The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (59 page)

Eresken began to force his way through the crowd gathering around Jeirran. Tiredness weighed him down like a physical burden but he managed a warm enough greeting. “Jeirran! Good to see you back so soon. How did you fare?”

“Eresken!” Jeirran pushed a man with a flagon of ale aside and dragged Eresken into a crushing embrace. Jeirran’s breath was piercing with an unfamiliar, woody sweetness, eyes bright with the exuberance of alcohol.

Eresken detached himself with some difficulty and held Jeirran at arm’s length for a moment in a passable imitation of affection. “So how did you fare?”

“We drove those mewling cowards of villagers clean out of the foothills, all the way down to the chase above the lakes.” Jeirran laughed uproariously. “We thought about ducking them in the water but let them alone once they’d cleared our lands.”

“For the present, anyway,” quipped a bystander to ominous laughs.

“I thought you were to drive the Folk of the Forest south of the road?” Eresken managed a tight smile to cover his annoyance.

“Oh, we sent the squirrel fanciers scurrying up their trees, right enough. Took ’em on, man for man, fair fight and no quarter asked or given!” Jeirran took a swig from a crude glass bottle and sucked in air to cool the mellow burn of the spirits in his mouth. “We hit ’em first, burned ’em out, told ’em not to set foot on our lands again!”

Eresken steeled himself to look beyond the surface confusion of recollection and wishful thinking in Jeirran’s mind. Teasing out the truth was no easy task; memory was curdled by drunkenness and complicated by deliberate refusal to acknowledge darker truths lurking in the depths.

Jeirran had heeded the agreed plan to begin with, Eresken saw, attacking a small group of Forest Folk already fallen foul of an earlier sortie from the uplands. Eresken listened to Jeirran’s vainglorious boasting while seeing the truth of the events in his mind’s eye. The Forest Folk’s few possessions were dragged from their feeble grasp, the men hacked mercilessly down as they fought despairingly. Any woman who took up a weapon was cut to the ground by the fury of the Mountain Men. Those that sued for mercy were cruelly disappointed, used and discarded, bleeding and weeping.

Eresken nodded his approval; that much at least had been done properly. It had taken long enough to convince these fools to wage war as it should be done, unpicking their nicety and scruples, convincing them to use every terror as a tool.

He stumbled over a fearful recollection Jeirran had thrust deep into a recess of memory, cloaked in shame and confusion. So the heroic leader had joined his men in the wholesale rape? After all his high-flown words and claims to a lofty cause, he’d gone nosing in the dirt as eagerly as any beast, but this wasn’t just something done in the heat of the moment, Eresken realized with interest. Jeirran had a taste for it, unmasked by the deceits of drunkenness. That would be worth letting slip to Aritane, if her loyalty to this fool ever threatened to draw her away.

Eresken’s concentration wavered as anger shook him. The arrogant shit could take the western sweep next time, deal with the shoot-and-run tactics of the cowards with their bows and spears. Let Jeirran lose his best men to deadfalls and pit traps, find his nights poisoned as sentries were stabbed from the darkness by darts bringing death and madness.

Jeirran broke into a paroxysm of coughing, the spirits searing his throat as he tried to subdue unlooked-for memories with an unwary gulp from his bottle. Eresken blinked and saw the other man was ashen beneath his golden beard. He had to be more careful; if the sot mentioned such disturbance of thought and memory, Aritane would realize what he was doing, even if her idiot brother didn’t. Not that Jeirran was likely to tell her though, admitting weakness, when all the dolt’s own sense of worth depended on the admiration of others.

“So what took you out to the villages?” The Elietimm slackened his grip on Jeirran’s mind.

“It was time to take the fight to the real villains,” replied Jeirran robustly if hoarsely. His men had been squabbling over the inadequate spoils won from the Forest Folk; his unconscious mind told Eresken loudly. “Suratimm are like ticks on a goat, they drain its strength but can’t do too much harm, not if you burn their arses with a hot ember every so often,” Jeirran continued with an expansive gesture. “It’s the lowlanders that are the real thieves, the ones who’ll rob you blind and then steal what’s left from under your nose.” He paused, frowning a little as his own meaning escaped him. He need not worry, thought Eresken sardonically. The audience hanging on his every word were well on their way to being so drunk they’d cheer a quacking duck.

