by Mark Anthony
Sky held out a hand. Wait.
“What is it, Sky?” Melia said softly.
He gestured again to the tattoo of the tower, then made his hands into two fists and circled them around each other several times. Then, at the point in the circle when his fists were farthest apart, he halted.
These gestures were too much for Grace. “I don’t understand, Sky. What do you mean?”
“I think I know,” Falken said. “It’s Midwinter’s Day. That’s when you want us to go to the Black Tower.”
Of course. When the sun appeared to be its farthest from Eldh. “But why?” Grace said. “Why go there on Midwinter’s Day and not now?”
Once more Sky made motions that bespoke words. Because that is when the lost may be found again.
Falken started to ask more questions, but the young man’s eyes fluttered, and he sank back against the chaise. Instantly, Grace’s medical instincts superseded any desire to learn more about Sky’s mysterious message.
“He’s exhausted,” she pronounced. “You can talk to him more later. Right now he needs to rest.”
Falken started to protest, but Grace gave him a look as piercing as a hypodermic needle, and the bard clamped his mouth shut. After the others departed, she smoothed Sky’s hair from his heavy brow. She was full of questions herself, but they could wait. “Will you be all right?”
He gave her a faint smile, then reached up and gripped her hand, pressing her fingers tighter around the iron key.
I will be now, my lady. I will be now.
She returned his smile, but he had already shut his eyes, and in moments his breathing grew deep and even. Grace slipped from the room, shutting the door behind her.
The others were gathered around the table in the villa’s central room—although Beltan was pacing rather than sitting.
“I don’t see why we can’t leave now,” the knight was saying. “How far is it? Maybe eightscore leagues? We could be there in three weeks.”
“You heard Sky,” Falken said, then scratched his head. “Or saw him, I suppose. He says that whatever it is that we’ll find in the Black Tower, it won’t be there until Midwinter’s Day. Or perhaps the key won’t even work until then. If we go now, we could end up sitting around for weeks. And even before the Black Tower was abandoned, those were wild lands. It wouldn’t exactly be a safe place to set up camp for that long.”
Beltan clenched his hands into fists. “But Travis and the others could be wounded or starving. They could die waiting for us.”
“You’re raving, dear,” Melia said affectionately, touching the knight’s arm. “Certainly Sky would not direct us to delay our journey if the others were there and in need of our aid.”
“Why there of all places?” Aryn murmured. The baroness’s gaze seemed turned inward. “Why must we go to the Tower of the Runebreakers? And why now? This can’t be good. It can’t.”
Grace stared at the young witch. Why was Aryn so upset at this news? Grace started to speak——and a pounding emanated from the front door of the villa.
For a moment all of them were too startled to move. The pounding came again, hard and urgent. Then Beltan crossed to the door in three strides and threw it open.
The man in the doorway was not one of the emperor’s men; he did not wear the bronze breastplate or leather kilt of the Tarrasian imperial soldiers. Instead, he was clad in a chain-mail shirt over gray tunic and hose, along with a forest-green cloak spattered with mud. The man pulled his hand back just in time to keep from pounding on Beltan’s chest. Only as a grin crossed his handsome face did Grace realize she recognized him. The man was not so tall as Beltan, but well shaped. And with his short, wild red hair and the pointed red beard on his chin, it could only be—
“Sir Tarus!” Beltan exclaimed.
The blond knight threw his arms around the other man and caught him in a fierce embrace, dragging him over the threshold and into the villa in the process. The red-haired man seemed to hesitate, then returned the gesture.
Finally, Beltan released him. “By the tail of Vathris’s Bull, you reek, Sir Tarus.”
The young man laughed and scratched his beard, as if digging for unwanted trespassers within. “I’ve been riding as fast as I could for more than a week, Sir Beltan. And I fear there wasn’t a lot of time for niceties like bathing or sleep. I was going to warn you, but—”
“—but as usual,” Melia said, gliding forward, “Sir Beltan’s enthusiasm has gotten the better of him. Of course, in your case, it’s easy to see why, Sir Tarus.”
