Glasswrights' Journeyman Page 12

  Hal forced himself to meet his rival’s gaze, unflinchingly accepting defeat on the issue of the Little Army. “Then you will not help me?”

  “I cannot, my lord. It is not in my power to do so. Take heart, though. Some of your people have purchased their freedom through the labor of their hands. Others were granted freedom immediately by kind-hearted Liantines. Your ‘children’ have grown, King Halaravilli – some have even fathered their own children, on my Liantine maids. Your Little Army is no more.”

  There. It was done. Hal had lost this battle. Perhaps in doing so, though, he was in a better position to win the war. He could only hope.

  For just an instant, he remembered Rani coming to him in Amanthia, appearing in his camp outside the northern capital. She had been clad in the rags that passed for a uniform in the Little Army, and she was flanked by two brave soldiers, by two boys who had forfeited their innocence for a king’s lie.

  Rani would not be pleased when she learned that Hal had bartered the Little Army. She would not be pleased to learn that the soldiers were lost, forever beyond recall. But she would be less pleased if Hal lost his other bargaining point, if he had to forfeit Berylina’s dowry. Rani was committed to a strong negotiation for the princess; she had pledged as much when she agreed to travel with him.

  After all, wasn’t that what Rani always tried to teach him? A shrewd merchant must give and take, must recognize the value of yielding on one point, only to snatch up success on the next. That was the lesson, that Hal attempted to apply with the Fellowship. He had yielded them some gold – when he could afford the loss – and he hoped for advancement. He could only hope that the strategy would yield success more rapidly here in Liantine.

  Besides, Crestman still waited back on Hal’s ship. The Amanthian soldier was likely to investigate the Little Army on his own. Who could guess what Crestman might learn, what new facts might change the bargain Hal had just made?

  King Teheboth let him sit for a moment, giving him the chance to swallow the acid taste of defeat. Then, before the silence between them could stretch too long, the Liantine lifted one meaty hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the sun as he scanned the horizon. “We mustn’t lose more time, my lord. The winter days haven’t grown back to their full summer length yet. You can see the Royal Grove on the horizon there. My master of the hunt is waiting for us, his hounds at the ready. Shall we ride?”

  Hal heard the invitation, and he recognized it for what it was – a request to put aside the matter of the Little Army, to declare the dispute completely closed. He nodded grimly. “Aye, my lord. Let us ride.”

  The sun had barely moved a handspan higher in the sky when they arrived at the Royal Grove. Hal could see that the master of the hunt was busy, attempting to whip in the frantic pack of staghounds. Four boys held leather leashes for the scent hounds, which had already located the trail of deer in the forest. Excitement was palpable in the air.

  There was a long moment of disorganization as the Liantine lords sorted themselves out, and King Teheboth held a rapid conference with the master of the hunt. Hal hurriedly met Teheboth’s youngest son, Olric, the boy who had wed his spiderguild bride only two weeks before.

  Then, the hounds were loosed, and Hal found his gelding eagerly leaping into the Grove. Hal leaned low across the great beast’s neck, even though the position made it difficult for him to catch his breath. The horse pounded beneath him, bunching its massive hind quarters to spring over great blocks of stone that were occasionally strewn across the shadowed path. Once, he sat up straighter, eager to help guide the horse over and around stony obstacles, but his cape was grasped by low-hanging branches. Laughing in the forest gloom, Hal abandoned himself to the roan’s good sense. He urged the horse forward, yielding to the excitement of the hunt, to the blood-quest for the Horned Hind.

  The hounds’ belling echoed in the forest. Occasional shafts of sunlight broke through the canopy of the oak trees, blinding in their brightness. Hal could smell the returning life of spring, the fresh earth churned under hooves, the green crush of first leaves whipped by their passing. Men called to one another, challenges that bounced off the trees with ferocious good cheer.

  And then the hounds had found the deer. Their belling changed tone until it was frantic with bloodlust. Hal’s senses were heightened in the dark wood. He could see the flash of white and brown and black as the dogs leaped through the forest. He could hear the desperate crashes as the prey plummeted through thicker and thicker undergrowth. He could smell the sweat of his horse and of his own body, acrid and strong in the chilled air.

