Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  She had merely wanted to save that girl’s life.

  “Senneth.”

  Cammon’s voice—Cammon who had found her without, she was sure, a single misstep. Without looking up, she said sharply, “Don’t touch me. My skin will burn you.”

  “We won’t touch you,” said a second voice, and that one did make her lift her head.

  Tayse.

  She stared at them, just shadows in the dark, the one solid and hulking, the other slim and fluid. “Go away,” she said, but she was too tired to put any threat in her voice.

  Cammon squatted down beside her, but Tayse remained standing. “You can’t stay out here,” Tayse said. “We need to set a watch, and we can only guard one perimeter.”

  She could not keep the edge from her voice. “And you really think one of them has the power to hurt me?”

  “I think, when your anger fades, you’re going to feel like five kinds of hell,” Cammon said. “Give me your hands.”

  She crossed her arms, tucking her fingers next to her ribs. “No. I’m not safe to touch.”

  “You’re safe to touch me,” he said and held his palms out.

  She gazed at him a moment, trying to read him in the dark, catching only glimpses of that smooth face and those flecked eyes. He was so young, and he didn’t have any idea what the limits of his own abilities were, and she had never, in her seventeen years of wandering, encountered any mystic with a power to equal her own. But he had made so few mistakes since she had met him; he had such calm confidence. And she wanted nothing so much as to siphon off the rage and magic circling through her veins, and lay her head down, and sleep.

  Cautiously, she put her hands out and let them rest, just touching his. He winced, but barely, and before she could pull back, his fingers closed over hers. He was like cold starlight on a solstice night, like frost on a limitless field of sere grass. She closed her eyes and stepped into a cave of ice and crystal. Her body radiated waves of heat and fury but could not disturb the perfect black, the eternal chill, of that lightless cavern. Her pulse slowed, and her fever burned lower—and just like that, her veins were emptied of fire.

  She opened her eyes and stared at him, glad he could not see her expression in the dark. Or maybe he could—or maybe he did not need to see her face to know what it showed. “How did you do that?” she whispered.

  By his voice, she could tell he was smiling. “Something Aleatha taught me,” he said. “I didn’t think to have a chance to use it so soon.”

  “And your hands?” she said. “I didn’t harm you?”

  He released her to show her his palms, though she could see nothing in this light. “Perfectly fine,” he said.

  “I’m almost cold,” she said. “I’m never cold.”

  Cammon stood up, and Senneth rather shakily followed suit. The poison in her head sloshed from side to side, sending her momentarily off balance. Tayse caught her before she realized she might be falling.

  “We’d better get you back,” Cammon said, sounding worried.

  “You go back,” Tayse said. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Senneth nodded, and Cammon turned to fight through the underbrush toward the barn. Now Senneth tried to use the patchy moonlight to read Tayse’s face, but it was even harder to see than Cammon’s. “Thank you,” she said. “I know this was not what you wanted to do tonight.”

  She saw his big shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “If I’d seen a bunch of men torturing a dog, or a boy, I’d have pulled my sword and scattered them all,” he said. “Which is more or less the same thing, though my methods aren’t as—spectacular—as yours.”

  She smiled, if he could see that, and waited for him to ask the real question. But he was silent. He wanted her to volunteer the story, she realized, and she could just as easily choose to say nothing. But he deserved to know. They all deserved it, and Kirra already knew it, and Cammon may have guessed it, because Cammon could read souls, but Tayse was the only one she would tell.

  “When I was seventeen, I had a baby boy,” she said, starting the story with absolutely no preamble. “My father had not known till then that I was mystic—or chose not to know it, since I so rarely came his way, and I was strong enough to control my power until that point. But the baby made me—made me careless, or made me clumsy, I don’t know. And the baby himself was powerful—he came into the world so strong and so angry that the bed caught on fire as he fought from my body. I loved him,” she said, her voice breaking on the words. “He was a bundle of pure rage and beauty, and I never knew that anyone could hold my heart so hard between his two small hands.”

  “What happened to him?” Tayse asked.

  “When he was two weeks old, my father killed him. Came into the room and strangled him in his cradle.”

  There was a moment when she realized she had finally managed to shock the unshockable Tayse.

  “It was before I knew how strong I really was, or I might have killed him in return,” Senneth added. “He turned from the cradle and pulled me from my bed, and dragged me down the hall, and threw me out the door. Well, you’ve heard this part of the tale before. My mother hung back, and my older brothers merely watched. But my younger brothers gave me what money they had, and my grandmother gave me this pendant as I was stumbling down the walk. And then she cursed my father, and he died anyway, though not at my hands. I don’t know—some days I’m glad that I didn’t kill him, and some days I’m sorry. I do know that, on my blackest nights, it’s a comfort to me to know he’s dead.”

  “If we killed all the unkind people in the world, there would be scarcely anyone left alive,” Tayse said.

  “I know.”

  “But I am glad you were able to save that baby tonight,” he added.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am, too.”

