“Most fully. When he’s not speaking to me, he insists on carrying one-sided conversations with you.”
Isidora relaxed as the mystery solved itself. “And so I speak Common,” she mused.
“It seems so,” he said oddly. “You are a quite unusual woman, Isidora of Alesia.”
She narrowed her eyes on his face, unnerved by his words for reasons she could not name. “May I have my clothes?” she asked.
“No,” he said simply. “They’re being mended. You’ll have them in the morning.” He stood, tall frame arching languidly as he stretched. “I suggest you sleep now, for if you feel well enough, tomorrow you’ll be astride a horse for the rest of the journey.”
“I’m not tired,” she protested.
He bent to blow out the lamp. She heard his steps across the room, the soft opening and closing of the door. Within minutes she was asleep.
*
The day dawned bright and clear, but a cool breeze banished any association Isidora might have drawn between this new land and the desert they’d left behind. She rose at the first hint of light and with the one small window in her room opened to emit the breeze, set about stretching the fatigue and cramps from her body.
When the last of her meditative postures were finished, she stood naked in the lightening shadows, gooseflesh rippling over her bared arms. Fatigue made her knees weak and breath come fast, reminding her that not long before, she had tapped all reserves of her power and fortitude.
She did not bother testing her bond to the elements, for she knew that the bloodline was broken. The Goddess had granted her power a final time in the desert, a gift for the last daughter of Alesia.
Aware that she was traveling avenues of thought better left untouched, she turned instead to the door, before which was a wrapped bundle. The stranger had promised rightly, for within the strings were folded her washed and mended gown, fresh undergarments, soft socks, and her newly polished boots.
She dressed slowly, wary of exhausting herself. There was a small mirror mounted on the wall, which she looked quickly into and then away. Her reflection was no worse than she’d expected, which was to say not good at all. Shadows were etched deeply beneath her eyes, her skin sallow, lips cracked and peeling.
With a sigh, and a fleeting memory of her mother’s beautiful face, Isidora dragged the single chair before the window and sat to watch Anshar establish his rule. As the sun crested low hills in the east, she studied a landscape that was little better than the desert. Fields of dry grasses, a few groupings of unhappy trees, pale dirt upturned by plows. The only real difference was the air, cooler and with a hint of moisture.
And, of course, there were people here. The sounds of humanity were growing in the village below, life gathering momentum to pursue another day. Women emerged from doorways with tall urns, melting into a group as they walked down the single street of rustic, mismatched buildings. Traveling to a well outside town, most like.
Fountains and streams gurgled merrily in the background of her memory and youth, flowing day and night in Almhain.
The pit of despair within her grew greater.
When dawn slanted brightly across the floorboards, a knock and a cautious question finally came from outside her door. “Come in,” she called with relief.
Finnéces’ bow neared the floor when he saw her, dressed, sunlight tracing the gold and red strands in her hair. She rose, overwhelmed by emotion, and moved forward to embrace him tightly.
With his lined, beloved face between her hands, she bestowed a ritual kiss upon his forehead. “Blessings of the Goddess upon you,” she murmured.
“As Istar brought you through the night, may Anshar bring you through the day,” he replied softly. He peered into her face, noting every detail. “When Arturo said you’d awakened last night, I could scarcely believe it. I am sorry I was not beside you.”
“It is no matter,” she assured him. “I knew you were near.”
“Arturo sent Diego to purchase horses so we may ride now that you’re well,” he continued, smiling. “Arturo said we should break our fast astride, for we’ll do most our traveling before midday. He says you’ll grow tired quickly.”
“Does he?” she asked, lifting a brow. “It seems Arturo says many things.”
Finnéces nodded happily. “He knows quite a bit about most things,” he agreed. She opened her mouth, but he forestalled her with a hand. “I know he is not the messenger.”
She blinked in surprise. “How?” she asked.
