The Gathering of the Lost

by Helen Lowe

  No. Kalan forced his eyelids wider apart, conscious of Yorindesarinen’s gift ring, with its black pearl caught amidst strands of plaited metal, lying like a weight against his heart. It was too fine a jewel for Hamar Sondsangre, from the modest manor of Aldermere, to wear—or so he had told himself, keeping it sewn into the breast of his coat all these years.

  And right now, he thought grimly, is not the time to step beyond those mists: not without other Oakward here to anchor me to the oak forest that is the Emerian route through the Gate of Dreams.

  “There’s something there,” Malian said, so quietly that even Kalan almost did not hear her as she rose to her feet. Automatically, he glanced at Iliase, but the rise and fall of her breath was even and she did not stir. A floorboard creaked, loud in the silence, as he joined Malian at the window and looked out. The scene below reflected the world that his psychic shield had conveyed: banks of mist lying above the grounds of Tenneward lodge and extending into the avenue they had ridden along that afternoon. The mist was thickest on the lawn beyond the perimeter of his shield, and as Kalan watched, the heart of the whiteness began to drift apart. He narrowed his eyes.

  “Is it a cairn?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Yes. But it’s not really here.” Malian’s voice was still very soft.

  No, Kalan thought, his keen eyes peering through the mist to what looked like a shingle plain, with a stone cairn rising out of it. He knew it was not anywhere in Emer. A dog lay before the cairn, the line of its body expressing weary resignation. At first Kalan thought it was a stone beast, carved to lie before the memorial, but then he saw its fur riffle in whatever wind blew there.

  “I think it’s the Gray Lands,” Malian continued slowly, “and this is Rowan Birchmoon’s grave, with one of her hounds keeping vigil.”

  Was that a catch in her voice? Kalan wondered. She had seemed so emotionless about the Winter woman’s death up until now, both when she first spoke of it in the hill fort, and the few times they had discussed it since. As though the honor and duty she had invoked in relation to the death really belonged to someone else, some Malian other than the one who spoke and breathed in the everyday world.

  Kalan stared at the cairn, recalling the first and only time he had seen the Winter woman: a rider cloaked in white and seated on a white horse amidst falling snow, with a hawk resting still as stone on her forearm. In Jaransor, he thought—and was seized by the loss, pain, and terror, mixed with exhilaration, that had accompanied their flight through those hills. He clenched his hand hard around his sword hilt to stop himself crying out against the memories’ sharpness. The metal of pommel and guard pressed into flesh, cold as the snowflakes that had fallen from an iron sky, five years before. He had thought they might die in that snow, but instead Rowan Birchmoon had opened the door into winter that saved them.

  From the Swarm as well as the blizzard, Kalan thought now—and without her strange power, and her sponsorship amongst the Winter people, I might never have come into Emer. His anger licked, bright as a flame in thatch, because what he remembered most from their one brief meeting was not Rowan Birchmoon’s power, but her gentleness.

  I acknowledge my debt, he said silently, staring at the cairn: I will not forget. He allowed the flame to lick again, then as deliberately let it cool, like water tempering a blade. “An opening from Emer into the Gray Lands?” he queried Malian. “I thought that was impossible without resorting to force?”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Malian said, although her tone suggested a frown. “The Gray Lands are not the full Wall, and she was of Haarth, but still . . .”

  Still, thought Kalan, watching the mist begin to draw together again—and felt a darkness touch the rim of his shield. He closed a warning hand on Malian’s shoulder, but she nodded, indicating that her seeker’s sense had picked up the same presence.

  Of course, he thought. She has lived as a Dancer of Kan. How better to hone a seeker’s sense to danger wrapped in night’s shadows? “There,” he said, catching the faintest hint of movement beneath a mist-wreathed tree. A moment later a tall, cloak-wrapped figure stepped from beneath it and stared toward the lodge.

  “There’s more.” Malian spoke on a half breath, and a split second later Kalan sensed them, too: four more cloak-shrouded figures emerging to watch the house. “I have seen their kind before, I think,” Malian added. “Within the Gate of Dreams on Summer’s Eve . . . But perhaps before that as well, at Normarch.”

