WOT Prequel 02 - New Spring Read online

  They had been moving steadily towards the centre of the city, climbing towards

  the highest hill, Stag's Stand. Lord Marcasiev's fortress-like palace covered

  the peak, with those of lesser lords and ladies on the terraces below. Any

  threshold up there offered warm welcome for al'Lan Mandragoran. Perhaps warmer

  than he wanted now. Balls and hunts, with nobles invited from as much as fifty

  miles away, including from across the border with Arafel. People avid to hear of

  his "adventures'. Young men wanting to join his forays into the Blight, and old

  men to compare their experiences there with his. Women eager to share the bed of

  a man whom, so fool stories claimed, the Blight could not kill. Kandor and

  Arafel were as bad as any southland at times; some of those women would be

  married. And there would be men like Kurenin, working to submerge memories of

  lost Malkier, and women who no longer adorned their foreheads with the ki'sain

  in pledge that they would swear their sons to oppose the Shadow while they

  breathed. Lan could ignore the false smiles while they named him al'Lan Dai

  Shan, diademed battle lord and uncrowned king of a nation betrayed while he was

  in his cradle. In his present mood, Bukama might do murder. Or worse, given his

  oaths at the gate. He would keep those to the death.

  "Varan Marcasiev will hold us a week or more with ceremony," Lan said, turning

  down a narrower street that led away from the Stand. "With what we've heard of

  bandits and the like, he will be just as happy if I don't appear to make my

  bows." True enough. He had met the High Seat of House Marcasiev only once, years

  past, but he remembered a man given entirely to his duties.

  Bukama followed without complaint about missing a palace bed or the feasts the

  cooks would prepare. It was worrying.

  No palaces rose in the hollows towards the north wall, only shops and taverns,

  inns and stables and wagonyards. Bustle surrounded the factors' long warehouses,

  but no carriages came to the Deeps, and most streets were barely wide enough for

  carts. They were just as jammed with people as the wide ways, though, and every

  bit as noisy. Here, the street performers' finery was tarnished, yet they made

  up for it by being louder, and buyers and sellers alike bellowed as if trying to

  be heard in the next street. Likely some of the crowd were cutpurses,

  slipfingers, and other thieves, finished with a morning's business higher up or

  headed there for the afternoon. It would have been a wonder otherwise, with so

  many merchants in town. The second time unseen fingers brushed his coat in the

  crowd, Lan tucked his purse under his shirt. Any banker would advance him more

  against the Shienaran estate he had been granted on reaching manhood, but loss

  of the gold on hand meant accepting the hospitality of Stag's Stand.

  At the first three inns they tried, slate-roofed cubes of grey stone with bright

  signs out front, the innkeepers had not a cubbyhole to offer. Lesser traders and

  merchants' guards filled them to the attics. Bukama began to mutter about making

  a bed in a hayloft, yet he never mentioned the feather mattresses and linens

  waiting on the Stand. Leaving their horses with ostlers at a fourth inn, The

  Blue Rose, Lan entered determined to find some place for them if it took the

  rest of the day.

  Inside, a greying woman, tall and handsome, presided over a crowded common room

  where talk and laughter almost drowned out the slender girl singing to the music

  of her zither. Pipesmoke wreathed the ceiling beams, and the smell of roasting

  lamb floated from the kitchens. As soon as the innkeeper saw Lan and Bukama, she

  gave her blue-striped apron a twitch and strode towards them, dark eyes sharp.

  Before Lan could open his mouth, she seized Bukama's ears, pulled his head down,

  and kissed him. Kandori women were seldom retiring, but even so it was a

  remarkably thorough kiss in front of so many eyes. Pointing fingers and

  snickering grins flashed among the tables.

  "It's good to see you again, too, Racelle," Bukama murmured with a small smile

  when she finally released him. "I didn't know you had an inn here. Do you think

  — ?" He lowered his gaze rather than meeting her eyes rudely, and that proved a

  mistake. Racelle's fist caught his jaw so hard that his hair flailed as he

  staggered.

  "Six years without a word," she snapped. "Six years?" Grabbing his ears again,

  she gave him another kiss, longer this time. Took it rather than gave. A sharp

  twist of his ears met every attempt to do anything besides standing bent over

  and letting her do as she wished. At least she would not put a knife in his

  heart if she was kissing him. Perhaps not.

  "I think Mistress Arovni might find Bukama a room somewhere," a man's familiar

  voice said drily behind Lan. "And you, too, I suppose."

  Turning, Lan clasped forearms with the only man in the room beside Bukama of a

  height with him, Ryne Venamar, his oldest friend except for Bukama. The

  innkeeper still had Bukama occupied as Ryne led Lan to a small table in the

  corner. Five years older, Ryne was Malkieri too, but his hair fell in two long

  bell-laced braids, and more silver bells lined the turned-down tops of his boots

  and ran up the sleeves of his yellow coat. Bukama did not exactly dislike Ryne —

  not exactly — yet in his present mood, only Nazar Kurenin could have had a worse

  effect.