“So we took the fight to them,” Jeirran repeated, nodding with satisfaction. “Fought ’em, drove ’em off, a boot up the arse so hard their teeth shook loose!”

Eresken tried to make sense of his jumbled recollections; thatch burning in the gray light of dawn, screaming women, howling children, the outraged roars of men dragged from sleep by sudden assault. He gave up the struggle with a silent curse of derision. Come the morning he’d determine if Jeirran’s success was all the fool was claiming or just another ineffectual raid that would have to be gilded with enchantment to satisfy the men they had indeed won a mighty victory.

Eresken closed his eyes for a moment. Another task to remember, yet more demands on his time and energies. Well, he’d use more direct methods in the morning, no more tiptoeing around the edges of Jeirran’s arrogance, stealing his memories unseen. He’d go in with the ruthlessness his father favored; Jeirran could put the subsequent headaches down to indulgence in looted lowland liquor and any evil memories down to the lash of conscience. Sudden desire seared Eresken, to drown all the myriad tasks clamoring for his attention in the seductive golden depths of a bottle.

The Elietimm turned his back on Jeirran. Such release was denied him but Aritane was up in the rekin. Perhaps this was the time to break down her idiotic scruples and make a true woman of her. Once she’d forsworn that final vow, she’d be unable to betray him. He could draw on her strength, force her to take some of the load. Eresken’s step quickened as he headed for the fess. A brazier was smoking by the gate, white and red beneath a layer of fresh fuel. The Elietimm strode past without so much as a glance at the knot of men chatting casually around it.

Inside the fess, the noise confined within the massive stone circle buffeted him. Every building around the walls had windows lit and chimney smoking. Some doors were closed on work or sleep within, more were open to people coming and going, stepping around each other with scant apology. Two men stood unyielding as everyone else flowed around them, intent on comparing closely written slates. A shout made them both look up and one hurried over to a heap of sacks, spilled grain drifting at his feet. The main steps to the rekin were clogged with men deep in conversation, women exchanging news and opinion. The stone walls were dappled with shadows of torch and firelight until they reached high enough to cut a hard black outline in the starlit sky.

Eresken fumed; once he and his kind held sway here, this would all stop. True magic was meant to rule. No Elietimm enchanter would be at the beck and call of every self-important buffoon puffed up over a few bare leagues of mountainside. Hunger nagged at him so he skirted the rekin. He clicked his tongue with annoyance at the miserable crowd in the kitchen yard. Pushing his way past importuning hands, he tapped one of the Sheltya briskly on the shoulder. “Where is Aritane? I must speak with her.”

Krelia looked around, her face drawn with the anguish she took into herself with every healing touch laid on some needy body. “Did she go inside, for something to eat perhaps?”

The fool woman was going to lose herself completely soon, Eresken realized with a faint chill, seeing the vagueness in her eyes. He must watch Krelia more closely; if she was going to dissolve into madness, she wasn’t going to hamper his plans when she did so. He’d smother her in her sleep first.

“You’re looking for Aritane?” Remet halted, all manner of questions in his raised brows. “Bryn came; they went inside to talk in private.” Remet’s eyes were alert in the soft lines of his face, a newfound maturity in their focus. “He had news of Jeirran.”

Eresken nodded and hid curses in the deepest hollow of his mind. Bryn’s long friendship with Aritane made it so much harder to displace whatever doubts his news might fix in her head. What had Bryn heard from Jeirran? Did he know something Eresken didn’t?

“Thank you.” Eresken managed a friendly smile, man to man, overlaying it with a faint promise of confidences to come, of admission to an inner circle of knowledge. As he turned, he felt the youth’s eyes on the back of his neck. Yet another thing to remember and to step wary around. This onslaught of incessant and varied demands had tested Remet’s training in a way he’d never have faced in ten years of trailing up track and down vale after some ineffectual soothsayer. The boy was starting to think for himself and Bryn only needed someone to share his faltering loyalty to go running to his Elders, ruining everything.

Eresken’s pace quickened. The side door was ajar, a few huddled figures cowering on the wooden steps. Eresken spared no glance to encourage some worthless request. He took the stairs two at a time and hurried to the door at the far end of the corridor.

He halted on the threshold, honeyed words dying on his lips. “What are you doing here? Where is Aritane?”

