by Amy Bai
She couldn't come for Kyali yet, not and live. But she would not waste the unthinkable sacrifice Kyali made. Nor would she leave her friend to face it alone. Pain—oh gods, there was pain—that, she could bear, now that she had the means to keep hold of Kyali.
"Find us one of the old rooms," she ordered, still curled over herself. "Deep underneath. We'll gather those that we can. The guard first, all we can reach."
"Lady," Marta whispered, and the fear in her handmaid's tone straightened her spine. Taireasa wiped tears from her face, hissing a curse.
Voices hissed back in her head: Say it, stupid girl! Where is the princess?
Taireasa swayed and caught herself on the wall again, tears smoldering on her skin and guilt and fury burning in her. Kyali would not say. And they would not kill her, not without that.
That anyone should endure such a thing for her… it was beyond bearing.
"The guards," she said, "then my bedroom. We are not leaving her behind."
"Yes," Marta said with toneless enthusiasm, never needing to ask who that was. She snatched the candle up, slipping past Taireasa to lead the way.
* * *
They couldn't keep this pace up for much longer. Savvys's bone-jarring gallop had dwindled to an exhausted, head-down trot and sweat foamed on his coat. Two horses had been left at the roadside already, blown and trembling. And yet they rode on, some three hundred worn-out men without home or hearth: these were the men of the Third with him, who had spent most of their lives at the Corwynall estates. Tonight, they were as orphaned as he.
Devin knew it, and knew too that right now they would follow him unquestioning into death if he asked, but he had never felt more alone in his life.
Something was happening to Kyali—he had no idea how he could know that, but he was increasingly certain it was true. He'd felt her presence for the briefest of moments, as he had felt both hers and Taireasa's in the great hall today—a sense of bewildering newness and utter familiarity, like opening a strange door in his own home. That first time, anyway. This second glimpse had been a nightmare of confusion and terror, there and gone so fast he wasn't even certain it had truly been Kyali behind the experience. He got nothing from Taireasa, which filled him with both relief and fear.
They were still more than an hour away from Faestan even if the horses kept this speed. Which they wouldn't.
He was going to be too late. He was going to lose Kyali too. And there wasn't anything he could do to stop it; the distance was too great, and whatever Gift he had, it couldn't take him to Faestan in time.
The whole world had come unraveled so fast.
Grief choked him. Devin swallowed it back, determined to be strong for the night, fairly certain he wouldn't have to worry about such things after that. Here was Song riding east to the end of a kingdom: whatever plans prophecy might have had, they were nothing now. In bitter acknowledgment of all fate had laid on him, he drew out the bone flute, arbiter of all the useless magic he owned. He put it to his lips, meaning to play some marching tune—he had to earn his place in this company somehow, and it certainly wouldn't be with his fighting skills—but instead he chose, at the first faint peal of sound, to play his father's favorite song.
This was all the eulogy it was likely he would be able to give.
It was a mistake: the notes weren’t made for anger. They broke the night open like an egg, let in all the awful truth the dark had hidden from him. He squeezed his eyes shut and played past the feeling that something in him was tearing apart, coming undone like everything else already had. All around him he could hear the stifled misery of men grieving. But he didn't stop playing; he was a Bard, after all, worthless in the kingdom as it had become tonight, and this simple noise was all he had to offer the world now. He forced his eyes open and stared at the unforgiving stars, swaying to Savvys's tired pace, and played until a hazy shimmer of effort was blurring his vision, till he was lightheaded and the grief he wouldn’t give voice any other way sat in his guts like a stone.
Dizziness shuddered through him, a sickening lurch that hurt his bones. There was a dreadful pulling making it hard to draw the next breath. The air went away, returned in a rush. Then Savvys stumbled hard, making his last note jump an octave, and Devin looked up.
He felt the blood leave his face.