  While the pair of them were settling themselves on benches, a serving maid in a

  striped apron brought hot spiced wine. Apparently Ryne had ordered as soon as he

  saw Lan. Dark-eyed and full-lipped, she stared Lan up and down openly as she set

  his mug in front of him, then whispered her name, Lira, in his ear, and an

  invitation, if he was staying the night. All he wanted that night was sleep, so

  he lowered his gaze, murmuring that she honoured him too much. Lira did not let

  him finish. With a raucous laugh, she bent to bite his ear, hard, then announced

  that by tomorrow's sun she would have honoured him till his knees would not hold

  him up. More laughter flared at the tables around them.

  Ryne forestalled any possibility of righting matters, tossing her a fat coin and

  giving her a slap on the bottom to send her off. Lira offered him a dimpled

  smile as she slipped the silver into the neck of her dress, but she left sending

  smoky glances over her shoulder at Lan that made him sigh. If he tried to say no

  now, she might well pull a knife over the insult.

  "So your luck still holds with women, too." Ryne's laugh had an edge. Perhaps he

  fancied her himself. "The Light knows, they can't find you handsome; you get

  uglier every year. Maybe I ought to try some of that coy modesty, let women lead

  me by the nose."

  Lan opened his mouth, then took a drink instead of speaking. He should not have

  to explain, but Ryne's father had taken him to Arafel the year Lan turned ten.

  The man wore a single blade on his hip instead of two on his back, yet he was

  Arafellin to his toenails. He actually started conversations with women who had

  not spoken to him first. Lan, raised by Bukama and his friends in Shienar, had

  been surrounded by a small community who held to Malkieri ways.

  A number
of people around the room were watching their table, sidelong glances

  over mugs and goblets. A plump copper-skinned woman wearing a much thicker dress

  than Domani women usually did made no effort to hide her stares as she spoke

  excitedly to a fellow with curled moustaches and a large pearl in his ear.

  Probably wondering whether there would be trouble over Lira. Wondering whether a

  man wearing the hadori really would kill at the drop of a pin.

  "I didn't expect to find you in Canluum," Lan said, setting the wine-mug down.

  "Guarding a merchant train?" Bukama and the innkeeper were nowhere to be seen.

  Ryne shrugged. "Out of Shol Arbela. The luckiest trader in Arafel, they say.

  Said. Much good it did him. We arrived yesterday, and last night footpads slit

  his throat two streets over. No return money for me this trip." He flashed a

  rueful grin and took a deep pull at his wine, perhaps to the memory of the

  merchant or perhaps to the lost half of his wages. "Burn me if I thought to see

  you here, either."

  "You shouldn't listen to rumours, Ryne. I've not taken a wound worth mentioning

  since I rode south." Lan decided to twit Bukama if they did get a room, about

  whether it was already paid for and how. Indignation might take him out of his

  darkness.

  "The Aiel," Ryne snorted. "I never thought they could put paid to you." He had

  never faced Aiel, of course. "I expected you to be wherever Edeyn Arrel is.

  Chachin, now, I hear."

  That name snapped Lan's head back to the man across the table. "Why should I be

  near the Lady Arrel?" he demanded softly. Softly, but emphasizing her proper

  title.

  "Easy, man," Ryne said. "I didn't mean . . . " Wisely, he abandoned that line.

  "Burn me, do you mean to say you haven't heard? She's raised the Golden Crane.

  In your name, of course. Since the year turned, she's been from Fal Moran to

  Maradon, and coming back now." Ryne shook his head, the bells in his braids

  chiming faintly. "There must be two or three hundred men right here in Canluum

  ready to follow her. You, I mean. Some you'd not believe. Old Kurenin wept when

  he heard her speak. All ready to carve Malkier out of the Blight again."

  "What dies in the Blight is gone," Lan said wearily: He felt more than cold

  inside. Suddenly Seroku's surprise that he intended to ride north took on new

  meaning, and the young guard's assertion that he stood ready. Even the looks

  here in the common room seemed different. And Edeyn was part of it. Always she

  liked standing in the heart of the storm. "I must see to my horse," he told

  Ryne, scraping his bench back.

  Ryne said something about making a round of the taverns that night, but Lan

  hardly heard. He hurried through the kitchens, hot from iron stoves and stone

  ovens and open hearths, into the cool of the stableyard, the mingled smells of

  horse and hay and woodsmoke. A greylark warbled on the edge of the stable roof.

  Greylarks came even before robins in the spring. Greylarks had been singing in

  Fal Moran when Edeyn first whispered in his ear.

  The horses had already been stabled, bridles and saddles and packsaddle atop

  saddle blankets on the stall doors, but the wicker hampers were gone. Plainly

  Mistress Arovni had sent word to the ostlers that he and Bukama were being given

  accommodation.

  There was only a single groom in the dim stable, a lean, hardfaced woman mucking

  out. Silently she watched him check Cat Dancer and the other horses as she

  worked, watched him begin to pace the length of the straw-covered floor. He

  tried to think, but Edeyn's name kept spinning though his head. Edeyn's face,

  surrounded by silky black hair that hung below her waist, a beautiful face with

  large dark eyes that could drink a man's soul even when filled with command.

