'A trapper's relation?' Dakar shivered, then nodded, if not relieved, at least rea.s.sured he would not be shunned out of rancour. 'That makes sense. His Grace owes the man's sister a promise concerning a call of condolence.' Yesterday's fulfilled obligation to a surviving clanborn uncle had provided the information. The woman's husband had closed his cooper's shop in Eastwall and re-established his trade where the bounty of Alliance funding made business more lucrative.

Much later, when Elaira was settled and sleeping, Eriegal stirred from his extended catnap. First informed of Prince Arithon's precipitous departure, then given the round of ill news he had missed by his choice to guard Jeynsa, he heard out the grim scale of the upset served by the Alliance's taint of cult necromancy. Sidir's account did not finish until the pine knot had burned to a coal.

Under thin, b.l.o.o.d.y light, Eriegal rubbed at his balding head, the first uneasy sign he was troubled. 'Jeynsa went after Prince Arithon,' he admitted to Barach point-blank.

No one worried. The girl was well able to look after herself anywhere in the free wilds. Burdened down by far weightier concerns, Barach shrugged. 'If my sister tried to follow his Grace, the rain will have spoiled her tracking.'

'So she catches him up?' said Braggen, amused. 'Our liege is no fool. He'll shred her dignity, raise every hackle she's got, then send her young backside packing.'

Lumped onto a ha.s.sock in jellied exhaustion, Dakar dismissed, 'If he doesn't, I'll knife him, believe it.'

For what lay in the north was an unresolved danger cold-bloodedly vicious, and beyond the pale of any clansman's mortal imagining.

Summer 5671 Bait Fast as Arithon could cross the wilds of Halwythwood, then engage the travellers' amenities for a swift pa.s.sage by way of the trade-road, the Mad Prophet could maintain no such scorching pace. He lacked the stamina to make speed on foot. Post-horses tired beneath his stout bulk, even if his slipshod balance astride did not scour him to raw blisters. Beyond mundane discomforts, he found himself loath to meet Arithon s'Ffalenn face-to-face.

The spellbinder who had enacted a Fellowship directive had not stood, heart or mind, as a friend.

A fortnight and two days granted too brief an interval to reconcile the hurt, or ease the fresh brunt of remorse. Hot sun, and dust, and the seasonal scourge of night-feeding insects could not eclipse the dread or distance the hollow eyes of the enchantress now left to keep desolate vigil in Halwythwood.

But the shadow thrown by the dark practice of necromancy posed a crisis too bleak to defer. Too soon, Dakar crossed the Mathorn foothills. First wrapped in the resin-thick taint of the firs that blackened the steepening slopes, then folded under the blanketing shade thrown by the flint-crowned rims of the peaks, he cleared the last notch, while his hack puffed and lagged underneath him.

Spread under dusty haze, amid the creak of spoked wheels and the lowing of the teamed oxen, the overlook exposed the last, rolling downs, where the wilds of Daon Ramon lapped against the furrowed pa.s.s that bisected the spurs of two ranges. All traffic bound northward funnelled up through the gap, while the diminishing ruts of the east-bound trade-road wound away towards the opposite coast. The snake-twist approach to Etarra had always dizzied, for the switched-back that curves rose in ascent to the southern gate. Yet today, the bra.s.sy fall of noon sunlight lit the sweeping changes made since the year of Prince Arithon's failed coronation.

Dakar reined up with caught breath at the sight.

The wedged muddle of square-cut brick battlements and k.n.o.bbed towers still straddled the cleft of the pa.s.s. But the forested vales he remembered had been razed to stripped clay and bare rock. Above loomed the bleak, fitted walls of an outer array of defence-works, newly constructed by conscript labor under the arcane expertise of Elssine's masons.

. With Lysaer s'Ilessid now the ratified mayor, a westlands-bred chancellor had been appointed to govern, his experience and temperament a sharp match for the town's stew of pedigree arrogance and cutthroat politics. Etarra's influence lay at the hotbed center of the sunwheel Alliance. Onto that template, Raiett Raven's directive had stamped its pejorative imprint, transforming the north's most prosperous trade hub into the seat of command for its burgeoning war host.

