The Hidden Queen

by Alma Alexander

  “He went to Sif,” said Feor. “I fear he may have met with a reception that was far from the one he imagined.”

  Kieran hesitated. “Is he…”

  “He lost the eye,” said Feor curtly. “And he went to Sif to exact a kind of revenge. He thought he might have the coin to buy Sif’s favor—news of Anghara.”

  Kieran’s fingers tightened on Feor’s arm. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s alive,” said Feor tiredly. “It’s all I know.”

  “Where is she?”

  Feor met Kieran’s troubled eyes with a steady gaze. “I am too old a hunter,” he said. “She’s lost in the wilderness, in exile in her own land. She has been to the brink of death and survived, but Sif will not rest until he has taken her. You are all I can wield against the king, Kieran. You are the hawk I will loose to search for her.”

  PART 3

  Kheldrin

  13

  The only rumor which reached Anghara’s ears when she had passed through Halas Han on her way down-river was that Cascin no longer existed. Both her visions of the fall of Bresse and the sparing of Cascin had been equally vivid; one had come to pass almost exactly as she had seen it happen in her mind. There was no reason not to trust the other. Cascin must be standing, and safe. But she paused a moment and cast a longing glance up the road which led across the bridge of Halas Han toward the house where she had spent what now seemed the golden days of her childhood. Even if Cascin was as it had always been, it was the one place Anghara could not go. Sif knew everything. He knew all about Cascin. It was no longer sanctuary—and, worse, it was entirely possible that even if it had been spared so far, Sif might decide to destroy it as he had Castle Bresse, for the simple reason of having given her safe haven. No, Morgan had been right. Her only chance was to seek Sanctuary with Nual, at least for another year or two. There was little a girl of fourteen could do to stand against a crowned king with loyal armies.

  But Nual was a small God. There were temples to Kerun in nearly every village; and most people could find a Tower of Avanna somewhere within a day’s ride of their home. Nual’s Sanctuaries were scattered and few, and always on or near water. Anghara knew of only three. One was on the Mabin Islands, south of the Tath border, too far away to be of any practical use, even if it wasn’t in what was technically enemy territory. Another was in Shaymir, near the source of the River Shay which fed their great lake. It could have been a good choice, if Anghara hadn’t fled south and, more to the point, if she didn’t have to creep almost under the shadow of Miranei to reach the Brandar Pass, which would itself doubtless be under guard. The alternative was making for the eastern passage and then having to face the length of the barren Shaymir plains or trying to trek through the mountains. Without friends or supplies such a venture would be doomed from the start. That left the third, on the promontory beyond the port of Calabra. It was a long way from Halas Han, just like the others, but it had the distinct advantage that it could be reached simply by keeping to the River Tanassa. All Anghara had to do was keep a low profile and catch the right river boats.

  She boarded the first one at dawn of her second morning at the han. She had no way of knowing that Kieran, who had arrived late the previous evening, was asleep in a room in another wing, almost close enough for him to hear if she called his name. Feor was already on the river and due to arrive at the han the next day. Morgan had sent her off with a tidy sum of money which would be sufficient to keep her for a short while, as well as a little set of pipes she had been learning how to play. She would never be Keda, but her small talent at the pipes, together with the blessing of a good, clear soprano might prove a help in securing an occasional meal or lodgings until she could reach sanctuary. She was a vagabond queen, after all; it was not entirely inappropriate for her to sing for her supper. But she did not much feel like making music in the first few days after Bresse, and the boatman at Halas Han seemed content enough with her coin.