  After a bit the groom mumbled something in his direction, touching her lips and

  forehead, and hurriedly shoved her half-filled barrow out of the stable,

  glancing over her shoulder at him. She paused to shut the doors, and did that

  hurriedly, too, sealing him in shadow broken only by a little light from open

  hay doors in the loft. Dust motes danced in the pale golden shafts.

  Lan grimaced. Was she that afraid of a man wearing the hadori? Did she think his

  pacing a threat? Abruptly he became aware of his hands running over the long

  hilt of his sword, aware of the tightness in his own face. Pacing? No, he had

  been in the walking stance called Leopard in High Grass, used when there were

  enemies on all sides. He needed calm.

  Seating himself crosslegged on a bale of straw, he formed the image of a flame

  in his mind and fed emotion into it, hate, fear, everything, every scrap, until

  it seemed that he floated in emptiness. After years of practice, achieving

  ko'di, the oneness, needed less than a heartbeat. Thought and even his own body

  seemed distant, but in this state he was more aware than usual, becoming one

  with the bale beneath him, the stable, the scabbarded sword folded behind him.

  He could "feel" the horses, cropping at their mangers, and flies buzzing in the

  corners. They were all part of him. Especially the sword. This time, though, it

  was only the emotionless void that he sought.

  From his beltpouch he took a heavy gold signet ring worked with a flying crane

  and turned it over and over in his fingers. The ring of Malkieri kings, worn by

  men who had held back the Shadow nine hundred years and more. Countless times it

  had been remade as time wore it down, always the old ring melted to become part

  of the new. Some particle might still exist in it of the ring worn by the rulers

  of Rhamdashar, that had lived before Malkier, and Aramaelle that had been before

  Rhamdashar. That piece of metal represented over three thousand years fighting

  the Blight. It had been his almost as long as he had lived, but he had never

  worn it. Even looking at the ring was a labour, usually. One he disciplined

  himself to every day. Without the emptiness, he did not think he could have done

  so today. In ko'di, thought floated free, and emotion lay beyond the horizon.

  In his cradle he had been given four gifts. The ring in his hands and the locket

  that hung around his neck, the sword on his hip and an oath sworn in his name.

  The locket was the most precious, the oath the heaviest. "To stand against the

  Shadow so long as iron is hard and stone abides. To defend the Malkieri while

  one drop of blood remains. To avenge what cannot be defended." And then he had

  been anointed with oil and named Dai Shan, consecrated as the next King of

  Malkier, and sent away from a land that knew it would die. Twenty men began that

  journey; five survived to reach Shienar.

  Nothing remained to be defended now, only a nation to avenge, and he had been

  trained to that from his first step. With his mother's gift at his throat and

  his father's sword in his hand, with the ring branded on his heart, he had

  fought to avenge Malkier from his sixteenth nameday. But never had he led men

  into the Blight. Bukama had ridden with him, and others, but he would not lead

  men there. That war was his alone. The dead could not be returned to life, a

  land any more than a man. Only, now, Edeyn Arrel wanted to try.

  Her name echoed i
n the emptiness within him. A hundred emotions loomed like

  stark mountains, but he fed them into the flame until all was still. Until his

  heart beat time with the slow stamping of the stalled horses, and the flies'

  wings beat rapid counterpoint to his breath. She was his carneira, his first

  lover. A thousand years of tradition shouted that, despite the stillness that

  enveloped him.

  He had been fifteen, Edeyn more than twice that, when she gathered the hair that

  had still hung to his waist in her hands and whispered her intentions. Women had

  still called him beautiful then, enjoying his blushes, and for half a year she

  had enjoyed parading him on her arm and tucking him into her bed. Until Bukama

  and the other men gave him the hadori. The gift of his sword on his tenth

  nameday had made him a man by custom along the Border, though years early for

  it, yet among Malkieri, that band of braided leather had been more important.

  Once that was tied around his head, he alone decided where he went, and when,

  and why. And the dark song of the Blight had become a howl that drowned every

  other sound. The oath that had murmured so long in his heart became a dance his

  feet had to follow.

  Almost ten years past now that Edeyn had watched him ride away from Fal Moran,

  and been gone when he returned, yet he still could recall her face more clearly

  than that of any woman who had shared his bed since. He was no longer a boy, to

  think that she loved him just because she had chosen to become his first lover,

  yet there was an old saying among Malkieri men. Your carneira wears part of your

  soul as a ribbon in her hair for ever. Custom strong as law made it so.

  One of the stable doors creaked open to admit Bukama, coatless, shirt tucked

  raggedly into his breeches. He looked naked without his sword. As if hesitant,

  he carefully opened both doors wide before coming all the way in. "What are you

  going to do?" he said finally. "Racelle told me about . . . about the Golden

  Crane."

  Lan tucked the ring away, letting emptiness drain from him. Edeyn's face

  suddenly seemed everywhere, just beyond the edge of sight. "Ryne says even Nazar

  Kurenin is ready to follow," he said lightly. "Wouldn't that be a sight to see?"

  An army could die trying to defeat the Blight. Armies had died trying. But the