Traitor's Knot Part 44

A raised hand jerked him down, while the m.a.s.t.e.r.b.a.t.*rd finished,'- complete with a signed bill of sale. You can burn that, once the children are back in safe custody. At this time tomorrow, if all goes well, they'll be on the way home to their families. Untouched. Unless, last night, you couldn't restrain yourself?'

Another pause, this one drivingly vicious. Dakar managed to choke his galled rage, just barely.

Rathain's crown prince resumed against censuring silence. 'Simshane's was vying to purchase them, anyway' In that sharp change of course that always drowned fury beneath the moil of deeper waters, he added, 'The girls went last week. To an unknown client who made his transactions by night and refused to receive their delivery in daylight.'

Cold fear shot a jolt straight through a seized heart. Dakar raised his head. 'Dharkaron avert!' Somehow, he forced his hazed wits to respond. 'You think the females were purchased for necromancy?'

1 don't think. I know,' stated Arithon s'Ffalenn, motionless in his disguise. Kewar had deepened him. The veiling illusion cast over his form was not visible, even to the extended awareness of a Fellows.h.i.+p-trained spellbinder's mage-sight. 'After all, I have been in Etarra five days, pursuing the purpose that brought me.'

'Enough!' cracked Dakar. 'I suppose I deserved that. Though when all's said and done, I don't feel the least sc.r.a.p of need to grovel and beg your forgiveness.'

Arithon stared back through milky-white eyes that might, or might not, cloud his vision. A sorcerer cloaked in a stilled well of mastery, he would not be blinded to resource. 'Should you feel sorry? That was, after all, an inflicted, unconscious sacrifice.' Almost no stain of rancour darkened the words of a man whose private will had been torn wholesale from the grasp of his dignity. 'I gave the permission that granted you power in trust. What use to blame, that you and Kharadmon saw fit to use what you held for expediency? Apologize to Elaira,' Prince Arithon said. 'It is she who should grant absolution.'

Dakar stood, furious. Fresh sweat stung his eyes. Between them, the crockery jug was a weapon he refrained from using, but only out of civil respect for a stranger's hospitality. 'In my shoes, you would have risked walking away? You would have dared the dread consequence? Athera may have come to suffer the price! How much worse, had you shouldered the failure?'

Eyes locked, Arithon turned away first. 'What is our experience, but the reflected truth of our misapprehensions and short-falls? And also the grace of our beauty and strength, and the wise choices that make up our character?' He laid his slender, musician's hands out flat on the battered board trestle. Then gave his last line with the vulnerable quiet that stripped beyond grief to the core of him. 'We'll never know, will we?' Dakar swallowed. He cursed his own tears, which welled down his face in remorse and raw pain and stung sympathy. 'You love her that much, that the whole world should burn?'

'You don't,' said Arithon. 'The world has stayed whole. Every-one else can rejoice for the fact. But not me.' He moved at last, too scalded to stay still or contain the bright blaze of his anguish. 'Without her, what else in my life keeps its meaning? We may as well stop this and just be ourselves. Plans set in motion must be carried through. Or Simshane's will be gelding your innocent boys, while their sisters get sacrificed to necromancy.'

Summer 5671 Lines In the caithdein's lodge deep in Atwood, scouts from the forest's fringe outpost report the latest grim news: that, after scorching the road to reach s.h.i.+psport, Lysaer s'Ilessid has just raised the sunwheel standard for war and boarded a galley for Jaelot; now, north-bound messengers bear sealed word to the garrisoned towns across the East Halla peninsula to call on their strength to take the field against Shadow in Alestron . . .

Bearing his orders to muster the south, Sulfin Evend delivers the dispatches that leave Ithish and Innish seething with the command to take arms, and as the sunwheel flags.h.i.+p dips her oars back to sea, the charge of a flint dagger left in his possession turns her prow towards the forbidding headland of Sanpas.h.i.+r . . .

Eriegal sweats under Feithan's cold eye, just made aware of the word arrived from the watch camp at the ford by the Arwent: that young Jeynsa never intended to confront the Teir's'Ffalenn directly, but instead has bolted southward to launch her formal inquiry from the clan seat in Melhalla; and though Sidir and Elaira leave on the hour in pursuit, the girl's lead may well be too wide for closure . . .

