The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (20 page)

The market hall was bright with candles within and braziers outside. Groups of men taking a rest from the dancing shared chewing leaf and one was roasting a few nuts in a skillet set on the glowing coals.

“Evening,” one nodded to Keisyl, licking his fingers as he peeled a hot kernel. Keisyl acknowledged the greeting with a curt nod, but he was already looking in through the open door, searching out Jeirran and Eirys. There was a good sprinkling of fair heads in the company and plenty darker with the shorter, stocky build of upland blood.

Eirys was in a set forming for a round dance, eyes bright with enjoyment and a pretty blush on her cheekbones. Her dress of embroidered linen was the only one of Mountain style in the wide room but Eirys seemed entirely content to be noticed for it. Respectably high-necked and long-sleeved, it was cut to her curves to flatter her and drew irritated glares from a couple of local beauties affecting boldness in low cut and sleeveless gowns.

Eirys would still have drawn all eyes, had all the other girls been stripped naked, Keisyl thought with a private smile, even if she hadn’t a jewel on her. Eirys was wearing a necklace of interlaced gold chains, rings on each finger catching the light with their deep engraving and a filigree net with crystal drops glittering against her blond braids. The jewelry Jeirran had given her in earnest of his pledge to wed her made a good show, Keisyl reflected. He’d given her precious little since though.

Around the edge of the dance floor the matrons of the town were exchanging gossip over tisanes and well-watered wine. One glanced curiously at Keisyl as he made his way past them. “Who is that young man?”

Her companion peered short-sightedly after him but shook her head. “Just some uplander passing through.” The women returned to topics of more compelling interest.

Keisyl stood for a moment, looking at the four musicians sitting by the shrine to Larasion. The statue of the goddess was decked with a spray of pink and white blossom and looked with blank marble eyes at the red-faced man puffing out his cheeks as he led the melody on a double-reeded flute. His companions, brothers by all appearances, filled out the tune with a bowed lyre and a dulcimer while a double-headed drum carried the beat.

“Shouldn’t you be dancing with your wife?” Keisyl took a chair without ceremony. Jeirran was sitting by a screen set to baffle the draft from a rear door, eyes unfocused as he sat deep in thought.

“What?” Whatever Jeirran was thinking, it was putting a smile on his face. Already one of the most handsome men in the room, he was attracting a share of speculative glances from the girls currently sitting hoping vainly for a partner.

“I said, shouldn’t you be dancing with your wife?” Keisyl’s emphasis was little short of a challenge.

Jeirran looked at Eirys with proprietorial satisfaction. “No, she’s safe enough on the dance floor and she’s hardly likely to go outside with one of these muddy-boots. Can you see any of them thinking he could risk it without me breaking his face? I’m joking!” he added hastily, seeing Keisyl’s unsmiling face. “What are you doing here? You don’t like capering like a spring-giddy goat any more than me.” He smiled fondly at Eirys as the girls whirled past in a quick exchange of partners. “You don’t have to put up with her nagging like a hooded crow.”

“Did you give Teiriol the coin to get puking drunk?” Keisyl looked hard at Jeirran who shrugged.

“He’s a man, he can do what he likes.”

“He’s not of full age for another five years, as you cursed well know. You’re married to his sister, you owe the duty of care that I do,” stated Keisyl.

Jeirran looked around with the first stirring of concern. “What’s he done?”

Keisyl’s eyes were midnight blue in the shadowed corner. “He’s been telling me about the wonderful deal you struck in Selerima, for a start.”

“Deal? It was little more than robbery,” snorted Jeirran. “A nest of thieves, like all the lowlanders, that’s what Teiriol led me into. You’re right, he’s nowhere near full grown, not yet awhile.”

Keisyl scowled. “Teiriol said you suggested looking for a trade around the back gates.”

“It was Teir who wanted to see a cockfight.”

Jeirran’s confidence dared Keisyl to deny this. “He says you got a piss-poor price,” insisted Keisyl grimly.

Jeirran’s expression turned belligerent. “I got the best price I could and I’ll knock down any man saying otherwise.” He ran an unconscious hand over his beard. “Anyway, what’s done is done. Dogs barking at a moon don’t stop it setting.”

