Changer of Days

by Alma Alexander

  “Favrin undoubtedly has other things on his mind,” said Kieran. “But I think the respite won’t last. The man is nothing if not a ferociously good organizer. Sooner or later he will remember you. He may or may not think you pose a serious threat—but, whatever he decides, it would be in his interest if you never reached Roisinan. And he knows you’re still in his land, and in his power, should he choose to stretch it forth. This time he gave you no promises.”

  “You think he’ll come after us?”

  “Maybe not just yet,” Kieran said, feeling absurdly young and innocent; he almost expected the lanky ghost of Feor to emerge at any moment and rap him over the knuckles for an ill-considered analysis. “Right now he’s in the same situation Sif was when he swept into Miranei. For all that Favrin inherited lawfully and Sif simply took what had been offered—both are forced to pay attention to home base first, before they can think about striking further afield. Then again, Favrin will never get this chance again—Sif away from Roisinan, and you in no position to offer him serious opposition. What is it?” he said, with a smile, as he saw her watching him with her head tilted thoughtfully on one side, the corners of her lips turned up, but her eyes glittering with what looked suspiciously like tears.

  She held out her hands and he stepped closer and took them, searching her eyes.

  “I missed you,” she said unexpectedly.

  It woke an echo in him, a painful one. The words were innocuous enough in themselves but she had said them to him once before—in a bloody dawn on the battlements of Miranei, a day which seemed a lifetime away. They were different people now, their earlier selves so far removed as to almost be creatures of myth. But Kieran shied away from the memory, shutting it away, his smile widening a fraction as he raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Are hostilities over, then?”

  She laughed out loud, squeezing his fingers; her mouth opened to say something when, suddenly, the small tin kettle they hung above the fire boiled over with an angry hiss of steam and they both whirled to rescue it. Anghara was more tired than she would admit, and began nodding off over the mug of lais tea, made from supplies eked out all the way from Kheldrin. She was asleep almost before Kieran gently removed the mug from her hand and wrapped her into a blanket beside the dying fire. This, Kieran reflected wryly as he went to check the horses before he too turned in, was getting to be a habit—sabotaged yet again at what might have easily been a critical juncture. Another wasted moment. Kieran was beginning to assemble a library; he would flip through his collection before going to sleep, sparing a moment of regret for all the might-have-beens he held so gently in his memory.

  Anghara was quiet at breakfast, almost as if their reconciliation had never taken place. But it was soon apparent to Kieran that this was a new kind of quiet. What had gone before had been a silence of pique, born of brooding frustration. This was different, deeper, with a pain Kieran couldn’t initially understand. He sensed a deep foreboding, and recognized the silence of anticipation. And then, mapping out their journey in his mind, he suddenly understood. The Ronval River lay squarely across their path; not so very long ago, its banks had been soaked with the blood of two armies. On this battlefield Anghara’s father had been slain, surrendering his crown into the waiting hands of his firstborn son.

  Anghara’s wanderings had never taken her so close to this spot. Perhaps she would have reacted differently had she not come here from the heart of Algira, from the palace where the Rashin clan’s desire for the crown of Roisinan had wrought her father’s death in its defense. It was new again in Anghara’s breast, and the pain was sharp, the sharper for being an old pain whose true magnitude was being felt only now.

  Kieran tried to work out another path, in the first flash of comprehension, but there were no real alternatives but to cross into Roisinan over the haunted ground of the old battlefield. Everything else would take too long. They needed time to escape across the border, time to reach Roisinan and lead Anghara’s army to Miranei before Sif returned from Kheldrin with his own. And while Kieran never doubted there would be an army waiting, he was far from sanguine about its size or its abilities compared to the one it would have to face. The stars had turned in this circle, had offered Anghara this chance. If it was wasted, it might never come again.

  “I will be with you,” Kieran said into Anghara’s silence, without touching her, without looking at her. He only turned his head when he felt the almost electric power of her gaze, to meet a pair of gray eyes brimful of memory. For, once again, the words were an echo, the shadow of a Standing Stone upon the moors before Miranei lay across them, across an hour long gone which had been fraught with another hard choice. The memory was no less potent for Anghara than those clinging to the Ronval battlefield.

