Then a sharp tap on the door sent her heart racing and drove all thoughts of bath and bed from her head. Eöté flinched and dropped the cloth she’d been holding, and everyone else stared, motionless, at the door. No one moved to answer it, until Luad stood up uncertainly.
“No,” Kehera said hastily. “It had better be me.” She stood up, waving Tageiny back sternly when he would have tried to get up.
But it was Caèr Reiöft. Kehera let out her breath in relief and then hoped her nervousness wasn’t visible to anyone else.
Reiöft bowed his head politely, murmuring some quiet politeness as he set one hand on the door, gently pushed it wide, and stepped into the room. His sharp glance fell on Tageiny, braced on one elbow, the marks of the whip vivid across his skin. He took in Luad’s stiff hostility and Eöté’s nervousness, and finally settled on Kehera. His quiet self-possession was intact, but even Kehera, who barely knew him, could see that his normal good humor was completely absent. He looked . . . He looked, she thought, like the rest of them felt: stiff and tired and worried. He said to her, “Might I speak to you for a moment, my lady? Privately?”
“Absolutely not,” growled Tageiny, shoving himself to his feet, almost completely concealing what the movement cost him. Luad put one hand on Tageiny’s arm and the other on the hilt of one of his knives, and for the first time it occurred to Kehera that the young man was still armed, that no one had taken his weapons. That had to mean something. Just what, she wasn’t sure.
Reiöft cast his gaze upward. “Oh, come now.”
“You, least of all. Do you want me to spell it out?” said Tageiny.
Kehera was almost sure she didn’t. She said hastily, gesturing toward the other end of the room, “Perhaps just over here.”
“Hold up, there,” Tageiny snapped, and ordered Luad, “Make sure he’s got nothing.” Tageiny himself leaned against the back of a heavy chair, which Kehera took to mean he was having trouble just staying on his feet.
Luad made quick work of checking Reiöft for weapons—the duke’s servant cooperated with no further protest—and then she guided Reiöft to the minimal privacy of the other end of the sitting room. It was a big room, at least.
The moment Kehera settled in a chair and looked at him inquiringly, Reiöft said, his tone low but intense, “I’ve seen him in a temper, and I’ve seen him upset, and I’ve seen him worried, and before his father died, I saw one or two things that would freeze your blood. And he handled all of that. But I’ve never seen him like he was today. Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”
Kehera studied the man for a long moment. Then she told him everything.
“He let him go through the pass,” Reiöft said when she got to that part. “Good. That’s good. And you told him to go to your father, and he didn’t say anything about that. Good. And he gave him a pebble from the road. A memory of Eäneté. A thin tie to Eänetaìsarè.”
Kehera had no trouble following this despite the abundance of pronouns. She nodded. “I think he meant it to protect Gereth. But I—I’m not sure what else he might have meant it to do. He gave it to Gereth after I told him to go to my father.”
“He would hardly have given him anything that would make him the focus of a king’s anger. No. Protection on the road. I think you’re right. Whatever else, I’m sure you’re right at least that far. Good,” said Reiöft. He ran a hand through his hair and drew a long breath. “That’s better than I feared it might be.” Some of the stiffness had eased out of his face, but he gave her a long, serious look. “He’s under a great deal of strain. I’m sure he’s worried about whatever’s going on in Irekay. And he hasn’t wanted to hurt you. And now there’s . . . this.” He hesitated. “I know it’s hard for you. I know none of this is your choice. But I came . . . I came to tell you that it’s hard for him, too, and to ask you to be . . .”
“Brave?” suggested Kehera, when he paused. “Cooperative?”
“Kind,” corrected Reiöft. When she stared at him in astonishment, he went on in a low, urgent tone. “He’s been hurt. I don’t wish to dismiss what you have suffered, or will suffer. But try not to . . . I know you have reason to be angry. But try to be kind to him. Please.”
Kehera made herself stop staring. She said, hearing the constraint in her own tone, “Aren’t you—I mean, you’re—” She tried to think how to frame a question there was no polite way to ask. “You aren’t . . . jealous?”
Caèr Reiöft gave her a long, serious look. “I’m trying not to be. No offense, Your Highness, but, all else aside, I’m glad it’s you and not someone else.”
“Because I’m a . . . woman?” Kehera hazarded.
