by Tom Deitz
Avall chuckled wryly, even as his ears caught the sounds of chaos from the room beyond. Packing, it seemed, was always noisy. “Actually, I'm as busy as anyone will let me be,” he sighed, following Rann to the room's lone sofa. Both Lykkon and Bingg were absent, so Avall snared a jug of ale himself, passing it to Rann as he joined him.
“It's a funny thing about being King,” Avall mused. “Once something like this is set in motion, it more or less takes care of itself. I don't have to decide anything, really, except what I'll take to distract myself—excluding you, of course.”
“Of course.”
“The rest—well, it's not like War didn't have plenty of practice back in the spring. They've got ‘moving the King around’ down to a fine art by now. Lykkon's taking notes like crazy. Says he's going to compile it into a concise form in case some other King ever has to do it again.”
“That's our Lykkon.”
“Always where you need him—unlike some.”
“That's an odd remark.”
“I'm an odd King—as we both know all too well. But I really do feel kind of useless right now, Rann. My job, ultimately, is to provide a figurehead and a scapegoat as necessary, and to make decisions when decisions of a certain sort are required. Right now, the only decision anyone needs from me is how many changes of clothes to take, about which I could care less.”
Rann grinned. “Given that you're a middle-sized man from a populous clan, that's unlikely to be a problem. If you run out, you can always borrow. Maroon is maroon, after all.”
“There're things like crowns, though. I keep finding new ones for particular purposes, but there doesn't seem to be one for civil war.”
Rann's face darkened. “Are you going to take the Sword of Air?”
“In case I have to command another Sovereign Oath? I don't know. Do you think one would hold if someone swore on The Eight but believed in The Nine?”
“The Nine might have something to say about that.” “Bullshit,” Avall snorted, allowing himself the rare luxury of profanity.
Rann shifted beside him, reaching over to fling an arm across his shoulder as he relaxed against him. Which, given the order of the day, was probably not purely for comfort.
“Something bothering you?” Avall murmured.
“Just wondering if Strynn got away all right.”
A shrug, as Avall felt a jolt of anger. “You know she left without telling me good-bye.”
“I know she's had to tell you that a lot of late. Maybe she's tired of it.”
“Maybe.”
“You should be used to it. That's how it is with Merryn. And they are bond-sisters.”
“They are.”
“Faster gone, faster returned.”
“So I've heard.”
Rann eased away and took a long draught from the jug. Avall regarded him dubiously. “That's your ‘I've got something controversial to say, and I need to find strength in alcohol’ style of drinking.”
Rann lowered the jug and wiped his mouth. “I have a controversial proposition.”
“I'm a controversial King—as well as an odd one,” Avall retorted. “Perhaps I'll hear it.”
“I can't say you won't like it, but it'll be trouble to execute. But you said yourself you really have nothing to do.”
Avall shifted so as to look at him more directly. “I'm listening.”
Rann took a deep breath. “Two things, Vall. One is simply that if we can identify our enemy's stronghold, we can take the battle to them where they don't expect it. At best, it could break their back without requiring us to go all the way to Gem. At worst, we'd know more than we do, and in the middle we could find ourselves with another bargaining tool, or at least a useful distraction. Ultimately, there's no way they can put as many forces on the field as you can.”
“It is fervently to be hoped.”
“But all this depends on finding their citadel, and we don't know where it is. Not without subjecting everyone in Priest-Clan to interrogation under imphor, and anyone who's affiliated with the Face would probably go mad before he'd volunteer anything.”
“Or kill himself—as we've already seen.”
“Or be killed.”
“Your point being?”
Rann cleared his throat. “There is someone else who may know where their citadel is, and who has no cause to love Priest-Clan—or the Face—at all. Someone they, in effect, abandoned.”
Avall knew whom Rann meant even as they both said it. “Rrath.”