The scorched scrub and broom-gra.s.s at the foot of the notch were now trampled to dirt by a soldiers' camp, pavilions and tents sprawled out in picketed squares. Recruits drilled on the gouged turf of the practise fields, where wild orchards once ripened apples. Flag standards parted the tenuous breeze, smoke-hazed by the fires in the ramshackle armoury sheds that scabbed the vale like a canker. The burdened air bore its tang of hot steel, the composting reek of the middens, the fly-swarming latrines, the stock pens, and the bustling cook-shacks.

Thought stalled. The heart faltered. Nowhere was the Master of Shadow more hated and feared than here, in the heart of Rathain. Inside this wasp's nest of zealous fanatics, there walked that single, marked man, his flesh made the target for every fletched arrow; his blood the sought prize for each pervnoned lance, and down to the last sharpened sword. To curb a deadly incursion of necromancy, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had entered Etarra, unsupported, bereft, and alone.

A whip cracked, close by. 'Get along, you fat jacka.s.s!' An incensed driver shook his fist and shouted over the milling grind of the drays. 'I'm not paid to park here for the view! Bed.a.m.ned if your nag hasn't jammed the whole road while you nod off like a daisy!'

Dakar snapped from the throes of unpleasant reverie and reined his blown hack downhill. Before long, he steered through the warren of free-booting wh.o.r.e's cribs and craft shacks, where inquiry found him the cooper's shop appointed for Arithon's rendezvous.

The meeting he dreaded did not await him. Dismounted before the open, board shed, he was welcomed as a traveller tired from the road, well spoken for, and expected. A lanky boy led his horse off to the livery. Set at ease in the shade, Dakar was served currant bread and tepid tea by a muscular matron, who then hustled off to stoke the flame for the steam-box. While he munched to the din of the cooper's apprentice, hammering steel into barrel hoops, the plank trestle was shared by an inquisitive old man whose pouched eyes were clouded by cataracts.

Dakar gave back all the news from the road, on request recounting the blazons of the dispatch riders inbound from the towns lying west. Such interest was ordinary, the routine queries any sight-impaired elder might ask, whose shelter relied on the fortune of a nephew's craft, or grandson's. Yet as the meal finished, the untidy fellow did not settle into his wicker chair for a nap. Instead, he delved into a box at his feet and pulled forth a folded doc.u.ment. The wrapper was tied with gilt ribbon and a genuine sunwheel seal.

Dakar shot erect as though pinked with an awl.

The man's milky eyes stared ahead, quite oblivious to the irregularity. 'You will take this into Etarra, my friend. Deliver it to the proprietor of Simshane's House of Exotic Delights.'

Dakar clicked his mouth shut. 'But that's the brothel that sells -'

The old man had a cutting, ironic smile. 'Did you come here to help? Then you'll say you're eager to sample his wares. Since this doc.u.ment offers him lavish reward, he'll fall over himself to oblige you. Is the bargain so dreadful? You'll have a comfortable bath. A softer bed than this abode can offer a guest who's a stranger. At breakfast, you'll tell the fat pimp that two hired carriages will arrive the next night to collect the young flowers he peddles. If you find them sweet, and yielding, and clean, you'll promise delivery of gold on these terms and seal a clandestine transaction.'

The Mad Prophet slammed his fists on the trestle.

Plates, crumbs, and tea mugs jounced, lost under the din from the craft-yard. The blind elder did not twitch an eye-lash. 'You don't like such instructions? They grate on your character?'

On his feet before thought, Dakar s.n.a.t.c.hed the scroll from the man's idle hand. 'Don't ask,' he retorted through his clenched teeth. 'If the conniving b.a.s.t.a.r.d who left me these orders comes back here to ask for more favours, you can tell him from me: he's got a vicious hand with a grudge, not to mention a sick touch for back-stabbing cruelty.'

The old man blinked. 'I'll say you're not going?'

'Oh, I'll go!' Dakar shoved off the trestle, the ache in his spine like a heated steel rod and his eyes pinched to slits of hazed anger. 'If only to say to the mountebank's face what I think of his vindictive temperament!'

