It worked; the lock clicked, and the door swung open, hinges creaking.
The stairs gave out on the tack-room, and the shielded light normally kept burning there made her blink, eyes watering. But there were no sounds of restless horses beyond the door, and the tack-room itself was a shambles.
As her eyes adjusted to the light and she picked her way over the saddles and other tack strewn over the floor, she saw why—there were no horses to hear. The stall doors stood wide open; what beasts the brigands hadn't stolen had doubtless been driven off. Witless things that horses were, they were undoubtedly scattered to the four winds, running until they foundered.
So much for sending someone for help, she thought bleakly. Not even the guests are going to be able to send their own people back, not until some time tomorrow at the earliest.
Someone had planned this very well indeed.
With one small exception.
Kero hurried to one stall that would have been empty even if one of the guests hadn't brought a high-bred palfrey to install there. Though this was the stall reserved for Kero's riding beast, her Shin'a'in-bred mare spent most of her time in the pastures from the time the last of the winter's snow cleared off until the first of it appeared. Kero generally kept Verenna's tack hung over the side of the stall; it didn't take up much room, since she had never permitted anything other than Shin'a'in tack on the young mare's back. The one thing Rathgar was an expert on was horses, and he'd taught his children himself. Kero tended and trained Verenna with her own hands unless there was an urgent need for her to be otherwise occupied.
The tack was still there; blanket, a saddle with lightweight stirrups that was hardly heavier than the blanket, bitless bridle and reins. She gathered it all up, slipped the hackamore over her arm, and took her back way out of the stables, out into the pasture.
Some of the horses had either jumped the fence or been driven out here—she saw them in the moonlight, dark shapes milling around at the end of the pasture, whinnying their distress. Catching them was going to be impossible until they'd tired themselves out.
Pray Verenna hasn't gotten caught up in their panic, she thought, biting her lip. If she has—
Best not to think about it. Kero pursed her lips and whistled shrilly, three times.
And very nearly jumped out of her skin as something warm and soft shoved her in the small of the back.
Gods!
She managed to kill the scream trying to tear its way up out of her throat before she frightened the mare, but she did drop all the tack, startling the young horse so that she shied a little and danced away, nervously. Kero, for her part, just stood and shook for a moment. A very long moment, in fact, so long that Verenna got over her startlement and picked her way cautiously back toward her rider before Kero had entirely recovered.
The horse nuzzled her anxiously, and Kero found the steadiness to reach for Verenna and scratch her ears while she regained the last of her own composure. Finally she was able to take the hackamore off her own arm and slip it over Verenna's nose without her hands shaking so much that she'd be unable to get the band over the mare's ears.
Saddling Verenna was a matter of moments. The mare stood on command, quietly, as she'd been taught, while Kero slung the saddle and blanket over her back and fastened the girth. Chest and rump bands were next, as Kero fumbled the buckles a little in the dark, then Kero snugged the girth tight against her barrel. Verenna snorted a little, but was being remarkably well-behaved under the circumstances.
Which is just as well, Kero admitted, as she put her foot in the stirrup and pulled herself up onto Verenna's back. I'm not sure what I'd do if she decided to get out of hand.
She rode the mare up to the fence, then leaned over and grabbed the latch on the gate. The pasture gate could be opened from horseback, and Verenna remained quiet, though a little jumpy, throughout the entire maneuver. At least I don't have the others crowding up around this end, waiting for a chance to bolt. Verenna was a very light-footed beast, and hardly made more noise than a goat as she pivoted in place so that Kero could pull the gate shut and latch it closed. Kero was counting on that; she'd need every advantage she had against the raiders.
Verenna automatically turned southward as they moved away from the gate at a fast walk; Kero normally rode her along the game trails in the Keep's wild lands, and the shortest way there was along the road south. She shivered under the saddle; horses are creatures of habit, and her world had been turned all round about this evening, first by the invasion of strange men and horses into her pasture, then by Kero's arrival on the heels of the chaos. This business of riding out in the middle of the night had the mare nervous and confused—
And now Kero confused her still further by turning her in an entirely opposite direction to the one she expected. Westward, not southward, and away from the hunting lands and the main village.
