There was no man at the latch-gate at the end of the corridor, but there were three at a small sturdy door set into the Western Tower. One of them, wearing the insignia of a commander of some rank, was leaning casually on the ill-tempered face of a gargoyle made of tarnished metal and wearing a black iron ring through its broad nostrils, set into the door.
“That’s the postern?”
“Yes,” Anghara said, and her voice was barely louder than breath. “The door is stone. From the outside, you can’t see it. It looks as though it is a part of the wall…”
There was a sudden silence, and even as Kieran turned his head he saw Anghara crumple soundlessly and Charo’s arms go around her as she fell. “Out,” Charo said, “like a candle. It’s all been too much.”
Kieran paused for another moment, turning back to the conversation at the gate, and then his lips tightened. “Set her down just inside the door,” he said, “and we can only pray that nobody comes this way until we’re done. Make it fast, Charo; if we make any more noise in Miranei today, we will never get out of here. I’ll take the captain.”
Charo nodded. “The other two are mine.”
The surprise was total, and that instant in which the soldiers could do nothing but gape open-mouthed at the two apparitions who issued forth from the maw of the keep was all Kieran and Charo needed. The captain had time to pull his jewelled dagger out of its sheath, but looked unsure as to what to do with it; all too obviously a lordling of some description. Few men in Sif’s army had leadership positions through court connections rather than merit, but there were some; the captain on postern duty this morning was one of them. Kieran felt no compunction in despatching him, thinking even as he straightened that he had probably done Sif a favor. When he turned, it was to see Charo bending over the second man he had just bested. Kieran could see the guardsman’s chest moving in short, shallow breaths.
Charo seemed curiously reluctant to finish him off.
“What is it?” Kieran said, taking a step closer.
“The other one’s dead, but this is Melsyr,” said Charo. “I only skewered him through the shoulder; it should bleed enough to convince them he put up a fight, but not so much that his life is in danger.” Charo grinned, the dangerous, wolfish grin of a man who had just killed—a man who scented victory. “This is a great heart,” he said. “If I ever meet him again, I swear I’ll bow before him.”
“Get Anghara,” said Kieran, wiping his blade on a corner of the dead guardsman’s cloak and sheathing it. Charo bounded away toward the gate, and returned bearing his foster sister’s limp form in his arms.
“She weighs no more than a Cascin goose,” he said, the indignity of the remark almost an antidote to the anxiety in his voice. “She’s still out; I don’t like the look of it.”
“She’ll be all right,” said Kieran, very gently. “It’s a pity you had to knock Melsyr out…he said he’d give much for a chance to see us take Anghara out of here.”
But when he looked down on Melsyr’s prone form, he saw an echo of Charo’s grin on Melsyr’s face, his eyes open and blazing. “Go,” he said. “I have seen. The Gods bless you.”
Kieran dropped onto one knee beside him, pressing his good shoulder in a gesture of gratitude which spoke louder than any words.
“There is a horse and some blankets in a copse just off the path,” Melsyr said, grimacing with pain. “I made them ready, on the chance you might pass this way. I could not do more.”
“You did enough,” Kieran told him. “More than enough. Will you be all right?”
“They won’t suspect me,” said Melsyr. “Go.”
Kieran rose to his feet. “We’ll meet again,” he said. “Stay well.”
He pulled at the ring threaded through the gargoyle’s nose, and with a groan of protesting hinges the postern, a part of Miranei’s battlements, swung slowly open. When the thick stone door was open enough for him to see a glimpse of trees and mountains, Kieran dropped the ring and glanced about. “We can’t close this from the outside,” he said. “As soon as they get here they’ll know exactly where we went. Come on, we need a head start; they’ll be after us before we know it.”
Charo slipped out first, Anghara still in his arms; Kieran followed. They found the copse easily, and the things Melsyr had left there. He’d chosen a good horse—perhaps it was his own.
“When they discover where we came out, they’ll look for us in the hills,” said Kieran thoughtfully, rubbing the horses soft nose in an overture of friendship. “We ought to be far from here by then.”