Previous Chapter Contents Glossary Summer 5671 XIV. Sinkers and Hooks The Mad Prophet chose to sulk by going to sleep. Because the night's efforts had left him tired, he snored through the upheaval that arose when the delegation of sun wheel priests arrived from the east and preempted the use of the practise field. Above protesting officers and cursing men, their sealed requisitions commandeered the Light's recruits to erect their elaborate pavilion.

Dakar's nap broke when the balding cooper stumbled in and collapsed, pounding the boards of the trestle, while his whooping journeymen roared with helpless hilarity alongside him.

Uncurled from the blankets where he had pa.s.sed out, the Mad Prophet arose. Yawning, he shuffled past the stack of planed staves and plonked himself down on the bench between a spaniel-faced craftsman and a dandified boy, sporting tooled-leather bracers.

'What's funny?' he asked.

The bland inquiry redoubled the explosion of mirth, until the blond apprentice across the boards caught the glower shot off by the cooper's wife. Cheeks already packed, he shoved the crock of fresh cream and the basket of biscuits across to be shared with the wakened guest. Between gasping chuckles, the yard's workers explained that some Shadow-touched mountebank had rifled the Light's chests of tribute. 'Rocks!' The breathless cooper wheezed out. 'The coffers came off the wagons chock-full of lichen-stained Skys.h.i.+el granite.'

'No one knows where the strayed bullion's gone,' said the grinning young man with the bracers. 'The drivers claim that their mule train wasn't raided. Hide nor hair, they saw no trace of barbarians. That leaves the frocked priests, who swear by the avatar's name that they're clean and not lining the nests of their relatives.'

Inquiries and accusations were still flying. Since no one seemed able to finger a culprit, suspicion had started fisticuffs.

The cooper clutched his aching ribs, ruefully shaking his head. 'The Light's faithful got off with no worse than black eyes, once the bard used his lyranthe to calm them.'

Caught tipping the cream jug, Dakar froze outright. 'The free singer was there?'

'Oh, aye. The whole time.' The apprentice swallowed his mouthful, then shot out an arm to right the pitcher and salvage the fat guest's inundated biscuit. 'The fellow's still out there, impressing the faithful with sanctimonious ballads.'

Dakar all but choked. Stunned by the break-neck speed of events, he pretended amus.e.m.e.nt by asking after the ballast.

'What became of the rocks?' The cooper swiped tears off his streaming chin. 'Who knows? Who cares? Why not ask the singer? He'll have witnessed the whole thing. The priests are already so infatuated with his warbling, they've engaged him for their night's entertainment.'

As Dakar braced to shove to his feet, the adjacent journeyman reached sidewards and jammed his bulk back down on the bench. 'Man, sit easy. You've no need to scuttle. The singer comes back here for supper each day. Our errand-boy's got the cart-horse already harnessed to fetch him.'

In accord with the shop mistress's solicitous care, the blind singer was shortly led in by the child. The lyranthe he unslung from his shoulder was a nondescript instrument bearing a crudely etched sunwheel on the sound-board.

'The rocks?' he responded. His blade-thin features tracked only the food, as the beamy matron laid a filled plate and a mug between his supple hands. 'They were sold for a pittance to a mason who said he wanted to chip them for curb-stone. He brought in slave muscle to haul them away.' The singer dug in, and the finish, disinterested, came m.u.f.fled through mastication. 'Two conscript barbarians, recently collared, and nursing the scabs of fresh brands.'

Dakar suddenly found the bread sops and cream not settling well in his gut. Since the cooper's wife had a clanblood grandparent, the laborers' rowdiness staggered across a brief silence and discomfortably changed the subject. The bard devoted himself to his meal without comment. Shortly, the craftsmen sc.r.a.ped their plates, and grumbled their way to the work-yard.

The matron departed to boil more glue. The instant she pa.s.sed the threshold, Dakar accosted the singer's complacency. 'That gold was masked under a powerful glamour! Else the resonance of conjury would have never gone past Lysaer's twitchy examiners. You had help for that sleight of hand, or I'm dead, and those conscripts weren't shackled, or branded.'

Turbid eyes stayed trained straight ahead, unperturbed by badgering anxiety. 'They were, in fact. But parents who have cherished offspring at risk won't balk at necessity to save them.'