The knight’s cheeks flushed as crimson as his beard. He bowed before Melia, chain mail jingling.
Grace remembered the first—and only—time she had met Sir Tarus. It had been on their journey to the Gray Tower earlier that year. They had encountered Tarus and Beltan, along with the other Knights of the Order of Malachor, in the forests of western Calavan. She had guessed then that Tarus and Beltan had been lovers, at least for a time. Clumsy as she was at reading others’ emotions, even she could see it now when Tarus rose and glanced at Beltan—a shy light in his eyes.
However, his smile was strong and genuine, and—it seemed to Grace—bore no hint of heartbreak. She supposed it had not been hard for a man as good-looking as Tarus to find another to warm his bed. But it was more than that. There had been a boyish ebullience to Tarus when she met him last—she could see it still in his face. Yet there was a strength there now as well. Beltan had left him in command of the band of Malachorian Knights; it seemed being a leader suited him.
“It’s good to look upon you again, too, Lady Grace,” Tarus said, bowing in her direction.
She winced. He must have seen her staring. Hastily she returned the bow, only belatedly realizing she should have curtsied instead.
And be grateful for your goofiness, she told herself with a wry smile. In case you ever start to delude that you really are a queen...
“Thank you,” she said. “Now, are you going to tell us why you’ve ridden so hard to Tarras?”
“To find us, obviously,” Falken said. “But for what is the question?”
In an instant, Tarus’s demeanor changed. He threw his shoulders back and spoke in a formal voice. “I bear a message from King Boreas for Her Highness, the Lady Aryn, Baroness of Elsandry.”
Aryn clutched the back of a chair with her left hand. “A message for me? From the king?”
Grace understood the shock in the young woman’s blue eyes. She had stolen away from Calavere six months earlier and had not been back since. Nor had she asked for King Boreas’s permission before traveling south to Tarras, even though the king was her foster father. Suddenly, Aryn didn’t look so much like a regal young woman as a teenager who had gotten caught sneaking out her bedroom window.
Tarus bowed in Aryn’s direction, then straightened. “This message comes to you by the hand of His Majesty, King Boreas of Calavan, Lord of the Land Between the Two Rivers, Bearer of the Sword of Calavus, and—”
“Yes, yes,” Falken said, waving his black-gloved hand, “we’re all aware of Boreas’s overwhelming magnificence. Could you just get on with the message?”
Tarus bit his lip to hide a grin. He moved closer to Aryn, speaking more casually now. “I have a summons for you from the king, my lady. Boreas has commanded you to return to Calavere at once, making all possible haste.”
Aryn still clutched the chair; she looked as if she would fall if it were snatched away. “Return to Calavere? But why? Am I to be...punished?”
“Punished?” Tarus frowned. “No, my lady, it is for a much happier reason that Boreas has bid you return. You see, the king has finally found a husband for you.”
Aryn stared, mouth open, as did the others.
“Congratulations, Lady Aryn,” Tarus said with a big grin. “You’re going to be married.”
10.
“It seems to be a day for messages,” Falken said, setting down his empty wine cup on the table in the villa’s main gathering room. He looked up
as Grace quietly shut the door to the side chamber. “So, how’s our first courier doing?”
She sat down at the table. “He’s still sleeping. I think he’ll be out for a while. Whatever happened to Sky on his journey, he’s utterly exhausted.”
“I’d like to know exactly where it was he journeyed from,” Falken said. “And I have a dozen other questions for our mysterious friend. But I suppose that will have to wait until he wakes up.”
“Yes,” Grace said firmly, “It will.”
She reached for the wine bottle in the center of the table and upended it over an available cup.
Exactly two drops poured forth.
She set down the bottle and shot a dark look at both Falken and Beltan. The bard feigned a look of surprise, and the blond knight gave her a sheepish shrug before hastily quaffing the last swallow in his own cup.
“So where are the others?” Grace said with a sigh.
“Tarus is taking that much-needed bath,” Beltan said. “And I think Melia is upstairs with Aryn.”
Grace sighed again. It was good the lady was with Aryn. Tarus’s message from King Boreas had stunned them all— although maybe it shouldn’t have.
