by Sharon Shinn
“Release him and let him mount,” Coralinda said. In a moment, Tayse had flung himself into the saddle with as much grace as a bound man could manage. The guards fell back a few paces.
Senneth did not turn to look behind her. “Open the gates,” she said, “and order all your men inside the compound.”
Coralinda looked contemptuous. “We will not attempt to impede your exit.”
“Open the gates,” Senneth repeated, “and bring all your soldiers inside.”
“Do it,” Coralinda directed, and the closest commander bawled out orders. Behind her, Senneth could hear the barred gates swing open and the slow tramp of booted feet cross into the enclosed space.
“Back away—all of you—toward the house and the stables,” Senneth said. “Give us some space.”
“I said that we will not—” Coralinda began, but a disturbing keen rose from near the back of the compound. Coralinda flung her hands into the air. “As she says,” the Lestra ordered with heavy sarcasm, “retreat. Everyone step back till we stand alongside the manor.”
There were a few grumbles, but the guards and what brave novices remained trudged in a sloppy group back across the lawn, away from the gate. Senneth briefly watched them, then returned her gaze to Coralinda, who had retreated along with the novices.
“Cammon,” she said softly. “Are there any guards left outside?”
“No. They’re all in here.”
“Justin. When you judge them safely back, lead the others out. Head east and then south. Travel quickly but stop before sundown. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can—within a few hours.”
“You leave with us,” Tayse said sharply.
Five minutes out of captivity and he’s already resumed his usual autocratic manner, Senneth thought. “No,” she said. “They won’t be able to harm me. You go. Justin, take charge.”
She heard the sound of horses turning in a circle. “Pull out,” Justin said. “Donnal, animal shape in the lead. Tayse, take the rear. Let me cut your ropes first.”
“I think Donnal should stay with Senneth,” Kirra said.
“No,” Justin replied. “Ride out!”
She listened to their hoofbeats pounding down the road until the sound was so distant she could not distinguish it at all. And still she waited, sitting solitary between the gates, watching the novices and guards grow restless and begin to disperse. The raelynx paced back and forth on the thin, invisible line that Senneth had drawn for him, maybe ten yards away from the front door. Now and then he leapt and whirled, inches in front of another arrow or thrown dagger. Senneth didn’t even bother to protest the attempts to kill him.
“Leave now, Senneth, or do you plan to hold us hostage in our own house for the rest of the day?” Coralinda called out across the broad lawn.
“I am just waiting for my companions to get safely away.”
“I have told you, I have no plans to send my men in pursuit.”
“I feel so reassured,” Senneth said. “Would you like me to take my raelynx with me or leave him behind?”
The silence was eloquent with fury. Senneth laughed. She closed her attention over the seething mind of the raelynx and forced the creature to turn with a wailed protest away from the spread of humanity. It hissed at her and lifted its paws as if to bat away at an annoying insect, then bounded forward, passed her with two leaps, and headed out to the road.
Senneth backed her horse through the gate, moving slowly, never taking her eyes off Coralinda and her assembled companions. None of them moved, even after she was past the metal scrollwork. She kept backing up, judging her distance, judging her power.
When she was about fifteen yards outside of the compound, Coralinda must have given a sign. Some of the guards broke for the gate at a dead run. Others ran for the stables. So much for promises to leave the mystics unmolested.
Senneth flung her arms in the air and felt heat scatter through her fingertips. Fire leapt up on top of the high stone wall and traveled like a runner along the entire perimeter. She clenched and released her fingers, and another sheet of flame created a shimmering and deadly barrier across the entire opening of the gate. She heard cries of alarm and terror as men tried to dash through and then skidded back. Maybe none of them had believed that magic would burn as hotly as fire.
She wheeled her horse around and pounded down the road, in fast pursuit of her fleeing companions.
IT was an hour or so past noon before Senneth and the raelynx caught up with the others. She had started out at a dead run but knew the horse could not sustain that pace for long, so as soon as she felt she was out of immediate danger, she slowed to an easier gait. The fire she had left at Lumanen Convent would burn for a day, she thought, though there was always the chance a few of the hardier soldiers would be able to nerve themselves to dart through the flames. She didn’t think they’d convince any horses to break through, though, so she hoped they were safe from immediate pursuit.
Though safety, it would seem, was not something this small group was really destined to enjoy.
Once she’d been traveling for nearly four hours, she spotted the hawk circling above and then angling down as if to make a landing some distance ahead of her. Kirra, she suspected, and so she was not surprised when she rounded another curve and came upon her five companions drawn up on the side of the road. Justin’s face broke into a smile of elation when he saw her. He spurred forward to meet her, catching her hands in both of his and seeming as if he actually wanted to lean over both saddles to embrace her.
“Senneth! Amazing! You were so—I’ve never seen anything like that! She was afraid of you!” he exclaimed.
Senneth laughed and dropped his hands. “Not really. But I had her at a momentary disadvantage. How’s Tayse?”
Justin turned back to the other Rider, who was trotting up. So were the others; she was in the middle of a small, grinning group of friends. Well, Donnal only appeared to be grinning as he sat in wolf shape, panting on the side of the road. And Tayse did not have anything even remotely resembling a smile on his face.
