“We’ll have one waiting,” Charo promised. And then, the clown in him unquenchable, he glanced down at his boots with comic consternation. “You mean I’ll have to get these wretched things off again? The dainty lad whom I took them off had feet three sizes too small—that’s punishment enough, but pulling them off and on like this is torture. It’s a good thing I won’t have to walk…”
“Shut up, Charo,” Kieran said affectionately. “Get going. Tell Rochen…” he stopped, swallowing a sudden lump. Rochen had been a good friend, a marvellous lieutenant, but there was no guarantee he would be amongst the survivors of that fateful camp, no guarantee he would be receive any message Kieran might think to send him. Anyway, the important things…he’d know without being told. “Go,” he said instead, reaching out to clap Adamo on the shoulder. “The Gods go with you.”
“And my blessing. And my gratitude. And my love.”
Anghara. Somehow she’d clambered out of the coracle and approached unheard; now she stood a pace beyond Kieran, swaying but straight. It had been another abrupt metamorphosis; there was nothing about this figure of moonlight and shadow that recalled a little girl called Brynna. This was all queen, the Kir Hama name mantling her like a cloak. Adamo was the first to move—to take the few steps that separated them, and fall to one knee before her, taking her hand in both of his.
“My queen,” he said, but his head was not bowed, and in his eyes was all the love given to a sister. “We will be here when you return.”
Charo came next, bending over the same hand with the gallant grace that was the essence of him. And then, equally characteristically, he ruined it all with a fierce grin that lit the twilight like a beacon. “Yes! When you come back…it will be to ride into Miranei and claim more than just a dungeon for your own! And I’ll be there to open the gates for you!”
The last man, Bron, had been bound to her through the rescue from Sif’s dungeon, and, before that, through Kieran’s tireless, faithful search. But he didn’t have the bonds the others shared with the young queen. Not for him these intimate farewells. All he could do was kneel before her, as Adamo had done, and reiterate Adamo’s promise—but Anghara raised him, gently, and her smile for him had no less warmth than she had bestowed upon the others. Taking him in; his had been a mad adventure, and he was part of the family now, tied with blood. His own, shed in Anghara’s cause, even now stained his tunic—a blood brother, then, where the rest shared closer ties. But there was always a blood price; the old Gods of Kheldrin had taught her to accept the gift this one had bought.
And then it was over, and Adamo, with a last glance at Anghara, was on his horse, the reins of two of the empty-saddled beasts tied securely to his saddle. The other man, Bron, had the other two. Charo had paused to haul off his stolen boots once again and bundle them up in his cloak, high up on his back, before mounting his own horse, wincing as bare feet slid into cold iron stirrups.
“No point in getting one’s shoes wet when one doesn’t have to,” he offered by way of explanation as he urged his horse past.
Adamo’s mount was already fetlock deep into the river. Bron’s followed. Charo urged his in at a canter, and plunged into the water with a yell only partly muted by his recollection that there might be an army close enough to hear. And then they were all no more than bobbing dark shapes in the moonlit river.
“Come,” Kieran said. “It’s time we were moving.”
The boat was conspicuous on the pale water, but Kieran couldn’t help that—he could only hope Sif’s men weren’t watching their silent progress upstream. Anghara’s farewell seemed to have taken the last of her strength; she lay huddled in the prow of the coracle—asleep or unconscious—while Kieran rowed them up the Hal, toward the forest.
It was full light when Anghara woke, to find the small boat pulled into a stagnant rush-filled pool at the river’s edge. Kieran, stretched out on a piece of dry, sandy ground nearby, was dozing, but sat up as her eyes opened as though pricked by some sixth sense.
“Morning,” he said, smiling warmly. “So far, so good. How are you feeling?”
“Like all my bones have been broken, and reset in the wrong places,” Anghara answered truthfully.
He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes thoughtful. “It won’t do,” he said at last. “You won’t last a week. You need some place to lie low for a few days, sleep safe, eat properly.”
