"What happened?" Soren asked, voice muted. She was glad to have met Nina. If it wasn't for the girl's message, she'd be spun sideways by this news. As it was, she felt more sympathy for Captain Sharwell than she would like. But if she planned to leave Darest, she couldn't take him into her confidence.
"Jutlanders."
Soren aped surprise, and felt she'd overdone it.
"Riding escort with a merchanter train, until they stopped in Teraman. Only a half dozen, but more than enough to take out the two men stationed at the inn. Young and glory hungry. They tell me ransoming the Crown Princess of Darest is 'name-worthy'."
"You caught them, then?" Nina's description had left Soren picturing an entire clan descending on Teraman.
"Oh, yes. A couple made a break for the road, but we rounded them up quickly enough. No-one's too eager to stray into the woods around here." He smiled thinly, then shook his head. "But they stormed the inn, left both my men and a number of others injured, and sent the entire Meddescalf clan out of the window."
He was looking very grim and stiff-backed, and Soren felt a pang of guilt. "So they escaped?" she said, disliking her pose of innocent ignorance more and more. She hated playing games with truth.
"They did indeed. So thoroughly that we haven't been able to find them since."
Soren didn't say anything, finding herself incapable of putting on a further show of horror or astonishment, let alone haranguing the man for this turn of events. Her face felt stiff. Sharwell shifted uncomfortably, and colour darkened the tanned skin of his cheeks. Then he turned one of his hands over, a device to dismiss the moment.
"We've scoured the road, of course, but it seems they must have headed into the Tongue or The Deeping."
"Why would they do that? Instead of making for the garrison?"
"Possibly Mistress Meddescalf felt the wiser course was to remain out of sight until you arrived, Champion. There are places within the Tongue which are said to be safe, and we've been attempting to search these, with the help of some of the locals. Slow going, since there's too much risk spreading the search among a number of small bands, and we've only a minor mage assigned to the garrison. My hope is that your arrival will draw them out."
His hope, and that of anyone else taking an interest in the heir. "Could they have made for Tor Darest?" she asked.
"Unlikely. Some doubt even the existence of the safe places; actually crossing the Tongue would be courting death. And they certainly haven't travelled along the trade road." He gave her an assessing glance. "Is there any chance, Champion, that you–?"
Soren shook her head, then lifted a shoulder equivocally. She was very aware of the weight of the sword, of the harness currently pulling to the left because she'd pushed the sheathe to the side so she could comfortably sit down. "I don't sense the heir's presence, if that's what you mean," she said. "The Champions have had only their title, since the death of King Torluce. I will try what I can, but I'm afraid that's very little."
"Even a little might be enough," Sharwell said, though he was obviously disappointed. "Would you care to refresh yourself, before eating? I've had a room kept for you."
A blank-faced man wearing a lieutenant's badge was summoned and escorted Soren upstairs. She paused to look out over the public room again, busier than before. Dozens of faces lifted to follow her progress, but the man in the corner was gone. She felt uneasy, not knowing where he was. He could be waiting upstairs with a knife and a grudge. He could be heading for Lucia and Helena, or just away. But she was careful not to pause to search for him, obediently following the Lieutenant to a door well away from the stair.
The room, which was presumably the one with a wardrobe you could walk through, was not large and was dominated by a cushiony bed. Her saddlebags were already empty and hooked neatly on the wall next to the small window. Checked curtains puffed inwards, allowing her a glimpse of a twilight town walled in black forest. No assassins, this time.
-oOo-
A lone bird called: two warbling notes. The moon was directly above, slowly drifting toward the far side of the sky, and Soren was being watched.
She'd dined excellently with Captain Sharwell, glad when he'd chosen to focus the conversation on Teraman and its environs and hadn't objected to her retiring early. After an intensive investigation of the back of her closet she'd napped until midnight. Now, looking out over Teraman from a dark room, she found herself listening to three people breathing.
