by Ellyn, Court
Hands intervened, gripping limbs, clothes, hair, and pried them apart. Kelyn stepped between them. “Well done. Spread panic, why don’t you!”
Surrounding them, human archers and sentries had joined the dranithion. The sight of their commanders battling baffled them.
Regret of his savagery seemed to strike Laniel all at once. He turned away from Thorn, planted his hands on his thighs and uttered a wordless cry. “My home, Sheannach!”
To Thorn’s astonishment, Kelyn said, “You’re right, Falconeye. It’s good that you return home.”
Calm stole over Laniel’s bearing. He dabbed blood from his mouth and drew himself up.
“But wait until tomorrow,” Kelyn added. “Hold council with your people to determine if leaving is the wisest course. You cannot stop the Wood burning, not now, and your numbers are too few to save the city, but I will not keep you if you feel you must go.”
~~~~
11
Carah emerged from the infirmary late in the afternoon, wound-sick and heat-weary. Her royal helper had left her in the lurch, drawn away earlier in the day by some news that involved the War Commander’s plans. Battle was not on the doorstep, and no one was panicking, so Carah barely lifted her head from her work when Arryk excused himself.
The wounded Regs had conveyed more dire tidings. “They will leave without us!” cried one warrior who, despite Carah’s attentions, was still unable to hobble faster than a three-legged turtle.
“Who is leaving?” she had asked.
The answer had alarmed her. Not Avidan Wood! A moment later, excitement began to itch in the back of her brain. If Laniel was trekking north…
Her shift over, she trudged the long walk through the boisterous encampment and through Tírandon Town to the keep. Light from a wilting sun slowly scaled the inner towers, towers built from stolen stone the color of rust. With the bailey drowning in the shadow of the outer wall, the upper reaches of those towers glowed like lanterns.
She found Alyster talking with Azhien on the steps of the keep. The two scouts had become nigh inseparable. When they weren’t on duty, they tossed dice together, or exchanged wild stories, the details of which were highly dubious, or shared a flagon of something they had hidden from their commanders. But now they weren’t laughing or conspiring or competing over who had the tallest tale. Azhien was bone-pale, his head hanging, his stare bleak. Alyster leaned close, jostled him, trying to bolster his spirits.
Carah climbed the steps and took Azhien’s hand. “I am sorry, my friend.”
Once he recognized who spoke to him, he spilled out his heart. “I may live ten thousand years, Kharah. How long before I see her as she was? Will she be forever a corpse?”
“Stop talking like that,” Alyster insisted. “Trees grow back, man.”
“These are not mere trees! You must see them to understand. See them … but now …” Azhien’s face crumpled, he covered his weeping with his free hand, and tugged Carah’s fingers to his chest, like a boy clinging to his mother, and she remembered how young he was. She wrapped an arm around him and felt the depth of his pain reverberating inside him like the throb of a great bronze bell.
She released him before the emotion transferred and reduced her to tears too. “Is it true that Falconeye leaves tomorrow and takes you with him?”
He sniffled loudly, pathetically, and dried his face on his sleeve, unashamed of his sorrow. “We argued about it for hours. Do we go, do we stay? We have decided to go. It is better to know than to wonder. We only hope Linndun is safe.”
“Just you dranithion?”
“And the Regs. We all go.”
Hope swelled. An escort of nearly one hundred Elarion.
“And you, Alyster?”
“No reason for us to go.”
Carah left them to bid one another farewell and scurried into the keep. She avoided eye contact and conversation with highborns in the corridors, especially desiring to elude her uncle, but kept her head low and her course steered unerringly. If she stopped to think, she’d never go through with it. In the cavernous kitchens, she snatched a flour sack and tucked it under her skirts, then made herself comfortable on a stool near the chopping block. Cooks glanced uneasily her direction but they tolerated her intrusion. They couldn’t exactly order her to leave as if she was the delivery boy. Scullery maids bustled past with steaming pots and quail on skewers. Lord Rorin rushed in with a ledger open on his arm and inspected the quantity of potatoes laid out for supper.
