by Jenna Rhodes
He didn’t want to leave Lariel, but knew he could be better used elsewhere. As he started out the door, the healer caught him with a gentle hand on his elbow.
“She won’t die,” Sarota told him. “And she’s no longer bleeding out, but she has lost a lot of blood. There may be a cost for this, Lord Bistane, one that she cannot pay.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know if we’ll have our queen back when she awakens. Severe blood loss does affect the mind. I cannot tell you if the Kobrir poison will protect her from that, one way or the other. This has been unprecedented, and there’s no way of knowing until the day she wakes.”
He removed her hand carefully. “You won’t be blamed.”
“I know. I am just trying to prepare you.”
Bistane nodded. “Consider us all prepared and take care of her as well as you’re able.”
“Always, my lord. As Lara has always done for us.”
He felt a coldness arc through him as he left the rooms. When the queen awoke, if she awoke, what would they both face?
The Kobrir would find him acquiescing no longer. He’d waited long enough for them to come and heal Lara. They had a duty to fulfill, a promise, and he would hold them to it if he had to wage a vendetta on them wherever he could find them. They would do well to remember that he was a Warlord, and he would not hesitate to remind them. He had men who could dig them out of their holes to carry a message to those who held rank among them. The Warrior Queen must not be left to sleep any longer. Her time was now!
And he had a duty to tell what had happened, a duty to protect her legacy which the ild Fallyn would assassinate as surely as they tried to murder her person. A slow smile crept into one corner of his mouth. He knew one man who could spread the truth (and a tale or two) better and faster than any other.
He called for a scribe to bring ink and fresh paper, and a rider to make preparations for a hard journey to Calcort.
Chapter
Twelve
“NEWS! News from the high court of Larandaril! Reports and intelligences from our own Tolby Farbranch! Today! Now at th’ Bucking Bird!” A runner streaked down the dirt runs of Calcort, a Kernan street boy by the looks of him with his tousled brown hair, flyers in his upheld hand, bare feet pounding the thoroughfare. His cries stopped strollers on the walkways and carts on the main road. As people looked after him, he tossed papers into his wake where passersby caught them up, intrigued by his cries: “Pints and cider half price! Storytelling by Tolby Farbranch at the Bucking Bird pub!”
The curious and the customers headed to the pub in question, joining a thirsty throng already packing it full. They shoved past one another: tall, golden-skinned Galdarkans and even taller Vaelinars, Kernan traders and scholars, and the barely chest-high Dwellers who grumbled until they were let to the front where they could see their own cider maker and vintner hoisting himself up to sit on a tabletop.
With sharp elbows and hobnail shoes, patrons shoved and stomped their way inside, making room where there was little enough to be had. Their sleeves and skirt hems held the fragrant odors of whatever work they’d been at: potion making, tanning, smelting, cooking, stabling, printing, weaving, matchstick making, and whatever other jobs took place throughout the busy quarters of the city. Kernan and Dweller, with a golden-skinned Galdarkan or three, grabbed whatever mugs they had tied to their belts or could wheedle away from the pub owner and settled back with their libations, intently watching the Dweller who sat on the countertop end, legs crossed, tamping down his pipe. He had a few years on him, sun-seamed into his face and hands, his hair gone salt-and-pepper, but his physique stayed Dweller-strong and steady, and not a man in that pub thought he could best Tolby Farbranch in a fight, fair or otherwise. It was rumored he’d been a famed caravan guard in his younger days.
They muttered among themselves: “Is she dead?”
“Na, I heard she still but sleeps!”
“Who cares about a pointy-eared queen, I want to know if they’ve found and hung that king of assassins yet!”
A Kernan pulled at his vest adorned with gold buttons even as he muttered, “I’ve got provisions contracts. I want to know what’s going on with the Vaelinar roads and Ways. They’re unstable lately, they are, and dangerous, but what roads have I got to use?”
To all of which someone at the back growled, “He’ll know, he’ll know! And if you quit yer bellyaching for a minit, he’ll be telling us!”
