Daughter of Blood

by Helen Lowe

  During the meeting, Lord Nimor’s secretary had explained how his farspeaking had been blocked by the enemy. But Murn was a weatherworker, so farspeaking would be his secondary power, whereas Rook was one of Adamant’s strongest farspeakers, even if he was still an initiate. The besiegers’ blockade might be weaker now, too, since they had expended so much power attacking the camp—and Rook had been trained to exploit weakness.

  Frowning, he considered which House to farspeak. Blood had no ’speakers, and Sea and Swords were both too distant. The Rose probably is as well, Rook decided. That left Night, which was the caravan’s destination anyway. Unlike Blood, Night still had a functioning Temple quarter, and Adamant’s intelligence suggested they had been pushing the Oath’s limitations in recent years. In fact, there had been Night initiates with the company that confronted Torlun earlier in the year, a fracas that resulted in the latter declaring blood feud against the Commander of Night. But if I’m already a traitor, Rook reasoned, I can’t be any more of one for farspeaking Night, blood feud or not. He didn’t know any Night adepts, though, or the disposition of their keep, so would have to find an alternate focus for his farspeaking.

  “We should eat,” Taly said, interrupting Rook’s deliberations as Vael finished with Namath. “Then report for duty wherever we’ll be useful.”

  “We could use extra hands here,” Vael said. Rook felt guiltily sure the healer was looking at him, and resolved to return after the farspeaking. He avoided meeting Taly’s and Namath’s eyes, too, as they accompanied him to the only cookfire in the inner camp.

  “My healing talent’s only minor,” he said, feeling the need to excuse himself. “So I’ve just been given basic training, enough to help get injured to an infirmary.”

  Namath studied him. “I wouldn’t have called that jolt you gave me minor.”

  “Even if it is, you can still help those with more skill,” Taly pointed out, making it clear where she thought his duty lay.

  But helping in the infirmary wasn’t the path of glory that Rook needed if he was to win a place with Khar—or Stars or Sea either. He chewed slowly, to make the meager meal last, and studied the inner camp for somewhere suitable to attempt his farspeaking. In the end he opted for the far side of the infirmary, which would screen him from both the other tent openings and the main crossing into the outer camp. The inner barrier would still be guarded, but with far less coming and going. In the meantime, Rook assured himself it was sound strategy to linger over his last hunk of bread until Taly and Namath finished theirs and left, even if an onlooker might have called it delay.

  My younger brother had the old power . . . Brave Hold and Clan Tavar: Kalan repeated Taly’s words silently, watching the wind stir the tent’s garnet-and-gold panels. And then, testing the word he could not say aloud: sister.

  Kalan shook his head, because accepting comrades-in-arms at face value was the warrior life; more so when the warriors in question were exiles. So he had never delved beyond the names the others volunteered. Yet he, too, had been of Clan Tavar, out of Brave Hold, before the right to claim both was stripped away. The fact that it had never occurred to him Taly might be his sister, Talies, suggested that the rite of renunciation and expulsion might be more than a formality, after all. Their respective ages might also explain the lack of recognition, since Kalan had been seven when banished, and she no older than nine, at most.

  You are no more son of mine. Six years ago, he had dreamed his father saying those words, and the rite made it equally true of his status as brother. The Blood Oath had not given any of them a choice, but Kalan had never forgotten his father’s closed expression, or his siblings’ hostility, as they performed the rite. Yet when he overheard Taly, she had sounded as though she remembered her lost brother with affection. I was seven, Kalan reminded himself again, and she, being not much older, was probably equally bewildered by the turn of events. He was sure of the present, though, and that he could not broach the subject until a day came when he could safely reveal his true identity.

  “‘. . . the line of Tavaral comes into its own again and the old Blood returns.’” Yelusin’s spark stirred, repeating Ise’s words in his weary mind. Tavar, Tavaral: juxtaposed, the connection seemed obvious—except that Kalan’s seven-year-old self had tried to bury the raw wound that he was no longer Clan Tavar. And whatever Ise might have meant, the most likely outcome if the camp survived was that Khar of the Storm Spears would vanish as mysteriously as he had appeared. While Taly and the other remaining exiles, Kalan felt sure, would find honorable service with Lady Myr in Night.

