At Marisa Pines, she could finally rest under the protection of the clans, and properly mourn those who had paid for her passage with their lives. Once there, she could send word to her mother the queen about the attack in the pass and the loss of her captain.
It was a grave attack on the queen’s authority. Maybe it would wake Queen Marianna to the real dangers circling the Gray Wolf throne. Perhaps Marianna would be willing to travel to Demonai Camp, as Elena had suggested, and allow clan healers to verify whether the High Wizard was still bound to the queen. They could determine how much damage Gavan Bayar had done and find a way to undo it.
If Raisa survived, she swore that she would bend all her efforts to helping her mother win this most important of battles. They would join together—mother and daughter, queen and princess heir. If Marianna would allow that, after Raisa’s year in exile.
They represented the Gray Wolf line—and nothing could stand against them.
Even Mellony could have a role to play. Raisa would seek out her younger sister, would quit seeing her only as a rival for power and her mother’s affections.
A brush with death could be the midwife to wisdom and good intentions. She prayed she would live long enough to carry them out.
Thus resolved, Raisa curled up next to the fire. She should sleep—she would need to be clearheaded tonight.
But sleep was long in coming. Danger pressed in on her from all sides. It weighed her down, flattening her against the ground. Several times, her eyes flew open when some small sound startled her.
When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed a series of vivid scenes, like fever dreams, or the images in a clan memory stone.
She lay next to Han Alister on the roof of the Bayar Library at Oden’s Ford, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Fireworks burst overhead, raining flame down on them. Suddenly, he rolled over, pressing her onto the roof tiles, his knife at her throat. “What are the rules for walking out?” he demanded. “Who can you kiss, and how often, and who starts?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know the rules.”
And he looked at her with those riveting blue eyes, brushed her cheek with his hot fingers, and whispered, “What are you afraid of? Thieves or wizards?”
The scene dissolved, and she was a small child again, cuddled on her mother’s lap. Marianna read through a picture book while Raisa tangled her fingers in her mother’s glittering hair.
After that, she dreamed of a long-ago picnic on Hanalea. Her mother pelted her father with hard rolls when he teased her. “Next time I’ll choose a wife whose aim is not so good,” Averill said, laughing.
The scene shifted. Marianna sat next to the pompous Duke of Chalk Cliffs, who thought himself quite the ladies’ man. The duke chattered on and on about his hunting lodge in the Heartfangs and how she should come visit. Marianna looked down the long table to where Raisa sat, and raised an eyebrow, her mouth quirking in a half-smile. Her mother could say more with one small gesture, one shift in expression, than Speaker Redfern in an hour-long sermon.
Finally, Raisa, Mellony, Marianna, and Averill snuggled together in a sleigh, riding out at solstice to see the fireworks. Marianna’s cheeks were rosy with the cold, and she laughed like a young girl. Raisa sat between her parents, holding their hands, the link between them. It made her feel cozier than the fur throws tucked in around them.
There followed more visions, new and unfamiliar. Not her own memories, then. Clairvoyance? Foretelling? Or the recent past?
Her mother knelt in the Cathedral Temple, head bowed, hands clasped in front of her, tears running down her face. Speaker Jemson knelt next to her, one hand on her shoulder, speaking softly. Marianna was nodding, she was speaking, too, but Raisa could not make out the words.
Marianna at her desk in her privy chamber, scrawling words across a page, spattering ink in her haste. Speaker Jemson and Magret stood by as witnesses. The queen signed her name, blew on the page to dry the ink, rolled and tied it, and handed it to Jemson.
Queen Marianna stood on her balcony in her tower bedroom, looking out over the city, her hands resting on the stone railing. The city sparkled under a light blanket of snow, the spring bulbs poking through. It was late afternoon, and the sun was descending, casting long blue shadows wherever it could slide between the buildings.
