Elise looked around and, indeed, the wolf-woman had dis-appeared.
“Still with us?” she asked Sapphire.
When Sapphire bent to pick up their lantern, Elise saw that her cousin was dreadfully pale beneath her tan, but when she replied her voice was steady. “I'm with you. I'll walk first with the lantern. Let Mistress Healer come last leading the horse.”
In the glen where—as Elise would later leam—Prince Newell and Lady Zorana lingered for dalliance and met with disaster, Firekeeper had a steady fire burning within a ring of river rocks. A small copper pot—hardly larger than an apple and polished so bright as to look almost pink—was slung over the flames.
“From my emergency kit,” Hazel explained, tying her mare, a brown horse unremarkable for anything but its calm, to a bush. “You won't believe how often you need hot water fast and the best thing available is a kettle large enough to make stew for an entire harvest crew and cast of thick iron besides. Now, let's get comfortable.”
Under her calm authority, Elise positioned her lamp and two more from Hazel's.gear so that, without shedding undue light outside of the glen, they had enough that they could read each other's expressions. Firekeeper brought over a couple of logs to act as benches and when the water boiled Elise brewed rosehip tea. Sapphire set more water to heat and then Hazel indicated that she was ready to continue.
“From what you told Lady Elise,” she said to Sapphire, “the sapphire—indeed the entire headpiece—is symbolic to you of the identity which your mother has crafted for you. Is that right?”
Sapphire nodded. “Of who I am.”
“And who you are is someone under Lady Melina's control,” Hazel stated unapologetically. “And don't try to deny it. I saw how you favored your side while you were helping set up our Uttle parlor here. I've spoken at length with Sir Jared about his talent. Your injury should be mending now without pain. The wounds were superficial, though ugly, and were treated almost immediately.”
Sapphire bit her lip, then nodded stiffly. “It has been four-teen days. Very well. I accept that my mother has the ability to inflict pain on me, pain I shouldn't feel. I'll even admit that she's done it other times, though I never remember feeling this angry about it before. What I waiit to know is do you think this is sorcery or that trance induction that Elise told me about?”
Hazel sighed. “I wish Elise hadn't told you quite so much. It will make our task more difficult. To be blunt, I don't know. However, I don't think it matters… “
“Doesn't matter!” Sapphire said with a fury that Elise realized was mostly fear. “It doesn't matter whether my mother is a sorceress or merely skilled in some form of controlling the mind? How couldn't it matter?”
Hazel ignored the anger and answered the question. “Because the tool which she used to effect her control is the same in either case. It doesn't matter because if we can—if you can—destroy that means, then the hold should be broken.”
I wonder, Elise thought uneasily, just how much Hazel is bluffing. She didn't seem to know this much when we consulted her ten days ago.
“I've been reading about related matters ever since Elise brought her own problem to me,” Hazel said as if in answer, “and have consulted most privately with various colleagues. Lady Melina's fondness for the showy gesture—for using her power over you to enhance her own reputation rather than keeping it quiet—may be her undoing. However, I can only show you die way. I cannot do any more.”
“What,” Sapphire said, “as if I can't already guess, do I need to do?”
Hazel ignored her for a moment. Removing the boiling water from over the fire, she poured some into a round pottery cup, then shook in powder from a folded paper packet. This done, she covered the cup and asked:
“Elise, how much trouble did you have telUng Sapphire about your discovery of Lady Melina's powers?”
“Not much,” Elise replied, slightly puzzled at this change of subject. “I felt shy, of course. It's hard to admit you've been spying on people, even by accident.”
“But you didn't feel any pain? No ants biting your tongue?”
“No!” Elise was surprised. “But why should I? Sapphire already knew the truth.”
Hazel turned to look at Sapphire. ‘Tell me, is that the usual way with your mother's curses? Do they work only when you try to talk to the uninformed?”
Sapphire shook her head. “I haven't really tried, not for years, but we never could talk about what she had forbidden, not even to each other, not without bringing down the curse.”
“So, you see, Elise,” Hazel said, “what you did is remarkable.”
