Songs of the Earth (11 page)

‘Supper’s ready.’

‘Alderan.’

A plate of stew was held out to him, with a hunk of bread. ‘You just pointed at Dremen, true as an arrow,’ the old man said. ‘I’d love to know what you did to make Goran go to these lengths – catch him with his hand up a choirboy’s cassock or something?’

Gair sat down with his supper. ‘I hardly knew who he was until the charges were brought.’ He pushed the meat around on his plate, searching for an appetite though his ears were full of the
sing of the tawse. The dreams had not relented. ‘We got better acquainted later, when he oversaw my questioning.’

Alderan grunted. ‘They were his questioners?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’m not surprised. Does Ansel know?’

‘I’ve no idea.’
I don’t want to talk about it
.

‘Sing out if you hear it again.’ Alderan pointed at Gair’s untouched plate. ‘Are you going to eat that?’

In the morning, the witchfinder’s presence was gone. Around noon they broke their journey in the shade of a copse. Gair hobbled the horses under a tree to graze and climbed up on the field-wall to sit next to Alderan. Summer had ripened towards autumn and harvest had begun. Sickles flashed in the fields and rows of stooks striped the hillsides, racing home ahead of the thunderheads piled along the rim of the valley.

‘Have you ever been this far west, lad?’ The old man handed him a water bottle.

‘No. Never further than Dremen.’ Gair yawned.

‘Doesn’t look much different, does it? A farm is still a farm, whether it’s here or six hundred miles away. That’s about how far we’ve come – maybe a bit more. The rest we’ll do by boat. We can take a barge from Mesarild to the White Havens, then sail around to the Isles.’

‘How long will it take?’ Gair smothered another yawn.

‘Should be there by St Simeon’s. Tired?’

‘A bit.’

‘Sleeping all right?’

‘Fine.’

Alderan looked sidelong at him. ‘And the truth?’

In truth, he had dreamed again, as he did most nights. Sometimes those dreams wrenched him awake in a sweat, his body tensed for a blow. Occasionally, like last night, he dreamed of
Goran’s piggy eyes glittering in anticipation as the heavy leather tawse reared up.

‘Not good,’ Gair admitted. ‘Better than I was, but not good.’

‘It’ll take time.’

‘Fresh air helps. Daylight.’

‘They kept you in the dark?’

‘The cell was lined with iron plate. I could barely see to avoid pissing on my feet.’ Gair stoppered the bottle and handed it back. ‘How far are we from Mesarild?’

‘We’ll be there in time for supper. It’s in the next valley.’

An hour later, the road brought them to the rim of a broad, shallow valley, bisected by the shimmering expanse of the Great River. At its centre a wedge-shaped rocky outcrop rose above the confluence with the River Awen, upon which a huge fortress grew up from the cliff tops as if birthed from the belly of the earth. Cascading down the back slope of the outcrop lay the city itself, encircled by tier upon tier of walls, as if Mesarild in its expansion had been obliged to keep letting its belt out a notch.

Gair sat his horse in the road and stared in disbelief. ‘It’s huge!’

‘And getting bigger.’ Alderan pointed at tiny figures scrambling about the red-brown scar of fresh earthworks. ‘Look, the outer wall is only a hundred years old and already they’re digging foundations for a new one.’

‘What for?’

‘Goddess knows. There hasn’t been a war in Elethrain in nine hundred years. Still, it keeps the stonemasons in business, I suppose. Are you ready to go?’

Gair nudged his horse on to catch up. ‘Will we stay there overnight?’

‘Probably. It depends on whether there’s a place on the next barge. Why?’

‘It’s the capital city. I’ve never seen it before.’

‘That’s as good a reason as any. Come on.’

Where Mesarild truly began was difficult to say. The North
Road acquired a straggle of houses as it progressed southwards into the valley, then a few more, then side streets, inns, livery yards and stockpens. Soon it became impossible to see between the buildings to the surrounding farmland. Smoke and refuse became the dominant smells, instead of earth and new-mown hay. The houses crowded ever more thickly together were now three and even four storeys high. The more prosperous residents could afford to decorate their windows with panels of stained glass, something Gair had only ever seen in churches before. In Leah, windows were plain leaded casements, with stout shutters to keep out the storms. He had never thought of them being ornamental as well as functional.

Alderan was unmoved by all the wonderful strangeness of it, maintaining a confident, slightly bored air, whilst Gair could not help but stare like a bumpkin. He tried to match the old man’s composure, but it was impossible when each turn of the road brought something new to his eyes. Colonnaded buildings framed wide, fountained squares swirling with crowds. Statues held their hands high in benediction, or gazed imperiously towards the horizon along avenues of broad-leaved trees underplanted with flowers in more colours than he could name. It was all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping.

By the time they reached the third city gate, a broad arch of ruddy Elethrainian granite, the afternoon was well on the wane and their pace had slowed to a crawl. The queue in front of them turned the jostle at the Anorien Gate in Dremen into something resembling the serving line at a bakery, but finally deposited them onto a square the size of a village green. The mass of people thinned as some went this way and some that, until all the backs with which Gair had become familiar during the long wait had been transformed into scurrying citizens and disappeared like raindrops into a running stream.

