by Hal Emerson
A series of leather straps snapped, the wood broke the rest of the way through, and the whole cart, loaded to the brim, began to roll slowly, inexorably, backwards, and Raven knew that if it was allowed to pick up speed it would be nearly unstoppable.
Without thinking, he kicked his horse Jack in the side and the beast leapt forward toward the cart. He jumped off at the last second and threw himself behind the cart, planting his boots in the ground and straightening his legs, trying to stave off as much of the cart’s momentum as possible. There were people on the trail below – if it rolled past them it could kill or injure dozens.
But he was only one man, and the cart continued to roll, his boots sliding and scraping on the dirt of the trail, unable to find traction.
“HELP ME!” He roared to no one in particular.
And then Leah was there, right beside him, pushing as well, yelling at the wagoner to get a block to shove behind the wheel, but still they weren’t strong enough to stop it.
Raven’s wound burst into pain from the strain and, unable to stand, he collapsed sideways, nearly blacking out.
A tall, strong form shot passed him and took his place, planting powerful feet and legs and lifting, forcing the cart back, stopping it in its tracks. Raven looked up and saw Henri Perci, side by side with Leah, holding the huge cart in place as the wagoner and a number of other Kindred swarmed around it, shoving blocks in place to stop the wheels turning.
The Kindred gave out a cheer, applauding the young officer.
Henri Perci pulled back, breathing heavy, and waved at the surrounding group, smiling broadly. He turned to Raven and the smile turned into a mocking smirk. Leah rose beside him and he went to her, helping her to her feet. He smiled at her too and she, after a moment of hesitation, nodded back in acknowledgement.
Henri Perci strode back to his white stallion, mounted, and kicked it past the cart on the far side of the trail, earning cheers from the gathered Kindred. Leah watched him go with an unreadable expression, and then crossed to Raven.
“Shadows and light!” cursed Raven, standing up and brushing himself off. His shoulder and side ached, but not too badly. Likely he’d just strained something.
“Don’t worry princeling, he’s not worth it.”
“Don’t call me that, I’m not a Prince anymore,” he responded doggedly. The last thing he needed was for people to hear her say that. He felt embarrassed as it was – here he was trying to play the hero, and in the end he’d only gotten in the way.
“Yeah well you may not be a Prince anymore, but you still act like one,” she said. “And you’re still a pain in my – ”
“Leah!” Called the voice of Davydd further up the column.
She turned sharply around, and as she did her long black hair, pulled back in a long, thick braid today, swung around and smacked him right across the face.
“Ah! Shadows and light! ”
“Oh! Shadows and fire, I didn’t mean to –”
“I know, I know, don’t worry about it – ”
“Leah!” Davydd called again.
“Go, go,” Raven said, motioning her forward, trying not to nurse his wounded pride too obviously. Not only was he useless at stopping rolling carts, he yelled like a little girl when slapped in the face with a hair braid. He was certainly a far cry from the heroic princely figure he’d thought himself to be a few months ago.
Leah hesitated a moment longer, but then she was gone, mounting and spurring her horse ahead in a single fluid motion, leaving a thoroughly disgruntled Raven behind her. He mounted his own horse, Jack, and walked him carefully around the men fixing the wagon, falling back into the column behind a number of mounted Kindred, now even more thoroughly unexcited by the prospect of a winter spent among a people that had no more reason to like him than did Henri Perci.
“I would suggest you keep a cool head on your shoulders about that one,” said the thin, reedy tenor of Elder Crane.
Raven jerked around in his saddle and saw the Elder come riding up along next to him with nothing but his large chestnut gelding for company or escort.
“I … I don’t know how to address you,” Raven responded, thrown off by the appearance, playing for time. What was the man doing here?
“I have no title besides Elder,” Crane said simply. “But you can call me ‘Crane’ if you’d like, the choice is really up to you.”
He was now riding equal with Raven as they ascended the mountain on the first truly steep incline. The pass had widened and was large enough for several men to ride abreast, but everyone in the company seemed to have backed away from the Elder. Raven looked around and saw that they were now in a strange, protective bubble of open space where just a few minutes before he’d been in the middle of a crowd of soldiers.
“Very well then,” said Raven, examining the man though trying to appear as if he wasn’t. “I’d prefer to call you ‘Crane’ if it’s really my choice.”
“And why would you prefer that?” Crane asked him, peering at him from under an hoary eyebrow with a look of kind amusement. “Would it be perhaps that you have decided not to accept my offer?”
Raven quickly looked down and cleared his throat nervously.
Shadows and light I really have been away from the Fortress for a long time. If I’d ever shown my discomfort that obviously in the presence of Symanta she’d have been able to read me like a book.
