Inside, the air was rich with smells of hay and manure. The youth led him past many stalls, some empty, others the home to gorgeous horses, Jazidians, the most coveted breed, sleek stallions with glossy black coats. The “smaller” mares were larger than warhorses native to Harsdown and Aronsdale. It was an advantage Jazid and Taka Mal had over other armies: stronger, faster, smarter horses. Jazidians were exorbitantly expensive, though, which was why few people owned them. Drummer had seen some at Sun croft, but they hadn’t filled the royal stables the way they did here.
The boy stopped at a stall. “This one, Your Highness.”
Drummer stared at the horse. “Yes,” he managed to say. “He will do.” He hoped he could ride it, because it was the most glorious animal he had ever seen.
“His name is Vim,” the boy said.
“Vim, eh?” Drummer eyed the horse. “Does that mean he’s full of energy?”
“He’s a steady one, Your Highness. One of our best.”
Drummer grinned at the boy. “Thank you, then.”
The youth led Vim out of the stable, earning annoyed glances from the grooms, who probably wanted first shot at attending Drummer. At Suncroft, the staff had an established hierarchy, and grooms were higher than stable boys. Drummer had no doubt he was breaking unwritten rules here, but he had no time to figure it out. The officer was watching him, and Drummer didn’t want to give the fellow time to decide to intervene.
As the boy saddled Vim, Drummer looked up at the horse. It was big. Really big. How would he get up? Well, yes, he knew how to put his foot in the stirrup, but he had never done it with an animal this size. He wasn’t dressed to ride, he had no supplies, and he was probably insane, but if he planned on escaping, he had to go before someone realized he was loose—and before Baz or Onyx figured out he had taken liberties with the queen. The worst of it was, if she asked him to stay, he would do it. He was a fool.
Drummer turned to the boy. “Well done, young man.” He knew the youth believed he was taking Vim for a trial ride and would return to discuss his purchase with the stable master. Drummer had no intention of coming back, but he didn’t want to steal the horse. Although in his younger days, he had snatched fruit from the market, he had outgrown that spate of misbehavior. He had a rough idea how much a horse cost, having watched Muller haggle for animals, but a Jazidian was worth far more than workhorses.
Drummer took the topaz and ruby out of his pocket and handed both to the boy. “Give the ruby to the stable master, as payment for the horse. You may keep the topaz.”
The youth stared at the gems with his mouth open, which made Drummer wonder if he had underestimated their worth. He put on a stern face. “You will see that the stable master receives that ruby.”
“Yes, sire! I will.” The boy held up the topaz. “Is it really for me?”
“Of course.”
“But it’s so much.”
“Well, you could get me a tier-stool.” Drummer coined the last word on the spur of the moment.
The youth squinted at him. “Sire?”
“For getting on the horse,” Drummer said. “We use them in Aronsdale.” He hoped the boy knew too little about Aronsdale to realize Drummer had made it up.
“Ah!” The youth beamed at him. “Of course. Right away.”
Drummer blinked. Maybe he hadn’t made it up after all.
The boy ran off and soon returned with a three-legged stool. Drummer used it to swing up on Vim, and the horse nickered. The stable boy had chosen well, though; Vim controlled his energy and responded to Drummer’s touch on the reins. It was a good thing, because Drummer didn’t doubt the horse sensed his uncertainty. He held the reins stiffly, aware of the powerful animal under him. He was so high. The youth was watching, as was a groom walking horses in the yard and the officer by the stable. Striving to appear nonchalant, Drummer rode toward the gate. Mercifully, Vim obeyed his directions and trotted out, headed into Quaaz.
9
Ocean and Desert
“Gone?” Baz stared at Jade, and she thought she might incinerate under the heat of his anger. “How in a flaming dragon’s hell could he be gone?”
“He seemed sick at the banquet,” Jade said. “Apparently he was healthier than we thought.”
