Dawnsinger

by Janalyn Voigt

  Her smile faded, but she inclined her head. “You are right. We have need for haste. And yet, I wish we could stay longer and that we did not travel in a windstorm. Listen to its wailing!” She paused, and he listened with her to the rattle of the shutters behind the embroidered window hangings. The squall that howled outside had sprung from the east before morning and raged all day without abating.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “I fear we will have difficulty submitting ourselves to the rigors of our journey after the comfort and plenty at Graelinn.”

  “If it were only that!” Shae wrapped her arms about herself. “I find a different sort of comfort here. The feeling of being hunted has already left me, and I don’t relish its return.”

  “How I wish we were quit of this business!” At Kai’s raised voice, the servant Katera had provided Shae, a gray-haired matron, lifted her head to peer at him from the bench nearest the window. Kai steadied himself, and the matron returned to her embroidery.

  “As do I,” Shae rejoined with quiet intensity, “and yet, we must fulfill our duty.” She smiled then. “I resented it—not owning a temperament or a fate like Katera’s—but now I see the truth. We each answer a different calling.” Her voice softened. “What of Guaron?”

  “He will live, by Lof Yuel’s grace.” Guaron had done enough, suffered enough, lost enough. “He will remain here with the wingabeasts until our return.” The words dropped into silence—until our return.

  “May it be thus,” Shae agreed, but she did not meet his eyes. “What troubles you?”

  “How well you know me, Shae.”

  Her smile tugged at his heart. “You’re not hard to read when you scowl like that. Tell me.”

  “I have just learned of waeven bites and what they bring.”

  “Guaron recovers, you said.”

  He let out his breath. “His wound will heal.” He shook his head. “I blame myself! Had I not been certain safety lay within the walls of Braeth, he would not now suffer.”

  “You couldn’t know what would happen.”

  “True enough, but I might have guessed that a place with such a history would draw fell creatures to itself. I should have known, too, that a night spent in Paiad Burein could only bode ill. Aerlic has not been the same since our sojourn there.” He struck the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, causing Shae’s servant to stir again. “I continue to make decisions that put us in peril, and now Guaron will pay for my poor judgment for the rest of his life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A body can heal from a waeven’s bite, but its poison continues to fester within the soul.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and turned away. “Guaron dwells halfway in shadow.”

  Her hand on his arm recalled him. “You cannot blame yourself for what the waeven did. Reproaching yourself changes nothing and only clouds your thinking.”

  He pressed his lips together and slid a hand over hers. He should not add his own burdens to the ones she already carried. “You are right.” He gave her the words of comfort she needed. “Will you come with me to the stables?”

  She nodded. “I should say goodbye to Ruescht.”

  He took up a lanthorn from the mantle and lit it while Shae donned her cloak and whispered to her servant, who nodded and resumed her needlework. He stilled a twinge of conscience. Shae came alone with him without reproach only because others thought him her brother. He shouldn’t do anything that might compromise her, but he couldn’t deny himself the balm of her company.

  Cold drafts accompanied them down darkened corridors and made the flames within the lanthorn he carried flutter and dance. Their shadows loomed tall before them, but in the next current shifted to fall behind.

  Shae turned at the side door. “I wish we did not leave the wingabeasts.”

  When he reached around her for the latch, the movement brought them close. “Indeed, it’s a blow to lose their speed, and already Brael Shadd stands above the horizon at dawn.”

  The wind tore the door from his hands and a gust swept them, making the lanthorn flame sputter. He turned to shelter Shae, his own back to the brunt of the wind, and lowered his head to speak near her ear. He meant to urge her to stay close as they crossed the bailey, but she lifted her face as he lowered his, and words fled. Wonderingly, he touched her soft lips with his own. As she sighed, he groaned and slanted his lips across hers in a firmer demand. She leaned into him, and he gathered her closer to kiss her in earnest. As she yielded, the fury of the wind could not match the storm that raged between them.

