Sorcery Rising (57 page)

She watched Halli and Fent go to make the ritual greeting from the men of the house to the visitors, and waited until the last of the mummers had disembarked. But there was still no one-eyed man, nor any likely-looking
seither
. Perplexed, she tailed the troupe up to the longhouse with Ferg lagging at her heels. Clearly the sorcerer had not come, despite her grandmother’s request. She would have to try to catch a quiet word with Gramma Rolfsen to find out what had gone amiss.

But when she arrived at the hall, there was already a commotion taking place. Her mother was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, dwarfed by the carved posts and by the knot of shouting men in front of her. At the head of the knot was her husband.

Bera waited for the noise to subside. Then: ‘Until you tell me which is the
seither
,’ she said grimly, ‘none shall enter my house.’

‘Wife, this is no way to greet people who have sailed hundreds of miles to bring us all entertainment! They are hungry and thirsty—’

‘Aye!’ came a chorus from the mummers. ‘Thirsty, that we are!’

‘—and we are bound by the kingdom’s law to offer them bread and salt—’

‘And ale as well!’ chimed a lone voice, and others joined the chant.

‘—for if word reaches the King of such lack of hospitality, he’ll make outcasts of us all.’

Bera’s face flushed. ‘Our so-called king did nothing to save my daughter from the Istrian fires, and this is what I think of him and his laws!’ She spat on the ground at Aran’s feet, and a hush fell over the assembled crowd.

Then a tall woman carrying a bulging knapsack pushed through the crowd, stepped neatly around Aran Aranson and knelt before Bera, her hair a flag of gold that swept the ground. ‘Mistress of Rockfall, I beg your pardon: I had not meant to cause you offence by coming here. Indeed, having come by invitation, I had thought to find a better welcome.’

Bera looked down at the woman suspiciously. ‘I find no offence in your presence,’ she said stiffly. ‘I shall turn no travelling woman away from my home.’

The woman rose and shook back her long hair, and Bera’s hands flew to her face. Katla saw with a start that in the midst of the visitor’s sharply-boned, handsome, sun-weathered face, she bore only one eye, and that set squarely in the middle of her forehead.

Gramma Rolfsen hustled past her daughter and embraced the one-eyed woman. ‘Festrin, Festrin – you have aged not a day since last we met.’

‘Oh, I have aged, Hesta, that I have. It just does not show in the ways that your people look for.’ The
seither
regarded Gramma Rolfsen solemnly, then graced her with a smile of surpassing sweetness. Then she reached out a hand to Bera, who looked at it as if she had been offered a nine-day herring and declined to shake it. Festrin shrugged. ‘So be it. I shall go and visit my grandfather’s burial mound, and I will return later. If you still do not wish me to set foot over your threshold, I will honour your decision, but the Fates may regard your decision with less equanimity.’

Hoisting her knapsack over her shoulder, she turned and made her way back through the mummers, who parted for her, eyes averted and heads bowed.

‘She threatened me!’ Bera turned to her husband. ‘Did you hear that? She threatened to turn the Fates against me.’

‘Hush, wife,’ Aran said, though even he looked white about the eyes. ‘It was no threat she made, and you are behaving badly. Let us welcome the company into our home and make them comfortable. I pray the
seither
will return quietly of her own accord, and that you will say no more against her.’

And clearly, Katla thought, watching Bera nod quietly and step back inside the hall, the
seither
’s magic was working, for she had never seen her mother back down in an argument. The mummers, meanwhile, piled up their baggage in the outhouses and followed the Master of Rockfall into the longhouse, ready to enjoy their meat and ale. But Katla’s appetite had been subsumed by her curiosity. And so, when no one was watching, she slipped away, with Ferg silent at her heels, and headed for the Old Howe.

The
seither
was waiting there for her – or so it seemed to Katla. She was sitting on her knapsack outside the entrance to the ancient burial mound with her feet crossed neatly at the ankles, paring the skin from an apple with her belt-knife. When Katla appeared over the knoll, Festrin held out half of the apple to her and Katla walked over, trying hard not to stare at the single blue eye, took it without a word, and sat down beside her.

They sat together like this for a short while, eating the apple, while Ferg slunk around them, belly to the ground, ears flat against his head; but even he made no sound. At last, the
seither
said, ‘Show me your hand, Katla Aransen.’