She roused. “Kieran, I told you, I don’t want to put anyone in any danger…”
“Even Sif,” said Kieran stubbornly, “is hardly likely to go bothering every woodcutter for news of you just yet. And we’ll have to leave the river before we get to Tanass Han anyway. There’s an old man who lives at the edge of the forest; his wife bandaged a festering arm for me once. They’ll take you in.” And, when she looked as though she would protest again, he raised a peremptory arm to forestall her. “No arguments,” he said. “Anghara, don’t you understand? You’re riding the ragged edges, even now…Sif is quite possibly only hours behind us, and there is no way we can outrun him, not with you as weak as a day-old kitten. You’ll be safe with old Miro and his wife. It’s just for a few days; you need to get your strength back, and this is a start.”
But Anghara had latched onto something else. “You sound as though you mean to leave me there.”
“I do,” he said, and then had to smile at the expression on her face. “Not to abandon you. But I do need to get us some horses, if we plan on getting any further. The way we are…This bedraggled crew, in this kind of craft, would cause a definite stir in Tanass Han—and you can be sure Sif will hear of that. Our paths now lie on the back roads.”
And so it proved. Miro and Ani, his wife, took in Anghara without demur; Ani had her tucked up in bed within an hour of her arrival, and Anghara, despite her protests, surprised herself by waking almost six hours later, rested and ravenous. There was no sign of Kieran.
He was gone for six days, returning on the seventh with three mismatched horses. Anghara fairly flew at him. “Where have you been? Don’t you know I’ve been out of my mind with worry?”
“Didn’t Miro tell you? Sif hasn’t been seen in this part of the world of late.” Kieran asked, dismounting from the tall bay gelding he rode.
His tone was lightly teasing, and she turned away with a growl of frustration. He was at her side in two long strides. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean to distress you. It’s just that I didn’t want to be seen bargaining for all our horses at any one place…and besides, you look a lot better. The week has done you good.”
She’d glanced up at him, and then down again; there was once again a swirl of what was almost madness in her eyes. But he couldn’t be sure he’d seen it—it was gone when next she met his gaze.
He’d wanted to make her stay another few days, at least—Ani was something of a wise-woman, and her herbs and potions seemed to have done Anghara the world of good. Her face had lost that taut, stretched look, and she had a bit of color in her cheeks; she was still painfully thin, but that would take time to remedy. Still, all of this was only physical; there was a restlessness in her which no herb of Ani’s could heal. And that, in the end, could eventually undo all the good. Anghara was fretting to be on her way, and Kieran finally agreed.
The journey proved even more complicated than Kieran had originally thought. There were more patrols on the roads than ever before, and keeping clear of them was almost impossible; every now and again some path would be blocked and they would have to go around. They doglegged their way northeast, where the mountains which separated Shaymir from Roisinan faded into a broad saddle of low hills, tough to guard and easily accessible on horseback. But Sif kept pushing them further west, keeping them on track for the one place Kieran had hoped to avoid.
Bresse.
It was almost inevitable, in the end, that a last detour brought them within sight of the foothills where Castle Bresse used to stand. Anghara reined in and sat very still, her eyes on the remembered vistas. Kieran
, a pace further, stopped his own horse.
“Anghara…”
She turned those luminous eyes on him—no madness there now, only a quiet, ineffable sorrow. “But I must,” she said. “Perhaps, if we’d passed a day’s ride away from here…but, now, I must. I cannot ride past this place without seeing what Sif has made of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he muttered, but she had already nudged her horse’s head around, and he could only follow.
The years had been kind. Not much was left of the White Tower; but the harshness of the ruin had been softened by ivy, and tiny white mountain flowers had woken to spring and peered shyly through the tall grass. White, like the robes the Sisters of Bresse had worn.
Anghara slipped off her horse and walked stiffly toward what had been the base of the tower. The earth had fallen in over what had to have been the stairway to the tunnel by which she had escaped. The whole layout was irreparably changed, but she went unerringly to stand at what had been the base of the tower’s stairwell and raised her eyes up imaginary stairs into the corridors where she had first learned to ride her wild gifts.
