The joke was not obvious to Morghiad, but he ventured a smile all the same. As before, the smiles soon faded, and they were once again left in introspective silence. It needed breaking. “There is no doubt that I have your blood, father.”
“No. I agree with you there, son. But I was cold to you when I should have been warm, and I was too harsh when I should have been forgiving. The other boys had it far easier than you. I simply... I thought that your value was only to me in politics, but recently have I come to understand just what you could do, what you could become. You are a son of Hirrah, a friend of Sunidara and you could merge so seamlessly into Calidellian society that anyone would think you were from there. You are in a position to do what no other man has ever been able to do. You could unite us.”
There was a strong chance that
his father had been drinking, but Morghiad was not about to say anything. He tried some gentle arguments instead. “There is already peace. There hasn’t been a battle between either country in decades.”
“Oh no. What I’m talking about goes beyond peace. Peace is temporary, and I’ve heard whispers of a renewed attack on Calidell besides. No. There has to be something stronger. A union of countries is like a marriage. It relies on pooling resources, honesty and support – uniting against everyone else. It is something greater than the sum of its parts.”
“I owe nothing to Calidell.”
His father sighed heavily and with an odd sort of grunt. “Maybe. But think about it for me, won’t you? Blazes knows I’ve seen enough people go off to war and not return.” He grumbled for a short while, and then frowned. “Why did she leave?”
“It was my fault.” All of it was. All of his father’s hopes, utterly wasted on him.
“Well, aren’t you going to put it right?”
“I don’t think I can.” He swallowed. His throat suddenly felt
very tight.
“Have you tried?”
Morghiad compressed his lips. “I apologised.”
“And did she accept?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you must try something else. Go after her and make whatever amends need to be made. There is no sense in your being miserable here without her.”
He was not miserable. No more than he ought to be. “She said-”
“Morghiad, we may have exceedingly long lives, and time may seem a luxury to you, but making life enjoyable is hard work. The longer you put it off, the longer you will be moping about on your own.” His father leaned across to embrace him. “I know she makes you happy, and nothing else would please me more than to see my son grow into a content man. She is where you need to be.” The rare hug ended, and Lord Calyrish stood. “You will both make me proud one day.” He left the room without saying any more, his long cloak swishing against the floorboards as he went.
An emotion that Morghiad did not understand began to well up inside him. It was a peculiar mix of something that felt good, and something that felt
terrible. Tears began to gather at the corners of his eyes. This was not what he did!
But an idea had come to him. It was so ridiculous that he would have laughed if he had tried to explain it to himself, yet out of all the options available to him, it surely was the most moral and honourable of any of them. All he had to do was give himself to Artemi, and he could buy her another two weeks of life. There was, of course, a considerable chance that those two weeks would change nothing at all, but there was also a chance that she would cross some unseen boundary into maturity, and that she would survive nalka. Maybe... maybe he could save her from death by giving up his own life.
With great rapidity, he leapt out of bed, thrust his face into a bowl of ice-cold water and threw the rest of his clothes on. His sword he buckled to his back for riding, and he grabbed as many spare items as he thought he could get away with. His horse needed to be able to run as fast as it could for as long as possible. The sooner he got to her, the more time he would have to persuade her that this was the best thing to do.
He met Qeneris, who was preparing himself for some quarterstaff work on his way to the stables. “Finally out of your love nest, Mor?”
“I’m afraid so. And I have to leave. I’ll miss your teasing, brother.” He gave his elder sibling a quick hug across the shoulders, and ran on toward the horses. Qeneris looked on with understandable confusion.
Morghiad opened the door to his bay gelding with the saddle on his arm, and paused. To his right were the boxes where his father’s horses were kept. Those were the very best animals, the fastest animals.
He dropped the saddle and peered into the darkness of the first. It contained a white mare with fetlocks long enough to trip over. It was clearly an animal for show rather than endurance. The next box was home to a chestnut gelding that looked as if it came from the same Hirrahan blood as his existing horse. No improvement there. He moved on to the third stable. Because of the way it was angled to the torches in the yard, it was as dark as pitch inside, so he had to squint to make out any sort of creature. But something moved. It came toward him, forcing him to back away from the
door. When the animal swung its head into the light, Morghiad’s mouth almost dropped to the floor. The horse was huge. It was entirely black, heavy with muscles and a neck that crested more than high enough for it to be a stallion.
He opened the stable door and stepped back to allow the animal to walk out. It did, with strides so long that it surely could have run twice the distance of an ordinary horse with the same effort. With surprising obedience, the black stallion stood motionless in the centre of the yard, its breath a low roar. Closer inspection revealed that it had some scars – they looked like
battle scars – on its flanks and shoulders, but they were very old indeed. “A horse like you should have a name.”