  “Are you sure,” Anghara asked gently, “that you don’t have the Sight?”

  “Quite sure,” Kieran said brightly, breaking the mood. “It’s time we were moving; the day will not stay for us.”

  Anghara knew this, and yet she couldn’t suppress a sigh that tore itself from her deepest soul. She made no reply in words. She didn’t need to.

  The Ronval looked deceptively drab and gray. Kieran had steered them west of the fatal fords where Red Dynan’s last battle had been fought—the Ronval, after all, was a border between two kingdoms and the fords were constantly patrolled. There had been a ferry, but that had long since been stopped. They would have to swim the river downstream, at a deeper spot. More dangerous, perhaps, on the physical level, but Kieran had learned enough in the past few years to prefer physical peril to exposing himself and his companion to the unpredictable danger of edgy border guards.

  “It looks so innocent,” Anghara said, putting some of his own thoughts into words.

  “I’d prefer it at our backs,” Kieran said. He sniffed at the air, already tainted with the fetid odors of Vallen Fen. “As long as we don’t cross into Roisinan branded with the same perfume that led our army to the Rashin men when they tried to cross the Ronval.”

  Anghara smiled, remembering the story. She allowed herself one regretful backward glance for all the opportunities lost in Algira, and then dug her heels into her horse’s flanks.

  Kieran took a moment to watch her lead the way into the kingdom she meant to win back, and found himself wrestling with a moment of bittersweet ambivalence. In Roisinan she would be royal again. It was what he wanted her to be, what he had fought and planned for, risked other men’s lives, and his own, for; and yet—by the very act of becoming what he had dreamed, she was removing herself from his ambit, a queen to his knight. With every step she took toward the borders of her own land Anghara was taking away choices. In the end there could be only one, and Kieran felt the blade of it against his heart.

  His own choices were few. There was little he could do other than urge his horse forward in Anghara’s wake.

  She had no wish to linger on the other shore, waiting only long enough for Kieran’s horse to struggle up the uneven muddy bank before she urged her mare into motion. She kept her face resolutely turned to the north, with only her eyes, wide and bright, betraying her by occasionally straying toward the east and her father’s last battlefield. Kieran caught up with her in silence, and they rode for a while without speaking. The plain that spilled out flat and meadow-green from the riverbank was empty of movement; it was easy to imagine themselves alone in the world. But for all that none were in sight, it wasn’t as though the people of the place hadn’t left traces. Near an isolated copse Anghara drew rein and contemplated with interest what seemed to be a small shrine—but it was a shrine to no God she’d ever known. A broad, carved wooden pole had been set into the ground; its crown was rounded, buffed and polished into a semicircular sphere, and a crest, or a halo, of plaited golden straw had been fixed onto this. Below, at the foot of the pole, lay a number of wreaths. A few had fruit twisted into them, sweet-smelling apples or a wilting peach, but most were of flowers—some dry and already crumbling, others fresh, as though they had only j
ust been left there. The one thing they all had in common was that every one had a trace of yellow—a yellow flower, or a weaving of golden straw, and in at least one Anghara saw a thread of what looked like a thin strand of gold.

  “Curious,” she said. “What do you make of it?”

  “From the flowers, I’d say it was Nual’s,” said Kieran, leaning forward from his saddle to get a closer look. “But the nearest water is the Ronval, and that’s too far away to build a shrine to Nual. Besides, there’s gold. That’s Kerun’s.”

  “And the fruit of the harvest is Avanna’s,” murmured Anghara thoughtfully.

  “Too many questions,” said Kieran after another moment, kneeing his mount into a turn. “We won’t learn the answers here.”

  After another long look, Anghara turned to follow. “Where to now?”

  “The Tanassa Hills. If Adamo or Charo aren’t there, they’ll have left a message. They had no way of knowing which way we might come back; they will have left a message in every stronghold.”

  “We’ve been away a long time,” Anghara said, her voice oddly flat.

  Kieran snatched a look; she was very white, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. “Faith has been bred into them,” he said quietly. “The last time you disappeared, they believed for years.”

