by Court Ellyn
Falconeye conferred with his cousin. Azhien broke from ranks and fetched a horse from a tether beside the fountain. The black saddle on her back was polished to a mirror shine, and silver tassels ornamented the bridle. “Carah?” She glanced up at the dranithi with dull eyes. Azhien searched for the right words. “The … grooms? … say to give this to you. Aerdria’s wish. She is Lírashel. Er, Summer Gem.”
For the first time that morning, Carah’s face lit up. “The filly with the white star!”
“Yes, she chooses to go with you. She is … what is the word? Special? She is the only horse of the Lady with such a mark.”
Carah caressed her sleek black neck, her velvety muzzle, the four-pointed star blazoned on her forehead. “I shall treasure her. Lírashel, you said? Do you go with us, Azhien?”
“Yes, I tell my cousin I will go. He agrees, but this does not make him happy.”
It was good, Thorn thought, that his niece had a faster mount of her own. They were all safer for it.
Someone called his name, though the summons was barely a whisper in his mind. He turned and found Aerdria half-hidden by the fountain. She had emerged from the palace in such a ghost-like manner that no one had noticed her. She was as pale as marble, even her lips and eyelids. Her brow was bare of its silver coronet.
“Aunt?” Thorn started to take her hand; something forbade him. “I … I shouldn’t have … I’m sorry.”
“No, you were right, Dathiel. I chose blindness, believing it would let us live in peace. Here, I want you to take this.” She passed him a scrap of parchment. “It’s a spell from the Book of Barriers. I stayed awake last night trying to remember it. The fairies were a great help.”
Thorn peeked at the letters scrawled in silver ink. “Spell of Unraveling” read the heading. He stared at Aerdria in dismay. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Your brother and his brave army will be able to see the naenion. It’s all I can offer them now.”
“Aunt, this will change everything!” He wanted to embrace her, but she gripped him fiercely by the arm.
“Once you learn it, burn it. And, Dathiel, be ever so careful who you teach it to. The veil is the only shield that protects my people.”
“Of course.”
Aerdria’s hand rose to touch his face. Inexpressible regret filled her lavender eyes. “Take courage, beloved. The Goddess walks with you.” She turned and drifted back up the steps, leaving him beside the splashing fountain feeling bewildered, empty. He tucked the parchment into a secure pocket and gestured for the grooms to bring him his horse.
He was double-checking the cinch of Záradel’s saddle when he heard the cadence of feet rising over the splash of the fountains. Beyond the palace gate, soldiers with red stripes like blood marched across the spindle bridge, five abreast, all armed with dual swords crossed on their backs. Tíryus led them. For an instant, Thorn was back in the King’s Hall, and the doors were slamming shut. Carah must’ve remembered too. She gasped in terror and ducked behind Lírashel.
Thorn dropped a hand, ready to fill it with fire, and met the Regulars at the gate. “Commander? What is this?”
Tíryus glanced at Thorn’s open hand, perturbed. “I’m sending one company with you. No more.”
Relieved, Thorn held up his hands in apology. “It’s more than I anticipated. You have my thanks.”
“Depending on what the Elders decide, I may have to recall them. Part of me hopes I get to send more to you.”
“Will you tell that to the Elders?”
Tíryus eyed the palace as if afraid of disapproving eyes. “I must do as they decide.”
“Must you?” Thorn clenched his fists and dared to tell Tíryus what he needed to hear: “Grow a spine, Commander. I read you had one once.” He turned and mounted up, feeling Tíryus’s glare bore into his back. Undaunted, Thorn asked, “Will they follow my orders?”
“If they don’t, it’s your right to hang them.”
Thorn found that less than comforting, but he had to settle for it. “Right. About face! Double-time to the south gate.” The Regs obeyed without hesitation.
Carah rode up beside him, watching the warriors go. Confusion furrowed her brow. Thorn needed to teach her Elaran. She hadn’t understood Tíryus’s words. Maybe they would have time for such a lesson, one day.
“Laniel, after you.” Half of the dranithion marched across the bridge and wheeled left toward the city gate.
Thorn peered back at the palace. Aerdria lingered on the steps, framed by the twin fountains. Her hand rose in farewell, and Thorn knew he’d not see her again on this side of the Light.
