Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga)

by Doranna Durgin

  "Perhaps," Ehren said, with no promise in the words at all. He rose to his feet. Laine hastened to follow, with some vague realization that remaining seated when the T'ieran was about to rise was not the thing to do.

  Ehren went one further, and offered his hand to Sherran.

  Laine didn't really expect her to take it. But she did.

  ~~~~~

  Laine rolled over to his side and punched up the feather pillow beneath his cheek.

  Crisp sheets, soft pillows, a semi-private chamber with its own tiny privy…they all underscored the obvious truth: Laine was a very, very long way from home.

  As if he hadn't seen enough to drive that fact home already, with the lengthy and sometimes boisterous evening meal, or the after-gather in the casual sitting room— one with instruments placed casually around the room, and no lack of those willing to pick them up and play.

  They'd met Grannor relatives, summer home residents, and a significant number of suitors for the T'ieran's hand. None of those men seemed to be trying very hard; it was almost like they were playing out roles in a game. They'd also met any number of servants, some of whom took breaks to contribute to the singing. And Shette had already fallen in with several girls, all of whom who were filling her with their notions of true Clan Grannor fashion and deportment.

  She'll be all right here, Laine had realized with some surprise. And if he worried about her discretion…he was beginning to think there was no need. He'd walked by once as the girls broke into fits of giggles over Ehren, and Shette glanced at him with eyes dancing, but her mouth closed.

  He didn't think he fit in nearly as well. Not with his odd-colored eyes; not with his Dreams. Not with the need to do something— and something more than merely fighting his Dreams while Ehren was off fighting battles on his own.

  They're battles Ehren knows how to fight and you don't. He flopped over to his stomach. The bed was too big; maybe that was the problem. Or too comfortable. Or too quiet, without the familiar sound of companionable breathing from the other bed in this room— the one Ehren would occupy once he quit roaming the night. Shette already slept soundly in an adjoining room— the door open at her request, and only a heavy curtain between them.

  Unaccountably, it made him feel more like a big brother than he had for a long time.

  Awash in comfort, breathing in the cool breeze from the wide, unshuttered window, Laine finally fell asleep.

  Straight into True Dreaming.

  Dannel and Jenorah. The black and red colors of Grannor, now-recognizable summer home around them, the obvious importance and status of Jenorah's family... struggles made sweeter by Laine's inner knowledge that the lovers would win their battle to be together.

  And then the Dreams took him deeper, past the place where he could watch and into the place where he simply was, spitting him out to live Benlan's death anew— into a yard full of desperate Guards who first fought for their lives, and then laid them down to protect their king.

  Ehren! Ehren, I need you!

  Benlan, watching his men and women die before him and knowing they were lives given in vain. Warm blood slicked down his arm…his sword slipped in his weakening grip. Ambush, who knew I was here— who has the magic to overcome Varien's protections? But it was too late, and the smell of blood was all around him; he took another cut to his belly and suddenly had no strength. Gut wound... no hope for that. Ehren!

  The sword tipped out of his hand as Benlan/Laine stumbled to his knees. Someone grabbed his hair from behind, and pulled his head back, arching his neck for the final cut. Death touched him, ran its cold fire through the fatal wounds he felt as much as Benlan had. His world was already fading, but his awareness of something else was growing. Someone was watching. Someone making sure of his death, from afar. Laine knew he'd be able to see who it was, knew it, if only he could turn around somehow...

  No, someone was screaming. Not the hoarse cries of men in pain, but a shriller, frightened sound. Familiar— and even annoying.

  Shette.

  Laine suddenly became aware of the hard, cold floor at his back, and that Shette was screaming right in his face, shaking his shoulders so hard his head went bump-bump-bump against the floor.

  "Stop that," he gasped, as best he could when his teeth were clacking together.

  She released him immediately, and threw herself on his chest, sobbing.

  "Shette," he said, dazed, lifting one arm to pat her back, "What's wrong?"

  She only held him tighter, unable to speak.

  It wasn't enough to keep him there. Nor was the commotion outside the room. Without something in this world to grab his attention, someone shouting at him nose to nose, Laine couldn't fight the familiar fugue…couldn't hold on to the here and now.

  Shette seemed to sense it; she raised herself and said, "Laine, no— come back!" And then, when the disturbance at the doorway increased, "Ehren! Ehren, help me, I can't get him back!"

  There was no denying Ehren, who was suddenly there. "Laine." His voice was sharp but calm. "Laine."

  Not…enough…