  Darkswarm, then. Kalan’s heartbeat drummed as the figures began to glide toward the lodge. In just a few more paces they would encounter the psychic barrier of his shield—and they already knew about the Oakward. He had to assume that they had come prepared.

  A greater darkness brushed across his mind, like cloud across the moon—and both mist and night billowed apart, a formless darkness pressing through. It reminded Kalan, just a little, of the inchoate darkness they had encountered on the mountainside during the dark of the moon, the one that had tried to lure Malian—in her guise as Maister Carick—to her death over a cliff.

  “Do you see it?” Even Kalan’s mindvoice was a whisper, but he felt the dark mind regard him—as though my shield isn’t even there, he thought, his heart lurching. Except that this new power did not appear more than momentarily interested in either him or his shield. Its focus was on the cloaked figures, and Kalan felt their fear, but also their rage. A wild, sharp-edged bolt of power surged out of them toward the lodge, but the formless dark rolled along the edge of his shield like a black fog, absorbing the blast. He sensed cloaked figures dismay as they stepped raggedly back, then began to melt away into the trees. The darkness followed, blending with the deep shadows between the fog drifts until the whiteness roiled, rising up around the cloaked figures. When it settled again, the night was empty.

  “They’re gone.” Kalan could hear the confusion in Malian’s voice. “An intervention,” she added, as though repeating something heard elsewhere. Or perhaps she was just responding to Nhenir, speaking for her mind alone. “But why?”

  Kalan shook his head, reflecting that they already suspected the Swarm of divergent purposes. But as to why—he shook his head again, then stiffened. “Look.”

  Malian peered out, and this time Kalan saw her frown. A tall figure had emerged from the shadows of the lodge entrance, to the left of the window where they stood. Kalan could hear gravel crunch as he walked to the edge of the lawn and stopped, looking toward where the cloaked figures and the dark power had disappeared. “Raven,” Malian said.

  She never called him Ser, Kalan noted, when she spoke of the knight away from the others. “He must have been there all along.”

  “He can smell magic.” Malian spoke almost absently. “That’s what he said when we first met. So he would have picked up on the Swarm minions’ arrival.”

  Kalan frowned, trying to think who amongst the powers of Haarth had that ability, but couldn’t recall anything from the Oakward’s lore. In much the same way as the formless darkness had done, the knight below seemed to feel their attention, for he turned and looked up, his shadowed regard meeting theirs where they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, gazing down at him.

  Chapter 32

  Cockcrow

  “What was that darkness?” Malian asked Nhenir, when Raven had walked back into the house and Kalan resumed his post by the door.

  “A power,” the helm replied, at its most uncommunicative, its voice a chime of ice through the midnight room.

  “A Darkswarm power?” she persisted, and received the mental equivalent of a nod in reply. Of course, she thought: those others would not have gone without a fight otherwise. But why would a Darkswarm power intervene against its own?

  She fretted at that thought, and the puzzling window that had opened onto what she guessed was Rowan Birchmoon’s tomb, until her eyelids grew heavy. Her slumber, too, was uneasy and her dreams restless. She glimpsed a solitary tower, squat against a green wood. A storm of wings rose on the wind’s back, b
lotting out the sky as the dream changed into dust, swirling above an empty road.

  The landscape surrounding the road was drear, with a thin, unhappy wind whistling across a stony plain and prying at Malian’s clothes. The cairn she had seen through the mist stood directly in front of her now, with the same hound lying before it. The beast lifted its head as she drew near—as though it, too, is in the dream, Malian thought, or can see me through it.

  “Falath,” she said, and the hound whined, deep in his throat. “You must be an old hound now.” In the dream, she rubbed his head as she had when they were both younger and dwelt in the Keep of Winds. Falath thumped his feathery tail.

  You saved me five years ago, Malian said to the silent tomb, but could not save yourself from the hostility of the Derai. Or chose not to, she added, drawing Falath’s ears gently through her dream fingers. She was almost surprised at the ache in her throat

  A pebble has fallen. Malian repeated the traditional phrase to herself. But why this pebble? And why now, after so long?

