The Darkling Hills

by Lori Martin

  Dalleena put down the case she was holding. She was astonished. “What?”

  “I want to come with you.”

  Lilli looked at Dalleena. Temhas stared at his sister.

  “I don’t want to stay behind,” she blurted. “And have people here who don’t know me – people who don’t understand what happened – I –”

  “Pillyn, I’m in exile. I’m crossing the Valtah.”

  “I know. I don’t care. Did you really love Rendell?”

  The tears still came up too quickly; she had to blink them away, but the girl had seen. “Yes. I still do.”

  “Temhas said I shouldn’t blame you. I guess everyone did what he had to, and Rendell wouldn’t like me to be – to be the way I’ve been. Besides,” she continued, her voice lowered. “I want to see his baby when it’s born.”

  “I –”

  “No,” Temhas suddenly said. “I absolutely forbid it.” He sounded so much like his father that Pillyn was taken aback.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s too dangerous. I won’t have it.”

  “Temhas!”

  “No, I said! It’s bad enough that Lilli’s going –” He caught himself. “I mean, Lilli and Dalleena, but they have to. You don’t.”

  “Yes I do. You’re leaving me.”

  “I’ll come home.”

  “What makes you think so?” She flung it at him. “It’s a war, isn’t it?”

  “There’s nowhere safe now,” Dalleena said to Temhas thoughtfully. “There’s no way to say what would be more dangerous, here or there. The Mendales are winning.”

  “I want to be with someone,” Pillyn said. “And Rendell would want me to help you.”

  Dalleena almost smiled; she was thinking of it in reverse. Lilli decided things were getting out of hand.

  “Dalleena, she’s so young. We’re going to have a baby on our hands as it is. And who do we leave Baili with?”

  “I want to go with Pillyn!”

  “He goes with me,” Pillyn said.

  “Are we supposed to get all these people across the Valtah?” Lilli demanded. “We’re running, not going on an afternoon ride!”

  “They’re coming with us.”

  “Dalleena!”

  “They’re coming. That’s final.” The sound was new to them, and only Lilli recognized the familiar royal tone. Temhas began to splutter, but Lilli shook her head at him.

  “You’ve just been overruled,” she said.

  Like an omen, the first snowfall of the year began just as they were saddling the horses. “Not starvation. Not drowning.” Lilli said to the sky. “We’ll just freeze to death.”

  Dalleena had to sit sidesaddle. The pain shot immediately up her back and settled in her lower spine. She held out both hands to Temhas. “Thank you, for everything.”

  He flushed deep red. All he said was, “How can you?”

  “I mean it,” she insisted. A thin layer of flakes was already covering the ground. He took each hand, one at a time, and pressed it to his forehead.

  Pillyn did not seem to be able to stand to look at him, so he tried to walk by her. As he did she leaned off the horse to catch his shoulders in a fierce but fleeting embrace. He helped Baili climb up in front of her. The boy, thinking of soldiers, saluted him.

  “Let’s go,” Dalleena said. She urged her horse forward.

  Lilli’s horse lingered. Temhas had his hand on the bridle. He was reluctant to let go.

  “Temhas, whatever you think you’re paying for, or whatever you have to do –” Lilli paused.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t deliberately get yourself killed, out of shame.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t. I promise you I’ll do my best to stay alive and help the living, and I won’t beg forgiveness from the dead.” He smiled a little. “Dying would be too easy.”

  “It’s farewell for us. I doubt if we’ll ever see each other again.”

  “I know.” His dark eyes burned with a hunger into her own. “Farewell, and may Nialia hold you –” He broke off. “May Nialia hold you as beloved as I do.”

  Lilli whispered, “May her grace light your path.” She leaned over, and kissed him softly, on the mouth. His hand went up to the back of her neck, locking them together. Then he pulled back suddenly, shouting to the horse, “Forward!” He slapped its rump, and the startled animal bounded ahead. Lilli sat stiffly, never looking back, feeling his eyes follow her, until she was out of his sight.