“Do you think it's because we replaced my jet piece?” Elise asked eagerly.
“Yes, I do. When you removed the means by which Lady Melina had laid her hold on you, that hold was broken.”
“Then all I need to do,” Sapphire said, her disbelief evi-dent, “is take off my coronet?”
“I fear not,” Hazel said sadly. “Lady Melina's control over you is of much greater duration and her curse laid upon you directly. For you to break her hold, not only must you re-move the sapphire from your brow, you must destroy it.”
There was a long silence. When Sapphire spoke her voice was no longer that of the confident, even arrogant, warrior and noblewoman but of a very young girl.
“I can't!” she wailed.
“Then you are doomed to remain bound.”
“Wait!” Elise said. “Sapphire was talking to me before with no trouble. Maybe the hold is already broken.”
“No,” Hazel said sadly. “Think back. She told you about very general things. The closest she came to anything sensitive was when she mentioned her panic whenever die sapphire was removed—she said nothing that couldn't be dismissed as superstition. I'd guess Sapphire knows her own Umits very well.”
“I do,” the other admitted dully. “Perfectly.”
Firekeeper, who had hovered at the edge of the firelight, her back to them so as not to diminish her night vision, spoke for the first time.
“So we are ended before we begin?”
“No,” Sapphire replied with sudden stubborn decisiveness, “I won't let myself be.”
Her hands rose to the elegant band about her brow, rose, fell, and rose again. Elise could see them shaking as Sapphire fumbled for a catch.
“It's beneath the stone setting,” Sapphire said, her voice a weak semblance of normalcy. “Nice bit of design, really.”
Hazel strained the mixture in the pottery cup and offered it to Sapphire. “It will calm you. I suspect it's similar to what your mother gave you.”
“Then I don't want it!” Sapphire snarled.
With a violent tug she snapped the strap. Elise heard a slight metallic ping as the silver wire parted.
The torn strip dangling from her hand, Sapphire asked, “And now?”
“And now,” Hazel replied, “I'm afraid you're going to need to crash or break the stone. That won't be easy. Sapphires are quite hard, not as hard as diamonds, but almost.”
“Gem cutters manage,” Sapphire said, the words sounding torn from her. Unable to speak further, she put out her free hand in a mute request for tools.
Hazel said apologetically, “I couldn't get a gem cutter's wheel in the middle of the night, but I do have a hammer with a steel head. We can use a large river cobble for an anvil.”
Firekeeper brought the latter, pausing to put her hand on Sapphire's shoulder. Even this slight delay had started Sapphire trembling again, but she stiffened at Firekeeper's touch.
Elise wondered if Sapphire could not bear pity—or what she perceived as pity—from a potential rival. For whatever reason, Sapphire steadied enough to kneel and place the dam-aged headpiece flat across the cobble, the blue gem in its center glittering like a single eye in the lantern light.
Raising the hammer, Sapphire swung with all the power of muscles trained to use of sword and shield. A thin cry slipped out between teeth locked in a death's-head grimace. The bright steel arced down, a blur
rather than a solid thing. There was the sound of metal hitting rock, a sharp stink as of sulphur, a crack…
Elise stared in disbelief. Sapphire's blow had stmck the cobble, not the sapphire, splitting the rounded stone in two. Bending forward, her long black hair masking her face, the hammer clutched in both hands, Sapphire was whimpering hysterically:
“I can't, I can't, I can't… It will kill me if I do. My soul … I can't.” The repetitious rhythm of her chant was more terrifying than any scream could be.
“You must!” Elise pleaded, hearing her own voice shrill despite her efforts to keep it level. “You must!”
“I can't!” Sapphire snapped, sitting straight in a sudden motion like an arrow shot from a bow. “I can't…”
And her voice sank again.
In the shocked silence, Firekeeper's return with a new cobble seemed as prosaic as a shopkeeper polishing counters on a slow day. She crouched beside Sapphire, removed the split cobble, and placed the headpiece in the new cobble's center.
