When she could no longer bear the suspense, she opened her eyes. She realized (as her body should have told her, even with her eyes closed) that the boat was no longer moving, except for a gentle up-and-down motion with the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the water. The air was utterly still, a dead calm that some part of her understood could not have occurred naturally.
The High Priest stood in the prow, looking out across the water. Once—twice—three times he cried out words in that language she almost understood, and each time he spoke, Winloki had a sense of warring elements, an intolerable strain.
His withered hand sketched runes on the air; she could see them written there like silver fire. The air turned dark, and she could see it move—not as any ordinary wind, invisible but for its effect on what it passes, but as a thing in motion itself. She realized with a thrill that he was working a powerful spell, instinctively recognized magic on a scale she had never experienced, had scarcely even imagined before.
The turbulence increased until Camhóinhann stood at the center of a great vortex of dark winds. Chaos roared around him, yet he remained there unmoved, immovable. The only light in that unnatural darkness was he himself, a lurid glowing figure that it almost hurt the eyes to gaze on.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the disturbance subsided. It was broad daylight again. In the sudden deafening silence, a low wave hit the side of the boat, and then another. In a moment she was moving again, up one great billow and down another, plunging her prow into the water so that the spray flew. All was as it had been before—but for Winloki the whole world had changed.
“What did you do?” she asked, just above a whisper.
He turned and stepped away from the side. The awful glamour of his spell-casting was still on him. “There is a line just here on the bottom of the sea. It is one of many—some on the ocean floor, some on the surface of the earth—and we call them ley lines. They are the veins and arteries that carry the Blood of the World. And the Blood of the World is power. Wind and fire, storms, earthquakes, tidal waves, these are but a few of the ways that power expresses itself. All things would exist in a state of perpetual stasis without it.
“I have tapped that power, as a miner taps into a rich vein of ore. And with it I have created a line of my own, just under the surface of the water. Anyone who follows after us will call up a great storm and gale as soon as they cross that line.”
Winloki felt a flare of indignation; she did not believe for a moment that anyone was actually following to rescue her, but she could not be so careless as he was of the lives of strangers. “That might be anyone; you might catch anyone in your trap. You could sink a hundred ships!”
The glamour around him was beginning to fade. His face looked more haggard and hollow than ever, the flat golden eyes even more remote. “The line will exist for a few days only. There is very little chance that anyone who is not pursuing us will be harmed; traders do not sail these waters, and fishermen rarely come out this far. In truth, a large ship and an experienced crew might even be able to ride out the storm.”
Winloki twisted her fingers in the coarse brown wool of her cloak. This was the power she had yearned for, the inheritance so long denied her—turned to mindless destruction. As he used it, it was a wicked thing. Yet having seen, how could she forget; remembering, how could she not wish to experience that power again, if only at second hand?
“You might, for all that, kill innocent people, people who have no idea of interfering,” she insisted in a small voice.
Something in his face changed, something moved behind his eyes—she did not deceive herself that it was regret, or grief, or any such human emotion, yet it was more than she expected.
Then he shrugged his broad shoulders and turned away. “That is, unfortunately, a risk we will have to take.”
For two days and two nights, one or the other of the Furiádhin kept a steady wind in their sails. On the morning of the third day they landed on a forested shore, where a little creek flowed into the Necke and the trees came down almost to the water. From the sea, they had spotted a town of considerable size, with a fine harbor behind a substantial breakwater, but Camhóinhann had chosen this isolated spot a mile or two to the east instead.
Having no further use for the boat, they ran her aground in the shallows and waded in knee-deep water up to the beach. After that, the men made themselves busy establishing a camp, just above the tideline where the woods began. Winloki settled down on a fallen log and watched the acolytes help the guards to unload the boat: kilting up their coarse black robes, splashing back and forth through the water while the tide flowed in and out. Afterward, some of them gathered firewood and kindled a blaze, and before long preparations for a meal were well under way. Winloki had no idea what they were cooking, but it promised to be more delicate fare than the dried fish and hardtack they had all subsisted on for two days.
But what place is this? she wondered. Taking stock of her surroundings, she was suddenly appalled by her own ignorance.
She might have excused that ignorance by reminding herself that she had never been interested in maps or geography, her thirst for knowledge being amply satisfied by the things she had learned in the Healers’ House. But if she was honest—and what use now being anything else?—Winloki knew she had been very careful to learn no more than she must about distant lands, fearing that knowledge might lead her away from Skyrra and the people she loved by providing her with a name and a history she had no wish to claim.
A strategy that has proved singularly unsuccessful, she admitted with a sigh. For the greater world had reached out to claim her, and her carefully cultivated ignorance had protected her not one whit!
She ransacked her memory, trying to remember names of places: Arkenfell, Pehlidor, Weye. Thäerie, Malindor, Rheithûn. Oh…but what was the good of remembering the names when their proximity to Skyrra and to each other was what she needed to know—and the very thing she did not. Finally, she was forced to swallow her pride and ask.
“Mistlewald,” said Efflam. “At least by my reckoning. Though we may be just over the border in Arkenfell.”
