by Ellyn, Court
Only in an army camp had Kethlyn ever dined with less than two forks beside his plate. A foreign sea, indeed. He shrugged. “Pick one you like. They all work the same. Five minutes. Farns, assist him.”
“I don’t need help getting dressed!”
Kethlyn grinned. “You will this time. The doublet laces up the back. And, er, leave the hatchets.” He turned out the door before Alyster could voice further protest.
A wicked sort of delight surfaced at challenging the highlander’s pride—and from watching Uncle Thorn squirm. Unbearably vain and self-righteous, Thorn had always put himself on a higher plane than everyone else. Turned out he was just as base as the rest.
Hmm, how to get the full story? He probably stood a better chance of wheedling it from Carah than from Uncle Thorn.
He was pondering his strategy as he turned into the corridor that led to the main stair, and there Aunt Halayn was waiting.
Kethlyn stopped and stared. Her hands were curled around the head of her cane, and her face was impassive above her stiff taffeta collar. Had Kethlyn caught her out by accident? She had sworn to never slap eyes on him again. As ill-tempered as she was, idle threats were common on her tongue, but on that score she had remained true to her word.
This was no chance meeting. Why break her vow? She made a show of it, looming at the top of the grand staircase, barring his way like a sentry wielding a pike.
Kethlyn waited for some biting criticism, some denouncement of his character. But she said only, “Your sister is convincing. You may escort me to supper.”
If that was how this proud lady extended forgiveness, Kethlyn would gladly accept it. Smiling, he took her hand on his arm.
~~~~
The next morning, Kethlyn’s commanders gathered in the Duke’s Hall to discuss the particulars of the march. Commander Leng wanted to know which route his troops were to take and what dangers to anticipate on the road. Admiral Gregorin expected orders for his ships patrolling Windy Coves and brought questions about the probability of Leania’s navy attacking in His Grace’s absence. And Captain Drael needed to know how His Grace expected him to best protect the palace and the city in the meantime.
None of which information Carah was made privy to. She lurked in an unobtrusive corner of the Hall, trying to glean meaning from the gruff debates echoing against the painted ceiling. She was spied out. At a gesture from Kethlyn, Uncle Thorn left the table, took Carah by the elbow and guided her into the corridor.
“So unfair,” she pouted.
“How old are you? This has nothing to do with fair. Your father doesn’t include you in his war council either. Shoo.”
She paced before the closed doors, grinding anger between her teeth like gristle, and that’s where Alyster found her. He had forsaken the duke’s fine garments in favor of his mud-and-blood-spattered homespun. How fine he had looked at supper last night; uncomfortable, true, yet so much like Da that Carah was sure Kethlyn would guess the truth. Aunt Halayn certainly had her suspicions; she refrained from voicing them, however. She merely glared at Uncle Thorn and clucked her tongue for shame.
“What’s got you in a tiff?” Alyster asked.
“They don’t trust me!” Carah said, hand slicing toward the closed doors. “Any more than they trust you.”
Watching Alyster shrug, utterly unperturbed, enraged Carah the more. “To hell with that,” he said. “They’ll tell us where to stand and swing a blade. You could come into town wi’ me. I want to spend my winnings.”
Carah rallied. “You’ll take me the dice hall?”
“No! A dice hall is no place for ladies.”
She growled in disgust. “Why do men get to do all the fun things? I can throw dice, for the Goddess’ sake.”
“Then let us buy you a set of dice, and you and I can play.”
“That’s not the same.” Carah might as well have stuck out her lip and stomped a foot.
Alyster nudged her along the corridor and out into the sunshine. “Surely there’s some place you can go that I can’t.”
They were riding across the bridge, under which a galley merchanter was rowing upstream, bells ringing and men shouting, when Carah realized he was right. She led Alyster to the pier where her mother’s flagship waited in dry dock. The port-master recognized Carah on sight. The rotund man’s greeting was ebullient, but only because he thought Carah’s presence meant the duchess had returned to Windhaven. He deflated like a sail devoid of wind when Carah told him it wasn’t so. Still, he permitted her and Alyster to board the Royal Concern and tour its decks.