Rann nodded. “From what Eddyn said before he died, they've both been inside one of the Ninth Face strongholds— probably the main one, since Eddyn met one of their chiefs there. Unfortunately, we were all preoccupied when Eddyn returned, so no one ever bothered to find out particulars of place from him until it was too late. The Eight know we've both worn out the maps of the area between here and Gem-Hold in hopes of identifying anything that might serve the Ninth Face as a hold—any place where a large number of people could hole up in secret. And all we've come up with is that there are a lot of rock formations in that area, many of them riddled with caves, and we've no time to check them all on the way.”
“What're you getting at?”
Another breath. “What I'm proposing is that we take Rrath with us to Gem-Hold just in case. It's possible that simply being in the proximity of a place linked with that group might jog him from his coma.”
“It's also possible he might serve as bait,” Avall replied slyly, wondering even as he spoke why he found that idea so appealing.
Rann grinned fiendishly. “I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. The Face doesn't know what's happened to him unless they've got spies closer to you than either of us would like to think. Therefore, they don't know if he's alive or dead, conscious or unconscious. Therefore, they don't know what he'll have told us.”
“Nothing,” Avall growled. “But they won't know that.”
Rann grinned again. “The question then becomes how do we actually effect his … removal, and how widely do we let his presence with the expedition be known?”
Avall eyed him wryly. “You probably have an answer to that, too.”
A vigorous nod. “Lykkon and I do. But it was Bingg's idea. It's simple, actually.”
“I'm listening.”
Rann paused for another swig of ale. “You already know that the plan is for one of the wagons in your train to be the designated treasure wagon—the one containing the presumed regalia. It'll be housed in your own compound—probably in an adjunct to your own tent, so it'll be under heavy guard at all times, one of which guard will always be someone you know personally, and one of them always Night Guard. As for the regalia itself, we've already had a safe made for it, which no one can carry off, and it's quite … large.”
“Large enough to contain a person?”
Rann nodded eagerly. “A small one, like Rrath. Long enough to get him into the treasure wagon, at any rate.”
Avall gnawed his lip. “It's risky.”
Rann snorted. “To whom? You're the King, Avall. All we have to do is keep Priest-Clan at bay when we load the regalia.”
“And his healers? He's a sick man, Rann.”
“Beejinn's probably too set in her ways to risk such a journey, though she'd go if we asked, but Gynn's daughter used to be Royal Healer and has a bone to pick with those who helped work her father's doom. I don't have to tell you that she's loyal as they come.”
Avall shook his head. “No. But what about Esshill?”
Rann gnawed his lip. “That's a hard call, but I think we'd be mad to try to separate them. He'd probably be content to hide in the wagon with Rrath. If not, we could always keep him sedated.”
Avall raised a brow, then shook his head. “I see you've thought of everything.”
“You approve, then?”
“I don't disapprove, and it increases our choices. When do you propose to do this?”
“Tonight, optimally. With the help of the Guard, we can seal o
ff corridors and stairs at need. And since no one knows where the regalia is housed anyway, or even if it's all in one place, that alone will be an enormous assist right there.”
“Won't Rrath smother in the safe?”
“Maybe. But it's not like the thing's airtight, plus he's barely breathing anyway. And let's not forget that it's residue from the gems that's keeping him alive to start with.”
“So he'd be at risk—”
“Maybe half a hand. Once he's in the wagon with a healer, we can let him out.”
Avall exhaled deeply and rose. “I'm not sure we can actually gain anything from this, but I don't see that we've got much to lose, either. And Fate seems to smile on us most brightly when we take foolish risks.”
Rann rose as well. He favored Avall with a hearty hug, followed by one of his rare kisses, and sauntered out the door, jug still in hand. “To Luck,” he called cheerily.