‘You know who I am,’ Katla said wonderingly.

Festrin threw her head back and laughed, a great harsh bark of a sound that had Ferg bounding away in fright. It was not the response Katla had expected. ‘I came at your grandmother’s request: she told me in her message just how her talented and beautiful granddaughter had been afflicted and—’ She gestured at Katla’s wrapped club of a hand. ‘It’s hard to miss, even for one without the eye.’

Katla smiled, feeling foolish. Then she began to unbind the bandages until the awful pink-and-red thing on the end of her arm was exposed in all its ugliness. Festrin did not flinch at the sight. Instead, she put her belt-knife carefully away, then reached out and took the hand between her own two. At once, waves of tingling heat ran up each of Katla’s arms, crossing at her chest and running back down the opposite arm. It was the most bizarre sensation.

Now Festrin smiled. ‘I was right,’ she said. ‘I thought so as soon as I saw you.’

‘About what?’

‘You have been touched. Not directly, maybe, but in some other way.’

Katla frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Touched by what?’

‘It must have been latent in you before then, though,’ the
seither
mused, ignoring Katla’s question. ‘I have rarely come across the gift so strongly.’

‘What gift?’

While this tableau was being played out, Aran Aranson had appeared quietly behind them, and Ferg, obviously relieved to know his place again, took up his rightful position at his master’s heel.

The
seither
regarded the tall West Islander thoughtfully. ‘You are not entirely immune from its power yourself,’ she said cryptically, ‘but in you the mystery has taken another course, and not one for the good, I fear.’

Aran frowned. ‘Where I come from folk say what they mean straight out, rather than hide the sense in such glib and abstract notions.’

Festrin stood up, and Katla was surprised to realise that she was very tall, topping the big man as she did by half a hand. This was puzzling, until it dawned on her that, arriving at the Great Hall, the
seither
had carried herself stooped and with her head bowed. With a shiver, Katla remembered the long, yellow bones in the howe behind them.

‘Most folk do not usually like to hear straight out what I have to say,’ Festrin said. ‘It discomfits them to hear it plain and simple.’

‘I am not “most folk”,’ Aran said sternly. ‘And in matters concerning me and my family, I like to know exactly where I stand.’

The
seither
reached a hand out and touched him on the cheek. Aran felt a pulse of heat, then nothing. ‘Ah,’ she said. She withdrew her hand, looked at her fingertips for a moment, then rubbed them together as if dusting flour from them. Then: ‘Now is not the time,’ she said. ‘I am hungry and I am weary. May I sit at your table, or is your wife still adamant that I should suffer the elements? Because if she is, then I will stay here with my kin—’ she gestured at the burial mound ‘—and make my own repast.’

‘And I will stay with you!’ Katla said hotly.

Aran rolled his eyes. Then he bowed to the
seither
and said of course his wife had not meant to bar her from their table and that he had come out here expressly to fetch her to the feast.

They walked in silence back to the hall, where their arrival was marked only by a brief pause in the conversation and supping. It was amazing, Katla thought, that their longhouse could accommodate so many people. Trestles had been set up along both long walls and laden with every sort of delicacy and staple food – wheat-bread and apple-bread; goats’-cheese and ewe-cheese, pressed meats, soused fish, great haunches of lamb and beef, roasted chickens and seal-steaks and shark-steaks; hen pies and mackerel pies, whole roasted seabass and trout stuffed with fruits; and great barrels of ale and casks of the islands’ best stallion’s blood wine – and folk were ranged along either side of the trestles, with their backs to the wall or to the firepit that burned merrily down the centre of the hall. If you were particularly susceptible to the intoxicating power of stallion’s blood, it was as well to sit on the outside of the tables, Katla recalled.

Aran took his place at the high seat and beckoned the
seither
to sit beside him. Bera’s eyes nickered malevolently at the woman, then she pointedly turned away to talk loudly and flirtatiously with Tarn Fox. Katla viewed her possible placements – on Tarn Fox’s left hand or beside Festrin One-Eye, and slipped quickly in beside the
seither
.

‘So tell me, Tarn,’ Aran said loudly, breaking into his wife’s conversation. ‘What news of the King’s new shipmaker – will he take my commission?’