  He did not go far, merely until the first landing in Bodmer Forest, where several stewards of forest holdings waited to pick up cargo bespoken from Halas Han. Anghara disembarked together with the bales, ignored by nearly everybody; she was the only thing left unclaimed on the pier when everyone had loaded their consignments onto carts and traps and trundled away on narrow forest roads. The home of the man who plied the ferry across the river and doubled as landing overseer could not be called a han, by any stretch of the imagination. But the ferryman’s wife served a hot stew for which she would accept no payment and, seeing as there would be no boat down-river until the next day, allowed Anghara a small pallet by the hearth. She was a quiet woman, who did not ask where this strange solitary girl was going; but she did come out the next morning, wrapped in her faded shawl, and watched as Anghara boarded a narrow river-runner bound for Tanass Han. Anghara gave her a grateful smile for her unquestioning hospitality, and the tired face of the river woman was transformed as she smiled back and waved her on her way.

  Anghara was one of two passengers on the boat, and had to share cabin quarters with what looked like a lapsed priest of Kerun. His hair was suspiciously coarsely chopped, as though his priest’s braid had been hacked off not too long ago, with a rather blunt instrument. She tried keeping her distance with silence, but he became increasingly persistent in his attentions as the days wore on. She even went so far as to approach the skipper of the small boat, asking if there wasn’t somewhere else she could sleep.

  “Sorry, little love,” he said apologetically. “If I had a spot to myself I’d offer it you, but there’s three of us crew sleeping on top of each other as it is. And he paid his dues, just as you. But if he tries anything with you, you call me, you hear? I’ll see that he stays decent.”

  “I’d almost rather take my chances with the crew,” said Anghara, with some desperation.

  The skipper grinned, showing teeth that were green with decay. “Believe me, little love, one or two of us crew aren’t much of a substitute. I’m nice enough, but that Squint-eye…I wouldn’t trust him closer’n an arm’s length if I were you.”

  No sooner had he left her than the ex-priest was at her side in the prow. “Telling tales?”

  “Just insurance,” she said, looking at him coldly and stepping away.

  “Now, don’t be like that. We’ve still days to go before we reach landing, and we’ve only each other to talk to. You can’t seriously think you’d find more in common with that yob of a river rat than you would with me? I can see you’ve had something of an education, just by the way you speak…”

  “Leave me alone!” cried Anghara. “I mean it! The last time someone tried to harm me or someone I loved I…” I put one of his eyes out. But she could hardly say that. For one thing, it was not something she was proud of; for another, the priest would probably laugh at her, in which case…she might well have to put her words to the test. Her eyes were hooded, opaque. “Leave me alone…or take your chances.”

  “Dangerous, are you?” he said, the tone of his voice mocking her dire implications, and laid a hot hand on her arm. He jerked it back in an instant, as though he had laid hold of a burning ember. “Ouch! What was that?”

  The aura flared and died around Anghara’s head, almost too fast for the priest to have seen it. She smiled at him coolly as he snatched up his hand to stare at his unmarked fingers.

  “Just a sample,” she said. “Stay away from me.”

  He did, for two nights; then the temptation proved too much for him. Anghara woke on the third night to feel trembling fingers fumbling with the laces at her throat. Her first impulse was to protect not herself, but the king’s seal which she still wore beneath her bodice; as her eyes flew open she could only think of exposure for Dynan’s daughter and not of profane fingers reaching to cup the curve of her breast. She cried out, lashing out with power that was barely controlled, even as she brought up her hands to physically ward off the assault. The lascivious priest only had time for a strangled yelp of surprise before he was flun
g away from her as though by a blow, colliding with the opposite wall with a thump and fetching up crumpled against the far side of the cabin.

  The commotion brought the crew, one with a burning torch, the skipper with a drawn dagger glinting in the flickering light. He surveyed the scene with something like dis gust, but he was not too far away from sympathy as he glanced at Anghara’s fellow passenger, who lay groaning in a heap where he had fallen. His eyes glinted as he turned and took in Anghara’s slender hands fumbling to retie the laces around her throat.

  “What in the Nether Hell did she hit me with?” the priest kept on repeating, rubbing his tender jaw. At least one tooth appeared to be loose.