Then Winloki was even more ashamed. That much, at least, she should have remembered, that Mistlewald and Arkenfell were just across the channel from Skyrra.
Would the people here aid me if they knew I was a prisoner? Would the ancient kinship and friendship between Skyrra and Mistlewald be strong enough, their distrust of strangers out of the south deep enough, to rouse them to action on her behalf? She knew there was little chance she would ever have the opportunity to find out. The Furiádhin would keep her away from towns and villages, in order to avoid “inconvenience.”
Camhóinhann’s long figure moved across the camp to join her. He was followed by one of the acolytes, who placed a large bundle of cloth in her lap. She frowned up at him, startled, suspecting…she scarcely knew what she suspected, only that it could hardly be anything good.
Still, her curiosity had been piqued, and she could not resist unwinding the wrappings. Inside, she found a gown and a cloak: the former of a dull gold velvet, the other of a rich brocade. She stared at these things for several minutes, dumbfounded, before she realized such beautiful garments were meant for her.
Then the priest bent down and deftly removed the chain from the silver manacles. “I believe this will no longer be necessary. And it is time we began to treat you according to your rank. As a princess of Phaôrax, it is hardly appropriate for you to be taken there in rags and chains.”
At first she was only bewildered, trying to make sense of his words. Despite her abduction by Ouriána’s priests, she had never imagined that she herself might have any connection to Phaôrax—because if that land had a legitimate claim to her, what need for kidnapping? Besides, if she were a Pharaxion princess—
Understanding came like a physical shock. “But that would mean—that would—that would mean some near kinship with…” Try as she might, she could not get the words out.
>
“With the Empress Ouriána, yes. Her sister was your mother.”
A thousand new questions, a thousand wild speculations and suppositions jostled for space in her mind. Incredible to believe she could actually be related by blood to the woman most hated and feared in all the world—and a self-proclaimed goddess at that! She cudgeled her brain, trying to remember everything she knew about the Dark Lady of Phaôrax. Again her knowledge was far too scant, and none of it encouraging.
“But then why was I taken to Skyrra? Why was I raised there and never told anything about my mother or father?”
“Your mother was sister to the Empress, but your father was a Thäerian prince. Not of the Pendawer line; of the house that ruled there before the fall of Alluinn, when the High Kings made Thäerie their home. That is where you were born, on the isle of Thäerie, almost twenty years ago.”
“But Thäerie and Phaôrax are at war. They’ve been at war since—” Truly, she did not even know how long. It might have been a century, it might have been forever. What had that war ever meant to her, half the world away on Skyrra?
“Your father was killed fighting that war, and your mother…indirectly.” Camhóinhann hesitated, so briefly Winloki almost failed to notice it. “When she died, there was some question where you belonged, who should take charge of you. The King on Thäerie and his allies on Leal decided to hide you away, so that your mother’s people would never find you.”
Lies, he is telling me lies, she thought. Or at least, he’s not telling me all of the truth. How many of those omissions concealed a threat? Certainly, there were no answers to be had from studying his face.
The eyes are windows to the soul: she had heard that said many times. But the eyes of a furiádh admitted no light; they only reflected it, so that you could never see in. The dead white skin was similarly opaque; even the lips and the rims of the eyes were void of color, apparently bloodless. That there was blood in his veins she knew only from the powerful beating of his heart that first day, when he snatched her up in his arms and carried her before him on his horse.
She looked down again at the fine clothes he had given her, and the silver she wore on her wrists caught the light. Without the chain she could move more freely—but so long as the bracelets and her guards remained she was still his prisoner. That hardly argued that his Empress’s intentions were wholly benign.
And if I am half of Thäerie and half of Phaôrax—which half is it that Ouriána wants?
17
The rescue party, muddy, disheartened, and weary after three days wandering, came out of the fens, leading their horses, and walked into a world of wind and empty sky, so flat and featureless it might have been the world unmade and waiting to be created again. To the east and west, there was only silt and sand, unmarked except for occasional bird tracks. To the south the salt flats ended at a glittering sheet of water.
For a time nobody spoke; the sickening sense of failure was simply too great. All possibility of fulfilling their avowed task—to delay Winloki’s captors until King Ristil and his army might arrive—came to an end at the sea. The Necke was a barrier the King and his riders would never cross, not while half of Skyrra remained in Eisenlonder hands.
Sindérian was the first to break the silence. “Camhóinhann and the rest can’t fly to Phaôrax; neither can they swim.” Though her words were clearly intended to encourage the others, she spoke in a dull voice, entirely lacking the vitality and determination Prince Ruan had come to expect of her. “There may be news of them somewhere along the coast. Let us at least make certain they are no longer on Skyrran soil.”
They mounted and rode east into that vast emptiness, while a bitter-tasting wind off the sea tried to blow them back into the marsh. Sometimes they splashed through shallow saltwater creeks running inland; sometimes they could hear the muted roar of the sea, faint but threatening, like thunder heard at a distance.
