"That she had no choice, that she had been told to bring me to him. She didn't have to say his name."
"Arontala," Tris supplied
"Great. Just great," Vahanian snapped, with an accusing glare at Riqua. "Are the rest of your brood coming after us now, too?"
"You have nothing to fear from them. They are my creations. This one," she said, with a disdainful look at Elana's remains, "came to us a few months ago. Perhaps Arontala has planted his own among all the families, watching for you."
"Does he know we're here?" Tris asked.
"Doubtful. Elana wasn't strong enough to alert him. More likely, she'd been given orders to watch for you, in case you showed up."
"The dagger," Kiara said, looking down at the hilt in Elana's corpse. "It can turn the undead or destroy the soul." She reached down and withdrew the blade, cleaning it on the hem of Elana's dress before resheathing it.
Carina sat down on the slab, visibly shaken. "I didn't even realize that I grabbed a sword," the healer murmured. "I just knew someone was taking Kiara away."
"You picked a good time to get over using a blade," Vahanian said.
"Elana was sure the rest of you couldn't interfere," Kiara said.
Vahanian glared at Carroway. "You were supposed to be on guard duty."
"I was. I didn't see anything," Carroway said, appalled. "I swear by the Lady."
"You couldn't have prevented what happened," Riqua said. "We're skilled at passing unnoticed."
Gabriel joined them, and Tris thought he saw uneasiness in the vayash moru's face. Riqua looked at Gabriel. "I thought you were sleeping."
"I've learned to sleep lightly."
Kolin and Keir joined them and, at Riqua's word, pushed their way in to gather up Elana's body. "Place it outside, where it will catch the sun. She doesn't deserve burial."
When they were gone, Riqua turned to Gabriel. "If Arontala has his fledglings planted among our houses," she said, "you can't be safe among any of our kind you didn't made yourself."
"I'll revise my plans," Gabriel said.
"Do we get a vote on that?" Carroway muttered.
"We can't lose more time," Tris said. "The Hawthorn Moon is only a few weeks away."
"You'll reach Shekerishet by the Moon," Gabriel vowed. "You have my word."
"Cross your heart and hope to die?" Vahanian asked.
"Now, despite this... misfortune," Gabriel said, "you need to rest, and so do I."
"I don't feel very tired right now," Kiara replied, rubbing her neck where Elana had gripped her.
"I think we should stay together," Carina added.
"I'll watch over you personally," Riqua said. "I have eternity to rest and, unlike Gabriel, I don't have to save my strength for the journey. I assure you, none of mine will harm you while I'm your protector."
Vahanian looked as if he were about to make another comment, then saw the ice in the vayash moru's eyes and thought better of it. "Let's get to it, then," he said.
What Vahanian lacked in diplomacy, Kiara thought as they filed out, he made up for in voicing the sentiments of them all. She wiped off her sword and dagger carefully before resheathing them, not willing to look too closely at the blood, then fastened her sword belt and walked to the door, where Tris waited to follow her.
Riqua led them to her own quarters, a sumptuous tomb obviously intended for one of noble birth. It had been transformed to a well-appointed boudoir, with one significant difference. In the center stood an ornate catafalque, and atop it an alabaster image of Riqua. Exhausted, Kiara and the others made impromptu beds of couches and pillows, choosing to stay close enough together that no one could pass among them without waking the others.
Kiara gave Carina's hand a grateful squeeze. "Have I ever told you how happy I am that you're a light sleeper?"
"I'm glad I was able to stop her. But I can't believe I used a blade."
"What exactly do your healer rules say?" Vahanian asked from where he had stretched out, blocking the doorway with his body. He closed eyes, trying to relax.
"The taking of life or the shedding of blood in anger with a knife or blade is forbidden."
"Then you're clear."
"What?"
Vahanian opened one eye. "Elana was already dead. Undead. You didn't take her life. And whatever that stuff was on the floor, it wasn't her blood."
Kiara chuckled. "He's got a point, Carina. I like his logic. And admit it-it wouldn't be the first time healers have split hairs on some obscure rule."