“Fifty exactly? Good. No, no, ten loaves of bread. Not twelve. Put those aside for tomorrow.”
Guilt tried to rise, but Carah tamped it down. After all, she meant to take only her own ration of food and no more.
Her old ploy worked. Rorin sped out again with little more than a nod in greeting, and soon the cooks were working around her as if her presence were as commonplace as a stack of spoons. She made her move. Pretending bored curiosity, she drifted about the circumference of the kitchen, sniffing the contents of mixing bowls and inspecting mounds of lettuce, then she ducked into the larder. Quickly, she filled the flour sack with potatoes, apples, cured meat and a biscuit tin. Surfacing into the kitchens again, she carried her spoils between her skirts and the cabinetry. She’d save her portion of bread from supper tonight and add that in as well.
Heart racing with the thrill of her theft, she took narrow side passages and servants’ stairs through the skin of the keep. She emerged in deepening twilight and wended along a street that was squeezed between the keep and the curtain wall. Workshops rang with industry. The artisans of Craftsman’s Row provided services for the keep and Lady Tírandon alone. The smithy boasted half a dozen forges. Daryon labored at one of them, oblivious to the dwarves working around him.
A handful of White Mantles, oddly enough, had gathered outside the smithy’s awning and stood at attention. Arryk was somewhere nearby, but why here?
Carah sped past before he caught sight of her. If he learned of her plan, no doubt he’d condemn it as vehemently as Uncle Thorn would.
The street opened on the courtyard, and the keep’s stables spread out before her, spacious and luxurious. Stableboys with sweaty faces tossed feed into stalls, giving rise to shimmering clouds of dust and the sweet scent of hay. The three Elaran blacks insisted they be housed in adjacent stalls away from human-bred mounts. Snobs, the lot of them.
Carah turned up her nose at Záradel, as if Thorn’s horse were Thorn himself.
Lírashel nickered a greeting at her, but in the far stall Duíndor was reticent and spiritless. She offered him one of her apples, but he refused. Stroking his forehead and the lush velvet of his nose, she detected his melancholy. “I miss him too,” she whispered. The lilt of Rhian’s voice, the quiet control of his expression in public, the enamored smile he reserved just for her, the mischievous cut of his eyes, even the way he put her in her place and loved her despite her obstinate foolishness.
Before she knew it she was sobbing, her arm wrapped around Duíndor’s neck.
“My lady?” One of the stableboys stared in concern. He wielded a pitchfork as if it were an avedra’s staff. Likely he had never seen a lady cry and thought them above things as base as tears. Worse, Carah had made a spectacle of herself. If word got around that she’d been to the stables—and brought a bag of supplies—she might find her bedroom door locked in the morning.
She dried her face and let herself into Lírashel’s stall. Her horse munched contentedly on her ration of oats. Carah gave her the apple Duíndor had refused, then tucked the flour sack under the manger for safekeeping. Lírashel inspected it. “Now listen here.” Carah wagged a finger. “That’s my food. You’re not to touch it.”
The horse whickered.
Carah awarded her with a scratching of the white star on her forehead. “Good thing horses can’t talk. The other two might snitch on us. You and I are going on a long journey tomorrow. Rest well.”
On her return to the keep, she saw Arryk emerge from the s
mithy. He turned in the waning light, showing off a resplendent suit of armor. The plate on his chest and the scales cascading down his abdomen glistened darkly with hues of burgundy and emerald. Hutza. Foreman Dagni herself fussed at buckles and adjustments. Laral and Rance looked on, nodding in approbation. But what was wrong with the plain ol’ iron chainmail he’d been wearing? Oh, Goddess, he means to fight. No, no, no…
Carah dashed to the smithy. Rance’s well-trained ear heard the hammering of her steps, and he glanced around sharply, a hand going for his sword. He wore the elaborately winged and etched helm of the Mantles’ Captain. Rumor had it that Moray had fallen out of favor, and Carah was certain his demotion was her fault.
Rance’s hand rose, bidding her stay put. She knew better than to approach royalty uninvited.
Arryk raised a smile, as ecstatic as a boy delighting in a new toy. A twitch of his fingers gave her permission to approach. “The dwarves finally finished it. Isn’t it kingly?”