  The banging of the door brought Kai to his senses. Shae pulled away with a small cry. He lifted the lanthorn. Shae looked at him out of wounded eyes, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth.

  He raked a hand through his hair and took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to happen.”

  She nodded, and he caught the glint of tears.

  “Shae, listen—”

  She shook her head with violence. “Please! Let’s not speak of this.”

  He went still while he fought the urge to comfort her in his arms. Instead, he inclined his head, accepting her choice. “Lean into the wind and stay close to me.” He wrenched open the door and raised his voice above the storm. “Don’t worry. I’ll not let harm come to you.”

  ****

  Shae stepped into the howling wind and averted her face to breathe. Overhead, clouds raced across the moon. Kai secured the door, and then pulled her with him across the outer bailey. As they ran, the lanthorn guttered and flamed, making shadows leap.

  They fetched against the stable, and Kai flung open its door. They hurried into a chamber filled with tack and saddles, and the wind cut away. They stood apart and silent, where before they might have clung together, laughing and warming themselves. Instead, Shae huddled in her cloak and tasted the salt of foolish tears. When she lifted her head, she met Kai’s darkened gaze. Despite herself, she could not look away.

  Kai broke the contact and, raising the lanthorn, led her through a second door to a long corridor with stalls on either side. She wrinkled her nose at the sharp scents of hay and straw mingled with the musky smell of droppings.

  Most of the wingabeasts had settled for the night. Ruescht’s silver coat glinted midway down the stalls. At their approach, the little mare put her head up and whickered a greeting. Shae put a hand to the soft muzzle, and warmth blew against her palm. Tangling her fingers in Ruescht’s silken mane, Shae leaned her forehead against the wingabeast’s warm neck. “Goodbye, my friend.”

  Shae stepped back and scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks. Kai’s hand touched her arm, but she could not find her way back to him—not now. Perhaps she never would. Ruescht’s luminous eyes glistened and her nostrils flared. She tossed her head. It seemed almost that the little wingabeast understood her distress.

  They returned to the hold in silence. At her outer chamber door, Kai pressed the lanthorn into her hands with a curt nod. “Make your preparations. We will leave after we take food together in the hall.” He walked away without a backward glance

  Shae hesitated at the latch, and then lifted the lanthorn and turned away from the door.

  The Allerstaed waited in silence. She moved into the graystone and marble chamber, her footsteps eager. The lanthorn cast a warm glow before her. She set it down and knelt on the step below the altar, but tears, rather than prayers, found their release. She wept for the losses she’d suffered since Kai first summoned her from Whellein. She wept for Maeven and Eufemia, but also for the shift that would come to her relationship with Aeleanor and those she had called family. She wept most of all for the change between herself and Kai. But prayer at last replaced tears.

  “I knew I would find you here.” Katera’s voice and footsteps echoed. “The others wait for you before breaking bread.”

  She raised her head. She’d forgotten place and time.

  “Do you sleep?” Katera asked on a rising note.

  Shae pushed the hair out
of her eyes. For the first time, she saw through the criticism that cloaked what Katera really asked. She spoke in a rush of sympathy. “Sometimes, when I pray, I find a deep place within that only Lof Yuel can touch.”

  Katera sat beside her. “Can anyone find such a place? Can I?”

  “I think it must be so.”

  “I will pray Lof Yuel will keep you safe, then.”

  Shae met Katera’s embrace, marveling that she felt more a sister to her now than she had when she’d thought them joined by blood.

  Kai, Aerlic, and Dorann looked up when she entered the great hall. A late feast, prepared to send them on their way, had already begun. Despite little appetite, Shae ate all she could, for she would need strength to endure this night’s trials. After a brief greeting, Kai remained aloof. Heat rose to her face, and she looked away.

  They made their goodbyes and ventured into the night. If anything, the wind blew more strongly now. She settled her elkskin satchel over her shoulders. Although it weighted her steps, it carried a share of food and water and the few personal oddments she’d allowed herself. The others bore the bulk of their supplies.