“Unhurt,” Tayse said tersely. “But while I was there, she boldly threatened war with the king.”
“In a private interview with you?” she asked.
He nodded.
She continued. “Did she give her reasons?”
“His soul is corrupted by magic, and she’s the savior of Gillengaria. Standard fanatical rhetoric, but she strikes me as dangerous.”
“Very dangerous,” Senneth said. “Did she try to recruit you?”
A flash of surprise in his eyes, quickly hidden behind a neutral expression. “How did you guess?”
She smiled. “Standard fanatical rhetoric.”
“She gave me a moonstone and told me she could reclaim me.”
“And where’s the moonstone now?”
He smiled grimly. “I left it on the pillow of my bed.”
“Is it safe for us to be standing in the road talking?” Justin interrupted. “Do you think she’ll send soldiers after us?”
Senneth turned her smile on him, and he actually smiled back. She might have done it, she thought; she might have found the way to win over Justin. Save Tayse’s life. “Well, I think she will eventually,” she drawled. “But when I left, there was a ring of fire around the whole compound, so I don’t think anyone will be leaving soon.”
General laughter at that. “So we’ve got, what, a head start of a full day?” Kirra asked.
Senneth nodded. “Probably.”
“Then we can all sleep the night through without setting a watch?” Cammon asked.
She laughed. “Well, I’m not sure Coralinda’s men are the only ones looking for us. She may have gotten a message off to her brother after they captured Tayse. ‘Mystics on the loose, headed south.’ And who knows what else he’s heard about our escapades to date? I don’t know how far we can relax.”
“Oh, to sleep in a bed again for just one night,” Kirra groaned. “To bathe. To eat a me
al that someone else has cooked.”
“Not just yet,” Senneth said. She glanced over at Tayse, who still seemed remote and far more unfriendly than someone who had just been rescued should seem. “But when we stop tonight, Tayse will have to tell us all the details of his stay.”
He nodded. “I think it might prove to be valuable for me to have gleaned what information I did about the workings of the convent.”
Justin pulled on his reins, turning his horse back in a southerly direction. “Let’s move on, then.”
“Senneth.” Cammon’s voice stopped her from following immediately in Justin’s wake. All of them lingered to hear what he had to say, made curious by the troubled sound of his voice.
“What?” she asked.
“Back there. At the convent. There was something—” He stopped, looking uncertain. “Someone there is a mystic,” he said.
Senneth felt her eyebrows stretch as high as they would go. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It was very faint. And she seemed—fairly young. I would guess she has no idea she has any power.”
Senneth glanced at Kirra, who looked as wide-eyed as Senneth felt. “So—not a spy gone gamely to the enemy camp,” Senneth said.
“There’s someone who will come to grief if she ever starts exercising her abilities,” Kirra commented.
“Maybe they’re so buried they’ll never surface,” Senneth said. “But that’s the last place I’d want to be if I was infused with latent power.”
“It was the last place I wanted to be at all, and I don’t have a speck of magic,” Tayse said.
They all laughed. Justin, still taking very seriously his duties as temporary leader, kneed his horse forward. “Move out,” he said, sweeping his left arm forward. “We can cover a lot of ground before nightfall.”
With a little sigh, Senneth silently relinquished to him all immediate responsibility for command. She settled back in her saddle, watching the others dispose themselves for travel. With Justin in the lead, Tayse fell back to take the rear. Donnal trotted ahead of Justin and then disappeared off into the undergrowth. Cammon and Kirra arrayed themselves on either side of Senneth, Cammon leading Donnal’s horse.
“How’s Tayse really?” Senneth asked quietly. “He seems—withdrawn. Did something happen?”
Kirra smothered a giggle. “I think he’s just miffed that he was careless enough to get taken on the road. I think he also wishes he’d fought back—even though it’s clear that he would have been dead if he’d lifted his sword.” She glanced at Senneth. “And maybe he thinks it’s embarrassing that you had to rescue him.”
“I don’t think it’s embarrassment,” Cammon said thoughtfully, and then looked alarmed and refused to elaborate when they both demanded to know what that meant. Finally he said, “It’s just that—Senneth, you know. She’s so powerful. She puts everyone in awe.”
Senneth felt her mouth twist. “I don’t think he looks on me with awe. Maybe he thinks we’re stupid to be going on to Gisseltess.”
“Maybe he’s mad because Justin’s acting all serious and in charge,” Kirra said.
“Give him a night to recover,” Cammon said. “And he’ll be in charge again.”
“I think this is my mission and I’m the leader,” Senneth said. When they laughed, she allowed herself to smile. “Some of the time, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Tayse,” Kirra said.
Cammon’s smile was secretive and hard to read. “Or you could just ask him,” he said. “What’s on his mind.”
After that they rode on in silence for a while. Senneth thought that if the day ever came where she could lie down in safety, she would sleep a week through. As dusk drifted down, Justin called a halt, and they pulled off the road to try to find a level place to camp. Donnal stood on all fours for a moment, sniffing the air, then bounded off to seek out game or water or whatever he was focused on at the moment. Senneth dropped her bedroll to the ground and expended a small quotient of energy to warm the air around them.