'Who is the mason?' Dakar said, wrung to shaking as the high-stakes course of Arithon's effrontery shredded his last, cringing nerve. 'Dare I suppose? I'm to wander across for a social call before I engage two hack teams and a pair of closed carriages?' The lethal surmise remained beyond speech: that the hot gold purloined from the tribute chests now would be destined for Simshane's, as barter for captive flesh.

'Don't flare up in smoke,' the bard stated, nonplussed. 'I still have some friends from my travels as Medlir. Traithe also left me some trustworthy names. The mason's family was first on the list.'

Dakar's queasy stomach failed to unclench. 'You could still be sold out.' The allure of the tribute, or the excessive bounty Avenor's edict had set upon Arithon's head, might tempt the most reliable acquaintance to turn coat.

The bard shrugged, unconcerned.

Which gesture raised Dakar to more anxious sweat. 'You plan to expose Simshane's?' Then, impelled into terrified disbelief, 'Disenfranchise the priests?'

'Watch and see,' said Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn. The daylight reflected off those white eyes glinted cold as a headsman's axe blade. 'Since the Light left its game-pieces all in a row, do you trust they'll stay planted for gravity?'

That glib statement veiled more than Dakar cared to know: had, at Jaelot, and Riverton, and Dier Kenton Vale, tripped a balance that launched off a ma.s.sacre. Wrong step or right move, one bold action might rend the whole web; and Etarra was tinder, primed for the torch to ignite a broadscale disaster. 'If I'm to masquerade as the pimp, what part are you playing to back me?'

'The merry measures that whirl all the dancers to h.e.l.l.' One languid finger plucked a taut string. The struck note speared across trembling air and rang like the s.h.i.+ne on a promise. 'I'll be the performance out in plain sight, singing pap that will blindfold the priests.' A damping thumb left the counterpoint thunder of mallets against the dauntless conclusion. 'The stonemason has your instructions, my friend. All told, the outcome relies upon luck, subtle cues, and a clock-work array of stage timing.'

Yet how daring the reel, and how giddy the pace, Dakar failed to antic.i.p.ate. Not until after the sunwheel gold was unveiled in the dusty glare of the stone-yard. The mason c.o.c.ked back his filthy, slouch hat and related the audacious scope of Prince Arithon's planned machinations.

Much too late, the sane man found the sense to refuse. In the stifling sheds, helped by an anxious wife and three boys, the shop's craftsmen packed their tools and belongings in preparation for swift flight. They were town-bred and upholding a choice that would see their home and livelihood abandoned against certain charges of treason. The spellbinder regarded the two close-mouthed clansmen, for whose sake these stout folk offered sacrifice. The strapping fellows were half-stripped to load wagons, and collared, if not actually captive. The price of their ruse had been paid all the same. Both sweated in pain from the heated iron that had disfigured their muscular forearms.

'Why are these people doing this?' Dakar asked point-blank, as the displaced family bustled around him.

Both clansmen stopped work. One replied in Paravian. 'They act for what's right. It's an ironic twist out of history.'

When Dakar's distrustful glower stayed fixed, the other posed conscript explained. 'Apparently their mother was once taken prisoner by Earl Jieret's war captain, Caolle. He'd slaughtered her brother during a caravan raid to save the secret of our liege's whereabouts. But the sister was weaponless. She had two weans. Stuck holding the knife, Caolle lost his nerve. Since he couldn't slit three helpless throats in cold blood, the bunch was held in Daon Ramon, then released when their news lost its value. The old lady's stayed bitter. Still funds the league's bounties. But her older boy had seen through the lies that drive townsmen to kill for our differences. The mason who helps us is that man, grown, and now it's our children he's saving.'

Dakar mopped his face, seized clammy with dread. Having heard tonight's plans in their d.a.m.ning entirety, he found no a.s.surance to allay the fear that still leached at his shrinking resolve. 'We're not just effecting a rescue,' he challenged. 'Follow this through, and you set your young sons at worse risk than gelding abuse by a brothel.'

Both of the clanborn fathers stared back. The one with the bruised look around his eyes said, 'For all the bodily harm they might see, their lost sisters stand to lose more than their lives. As a Fellows.h.i.+p spellbinder sent here to curb necromancy, if you can't find the gall to lead these coaches up-town, then charter law binds us to force you.'

