This was a big man; not young, but powerful. His hair was mostly dark, but his short-cropped beard was grizzled, and the lines around his eyes and on either side of his mouth attested to long years of patience and discipline. He met her eyes with a direct confidence that she did not trust in an Emmeran officer, then bowed his head in a deference she trusted less than that. He wore the uniform of an Emmeran officer, but she was not certain what rank was indicated by the badge at his shoulder.
Taking her mare’s rein, he said to her, his manner respectful, “Princess Kehera Raëhema. I am Enmon Corvallis. Allow me to welcome Your Highness to Emmer and assure you of my goodwill. My king is not here, but he will come to Suriytè before you.”
Much about this little speech seemed odd to Kehera. His goodwill, was it, and his welcome? And no mention of the goodwill of his king. Who was not here. Kehera wanted to ask where Hallieth Suriytaiän had gone and why, but she did not think the question wise. Even if she had the goodwill of General Enmon Corvallis.
She knew who he was now that he had offered her his name. She perhaps knew a little more of General Corvallis than he might expect, for her father had mentioned this man’s name on more than one occasion. She knew her father thought him the ablest of the Emmeran generals. Her father had said once that General Corvallis was the sort of man who would choose his own means of carrying out operations, who would sometimes even choose his own objectives over his king’s. That afterward he would look anyone who challenged him straight in the eye and declare that he had kept strictly to his exact orders, even when it was perfectly obvious he hadn’t. Her father had not been speaking to Kehera at the time, but the description had struck her and she had remembered it.
Now, looking at him searchingly, she found she could believe it. He certainly looked confident enough, even in these peculiar circumstances. Indeed, Corvallis’s sheer arrogance seemed to have carried him through the Mad King’s reign very well. Where more timid men incurred the king’s displeasure and were cast down, here General Corvallis was, in command of this important Emmeran force and now trusted to escort her to Suriytè. She thought—she hoped—that the goodwill of this man might be a true asset to her in the days to come.
“I thank you for your welcome, General,” she said quietly. And asked no questions at all, not about his king, nor about his king’s intentions, nor about what his own goodwill might be worth. Not yet. Though she hoped perhaps she might find a chance to ask such questions sometime before they reached the walls of Suriytè.
It was eight or nine days’ ride from the Imhar River to Suriytè in the heart of Emmer, if one went at a dignified pace. Eight or nine days was going to be a long time for Kehera to keep up a brave pretense in front of her Emmeran escort, a long time to watch Eilisè worry about her, a long, boring time to fill with fears of the future. She did not quite wish that the Mad King had seized her forcibly as soon as she’d set foot in Emmer, but no matter what waited for her in Suriytè, Kehera almost longed to arrive there just to put an end to this terrible uncertainty.
Whatever happened in Suriytè, this was certainly not a future or a marriage she had ever imagined for herself. She still flinched from imagining it now. Of course she trusted her father to bring her back to Harivir; of course she did. Quòn would help her, or she would get away on her own. She would get out of Suriytè somehow and back to Harivir and Raëh.
But even then, she didn’t know what her future might hold. Tiro might try to return the heir’s tie to her, but Raëhemaiëth had accepted him already, and from the story he’d told her, no such effort was likely to work.
She had known all her life that she would someday take the ruling tie and become Queen of Harivir. Raëhemaiëth would strengthen her in good years and draw on her own strength in harder years, and she would listen carefully to the concerns of her people and do her best to make good and just decisions about the problems they brought her. She would marry some important duke or lord and bear children to come after her, children with solid ties to her lord’s province as well as to Raëh, thus strengthening the bonds between Immanents that held Harivir together and kept the whole country secure.
Of course, love was not something she had ever counted on when considering whom she might wed. Of course not. A princess or a queen married to strengthen Harivir. Raëhemaiëth was a generous Power, and all the bonds it made with lesser Powers were Fortunate bonds, bonds through which they could draw upon its strength and surety. Thus, every marriage of a Raëhema to a lesser lord reinforced those bonds, and thus the lesser Powers of Harivir grew stronger. Thus all of Harivir became more secure. Or that was how it was supposed to work.