Beyond the castle close, children played in the park, and Marianna watched them in their brilliant colors spin and collide and pop up again, the sound of their laughter carrying in the softening spring air. Marianna smiled to see them, tucking her hands under her arms to warm them.
The queen heard another sound, this time behind her, and she started to turn.
“Mother!” Raisa jackknifed to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake, her heart flailing painfully in her chest. She’d slept the whole day through, and it was nearly dusk. The fire had long since died, and what heat the spring sun had provided was rapidly dissipating. Gillen’s horse looked at her, snorting clouds of vapor.
Her cry seemed to echo, reverberating among the peaks, the tombs of the dead queens all around her. At first it was Mother! and then it seemed to change to Marianna! Repeated over and over and over until it faded to silence.
“Mother,” Raisa repeated, softly this time, and yet still the mountains heard. They took up the refrain again. Marianna! Only this time they named off the line of queens.
Marianna ana’Lissa ana’Theraise ana’…and so on, all the way back to Hanalea. The names echoed and clamored through the mountains like the tolling of a great bell. There had been thirty-two queens in the millennium since Hanalea healed the Breaking. The mountains named them all.
Raisa had always felt embedded, safe in these mountains, connected to the future and the past. Now she felt like a loose thread dangling, the entire web threatening to unravel. Or like a sapling ripped out of the soil and left to die. She closed her eyes, sending up a wordless prayer.
When she opened her eyes, she was ringed by wolves, larger than any she had ever seen before. Gray wolves in all the colors that gray can be. Their eyes were blue and green and golden and black.
“Go away,” she whispered, putting up her hands for defense. “Leave me alone.”
One wolf padded forward, stepping lightly over the snow, regarding Raisa with wise gray eyes. The others parted to give her room.
“Greetings, Raisa ana’Marianna,” the wolf said. “We are your sisters, the Gray Wolf queens.” The she-wolf sat down, curling her fluffy tail around her feet. “Isn’t it a shame,” she said, cocking her head, “that we become queens only in the pain of losing our mothers?”
“I need to rest,” Raisa said. “I have a long way to go tomorrow.” She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “I’ve had enough dreams for one night.”
“And we as queens birth our successors only in the pain of our own deaths,” a green-eyed wolf said, as if Raisa hadn’t spoken. “But the knowledge that our daughters follow us eases our passage.”
The gray-eyed wolf nudged Raisa’s knee with her nose. “You are not alone. If you concentrate, you can feel the connection all the way back through the Gray Wolf line.”
“We serve as advisers to the reigning queens,” the green-eyed wolf said, “only when the situation is dire. Like now.”
“Well, I’ve been seeing you for months,” Raisa said, shivering. “Why haven’t you spoken to me before?”
“Your mother could no longer hear us,” the green-eyed wolf said. “That’s why we came to you.”
“Althea,” the gray-eyed wolf said reprovingly.
“Well, it’s true,” Althea said. “Raisa may as well know. The Bayar blocked up Queen Marianna’s ears so she could not hear our warnings.”
“Why should I listen to you?” Raisa said. “You might be hallucinations, or demons conjured by my enemies. Or a bad dream,” she said hopefully.
“You must listen to us,” the gray-eyed wolf said. “You have many enemies. Unless you take action, they will destroy the
Gray Wolf line.”
“That’s why I’m going home,” Raisa said. “To help my mother the queen. For too long we have not heard each other.”
The wind stirred the treetops, whispering, Marianna.
The wolves stirred, too, looking at each other, snapping their jaws and whining.
“The line now hangs by a thread,” the gray-eyed wolf said. “And you are that thread, Raisa ana’Marianna.”
It was so close to her thoughts that Raisa shivered again.
“My mother and I are in danger,” Raisa said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Beware of someone who pretends to be a friend,” Althea said. “Look close to home for your enemies.”
“Why is prophesy always so bloody cryptic?” Raisa said. “Why can’t you just flat-out tell me what’s going on?”
The wolves rose, as if at a common signal.