Dakar mounted the driver's box with shaking knees. The reins of the team weighed like lead in his sweating grasp. He rousted the horses, set the front vehicle rolling, not by choice, not for courage or duty, but for the lives of twenty-four boys, and for the friend whose unreserved trust relied on a flawless deception at Simshane's.

By then, the Master of Shadow was installed at the sunwheel pavilion, strings tuned for the priests, with the first set already in motion.

The most infamous night in Etarran history since the renegade prince's failed accession began with a murmur, as the reddened sun dipped into the haze of a fair-weather twilight. The routine, written summary that detailed the Light's vanished tribute gold had cleared the torpid delay of officialdom and reached the Lord Marshal's desk. A dispatch runner was bearing the customary sealed copy to Raiett Raven, when the closed coaches led by a grim-faced, fat driver reined up at the rear entrance of Simshane's House of Exotic Delights.

There, two ma.s.sive chests were unloaded by eunuchs. The lids were pried open, and what had worn the semblance of plain, Skys.h.i.+el granite chimed through the proprietor's covetous hands. His nod to his staff tied up the exchange: two dozen young boys clad in bangles and paint were loaded and sent on their way. The packed coaches that bore them ground through darkening streets, wheel-spokes glinting by lamplight. A bribe ensured that they cleared the south gate. More coin, and a discreet, spelled deception circ.u.mvented the routine inspection. The draft teams lumbered slowly downhill, while inside the town, a tip-off enclosed in a sealed affidavit was slipped into the Etarran Lord Magistrate's evening docket.

By then, the news of the infamous gold theft had been sorted by Raiett Raven's secretary. Since the High Chancellor now changed his state robes for his customary light supper, and given that he preferred to reflect in solitude as he dined on his private balcony, his staff withheld the interruption until the steward brought the dessert wine.

Across town, the anonymous affidavit planted with the magistrate encountered a different frame of delay: it was readdressed and turned into the hands of the acting officer of Etarra's garrison. The parchment arrived at the watch change, as the Lord Marshal departed for home. His night sergeant signed in, a gaunt creature known for blunt fists and a vicious temper. His ambitious, hard eyes perused the sealed statement, and widened. 'Dharkaron's trampling Five Horses avenge!' he exclaimed. 'Will you look where those thieving priests cashed their tribute?' Seasoned troops were rushed off to ransack Simshane's brothel before its pervert staff could s.n.a.t.c.h time to melt down the critical evidence.

Dakar's rented coaches, by then, were reined up by the verge, apparently stalled by the failure of one wheel's linch-pin. When a pa.s.sing carter pulled over to offer a.s.sistance, the livery barn's borrowed driver agreed to shoulder the nuisance of the repair. The fat lackey's live cargo was transferred to the volunteered vehicle, bound and gagged, and bundled from sight under blankets. More coin changed hands. Slightly mussed, and reeking of scent, the boys rolled on their way in a slatted dray crammed with hogsheads.

In the sunwheel pavilion, the Light's oblivious priesthood dined on roast swan and wine, their snowy raiment resplendent under candles and torch-light. If the loss of their gold left them with galled nerves, the skill of the bard was a tonic. Their rankled mood eased to his hand on the strings, and the honeyed gift of his singing. His talent raised no taint of distrust. Under the sighted acolytes' scrutiny, he had pressed his bare lips to the relic containing the Blessed Prince's plucked hair. That potent talisman should have unmasked any minion of Darkness. If free singers elsewhere were held in suspicion, this one had established his harmlessness. Since his repertoire extolled the Light's glory with every sincere sign of reverence, by the hour the picked bones were cleared from the boards, his credentials were taken as sterling.

Up-town, the High Chancellor's repast enjoyed no such felicitous tranquillity: the belatedly delivered official parchment caused the decanted wine to be abandoned beside a fluttering candle. Black-clad and grim, Raiett Raven raced from his balcony, shouting for spurs and boots, to be followed by an armed company of light horse to escort him at speed through the gate.

Across town at Simshane's, beside the gutted wreck of his desk, the distressed proprietor now pleaded in irons, alongside his weeping head eunuch. The purchase doc.u.ment bearing- the sunwheel seal was being read off by an astonished equerry. Given the two chests of Alliance-stamped gold as firm evidence, Etarra's night sergeant realized he was in over his head. He dispatched two men, who rushed word of the horrific scandal to the senior ear of the off-duty Lord Marshal.