“He does. He’s called Tyshar.” The old stable master, Zarin, emerged from his hut. “Blood horse. Very rare. Very grumpy.”
Morghiad nodded. “Hmm. Where is his saddle?”
There was a sigh before Zarin vanished back into his lair, and shortly re-emerged with the leather work. “My lord, it wouldn’t trouble you to say ‘please’ once in a while.”
He grinned. “Thank you Zarin.
It is much appreciated.”
“You’re welcome. And you ought to let me tack him up. He gets fractious about it.”
“No. I want to do it.” He paused, and emitted a gruff, “Please?”
Zarin’s eyebrow rose, but he handed over the saddlery without argument. And his words turned out to be utter nonsense. Tyshar behaved perfectly while straps were tightened and buckles were fastened; there wasn’t so much as an angry stamp. But Morghiad almost kicked himself for not packing more things. A horse like this could carry a house and not be slowed
At last he clambered atop the animal, and discovered he was quite far from the ground.
“I hope you’re going to return your new friend before your father finds out.”
“Oh - no. This is the first down payment for my wife.” With that he gave Tyshar a sharp kick, and was launched into the night with such force that he had to grip a handful of mane to keep his seat.
Tyshar’s hooves ate up the ground as if they had been starved of it for a hundred years. The tree-lined
avenue passed by in a single breath, and the roads that came after it seemed to flow underneath them like stormfilled rivers. Rain pelted his face as hard as hail, and the smells of the damp earth rushed into his head with every stride. He had been born to ride this horse!
A day passed before he reached the border, and that was half a day sooner than it ought to have been. He rode hard through the mountains and their mists, arriving at their limits early in the morning. He had travelled through the final pass and down the
rock face more times than he could count, but not once had he ever stopped to look out at the view. At that moment, he felt as if he were at one of the highest points on the planet, mounted on one of the
tallest horses that ever lived. He felt like a king. Spread out before him was a blanket of yellow sand that stretched all the way to the horizon and some miles beyond. There would be no rain here. Sunidara offered a bleak welcome, but it made him smile even so. With any luck he would be able to catch Artemi before she returned to Fate’s.
Tyshar’s balance on the way
down the mountainside was just as impressive as his pace. It seemed a shame their days together would be so limited, but Morghiad gritted his teeth and pushed onward into the hard plains, the hooves of his mount kicking up sand and dust into a great cloud that trailed them. Another day took him to the outskirts of Hestavos, and thence to the gates of the school. He had not seen Artemi in the final part of his journey, which must have meant that she had ridden just as hard as he had. He grinned as he rode into the compound; it would not be long now before he saw her again.
Her horse was in the stable next to Tyshar’s, which meant that she was still here. It struck him that she might not have chosen to return to the school at all, given the situation, but he could not think where else she had a home. He knew her better than anyone. When he walked into the main courtyard of the school, he found the presence of the guards and tutors to be somewhat heavier than usual. It would be wiser to check the communal areas of the school for her first. Marriage or no, their relationship would still be a punishable offence here.
He toured the practice yard, the
area around the well, the dining hall and the weights room. He checked the stairwells, the Porters’ Lodge and the stabling again. She had to be in her room, but a small gathering of children and tutors blocked the entrance to the female quarters. An old trick would be necessary if he was to reach her. Upon his return to his chamber, he set down his things and pulled one of the cabinets away from the wall. One tight knot of Blaze remained hidden there: his last one. Morghiad seized it in his hand, took a deep breath and began to pull apart the forms that made it.
The blistering cold that engulfed his body and burned his fingers was the worst he could remember, but the accessway was perfectly placed. It took a moment for him to shake the ice headache and open his eyes, and the details of the room were unusually slow to become clear. “Artemi?”
Silence. She was probably annoyed with him, probably sat behind him and fuming at his unannounced arrival. He spun round to face her, but she was absent. In truth, many things were absent. The bed had been stripped, no coat hung at the door, no bags, no weapons, no clothes and no books. Nothing. The room was utterly
bare. Morghiad wrenched open one of the drawers in her dresser. Empty. He checked the next one, and found it in the same condition. The wardrobe was bare too, and so were her shelves. There was no dust or mud or... anything that remained. He looked out of the window. The view was the same. He checked the wall where he had shoved a dagger into the plaster; a faint mark was still evident, but it had been painted over. And the smell... the whole room had been repainted! This was definitely her room, but there was
no sign that she had ever lived in it at all.
His heart began to beat faster and his innards felt an overwhelming desire to turn over themselves until they formed knots. Where was she? It did not make any sense. He could not have arrived more than a few hours after she had; she simply would not have been able to clear the room, clean it and have it painted in that time. And her horse was still here. If she had left, why would she not take a perfectly good mount with her?