Where there had been fields stretched out on either side of them, there were thick trees now. Where the Sainey river had kept a quiet, distant counterpoint to his playing, there was now the hum and whisper of a sleeping forest. The ground under his mount’s hooves had a marked tilt. It felt like something was pulling him down in one direction. Devin turned in the saddle, more disoriented than he had ever been in his life, and cried out when he saw the sharp slope of land outlined in moonlight, falling away from him in the starry dark.
They were in the mountains. High in them.
"Gods bless," Devin murmured, forgetting fury and even grief for one moment in favor of sheer terror. "What—?"
He looked at his old bone flute, friend of many years, still sitting in his hand, and blinked.
No. Surely not.
He stuck the flute in his pocket, hoping there was a better answer.
Around him, the men of the Third were riding in circles, moving their horses into the trees. He knew a scout pattern when he saw it and opened his mouth to call them back. He wanted to lose no one else tonight.
Peydan rode to his side. "We ought to scout out, m'lord."
"I—" Gods, he could barely find his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Not just yet, Lieutenant. I don't want to spring any traps."
There, that almost sounded reasonable, didn't it? Devin passed a hand through his hair, looking at trees, trees, trees, and the faint outline of a game trail. How had they gotten here?
How would they get back?
Oh, gods, Kyali, Taireasa. He would never get to them now.
"An’ where are we then, m'lord?" Peydan asked, breaking into his thoughts before the despair and panic that welled up in him could send him riding off a cliff in an attempt to get to Faestan.
It was a good question.
"I don't know," Devin muttered, too loudly. The sudden silence that fell around him felt like an accusation. "In the mountains, obviously, but gods, how—"
"Magic, Lord Corwynall, what else? Magic and geas."
Swords leapt out of sheaths all around him.
The voice seemed to be coming from the woods ahead on the right. Devin urged Savvys carefully forward. Peydan followed close as a shadow, his sword naked and gleaming in the faint moonlight trickling through the leaves.
"Who are you?" Devin said to the darkness between the trees. "And don't call me that."
"It's what you are tonight."
Damn it, his hands had begun to shake again. He swallowed a hard lump of sorrow and hissed through clenched teeth: "Show yourself. Show yourself and explain yourself. How do you know that my father is dead?"
"Magic there too, Devin Corwynall. There are many things we know tonight that we wish we didn't."
There was a rustling. Devin gripped the reins, wondering if he were about to regret not having drawn his sword. Ahead, five men melted out of the treeshadow like ghosts to stand on the trail. A soldier shouted. There was a general jostling as men rode forward. But Devin, squinting in the dimness, raised a hand and Peydan immediately shouted over the din, ordering them to stand down.
He knew that style of dress, just as he knew the long shape over each man's right shoulder was a sword in a baldric. If it were daylight, he would see daggers belted on hips.
The Fraonir.
One of the shadows separated from the group and came to his foot, looking up. In the dark, the lines of the man's face were deep and grim.
"I am Arlen Ulin's-son. Get down, Devin Corwynall. We have much to speak of.”
CHAPTER 10
"You know you are always welcome here."
Arlen’s face wore an odd expression, both gentle and dreadful
ly sad. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, calluses rasping against her cheek. Something knotted tightly in her chest loosened.
It wasn’t real. She was somewhere else, somewhere terrible and pain-filled and dark. She thought she might be dying.
Saraid knelt at her side and set one thin-skinned hand on hers, which rested on the leather-bound cover of a book she'd never read, one that might—no. She wasn’t thinking of that. She drew her knees up, feeling like a child. She wanted only to forget: forget the book, forget the words it held, forget the rhyme that had changed the world, forget it all, even the feel of her father's hands on her shoulders, if it meant she could forget what had come after.
What was happening now.
But Taireasa's face intruded on her retreat, Taireasa's iron will and brilliant, passionate mind, like a hand clinging to hers. It made no sense, it wasn't real, but she was held by it nonetheless.
Taireasa wasn't safe yet.
Nothing was more important than that.
