The pull of the schoolroom proved entirely too much to resist when she finally got up and made herself presentable. She could have been forgiven for the sharp intake of breath when she pushed the door ajar and was greeted by a familiar scene. It looked as though the same fire burned in the grate, with the chairs arranged around the hearth just as they had been when Anghara had sat here with Ansen and Kieran, analyzing her father’s battles and nursing her secret identity. The chairs were occupied, and Anghara jumped when one creaked, and Kieran’s face popped around to look at the door.
“About time,” he remarked equably. “We were about to start without you.”
There was no need to ask what they had been about to start—the room was piled with maps and letters, and in one corner, incongruous in this place of learning, rested a stack of naked swords, with three long spears leaning against the wall. The men in this room were a war council, beginning to plan for tomorrow—that tomorrow they had sworn to see in Miranei.
This interlude in Cascin, time to rest and plan, was the last step in a long journey. The three children who had grown up in this house began to appreciate Feor’s true legacy, as the qualities and abilities he had fostered in them quietly came into their own in the planning of the taking of Miranei. It was here, as much as anywhere, that Kieran had become a leader of men, that Anghara had unobtrusively changed into a young queen. The small select circle—Kieran, Anghara, Adamo, Rochen, and two more of Kieran’s lieutenants—sat and planned, aware that every hour slipping past was one hour less they had to put those plans into action before Sif returned. They had to work fast, and they knew it—and yet they had to resist the temptation to work too fast. A sloppy plan could fail—and there would be no second chance.
It took them several days to hammer out the beginnings of a plot, and at the end of that time Anghara paid another visit to the family graves, this time accompanied by an unexpected ghost. Beside the stone-sealed niche which held the remains of Rima’s mother, Anghara’s grandmother whom she had never met, Anghara vividly recalled her first visit to this place. It was only days after her arrival at Cascin as a bewildered nine-year-old. March had accompanied her then, guiding her hand toward a specific carving on the frieze adorning the stone covering her Grandmother’s grave. He showed how a piece of the stone could slide out and reveal a long, narrow, dusty hiding place. They’d pulled out a handful of childhood treasures—relics of Rima’s childhood, and for a moment Anghara had been distracted by the sudden insight into her mother’s past. But soon the niche was empty, waiting for the next treasure it would to be called upon to guard—the document weighed with the Council Lords’ seals. Anghara held it in both hands as if it were too heavy to support with just one. In some ways, it was—this was the proof and bond of her inheritance, bearing witness to her crowning. March had taken it and laid it with gentle reverence into the narrow space; they had replaced the stone, sealing the document into its secret chamber. Nobody would have thought anything was amiss; the graves would need to be taken apart stone by stone for the document to be discovered by anyone who didn’t know precisely where and how to look.
Now, returning to claim it, Anghara heard March’s voice float down to her through the years. “One day, Princess, this will take you home.”
And now that day was here. Even Kieran hadn’t known about this—half his work was already accomplished by the simple existence of this paper, wrought years before he began striving toward the very goal it embodied. For a moment, when Anghara had told the little council of war about it, he vividly recalled his earlier sense of betrayal, when he had first learned that Anghara wasn’t the innocent foster sister he thought her to be, and hadn’t trusted him with her secret identity. And then, as he had done before, he grew ashamed of holding her responsible for secrets others had thrust upon her. He stopped thinking of the document as yet another thing she had kept hidden, and started to build it constructively into their plans.
It was Rochen who was charged with taking the document to the Keep Under the Mountain, and with making sure it became common knowledge before Anghara herself swept into Miranei. He left within the hour, alone, with the precious paper wrapped in a cocoon of yellow jin’aaz silk from Kheldrin. The rest made preparations for their own departure, set for twelve days hence—striking the forest camp at Cascin, and organizing the fighting force into the arrow of a new God, ready to be loosed—to find their mark, or perish in the attempt.
