Kurnos’s reign was only days old, and he had already doubled that number. Written on the parchment were two names- hers, less the title of First Daughter, and that of Brother Beldyn. For black heresy and consorting with traitors, it declared-and beneath their names, a promised reward of a thousand gold falcons.
Tavarre reacted quickly, rushing to catch her as her knees buckled, but he couldn’t stop the parchment from dropping from her hands. The wind caught it, sending it soaring over the keep’s walls. She watched it spin away.
“No,” she murmured. “It has to be a mistake.”
The baron didn’t reply, but his grip tightened. It was a familiar gesture, one of kinship. They were both outlaws, now. She shuddered at the thought.
Then another occurred to her. “Beldyn. Does he know?”
“No, Efisa.”
She nodded, then took a deep breath, and pushed away from Tavarre to stand on her own. “Come on, then,” she said, turning. “We’d best-”
A sound rose, eerily filling the air as it echoed among the hills: the mournful howl of a wolf. Hearing it, Tavarre stiffened and muttered a curse.
“What was that?” Ilista asked as the howl died away.
“A signal,” the baron replied. “The sentries have returned.”
He whirled, his cloak flapping, and hurried up the steps to the battlements. Ilista followed, hardly breathing as she looked down from the keep into the vale below. In the distance, two frothing horses were galloping along a trail to the village. One was a bandit, cloaked and leather-clad, but the midday sun’s light glinted off the other’s armor, and she knew it was Gareth, come back early from his sojourn to the highroad.
Ilista swallowed as the riders charged toward Luciel. Already she knew what they were going to report, and she saw her knowledge mirrored in Tavarre’s pale face as well. The Foripon seemed silly now. War had come to the highlands.
They met down in Luciel, and gathered inside the tavern- Cathan and Gareth, Tavarre and Vedro, Ilista and Beldyn. Caked in road-dust, the Knight drank a flagon of raw wine to moisten his throat, then told what he had seen. Cathan nodded breathlessly as the others stared in shock.
“Well,” Tavarre said when he was finished, and sighed.
“Perhaps they won’t come here,” Ilista said. “This is a small town…”
“They’ll come,” Vedro growled.
Everyone looked into the room’s corners, trying not to meet one another’s gaze. In the end, it was Beldyn who coughed softly and spoke.
“We must leave, then,” he said. “All of us.”
Tavarre looked up, meeting the monk’s burning gaze. After a moment, he nodded and turned to Cathan. “Did they see you?”
“No, but they’ll find the bodies of their men,” Cathan replied, “and we left tracks.”
Vedro cursed, slapping his thigh in frustration. “It’ll have to be tonight, then. They’ll send riders ahead and have our heads if they find us here.”
“Where can we go?” Gareth asked.
“Govinna,” said Tavarre, running a hand through his dark, curly hair. “Ossirian will take us in-and he has to be told the army’s in Taol.”
Dista cleared her throat. “You’re all forgetting the Longosai” she said. “Beldyn, how many still have to be healed?”
“Only eight,” he replied.
Vedro swore again, and the others slumped, looking defeated. They looked at one another hopelessly, and Dista could tell they were all sharing the same terrible thought The sick couldn’t make the journey, but sunset was only three hours off. Already Beldyn looked tired, and wisps of holy light clung to him like clouds to the peak of a mountain. His strength was leaving him. No one wanted to say the words that flashed through their minds, though it was the only choice left. They had to leave the eight sick people behind, if the rest of Luciel were to live.
Beldyn’s mouth hardened into a line, however, and he pushed away his mug of wine, untouched. “Bring them,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What?” Ilista asked as everyone turned to look at him. “Beldyn, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have the strength right now-”
He glared back at her, and her voice failed her. There was something terrible in his gaze, a ferocity she hadn’t seen before.
“I said I’ll take care of it,” he declared. “We’re not leaving anyone.”
Dista wanted to protest, to talk sense into him, but the blaze of his eyes stilled her tongue. It was a fanatic’s look, and it made her uneasy.
