“Of course, Great One!” Nessa said with a smile and a flick of the wrist.
Kheled attempted to dodge the knife speeding for his face. Quickly abandoning the attempt, he dove to the side, hitting the stone floor hard even with a roll to spread the impact. Without pause, he sprinted for the balcony door, ignoring the scrape of swords clearing sheaths. He burst through wood and glass, crossed the short distance to the balcony’s edge in the blink of an eye, and jumped.
Wind rifled Kheled’s hair and ripped at his clothing as gravity imposed its will. The previously ignored stone buildings in the bailey took on sharp clarity as both they and the ground rushed to meet him. Terror clawed at Kheled. He could already see his broken body smashed against the earth. What had he been thinking?!
With his breath coming in gasps and the sight of the ever nearing roofs below, he’d never be able to focus. Kheled closed his eyes to shut out the terror and shifted into a falcon.
He pulled up and hovered long enough to watch his armor hit the ground. Then, he flew as fast as he could away.
Away from Teron and his failure to murder the sadistic bastard. Away from the enemy army and the coming battle.
The site where he’d left his cloak fell behind, and he kept going. Kept flying because it was freedom and escape. No more troubles, only flying and the hunt.
Everything else… could… wait.
Except for Raimie. And now he had Ren once more.
Kheled let loose a shriek and circled back. He shifted while landing and tumbled to the forest floor exhausted.
Fuck magic! This was why he hated it. It so easily took over and controlled the wielder, and he was especially susceptible to shape change. He shuddered to recall how close he’d come to staying hawk.
He summoned enough energy to crawl over to his cloak and pull it over his naked skin.
“Creation, please wake me if pursuit draws near,” he yawned.
He needed to sleep off this exhaustion before he could hope to bring the news of impending disaster to his friend.
“I knew it was a bad idea,” he heard Creation mutter before sleep took him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You have to go to him,” Lirilith told me gently.
I clung to her like a lifeline because that’s exactly what she’d become. I could feel the swell of her belly through the thick layers of her dress, a reminder of how long Reive had held me captive.
“Erianger,” she said, forcing me away, “he needs you.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done to him,” I said through the lump in my throat.
“I can guess,” she replied.
I flinched, but her eyes held no reproach. She held the door open for me. I kissed her forehead as I passed.
For the second time in as many months, I hesitated before knocking on Arivor’s door. I was frankly surprised I’d made it this far. I’d half expected, and a guilty part of me had hoped, that Reive’s people would prevent me from arriving here.
The door opened. Arivor stepped to the side to allow me entry.
His house was cloaked in the usual dimness, but boxes lined the floor that furniture had previously occupied. I took in the bare walls and floors while Arivor poured drinks. He handed me a tumbler of brandy, and I held it absently while he sat on a box.
When I remained silent, Arivor drained his glass and slammed it down.
“It seems the Council views me as a pariah now,” he began. “They have me serving as ambassador to the humans, a solely ceremonial title while we have them under our thumb. That’s why all the boxes.”
He gestured around the room, rising to pour another drink which he downed.
“Maybe they’re doing me a favor. While I’m in this house, all I hear is my son’s screams, and all I see is my wife’s hanging body.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring at the beautifully swirling brown liquid in my glass.
Arivor laughed at me, and his voice cracked and rose in pitch before it cut off.
“Why are YOU apologizing?” he asked. “You’ve done me nothing but kindness, my friend. It’s this damn city and my damn uncle.”
The glass he’d been clutching shattered, driving shards into his palm.
“Huh,” he commented eloquently.
I took his hand to pull the glass out, but he snatched it away.
“No!” he shouted, clutching it to his chest. “No, I’ll-”
He took a deep breath.
“Thank you, my friend. I can treat something this simple by myself,” he said, his grin whispering instability to me. “Seems the war taught me something useful after all, yes?”
I didn’t know what to say to fix him. It was my calling to fix people, and although Arivor was clearly broken, for the first time I couldn’t think of a remedy to make him better.