“Luck,” Avall called back. But before he could return to his packing, Tryffon had claimed an impromptu audience to discuss final plans for their departure. It would be tomorrow—at dawn, because that was an auspicious time. There would be a preposterous amount of panoply, but that was necessary; the people needed to see their King, and the King, frankly, needed to see his people. He would also have to wear the regalia, because they expected to see it—which might actually facilitate their ruse. Avall only prayed they wouldn't want him to call the lightning.
CHAPTER XVI:
TREKS AND TOMBS
(SOUTHERN ERON—HIGH SUMMER: DAY LVIII—LATE AFTERNOON)
Merryn reined her horse to a halt half a shot short of the gap. Mountains rose around her, a jumbled, broken pile of them soaring up on the right to form the massive range called Angen's Spine, which paralleled Eron's coast at varying distances until it disappeared beneath the ice cap far to the north. That ice formed Eron's northern border, the Oval Sea its eastern one. The Spine itself defined the west—for now.
For now.
She paused in the saddle, steeling herself for what lay ahead. For the last three hands she'd been riding the crest of a ridge, heading steadily south, with the Spine to her right and a less threatening assortment of peaks tumbling down to the left to join the narrow strip of lowland that divided the Spine from the sea. The water was blue, as was the sky, for the day was clear and as hot as it ever got in Eron. She wore no cloak and went clad as a Common Clan woman—overtly, though mail she could not bring herself to forsake lay snug about her thighs and torso beneath a plain beige gown. Her hair was unbound, too: more freedom there. As for the regalia, which rode on the packhorse behind her: The helm was tucked inside a large cookpot; the sword nestled among a brace of tentpoles. The shield was too large to hide, but she'd masked that intricacy of metalwork within a plain leather case—masked it so well, she suspected, that unless someone actually hefted it, there was no way to tell it wasn't ordinary.
Besides which, it was the safest of the three pieces of regalia, and the only one she'd dare to wield herself.
She hoped she wouldn't have to.
As for the personal gems—Avall's, Rann's, and Strynn's— those she'd sewn into a false lining in the leather pouch she wore chained at her hip.
The air stirred her hair as she sat there looking. Her mount—a new mare named Hammer, overtly for her steady gait, but more likely for her hard-headedness—had taken her hesitation as permission to wander, and was happily investigating the short grass that grew beside the road. The Eight knew nothing grew in the road itself—not with the steady traffic going south to the site of the great rebuilding. So much traffic, in fact, that she'd had to spend most of the last two days traveling by night, in the woods.
She probably shouldn't have come here, anyway; it wasn't really advancing her mission, though she had no firm timetable.
More to the point, it was a risk.
Still, she had to know, and this was a good time for knowing. After this—after tonight—she would disappear, in truth.
And so she picked up the reins again, set heels to her horse's flanks, and urged him toward the gap.
The ruins of a gatehouse rose to either side, but they were ancient and covered with Ixtian graffiti. Mostly, now, they served to frame this approach to what lay beyond.
Had lain beyond, rather.
War-Hold-Winter.
Eron's southernmost bastion against its neighbor, Ixti, which lay even farther south, beyond the empty desert called the Flat.
War-Hold-Winter.
Now in ruins.
Because of her.
She paused between the weathered stones, looking out, for War-Hold stood—had stood—on the next peak down, a good four shots away. Yet even at that distance, Merryn could make out the changes the recent war had wrought.
Attacking in the night from within, Barrax's army had intended to keep the hold as intact as possible, merely killing its defenders or taking them prisoner. But some fool lower in the chain of command had ordered the machines that controlled the heat plant slighted. And since the heat plant ran off steam from a fire mountain nearby, the hold had effectively exploded. The central keep had come down, and with it both adjoining sections of curtain wall, so that its eastern flank now stood exposed and bare. Fire had rampaged through some of the rest, but much of it was stone, and fire spread slowly, so the bulk of the hold had been spared.
Ixti was rebuilding it. Ixti's gold, resources, and food, rather. Merryn's brother was not fool enough to trust even the most obtuse Ixtian laborer anywhere near such an important fortification. For though the Spine extended a fair way farther south, in humps and ripples, Eron effectively ended at War-Hold.