She stopped, snorted again, and bucked a little. Kero held her head down, and she fought the reins for a moment more, then settled, shaking her head.
Poor baby, you don't know what we're doing out here in the middle of the night, do you? Kero let her stand for a moment until she stopped shivering, then loosened her reins and gave her a touch of the heel. Obedient, but still snorting a little in protest, the mare headed into the west, up to the least hospitable side of the valley, along a faint track that led to the border of the Keep lands.
Their road stayed a track only so long as it lay within the Keep's borders. From there it turned into a goat path, then into a game trail.
Verenna didn't like it at all; it was bordered by clumps of bushes that swayed and rustled alarmingly, and overhung by trees that made it difficult for either her or her rider to see the path. Any horse bred by the Shin'a'in nomads could pick her way across uneven ground in conditions much worse than this, but that didn't mean she had to like it. Her ears were laid back, and Kero sensed by the tenseness of her muscles that the least little disturbance would make her shy and possibly bolt.
A spooky enough road for a visit to a witch. Kero kept looking sharply at every movement she caught out of the corner of her eye, and starting a little at every sound. She was just as bad as Verenna, when it came down to it. This was the way to her grandmother's home, called "Kethry's Tower." Kero hadn't been up this road very often, but she knew it well enough. As a child, she'd been taken here either pillion behind a groom, or on her own fat pony, and the visits had been at least once a month. Later, though, as Lenore became ill, she'd gone no oftener than twice a year—and since her mother's death, she hadn't gone at all. Not that she hadn't wanted to, but although Rathgar hadn't expressly forbidden it, he'd certainly made his disapproval known. Kero had her hands full running the Keep, and somehow there never seemed to be enough time to visit her grandmother. And Grandmother had never sent any messages urging a visit either, so perhaps she hadn't wanted any visitors....
And maybe she still doesn't. But that's a chance I'll have to take.
As Kero remembered it, the place wasn't exactly a tower; it was more like a stone fortress somehow picked up and set into the side of a cliff. Kero scrubbed at her burning eyes with her sleeve, wishing that the Keep had been as impregnable as that Tower—it always looked to her as if it had been grown into the cliff side, or perhaps carved into the living rock, and the only access to it was along a steep, narrow stairway. Witch and sorceress her grandmother might be, but she took no chances on the possibility of having unfriendly visitors.
Verenna stumbled, and Kero steadied her. Now that they were away from the Keep, the normal night sounds surrounded them as if nothing at all had happened back there tonight. Off in the distance an owl hooted, and beyond the clopping of Verenna's hooves, Kero heard tiny leaf-rustlings as nocturnal animals foraged for their dinners.
Mother said that Grandmother had offered to build the Keep into something like the Tower, and Father refused, she remembered suddenly. Why? He wasn't normally that stupid, to refuse help. Was it just that he didn't want to be
any further in Grandmother's debt?
That could have been it. Every thumb's length of property that Rathgar called his own was actually his only through Lenore, and had come as her dowry. And he had resented it, Kero was certain of that; Rathgar was not the kind of man who liked to be in debt to anyone. Stubborn, headstrong, determined to make his own way, to depend on no one and nothing but himself, and to allow nothing to interfere with his plans for his lands and children.
But he loved Mother, she thought, letting Verenna pick her way through the thin underbrush. I know he loved Mother, and not just her lands. He used to bring her meals and feed her with his own hands when she was too weak to even move. He never said a cruel word to her, ever. He never once even looked at another woman while she was alive, and I don't think he wanted to look at another one after she was gone.
Verenna's eyes were better in this light than Kero's were; basically all she had to do right now was keep from falling off, and stay alert for stray bandits or wild animals. It was hard to believe that Rathgar was really dead.
