The Seer - eARC

by Sonia Lyris

  The man. Behind me. In the bed.

  For a moment Jolon looked confused.

  You say the Lord Commander?

  Yes.

  Jolon’s face showed incomprehension. I do not understand.

  The second thing, signed Amarta, is to take me to the mine.

  When Innel woke again the camp was dark, the pavilion quiet. A lamp burned low on the side table. He looked around.

  Amarta sat next to him, watching him.

  He was hot, soaked in sweat. For a moment he struggled to sit up, then again gave up. “Tomorrow,” he said hoarsely, then swallowed. “The general is going to attack. Will it succeed?”

  “No,” Amarta said. “The few who survive will be ransomed back by the Teva. As you will be.”

  Ransomed back. To the queen. A humiliation from which his reputation would never recover.

  Far better to have died.

  “Why did you save me?”

  “You have more work to do.”

  “There you are wrong,” he said bitterly. “Lismar has taken my command. And Cern . . .” He trailed off.

  Cern might keep him as Consort, though he could not think of why. Certainly he would not advise it. Cut away the mistaken choice as quickly as possible and find someone to replace him. A Cohort brother from one of the Houses, perhaps.

  He had risen too far too fast, he realized, and it had not been an accident. The old king had maneuvered Cern into giving him the Lord Commandership not because of his ability but to see to it that when he fell it would be from such a height that he could never rise again. He had been a fool to think otherwise. “What will they say about me in the histories?”

  “They will call this the Battle of Hanatha, or Innel’s Folly. They will say it was the beginning of the empire’s fall.”

  “No.” With his good hand he rubbed sweat from his face. He could easily imagine that scribed record. How the Arunkel army had failed to take a walled town defended by children. How the next day the army was bested by a smaller force with smaller soldiers and smaller horses.

  Innel’s Folly.

  And no one would blame Lismar.

  He reached across his body, groping for the arrow, thinking to drive it deeper, but of course it was gone, his shoulder and chest heavily bandaged. He looked for the bottle of tincture the doctor had given him to numb the pain of surgery, thinking that enough might kill him. But it, also, was gone.

  “You should have let me die.”

  “No,” she said with surprising ferocity. “Your empire and queen need you.”

  He laughed at this, struck by the absurdity not only of such patriotic words, but that they had come from her.

  The motion sent lances of pain through him. When he stopped, he felt exhausted.

  Cern should reconsider their Cohort brothers. Sutarnan would have been a good choice for consort, had he survived the disaster at Garaya. Mulack dele Murice, then. Despite how untrustworthy he had always been, such a union would put House Murice solidly behind the crown, and that would go a long way to strengthening Cern’s rule.

  Or Tok. Now that he thought of it, Tokerae dele Etallan would make an excellent consort. With no ambition to command the army, he would also be a more manageable one. With Tok by Cern’s side she would have Etallan securely in hand, the most powerful of the Houses. Her rule would be unchallenged.

  But Innel remained convinced that his brother would have been the best choice of all. Prudent, sensible, and charming, Pohut would have approached the Teva with more finesse and eloquence. Not been so hasty to attack simply because Lismar wanted it. Arranged a truce that lasted more than mere hours. Charismatic as he was, he might even have persuaded the Teva to give up the gold at the very start, preventing all that had occurred.

  Lismar’s strange words drifted back to him, then.

  Restarn thought he was playing you against each other, but you saw through it.

  They had seen that, the brothers had, again and again. When he and his brother had clearly become candidates in the very long contest for the princess, there had been plenty of attempts to divide them. But the brothers were too smart for that, of course, seeing right through every scheme that—

  A sickening feeling came over him.

  Seeing right through every scheme that—

  No, it could not be. Innel had followed the trails of his brother’s betrayals back to every source. He had studied the letters closely; they had been written in Pohut’s own hand, which he knew perfectly. From the brusque, insulting words to the overheard conversations, he knew beyond doubt that his brother had been plotting against him. He could not have been that wrong.

  He blinked, swallowed, reconsidered.

  Could Restarn truly have falsified every piece of information on which Innel had based his betrayed fury? Every single letter that had arrived?

  Of course he could have.

  “He deceived us,” Innel muttered, fighting down nausea. “Set us against each other. Like pieces on a game board.”

  “Lord Commander.”

  Now he understood the years before Botaros all too clearly: his estranged brother, as betrayed as he was. Reading the same forged letters. Hearing the same seeded rumors.

  But why? Because Restarn needed one of them to prevail. He had been tired of waiting, had taken the matter in hand. The king had told Innel that there was not room at the palace for two mutts. He had told Innel what he was doing, but Innel had been too distracted by politics and Cern to hear.

  And of course, the old king had not credited the rumors about the seer, or he would have taken her for himself. She was merely a tool to force the brothers to Botaros, to have them engage in one final, engineered conflict.

  He’d killed his brother for a betrayal of which he was innocent.

  “I should have known,” he whispered. “I should have seen.”

  “Lord Commander.”

  It took Innel a moment to realize someone was addressing him, and then another to recall who sat by his side. The seer, who, that night in Botaros, had given him the prediction that allowed him to take his brother’s life and save his own.