“This is the message we bring you, Raisa ana’Marianna, descendent of the queens of the Seven Realms,” Althea said. “You must fight for the throne. You must fight for the Gray Wolf line. You must not allow yourself to be ensnared as Marianna was. The future of the realm balances on a knife’s edge.” She bowed her head and turned away, moving off at a trot.
The others followed, all but the gray-eyed wolf. She tilted her head, regarding Raisa thoughtfully, as if taking her measure. Raisa thought she saw sympathy in the she-wolf’s eyes.
“Raisa ana’Marianna, my sisters speak the truth, but it is incomplete. Do not make the mistakes that I made. Choose your friends carefully. Never forget that two threads spun together are stronger than one of double thickness.”
“My mother and I,” Raisa whispered. “Is that what you mean?”
The she-wolf glanced over her shoulder, as if worried about being overheard by her sister queens, then turned back to Raisa. “Know that sometimes you must choose duty over love. Do not forget duty. But choose love when you can.”
Raisa stared at her. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“I am Hanalea ana’Maria, who shattered the world.”
“But…” As Raisa groped for words, Hanalea bowed her head and turned away. She broke into a lope, ears back, tail streaming behind her, disappearing into the shadows under the trees.
Raisa opened her eyes again. She lay on her back, staring up at the treetops. The cold and wet had seeped through her coat. Snow sifted down on her as the wind stirred the branches.
Marianna, they whispered.
She sat up, her head still clouded by the remnants of dreams, a knot of dread in her middle.
So it was a dream. But what did it mean, this twilight visitation? Was it a nightmare born of worry? A premonition of something that might occur? An obscure parable symbolizing something completely different?
It was said that the Gray Wolf queens had the gift of prophesy, but she’d never seen it in her mother, Marianna. Was this how the messages came—from gray wolves in a dream?
Or perhaps it was just that—a dream. The remnant and consequence of a tragic day.
Could she trust in a tradition of magic that seemed to have gone dormant—relics of a past when wizards behaved, amulets lasted forever, and queens knew what they were doing.
What would she find when she returned to Fellsmarch? What was the danger so potent that the wolves had issued this warning?
She had to know. She had to know now.
She scrambled to her feet. As she did so, she saw that the snow all around her campsite was pocked with pawprints the size of luncheon plates.
Wolfprints.
Bloody bones, she thought. Maybe she was losing her mind.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Gillen’s horse, who’d stood saddled all this time. He’d managed to scrape his back against a tree, knocking the saddle askew. She released the bit long enough to feed and water him again, then tightened the girth and mounted up.
When she emerged from the dark narrow canyon, more daylight remained than she expected. The last rays of the sun reflected back from the snow, illuminating the road before her. She looked up and down the trail, then turned north, toward Marisa Pines Camp.
Raisa walked the gelding off the trail when she could, though it made for slower going, hoping it would prevent her being spotted by anyone looking down from above. She kept Gillen’s cocked crossbow next to her, knowing that her one shot was unlikely to save her.
It was all she could do to keep the gelding reined in, when what she wanted to do was break into a gallop, to race all the way to safety. Occasionally she stopped and listened, hearing only the movement of branches overhead and the hiss of snow on snow.
Those hunting her would be proceeding cautiously also, not wanting to miss her in their haste. Or maybe they had set a trap and were sitting like spiders, waiting for her to fall into it.
She did her best to stay alert to her surroundings, to live outside of her head. She couldn’t afford to dwell on all the decisions that had brought her to this place, where life and death intersected. Her future—her life depended on this small space of time on this narrow road that led from Delphi, through Marisa Pines Pass, and down to the camp.
Where are the Demonai? she thought. Why couldn’t they be patrolling this stretch of road?
Raisa eased her white-knuckled grip on the reins as the light dwindled. Perhaps she could move a little faster now, at least until the moon rose. But the lack of light made traveling off-trail more dangerous. If her horse sprained his leg, she was done. So she risked the trail more often, making better speed in places where the trees closed overhead and hid her from prying eyes.