The old man raised white eyebrows, and Dakar, beyond words, turned his back and stamped out.

Red-faced, and scorching in merciless sunlight, he was forced to beg transport up-town, cheek by jowl with a chatterbox boy who drove for the kiln that baked mud-bricks. The urchin pattered through the day's seamy gossip in gutter-snipe accents, while the rattletrap vehicle rumbled uphill, and the straining oxen dropped steaming manure. They crept past the tight bends. Stopped for the laden drays, paused to breathe draft teams, the spellbinder huddled in simmering fury until the odd phrase in the boy's busy tongue s.n.a.t.c.hed his cogitation up short. 'What did you just say?'

The filthy child flipped him a grin, snaggled with broken front teeth. 'Which? The pedigree spinster who dropped stone-dead in her plate while porking down snails at the banquet?'

'Not that,' Dakar said, canny enough to cool his sharp interest.

'Oh!' The boy's puzzlement cleared. 'The bit before that one. You weren't aware of the blind bard's bet with the city's appointed High Chancellor?'

'That one,' the disgruntled spellbinder affirmed, and then heard in remarkable depth of the cloudy-eyed free singer who was winning enraptured acclaim through the vibrancy of his playing.

'There's this wager afoot,' the waif ran on, switching his oxen around the last hairpin curve. High overhead a hawk sliced the sky, while the war camp sank into the bruise-coloured shade that mantled the lower vale. 'Word goes the High Chancellor can't sleep at night. The bard's posed a challenge, and promised hard proof. Inside of three days, he's claimed he will show that his music can free any man living from the affliction.'

As the burdened cart ground up to the gate, Dakar chewed over the fresh pill of rancour: that the encounter he dreaded had come and gone in the noisy murk of the craft shed. In hindsight, that una.s.suming old man had been much too suave; not to mention the suspect, official parchment was sealed with a sunwheel blazon. The very same fiendish bent for conniving would mean that two birds must fall to one stone. This errand to visit an unsavoury brothel promised more than an underhand stab to retaliate.

Which revelation stuck in the craw like the sc.r.a.pe of a fish-bone, jammed sidewards. 'd.a.m.n you to the plague of a thousand fiends!' Dakar rasped under his breath as the wagon was reined up for the routine inspection at the town entry. Although he was dressed as an unkempt tradesman, unlikely to raise probing questions, the nefarious dispatch he carried now might see him condemned for seditious treason. Dakar swore with invention, forced to spin a diversion to defer the armed guards and gain free admittance through the paired brick keeps.

Simshane's House of Exotic Delights was an oasis of lavish, bad taste set amid the soot-grimed rows of the oldest, trade-quarter tenements. Dakar arrived streaming sweat, and nerve-jangled from the vituperative slang served out by Etarra's carters. The narrow escapes as he missed being run down, and the contempt raised by pedigree sn.o.bbery had not changed one whit with Alliance rule. The brothel was a nestled confection of pink-brick walls and expensive quiet. A wrought-iron grille let into its compound, softened by a trellis of climbing roses. There, a huge eunuch who reeked of spiced oils unbolted the locks with a ring of ornate, gilded keys. An obsequious touch, a secretive smile, and the client was ushered inside. Within lay a courtyard with fountains and a hidden alcove that echoed with flutes. A lithe youth with shaved hair, painted eyes, and a voice of mellow soprano came forward and steered Dakar to a bench beneath spouting satyrs. He was given a cool drink, while sensuous hands removed his crusted boots and washed his feet in a basin of lily-water. Reshod in unguents and white-rope sandals, he was expected to smile, while an urchin wearing little but gold jewellery attended his unkempt foot-wear. Another blond boy led him on a meandering stroll through shade-trees and flower-beds, then into a doorway hung with gla.s.s beads. There, ankle-deep in a costly carpet and nauseated from breathing perfume, he was greeted by the establishment's rotund proprietor.