  Anghara glanced at him from beneath lowered eyelashes, betrayed into a smile; and then her expression changed, into something more subtle, more sad. “After Sif destroyed Bresse…this is where it all began, in the Tanassa Dance,” she said. “It’s where I first met ai’Jihaar.”

  Kieran had pieced the tale together from scraps that had come his way, but only now did the story begin to assume its true shape. He tried to imagine the Kheldrini woman, old and blind and yet wrapped in a cocoon of power, away from her desert home, and almost failed. Almost, because in the final reckoning he would have found it hard to believe anything was impossible for ai’Jihaar ma’Hariff. It would not be entirely beyond the bounds of possibility, Kieran thought wryly, if they were to find the old an’sen’thar waiting for them in the Tanassa Hills.

  It was not, however, ai’Jihaar who met them when they finally slid off their mounts. They stood before the same cavern from which Kieran’s men had issued forth to ride after a captured princess on her way to the dungeons of Miranei. They entered carefully, Kieran in the lead, one hand lightly on his horse’s bridle. The horse snorted as it stepped inside, alarmingly loud in the dark, echoing silence of the empty cave.

  What they thought was an empty cave.

  Another horse suddenly answered from the shadows, and Kieran froze, peering into the gloom, halfway through the swift motion toward his horse’s muzzle. “Who’s there?”

  “You took your time,” said a familiar voice.

  Kieran closed his eyes for a moment, his fingers knotting in the horse’s mane. The silently eloquent relief of his gesture was transmuted into radiant joy as his eyes opened and sought eagerly for a man-shaped shadow. “I thought you were lost,” Kieran said, very softly.

  “You left me with the honor of dealing with Sif Kir Hama’s entire army, with the victorious king-general himself at its head. Why in the world should you think me lost?”

  “Stop crowing in the dark, young cock-a-hoop, come out and let me see you!” Kieran said, laughing.

  A piece of darkness peeled off a cavern wall and flung back a concealing cloak the color of winter twilight, to reveal itself as a stocky young man with an enormous grin splitting his broad face.

  “Rochen!” Kieran said, stepping forward to clasp the other’s arm. “You’ve no idea how glad it makes me to see you in one piece! I thought Sif had done for you. We found the camping place, it looked to tell a grim tale.”

  “Grim indeed,” Rochen’s voice changed in the space of a heartbeat, from teasing banter to harsh pain. “I had lookouts posted, so at least Sif didn’t take us totally by surprise. But there was surprise enough, in the end. Only a handful lived, and most have souvenirs of the encounter. Mine was a sword across the back of my legs from a man I thought dead. I was lucky he didn’t hamstring me.”

  “The others?”

  “We gave a good account of ourselves. We fought as best we could. And in that hour we didn’t know if you had succeeded, or if you had already failed, and our stand was in vain.” His eyes strayed at last to where Anghara waited in silence, a hand rubbing her restive mare’s nose. To her he was still half shadow, but there was no mistaking the expression on his face—the pride and exultation as he glanced back at Kieran, the glow of joy as his eyes returned to her and then dropped as he went down on one knee. “It was not vain; those who died there would regret nothing in this hour. I give you welcome, my lady. I wish it could be in a place more fitting…”

  Anghara took the few steps that divided them and raised him with her own hand. “I saw that campsite. I saw Sif’s Army. It would have been a brave band who dared to challenge that. I would have liked to have known them all.”

  “They knew you,” said Rochen gravely. “They all knew you. So do those who now follow in their wake.”

  “What news, then?” said Kieran briskly. “Where are the twins?”

  “Adamo is in the woods below Cascin, where most of the men are gathered.”

  “Charo?”

  Rochen grinned wolfishly. “In Miranei.”

  “What?” Kieran said sharply.

  But Anghara, after the first moment of surprise, laughed quietly, and both men turned at the sound. “His words at our parting by the Hal were that he would be there to open the gates for me. I didn’t think he meant literally. What is he doing in Miranei?”

  “He’s with Melsyr,” Kieran’s lieutenant said. “He…”

  “Charo joined Sif’s Guard?” Kieran demanded incredulously, his eyes wide with disbelief.