"I'll have to think about it tomorrow," Carina said, settling in next to Vahanian and sharing his cloak. "That just might make sense in the morning."
Kiara smiled, finding a spot beside Tris, glad for the arm he slipped around her shoulders and the warmth of his heavy cloak.
When the others were quiet, Tris turned toward Kiara. "I have something I want you to carry for me."
"Not another magic dagger, I hope?"
Tris carefully withdrew the precious vial of Bava K'aa's elixir from where it hung on the strap around his neck. He slipped it over Kiara's head. "Wear this for me, please."
"What is it?" She looked at the vial, which glowed a faint violet through the thick glass.
"It's a potion. Grandmother left it for me with Riqua. Quite literally worth a king's ransom." He reached out to touch her cheek, and kissed her. "It will cure a mortal wound." She gasped, looking at the vial with renewed respect. "Keep it safe, please? If it's needed-and I hope it isn't-you're more likely to be able to do something with it than I will."
"I don't like it when you say things like that," she said, suppressing a shiver as she carefully slipped the vial down the throat of her tunic.
Tris put his arm around her. "I have every reason to want to live through this," he said, tangling his fingers in her hair, glad for her nearness. "You know that."
"I know. But it doesn't make me worry less."
Tris kissed her gently, and she leaned back against his shoulder. "I've thought a lot about what you said, back in Principality, about being the 'hound of the Goddess.'. Coming when the Lady calls and doing as She bids. I only wish I were a fox hound, and not turned out after a beast."
"But look at your pack," she said. "A good pack can bring down a very large bear."
"Have I mentioned, recently, how much I love you?"
She nestled closer. "Yes, but tell me again." Tris let his kiss answer her, and then folded her close. They shared the warmth of his cloak in the crowded room, content for the company as they fell asleep in what might be the last safe night before the Hawthorn Moon.
Chapter Thirty-one
Ban Soterius shivered and gathered his cloak tightly around him in the harsh winds of northern Margolan. It was the fourth month, the Lover's Moon, but the winds had turned unseasonably cold, even for the unpredictable weather of the north. Rain fell, mixed with sleet, in a last winter storm. Soterius had ridden a candlemark since leaving the shelter of the village where he raised his most recent cluster of fighters, and had yet another candlemark to ride before reaching his destination. Although it was not yet dusk, the heavy gray clouds made it seem much later. Soterius found himself wishing for sundown, when Mikhail promised to join him.
The trek across northern Margolan had been successful so far. He had gathered thousands of volunteers and deserters into the ranks of his militia, seeding small groups of rebels to harry Jared's troops.
It had started with the refugees and the three deserters from the Margolan army in the Principality camp. Soterius knew there was plenty of bottled up rage against Jared, but he had no idea just how deep the feelings went, or how broadly they were shared. Once his purpose became known, the number of volunteers swelled. He and Mikhail were moved from village to village, protected by ties of kin and marriage, hidden in barns and wagons, caves and sheds.
Many a tavern keeper welcomed them by the back door, tired of Jared's troops busting up their inns and taking liberties with the women. Soterius and Mikhail slept i
n crypts and barrows, watched over by ghosts and the undead. Out in the villages one's kin included the living, dead, and undead. Those ties of kinship were as binding as any blood oaths; Soterius found that many of the families were linked from village to village all along the Borderlands. When multiplied by many generations with the inclusion of kin who were vayash moru or ghosts, Soterius came to see the villages as a tightly woven net of families, similar to the nobility at court.
Opportunities to test the skills of their trainees were readily available. Both Soterius and Mikhail led skirmishes against Jared's troops that heightened their renown and drew volunteers to their cause. As the successful strikes grew more numerous, Soterius amassed a better store of uniforms and weapons, wagons and horses. These he hid in the caves that pock-marked the foothills, until the time was right to march an army of his own toward the palace.