  But when Ehren lifted him up by the front of his shirt and slapped him repeatedly, shouting at him the whole while, he cut through that quicksand of hazy reality. Laine blinked, and opened his mouth...

  And suddenly things erupted into chaos again. Ehren disappeared, ripped away from him, and Laine thunked back to the floor, this time making a half-hearted attempt to soften the landing. Shette screamed again, a background to the punctuation of hard blows against flesh. Only this time, she was screaming Ehren's name.

  Laine rolled over to his knees, shaking his head, surprised to find it was actually clearing. Then someone landed on him and he sprawled face-first. If only people would stop dropping him—

  "Hold!"

  The T'ieran's crystal clear command brought instant silence. Even Laine froze beneath the burden he'd been trying to shed.

  For a long moment, there was silence…until Shette sniffled. Loudly.

  Sherran's voice was unyielding and hard. "Sem, get off of Laine and see how badly Sandy's hurt. Ehren, I hope you have an explanation for this."

  Finally, Laine was able to turn around— and if he wasn't on his feet, he was at least sitting up. Shette cringed against the doorway between their rooms, dressed in nightgown and tears, her frightened gaze fixed on the T'ieran. Ehren, standing tightly erect and looking nothing but dangerous, had a red-and-black dressed form crumpled at his feet and a cut on his cheek. Sem, the man who'd been on Laine, staggered over to check his injured partner.

  "I'm waiting," Sherran said tightly. "You're a guest here, Ehren, but if it pleases you to think about your answers in detention, I would be glad to oblige."

  "It wasn't his fault!" Shette blurted. "They attacked him from behind— what was he supposed to do?"

  Ehren raised an eyebrow at the T'ieran. Laine read it as defiance and didn't understand why Ehren didn't just tell her what had happened.

  He, for one, wanted to know.

  Sherran gave Ehren a long look and turned to her guard. "Sem?"

  Sem prodded Sandy's shoulder. "Dislocated, I think, ma'am."

  She took a deep breath, sent Ehren another sharp look. "It could have been worse, I'm sure. Unless someone tells me exactly what happened here, it will get worse." She targeted Shette. "Your brother looks like he just fell on his head, your friend Ehren doesn't feel cooperative— and you look like you saw it all. Talk."

  Shette wiped her wrist under her nose, looking nervously from Ehren to the T'ieran. "It was one of his Dreams. Ehren, I thought he was dying, and he wasn't breathing and I got him back, but then I couldn't keep him the way you can, and then when you got him, those two jumped you from behind—"

  Sherran shook her head, making an abrupt cutting motion with both hands. "That makes remarkably little sense. I don't suppose I should be surprised. Sem, report!"

  Sem blinked, still looking as dazed as Laine felt. "You told us to protect these two as if they were high
-ranked Grannor. We heard the young lady screaming, and when we got here, this fellow was on top of her brother. Of course we moved to protect him."

  "Ehren was helping!" Shette cried.

  Sherran rolled her eyes, and the corners of Ehren's mouth broke a smile.

  Laine rubbed a hand over one eye. "I'm confused, and I was here."

  "Ma'am, I swear to you we only acted to protect him," Sem started anxiously, and Sherran cut him off with a short shake of her head.

  "Be at ease, Sem. You acted in honor. If Sandy can walk, take him to the surgeon. If not, get help."

  Sem nodded, prodding Sandy to his feet with a spate of grunts and murmured encouragements. When they'd limped out the door together, Sherran crossed her arms and leaned back against the door frame. "No lack of excitement with you folks around, I can see. Now, since it seems the immediate crisis is over, do you think you can explain this so a simple T'ieran can understand?"

  Ehren said dryly, "I expect we'll manage."

  Gingerly, Laine climbed to his feet. "What time is it? What are you doing up, Ehren? Are Shette and I the only ones who actually went to sleep tonight?"

  "It seems that way," Sherran said. "Though it shouldn't surprise you to hear a T'ieran's duties often keep her working until the small hours of the morning." She sent Ehren a meaningful look.

  He shrugged. "I was out with the boys. Just on my way up."

  Sherran looked at Laine. "And you were sleeping in your clothes, and you had a Dream." She managed to put the correct amount of emphasis on the word, although she clearly had no idea what it was all about. "Fine. Shette, you, at least, are properly dressed for sleep. I suggest you get back to it. And you two— since you've managed to chase away the thoughts of sleep I had so carefully cultivated, you may accompany me to the study, where we'll have some wine and you'll make clear what happened here. I suspect it has more relevance to your sudden appearance in Therand than you've told me."

  "I don't know that that's true," Ehren said. "Consider it as an unrelated bonus."

  "Nonetheless," Sherran told him, and left it at that, the command implicit as she left the room, as brusque and energetic as she'd been on horseback, so much earlier in this long day.

  Laine exchanged a glance with Ehren, who gave him a sudden and totally unexpected grin before following the T'ieran out the door.