She had learned not long after meeting Aryn that Boreas intended to find a husband for the young baroness by her twenty-first birthday, someone who could help rule the barony of Elsandry and who would be a loyal vassal for the king. However, in the upheaval of these last months, it had been easy to forget about such matters. One thing Grace had learned in her time on Eldh was that, while being a noble brought many privileges, it also brought far less welcome duties and responsibilities. Aryn’s marriage was of great political importance to Boreas; her heart—and her wishes—had nothing to do with it.
Aryn had only nodded at Tarus’s message; she had not cried out in protest or thrown a tantrum or refused in any way. The young woman knew her station. All the same, Grace had seen the stricken look in her blue eyes.
“Well, isn’t this a lively crowd,” Tarus said with a grin, striding into the room.
Grace managed a weak smile. The young knight was much improved for his bath, both the dirt and weariness gone from his face, the beard on his chin trimmed to a neat point. The servants had cleaned the road grime from his cloak and tunic, and no doubt his mail shirt was off being polished.
Beltan gave the red-haired man an admiring look. Grace knew Beltan loved Travis more than anything. But Travis was a world away, and Grace was beginning to get the sense that, on Eldh, there was a distinction between love and sex. The former was an exalted ideal, to be treasured and cherished; but the latter was regarded as more akin to food—or in Beltan’s case ale—a staple nourishment that one could do without for only so long before ill effects resulted.
And what about you, Grace? If physical intimacy was really such a necessity for life, you’d be six feet under by now.
Of course, most people hadn’t spent ten years of their life in an orphanage run by people with hearts made out of iron. While she had left the shadow of the past behind her, she couldn’t change what the past had made her. Or at least, she hadn’t changed yet. And whatever Beltan’s look portended, Grace noticed that Tarus studiously avoided it.
A full bottle of wine had appeared on the table, brought by a servant. Grace poured a cup for herself, then filled another and held it out toward Tarus.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said. “And how did you know I could use a drink?”
“Doctor’s instincts.”
Tarus started to reach for the cup——then spun around, jerking the dagger from his belt and holding it at the ready. The air in front of Tarus rippled, then grew smooth again. A lithe figure clad in black leather stood before him, golden eyes gleaming.
“Not bad, Servant of the Bull,” Vani said, a sharp smile slicing across her angular face. “You are swifter than most I have met.”
Tarus let out a cry of alarm. Grace tried to call out, to tell him it was all right, that Vani was a friend, but she was too slow. Tarus thrust forward with his dagger hand.
The hand was empty.
Vani cleared her throat. Her eyes flickered downward, and Tarus followed her gaze. She tapped a dagger against the inside of his thigh. His dagger.
“What the—?” Tarus said, eyes wide as he took a quick step back.
Vani grinned, flipped the dagger in the air then tossed it hilt first at Tarus, who, despite his startlement, caught it in a swift hand.
Finally, Grace found her voice. “Tarus—I’d like you to meet our friend Vani.”
The young man glanced at Beltan. “Friend?”
The blond knight hesitated, then gave a curt nod. “She’s a far better warrior than most men will ever be, Tarus. Be glad you aren’t her enemy. If you were, right now you’d be joining those fanatical new priests I’ve heard about here in Tarras—the ones who’ve offered up the jewels of their manhood in a golden bowl at the altar of Vathris.”
Tarus swallowed hard, and Grace tried not to notice the quick check he made of his equipment.
“Vani,” she said, rising, “we didn’t see you come in.”
“Do we ever?” Falken said with a pained look.
The bard had a point. “Is it time?” Grace said to the assassin.
Vani nodded. “My al-Mama is waiting for you.”
Just as the last rays of the sun turned the gold domes of Tarras to copper, they reached the circle of slender ithaya trees atop the white cliffs north of the city. Here, a thousand feet above the harbor, the Mournish had camped for the last two months. Half-lost in the gathering shadows among the trees, Grace could just make out the fantastical shapes of their wagons: a hare, a snail, a crouching lion, and—coiled like a serpent ready to strike—a dragon.