“I know that you requested to speak with me,” Raven said, his voice once more level and emotionless. “But I –”
“Indeed, I did. I requested such almost two months ago. Quite a long time to keep such an elderly man waiting.”
Raven glanced at the old man – no, not truly old, he corrected, he can’t be more than sixty-five – and was again slightly taken aback by the Elder’s strange disregard for the rules of formality.
“I asked you to speak with me,” Crane continued, as if he hadn’t interrupted Raven and had been speaking all along, “because the Kindred have kept the peace in our lands by keeping the Empire out. I have given you a long time in which to consider your position – and I thought now a fitting time to bring up the subject once more, while you don’t have anywhere to hide, and there’s no short-tempered Elder against whom you can rail.”
“I apologize for my actions in regard to Elder Warryn,” Raven said smoothly, slipping into the conversation as Crane took a breath. “I did not mean to cause any undue trouble. I can only excuse myself by saying that I was in pain and was provoked.”
“You let yourself be provoked,” Cran said, eyeing him, again with that strangely disreputable smile. It looked completely out of place on the face of what Raven knew to be the most powerful of the Kindred in terms of both station and, likely, political clout.
“But Elder Keri told me the same, and in any case I am not here to talk about Elder Warryn,” Crane continued, reedy tenor growing a little softer. “I have the highest respect for him as he is my colleague and fellow Elder, but if someone were to describe him as a pompous wind-bag with all the arrogance of a stallion in heat, I could hardly claim such an assertion to be ill-founded.”
Raven, not quite believing he had heard what he’d just heard, caught a small twinkle at the corner of the Elder’s eye and suddenly felt a weight drop off his shoulders, just that easily. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been worried the confrontation would lead to reprisals – if ever an Imperial citizen, even one of the Most High, had spoken to one of the Children the way he’d spoken to Elder Warryn, that man or woman would have been executed in excruciating fashion, and with good reason. Who would believe the Children were gods, like the Empress, creatures above criticism and error, if there were people around to criticize their errors?
“In any case,” Crane continued, “I do not wish to talk about the, as some might say, well deserved scolding of Elder Warryn. What I want to talk about is the fact you haven’t given the Kindred your allegiance, and yet you are returning with us to our lands and, unless I am mistaken, inten
d to partake in our protection for the foreseeable future.”
Raven tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. The Elder had him rather soundly cornered.
“I don’t know if I wish to give the Kindred my allegiance,” Raven said finally, not knowing how else to proceed but with the truth.
“Then what was it that made you stay in the first place?” Crane asked.
“I wish I knew,” Raven sighed, looking away.
“I think you do,” Crane said, watching him carefully. “I’m told you share a surprisingly strong bond with Leah Goldwyn, daughter of General Goldwyn, and the exiled BladeMaster, Tomaz Banier.”
Raven looked up in shock and felt a touch of anger as well. Tomaz guarded his secrets carefully, and if he did not choose to reveal his past as a BladeMaster, it seemed both careless and mean-spirited to bandy the word so openly.
But as he opened his mouth to speak angrily to Crane, the old man held up a hand to forestall him, and smiled with a simple, graceful air of apology.
“I am sorry for using such a trick,” Crane said. He did indeed look contrite, though also pleased. “But you are well versed in courtly ways, and I needed to know if indeed your affection for Ashandel Banier was real.”
Raven felt his anger sputter and die and realize he’d been played.
“Do not do that again,” he said coldly, his voice and face a mask of emotionless stone.
“I do not think I will,” Crane said, watching him carefully. “But you know as well as I that you did betray him once.”
Raven felt himself go cold, but he had no retort to this. Crane was right – he’d once played Tomaz for a fool in order to escape from him in the Elmist Mountains. But that was a long time ago now – it almost felt as if it had been another life, one as far away and unknowable as the icy tops of the mountains surrounding them.
“Fine,” Raven conceded, suddenly very unenthusiastic about this conversation. He was starting to reconsider his heretofore good opinion of the Wise Elder. “Now that you’ve insulted me, why don’t you get to the purpose of this charming visitation?”
“I apologize that we seem to be getting off on the wrong foot,” Crane said, looking a little worried now. “I was trying to put you at ease, though it seems to have had to opposite effect.”
“Indeed,” Raven said with a brutally short smile of acknowledgement.
“Then I will come to my point,” Crane said quickly. “I’m here to tell you I hope to sway your choice. I want you to be a part of the Kindred, and since I know that we have yet to convince you of your place among us, I thought I should mention that there is information we have that might be of great interest to you.”
Raven’s ears pricked up. Information – that was the one kind of currency with which he might be willingly bribed.
“What do you mean?” He asked slowly. He watched Crane’s face carefully, but the man gave nothing away. Was he bluffing? Outright lying? After all, what information could he possibly have that the Empire did not?