  CHAPTER 22

  The snow continued to fall intermittently over the next few days, falling and subsiding into mud. It landed, soft bright jewels on their cloaks, and faded away. They traveled old roads, little-used, hearing behind them – or imagining they did – the sounds of strangers in Boessus’s deserted house. There was little conversation; even Baili was subdued, and the horses’ breathing was loud in the cold air. The three women rode close together where possible, drawing comfort from one another’s presence. There was so much they were leaving behind: their homes, their country, the fabric of their daily lives. For Lilli there was the anger and hurt caused by her own family, who had turned her away, and who might now be dead or fleeing, frightened, to the east. They had accused her of being selfish and irresponsible, she who was in exile for the sake of a friend, carrying the burden of worry for Dalleena’s health and preparing to be her midwife. But her mind moved from these thoughts to more practical ones, and she chafed at the weather. How would they feed themselves? Where would they find shelter? The contemplations of the personal or the practical made no difference; there were no answers, and both occupations were equally useless.

  Pillyn rode with Baili cradled against her arm, thinking of another trip they had taken together. Mendale seemed so long ago, and far from her. The people had seemed friendly, cheering her father’s speech and prayers for continued peace. She remembered telling Nichos how much they had enjoyed themselves. Nichos. What was Nichos doing now? Had he known? She pictured him acting and pretending to be her friend, sly and hostile beneath.

  The third woman was composed and quiet, suspended in time and soft fluid space, much as was the child within her. Often it kicked and thrashed, bringing a half-smile to her mouth. It’s healthy and strong, she told the silent ghost who rode beside her. How not? Rendell answered, smiling, and she almost felt the brush of his touch on her skin. In fancy she thought she sometimes heard, behind them, a host of spirit riders, the shadowy hooves of their horses whispering on the ground. Rendell and her father, and behind came Inama, her wrinkled face cracking into a look of blessing; perhaps then Boessus, still glowering, or forgiving at last; even Baili’s brother, leading the Lindahnes who had fallen in battle.

  If the dead of the King’s last Hold did follow behind, then the ghostly faces were more than these, had she but known it. Perhaps her once-supposed lover Linner rode, a gaping scarlet hole in his chest showing the mark of a Mendale arrow; or gossiping Phenna, overtaken by sickness on the flight through the valley. And the Nialian women would be there, sending a hint of pale yellow into the sky, arms locked, singing the final song of Sunset.

  “Pull up,” Dalleena said, and halted. Pillyn, startled out of a half-sleep, fumbled for the reins, but Baili caught them. “There they are.”

  The woodlands in the winter afternoon looked almost beautiful. Brown and tall, the trees held up bare winding branches, while evergreens lifted the color of brighter days against the falling flakes of snow. The pink relasii flower, never failing, grew wild and numerous, from mud, from beneath moldering dead leaves, from it seemed the very stones. Life in cold and increasingly bitter times, but life still, shining, refusing to dim or surrender.

  “It’s lovely,” Lilli said inadequately. Unable to express herself she could only repeat, “It’s lovely.”

  The civilians had fled, and the army retreated in their wake. They were headquartered now at the otherwise deserted palace, waiting tensely for the Mendales. The new king sat in the Co
uncil Room in his brother’s chair, staring sightlessly at the orders awaiting his signature. Sillus’s mind was not on his work.

  His eyes blinked, then began a slow circuit of the room. The councilors had managed to remove most of the valuables; every wall, every doorway, every passage had a stripped and empty look. The remaining treasures, left where they had been dropped by frightened servants, littered the floors. If the invaders had ransacked Marlos-An they could scarcely have left it looking worse. He had always longed to be the master of this palace – but now it barely seemed worthwhile to defend it.

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” he said aloud.

  “I can’t think why they haven’t attacked yet,” said Carden, who sat with his dirty boots up on a torn velvet chair.

