Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1)

by Holden, Ryan

  Kerry whistled. He jumped up. All the dew burned off by the sun and the seductive warmth that held him creekside now precipitated a light sweat. He ran at an easy pace back to the cabin, not knowing what he'd find. Every sense strained to gather little tendrils of information: a strange scent, an unfamiliar sound, a flash of color. A kardja keeper learned to trust his animal's senses more than his own, and that whistle meant danger.

  At the cabin he saw Kerry poised, neck held high, ears flicked forward towards Darach. He finally heard what she had minutes ago, or what she'd smelled, as he ran the last few paces into the breeze rising up the hillside. He'd heard it but weeks ago, though years of living had passed in between: the unmistakable stomping of horse hoofs with the accompanying shouts of men.

  Without pausing he sprinted into Kerry, pushing her south. She stumbled at the interruption then found her feet as he leaped on her bare back. They dashed into the woods and out of sight.

  Orion pulled up on her. They'd avoided the eyes of Riley and his men, he was pretty sure, but couldn't crash through the undergrowth unnoticed. He stopped and it was well he did so. The troop's hooves quieted upon reaching the cabin.

  Orion feared his heart beat would give him away, so loud was its sound inside his head. He stroked Kerry to hush her as she stood there trembling, her heart beating twice as fast as his. She still looked agitated so he slipped off and led her at a walk through the forest. Her footfalls were as soft as a fox's and their passing made less noise than the breeze in the leaves.

  Orion wondered why he'd been so foolish. Riley would know where he lived: who in Darach didn't? It wasn't exactly a maze to arrive at the old cabin. He got mad at himself. This, then, was what it meant to be on the run. He'd have to get used to it. If not Riley, then someone else. He would be chasing after the merchant, yes, but there would be others on the roads with no care for solitary travelers or rules of a faraway king.

  He led Kerry to a nearby pasture and let her graze. Twice her neck went up and he tensed but both times she went back to calmly chewing her grass. Around noon she settled in the shade of an oak to chew her cud. Orion found one of the oak's exposed roots and sat against it, molding his seat to its irregularity. He sat there, wondering what Riley was doing at his cabin, then fell asleep.

  When he awoke it was late in the afternoon. Kerry was grazing some more, very slowly though, so he knew she was full. He clicked his tongue at her then, with less haste than in the morning, made his way back to the cabin. It looked more disheveled than before from the outside: he couldn't tell if they had searched the place, too, or just threw things about for spite. The door was now completely dislocated from the cabin.

  He paused in the shadow of the woods. Kerry's ears flicked about, then she stepped forward. That was good enough for him. He dismounted at the cabin and found the mess wasn't any worse inside.

  “Orion.”

  He jumped, then felt immediately embarrassed that Enda could scare him so easily. “Hey.”

  “Did they find you?”

  Obviously not.

  “Umm, they asked again. Father said he'd seen you in passing, thought you'd be at the cabin.”

  “He told them that?”

  “They'd find it out anyways! And a little truth never hurt our chances.” She clasped her hands.

  “I'm sorry.” Another thing to learn. Very few bullies survived as far east as Darach: life was too hard for such a luxury. But these men had silver and horse and knew no friends here. They were strange to Orion: they did not merely desire vengeance, as if on point of honor, but were reactive, like wolves woken from sleep. The gods pity the one that got in their way.

  “That's okay. But what will you do now?”

  She had asked him this less than a day ago. “I have to leave. I have to find the ring.”

  She nodded, then jumped forward and hugged him. He hugged her back, feeling some barriers break inside him, and tears start to flow. He jerked back, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “That's good. I mean, not really good. But good that they won't find you here.” She gulped.

  He stood there, looking at her feet. She had such small feet compared to his. He wanted to protect her, to make her safe. Leaving was the best thing he could do to help. He felt as if he'd eaten rotten berries. Then a thought came to him.

  “If they ask anymore, have your father say that Devlin's family is ended. His son is no more. Their desire for blood is fulfilled.”

  “You know my father wouldn't lie.”

  “It's not a lie. He's dead, he's gone. I have no place here, in his world. I seek after my mother's kin, for there I hope to find something. Who does Devlin have? A brother? A father? A family name? He doesn't even have a grave.” His voice, rising like storm clouds, broke into jagged lightning. “From now on, I am Astra's son. Let their anger die with Devlin, let it die with the life I leave behind me.”

  He was surprised at himself. Where had that thought come from? Too many of his mother's stories.

  Enda cocked her head at him. “You are your mother's son. But your father's son still lives, and someday you will be glad of it.” She walked a few steps downhill. “I must away. I will tell father what you said. Goodbye.”

  His mind said goodbye but his tongue failed him. He watched the falling sun set her tresses aglow until she faded into the wood.

  It was an odd time to begin traveling at this late hour, but why not? The rifled cabin would give little comfort more than open sky. Why sleep the one place where Riley might find him? He took the oatmeal and began filling a sack. So many memories came back to him, happy ones. Playing chess with his father. His mother's eyes flashing as she told him one of her stories. The birth of his sister.