To her surprise, Reiöft smiled with something of his customary warmth. “You think he doesn’t like women? That’s not quite right. He thinks women are fragile. Because of his mother, I’ve always thought, and then later he . . . Never mind. What I mean is, he’s afraid he’ll hurt a woman. Even if he doesn’t wish to, or intend to. So you see, you needn’t . . . He’s not always gentle with me. But he will be careful with you.”
Kehera thought about this. “That’s why you don’t mind,” she said at last. “Because you’ll still be the one he doesn’t need to be careful with.”
This got her a raised eyebrow and a half smile. “That . . . I won’t say that doesn’t matter to me. But that would be true for any woman. No, it’s because you’re foreign. There will always be a part of him you can’t touch.” He met her eyes. He was smiling, but he was serious, too. “Perhaps you should be jealous of me.”
“I don’t want this, remember?” But Kehera found that she was a little jealous of Caèr Reiöft after all. Not for the reason he was suggesting. Perhaps because he cared enough about the Wolf Duke to come to her and ask her to be kind. She wished she’d had, once in her life, a chance to care about someone that selflessly. She said, “He makes me so angry. He’s so sure he should make all these decisions for us, both of us, for both our Powers, both our countries. Raëhemaiëth may be determined to ally with your Eänetén Immanent, but I’m angry.” She didn’t admit to fear, but only went on slowly, “But I know you’re right. I know he’s been hurt, and I’m sorry for it. I’ll remember that, too, despite all the rest.”
Reiöft bowed his head briefly in gratitude. Then he met her eyes again. “While we have this little moment. No one else will tell you this, so I will. His tie will strengthen when he’s . . . with you. I tell you so that you’ll expect it. Don’t be afraid. He’ll ride it. Let it sweep you up. You’ll be . . .” He paused, then shrugged, smiling slightly. “Let’s just say your wedding night will probably be memorable.”
He didn’t pause for her answer, which was just as well because Kehera had no idea how to respond to this. He gave her a smooth bow instead and strode away toward the outer door, leaving her staring after him.
After he was gone, Kehera looked wordlessly around the room—at frightened Eöté and battered Tageiny and worried Luad. And sighed, and shook her head, and said firmly, “Tomorrow’s dawn isn’t so very far away. All of you: Go to bed.” She caught Tageiny’s raised eyebrow and added, “I promise you, that’s just what I mean to do, and nothing, not even His Grace shouting and throwing things, will keep me awake.”
Nor, in the unlikely event that the Wolf Duke actually shouted or threw things, did it trouble her rest. Not even the thought of having to face him at dawn could keep her awake. Kehera was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow. She slept dreamlessly through the afternoon and evening and most of the night, though a few hours before dawn her rest was disturbed by a dream of wolves. They stayed just out of sight among the forest shadows, only their eyes gleaming with reflected moonlight, and she knew they were laughing their knowing, mocking wolf laughter at her.
She woke in the gray dawn, hearing in her ears the echo of wolves singing to the night.
16
Tirovay Elin Raëhema dreamed of white whirling snow and black knife-edged winds, of many-headed dragons whose
wings encompassed the sky and whose breath froze air and light and life. He dreamed of the Wall, the great Wall of Storms, where the obsidian winds endlessly slashed through their continual circular path, dividing the world in two: the northern lands where the Fortunate Gods ruled and men yet lived and the southern where the Unfortunate Gods had destroyed everything living except, maybe, dragons. If dragons could be said to live. Scholars argued one way and then the other, but no one knew. As no one knew whether the dragons deliberately brought down the storms, or whether they only rode upon them, indifferent to the devastation they caused to the lands below.
Tiro dreamed of the Iron Hinge days, of midwinter storms spinning away from the Wall of Storms, one mad gyre of deadly winds and then another and another, each bearing one or two or three dragons into the lands of men. He saw how the dragons blurred into one another, not like mortal creatures but like storms themselves, dividing and recombining, the storm winds filling them up until the tangle of dragons became just one dragon and that one rode the winds on translucent obsidian wings as broad as the sky.
The winter dragons rode the knife-edged winds, and far below mortal creatures fled for shelter. . . . Tiro saw it, memory or anticipation. No scholar’s description could capture the terror or wonder of the dark turn of the year. Of course none of the folk who lived near the mountains or anywhere near the Wall of Winds set either window or door into the windward side of their homes; of course they all turned their stables and byres to block the midwinter storms, without concern for ordinary summer storms that came from other directions. Wild creatures too must make their dens so that they could hide from the black winds and the shadows of the winter dragons. Deer must shelter in the lee of cliffs and thickets, birds creep under the cover of thick firs, the whole world take shelter until the Iron Hinge should turn and the world rise back toward gentler days.