Flame touched the edges of the dream, searing first the blanket and then her skin. The pages of the book curled and blackened under her hand. Arlen’s face vanished as she disappeared under the heat, became it, and cruel shadows pushed at the edges of her vision, man-shaped, blood-dark. Her limbs twisted as wounds blossomed on and inside her body. The pain was deep, all over, rising endlessly, too huge to breathe around. She couldn't even scream. Saraid’s hand tightened on hers. Streaks of gold began to crawl over everything.
The fire swallowed her, leaving no room for love, scorching even sorrow from her as it raged through her bones and made them flame.
In the blinding gold-flecked light, there was an end to the pain; there was even something like peace.
Then the shadows faded, and all around was the quiet of old stone, the scent of blood. Someone was curled in sleep next to her. The stillness of night hung heavily in the air.
A man’s voice laughed raucously somewhere else, and in the dark, flame opened its eyes.
* * *
Campfires made small bright points against the pitch black of a nighttime forest, throwing the shadows of men up against the trees. Devin huddled toward the flames, though the night was warm, and tried to swallow stew down a throat raw with smoke and shouting. Across from him, motionless as a statue, the lines etched deep in his face by the flickering light, Arlen Ulin’s-son of the Darachim Clan watched his every movement like it were something fascinating.
This man spoke of the prophecy. He claimed that his people, not Devin, had brought their ragged company from a lonely Faestan road to the second highest peak of the Baar mountain range, a claim Devin was all too willing to believe. It was easier than thinking he might be capable of such things. Arlen also claimed that Kyali and Taireasa were alive, a thought Devin clung to even more desperately. He could no longer sense his sister's presence in any way.
The source of this astonishing knowledge, this unbelievable power, was apparently sitting next to the Clan leader, spooning stew into her mouth with trembling hands. Saraid's long silver hair was tangled as if from sleep, her eyes red-rimmed and her face deathly pale. She looked like he felt.
Why she looked so was a question he had not yet found the courage to ask.
She left off eating and stared right at him. "You surely don't think you're the only one grieving tonight, Devin Corwynall? We were all surprised by this move—though I wish to the gods Niall and Farrell had done less to provoke it. Your part in this will be very different now, boy, than it would have been if things had gone as we planned."
Several things came clear, suddenly; several more were called into question. "What?"
"Easy on him, woman," Arlen muttered, darting a sharp glower at the old woman, who scowled. "Ignore it," he suggested to Devin. "She does it to everyone."
Devin set his stew down with deliberate care; he wanted so badly to pitch the bowl into this woman's face that he was afraid he'd do it before he could stop himself. "I couldn't care less about what she hears of my thoughts, sir," he said, trying hard to sound calm. "I want to know what plan this is that was set aside tonight."
Saraid raised her head abruptly, looking stricken. "Devin, it was not—"
"And when, precisely, did it go awry, lady? Before or after the king and queen were murdered?" Even Arlen had paled now, but Devin couldn't seem to stop, though he knew how unlikely it was these folk had anything to do with the West's treachery. "My home burned?" he spat. "The capital overrun with the armies of the Western barons? My father… my… my… before they… "
The soft murmur all around them had fallen to silence.
Devin clenched his teeth over the rest, words and grief and rage rising like a scalding tide in his throat. He shoved himself up and away from the light and the presence of his father's men. The shadows of the trees splintered into dim prisms. He made it as far as a boulder and leaned heavily against its rough side, shaking with sorrow, shattered by it. He couldn't breathe, and for a moment he didn't want to: it would be easier, gentler, to die now, before he could get anyone else killed on his behalf.
But Kyali, oh, Kyali. Taireasa.
A choking sound tore out of him. Now he could breathe, and he gasped, air scraping into his throat. He pressed his face against the unforgiving rock and wept, trying to be quiet, not wanting to give the men of the Third something else to worry about, or a witness to this moment. He wanted to be alone with this simple, merciless truth for a while.
"Devin."
The old woman. Of course.
"Go away," he said, but he pushed away from the stone, wiping his face.