The villagers who volunteered were men old enough that Jared's troops had not conscripted them and women who had been subjected to the lusts of Jared's soldiers, or who had lost daughters and sons to Margolan's army. Those who could leave their villages Soterius and Mikhail trained to fight, helping them understand how to turn the land itself into a weapon. Those who could not leave became spies, passing along information as valuable as ammunition. Willing tavern masters became important gatekeepers in the resistance, noting the movement of troops and the number of soldiers passing through an area. Mikhail, a reasonably skilled musician, made sure to teach Carroway's defiant songs to the minstrels he met. He added stories of Tris's prowess as a Summoner to the bards' tales. Thanks to Mikhail, Soterius did not doubt that Carroway would find all the minstrels and bards he needed to create chaos in the palace city on the night of the Hawthorn Moon.
The courage of the rebels increased with every victory against Jared's army. After a few months, Soterius noted that the army did not venture north without large numbers. By then, the rebels were well-trained enough to harry the intruders, decimating their numbers and keeping them off balance and in constant fear. Soterius showed the village militias how to appear more numerous than they were. Mikhail taught them how to move silently and hide themselves.
From the villagers' web of family ties came another unexpected boon. Soterius knew that Tris had given his blessing to the ghosts of the Scirranish to avenge themselves and their families. Tris had also lent his power to make those ghosts visible. As the spirits of the Scirranish returned to the places of their slaughter they called to the ghosts of their ancestors, until the forests and passes of the northlands were too dangerous for even the most intrepid of Jared's troops. Soterius heard tales of the encounters between the spirits and the Margolan army. If they resembled even a fraction of the truth, the murdered villagers had fully avenged themselves. Even without Tris's magic, Soterius was more aware of spirits around him than ever before, especially since he almost always rode by night to accompany Mikhail and avoid detection.
Vayash moru were more numerous than Soterius expected among the volunteers, until he heard the stories of how relentlessly Jared's troops had persecuted the undead, hunting them to their day crypts and burning them in the sun while they were vulnerable. Those vayash moru were kin to the villagers, and had remained part of the lives of their families and villages even after they had been brought across into the Dark Gift. And so the fear that Jared hoped to instill of the vayash moru became loathing for the usurper king who severed bonds of family and marriage that even death had not sundered..
Feeling the barely suppressed rage of the villagers, the anger of the spirits, and the cold resolve of the vayash moru, Soterius felt like he was watching storm clouds brewing on the horizon. The storm's center would be Shekerishet, and its fury would fall on the night of the Hawthorn Moon. Until then, he and Mikhail had a kingdom to lead into revolution.
Although Gabriel had given Soterius the names of Margolan nobles likely to aid the rebellion, those holdings were further south. So it was the villagers and farmers who offered shelter and hiding places, as well as provisions and safe passage. But now, just a few candlemarks from his father's lands, Soterius felt the need to go home and see how his own family fared.
Soterius passed an inn but did not stop. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize him, Soterius thought wryly, dressed as he was in a worn leather riding cloak with a full beard and his hair grown long. He was more likely to be taken for a brigand than the captain of Bricen's guard, but there was still no sense in tempting fate. He rode on, though a mug of ale and a few moments by the fireside would have warmed him.
Once he passed the inn, the road grew quiet. Soterius rode on high alert, wondering if he had been wrong about insisting on riding alone. But these were the roads he knew from his childhood, and he had never before felt in danger here. Now, in Jared's Margolan, Soterius wondered if he had been reckless. Again he wished for dusk to come, so that he would have Mikhail's company. Something felt wrong, very wrong. Soterius thought about going back to the inn, but decided that it would take longer to go back than to go forward. Besides, he argued with himself, Mikhail would be looking to meet him at Huntwood, the Soterius family manor. Chilled to the bone, Soterius decided to continue forward.
The sleet fell harder, glazing the wet ground and covering the bare branches of the trees so that they looked spun from glass. Soterius came to a rise in the road and saw Huntwood in the distance, a dark shape against the horizon. Only then did he realize the source of his sense of foreboding. The road to the manor, usually well-traveled, lay covered with an unbroken skin of ice, marked neither by hoof prints nor wagon tracks. The fields to either side of the road, usually home to cattle, goats, and sheep, were empty. No lights flickered from the manor house windows, and no smoke rose from its chimney.
