by Dan Allen
“You saved my life,” Terith said after a pause. “I know . . . I don’t know how it must feel to see me leave you again, to go back into peril.”
Enala sobbed.
“Thank you. I wish you well. I wish you someone worthy . . . I was not.”
“You know that’s not true,” Enala cried, tears streaking her too pale cheeks. “You bonded with me.”
“I made an oath with Lilleth.”
Enala turned away, eyes closed tight.
“Enala, I walk the path laid before my feet. It will bring me home.”
“In pieces!” she wailed. “You’ll fall!”
“Enala—”
Now she was beyond convincing as well. Neither could touch the other.
“Will you be safe to Ferrin-tat?” Terith asked.
Enala nodded.
“Tell Lilleth . . . tell her to look for the light at the edge of the horizon when there is no more hope. Draw upon that light. It can save her as it has me.”
Enala’s mouth opened as though she wanted to cry out in a mock laugh, but her throat kept silent.
“The light of the awakening will bring me home,” Terith said. “And I will see you all again.”
He stood, swung his leg that screamed in pain over the bowed dragon.
“May you return,” Enala whispered almost soundlessly as the wings of Nema’s dragon beat twice. The dragon prince took flight going southwest, to the canyon of the blood river, to Toran’s trail, traversing the slender space between Neutat and the Outlands.
Into treachery or destiny, he flew. He didn’t look back.
Chapter 24
Erdali Realm. Citadel of Toran.
Reann knew Verick’s identity.
He, a sworn enemy, knew hers.
She wished for an instant that she could just melt away.
Her well-thought-out plan was hardly consolation for the kind of risk she was about to take.
You could call it brilliant or cavalier or brash all in the same breath.
Reann was no longer safe if Verick knew her identity. The power of her secret was lost.
Two can play at that game.
The thought struck her as awful and sadistic.
Had her father felt that way before going into battle, before springing a trap on unsuspecting enemies?
Dressed in her least ceremonious serving dress and apron, Reann busied herself tidying flower arrangements in the hall that ran around the outside of the ballroom. It was a squat ballroom, in truth, more of a basement crypt. But this was a stone castle built to withstand assaults, not to host parties. The room was a rotunda with two circles of pillars. The center ring of supports held up a ceiling that was all of ten feet high. There was just a double step-down between the inner and outer rings to a depressed floor section in the center that tended to fill with water after a storm.
The supports made dancing a chore, and there were inevitably collisions in which the pillars came out better than the dancers. But the ballroom had more floor space than the upstairs throne room and so it was used for such events as the Summer Gala. Toran said it had the feel of the cozy half-underground great halls of Furendal, so it was similarly decorated with furs and hunting trophies, rather than tapestries.
Tables had been arranged around the perimeter, while the center section, which looked more like a pit for dogfighting than a dance hall, was bare except for a few compass-themed flag runners along the pillars, the symbol of the five realms.
Near the back of the ballroom, on a rostrum next to the head table, was a guest list for announcing the official title of each the attendees at the evening gala. It was a tedious, ceremonious, and bothersome affair. But it was custom, just like the festival going on outside.
Cheers and hurrahs from ongoing games outside drifted in through the stairwells leading down to the basement hall. Folk from the nearby villages up and down both the east and north forks of the Erdal river were competing in the annual contests her father had begun early in his reign.
Reann was sure Ret would be winning a good share of the matches in the wrestling and boxing for his age class. But she was just as sure he would bring back more bruises than trophies.
Academic studies, on the other hand, provided a great number of generally useful skills, such as penmanship, or in Reann’s case, forgery—something she’d been working at in earnest every spare moment of the previous two days. Reann’s hand gripped the waistband of her skirt. Her fingers held a precious sheet of parchment beneath the fabric.
She knew two things. One was that Verick was a man of honor, or so he seemed. The other, that he was extremely dangerous.
But the thing that made his danger real was secrecy—that was her real enemy.
And so the secrets would come out.
The success of her venture, her attempt to save her own life and convince Verick to abandon his vendetta against Toran’s heirs, came down to a matter of wit and timing.
And Reann’s time window was closing fast.
There was no way she could get to the rostrum with the servants and guards scattered through the ballroom. But she had a plan.
Cue the trays.
A clatter of noise signaled the arrival of trays of serving dishes. A handful of young men who had either taken early losses in the competitions or who had simply strayed within reach of the head butler and been conscripted into kitchen duty emerged from a stairway and turned into the outer hall.
“Use the side door,” Reann insisted. “It will save you time.”
“Where is it?” the first boy asked from behind a pile of stacked bowls.
“Right here,” Reann said, hurrying to the narrow side entrance to the ballroom. “I’ll hold the door for you.”
“Just clear out,” the boy hissed. “You’re practically blocking the whole doorway.”
Reann scurried into the ballroom ahead of the trays and led the young men toward the back of the room.
“Do the head table first,” she instructed.
