He put his arm around her, held her, wondering what to do, where to hide. He wished the earth would hide him now, wished for some deep hole to crawl into. And he felt...a Tightness on wishing that, felt that the earth would protect him that way.
"Rowan, do you know a place here in the city where we can hide? A cellar, a pit?"
"Hide? Aren't we going to swim?"
"The water's too shallow and too cold. You can't swim it." Gaborn licked his lips. "So I'm going to stay and fight Raj Ahten as best I can. He has soldiers and Dedicates here. I can best strike a blow against him if I stay."
Rowan leaned close, seeking to warm herself. Her teeth chattered. He felt the tantalizing softness of her breasts against his chest, her hair blowing against his cheek. She was trembling, perhaps more from the cold than from fear. She'd gotten wet crawling through the stream, and she did not have Gaborn's stamina to help her weather the cold.
"You're staying because you're afraid for me," she whispered, teeth chattering. "But I can't stay. Raj Ahten will demand an accounting..."
It was common for a new king to take an accounting of all his people, to find out who owed money to the kingdom. Of course, Raj Ahten's facilitators would be there, looking for potential Dedicates. When Raj Ahten's men learned that Rowan had been a Dedicate for the dead queen, they would probably torment her.
"Perhaps," Gaborn said. "We can worry about that later. But now we need to hide. So tell me of such a place: a hole. A place where the scent is strong."
"The spice cellars?" Rowan whispered. "Up by the King's stables."
"Cellars?" Gaborn said, sensing that this was the place. This was where the earth would lead him.
"In the summer, Binnesman lays up herbs for sale, and at the festival the King buys others. The cellar is full now, with many boxes. It's up the hill, above the stables."
Gaborn wondered. They wouldn't have to go far into the city, and would merely be doubling back on their own trail, confusing the scent. "What about guards? Spices are valuable."
Rowan shook her head. "The cook's boy sleeps in a room above the cellars. But he--well, he's been known to nap through a thunderstorm."
Gaborn picked up the little bundle of forcibles, struggled to put them in the wide pocket of his robe. The cellars seemed to be the kind of place he needed. Someplace secretive, someplace where his scent would be covered.
"Let's go," he said, but he didn't head directly back uphill. Instead, he picked up Rowan in his arms, carried her down to the river, and began creeping upstream in the shallows, hunching low, trying to cover his scent.
He headed upriver, hugging the reeds. Ahead of him, the waters grew fast. A millrace split off from the river, fed into the moat. The banks along the race had been built high, so that when Gaborn reached it, he was able to wade through the shallows with good cover, until he came right up under the thundering waterwheel, splashing and grinding. To his right was a stone wall, dividing the millrace from the main course of the river and its broad diversion dam. To his left was the mill house and a steep trail up to the castle.
Gaborn stopped. He could go forward no farther, needed now to climb the banks of the millrace, then take the trail up through the trees, to the castle wall again.
He turned, began climbing the bank of the millrace. The grass here was brown and dying, tall rye stubble.
Ahead he spotted a ferrin, a fierce little rat-faced man with a sharp stick to use as a spear, outside the mill house. He stood guard over a hole in the foundation, his back to Gaborn.
As Gaborn watched, a second ferrin scooted out from the hole, carrying a small cloth by its ends. They'd stolen flour from the floor of the mill, probably nothing more than sweepings. Yet it was dangerous business for a ferrin. Many had been killed for less.
Before standing in plain view and frightening the creatures, Gaborn searched downstream for signs of pursuit, his eyes just level with the tops of the grass.
Sure enough, six shadows moved at the edge of the water, under the trees. Men with swords and bows. One wore splint mail. So Raj Ahten's scouts had found his trail again.
Gaborn clung to the side of the slope of the millrace, hidden in tall grass. He watched the soldiers for two long minutes. They'd discovered their dead comrade, followed Gaborn's and Rowan's scent to the river's edge.
Several men were looking downstream. Of course they expected him to go downstream, to swim past the giants, into the relative safety of the Dunnwood. It seemed the only sane thing for Gaborn to do. Now that he'd fled the castle, they wouldn't expect him to sneak back in.