Glancing around the room, she saw the rest of them watching her hopefully. They wanted to believe-and who was she to deny them? Looking back at Beldyn once more, the fierceness in his eyes, she could only nod and sigh.
“Very well, then,” she said. “Do as he says.”
The rest of the day passed quickly. From the wall of keep Tavarre winded a long brass horn, sending its clarion blare ringing out across the vale. Men and women came running, emerging from houses and shops throughout the village. The bandits and Gareth’s Knights took control of the situation, gathering the villagers in Luciel’s central yard, sending runners to fetch food and blankets and fill skins with water from the town well. The scant survivors of the plague, barely two hundred in all, looked around nervously, not sure what was happening.
Clad in chain mail and a long riding cloak, his sword hanging at his side, Tavarre strode into the midst of his vassals and stepped up on a tree stump, waving for silence. He got it at once, though many darted glances about, searching for Beldyn. The monk had disappeared that afternoon, and no one had seen him since. Now the sky was red, the sun gone behind the distant Khalkists. Night would come soon, and Luciel’s folk whispered fearfully as they turned listen to the baron.
He.’d barely finished explaining about the army and the need to flee when the murmurs turned into a rumble of outrage.
“Leave!” shouted an old man, his bald head wrinkling with worry. “I’ve lived in this vale all my life!”
A young woman stepped forward, shifting a squalling baby on her hip. “Govinna is too far! We’ll never get there with winter coming!”
“What about them?” demanded a stout, severe-looking matron. She stood near a cluster of bodies near the middle of the yard: the plague’s eight remaining victims. They were an awful sight, gaunt and wasted, four men, three women, and one child, coughing and shivering where they lay atop bedrolls the bandits had spread out for them.
“They can’t make the journey!”
Standing near Tavarre, Ilista swallowed, knowing the woman was right. The sick were too many. Beldyn might be able to lay hands on three of them, maybe four, but eight? It was more than he could handle. Though she knew there was no hope, one thing kept her from shouting it out-Beldyn’s eyes, the stubborn ardor shining from them.
He appeared then, even as the villagers clamored and Tavarre tried to calm them down. At first, only a few folk saw the monk, standing at the yard’s edge with his hands folded inside his sleeves, but when he stepped forward the mob grew silent and turned away from their baron to stare in awe.
Beldyn made his way through the crowd, which parted for him gladly. A few people dropped to their knees, while others whispered to one another, their voices tinged with wonder. As she watched the adulation in the borderfolk’s eyes, Ilista had the feeling of having started something she could no longer control. They might balk at Tavarre for saying they had to leave Luciel, but she knew they would follow Beldyn across Ansalon, if he asked. Ilista’s hand strayed to her medallion as the monk stepped up to the dying on their pallets.
Please be right, she thought, not wanting to consider what might happen if Beldyn proved wrong.
“Hear me, my children,” he declared. His voice was stern, the music all but gone from it, leaving cold authority behind. He raised his chin, and his youthful features hardened before her eyes. “I know this is a hard thing, but it must happen. There is no shelter here, and Govinna’s walls will keep us safe. As to these pe
ople…”he added, gesturing at the fever-wracked bodies,”… watch.”
As he knelt before the eight pallets, the only sound in Luciel was die ever-present rush of the wind. He looked out upon the bodies, spreading his hands over them. Ilista stopped breathing without realizing it as he closed his eyes and began to pray.
“Palado, ucdas pafiro…”
The light, when it came, grew bright so fast that all around the yard, folk cried out, shielding their eyes against the glare. The chiming noise that accompanied Beldyn’s healing rituals was louder and deeper, filled with strange echoes that came from nowhere. The autumn chill vanished, turning warm as the holy light engulfed Beldyn, then snaked out into the crowd in tendrils of silver fire. Ilista found herself trembling at the monk’s power.