She had changed rooms, or one of the house mistresses had forced her to. That had to be it, though he did not particularly like the idea of searching
the entire building for her. One of her friends would know... Ulena? Morghiad rapidly pocketed the remains of the Blaze bundle and listened at the door.
He spent the best part of two minutes listening to silence so thick it sounded unearthly, until he remembered about the partition and sound walls he had placed around the room. They were easily removed, and soon the soft noises of the old building came to life. It was a moment before he could be sure that the corridor outside was empty, and Morghiad took his opportunity to slip into it before
anyone else approached. He knew where Ulena’s room was from his wanderings of the past, and the times he had gone to eavesdrop their conversations. Quite a few valuable secrets had been learned from the moments he had spent outside that door.
He did not knock when he arrived, choosing instead to open the door and step in quickly. There was a shriek as soon as he entered, and a wide-eyed Ulena reached for a weapon to defend herself. Evidently he had caught her halfway through dressing, as her other hand clutched the corner of a
bed sheet to her chest.
“Get OUT!” Her sword was now pointed directly at him.
“Shhh!” He tried to step closer, but thought better of it. “I need your help.”
Ulena’s almond-shaped eyes widened to perfect circles of fury. “I don’t CARE!”
Oh, for the use of a wielder! Someone would hear this! “Please, lower your voice. Artemi may be in danger. I need to know where she is.”
She blinked, but the sword did not move position. “What, so you can play another of your games with her?
I’m not that stupid.”
“It’s not a game. This is real. Do you know which room she’s moved to?”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Moved to?”
“Her room is bare. All of her things are gone.”
The sword lowered, and Ulena’s eyes finally released him. “I haven’t seen her for over a week.”
“But she got back here this morning. Her horse is here.”
“Are you sure this isn’t one of your stupid tricks? I have no desire to be dragged into your idiotic fights with
her.”
“Yes. Go and check for yourself, if you like.”
She raised her chin. “Alright. I will. But you can turn around while I get dressed, ogler!”
Morghiad was quite sure he had not been ogling her, but turned his back anyway. She was no Artemi, and he was married now.
“Wait here, and don’t touch ANYTHING,” Ulena instructed once she had dressed. The door slammed behind her, and she was gone for quite some time. But the expression on her face when she returned was not
encouraging. She closed the door very softly behind her, and spoke in low tones. “You’re right. I checked her horse, and it is her horse... Mirke said he saw her ride in this morning, but her room’s... And I asked Mistress Cayando if she’d moved. She said – she said Artemi was no longer at this school.”
“What?”
“I know. She would have said goodbye to me first, wouldn’t she? So I thought they might have dismissed her for something she’d done. I asked Gilkore, but he said she’d just decided to leave. Why would she have done
that, and why do you think she is in danger?”
He thought of several excuses, but they were all very weak. “It’s just a feeling...” But that feeling was growing worse. He checked her Blaze stream; still flowing, still alive. Artemi was far too sentimental to leave her friends without hugging them and becoming emotional and overly female. Even with death at her feet, she would not have forgotten to do that. What was she up to? Time was draining away by the second. “She must still be in the city. I have to find her before she goes.”
“Since when do you care so much?”
He was not even going to answer that. It was far too difficult a question, and the truth could have landed Artemi in enough trouble to prevent her return to Fate’s. Morghiad wanted to leave her with a life she could at least do something with. “Tell me if you hear anything, Ulena.” He left her room, pulled out the bundle of Blaze and forged his way back to his chamber. It hurt far more the second time, and he collapsed against one of the walls to regain his breath. But there was no time to be wasted.
His first objective was to find out why she had left her horse behind. Perhaps she had taken another, or had chosen to take some sort of carriage. Perhaps
she had decided to do something incredibly stupid and walk into the desert, thinking that it would take her before nalka did. That sounded like a very Sunidaran thing to do.
Mirke was sat in the centre of the stable yard when he arrived, and was busily cleaning Tyshar’s saddlery. “What is that beast you brought back with you this time, my lord? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“He’s a war horse,” Morghiad said absently. He scanned the stable for Cloud, but found her... missing. “Has Miss Fevtari come to collect her mount?”
“Hmm?” Mirke looked up and round to the empty box. “Ah... yes... er, about ten minutes ago. Someone else was asking after Miss Fev’ today as well. She must be in demand.” And the ‘someone else’ must have been Ulena.
“Where did she go?”
The stable master shrugged.
“I need my horse back now.”
Mirke shook his head. “That
animal may be a brute, but he’s been ridden very hard and one of his shoes is loose. You let him rest.”
There was no time. Artemi could be at the edge of the city by now! “I don’t have a choice.” He thrust open the stable door, cut Tyshar free of his head collar and leapt on the animal’s back. Morghiad had never been an accomplished bareback rider, but he did not have time to fight over bridles with the stable master. The old man shouted after him as he galloped out of the enclosure, but he hardly cared.
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 173