He was dimly aware of the memory of summer. Slow sunlit days and quiet moonlit nights . . . Raëhemaiëth tried to show him summer, tried to carry him out of the winter, but the shadow of a double-headed dragon cut between them, obsidian winds glittering, bitter and knife-edged, dividing Tiro from Raëhemaiëth, driving them apart.
Raëhemaiëth spoke to him, not as a person spoke, but in the way of an Immanent, wordless and certain. He heard it, and then lost its voice beneath the ceaseless voices of the winds, which were also the voices of the dragons, layering one upon another like the endless reverberations of shattering ice.
A storm like this had come upon Leiör. Tiro remembered that, or something like that. It was confusing, because surely it was not yet midwinter. Surely the black storms had not yet come. And Leiör was neither far enough south nor near enough the mountains to experience the full peril of the midwinter winds. He had been in Leiör, though. . . . He had been in Leiör. He was certain of that. He remembered Taraä inan Seine Leiörian, with her willow tree and her ax. Only he had sent the ax away . . . across the river, he had sent it to Emmer, though he couldn’t quite remember why. She must have agreed. Surely he wouldn’t have sent Taraä’s ax to Emmer without asking her first. Though that was a little confusing, too, because he knew the ax was actually his . . . not exactly his, but it had belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather. He remembered that story. . . . He remembered all the stories, but now he seemed to have forgotten. Raëhemaiëth was trying to tell all the stories to him again, but he couldn’t hear them properly because the dragons were crying too loudly. . . . He’d sent the ax away and something terrible had happened. . . . The great willow tree had gone down in a storm, or maybe he had dreamed that. Poor Taraä, that would have been terrible for her, losing her ax and her tree and her city. . . . She had lost her city, Leiör had been lost, the willow had split from the crown right down to the roots, and Leiöriansé had been eaten by the winter dragons, and all of it was Tiro’s fault. He didn’t remember what had happened, but he knew it had been his fault, for taking the ax and for failing Raëhemaiëth.
Someone was calling him. Someone was calling his name. But Tiro couldn’t quite hear through the shattering of the winds. It might have been his father’s voice. But he thought it was someone else, a man he knew, someone he’d been arguing with recently. Someone as confident and assured as his father . . . He couldn’t quite capture the name, but Raëhemaiëth gave it to him, beyond sound and sense: Enmon Corvallis.
That was it. Enmon Corvallis. General Corvallis. The Emmeran general who’d served the Mad King. The Mad King had taken Kehera away and she hadn’t come back, and now Tiro had to be heir, only he’d failed Raëhemaiëth, failed his father and Raëh and Harivir. He’d lost Leiör; he’d let Hallieth Theraön Suriytaiän ruin Leiör, eat its Immanent, leave the city and the province hollow and empty. . . . But that wasn’t right. It hadn’t been Hallieth Suriytaiän. The Suriytè Power was gone, too, and Hallieth Theraön was no longer the Emmeran king. Hallieth Theraön was dead, or . . . not dead, but lost in the whirling black midwinter, as Tiro was lost.
Either way, Emmer had no true king, not anymore. That was what Enmon Corvallis wanted: to be King of Emmer, and Tiro had thought that would be fine, but he would make Corvallis give him something in return. Leiör. Or, no, Leiör was gone. And anyway, it hadn’t ever been Corvallis’s to give away. Sariy. That was it. Tiro had demanded Sariy, on the other side of the Imhar, there at the confluence where the river was so wide. He’d carried Raëhemaiëth across the river and rooted it into Sariy, in order to set a border and a bulwark between the storm coming down from the north and Leiör. He had almost saved Leiör. But not quite. Leiöriansé had been too much at odds with . . . Sariänesciör. Yes. Sariänesciör. That was the name of Sariy’s Immanent.