Soterius urged his horse on, as fast as he dared to go on the icy roads. Within a few moments, the turn to the manor house came into view, as dark and undisturbed as the road itself. Feeling a rising panic, Soterius galloped up the long approach, hearing his horse's hoof beats pounding in the silence. He reached the great entrance and stopped, feeling his heart rise to his throat.
Huntwood was a ruined shell. The dim light of evening was visible through the upper floor window casings, where the roof had been burned away. The manor's windows had been shattered, their casings blackened by fire. The front door was splintered. From the overgrowth of the bare shrubbery, it appeared as if no one had tended the gardens for many months.
Soterius lightly tethered his horse to a hitching post and drew his sword, advancing toward the steps warily. In the distance an owl hooted, but there were no other sounds of life. Heart pounding, Soterius realized he was holding his breath as he approached the doorway, stepping over the broken pieces of what had been massive oaken doors.
The smell of smoke and charred wood still lingered. Little remained of the manor's furnishings. What had not been destroyed by fire appeared to have been slashed or hacked to bits. Icy rain fell from the gaping hole in the ceiling. Leaves swirled around Soterius' boots in the ravaged front hallway.
Numbly, he made his way through the ruin of the familiar manor, but found neither life nor any sign of recent habitation. He slipped from the back entrance into the terraced yards of which his mother had once been so proud. The gardens with their carefully tended hedge mazes and roses had been ridden down, and parts of them had burned.
Soterius found it difficult to breathe. He looked down over the sloping yard, toward the barns that were now charred timbers, and toward the fields that appeared to have been torched instead of harvested. Gone, all of it gone, he thought in shock,. All gone-
He heard a crunch of ice behind him, and then a cry. Soterius could not see his attacker, but the man had to be at least double his bulk and a good bit taller; he easily crushed Soterius to the ice-covered ground and pinned him with his knee. He grabbed for Soterius' sword hand and slammed Soterius' knuckles against the ground until he could pry the sword away and throw it well out of reach.
"There's nothing
left to take, thief," a man's voice rasped near Soterius' ear. "Your kind has taken it all. Give me one reason I shouldn't slit your whore-spawned throat!"
Soterius felt the blade of a knife press against his skin. He struggled in his shock to place the voice. "I'm not a thief!" Soterius said. "I'm Lord Soterius' son."
He heard a rush of air and a strangled cry from his attacker, who was suddenly lifted from off his back. Soterius scrambled to turn over and saw Mikhail, holding a burly man aloft with one hand so that the man's feet dangled a few inches off the ground.
"You!" the man gasped. "I should slit your throat! It's because of you they're dead-they're all dead!"
Shaken, Soterius regained his feet. Mikhail returned the attacker to the ground but did not remove his hand from the assailant's neck. Although the man was unkempt and an unruly growth of beard altered his appearance, Soterius recognized his brother-in-law, Danne. Danne's words gave him no doubt as to the fate of his sister, Tae.
"Danne, what happened?"
"Soldiers came just after Haunts. When your father met them at the door, they ran him through. Your mother, your brothers, the children, Tae-the soldiers chased them down, through the house, into the fields and killed them. Even the servants. All but Anyon, who hid in the well. I was gone to market with Coalan. When we came back, the fires were still smoking. Everything was gone."
Soterius staggered, and fell more than sat on the remnant of the garden wall.
"Anyon said that as your father lay dying, the soldiers told him that you were a traitor, that you had helped to kill King Bricen and then fled like a coward."
Soterius closed his eyes for a moment, unable to speak. It was Mikhail who broke the silence. "Is that what you still believe?" the vayash moru asked. He released Danne's throat, but stood between Danne and Soterius, blocking the big man's way.
Danne glared at Soterius; his shoulders sagged as the fight left him. "At first, we knew nothing else. But it made no sense, none at all. Ban had no reason to kill the king, and no profit from it." Danne's pain was clear in his eyes.
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