  But they were gone. All of them. What family did he have now? One he was leaving behind tonight, another a kinswoman he didn't know, and the third four-legged. Instead of trying to decide between them, he left behind all symbols of his parents' life. He imagined someday returning to this shrine of his past to ease the parting.

  One thing he did take. His father's spare knife, won by a bet he'd placed on Myra. He took his own and spiked it in the dirt at the foot of his mother's grave. He knew someone would take it soon enough but didn't care. He'd be long gone before the looting began. Whistling for Kerry, who had wandered off with her load on her back, he mounted her and skirted the village to the north.

  The merchant would have gone to Avallonë. Where else would he find a buyer for the ring? Surely not in the poor hamlets between, though perhaps a noble of Riley's wealth might have the ability to make him part with it. Orion hoped not.

  Avallonë or not, there were only a few roads to travel on. The north road his father told him of, running along the foot of the mountains to the great pine forest. His mother had said it ran south too, to the sea, but that part was in severe disrepair. Somewhere along the north road the west road began, leading straight for Avallonë.

  The merchant had three, four days' head start on him. The city of queens: a week's travel? Orion wasn't sure. The merchant had a horse; he had Kerry. He sighed. How could he hope to catch up? If he didn't, how could he find the man in a city of thousands? He gritted his teeth and pushed those thoughts aside. He had to, and so he must.

  Twilight began as Kerry descended another hillside in the forest. Orion knew they were well west of Darach and nudged her a little southward. They passed through a small glade. Orion looked back, seeing the last of the sun redden the high slopes of Mt. Finola. Kerry entered the woods again and the vista was lost.

  “Come on, girl,” he said. Her steps quickened as the ground leveled out in front of them. They came across the path leading from Darach to other villages westward, only one of which he'd been to, and took it.

  It was now night. Orion looked up at the star-pricked sky. He found his father's favorite in the south: the Hunter, bow in one hand and a slain deer in another. He'd always wondered how the first person looking at the sky had seen it all. The should
ers and feet of the hunter, and especially his belt, made much more sense than the deer and sword. Some views didn't change. He breathed in deeply. A warm kardja under him, the cool night air on his face. For the moment, all his troubles seemed small and far away.

  Twelve

  In the wee hours they stopped and slept. They were up at daylight again. Orion built a fire and tried boiling water. The fire was to small or the water too much. He gave it up, munching on some of the oatmeal. It dried his mouth out and was rather tasteless but he'd had worse. He put out the fire and checked on Kerry. He envied her ability to eat grass. Wouldn't that be convenient.

  He whistled for her to come over. She flicked her ears back but went on grazing. “Kerry!” She looked at him, and walked further away. He walked over and pushed at her shoulder. She whirled to face him, staring him down. Oh no. “It's okay, girl. It's me. What's going on?” He kept his arms low and backed away.

  Apparently we're not leaving yet, huh, girl? He sat down. His fingers grabbed at the grass in front of him. He then decapitated a couple dandelions, flicking there heads away. How long since he'd done this? Before the spring rains, he guessed, if there were any flowers out that early.

  Kerry had gone back to grazing. He felt like taking a nap but fear drove him forward. He walked back to her, talking softly. He slowly reached a hand for her shoulder, this time petting her. She didn't shy away. He might as well make himself useful so using his fingers he removed some twigs from her coat and untangled hairs that always knotted up under the saddle.

  He gave that up. He'd use a brush on it later. Stroking his way in that direction he checked her foreleg again. He couldn't see any swelling and Kerry didn't seem to notice his fingers squeezing it. She burped. He laughed, then seeing her face laughed harder. She was surprised, as if someone else had used her throat to burp. He used the distraction to clip the reins to her halter. Soon they were on their way.

  The road was easy and they met no one. Orion felt uneasy. Almost criminal. Kerry was his and he was breaking no rules. But it was not usual for a herder to ride his own kardja, much less to travel. It had been decades since this was normal: kardja were now sheep, more or less. Besides, it would make his path well marked by local gossip in case Riley and his crew came this way. On the other hand, a single horseman wasn't rare. Men of means, dispatch riders, sons seeking their fortune in the city, the landed traveling between city and country estate—a horse was a luxury but by no means uncommon.

  His sack of meal should last him to the city. Once there, a few coins he'd reclaimed from a oak knothole—the last of the payment for Myra's fleece this year—would come in handy. He wondered if the Queen ever traveled. To the sister city Kyriopolis, perhaps. He hoped not.

  He avoided the side paths that marked nearby villages, some of them appearing to be used little more than a deer run. Sometimes the road would run right through the village, as it did, or rather ended, in Darach. In these cases, upon first sign of life, he ducked into the woods to slip past it.

  He couldn't avoid sight entirely, but when it was one person at a time—a farrier here, a farmer there—he didn't mind, though he still found it uncomfortable. At least his speed on Kerry soon left those behind whom he passed and left those he met faster still.

  On the second day after their late night departure they left the woods, which had grown thin, behind. The ground was now fully level and a great plain stretched before him. His eyes took in the wide blue sky: it was almost as good as being on a high mountain pasture. Here the sky seemed bigger, but it felt squished, like you were in one of those portraits being hawked on market day. But he also felt as if he stood back to a cliff: the western horizon stretched out in front of him into nothingness.