“The others don’t know where we are,” said Charo, “and we can’t go far on our own with one horse, two blankets, and a saddlebag of food.”
“You’ll have to go back to the inn,” said Kieran. “That’s where the rest will come, if they manage to get out of the keep. At the very least leave a message that we’ll try to cut across the moors and link with Rochen.”
“We might all stay in the city longer than we wish,” said Charo grimly. “And if they dig into our stories too deeply…none of us will see Rochen again.” And then his eyes cleared again, glowing with a fierce exhilaration. “But we did it!” he crowed, hitting his thigh with a closed fist. “We did it, Kieran! And now…now the real work begins.”
“Yes, and now Sif will scour the country for us with even greater zeal. I don’t know why he held back for so long, but when he finds out what his hesitation has wrought in Miranei, he won’t make the same mistake again. We’ve shown our hand; he knows the only thing we might want with Anghara is to raise her up in his place. And he won’t sit back and let that happen.”
Anghara moaned softly, turning her head. Both youths turned sharply at the sound, in time to see her eyes flicker open.
“Rochen will be at Lucher?” Charo said tersely, without taking his eyes off Anghara. She was very pale, and her skin was drawn tightly across cheekbones which seemed to be made of glass.
Kieran nodded mutely. Charo raised a hand to adjust his cloak’s fastening at his throat. “Get her there,” he said. “I don’t know what that devil did to her while she was in his clutches, but this is a score I’m taking on. Look at her.”
Kieran hadn’t taken his eyes off her since he had first seen her upon the battlements at dawn, unless it was to find a path in Miranei’s labyrinthine courtyards, or raise a sword to clear it before him. Charo’s words had already been written in his own heart.
“She looks too frail to be real,” said Charo.
“We’ll meet you in Lucher,” said Kieran. “Get going.”
Without another word Charo turned and melted into the dappled shadows of the wood.
Anghara still looked impossibly fragile, but her eyes had regained the steadiness he remembered from years before; it was this that gave Kieran the first intimation that the words he had been repeating ever since they had snatched her—she’ll be all right—might have some truth. He had not quite wholly believed them himself.
“We still have a moment or two,” he said. “Do you want to rest a while longer? I think Melsyr left a wineskin…”
She nodded; taking the gesture as an assent both to a few more minutes’ rest and a sip of wine, he rummaged for the wineskin and passed it over, dropping to one knee beside her. She lifted the skin to her lips, took a few swallows, her eyes closed; and then she laid it on her lap and met his gaze, her own eyes once again brimming with tears. “I missed you,” she said, very quietly.
“I promised Feor I would find you,” Kieran said. “I must have scoured all of Roisinan seven times over; we buried Feor last summer, and he went to his grave thinking you lost forever. Where were you, Anghara?”
“Kheldrin,” she said softly, dropping her gaze.
The bluntness of it took him by surprise.
“Kheldrin?” he echoed, when he’d got his breath back. She could almost read his mind—the shock, the doubt, the sense of violation; he was from Shaymir, after all, and, as al’Tamar had admitted, occasional Kheldrini
traders had long been finding their way into Shaymir from the northern fringes of the Kadun Khajir’i’id. The Shaymir folk had seen more of “Khelsies” than the average Roisinani. But even in Shaymir, Kheldrini, when their hosts weren’t bargaining for their silk or amber, were avoided, suspected and feared. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely surprising, the Shaymiri, if anyone, would have glimpsed some of the more arcane aspects of Kheldrini culture. Kieran hadn’t been back to his native land for any length of time since he had been sent to foster at Cascin, but he was a son of Shaymir for all that. And now Anghara, whom he had steadfastly sought over long years throughout what he thought of as the civilized lands, named as her sanctuary what had always been drilled into him as a dark and dangerous country.