  A wind gust shook the tent as his thoughts shifted to whether the Storm Spear’s page should disappear with him. Myr’s questions had revealed the depth of the mystery surrounding Faro, none of which pointed to easy assimilation into the Derai world. Especially, Kalan reflected grimly, with Arcolin hunting him. The business of the Darksworn’s offer and the camp’s response to it still turned his stomach—or would have if not for Myr, who had never wavered for a moment. Yet she could, as Daughter of Blood, have ordered him to accept Arcolin’s bargain, placing him in the invidious position of either forswearing honor as her captain, or betraying Faro.

  When it came to Lady Myr, Blood’s loss was undoubtedly Night’s gain. Kalan only hoped Earl Tasarion and those about him would see it. After this morning, in particular, he was far less sanguine about the marriage’s success being none of his business. Increasingly, he felt that Myr’s happiness was very much his concern, not just as an Honor Captain or champion, but in the same way a younger sister’s would be, or a close friend like Alianor in Emer.

  You still can’t interfere in an alliance between Houses, Kalan told himself. He did not think Myr would want him to either, any more than Taly would expect him to fight her battles. So he had best confine himself to looking after Faro, who was his responsibility, as much as the boy was anyone’s. And get the sleep that will help me remain effective, he added. With no evidence of Swarm withdrawal, they were not saved yet, and the longer the lull continued, the more ominous he thought it—yet whenever he checked his psychic perimeter, he could detect nothing untoward.

  Shortly afterward, Kalan fell asleep at last, although the dreams followed swiftly. The first, perhaps not surprisingly given his preoccupation with the camp’s defense, picked up on the predawn’s waking dream. Only this time, instead of a faceless woman examining the shield-wall from within the camp, a warrior in barbed, black armor approached from the plain. Were-hunters accompanied him, assuming their upright form rather than loping on all fours, and possibly because of their magic, no defender challenged their approach.

  Were-hunters, Kalan thought, unease niggling again as the warrior sank onto his heels and rested one hand against the dike. Jeweled pins gleamed in his black hair, and the face that considered the shield-wall was all austere planes and sculpted angles. After a time, the warrior rose and departed with his were-hunt escort, their forms fraying into haze.

  They approached through the Gate of Dreams, Kalan realized, that’s why there was no challenge from the camp. He frowned, wondering where Elodin and the rest of Tirael’s shielders were, or whether their talent did not include perception of the dream realm. Although because this was a dream, the warrior’s approach could have happened earlier, or be yet to happen, or never happen at all—except Kalan could not shake the sense of danger pressing. He began to force himself back through the layers of exhaustion to wakefulness, but the dream countered, throwing him into his storm vision from the Red Keep.

  Once again, the ocean was a dark, heaving mass and the sky riven by turbulence and fire. The same voices cried out in doubt and terror, culminating in the man who shouted above the tempest: “She’ll never hold unless—Do it, by the Nine. Live!” The final words were new, but the vision rolled over Kalan like the mountainous waves and showed him the young woman from his Grayharbor dream, her face blotched with tears. The jeweled mesh no longer concealed her hair, revealing a weatherworker’s cable
d tresses.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Kalan still felt sure he knew her, but recognition eluded him. The Oakward taught patience in such cases, so he waited to see if the dream sequence would change its course, or continue as before—and found himself back in Myr’s old rooms in the Red Keep. Fire shadows danced on the wall while the flames whispered secrets, and again Myr turned toward him.

  “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was steady, but Kalan could tell she was afraid. Yet when he stepped closer, all he could see was Faro’s tearstained face, framed within the shield-mirror’s tarnished oval.