Carah crossed her arms. “Indeed, sire. I’m sure I could throw rocks at you and you wouldn’t feel a thing.”
He marveled at her displeasure.
Her mouth battled with protests that she dared not utter.
“Speak your mind.”
He was merely humoring her, but Carah didn’t care. The barricade came crashing down. “What do you think you’re doing?” She turned on Rance and Laral. “You condone this? Shame on you!”
Rance’s stance was impassive. He did nothing without orders. But Laral? Hadn’t he tried to discourage his king and his friend from exposing himself to an ogre’s axe? “Carah, this really isn’t your place,” he said.
“I gave her leave,” Arryk said.
Carah’s face flushed with fury. She wasn’t a child throwing a tantrum. This was important. And these men treated it like a game.
“Sire, you can’t fight. You’re not expendable, not like the rest of us poor sods.” Goddess’ curses, her throat was constricting around the words, and Arryk kept smiling at her, a light of adoration on his face, and she realized what her protest must sound like, what it did sound like. She caught Laral casting Rance a questioning glance and Rance suppressing a grin in reply.
Carah flew at them, flapping her arms as if shooing chickens. “Go away, damn you! Get! You can’t let him do this. You stupid, stupid men.”
Laral retreated a couple steps, but Rance leveled a remonstrative glare as if pondering whether to restrain her. It was Dagni who fled. Muttering in dwarvish and wide-eyed, she dropped a handful of small intricate tools on the nearest anvil and barred herself inside the shop.
Helpless to budge the others and feeling an utter fool, Carah whirled for the nearest tower and fled up the spiraling steps. She ran onto the battlements and stopped atop the gate that overlooked the keep’s garden. Struggling to catch her breath, she cursed herself for opening her mouth. Wasn’t she flirting with enough controversy?
She fell against the wall, hands clasping each side of her head, and watched cooks’ assistants drift among fragrant rows, gathering herbs for supper. Gardeners raked gravel paths after a day’s worth of foot traffic. Above the evening-shadowed streets, the sky was still bright with sunset. A vermillion glow flared over the western towers, casting them in silhouette.
Her nape tingled. A glance over her shoulder showed her Arryk ambling casually along the wall toward her. He had tossed off the weight of pauldrons and breastplate and vambraces, but in his haste to follow her he’d left the plate on his legs. He came alone.
She turned to face him, as etiquette demanded, but couldn’t meet his gaze. “Sire, I’m the most irreverent, improper person.” A petulant shrug. “You’ll do what you want. Who am I to stop you?”
He stopped at the adjacent gap in the crenels, leaned on an elbow. “It’s not my intention to fight. Does that ease you?”
“Then what…? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I was savoring your concern for my safety.” He wasn’t making fun. On the contrary, he gazed somberly, contritely, at the stones between their feet. And the light of sunset on his face was pleasant indeed. Oh, why couldn’t he be abhorrent or cruel or unbearably conceited? Why couldn’t he be more like Daxon?
“Carah, I commissioned this armor days ago. Who knows what will happen? What if the walls are breached? What if we must flee Tírandon? What if we have occasion to take the fight to our enemies? Your father is planning a new campaign, did you know? Having armor more substantial than ringmail is wise, is it not?”
“So you will fight?”
“No.” Regret, shame, that the answer was not yes. “But I intend to ride alongside your father with my banner flying beside his. My people need that. So do I.”
“But why?”
He drew near in a rush, pleading. “Carah, don’t you understand? When I return home, I must feel that I’ve earned the right to step onto Fieran soil.”
“But Fiera is your birthright. It’s yours whether you bleed for it or not.”
“My birthright to sit on a stone chair, yes. My birthright to sign my name to a thousand documents governing the lives of every man, woman, and child south of the Bryna, yes. But what of their respect? And my respect for myself? That is not attained by birthright.”
Foreboding rose to choke her. Her journey to Windhaven would sweep her far out of reach. If Arryk was wounded… But she must mend the wounds sundering her family. If she traveled quickly, and if Kethlyn didn’t insist on being a stubborn ass … Goddess, even if bad weather didn’t stall her and ogre regiments didn’t divert her, it was a twelve-day ride to Windhaven and back again. Maybe ten, if she pushed Lírashel hard.