Oh, Father. She thought about all the happy times she'd spent in his presence; how he'd taught her to hunt, how proud he'd been of her scholarship. He could hardly write his own name, she thought, with a lump in her throat, yet he was so proud of me and Lordan and Mother. He used to boast about how learned we were to his friends. He used to tell them about how I could keep books better than Wendar, and how Lordan was writing the family history—and then he'd drag Lordan's chronicles out and have me read them out loud to everyone after dinner. And he used to tell us both how we were following in Grandfather Jadrek's footsteps, and how respected Grandfather had been, and how we should be proud to live up to his example. She could see him even now, sitting on the side of Lenore's bed, with Lordan at his right and herself at his left, and whatever book they happened to be reading on his lap. "Don't be like me," he'd say, solemnly. "Don't pass up your chance to learn. Look at me—too ignorant to do anything but swing a sword—if it hadn't been for your mother, I'd probably be living in a bar somewhere, throwing out drunks by night and mopping the floor by day." And with that, he'd look back over his shoulder, and he'd stretch out his hand and gently touch Lenore's fingertips, and they'd both smile....
What happened? she asked herself, around the tears that choked her throat. I know he changed after Mother died. Was it because I wasn't able to be like her? He became so critical, that's all I ever saw. There were times when I wondered if he hated me—and times when I wondered if he even knew I was alive. Maybe if I hadn't been so completely opposite from Mother, maybe we could have gotten along better.
Verenna stopped for a moment, ears pricked forward, and Kero hastily rubbed her eyes, then peered into the moon-dappled shadows beneath the trees ahead of them. She slipped her knife from its sheath as she heard a repetition of the sound that had alerted the horse in the first place. A rustling noise—as if something very large was threading its way through the brush.
A crash that sent her heart into her throat—and then it stood in the moonlight on the path.
A stag.
Verenna shied, the stag saw them, and with a flip of its tail dove into the brush on the other side of the trail. Kero's heart started again, and she urged Verenna forward. The mare didn't want to go, and was sweating when Kero forced her to obey; but once they were past the spot where the stag had appeared, she calmed down a bit.
Maybe it was because he thought I wasn't listening to him about schooling, she thought, trying to calm the mare further with a firm hand on her neck. I know he thought I should be spending more time reading and less with the horses. Dammit, I passed every test the tutor ever set me! Is it bad that I like to be outside, that I hate being cooped up inside four walls when I could be out doing things? What's wrong with that? A book's all right when the weather's foul and there's nothing else to do, but why sit and read when the wind is calling your name?
She'd never been able to figure that out. Lordan, though—every chance he had, he was at a book or driving the tutor mad with questions. It was as if he got all of Kero's love of learning as well as his own.
Books, dear gods, he owns more books than anyone I know. And if he gets his way, he's going to spend half Dierna's dower on more books....
... if he's still alive to do it.
Her eyes stung and watered again, and her throat knotted. She rubbed her sleeve across her eyes, and wondered if he'd live the night.
If I can just get Grandmother down to the Keep... if she's got the kind of power everyone seems to think she does. Father would have had a cat if he'd known about the stories I used to pick up in the kitchen. They say she built the Tower in one night, with magic, just before she moved out of the Keep and gave it to Mother as her wedding present. They say she has a giant wolf and a demon-lizard for familiars. They say she can kill you or Heal you just by looking at you. And if only half of that's true, she surely will have what I need to save Lordan and get Dierna back.
Kero bent over Verenna's neck to keep from getting hit in the face by a series of low-hanging branches, and thought about what she'd ask for. Something that shot lightning, perhaps; a magic wand that called up demons. Exploding arrows? Maybe the help of that giant wolf?
With magic even I ought to be able to get Dierna away. And magic can surely save Lordan... unless Grandmother doesn't care what happens to us.
The thought made her heart freeze, and every succeeding thought seemed worse than the first.