“You can quote fireside wisdom at me? After all your promises to make us rich are dust and ashes? Teiriol said it was little more than robbery!” Keisyl retorted. “We can be cheated by lowlanders in the valley bottom back home, thanks all the same. And you’ve got more losses than either of us to make up! Where’s the gold coming from to replace your patrimony? What’s Eirys going to find under her hearthstone come Solstice?” He kept his voice low beneath the jaunty music but the anger in his unintelligible words was still attracting curious glances.

Jeirran folded his arms over his burly chest with an air of satisfaction. “Eirys will be thanking me for more than tainted lowlander coin in her coffers by Solstice. We can forget that stinking Harquas and his gutter curs.” He drew back his feet as a couple of dancers strayed out of their set.

“What are you talking about?” Keisyl’s irritation was replaced by plain bafflement.

“Would you like to find a means to put these lowlanders in their place once and for all? Don’t we need a way to regain what’s rightfully ours and be cursed to anyone who tries to do us down again?” Jeirran stretched his arms over his head and smiled broadly at Keisyl as he folded them again.

“You’re deeper in your cups than Teiriol,” said Keisyl crisply. He reached for the green glass goblet by Jeirran’s hand and sniffed at its dregs.

“I’m not drunk on almond sweet-cup,” sneered Jeirran.

Keisyl gave him a steady look. “Then explain yourself.”

Jeirran’s desire to share his discovery overcame the temptation to hug it to himself for a while longer. “See those musicians over there; they’re just back from Selerima.”

“So?” Keisyl barely spared a glance for the players lustily raising a new tune.

“So, they’ve got a new song. The drummer was singing it earlier.”

Keisyl sighed. “Either tell me straight or I’m going back to look after Teiriol.”

Jeirran’s good humor faded a little. “They had a ballad, about Tormalin men sailing across the ocean to unknown lands, finding a powerful race of men. Powerful in magic, Keis, using it to cross the seas and attack Tormalins in their own homeland.”

Keisyl shrugged. “The lowlanders drove their wizards into the sea, didn’t they? So they’ve come back to make a fight of it.”

Jeirran looked smug. “According to the singer, these folk are called Elietimm.”

“Should I know that name?” Keisyl knotted his brows. “It sounds familiar—”

“Alyatimm?” suggested Jeirran.

Keisyl’s mouth opened in sudden surprise. “But that’s only a fireside tale for winter nights.”

“What if it isn’t?” Jeirran demanded. “What if these folk, wherever they are, are born of that blood?”

The two men fell silent as the music swelled and the dancers swirled past them.

“Do you think they could be?” Keisyl pondered this startling question, antagonism forgotten.

“This ballad speaks of fair-haired men,” Jeirran told him.

“That just makes us the villains of the piece again,” Keisyl said slowly. “That’s no news. Half the lowlanders’ tales have yellow-headed thieves raiding Grandma’s chicken run.”

“The peasants hereabouts, true enough,” nodded Jeirran, “but why would a song from down and east say that? The ballads we heard in Selerima mostly warned of shoeless barbarians raiding up from the far south.”

Keisyl spread his hands. “So that’s your answer, isn’t it? They’re islanders, aren’t they, the barbarians from the Southern Seas?”

“And dark of skin and eye,” Jeirran pointed out. “This tale can’t be about them.”

Keisyl chewed his lip, puzzled. “But do you think they could really be Alyatimm?”

“The song spoke of Men of the Ice,” Jeirran told him. “That can’t be coincidence, surely?”

“No,” breathed Keisyl. “I don’t suppose it can.” He looked at Jeirran. “What should it mean to us, beyond making history out of a tale? And why would we want to find Alyatimm anyway? They were exiled because their leader tried to make himself sole ruler of all the sokes!”

“These people have magic, Keis,” Jeirran said, eyes intense. “They have magic enough to cross the ocean, to travel unseen among the lowlanders. If that song’s any guide, the lowlanders are running scared of these Elietimm. Think about it, Keisyl. If these are Alyatimm, then this must be true magic, not perversions of lowland wizards. Real power, rooted in the mountains of old and not locked away in Solstice secrets by Sheltya. If these are Alyatimm, then we have common blood, no matter if it’s countless generations divided. What if we could claim kinship and help?

“Think on tales you’ve heard around the hearth of a sunless Solstice. What if the Wyrm of Ceider could be summoned up again? That would get lowlanders out of our mines faster than firedamp! What if the wraiths of Morn could be sent down the sokes? Let them chase the stupid cows clean over the nearest crag! We could maze the feet of the thieves setting traps in our woods couldn’t we? Kell the Weaver did it!”