That errand zigzagged from the man's private house to the packed doors of the up-town theatre. There, a sn.o.bbish refusal to let in the uniformed watch created more fuming delay. The shouting cut through the players' performance. The Lord Marshal left his seat in his formal attire, to the t.i.ttering amus.e.m.e.nt of Etarra's pedigree society. Whispered talk swept the boxes throughout the last act, while the grooms' gossip also chewed over the stir as two liveried lackeys were sent at a run to the governor's mansion. For all their haste, they failed to inform the High Chancellor. His lords.h.i.+p's rattled butler opened the door in the wake of his master's precipitous departure. The stalwart attempt to intercept him at the stable proved a wasted effort. Raiett had already mounted and gone.

'Valley bound,' grumped the grizzled master of horse. 'Whipped his best mare in a towering fury, which isn't his usual, believe me.'

The stable-boy's scandalized comment was ripe. 'Old Raven swore he'd rip gizzards for negligence before he ever licks a.r.s.e for a bunch of disgruntled priests.' Not convinced any lump sum in bullion had slipped through the Light's obsequious fingers, Raiett was bound to have somebody's blood, just for the stinging effrontery. 'Aye so, wait and see. He'll force satisfaction. That upright, bra.s.s tack won't bury a victimized theft on his orderly turf at Etarra.'

Night deepened, with the up-town propriety moiled through by an ever-widening dissonance. More messengers clattered down torch-lit, brick streets. The armed squads of the Lord Marshal's hors.e.m.e.n rammed their purposeful way past the idle rakes seeking sport. Cries for right of way detained the elderly rich, jaunting on social calls in their glittering, lacquered carriages. In small knots, the bored and the curious abandoned their engagements to investigate. Soon the shake-down at Simshane's drew a t.i.tillated crowd, while on the roadway below the south gate, the town-guard, with warrants, surrounded the parked hulks of two suspect coaches. The bartered, live cargo had vanished long since. The rental hack's driver knew nothing. Brisk questions devolved into fist-shaking threats that unravelled to frustrated shouting.

The burgeoning fracas launched echoes uphill. Errant sparks to stacked fuel: Etarra's pedigree elite relished a social gaffe as nowhere else on the continent.

Meantime, the hotly sought children were safely sequestered in the darkened gloom of a harness shop. There, the erstwhile mason's two conscript clansmen settled their terrified tears. They a.s.sessed with soft questions, bolstered flagged spirits, and selected eight boys who possessed the audacious nerve to score a courageous revenge.

Dakar watched those small warriors straighten cowed spines. Sly grins became snickers. The most determined of the child volunteers was no less than the panicky sprite who had landed the festering bite on his thumb.

'You don't have to prove your young manhood to me,' he a.s.sured, as the boy stepped up to the mark.

'It's those priests who should worry,' the wee demon p.r.o.nounced.

Dakar laughed, at last shaken loose by the chance to spit in the teeth of self-righteous authority. Granted the pluck displayed by last night's captives, he would see the snide viciousness driving Arithon's ploy orchestrated into a command performance. Committed, he saluted the determined clan parents and loaded the chosen contingent of boys back into the empty hogsheads. The barrels now carried a vintner's guild brand, with the wagon currently bearing the load painted to match the conveyance owned by Etarra's best winery.

Dakar tucked another sunwheel-sealed requisition into the breast of his s.h.i.+rt. Now whistling, he leaped on the driver's box, then rolled the laden vehicle from the shed, attended by two apprentice masons reclad as lackeys. On schedule, the mule-team was reined towards the lit tents of the Light's frocked evangelists.

As the wine-cart creaked from the darkened warren of craft shops, the looping road from the town wall was not quiet. Above slope, in meshed timing, the paired torches of the High Chancellor's outriders blinked through the gate piercing the lower barbicans.

'Dharkaron! We're slicker than b.u.t.ter on bread,' enthused the young man to the Mad Prophet's left.

No chuckles emerged from his sober companion. 'Too easy, perhaps. Mind your back. We're sure to be gutted as heretic dissenters if we get careless.'

Dakar hushed the stray talk and soon pulled the team to a stop at the verge of the practise field. While the bored sentries who manned the priests' checkpoint arose from their dice to verify clearance, he easily tracked the whipped flare of the cressets, where the second armed company from the Lord Marshal's garrison now escorted the pair of stalled coaches. They had turned downhill, zealously chasing the trail of Simshane's execrable bargain. Paused at the hack stable, they would grill the head hostler. The geezer was deaf, and would also know nothing, since the rental fee had been paid with clean silver, under false name and employment. They were not going to get as far as the mason's, whose compound was already emptied.

