“Where am I?” he asked, though he trusted neither of them to give him an answer straight. Still, he had to ask. Had to at least try and make sense of what had happened to the world, to him, while he’d been out.
“He’s recovered enough to ask a reasonable question,” Lysanor said pointedly.
“Tell me, what constitutes a reasonable question in your esteem?” Isdemus countered.
Jesse felt as if he was coming into the last stretch of an old marriage, the way the two spoke to one another. But they were not old.
“Oh, go on already. He deserves to know.”
Isdemus sighed. The sound was laden with the history between them, one Jesse was glad not to have been a part of, but yet, felt recognizable. The sorcerer shot his hand out to the side like a child in the throes of a fresh tantrum. As he did, a small ball of light appeared. When Isdemus rotated his hand, curving his fingers inward, the ball grew, its center becoming a brilliant orange as the edges spread farther outward.
“It’s lovely, really,” Lysanor said. “I think that’s large enough now.”
Isdemus lowered his arm, but the ball of light didn’t diminish. It hovered in the air, as if waiting for another command from its creator.
“Go on, then,” Lysanor urged, giving Jesse a light nudge. “It’s for you.”
“For me?” Jesse repeated. “What am I supposed to do with... with that?”
“You have questions. Your answers can be found there.”
Jesse laughed, coughing at the end as his scratchy throat demanded more water. “Into that? Nay. Not today.” He pushed himself to his feet, dusting himself off. “I’d like to go now.”
“Just look at it,” Isdemus said gently. “Go on. Take a look. That’s all.”
Jesse grunted, frustrated with himself as he turned, obediently, to observe the strange ball. He started to demand something from Isdemus, but forgot his words. What was he going to ask? Was it even important? Did it matter?
Jesse stepped toward the ball of light. Yes. He should go there. He was supposed to be there. Why wasn’t he there already? How could he have taken so long?
“It cannot harm you,” Lysanor said, but she was far away now, and Jesse was stepping forward into the light, where he belonged.
* * *
Mortain finished his morning binding of the Saleen and then walked down to the Sparkling Beck. There was an old well by its banks, so oddly placed that there were stories about who had put it there and why. Mortain didn’t have the answer. He didn’t care.
The idiot, Waters, hadn’t joined him today. He hadn’t joined him in nearly a week. That was fine. He didn’t need him anymore. He’d never needed him, though he’d proved useful in his easy acquiescence to treasonous choices. Men like Waters, they were born to hurt others, and Mortain could use that, had used that, but he could not comprehend a call to evil without cause. He once watched Waters crush a baby duckling underfoot, then chuckle to himself as he examined the aftermath. Mortain, who had taken more lives than he had capacity or desire to count, couldn’t understand a man like that.
He didn’t understand men at all, but he wasn’t here to decipher them. That men had been in the one place he needed to be was an obstacle, nothing more. But not all men were like Quinlanden. Not all would bend their morals far enough to snap for the promise of power. This was why he’d chosen him, and not the lords of the other Reaches. Why he’d planted the idea in Eoghan’s malformed head. Mortain hadn’t even had to employ convincing on Quinlanden, who easily laid his sword at the feet of a king whose ancestors had done nothing for him.
But he was old now. He was tired. There could be no more failures. Oldwin had an endless font of energy that Mortain almost envied. He had a mind for the constant politics and maneuvers of court, and, Mortain suspected, enjoyed it more than he should.
Mortain only wanted what they’d come here for.
He leaned over the old well. The dank scent traveling upward used to turn his stomach, but he was used to it now. Though inches from the river, this well had run dry.
Mortain waved his hand and fresh water appeared. He waited until he saw the face he was after.
“Tell me what you’ve seen,” he said.
Oldwin laughed from the water. “Hello to you as well!”
“Tell me.”
“Has it really become so bad, Mortain? That you cannot even scry for yourself?”
“Binding them takes everything from me. You know this.”
“Do others know this?”
“Why would others know this? Why would others know anything?”
Oldwin lifted his brows. “They know you are the center of the war waged by the Easterlands. They come to you now to put an end to it.”
“Who?”
Oldwin laughed. “Truly? You truly have seen nothing? You old fool. You never could do more than one thing at a time.”
Mortain swallowed his displeasure. Not for the first time, he wondered if Isdemus, or even Lysanor, would have been more palatable to partner with, but they had aimed elsewhere, and he wasn’t left with a choice. “Who, Oldwin?”
Oldwin told him. Told him about the boy, about Warwick. About the Southerlands.
But while Oldwin laughed at him, something he’d grown quite used to over the years and no longer bothered him as it once did, Mortain was somewhere else.
“You do not look as worried as you should,” Oldwin said with an indignant look as his humor faded.
“We each see opportunities in different things.”
“Ah! Tell me!”
Mortain looked behind him. There was no one there, but there would be.
“You want to know? Scry it,” Mortain said and waved a hand over the water, drying the well.
He checked his surroundings once more.
Still alone.
Mortain stepped back from the riverbank. His slow steps crunched in the undergrowth of the forest and then disappeared altogether as his feet curled into talons, pulling inward toward the firmness of his phoenix form, prismatic ochre and amber and flame spreading into wings broad enough to cover the well.