“Be right,” she whispered, clutching her medallion until its sharp corners dug into her flesh. “Merciful Paladine, let him be right…”
At last the glow rippled and began to fade, bleeding away into the gathering night. One by one it uncovered the bodies on the pallets, washing away like a sunrise in reverse. Each time it left a healthy person behind-clear skin, brows no longer damp with fever, breathing easily again as they slumbered. Only Beldyn remained, all but lost amid the radiance, his eyes burning blue through the god’s white light. Ilista also saw the red gleam of rubies-then it was gone, swallowed by the brilliant whiteness.
The villagers who hadn’t already knelt did so now, their faces aglow with belief. Atop his stump, Tavarre shook his head, his mouth crooking into a wry, wondering grin. Ilista stared, fingering her medallion worriedly. Beldyn, gazing out upon the doting folk of Luciel, closed his eyes, smiled, and crumpled to the ground.
Chapter Seventeen
Everyone stared as Beldyn fell, dropping first to his knees, then slumping backward in a senseless heap. Some gasped, a few put their hands to their mouths, but coming so soon after the healing, his collapse took everyone aback.
With a cry. Cathan shoved his way through the mass of villagers, hurrying to the monk’s side. The holy light continued to burn, rippling silver and making soft, crystalline sounds, but Cathan didn’t balk. Holding his breath, he knelt hurrying and reached into the glow. It was a strange feeling, like putting his hands in a cool stream on a hot day, and the hairs on his arms stood erect, but there was no pain. Feeling around inside the light, he found Beldyn’s head, pillowed on one outflung arm and lifted it, propping it in his lap. The monk’s skin was clammy, and for a heartbeat Cathan feared he might be dead, but then he felt the body stir and the faint hiss of breath, and he sighed in relief.
Others were crowding close now, and the townsfolk parted to let them through, Ilista, Tavarre, Sir Gareth. Wentha was there too, somewhere-she had been standing beside him. Cathan heard their voices, taut with worry, but he didn’t listen; his attention fixed on Beldyn, his hands moving within the light to brush hair from the monk’s brow. The glow was already beginning to fade. Through it, he could see Beldyn’s youthful face, pale and slack, the lips parted, keeping a hit of the smile they’d held before he fell.
Cathan patted Beldyn’s cheek. “Reverence,” he asked. “Can you hear me?”
Beldyn stirred, moaning, and his eyelids trembled open. The blue fire in his eyes was banked, but it flared a little when he saw Cathan. His smile widened.
“You kept your word,” he said. “You came to my aid.”
Nodding, Cathan continued to stroke his cheek. “How can I help?”
Beldyn considered this. Letting out a shuddering breath, he glanced not only at Cathan, but the others as well.
“Help me up,” he said.
Cathan hesitated, looking at Ilista. The First Daughter hit her lip, unsure.
“Do it,” Beldyn insisted. “The Kingpriest’s warriors won’t wait for me to gather my strength.”
It was true, Cathan knew. Even now, the soldiers were heading for Luciel. Time was dear. So with a swallow, he grabbed Beldyn under his arms and rose, lifting the monk’s weight. In a moment, Beldyn was on his feet again, though he leaned much of his weight into Cathan’s shoulder. They exchanged looks, and Beldyn smiled.
“Thank you, my friend,” he said.
They left Luciel an hour later with whatever they could carry. The sun set soon after that, but they kept on, moving well into the evening. Finally, when it was full dark and they had put two leagues of wilderness between themselves and the town, they stopped and spent the night huddled and shivering in the shelter of a stand of aspen. They lit no fires, for fear of the Scatas.
Hours later, they woke-more tired, it seemed, than when they’d made camp-to the sight of ruddy light smearing the horizon. At first they thought it was dawn, but the glow was to the south, not the east They stared silently, knowing what it meant but not daring to speak of it. The Kingpriesf s men were burning their homes. Whatever became of them, no more maps would bear the name of Luciel.
The Scatas would not be so easily sated, however. Soon the riders would pick up their trail, if they hadn’t already. As the villagers watched the fireglow, some of them weeping, Tavarre and Sir Gareth drew the leaders of the band aside to talk.
“Well never make it,” Gareth said, studying a map of Taol. Scowling, he traced his finger along the distance to Govinna, still many leagues away. “We can’t outrun imperial cavalry.”