He pointed at an envelope sitting beside the liquor bottles.
“That’s for you,” he told me. “You’re to read it on the off-chance things go badly in the human kingdoms, but I’d really prefer if you didn’t open it until I get back or unless I’m killed.”
I silently took the letter, struggling to come up with a single thing to say to my best friend. Arivor turned his back to me. Raising his lacerated hand, he chuckled and picked at the glass.
“Go home to your wife, Erianger, and thank you for everything.”
Crumpling the letter, I shuffled to the door with leaden feet and opened it. I glanced back once more at my giggling friend and trudged away.
“I recall agreeing that you could come with me,” Ren said blankly. “No additional people were included in that invitation.
“Are you talking about Oswin?” Raimie asked. “You can ignore him. He’s my… assistant.”
Ren narrowed her eyes at him.
“What could you possibly need assistance with?”
“Well,” Raimie answered slowly, “if your people and my people can work out a mutually beneficial arrangement, Oswin will witness it and ensure both sides adhere to the agreement.”
“Why?” Ren asked. “Do you have issues remembering what you’ve promised?”
“Oh, my memory’s gods awful. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve forgotten,” he hoped Nylion got a kick out of that. “That’s why I need Oswin to help me.”
Ren stared, and Raimie smiled neutrally at her.
“Fine,” she pronounced. “He can come.”
“Then shall we depart?”
Ren glanced at him sidelong and led the way out of camp.
“From the best spy in the Queen’s Hand to a boy’s secretary,” Oswin mumbled to himself with disgust as they left the gathering of people behind.
“Did you say something, Oswin?” Raimie asked sternly, walking backward so he could fix the spy with a cold glare.
“Not a word, Your Majesty.”
“I thought not,” Raimie faced forward. “And stop calling me that!”
They tramped into the forest, and once again, night made the trees and plant life seem eerie and somehow threatening. Maybe it was simply the dark affecting him, but Raimie could swear that the forest’s stillness had deepened so that the only noise present was the crunch and snap of fallen leaves and twigs underfoot.
“You two are so loud!” Ren whispered fiercely. “You’ll bring the Kiraak down on us long before we reach Tiro.”
She shook her head.
“Watch me and walk exactly where I do. Hopefully, you can do that well enough to minimize the noise.”
Raimie tried his best to do as she asked, but in the dark, it was difficult to precisely mimic her foot placement. He didn’t think the noise lessened, but Ren seemed satisfied or at least resigned.
“What’s a Kiraak, sir?” Oswin whispered quietly.
“How should I know?” Raimie answered. “No one tells me anything, and she’s no different.”
“Kiraak are the enemy. That’s all you need to know,” Ren whispered shortly. “This forest is especially rife with them because Doldimar
knows resistance to his rule is centered here, but he has yet to find it.”
“How far is this place of resistance?” Raimie asked.
“Not far. Now stay silent.”
Ren led them deeper into the forest, and before long, Raimie was lost again. Their guide occasionally stopped and made marks in the trees, but besides that, they took no breaks, marching quickly for hours in silence. The ground took on a slight rise that quickly increased in gradation until each step forward was a climb and strain on the muscles. Raimie looked up from watching Ren’s feet and smiled at the sight of the mountains towering directly overhead.
Ren stopped and unwrapped the cloth binding her hair back. She used one of her throwing knives to cut it into smaller strips.
While she was occupied with her own task, Raimie stood over Oswin, his hands on his hips. The spy had collapsed, out of breath, to the forest floor, hanging his wrists off of his knees and staring between his knees.
“Apologies, sir,” he gasped. “My work hasn’t required much physical exertion of me in recent years.”
“Why did one of Kaedesa’s spies desert her, and how do I know you won’t do the same to me?” Raimie asked roughly, voicing the question that had been eating at him during their hike.
Oswin’s head jerked up.