Her servant cocked his head chidingly. “I’m not without wits, my dear. Still, it seems to me that he is nonetheless a gift of the Gods.” His expression grew grim. “You were dying when he and his partner found us. If not for the water…”
“Yes, the water,” she said quietly. “That was strange, indeed.”
“Why strange, my lady?” he asked.
She looked into his familiar face, and watched it grow troubled in response to her own. “I did not summon elementals,” she said. “My link to them is gone.” She swallowed the pain the words brought.
“Then the Goddess…” he began.
She shook her head. “The Goddess is mistress of moon and stars. This is Anshar’s land and She does not dwell here. For Her to reach me at dawn was a miracle in itself. She cannot touch Her devotees in the full light of day.”
Finnéces’ faded brown eyes grew dim with remembrance. “On Alesia there were always stars in the sky.”
“Yes,” she whispered brokenly. “Even at midday, there were stars.”
*
Arturo was leaning against a low stucco wall bordering the inn when Diego came into view, turning onto the main road from the outlying farmlands. His head was bent and he was grumbling to himself, dragging a sorry looking horse behind him.
“Let me guess,” Arturo said when he was within easy earshot. “The farmer’s wife was pretty, took you for all you had, and gave you that miserable beast in return.”
“Curse you,” Diego replied, lifting his head and glaring. After a moment, though, he grinned. “She was comely enough, and I wasn’t in the mood for horse thievery.”
“We needed two horses,” he pointed out.
The glare returned. “Yeah, well, you got one.”
A half-hour later they were mounted, Finnéces and Edan perched uncomfortably atop the farmer’s bony horse while Isidora joined Diego. The latter decision had been made with much humor on Arturo’s part, and much blushing and fussing on Diego’s end. It wasn’t until they took to the road and were an hour outside town that the lady’s apologies and Diego’s flustered responses quit.
The morning was uneventful, the land offering no real beauty or change. They halted for lunch near an ancient tree, standing solitary by the roadside, its massive trunk etched almost completely with the signatures and messages of travelers. Isidora, lips pinched with weariness, rested on a blanket in the shade as she shared the meal with Finnéces and Edan.
Diego was busy chewing on strips of dried meat and tending to the horses while Arturo stood watch, hand on the hilt of his sword as he scanned the southeastern horizon. The back of his neck had been prickling for the last hour. The sensation was familiar from years of avoiding assassins, both foreign and Tanalon bred.
Diego finished with the horses and offered him a nip of chewing tobacco. He waved the vile stuff away, eyes on the road where it bent behind a rocky knoll.
Whereas Diego eyesight was long, Arturo’s ears were sharper. “Did you catch that?” he asked, senses straining toward the hill.
“What?” his partner asked, quickly tucking his tobacco away and laying a hand upon his sword.
“There it is again. Horses, at least five of them, galloping our way.”
“Anshar’s Balls,” Diego cursed. He moved like a flash of lightening, snatching the leads of the horses and sprinting toward
the others. Arturo could hear Finnéces’ voice raised in panic, and the low, musical tone of Isidora’s voice. Then all was silent behind him, and with a glance back, he saw that both the horses and Alesians were concealed behind the girth of the tree.
Diego reached his side just as the first rider came into view.
“It doesn’t look like pretty words will matter much to these men,” Arturo commented, pulling his sword free.
There were five of them, astride magnificent warhorses, armored flanks gleaming in the sun. The men themselves were similarly attired, each link of their mail meticulously polished, broadswords brandished and flickering like gems. Above their helmets rippled plumes of green feathers, and each short cloak they wore was of the same color, lined in gold.
“Draw your sword, brother,” he snapped, “they are coming for us.”
“Bellamont, they’re soldiers of the Church!”
He had to yell over the noise of approaching steel and hooves, “By the God, man, it does not matter who they are, they’re going to run us down!”
Diego stayed frozen in disbelief until the last possible second, then followed Arturo as he leapt from the path of the horses. With enraged whinnies, the steeds reared some feet past, turning almost on their rumps to leap forward again.