“Can we hide from them?” Ilista asked.
Tavarre glanced at the villagers and shrugged. “Where? There’s two hundred of us.”
“We’re done, then,” Vedro said, and spat.
“No.”
Everyone stopped, turning to look in surprise. Last night’s healing had left Baldyn pale and weak, but he was recovering, and the silver light dimmed to a glimmer around him. His eyes blazed, silencing questions. Half the bandits and more than one of the Knights couldn’t meet that unsettling gaze at all and looked away.
“There is a way,” he said, pointing at the map. His finger marked a spot ten miles to the north, where the old road passed over the River Edessa. “This crossing. Is it a ford or a bridge?”
Tavarre leaned in, scratching his beard. “Bridge. That’s high ground there-the river flows through a gorge.”
“Good!” Gareth proclaimed, his eyes glinting. “We can cross, then burn it behind us.”
The baron shook his head. “We could, if it were made of wood. That bridge is stone.”
Everyone looked at one as the spark of hope they had felt faded. Beldyn, however, still stared at the crossing.
“Then we’ll knock it down,” he said.
“How?” Tavarre pressed. “We have no tools, and even if we did, it would take days-oh.”
He stopped, seeing the look in Beldyn’s crystalline eyes. Everyone who saw knew what he had meant. Healing was not the only power the god had given him. Looking at him, the others felt some of his conviction flow into them. Besides, they had no other option but surrender, and that path surely led to the gibbet for them all.
After dispatching riders to trail behind and serve as watchers, the folk of Luciel-all of them cold, hungry and tired- broke camp and set forth, through the morning mist. Behind them, the distant glow of Luciel’s death vanished in the brightening dawn.
They first saw the bridge late that morning, as the road humped over a hill-shoulder. The refugees halted at its crest. Less than a league away, the trail wound up to the lip of a chasm, where a narrow arch of white stone spanned the gap. Huge figures, carved from streaked granite, loomed at either end: statues of warriors, wearing old-fashioned, banded armor and holding oblong shields and tall spears. They had been four, once, but one had crumbled to pieces with the passage of years, and another was missing its head and shield arm. The others stared out, their beardless faces grim.
The villagers were exhausted from hours of hard marching, but now a ragged cheer broke out as they beheld the bridge. A few bandits joined in, raising their swords in the air.
“Is that it, Cathan?” Wentha asked. “Are we going to be safe now?”
He looked up at where she sat, astride his horse. He’d given it to her to ride, jogging alongside the whole time. He wanted dearly to tell her yes, everything would be all right, but glancing at Beldyn, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. The monk’s face was drawn, weary. Even if the god had given him the power to destroy the bridge, would he have the strength to wield it? Cathan bit his lip.
Now he heard it, a new sound, rising above the murmur of voices and the wind’s whistling: a low, ominous rumble coining from behind them. Hoofbeats. Freezing with dread, he turned and looked back down the slope, half-expecting to see hundreds of blue-cloaked Scatas bearing down on them. He didn’t, although what he did see did little to raise his spirits either: the bandits’ lookouts, lashing their horses as they thundered up the hill.
Tavarre and Gareth wheeled their steeds, cantering back to meet them, so the villagers wouldn’t hear their breathless report. It was needless, though. The scouts’ flushed faces and the glisten of blood on one man’s arm told them enough. An uneasy murmur rippled through the mob as the baron came around and started back toward them. His scars seemed like canyons, cutting through his glowering face. “Get to the bridge,” he told them. “Move!” The villagers didn’t need to hear more. Their weariness forgotten, they surged forward again. Those with the strength broke into a run. Others glanced back, but still there was no sign of pursuit. Cathan could feel it now, though, shaking the ground beneath him: the hammering of hundreds of hoofs, and the shrill of war-horns with it.
Legs burning, he looked up at Wentha. His sister was white with fear, clutching the saddle horn. Then he looked at the distance to the bridge, and clenched his teeth. They still had nearly two miles to go. Swallowing, he drew his sword.
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