  The moon, full and round and tinged with amber, rode high to light their way. Seeding grasses tossed before them like waves in the sea and then fell in their wake. The wind, when it shifted to blow with gentleness from the south, brought the clean scent of salt and the ripe odor of wet reeds from the great marsh of Weithein Fain.

  They came upon remnants of the ancient road that had once connected Braeth to Pilaer. The hard-packed surface gleamed pale blue in the darkness, except where ruts cut by long-ago wagon wheels unfurled like twin ribbons. They made slow progress, for the road crumbled here and there into the marsh it skirted. Soft places made by burrowing rodents caved in beneath their feet. Undergrowth encroached and clung or stung as they passed. A rock rolled underfoot, and Shae gasped. Kai half-turned toward her. As she stumbled, she put out a hand to him but snatched it back. He hesitated, his expression unreadable in the darkness, and then turned away. He seemed as bent on ignoring her as she was on ignoring him. Where he might once have offered his hand to help her, he left her to struggle alone. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wished she could let herself call him back.

  She trudged on, caught in a dream without end. A growing ache of homesickness troubled her, although she no longer truly belonged to Whellein. She pined for the carefree innocence of her early days, a time when nothing had changed between herself and Kai. Her ankle throbbed, but she bit her lip and did not complain. An odd pain of another sort twisted inside her, for she’d wanted to take Kai’s arm, to lean into his warmth and revisit their bond of shared love. She couldn’t remember a time she had not borrowed his strength. It had always been so between them, but she couldn’t let it be so now. She blinked away foolish tears and pulled her cloak tighter about her, stumbling on through the night.

  It took her more effort to cover the same ground as the others. When she stepped into a soft place in the road and pitched to the ground, she cried out and grabbed her ankle. She’d wrenched it again. Kai called for a rest, and after that, they proceeded at a more moderate pace.

  Dorann found his way to her side, his solicitude a balm. He held back the encroaching underbrush and steadied her whenever she faltered. The road stretched before them, curving only to avoid places where solid ground gave way to mud flats and salt bogs. Night birds whistled. Water lapped and mud sucked.

  A pheasant erupted from a stand of marsh grass. Shae jumped, and her heart thudded. Aerlic already notched an arrow to his bow, but the bird winged across the faen to become a shadow limned by moonlight. The arrow glinted as Aerlic returned it to its quiver. Just as well. They had no means of retrieving a fallen bird from the faen nor could they abandon caution and raise the scent of blood or light a cooking fire.

  Brael Shadd glowed near the westward horizon, and the thinning darkness suggested morning. Kai called a halt near a grove of stunted draetenns where the road left the grasslands to plunge into Weithein Faen.

  Shae sheltered beneath the trees, too weary to follow as the others climbed a small knoll for a view of the road as it cut through the faen.

  From the small distance between them she heard Dorann’s whistle and Aerlic’s soft cry. “May Lof Yuel protect us.”

  22

  Road to Pilaer

  Shae stopped to rub a stitch in her side. She’d run too fast to reach her companions. Without waiting to catch her breath, she turned her head to see what held the others enthralled—and gasped.

  Golden morning light fell across the faen and in the near distance touched broken marble pillars flanking a wide stair. Above the stair a marble and granite fortress overlooked the rooftops of an abandoned town. With its base still in darkness, the stronghold seemed to float above the drowned lands.

  Pilaer!

  Her knees went weak. The ancient fortress hung suspended in the mists of time, at least in her imagination. The reality might prove as mysterious. Indeed, rumor gave it that this ruin was haunted not only by what had been but by what could never be.

  The road to Pilaer narrowed and meandered across the faen. Waters lapped over it and quick mud consumed its edges. Here and there, the road sank below the surface to vanish altogether.

  Shae pressed a hand to her throat. “How can anyone cross those sunken places?”

  Kai spoke beside her. “We have no choice.”

  She hesitated. “Can’t we go around the faen?”