“You don’t know, sir?” he asked, stunned.
“I said no one tells me anything. That was not an exaggeration.”
The spy seemed flustered while he decided what to say.
“Most everyone who boarded those ships in Ada’ir were only ever loyal to you and your family, sir,” he explained solemnly. “We’re all of Audish descent, whether the children of recent refugees or descendants of the original mass exodus. We took positions in the service of Ada’ir’s royal family so that we could survive and learn skills that might prove useful for when you made yourself known, but we never held any loyalty to them.”
Raimie was quiet while he processed.
“How long have you been waiting?” he eventually asked.
“Multiple generations. The original flood of refugees began quite soon after Doldimar destroyed the republic, so…. between two and three hundred years.”
“I see…” Raimie distantly replied.
He wandered quite a distance away. While he stayed within view of his companions, he also placed a small buffer between them. He paced back and forth, attempting to dispel the pressure the spy’s words had dumped on him, until Ren called him back.
“I need to blindfold the two of you now,” she said, hefting her cloth strips. “I’d love to say I fully trust you both, but I don’t. I won’t risk my home’s safety on two relative unknowns.”
“We’ll submit to whatever measures you deem necessary,” Raimie assured her.
He patiently allowed her to tightly bind the cloth over his eyes, suppressing unbidden nausea and anxiety, and waited for her to finish with Oswin. After spinning them both multiple times, she guided one of his hands to the spy’s and took the other in her own surprisingly soft hand.
The hike was strenuous, and there were numerous bumps and rises on their path that he tripped over. Fortunately, they took it slowly so that no one would fall.
The temperature dropped, and he was grateful for the exercise to keep him warm. At some point, the stillness of the forest broke as if by magic. Dove calls and the occasional trill of waking birds interspersed the babbling sound of water in a stream or brook.
Eventually, they came to a stop. The blindfold came off of his eyes, and he blinked back tears caused by the sudden brightness of the rising sun. When he could see, he gasped.
He was home. Nestled in a small valley between two mountains, everything around him screamed of the farm, from the types of tree to the color of plant life to the gravelly soil under foot. There was even a thin crevasse running up and down the cliff face nearby that he wouldn’t have been able to resist squeezing through as a child. If it wasn’t for the presence of Ren and Oswin, he’d swear that everything that had happened since the fire was a nightmare and he’d woken up.
“Are you all right, sir?” Oswin asked, breaking the spell.
“Yes,” Raimie replied absently, lingering on the familiar sights longingly, “I’m simply reminded of a different life. Are we nearly to your home, Ren?”
The woman’s face lit up with a smile, and again Raimie was hit with an intense sense of comfort as well as a peculiar hungry desire.
“Welcome to Tiro, gentlemen.”
Raimie and Oswin looked about curiously. Besides the forest and the cliffs, nothing remarkable stood out, and no one else appeared.
“There’s nothing he-”
A loud crack made both men duck and reach for weapons, and Ren beamed. The crevasse in the mountain widened, and both sides of the cliff around it bowed inward. A tiny man hurried through the gap, and as he came closer, Raimie realized that he wasn’t small. The stone he’d walked through had simply dwarfed him.
“You better not have picked up another set of strays looking for refuge, Ren,” he called as he approached. “We’ve neither the space nor the food for more.”
“No such luck for you, Hadrion. These fine gentlemen hope to meet Dury is all,” Ren replied lightly.
“Damn! I suppose I’ll have to find some other way to get you in trouble with our great and powerful leader. Not that anything you do could ever upset him, wrapped around your finger as he is,” the man said, giving Ren a hug.
He turned to take in the visitors. Dressed in simple, brown, hemp clothing as he was, he might have passed unremarked by the casual observer if it wasn’t for his shock of brilliant blonde hair and the mischievous, dark green eyes sitting below it. A rash of freckles invaded the skin over his nose, and his gap-toothed grin graced its observers with a sense of welcome. Now that he’d had a good look at him, Raimie could see that Ren’s friend was much younger than he’d originally thought, hardly a teenager.
