by Melanie Rawn
Yes, you really can.
Goddess! It’s fantastic!
I’m glad you like it, she replied wryly. But you must listen to me, Saumer. There’s another way to get into Lowland. Be silent, and I’ll tell you how.
It seemed a very long time before he opened his eyes again. Lady Hollis was gone, and the colors around him of blue sky and green grass and brown dirt were just colors. Havadi crouched beside him, fairly trembling.
“I’ll be damned,” Saumer mused, then laughed and sprang to his feet. “I’ll take your excellent suggestion, Havadi, and camp here again tonight. Tomorrow or the next night a rainstorm will blow up from the south, giving us enough cover to get inside Faolain Lowland.”
“M-my lord?”
“Goddess, I can’t wait to have a bath in hot water instead of a half-frozen creek, and sleep in a real bed, and—” Laughing again at the total befuddlement scrawled across the man’s face, Saumer said, “It’s all right. Really. I know how to get in. Lady Hollis told me. I’m a Sunrunner, Havadi.”
“A— But you can’t be, my lord! I mean—”
“I know, I know. I never had a clue. Nobody did.” All at once he lost all impulse to humor. “But I wonder if Lord Andry—”
“If he did, would he say so and add another faradhi prince to the bunch? He has enough trouble, to his way of thinking, with the one who already knows what he is.”
“Pol? Mmm. Yes, I see.” When he smiled this time, it was with smug satisfaction. “I’m going to like being dangerous to the Vellant’im.”
Chapter Twenty-four
It had been many years since Tilal and Danladi had spent any length of time together—almost eighteen years, in fact, ever since the Rialla of 719.
All that seemed incredibly long ago, nearly another life. Tilal had a hard time remembering the days at High Kirat when his father was alive and they’d all been young together. Danladi now spoke of it sometimes, when they sat together late at night in her solar. She would say, “Do you remember . . . ?” and relate some incident when he was Lord of River Run, Kostas was the heir to Syr, and Gemma supervised the castle with Danladi following close at her heels. He wondered sometimes as he listened if she talked of those times to convince herself that they had really happened, or to confirm that they were gone.
Only once did she say anything about Kostas’ death. That had been on the night he arrived, before he went upstairs to see his son. She had told him what Rihani had told her about how Kostas died—how he had spoken of Gemma, how his last words had been for herself. Composed and quiet, her delicate pallor made fragile by grief, she had talked as if it were only natural that her dying lord’s thoughts had turned for a moment to another woman.
Tilal had remembered then what had never been spoken of, and marveled at the passionate angers of the past. His encounters with Kostas had been friendly enough these last ten years or so, but they had never regained the easy intimacy of brothers. It all seemed so stupid and pointless now. And he felt so old, at least twice his forty-five winters.
He watched Danladi now as she poured taze for them both, thinking that she looked much as she always had. Never beautiful in Gemma’s breathtaking, vivid way, still there were subtle graces about her: the soft curves of white-blond hair back from her temples, the low, sweet voice, the gentle way her head tilted to one side on her long neck. It pleased him to think that his brother had come to appreciate this shy, silent woman he’d married.
But she looked too young to be his widow.
“Where will you go now, my lord?” Danladi asked as she handed him a cup.
“I beg your pardon?” Startled, he grasped the silver handle but not the question.
She folded thin fingers in her lap, staring down at them. “Forgive me. But your son is dead. Mine still lives. I had to ask.”
For just an instant he hated her. Seven long days since Rihani had died in his arms. Six since he’d watched through a blur of tears as Andrev called Fire to a slim young body draped in Ossetia’s battle flag. The pain pierced his chest and he waited until he could breathe past the ache in his throat.
“Forgive me,” she whispered again, shining head bent.
“I understand,” he replied.
“Then . . . where will you go now?”
Home to my wife and the son and daughter who remain to me. Away from death and war, home to Athmyr where I can shut my gates against all this horror that steals sons and brothers and makes widows. Where I can keep safe what’s mine.
