Sorcery Rising Read online

  He threaded his way between innumerable stalls offering trinkets and fabulously-patterned fabrics, exotic-smelling foods and flasks of drink. Around one stall specialising in variously flavoured araques a large group of young men had gathered rowdily, drinking the samples and shouting down the distressed stallholder, a wizened old man without a tooth in his head. Saro walked quickly by.

  He bought a spiced pastry and stopped for a while at a puppet theatre. On a gaudily-painted stage in a striped fabric booth which hid the puppeteers, three grotesque mannequins clacked up and down on sticks. They had long, thin fingers and pointed noses; spidery limbs and gilded clothes. He had no idea who the figures represented; and when the fourth character made an entrance: a smaller figure in a white robe whom the audience cheered as if he was the hero, he was still none the wiser. The small white-clad puppet led the three larger ones on a journey towards a board of painted mountains and into a dark hole in the backcloth. Then it clapped its wooden hands together and a great puff of green smoke engulfed the stage, much to the delight of the onlookers. When the smoke cleared, the three larger figures had vanished, leaving only the white one, with a tiny wooden cat at its feet, and everyone started to applaud. Saro found himself doing the same, since it seemed only polite.

  A small dark-haired girl with a silver ring through her nose and another through her right eyebrow came scooting out from behind the screen and bowed, then with a flourish produced a large leather bag, which she held out before her. Folk started to throw coins into the bag, then to drift away. Saro was one of the last to leave. When the girl came to him, she placed her palms together and bowed to him.

  ‘Rajeesh, mina Istrianni,’ she said.

  He made a clumsy copy of the bow and repeated the odd greeting, which for some reason made her laugh. Then he asked her, slowly and carefully in the Old Tongue, what it was he had just seen.

  ‘Rahay and the Wizards!’ she said in surprise. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  He grimaced. ‘Apparently not. I arrived late to the performance and missed all but the last scene.’

  ‘Come with me while I get the stall ready for tonight’s performance and I’ll tell you the story, if you’d like.’

  ‘I would love it.’

  She disappeared into the booth and began to sweep the dust from the explosion off the stage with her hands, then with a grin turned the palms up towards him. They were bright green. ‘You want to smell some magic?’

  Saro laughed. ‘Magic? That’s just green dust!’

  ‘Maybe now it is: but in the play . . .’ She held her hand out to him and he took it briefly in his own. Her fingers were tiny, like a child’s. The dust smelled acrid and pungent and entirely unfamiliar to him: the smell of another country, another world.

  In a singsong voice, she began her tale:

  ‘Rahay, he was King of the West

  Keeper of peace, maker of gold

  Of all kings the wisest and best

  His folk lived well till they were old.

  Word of the West spread far and wide

  Till wizards heard tell of the gold

  On their great ship they caught the tide

  Planning to steal all they could hold.

  To his court they came from the sea

  (Their ship lay broken on the rocks)

  King Rahay smiled, a shrewd man, he:

  Wise as an owl, wily as a fox.

  “To stay here in my land of gold

  Just grant me three wishes, I pray.”

  The wizards laughed, for they were bold

  And knew their promise they’d betray.

  So King Rahay asked for the skill

  To move rock, call fire from the sky

  “That’s two,” they said. “You have one still.”

  Then the King’s cat came walking by.

  “Fill my cat with your magic charms,”

  Was the third wish of the good King

  And he placed the cat into their arms

  “It is done,” they said, “this strange thing.”

  For three days the wizards ran amok

  They smoked, they drank, they defiled

  They brought with them the worst of luck,

  They killed a goat, a dog and a child.

  The next day the King took them into the hills

  Where caves of gold glittered and shone

  And when they were in he called on his skills:

  In an eyeblink the wizards were gone.

  For he had called a thunderbolt down

  To cleave the golden cave in two

  And mountains moved across the ground

  To cover the old caves with new.

  Back at the court he stroked his cat

  Till it gave up the spells to its lord

  He used them to make his lands fat

  And fine; and for this he was adored.