  He turned Kerry right, up the broad avenue that was the North Road. It was harder to tell, with his woodsman's eyes, what was road and what was plain. The twin cuts of wheel marks here and there were the most visible sign though, he soon noticed when once they strayed off of it, the spongy plain was textured in bumps and dips and quite different than the beaten turf of the road.

  He kept on looking left, feeling the emptiness, and looking right, to tell himself where he was. Kerry didn't mind, or at least didn't tell him so. Her pace was swifter here: no curving road, no tense rider slowing her to a walk at every sound and every bend in the road, no shady detours and struggling through underbrush to get to water.

  Water. Orion wondered if there'd be any here. Was that why no trees grew? His mother had tried to explain it to him once. The result was that he knew he didn't understand—how could he, when half the words she used she had to explain too? Maybe yes, maybe no.

  His question was answered a few hours later, as twilight made him think of stopping. He saw trees ahead reaching in a great spur into the plain with a sliver of light cutting its tip off from the forest. Kerry quickened her pace. Some time later, he heard a sound he thought he knew but couldn't quite place. It was too quiet. A few more paces and his eyes filled in the details.

  The road ran straight ahead, right into a clear pool of water, and continued, none the wetter, on into the darkening distance. Low trees flanked the water with bushes close clustered. Orion dismounted and let Kerry drink. It was the strangest pool or creek that he'd seen yet. It was too narrow for a pool and the water could be seen moving, but it was quieter than a creek and much too big. Was this a river?

  To Kerry it was just water. He joined her, throwing his shoes off and walking in. It felt cool and soothing. He drank some. Ugh. It tasted strange, like a bad tea. His thirst woke up, though, and he guzzled, head just upstream, if it could be called that, of Kerry.

  He happily made camp here. He wouldn't know what to do out in the plain: how to find water, firewood, shelter? The river didn't seem so strange now. It brought water and water brought trees and trees, well, trees were very useful things. He wondered if the city had any. He tried boiling water again, with greater success, and munched on his hot oatmeal with berries he found while wading up the river. It was almost a feast. He decided to forgive the river for being so slow and poor tasting.

  Early the next day he saw wheel cuts heading west. He was delighted. From all the stories he thought it was much further north: they must have come faster than he thought, or the trip from Darach to the the plain turned more northward then of old. He felt in high spirits, and why not? Kerry was no longer lame, it was beautiful weather, and his belly was full. Well, full enough.

  She had been irritable this morning, too. It reminded him of some of the dumber, untrained kardjas they had. He was too much of a herder not to know that not all would be intelligent. That only happened when you had a very large herd and three-quarters of them stayed behind to eat grass and make fleeces.

  No, Myra was unequaled in living memory, and her daughter Kerry had received all her intelligence. Orion hoped she wasn't getting stupid, or sick. Of all the foals lost this spring, he knew his father had wept over Myra's the most. And when the merchant had poisoned her and her last year's foal—Orion gritted his teeth and tensed. He must find the merchant for both his parents.

  Kerry snorted. “Sorry.” He stopped pressing her with his knees and relaxed into his seat. He knew Paris hadn't murdered his mother, just like Riley hadn't murdered his father. But they would have. In the glory days of Anatolia, theft or kidnap of a noble's kardja was punishable by death. Orion didn't know what he would do when he found the fool who had poisoned their lives, stealing his family's treasures, but he didn't care.

  He'd gotten used to the horizon by now. Riding straight for it with the occasional glance at the ground, he felt the breeze tousle his hair. There was nothing between him and his goal, nothing but space they were fast leaving behind.

  Darkness came and the twinkling brightness of Hespera rose in the west. He road on into the night.

  A few days earlier had Paris descended from the hills. “Enough with trees,” he said, to no one in particular. He let his face feel the free breeze wafting at him and air
ing his cloak out. He felt the orbed circlet in his pocket and a smile spread across his face. He soon came to the crossing.

  His horse sniffed the air. “Smell home, don't you? Far away, on the other side of the yellow graveyard? Smell well. This is the closest we shall get to it.” He wheeled him north and rode on.

  On the second day he came to another road. This one too went west. He left the mountains behind and passed town after town, each larger than the last. A day after that he forded the Pisgah, one of the great rivers of Arcadia, and a day later, as sun was setting, beheld the City of Queens on the horizon.

  Earlier that day the horizon changed color for Orion. The green fading into blue lost its luster. A dull gray settled in its place, here and there rearing up, breaking the line of the sun-streaked horizon. The grass around him thinned and soon bare patches appeared. Lush pasture grass was swallowed up by dry sage with scattered scraggly bushes.

  Orion didn't know what had happened to the landscape. The horizon, by now a bright yellow, gave no hint of when it would end. He turned around. The mountains rose in a blue strip far away, the forest at their base indistinguishable from the grass carpet he'd just left behind. Kerry kept on walking, pace slowed as if contemplating the new scenery, but Orion didn't direct her. He kept on looking back, then looking forward. Where were they? Avallonë had to be ahead: it was west. Perhaps further north than here.