“The Desert, I suppose,” he heard himself say. Where the battle will be fought that wins or loses all. Where Walvis has lost a son and Sioned was made a widow. Where Rohan died.
Danladi nodded, still not looking up. “Then I think you had better go, my lord. To the mouth of Faolain, where the Vellanti ships are now, and where Prince Amiel soon will be.”
“What? How do you know—” He broke off. “Of course. Your Sunrunner.”
“Yes. Diandra told me just a little while ago what she saw at daybreak. Will you do me the honor of taking the leadership of Syr’s remaining troops?”
“I can’t leave High Kirat unprotected.” He said it automatically, his brain abruptly busy with a thousand questions. What was Amiel doing so far from Medawari? How long would it take to march from here to the sea? And why were the dragon-headed ships gathering?
Rohan would be appalled at how quickly and efficiently his mind turned to war. The very pattern of a fine barbarian prince.
Danladi lifted her head with the grace that made one think her bones were woven of silk. But the lines of her brow and jaw were stone as she said, “If Pol is lost, so shall the rest of us be. I would prefer that you take with you whomever you feel will make a soldier, my lord.”
Tilal nodded, a little numb.
She rose, gray skirts rustling around her ankles. “I wish Kostas could be here to go with you. He was happy, you know, fighting this war. May I ask another favor? That you use his sword, that was your father’s? I remember that you gave it to Prince Davvi a long time ago.”
He remembered, too: the Rialla of 719. Maarken had used it against the pretender, defending Pol’s right to Princemarch. But before that, Tilal himself had used it against his own brother, defending Gemma.
Danladi had followed his thoughts without difficulty. She was smiling a little. “It’s all right, you know,” she murmured. “I never minded. She’s so beautiful, everything a princess ought to be. I always knew I was second with him. But it was me he thought of at the last.”
As she rose with gentle dignity and left him, he reflected that there were many ways of being what a princess ought to be.
• • •
Not knowing any differently, it would be natural to assume that the elder of the two women Andry watched was the High Princess. It was not merely for reasons of age, or even the way she held herself. There was something indefinable about her green eyes that was missing from the other woman’s dark and fawn-soft gaze, some promise of power.
Forever unfulfilled.
I could have shown you, if you’d let me. Oh, Alasen, what we could have been together—if only you’d let me.
Andry watched on drowsy noon sunlight as they took their meal by the side of the road. Alasen and Meiglan sat apart from the others on a blanket laid atop a snowbank. They talked as they shared hard cheese and bread and slices of cooked meat, presumably from the previous evening’s hunt. There were plenty of rabbits and nesting birds in the hills, even deer if the archer was quick and skilled. The soldiers had all dismounted to stretch their legs, eyes flickering constantly from the road ahead to the road behind and all the snowy rocks and crags between. Another woman walked up the road a little way, keeping an eye on three energetic children who gamboled ahead. Andry thought she bore a resemblance to someone, but couldn’t place it.
Nearby, a man wearing a violet tunic over a blue shirt to combine the colors of Princemarch and the Desert stood gnawing on a half-round of bread as he and a younger ma
n regarded a map held by a redheaded boy of perhaps twelve winters. Andry didn’t know Pol’s man, but he assumed the other was Draza of Grand Veresch, even though the athri’s clothes were nondescript brown and there was no clue to his rank. Alasen’s gaze strayed to them every so often. Andry realized that the young boy was her son, Dannar. It had been a long time since he’d taken a look at the boy; he wouldn’t have known him, so much had he grown.
Gently, oh-so-cautiously, Andry centered the sunlight on Alasen. He had done this many times over the years, though not since Brenlis had come into his life. Now he approached Alasen once more, hovering just beyond her consciousness of his presence.
She looked tired, and there were a few lines at the corners of her eyes from squinting into the snow glare. Gold-lit brown hair, fine as silk thread, was tucked into a neat coil at her nape, seeming to tilt her head back slightly with its weight. There were strands of silver in it, sweeping back from her forehead and temples.