If they pursued him into the Dunnwood, they'd find his scent aplenty, for Gaborn had ridden through this morning.
But the fellow in splint mail was staring toward the mill, squinting. Gaborn was downwind from them. He didn't think the man could smell him. Yet perhaps the man was just cautious.
Or perhaps he'd seen the ferrin above Gaborn, spotted movement. The ferrin was dark brown in color, standing before gray stone. Gaborn wanted it to move, so that the scout below would see the creature more clearly.
In his years in the House of Understanding, Gaborn had not bothered to study in the Room of Tongues. Beyond his own Rofehavanish he could speak only a smattering of Indhopalese. When he had a few more endowments of wit and could grasp such things more easily, he planned to make languages a further study.
Yet on cold nights during the winter, he'd frequented an alehouse with certain unsavory friends. One of them, a minor cutpurse, had trained a pair of ferrin to hunt for coins, which he exchanged for food. The ferrin could have gotten coins anywhere--lost coins dropped in the streets, stolen from shop floors, taken from dead men's eyes in the tombs.
This friend had spoken a few words of ferrin, a very crude language composed of shrill whistles and growls. Gaborn had enough endowments of Voice that he could duplicate it.
He whistled now. "Food. Food. I give."
Up above him, the ferrin turned, startled. "What? What?" the ferrin guard growled. "I hear you." The words l-hear-you was often a request for the speaker to repeat himself. The ferrin tended to locate others of their kind by their whistling calls.
"Food. I give," Gaborn whistled in a friendly tone. It was a full tenth of all the ferrin vocabulary that Gaborn could command.
From the woods above the mill, a dozen answering voices whistled. "I hear you. I hear you," followed by phrases Gaborn didn't understand. It might have been that these ferrin spoke another dialect, for many of their shrieks and growls sounded familiar. He thought he heard the word "Come!" repeated several times.
Then, suddenly, half a dozen ferrin were running around the paving stones of the mill house, coming down from the trees. More ferrin had been hiding up there than Gaborn had seen.
They stuck their small snouts in the air and approached Gaborn cautiously, growling, "What? Food?"
Gaborn glanced downriver, wondering at the scouts' reaction. The man in splint mail could see the ferrin now, a dozen of them, sauntering around the foundations of the mill. Reason dictated that if Gaborn were near, the ferrin would have scattered.
After a moment's hesitation, the scout in splint mail waved his broadsword toward both banks, while he shouted orders to his men. With the thundering of the waterwheel in his ears, Gaborn could not hear the orders.
But presently, all six hunters hurried back uphill into the trees, angling south. They would search the woods, downstream.
When Gaborn felt sure they were gone, and that no prying eyes watched his direction, he carried Rowan uphill.
* * *
Chapter 12
OFFERS
Chemoise Solette felt dazed. Watching her best friend, Iome, lose her glamour horrified Chemoise to the core of her soul.
When Raj Ahten finished with the Princess, he turned and gazed into Chemoise's eyes. His nostrils flared as he judged her.
"You are a beautiful young creature," Raj Ahten whispered. "Serve me."
Chemoise could not hide the revuls
ion she felt at those words. Iome sill lay on the floor, dazed, barely conscious. Chemoise's father still lay in the wagon down in the Dedicates' Keep.
She said nothing in response. Raj Ahten smiled weakly.
Raj Ahten could take no endowment from a woman who hated him so intensely, and his Voice would not sway Chemoise. But he could take other things. He let his gaze drift down to her waist, as if she stood naked before him. "Put this one in the Dedicates' Keep, for now. Let her care for her king and her princess."
A chill of horror crept over Chemoise, and she dared hope that while she was in the keep, Raj Ahten would forget her.
So a guard took Chemoise's elbow, pulled her down the narrow stairs out of the Great Hall and up the street to the Dedicates' Keep, and thrust her through the portcullis. There he spoke a few words in Indhopalese to the guards who'd just been posted. The guards smiled with knowing grins.
Chemoise ran back to her father, who had been dragged into the Dedicates' Hall, and now lay on a clean pallet.
The sight of him felt painful, for his wound ran deep and had festered so many years.