  Rahay, he was King of the West

  Keeper of peace, maker of gold

  Of all kings the wisest and best

  His folk lived well till they were old.’

  She dusted her green-stained hands down her tunic. ‘The Old Tongue doesn’t rhyme where the original did I’m told, but that’s the version I was taught. And, to be properly traditional, I ought to have accompanied it with a cither, but mine’s so out of tune at the moment, I think you’d thank me for the lack!’

  Saro dug in his pouch and withdrew a silver coin. ‘I thank you anyway,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘I loved your tale.’

  She waved it away. ‘Don’t insult me with your money: this was not a paying performance – I chose to tell you the story. Regard it as my gift to you, at your first Allfair.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  He smiled at her and was delighted to see her smile back, her dark eyes crinkling in that smooth tanned face. Her very naked, female face. He felt a wave of shame rise up in him for seeing it so, and bobbed his head to hide his blush. When he raised it again, she was watching him intently.

  ‘You stare at me as if you’ve never seen a woman’s face before.’

  Saro felt stupid. ‘Sorry, no,’ he stammered. ‘It’s just that where I come from women do not show their faces. They wear a veil that leaves just their mouth free to eat, and speak and—’

  ‘You are Istrian.’

  He nodded, though it had not been a question.

  ‘Your people have odd ways with women.’ She laughed, picking up the puppets and untangling the rods and strings where they had fallen at the end of the play. ‘To hide them away so jealously. The men must be very afraid.’ She handed one of the untangled puppets to Saro, who took it cautiously. He turned it over. It was beautifully made, he saw now: carved by a master’s hand, each feature, each digit delineated with exquisite care. He moved one of the rods and saw how a limb jerked; saw that with a skilful puppeteer’s art, the fingers could be made to move individually, so that the hand might beckon or make a fist.

  He thought about what she had said, turning the puppet over and over. At last, he said: ‘It is said that the power of Falla shines out of a woman’s eyes. Perhaps we are afraid of that power.’

  The girl laughed. ‘So you should be! Now, give me that wizard before you rub all his gold off.’ She replaced all four mannequins into a cleverly-made wooden box with compartments to keep the rods and strings separate. ‘So, what are you doing here with the Wanderers on your first Fair, young sir?’

  ‘I came to look for a gift for my mother.’

  ‘Good boy,’ she regarded him approvingly. ‘Women like gifts. Did you have something in mind?’

  Saro shook his head. ‘Some jewellery, maybe,’ he added lamely.

  She clapped her hands. ‘I’ll take you to my grandfather, then. He specialises in moodstones – set into necklaces and bracelets, rings and brooches; or, even better, I think, on their own, just to hold in your hand. Your mother will be enchanted.’

  ‘But why are they called moodstones?’

  ‘They change colour to mat
ch your mood.’

  Saro laughed. ‘How can a stone do that?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Ask my grandfather: he’s the expert.’

  ‘In stones?’

  ‘No, silly: in moods.’

  The old nomad’s stall was situated just behind the one selling araque that Saro had passed earlier, but the crowd had grown since then: both in size and in volubility. Young Istrian men with their clean-shaven chins and elaborate tunics rubbed shoulders with northerners in leather and braids, and while they appeared incongruous in one another’s company, it seemed that the universality of a shared drink had bound them in great good cheer: one lad – who might have been Ordono Qaran from Talsea, had an arm around a young Eyran with white-blond hair and beard, and they were singing an old drinking song, each in their own language, but with more or less the same tune. Saro recognised others he had met – friends of his brother’s a few years older than himself; sparring partners and hunting companions – Diaz Sestran, in a ridiculous silver and orange doublet, and Leonic Bakran; and, oh Falla, there was Tanto himself, stumbling, red-faced and bleary-eyed, upending the last drops from a violet-coloured flask into his gullet.

  Saro sighed and walked faster.