“Well? Who are they?” he asked as he circled them. “They look capable enough. Maybe father will offer them refuge after all.”
“I promise they’re only here to talk,” Ren said, rolling her eyes. “This is Oswin, and-”
“I’m Raimie,” Raimie said, extending a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“My name’s Hadrion,” the teenager replied. “I don’t know why you’re giving me your hand, but since big sis vouches for you, I extend invitations for you both to Tiro. Please come inside.”
Raimie dropped his hand when it became clear that Hadrion wouldn’t shake it. Apparently, that wasn’t an acceptable greeting here. He meekly accompanied Ren and her friend as they strolled nonchalantly through the crack in the mountain’s side.
Upon closer inspection, he discovered that what he’d originally thought was the cliff face of an outcropping was actually a set of cleverly disguised doors. A collection of moss and ivy climbed the sides of the doors exposed to the open air, covering the cracks where they met the mountain on either side. The crack where they came together had been cut in an irregular manner to resemble a natural crevasse. They maneuvered their way through the bushes and brush entangling the base of the manmade outcropping. The doors swung shut behind them, but Raimie had already moved on from their curiosity to the wonder that lay before him.
When Ren had spoken of her home with the resistance, he’d pictured a tent city little more than what he’d lived in for months. What he saw instead took his breath in wonder and appreciation for what man could do in hardship.
A veritable city spread before them. It was cramped and not very clean, but it bustled with life. Almost immediately inside the great stone doors, waddle and daub houses lined a narrow street illuminated by lanterns hanging from tall poles, and the single street they faced was one of many.
The ground dipped like a wide bowl, and all streets and lines of sight drew the eye to the fields of grain and crop growing in the exact center. A large rock shelf extended overhead from the valley’s opposite end, and a carefully crafte
d network of lattices spread from the door to meet the shelf near the middle. Ivy grew along the lattice, skillfully shaped to provide cover from observers above but to also allow an appropriate amount of sunlight down to the fields below.
“Are you coming or not?” Ren asked.
She seemed pleased by their gawking. They muttered apologies and trotted to her side.
“Not what you expected is it?” she asked.
Raimie vigorously shook his head, afraid to offend her or make a fool of himself if he opened his mouth.
“Riadur is this way.”
She chuckled at his expense.
The city seemed busy. Granted, he hadn’t visited very many cities, but this one appeared to be in quite the uproar. People ran up and down and across the streets, and as they approached the city center, more and more blank-eyed families and individuals listlessly crowded the empty spaces. Bawling children clutched at mothers’ skirts or cried quietly by themselves. A soot-streaked man rocked back and forth on a crate, muttering to himself.
“I take it my intel on the fall of Lindow to harvest was good?” Ren quietly asked.
“Yes,” Hadrion whispered sadly.
“Is Ky back yet?”
“Why?” the teenager asked impishly, quickly bouncing back from gloom. “You worried about lover boy?”
“He’s not-” Ren huffed with exasperation. “We’re not lovers. Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you are. You just don’t see it yet,” Hadrion told her.
“Kylorian’s a brother to me, same as you. I’ll never see him as more,” Ren insisted.
“Whatever you say, big sis.”
The teenager raised his hands in surrender.
“Is he back?” Ren asked once more, teeth gritted.
“Not yet, but I wouldn’t worry. This is Ky we’re talking about. He’s one with the impossible,” Hadrion grinned. “How did your thing go?”
“Better than you might expect,” Ren answered, looking back at her guests.
Raimie listened to the conversation with half an ear, intent on taking in the city. The waddle and daub houses had been replaced with wood and thatch and even stone as they plunged further into the city’s depths. Lanterns were strung across the streets on strings between the buildings as the passage narrowed, leaving little room for anything besides passersby in the thoroughfare.
The Undying Champions (The Eternal War Book 1) Page 60