Talus and the Frozen King (16 page)

Bran looked around the empty house. 'They're not here yet.'

'Tharn will send them when he has concluded his business with Lethriel.'

'I think they might be a little while.'

Talus stopped dancing. He cocked his head on one side. 'Ah, so you know about them.' 

'Now I do. I suppose you knew all along?'

'Of course! Now, tell me about the boat.'

Bran sighed. The bard was incorrigible. Well, talking about what he'd found on the beach would at least distract him from the turmoil of emotion he'd felt since seeing Tharn and Lethriel together. And he had to admit to feeling smug about having his own surprise to spring on the bard.

'The boat has a clever design,' he began. 'There's a flat deck inside. It makes it much easier to move around. Well, it would have been, if it hadn't been for all the clutter.'

He went on to describe the vessel's internal structure in as much detail as he could remember. It felt good to talk like this; for a long time, boats had been his whole life, and he'd forgotten how much he missed being around them.

'Anyway, Talus, since when were you so interested in boats?'

'I am interested in everything. Now tell me the rest.'

'There's not much more to tell.' Bran paused. 'Oh, unless you wanted to hear about the woman I found hiding in the hull.'

The bard's eyebrows lifted up, making deep creases in his hairless brow. Bran suppressed a smile of satisfaction, then related his encounter with Alayin.

'A woman,' said the bard. 'Very interesting.'

'I hope she managed to get out of the boat,' said Bran. 'Lath—that's the guard—was unconscious when I left him. It was the best chance she was going to get.'

'Oh, believe me, Bran—the woman you found has not gone anywhere. She is still on the boat, precisely where you left her.'

'What?'

'Let us return to the man you found asleep: Lath.'

'Yes. He was guarding the boat.'

'Against what?'

'Well, against ...' Bran could hear himself beginning to bluster. He battled on regardless. 'Theft. What if someone from Creyak wanted to steal it?'

'Steal the boat? A boat that requires at least eight men to crew it? What person, in a community that has turned its back on the sea, would want to steal such a vessel? Try again, Bran.'

'There must be valuables aboard. Farrum put Lath on guard to stop someone stealing things from inside the boat.'

'Very well. So tell me, Bran, what valuables did you find?'

'Well ... none, I suppose. Just the usual boat clutter. Provisions, clothes, tools, that sort of thing.'

'But there was something, Bran, was there not? A single thing you found, surely the most valuable thing on board? The thing Lath had really been put there to guard?'

Bran shook his head. 'I don't know what you ...'

Then he had it.

'Her,' he said. 'Alayin. That's what you're talking about, isn't it? Lath wasn't there to guard the boat at all. He was there to guard Alayin.'

'You found your way to the truth in the end!'

'Farrum didn't want anybody finding her there.'

'Yet that is exactly what you did. I think we should keep your discovery to ourselves, for now at least.'

Bran called up an image of Alayin: dark, scarred skin surrounded by white fur. 'She lied to me,' he said. 'She didn't come to Creyak to see her lover at all. So why is she here?'

'Perhaps some of her story is true,' Talus replied. 'Perhaps not. But it is an interesting development, is it not? Now, can you guess what I have been doing while you have been playing with boats?'

'You always tell me not to guess.' Bran waved the hunk of meat he was steadily working his way through. 'But if you want me to I will. Has it got something to do with the shaman?'

'I have been speaking with Mishina, yes.' Bran put down the meat and stared out into the fog. Mention of the shaman made him feel cold again, despite the heat of the fire.

'He is unusual among shaman,' Talus went on. 'Although he serves Creyak as spirit-walker, in the past he has walked himself, far across the world. He is interested in all spirits, not just those of this land.'

'Sounds like someone else I could mention.' Bran didn't have much time for the wider world Talus often talked about. The world beneath his feet was enough for him.

'But, clever as he is, Mishina did not know his greycaps were missing.'

'Greycaps? Oh, the mushrooms. What have they got to do with ...?'

Talus was up and dancing again, unable to contain himself. Bran felt himself beginning to relax. Sometimes the bard was too much like a little boy not to smile.