  She wanted to say more—she wanted to explain something to him, everything she had thought before, about good and evil and right and wrong and who truly deserved the power of vengeance—but she was so tired. She was so heavy. Her body felt like flaking limestone, solid-seeming but easy to chip apart. She had to get back to the barn, she had to lie down, she had to rest her head on a solid surface, or she would come to pieces right here.

  She took a step and nearly fell. Tayse’s hand was on her before she had done more than wobble. “Is it your head?” he asked sharply. “I can put pressure on your back where you showed me before.”

  “Yes—my head—but it’s more. I’m so tired,” she stammered. “I just—I have to lie down—”

  Without another word, he swept her into his arms and held her to his chest tightly enough to avoid knocking her into overhanging branches as he strode back down toward the barn. She wanted to protest—she wanted to thank him—she found herself incapable of speaking at all. She rested her cheek against the rough cotton of his shirt and surrendered herself to his strength.

  THEY rode out the next morning right at dawn.

  No one had slept well in what few hours they had allowed themselves to rest, and they all knew that, with daylight, the townsmen would find fresh courage. So they rose early, left a few coins in payment, and were on their way before most of the town was astir.

  “I’m thinking we might want to avoid all towns from here on out and sleep only in camp,” Tayse said, as they trotted past the last house facing the road.

  “Except that the point of our entire trip is to discover the mood of the people,” Kirra said. “Hence, we must observe the people.”

  “The mood of the people is rabid-dog mean,” Justin said. “Let’s go back to Ghosenhall with our news.”

  Senneth smiled but didn’t add much to the discussion. She was feeling odd today and having a hard time deciding if her reactions were physical or emotional. The headache was gone—and she had the clearest, most vivid memory of the feel of Tayse’s hands, chasing the pain away with brute force—and she was only a little tired. But she felt awkward and almost shy, as if she had thrown a tantrum or otherwise behaved badly, and p
eople around her might eye her askance. She covered her uncertainty with her usual stoic mask, but she didn’t feel like contributing much to the conversation.

  “No, I believe it’s Nocklyn for us,” Kirra said, “and maybe a trip to Nocklyn Towers.”

  “I’d like to see this place Aleatha talked about,” Tayse said.

  “What? The Lumanen Convent?” Kirra asked.

  He nodded. “Like to judge how many fighting men have gathered under the banner of the Daughters of the Pale Mother.”

  Kirra seemed to ponder that. She looked sideways at Senneth, who didn’t bother to voice an opinion. “It’s an interesting idea,” she said. “Maybe on our way down from Nocklyn.”

  Tayse looked at her. “And from Nocklyn we go where?”

  Kirra laughed lightly. “Where else?”

  He nodded. “Gisseltess.”

  To see Halchon Gisseltess. Senneth could hardly wait.

  They rode in a tight formation this day, Tayse too worried about repercussions from last night’s episode to send scouts before and behind. There were too many of them to ride all abreast, so as the hours passed they spurred forward and dropped back to fall in line next to varying companions. After an hour or two of riding, when she began to feel more normal, Senneth worked her way to the head of the column, next to Tayse. The other four rode a few yards behind.

  “Let me know,” she said, “when you think it is safe enough to send Donnal off hunting.”

  He glanced over at her, the expression on his face completely neutral. By the way he treated her, he might have been introduced to her this morning and already forgotten her name. “You think we need fresh meat?” he said. “I thought we had enough provisions to see us through another day or two.”

  “It’s the raelynx,” she said. “I think I might be able to trust it now to go off on a kill. And I can feel it getting restless—if I can let it run almost free for a few hours, I think it might grow calmer. But I’d like to have Donnal beside it when it runs just to—connect it back to me somehow. I don’t know that I can explain.”

  He nodded. “Let’s see what we encounter on the road in the next few hours.”

  “You think our angry villagers sent off to Nocklyn Towers for reinforcements?”

  “I think we’ve created enough of a stir all along our journey that anyone interested in tracing our path will be able to do so.”

  “And I had planned to be so unobtrusive,” she said in a light voice.

  “Really?” he said. “And have you ever managed that?”

  She laughed. “I can be most quiet when it suits my purposes,” she said. “As I imagine you can. And yet, in general, a person would say you would be a hard man to overlook.”

  “I’m big,” he said, “but I don’t set things on fire. I think you’re even harder to ignore than I am.”

  “Perhaps I won’t have cause to do anything like that again.”

  They continued on a few moments in silence. Behind her, Senneth heard Kirra’s bright voice and Donnal’s rare laugh. Cammon had dropped back to ride beside Justin, who seemed to be his favorite person out of the entire party. Senneth could not imagine two people less likely to be friends, and yet Justin treated the boy with a warmth he showed to no one else, not even Tayse. Tayse he worshiped, Kirra he hated, Donnal he tolerated, and Senneth he feared. But he liked Cammon.

  “What happened to your young man?” Tayse asked abruptly.

  She glanced over at him, completely baffled. “What young man?”

  “The one you must have known in order to have a baby.”