  “Why?” A voice echoed her thought, speaking from behind the wind. “What did they hope to achieve?” Malian recognized Haimyr’s intonation, even though her dreamscape remained empty of anything except the cairn and the hound.

  “What they have, perhaps.” Asantir, thought Malian. Falath, too, lifted his head. “The marriage alliance Night needs, which would not happen while he kept her with him. ‘Polluting keep and hold’ was the way one of the Sons of Blood put it. Forthright perhaps—but none of our allies liked her presence here.”

  “And so she was murdered.” Malian could almost see Haimyr’s remote, dreamy expression. “Three arrows in the back and one in the throat, Garan said.”

  “I did not say it was right,” Asantir replied, in the quiet, even tone that Malian remembered so well. “But you asked why.”

  The wind gusted, stirring up grit. When it died away Haimyr was still speaking. “ . . . and the killers?” Did he hesitate? Malian wondered. “Garan said you hunted them down yourself?”

  “Blood demands blood.” Asantir’s voice bore echoes of the stone plain and the unceasing wind that blew across it. “And they were Honor Guard yet betrayed Earl and oaths. Justice needed to be seen to be done, and done swiftly.”

  “And those who set them on to the deed?” Haimyr asked.

  “I have not found them,” Asantir replied. “Yet.” The wind gusted again, mournful, and Asantir spoke softly beneath its plaint. “He loved her. I would kill them for that reason, even if I had not called her friend myself.”

  “We cannot get the dog to leave.” Malian did not recognize the new speaker. “But Teron’s people, out of Cloud Hold, have been bringing it food.”

  “Teron’s people?” Malian could hear Haimyr’s astonishment. “He despises outsiders.”

  “Yet wept when the Winter woman fell.” Asantir’s tone was impossible to read. “Although perhaps only for the Earl’s sake. But his clan honors loyalty above all else.”

  The wind blew more strongly, swirling grit in clouds, and Falath’s head sank back onto his paws. “Farewell my braveheart,” Malian said, knowing that the dream was either changing again, or ending.

  She turned away, but another voice spoke out of the heart of the cairn, ominous as distant thunder: “There is always a price . . . And now Winter’s heart lies buried in these gray lands, Winter’s blood soaked into barren ground.”

  Malian found it impossible to sleep again after that. She lay silent, watching the darkness beyond the window while Audin replaced Kalan on watch, and then Girvase, bleary eyed from only a few hours’ sleep, took Audin’s place. Eventually she got up and went to the small table, lighting a candle and opening up her wallet to search for the handful of Imulni amulets she had bought from Ar, companion to those crafted by the priests of Seruth. She drew out the little tangle and began to unravel the threads, aware that Girvase was watching her. “What are you doing?” he asked finally.

  He was in service to the Oakward, Malian thought—and he had seen what happened with the cup. She knew he would work it out soon, if he had not done so already. “I am working on amulets for the damosels,” she said. “Ones that will resemble favors of Imuln, the sort that priestesses give out.”

  “Like the ones you used against the wolfpack?” Girvase asked. “I always thought,” he added slowly, “that they were remarkably effective for Serruti charms.”

  “Adepts of the Shadow Band learn these things,” Alianor said, from the doorway of the adjoining room. She was wrapped in a quilt, with her dark hair loose down her back.

  Girvase’s eyes rested on her, their expression softening, and Alianor smiled back at him. Briefly, Malian felt—What, she wondered. Envy? Regret? She shook her head at herself as Alianor moved to the window.

  “Lord Falk said that we could tell Gir if it became necessary,” the damosel said. A little belatedly, she glanced at Ilaise by the fire.

  “Don’t worry she’s still asleep,” she said. “But I imagine a lot of people will begin to speculate, if the business with the cup gets about.” She shrugged and held up one of the amulets. “If you wear these, the charm I’m working should be strong enough to warn you of another poisoned cup, or the dagger in a hand that seems well-disposed. You can tell the world that the three of you wear them as friendship tokens.”

  Alianor looked over her shoulder, her gray eyes serious. “Thank you.” Her fingers drummed briefly on the sill as she returned her attention to the shadowed pane, her reflected expression a mix of doubt and resolution.