  ~~~~~

  Sherran slowly turned the wine glass in her hand, resting it thoughtfully against the curve of her lower lip. If Ehren had been forced to guess, he would have classified her expression as slightly embarrassed.

  "I may have an answer of sorts," she said, and downed the last swallow of sweet red wine, reaching for the bottle. Ehren moved it closer to her, across the short, round table between them, and settled back into his well-stuffed chair, resting his ankle over his knee.

  Laine, the third of the trio, looked less relaxed; his attention was riveted on Sherran. "You know why I didn't fall to Solvany's curse?"

  She'd listened attentively while Ehren and Laine— but mostly Ehren— told her about Laine's Sight and Dreams. Ehren told her they tended to hold to him too tightly, but deliberately omitted the details of those dangerous Dreams.

  Benlan's death was not Therand's business.

  Neither of them had expected Sherran not only to accept the fact of the Solvan curse so quickly, but to come up with answers they didn't have. Not that she was making it easy; she seemed to be weighing how much she, too, wanted to reveal. She wiped her finger up the side of the glass to catch a sliding drop of spilled wine, and absently licked the wine from her finger. Then she looked squarely at Laine and said, "We cursed the Solvans, you see."

  Ehren got it first, and snorted, shaking his head. Therand's ruling line, cursed. Solvany's ruling line, cursed. And Laine is a son of both.

  Sherran looked at him and shrugged. "It was the fashionable thing to do at the time."

  Ehren couldn't help it; he laughed out loud.

  Sherran kept her reaction to a smile, though it held true humor, wry as it was. "A hundred years ago, things were pretty tense. There were factions in both countries that wanted to remove the Barrenlands so we could change our cold hostilities into active war. Wiser heads prevailed— and apparently came up with the same way to appease the warmongers."

  If the smuggling had already been present those generations earlier, an open border would hardly have been desirable— no more so than a year ago. Or now. Those involved would lose control of their black market goods. Whatever they are.

  Laine stared blankly at nothing, still grasping to understand. "The Solvan children I keep seeing," he said. "The ones who always seem so oblivious to the world around them, like their minds were trapped somewhere else..."

  Benlan's firstborn. The son who hadn't survived...

  Sherran nodded. "Some have been stillborn; some simply seem to have no wit at all. I'm not surprised the Solvans haven't figured it out yet," she said to Ehren. "They've only had a couple generations— and since the affected children are in the same family line, it's natural they'd think it was in the blood. Which it is, I suppose, in a way. But we knew there was something going on a long time ago— to have so many firstborn turn out blind? It didn't affect the T'ierans who'd already started their families before they took office, of course— and you'll notice the rest of us now avoid starting our families while in office. Why do you think there are so few of the eligible Grannor here? At the moment, they're simply not interested in me."

  Ehren raised an eyebrow at her and let it go unaccompanied by comment. Far too easily discouraged, those men.