  ‘Do you know them?’ the girl asked curiously, staring at their antics. One of the Istrians had picked up an Eyran and was carrying him around on his shoulders. The Eyran, all long red hair and wolfish grin, brandished a wicked-looking knife.

  ‘My brother, for one,’ Saro said through gritted teeth.

  ‘And you have no wish to join him?’

  ‘None at all. I came here to avoid him.’

  The girl laughed. ‘He’s enjoying himself far too much to notice you. Come on.’

  Her grandfather’s stall was festooned with chains and glittering objects, all set with milky-looking stones polished to a high gloss. The old man himself wore them on his hands, in his ears, on bands around his arm. There was even a single large moodstone in the middle of his forehead, suspended from a thin silver circlet and looking for all the world like a huge third eye. And while those on the stall were a pale, cloudy white, those worn by the old man swam with shades of soft sky-blue.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  ‘Guaya, my dear.’ The old man’s black eyes were small and round, as shiny as a robin’s. He cocked his head to look at her, then cocked it the other way to regard Saro, as quick and intelligent as a little bird.

  ‘This is my friend—?’

  ‘Saro,’ Saro supplied quickly.

  ‘My friend Saro wants something for his lady mother.’

  Saro smiled at the old man. She – Guaya – had called him ‘friend’, and though she was a little foreign girl of hardly more than twelve or thirteen, it made his heart feel large and warm in his chest.

  ‘Guaya—’ he stumbled over the pronunciation: in the nomad tongue it seemed to have too many syllables to it ‘—Guaya said your stones can change colour to match a person’s emotions . . .’

  Without a word, the old man picked out a pendant, a long, pear-shaped stone suspended via a simple setting from a fine silver chain. It was elegant and understated, and when he touched it, the stone took on the cloudy blues like those on his own hand. He held it out to Saro, and at once the colours swirled and changed to ochre and mustard yellow.

  ‘You are happy at the moment, though your happiness underlies a deeper emotion: of anger, maybe or even fear.’

  Saro stared at him.

  Guaya leaned forward and took the necklace from him, and the ochres gave way almost immediately to a translucent gold. The old man laughed. ‘She is a simple child, my Guaya; and very serene.’

  ‘It’s a lovely thing,’ Saro said softly. He scanned the display, but the old man had been unerring in his choice. ‘How much would you like for it?’

  He was about to open his money-pouch and tip out the contents, when there was a louder cry from the adjacent stall, followed by a great crash and a lot of shouting.

  ‘Something going on over there, Doc.’

  ‘Looks like a spot of trouble, Joz.’

  ‘Shall we wade in, Knobber?’

  ‘Aye, may as well: always enjoy a bit of a ruck at an Allfair.’

  ‘Never know who you might thump!’

  ‘Coming, Mam?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid: we don’t get paid for this sort of thing.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘I fancy hammering one of them Istrian louts right in the chuds, I do.’

  ‘Best be careful, Dogo: they’re a fair bit bigger than you.’

  ‘Here we go down the slippery slope, slippery slope, slippery slope . . .’

  Lord Tycho Issian was passing through the fair, having finally found temporary relief at the hands of a dusky woman with shells threaded through her hair (though all the time she worked upon him all he could think of were a pair of pale hands and sea-green eyes), when he noticed a commotion at one of the liquor stalls. A pair of young men were at each other’s throats; but luckily neither of them appeared to be armed. The tall fair one drew his fist back and got the Istrian youth a hard blow just under the ribs. When the Istrian boy – dressed in a strangely familiar bright pink garb – doubled up, the Eyran brought his knee up sharply and his opponent crumpled to the ground, clutching his crotch and whimpering. There was a moment of quiet, when it looked as if the incident might just blow over; as if someone might make a timely joke and everyone would return to their drinking, but into this unnatural calm the blond lad shouted, ‘Take that for your bitch-goddess, you scum! Falla would spread her legs before Sur and bless him for the opportunity!’