Olive-skinned, sporting ringlets, and hanging emerald pendants in each powdered ear-lobe, the creature had carmine lips and the glittering eyes of a snake. 'How shall Simshane's offer the gentleman ease?'

No pause, and no disparaging glance at the visitor's drab clothes: the wealthy who patronized this house's wares quite often disguised themselves as nondescript commoners. Still sickened with shame from the clinging touch of the prandey dispatched to sponge his sore feet, Dakar jammed his right hand in the crook of his arm lest he slam a fist in the simpering wh.o.r.emonger's face. Unable to muster civilized words, he turned over the sun wheel-sealed parchment.

Bangled wrists jingled as the august seal was cracked and dismissed with no visible flicker of interest. Discretion would be stock-in-trade in this place. Yet any demand made by the priests of the Light would risk scandal beyond even Simshane's vicarious experience.

The proprietor fluttered the parchment closed with scarcely a blink and no break from solicitous servitude. 'Quite an order. Of course, the immense compensation allows for all needs and contingencies. I'm pleased that your masters have entrusted our house to shoulder the requisite details.'

Dakar need not guess the transaction at hand required the incentive of payment, at premium. His biting quiet would no doubt be mistaken for worldly impatience.

'You've asked proof in advance that the wares will be genuine,' the proprietor resumed, his smile laid on thick as syrup.

The spellbinder forced a nod. Still too riled for speech, he watched his acquiescence change his unctuous reception to avaricious enthusiasm. The pimp clapped his soft hands.

A bevy of bath servants answered, each one male and exquisitely made, with hair dark, and auburn, and golden fair braided with jewels and scent.

'Simshane's finest, at your least command.' The proprietor bowed. Already gloating, he waved for his pack of trained puppets to attend the rich client's comfort.

Dakar survived the bath, barely. Stripped, steaming mad, and worn-out by the need to repel the barrage of professional advances, he was soon installed in an airy chamber appointed with mirrors and silk sheets. In line with Etarran taste, the enamelled furnishings and throw rugs had the gaudy opulence wealthy patrons expected of love-nests. One glance made a man want to shield aching eyes.

By then, the day's afterglow streamed through the pierced metal screens inset in the louvred shutters. Dakar kept the sheer robe, despite torpid heat. Alone, at least until he received the live flesh imposed by the parchment, he made the best of a bad situation, locked the door, and settled to sleep.

The servant who called with fruit juice and supper was dispatched with one surly word. Dakar rolled over and subsided to dreams as night flooded the gilt ta.s.sels, poufed quilts, and overstuffed couches in shadow. Hours pa.s.sed. He forgot where he was, until a knock at his door rousted him back to logy awareness.

Since his chamber was locked, no servant had come to light the lamps or crack the latched shutters. Dakar freed his ankles from the miring sheets and blundered between the grotesque, padded stools used for who knew what obscene purpose.

He shot back the bar, too disgruntled to curse, and encountered a gagged and bound coffle of children. Boys; still wet from the bath, and reeking of perfume. Above twisted cloth, knotted cruelly tight, their cleaned faces were flushed with fight and fear, or streaming tears of heart-wrenching terror.

Dakar's dumbfounded expression must have shown rage, for the escorting eunuch bearing the lamp blocked the corridor and snapped his fingers. Two muscular heavies pushed forward to flank him. These carried cudgels, and proffered no smile, their purpose being to eliminate trouble in cases where customers chose to be difficult.

'Your high priest's detailed order, as written,' the eunuch p.r.o.nounced with cold courtesy. 'Two dozen young males, entire and unspoiled, with the spirit not yet broken out of them. As detailed, they are presented for your inspection and, Simshane's trusts, your subsequent word of approval.'

Dakar burned. Locked by the fury that pounded his blood, he was unable to speak.

His silence posed danger. Already, the hardened attendants' regard shifted towards murderous suspicion. The parchment brought under the sunwheel seal could in fact pose them a trap. If the Light's priests chose to seed moral outrage and rout out the warrens of vice, they might tear down a long-standing, lucrative business, established with painstaking attention to delicacy.