~~~~
14
Through Kethlyn’s spyglass, the city of Endhal appeared to have been deserted. Wisps of smoke rose over the battlements, but not from chimneys. The fires, set more than two weeks before, had devoured much of the city and her pier. Some of the ruins still smoldered. Kethlyn had traveled through Endhal several times on his way to guest at Wyramor or Graynor. It had been a beautiful, proud city. Rust-orange banners blazoned with a grand black galleon had fluttered from every rooftop like torchflame, but the banners were gone. Many of the real ships, sunk to their gunwales in the shallows, were black now with ash. Empty docks jutted out into the harbor like exposed ribs. How many ships had escaped? Survivors would carry word of the attack to Queen Da’era in Graynor. She was sure to want vengeance. Kethlyn sighed. No more wars, Valryk had promised him.
Atop the portside towers, there once stood a statue of the city’s founder, a bold sailor-explorer whose foot crushed some faceless enemy. He had welcomed—and warned—travelers entering Leania. Now there was only a plinth and the stubs of his legs. Such were the consequences suffered by those who threatened the Black Falcon. The Leanians had brought this ruin upon themselves. Kethlyn supposed it had to be done. How was Valryk to protect his border, otherwise? On the other hand, if Leania blamed Aralorr for the death of King Ha’el, this kind of destruction only made Valryk seem bent on conquest. No more wars … a change of the watch… Ach, it was all too confusing. Kethlyn was determined to be a good soldier and trust his commander’s judgment.
High in the towers of Brimlad Castle, his spyglass strained to pierce the morning haze. Here, where the Avidan dumped red into the gray sea, the river was easily a half-mile wide. A mighty bridge joined the Evaronnan bank to the Leanian. Kethlyn watched Endhal’s gate intently for any sign of inhabitants. More importantly, where were the troops Captain Lothiar should have stationed on the walls? Was he so confident in his victory that he left no troops to hold the city?
“You haven’t seen anyone flying Aralorr’s banner?” Kethlyn asked.
“No banners at all, Your Grace.” Brimlad’s castellan had the countenance of a walrus. The dome of his pink, freckled head furrowed as bushy eyebrows rose. “Nor troops, for that matter.” Cenaidh, Lord Stormtyde, was a stern man who didn’t like fanfare or frills, but he was accommodating toward his duke. He’d had his surcoat cleaned, his trousers pressed. On the dark red velvet, Brimlad’s silver octopus splayed its eight arms under a golden crown. He’d waxed his yellow moustache as well. The ends drooped past his chin and flicked about in the wind.
“Surely someone saw something when the fires started. And those gates didn’t bash themselves in.”
“As you say, Your Grace.”
“How long did the siege go on?”
“Two days. That’s how long we heard the bashing at the gates and saw the garrison trying to hold them.”
“Two days the city was surrounded, yet no one saw outcamps or supply wagons or siege engines, much less hundreds of soldiers?”
“Nothing.” The castellan’s small eyes squinted, daring his duke to doubt his word.
Incredible. All Kethlyn had asked was, “Whose troops did Valryk send to Endhal?” and that’s when the confusion began. Cenaidh didn’t know. Nor did any of the sentries stationed on Brimlad’s wall, despite the fact that they had watched the siege unfold. How could a b
attle take place on this man’s doorstep without a single soldier being observed? Perhaps Cenaidh had been in a drunken stupor the entire time, but Kethlyn suspected he was too disciplined to be a slave to the bottle.
The castellan wanted answers, too, and for some reason he expected Kethlyn to have them. No, he didn’t know what Valryk meant to do with Endhal. No, he didn’t know what had become of Princess Rilyth or Lord Drem. Since arriving in Brimlad late last night, he’d been bombarded with questions he couldn’t answer. The people of Brimlad dearly loved their princess and her gentle son. Hearing nothing of their whereabouts since the Convention of Kings sat well with no one. Fear seethed inside the walls like a black cloud ready to burst into storm.
The only answer Kethlyn dared give didn’t appease anyone. “The Black Falcon has things well in hand. It’s likely that Her Highness is prolonging her stay at Bramoran until things settle down. The roads are not safe for travel.”