“Ah,” she said in a light voice, “so good to be home.”
CHAPTER 27
TAYSE knew he was being surly and that only Senneth cared, and she was the last person in Gillengaria he wanted to offend. Yet he could not shake off his strange sense of oppression and behave in a normal fashion. He had been so sure she would come for him that he had not even been surprised when the breathless guard burst into his room and demanded that the Rider leave with him instantly. He had not known precisely how she would accomplish the rescue until he saw the pacing raelynx, the phalanx of mystics, Senneth at the absolute center of every pair of eyes in the courtyard. Her star-white hair made a halo around her face, and her expression was one of pure serenity. She might be the focus of the whole world, he thought; she had that much strength of purpose, that much force of will. The royal court and the Twelve Houses and the merchants and the farmers and the laborers would all gladly revolve around her.
Or maybe he was the only one who felt her presence so powerfully, who had made her the sun for his own small world.
Something he did not want to do.
She had scarcely glanced at him as she sprang him from his trap. All her attention had been on the Lestra. Tayse had climbed into the saddle, followed Justin and the others through the gates, and ridden away as fast as their horses could take them, and all the while his body had been clenched in mute protest. They could not leave her behind, solitary and undefended! Yet it was clear she had planned this whole escape, down to the final tongue of fire, and that the only part any of them could play had already been scripted by her.
So they had ridden out—and he had strained every sense to catch the sound of her horse cantering up behind them—and interminable hours had passed before Kirra brought the welcome news that she was just a few minutes behind them. He had waited as gladly as the rest of them for her to ride up, relaxed and smiling, but he had not been able to show his emotions on his face.
Something had changed.
He could not define it; he had no words for it; he did not even want to understand it. He would almost rather still be a prisoner inside Lumanen Convent than to feel this crushing weight upon his chest and not have the first idea how to dislodge it.
He was as weary as the rest of them, but it was no particular relief to stop for the night. He felt the quick bloom of warmth as Senneth did something to ward off the chill, and all of the others fell gratefully to the ground.
“Can we just stay here?” Kirra said drowsily. “Forever? Do we actually have to get back on the horses tomorrow and ride?”
Tayse handed his reins to Cammon, who was collecting the horses. “I’ll look for water,” he said.
Kirra pointed. “Donnal went that way. That usually means that’s the first direction to go.” She tossed him her water bottle. “Thanks.”
Tayse gathered the other containers, then headed out the way she’d indicated. Sure enough, within a quarter of a mile he practically stumbled across a slim, mossy stream. It was so covered with leaves and fallen branches that it was easy to miss, but it was moving swiftly enough that there were only margins of ice showing white along its narrow banks. He knelt down and filled the containers one by one, first emptying and rinsing them of their stale contents.
He rose to his feet but found he was in no particular hurry to get back to camp. Looking around, he saw the stump of a tree, neatly sheered off below waist height. He settled onto it as if it was a tall barroom stool, and for a moment he wished he had a glass of ale to accompany the illusion. After the events of the past two days, he thought he deserved a drink or two. Too bad the forest yielded no taverns.
He heard a rustling in the undergrowth, coming from the direction of camp. He leaned his fists on his knees and waited. It was entirely without surprise that he saw Senneth break cover and make her way slowly to where he sat. It was not quite full dark, but she was still a shadowy shape, her face lit faintly by the glow of her hair. She approached him slo
wly, as if uncertain of a welcome.
“The others assure me that you’re just fine, but you’ve been so quiet,” she said in a low voice. “I find myself wondering if you were subjected to torture and just haven’t wanted to say so. Kirra can cure most hurts, you know, if you’re hiding wounds beneath your vest.”
That did make him smile, just a little. “No. A wound to my pride, perhaps, that I let myself be ambushed. But the Lestra offered me no torture, only her views on the world and a chance at salvation.”
“And some strictures about the dangers of consorting with mystics.”
He was able to smile. “Ah. I was already aware of those.”
“Justin was so afraid for you,” she said. “He actually let me comfort him. I think I would have felt I had betrayed him even more than I had betrayed you if we had not been able to free you.”
The smile was easier this time. “With the result that he has now transferred his allegiance to you.”
“Oh no,” she said. “You will always be his hero. It’s just that he doesn’t quite despise me now. Which makes for a pleasant change.”
He couldn’t exactly dispute that, so he introduced a new subject. “How’s your head?” he asked. “After your conjuring of fire this morning.”
She smiled. “Very well, thank you. I think it is not the fire so much as the fury that puts me in such pain. I knew I had to stay very, very calm, or I would lose control of the raelynx—and I wouldn’t be able to face down Coralinda. And I was able to manage it. Though, I don’t know—all the horror may come rushing in on me tomorrow, and I’ll be paralyzed with pain.”
“Well,” he said. “Let me know. I will do what I can to ease it.”
“It eases me just to know you are among us again and safe,” she said quietly. “I was sure—I thought—it seemed she would not have the nerve to harm you, and yet—”