'There is a truth here in Creyak which nobody wishes to face, Bran, because it is too terrible to contemplate.'

'And what truth is that?'

'The fact that someone has killed a king.'

'I know. We've been over this already. I can't imagine the punishment that waits for the killer in the afterdream. Nobody in their right mind would consign themselves to it.'

Talus clapped his hands. 'Precisely, Bran! The question is therefore: how does a man remove himself from his right mind?'

Bran was pleased he was managing to keep up. 'The greycaps,' he said. 'They affect thoughts and dreams. The shaman probably uses them to enter his spirit-trance.'

'Well done, Bran. A man who eats greycaps might convince himself of anything. Might convince himself, for example, that it is perfectly safe for him to kill a king. Of course, it is only an idea.'

Talus sat on the dirt floor before the blazing hearth. Bran tore another chunk of meat from the haunch and tossed it to him. Talus caught it and started to nibble. 'How did we get mixed up in this, Talus?'

'Our path leads us where it will. You know that.'

'I suppose so. I just don't know why it had to lead us here.'

'We are where we need to be, Bran. We always are. Which reminds me of a tale I know in which ...'

'Forget the storytelling, Talus. Just tell me what you think is going on in Creyak.'

'Ah, to the point! Reliable Bran! But you forget that what we think is not important. All that matters is what we know.'

Bran finished his meat and licked the last of the juices from his good hand. 'All right. What do we know?'

'We know two men have died mysteriously.'

'And that a third man has arrived unexpectedly.'

'Farrum, yes. Good again, Bran. Farrum's arrival is certainly suspicious. And here is something else: we can guess that the king was probably killed by someone close to him. This is not something we can know, but we do know that this is how the pattern of the world is woven.'

'Now who's making guesses? I'd tuck in to this deer, Talus, while there's still some left.'

'No time, Bran!' Talus pointed outside. 'See? Our first visitor is here!'

A man emerged from the fog to fill the doorway. He was so tall he had to stoop.

'Please come in, Cabarrath,' said Talus. 'We have a little food, if you would share it with us.'

'I am not hungry,' said Cabarrath. He smiled, but it was a smile filled with sadness. Bran felt sorry for him. For them all.

'Tharn tells me you have questions,' said Cabarrath, seating himself by the fire. He moved his long limbs with economy and grace. His face was sad and open. He did not look like a killer.

In Talus's experience that meant nothing at all.

'Yes,' said Talus. 'My questions are few, and they are simple. Are you ready to answer them?'

'I will tell you what I know. Anything to catch the demon that is loose in Creyak.'

'Demon? So do you believe the spirits are responsible for the deaths of your father and brother?'

Cabarrath shook his head. There were dark rings under his eyes. Grief could keep a man awake. So could guilt.

'All I know is that I helped carry my father's body from the snow into the cairn, and that I held my brother Gantor in my arms as he died. How these things happened, I cannot say.'

'Where were you on the night your father was murdered, Cabarrath?'

'In my own house.'

'Can you prove it?'

'I do not understand.'

'Was there anybody else there with you?'

'Tharn was there. We live in the same house.'

'I suppose that, if I asked Tharn the same question, he would say he was with you?'

'Of course.'

'Your house lies near the maze, does it not?'

'Yes.'

'And you heard nothing?'

'Not until the screaming.'

'The screaming?' 

'When my father's body was found.'

'Who screamed?'

'Fethan. He told us he woke from a nightmare and went outside to clear his head. He walked out of the village towards the maze. That was when he saw it.'

'It was Fethan who found the king's body?'

'Yes.'

Tired as Cabarrath clearly was, he seemed relaxed. His answers were swift and certain.

There was no guile to him, no sense that he was anything other than what Talus saw before him.

Of course, that might have been an act.

'What sort of relationship did you have with your father?'

For the first time, Cabarrath faltered.

'I was his son,' he said at last.

'Evidently. Were things well between you?'

'I don't know what you ...'

'Did you fight?' said Bran.

Again Cabarrath hesitated. 'We had been through a difficult time,' he said finally. 'Do I have to say more than that?'

'I would welcome the whole truth,' said Talus.