Baz stalked back and forth in her library, a cozy room with bookshelves, windows, a globe of the world in one corner, and an abacus on the table. Jade kept the table between her and her incensed cousin and wondered how she could have been so stupid as to believe Drummer would honor a Topaz Pact. He had said he would stay put and she believed him. She was a fool. He used trickery as old as the human race to get past her guard, and she had fallen for it like a lovesick idiot.
Of course she hadn’t left his room guarded while she slept with him. She couldn’t risk anyone knowing she was there. She should have locked him in when she left, made it a cell instead of their love nest. But the unlocked room had a long history in the settled lands. It spoke of trust, particularly in situations such as this. That was the Topaz Pact she had offered Drummer last night: the hostage agreed to stay put and the host agreed to treat him as a guest instead of as a prisoner. Drummer had accepted. Then he threw it back in her face.
She couldn’t tell Baz. He would want to know where she got the idea that Drummer would honor such an oath. If her cousin ever found out what she had done with Drummer last night, his anger would outdo even the mythical flames of the Dragon-Sun.
Maybe if she had told Drummer his family was sending an envoy to negotiate his release, he would have trusted her enough to stay. No, she couldn’t make excuses. He had betrayed the pact, and even worse, he did it after making love to her. She had always hesitated to let any man close, wary he would covet her title. In her youth, she had felt crushed by the hostility of those who thought she had no right to the throne. Baz had supported her with the military, as had her father’s top officers. She learned from them, learned from everyone. Over the years, she had even developed affection for her three contentious generals, Firaz, Slate, and especially Spearcaster. But always she balanced on an edge. One misstep and she could topple from power.
Drummer hadn’t been one misstep—he had been an entire march of them. A misjudgment of colossal proportions. What did he think to accomplish, riding off with no equipment, no maps, no plans? She didn’t want to care what happened to him, but she couldn’t help it. He was going to get himself killed.
“He has spent a lot of time in Aronsdale jails,” Jade said, dredging up what her spies had discovered. “He probably learned how to pick locks and escape cells.”
“Then you should have guarded him more closely.”
She had no argument with that. “We’ll find him.”
“We had better.” He strode to the door. He stopped, though, before he opened it. Facing away from her, with his hand on the knob, he said, “Have you thought on Ozar’s proposal?”
Jade had no desire to marry Ozar. But they needed his army if they were to face Cobalt Escar’s growing dominion. She spoke carefully. “I may not have explored every alternative.”
Baz turned, his hand on the knob as if he were prepared for a quick escape. “Marrying him would be an abomination.”
Jade hated the thought of Ozar touching her, especially after the sweetness of her night with Drummer. Not that she was thinking about Drummer, curse his fickle soul.
“We need Ozar’s army,” she said.
“We had another option with Cobalt.” He growled the words. “Now our option has stolen a Jazidian stallion and ridden away.”
“He didn’t steal it.” Drily she added, “In fact, he overpaid.”
“For the sake of the winds, Jade. He tore a ruby off his clothes. It belongs to you.”
“I gave him the clothes.” Another weakness on her part, lavishing gifts on her deceptively beatific guest.
Baz’s expression darkened as if he were a thundercloud. “Why such an expensive gift?” He was so angry, he almost spat the words. “What did he
do to earn such a treasure?”
“Stop it, Baz.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing.” It was true; at the time, he hadn’t yet been in her bed. “We kidnapped him. Then I insisted he dress up and let us put him on display so people would know I wasn’t mistreating him. The least I could do was give him the clothes we made him wear. It was a gesture of good faith.”
“Such terrible hardships we’ve inflicted on him,” Baz said, “forcing him to wear magnificent clothes and attend a sumptuous feast. What evil shall we commit next? Give him one of our most valuable horses? We are truly vile people.”
“Oh, stop.”
“My men have probably found him by now,” he said. “And saved his irksome hide from dehydration in the Rocklands.”
Jade hoped so. She dreaded having to face Drummer, but it would be far worse if the envoy from Harsdown arrived and discovered the House of Quaazera had lost their queen’s brother.