“What I mean to say is that there are things we know about the Raven Talisman that no one but the Empress knows.”
“You gave me information freely enough when I was recovering from the battle at the Stand,” he said, still examining Crane’s face for any sign of emotion, any trace of an expression that would tell him what the man was truly thinking.
“Indeed I did,” Crane said. “I felt that after what you did for us, we, the Kindred and the Elders, owed you that much. It was information known by many, but it was important that it be shared with you at the time.”
“But now you’re telling me that in order to learn more I need to make a bargain with you? I need to willingly give up my freedom and swear allegiance to the Kindred?”
“You mistake me,” Crane said quickly. “I do not mean to hold the information hostage – quite the contrary; should you wish to know more about yourself and the power you carry, then I will gladly point you in the right direction. But if I were to do so, I would be giving you a great secret … knowledge that the Kindred have kept safe, even from ourselves, for almost a thousand years. It is not knowledge that can be given lightly, and as such it would require a guarantee of a sort that you would not take that information and use it against us. It is not that I expect you to do such a thing – but we both know that you are, quite rightly I would think, wary of giving yourself to one cause or another at this time. Particularly so soon after what you suffered at the hands of your family. But I think you could find a place among us. Leah’s father, General Goldwyn himself, has even expressed interest in continuing your education.”
“My education?” Raven asked, taken aback by the seeming non-sequiter.
“Indeed,” Crane said, smiling slightly at the shocked look on Raven’s face. “It is a tradition among the Kindred to continue education into your adulthood, until you’ve decided on a trade or your teacher has pronounced you schooled enough to be a teacher yourself. Goldwyn has expressed interest in taking you in, after hearing about your fight with Ramael at the Stand and also having his daughter vouch for you.”
“What did Leah say?” Raven asked.
“I do not know the details,” Crane said, “but it is a simple thing to understand – the girl does not make friends with fools. Her father knows this, in fact he probably taught it to her, and when he heard you traveled in her company I would assume he asked for her evaluation of you. I can also assume the evaluation was good – or else he would not have expressed interest in you.”
I wonder what she said about me? Raven thought to himself. Their interactions together covered everything from friendship to betrayal, and as such he hoped she had left out some of the more interesting plot points.
“But we have gone off the subject,” Crane said, his reedy tenor returning calmly but forcefully to the topic at hand. “I cannot allow you to learn more about your Talisman, or about your place as Aemon’s Heir, if you do not first swear to the Kindred. It is … unfortunate. I will admit that I see something in you that I have not seen in many people, and I am inclined to trust you, but I cannot do so without proof. It would be putting too many lives at risk.”
Raven looked carefully at Crane, concealing his feelings as best he could, trying to keep his face impassive, and reminding himself forcefully that he did not care what this man thought of him. Not at all. Not one bit.
“What do you mean, you see something in me?” Raven asked.
“I mean that you have it in you to be a great man,” Crane said, his voice almost like a sigh, as if he’d been holding that sentence in for too long and letting it go was like releasing a burden. “I have been carefully trying to distance myself from you, knowing your past and knowing that you have yet to choose a side in this conflict between Empire and Kindred. I know that, for now, you side with us, and that is enough for some things. But I cannot tell what you will do next. It is as if you stand on a precipice, where a single wrong move will send you falling into darkness, while a cautious, careful step will bring you back to safety.”
“I do not need to be saved,” Raven said, trying to focus on the one negative thing the man had said so that he didn’t have to deal with the positive.
Shadows and light, he thinks I could be a great man? What does he mean by that? Is he trying to sway me with flattery?
“I have said too much and offended you,” Crane said, watching him, “I apologize for doing so.”
“I should be apologizing,” Raven said, surprising himself with the words.
What are you doing? He asked himself, suddenly confused.
“I’ve been rude to you,” he continued, “making you wait for an answer. I have never been good at making hasty decisions. I need time to think, often too much time by the standards of others … but there is no life for me in the Empire. Even if I wished to return there, such a thing would cost me my life. The Kindred are the only ones who have offered me safety … I would like to join you, if you will still have me.”
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Roared a voice in the back of his head, the voice of the old Raven, the Raven who had been a Prince, who still thought of himself as a Child of the Empress, who would not give into the reality of the world around him. Things had changed – he needed to accept that.
This is wrong, and you know it! I am a Prince of the Realm, even in Exile, I am –
“I am one of the Kindred in all but name anyway,” Raven said out loud. “We might as well get it over with and make it official.”
Crane looked a little taken aback by the sudden change, but to his credit he seemed to take it in stride. His long, thin face split into a wide grin, and he suddenly looked as if fifteen years had fallen off of him. The transformation was so abrupt and unexpected that Raven found himself overcome with the urge to smile back.
“Very well,” said Crane, “then it is a simple matter to make it official.”