Adamo, Kieran and Anghara, the son of Cascin and the two who had fostered there, found they had little time to themselves. They managed to snatch an hour or two in the evenings to sit by the fire and talk of old times, of things other than the battles looming before them—but the battles were all-pervasive and it proved difficult to keep their mind off them. All too soon the time had sped, and Cascin was ready to let them go. On the eve of their departure Anghara rode up to the family vaults, perhaps for the last time, to say goodbye. Alone, in defiance of Adamo’s words of prophecy—or so she thought.
It was with an odd sense of history that Kieran climbed after her to the family graveyard when she had been there too long for his peace of mind—to find her crying quietly as she leaned on her grandmother’s tomb and gazed in the direction of Miranei.
“What is it?” he said, stung by a pang of sudden fear.
“It’s begun,” Anghara whispered, almost too softly for him to hear, her voice drowned beneath the muffling of her tears. “I felt them die…”
“Who?” Kieran asked, a cold shiver running down his spine as he thought of all the friends who were in Miranei in this hour of reckoning.
“I don’t know them. Some of them…were Sif’s. But Rochen…”
Kieran clutched her shoulder. It never occurred to him to doubt her words. “What of Rochen? Is he…dead?”
“No…I cannot tell if it has happened, or is yet to come—but I saw him laid out, very white, a bloody bandage around his left shoulder…not dead!” She cried out, as his fingers tightened painfully. “Wounded—but there is blood—there is so much blood…”
She swayed toward him and he caught her, holding her close, burying his face in her hair as she clung to him with both hands twisted into the material of his tunic. Here, in the charmed circle where their childhood yet clung to them, Kieran was still the rampart against which all terrors crumbled—he still had the power to protect her against anything, even the nightmares flung at her by Sight. She quietened in his arms, relaxing her grip, smoothing his tunic with a strangled sob.
“It’s just as well I won’t be leading the men into battle,” she said, her tone filled with self-reproach. “These fits take me when they choose…” She sniffed, wiped tears off her cheek with the back of her hand and lifted her head, with a smile that looked like sunshine breaking through rain. Strands of her hair curled around her face; her eyes were red, her cheeks smudged with traces of tears—but she had never been as beautiful. Kieran’s arms tightened around her instinctively, but here, in the haven where she was strong, she was oblivious to the source of that strength. Her thoughts had already ranged wide, to the army of men waiting under the eaves of Cascin’s woods for a signal to depart. “Are they ready?”
“We leave in the morning,” Kieran said quietly, releasing her. “They will be ready. Will you be all right?”
“Riding out under my own banner, with you at my side and an army at my back? How could I not be all right?”
It was simple faith. But now wasn’t the time to ask or expect more of her—and Kieran had been sustained in his faith for years. But that had been before he knew he loved her. Before he knew faith was not enough.
The army raised the ancient Kir Hama banner and rode out at dawn the next day. Halas Han lay in their path, the only road north out of Cascin led through it; they found the place packed with the usual crowd of traders, river-men, journeymen singers, and an assortment of travellers breaking their journey at the han. It was also tenanted by a small cheta of Sif’s men. There was no skirmish to speak of—Sif�
�s handful of soldiers were far too experienced to make a pointless stand against an army. Once they understood who rode beneath the banner they had thought of as their master’s, many joined Anghara’s forces, while those who didn’t were too demoralized to put up a fight. And the acclamations which almost raised the roof of the han once the common people learned who led the forces before them were all that Charo could have wished.
It would have been too much to ask for them to proceed unremarked; they found every place on their road waiting for them. In places where Sif was strong they were met with a show of force; in others they were greeted with joyous shouts by the local populace, who had already dealt with Sif’s men themselves. Time and again they marched away with their numbers swelled by those who had followed Sif only for the Kir Hama name, who came forward in increasing numbers to pledge their faith to Anghara. It didn’t escape Kieran that many worshipped the new God, Bran.