  “They’re waiting until they completely conquer the Second,” his father said impatiently. He had already explained it twice. “That way they can get at us from two sides and possibly cut us off from the valley. The only thing stopping them right now is the fight the people on the Second are putting up – very fierce, I’m told.”

  “Did you send anyone to help them?”

  “I can’t. The Mendales who came through the passage are blocking the way. The Hill’s bound to fall in the end. I’m surprised they’ve lasted this long. It must be the influence of the Proseras sect. But perhaps tomorrow.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better for us to attack them now, while they’ve got their hands full on the other side?”

  “We’d have to leave the palace, and then they’d come down from the First and take it.”

  “But – ”

  “Shut your mouth,” Sillus snapped. “I’ll plan the battles.”

  “I was only asking,” Carden said pettishly.

  Sillus in fact had made several mistakes in strategy, after his initial successes. The officers under him had proposed and vigorously defended the same step Carden had suggested, and received the same treatment. The new king was finding his position difficult. His dreams of ruling had never included war and invasions, or the panicked flight of his citizens, or the army camped in these cold rooms. He had always been a powerful man, used to giving orders and shouldering responsibilities, but these were breaking his spirit. He was beginning to long now for his brother’s peace, that peace he had once scorned because the treaty had won so much acclaim for Raynii. Poor dead Raynii, he had been such a fool, but somehow the people had loved him. Sillus felt his hold on the scepter weak; though they obeyed him, they were skittish in his presence, looking at him from the corners of their eyes.

  He would not own, even to himself, that he begrudged his murdered brother their love. They obeyed him not through love but fear, fear of the heretical Mendales. And the Mendales and their army, their never-ending line of gahls and arrows, took more of his land from him every day, while he waited in his marble halls as if entombed. His schemes had somehow gone wrong, and his visions had proved false. He felt like a man trembling with thirst, who finally gulps down a long sweet draft of wine, only to find shreds of glass at the bottom. The Mendales. The army. The war. The people. No, he would not attack; he would not leave Marlos-An.

  He would not leave because he was afraid to leave, and he was the only one who did not realize it.

  His wife bustled into the room. She was a dull and melancholy woman, who had been named Ditta, after the goddess of Joy, an irony that irritated her husband. Her features were pale and vague, contorted into a constant look of worry. The queen whose court she had been a part of was now a prisoner, and she herself had somehow succeeded to the title. She did not know what to make of it.

  “Sillus, I want to ask you something.” She sat down beside him.

  “Not now.”

  “Oh, but you must tell me. It’s only one little question,” she said in the whining tone she had bequeathed to Carden. “It’s about the Hold. When does yours start?”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s still Raynii’s Hold, isn’t it? Will you take over at the solstice? Wouldn’t that be best?”

  “Ditta, I’m king right now.”

  “Well, I know that, but what about the ceremony?”

  “We’re at war. What difference does a ceremony make?”

  “Well, after all, we have to have a date, to count your three years. Then we’ll know when it’s my Hold.”

  Sillus stared. Carden yelped with laughter.

  “Don’t be a fool, Ditta. You’re completely incapable. Besides,” he said, his voice rising over her protests, “we might be overrun at any moment. Leave three years from now until three years from now.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. She had proven incompetent in almost every task she had ever attempted in her life, but giving all the orders sounded like a fine thing. But she saw a look on his face that she recognized, and she decided to drop the subject. She drifted out.

  Carden shook his head in contempt. “She can’t do anything right.”

  “You take after her,” his father growled.

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Then where’s the relas?” he asked pointedly, forgetting not to give her the title. Carden’s arm was still in a sling.

  “I don’t see what difference it makes. You wanted her gone, didn’t you? Well, she is.”

  “But where?” he shouted. “With whom? She’ll be giving birth soon, and if it’s not a demon it will be Raynii’s grandchild! Suppose the people think better of it all and decide the child’s entitled to inherit?” Even Carden could see that this was unlikely, but it was becoming an obsession with his father. The smallest threat upset him now. “If you hadn’t let that whelp of a boy intimidate you, we’d be free of her. And now I’ve got this woman on my hands besides.”