  The hunt party plunged through a clearing, and Hal caught his first glimpse of the frantic deer. The Liantines might ride for the Horned Hind, they might dedicate this Spring Hunt to her glory and her power, but the hounds had managed to find a male deer, a virile stag.

  The beast was magnificent, his antlers glinting in shafts of the afternoon light that shot through the trees. His powerful haunches gathered as he sprang away from the dogs, and Hal caught his breath as the animal leaped onto a rocky outcropping. The trapped stag turned to face the snarling pack.

  The riders quickly drew up, reining their mounts in beside the stony promontory. The dogs were driven into a frenzy by the nearness of their prey, snapping and howling as they tried to leap onto the stony crag. One particularly long-legged beast gained the high ground, but the stag swept toward it, lowering his antlered head and tossing the dog from the rock. The hound yelped loudly as it hit the ground and then lay still, stunned or dead – Hal could not tell.

  Other dogs followed suit, maddened now by the proximity of the great beast. One launched itself directly at the stag’s throat, and the dog’s teeth closed on the russet pelt. The hound lasted for only a moment, though, before the stag struck out with its hooves, slashing at the beast until the dog released its grip and fell, yelping, from the rock.

  The smell of deer’s blood enraged the pack, and the dogs took grander risks. They leaped from the forest floor onto the escarpment, one, two, three together. The stag lowered his head and tried to sweep the dogs from the rock, but there were too many. Even as the deer’s grand antlers connected with a crunching sound, one of the hounds managed to leap behind the stag, to harry the beast’s far flank.

  And then the hunt was over.

  The stag slipped to one knee, permitting two more dogs to leap onto the rock. The dogs’ baying chorus crested into one long, sustained note, a note that echoed inside Hal’s head, growing and turning and reverberating until his very bones seemed to melt. In a daze, Hal realized that the dogs’ cry had been captured in the clarion call of a horn; the master of the hunt was commanding his frenzied hounds to stand down.

  King Teheboth strode to the rock, leaping onto its craggy surface with the agility of a much younger man. The king of all Liantine held a long, smooth spear, a weapon tipped with darkest iron.

  The stag raised a bleeding foreleg, as if determined to fend off this one last foe. The motion forced the beast to lift its head, to stretch its bleeding, muscled neck into an arch as powerful as the stony crag. Hal thought that he could see the pulse beating beneath the stag’s flesh, thought that he could see the noble heart pumping over and over, trying to save the doomed beast.

  Teheboth drew back his arm, his own muscles trembling with the force of his grip. Then, he thrust forward, piercing the stag’s throat, plunging the spear down, down, into the dark meat, into the bloody caverns of the great body.

  The canine chorus resumed its frenzied song as the stag’s knees buckled and the great beast collapsed onto the stone table. The master of the hunt blew on his horn three more times, and then the boy-assistants were in among the dogs, pulling them back, attaching their leashes.

  Hal watched as two boys stepped forward, boys with slick scars shining beneath their left eyes. The slaves held iron knives which they used to salute King Teheboth, and then they set to their labor, plunging iron into deerflesh, cutting, dragging, sawing.
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  Hal was not certain if the great stag’s heart was still beating when one of the boy’s pried it from the chest, or if the organ only seemed to move with the remnants of life. The servant held up the glistening heart, bringing forth a bellow of approval from the assembled Liantine noblemen. The boy bowed his head and presented the slick, crimson gift to Teheboth.

  Teheboth accepted the offering like a victorious conqueror, holding it aloft to another roar of approval. Then, the king tossed the heart into the pack of dogs, grinning at the explosion of canine yips and snarls. The lungs followed, and the liver and gut, and the great stag’s windpipe last of all.

  As the steam still rose from the cooling meat, Teheboth drew his own knife, holding the Zarithian blade high above his head. The king’s voice rang out in the forest, bouncing off the trees, off the stone. “Behold, good men of Liantine! Behold the Horned Hind!”

  It wasn’t a hind, Hal wanted to argue. It wasn’t a hind at all. It was a stag, who had fought nobly until the end.