Her mother, she knew, sailed only when King Ha’el invited her to Graynor, which occurred once every other year. She had permitted her daughter to sail on the galleon during one of the rare westward trips Carah and her father had made. She’d been twelve or thirteen, and the jaunt had lasted no more than half a day as the Concern carved a ponderous path along the coast, never out of sight of Windhaven. The winter sea had been the dark gray of slate, and Carah’s cheeks had stung with the cold in the wind and sea spray.
With its gold-painted prow and four naked masts, the galleon was almost twice the size of a regular war galleon. Her ballistae and garrot stores had been removed. A cat prowled the lower decks, fat on rats. The bedding, rugs, and soft padded furniture had, likewise, been stored away until the duchess required them. But the tables, which were fixed to the deck, the paintings, the silver lamps—tarnishing in the still, humid air—remained. The tight spaces, the utility of all the ship’s parts, mingled with a strange sort of opulence.
Going through doors, Alyster had to duck his head. “That settles it. I’m too tall to be a sailor.”
“Whatever happens,” Carah said, climbing the narrow stair to the quarterdeck, “as soon as this war is over, Uncle Thorn and I are sailing to Azhdyria.” Memory struck her, a vision of a tall silver gate and a booming voice: Are you the one?
“What the hell is Ass-tyria?”
Carah snickered. “A big empty space on all the maps. Who knows what treasures are waiting to be uncovered?”
Alyster shuddered. “Count me out.”
It was early afternoon when they started back to the palace. They rode through bustling crowds. The heat rising off the cobblestones made shoppers languid, vendors grouchy. “Take it or leave it. It’s all I got, and there ain’t more coming.” The apples were wrinkling, turning brown in spots. The shopper purchased them anyway.
Carah heard someone call her name, or thought she did. She turned in the saddle to search passersby. No one waved her down. A sticky feeling irritated her, like sweaty silk clinging to her armpits.
“You all right?” Alyster asked.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed him in the mouth of an alley, tall and lean and wearing the black sleeveless jerkin, his arms patterned with green trophy stripes. She felt the gaze of eyes the color of tropical seas, but by the time she hauled back on the reins, the alley was empty.
“Carah?” Alyster turned back for her.
“He was there,” she gasped. “Rhian. In that alley. I saw him.” Her head spun. Perhaps the heat had made her drowsy. Perhaps she had dreamed him. But what if she hadn’t? She urged Lírashel toward the alley. Alyster jerked the reins the other way. The horse stopped and shook her head, irritated.
“If it was Rhian, would he hide from you down a dark alley? Use your brain. We need to get back to the palace. Now.”
He refused to release Lírashel’s bridle and hauled the horse fast for the bridge. If Carah bailed from the saddle at this pace, she’d risk a broken ankle or worse. The busy streets dwindled behind them; the crowds were faceless.
All those times walking the bustling thoroughfare between Tírandon’s keep and the infirmary, she hadn’t once imagined Rhian peering between tents or market stalls. Why now?
As she crossed the bridge and began up the cliffside road, a new horror occurred to her. What if she had seen his spirit? She had never believed tales of ghosts. Was it possible? After su
ffering untold tortures at an ogre’s hands, had Rhian at last died? Had his spirit searched until he found her? Her heart twisted so painfully in her chest that she cried out and bent over Lírashel’s neck, biting back tears.
Alyster helped her dismount in the courtyard.
He’s not dead. He’s not! Uncle Thorn would find him, somehow.
She let Alyster escort her toward the palace doors, but on the steps she stopped. “I’m not crazy. I have to be sure.” She ran up the nearest tower and out along the wall to the spyglass.
Dogged and despairing, Alyster trailed her at an unhurried pace.
The lenses showed Carah people arguing on a street corner, congregating around a bread wagon, wringing laundry at the well, pushing cargo along the docks, but there were too many roofs in the way, too many walls and windows and doors. Rhian might be down there, wounded, ill, and she would never find him.
“Stupid,” she muttered. “You’re lying to yourself.” She backed from the spyglass.
“I’m sorry.” Alyster’s labor-hard hand settled gently on her shoulder.