  He shook his head. “That would take far more time than we can allow.”

  “I’d rather you gave a different answer.”

  “Then you join your wish to mine. Come, Shae, and rest. We’ll pass through the ruins after all welkes return eastward—before twilight, with any luck. I don’t wish to visit such a place in full night.”

  She shivered, needing no explanation of Kai’s words.

  The small stand of draetenns draped curling leaves about them and bore the brunt of the ever-present wind. Shae settled herself on the hard ground and pulled her cloak close. She shifted to remove a small stone that gouged her side, but then had to settle all over again to avoid the draetenn root bumping her feet. For speed of travel they’d not burdened themselves with luxuries such as bedding. But how would she ever rest?

  Kai’s touch summoned her from the depths of a deep, dreamless sleep. If fearsome birds of prey had hunted overhead while she slept, she never knew. At her smile, a pained expression crossed Kai’s face. She stared at him, baffled, until memory returned and her smile faltered.

  The comforting words she longed to speak stuck in her throat. Her hand itched to touch him, but already he turned away. She would not call him back.

  Emerging from the trees as a flock of ungainly brown waterfowl winged across gray skies glowing with subdued light, she stood transfixed. She’d never seen such birds before.

  She came upon Kai beside a raft of draetenn branches lashed together, so small it could carry only two at a time. He spoke without turning his head. “We built it while you slept.”

  She frowned. “Will it ferry us in safety across the breaches in the road?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll soon answer that question.”

  They set out almost at once, keeping to the road as it plunged into the faen and leveled at waterline. Kai led while Dorann and Aerlic shouldered the raft behind Shae.

  She took care to keep her feet out of the ruts, which in places shone with water. Dragonflies darted through the tall reeds that closed her in. She flipped back the edges of her cloak and basked in the residual heat shimmering above the road’s surface.

  She avoided the edges of the road where water bugs skittered in green water. Birdsong flowed all about her, the warblers hidden in reeds and grasses. The beauty of the marsh sang its own melody in her heart. She could almost forget their destination, at least until reeds gave way to burbling mud flats affording views of Pilaer.

  When they reached the first of three breaches in the ro
ad, Aerlic tested the raft, paddling across the pool that had swallowed the road. Although it tilted and sank at one edge, the raft remained afloat. They drew it back by means of ropes, and Dorann went next. He hesitated, but then offered his hand to her.

  Shae looked to Kai before she thought but met a shuttered expression. With effort, she returned the smile Dorann gave her and grasped his hand.

  He balanced her as she stepped onto the raft. It gave beneath her, and she sank to her knees, fearful that if she stood it would tip. Aerlic pulled the rope, his muscles straining. The water slid by, murky and silent. When they reached the other side of the breach, Dorann offered his assistance once more. She gave him her smile and felt her cheeks go warm at the light in his amber eyes. After Kai took his turn, Aerlic and Dorann hoisted the raft between them again.

  Low tide exposed great boulders laid below the surface to support the roadbed. But they’d barely begun to cross the flats when the tide rushed in to cover the sucking mud. Shae eyed the rising water and did not stray from the middle of the road. A long-legged bird landed near the road’s edge and waded through the water, pausing here and there to dip its beak and capture delicacies.

  Storm clouds gathered, sending shadows over the faen. Wind pierced the folds of Shae’s cloak. Aerlic and Kai took the lead, while Dorann hung back beside her. Did someone call her name? She looked behind her, for her skin crawled, but only windswept marsh and rippling grasslands met her eye.

  They halted at the second breach while her companions settled the raft in the water.

  Kai straightened. “It’s shallower here. If we catch the waves right we should make it, but we’ll have to go one at a time.”

  Dorann helped Shae sit in the center of the raft when her turn came, and then pushed off as a wave washed toward the raft. Aerlic and Kai strained together against the rope. The raft broke free of the bottom with a scrape and bucked beneath Shae. She put a hand against her mouth to keep from crying out.