“Just promise me you won’t do anything foolish.” The irony almost reduced her to bitter laughter. Who was the fool taking off across country? And who was she to demand promises from a king?
“I promise,” he said. “Anyway, Rance won’t let me within twenty feet of an ogre. And Laral will have me on a tether.”
Carah nodded, appeased.
But Arryk seemed more unsettled than ever. He raked back the hair breezing across his face, shifted feet, absently traced the seams between stones, all the while avoiding her eye and trying to shape words. Carah might’ve saved him the trouble with a quick peek at his thoughts, but peering into the mind of a king was not a place she wished to go. Regardless, she knew what he was going to say.
Tossing all to the wind, he dived in. “Look, I know it’s only been a few days, and that your heart is heavy with sorrow, perhaps for a long time to come. You know I have suffered that pain. I know how long it lasts, how deeply it takes root. But hear me out, and whatever you do, say nothing.”
Carah stopped breathing to listen.
“If in the course of time you do not find him, will you consider me? Please consider me. You have undone me utterly.”
~~~~
Arryk did not sleep that night. He lay deep in a cloud of pillows, hands laced behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling in wonderment. The coffers molded with Tírandon’s chevrons ceased to be. That moment, that singular moment with Carah on the wall, burned like a jewel in his mind. He relived it over and over again, examining each facet, each exquisite detail.
He’d watched her wrestle with sobs, her eyes so large and liquid and blue. It wasn’t weeping induced by joy, but by agony. She quelled it masterfully. Then she’d surprised him by raising a hand to touch his face. Goddess’ mercy, she was actually considering the proposal. He’d expected her to flee, horrified, affronted, something. But she stood her ground and her gaze seemed to delve into him. Had anyone ever looked at him so intently, so studiously? She was trying it on, testing the possibility.
Arryk’s pulse had hammered painfully in his throat.
Her touch, so tentative against his jaw, carried with it the weight of a question. In answer, Arryk leaned to kiss her. It was the barest brush, the slightest breath. As Carah closed her eyes, a tear spilled between them. He tasted it still.
Not yet. Not ye
t, he’d thought. That tear was for Rhian, and Arryk would not coerce his way past her grief. He knew all too well that nothing could bring the pain of loss to a premature end. The last thing he wanted was Carah to resent him for trying.
Through sheer force of will, he broke the kiss and without a word or a glance he strode from the battlements. Carah did not call for him, so he knew he was right to leave.
It wasn’t just her impetuousness, her audacity, her spoiled bright beauty, the tender ferocity with which she ministered to her patients, or the way she tossed aside all unctuous reverence and treated him like anyone else; it was the gift of her otherness. Arryk supposed many might balk at the idea of an avedra queen—or desire to harness her power for their own ends. It appealed to Arryk for far different reasons. If Istra could have read the ill intentions lurking in the minds of her physicians and advisors, she might still be alive. What enemies would dare approach Carah or her family if they feared she might sniff them out? Some fool might try, but she could raise the earth in her own defense.
Ah, to spoil her, to show her the splendor of his city, to let her step on his toes, to clasp sapphires about her throat.
He was too young to feel so alone. Even Laral’s mild company and intelligent conversation did not fill that loneliness. Arryk had become so accustomed to the emptiness that he had ceased feeling it. He was unaware it persisted until Carah broke through the brittle shell he’d built around himself. She didn’t even know she had done it.
For the first time since Istra died, Arryk felt that he had found someone safe to love. Someone he might not be forced to mourn. Someone who might actually outlive him.
His own family had demonstrated a poor aptitude for survival: Arryk’s father and Shadryk’s three queens, Aunt Ki’eva, and Arryk’s brothers, Nathryk and Bhodryk. All of them so young. The curse seemed to have passed to the next generation like an inheritance, claiming Istra and half a dozen miscarried babies. Arryk was surprised he still breathed. And he had Carah to thank for that.