  “Oh.” She thought his determination to know had outweighed any embarrassment he might feel at asking the question; there was no expression to be read on his face. As for herself, she couldn’t help a tiny smile. “Him. I’m ashamed to say I never really cared about him. He was just a means to an end.”

  “You wanted a baby?” An edge of sarcasm there.

  “I wanted—I wanted to thwart my father, who had planned to marry me off to one of his cronies’ sons. I thought if I turned out to be damaged goods, as the saying goes, the marriage was less likely to go through. I miscalculated, as it turned out,” she added, her voice hardening a bit. “He was still willing to marry me, though he wanted some adjustments made in the dowry to reflect my—impurity. They were still hammering out the details when my father threw me out of the house.”

  “So you were successful. In a way,” he said.

  She reflected. “In a way. But the cost was too high.”

  “It very often is,” he replied.

  “Yes,” she said. “So I have learned.”

  “I am sorry, though,” he said, surprising her. “That you would have to lose something so precious. In such a way. It’s a grim tale, and I’m not surprised that you don’t often tell it.”

  She turned her head sideways and regarded him a moment with a lurking smile. “But I am not the only one who chooses not to tell many tales of her young life,” she said. “We know nothing about you except that you sprang whole from the loins of a King’s Rider, sword already in hand.”

  He smiled back. “It was not quite that way.”

  “Come, then! Were you raised by a mother who made some faint, desperate effort to instill gentleness in your soul? Were your parents married? Do Riders marry? I can hardly credit it.”

  “They do marry, from time to time,” Tayse said. “The women usually regret it. I know my mother did. She had three children with my father, and he was present for none of their births and very little of their lives. I remember how bitterly she would speak to my sisters about his absence and his lack of affection. When I was about ten, she and my sisters moved from the soldiers’ quarters near the palace to a real house in Ghosenhall. I think she thought that would get my father’s attention, but it didn’t.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t get yours, either.”

  He shook his head. His smile had turned a little rueful. “I was already in training. I didn’t miss her lectures and silly worries. I think I went five years without seeing her except on the days she would come to the palace just to visit me.”

  “Oh, I hope you were kind to her those days.”

  “I would like to think I was, but I doubt it. I was always very anxious for her to go, so I could get back to sword fighting or horse riding or dagger play or whatever it was we were working on for the day. I did always hug her and give her a kiss on the cheek. She requested it, you understand, but I did comply.”

  “And is that the typical life of a Rider’s wife?”

  He nodded. “From what I’ve observed.”

  “Then I can’t believe that women are lining up to marry them.”

  He laughed. “You’d be surprised. The king holds us in high esteem, and on the streets of Ghosenhall we are practically lionized. No tavern will take our money—merchants are always pressing goods on us for free. Men like to say they have made friends with a Rider, and women—well, you might guess what women like to brag of. There are no shortage of candidates for wifehood. But I don’t know many Riders who are happy in their marriages. Or, rather, they might be happy, but their women are not.”

  “And has this turned you against the thought of marriage? Or do you have a wife stashed away in Ghosenhall that you just have not found time to mention?”

  A slight smile for that. “No time to seek one out and, so far, no inclination. I would make an even worse husband than my father.”

  “You could choose to do better,” she said. “I have chosen to be kinder than my father and stronger than my mother. You could make the same decision.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she had time to wonder what he could possibly be thinking. “It is hard to imagine ever loving someone else so much that I would want to give her a very big part of my heart,” he said at last. “If she did have so much of me, I assume my behavior would change in every respect. But I have not been particularly changeable so far in my life. It is difficult to envision what kind of
force could have so much influence on my personality.”

  “Well,” she said, “there’s always magic.”

  He almost smiled. “These days,” he answered, “I am less impervious to that than I used to think.”

  “Love or magic,” she said. “No one’s impervious. I would be on my guard, if I were you.”

  He gave her a quick, ironic nod. “I always am.”

  A scuffle of hoofbeats behind them and then Kirra’s voice called out. “Senneth! Come settle this!”

  She could have continued this particular conversation forever, and at the same time she was almost relieved to have it end. She gave Tayse a quick smile and reined back to join the others. The dispute was over the colors used on an old flag hanging in one of the hallways of Danan Hall, and Senneth told them with a laugh that she couldn’t remember the flag, let alone the color scheme. But she continued to ride beside the two of them until Donnal dropped back to ask Cammon a question, and then she continued on alongside Kirra.

  “Better today?” Kirra asked.

  Senneth shrugged. “Tired. Worried. Wondering if Annie and Sosie are all right. Wondering what we’ll find in Nocklyn. Wondering what we’ll know by the time we end up back in Ghosenhall. A lot on my mind.”

  “Sosie and Annie will be just fine,” Kirra said in a dulcet voice. “Since they have magical stones to protect them.”

  Senneth grinned. “Yes, I could tell you were quite impressed by my ability to turn common things into objects of power.”

  “But can you really? I mean, seriously? Because I’d like a stone like that, if you can find the time to cast another spell.”