One in the lane directly beneath her window, quick and light. Another across the road which joined the lane, with only a sidelong view of her window. There was a faint, moist gurgle to that one's breaths, as if on the verge of a cold. The third was on the rooftops, sitting in the shadow of a chimney near the building she thought was Teraman's temple. Slow, deep inhalations, almost as if the person was asleep.
Of all those in Teraman, these were the only people whose breathing she could hear. The ones who watched. The ones the Rose chose to point out. She wasn't a mage, didn't have the senses to detect the power within, but could hardly deny that the Rose was working through her. Out in the night, the man across the road swallowed a cough. It felt like he was in the room with her.
Why, so far from its garden in Tor Darest, was the Rose's power becoming tangible? Because she was closer to an actual Rathen than she'd ever been before? Because now, unlike in Tor Darest, danger truly threatened? She'd told Sharwell she couldn't sense the heir's presence. Now she closed her eyes and tried to reach for the child whose life was to be her centre, her focus. Somewhere, out in this same night, was the future Queen of Darest.
Or nothing but three people, watching. Experimentally, Soren moved forward, twitching the curtain against the wind. The one below caught back a breath, and across the road she heard a sigh. The one on the roof snorted.
Staring at the shadow of the chimney, Soren decided that this was the man from the inn's public room. A huge assumption, but she didn't doubt it. One of the others would surely be stationed there by Captain Sharwell, and the third an unknown. All waiting to see if she'd make contact with the family of the missing heir.
Knowing where the lurkers were hidden was a boon. Soren left the curtain to the wind and lay down on the bed. Their breathing kept her from dozing and, when she decided at last that the moon would surely have passed beyond whatever temple gate Nina had been talking about, it was a useful guide to their failure to detect her as she fastened her sword to her back and eased her way into the wardrobe. Her prior search had revealed a catch which released a false back. With only moonlight in the room, the stair beyond was a black well which could harbour any and everything.
The detachment she'd felt while waiting faded. Immediately, her strange sense shifted its attention away from those outside to the quick, nervous breathing of the one who waited at the bottom of the stair. Nina.
Soren had prepared for this moment, and when her heart caught up to her head she carefully lifted her re-packed saddlebags to her shoulder. She didn't know if she'd be coming back. The leather creaked, dragging her off-centre, and she moved with excruciating care onto the steep, narrow stair. Both doors had to be closed behind her.
Insensibly cheered at having successfully shut away three spies, Soren inched down, hugging the rough wall and feeling for each step. She'd lost track of Nina and found that when she tried to locate the girl, her own heartbeat and nervously ragged breath deafened her.
What was she doing? Creeping down a hidden stair in the middle of the night, off to smuggle a princess to safety. Rain would love this. Her sister was the most adventurous of the three Armitage siblings, and after Soren's annunciation she'd had a few pithy things to say about just who should be the Champion of the family. Romadin would have brought Captain Sharwell with him, always confident that right and wrong were clearly separate. Soren had the dubious pleasure of feeling that she was doing wrong, while unable to see another clear course. She felt sick, more than a little frightened, and, beneath it all, excited. After two
weeks' of travel, she was eager to finally see the Rathen child.
"Nina?" she murmured, when she thought she was almost at the bottom of the stair.
A puff of wind touched her face, then the girl's whisper: "Take my hand, Champion. We've got to go quiet here. It's narrow an' it runs along the back of the common room, out to the icehouse."
Soren didn't reply, simply squeezing the small fingers which found hers. Trying to move silently while carrying saddlebags and strapped to an oversized sword proved more difficult than she'd expected, but the few scrapes and single tap would surely be put down to mice. She hoped.
Chapter Five
They travelled for at least half an hour, splashing along the course of a stream choked with overhanging bushes. It was an uncomfortable, itchy journey accompanied by far too much mysterious rustling in the underbrush, but no attack came. Nor did that strange awareness of observation return, though this was no guarantee they weren't being followed. Half Teraman could be trailing them, for all Soren would be able to tell. She was truly out of her seaside element.