The hill known as the King’s Spring was green with the first days of summer. Mel rode down behind the Diamond Palace, past the spindle trees, narrow and tall, that grew only in the Misted Cliffs. She was in the King’s Fields, a large tract of land where supposedly no one ventured without the king’s permission. In theory, she didn’t need bodyguards here, so she had tried to send them away. They came with her anyway, but at least they were discreet enough to give her the illusion of being alone.
Twenty days had passed since she and Cobalt had returned from Harsdown. She would have liked to stay with her family until they heard about Drummer, but it could take as much as two months for the delegation to reach Taka Mal, negotiate, and return. Cobalt had duties to attend, and he had asked Mel to come back with him. That he asked instead of trying to order her mattered a great deal to Mel. So she had come.
In the countryside below the hill, she gave Smoke his head, and he galloped through fields dotted by starflowers. The air smelled of honey-dust blossoms. Spindles stood by the path like sentinels, and she passed groves of heliotrope trees, heavy with blue-green foliage. Her maids had told her that soon a profusion of purple fruit would hang from the branches, helios, sweet and tart at the same time. Until Stonebreaker’s illness, she had never visited this part of the country. The land was beautifully strange, so much more lush than Harsdown.
The path changed, more sand mixing with the soil. Up ahead, hills spiked with reed-grasses hunched beside the road. Mel heard a new sound, a low rumble. She reached the top of a hill—and reined to an abrupt halt. Before her, the grasses petered out into sand dunes and then into a primeval beach; beyond that, the Blue Ocean roared into the shore. Waves reared up, crowned with froth, then curled over and crashed on the beach.
Mel stared, unable to move. She had never been this close to an ocean before. Her trance broke when Smoke whinnied with impatience. Inhaling deeply, she took in the salty scent of the ocean. She nudged Smoke forward, and he picked his way along the path. It occurred to Mel that she didn’t know if horses were supposed to walk in sand. Smoke didn’t seem bothered, but she slid off anyway and walked along with him. Her boot heels kept sinking into the sand, so she took them off and rolled her leggings to her knees. As they neared the water, a wave swirled up the beach and around her feet. With a snort, Smoke backed up a step.
“Sorry,” Mel said. “You stay here.” She offered him an apple she had stashed in a pocket of her tunic. He gave a forgiving snort and chewed contentedly. Mel knew him well enough to trust he wouldn’t wander away without her.
Mel walked to the sea. She didn’t know whether to be afraid or fascinated by its rhythmic power. Water splashed her ankles. She went deeper, and it surged around her knees, making her stumble, splattering foam against her body. She stopped then. The receding water dragged at her legs like a spirit trying to pull her under. Much farther out, a wave towered at the height of two men. So wild and beautiful. The ocean was an enigma, as were her mage gifts. She had come to the privacy of this wild place hoping to learn more about both riddles—the sea and her power.
She opened the pouch she carried over her shoulder and lifted out her sphere. Tadimaja Pickaxe, a palace aide in Shazire, had personally selected the metal for her. Blacksmiths had tooled it to be as perfectly round as possible, and it shone with the iridescent sheen found on a smear of oil after the rain.
Over the past year, Mel’s abilities had developed in fits and starts. If she pushed a spell too hard, her head ached, her vision swam, and her heart beat too fast. She didn’t understand why it hurt. Her mother had never been that way. But each mage did spells in her own unique style. Chime was among the strongest adepts in the settled lands, a green mage who could draw on a twenty-sided ball. A few years ago, Mel had thought she would also be a green, with a faceted sphere as her highest shape. Unlike most mages, though, who had finished developing by her age, Mel continued to grow in ability. Only Cobalt knew, and he didn’t understand. However, each time she pushed hard, the spells were a little less of a strain and her recovery a little faster.
Mel thought of the blue spell she had made for Cobalt. If she really was a blue-sphere adept, she would be the strongest mage alive after her father and Jarid. But her father needed flawed shapes, which created flawed spells. Historians thought that the Dawnfield mages had bred the trait into their line thousands of years ago, creating a weapon. After centuries of dormancy, it had manifested in Muller. He had no wish to harm his family or his people, so he rarely performed spells. Mel knew even less about Jarid, only rumors of his immense power.