“I think,” the wolf-woman commented sardonically, “that you are like the Whiner in my pack. She is great hunter except when anyone bigger face her. She even afraid of me!”
Firekeeper's laughter made plain howridiculousshe found the thought of any wolf fearing a naked, clawless, fangless creature like herself.
“I'm not afraid of you!” Sapphire gasped, her gaze still downcast, safe within the sheltering tent of her hair.
“I not say you are, but your mother, she the great One of your pack and never will her pups rise to challenge her. Never even will they disperse to found their own packs. You are poor, sad creatures: can't piss, can't eat, can't breed without mama's word.”
That “mama” was said with a rich sneer to Firekeeper's voice, a sneer that Elise noted did not reach her face. Sapphire only heard the mockery and some faint shred of pride in her responded.
Raising her head, she glared at Firekeeper. “You dare! I am a Shield and grandniece to a king.”
“You are a weak-spined, mewUng pup,” Firefceeper said savagely. “You dine only on the regurgitated pap from your mother's gut. You crouch so in her shade that you fear a blue rock! A rock!”
She laughed, a cmel sound from deep in her belly, and from the shadows Blind Seer sniggered agreement.
“I'll break your head!” Sapphire shouted, leaping to her feet and swinging the hammer at Firekeeper.
Firekeeper blocked her, hand grasping the descending forearm and squeezing, forcing the infuriated woman to face the glimmering blue eye of the sapphire on the rock.
“A pup,” Firekeeper said steadily, “attacks a butterfly to show how big he is. So you attack me naked and unarmed as I am—you with steel death in your hands—because you are a pup. If you are so terrible, smash that blue stone.”
“I thought you said,” Sapphire retorted, twisting but unable to get free, “that it was just a stone.”
“Then why,” came the reasonable voice, just showing the edge of the effort Firekeeper was exerting to hold the larger woman in place, “don't you break it?”
She let go then and Sapphire's own twisting spun her to the ground in front of the makeshift altar with its mute sacrificial victim across it. With one hand Sapphire caressed the faceted surface as if it were the face of a lover, perhaps recalUng the years during which it had adorned her brow, the fairest gem of its type in all the land.
Then Sapphire grasped the hammer with two hands, raised it above her head, and brought the steel head down with the force not only of her arms, but of the entire weight of her body behind it.
Elise surged to her feet, unable to look away, unable to remain still, knowing in her heart that if Sapphire missed this time, if the gem refused to break, if she lost courage at the last moment, that there would never be another attempt, that this was the last chance and if it failed everything—even the steaUng of Lady MeUna's necklace—would have been for nothing.
When the hammer rose, a fine blue dust littered with tiny fragments of gemstone sparkled on the river rock, brighter even than the tears that glittered in Sapphire Shield's eyes. But Sapphire did not weep, only said:
“I guess I'd better have die matching stonefromMother's necklace. We'd better do a thorough job of this.”
Elise wrenched the pendant holding the sapphire from the band. Not bothering to remove the gemstone from the silver that framed it, Sapphire smashed it, her first blow breaking the diamond-shaped stone, her second thoroughly flattening the silver and breaking the gem to pieces.
Rising to her feet a bit unsteadily, Sapphire looked at Firekeeper. “Still think me a pup?”
“I think you a great woman,” came the reply, and Fire-keeper bowed low. Beside her the enormous grey wolf bowed as well.
Hazel said then, “Do we destroy the rest of the necklace here and now, or should we preserve it for the others?”
“I think,” Sapphire said, “that it must be preserved as proof that this can be done. It's going to be hard enough to convince my brother and sisters as it is.”
“And you,” Hazel asked, “how do you feel?”
“Like I've jumped off a cliff only to be caught by water at the bottom and nearly drowned. My knees are shaking, my head is throbbing, and,” Sapphire grinned, “my side has stopped hurting. I don't think I've felt better in a long, long time.”
“How do you plan to hide from Lady Melina what you've done?” Elise hardly recognized her own voice when she spoke.
“I don't. It's time Mother realized that her control of me is over and here in this camp with King Tedric near at hand she should moderate her response to what she will see as my rebellion.”