“Ah, Morgan…” she whispered. “Where are you now…”
Feor had said there’d been a message left at Bresse for those who had the senses to hear it. A message which spoke of what had been done here, and in whose name; and a final testament: The young queen lives. Anghara strained with every fiber, every nerve taut with effort, but she could hear nothing except the sighing of the breeze in the tall grass and the occasional thrush among the trees. Perhaps, after all these years, it had faded away…
But even while not hearing Morgan’s voice, Morgan’s words, something deeper in her knew they were still here, they haunted this place and would do so while the world endured. And the pain of being deaf to them tore at her until she sank to her knees amongst the ruins with a cry of utter anguish.
Kieran, who had left her alone with her ghosts, came up at this and knelt beside her. “This was exactly why I didn’t want to pass this way,” he said, his voice filled with compassion, as he readied to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Anghara turned and buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing; she had so much to say she could say nothing at all. Kieran respected the silence, holding her, offering the solace of his presence because he didn’t know how to give her anything else.
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to hear them again?” she asked plaintively after a while, rubbing at her tear-spiked eyelashes.
“I don’t see why not,” Kieran said sturdily, although he had no clue what she was talking about. But it seemed to do the trick. Anghara scrambled to her feet, flicking clinging bits of brush off her knees.
“Come on,” she said, suddenly anxious to leave. “I can’t…I can’t bear this place. There is too much here…that I remember…too much I cannot reach…”
“I agree,” said Kieran, with some alacrity. He didn’t like the look of her. The madness had swirled back into her eyes, gray-blue, as she stared at the ruin of the White Tower, and he hated it when she started sounding fey. It separated them, an almost physical barrier he had no hope of ever scaling or even understanding. He wouldn’t be sorry if the Khelsies told her the damage was permanent and she had to learn to live without the dangerous, fiery gift of her Sight…and then he caught himself with a gasp. These were Sif’s thoughts, Sif’s rationalization for the destruction he had let loose amongst his people—the destruction Kieran had spent the last four or five years fighting against. What am I thinking? he asked himself, aghast. Would I really throw away something that someone I love treasures simply because I cannot understand it?
In one thing, at least, Anghara was right. They would do well to leave this place as soon as they might. It was doing neither of them any good.
There were also patrols in the foothills, but it was too broad a frontier to guard with a soldier on every knoll. They slipped through unobserved, and crossed into Shaymir on Kieran’s birthday, a fact he found oddly symbolic.
Beyond the foothills, the land sloped away into moors not so much different from the one they had left behind in Roisinan.
“I thought this was a desert country,” commented Anghara, who had never been to Shaymir.
“You’ll see plenty of desert soon enough,” Kieran said. The words were vaguely familiar; Anghara groped for them through a fog of confused memories, then recalled ai’Jihaar—ai’Jihaar on the ship. The same words had been said at the beginning of her last exile.
“There’s no need to try and tangle ourselves into the real desert country before we have to,” Kieran said. “You’ve no idea how difficult…” He caught her looking at him with a wry smile. “All right,” he said, with a self-deprecating grin of his own, “so you do have an idea. Still…Let’s stick to the plain while we can; and then I’d like to get us fresh horses for the next stretch, or perhaps even camels…but that depends on how rough the mountain passes might be—”
“Ki’thar’en are very adaptable,” Anghara said.
“What are?”
“I mean…camels. We took them from the coastal plain into the Arad…and then into Khar’i’id…”
She got a blank stare in reply, and decided to leave it. Time enough for geography lessons, if they got through into Kheldrin. And, please the Gods, Kieran would never have to learn what Khar’i’id was…
The Shaymir plains soon petered out into what was only technically not desert—they became dry and dusty, the only grass intermittent hummocks of tall, dry, whispering blades. Squat, spiny cactus-like plants began appearing, and after them it wasn’t long before the harbinger of the real desert, the spicy, sweet fragrance of the tiny desert sage, reached out for them.