Even as recently as last winter, Kehera had not quite been able to decide whom she should marry, though she had puzzled over the question for several years—ever since she’d become a woman. She had thought first of Duke Riheir Coärin of Coär, who was always kind. He was only ten years older than she was, which wasn’t so bad, though he was dedicated to his land and so looked a little older than he was. She liked Riheir’s voice, which was cheerful and warm. She liked the way he looked: not precisely handsome, but athletic, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip. On one visit to Raëh, he’d taught Tiro and her how to make wonderful things out of paper—swans and fish—and he’d taught them how to make and fly kites; he’d made her a beautiful one, all the colors of fire. She had thought then that perhaps someday she might like to marry Riheir Coärin. Other considerations also made this a reasonable idea. Coär was an important province, set as it was far to the east and south of Raëh, at the foot of the Takel Mountains, directly west of the Pohorin province of Eäneté. The pass there was the only pass through those mountains that never closed, and the trade that moved through it was important. But Pohorir was always slyly aggressive, the dukes of Eäneté always strong and cruel. In order to safeguard all of Harivir, it was important for Coär to be as strong as possible.
But then Riheir married a woman from his own province. The woman had a daughter right away and then a son. Then she died, but Duke Riheir wore black and lavender afterward and showed no sign of putting off his mourning even years later, so Kehera had known he was not planning to marry again.
Gheres Risaniòn, Duke of Risaèn, was nearly forty. Risaèn was not as strategically important as Coär, but centered the important farmlands that stretched out in south-central Harivir. Those lands were more important than ever when, as now, drought weakened the northern provinces of Harivir.
Kehera could have borne marrying a man as old as Gheres Risaniòn, but he was also far too grim. A forbidding sternness had echoed back and forth between the dukes of Risaèn and their Immanent Power for generations, intensifying with every new Risaèn heir, and as the family had taken no pains to bring in bonds to gentler, more joyous Powers, that sternness was now set deep. The dukes of Risaèn were strong and loyal and mindful of their duty to their people and to Raëh, but Kehera had never liked either Gheres Risaniòn or his Immanent Power.
The Duke of Lanis was younger and recently widowed, but he was also impossibly annoying. He couldn’t tell minor irritations from major disasters and complained about everything equally, a constant whine of disapproval and disappointment, and though that was just him and not his whole family or his Power, Kehera had never seriously considered him.
There were two boys she had thought might do. One of them, the heir to Viär, was bright and funny, and she thought she might like him, but he was also only nine years old. The other, the heir to the important town of Timir that sprawled along the southern edge of Imhar Bay, was tall and handsome and only a year younger than Kehera, but he was not very clever. Kehera had supposed the little boy in Viär would get older, whereas the dull boy in Timir probably wouldn’t get smarter, but she was not eager to wait another ten long years and finally marry a boy ten years younger than herself. Besides, Viär, north of Coär and hard against the mountains, was so small a province, its namesake town hardly more than a large village. She could not
see how she could justify marrying its heir.
So it had been difficult to decide what would be best for Raëh and for herself. One day soon she would have gathered her nerve to speak to her father about such matters, if he hadn’t spoken first.
Then late this spring, in the Golden Hinge Month, the month when spring turned to summer and all change was counted fortunate, Riheir Coärin had finally put off mourning and sent her a courting poem. Kehera remembered every word of it. He had written:
In Risaèn the roses bloom red,
red as the heart of the burning fire.
In Eilin the roses bloom gold,
gold as the sun on summer wheat.
In Coär the roses bloom white,
white as the snow on the mountains.
But in Raëh the roses open blue,
blue as the sky that stands above,
blue as a fountain under the sky,
blue as the ribbons in your hair.
And he had sent with the poem a tiny rose carved of lapis, strung on a silver chain. Kehera had considered the needs of Harivir and the choices available to her. And she still liked Riheir Coärin well enough. So she had put on the pendant to let her father know that she approved of Riheir Coärin’s suit and would accept him when he asked for her.