It was inevitable that Miranei knew of their coming long before they were near. The keep was poised on a knife-edge, with men loyal to both Kir Hama scions trapped within its walls. There had been no word since Rochen had departed, not unless Anghara’s vision was counted; and there were men in Miranei with longbows, and far-reaching arrows. Kieran took Anghara no closer than necessary, and the army made camp within sight but well out of bowshot.
A tent was raised for her in the encampment, with its own guard. At her campfire, one of the dozens that had been lit, Anghara stood with her elbows cupped into her palms and stared dry-eyed at the castle. The image she had taken away as a child hadn’t changed, except for the different pennants flying from the high towers. She couldn’t tell what she felt at the sight. She seethed with a strange mixture of elation, fierce pride, and abject terror—the last time she had seen Miranei it had not been as a returning queen or an avenger. She remembered the dungeons of Miranei, and trembled. They were the most recent memory, not the hall where she had been crowned when she was nine.
Kieran, watchful and waiting, didn’t rest. He paced the camp, exchanging a few words at every campfire, passing a moment with the men at the picket lines, with the surgeons who were grimly preparing for the inevitable on the morrow. He was a shadow that passed like hope through the ranks, and where he went men turned away with a sigh of release and tried to grab a few precious hours of sleep. At length he came to Anghara’s own tent; the guards, recognizing him, retreated a few paces, giving their queen and her commander a shell of privacy.
“Tomorrow, in Miranei,” Kieran said softly.
She had been wrapped in her own thoughts, and started at the sound of his voice; he grinned with an almost childish sense of triumph at having caught her out.
She tried to offer a smile in return, but suddenly, as though triggered by his arrival, the tears she had held at bay in her solitary vigil glinted in the firelight. “I’m afraid to think about it,” she murmured.
“You’re going home,” he said. “That’s all you need to think about.”
“I dare not look into the fire,” Anghara said, as her eyes slid past his into the flames and then hurriedly out again into the darkness. “Being afraid of an unknown future is in all of us…but it would be infinitely worse…I don’t think I could face tomorrow if I knew what it really held.”
“We have not come so far to fail,” Kieran said.
The smile she couldn’t find a moment ago now came as she looked up at him from underneath her lashes. “You keep me sane,” she said softly. “Tomorrow…”
“Everything according to our plans,” he said. “You will wait here, until I come back for you.” He anticipated her next sentence, reaching out to tuck away a stray tendril of bright hair. “I will be back,” he repeated. “Don’t doubt that.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. “I know.”
He melted away into the shadows, sketching her a low, graceful Kheldrini bow. She smiled at the place he had been, and turned away from the black bulk of Miranei. Once more, Kieran left rest and faith in his wake. Anghara retired into her tent and discovered she could sleep, only a few hours before the confrontation that would decide her fate.
They were gone, Kieran and a few dozen men, when Anghara woke into the pale light of sunrise seeping through her tent flaps. He’d said he would be back for her, to escort her into her city; she donned the gold robes of the desert and hung the say’yin with her father’s Great Seal around her neck. And then she waited for Kieran’s return.
It seemed as though the sun was hurtling through the sky. No sooner did it rise than it seemed to be noon, and the sun hung hot and still above the encampment.
“What is happening out there?” Anghara, flushed with tension and fear, asked Adamo, whom Kieran had left in command of the camp. “Surely they’ve been gone too long…was that fighting I could hear on the battlements?”
“Wait,” he said, in his usual sparing manner. He had his orders; and the hour in which he was to act was not yet upon them.
It was almost four hours past noon before sentries hurried over to report movement at Miranei’s gates. A group of armored men on horseback had broken away from the keep, one of them bearing Anghara’s banner. Which was also Sif’s. Adamo and Anghara waited by her tent; her men stood with swords loose in their scabbards, and archers stood by with arrows poised on bowstrings, ready to let fly.
Another sentry came back toward the tent, pausing to offer a sketchy bow to Anghara before blurting that the riders had been recognized. But it wasn’t until she saw Kieran riding bareheaded, with Melsyr at his side bearing her banner with a triumphant smile, that Anghara could allow herself to breathe again. She caught at Adamo’s arm for support, and he stepped forward flawlessly, as though the gesture had been a command to conduct her to the riders from Miranei.