Kieran had become increasingly uneasy about Anghara. She wrapped herself in long, brooding silences which would last for hours, riding in a cocoon of solitude which was almost frightening. Once he caught her almost sleepwalking, wandering away from a campfire while his back was turned and stepping into a desert night without any idea as to where she was. That night they’d heard the distant baying of the colhots, desert predators who lived on carrion when they could find it, nevertheless fearless and inventive hunters who never avoided easy prey when it crossed their path. Another time she had sat beside a different campfire—and silent tears ran unheeded down her cheeks as her hand closed on a fistful of dusty sand, letting it trickle out between her fingers.
And tonight, here on the edge of the desert, he’d started awake to a breath of sudden wind which rushed through the still night like a sigh, and what had sounded like a strangled cry. The fire had died to glowing embers and the occasional faint flicker of flame; it was too dark initially to see anything, and Kieran narrowed his eyes to sharpen his night vision. Anghara’s nest of blankets on the other side of the fire was empty.
He scrambled to his feet, groping for his sword. “Anghara! Anghara, where are you?”
Again, a sound; a sob, it sounded like. A sob of pain.
“Anghara!”
He took a few steps away from the fire and all but tripped over Anghara who lay prone on the sand. She clutched a narrow-bladed, black-hafted stiletto in her right hand—for a moment it was unfamiliar, but then memory returned and Kieran recalled seeing it in the package Adamo had rescued from the Calabra inn. A Khelsie dagger.
A long gash on her left forearm oozed blood into the desert sand. Kieran’s heart sank. “What in the name of all the Gods are you doing?” he whispered. “What heathen magic is this?”
She’d opened her eyes and they were twin gleams in the darkness. “It was in the name of the Gods that I did it,” she whispered despondently. “There was a time…but now…look…there’s blood on my sleeve…”
“Of course there’s blood on your sleeve,” he said uncomprehendingly, sheathing his sword and bending down to drape her good arm around his shoulders. “You’ve just laid your arm open. Come on, we’d better clean that up, its full of sand, and I wouldn’t know wha
t to do if it gets inflamed or infected.”
“There was a time,” she said, suddenly and strangely calm, “when there would have been no blood at all. But they didn’t come…al’Zaan, Sa’id-ma’sihai, qa’rum mali hariah?”
And she’d fainted, gone slack in his arms, still clutching the black dagger in a death-grip he couldn’t loosen. He’d left it, then, turning his attention to the wound it had inflicted. It wasn’t deep, but it was long, running from the inside of her elbow to the wrist. She didn’t seem to have sliced any major blood vessels, but there was a significant amount of bleeding nonetheless and much of it had clotted already, forming a crust around which blood still oozed. Kieran cleaned it up as best he could—twice he restarted the bleeding he’d staunched, and eventually had to resort to the emergency pressure points he’d learned from Madec, the healer who rode with his own band. Battle-spawned knowledge he had never thought he might have to use with Anghara Kir Hama, Queen of the Royal Line of Roisinan. He’d used a clean piece of linen to bandage the gash securely. During his ministrations Anghara had not stirred, nor let go of the black dagger. She seemed to be lost in some unpleasant dream of her own, tossing her head from side to side in the uneasy swoon she had fallen into—or was it sleep? Her brow was filmed with a thin sheen of sweat.
They were still far from Kheldrin.
Seated by the fire, staring at Anghara’s restless slumber, Kieran found a small sprig of desert sage beneath his hand and pulled it out of the ground, almost unthinking, rolling the leaves between fingers and palm, releasing the scent into the clean desert night, remembering…and deeply afraid.
Anghara had been wrong. The Gods had come, the old Gods whom Kieran did not know. He had felt their breath on his face when he’d started from sleep. She had called them, and they had come, wild, loose, dangerous—Gods who had not walked on the eastern side of the Kheldrini mountains for more generations than anyone could remember. But they were here now, and she who had summoned them had no strength left to control them. Kieran’s soul was cold as he sensed eager, inhuman eyes on the girl who writhed in the grip of violent nightmare in the pitifully small, safe circle of a dying campfire.
Changer of Days Page 9