Tarn looked shifty. He coughed. ‘Ah, no, Aran. Morten says he cannot leave his yard: he’s inherited a lot of Finn Larson’s unfinished business, and that work alone will take him through next spring. He recommends one Fly Raglan, though, who was his apprentice and has now set up on his own.’

‘I don’t want his damned apprentice! I want the man who built the
Snowland Wolf
, if I can’t have Finn Larson—’

‘Aye – it’ll be only the Lord Sur who can avail himself of Finn’s skills from now on!’ laughed one of Tarn’s men.

Tarn dropped his voice. ‘Morten says he won’t meet with you because he heard a rumour it was your son who slew Finn Larson.’

Aran looked aghast. ‘What, Halli kill his future father-by-law? That’s sheer madness.’

Tam put a finger to his lips. ‘Fent,’ he mouthed.

Aran’s eyes went wide.

‘What?’ Bera thrust her head between them. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing,’ Aran said irritably. He shook his head as if to dislodge this unpleasant piece of information, then leaned around his wife. ‘So he won’t take the commission? What if I were to offer a better price?’

Tam Fox shook his head. He applied himself to half a chicken. ‘“Wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole,” was what he said,’ Tam reported indistinctly, hot juices running down his chin and into his beard. ‘“Load of mad dogs, the Rockfallers” were his exact words. Besides, I gather he’s already undertaken a commission for a vessel from Fenil Sorenson.’

‘Has he, now?’ Aran’s face went thoughtful. ‘Big one?’

‘Sixty-oar, I heard.’

Aran nodded. ‘Interesting.’ He’d seen Fenil briefly at the Allfair: he and Hopli Garson, never usually that friendly, had had their heads together in a conspiratorial fashion; but he’d not have had either of them down as adventurers – they were solid landsmen, both with sardonyx mines on the mainland within fifty miles of one another; as far as he knew, the only time they took to the ocean was on the annual trip to the Fair.

After that, Aran was remarkably quiet. Gossip and rumours and news alike washed about him and occasionally he nodded in an abstracted manner, though it was clear he had not really taken in what had been said to him. Someone told how freak tides had washed a monster ashore on the beach at Whale’s Ness – a giant narwhal with human eyes, some said; others reported the dead thing as being a humanlike being with flippers and a great whiskery chin. Someone else chimed in with a tale of a sea-creature swallowing a fishing boat whole in the Blue Channel west of the Sharking Straits, a beast longer than three ships, with teeth like swords; but others said it was just a whale that had strayed from its usual path which had risen up and capsized the vessel; or maybe it was just a big wave. But for all her love of such tales of monsters, Katla was most intrigued by talk of the King and his new wife: it was, after all, indirectly because of the pale nomad woman that she had been burned; for King Ravn would surely never have allowed such to happen to one of his subjects were he not under some spell; and now it seemed she had worked her magic on others, for one of the troupe reported she had quite stolen the hearts of all at the northern court; all, that is but Queen Auda, Ravn’s mother.

‘Took one look at the Rosa Eldi, she did,’ said the mummer, a dark and wiry man called Mord, ‘and turned her back on her, went to her chamber, and hasn’t come out since.’

There was a murmur of surprised chatter at this from the Rockfallers: far from court, such tales of royal affairs were always fascinating to them. Bera quite forgot how angry she was with her husband, and pressed Tarn closely for as much detail as he could provide her about the strange foreign woman. Even the
seither
appeared to be interested in this subject, for she leaned forward and turned her powerful blue gaze unwaveringly upon Tam Fox.

‘She’s a rare one,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Got the King completely bewitched: not a mention of war in all the time we were at court, not from Ravn, anyway. Spent most of his time holed up with his new queen, and looked a bit shaky when he did make an appearance, if you know what I mean. Amazing, really: I never saw a woman so pale and fragile-looking; but those eyes – they transfix you. She could kill you with a single glance.’ He clutched his chest and tumbled backwards off the bench, to the amused roar of those around him.

This was the signal, it seemed, for the entertainment to begin. The mummers leapt up from their places, some rather the worse for wear, and the musicians vanished outside then reappeared with their arms full of odd-looking instruments and costumes, and assembled at one end of the hall. Tam conferred briefly with them, and they struck up a lively tune.