But beyond The Deeping were human lands. Kingdoms which shared no borders with Darest, and had no great interest in Rathen children. It would be a journey of many weeks to reach them, but she could surely find a hiding place there, if anywhere.
She decided this over a week of sun-lit and unmolested riding, north along busy roads to Islay at the tip of the Tongue. Then she turned down the failing trade road east, travelling into a place of trees, tall and close to either side of a near-swallowed road. As she passed through the small, lonely townlets which scratched a brave existence in the north-east, Soren's thoughts shifted to the more immediate future. What, for instance, was she going to do once she reached Teraman? Ask to inspect every babe born in the last few weeks? Hope one happened to have a convenient birthmark of a crown or some such? And then try and spirit it away, whatever the wishes of the parents? She still hadn't thought of a reasonable explanation for a Rathen without Rathen parents, and she was at a loss over how to go about identifying the right baby and assuming Championship of it.
"Champion?"
Soren started, jerking Vixen's reins. She'd stopped at a stream, still an afternoon's ride out from Teraman, and there'd been no-one visible when she'd slid out of the saddle. Vixen lifted her head and snorted, put her ears back, then returned to thirsty drinking. Water first, in this early Autumn warmth.
"Don't look at me," said the voice, so naturally Soren did, searching for the source. A young girl was crouched beneath the small bridge crossing the stream. She was about twelve, berry-brown, and more than a little damp. Pulling a frantic face, she waved a hand, urging Soren to look away. "Pretend I'm not here!"
"All right." Soren studiously turned her attention to the trees – a mix of walnut and tall, black-barked loram. Hoping to make Teraman before dark, she'd been feeling increasingly ambiguous about what was to come. The girl was the first person she'd seen since Thissen, the last village.
Struck anew by the sheer unreality of everything happening, Soren could only try to be practical. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Nina, Champion. Lucia's my heart-sister. You are the Champion, aren't you?"
Soren admitted that she was. "Are you hiding under the bridge for a reason?"
"They're looking for us, Champion. Mama and Mama-la sent me to tell you what to do, when you get to Teraman. Don't look!"
"Who are 'they'?" Soren asked as she stared obediently at the small round leaves of the lorams and suppressed a faint urge to laugh. The situation appealed to her sense of the bizarre, if nothing else.
"Everybody," Nina said, sounding more than a little overwhelmed. "Strangers started arriving a week ago, but mostly they kept to themselves. Then the news came – about the Rose, and that you were coming to make Helena Queen. After that, everything changed. No-one'd believed Lucia before, when she said that the lost prince had come to her. Not even Mama-la, I think."
This was getting convoluted. "What happened?"
"Well, soon as Mama-la heard the news, she had us grab what we could carry. Then we went down the back. We were still on the stair when they rode in, and we had to keep quiet, between the walls, while they searched the inn. Jutlanders. From the trade caravan. Garrison men came and ran them off, but they haven't gone far, Mama-la says."
"Jutlanders?" That certainly wasn't who Soren had expected to be taking an interest in the Rathen heir. New factors, spinning her tentative plans all awry. "What was that about a lost prince?"
"Don't you know, Champion?" Nina asked, suspicious and uncertain.
"I only know that the heir is – or was – in Teraman, two weeks ago."
"Oh." The little pause spoke volumes. Champions were supposed to do better than that.
Then, in a flurry of words: "The lost prince was one of the Rathen princes that got killed in The Deeping centuries and centuries ago. Our inn's named after him. He haunts the woods just a ways north of Teraman, and people who cross his hidden grave are doomed to die before a week's gone by, and to see him's a bad omen, but sometimes he comes to girls out walking alone and lays with them if they please him. And he came to Lucia, and she had Helena. Mama and Mama-la weren't a bit pleased."
"I can well imagine," Soren said, weakly. It was some sort of explanation, at least, for how a Rathen child could suddenly come into being. It sounded like the Teraman situation was already a hopeless muddle. "Where is your family now?"