Tiro had anchored Raëhemaiëth into Sariy, he’d invited a bond between Sariänesciör and Raëhemaiëth, and at first the lesser Immanent of Sariy hadn’t wanted the bond, but then the obsidian winds had come down upon them all. Sariänesciör had felt the dragon’s shadow fall across its lands, and so at the last moment it had taken the bond after all and sheltered from the midwinter storm behind Raëhemaiëth’s deep-rooted strength. And the winter dragon had passed over Sariy and lain its shadow across Leiör, and Tiro hadn’t been there; he’d been across the river. So Leiör had fallen silent, but Sariy’s Immanent was still present in its land.
It wasn’t fair. It was utterly unfair. He’d done everything wrong. His father had trusted him to protect Leiör, Taraä had trusted him, but he’d failed them both, and now Leiör was empty. Hollow. And it was all Tiro’s fault.
Somewhere, his father was calling him. Or Enmon Corvallis. Or someone. He heard Kehera’s voice, and then thought no, it wasn’t his sister, it was Taraä. Then he thought, no, it was Raëhemaiëth. It was the still, soundless voice of the Immanent Power.
But the bitter winds cut between them, between him and every voice and every memory of other sound, until he could hear only the many-headed winter dragon crying with all the voices of the winds.
17
Kehera rode, on a white horse and cloaked in white, at the left hand of the Eäneté duke. They rode at the head of his column of troops, through the icy fastness of Roh Pass, through the gray dusk of the fourteenth day of the Iron Hinge Month, as the year slid inexorably toward the dark turn of winter. Above them flew their standards: the yellow-eyed Wolf of Eäneté, and beside it, the Falcon of Raëh. Only it wasn’t the powerful red and black Falcon like the one Kehera’s father carried; this was a white Falcon, a delicate kestrel, with sapphire eyes and all its feathers outlined in blue. All her people wore the White Falcon badge now, setting them apart from the Eänetén wolves.
Kehera was a bright mirror image of the duke, and although she knew perfectly well that her bright appearance had been carefully designed, she also had to admit that it was effective. Anyone seeing her White Falcon flying above the Wolf could not help but look to her for hope of mercy. It was exactly the effect the duke intended. Knowing this made Kehera feel . . . she wasn’t even sure. Angry at the Wolf Duke’s presumption. Hopeful
because he thought of such details and never let anything slip.
And she was, in a sense, letting herself be used that way. It was too late now for her to slip the duke’s hold and ride to Harivir before him, go to Tiro and . . . make things right, somehow; make Methmeir Irekaì’s horrible Immanent Power let him alone. She couldn’t do that. But she thought of Gereth Murrel and the pebble the Eänetén duke had infused with a little tie to Eänetaìsarè, and hoped that the duke’s seneschal would somehow do what she could not. Raëhemaiëth had helped Eänetaìsarè; surely the Eänetén Power was willing to return the favor. If it could.
If Gereth carried a tie to Eänetaìsarè into Raëh and so let Eänetaìsarè anchor itself even so far away from Eäneté—if Raëhemaiëth let the Eänetén Power anchor itself into Raëh through that thin tie—if the two Immanent Powers together could indeed help Tiro break free of the Irekaïn Power, then maybe she could take that as proof that this alliance was after all the best decision any of them could make.
And if they had to make this alliance work, then she had to admit, it probably was better to perform the wedding ceremony in Harivir, among her own people as well as the Eänetén duke’s, so that everyone could see her tie the cords herself and no one could doubt the validity of the marriage.
Presuming she did tie the cords herself. But if she refused publicly, Riheir Coärin would probably start a war right there, and that wouldn’t do at all.
Soon she would have to decide what to do. They had pressed the pace, up and up into the teeth of the mountains, until Kehera’s thighs and back ached with the strain of leaning forward in the saddle. They had crested the pass just before dusk. There, where Roh Pass wound between the sharp peaks, she had glimpsed for one terrifying moment a winter dragon. Wonder and horror held her transfixed. Just as stories held, the winter dragon was triple-headed, its long sinuous necks and long snakelike body rippling in the violent winds that cut around the sharp-edged stone of the farthest heights. Those winds were streaked with translucent black, but the dragon that rode upon those obsidian winds, though monstrous, did not come down. She knew it must be waiting for the Iron Hinge days. It did not cry, with the voices of the winds or of doomed souls or any voice she heard, and after that one glimpse it disappeared behind the black winds and the naked stone. But even after it had gone and she was once again able to focus on the ordinary world, Kehera was glad to leave the high crest of the pass behind and begin the slow ride down.
Winter of Ice and Iron Page 33