A well dressed woman in felt trousers sewn with silver thread wandered across the inner courtyard looking at the few stalls Queen Adran had allowed to be set up as a sop to the Festival Lords. She feigned an interest in the goods of a silversmith, who I knew was weighting his scales with clay. Occasionally the woman would look over her shoulder at the keep gate. A woman appeared there and gave her a subtle nod, and both vanished through different doors to some prearranged liaison.
A castle guard, no red splash betraying his allegiance, spoke to the silversmith, putting out his hand as he did. The silversmith shook his head until the guard pointed at the scales and then he passed over a handful of coins. From the look on both men’s faces each thought he had got the better part of the deal.
Across from the smith sat a woman selling grain and flour. Twice, when she thought no one looking, she opened a flour sack and poured in sand. When someone dressed in the triangular coverings of the Festival hierarchy bought flour from her I noticed she took it from a different bag, the unadulterated one.
The guards in the courtyard would have been a disappointment to Adran if she expected them to be committed to their jobs. In fact, the more I watched the more clear it became that Rufra was right about a schism running through the castle. When backs were turned there were sneers, shakes of the head and weapons slightly drawn from scabbards in mock threat. I saw a confrontation happen in one of the rooms cut into the walls. One of the guards with a red rag around his wrist slipped into the room, which held a water butt, and was swiftly followed by two others who grabbed him and pushed his head under the water. They pulled him out, and had I been nearer I could have read lips and discovered what threats were being made, but instead I just watched as they repeatedly held him under the water, almost drowning him. When the guards left, their victim’s red rag remained on the floor of the room.
The whole atmosphere of this castle was like a bowstring held taut, pregnant with violence.
The gatehouse tower I watched from could be seen from the window of our room. We were on the third floor, and it was not hard to find us, right in a centre of the wall between two of the towers. It was pointless for me to try and guess where my master—or more likely I—would be climbing to, but from the top of one of the huge corner towers I would be able to check the walls and at least ensure my nails and rope would be up to the job. The tower on my left had an added attraction—it was the highest place for miles around and I fancied it would feel like being one of Xus’s birds to stand on top of it.
Wind bit into me as I walked around the wall, and I was thankful for the small shelter provided by the tower’s inner stairs. It always amazed me that at ground level the world could be still, but at height the wind could be roaring. Sometimes I imagined the wind as a beast flying above the land looking for an opportunity to swoop down and cause havoc. I leaned over the tower’s battlements looking at the surface of the inner wall, which was ill kept and full of holes, perfect for climbing.
Further round the tower I stared out between two crenellations and marvelled at how far I could see. The weak yearsage sun brushed the land with tentative fingers and the orchards below wore the variegated reds and browns of a coat of leaves about to fall. At the edges of the orchards trees were already bare, a reminder of all the land lost to the sourings. To the south, the Festival roads ran through squares of fields and past small houses oozing smoke, it rose in gauzy columns until it hit the wind and was whipped away. Streaks of flattened smoke were smudged across the landscape as the road vanished into copses of pines, which grew quickly and were our main building material—the stinging scent of pine sap infused almost all of our furniture. To the north were more fields and eventually the capital city of Ceadoc, where the high king sat and the Landsmen pretended they had an answer to the sourings in the blood of criminals, sorcerers, or those too poor or ill to feed themselves. Half a mile to the west of the castle the fields stopped abruptly in a line of yellow, marking the edge of the western souring which had been created by the final battle with the Black Sorcerer. I shivered at the sight of the sourlands where magic had sapped the land of all life, ripping open a crevasse thirty miles long and a mile wide.
“There was a forest once.” A weak and almost inaudible voice spoke over the hollow whisper of the gusting wind. I turned and immediately fell to one knee.
“Sire,” I said, “I did not see you there.”
King Doran ap Mennix sat in a curious wooden chair, one that had wheels on it. He was wrapped in thick blankets and nothing but his head showed from within. His beard was still dark and thick, but scabrous pink patches marred the tanned skin under his hair, which had been treated with some sort of dark paint to make it appear thicker—if only from a distance. The skin around his watery eyes sagged and showed the wet red flesh beneath the yellowing mask of his face. He was far more wrinkled than was normal for a man of fifty-five and looked constantly pained, as though the effort of existing was an agony, and his rasping breath did nothing to dispel that impression. He took short, audible breaths, letting them out out in a wheezing sigh almost three times the length of the intake.
“Rise, boy,” he said. “My time left is too short to waste on formalities. You were looking to the west, eh?” I nodded. “Wheel me over,” he said. I stood and went to his chair, pushing it to where I had stood. “It was forest once. I hunted there with Heamus and my other friends. Dead now. Mostly …” His words faded away as memory overwhelmed him. “Do you know how we made it? That souring?”