Strange to feel so alive.
"We have to go on hands and knees here, Champion," Nina said, her hand warm and sweaty in Soren's. "It's not far now."
A fortunate thing, given the weight of her remaining saddlebag. She'd packed them both with care, trying to anticipate all eventualities, and left the more disposable concealed in the short passage between The Lost Prince's cellar and its icehouse. The single bag had still become an aching burden, and she would be entirely glad to stop.
"Why is it safe for us to travel this way?" she asked, shifting the bag to her opposite shoulder.
"Running water, Champion." Nina's tone indicated she found the Rathen Champion sadly ignorant. "We got to leave it now, but nothing'll come close here. The bushes are spiny, so keep low. There's boards either side."
There wasn't enough light for Soren to see what Nina was leading her into, but with the child's guidance she found wide, rough boards which seemed to have been shoved beneath a stand of extremely thorny bushes. They formed a low, uninviting passage away from the streambed. Nina was already scuttling ahead, but Soren hesitated. She wasn't particularly afraid of the dark, and so long as she went slowly the bushes weren't a major issue. Yet for the first time it had occurred to her to wonder if Nina was who she'd claimed to be. Trapped in a thorny tube, she would be at the mercy of someone who wished the Rathen Champion ill.
A bit late for cold feet. Besides, the use of the secret stair in their escape wasn't likely if Nina was only pretending to be the innkeepers' child. Feeling a little scared was natural, but it was no good letting nerves overcome common sense.
A few jabs to the spine later, Soren found herself facing a tall, dark figure who patted Nina's shoulder before saying: "Welcome, Champion. I'm Riese Meddescalf."
"Soren Armitage," Soren replied. "Thank you for sending for me."
"Didn't see what else I could do," Riese Meddescalf replied, bluntly. "I don't relish spending the rest of my life skulking about an abandoned temple."
"Is that what this place is?" Soren could only make out the shape of a wall ahead, and the faintest crack of light.
"One of the Selunic retreats as was." The innkeeper moved back toward that line of light. "Best crowd close, Champion. Don't want to keep the door open long."
As Soren moved forward, the woman tapped on the door. Immediately, the light within dimmed to nearly nothing, and then they were moving forward into a single, dilapidated room. A guttering lantern revealed a woman who was Nina's image, and a girl perhaps five years Nina's elder – younger than Soren had expected. She was darker than her heart-sister, more like her blood-mother, who proved to be tall and statuesque, with near-black hair and hazel eyes.
Soren lowered her bag to the floor and immediately looked around for the heir.
"I suppose introductions are the first order of the day," Riese Meddescalf said. "You know Nina, of course, and this is Lucia, my eldest."
"Champion." The girl, Lucia, bobbed briefly, then busied herself turning the lantern back up.
"My wife, Jesmy," said Riese. Jesmy nodded, reserved and unforthcoming, and Soren tried to smile at her, but almost all her attention was taken up by the bundle the woman was lifting from a nest of blankets. Her stomach was a tight knot. At last.
"About time you were feeding her anyway, Lucia," Jesmy Meddescalf said prosaically. She surveyed the baby cradled in her arms, then stepped forward so that Soren could view the new Queen of Darest.
Sleepily, the child blinked. She had dark blue eyes and long lashes, but only a thin fuzz of black hair. Pink lips parted in a minute yawn and she shifted in her grandmother's arms. Her skin was the flawless cream of the very young. Beautiful.
And not Rathen. Not remotely. Soren knew it as she knew the sun would rise in the morning. There was no response within her, nothing like the force which had brought her to Tor Darest for her annunciation, or had spoken the name 'Teraman' at the touch of a rose. There wasn't even the same intense awareness which had made her look at the man at the inn. This was just a pretty baby.