She never once sent a messenger or anything after Mother died. Maybe she was angry with Father for taking Mother away from her. Maybe she really hates the rest of us. Maybe she thinks we all hate her, and she's gone all sour and mean. Maybe the magic has gotten to her brain, and she's gone mad.
"Lady Kerowyn—" said a voice out of the dark.
Three
"Lady Kerowyn—" said a voice from beneath the shadows of the trees, frightening the breath out of her, closing her throat with an icy hand. There was no warning, no movement beside the road, just a voice coming out of the darkness. It was a voice as harsh as the croaking of crows, and Kerowyn jerked, letting out an involuntary squawk of surprise as she reined in Verenna. The mare jumped and squealed, dancing madly backward, but fortunately didn't bolt.
Her heart felt like a lump of frozen stone, her pulse rang in her ears as she wrestled Verenna to a standstill. Hands trembling on the reins, she peered at the dark shadow-shapes under the trees; there was something there, but she couldn't even make out if it was human or not, much less if it was male or female. And that voice certainly didn't tell her anything.
"Who are you?" she replied, hoping her own voice wasn't going to break. "What do you want?"
"I live here," replied the voice, "which is more than I can say for you. What are you doing out here, beyond your father's lands, Lady Kerowyn? Why aren't you safe in your bed, in your father's Keep?"
It sounds like an old woman, Kero decided. A really nasty old woman. The kind that makes her daughter-in-law's life a misery. Oddly enough, the mockery in the old woman's voice and words made her feel calmer—and angrier. "Which is more than I can say for you," indeed! "If you really live here, you know that the sorceress Lady Kethryveris is my grandmother," she called back. "I need to see her, and I'd appreciate it if you got out of the way. You're frightening my horse."
"In the middle of the night?" the old woman retorted. "Dressed in men's clothing? Carrying a weapon?" She moved out into the middle of the path, blocking it, but still in enough shadow that Kero couldn't see her as anything other than a cloaked and hooded shape. "What kind of fool's errand are you on, girl?"
Kero tightened all over with anger, inadvertently making Verenna rear and dance. When she got her mare and herself under a little better control, she told the old woman of the raid, in as few words as possible, though she wondered why she was bothering. "I'm going to ask my grandmother for help," she finished. "Now if you'll please get out of my way—"
"Dressed like that?" The wom
an produced a short bark of a laugh, like a fox. "I think you have something else planned. I think you reckon to follow after these raiders, and try to rescue this girl they took."
"And what if I do?" Kero retorted, raising her chin angrily. "What business is it of yours?"
"You're a fool, girl," the old woman said acidly, then hawked and spat in the dust of the path just in front of Verenna's hooves. "You're a moonstruck fool. That's a job for men, not silly little girls with their heads stuffed full of tales. You're probably acting out of ignorance or out of pride, and either one will get you killed. Go back to your place, girl. Go back to women's work. Go back where you belong."
Every word infuriated Kero even more; she went hot, then cold with ire, and by the time the old woman had finished, she was too angry at first even to speak. Verenna was no help; she reacted both to Kero's anger and to something the mare saw—or thought she saw—under the trees. As Verenna danced and shied, the mare's panic forced her to calm herself down in order to control the horse. She finally brought Verenna to a sweating, eye-rolling standstill a scant length from the old woman.
Whoever she was, the old hag was at least as foolhardy as she accused Kerowyn of being, for she hadn't moved a thumb's length out of the way during the worst of Verenna's antics.
"What I do or plan to do has nothing to do with pride," Kero said tightly, through clenched teeth, as Verenna tossed her head and snorted in alarm. "There's no one left down there that's capable of riding out after her. No one, old woman. Not one single man able to ride and lift a weapon. All that's down there is a handful of frightened servants and pages, and two old, arthritic men who never learned to ride. If I don't go after Dierna, no one will. If I wait until that so-called "proper" help arrives, she'll be dead, or worse. People who intend to ransom a captive don't ride in and try to slaughter every able-bodied adult in the place. I don't have a choice, old woman."
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