  “I’m sorry,” the boy whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Kalan’s sense of danger sharpened and he tried to shake free of the dream a second time, but again it would not let him. He could hear the Hunt of Mayanne now, baying out a paean to blood and death as it had in the Red Keep—only this time a new song, imperative and hornet-fierce, wove through the hounds’ clamor. The Great Spear, Kalan thought, growing still, because he had never forgotten that dark voice, or the leaf-shaped blade with its collar of black, shining feathers. It had manifested through another dream, six years before, but the Huntmaster and his crow had maintained the time was not right; that the young Kalan was not strong enough to master the weapon.

  Within his current dream, the hounds’ baying grew wilder, insistent as the spear’s song and very near. “We hunt! Awake!” Wake up, Kalan told himself. He did not need to look to know the black-pearl ring would be glowing on his hand. “Awake, Token-bearer. It is time!”

  It is time. Kalan could not see the spear, as he had in their first encounter, but the song that soared through his dream was as imperative as it had been six years ago. “It is time, Kalan-hamar-khar . . .” This, he thought, was a different voice altogether, the words a moth-wing brush beneath the wild belling that sounded as close, now, as if the Hunt coursed through the inner camp. A moment later the pack were stalking into his tent, their eyes on fire—except these were not the Hunt of Mayanne’s milk-white hounds, but dark sleek shapes.

  “What,” Kalan demanded of the wyr hounds that had followed him from the Red Keep, “are you doing in my dream?”

  Eleven pairs of eyes regarded him. “We are Maurid.” The mindvoice was stern and sonorous, the previous phantom whisper banished, and Kalan’s heart leapt, as it had when the hounds first spoke to him directly in the tunnel beneath the Red Keep. Maurid, he thought, and felt Yelusin’s spark quicken in unison with his pulse.

  “No gate or door could hold us in the Red Keep. Did you think we could not pass the Gate of Dreams?” The incandescent eyes burned into his. “Rise up, Scion of Tavaral, Kalan-hamar-khar. You must make haste: the sands are running.”

  Breaking free of the dream’s hold at last, Kalan woke to the camp’s familiar sounds—but the ring on his hand glowed like the moon through cloud, and all eleven wyr hounds were in his tent, their eyes silver flame. “Storm Spear, Token-bearer.” The voice of the Great Spear, too, had pursued him into the waking world: “It is time.”

  Myr, Kalan thought, because the sense of danger to her and Faro still pressed, but the spear’s voice and the eyes of the hounds compelled him. And with the voice of the spear no longer contained by the Gate, the Hunt would be close behind. “Storm Spear, Token-bearer—”

  “I’m hurrying!” he said. For the first time in six years, and without stopping to decide if it was something he could truly encompass himself, or whether the first and last time had been solely Malian’s power, Kalan reentered the Gate of Dreams in his waking body. And the eleven wyr hounds flowed through after him.

  53

  Shadow Play

  Once Rook was crouched in the lee of the infirmary, looking out at the expanse of the plain on one side and the vastness of the Wall on the other, the magnitude of his undertaking seemed far more daunting. I’m strong, he reminded himself, and skilled, too: all my teachers say so. In fact, he had already worked out that he could use Mhaelanar’s sanctuary as a focus for his farspeaking, since Night followed Mhaelanar, the Defender, first among the Nine, and the sanctuary’s altar, votive flame, and great shield of the god, were the same in every Derai temple. But once he focused on the dark mass of the Swarm force ringing the camp, Rook’s recollection of his attempt—and failure—to farspeak the caravan from the watchtower reasserted itself.

  Perhaps I should ask Captain Khar first, he thought uneasily. If he did that, though, the Honor Captain would probably ask Liad to do the farspeaking—and Rook’s chance to prove himself would be lost. He reassured himself, too, that the fact the Swarms’s battery of power hadn’t resumed, must mean their adepts were exhausted, as Murn had been. So all Rook needed to do was find a place where the fabric of their working had frayed and his farspeaking could slip through, the way he’d practiced . . . He trickled a handful of dust and pebbles through his fingers and imagined Tirael calling him brother, as he had Khar—or Lady Myrathis gazing on him the way she had looked at Tirael when the Son of Stars first greeted her.

  To be someone great, Rook thought, I have to do something great. Standing up, he squared his shoulders and stretched his psychic awareness to encompass first the camp, and then the Swarm blockade.