Arturo’s thrown knife caught the lead man in the throat. He toppled from the saddle and fell like a sack of grain to be trampled by his own horse. The second man came at him with a wide downward stroke meant to take his head. He ducked, and with regret, slashed open the unprotected belly of the horse.
The stallion screamed and threw its rider, who was scrambling to his feet as Diego’s sword took him in the neck. Arturo put the dying animal out of its misery.
It was suddenly very quiet. Four dead bodies, one dead horse and three more snorting and pawing the dirt nearby. The partners exchanged a knowing glance and were already running when they heard Isidora scream.
Arturo thought he’d never run so fast in his life, but even as he neared the tree, the last rider thundered past him. He threw himself back to avoid being caught by the sharp hooves, but at the last second made a lunge for the hand that was extended to him from the saddle. Her fingers slipped through his, and for a second their eyes locked. The blue of hers was dark with fear, her face frozen in shock.
He thrust his sword into Diego’s hands. “Stay with them,” he barked, then ran and leapt onto his horse.
The stallion responded to his fierce kick with a bunching of powerful muscles and a burst of speed that caused Arturo to falter and grip the pommel hard. He made a swift decision that if he lived much longer, he would write that Argentan nobleman a longwinded note as to the unsurpassed breeding of his beasts. Perhaps commission a piece of jewelry for his wife.
They gained on their prey in a matter of minutes, the lesser horse no match for the Argentan. The church soldier’s visor was down, but his eyes rolled wildly toward Arturo, whites exposed around the edges. He lifted a gauntleted fist and cried, “In the name of the God, stop now and I won’t kill you!”
“Your God is not mine!” Arturo yelled back. “The second you slow, I will kill you!”
Isidora, to her merit, did not fight the man holding her captive. A fall from a sprinting horse, if not instantly deadly, was in the least extremely detrimental to bones. She lay stomach down on the saddle before the soldier, long hair whipping free, curls straightened by the force of the ride.
The horses’ hooves ate several tense miles, galloping neck and neck, before they rounded an outcropping of trees and the outline of a town became visible. The soldier flogged his tiring horse mercilessly, eyes no longer straying to Arturo but fixed on his destination. He knew, as Arturo himself did, that if he made it to the village he was safe. For the sake of a church soldier, and the Church itself, the entire population of souls ahead would gather to fight for his life.
Isidora had seen the town, too, and with uncanny perception, drew a similar conclusion. She lifted her head to yell at him, “Kill me if you must, but you cannot let him take me!”
Arturo clenched his teeth and drew forth the long, curved knife from its sheath on the saddle. Every second that passed drew them closer to the first farms outside the town. Already he could see people gathering at fences, pointing and shouting.
“God,” he muttered feebly, and lifted his feet from the stirrups, bracing them against the front lip of the saddle. With a motion that took more insanity than courage, he jumped into a crouch. The stallion tossed his head but did not slow. “Steady, boy,” he murmured.
The landscape around him shifted to a blur as he drew his focus inward and narrowed it on the soldier. The man clearly thought he was already safe, this close to the village. Whether he was young or just stupid, he had yet to learn that safety was dependent on never believing you were.
Arturo’s booted foot caught the soldier on the side of the head, rocking him violently in the saddle. Isidora screamed as she started to slide backward but the Argentan stallion—clearly smarter than most humans—narrowed the gap between himself and the other horse, allowing her to reach out and grip his dark mane.
Dazed as he was from the blow, the soldier still managed to pull free his sword and aim an overhead strike toward Arturo’s unprotected head. He dropped back into the seat and was barely able to deflect the heavy blade with his knife. As it was, he felt immediate fiery pain from a gash on his forearm.
Against all odds, Isidora had somehow managed to wriggle halfway across the two horses, nails biting into Arturo’s thighs while her legs stretched between the racing beasts. The soldier, seeing his prey escaping, lifted his sword to strike again. This time he aimed at a feminine torso.