  He held his tongue, though. Hal understood the power of myth. He understood the nature of symbols.

  “King Halaravilli!” Teheboth cried. “We thank you for honoring us with your presence at this Spring Hunt. In recognition of your presence, and as a token of the friendship between our houses, I proffer you the Sign of the Hunt.”

  Hal knew what was expected of him. He strode forward, past the slavering dogs, past the boisterous Liantine nobles. He leaped onto the stony outcropping, using his hands to steady himself for just a moment as his boot slipped in a runnel of blood. He tossed his cloak over his shoulders, baring his gold-shot crimson tunic in the high afternoon sun.

  “King Halaravilli,” Teheboth proclaimed. “Be welcome in our court. Speak well of our hospitality, wherever you may ride. Be honored in all of Liantine.”

  Teheboth raised his Zarithian blade once more, rotating the hilt slightly in his palm. Then, he brought the knife down on the hind’s right foreleg, severing the hoof with a single blow. He raised the trophy above his head, eliciting a frenzied clamor from the Liantine men and hounds.

  Hal drew himself to his full height as Teheboth came to stand beside him. The burly king looked deep into his eyes, as if he could read all of Hal’s hopes, all of his fears, all of his expectations for this journey to Liantine. Teheboth held the severed hoof in his left hand, and he raised his right above Hal’s head. “In the name of the Horned Hind, be welcome to Liantine, King Halaravilli.”

  “In the name of the Horned Hind,” Hal murmured, and Teheboth’s rough fingers rasped across his brow, painting a holy sign with the stag’s blood. Hal shuddered at the touch, silently dedicating the hunt to Doan and all the Thousand Gods.

  Chapter 6

  Without thinking, Mareka Octolaris raised her fingers to her glossy black hair, pushing the errant strands behind her ears. She had never imagined how annoying her hair would be, left free from her apprentice braids. It was just as well that she was away from the spiderguild, that she could rapidly make her two braids when she attended her octolaris, here in King Teheboth’s palace.

  Not that she was allowed to wear the braids now that she had been stripped of her status as an apprentice in the spiderguild.

  Not that she was allowed to have the octolaris here in Liantine.

  Even now, nearly a month after she had stolen the twenty-four spiders, her heart beat fast at the notion that she had full responsibility for the beasts. No one knew that she had them here – not King Teheboth, not Jerusha, and certainly not the spiderguild itself.

  Even as Mareka had stared at the slave girl’s body on the day that she was supposed to become a journeyman, she had known that she would be banished from the guildhall. Her mother and father had come to her as soon as they heard about the accident. Her father’s hands had still dripped with indigo; her mother’s neckpiece was pulled askew. Mareka had pleaded with them, begged them to intervene, to say or do anything to save her from the masters’ wrath.

  There was nothing to be done, though. The masters had listened to the facts, and they passed sentence before the sun had set. The virulent octolaris were to be destroyed, burned upon a pyre of Jerusha and Mareka’s own making. The apprentices were to be banished, sent to King Teheboth’s capital. They were forbidden to wear apprentice braids, denied the opportunity to don their journeymen arm-bands. The unspoken condition of their return was financial – they might be reconsidered if they could bring the spiderguild wealth, coins enough to make the masters overlook the shame of an outsider dying from mishandled octolaris, the concrete cost of twenty-four executed spiders.

  Jerusha’s family succeeded where Mareka’s had not. They called upon the masters to finalize a long-pending strategy – marrying a journeyman into the house of Thunderspear. Debts were called in, hasty conferences conducted. A journeyman who had long been groomed to serve as Prince Olric’s bride was unceremoniously ousted, and Jerusha granted the status, the title, the responsibility. In the charged financial world of royal marriages, Jerusha’s parents let their vast wealth secure a sort of freedom, a type of hope for their shamed daughter.

  A mere fortnight ago, Mareka had witnessed the wedding ceremony, standing at Jerusha’s side like a loyal sister. All the time, though, she had longed to return to her tiny chamber in King Teheboth’s palace. Her fingers had twitched as she imagined plucking markin grubs from her deep, deep basket, digging for them between the layers of yellow riberry leaves. As soon as possible, she had excused herself from the wedding festivities, hurrying off to feed her twenty-four secret spiders from her stash of grubs.