“We know what we’re doing, you big know-it-all,” a tall skinny boy hollered. “Who made you the boss around here anyway?”
Reann stepped out of the way of the boys, who would have started at the first tables near the main entrance, if not for her suggesting otherwise, even if they claimed to know what they were doing.
Reann mingled among the boys and centered bowls and redistributed silverware, a chore the boys would just as well leave to her.
Reann finished one table and moved toward another on the opposite side of the rostrum. She reached out and brushed the guest list with her finger and it slid off the podium.
Reann knelt and drew her own version of the guest list from under her skirt. She made a show of blowing off any dust and then replaced it on the rostrum. She tucked the old version under an empty tray that she kept clutched to her chest as she walked to a table near the side exit.
She left the tray on the table and stuffed the original guest list up under her blouse and tucked her shirt in. Then she scurried around the outer hall to the opposite side of the castle and walked up a spiral stair to the first floor.
Part one, success, she thought, her heart beating double time with all the anxiety of being caught in her mischief. “Now for part two,” she whispered.
She had to get to the third floor on a day when castle servants and guards marked every exit and entrance to ensure the nobles preparing on the upper levels were not bothered.
The three dumbwaiters on the first floor were being loaded with food from the kitchens on carts. One of those shafts would be her shortcut to the guarded upper floors. But there were four people in the corridor, only one of which was working for her. The other three would have to be dealt with if she were to get past their food-guarding eyes.
As soon as Reann appeared in the stairwell and waved, a well-com
pensated friend of Ret’s on the far side of the corridor dropped a porcelain dish.
The dish shattered with the sound of somebody about to get a beating. The three other servants in the hall turned to look.
Reann lowered the first dumbwaiter a few feet, tied the elevating rope off on a wall hook, squished into the elevator shaft, and wriggled upwards. Using the lead rope to pull herself upward, Reann wormed her way up the narrow space.
Getting to the third floor took all the athleticism she could muster.
Head pressed against the top of the chute, Reann waited in front of the closed dumbwaiter shutters.
Just a few more seconds . . .
“Hey, what are you doing up here?” a voice demanded.
“Just looking,” answered a squeaky voiced teen—another of Ret’s friends, compensated for a week’s worth of chores, an amount Reann might never actually finish paying off.
“Hey, what’s in this room?” the boy asked.
“None of your business. Get away from there.”
Reann pushed open the shutter and stepped into the hall. She quickly closed the shutters and ducked into the recess of the doorframe opposite. Reann grimaced at the sound of Ret’s friend being physically driven off the floor with encouraging slaps from the flat of a short sword on his behind.
Reann quickly opened the unlocked door to the room being used for dressing the gala attendees and closed it behind her.
A myriad of ladies and attendants were arrayed across the room in varying degrees of preparation. Some were being corseted. Others were having their hair set.
Reann quickly undressed to her slip, eager to be rid of her servant’s clothing, and moved to a space in the dressing area where two young women about her age were waiting.
They were obviously Furendali. One was tall and large. The second was even taller and larger.
Reann needed foreign attendants for various reasons. Being attended to, as a noble should, was key. Second, being attended to by foreigners meant she was less likely to be recognized. The Furendali didn’t have nobles, officially, but wealthy land owners were entitled to a similar level of respect and privilege. So Reann had contrived a plan to pose as the daughter of a wealthy Furendali land owner and borrow from Trinah’s goodwill to get the help she needed.
“So sorry to have kept you,” Reann said, stepping up onto a footstool in her plain slip and making a perfect imitation of a Furendali accent, a gift of tongue she had inherited from her mother. “You are the attendants Trinah recommended?”
“I’m Lina,” said the elder, “and this is Toreen, my friend. Of course we came as soon as we received your message. But it was somewhat unexpected.”
“Thank you for being available on short notice,” Reann said.
“We really ought to thank you,” Toreen said with a blush. “It gave us an excuse to leave school to come see the festival.”
“I had so hoped that Trinah herself might come,” Reann said with a sigh. “But she couldn’t make it and asked that I attend in her stead. Only, I had just let my servants off for vacation—what was I to do? Trinah suggested I forward a request from her to ask you for help getting ready for the gala.”
“You know the Lady of the North?” Lina asked.
“Very well, in fact. We are related.”
The girls’ faces exposed natural excitement.
“She saved my brother,” Lina volunteered. “He actually doesn’t remember any of it, since he was nearly frozen at the time. But it was she that found him. It always is.”
“And she got us both accepted into the school in Redal,” Toreen explained.
“Thank you very much for being here on the Lady’s request,” Reann said. “I’m a bit behind getting ready. Would you help me?”
“Certainly.”
Reann did her best to imitate the other nobles being dressed by attendants, trying to do as little as possible on her own. Reann resisted the urge to push her hair out of her face.