Arturo flung his knife uselessly at the armored soldier and grabbed whatever part of Isidora he could reach. Hair was bunched in his fist. It might have been a breast in his other hand, for all he knew. With all his strength he tore her free of the other horse and pulled her onto the saddle before him. She was a tall woman, all legs and arms, and it was all he could do to keep them both from sliding to certain death.
The stallion beneath them, sensing victory, began peeling right for a wide turn at full speed. The soldier’s horse, freed of extra weight, sped after them and came up on their left.
Arturo saw a flash of steel in the sunlight, a longsword raised high, and had but a moment to speak the God’s name in preparation for death.
The blow never landed.
The soldier’s horse toppled without sound, forelegs splaying, an arrow lodged in its eye. Arturo’s stallion, panting and bewildered at the sudden absence of his foe, slowed to a canter and then to a walk.
Isidora was breathing raggedly, wrapped about him like a child with her legs locked painfully tight around his midsection, her face tucked into his neck. “Is it over?” she asked, the sound of her voice unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
Arturo stared down at the church soldier, laying several feet from his dead horse. There was a second arrow protruding from the man’s neck, blood sliding thickly down his mailed chest. He swallowed and turned his head to look down the road. Several armed townsmen stood there, including a massive, bearded man with a bow.
“May I assume you weren’t aiming for us?” Arturo asked, too lightly.
The giant grinned. “I never miss my target,” he rumbled.
“The penalty of slaying of a soldier of God is death.”
“He was no soldier of my God,” the giant replied.
Arturo felt himself smiling. “Then it’s my pleasure to meet you, friend.”
The man shouldered his bow and bowed perfunctorily. “The pleasure is mine, Assassin des Viana.” Arturo’s spine grew rigid with shock, all humor instantly vanishing. The bowman’s grin widened and he smacked his chest with a heavy fist. “You are most welcome here, Black Bellamont. I am Rodrigo Vasquez, Constable of Vallejo.”
Chapter
Four
Within the hour their company was safely ensconced in Rodrigo’s sprawling villa, located two miles north and concealed in the foothills above town. With the Alesians in the generous care of Mistress Vasquez and Arturo’s wound attended to by the household physician, Rodrigo appeared to offer him and Diego a tour of the compound.
The structure was in the style of home found most often near the South Sea, where the currency was wine and life was lazy and wholesome. High, sloping ceilings, walkways opened to the sky, and courtyards boasting exotic plants and graceful statues. The wide rust-colored bricks had been shipped north by river and hauled west by wagons. Masons, architects, and artisans had been employed for two seasons to construct and refine the estate.
It was a family home, Rodrigo stated upon Arturo’s dubious stare. A gift to his wife, who was southern bred and longed for her family’s seaside residence. Neither man commented on the abundance of hearty, muscled men roaming the compound, swords strapped to their belts more often than not. Nor did they deem it polite to remind the self-styled Constable of Vallejo that his title had been extinct for fifty years, since the combined armies of Vianalon and the Holy Church had ridden west to crush the last insurgents at Vallejo, thus ending a decade long civil uprising against the crown.
Arturo didn’t like it when men assumed things of him, especially when it involved an allegiance against the crown he often despised but had sworn to protect. Given the state of his relationship with said crown, however, Rodrigo was right in his unvoiced judgment. No exposure of his activities would come from Bellamont’s lips.
Dinner was a pleasant if tiring affair. By the end of the meal Arturo’s nerves were wrung raw from all he’d witnessed, and further tested by Rodrigo’s consistent vague speech and incredible resistance to drunkenness.
With all his courtly training, Arturo assaulted the man with misdirection and verbal subterfuge. The Constable proved immune to such persuasions. He gave not a hint of the greater reason behind his earlier action on the road, or the end purpose of the armed men he was harvesting like grapes. Nothing to appease Arturo’s natural inclination toward gathering information, despite having no liege to whom he reported any longer. Clever rebel that he was, Rodrigo gave no information away that might be used against him in a justice hearing or revealed under torture.
The Gardens of Almhain Page 3