“But those are just stories, Jeirran,” objected Keisyl, but his voice was uncertain.

“Are they?” Jeirran countered. “So are the Alyatimm, or so we’ve always been told, but how else would lowlanders know of them if there weren’t some truth in it?”

Keisyl was confused. “It’s just a song, Jeirran, just some balladeer making up a story to give the lowlanders a thrill. Tell me, what happens to these Elietimm?” He stressed the word. “I’ll wager my best shoe buckles they come to grief,” he snorted, looking with hostility at the unheeding dancers weaving a complicated figure down the length of the hall.

“Not so you’d notice,” replied Jeirran with satisfaction. “These Tormalin men went to these islands, so the song ran, to steal back a hostage—”

Keisyl drew a sharp breath.

“—that’s right, Keis. What lowlanders would understand the folly of that?” Jeirran pressed on. “They went to steal back the hostage, so naturally he was executed. The others were hunted as proved vermin, stole a boat and somehow managed not to drown, were washed up home. That’s as far as their victory goes and piss poor I’d call it.”

Keisyl shook his head. “It’s just a song, Jeirran. It’s some tale of adventure stitched together out of half-remembered scraps of saga. Some easterner who married out has passed on the legend to some lowlander wife and their half-breed children. That’s all it can be.”

“What legend?” demanded Jeirran stubbornly. “You tell me what saga this is cobbled up from. How could easterners come up with a tale like this, when they have fallen so far from the old ways? They can scarcely recite three degrees of their kindred!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Keisyl conceded. “All right, but what good does it do us, even if there’s some truth at the bottom of it? These people might have the power to raise Varangel and his ice demons, but it’s half a year’s journey to the ocean and you’re saying they’re on the far side of that!”

Jeirran leaned forward to speak softly. “If they have true magic, Sheltya should be able to reach them.”

Keisyl started as if he’d been stabbed in the leg. “You’re not serious!”

“Why not?” Jeirran demanded, face bold. “Don’t you think Sheltya should be told?”

“If this song is doing the rounds, they’ll get to hear of it soon enough and they don’t need to hear it from me,” said Keisyl with consternation. “I don’t want that kind of trouble.”

“I want that kind of power, if these Alyatimm have true magic and are willing to share it,” Jeirran said grimly. “Let Sheltya cling to their wisdom and get driven back farther every year. I want to walk Eirys’ lands without putting a foot in some thief’s spring-trap. I want to sell the metals I win from the earth by the sweat of my back for a fair price, not to be undercut by some lowlander whose mines run with the blood of slaves, tainting the earth with their misery. I want to move from soke to soke in safety, claiming shelter when I need it, not finding doors barred against lowlander robbers who dishonor the truce of the road so often it’s worthless.”

“You’ve no way of knowing these people have true magic, even if they exist,” protested Keisyl, but his words lacked their earlier force.

“Don’t you want to find out?” challenged Jeirran.

“Perhaps, now you’ve set your maggot in my brain with your fancies,” Keisyl sighed. “But not at the price of getting myself shunned by Sheltya!”

“I think I know one we can trust,” said Jeirran slowly. “My sister.”

“You have no sister,” Keisyl looked sharply at him. “She’s Sheltya now. Her blood is theirs and you have no claim on it.”

Jeirran ran a pensive finger through his beard. “I think I could persuade Aritane to keep this to herself.”

“She better had, else you’re neck deep in trouble,” said Keisyl dubiously. “What do you think she will say?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Jeirran. “I’ll sound her out, see if she’s willing to listen to me.”

“You keep us out of it,” Keisyl insisted. “If you do end up shunned, at least we’ll be able to take care of Eirys.”

“Eirys is a large part of why I want to do this.” Jeirran’s eyes burned. “I want to give her everything her little head fancies, I want to give her daughters standing enough to claim back every right on and under the land that has fallen away to others of their blood. I want sons with a patrimony to catch every mother’s eye, to link our blood, yours and mine, to every soke west of the Gap, so we never have to deal with lowlanders again unless we choose to.”

His voice turned calculating. “And of course, you and Teir will be the first to benefit. Given your father died before he could leave you a respectable coffer, no one will quibble if Eirys chooses to endow you. You could be taking a confident stand at Solstice, not like last time. I heard you claim not to be seeking a bride just yet, hoping all the while some girl with a decent holding would fall for your charms and insist on having you.”