  Somewhere in the lodge grounds a cock crowed, to be answered almost immediately by another nearby. Malian let her seeker’s sense follow it, extending her awareness as a third bird called from a greater distance. Lords on their dunghills, she thought, smiling to herself—and then her hands stilled as she sensed the reverberation of horses’ hooves, drumming on the earth. A great many horses, she decided, approaching from the direction of Caer Argent.

  Malian kept her mind tuned to them while she finished the bindings on the amulets. The lodge cock crowed again and Ilaise sat up, stretching and yawning, as Ghiselaine came to the connecting door. Unlike Alianor, she was already fully dressed and her fingers were busy, binding her hair into a long braid. She studied Malian, the smudges beneath her eyes pronounced. “Have you slept at all, Maister Carick?”

  “Not a great deal,” Malian replied, and the young Countess nodded.

  “Nor I,” she replied softly, going to stand beside Alianor at the casement. “I can’t get that child from yesterday out of my head. And as soon as I closed my eyes I saw the others, all the dead from our ill-fated expedition.”

  “The glamor,” Alianor began, but Ghiselaine shook her head sharply.

  “No. I’m sure there was a glamor, working on us all, but I wanted to go. I longed for an adventure—just once, before we came here and the door closed on the gilded cage. So I persuaded myself that Erron was being overly cautious and denying the others their opportunity because of me. But really, I wanted the adventure for myself—and closed my mind to the truth that if there was a threat, I would be the last to pay the price.”

  “Oh, Ghis,” Alianor said, and rested one arm across her friend’s shoulder, her dark head pressed close to Ghiselaine’s bright one. “We were all part of it. We all wanted to go just as much as you did. It would be arrogant, you know,” she added gravely, “to take it all on yourself.”

  Ghiselaine nodded, her smile crooked. “All the same, it might have been easier if Ser Raven had knocked me off my horse, after The Leas.”

  Alianor squeezed her shoulders. “Sent the Countess of Ormond and future Duchess of Emer sprawling in the dust? I think he is too wise for that.”

  “Besides,” said Ilaise, sitting up and stretching, “from what the boys say of his blows when training, I don’t think that would have helped at all.”

  Girvase grinned and looked as though he was going to speak, but Malian got up abruptly and went to the window, pe
ering at the graying world. “Did you hear something?” she asked, although she already knew that the approaching riders had turned off the main road and into the poplar avenue. The others shook their heads as she unlatched the casement, but then they all heard the rumble of hooves, moving at a smart pace. Girvase crossed the room in two swift paces and leaned out, before striding back to the hall door. “Riders coming!” he shouted, flinging it open, and the next minute the sleeping lodge was an uproar of shouting voices and running feet.

  “Let’s hope it’s friends,” Ghiselaine said, half under breath, and Malian guessed that could have a double meaning, given that she was Countess of Ormond, the longstanding enemy of Caer Argent.

  The damosels disappeared into the bedchamber to dress, while Malian descended to the landing window in time to see a lancer unit in green and black clatter into the yard. All wore the oak of Emer displayed on the front and back of their doublets, and the black plumes on their captain’s helmet riffled in the breeze. “Those are ducal colors,” Audin said, pausing on his way down the stairs. “Maybe my uncle’s come himself.”

  A few moments later the yard was full of a trampling, colorful mass of riders—as many as fifty of them, Malian thought, and mostly men, although the few women in their rich riding habits and ornate headdresses stood out. They were all laughing and talking together and looked far more like a hunting or picnic party than an escort into Caer Argent. The throng began to settle as Ser Amain and Raven emerged from the lodge, and a space opened up around a central group of riders.

  The foremost horseman was bareheaded, with a coronal around closely cropped hair, and Malian caught the glitter of gilded mail beneath a black jupon that bore an oak tree in gold across its breast. Caril Sondargent, Duke of Emer, Malian guessed, noting the authoritative lift of the iron-gray head. The body beneath the black jupon had thickened with age, but he looked powerful still, although well worn—as you would expect of the man who had ruled Emer since he was seventeen, cementing the peace that was the last long battle of his father’s and grandfather’s wars.