In the afternoon they came into a village: about twenty houses gathered together on two crooked streets, and another half-dozen straggling along the beach. Most were only driftwood shacks, but a few of the better sort were of wattle and daub with seashells showing through the plaster. In Ruan’s experience, the great cities, the larger towns, they each had their distinctive character whether you travelled north, south, east, or west, but coastal villages were much the same everywhere. He saw little to distinguish this one from hundreds like it on Thäerie and Leal. There was even a ramshackle pier staggering out into the water, and a slatternly little tavern with a starfish tacked up over the door. He saw no boats, not even a sail on the horizon, but then, at this hour the fishing boats would be about their business far from shore.
Hunger and a desire for news drew the weary travellers inevitably toward the alehouse. Once through the door, the interior was smoky and unwholesome, so small that half of the riders chose to sit outside on the porch instead. The host served a surprisingly good thick soup, along with beakers of a dark local brew tasting strongly of seaweed, which made a satisfying meal. And before he moved on with his pitcher of ale, he regaled the princes and Sindérian with a tale that had been amazing people up and down this stretch of coast for the past three days: how some odd-looking foreigners had been seen in the town of Havneby thirty miles away, how a fine, large fishing boat had disappeared that same night, all of which had been followed by a mysterious gift of thirty-five riderless horses the townsfolk discovered grazing in their gardens or running wild on the beach the following morning.
“But why a fishing boat?” Kivik exchanged a bewildered glance with Skerry across the scarred plank table. “I always thought they would have a ship of their own waiting for them. If they are planning to sail to Phaôrax—”
“They have no such intention,” said Ruan. “They will be travelling overland most of the way, as they did before—although this time almost certainly not through the coastal principalities.” He took out his knife, began sketching out a map on the table. “The waters along Weye and Hythe are full of warships they won’t want to meet. And no one ventures into the empty reaches of the Thäerian Sea—or at least, no one has tried in more than a century. Those waters are known to be deadly perilous.”
Skerry turned toward Sindérian with a hopeful look. “Given luck and ingenuity, you said, a small party might do what a greater force could not—that is still true, isn’t it?”
She sat at the end of the bench, a little apart from the men, with her rough crockery bowl of soup untouched and an air of not listening to anything they said. But when directly addressed, she flushed and answered in a low, intense voice. “Yes. There was never much chance to begin with, yet what chance there was, it was never a matter of numbers.”
“But we have to be there to take advantage of any favorable circumstances that might arise,” Skerry insisted, leaning across the table to speak to her. “We have to be there—just in case.”
Her dark, abstracted gaze flickered briefly in his direction and then away. “I can’t advise you what to do. I hardly feel qualified to choose for myself.” Which was, in Ruan’s opinion, an answer so uncharacteristic as to alert every instinct for trouble he possessed.
He had watched her grow increasingly silent, increasingly remote, these last few days, and he thought that killing the Eisenlonder perhaps weighed on her mind. Sometimes he had seen her lips move, shaping words he could neither hear nor quite make out despite his keen eyes and quick ears. At other times she would shake her head emphatically, as if holding some internal debate. And if Sindérian in one of her stubborn, reckless moods gave him ample reason to fear for her safety, to see her so subdued as she was now was absolutely hair-raising. Wizards, to Ruan’s way of thinking, were all a little mad—his ten years of tutoring by Elidûc notwithstanding—and healers were the worst by far, liable at any moment to turn volatile and emotional and self-destructive.
Skerry, however, did not seem to notice anything amiss. “Our minds are already made up: Kivik and I will be continuing on. We made a vow
before we left Tirfang that we would do everything in our power to rescue or avenge Winloki. If Ouriána’s priests had chosen to sail to Phaôrax…” He shrugged and made a wry face. “Well, there is no saying what we would have done, or tried to do. Something foolish, in all likelihood, for we know no more of ships and the sea than we do of wizardry. But you say they will be travelling most of the way by land, and that at least is something we know how to do.”
“To the land’s end and no farther, that is what my father said before we left,” added Kivik. “Which is why we never told him, Skerry and I, of the oath that we swore between us. But that vow binds no one but ourselves; I can’t in good conscience ask any of my men to continue on, not when the King has ordered otherwise. And by what you say, five may do as much, or as little, as a larger company might. That is—I suppose there will be five of us?”
“Our way lies south in any case,” Ruan said absently, half of his attention still on Sindérian. “And unless you can find a fisherman willing to take you across the Necke, you’ll need someone with you who knows how to sail a boat.” Then the Ni-Féa part of him flared up, and his eyes kindled. “Nor do I have it in me to refuse a challenge.”
Sindérian’s response was a long time coming. Almost, Ruan thought, as if she were afraid of saying too much. “I will follow Winloki, too,” she finally answered in a colorless voice. “Wherever that takes me.”
Evening brought the fishermen home, two or three boats at a time. If the Furiádhin had been reduced to stealing a boat, that was not to be the case with the King of Skyrra’s own son. Once word spread of Kivik’s presence at the alehouse, nearly every boat in the village was offered for sale, “if the Prince would deign to look at it.” Fortunately, he had carried a pouch of amber and ivory coins in his saddlebags ever since Lückenbörg, and having had little occasion to dip into it since, he could afford to pay a fair price and still retain a sufficient amount for the journey ahead.
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