‘What did you give him, my queen?’ he asked, as they walked down a curving hallway, Mother Sea stirring beyond the narrow windows.
‘Varoslaf is no fool and that snake Isriun had counselled him well. He knows we are weak. He wants to extend his power north, up the Divine to the shores of the Shattered Sea.’ She let her voice fall soft. ‘I had to give him Roystock.’
Koll swallowed. None of this felt very much like Brand’s idea of standing in the light. ‘A princely gift. But is it ours to give?’
‘It is Varoslaf’s to take,’ said Laithlin, ‘if neither we nor the High King stop him.’
‘We and the High King are a little busy with each other,’ growled Thorn.
‘The wise man fights no wars at all, but only a fool fights more than one at once.’
Thorn nodded to the warriors standing guard at the queen’s chambers and pushed the door wide. ‘I have a feeling Varoslaf will not stop at Roystock.’
As he stepped over the threshold Koll thought of the prince’s dead stare and gave a shudder. ‘I have a feeling Varoslaf would not stop at the edge of the world.’
‘Get back!’ snapped Thorn, barging the queen against the wall and whipping out her axe so quickly it nearly took off one of Koll’s eyebrows.
In the shadows at the far end of the room, cross-legged upon a table, a figure sat, swathed in a cloak of rags with the hood drawn down. Koll nearly dropped his dagger on his foot his heart was beating so hard. Nimble fingers tend to fail you when Death’s breath chills your neck.
Thorn, fortunately, was harder to rattle. ‘Speak now,’ she snarled, already in a fighting crouch between the queen and their visitor. ‘Or I kill you.’
‘Would you strike me with my own axe, Thorn Bathu?’ The hood shifted, the gleam of an eye inside. ‘You have grown, Koll. I remember you dangling from the masthead of the South Wind while your mother screamed for you to come down. I remember you begging me to show you magic.’
Thorn’s axe slowly drifted down. ‘Skifr?’
‘You could simply have knocked,’ said Laithlin, guiding Thorn away and smoothing her dress back to its usual perfection.
‘Knocking does not guarantee an audience, Golden Queen. And I have come a long road from the land of the Alyuks, up the Denied and Divine in the company of Prince Varoslaf. Not that he knew it.’ Skifr eased her hood back and Koll gave a ragged gasp. Even in the shadows he could see the left side of her face was streaked with mottled burns, half her eyebrow was missing and her cropped grey hair scattered with bald spots.
‘What happened?’ said Thorn.
Skifr smiled. Or one half of her face did. The other creased and twisted like old leather. ‘Grandmother Wexen sent men south, my dove. To punish me for stealing relics from the forbidden ruin of Strokom.’ She glanced towards the elf-bangle on Thorn’s wrist as it pulsed a bright blue-white. ‘They burned my house. They killed my son and his wife. They killed my son’s sons. But they found I am not easily killed.’
‘Grandmother Wexen has a long memory for scores,’ murmured Laithlin.
‘She will discover she is not the only one.’ Skifr tipped back her face, mottled burns seeming to glisten. ‘Grandmother Wexen brought Death to me. It is only good manners that I return the favour. I have read the portents. I have watched the birds across the sky. I have deciphered the ripples in the water and you will take me back across the Shattered Sea to Thorlby. Do you still wish to see magic, Koll?’
‘No?’ But it often seemed people loved to ask him questions but hadn’t much interest in his answers.
‘I must speak to Father Yarvi.’ Skifr curled back her lips to show her teeth and barked the words. ‘Then I will go to war!’
Ashes
Uthil’s fleet made ready to spit in the High King’s face.
A red-haired Throvenlander stood tall on a rock, bellowing verses from the Lay of Ashenleer with little tune but lots of vigour, that old fighter’s favourite where the queen’s closest prepare to die gloriously in battle. All around men mouthed along with the often-mouthed words as they gave blades final licks with the whetstone, plucked at bowstrings and hauled buckles tight.
You’d think fighting men would prefer songs about warriors who lived gloriously through a battle to die old and fat and rich, but there’s fighting men for you, not much they do makes sense, once you think on it. One reason Raith tried never to think if he could avoid it.