Then again, many things ended at War-Hold, not least among them Merryn's honor.
In spite of herself—in spite of the firm admonitions she'd given herself that she'd made peace with what she'd done and was now strong enough to confront the results of her actions— tears burned in her eyes. Maybe it was the wind—stronger on this side. Or smoke from the cookfires of those workmen camped outside the walls because there was no more space for them within. Why, it was a veritable carnival out there, with tents a shot beyond the walls in three directions, all catering to the needs of the workmen.
And it was all her fault.
For it was she who'd been shown the secret way out one night half a year ago, and that itself in a clandestine effort to repair another stupid thing she'd done. Not that she'd known Kraxxi was crown prince of Ixti in exile then. Still, she should have suspected. And not that she hadn't tried to set things right once she'd let him escape. But she'd played everything about that wrong. She should've simply gone to Hold-Warden Lorvinn, told her everything, and let Lorvinn handle it.
Then again, Lorvinn had found out anyway, and almost as quickly as if Merryn had approached her first, so maybe that much wouldn't have changed.
Maybe Lorvinn, acting, in all honesty, to repair an indiscretion of her own, wouldn't have asked her along on that fateful final mission in search of Kraxxi, so she wouldn't have known the secret exit. And if she hadn't known it, she couldn't have revealed it to Barrax's spymaster. Granted, they'd broken her with imphor, but she should've been able to endure that. If she'd stayed in the hold, she'd have built up a stronger resistance by now. If she'd stayed in the hold—well, the attack would probably still have come, but it would've been much more direct. She could've fought an enemy she could see, and maybe she'd have died, but she'd still have had her honor.
She'd been forgiven, of course—by everyone from Preedor and Tryffon on down. Avall had forgiven her, as had Strynn and Vorinn. But she still hadn't forgiven herself. Maybe she never would.
In any case, she'd seen enough for now—more than enough to drive the dagger of guilt satisfactorily deep into her heart and let it twist and turn there. She was ready to move on, to begin her quest in earnest.
West, into these mountains—and beyond—just as Avall and Strynn had predicted, the only uncertainty being where she would begin that turning.
After that, who knew? The only direction she'd ruled out was farther south. This was close enough to Ixti, thank you very much. And not only from the real, if unlikely, fear that the regalia might somehow fall into Ixti's hands, which could be very bad indeed, but also because that way lay Kraxxi, and he was another source of guilt in her life.
After all, had one conversation gone differently, she could now be Ixti's Queen. Kraxxi would love her like a man possessed, and give her everything she could reasonably desire.
And guilt would gnaw her heart raw.
No, this was the right thing, she had no doubt of that.
And when morning came, she would, indeed, turn west.
She found the cairn by accident.
Unable to sleep so close to the source of so much distilled pain, she'd crawled out of her tent at midnight, intending simply to stare up at the sky, which always seemed to calm her. It was a cloudless night, if somewhat humid. Mist hid the land around War-Hold, though the hold itself reared above it: stark, angular black above the glowing white. Her campsite was clear, as well. For while the idea of companionship after eight days on the road appealed to her, the need for solitude was stronger. She'd therefore camped in the lee of an outthrust scrap of mountain two shots from the hold.
And for the last half hand, had been walking.
She hadn't really been thinking about it, had simply been striding along the ridgetop, letting her feet take her where they would, which was mostly east and south, for the brighter sky there beckoned.
Still, she carried a sword, though not that sword, and followed the ridgeline but a little below, so as to paint no silhouette upon the sky. The ground was rocky underfoot, more stone than grass, but that was typical of the area. Now and then, however, she caught a glimmer of rusting steel or had to sidestep a helm or—once—a sprawl of bones, all of which served to remind her that not all deaths at War-Hold had occurred indoors.