But couriers had made it through, the people argued. Why did the princess send no word?
All Kethlyn said was, “Not all couriers arrive safely.”
He told a different story to the castellan. In the absence of the princess and Lord Drem, the task of keeping civil order in Brimlad fell solely on Cenaidh’s shoulders. He was entitled to more than soft words of comfort. “News from Bramoran is not promising,” Kethlyn confided. Princess Rilyth’s household had prepared him a late-night feast of salmon and scallops basted in lemon and white-wine sauce. Fish was as costly as lemons at present. The moons feuded, and the tides fought fishermen for every net they tossed. But no expense was spared when the Duke of Liraness paid a call. Cenaidh looked as if he’d be more comfortable with a leg of mutton and a mug of ale, but he knew etiquette well enough to share a duke’s table. Kethlyn’s words dampened the castellan’s appetite: “The way I understand it, when the White Falcon’s assassins struck, battle broke out in the corridors. Valryk wrote that hundreds were slain. I’ve not heard from Lord Vonmora or Lord Westport either. I fear the worst.”
“Fieran assassins?” Cenaidh exclaimed. “Then why would Leania blame Aralorr for Ha’el’s death?”
“Valryk hosted the three realms, that’s why. Some felt it unwise.” Kethlyn had been one of them, but he preferred not to argue with the king.
Rage drove Cenaidh from the table. “Who would murder an old woman armed with naught but a cane and a man too ill to wield a sword?”
Loudly, both for the castellan and the footmen listening from their posts against the walls, Kethlyn said, “Rumor will only serve to incite panic. Until we know their fate for certain, we will keep my morbid suspicions inside this room.”
Half of Brimlad had heard by morning. Kethlyn wasn’t through his first cup of breakfast tea before he heard people in the courtyard outside his window, clamoring for answers. All he could do was close the drapes.
At last, the spyglass revealed movement. The blurry figure of an old woman toddled through Endhal’s broken gates. She carried a heavy laundry basket toward the riverside. A short while later, a child darted out from the shadows under the gatehouse and into the morning sunshine. An old, stiff-legged hound trailed her, sniffing the road.
Children, old women, and dogs. No men.
“Did anyone ride across the bridge and investigate?”
Cenaidh grunted. “Under whose authority, Your Grace? Now that you’ve arrived, you may seal orders for my men to cross into Leania, if you wish.”
Kethlyn snapped the spyglass closed. His orders were to defend the bridge that spanned the river between Brimlad and Endhal, but he saw no sign of an enemy host. Still, he was a good soldier. He personally oversaw the housing of the regiment he had brought from Windhaven. The bridge was a small city unto itself. In the middle of the stone expanse loomed the Evaronna-Leania gate, hung with banners bearing the silver arrow and orange setting sun. To each side of the grand archway were customs houses, guardhouses, warehouses, barns for livestock, liveries for horses and wains, and inns and taverns for tradesmen. Plenty of accommodation for a thousand infantrymen. The merchants and customs officers stationed there were unapologetically ousted and moved into Brimlad.
While the regiment settled in, Kethlyn tried to stay cool in the shade that pooled between the rows of inns and guardhouses. The noontime sun beat upon the surface of the river, and the wind from the sea was thick enough to swim in. Both served to steam him like a potato inside his armor.
Cenaidh had accompanied him and was good enough to settle disputes between officers arguing over who got which room at the finer inns, a dispute that Kethlyn would’ve settled by assigning them all to the pig barn. How could grown men be so petty? Didn’t they see something was wrong?
The silence coming from the Leanian half of the bridge was eerie. The Leanian merchants must’ve fled with the inhabitants of the city. Valryk wouldn’t take a city’s entire population prisoner, would he?
“Come,” he said to Cenaidh, “I’ll draw up papers. Even if there doesn’t seem to be much point. There’s no one on the Leanian side to approve them.”
The castellan huffed. “Not that any Leanian would, at this point.”
Why did Cenaidh seem to be blaming him for Endhal’s ruin? He hadn’t even been here.
