"Search him out, if you please, and send him to my chambers."
Aillas bathed in hastily provided ewers of warm water and changed into fresh garments. When he came out into his parlour, he found Yane waiting for him. "At last!" said Yane. "The far-ranging king returns, preceded by startling rumor."
Aillas laughed and threw his arms around Yane's shoulders. "I have much to tell you! Would you be surprised to learn that I am now King of all Ulfland, in full formality? And no doubt to a bitter griping of Casmir's royal bowels. No? You are not surprised?"
"The news came two days ago by pigeon."
"I have other surprises still! You remember Duke Luhalcx of Castle Sank?"
"I remember him well."
"You will be pleased to learn that I twisted his nose in a most satisfying style! He now rues the day that he offended Cargus, Yane and Aillas!"
"Now there is fine news indeed! Tell me more!"
"I captured the Lady Tatzel and took her across the moors as my slave. Had I bedded her as she expected, she would have hated me as an insolent brute. I gave her back to her father untouched and now she hates me even more."
"Such is the nature of the female race."
"True. I expected effusive thanks and tears of joy and invitations from Tatzel, but I had none of these: only a surly ingratitude. More urgently, what of your bodes and premonitions which brought me home at such haste? Evidently they have come to nothing!"
"Not so! Nothing has changed, and I feel imminence as heavy as before."
"All on account of the sorcerer Visbhume?"
"Exactly so. He excites my deepest suspicions. He is Casmir's agent: so much is incontrovertible, even though the facts lead to more mysteries."
"And what are the facts?"
"Three times he has visited Haidion, where he was favoured with immediate audiences. He came to Troicinet aboard the Parsis and made careful inquiries in regard to Dhrun and Glyneth, and took the news back to Casmir. Recently he came again aboard the Parsis and at this moment sojourns in a village not ten miles from Watershade. Now do you understand my suspicion?"
"Not only do I understnd it; I share it. He is still at Wysk?"
"He lodges at the Cat and Plough: needless to say, under surveillance. Sometimes he studies a book with leather covers; sometimes he rides in an absurd little pony cart; sometimes he walks out into the forest, searching for rare herbs. The village girls give him a wide berth; he is always after them to cut his hair or rub his back or sit on his lap and play a game he calls ‘Pouncing Ferrets'. When they will not go into the woods to hunt herbs with him, he becomes peevish."
Aillas heaved a fretful sigh. "Tomorrow I must consult my ministers, or they will think harshly of me. Then I will ride out to Watershade... . With magic at hand I would be happy to see Shimrod. But I cannot send for him every time one or the other of us feels a bode. He would quickly lose patience with me. Ah well, we shall see. Now I am ravenously hungry. The food aboard the Pannuc is at best only adequate. Perhaps the kitchen can find us something savory for our dinner: a fowl, or some ham and eggs, with some turnips in butter and some leeks."
As they ate, Yane told of King Casmir's secret warship. With many precautions the hull had been launched from the ways in Blaloc, and according to all reports it was a fine hull indeed, built of staunch oak and sound bronze nails, with low freeboard and lateen rig for crisp sailing, and ports for rowing with forty oars when the winds went calm.
To evade notice, the hull had been towed by night from the shipyard to a fitting-out dock further up the Murmeil Estuary, where the rigging would have been installed. Instead, Troice ships had closed in; the tow-lines were cut and the hull drifted down the estuary and out into the open sea. At dawn, Troice ships picked up the line and towed the hull to the south of Dascinet and into one of the deep narrow inlets, where the hull, suitably rigged, would eventually join the Troice navy. Yane reported that Casmir, raging over the loss, had pulled half the hair from his beard.
"Let Casmir build ships by the dozen!" cried Aillas. "We will continue to take them until not a hair remains to his face!"
As Aillas and Yane took their cheese and fruit, Dhrun burst into the chamber, travel-worn and wild-eyed. Aillas jumped to his feet. "Dhrun! What is amiss?"
"Glyneth is gone! She has disappeared from Watershade! I could not prevent it; it happened the day before I arrived!"
"How did she disappear? Did someone take her?"
"She went wandering into the Wild Woods as she often has done; she never came back! No one is sure but a certain odd fellow named Visbhume is thought to be responsible. He is also gone."
Aillas sagged into a chair. The world, only minutes before so bright and fair, had suddenly gone gray. A dull weight pressed upon his heart. "Naturally you made a search?"
"I went out at once with Noser and Bunce. They traced her well enough to a glade in the forest and there the trail died. I called out searchers, and a hundred men sought her high and low, and they are still searching. I rode here to get help, and I have not stopped along the way except to change horses! I am greatly relieved to find you, for I am at my wit's end!"
Aillas threw his arm around his son's shoulders. "Good Dhrun, I could have done no more or no better! There is magic at work, and we cannot cope with it."
"Then we must send for Shimrod!"
"That we will do! Come!"
Aillas led the way to the study at the side of his parlour. On a taboret a stuffed owl sat on a perch. From the owl's beak dangled a blue cord by a string with a gold bead at the tip. "Ah!" cried Aillas. "Shimrod has preceded us!"
He gently pulled at the blue cord and the stuffed owl spoke: "I have gone to Watershade. Join me there."
Chapter 14
THE SEASON CAME AROUND to the high solstice, a time of great significance for astronomers. The night skies were ruled by the gentle constellations of summer: Ophiuchus, Lyra, Cepheus, Deneb the Swan. Arcturus and Spica, noble stars of spring, sank in the west; from the east rose Altair to stare down upon sullen Antares, where Scorpio sprawled across the south.
Under the cool stars and everywhere across the Elder Isles folk conducted their endeavors: sometimes in joy, as at King Gax's coronation of Aillas; sometimes in fury, as in the case of King Casmir and his stolen ship. Elsewhere husbands chided wives and wives discerned flaws in their husbands; at village inns and wayside taverns boasting, gluttony and wine-swilling were rife, to the thud of mugs, the clinking of coins and gusts of laughter. At Kernuun's Antler, on the shore of Lake Quyvern, avarice was embodied in the person of the innkeeper Dildahl, and here, perhaps, is an appropriate occasion to recount further incidents in regard to Dildahl which otherwise might be lost in the spate of larger events.
Two days before the solstice, a group of druids came to Kernuun's Antler for their midday meal. Despite double portions of Dildahl's good boiled beef and braised lamb shanks, their conversation was pitched in tones of vehement indignation. At last Dildahl could no longer contain his curiosity. Putting a question, he learned that a band of sacrilegious outlaws had stormed the sacred islet Alziel, put torches to the great wicker crow and liberated the sacrificial victims, so that the usual rite was no longer feasible. The circumstance, so the druids asserted, was somehow connected with the accession of a new king at Xounges, who had sent out gangs of cutthroats to harass and ambush the Ska.
"Outrageous!" declared Dildahl. "But if they were in pursuit of Ska, why did they destroy the crow and so spoil the rite?"
"We can only believe that the new king's personal fetish is the crow. Next year we will construct a goat, and no doubt all will be well."
Later in the afternoon a pair of middle-aged travellers arrived at the inn. Dildahl, watching from a window, adjudged them persons of no great distinction, although their garments and the silver medals on their hats indicated a decent level of prosperity, and each rode a horse of obvious spirit and quality.