He aimed his beak toward the sky and burst into flight.
* * *
He made his way down the cobblestone road running parallel to the wharf. The place was familiar to him, and soon, he recognized it. If he were to walk another hundred paces or so, he’d see the sign reading Wayfarer’s Bythesea, where he’d passed more than a few free evenings.
Rutland’s ship was docked just past there. They’d taken his vessel this time, Drummond’s Pride, which was stuck like a thorn in Hamish’s thumb, just as it would have his father’s had he not gone to the Guardians long ago. But Lord Warwick said it would be so, and so it was. Hamish couldn’t wait for Warwick’s son to take over, Khallum. Khallum had been his best mate since they were both in swaddling. Khallum knew Hamish was loyal, and would reward him for it.
Now, the day was coming back. He’d awakened in the bed of a local fishwife, chased away half-heartedly by her red-cheeked husband as if the routine was so familiar to him now that it no longer required fair effort. The night left no lasting impression beyond this, other than the dull reminder that he should take a wife. His mother had picked up the refrain when his father died, and she never let him forget it.
Aye, Ma, he would say, but a freebooter needs jus’ tha’ right woman, ye ken? One who willnae lose sleep o’er the long absences, nor a little dip on the side just the same.
And Ma would remind him that there were plenty of women fitting that bill in Sandycove; women built to be the wife of a trader, expecting no more or less.
He didn’t know why he’d waited to marry, batting away every suggestion she made with rationale that didn’t make sense to him even as he muttered the words in protest.
She’s too shrill.
Too plump.
Too thin.
Too fair on the eyes.
Not fair enough.
None of that talked of the fear in his
heart, that he hadn’t enough to please a woman beyond the name.
He was a few paces from Wayfarer’s Bythesea when he saw her. He might not have noticed her at all, if not for the pale green hair cascading around her face, which was covered in filth. He’d never seen hair like it in all his travels. What could even make a color like that, he wondered, as he stepped closer to where she huddled against the side of a fur trader’s shop.
People walking by threw coin at her, or even spilled their drink at her feet. She cowed at their assaults. Whatever spirit she’d had was broken by whatever had come before.
Hamish, ’tis not your business, he thought, and in the same passage of the moment thought, t’would cost so little to put a hot meal in her belly and buy her a room for the eve.
He made his way through the thick crowd toward her. When he knelt by her, she recoiled, covering her face with her hands as if expecting to be struck. His heart flipped.
“There, now. Let me get a look at ye.”
“That isn’t my trade, sir,” she muttered, still hiding her face.
“’Tis a good thing tha’s nay what I’m after, then,” he said gently, peeling her hands away from her face. His heart surged once more when, this time, she let him.
She was covered in scratches and filth months deep, but she was beautiful, and he could do nothing about the way he fell in love with her.
It was then he noticed the little ball of fur at her side. A fox.
“Shoo! Get!” he called, but she reached for the animal and clutched it protectively to her chest.
“He’s no nuisance,” she said. “He’s mine.”
“Yours? Now I’ve seen everything.”
The fox purred as it snuggled under her chin.
“Name’s Hamish. Hamish Strong,” he said. He offered her his hand, but she only stared at it.
“Ah, look, there’s Hamish! You’d suppose he’d had enough after being chased off by one husband already!” Lem Garrick called out. Hamish already knew who he was talking to. It had to be Erran Rutland.
Hamish waved a hand behind him dismissively. He didn’t care about their cajoling on a good day, but right now it was a bother, and all he wanted was to know more about this strange young woman with the green hair.
“Right, then, well, just know we sail at sundown with or without ye!”
They continued on, their drunken laughter following them.
“Allow me to put some food in ye,” Hamish said to the woman.
“I won’t pay what you’re asking.”
“And what am I...” Hamish’s eyes widened. He shook his head with vigor. “Nay. Nay. I ain’t ’spect nothing in return, miss. Only to see the hunger in yer eyes die.”
Her distrust didn’t fade, so he reached inside the satchel he carried and pulled out a hunk of bread, flushing at precisely the moment they both noticed he’d eaten half of it. He’d forgotten his earlier hunger when the idea came to him.
The young woman ripped the bread from his hands and shoved it greedily into her mouth, inhaling it in one gulp.
“Careful, now,” he said. “Need something to wash that down.” He reached for his wineskin, and this, too, she took. Her famishment was greater than her pride or judgment.
“Have I earned your name, at least?”
“Yanna,” she said so quietly he made her repeat it.
“Yanna,” he mused. “Name’s unusual I ken. Ye ain’t from Bythesea?”
She shook her head.
Hamish pulled a rag from his satchel and handed it to her so she could clean herself off. She only looked at it before setting it aside.
“Where are your people? I could take ye to them.”
“I can never go back.”
“Why?”
Yanna lowered her eyes to her belly. She placed a hand upon it.
Hamish fell back on his haunches. “Is that... what happened to ye, then?”
He had his answer in her silence.
“The ratsbane! What bloody man dips his wick and cannae see after his own spawn?” The look of horror on her face tempered his words. He remembered himself. “Where is he? The da’?”