  Tycho stopped still. The blood rushed to his face, then drained again, leaving his usually walnut features as pale as a northman’s.

  At the stall, all hell broke loose. Drinking partners and companions in horseplay they might have been but a moment before; but now they were Istrians and Eyrans to a man: goddess-worshippers and followers of Sur: history and religion separate them more surely than language, culture and learning: enemies for more than a hundred generations, through the rise and fall of dynasties, the destruction of cities, the desecration of shrines, they now recalled with hot passion the side to which they rightfully belonged, and laid about them with swift and stunning violence. Grudges harboured for two hundred years boiled swiftly to the surface: slights recalled from family tellings round the fire; lost grandfathers and wounded parents; fortunes sunk in war and debts owed for ever.

  The stall went over with a great crash, the little nomad who owned it running like a cornered mouse this way and that, desperately trying to avoid the raining blows. Then, with a bellow, four men in weathered armour leapt into the fray and began throwing punches in a haphazard fashion, not seeming to care whether their targets were Eyran or Istrian. For a while, it seemed as though their uninvited intrusion might defuse the situation; but then a wild-haired youth had his belt-knife out and there was suddenly blood on the silver blade. An Istrian youth in an absurd silver and orange costume fell to the ground with his hands clasped to his abdomen. Sestran’s younger son, Tycho realised with a start.

  His own hand went to the dagger at his belt, but even as his fingers brushed the pommel, the fighting had surged back and engulfed another stall. Two northern youths stumbled backwards, pursued by four or five of the southerners. One of the Eyrans was the tall red-haired lad who had wounded the Sestran boy. He raised his knife hand – a threat, it seemed – but two of the southerners fell upon him and wrenched it away. A tall Istrian with short dark hair and a thick nose yelled in triumph and went for the Eyran with his own blade. The northerner tried for frantic evasion, but in doing so, backed into the jewellery seller’s stall, which had partly been sheltering him.

  ‘Saro!’

  Guaya clutched his arm in terror, for suddenly there were brawling men everywhere. There was a high, thin wail of despair, and Saro whirled around just in time to see the old man disappear from sight as his stall overturned in a great flurry of boards and
fabrics. Moodstones flew all around, and where they touched human skin flared to deepest crimson and wild purple, before falling, pale and cloudy once more to the ground.

  A pair of combatants came crashing towards them, their faces contorted with hatred, their fists swinging wildly. Saro grabbed Guaya and thrust her behind him. He could feel how she trembled in his grasp, and then someone caught him a savage blow on the temple and he was down on the ground, with the black dust of the plain in his mouth and eyes, and feet all around him, on top of him, kicking and stamping. Where he had been struck, it felt as though his skull had swelled to twice its normal size, and each beat of his blood there felt like a tide. He tried to raise his head and felt an appalling wave of nausea sweep through him. Someone kicked him hard in the guts and he doubled up reflexively, retching and heaving. With a tremendous effort, he managed to roll under the remains of the moodstone-seller’s stall, only to find himself face to face with the old man, whose blood ran freely down his face from a rough gash on his forehead. The moodstone there shone clear and limpid, a blue so pale as to be almost white in the midst of so much crimson.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  Suddenly, Guaya was on the ground beside him, with blood in her hair and her tunic half-ripped from her. Tears poured down her nut-brown cheeks. She cradled the old man’s head on her lap. ‘He’s badly hurt: we must get him away from here.’

  Saro nodded dumbly: it was about as much as he could manage. He closed his eyes and swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat. Then he hauled himself upright, using one of the stall’s struts for support. The sight that met his eyes was astonishing. It looked like a battleground: two men lay writhing on the ground – one was Diaz Sestran, he realised with a chill of recognition; but the other was a young Eyran with light-brown hair and a braided beard. Blood spurted from a deep wound in his thigh. All around the two wounded men, a dozen or so youths were fighting in earnest – knives out, or with sticks in their hands – impromptu clubs taken from the broken stalls – and the air was heavy with bellows of rage and blood-lust.