  For Mareka had not let the vicious octolaris burn. She had been trained since birth to protect spiders, taught that the eight-legged beasts were the Horned Hind’s own gift to her guild. She could not burn the virulent octolaris solely because of her mistake. She could not condemn the silk producers because she and Jerusha had fought over a slave girl.

  Instead, she had diverted Jerusha’s attention, tearfully apologizing over and over for her role in the accident, claiming to accept responsibility, insisting that she – Mareka – feed the offending creatures to the pyre. No master wanted to attend the conflagration; no loyal member of the spiderguild could stand to watch the execution of the creatures in their care. Mareka had stood alone at midnight, poking embers until they turned to ash.

  She had harnessed all her creativity, focused all her angry energy, calculating how to get her treasures to Liantine. It had not been easy, but she had managed. She had transported them, hidden in her single travel trunk. She had fed them, collected their abundant silk. She had saved the octolaris, and still Jerusha suspected nothing.

  Now, returning from checking on her dangerous secret, Mareka hovered in the shadows of a spidersilk hanging, calculating the best moment to make her appearance at the feast. She had had such fun playing with King Halaravilli ben-Jair that morning. Pitiful, really – he had made the game so easy. Had he not heard about the Liantine princess’s rabbit teeth? Did he not know that Berylina’s eyes were crossed?

  Of course, the king’s companions, Rani Trader and Mair, had learned of Mareka’s game soon enough. Discovery had been inevitable, with the hallways crawling with servants who knew Mareka’s true status, who thought of her as the somewhat inattentive servant of the journeyman Princess Jerusha. Nevertheless, Mareka’s game had been worthwhile, if only to watch the blonde merchant girl spit her anger as realization dawned. If that one hoped to bargain for success in the Liantine marketplace, she had better learn to marshal her forces with more subtlety.

  Mareka reached down to smooth her gown. In honor of the Spring Hunt, she had donned her most delicate spidersilk, the garment she had worn to witness Jerusha’s marriage. At first glance, the gown was the white of fresh spring blossoms. As Mareka moved, though, even as she drew breath, the cloth rustled and reflected other shades – glints of cobalt and emerald, ruby and topaz. It was the finest creation her mother and father had ever made, and it comforted her to realize t
hat she walked in the tradition of her guild.

  She had further honored that bond by wearing her greatest treasure of all – a rough-cut diamond that her mother had given her the day that she became an apprentice. The clear stone slid on a simple golden chain about Mareka’s neck, clasped by eight tiny prongs, eight delicate fingers that twisted like a spider’s spinnerets. Looking out at the assembled crowd, Mareka took a deep breath and felt the brilliant gem whisper against her flesh. It was time to join the feast. Time to join the game.

  She ducked beneath the spidersilk hanging and stepped into the Great Hall. The room had been transformed since the morning, tables and long benches dragged in. A broad dais had been constructed along the far wall, stretching the length of the room. Even across the hall, Mareka could make out unlit lanterns at the edge of the platform, the mirrors in front of the lamps. The stage was ready for the players, the crown of the evening’s entertainment.

  In the meantime, the hall was filled King Teheboth’s courtiers. The men still wore their hunting leathers, and many stank of horse. More than one rider had braided beads of antler into his beard – symbol of the Horned Hind that had died that afternoon. Boisterous laughter filled the room, and goblets clanked together as men saluted their king and their goddess. Teheboth Thunderspear had better serve food soon, or some of his lords would be too far gone to sit at table.

  The Liantine ladies, of course, were better mannered and far more sober. No proper woman would drink enough to risk public humiliation. Duchesses, countesses, and other noteworthy guests stood against the wall, clustered into small groups to whisper stories in their well-mannered voices. Mareka saw a number of the women nod in her direction, but none was brave enough to speak to a member of the spiderguild, even an apprentice who had been sent to the Liantine capital in shame. Mareka raised her chin and smiled archly, pushing her hair behind her ears.