  The camp was ringed about by power, he realized at once, awed. There was a shield-wall grounded beneath the old earthworks, which explained a great deal about why the defense had held this long. Beyond it Rook could discern the shape of the Swarm’s psychic barrier, emulating the haze that thickened as it extended into distance. But the haze only appears to thicken, he thought, so the blockade could be the same . . . Cautiously, he extended his farspeaking, brushing along the invisible surface for a fissure wide enough to slip through. When the fabric of power proved impervious, he decided to explore whether the barrier dissipated with height, since several of his Adamant teachers believed that effect could explain why Swarm demons were able to ride the backs of Wall storms.

  Part of Rook’s awareness was still grounded in his body, with dust griming his sandals, a wall of canvas behind him, and interlocked carts ahead. The rest of his mind soared as high as the peaks of the Wall, where he could see the road stretching away from the beleaguered camp. The barrier did seem thinner, but Rook’s farspeaking was also stretched, the first pain needling through body and mind. Suppressing doubt, he visualized following the road to the Keep of Winds, then gathered himself, stretching his farspeaking to its maximum extent, then pushing it further again. Momentarily, he thought connection flashed: flame rose on an altar, its spear of brightness reflected in a shield’s face. Yes, Rook thought, yes. He began to formulate his message—but a cold wind funneled up from the plain and engulfed him, the image of the votive flame dispersed by a psychic gust. Dismayed, Rook tried to pull back, but found he could not.

  “Well, well. What have we here?” The voice was both part of the wind and inside his head, but where the wind was brute force, the voice was velvet and cruel as a cat’s paw. “A bug, scuttled out from behind its shield-wall. Shall I squash it, or play a little first?”

  “Even vermin may know something of value.” The second voice hissed through the wind, piercing Rook like shards of ice. “Let us make sure, before we amuse ourselves.”

  “This bug is so pathetic that intelligence seems unlikely. But if it spares me a debt to Thanir . . .”

  No, Rook thought, no. He tried to close his mind the way he had been taught, shutting out the ice that scythed through him, but each cut shredded his fragile resistance further. Think of nothing, his teachers always said, but all he could think of was the pain—and the memory of Taly’s face as Sird pummeled her with power. Desperately, he seized on that image: Taly, resisting Torlun’s interrogation in the watchtower bordering no-man’s-land. Anything but the garnet-and-gold tent and the Storm Spear, except he was already thinking of them—

  “Ah, the trumped-up captain from a forgotten order. But we already know about the Storm Spear.” Impatience roughened the
velvet voice. “Can we use him to penetrate their shield-wall?”

  The cold voice was considering. “It’s more likely we’ll lose our hold on him if we try, the same way my fire was extinguished crossing its protective barrier.”

  “Ream the crawler, then, if he has nothing to offer. Just make sure he screams.”

  “Oh, he’ll scream. But there may be something worth our while here yet . . .”

  Rook was already screaming as the wind sliced through him, winnowing his memory of the Storm Spear’s tent for details. The scream must have been only in his mind, though, because the fragment of awareness still grounded in his body knew the camp was going about its business, unperturbed. Think of nothing—Instead his mind snagged on the rhyme Khar had spoken, and he shrieked it out as the icy blades cut again. “I move between worlds, I move between worlds . . .” Desperately, Rook wished he could slip away from the pain and terror. “I move between worlds—” He screamed it out a third time, his mind and body raw.

  “I move between worlds and time.” The cool voice broke across him like a wave. Rook could have sworn he tasted the Sea Keep’s salt on his lips as the wave held the flaying wind and the pain at bay. “I seek out the hidden, the lost I find.” Now the wind was completely gone, and Rook hung suspended against a universe that was as much darkness as stars. He thought he could see it rotating, but that could just be the aftermath of the pain. Or perhaps he was the one being turned, a grain among constellations. Whatever power had snatched him from his torturers felt vast enough for that comparison. He felt, too, as though he had traveled as far from his body, and everything he knew, as he could get.