Well, there was gray in his hair now, too. He had a son just about Dannar’s age. Years and other people and her fear of what they both were all lay between them, but they did share one thing: the determination that the Vellant’im would be defeated.
Alasen.
Her head jerked up and it seemed she was looking straight into his eyes.
Alasen, it’s Andry.
He felt like a fool for saying it.
No! She flung him away from her with a ferocious strength. Stunned, he gathered himself and sought her again. She had moved from the blanket into the shade of a tall pine, where he could not get to her.
Meiglan was staring, slack-jawed and frightened. When Alasen spoke to her, she cringed and glanced around as if someone lurked in the shadows. Alasen stayed out of reach of the sunlight. Andry cursed bitterly and withdrew.
The expression on his face must have told it all, for Evarin said nothing for quite some time. Their horses plodded on through the slush and mud, and at length the young physician spoke.
“You can talk in person when we catch up to her, my Lord.”
“Yes, I can grab her by the arm and force her to listen, and won’t that be charming of me,” he rasped. “Damn it to Hells! How did she do that?”
Evarin looked a question at him.
“She shoved me away with both hands—something she shouldn’t be able to do. I want to know where she learned that.” He already knew why. Would he ever convince her that she needn’t fear his touch on the sunlight?
“Will you try again?”
Andry didn’t answer. He could get past her resistance; he knew he could. There was no one stronger than he, only one faradhi he acknowledged as his equal—and one diarmadhi. Alasen, untrained and afraid of her gifts to begin with, was no match for him. He could fight her and win. Upon reflection, he knew that that Sunrunner—or that sorcerer—had probably shown her how to block him out. Sioned or Pol would be sympathetic to a plea to be taught such self-protection. Especially against him.
“There is more than one Sunrunner with them, my Lord,” Evarin pointed out.
“Jihan? Rislyn?” He shook his head. “I’m not in the habit of frightening children. Besides, it’s not necessary. No, we’ll just ride on, keep out of Meiglan’s path, and look in on them every so often to make sure they’re all right. When we get to Feruche there’ll be time enough to explain things to Alasen.”
But, Goddess, how it galled him.
• • •
Chayla had hoped to postpone her foraging after she discovered a large sack of an unlabeled herb in the spice room. She recognized the pungent, crackly dried leaves as seep-spring, perfect for breaking a fever. But it was very dry, and the whole mess of it, boiled and simmered and strained, produced an infusion so weak as to be almost worthless.
So a harvesting was necessary. Applied to for directions, Ruala thought for a time and then described a trail, no more than a deer path, leading up to a hollow tucked in the hills. “It’s a steep climb, but the horses should make it without too much trouble. And it’s on our side of the Veresch so there won’t be any snow, although it’s freezing up there. Ivalia Meadow is as round as Skybowl, and the wind circles just the same way.”
“Ivalia Meadow, then. I’ll need about a dozen sacks, and—”
“Wait. You’re not going yourself?”
“I have to. I’m chief physician around here. My mother and Feylin always say to make sure of your herbs yourself from the picking to the final recipe.”
“There may still be Vellant’im out there in the hills.”
“Nobody’s seen any for days and days,” she replied impatiently. “I’ll take some guards with me.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Chayla.”
She argued because Ruala expected her to. But inside she was already making plans. It wasn’t as if they could lock her in her room to prevent her from leaving; she was chief physician here, and was needed almost every moment of the day and night. All she needed were a few of those moments, and she’d be on her way to Ivalia.
Not without escort—she wasn’t that headstrong.
Near noon on the fifty-fifth day of Winter, at about the same time Alasen escaped Andry by scrambling into the shade of a tree, Chayla made her own escape by using knowledge the Goddess, through Myrdal, had provided. Just before the old woman died, she’d shared the secrets of every castle in the Desert—and some beyond it. Chayla had been there to listen. Now she sought an exit from Feruche that ran underground for half a measure from its concealed doorway in the cellars. It was the work of a moment to find the sigil, spring the catch, slide through, and close it behind her.