Awake to his peril, Dakar felt his hair rise. This was Etarra, where disputes over trade were resolved by hired a.s.sa.s.sins. The inlaid tin shutters were not kept for privacy, but would be barred shut to discourage prying officials and keep the brothel's victimized wares from escaping.

Since the doorway was blocked by two heavy-set thugs all too primed to use garrotes and knives, the spellbinder sent by the Master of Shadow stepped aside and let the bound children be herded into the room.

'You will be locked in,' the eunuch explained, his honeyed tone masking threat. 'House rules demand that the lamps stay unlit. With wildlings, we can't risk a fire. Naturally, if you find yourself compromised, we will have help stationed outside.'

'I'll need no a.s.sistance,' Dakar said, amazed he could manage even the semblance of calm. 'In fact, I will sate my indulgence alone. Your attendants can take themselves elsewhere.'

The eunuch bowed to a c.h.i.n.k of gold chain. 'Indulge as you wish. I suggest as precaution, you might be unwise to unbind such as these. The handlers who managed them in the baths said Simshane's would be negligent not to warn you.'

As the last of the children was prodded past, Dakar said with chill dignity, 'My masters have paid well enough for this night. Mine to choose how I'll use what they've asked for.'

The eunuch returned an obscene, knowing smile, then mustered his escort and retired into the corridor. He took the lamp with him. Left in darkness, surrounded by the boys' panicked breathing, Dakar listened, while the fastening of chains, bolts, and bars went on for what seemed a long time.

He needed trained discipline to curb his riled nerves. Through the reek of jasmine, gardenia, and rose, he noticed the nauseating reek of seared flesh.

'My beauties,' he greeted with ominous calm. 'Can it be that you have been branded?'

No sound; only the thick, m.u.f.fled whimpers of children whose quaking dread found no requital.

Dakar stepped forward. Mage-sight let him see. He bent to the tow-headed waif by his knee, examined an arm, and before the mite flinched away from his touch, felt the hot, swollen flesh where the iron had seared into young skin. 'Easy,'

Etarrans meted out such abuse to captive clanborn to mark them as criminal labor.

The kick launched at the spellbinder's kneecap missed, only because he expected a desperate move to retaliate. As Dakar dodged, he flipped off the child's gag.

'Stinking pervert!' the boy gasped through puffed lips, then added a vicious torrent of curses, snapping with forest-bred accents.

'Wise up!' Dakar cracked. 'Don't force me to beat you.' A risk within walls, since subtle knowledge of clan ways could see him staked out for a maiming, he ventured, 'You have been well-taught?'

As he hoped, that precise turn of phrase was recognized.

Chastened to have judged a man by appearances, the child glared back in mutinous silence.

'Good boy,' Dakar crooned. For the sake of the watchful observers outside, he added, 'Let's agree to be seen, but not heard.' Fast and low, in Paravian, he whispered the rest. 'I'll put the question to you just once. I know you were born to old families in Fallowmere. Did Simshane's purchase the lot of you?'

'Not the girls,' the boy murmured. 'They were already sold. Gone to the four winds and sad destiny. Why have you had us brought here?'

'To discover sweet pleasure,' Dakar answered aloud, 'until you sing out with joy and discover good manners and willing compliance. We have until dawn to achieve this.' He sat on the bed, because his knees failed him. The tears welled thick and hot through his lashes. 'Act pleased,' he insisted. 'You won't be made prandey. But our bargain with Simshane's depends on the quality of your performance.' He added the Paravian term for 'strict patience,' masked as a murmured endearment.

The boy's return glare held white rage and murder. He spat upon the fine carpet.

'That's a start.' Aware the flimsy silk robe on his back was no a.s.set to his good character, Dakar hurled himself across the bed. 'Mind carefully. Here's how we'll proceed.' While the children stared, sullen, he kicked at the footboard. His terrified audience stared with huge eyes as he rolled and panted, and creaked frame and mattress with gusto. Then he added the flourish, tore the silk sheets, and cried out in breathless abandon, 'Go on! Nip my fingers. Shout. You don't fight, I'll presume that your parents were sheep.'