  “Do I have to post a guard outside this place?” demanded the skipper gruffly, not in the best of tempers. “What’ll it take for you to mind your own business? I run a river boat, not a whorehouse; the lady paid to be taken down-river, just as you, and she’s under my protection as long as she’s on this boat. So are you, so far; don’t try any more tricks, else I withdraw it and dump you in the river to cool off. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Very,” muttered the other passenger venomously.

  The skipper sheathed his dagger in the knife scabbard at his waist, which obviously never left his side, even when he was asleep. He crossed to where Anghara sat huddled in her cloak, wide-eyed, her hands still at her throat, and bent over her, reaching out to cup her face in one calloused hand—it was a gentle gesture, but not an entirely friendly one. The palm was too hot and damp on her skin. “I’ll be just outside,” he said, and the voice was caressing. He patted her cheek in a manner that was almost possessive, and went out, signalling with an abrupt jerk of his head for the other two to follow.

  “Is that it? Are you his piece?” hissed the ex-priest from across the cabin, making no move to approach Anghara again.

  She fought the impulse to scream she was no one’s “piece” and simply lay back, wrapping herself into Kieran’s cloak as though seeking strength. It was obvious this boat was no longer safe; she had taken it because it had been the first one leaving, but it had been a mistake. She needed the anonymity of crowds, not the concentrated attention she was getting in this situation. She would have to find a way to get off the boat, at the next stop for water, perhaps, and try to find alternative transport for the rest of the journey.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. The ex-priest left her alone in that he didn’t try to lay hands on her again; but now the skipper made her the focus of his attention. It was becoming increasingly clear he could well succeed where the other had failed, if only because he was the absolute law on his boat and there would be no recourse to a higher authority. At the next forest pier, Anghara stepped off the boat and lost herself in the mercifully dense crowd. Three or four boats had arrived more or less simultaneously, some larger than her own and laden with cargo which was being briskly unloaded without regard to any kind of order. The result was considerable confusion as stewards squabbled over what belonged to which estate. Anghara made enquiries at the other boats, but as luck would have it every single one would be continuing upriver, of no use to her.

  “There’s another landing on the next bend,” one of the skippers said to her. “It’s quite busy; the next one down after that is Tanass Han, and there’s always boats in and out of there. You don’t like the look of yours for another day or two until Tanass, do you, eh?” He grinned, revealing teeth every bit as green as her own boat’s captain. It might have been something they all chewed, because the man spat something green and noxious into the water. “I don’t blame you, lass, the Sanda’s master’s a shifty lot. What made you pick him?”

  “But how can I get to the other landing without a boat?” asked Anghara, ducking the question by asking one of her own.

  “It’s not too far if you’re not averse to a little walking,” the captain said. “And you can always try and get a lift with one of them nobs, if they ever untangle themselves.” He gave a gleeful chuckle; one could easily conclude that the chaotic unloading was not entirely by accident. The river men took amusement where they could, their sense of humor notoriously unpredictable. “I could fix that for you, if you like. I know one or two of them well.”

  But Anghara thought she had better arrange her own lifts. She was beginning to be wary of these river connections. If the captain intimated she might have something worth taking, it wasn’t inconceivable that an outwardly upright steward of a noble estate might be persuaded to deliver his “passenger” into the hands of someone whose acquaintance he would later deny to his grave, for a share of the anticipated loot. Many noble houses were notoriously loath to provide a decent wage when it came to household staff.

  As it happened, an elderly steward who had only two small bundles to collect had the room and the inclination to offer some of his extra space to a paying passenger. He was leaving almost immediately and Anghara managed to give her particular skipper the slip without too much trouble, especially as she was leaving him in possession of full fare for an incomplete journey. She paid her passage with the steward both with good coin and with the obligation to listen to his long and often rambling discourses and moans about his family and master, both of whom, it would seem, had a lot to answer for. The journey to the next landing wasn’t long, but it seemed endless, and Anghara was profoundly grateful when she eventually reached the place. She scrambled down from her perch with her head aching violently, thanked her escort with as much graciousness as she could muster under the circumstances, and went down to the water.