With a sigh, Kethlyn sent a man back to Brimlad Castle for parchment, quills, and his seal. While he scribbled out enough legal-sounding words to appease Cenaidh, he and the castellan shared a flask of cold ale. At last, he pressed the seal into a pool of dark red wax. Beside an arrow was a set of initials: “R.d.L.” Rhoslyn, Duchess of Liraness. Hmm, that little detail had been overlooked. No matter. Kethlyn had stamped plenty of documents in her name before. Besides, this permission slip was a farce. Who would see it or care?
“Choose five men to go with you,” Kethlyn said, handing the papers to Cenaidh.
“You’re sending me personally?”
“You’re the authority in Brimlad. You should’ve looked into this matter before now.” They left the tankard of ale behind. It had grown as warm as sweat anyway. Standing under the tavern’s swinging sign, Kethlyn added, “Bring me someone who knows what happened. I’ll pay them well for the truth. Of course, I need not state that no one is to be harmed, do I?”
The man restrained a growl. “I’ll defend my skin, Your Grace, and my men, if it comes to it.” He bowed and departed in a hurry.
Relieved to be free of the castellan for a while, Kethlyn searched out Captain Leng in the guardhouse. The commander of the Windhaven regiment looked as stout and strong as oak. In a rumbling bass, he conferred with his sergeants to set out the order of the watch. At Kethlyn’s entrance, he dismissed them. “The men approve their accommodations, Your Grace. At home, the barracks aren’t next door to alehouses.”
“I won’t stand for drunkenness, Leng. Ale is easily poured off the bridge to intoxicate the fish.”
“Understood, sir.”
Kethlyn eased himself into a cracked leather chair behind a battered desk. The walls of the guardhouse could stand for fresh plaster and whitewash, and the windows were so small that they barely permitted a breath of air. The soldiers guarding his border deserved better than this. Would that these were his only concerns. “What else needs to be done?”
“I would advise His Grace to send a platoon across the bridge and set up a picket line to alert us of enemy movement.”
Kethlyn preferred Leng’s practicality. He didn’t require papers to do his duty. Likewise, the Black Falcon had sent no papers authorizing Kethlyn to enter Leania in his search for Lady Endhal’s heirs. He doubted papers, signed by a king or not, would convince Leanians to toss their own to the lions. But men like Cenaidh did things by the book, even when it was impractical. “Lord Stormtyde and I seem to be at odds, but we both agree there’s no enemy within a league of the city.”
“I wouldn’t presume to argue with His Grace,” Leng said, “but we need a picket line outside Endhal’s gate. Cenaidh might come back with nothing. He might come back with an angr
y horde of Leanians on his tail. He might not come back at all. We need eyes posted.”
Do not shirk your defenses. How often had his father spoken those words? “Very well. Set up an inner picket halfway across the Leanian half of the bridge, and another below the city wall, on the eastern side, just before it curves out of sight. And we might station a few men on the pier to keep an eye out for ships.”
Leng chuckled inside a black thicket of a beard. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Now for the distasteful question. Kethlyn leaned back in the chair and laced his fingers across the belly of his breastplate, all in an attempt to look unrattled. “How do you suggest we hunt down these heirs?” He had met with Lady Endhal each time he traveled through her domain. He thought her a handsome woman, for all her sixty years, who spoke as bluntly as a man. Pretty words, she’d told him once, had won her friends, but they didn’t keep vassals in line. “You prefer obedience to friendship?” Kethlyn had asked her.
“I am delighted to call you friend,” she replied.
“Because I cannot be your vassal?”
To that, she had laughed.
Had Lady Endhal gone to Bramoran? Had she died at the Black Falcon’s table, or here at her own? She had no children, Kethlyn knew, but her sisters did, none of whom had been presented to the future Duke of Liraness. He knew nothing whatsoever about her heirs, yet somehow Lothiar knew they had escaped the sacking and where they had gone into hiding. Valryk’s new War Commander was an enigma, no mistake.
“We should send scouts first, Your Grace,” Leng said. “An army marching toward Heatherton won’t escape notice. Whoever hides these heirs could trundle them out of town long before we arrive.”
“Scouts asking pointed questions in a farming village won’t escape notice either.”
“If they claim to be Leanians who desire to join the resistance, they might.”
Kethlyn considered that. “Why are you the commander of my regiment and not my spymaster?”