In the first instant Anghara had eyes only for Kieran, reaching for him with one hand as if to make sure he was really there. He leaned down from the saddle to take it. There was weariness in his face, and blood on his armor. None of it was his—but it was the first thing Anghara saw, and she clung to him for a moment, eyes wide with the sudden shocking thought that she could so easily have lost him.
“Are you all right?”
“In one piece,” he said, with an economy of words almost on a par with Adamo. And then his eyes slid from her face, up to the gray battlements of Miranei, and down again. “It is yours,” he said simply.
It was still Miranei the impregnable—for they had been let into the keep by the postern gate by Melsyr, Charo and their men. Kieran, although he knew that there had been no other way, had brooded upon the necessity of this treachery, for it had never been in him to fight his battles from the rear; but a frontal assault on Miranei was suicide. As it was, they had been in before the startled garrison had really known what was happening, with all their attention fixed on the army encampment down below. There had been just as many who raised arms for Anghara in Sif’s Guard as there had been opposing her; Charo and Melsyr had done their work well. What resistance there had been was fierce—but in the end it had been no great task to overwhelm the defenders.
And now the great gates stood open, waiting. Adamo had signalled for Anghara’s horse and it was brought, turned out in royal style in silk and silver. With Kieran on one side and Melsyr with the banner on the other, Anghara rode out to claim Miranei.
Charo, as he had once promised, was waiting at the gate to greet her, mail hood thrown back to allow the breeze to play with his pale hair. In an unconscious echo of his brother, he rode up to bow over her hand and then raised his head, beaming. “Welcome home.”
But it felt less like home. The path left open for them to ride through was lined with the people of Miranei—quiet, watchful, even anxious. Anghara’s return had been on everyone’s lips for weeks—but now she was here, in the wake of the skirmishes in the keep, they could see the shaping of another war in which they could very easily be ground between two armies. It was hard for some of the ordinary folk of Miranei, de
spite all the evidence they had heard, to fully accept her return from the dead. There was a murmur in the crowd, like wind stirring fallen leaves, and underneath that a wary silence as Anghara’s horse passed through the gate and into the city.
And then it was shattered by a single cry, a woman’s voice cracking with passion, “My lady!”
Anghara’s head snapped around. “Catlin?” she whispered.
And Catlin, for it was she, fought past a couple of gawking apprentices standing in her way and ran to Anghara’s horse, tears streaming down her face. For a moment she couldn’t speak for sobbing. “The Gods be praised,” she managed at last, gulping it out as she clung to Anghara’s skirts. “The Gods be praised for sending you back to us!”
Anghara was finding it hard to speak past a lump that had lodged in her throat—this had been the first companion of her exile, one of two friends who had been with her from the start. The only one still there at the end. “Come up,” she said after a moment in which she fought to keep her composure. She turned her head a fraction, catching Adamo’s eye. “Can you…”
“Lady Catlin, with your permission, I will take you in,” he said courteously, taking his cue and leaning down from his horse.
With a last lingering glance at her mistress, Catlin turned away only long enough to accept the proffered hand, and Adamo hoisted her into the saddle before him amidst envious looks from the crowd. Catlin sat shaking as though with ague, unable to tear her gaze from Anghara’s face.
The incident had cracked the crowd, and the murmurs were louder, with people turning and nodding sagely at one another. This was confirmation indeed. But still there was a deep stillness at the root of the whispers, a holding back—almost unwilling, ashamed of its own existence, but there, impossible to bypass.
Until Kieran’s sword sang free of its scabbard and swung in an arc that made the closest in the crowd shy away with a gasp of fear. He reached with the sword over their heads to lift one of the topmost garlands from a shrine to Bran which stood in an alcove a few paces to the side of the street. As it slid down the blade he caught it, sheathed the sword in one smooth movement, and lifted the purloined garland above his head with both hands.
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