  For once, luck was with her. No less than three boats were leaving in the morning, and she could take her pick. On one she would have been the only passenger, but she had learned the senselessness of this the hard way. She opted instead for boatful of river farmers and their buxom wives, screaming children and squealing livestock in the shallow hold. Comfort was minimal, but it would do until Tanass Han, and if this was anything like Halas Han, she would have a rather larger choice when she got there.

  “Where are you going on your own, and so young?” one of the farmers’ wives, with a wriggling toddler on her lap, asked the next morning as Anghara took an empty seat next to her. The woman didn’t mean to pry, but gossip was life’s blood to the farm folk, and Anghara was a new face.

  “To family,” Anghara replied, rather rudely, but she really didn’t want to be the object of too much curiosity.

  But her companion would not be deterred. “Is it far?”

  “A village, near Calabra,” said Anghara, inventing. This was nothing new, she had already had at least two different lives. More, if she counted the tales she had spun while on this latest odyssey. Anyone trying to follow in her footsteps could hardly be blamed if he thought that not one, but at least five or six solitary girls had been seen travelling down-river, all going to different destinations.

  The woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Far. Have you come a long way? Was there not someone who could come with you? Times are not as they once were; it can be dangerous now for a young child to travel alone.”

  Anghara could have answered that she’d already found that out, but bit her lip.

  “Where do you come from, then? How come your parents allowed you to go alone like this?” persisted the young mother, bouncing her own progeny vigorously in her plump lap.

  “My parents are dead,” said Anghara, quite truthfully. “My father was killed in battle against Tath.”

  “Poor child,” the woman said instantly, reaching to touch Anghara’s cheek in compassion. “War. Leave it to men to mess things up. Look at what happened to you. I wonder how many other families…Is someone expecting you at Calabra?”

  “Yes,” said Anghara. That was a lie. But the woman swallowed truth with falsehood and made no distinction.

  “They should have come to meet you,” she said decisively, “at least as far as Tanass Han. It’s criminal, letting a child travel by herself in these times. I’ve a good mind to ask my Rogan…”


  Anghara made a mental note to get as lost as possible in Tanass Han, lest the woman ask “her Rogan” anything at all and Anghara find herself prisoner of these well-meaning people to whom meddling was in the blood. Quite aside from being found out in her lies, others might pick up the trail, and quite soon Sif’s soldiers could be paying an unwelcome visit to Rogan and his family.

  She managed to escape without major trouble, from Rogan as well as other familiar faces. One night she had a narrow squeak when she resorted to her pipes in one of the han’s lesser common rooms and had to step out quickly when she recognized the skipper of the boat she had abandoned on the forest landing above Tanass Han. She waited until his boat had gone before emerging from hiding to try and find a boat to take her on to Calabra, finally trading one of Morgan’s silver florins for passage on a large cargo vessel carrying skins and furs in addition to a handful of passengers.

  She was wary of attracting attention by asking for a cabin for herself, although she ached for some time alone. The old woman she was sharing with had a passion for reading fortunes, and was appallingly bad at it; she read Anghara’s palm and prophesied marriage within the year to a “nice young man with a bit of land—nothing too grand, mind, just a little plot.” There would be five children…no, six. And as for her past, Anghara was cast as one of three children, her mother was a Shaymir woman, and she had lived all her life in Bodmer Forest, this being her first trip out into the world. The old lady even had the gall to foretell shipping disaster for the captain, who threatened, entirely good-naturedly, to have her thrown off his ship at the next landing. She was a nuisance and an old fraud but she was likeable enough. Even though she snored abominably at night, at least she was a safe travelling companion who often found business—and clientele—on other parts of the ship, thus affording Anghara some of the privacy she craved. Then, at least for a brief while, she could drop her guard and relax into being herself.