Chemoise's father, Eremon Vottania Solette, was a Knight Equitable, sworn to bring down the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten. It was an oath he had not taken lightly seven years ago, the day he disavowed himself from Sylvarresta's service to ride through the spring-green fields for the far kingdom of Aven.
It was an oath that had cost him everything. Chemoise remembered how tall he'd sat in the saddle, how proud she'd been. He'd been a great warrior, had seemed invincible to a nine-year-old girl.
Now his clothing smelled of moldy straw and sour sweat. His muscles clenched uselessly, his chin shoved against his chest. She got a rag and some water, began to clean him. He cried out in pain as she rubbed his ankle. She studied it, found both legs horribly scarred. The skin around his ankles was red, hair rubbed away.
Raj Ahten had kept her father in chains these past six years. Such treatment for Dedicates was unheard of. After years of such abuse, she felt amazed that he even remained alive. Here in the North, Dedicates were pampered, honored, treated with affection. It was rumored that Raj Ahten had begun taking slaves to feed his need for Dedicates.
While Chemoise waited for the cooks to bring broth from the kitchens, she merely held his hand, kissing it over and over. He stared up at her with haunted eyes, unable to blink.
Chemoise heard a scream from the King's Keep, someone giving endowments. To take her mind from the noise, she began whispering. "Oh, Father, I'm so glad you're here. I've waited so long for this."
His eyes crinkled in a sad smile, and he breathed heavily.
She didn't know how to tell him she was carrying a child. She wanted him to be happy, to believe that all was well in her life. She did not want to admit how she'd dishonored the princess. She hoped her father would never need to know the truth, that grand illusions might give him some peace.
"Father, I'm married now," she whispered, "to Sergeant Dreys, of the palace guard. He was only a boy when you left. Do you remember him?"
Her father twisted his head to the side, half of a shake. "He's a good man, very kind. The King has granted him lands here near town." Chemoise wondered if she was spreading it on too heavily. Sergeants seldom got landed. "We live there with his mother and sisters. We're going to have a child, he and I. It's growing inside me."
She could not tell him the truth, tell how the father had died at the hands of Raj Ahten, tell how she'd gone to call his ghost to the place where she'd made love to him so many nights, bringing dishonor to her family and to her princess. She dared not tell how Dreys' wight had come to her that evening, a cold shade that now lodged within her.
Yet that night, when she had felt the first fluttering movements of the babe within her, it had seemed a miracle.
Chemoise took her father's hand, which seemed clenched in a permanent fist, and smoothed out his fingers, opened it, after years of its having lain useless. Her father squeezed her hand, a sign of affection and thanksgiving, but he squeezed so hard. With several endowments of strength, he had a grip like a vise.
At first, Chemoise tried to ignore it. But it grew too strong. She whispered, "Father, don't squeeze so hard."
His hand tightened in fear, and he tried to pull his arm away, to loosen his grip. But those who gave endowments of grace could not relax, could not easily let their muscles stretch. He clenched her hand more painfully, so that Chemoise bit her lip. "Please..." she begged, wondering if somehow her father knew that she'd lied, was trying to punish her.
Eremon Solette grimaced in apology, struggled with all his might to relax, to stretch his muscles, release Chemoise. For a minute, he only managed to hold her tighter; then Chemoise felt his grip soften.
The cooks had still not brought the broth around for those who'd given endowments of metabolism. Chemoise's father would not be able to eat anything more solid. The smooth muscles of his stomach would not contract properly.
"Father," Chemoise cried, "I've waited so long. I wanted you so long...I wish you could speak, I wish you could tell me what happened."
Eremon Vottania Solette had been captured at Aven, at Raj Ahten's winter palace by the sea. He'd scaled the white tower where gauzy lavender curtains fluttered in the wind, and found himself in a room thick with jasmine incense, where many dark-haired women slept on cushions, naked but for thin veils to cover their flesh. Raj Ahten's harem.
A brass water pipe lay on a sandalwood table, with eight mouthpieces wriggling from it like the tentacles of an octopus. The balls of rolled greenish-black opium in the pipe's bowl had all burned to ash. For one moment, he permitted himself to stand, admiring the beauties at his feet.
Coals glowed in golden braziers around the beds, keeping the room pleasantly warm. The sweet musk of the women would have made this room smell of paradise, if not for the bitter tang of opium.