"We've a hidey-hole in one of the safe places in the Tongue. Mama-la said to say that the Jutlanders, or even the garrison men, are sure to have spies out to see if we try and contact you. That the garrison men sent someone to Thissen to follow you along, sure enough. She says to say that you can trust Mesdie Cantlever or Rimana, but none of the rest, no-how. They'll be watching, in hopes you'll be leading them to us."
"I understand," Soren said, tightening her grip on Vixen's reins as the mare decided to wander into the shallow stream. Vixen turned her head and looked back at Soren speculatively as she moved further into the water. "The grass is just as green on this side, wretched beast," Soren said, to hide her dismay. Maybe anyone watching would assume everything she said was addressed to the horse.
Nina, after a short hesitation, continued. "It's all fixed that Rimana'll put you in the right room tonight, and you can go through the wardrobe and down the back stair. Go real late, after the moon's passed over the Temple gates, and I'll be on the stair waiting. If'n I'm not there, go back the next night, same time."
"I'll do that, Nina," Soren promised, still watching Vixen, feeling solemn and absurd and hopelessly overwhelmed. "And if – if I don't come after two nights, tell your mothers they should leave Darest, will you? Until the child is grown."
There was no reply, so Soren risked a glance. Nina was biting her lip, holding back tears. But she didn't say anything else, and Soren thought it best to move on, if there really was someone watching her.
Back in Vixen's saddle, she gazed about, but saw no sign of spies. Soren was a child of the seashore, used to sand, rocks, and grassy hills dotted with grazing sheep. Woodcraft wasn't something she'd had occasion to learn. She could be completely surrounded, and would never know. Champion Stumble-blind.
The girl had been clever to hide at the stream. Anyone travelling from Thissen would be sure to stop, exactly where Nina could pass on her message unnoticed. Far less suspicious than drawing Soren to the side of the road at a place where there were only trees, which would be exactly what a shadow would be watching for. A lead to a girl called Helena.
It sounded like the heir's grandmothers had dealt with the situation as effectively as possible. And the babe and her family were taking refuge in a 'safe' place in the Tongue? Soren hadn't known there were any.
More than eight centuries ago, Domina Rathen had performed some signal service for the Queen of the Old Race and been rewarded with the vast tract of land which became Darest. The histories theorised that the place was a disputed territory among the Old Race, and the Fae Queen had abruptly ended an age-old feud by handing it over to a human. Despite the valuable orchards, and rich land waiting to be cleared, Domina Rathen had initially found it difficult to convince settlers that Darest was no longer part of the Deeping, that all the dangers of the Faerie realm had been withdrawn. Time had proven Domina Rathen right. Darest was safe.
But that guarantee had held true only while Rathens still lived. The Rathen bloodline had been whittled down to its last King over two hundred years ago. When Torluce had died, the forest had come back, licking across the border. It wasn't as if it had sprung up overnight, or if farmers hadn't been able to chop the trees down. But they'd grown in such numbers that people became convinced The Deeping was trying to take back its own. Families gave up the fight and moved on to less chancy ground, leaving their farms to fall into neglect. A spate of disease, of bad luck, the discovery of gold just over the western border; it had all added up until there was a great swathe of forest cutting off the north-east. An entire town, Aramond, had been abandoned, slowly swallowed. Every year the Tongue stretc
hed a little further west, grew a little thicker in the middle. The past catching up with Darest.
It was not long after the Tongue had taken shape that it began to be whispered that 'things live there', that the Fae had cursed Darest, were even living in the Tongue. Some of the enchantments of the Old Race had certainly returned, and it had grown almost as dangerous to venture into the Tongue as it was to wander unescorted from the trade road through The Deeping.
A half-dozen villages such as Teraman lived uneasily along the road which ran between The Deeping's northern border and the Tongue. Soren had seen evidence of continued maintenance in recently uprooted saplings and lopped branches, but she still found that the trees pressed too close. She hoped that, wherever Nina's mothers had taken their family, it truly was safe.