  “In a way,” Rochen said. “To hear him talk you’d swear he and Melsyr were a private army. Even so, they’ve been making converts for us inside the walls; plenty of the Guard lost stomach for all too many things after your stunt, Kieran, and were ripe for the taking.”

  “Then we can take the keep?” Kieran said. “If we have men inside, and Adamo is waiting at Cascin with more…how many did you manage to gather? Melsyr could let us in through the western postern, and we could be in before anyone was any the wiser.”

  “Not that easy,” Rochen said.

  Kieran’s eyes clouded for a moment. “How many have we got?” he asked quietly.

  Rochen shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. The numbers are not the problem. We have plenty. This time there are enough to present a formidable barrier even to Sif’s main army—for all that our men are lamentably untrained—let alone a handful of half-won keep guards.”

  “What, then?”

  “Charo swore he wouldn’t have it.”

  Anghara smiled again. “Wouldn’t have me enter Miranei?”

  “Not until he could throw open the main gates and invite you inside with acclamation,” Rochen said, managing to keep a straight face.

  “Ever the grand gesture,” Kieran said, but without rancor. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe he and Adamo are brothers, let alone twins. Ansen was much more…”

  There was a moment of brittle silence as Kieran abruptly bit off his words. Ansen’s ghost hadn’t been raised for a long time; the Ansen Kieran invoked had been his close companion at Cascin, not the youth who had grown up to envy, hatred, and betrayal. And yet it was the latter who would always overshadow the more innocent days. The young Ansen might be what triggered a pleasant memory—but it wouldn’t be long before it was swamped by the recollection of a long-past midsummer’s eve, and a sharp dagger in Ansen’s hand.

  Rochen didn’t know the whole story, but was sensitive to the atmosphere Ansen’s name had conjured up. He backtracked, fast. It’s probably best to join Adamo at Cascin as soon as we can. I’ve been here for a while; maybe there’s fresh news.”

  “Are the men all at Cascin?”

  “Not at the
house itself. There’s a camp hidden in the forest. But Adamo himself is at the manor, with a few lieutenants. Sif’s men give the place a wide berth; there are rumors at the han that the manor is haunted.”

  “Somebody must have seen the new inhabitants prowling around, and it’s been deserted for such a long time…” Kieran began, but Anghara shook her head.

  “It’s more than that. There’s the Stone.”

  “What Stone?”

  Anghara turned with a smile. “Gul Khaima wasn’t the only Standing Stone I raised. There’s a Standing Stone at Cascin…of a sort. And those things always haunt a place.”

  Their eyes met briefly, slid apart. Neither said it—that Cascin was also haunted by Ansen’s brooding spirit. Cascin’s heir had inherited the manor in his own strange, dark way; it would never be free of him. Kieran found a moment to wonder how Adamo was dealing with the shade of his dead brother.

  “Well,” said Anghara quietly into the moment of silence. “This has proved a true homecoming. The path from Miranei to Kheldrin led through Cascin…and it is just as well that Adamo has chosen it for his headquarters. Cascin would have had to lie on my road back; there are things I left there I need to bring with me to Miranei.”

  “We could stay here tonight, rest your horses…” Rochen began.

  Anghara shook her head. “There will be time for rest. We rode them hard yet there is life and spirit left in them. We can rest soon enough, in the woods.”

  “She’s right,” Kieran said. “Too many things are riding at our back. We need every hour we can snatch.”

  Rochen wasted no more time, turning to reach for his riding gear. “On our way, then.”

  Anghara withdrew into solitude during their ride, leaving her two companions to reestablish severed bonds and catch up with one another’s doings. Rochen plied his friend with questions and, while there were some he was reluctant to answer, Kieran still found himself doing most of the talking. Later, when they made camp, Anghara sat a little apart beside the fire. Kieran, although keeping a constant and wary eye on her, was content to respect her mood, choosing instead to turn questioner himself and get the full story of what had transpired on the moors before Miranei. Anghara didn’t seem to be listening. She sat with her legs drawn into the circle of her arms and her chin resting on her knees, staring into the flames. When she suddenly laughed quietly into the night Rochen physically jumped as if the laughter had ambushed him.