That comment raised from the lips of the child an insult straight out of the gutter.

Dakar whooped. 'Again!' he encouraged. He tossed a pillow, then pounded until a snagged seam let out a blizzard of feathers. 'That, for your savage, rank insolence!' A belting slap against his own thigh gave the remark a cruel punctuation. 'Cry, d.a.m.n you!' he gasped, while he gestured to cue the tow-headed child who still stood with tied hands on the carpet.

A wide-eyed look met him, then a convincing whimper, more due to fright than play-acting.

Dakar nodded. He finished his jouncing charade on the bed, then covered his movement with heavy breathing as he rose, and eased the rope binding the first child's wrists. 'On the bed. Go to sleep,' he encouraged in Paravian. 'You won't be touched. I am trained as spellbinder, by Asandir. On my life, you shall have your freedom returned. But the plan for escape can't go forward until I've wrecked the room and faked the gamut of convincing appearances.'

And so the night pa.s.sed, with no suspicious attendant from Simshane's the wiser. When at last a red sunrise spilled through the screens, it lit the wracked sheets, splintered stools, and frayed ends of rope knotted onto the posts of the bed. The restraints still left fastened to the older boys' limbs showed crusted traces of blood.

The breeze wafted eddies through the loose down and dried the degenerate stains marring rucked carpets and floor-tiles. On the bed, huddled into an exhausted, bruised heap, the boys who were wakeful glared at the eunuch who unbarred the door to the corridor. Among them, Dakar snored replete, naked, and scratched, and flushed pink in the sweat of indulgence. The beaten, raw circles under his eyes were not feigned, to the eunuch's professional eye. Nor was the brisk shake required to restore him back to his overslaked senses.

'Splendid entertainment,' Dakar murmured, thick. 'Exquisitely violent. Clean them up in the bath. Over breakfast, we'll seal the terms on your gold and arrange the hour for the coaches to come and collect them.'

Noon broiled the craft shacks by the drill field. In the dusty, thick air, the sun blazed like lye, and heat trembled, redolent of baked earth, goose-greased leather, and horse sweat. The crossbuck doors of the cooper's shed were propped open to scoop the weak breeze, when Dakar blundered over the threshold.

The blind man who was no common craftsfolk's relation arose from the shadows to meet him. 'They scratch?' he said gently.

A hand far too steady to be an old man's eased the spellbinder into a seat at the trestle. There, plain fare waited, and a pitcher of water that was cold and clean, and not tainted with exotic aphrodisiacs.

'I could fake bruises by sleight-of-hand spells and illusion. Not the blood, or the fluids, which were mine. And for that, d.a.m.n your secretive viciousness!' Too distraught to do more than sip at the mug shoved into his shaken fingers, Dakar settled his damp head in a bitten hand that throbbed with an angry swelling. He was scarcely aware of the other fresh scabs, caused by an older boy too riddled with terror to listen, or trust him.

When Arithon did not speak, the silence hurt worse. Dakar could not suffer the poisonous ache or sustain the frayed thread of detachment. 'They are all under ten, and out of their natural minds, frightened. Why in Ath's sweet name didn't you tell me?'

'You never enquired,' came the soft-spoken reply.

Movement, to his left, then the c.h.i.n.k of a crock; a cool compress that smelled of an astringent herb was pressed over the festering wound on his thumb.

'Just as well,' stated Arithon, braced as his healer's touch was slapped off. He caught the wad of soaked rag just sent flying and tossed it within easy reach on the trestle. 'Given the muddled state you were in, I didn't think you would listen.'

The unfriendly truth pinched. Dakar expelled a wracked breath. 'That letter I delivered to Simshane's proprietor - it will in fact arrange for those branded clan children to recover their freedom from conscript captivity?'

'Merciful grace, Dakar! You have to ask?' A pause ensued. In the yard, the cooper's mallets banged on, while the matron harangued an apprentice for indecent language. Then, the lash of resentment too seamlessly masked, 'For a thousand gold coin weight, sunwheel-stamped, we get all twenty-four -'

'How!' Dakar interrupted. 'You couldn't arrange that -'