A fingerflame accompanied her through the darkness. She was surprised not to sense the weight of the Earth above her head; the stone passage was as finely hewn as any at Feruche. She wondered if her uncle Sorin had himself been inclined to build these little secrets or if Myrdal had ordered their construction. Certainly it was traditional by now; certainly the advantage during danger was obvious to anyone who had escaped Stronghold by the route Chayla had taken.
After a long walk and a steady climb up a flight of steep stairs, she emerged into a circular chamber hidden in the side of a hill. It was no dragon cave, this, carved out by water and clawed by huge talons. The walls had been smoothed and painted in soothing dark greens and browns, and the floor was bare rock carefully leveled. Two cots with close-woven rope webbing, an iron brazier for warmth, a few cookpots, and a torch sconce on either wall gave the impression that this was only a handy shelter for someone caught out in a storm. Once she had pushed the stone door shut, if she hadn’t known where to look for the seam she would never have found it.
Once outside in the brisk midday air, Chayla hiked quickly down to the main road and waited for the morning patrol to return. She was who she was; three of her grandfather’s people readily volunteered to accompany her. Another Radzyn retainer mounted double behind a friend so Chayla could have his horse. The patrol continued back to Feruche while she and her three new companions started for Ivalia Meadow.
Nobody asked if her mother knew what she was doing. Chayla was who she was.
“Any sign of stray Vellant’im, Lissina?” she asked the ranking soldier.
“None, my lady,” the young woman replied, “though Zakiel would dearly love to find some.” She threw a teasing glance at the taller of the two men. “It offends him mightily to think of them sitting in his saddles.”
“I only want one,” he corrected. “Just one, so I can tan his miserable hide while he’s still wearing it.”
Chayla recalled that Zakiel was not a regular in the Radzyn guard, but a master leathercrafter. His father had made her own first saddle. It was still in the tack room at Whitecliff—unless the Vellant’im in occupation had destroyed it as they seemed determined to destroy everything else.
“Then,” Zakiel went on, warming to his theme, “I shall make of him a leather bag, with his guts for drawstrings and his teeth for decorations, stuff him with manure, and thr
ow him off the Radzyn cliffs into the sea.”
Lissina grinned. “Ah, the soul of a poet and the instincts of an artist—that’s my Chosen, Lady Chayla.”
“Is he? Congratulations. When do you wed?”
“After all this is done with,” Zakiel told her. “Very soon, now, Goddess be merciful to us.” He shifted in his saddle. “What will we be looking for, my lady?”
Romanto, the third of her escort, nodded. “Tell us what you want, and we’ll find it for you.”
She began the list, with descriptions of how the plants would appear in winter, answered their questions, and wished she’d worn a heavier cloak. Romanto, Lissina’s uncle and a grizzled veteran of the war against Roelstra, saw her shiver and offered her his own thick woolen cloak, dyed dark blue and cut in a style worn in her great-grandsire Zehava’s day.
“Thank you, but I’ll be warm enough when we start work. It shouldn’t be too much farther now. Are you clear on exactly what I need?”
They nodded. They would work as hard at this as they would in battle, for they served their fellows as much by this harvest as by slaughtering enemies.
Ivalia Meadow was as windy as Ruala had warned. Chayla’s fingers remained stiff with cold inside her gloves as the sun dipped lower over the western mountains. It seemed she and the guards had been at this for days, and her back muscles were beginning to protest every move. But Ivalia was an open treasure box of medicinal herbs, and they were only halfway across it.
The cup of wetland, soaked by a spring with no outlet, was almost painfully green after a ride through winter-bare hills. No more than two hundred paces from one side to the other, they were two hundred very squishy steps. Chayla’s good dragonhide trousers were sopped to the knees and her feet were frozen numb, but every flower she picked and every sprig of leaves she slid into her satchel meant another fever cured, another wound eased.
Zakiel was being more careful now, after Chayla’s admonition about tearing up plants like a sheep devouring a grassy hillside. They must make sure that enough was left behind so the precious greenery would reseed this spring.