Alderan guided his horse left towards a side street and Gair followed.

‘Where are we going?’

‘There’s no chance we’ll find passage this afternoon, so we need somewhere to spend the night.’

‘Up here? Why not closer to the docks?’

‘Because I prefer not to share my bed with creatures that have more legs than I do. There’re rats down there the size of terriers.’

Gair’s belly hollowed. ‘Rats?’

‘They come off the grain barges, great big ones, full of fleas.’

‘I see.’ He felt queasy.

Alderan twisted round to look at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid of rats.’

‘Not afraid, exactly, but …’ Gair swallowed. A memory loomed large, of dark, odd-smelling places and a small boy who had missed his footing and tumbled headlong into a nest of unseen furry somethings that squirmed and squealed and bit. He shuddered. ‘I just don’t like them.’

‘So I see.’ Alderan smiled. ‘Come on. There’s a good inn not far from here.’

Running parallel to the curve of the city wall, the street led through two more arched gateways into still older levels of the city, becoming successively steeper as it ascended the flank of the hill towards the looming rust-red Citadel.

At last Alderan turned his horse in through wide double gates beneath an overhanging timbered balcony. Blue shadows climbed the walls of the yard and suppertime smells wafted from the inn’s door.

Gair’s stomach grumbled that it had been a long time since he had eaten. Inside the large square common room, a counter ran the full width of the back wall between kitchen door and staircase, with a row of squat barrels behind it like hogs at a trough.

Alderan rapped on the counter. ‘Landlord?’

A round man in a white apron emerged from the back room, drying his arms on a towel. ‘What’s your pleasure, sir?’ he asked
brightly, flipping the towel over his shoulder. ‘Ale? Wine? We have some very fine Tylan goldwine, just in.’

‘Rooms for myself and my squire, then some supper.’ Alderan’s tone was offhand, and he leaned on the counter as if it belonged to him. ‘A private dining room, if you have such a thing.’

‘But of course, my lord. A moment, please.’ With a bob of his head, the landlord disappeared into the back room.

When he returned, he was ushering a maid in front of him. ‘Maura will show you to your rooms, my lord. If there’s anything lacking, she will fetch it for you.’

A cool stare assessed the maid’s appearance from coif to shoes, lingering on the shape she made under her apron.

The maid coloured, and Gair frowned.

‘Thank you,’ the old man drawled. ‘Shall we go?’

The maid dipped an uncomfortable curtsey and led the way to a suite of rooms on the second floor, high enough above the common room not to be bothered by any noise. She listened to Alderan’s arrogant instructions concerning the disposition of baggage, bathwater and supper in that order, then bobbed her way out with the old man’s hand cupped on her rump.

The instant the door shut Gair rounded on him. ‘Do you always treat women like that? She’s not your property!’

‘You’ve got a witchfinder on your tail, remember? This way the landlord will remember me and not you, and with a bit of luck we’ll slip through the city like fish,’ Alderan told him. ‘Now I’ve got to see about booking passage for us. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

Without any further explanation, he left the room and Gair heard him stride back down the stairs. He plopped himself in a chair and frowned at the empty hearth, thoroughly puzzled. Something was going on and he was right in the middle of it, but he had not the faintest idea what it was. There appeared to be more layers to Alderan than there were to an onion, and like
an onion it was making his eyes water, trying to fathom the old man out. With Alderan gone, there was nothing to do but wait and see if he was prepared to answer questions when he came back.

Bathwater and supper came and went without a sign of Alderan. Bored, Gair prowled the room for as long as he could stand, then made for the door. The maid had mentioned a garden on the roof of the inn; a breath of air would do him good.

Two flights of stairs brought him to a low door onto the roof, where there was indeed a garden. The roof had been levelled and laid with square slate tiles, on which stood pots and barrels containing flowers and neatly clipped miniature trees. Scattered benches allowed the inn’s patrons to take their ease. A breeze blew from the river, but enough heat struck up from the tiles underfoot to make it more than warm enough to sit out in shirtsleeves.

Gair wandered amongst the plants, enjoying the fragrance and colour. The terrace overlooked a good two-thirds of the city, revealing a surprising number of other similar gardens, some even illuminated with coloured glass lanterns. Overhead, swallows screamed as they sliced the evening air.

‘Lovely view, isn’t it?’ said a voice behind him.

Gair swung round.

A man lounged on a wooden bench by the wall, a silver goblet in his hand. Dark hair lay loose around the shoulders of a violet
silk shirt, open at the neck. He raised his goblet in salute. ‘Your health.’

‘Forgive me, sir; I don’t think we’ve met.’ Gair gave him a formal bow.

‘We have a mutual acquaintance in Alderan,’ the man said. ‘I was hoping to look him up whilst he’s here in town.’

‘He’ll be back shortly, if you’d like me to carry a message.’

‘Oh, it’s not important.’ The man waved his goblet airily. ‘I just thought we might catch up on old times. I have some business interests in the capital. Rather tedious, most of it, but it pays the taxes.’