Reann’s dress, borrowed from the mistress room, hung on a post nearby where Reann had placed it earlier. The cream dress strung with pearl beadwork on the bodice was substantially more sophisticated than the one she had worn for Trinah’s ceremony. Intricate lace formed the upper sleeves, while the lower sleeves and gown trail were loose and flowing. The girls lowered it over Reann’s outstretched arms. “Where did you get this?” Toreen said with a gasp of amazement. “It must have cost a fortune.”
“Where is your land holding?” Lina asked, as she began to cinch the lace ties on the bodice of the dress until it hugged her waist and hips, following her form. “Is it near Erdal?”
Obviously Reann didn’t look Furendali. It was a fair question.
“Oh, it’s not worth mentioning,” Reann said. “I would rather hear about your homes in the north. I haven’t spent nearly enough time there to know a half a wit about the Furendal, my father being a diplomat to Erdal and my mother Erdali. I even have an Erdali accent.”
“You have a lovely voice,” said the attendant dutifully. “You sound like the traders’ daughters. They always get the best men.”
Reann blushed. “But what about your homes?”
The girls gladly provided plenty of details, describing everything from the mind-numbing boredom of winter to the hormone-charged spring fever that universally infected all Furendali when the frost broke early each year.
As they finished cinching the dress, thanks to recent late-night adjustments Reann had made to the seams, it fit perfectly.
“Are you being escorted to the gala?” Toreen, the larger and taller of the two, asked.
“Trinah was to be escorted by a gentleman from Serban of some reputation. He shall have to make do with me, unfortunately. I suppose it would be best to keep to myself and not make disturbances.”
“Never mind that,” Lina said cheerily. “Make the most of it and you’ll never regret it.”
Of course, that was what scared Reann more than anything. “I only hope I shall look decent,” she said. “I’ve been traveling and hardly had a moment to wash up.”
“We’ll take care of everything,” said Toreen. “But it will help us if you don’t fuss while we set your hair. It’s so short—is that the fashion here in Erdal?” She combed Reann’s hair with a bit of oil from an expensive-looking flask. It smelled like spring in a bottle. The frizzy edges transformed with each stroke of the brush into gentle waves that curled around her face with a soft sheen.
“I think your hair is lovely,” Lina said. “Better for the summer—it’s so terribly stuffy here. A headband would look serene. Yes, this jeweled one.”
Reann’s internal pendulum swung incessantly. Unrecoverable seconds marched away. The girls were moving too slowly. She would need a way to excuse herself, but not immediately.
Other ladies in the dressing room were gathering to go down to the dinner banquet and ball. Reann was late, just as she wanted—to avoid unnecessary, prying conversations.
Sensing her impatience, Lina said, “I wish you hadn’t been so long in coming. I’m afraid you’ll be late.”
“I must look my best tonight,” Reann said. “Much depends on it.” She took a deep breath and tried to relax. Everything was set in motion. The guest list was placed, with the last entry running onto the backside of the paper—a very important modification from the original.
“Will you wear that leather pouch about your neck rather than jewels?” Lina asked. Her voice hinted that the leather pouch looked rather out of place.
“I’ll tuck it into my dress—it was a gift from Trinah,” she explained. Reann had no use for the crystal her sister had given her, but she also had nowhere safe to hide it.
The two Furendali girls conceded the point without argument.
“Can we gather up your other things?”
“Yes, thank—”
Oh
—the list is still in my old shirt!
“No,” Reann recovered quickly. “We can worry about that afterward. Now you both get along and enjoy the competitions. I should like to see you best a few of the Erdali boys in the sports.”
The girls laughed politely, but then exchanged intrigued glances.
“Now off with you. Enjoy the festival. I’ll be fine, thanks to your help.”
The girls left the room.
“What is this?”
Reann froze.
It was Katrice’s voice, directly behind her.
“Do you think this is this supposed to be a costume ball?”
Reann’s chest constricted suddenly, as if her tightly laced dress had suddenly become a python. She couldn’t breathe.
“That’s you, isn’t it, Reann?”
Carena moved into view to one side of Reann.
Reann stood facing the door. She could feel the heads of the remaining gossiping servants turning.
For two crucifying seconds she paused, unable to speak.
She was about to be outed by her own kind.
Reann suddenly turned around. She screamed and pointed at the floor near Katrice. “Is that a rat?”
A dozen other screams issued instantly, and Reann turned and dashed for the door.
She shut it behind herself quickly and sped down the hallway, acknowledging the head guard at the stairwell with only a slight nod of her head.
“May I offer you a hand with the stairs?”
“Not this evening,” Reann said, making up an excuse on the fly. “The man waiting for me downstairs is a jealous fellow.”
The two other guards with him laughed.
The stairs came at Reann in a blur as she hurried toward an end she could only hope for. Her heart beat triple time as she raced down the spiral. And suddenly she was face-to-face with him.
“So you decided to come after all?” Verick said, clipping a pocket watch shut and tucking it into his waistcoat.
“My apologies,” Reann said, swallowing a gasp of breath. “I had some chores to finish.”