Tolby took his time getting his pipe out of his jacket pocket, and then a pouch of toback, packing and tamping it down carefully before lighting it with a certain amount of deliberation as the Bucking Bird filled to its capacity and spilled out onto the streets. Its doors and windows flung open wide so that all within and nearby could see and hear, somewhat. He drew on his pipe, teeth clamping down on the stem, and then exhaled deeply. He looked across the pub to a far wall where a brace of Vaelinar stood, apparently at ease, but their strong, slender-fingered hands never strayed far from their weapons’ belts. They’d come from their watch at his farmhouse to the far end of the quarter, where he and his family had taken a vineyard and made it thrive and ran a grand cider mill in addition to the winery. The Vaelinar stood at the queen’s orders to guard his daughter Nutmeg and her daughter, the heir to Larandaril, for all that she was scarcely two years old. He wasn’t much concerned about the feelings his words might ruffle; he couldn’t be.
His listeners hadn’t seen much of Tolby’s brood in the last three seasons, for Nutmeg had taken up residence at the queen’s domain, and he’d just brought her home not too many weeks ago with her daughter, nanny, and the nanny’s own half-breed toddler. That meant gossip and news to them, for which they hungered as a feral predator wanted fresh meat. Nutmeg’s child held a claim to the Warrior Queen’s throne, being the only child of her brother Jeredon Eladar, though not legitimate, and Bistane had wanted Merri raised close to Lariel and her kingdom. The Warlord held reign over two birthrights, his to the north and Lariel’s, while he waited for the queen to awaken. Tolby had developed a dislike for the Returnists who squatted at the edge of the battlefield ruins, and close to the rip, and often gave honor to the ild Fallyn and not the House of Anderieon where they perched like birds of carrion. Bistane had done what he could without starting a civil war, but Tolby didn’t have to let that sit with him, and he hadn’t. Now he had fresh news that clenched his fists and riled his innards and put a chill to the back of his neck. He smoked to calm himself, thinking on Lily’s words and his daughter and grandchildren.
Blue circles of toback smoke drifted in the tavern air for a moment. He sucked in his cheeks and his throat before saying, thoughtfully, “This is the Tale of the Queen who could not die and the River Goddess who vanished.”
“A tale? Not news? The papers promised intelligences. Reports!”
He looked askance at the speaker buried deep in the crowd and nodded. “Oh, ’tis news, surely, for we’ve all lived the facts of it, have we not? So it’s a report, and still it’s a tale because I haven’t had ears in all the shadows and nooks and corners of this thing, and neither have any of the lot of you.”
He took a deep breath. “And I heard someone asking if she had died, and this is the tale of it, for assassins have struck yet again.”
A gasp stilled the room. Tolby paused a moment to look at the two toddlers sitting under a nearby table and his booted feet, the one a sturdy Dweller lass with a heart-shaped face and smile, the other a solemn-expressioned boy of Vaelinar elven looks, crossed with just a touch of Dweller. “That is, if you are all wanting to hear it.”
Merri pushed her mass of curls from her forehead with one hand, peering up at him. A ribbon meant to hold her lustrous amber hair back looked as if it had unwound and perched as if by accident on her head. “Listenin’, Grampy!” She pursed her mouth into a pensive line and tilted her head.
Evar, the lad, crossed his arms
over his chest and scowled. His lips thinned. Tolby raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow, and the two stared each other down for a moment.
“Are ye listening, Evarton?”
The boy held his elder in a stare, not to be backed down. A pile of sticks and twigs rested in front of him, lined up as though he’d been playing soldiers.
“Let the lad be. Give us the tale!” someone shouted from the back of the pub, and thumped his mug on the tabletop.
“Aye, then. Well, that I’ll do.”
Tolby let his words begin to encircle them, as if it were a cloud of pipe smoke in itself, well spoken with authority and deep timbres of honesty within. “First, but it will not be the last of what I have to say, an assassin has struck at Queen Lariel. The cowards who sent him could not wait for her to die in her sleep, or the Gods grant wisely, yet awaken. He came in through a high, unguarded window and his blades found their target. Yet . . .”