Yanna buried her hands in her face and sobbed.
He understood then.
He knew enough.
For one, he wasn’t getting on Drummond’s Pride that evening.
“Yanna. Look here. Look at me. Can ye tell me if t’would be too much if I said that I ken I might be the man to see after ye? Not only today but... well, I ken... for as long as ye will have me? Not for fun, ye ken, or even love, though perhaps we’ll find some of that along the way.”
Yanna blinked. Her fresh tears cut a ragged path through the crests of dirt on her face. Her newly revealed pale skin nearly glittered in the noonday sun.
Hamish thought this time when his heart stopped that it was for good. He’d just offered to marry a stranger; one whose belly was swollen with the child of a man who had taken everything from her. She had no family. No name. Nothing but her tragedy.
But nor could he take the words back.
She stole his breath clear away when she nodded.
* * *
“He’s been in there a while now,” Lysanor said. The light chill in the desert air nipped at her just enough for her to dig out the blanket from her bedroll.
“He’s only just begun. Be patient.”
“What will be shown to him? Everything?”
“In time.”
“You know I despise your riddles.”
“The light will know.”
“Ahh, you are terrible!”
Isdemus smiled, but he looked very tired. “I hope we were right, Lysanor. I hope he was ready. For if he was not...”
She nodded. “I know.”
39
On the Eve of What Will be
“You’re restless.”
Darrick looked up from the stump where he cupped the last of the evening’s tea in his palms. He didn’t mix his with mead as the other men did. It muted his sleep, and there were few things about his freedom he valued more. “Is that an accusation, Law?”
Law grinned as he gazed off into the forest. They all did it, now by instinct. Their camps were exposed, and there was little doubt that word had reached Waters and Mortain of their arrival, or would soon. Lord Khallum sent Storm that evening to tell them they’d move into Whitechurch just before night turned to dawn. They should move now, but the day would be long and the men needed a few hours or they’d never last it.
Without the Southerland Guard? Rutland asked, as confounded as all the others receiving the direction. That was not the plan, girl.
They will be here soon, Lord Warwick says. Brandyn senses danger. That we are chasing it, not ahead of it. Until the morrow, stay quick and low, and out of sight. Maintain the high ground so you can spot them coming before they see you. When there’s enough light to see the path, make for the old abbey by the sea. He says you will know it, Steward Rutland, from your time at port. We meet there.
Trading a hiding place without walls for one with, that it girl?
Oakenwell says it gives us the best vantage point to determine entry into Arboriana.
Oakenwell.
I don’t trust him either, sir, but Lord Warwick does. And Br—Lord Blackwood as well. Until reinforcements arrive, all we have is our trust.
Why not move now, then?
Would you see the arrow coming at you from the darkness before or after it split your forehead... sir?”
“Only thinking a man deserves a spot of rest on the eve of what will be,” Law answered. He warmed his hands over the dying fire.
“Do you make predictions, Law?”
“I leave that to the Sepulchre and their soothsayers,” Law answered, his lip curling slightly. “But I see something tickling at your mind.”
Darrick nodded. He gazed down into the now cool liquid in the tin cup. “I’m caught between a desire to aid and a desire to lead. I cannot lead, for this is not my fight. Young Lord Bla
ckwood would give it to me, but I will not take it. And yet what aid can I proffer? A man still recovering from five years of prison?”
“Your presence alone stirs hope in the men,” Law pointed out. “They see you at their side, not ruling from some crumbling tower upon an isle in the White Sea. They would follow you, Your Grace, to whatever end. But they will die for the man who would die for them.”
“We could all die in a few hours.”
“Aye.”
“It changes nothing. We cannot delay.”
“No,” Law agreed. “For not only will those in Whitechurch be aware of our arrival, but word will reach your brother about you. He may already know.”
“Oldwin knows. He misses nothing,” Darrick mused. “If Eoghan does not, then it is only because the sorcerer has conspired to keep it from him.”
“Oldwin relies on Mortain. Soon, we will discover the extent of this reliance,” Law said.
Darrick looked up. “He will not be so easy to dispatch. He’ll see any attack before it lands. He has the means to defend against anything we attempt.”
“Should that change anything for us?”
Darrick shook his head. “Only something we should know.”
“Brandyn is only a boy. We all worry for him,” Law said.
“Lord Warwick will protect him,” Darrick answered, and he could see in Law’s concerned gaze that his words were not as convincing as he’d hoped. He should find the right ones, the ones that would inspire Law and the other men. But the ones tickling his tongue were hollow. They were all likely to die tomorrow, even young Brandyn, and the only consolation would be if Mortain perished with them.
He’d never again lay eyes upon Anabella, his Isa. He’d never meet his son, to see with his own eyes if the boy favored his father. And he’d not live to embrace Ryan as a free man, and a friend.
But he would perish in service to his kingdom, not rotting away in a mine. That was something.
“There are others who can and will assume command of the Westerlands and Southerlands should our lords not survive what’s to come,” Law began, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “There are others who can take the helm should our lords fall. But there is only one Darrick Rhiagain. Only one savior of this realm. I cannot command you to be safe.”
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