“Why Kheldrin, for all the Gods’ sake?” he demanded. “You could have come to us—to me; you must have known we would shelter you. I could have protected you…”
“I was a child, and you were young; you had no base to fight from, as you do today—not then. And remember where I ran from—remember what happened to the last place which gave me sanctuary…”
“How did you survive Bresse?” he asked, his voice husky. “Feor went to seek you, and found only a message: The young queen lives. It was then he sent me after you. I traced you to the river…and the river seemed to have swallowed you. And yet…I was sure you were alive, and waiting somewhere…”
“I was safe, Kieran,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I was safe, and…there were times when…I was even happy. And I learned…so much.”
“Khelsie magic,” he said, too quickly, his reaction a recoil born of pure instinct.
A shadow of pain crossed her face. “We are not so very different from one another,” she murmured. “But Bresse, Kheldrin…it doesn’t matter. It’s all gone, Kieran. There’s a great empty place inside of me where Sif ripped something away; I cannot even reach for Sight any more. I tried, at the battlements, to help you…it would have been easier, less bloody, less violent…but you saw what happened.”
“Does Sif know?”
“I think…Senena knew.” There was a catch in her voice, and Kieran, seeking to distract her from this line of thought, raised her to her feet.
“Come on. It’s time we were moving. They must have organized themselves by now. I’d rather not be here when they discover the open postern.”
She let him hoist her onto the horse and then he vaulted up into the saddle behind her, holding her against him with his left arm. They rode in silence, with Kieran choosing to skirt the edges of the concealing foothills for as long as he could, until the bulk of the castle was almost out of sight. His silence was composed of the peace of finally holding the foster sister lost so long ago, whom he had sworn to find and protect; of calculations as to how best to get Anghara to Lucher, the loyal village; and of contemplating how many of the men he had led into Miranei would walk outside its walls again. He also kept an ear cocked to their rear, waiting for sounds of pursuit. It was Anghara, therefore, who watched the gray expanse of moorland which stretched out at their left; and Anghara who roused in the circle of Kierah’s arm to point at a distant smudge on the horizon.
“Over there,” she said quietly. “What’s that?”
Kieran reined in the horse, narrowing his eyes against a sun which had already leapt almost into the noon zenith, and then drew his right hand over his face in a gesture of unutterable weariness. “Sif,” he said. “It has to be Sif. He’s too early, damn him. We’re too close to Miranei. It is not over yet.”
“Perhaps we should have stayed in the keep,” said Anghara faintly. “And just barred it against him.”
“You do not have the men or the arms to hold it,” said Kieran. “Yet. Your name has been kept alive in Roisinan, but it will still take more to convince them its bearer is likewise. And only then…Right now, there are too many with their loyalties still divided, and their knowledge of the keep is more than enough to hand it to Sif in a siege. Remember, that’s how he achieved Miranei in the first place.”
Anghara looked down onto her folded hands for a moment and bit her lip. But when she glanced up at Kieran, her gray eyes were steady. “And now?” she asked.
“I hope Rochen wasn’t in his path,” said Kieran. “We might be on our own. But I still mean to try and get you to Lucher. At least there they will shelter…”
“No,” she said. “If there is any chance of Sif taking it out on the innocent…no. Where would you look for Rochen and the rest of the men?”
“There should have been a base camp…”
“Is that where the rest of them will make for…if they get out of the city?”
“Yes, but…”
“Let’s find that first. And then we shall see.”
“But we’ll have to ride almost at the army’s heels, across open moors,” said Kieran helplessly.
“Until they get to Miranei and learn what happened there,” said Anghara, “they will not be looking back.”
Kieran said nothing more, but when the smudge on the horizon drew level with them and resolved into Sif’s returning army he urged the horse into a cautious canter, angling into the moors and to the rear of what he thought Sif’s main body of men might be.
The luck held for a span longer; Kieran led them into a shallow curve which skirted Sif’s rearguard, and they flanked the army unobserved. But then it seemed as though their good fortune had come to an abrupt end.