  Who he had worked for years to get in hand, yet whose advice he had ignored when it was inconvenient.

  The seer, who now told him the future of his empire depended on him.

  He searched her eyes. “Help me,” he whispered. “Help my queen.”

  For a long moment she stared back. “Do you trust me, ser?”

  Did he?

  “No,” he answered.

  She nodded. “Will you do what I tell you, anyway?”

  He considered these last years, this last day, and tomorrow.

  “Yes.”

  Maris walked into the Arunkin camp in the wan light before dawn, cloaking herself in the shadowy colors of night.

  “Maris.”

  “Amarta?” She gave the young woman a quick scan. “Someone beat you hard,” she said, reaching out to take her bandaged hand.

  “No,” Amarta said, pulling her hand away.

  “Who did this?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “No, I said. I don’t want your retribution, Maris. I don’t even want my own.”

  “How did you know how to find me here? Ah, of course. Amarta, I’ve come to get Dirina and Pas. Innel has taken them, and—”

  “I know. It will wait.”

  “But—”

  Amarta stepped close. “Maris, will you trust me?”

  The question took Maris aback. Behind Amarta’s usual earnestness was a sort of vibrancy and intensity that she had not seen before.

  How to answer? She took a deep breath.

  “You mean well, I know that, but good intention is not enough. You have so few years in you, but you think your ability somehow bestows wisdom upon you, wisdom to make decisions that—” She stopped herself mid-sentence, recognizing words that Keyretura might have used.

  Or that she had expected him to use
. That he had not actually used, during their recent—what? Conversation? Fight?

  Reconciliation?

  Go to the Rift in my stead, Maris.

  Looking at Amarta again, Maris realized that this was not the same young woman she had left with Tayre to deliver to the Lord Commander. What had happened in the time since then?

  “Forget all that,” she said, realizing the absurdity of her own words. “In what way do you ask me to trust you now?”

  Amarta reached out and took Maris’s hand in her good hand, twinning her fingers through the mage’s, and silently drew her through the camp.

  After the disaster at Hanatha, Tayre decided to stop seeming to be an Arunkel soldier. The writ of safe passage he carried would do nothing to protect him from the Teva. After changing his clothes he climbed to the top of a distant tree in the thick strands to the north, finding a good view of the field.

  As the sun’s first light rose above the line of the Rift, Arunkel troops marched from the camp into the valley. All but the wounded, from the looks of it, who were doubtless back at camp guarding what little they had left.

  Going in full, the general was.

  Teva battle histories, when scribed at all, were couched in descriptions that lacked any useful detail. Now Tayre had a chance to watch one, an opportunity he could not pass up. Indeed, this promised to be the sort of battle that many more would claim to have seen than could possibly have been here.

  Depending on who took the day, that was.

  Across the fields, columns of Arunkel soldiers formed into blocks, swords and spears gleaming in the dawn’s light. The center vanguard was slightly forward, sleeves of archers flanking spearmen, two thick lines of cavalry on the flanks. A small company fell back from the vanguard to surround the general. She was taking no chances.

  Overall, an unsurprising formation, one that had worked for Arunkel many times on many fields. Tayre found it aesthetically pleasing, almost, this geometric precision.

  The Teva, on the other hand, for whom Arunkel was thus arrayed, were a bare handful, the striped shaota and riders prancing back and forth between the Arunkel army and the town of Ote, tails swishing, heads tossing. They seemed relaxed, as if out for a pleasure ride, rather than facing thousands of Arunkel soldiers intending to kill them.

  If the Teva were anywhere near as formidable as rumor held, this promised to be quite a show.

  He wondered what the seer was doing.

  Amarta and Maris stood by the Lord Commander’s bed, watching as he slept.

  “Will he die?” Amarta asked.

  Nalas, eyes a bloodshot red, slumped in a chair nearby, lifted his head, watching the women warily.

  “Very likely,” Maris said. “What pierced him was far from clean. His body is now hot with battle. His shoulder is mangled. Even if he manages to live, it will never be right again. But surely you know all this?”

  “He dies, many times, in many ways, in many futures, but I cannot see everything, let alone the causes. Maris, can you heal him?”

  “It would take some time.”

  “We don’t have time. Can you do something quickly? Enough that he can move and speak?”

  “I have no desire to do that. He holds Dirina and Pas as hostages, and has across the years tried to kill you. Why should I help him?”

  Amarta put a hand on Innel’s unbandaged shoulder. His eyes fluttered open. For a moment he gave the look of an injured animal: confused and frightened. Then he was asleep again.

  “Because,” said Amarta, “I ask you to.”

  “Elders, we must leave,” said Mara at the door to the longhouse, one hand on the flank of her shaota. Her horse was nosing the door open, eager to be away into the battle.

  The elder man sat on the bench and motioned to the large doors that faced to the west. Two Teva children, both with fresh blood-dotted scars encircling their forearms, pulled open the doors to let in the day’s light.

  “Ride with the wind,” the woman in orange said to them, holding her hand palm out toward them. They each ran by her on their way out the door, touching her palm with their own.

