Still, no one spoke. Heyn turned away to face the fire.
“Will no one else put themselves forward?” Betanza waited a moment and then shrugged. “Well, we have a candidate to put to the Synod. It remains to be seen what the College of Bishops makes of it.”
But they all knew that the Bishops voted with their respective Prelates. The High Pontiffship of the western world had effectively been decided: by five men in a firelit room over dinner.
FOURTEEN
A UTUMN in the Malvennor Mountains. Already the snow had begun to block the higher passes, and from the vast peaks streamers and banners of white were being billowed out by the freshening wind.
Abeleyn pulled the fur of his collar tighter around his throat and stared up at the high land to the east and north. The Malvennors were fifteen thousand feet above sea level, and even here, on the snow-pocked hills at their knees, the air was sharp and thin and the guides had warned the party of the dangers of mountain sickness and snow blindness.
He was five weeks out of Abrusio, on his way to the Conclave of Kings at Vol Ephrir in Perigraine. His ship had made a rapid passage across the Fimbrian Gulf, docking at the breakaway Fimbrian city of Narbukir, then he had gone aboard a river boat for the laborious journey up the Arcolm river, taking to horses when the Arcolm was no longer navigable. He could see the river now, a narrow stream running and foaming through the icicle-dripping rocks off to one side. Further up in the mountains it was said that a man might bestride it if he had long legs. Hard to believe that down on the gulf its mouth formed an estuary fully three leagues wide.
The rest of the party were still below, labouring up the steep slopes towards him. He had a tolerably large escort: two hundred Hebrian arquebusiers and swordsmen and eighty heavy cavalry armed with lances and paired matchlock pistols. Then there were the muleteers of the pack-train, the cooks, the grooms, the smiths and the score of other servants who made up his travelling household. All told, some four hundred men accompanied the King of Hebrion across the Malvennor Mountains; a modest enough show. Only a king would ever be allowed to take such a force into a foreign country. It was part and parcel of the dignity of monarchs.
“We’ll camp here, and attempt the pass in the morning,” the King said to his chief steward.
The man bowed in the saddle and then wrenched his horse around to begin the job of setting up camp.
The King sat relaxed in the saddle and watched the ungainly straggling groups of men and animals gradually coalesce on the slope below him. The horses were finding it heavy going. If the snow grew much deeper—and it would—then they would all be afoot, hauling their mounts behind them. The snows had come early this year, and there was a bitter wind winnowing the high peaks. The baking heat of Abrusio seemed like a dream.
“Is it here you hope to meet up with King Mark, sire?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Hereabouts.” The King turned to regard the hooded lady who sat her palfrey behind him. The fine-stepping horse was feeling the cold; it was not the best of mounts for a journey such as this. “I hope you have good walking boots with you, lady. That nag of yours will drop in its tracks ere we’ve put another ten leagues behind us.”
The lady Jemilla threw back her hood. Her dark hair was bound up in circled braids around her head, held in place with pearl-topped pins. Two larger pearls shone like little moons in her earlobes. Her eyes sparkled in the snow-light.
“The walk will do me good. I am putting on weight.”
Abeleyn grinned. If so, he had not noticed. He looked down the hillside. His staff were erecting the huge hide tents, and he could see the dull flicker of a fire. His toes were numb in his furlined boots and his breath was whipped away from his lips, but he did not immediately ride down to the warmth of the fires. Rather he gazed south, along the line of the mountains to where Astarac loomed blue with distance on the southern side of the Arcolm river. If truth be told, they were in Astarac now, for the Arcolm had always been the traditional boundary between Astarac and Fimbria. But up in the mountains such technicalities were irrelevant. Shepherds herded their goats from one kingdom to another without formalities, as they always had. Up here the niceties of borders and diplomacy seemed like a faraway farce to be played out in the palaces of the world.
“When will he arrive, do you think?” Jemilla asked.
She was becoming a little familiar of late. He must watch that.
“Soon I hope, lady, soon. But he will be here no quicker for our watching. Come, let us warm ourselves and give our poor mounts a rest.” He kicked his horse into motion down the icy slope.
Jemilla did not follow him at once. She sat her shivering steed and stared at the King’s retreating back. One gloved hand felt her stomach tentatively, and for a moment her face became as hard as glass. Then she followed her king and lover down to the growing bustle of the camp, and the fires that were burning orange and yellow against the snow.
T HE wind had blown up into a gale. Abeleyn held his hands out to the glowing brazier—they would be running out of coal soon—and listened to the snowstorm that had come upon them with the swooping in of night. Perhaps he should have taken the sea route, south-east through the Malacar Straits, but then he would have needed a small fleet as escort. To the corsairs, a Hebrian king would have been too tempting a target to let by unmolested, despite—or perhaps because of—the longstanding accommodations they had had with the Hebrian crown.
And besides, he needed this chance to talk openly with King Mark before the intrigue of the conclave swallowed them all.
Something struck the side of the tent, seemingly propelled by the wind. It scrabbled there for a moment, and the steward came in from the adjoining extension. There was the clatter of plates from in there; they were clearing the remains of dinner.
“Was there something, sire? I thought I heard—”
“It was nothing, Cabran. Dismiss the servants, will you? They can finish in the morning.”
The steward bowed, then left for the spacious extension, clapping his hands at the serving maids. Abeleyn rose and let slip the heavy hide curtain that shut out their noise.
“Sire.” It was the bodyguard at the entrance. “We’ve something here. It struck the tent, and you told us to look out for—”
“Yes,” Abeleyn snapped. “Bring it here, and then let no others enter.”
The tent flap was thrown back and a heavily cloaked and armoured man thrust his way in, admitting a gust of snow and chill air. He had something in his hands, which he left on the low cot at a nod from Abeleyn.
“Thank you, Merco. Have you men a decent fire out there?”
“Good enough, sire. We switch round every hour.” The man’s voice was muffled in the folds of cloak he had wrapped round his face.
“Very well. That will be all, then.”
The man bowed and left. The snow he had let in began to melt on the thick hide of the tent’s floor.
“Well, Golophin?” Abeleyn said. He bent over the ice-encrusted gyrfalcon that crouched on the furs of the cot and gently wiped its feathers. The yellow inhuman eyes glared at him. The beak opened, and the voice of the old wizard said:
“Well met, my lord.”
“Is the bird drunk, that he crashes into my tent?”
“The bird is exhausted, lad. This damn snowstorm almost put paid to him for good. You will have a fine time forcing the pass if this keeps up.”
“I know. What word of King Mark?”
“He is only hours away. He travels with a smaller party than you. Perhaps his ideas as to the dignity of kings differ.”
Abeleyn smiled, stroking the bird’s feathers. “Perhaps. Well, old man, what news have you for me this time?”
“Momentous news, my boy. I have had the bird monitor Charibon as you requested. He has just come from there. I thought the flight over the mountains would kill him, but he had the east wind on his tail so he made good time in the end.