'Very well.' Cabarrath watched the smoke from the fire spiral up through the hole in the roof. 'My father was angry with me. I had disobeyed him and he was angry. It was a serious matter. I had hoped that, in time, there would be peace again between us.' He hung his head. 'Now it is too late.'

'And for your part?' said Talus. 'Did you feel anger towards your father?'

Cabarrath stared at the bard. He was the second-eldest of the king's sons, a man in his own right. Right now he looked like a boy.

'Yes,' he said. 'It hurts me to say such a thing, but ... yes.' 

'What happened between you?' said Bran.

'A woman.'

'You fought over a woman?' Bran raised an eyebrow at Talus. Talus gave a tiny shrug. Such things happened sometimes between father and son.

Cabarrath shook his head. 'Not in the way you think. The woman came from Sleeth.

Although my father and Farrum were always fighting, there has always been trade between our two islands. They are good fishermen; we are good hunters. This woman ... she used to hide on the trading boats, make the voyage to Creyak without anybody knowing. She would sneak ashore and we would meet in secret. Our love was forbidden, you see.'

Talus sat forward. Was there some truth in Alayin's story after all? Was Cabarrath her secret lover? If so, did it bear on the rest of the investigation ... or were they wandering down one of Creyak's many blind alleys?

'What was the woman's name?' he said.

'Alayin,' Cabarrath replied.

Both of Bran's eyebrows had lifted up. Ignoring him, the bard raised a finger. 'You speak of your affair with Alayin as something that happened in the past.'

'Yes. It ended last year. We realised we were spending more time arguing than ... well, you know how love can end up.'

'When was the last time you saw her?' said Bran.

Cabarrath shrugged. 'Last winter, when I told her she was a spoiled brat and she told me I smelt worse than a boar's crotch. We both meant it. It was not a happy day.'

'And you have not seen her since?' said Talus.

'I hope I never do again.' Cabarrath spoke in a matter-of-fact way, without bitterness.

'Perhaps I will have a little of that meat after all.'

Cabarrath stripped a long strand of venison from the bone. His hands were both gentle and strong. Talus recalled how Cabarrath had restrained Fethan when he'd lost his temper in the cairn; clearly his younger brothers were used to him taking control. Yet, as the second-eldest of the king's son, he wasn't weighed down with responsibility like Tharn, the direct heir. A confident man.

'Tell me about your relationship with Gantor.'

Cabarrath chewed methodically. 'We were close.'

'But Gantor was not liked by the others.'

'Who told you that?'

'It is not important. We also know that Gantor preferred the company of men to women, and that this caused trouble between him and his father.'

'Gantor was a good man. One of the best. He didn't deserve to be treated the way he was. I tried to look after him, but people were cruel to him.' A spark of ferocity had ignited in Cabarrath's eyes. So the easy-going giant had passions after all.

'When he died, he tried to say something to you.'

Cabarrath threw his unfinished meal into the fire. The meat tumbled through the flames, turning black and crisp. 'Our private words. It was what we said to each other whenever we met. It was a simple, stupid thing. It just meant we knew each other, and we understood.'

'What was it you said?' said Bran.

'"You and me,"' Cabarrath replied.

'Just that?'

'I said it was a simple thing. But that last time Gantor couldn't ... he couldn't say it all.' He lowered his head. 'Now he'll never say it again.'

Talus allow the silence to spin out. There was no doubt Cabarrath had held a grudge against his father. But what had he really felt about Gantor? He claimed they'd close. And Lethriel had hinted the same. It was just a shame Gantor wasn't alive to confirm it.

Talus stood and clasped his hands in front of him. 'Thank you, Cabarrath, for your honesty.

Your answers have been helpful.'

Cabarrath looked up, surprised. 'Is that it? Is it over?' 

'If I think of any more questions I wish to ask you, I will call you back.'

'Oh. All right. And ... please, I beg you, find out what happened to them. Please.'

Cabarrath's eyes filled up with tears. He stumbled to the door, his grace altogether gone.

Just as the morning fog was folding itself around Cabarrath's retreating form, Talus called, 'Actually, I have just thought of another question.'