  “Elders,” Mara said, her voice rising. “The Arunkin are coming. We must go.”

  The woman in blue touched Mara’s face and smiled. “Now is the time. We stay here, daughter.”

  “No,” Mara said, putting her hand atop her mother’s hand on her face. “You are not ready.”

  “You are not ready, perhaps,” said her father. “You will be.”

  “I will not leave you,” Mara said fiercely.

  The elder woman in orange said, “You will. It is time for us to stand where we have governed, stand against the invaders. Your turn will come.”

  The three elders arrayed themselves on the bench that faced the open door, took each other’s hands.

  Mara’s shaota nosed her again more urgently. Her voice broke. “I am not ready to see you die.”

  The Arunkin army’s horns blew, again and again.

  “Then mount up, Mara,” her father the elder said, his voice as hard as stone. “Make us proud.”

  Horns sounded distantly from the field as Maris reached fingers of thought into Innel. As he moved restlessly in his sleep, she sought to shift his blood to win its battle.

  “Maris,” Amarta whispered, “is he ready yet? Is he sensible? Can he walk?”

  “Not yet,” muttered Maris. “This is not fast work.”

  “Yes, I am,” Innel answered, words slurring, blinking, breathing hard. He managed to sit up, squinting as he looked between the two of them. “What am I to do, Seer?”

  “Talk to the elders, ser. Try to understand them. To listen.”

  “To listen,” he said dully.

  “Yes. Can you do this?”

  He struggled to get out of bed, and suddenly Nalas was there, helping him to his feet. Maris saw Innel trembling. She put her focus back inside him.

  “That is all?” he asked. “Listen?”

  “Truly listen, ser.”

  He nodded.

  “Also,” Amarta said, squinting, as if peering into the distance. “I may not have another chance to tell you this: low to high and left to right.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand it either. If you live out the day, it will be important to you. But if you don’t leave now, it won’t matter at all.”

  “Amarta,” Maris said, “I need more time. He is still very ill.”

  “There is no more time,” Amarta said.

  Innel stumbled past the two of them, Nalas half holding him up. “Bring my horse,” Innel said to one of the guards. The man hesitated. Innel drew himself up and gave the man a hard look.

  “Yes, ser,” the guard said, dashing outside.

  Innel considered the Teva sleeping on the cots. “We’ll need two horses.” He looked at another guard, who left as well.

  “I will go with you,” Nalas said.

  “Not safe,” Innel managed.

  “Ser, when the general finds you’re gone, she’ll hold me responsible. I would far prefer to take my chances with you.”

  Innel made a thoughtful sound, then nodded, turned to stumble toward the door, Nalas holding him up.

  “Ama,” Maris said, still making what changes she could to Innel’s body as he lurched out the pavilion door. “He is not ready.”

  “He has to be,” Amarta said as she woke the Teva.

  As Tayre watched, the sun lit up the rocks of the mesa to the south, making them glow.

  The Teva had multiplied in number, streaming in from the buildings of Ote, coming out from the cover of trees, trickling in from the edge of the Rift. They now numbered in the hundreds, dashing and galloping across the area between the army and the town, darting forward and back from the Arunkel line while staying just out of bow-shot range.

  It was nothing like a formation. One moment they they swooped and swirled like a flock of crows, the next they seemed a chaotic mob. Yipping and shouting, singing and laughing, the sound carrie
d like a distant mob of overenthusiastic troubadours.

  Showing off, Tayre guessed.

  Or warming up.

  Still the Arunkel army did not move.

  Tayre took a sip of wine from a skin, a chew of jerky, and shifted to get more comfortable on his branch.

  Innel clung to neck of his horse, hot and exhausted. Nalas sat behind him, keeping him from falling off. The three other Teva were on the second large horse, leading them forward.

  Innel made eye contact with the Teva he had hurled across the room the previous night, before his sister had tried to kill him. The man’s face was covered in heavy yellow and purple bruises. One eye was swollen shut. Innel was starting to wonder if it seemed unfair to him to be hurled about like a sack of grain by someone nearly twice his size when the Teva nodded at him and grinned widely.

  Innel blinked in surprise. He didn’t understand the Teva, he realized. Not even a little.

  He wondered what else might fall into that category.

  Truly listen, ser.

  As they made their way around the outskirts of the field of battle, following game trails though trees and high rocks to enter Ote unseen from the rear, war horns sounded. The signals for battalions one, two, then three, in succession. His army, even if he was not there to lead it.

  Lismar would find herself in an enviable position today: she could take credit for this battle’s success yet attach any failures to Innel. Through the trees he caught glimpses of the massive motion forward, the army surging to the same destination he was.

  He knew what Lismar would call what he was doing now. For a moment he considered turning back, crawling into his bed and putting his faith in an accomplished general and the overwhelming force now advancing on the Teva. By everything he knew, all the years of study, the tutoring by veteran commanders like Lismar who had made the empire what it was today, Arunkel would surely win this day. Better armed, extensively trained, once again it seemed impossible his people could lose.

  Whatever Lismar might think, it was only treason to be conversing with the enemy while the battle raged around them if he failed to accomplish what he had come for.