And Tolby looked across the room, sweeping it with his tense gaze, stilling his audience. “She lives. She survived this vile deed, as Lord Bistane discovered the assassin at his work and killed him for it. Her body heals from this last treachery. My daughter and heir I had already brought home, here, to be safe. As for why, well, it’s all in the story, isn’t it? Mind you, though, that the assassin struck the house from without, no aid of ladder or rope . . . and that only the blood of the ild Fallyn carry the Talent of levitation. This is not an indictment, though,” and he leaned back to listen as his words were repeated and traded throughout the tavern. The Vaelinars guarding the far wall watched him steadily, as a hound watches for prey to bolt.
He drew on his pipe. “Why? It’s not an easy tale. Most of us have lived through it, and yet know not the whole truth of it, for it concerns the Vaelinar and the mysteries they keep close. The Queen who cannot die is our own of Larandaril, survivor of not one but two great battles with the Raymy and the traitors Daravan and Quendius—” Tolby paused here to lower his pipe and look down upon the children. “Know who they are?”
“’Course,” said Evar while Merri just nodded before sagging onto Evar’s shoulder as if he were nothing more than a pillow for her body grown suddenly sleepy.
A sharp-nosed Dweller woman leaning at the far end of the bar man’s counter sssted through her disapproving lips. “That Daravan, playing at being th’ gentleman for centuries while he waded through our histories, stirring up our fates like a cook with a spoon in her soup kettle.”
“Indeed,” agreed Tolby. He settled back as the pub owner caught his eye. “More to be said, but it’s dry. Everyone served?”
“We’ve a crowd sittin’ outside, Tolby. Give us a chance.” Moments of shuffling and calls for ale or a cider, amid the throwing open of various items so those outside could have a possibility of hearing followed. When all had settled, Tolby looked about and then squared himself.
“For as much as we all here know, this is still a long tale. I will be telling it from my beginning in it, and there are those of you who know the start of it as well, so give me forbearance. Calcort is a crossroads of many, and there are those from the Eastern lands amongst us that do not know what we’ve been through. It might start six, seven years ago, when that drought began to bother all of us with fields or groves, but it stretches a mite farther back than that, when my daughter Nutmeg pulled the girl who would become our daughter Rivergrace off a flimsy raft on the spring-flooding Silverwing.”
“Mummy,” murmured little Merri drowsily and shoved even more snugly into Evar’s body. He put an arm about her, his free hand fiddling with his sticks, arranging and rearranging them.
Tolby smiled down at his grandchild. “Aye, your mum and your aunt, tied forever together by a moment of fate and the Silverwing.”
“It may not seem odd t’ any of you listening that our hearts went out to this orphaned lass and took her in. But it might in that she was clearly Vaelinar, near half-starved, and she had scars from shackles and cuffs on her little arms and legs. That took us aback, it did—who would have the power and mind—the balls, forgive me, ladies, to enslave a Vaelinar so ruthlessly? Doubtless, there were others who tried the escape and did not survive as the child barely did. Who would come after them? Who would hunt this child and those tryin’ to help her?
“We kept her anyway, knowing that the Vaelinars who invaded us centuries ago keep magics and secrets, but the child who came into our lives needed us. Lily, my wife—many of you know her for her great skills as a tailor and weaver—had just lost a wee one of her own, and glad to have another join our family. We were happy and prosperous for a good many years. Though I don’t mind saying that I kept a sharp weather eye out for any who might come looking for an escaped Vaelinar slave.”
Tolby stopped and reached for a mug of cider, his own crush and one of the best not only to his satisfaction but to the tastes of many, waiting at his elbow. A murmur stirred through the throng of listeners, many muttering about the elven Vaelinar, and others declaring the valor and goodness of Queen Lariel. He set his mug down and the room quieted.