There was shouting at the gatehouse. Sentries strung bows and ran to cluster at the gate.
Alyster craned his neck to see over the battlements. All at once, he reached for the spyglass and swung it as hard east as it would go, aiming it along the cliffside road. He turned dials in a frenzy. “Mother’s blood, Carah, you were right! Look!”
She smashed her eye to the lens. Rhian limped toward the gate, his head bowed, as if he dragged the weight of a dead horse behind him. His hair was unbound and the sea-wind whipped it in a torrent about his face. The glimpse was brief, and then he disappeared behind the battlements and a blurred view of sentries’ shoulders.
Carah darted off along the wall. “Go get Uncle Thorn! Tell him Rhian escaped!” Weeping, laughing, she called his name.
~~~~
The war council was wrapping up when the door burst open. Alyster stumbled across the threshold, panting, grinning. “Kingshield! You won’t believe this.”
Understatement. Thorn didn’t believe it. The news was too good to be true. As far as he knew, no avedra had escaped Lothiar’s hidden prison. In truth, he didn’t know if Lothiar let the avedrin live long enough to try.
But maybe, maybe it was possible.
Thorn left the commanders muttering in confusion and hurried from the Duke’s Hall. Kethlyn pursued. “Who is Rhian?”
“Carah didn’t mention him? He was my apprentice.”
“Another one?” There was a biting note of sarcasm in the question. Kethlyn clearly didn’t believe the lies about Alyster.
Thorn ignored his nephew’s oblique mockery. “Ask Carah. They were … close.”
“How did Rhian know where to find us?” Alyster’s question stopped Thorn in his tracks. He had been so jubilant at the possibility of Rhian’s escape, of having a way to locate the rest of the avedrin, that he hadn’t reasoned things through.
“Run, Alyster. Stop her!”
~~~~
The archers on the wall drew bows taut.
“Don’t shoot!” Carah cried, spilling from the base of the tower. “Open the gate!”
The massive andyr doors lurched open too slowly to suit her. She squeezed through and raced along the gravel.
Rhian stood in the middle of the road, hunched over, too weak or too exhausted to take another step. He raised a hand toward her, tremulous. Shiny baernavë chains were coiled about his neck, a slave’s collar sapping the vitality out of him.
She collided into him, flung her arms about him. He returned the embrace, clutching, hungry, and she kissed his face and wet his cheek with her tears.
A startled bark of laughter burst from his throat. The texture of his voice had changed. Carah tried to lean away to inspect him, but his hand caged the back of her head, and he whispered in her ear, “Vil’och eleth.”
Every muscle in her body seized up, as if sand filled her veins and stone infused her limbs. Her eyelids refused to close. Her lungs refused to draw breath. She tried to scream, but only a thin whistle emerged from her mouth. She had heard those words before, in the thoughts of the Elari who had attacked her in camp. But this was Rhian! Rhian. How could he?
As if she were a priceless statue, he carefully lowered her to the ground. Blocking out the sky above her, Rhian’s face slipped as if it were oil on water. Underneath, she glimpsed the face of someone else.
“Gotcha, my dear,” he said, his voice, his accent those of a stranger. “I wouldn’t have stopped you. You were enjoying yourself, and your kiss is quite lovely. But we’re short on time.” He uncoiled the baernavë links from around his neck. It was no collar after all, but a single length of chain. Each end sported a shackle whose shiny teeth he had concealed behind his back. He clamped them shut about Carah’s wrists. Winter-cold they were. The flame inside her guttered. Something seeped out, a chilled stream oozing into the links. Her last full breath dwindled, and she couldn’t draw another.
“Lothiar was right,” confided her captor. “Wear the right face and you can go anywhere.”
Men were shouting on the wall, in the courtyard; voices echoed against the palace windows. Someone bellowed her name.
“Shoot him!” ordered Uncle Thorn.
The Elari hoisted Carah off the road, spun her round to face the onrush of palace guards and clutched her tight against him. Her heels gouged furrows in the gravel. Arrows trained steadily but did not fly. Uncle Thorn shouldered through the guards, palm leveled and crackling with rage.
“Careful, Dathiel,” said the Elari.