  “I don’t see why you don’t just kill the queen and finish it?”

  “I’ve told you, I can’t. It would look too suspicious. She should have been struck down in battle, but the fools took her captive. If you had done what you were supposed to I might have been able to say she committed suicide in grief.”

  “Can’t she commit suicide over being a prisoner?”

  “Ayenna? Who’d believe it? At least if I keep her alive maybe Dalleena will try to reach her again, and we’ll have them both.”

  Carden dug his heels into the velvet, thinking about it. After a few moments he said, “Well, I can see that. You could always kill her later if you have to.” He paused. “But what I don’t understand,” he continued, as if struck by a new thought, “is why the Mendales haven’t attacked us yet.”

  Sillus clawed at his beard.

  Ayenna had one room left to her, a room that had been stripped like all the rest. For companionship she had one servant, a woman sent by Ditta to see to her basic needs, with orders not to speak a word. The displaced queen was heavily guarded, by men Sillus had picked because of their paid-for loyalty to him and their indifference to the royals. The secret sympathy most felt for her plight did not penetrate her barred door. She paced restlessly, up and down.

  She had full leisure to think of her life, and what had come to her. Once she had been a playful smiling girl, and the serious young man she loved had taught her to govern a country. She had grown into a queen, patient but firm, loving her homeland, and trusting – perhaps after all too much – in the blessings of the gods. Now it had all been taken from her: the man murdered, the child gone without farewell, her people supportive of the treachery that had overthrown them.

  She was bitter, but still trying to fight it. It will poison me far more effectively than even Sillus could do, she thought. Again she wondered why she was allowed to live. Somewhere inside she believed he had murdered her daughter, and the grandchild she carried. Why was I saved?

  Perhaps Dalleena was living. It was a hope to hang on to. And the child – it would be coming soon. A new generation, a new royal of her blood.

  That helped the most, to keep the hatred away: thinking of the child. Since the Watcher had come to the palace and Dalleena had survived her illness, Ayenna had
ceased to worry that some sort of horror would be born.The more she considered, the closer she came to accepting Dalleena’s belief that the goddess had willed it. And hadn’t the old priestess said the same? Whatever happened to her now, it did not matter, if another of her blood came after. Another of Raynii’s blood. If I could only live to hold it in my arms, she thought. She paced.

  Baili threw another bundle of wood onto the pile, blowing on his hands to warm them. They had devised a lodging of a sort for themselves in a hollow, near the only running stream they had found, which they all hoped would not freeze over. The shelter was little more than a network of thick branches put together inexpertly and covered with spare cloth. At night they huddled around the fire, the smoke going out a hole in the roof. When it snowed heavily, Lilli and Pillyn took turns floundering out into the freezing air to dust the roof clean; so hasty had been its construction that they feared it would not tolerate the weight.

  “It’s going to snow again,” Baili said to Lilli.

  “Think so?” she asked ironically. It seemed to her that it had snowed every day of mortal count. An early spring, a harder winter, she remembered a palace gardener once saying.

  “Check on the fishing lines. There might be something by now.”

  The brook was thick with lingees, a fish that thrived in the present cold waters, but they had had few meals of it. Though they were not starving, they were not eating well. The cold had enabled them to preserve most of the supplies they had brought, but even so the problem of day-by-day existence kept them all occupied. None of them had any training for such a life, and if the situation had been less perilous Lilli could have laughed at their ineptness.

  Only the day before Pillyn had gone out early in the morning, determined to bring back dinner. She was far from an expert shot but had at least a beginner’s knowledge of how to use her bow. Many hours later she returned, exhausted but proud, with a small rabbit – and had promptly burst into tears at the idea of skinning it.

  “Lilli!” the boy shouted. “I think there really is something!”