Jeirran’s expression turned belligerent. “I got the best price I could and I’ll knock down any man saying otherwise.” He ran an unconscious hand over his beard. “Anyway, what’s done is done. Dogs barking at a moon don’t stop it setting.”
“You can quote fireside wisdom at me? After all your promises to make us rich are dust and ashes? Teiriol said it was little more than robbery!” Keisyl retorted. “We can be cheated by lowlanders in the valley bottom back home, thanks all the same. And you’ve got more losses than either of us to make up! Where’s the gold coming from to replace your patrimony? What’s Eirys going to find under her hearthstone come Solstice?” He kept his voice low beneath the jaunty music but the anger in his unintelligible words was still attracting curious glances.
Jeirran folded his arms over his burly chest with an air of satisfaction. “Eirys will be thanking me for more than tainted lowlander coin in her coffers by Solstice. We can forget that stinking Harquas and his gutter curs.” He drew back his feet as a couple of dancers strayed out of their set.
“What are you talking about?” Keisyl’s irritation was replaced by plain bafflement.
“Would you like to find a means to put these lowlanders in their place once and for all? Don’t we need a way to regain what’s rightfully ours and be cursed to anyone who tries to do us down again?” Jeirran stretched his arms over his head and smiled broadly at Keisyl as he folded them again.
“You’re deeper in your cups than Teiriol,” said Keisyl crisply. He reached for the green glass goblet by Jeirran’s hand and sniffed at its dregs.
“I’m not drunk on almond sweet-cup,” sneered Jeirran.
Keisyl gave him a steady look. “Then explain yourself.”
Jeirran’s desire to share his discovery overcame the temptation to hug it to himself for a while longer. “See those musicians over there; they’re just back from Selerima.”
“So?” Keisyl barely spared a glance for the players lustily raising a new tune.
“So, they’ve got a new song. The drummer was singing it earlier.”
Keisyl sighed. “Either tell me straight or I’m going back to look after Teiriol.”
Jeirran’s good humor faded a little. “They had a ballad, about Tormalin men sailing across the ocean to unknown lands, finding a powerful race of men. Powerful in magic, Keis, using it to cross the seas and attack Tormalins in their own homeland.”
Keisyl shrugged. “The lowlanders drove their wizards into the sea, didn’t they? So they’ve come back to make a fight of it.”
Jeirran looked smug. “According to the singer, these folk are called Elietimm.”
“Should I know that name?” Keisyl knotted his brows. “It sounds familiar—”
“Alyatimm?” suggested Jeirran.
Keisyl’s mouth opened in sudden surprise. “But that’s only a fireside tale for winter nights.”
“What if it isn’t?” Jeirran demanded. “What if these folk, wherever they are, are born of that blood?”
The two men fell silent as the music swelled and the dancers swirled past them.
“Do you think they could be?” Keisyl pondered this startling question, antagonism forgotten.
“This ballad speaks of fair-haired men,” Jeirran told him.
“That just makes us the villains of the piece again,” Keisyl said slowly. “That’s no news. Half the lowlanders’ tales have yellow-headed thieves raiding Grandma’s chicken run.”
“The peasants hereabouts, true enough,” nodded Jeirran, “but why would a song from down and east say that? The ballads we heard in Selerima mostly warned of shoeless barbarians raiding up from the far south.”
Keisyl spread his hands. “So that’s your answer, isn’t it? They’re islanders, aren’t they, the barbarians from the Southern Seas?”
“And dark of skin and eye,” Jeirran pointed out. “This tale can’t be about them.”
Keisyl chewed his lip, puzzled. “But do you think they could really be Alyatimm?”
“The song spoke of Men of the Ice,” Jeirran told him. “That can’t be coincidence, surely?”
“No,” breathed Keisyl. “I don’t suppose it can.” He looked at Jeirran. “What should it mean to us, beyond making history out of a tale? And why would we want to find Alyatimm anyway? They were exiled because their leader tried to make himself sole ruler of all the sokes!”
“These people have magic, Keis,” Jeirran said, eyes intense. “They have magic enough to cross the ocean, to travel unseen among the lowlanders. If that song’s any guide, the lowlanders are running scared of these Elietimm. Think about it, Keisyl. If these are Alyatimm, then this must be true magic, not perversions of lowland wizards. Real power, rooted in the mountains of old and not locked away in Solstice secrets by Sheltya. If these are Alyatimm, then we have common blood, no matter if it’s countless generations divided. What if we could claim kinship and help?
“Think on tales you’ve heard around the hearth of a sunless Solstice. What if the Wyrm of Ceider could be summoned up again? That would get lowlanders out of our mines faster than firedamp! What if the wraiths of Morn could be sent down the sokes? Let them chase the stupid cows clean over the nearest crag! We could maze the feet of the thieves setting traps in our woods couldn’t we? Kell the Weaver did it!”
“But those are just stories, Jeirran,” objected Keisyl, but his voice was uncertain.
“Are they?” Jeirran countered. “So are the Alyatimm, or so we’ve always been told, but how else would lowlanders know of them if there weren’t some truth in it?”
Keisyl was confused. “It’s just a song, Jeirran, just some balladeer making up a story to give the lowlanders a thrill. Tell me, what happens to these Elietimm?” He stressed the word. “I’ll wager my best shoe buckles they come to grief,” he snorted, looking with hostility at the unheeding dancers weaving a complicated figure down the length of the hall.
“Not so you’d notice,” replied Jeirran with satisfaction. “These Tormalin men went to these islands, so the song ran, to steal back a hostage—”
Keisyl drew a sharp breath.
“—that’s right, Keis. What lowlanders would understand the folly of that?” Jeirran pressed on. “They went to steal back the hostage, so naturally he was executed. The others were hunted as proved vermin, stole a boat and somehow managed not to drown, were washed up home. That’s as far as their victory goes and piss poor I’d call it.”
Keisyl shook his head. “It’s just a song, Jeirran. It’s some tale of adventure stitched together out of half-remembered scraps of saga. Some easterner who married out has passed on the legend to some lowlander wife and their half-breed children. That’s all it can be.”
“What legend?” demanded Jeirran stubbornly. “You tell me what saga this is cobbled up from. How could easterners come up with a tale like this, when they have fallen so far from the old ways? They can scarcely recite three degrees of their kindred!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Keisyl conceded. “All right, but what good does it do us, even if there’s some truth at the bottom of it? These people might have the power to raise Varangel and his ice demons, but it’s half a year’s journey to the ocean and you’re saying they’re on the far side of that!”
Jeirran leaned forward to speak softly. “If they have true magic, Sheltya should be able to reach them.”
Keisyl started as if he’d been stabbed in the leg. “You’re not serious!”
“Why not?” Jeirran demanded, face bold. “Don’t you think Sheltya should be told?”
“If this song is doing the rounds, they’ll get to hear of it soon enough and they don’t need to hear it from me,” said Keisyl with consternation. “I don’t want that kind of trouble.”
“I want that kind of power, if these Alyatimm have true magic and are willing to share it,” Jeirran said grimly. “Let Sheltya cling to their wisdom and get driven back farther every year. I want to walk Eirys’ lands without putting a foot in some thief’s spring-trap. I want to sell the metals I win from the earth by the sweat of my back for a fair price, not to be undercut by some lowlander whose mines run with the blood of slaves, tainting the earth with their misery. I want to move from soke to soke in safety, claiming shelter when I need it, not finding doors barred against lowlander robbers who dishonor the truce of the road so often it’s worthless.”