Ceris sprang to her feet, looking for guidance from the men flanking her. “She went with Bryn?” Her pathetic smile beseeched him not to be cross with her.

“Who is this?” Eresken scowled at the older man, whose gnarled hand clasped the girl’s drooping shoulder. “You should work healing outside, not where we gather to meditate!” He took a seat behind the long table, forcing the others to rise from their chairs, stamping his authority on the situation.

The newcomer matched the Elietimm glare for glare. “I’m her father and this is her brother. We’ve come to see how she does, now that Jeirran tells us Sheltya need not be cut off from their blood no more.”

Yet another cursed complication to deal with. Eresken heard hurrying steps in the corridor. “Then please take your reunion elsewhere.” The Elietimm rose, expecting to see Bryn or, better yet, Aritane. Instead two unknown men charged into the room, faces alight with a hostility that hit him like a kick in the stomach. A woman followed, face obscured by some ghastly mask of paints but green eyes clear and bright with hatred.

It was the wizard’s slut from the Forest. Pain searing along his jaw told Eresken the bitch was using her cursed darts again. He stumbled with the cold shock of the drug in his blood. Scrambling around the table, he swept maps, parchments, goblets to all sides, throwing the jug bodily at the burlier attacker.

Closest to the door, Ceris drew breath on a panicked scream but the woman silenced her with a slap. The frail blond crashed back into the stone wall to slump whimpering to the floorboards. Eresken goaded Ceris’ startled father to attack, seizing on his impulse to protect his child. With an inarticulate roar, the man swung at the whore’s back. The elder of the traitors with her stepped in to block the vengeful fist, equal violence bolstered by the energy of youth. Eresken took a moment’s thought to weave the attacker’s face into an image of Jeirran’s foulest lust, with Ceris the weeping victim beneath the heaving body. He rammed this into her father’s mind, burning it into his consciousness, heedless of the damage he did.

“See what they—” He had no time to reinforce the vision with words. The second man, the skinny one with savage eyes, was a scant pace away, knife in his grasp. Eresken seized Ceris’ brother with hands and wits, throwing him bodily onto the gleaming blade. In the instant of agony distracting the boy, Eresken grabbed hold of his mind. He tied the lad’s wits tight in a web of chaos, isolating him mercilessly from all conscious thought and memory. Working faster than ever before, Eresken denied him any perception of pain from the myriad blows and cuts the frustrated attacker inflicted. Ruthlessly ripping out any instinct for defense and protection, he set alight every unconscious fury and hatred the boy harbored, turning each involuntary movement into aggression, tying the whole into a storm of mindless violence.

Eresken snatched himself from the maelstrom of the boy’s ruined mind just in time to see the shorter attacker go down under that insane rage. The father was laying into the other one with a chair leg, wood splintering as the agile man dodged and feinted and blows crashed into the wall behind him.

What of the whore? Eresken saw her biting her lip with vicious intent, halfway across the room with an upraised dagger. Eresken overturned the table, the stout oak board a futile defense, but it gave him long enough to drag Ceris’ body to its feet. With a frantic reach of his mind, he crushed the girl’s feeble volition with one explosive curse, leaving the girl’s eyes vacant pools of darkness. Barely an instant before the Forest bitch reached him, Eresken flung Ceris onto the whore’s back, uncoordinated limbs flailing, dead weight clinging, gray cloth hampering, dragging the murderous slut down.

Echoes of agony reverberated around Eresken’s mind as the brother died. Illusion of invulnerability was no defense against being bodily broken into a bloody mess, joints shattered, sinews cut, throat cut with a savagery that all but severed the head. The traitor was already moving forward, teeth white in a rictus of savagery against a mask of gore, reddened knife thirsty for Eresken’s blood. Kill or be killed, the simplicity of this one’s mind rang louder than any other thought in the room. A simple mind and one with no defenses worth the name.

The Elietimm felt the hardness of stone at his back, floorboards slick beneath his feet, the reek of blood, ordure and hatred thick in the air. The drug was tainting his senses, colors distorting, sounds both deafening and distant in the same moment. Eresken gritted his teeth, forced the turmoil from him with a shouted incantation and plunged his razor-sharp intellect, honed over so many years, into the naked reason of his assailant.