“The drought that hit eventually bought Ravers down on the farms and groves along the Silverwing. We dared not stay after several attacks, Worse, they seemed t’ know of Rivergrace. She drew them like nectar draws bees, and we never knew the why of it, just the danger. While the Warrior Queen Lariel and her brother Jeredon played at politics with their ambitious rivals at Fort ild Fallyn, wheels of deception began t’ turn faster and faster. Rivergrace found a suitor, Sevryn Dardanon who was no less than the Hand of Queen Lariel herself, and Nutmeg fell for the dashing Jeredon, her brother. The famed river Andredia turned corrupt, and began to foul the fertile valley of Larandaril. It took a quest to clean the sacred river, to thwart the plan of the rogue weaponmaster Quendius and his Hound Narskap. The two of them summoned demons, they did, and trapped them in weapons. It was one of their forges that spilled foulness into the font of the Andredia.”
Tolby counted on his hand: the sword named Cerat, caging no less than the demon Cerat Souldrinker itself, the war hammer Rakka which cracked stone and split earth when struck and was carried by Abayan Diort, and later the arrows which tore not only life’s blood from those struck down but the soul as well. He leaned back. “And those were the evil that stained that river’s precious, life-giving waters.”
“Led by Queen Lariel, this small group fought their way to the heart, the very font, of the Andredia and the sword met its end and the river was cleansed. Lara gave part of her hand to renew her family’s blood pact with the river and the Gods of Kerith, but hers was not the only sacrifice. Jeredon, of the queen’s own, was struck down on the way and became paralyzed. Rivergrace and Sevryn died.”
He paused as a gasp swept the room.
“Aye, a shock that because all of you know that Rivergrace and Sevryn live yet today. A River Goddess held two souls in her hands and saw a love that death would not stop. She brought them back so that they could finish that love, a second chance that the lot of us is never likely to see again. It was meant to be, though, for when Quendius made his pact with the Raymy to bring them for war on us all, it was only by the grace of the Gods’ mercy that we all live today. So do not doubt that we have Gods or that they watch us from afar.” Tolby grinned about the stem of his pipe, breaking from his solemn tone. “Thanks be that they are afar, or many of us would be in trouble, eh? ’Tis hard to live a saintly life!”
Laughter swept the room, amid the noise of mugs being clunked together in approval. Tolby nodded as he resettled on the countertop.
“The great war came where the Ashenbrook crosses the stony Ravela, two grand rivers embracing the armies of the Vaelinar and the Galdarkan Abayan Diort. Diort had the war hammer Rakka and used it to bring the broken empire of the East back together. He marched mercilessly toward us, the First Home lands of the west, and seemed unstoppable. The armies faced each other. Had Diort come to conquer the west coast as he
had conquered the Eastern lands? No one could be sure. But when the Raymy led by Quendius came pouring out of the mountain tunnels, the two armies merged to fight a bigger and more vicious one.”
“Curse those foul froggy beasts!” called someone from outside the pub, leaning in on his elbows through the windows.
Tolby pointed to him in agreement. “The Raymy cannot be called mortal in any way. Their blood is cold, their skin the warty and ofttimes scaled pelt of a reptile, their hearts misplaced, and their tempers vicious. We know now that the Ravers are their insect scouts, dread fighters on their own, but if they fall in battle, they are nothing less than fodder for the Raymy who drive them.”
“We faced this foe, knowing that victory was not likely, not trapped between the rivers, and no knowing when or if reinforcements might come. Fall came, the leaves dry and sere, the ground cracked from a hard spring and summer, and no rain in sight. We dug in, flanked by the two rivers, and fought.
“’Twas our own stout hearts that saved us, that and Vaelinar magic. Daravan woke his Ferryman brother and the two worked a magic that swept up the Raymy army and took it elsewhere, else when. We knew his magic would falter sooner or later, but any time he gave us at all, we would take to arm ourselves the better.
“The accounting of that war was terrible. Warlord Bistel died on the banks of Ashenbrook, along with many soldiers, men and women. So did Jeredon Eladar, leaving our own Nutmeg with child and alone. Many, many more fell and are mourned with all our hearts to this day, some two years and more later.”
Tolby drew vigorously on his pipe, sending up a fragrant cloud of smoke.
“Talent rides within the Vaelinars. It shows in their eyes of many colors, but it does not always bloom early. It bloomed that day for Rivergrace on the banks of the rivers. She found the way to make the skies rain, and the long drought finally lifted as the blood from the war washed away.”