Mel had no mages here to help her learn. If she told her parents, they might send their mage mistress, Skylark, but that would leave them without her advice at a time when a mage’s input was important in training the army. And Skylark was too elderly to travel. Mel thought it better she manage on her own, though at times she felt like flotsam tossed in the tumultuous seas of her nascent abilities.
Mel stood gripping the sphere while the ocean splattered her with froth and seaweed. She focused on the colors of the water, green and blue, and imagined her power rolling in waves, surging in force but then retreating again.
A blue light glowed around the sphere. Mel concentrated, letting her spell build and recede….
Ebb and flow…
Ebb and flow…
The rhythm became part of her, hypnotic. It eased the strain, for each time her spell built, it receded. At its highest point, her head ached, but then the spell eased. She closed her eyes and the spell flowed through her. Gradually, she became accustomed to the high points. Just as she warmed up before she practiced swordplay, so now she warmed up her spells.
Ebb and flow…
Ebb and flow…
Higher…
Higher…
Mel opened her eyes—and froze.
Blue light filled the beach. She hadn’t even realized she had backed out of the water. Birds cawed overhead, soaring through the spell. Smoke stood nearby, and crabs had crawled out of the sand or water to gather around her. All glowed blue. The light saturated her, not just soothing, as would an orange spell, but giving health. In the past, a spell this powerful would have exhausted her. But she felt good. Ready for more. A little more.
Except she tried a lot more.
“Indigo,” Mel murmured, though it was beyond her—
Indigo light exploded around Mel. Agony shot through her head and she dropped the sphere as she fell to her knees.
“No.” Mel pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. Tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the animals that surrounded her. “I’m sorry.”
Smoke nickered and butted her shoulder. Bleary-eyed, she peered at the horse. He seemed serene. The crabs scuttled away, and the birds sailed in circles that took them farther out on each circuit. That incredible burst of power may have hurt her, but it had done no other harm she could see. Legends said indigo spells healed emotional pain. Her father never tried, for he feared his flawed spells would create despair rath
er than heal anyone.
The sorrow that had plagued Mel since the war last year remained. Fear for Drummer still filled her heart. But… somehow, incredibly, it had become more bearable.
“Papa,” she whispered. “You gave me your power.” From her mother, she had inherited the ability to make pure spells with pure shapes. Her parents had each given her the best of themselves.
More had happened with the indigo spell, though. Mel felt…extended.
Too extended.
Her head swam and her sight dimmed.
With a sigh, she collapsed onto the beach. Darkness closed around her, replacing her colors with nothing.
The Tapered Desert had a stark beauty unlike any place Drummer had ever imagined. It was a world of red and gold stone. Rock spires rose from the earth instead of trees, and the land buckled in terraces the size of hills. When he rode along the top of a ridge, he could see for leagues in every direction. The astringent quality of the air exhilarated him. He had always thought of deserts as parched, but this one was full of oases, spots of green that flourished around water holes or rivers.
He followed a caravan trail. Vim ran easily, putting the city of Quaaz behind them with gratifying speed. Drummer kept expecting to see Baz’s soldiers in pursuit. He doubted they could catch Vim, but he couldn’t run the horse for too long, lest he hurt the magnificent animal.
His clothes chafed and his legs ached from riding. His muscles weren’t toughened up for this. He needed to stop, to buy food, water, a map if possible. He wished he could wait out the day’s heat in a shaded place, but he feared every lost second. He would find somewhere to hide after sunset. He doubted he would sleep much, but neither he nor Vim could go all day and ride at night, too, without rest.
He crested a ridge and looked down at a village on the other side. Tents clustered around one of the creeks that kept this part of Taka Mal habitable. He descended the ridge, riding warily from terrace to terrace, uncertain how the people would respond to a foreign visitor, apparently wealthy but without bodyguards. Were he wandering Aronsdale as a minstrel, he could charm the locals with song. He doubted a singing prince would inspire much confidence in Taka Mal, though. Far easier to knock him over the head and steal his clothes and horse. He didn’t even have a sword. Not that it would help much. He didn’t know how to use one.
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