She read the conflict in her uncle’s eyes. How to strike the Elari without harming Carah too? Do it! she wanted to shout.
“Paggon!” the Elari called over his shoulder. “Portal. Now!”
Carah couldn’t see the veil disintegrate and the ogre materialize, but she heard the palace guard cry out. Arrows flew. The Elari danced aside, making Carah a shield for the damnable ogre as well. The air cracked and rumbled. A rank wind struck Carah in the face.
Darkness crept over her eyes. As it closed, she saw Uncle Thorn unsheathe a sword and race toward her.
“Patience,” sneered the Elari. “I’ll be back for you soon.” Then he launched backward, carrying Carah through the cold and infinite darkness.
~~~~
Part Two: The Pit
18
A long highway mirrored in heat waves rolled out yards at a time. Kethlyn rode to his death. He was certain of it. And not an honorable death on the battlefield. He tried to be philosophical about it, telling himself that all roads led to the same destination, but he couldn’t reconcile the fact that his road was destined to be so very short.
His army stretched out behind him, the rhythm of their march a syncopation to the nervous hammering of his heart. Bows jutted over their shoulders; on their hips quivers bristled with red fletching. Though Evaronna was known for its archers, Kethlyn had placed little effort in the bow. As a young squire he had preferred the sword because he wanted to be like his father. So much for that. He should’ve stuck with the bow. It’s not intention that shapes a man, but his action.
In an attempt to help his cause, he had left behind the title of Your Grace. Speaking to his troops on the parade grounds at dawn, he’d insisted he be styled “Lordship” only. Likely, however, the measure was too little, too late.
His mother waited at the end of the road. How could he face her? She treated all criminals with the same objectivity. Why treat him any different?
Da worried him too. Only this morning, Kethlyn had awoken from a nightmare in which Da’s sword, the falcon blade, was arcing for his neck. The onyx falcon set in the crossguard detached from the steel and became flesh, flying at him with talons curled for the kill.
“Are they very angry with me?” he had asked Uncle Thorn as they departed Windhaven’s gate.
“Yes,” he’d replied, like a wolf snapping.
Speaking to Thorn was a risk better avoided. Since Car
ah’s abduction, he’d been inconsolable. Kethlyn had never seen a man so furious. Thorn had run at that magic doorway, and Alyster had let fly one of his hatchets. It had somersaulted past Thorn’s shoulder, over Carah’s head, and bit the ogre in the shoulder. A great clawed paw had batted the hatchet from the wound, then the ogre dived through the doorway. The stranger wearing another man’s face had smirked and leapt backward, bearing Carah away with him. The doorway had crackled shut inches from Thorn’s outstretched hand.
Kethlyn could still hear the cry Uncle Thorn had loosed into the wind. He’d turned, turned, hands empty, as if trying to decide where to go, where to search, but one direction was as good as the next. He slipped to his knees, expending all his breath in a wordless cry, then flung out his arms. A wave of rage had struck Kethlyn in the chest. He found himself on his back, disoriented and struggling to suck in air. To his right and his left, Alyster and the palace guards were picking themselves off the ground too. Glass tinkled as it fell onto the courtyard cobbles; stones rolled to a standstill; gravel settled back on the roadway; the wind eddied back into its course.
Today, Thorn rode some distance ahead of the column. “I’m the only scout worth deploying,” he’d claimed. “Alyster will watch your rearguard.” He didn’t look at Kethlyn as he spoke, but glared into some personal abyss. And perhaps Kethlyn imagined it, but the heat waves that hovered over the highway seemed to gravitate toward his uncle. The air rippled and seethed around him, and no one dared approach him.
Forath’s red light bled over the blethora groves as the column, caked in sweat and dust, drew up outside Vonmora’s gate. The long tedious miles had provided far too much time to think. Terror had taken root inside Kethlyn’s belly. It bloomed, driving thorns deep. “Mum is going to kill me,” he muttered as he trudged toward the keep; he didn’t mean it metaphorically.
He welcomed the idea of Lothiar’s army amassing against him on the road. Being set upon by enemies seemed of little importance when standing shoulder to shoulder with his regret, but it would provide delay, maybe several days of delay.