In an adjoining room, he had heard a woman's deranged squealing laughter, the sounds of cavorting. He suddenly had the wild hope he might take Raj Ahten while the Runelord lay naked, his attention diverted.
But as he stood, quietly unsheathing his long dagger, all dressed in black, his back against the wall, a maiden woke, saw him behind the gauzy curtains, hiding.
Eremon had tried to silence her, had leapt to plunge the knife into her throat, but not before she screamed.
A eunuch guard of little note leapt from an alcove, suddenly wakened, and clubbed Eremon with a staff.
The eunuch's name was Salim al Daub, a heavy man with the roundness and womanly voice common to eunuchs, and the soft brown eyes of a doe.
As a reward for capturing an assassin, Raj Ahten presented Salim with a great gift. He offered Salim an endowment of grace, from Eremon himself.
Eremon had thought he would rather die than grant an endowment to Raj Ahten's guard, but Eremon held two secret hopes. The first great hope was that someday he would return to Heredon and see his daughter once more.
He gazed at her, saw how she'd grown beautiful like her mother, and he could not help but weep at seeing his greatest dream fulfilled.
Chemoise watched her father's eyes fill with tears. He gasped for breath, struggling from moment to moment to stay alive, unable to relax enough to let his lungs fill. She wondered how he could have kept this up for six long years.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "What can I do for you?"
For a long moment he struggled to speak two words: "Kill...us."
* * *
Book 3
DAY 21 IN THE MONTH OF HARVEST
A DAY OF DECEPTION
* * *
Chapter 13
PRAGMATIC KING ORDEN
Thirty miles to the south of Castle Sylvarresta, a high rock called Tor Hollick rose four hundred feet above the Dunnwood, and from its crags one could gaze far.
Once, long in the past, a fortress had stood here, but few of the stones remained one atop another. Many had been carried away to build walls for peasants' homes.
&n
bsp; King Mendellas Draken Orden sat uncomfortably on a broken, lichen-crusted pillar, staring away over the rolling hills, the tops of trees that stirred in the night wind. His cape of green samite fluttered on the small breeze. A cup of too-sweet tea warmed his hands. In the air above him, a pair of nesting graaks circled on leather wings, calling out softly in the darkness, their batlike shapes huge against the stars.
King Orden ignored them, his attention focused elsewhere. A fire burned on a distant hill. Castle Sylvarresta aflame?
Orden found the very thought to be harrowing. It was more than a pain of the heart, it was a pain of the mind and of the soul. Over the years, he'd learned to love this realm and its king dearly. Perhaps, he loved it too dearly. He was riding now into danger.
According to Orden's scouts, Raj Ahten had reached the castle by midday. The Wolf Lord could have mounted a quick attack, burned the castle.
On seeing the glowing sky, Orden feared the worst.
Two thousand troops camped in the woods below his perch. His men were exhausted after a day of riding at an incredible pace. Borenson had raced to his king after leaving Gaborn. A hard flight it had been--Borenson had left four assassins dead in his trail.
King Orden found his heart hammering at the thought of his son, there in that burning castle. He wanted to send a spy in and learn where Gaborn was, how he'd fared. He wanted to charge the castle and save his son. Such useless thoughts preyed on him. He would have stood and paced, if his rocky perch had given him the room.
No, he could do nothing except grow angry at Gaborn. So foolhardy, such a strong-willed boy. And yet so hopelessly stupid. Did the boy really believe Raj Ahten sought to take only the castle? Surely Raj Ahten knew that Orden journeyed each year to Castle Sylvarresta for the hunt. And the key to destroying the North was to destroy House Orden.
No, this entire escapade was little more than a trap. A lion hunt, in the manner of the South, with beaters in the bushes and the spearmen somewhere in the rear. Clever of Raj Ahten to beat the bushes, to take Castle Sylvarresta as a distraction. Orden had already sent scouts to the south and to the east, hoping to discover what spearmen blocked his road home. Surely every path was guarded. If Raj Ahten played his part well, he might yet destroy House Orden and take Heredon in the bargain. King Orden expected to hear nothing from his scouts for a day or more.
The RuneLords Page 20