  Laine still seemed to be chewing it over. "So from my father's side I should be witless, and from my mother's I should be blind. And instead I have Sight and get chased by Dreams."

  "It makes sense, in a strange sort of way," Sherran said. "Mind you, Laine, I think you came out lucky. There's no predicting how those curses could have resonated together."

  "Are you going to give Ehren passage through the Barrenlands?" Laine asked abruptly. His dazed look had vanished, and turned intent. Ehren wasn't sure that boded well.

  Sherran, too, regarded him somewhat warily. "Why?"

  "Because I want to go with him."

  "Laine..." Ehren started immediately, while Sherran's fine eyebrows rose. Laine cut off both their protests.

  "Shette can stay here," he said. "But Ehren— the ring— you remember what I said about triggering the Dream..."

  "That's too dangerous," Ehren said, doing his own share of interrupting. Sherran instantly went still, like a stalking cat.

  "Maybe you wouldn't think so if you were the one being chased by these Dreams, and never able to see who's killed you, over and over again! Using your ring is the only way I can think of to get through them. Besides, after what I saw tonight, I think I can lead you to whoever killed Benlan."

  Instantly, Ehren forgot the other complications of this trip— the increasing border trouble, the military activity in Loraka, the unusual interest in his activities— and especially the trouble that waited for him in Kurtane. He stiffened, dropping his foot to the ground to shift forward and gifted Laine with his most intent stare.

  "Tell me," he said. He sensed more than saw Sherran's acute interest in his reaction, but ignored her for Laine.

  Laine shook his head. "I can't," he said. "I... didn't quite see it yet. But if I went all the way with the Dream..."

  Sharp disappointment flooded Ehren. "Do you think Shette was frightened out of her senses for nothing, Laine? Will it do either of us any good if you see something, and then die without passing it on?"

  Sherran cleared her throat. It was a deliberate noise. When Ehren looked at her, it was with his priorities sharply established— he was a Solvan King's Guard, with his own agenda— and she reacted accordingly, with more than a touch of the formality that had gone by the wayside for this late night discussion. "No one is cleared for passage through the Barrenlands yet," she said. "No one has given me a reason to make tha
t decision yet."

  "What suffices as reason?" Ehren shot back at her.

  She didn't miss a beat. "Who are you?" she said. "Why are you in my lands? What do you want? And how did you take down two of my own without bearing the scars from it?"

  "I'm a son of Solvany," he said, matching her demands with a quiet tone. "I'm a King's Guard— Benlan's guard. And not so long ago, I returned from hunting his killers to discover that most of the court wants to put Benlan's death behind it."

  "But not you," she murmured, watching him with that sharp gaze.

  "No. Not me. So they sent me off to be less inconvenient, and they probably hoped I'd be killed along the way. Instead I've found the trail I was looking for all along. Now you tell me if I'm wasting my time, because if I am, I'll leave immediately for the long road to Kurtane."

  "I see," Sherran said, taking it all in stride. "Not a Son of Solvany so much as the Son of Solvany. In your way."

  He tipped his head. "The bastard son, perhaps."

  She took a measured sip of wine, sat back in her chair, and watched him— taking her time to respond, because she was the T'ieran, and it was her time to take. "This explains what happened to Sandy and Sem."

  He crossed his arms, waiting…patience flagging.

  She smiled quiet sympathy, a genuine expression. "Before I can make a decision, I need to know if what you've found— if what you're involved in— affects my country."

  "It might." Not that he had any intention of telling her Solvany's business, and she should know it. "There are signs of serious unrest and warmongering in Loraka. You must know about the problems at your border— you may not know that the same thing, only to a greater extent, is happening at the Solvan-Loraka border as well. And it's possible—"

  "Ehren…" Laine shifted uncomfortably.

  Ehren shook his head. This information, Sherran needed to have. "It's possible," he repeated, "that there's a tricky pass in the middle of the Barrenlands. Both our countries could be at risk if the Lorakans learn of it, and I have reason to believe at least some of them have. Imagine soldiers keeping us busy at the Lorakan borders while the bulk of their army comes at us from the Barrenlands."