But the summer had passed into autumn, and he had not yet asked. And now there was this. Everything had changed. Nothing was as it was supposed to be, least of all her. She was so out of place and nothing that had been turned wrong could ever be made right again. Not even if she wheeled her horse this moment and rode back to the Imhar River and crossed it back into Harivir.
Kehera tried to forget where she should be and what future she should be facing and think about this moment and this day and this future now stretching out before her, whatever it might hold. It was hard, though. She would have liked to question General Corvallis about his king, about what Hallieth Suriytaiän was like, what he might intend. But she understood that he would not be able to answer such questions, so she didn’t ask. But sometimes, as the day wore on, the general commented on some bird that flew up from the fields or some flower blooming by the roadside, and eventually Kehera concluded, with some surprise, that he was trying to be kind. He had brought Kehera up to ride beside him at the forefront of the company, and he always addressed her carefully as “Your Highness.” He did not, she concluded, much like orders that involved forcibly taking girls from their homes and compelling them to marry mad kings. He might be an ally, if not a friend. She made careful note of that.
To the north of Talisè the land changed from the rolling hills to flat plains. Off to the northwest, the land stretched unbroken as far as Kehera could see, except for scattered farmhouses and fences. It gave her an odd, exposed feeling, as though the sky had grown too large. Grain swayed in the fields, golden with the turning of the year. She tried to remember whether there had been drought here as in Harivir, but doubted that Hallieth Theraön Suriytaiän would have spent his own strength and the days of his life to protect his lands from want and suspected Emmer had simply been more fortunate with rain.
She saw none of the sheep that would have been scattered along the hills at home, only occasional herds of short-horned cattle. Sometimes they passed farmers in the fields, or other groups of travelers on the road. All these people gave wide berth to the Emmeran soldiers.
Twice as the afternoon drew on, the general asked her if she would like to rest. Each time, Kehera refused. With every step her mare took north, she wanted more desperately to turn and flee south. Every moment that passed was another in which she had to resist that stupid, useless desire. She treasured the numbness that weariness brought.
At sunset on that first day, she waited wordlessly for her tent to be set up and water brought for a bath. She let Eilisè help her bathe, requested that she be served the evening meal privately, and retired as soon as she decently could. But she could not sleep. Not right away. The quiet camp sounds did not disturb her, but somewhere close at hand someone was singing.
“In Tinìen, the winter roses come up pale through the snow,
hope of spring in the months of deep cold,
and the black winds blow less sharply for their blooming.
But this year, no pale flowers open in my heart.
This year, no girl comes out to meet me,
with flowers in her hands, walking with a light step.
The silence of midwinter has crept into my heart,
and I pass by the gentle fields of Tinìen.”
The singer was a man with a clear tenor and the accent of the north, but the song was from Harivir. Kehera half wanted to go out and ask the man to stop, but it seemed right that her first night outside Harivir should be marked with a lament, and a lament from the home that she had ridden away from and might, if her father’s plans went wrong, never see again. The song’s plaintive words mingled with her own exhaustion and fear, and Kehera rolled over, hugged her pillow hard, and cried herself to sleep.
She was rewarded for this escape by a too-early waking. She lay on her pallet for some time, hoping that she would either go back to sleep or that the rest of the camp would begin to stir. Neither happened. Finally, unable to lie still any longer, she sat up. Eilisè did not wake. Kehera dressed herself. Traveling dresses at least had the advantage of simplicity. She pinned her braided hair up in a simple coil and slipped out of her tent quietly.
The camp was quite still. Stars glittered in the cloudless sky. The air was cool and still, but without the briskness that, at home, suggested the coming winter. Probably it was her imagination that suggested she could already taste the northern desert in the air.
The constant wind that blew during the daylight hours had stilled sometime during the night. Kehera walked a few steps away from her tent and stood still, looking up into the sky. Silence and stillness and the shimmer of distant stars: the hour before dawn was an hour for oath taking, for the Gods would hear any promise made under the silent stars.