"I can't."
"You can," he assured her. It would have sounded more impressive if his voice weren't still thick with tears. "Just turn around and head for firelight."
She knelt next to him. Devin fought the urge to fling an arm out and knock her over. "I can't," she said again. She sounded far too sure about that. "There isn’t time enough to grieve right now, child, much as I am sorry for that. Things have gone badly, and we've so small a window in which to push events in our own direction. You must leave now."
"You're not speaking sense," Devin snarled—but unfortunately, her words were a familiar sort of nonsense: she sounded like the court wizards whose instructions he'd spent so much of his life ignoring. It caught his attention, even when he didn't want it to. "What events? What plan, lady?"
She made an impatient, wounded sort of noise and swiped a hand over her cheek, which was when he realized she was crying, too. Gods! Who were these people?
"Your sister's teachers," the old woman said, answering, as she had done before, his unspoken thought. It was thoroughly unnerving. "And no plan, Devin Corwynall: nothing that has survived this night. We spent many long years studying Eairon's rhyme, and it still caught us by surprise. And I cannot speak of it, boy: there is no time, do you hear me? Quiet," she snapped, before he could even get his mouth open to protest. "There is too much to do, and you have your part to play—in some ways the hardest part, but you are strong enough to bear it. You are Song, Devin Corwynall."
The words sent a shudder through him.
"Song," he echoed roughly. "A Bard, in a war. What exactly do you think I shall do, win battles with my voice?"
"Perhaps."
He glared at her, infuriated, but her face was solemn. "You mean that," Devin said, in wondering scorn.
"I don't know what you shall do. I know there is magic in you, boy, magic enough to bring you and a whole company of men to us. We could never have done it without your strength. I know that you carry the weight of geas, of fate, in you, and it's bending everything in your path, myself included. Devin Corwynall might not win peace with his words, but Song—that man might."
He wanted to laugh. It caught in his throat. "I am not that man."
"You will be."
Her certainty was awful. Devin looked away, but Saraid set her hand on his arm again, insistent. "Listen to me now. The other side of this ridge is the kingdom o
f Cassdall, and a company of foreigners near the size of your own. They are exiles, just as you are tonight, and they are in search of help and home, just as you are. They are your allies, though they don't know it yet. Ride tonight, Devin. Find them and bring them here."
"You want me to..." Gods, it was so outrageous he couldn't even finish saying it. He gulped and tried again. "You want me to leave? To hare off into the kingdom next door in search of strangers? Are you mad? No!"
"Yes. You need them. Your queen needs them."
He realized, after a moment, that she meant Taireasa, and a fresh fit of shivers twisted through him. Taireasa was queen, good gods. He stared at the old woman, mute with horror.
"Devin, there is no time. You must decide."
That was Arlen, who had apparently decided to join this ridiculous discussion. Behind him, little more than a gleam of armor and a diffident posture in the dark, was Peydan, awaiting orders.
Damn it. He was not going to be pushed into something, tonight least of all.
"I can't leave Kyali and Taireasa," Devin said, finding, in that thought, a direction.
"You aren't, boy. They are coming here, I tell you. Everyone is. That will likely include your enemies, Devin Corwynall, and your numbers are not great. You need all the help you can get."
"Gods, how do you know all this?!" Devin cried, driving a fist into the soft dirt under his knees. He could feel his face crumpling with fury and confusion. "How? And if you see so much, how not what happened tonight? Where was our warning?"
There was a painful silence after that. He wiped at his face, and didn't even flinch when Arlen's heavy hand landed on his shoulder.
"We're not gods, boy. We have a better view from up here, and a few men in the lowlands, that's all."
"And magic my people can't even imagine. And years of studying a prophecy you didn't speak to its subjects about. And some way of knowing more about my sister than I do that has left the old lady haggard and exhausted, which does not bode well for what state Kyali is in. I am not a fool, sir. I'd prefer not to be lied to as if I were one."