Chapter Four
The first and best thing Soren noticed about Teraman was the space. The people of this village had managed to maintain their fields, and the only trees within its bounds were small and confined to even rows, heavy with nearly ripe apples, pears and peaches. Late afternoon shadows stretched from the wall of trees behind Soren, but had not yet reached the centre of the massive clearing, where warm sunlight glowed on thatch and shingle, promising comfort and safety. A loose sprawl of perhaps thirty homes made up the heart of the village, with a handful of farmhouses scattered among the fields. A steady tang, tung, tang announced a blacksmith hard at work. Closer by, two young voices spiralled into shrieks of laughter, and a handful of toffee-cream cows moved toward a milking shed, bells around their necks clanking in time with their unhurried gait.
And soldiers. They were waiting by the fence of one of the farms, two women in the uniforms of Darien swear-swords. They'd already seen her, were stepping forward with a kind of attentive respect Soren suspected she should find complimentary. Since turning tail and running had long since become impossible, Soren nudged Vixen to a faster walk, and soon reached them. They both saluted crisply, with no suggestion of irony.
"Welcome to Teraman, Champion Armitage," said the older and darker of the pair. "Captain Sharwell, of Elder Garrison, presents his compliments, and asks that he might speak to you at your earliest convenience."
Trying to work her mind around her new status, Soren simply smiled and gestured for them to lead the way. They saluted again, then formed a miniature honour guard at either side of Vixen's neck, who inspected them until certain they weren't carrying the appropriate treats to reward the long day's journey. The younger of the two, round-cheeked and pink, kept stealing glances up Soren. It was hard to guess if she was impressed by what she saw: a tallish woman with enough looks to make her pretty, and a stupidly long sword strapped across her back. She wasn't even wearing the surcoat.
It looked like she wouldn't need the Regent's Writ of Passage to gain the Garrison's help. The fact that everyone seemed able to recognise her without her full uniform didn't make Soren any more enthused about wearing it. No doubt it was the sword giving her away now. But it hadn't been possible to leave it behind.
Soren shifted uneasily in her saddle, attention straying from the buildings ahead. Why hadn't it been possible? She'd managed to get away without fanfare, and it wasn't as if Lady Rothwell would have held it against her if she'd chosen not to take a valuable heirloom along for the ride. She certainly wasn't capable of wielding the thing: she'd unsheathed it in the Champion's apartments, just to see how it fitted her hand, and nearly gouged the ceiling trying an overhead swing. Simply possessing the sword hadn't given Soren the ability to defend herself, only confused her with the tingling pleasure she experienced when handling it.
Leaving it behind truly had been out of the question, much the same as staying in Carn Keep had been impossible. Because she was Champion, and the Champion's place was with the Rathen ruler or, failing that, with the Rathen Rose. And the Champion's sword, now that she'd touched it, had become part of her. That last night in Tor Darest, she'd been unable to rest until she'd fetched the sword into the same room, though she'd managed to refrain from actually sleeping with it. Just thinking about not keeping it with her made her uncomfortable.
It would, Soren suspected, be equally impossible for her to do anything to harm the babe, Helena. She was bound by magic to do everything in her power to help the future queen of Darest.
There was no element of choice at all.
-oOo-
Annoyed by the thought of control, Soren rode into Teraman. The blacksmith, a woman with shoulders to put an ox to shame, stopped her work and came to stare critically. A boy made some comment and pointed, only to be shushed by his father. Curtains fluttered and doors opened – wide or just a crack depending on the courage of the occupants. Soren chose to appear oblivious as the two guardswomen led her to a large, solidly constructed building.
A painted forest decorated the board swinging beside the inn's metal-bound doors. It was only after intent study that Soren made out a small, smudged shape among the towering trunks, a flash of white face looking back over one shoulder. The Lost Prince.
As Soren drew back on Vixen's reins, the door opened and two people came out. The man's bearing and air of command would have told Soren this was Captain Sharwell, even without the insignia on his arm. He looked up at her and saluted. The woman, stout and neat behind a creamy apron, spared Soren a single judicial glance, then withdrew.
"Welcome to Teraman, Champion." Captain Sharwell was a small man, with grey specked through brown hair. "I'll try not to tell you too often how very glad I am to see you," he added as she slid from the saddle.
"Thank you. I'd be glad to know what's been happening here." Soren regretted that she had to start by lying to the man. She doubted Captain Sharwell would be supportive of her plans to decamp with Darest's heir, even if she could trust him not to have an agenda driven by Aristide Couerveur's ambition.