Part of Grace had been reluctant to leave Sky at the villa. But he was sleeping, and all of her instincts as a doctor—and as a witch—told her his wounds were not serious, that he would recover. She had left one of the manservants outside the door of Sky’s room with strict orders not to let anyone in.
Despite being weary from his long journey, Sir Tarus walked with them up the trail to see the Mournish.
“King Boreas ordered me to return to Calavere with Lady Aryn,” the young knight said. “I’m not about to let some bunch of vagabonds steal her away. I’ve heard stories about the Mournish, and how they...”
His words trailed off as he noticed Vani’s hard, golden stare. Beltan clapped his hand on Tarus’s back. “And you’ve heard how they throw the best parties, and you don’t want to miss your chance to see one.”
As they entered the circle of trees, the last sliver of the sun vanished beneath the western horizon. At the same moment, to the east, the full circle of Eldh’s enormous moon sailed above the edge of the sea. It looked to Grace as if the moon had actually risen out of the water, and its light made a silver road on the surface of the ocean.
Melia stopped and curtsied in the direction of the moon, murmuring something. Grace wasn’t certain, but it might have been, It’s good to see you as well, dear. Before she could wonder more, brown hands touched her arms, drawing her and the others into the circle of firelight in the center of the grove.
One thing hadn’t changed: The Mournish still knew how to throw a party. Wild music swirled all around, and dancers leaped and darted like the flames. The smell of rich, roasted meat was thick on the air, and the cup in Grace’s hand seemed eternally filled with fiery red wine. However, she wasn’t really hungry, and she had never been much of a dancer, so she was content to sit on a pillow beside Aryn and Beltan and stare into the fire while the wine did its work.
At one point during the revel, one of the dancers—a voluptuous woman with smoky eyes—approached Grace.
“Where is your friend?” she said in a lilting voice.
“My friend?” Grace said.
“Yes, the dark-haired one with the solemn face and many muscles.”
Grace blinked. “You mean Durge?”
“Yes, D’hurj.” The w
oman smiled. “That was his name.”
Grace felt a pang in her heart, and she wondered if that fragile organ could bear much more pain. “I’m afraid he’s not here.”
The woman was clearly disappointed. “I am sorry to learn it. He was a fine...dancer.”
With a flash of scarves, the woman spun away.
The feast continued as sparks rose up to glimmer among the stars. Then—at some signal Grace could not detect—it was over. The dancers and musicians slipped away into the shadows. The doors of the wagons opened and shut. The companions were alone in the circle of firelight.
Not quite alone, Grace.
Gold eyes shone in a withered face, gazing at Grace. Propped on a heap of pillows beside Vani was a figure Grace had not noticed in the wildness of the revel. Her neck was as thin and crooked as a vulture’s, and hair like cobwebs floated about her knobby head.
The ancient woman smiled at Grace, baring her one fanglike tooth. “I told you, did I not, that you would be the strongest of them all?”
Grace licked her lips. “Thank you for inviting us here. It was you who invited us, wasn’t it?”
The old woman let out a cackle. “I had the idea, yes, though Vani spoke it before I could. I wished to speak to you before we departed. We will begin our wanderings again on the morrow. Such is our fate.” Her eyes narrowed. “Just as you will begin your own journey soon—for such is yours.”
Grace lifted a hand to her throat. “How do you know about that? Did Vani tell you?”
The old woman scowled. “Surely you must know the portents are clear and strong. The ruby star vanishes as suddenly as it appears; things go lost that must be found once more. And no matter how I shuffle them, the cards I draw are always the same. The Wagon, the Spire, and the Queen of Blades. I know not what this tower is, or what you will find. I only know that you will go there.”
Falken jerked his gaze up from the fire. “Why did you call her that just now? The Queen of Blades?”
The crone shrugged knife-sharp shoulders. “It is her fate, is it not? Even I can see that much, dim though my eyes have grown. And I would have thought you of all people would know that, Falken Blackhand.” She cackled again. “But not Blackhand for long. For that I’ve seen as well.”