that his purpled eye lent him a frightening aspect, Tarens slowly shifted the quarterstaff into the crook of his elbow. By nature, he was prepared to be gentle as he eased the odd vagabond clear of the road.
‘Any idea where he came from?’ Kerelie ventured from her anxious seat in the wagon-bed.
‘No.’ Tarens grasped the man’s ragged shoulder. The unsavoury shirt was too thin for the season, and the bony frame, disgracefully underfed. Outraged, he exclaimed, ‘Wherever that was, naught can forgive the wrongful fact someone was starving him.’
‘We’re not hauling a stray!’ Efflin bellowed, at once shouted down by Kerelie’s protest.
‘For shame! Would you turn a blind eye on misfortune? If the man’s a simpleton, how can we not show him kindness?’
Efflin grumbled, unmollified, ‘You’re that sure he’s not one of the ungrateful orphans, scarpered from the witches’ protection?’
‘Nonsense!’ Kerelie batted his arm. ‘Since when has a boy ward of theirs grown a beard?’ Truth disarmed the argument. Koriathain always placed their male charges with an honest apprenticeship before they reached virile manhood.
‘Worse,’ Efflin persisted, ‘we could be caught harbouring one of their order’s half-witted servants.’
Which cruel guess was the more likely prospect. Rumors and grannies’ tales said Koriathain coveted idiots for the brainless service of fetching and carrying. Coin endowments, word held, were awarded for deaf-mutes. Ones unable to read or write could not betray the order’s secretive business. ‘If that creature’s stumbled away from such keepers, we’re not safe assisting a runaway.’
Tarens overheard. Susceptible to soft-heartedness, he jumped at fresh cause to brangle with his older brother. ‘I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy, here!’ If his prized bull must be condemned to the knacker’s knife, he had never allowed better sense to abet any form of mistreatment. Nor would he stand for the callous abuse of a person luckless enough to be moonstruck.
Efflin understood well enough when to humour his brother’s obstinacy. ‘Lead the wretch here, then. We’ll grant him a ride into Kelsing and leave him the coin to buy a hot meal.’ He set the brake, resigned, looped the reins, and climbed down to restrain the bull, while Kerelie pulled the latch pins and lowered the tail-board.
If the creature had been a witch’s familiar, he stayed docile as Tarens boosted him into the wagon. He curled up by the chicken crates, knees hugged to his chest, soothed by the ponderous rumble of wheels, and contentedly pleased to watch the autumn landscape pass by. When the ox-wain trundled into the sprawling farm market, shadowed beneath Kelsing’s walls, he observed with bright eyes as Efflin hauled the ox to a stop. Before Tarens could hitch the draught beast to a rail, the fellow leaped out, saw where he was needed, and with no one’s asking, helped Kerelie unload the baskets and poultry. His small size masked an unexpected, fierce strength. He hefted the heaviest crates without difficulty and arranged them as she directed for display and sale.
While Efflin took charge and untied the bull, Tarens dug into his scrip. The last silver left to his name, he placed in the vagabond’s hand. Sadness struck him afresh, that the man’s nails were dirt-rimed, and his palm, welted over with callus.
Peculiar, how those oddities niggled. Tarens had never heard mention that Koriathain worked the land or kept destitutes for field labor. He shrugged off curiosity, aware by the heat on his back that the risen sun burned through the mist. Already he risked being late to nose-lead the beeve to its fate at the butcher’s. Loose half-wits were scarcely his problem, besides. At large in the open market, someone might recognize the mute stranger and claim him.
If not, surely the industrious fellow might find some sort of menial labor in town. Aware he was unwanted, he moved off unasked, to assist an old woman who struggled to lift hampers of yarn from a neighbouring wagon. Diligent as he seemed, the local tavern might hire him to scrub tankards and sweep.
‘He will be better off,’ Efflin snapped, and dealt Tarens a shove to break his reverie. ‘Anything here offers much better prospects than blocking the trade-road for shiftless amusement.’
Autumn 5922
Hard Reckoning
The Fellowship Sorcerer entered the order’s sisterhouse at Whitehold empty-handed, his purpose to close the terms of an ancient score, declared in an hour of bitter defeat on a morning well over two centuries ago. He came clothed in formality. His robe of immaculate indigo velvet brushed the marble floor, while the silver braid that bordered his sleeves gleamed in the early sun shafted through the hall’s sea-side windows. Pale steel were his eyes, steady as he took the measure of the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain, enthroned in state panoply to meet him.
Always dangerous, the enchantress sat above everyone else in the room. Her coquette’s beauty was regaled in the deep purple gown and red ribbons of her supreme office, and her massive chair, atop a canopied dais, overshadowed the initiate sisters selected to witness the momentous audience. Where the Sorcerer was required to stand at her feet, his immense strength leashed in stilled patience, she glittered in extravagant triumph. Pale aquamarine were her eyes, hard as her jewels of amethyst and diamond, and just as stone cold, while she savoured her moment to hound him to humiliation.
She had cornered his game, or so she believed. The flicker of gilt thread in the gloves worn to mask her grotesquely scarred hands all but shouted her defiant scorn. Peremptory, invigorated by the thrill of her victory, she gestured for him to open the proceedings.
‘Prime Matriarch,’ he greeted, too self-contained to sound cowed, though the grandiose hall with its stone-vaulted splendour had been staged for demeaning spite. Lean and tall though the Sorcerer was, the soaring pillars that upheld the domed ceiling diminished his upright stature. More, the silent regard of the ranked Senior sisters picked to share his Fellowship’s demise seared the atmosphere to contempt.
The weathered lines on the Sorcerer’s features might have been quarried, with his hawk’s profile straitly expressionless. ‘I have come in accord to confirm the reckoning owed by our mutual promise.’
Perfect with youth, though she was in fact aged, her vitality engineered by dark spellcraft that had repeatedly cheated mortality, the Prime Matriarch tipped her coiffed head to acknowledge his careful greeting. ‘Asandir.’ Her coral lips turned, a smile made cordial by poisonous satisfaction. ‘We accept, by your presence, the promised acknowledgement that your Fellowship’s debt is now due. The last invasive free wraith from Marak has been duly banished by Athera’s Masterbard. The event occurred yesterday. This dawn, by the covenant carved onto stone in the King’s Chamber at Althain Tower, the stay of execution your Fellowship demanded on behalf of Prince Arithon of Rathain is named forfeit. Our order’s sovereignty requires his death. By the pledge held and sworn by Crown auspices to Koriathain, and sealed by the prophet apprentice under your Fellowship’s oversight, we choose to reject a further hearing.’
Asandir said nothing.
Stung, perhaps, by his dead-pan silence, Prime Selidie sat forward and jabbed. ‘My order will seize its deferred satisfaction! Did you really believe our initial demand would be softened by your past effrontery when you forced our hand?’
Malice spiked the Prime’s anger. The sweet hour of ascendancy heated her blood, all the more rich since the vicious riposte thrust upon her by the Fellowship Sorcerers’ underhand tactic: a deadly influx of wraiths unleashed on the world as their ruthless weapon in counter-threat. Unconscionably, they had gambled! The survival of Mankind on Athera had been callously