A ring of cold ashes. A broken knife half buried in the turf. Trampled ground. A torn piece of cloth, dark with what looked like blood.
“Yours?” Anghara asked quietly after a moment’s stunned silence in which Kieran had simply sat his horse motionlessly and stared at the evidence before him.
“If any escaped,” he said after another moment, his voice sounding tired and much older than his years, “I will find them; I know where they will have gone.”
He slipped off the horse and crouched closer to what had been the campfire, peering at it.
Anghara, wincing, let herself down as well, rubbing a cramped leg; she let him have his silence. The horse nosed rather hopelessly at the bitter moor grasses at its feet.
The sun slipped slowly across the sky; days were still winter-short, and there wasn’t much daylight left. Anghara walked about for a few minutes to stretch her legs, then returned to lean gratefully against the horse’s warm, hospitable flank. She still felt weaker than a new-hatched chick, and was contemplating calling to Kieran, a few paces away and engrossed in his investigations, to leave off and try instead to find a place where they could stop for the night. But then the silence of the moors was broken by…something. The horse lifted its head, with a snort; Anghara reached instinctively for its nostrils.
“Kieran,” she said sharply, a fraction of a second before his own head came up, and he sprang to his feet, loosening the sword in his scabbard. Horses.
“Take the beast and get back,” he said levelly.
She would have demurred but a look at his face stopped her; she did as she was told. From behind the shelter of the horse’s body, she stared across its back as the thunder of approaching hoof beats metamorphosed into four riders. Four riders wearing the livery of the keep guard.
She heard Kieran’s sword sing free of its sheath, and in the next moment she heard her own voice shouting, “Kieran! Put up! It’s the twins!”
Charo, in the lead, stood up in his stirrups and waved, as though to confirm her words; Kieran’s sword sank down until its point rested on the spongy sward. “Four?” he said softly, sick at heart.
“Kieran!” Charo called out. “Wait!”
Now they could see the newcomers were leading two empty horses, one saddled, the other free, led only by a rope halter.
It wasn’t until they came to an untidy stop almost at Kieran’s feet that the significance of the deserted campsite occurred to them. Adamo swallowed convulsively. But it was left up to Charo to ask, “Are they all dead?”
“Not all,” said Kieran.
“Or there would be bodies.”
Anghara hadn’t thought of that. Of course; there would have had to have been bodies if Sif’s soldiers had simply overrun the camp. Sif’s army wouldn’t have waited to bury the dead. There had to have been survivors.
Adamo straightened in the saddle, casting his eyes around the moors. Shadows were lengthening. “Perhaps we’d better find a place to lie up tonight,” he said. “And I’d rather it wasn’t here. I wouldn’t like to light that cold fire.”
“We brought your Sarevan, Kieran,” said Charo proudly, glancing in the direction of the bare-backed horse he himself had on a lead rein. “We didn’t have time for such niceties as saddling a riderless horse. Sorry.”
“Whose was the other?” Kieran said.
“It’s Daevar’s,” said Adamo quietly. “We lost him to an arrow; we couldn’t tarry to pick him up when he fell.”
“And the others?” said Kieran bleakly.
“They didn’t make it.”
“You were shot at?” Anghara asked him abruptly. “Were you followed?”
They hesitated. It was Charo who answered at last. “The main gates were still closed when we turned to look for the last time.”
“I think they have their hands full tonight at the keep,” said Kieran grimly. “If anyone could organize a posse at this short notice out of the chaos we left behind, it’s probably Sif—but he’s got important deaths to deal with tonight. We may have a few hours.”
“He might think it better to chase after us while we’re still close enough not to tax his men,” said Charo.
“He’s just come back from a campaign,” said Kieran. “All he may know is that five men were seen fleeing the city, one of whom was accounted for by a lucky shot; the escaped prisoner wasn’t with them. Four men aren’t worth the trouble, and he won’t want to lose the important trail in the dark. He’ll come for us tomorrow. We’d better put as many miles between us as we can before then.”
Changer of Days Page 7