The wine s.h.i.+pment to the priests being expected, Dakar's burdened cart was waved through. He rolled his load up to the central pavilion, conferred with its polished sunwheel steward, and received a signature on his receipt. A fox grin and a wave stirred his idling henchmen. 'Let down the tail-board. No dedicate wants to dirty their linen, so they've asked us to pile their s.h.i.+pment inside.'

More sentries admitted them through the back flap.

The sweet-ringing shower of music from the bard affirmed a finale now smoothly in progress.

'We're spot on target,' Dakar informed the men. Since he dared not try mage-craft in a sunwheel encampment endowed with a gifted examiner, the party masquerading as vintners had to plug their ears with soft wax. Dakar thumped a barrel in prearranged signal, and inside the tent, the blind singer's fingers configured a deft change in tempo and key. The music acquired an unearthly, sweet strain. Unaffected by an uncanny harmony that tugged mind and heart towards oblivion, the fake wine broker's men proceeded to unload their wagon.

One by one, the casks were hefted inside the pavilion and stacked behind the laid tables, with their extravagant flood of cinnabar candlelight. All the while, the bard plied his glittering strings. His spelled song wove light into a subliminal web. Peace settled, soft as air itself. The fluttering moths stilled pale wings and alit. The trill of night insects went silent. Bound into a settling, eerie calm, the sunwheel priests nodded off on their couches. They snored, while the gla.s.sy-eyed guards at their threshold lost focus and drifted, then collapsed at the knees, fast asleep. Dakar and his henchmen grasped their slack wrists. s.h.i.+elded behind the bulk of the wine-cart, they hauled the rec.u.mbent soldiers inside. Throughout, the bard's milky gaze never wavered. The lyranthe notes struck and soared, bright as gilt, bedazzling all within listening range into soporific delight. Dakar and his apprentices closed the door flap. Fast as men with a grievance, they bent to the task of unbreeching the prostrate priests.

Fat and thin, well-muscled or soft, the creatures were stripped of their smallclothes. Then the eight sleeping boys were removed from the casks. Each one was arranged, in their paint and perfume, in pliant repose alongside.

Meantime, the lyranthe's spellbinding measures were brought to a masterful close. The bard arose smiling and gladly agreed to accept a lift home in the wine-cart. Dakar and his accomplices slipped back outside, the last one guiding the free singer's step as he was helped over the tail-board. The stamped paper bearing the steward's mark saw the vehicle clear of the camp and into the dense summer darkness.

Between shed rows, another driver appeared, took over the reins, and turned the wagon with the mason's apprentices onto the east-bound road. Dakar and the blind bard parted ways with them there, melted into the nettles and wild scrub that bordered the edge of the tourney-field. A short way upslope, they were rejoined by the skulking pair of branded clansmen. Only now the conscript collars were gone, replaced by soft leathers and weapons.

'We left the stage set to perfection,' Dakar said, on fire with nerves as he crouched into the covering thicket.

The vantage permitted an untrammelled view: of the sunwheel pavilions, with gilt trappings agleam under the pale fall of starlight; of the weaving torches that demarked the site where two Etarran armed companies dispatched from up-town were presently jammed nose to nose. Arrived on level ground by the livery barns, and the ramshackle maze of the craft shacks, the High Chancellor and his outriders encountered the garrison's contingent and exchanged their incredulous news. The venue became lamentably public: loiterers lured out of the recruit camp's wine-shops overheard the raised voices. The Lord Marshal's exodus from the theatre had also attracted a loftier trail of coaches and lamp-men, mounted rakes, and the idle curious: thrill-seekers drawn by the promise of sport and an insatiable nose for fresh scandal.

'End game,' whispered Arithon with satisfied glee. His swift fingers stayed busy, unwinding the lyranthe's tuning pegs. The moment he had the ba.s.s courses loosened, he slipped his hand inside the instrument's sound-hole.

'Get ready,' he murmured as he groped inside. 'Mind you don't p.i.s.s yourselves laughing.'