The Gods were mysterious and nameless, uncountable and unknowable. Folk prayed to the Fortunate Gods and hoped for their favor, but in ordinary days, no one expected them to take much notice of one person or another. But these did not seem like ordinary days to Kehera.
At least the Fortunate Gods wanted the world from which they had risen to prosper. They wanted the land to produce Immanent Powers that would someday rise to join them. The Unfortunate Gods wanted to shatter every land and force the apotheosis of every Immanent into their own company. Or something like that.
Tiro had explained all that to her, but it had been ages ago and Kehera hadn’t entirely understood it, or cared. People prayed to the Fortunate Gods, and part of what they prayed for was protection against the Unfortunate. But usually Immanent Powers were more important. Immanences protected their lands against the influence of any Gods that might do them harm. Fortunate Gods quickened the warming earth in the spring and the seed in the fields and the baby in the womb; Unfortunate Gods brought the killing winds and the winter dragons. That was all an ordinary person needed to know; it was certainly all Kehera needed to know.
Even so, she made a silent oath, to the Fortunate Gods and to Raëhemaiëth and to her people: that she would do what she had to do to protect Harivir, and that if she came back to her home, she would strive to accept whatever small and minor tie she might yet hold to Raëh. That she would try to find a way to be useful to Raëh and Harivir and her father, and that she would do her best to make sure that she gave nothing of bitterness or resentment to Raëhemaiëth, so that in its time, far in the future, when it rose, it would become a Fortunate God.
In the predawn stillness, the unvoiced oath had the feel of truth. A light wind from the west ruffled the grass stems and picked up dust from the road to swirl into tiny whirlwinds. A vast sweep of cloud stretched across the line of the road and off to the east, dark slate against the pearl of the sky. It was going to be a beautiful morning, and almost against her will, Kehera felt her
spirits lift.
Suriytè was an amazing city, Kehera was forced to admit. It spread out in the wide and level lands of north-central Emmer, even reaching some way into the northern desert. Its walls rose against the sky as they approached, rooftops showing beyond, ornate as though the whole city was filled with palaces: rose-pink and white and gold. The city of Suriytè commanded the plains as though it had been set down deliberately in this flat country by the Fortunate Gods and shaped into glory for the awe of travelers.
But the tales of Suriytè were not all about its beauty. Everyone knew that Suriytè had survived the northern cataclysm when the apotheosis of a Great Power engulfed hundreds of square miles in calamity and made all that country into the great northern desert. By this time, the dust of the road included a lot of red sand, and the breeze had grown warm and dry. The air tasted of dust and copper, a northern wind carrying the breath of the desert to the travelers.
There was a great deal of traffic on the road this close to Suriytè, no matter how unsettled the times. Fruit and linen and lumber from Kosir came in from the east, while goods from Pohorir traveled a longer road, first through Anha Pass and then by barge down the Diöllay River to the great Imhar before being carried north by ox-drawn wagons. Those goods mingled with the fish and salt that came from Caftan and Daè and Ghiariy on the western coast of Emmer.
But above and beyond the trade caravans were military encampments and columns of soldiers. Kehera had counted these through the days of travel, her heart chilling with every one she numbered. It was uncomfortably clear that Emmer was indeed well prepared for conquest, and there were few signs that military preparations had lightened with her forced betrothal.
The escort had formed up in a compact column, with men riding ahead to clear the way. Folk stared as she went past. Some probably recognized General Corvallis and by that perhaps knew who Kehera had to be; the pressure of their curiosity pressed on her like the dusty wind. She set her face straight forward and tried to look regal. The towers of Suriytè rose before them, spreading out until they seemed to stretch along the entire horizon. Unlike Raëh, there was not the long sprawl of low walls and estates and little villages outside the walls. Only the city, rose-pink and white, glowing beneath the endless sky.
Winter of Ice and Iron Page 7