“Do you plan to tell her what… what we… what you … suspect?”
Sapphire shook her head. “Not at all. There's no need. I think I'll just tell Mother that I got tired of her taste in jewelry.”
The laughter that followed this announcement was too loud, too ragged to be cheerful, but it held a bravado more warming than the bright yellow-orange flames of the camp-fire.
XXIV
PRINCE NEWELL SHIELD NOTED his sister Melina's outrage when Sapphire stopped wearing the gem-studded headpiece that had been hers since she was small, and thought Melina's reaction dispropor”T tionate.
Certainly a young woman of twenty-three—one who had been her mother's cat's-paw for her entire life—should be expected to rebel at some point. Melina should be grateful that Sapphire had chosen to discard a piece of jewelry rather than, say, one of the numerous titled young men MeUna had betrothed to her, only to break the engagement when one more advantageous seemed possible.
He told Melina as much and her rage was so great that he deemed a retreat advisable. Calling for Rook to saddle the red roan, Newell went out to look for signs of war.
Things seemed promising. From Keen, who was recovering from his cut face hidden in a tavem in Good Crossing, Newell had learned that Bright Bay's troops were nervous and demoralized, trusting no one, not even—as the five days following the first battle with Stonehold produced no sign of Queen Gustin or her young husband, King Harwill—their own monarchs.
Allister Seagleam's role as commander in chief provided the troops no particular comfort. The duke had no great reputation as a warrior on land or at sea—although he had done nothing of which to be ashamed, either. Moreover, they resented him somewhat. The Stalwarts had marched out on a mission that should have been mostly play, to escort the Pledge Child to his uncle. Never had they dreamed that they might need to fight and, though Duke Allister was not responsible for the current situation, they blamed him nonetheless.
Additionally, knowing too much about a strong opponent was never a good thing for any army—and Bright Bay's Stalwarts of the Golden Sunburst knew far too much about Stonehold's Rocky Band. After all, until a slight eight days before, Stonehold's troops had been not only comrades under the same banner, but also the source of most of Bright Bay's noncommissioned officers: the sergeants and corporals who made things work when
ideaUstic officers gave impossible commands.
The Stalwarts must feel, Newell thought, cupping his hand around his pipe and striving to light it despite a freshening wind from the north, rather like children who suddenly found themselves challenging their teachers. He liked the image and played with it as he gave up on the pipe and cantered Serenity along a road mnning west then turning south along the edge of the rough foothills west of Good Crossing.
If Stonehold was bringing in reinforcements, they might be visible from this general direction. Stonehold's border with Bright Bay was the Fox River, a river as broad and difficult to span as the Barren itself. Indeed both the Fox and the Barren had their source in Rimed Lake, high in the mountains to the west. The same volcano whose emption long ago had split Rimed Lake into two fat lobes had spilled molten rock down its eastern side, creating the Barren Lands, a place where nothing grew but those determined plants that could subsist on dirt caught within crevices in the basalt.
Even at the foot of the flow, where Newell now slowed Serenity to a more cautious pace as the road roughened, the volcano's influence could be seen, but here trees had man-aged a roothold and a straggling forest had grown up. He felt secure continuing south under the cover of the trees, knowing that Hawk Haven had posted scouts throughout this area.
Moreover, the day was pleasant. Here, away from the river's immediate influence, Newell noted a kiss of autumn in the air. Good campaigning weather, but the harvest would beripening,making foraging easier for both sides.
He was thinking about how he would handle an extended campaign through this area when aflickerof motion caught his eye. Drawing Serenity up, Newell was poised either for flight or to take cover when a rather grubby woman stepped from cover. She wore the green uniform of the scouts, her arm banded in Kite blue with a chestnut staUion embroidered upon it.
Newell didn't recognize her, but she clearly knew him.
“Prince Newell,” she said, her voice was rusty, as if she hadn't spoken for hours. “Lam Joy Spinner, scout under the command of Earle Kite, posted to this point. May I ask your business here?”
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