The unsmiling clansmen checked the hang of their knives. They stood watch and guard as the free singer produced a s.h.i.+ning collection of iyats. A soft flow of Paravian, a neat turn of talent, and Arithon imposed his directive. The fiends were unleashed to wreak vindictive mayhem, just as Raiett Raven's smart hors.e.m.e.n formed ranks and spurred on to descend upon the encampment of priests.

The peace lasted as long as an intaken breath. Then a wisp of dust puffed across the parched ground. Movement rustled the central pavilion's stainless expanse of taut canvas. A guy-line supporting the ridge-pole popped loose and slithered, dragging its uprooted sliver of stake. Another knot gave. A third rope came unravelled. The ma.s.sive tent s.h.i.+mmied a moment, its golden sunwheel billowing. Then a spark bloomed from nowhere and fell. It settled downwards like a h.e.l.lish red star upon the religion's cloth emblem. Gilt glimmered a moment in crimson reflection. Then flame kindled, fanned into a whoos.h.i.+ng blaze, as the unstable canvas ignited into conflagration.

Upslope, a wall sentry yelled. The watchkeep's alarm bells shattered the night. Downslope, the slumbering war camp erupted. Men seethed from their tents. Hopping and yanking on clothes, they s.n.a.t.c.hed up their armour and weapons. Crushed into the forefront, Raiett Raven's contingent of riders reined up by the wildfire, chased by their straggle of thrill-seeking, pedigree gawkers.

The carriages parked. Mounted dandies milled in obstructive fascination, while the High Chancellor and the armed company's field sergeants seized charge and barked irritable commands to set cordons. The heaving press sorted itself like stirred glue. While rescuers stormed the collapsing tents, a bucket brigade formed, and the first naked priests sprinted out of their torched pavilion.

They were not alone. Each had a boy-child clamped to his neck. Coughing and shrieking with tearful hysteria, the mites wore naught but grease-paint and perfume, and the sparkling gleam of paste jewelry.

Surprised fingers pointed. A shocked matron shrieked. Upright citizens recoiled. Hard-bitten campaign officers jeered. While veteran troops whooped in mocking laughter, the recruit infantrymen under their orders hurled down their filled buckets in poleaxed disgust. The frightened boys released their bellowing clients, then bolted, streaking like hares through the crowd. Catching them paled beside watching the Light's high priest, nakedly protesting his innocence. Raiett Raven reined in his plunging horse. While the onlookers jostled to s.n.a.t.c.h the best view, his las.h.i.+ng contempt carried through wind and smoke and the racket of outraged catcalls.

'I am sickened!' Poised at the forefront of political disaster, he had to distance himself to avoid getting mobbed. 'Shame on us all, that honest funds were allotted to raise a temple for sc.u.m! Spare us! The vice masquerading behind the seal of our Prince Exalted is worse than a shaming fraud! In the name of the blessed avatar himself, I will see each wretched malingerer stripped. Justice will be served for abusing the public trust to support lewd acts and depraved habits!'

While the soldiers rounded up the buff miscreants, and the bucket brigade surged to toss mud clods, the breathless children pelted into the brush, met by the arms of their kinsmen.

'Time to go,' said the bard. He asked one of the boys to guide his sightless step through the rapid retreat to the craft quarter. Dakar himself was too crazed with relief to question the need for that ruse. Breathlessly rushed towards shelter and safety, then panting to catch his lost wind, he crouched in a noisome cranny between sheds. There, he measured the public outcry, and the course of the fire, fast reducing the Light's wrecked encampment to ashes. He cleared a throat stinging from laughter and smoke and realized he owed an apology for the ignominy suffered at Simshane's. Turned in redress, he encountered a shock: the blind bard no longer accompanied them.

'Where's the singer?' he blurted.

Fast as thought, a scout clamped a hand to his lips. Armed men from the war camp now fanned out on patrol, enforcing the need for strict silence.

Dakar had to wait till their threatened straits eased before he dared press for an answer. Too late, he learned that Arithon had returned to the cooper's shop to face down the official inquiry.

'He's a free singer, and blind,' allowed the brusque clansman. He shrugged off lathered worry, wary fingers poised on his knives and his eyes like chipped flint as the children were bedded down under sacking in a sympathizer's fusty warehouse. 'The man can't be held responsible for what he couldn't see. Since the cooper's kinfolk know nothing at all, he had to stay. No way else could he prove out their innocence.'