"That makes two of us," Sharwell replied, stepping back and gesturing toward the inn's door. "I'd call the last week a shambles, but that might cast too positive a light. Come in, and I'll give you a full report, made slightly more palatable by some excellent cooking."
Leaving Vixen to her escort, Soren followed. The inside of the inn was cool, dark after the sunlight, and smelled of ale and stewing apples. Blinking, she saw stairs straight ahead and a public room to the right, unexpectedly crowded. Everyone had twisted around in their seats to watch her come in. No-one spoke.
The Captain turned left, toward the open door of a private dining room. Discomfited, Soren hurried after him, then stopped. Someone was looking at her, a very specific presence dwarfing the avid curiosity of the crowd. Standing just inside the second doorway, she looked over her shoulder and saw, alone at a table in the very far corner, a lean and saturnine man who wished her gone.
Blinking again, Soren tried to understand what she was feeling. All she saw was a man dressed in dark clothing, leaning back in his chair, watching her. Black hair, thin but definite brows, and strong features set in cynical lines. Attractive. And lit with blazing anger, for all his easy pose.
It was the Rose. The power which had become part of her was alerting her to the man's presence, revealing what lay beneath the surface. There was not an actual sense of threat, just that strong impression of tight fury.
"Champion?"
Now was not the moment to pursue the warning. Soren stepped further into the next room, allowing Captain Sharwell to close the door and shut away the interested spectators and the man the Rose was telling her was important.
-oOo-
"We reached Teraman the morning after receiving the Regent's message," Captain Sharwell said. He poured Soren a glass of water, then sat down opposite her. "With orders to keep an eye on the child and await your arrival."
Of course the Regent wouldn't have left recovery of the heir to Soren alone. She should feel relieved, not annoyed. "You know who the heir is?" she asked, reminding herself to behave like someone who hadn't had a conversation with a girl hiding beneath a bridge.
Sharwell grimaced.
"Have you heard the tale behind this inn's name, Champion?"
"I know that Crown Princess Sethane led a hunting party from Teraman into The Deeping, about two hundred and fifty years ago," Soren replied. It had taken her too long to find even that. There was certain to be more than a paragraph devoted to the loss of an heir of Darest in the histories, somewhere in the tumble of books covering her floor. "None of them were ever seen again."
"Not alive. Searchers found a few limbs."
"They offended The Deeping?" She'd heard plenty of stories about the dangers of The Deeping, but something must have gone seriously wrong to end the life of a Crown Princess. A Rathen mage.
"The hunt had the approval of The Deeping," Sharwell said. "There'd been deaths in the area, a farm had been attacked. So they went out, they never came back. She must have succeeded – the Princess – even if it did cost her life. Whatever it was, it left Teraman alone after that."
"And where does this lost prince fit in?"
"The Crown Princess had a couple of cousins in her party," Sharwell replied, shrugging. "One's been sighted in the area on and off ever since – your standard infrequent haunt. Fading now, judging from the number of reports. But a tradition grew up – unmarried girls would claim that the lost prince had come to them. I always thought it was an excuse. With the garrison so close, Teraman girls have a tendency to find themselves starting a family without the security of a life partner." He shrugged, and rubbed his chin.
"So we come to the heir?"
"Ye-es. Lucia Meddescalf, the eldest daughter of the owners of this inn, claimed that the lost prince had come to her. Child arrived in due course, a girl she called Helena. Then we get the message from the Regent." He grimaced. "If we'd been the only ones getting messages, matters would have gone more smoothly, but it seemed like every second traveller had heard about the new Rathen and how Teraman came into the picture. Busiest the place has been for a century. When too many were inclined to stay, and a handful of distinctly unsavoury types drifted in, Mistress Meddescalf and her wife allowed me to station a couple of men as guests, though they declined my suggestion that they remove to the safety of the garrison. Seems like they didn't really believe the child could be Rathen." Captain Sharwell sighed, and put his hands flat on the table, giving Soren a straight look. "I'm not attempting to shuffle the blame, Champion. I made the decision not to act."
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