Idiot. Thousand times fool. She'd gone looking for a child purely on assumption. Why should a Rathen appearing out of nowhere be newborn, after all? A fully-fledged Rathen made just as much sense as a baby fathered by a ghost. And what had she met with, when she'd arrived at Teraman? What had the Rose told her?
"How old is Helena?" she asked, her tone not quite hiding suddenly discovered doubts.
"Three weeks tomorrow," said Lucia, then looked down and away, betraying awareness of the why behind the question. The girl knew perfectly well that there was nothing Rathen about her child.
As her daughter became the picture of guilt, Riese Meddescalf made a noise full of understanding, anger, and disbelief. "It was that smooth-talking lieutenant, wasn't it?" she said, sounding rather more relieved than anything else. "Sun, Moon and Sky, Lucia, do you have any idea what you've done?!"
"I've done?!" the girl retorted, with sudden fire. "What have I done except what dozens have done before me? Forgotten the herbs or the moon's quarter and found no-one to stand by me except a story about a ghost? I didn't suddenly announce that the Rathens had come back. I didn't bring Jutlanders and Cyans and half the garrison to camp at the inn!"
"You could have told us, you silly chit!" Jesmy said. "Why insist on the excuse after all this?"
"You never–!"
Disturbed by the raised voices, Helena coughed, then started to wail. Argument forgotten, there was a rush to soothe her. A babe's cry in the forest would be a beacon to any who searched.
Soren looked around the makeshift home the Meddescalfs had made out of this retreat of Selune's worshippers. Solid but neglected, with only a few sticks of furniture and nothing resembling comforts. The shutters were plastered with mud and leaves to stop light escaping, and a curtain, currently hooked to one side, had been tacked above the doorway. There was no arlune, no icons of Selune visible, but perhaps the retreat's dedication to the Moon afforded it some protection. The thornbushes outside certainly did.
Safe, in other words. But not forever. Eventually the garrison, or someone else, would find them.
"Mama-la?" Nina walked slowly forward. "Mama-la, does this mean we can go home?"
Riese Meddescalf looked at her heart-daughter with a mix of pain and regret, while Jesmy briefly stared at the ceiling, then turned back to Soren. "Champion?"
As if she might know the answer, could do anything to fix this mess. Soren wished she could reassure them, say that it would be all right. "There's few who'd believe the truth," she said instead. "Not when there is an heir, and that heir is in Teraman. If I went back there now and announced that Helena was no Rathen, they'd only search the harder."
Nina's face crumpled, and she would have headed for the door if her blood-mother hadn't caught at her shoulder.
"That's it then?" Riese Meddescalf asked. "There's no way back?" Her face was stark and sombre, facing down th
e prospect of abandoning her home and livelihood to escape those who would kidnap her granddaughter. Simply because Lucia had sought the refuge of a lie everyone had taken for granted until the blooming of the Rathen Rose. Soren immediately decided she couldn't let that happen.
All she had to do was think of some way to stop it.
-oOo-
Breathing in the dark.
Soren froze halfway along the fence between forest edge and icehouse. One of her hands protectively touched the babe-sling suspended against her midriff, and she almost laughed at the sheer futility of the gesture.
Over in the pitch-black shadows cast by the icehouse, the person who waited let out his breath – a soft, disparaging tuh! which Soren shouldn't be able to hear – in response to a movement the lurker shouldn't be able to see. The man from the inn. No need to see his face. The prickle down her spine was enough, the curling twitch of power saying here, yes, look. Look at this, your future, your central concern, your problem. Your King.
It was no use blaming herself for not understanding; the important thing was that she'd found her Rathen. With Teraman full of people who seemed determined to interfere, the best thing to do was get him far away as quickly as possible. Of course, unlike Helena, he was liable to offer an opinion about what happened next.
Glad she'd left Nina at the forest's edge, Soren started slowly forward, her stomach clenching tighter with every step. The subtle alteration in his breathing when she moved told her that he truly could see her, despite the moon-cast shadows. He must have watched her leave, and known that all she'd be able to do was come back.
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