How many of them were out there, she wondered. How many had died at the hands of her guard? Would they split up or stay together? Would some ride the trail, hoping to overtake or intercept her, while others lay hidden along the way?
Raisa scanned the forward trail, trying to spot likely ambushes, but the darkness hid them as well as it hid her. Ahead, the trail threaded through a narrow gorge, running alongside the frozen-over stream at the bottom. She could see tracks—evidence that horses had passed this way since the storm.
She told herself that just because horses had passed this way didn’t mean they were still here. Anyway, there was no other way through. Keeping close to the canyon wall, lying flat so she wouldn’t be silhouetted against the entrance, she walked the gelding into the gorge.
The element of surprise was what saved her. The men waiting in the canyon had likely been waiting for hours with nobody to kill, and so were less alert than they might have been.
Halfway through the gorge, Raisa saw a flicker of movement against the opposite canyon wall. A horse whinnied a greeting, and Gillen’s horse answered.
Boots scraped against rock as soldiers scrambled for the weapons they’d laid aside.
She drove her heels against the gelding’s sides, and he spurted forward. Behind her, somebody swore a Northern oath. A shout went up, clamoring against stone.
As they exploded from the mouth of the canyon, Raisa urged her horse to even greater speed. They flew down the narrow corridor between the trees, risking life and limb in the near-darkness. Behind her, she could hear the rattle of hooves on stone evolve into the thunder of pursuit.
The gelding seemed eager to run after his long night hobbled in one spot, and Raisa gave him his head. Trees blurred by, the wind of their passing fierce against her face. She might end up thrown over a precipice, but she’d be dead if they were overtaken anyway.
She considered her chances of making it all the way to Marisa Pines Camp ahead of her pursuers. Her gelding was fresh, and she was lightweight compared to those chasing her. But she didn’t know the trail, and she didn’t know whether they’d laid other traps for her. Anyone could hear them coming a mile away.
They broke out of the trees and crossed a broad meadow. Hearing crossbows behind her, she ripped back and forth across the meadow, something the Demonai had taught her. The bolts hissed past, none coming close. But her zigzag pattern slowed her do
wn, and when she looked back, the assassins had gained on her.
Once again, she regained the shelter of the trees, but couldn’t seem to open more space between her and the riders behind her. At a rough count, there seemed to be a half dozen.
To either side she saw wolves loping through the woods, ears back, legs extending and bunching, easily keeping pace.
Couldn’t you cross in front of them, scare their horses or something? she thought.
Foam flew from the gelding’s mouth, and his pace dwindled a bit. How long could he keep going? The other horses had to be tiring as well. More so than hers.
They funneled between two great slabs of rock into another canyon.
Blood and bones! Up ahead, two riders on either side of the trail angled forward to block her way, crossbows dangling loosely in their hands, grinning.
Raisa looked wildly to either side. The canyon was narrow here, and there was no way to ride around them. She heard shouts of victory from the riders behind her when they saw that she was trapped between them.
Anger sparked within her. These were cowards and traitors, attacking her eight on one.
She wrestled Gillen’s heavy sword free of its scabbard. Extending it ahead of her like a pike, she drove her heels into the gelding’s sides.
“For Hanalea the Warrior!” she shouted, barreling forward, straight at the riders in her way. The grins fell from their faces, replaced by surprise and panic. They wrenched at their horses’ reins, trying to drag their mounts out of the way.
The sword point drove into the neck of one of the horses as Raisa thundered by. The horse screamed, and Raisa let go immediately to avoid being dragged from her own mount.
A crossbow sounded at close range, and something slammed into her upper back, pitching her to the ground. She landed flat on her face, and the gelding came and stood over her, dripping foam on her neck. She pushed to her feet, trying to ignore the pulsing pain in her back and the numbness and tingling in her left arm.
The Seven Realms- The Complete Series Page 99