by Deborah Hale
Though she was grateful for the respite, another part of her felt sick with shame for shrinking from the harsh reality that most Embrians could not escape. Those were not the only contrary feelings and inclinations that warred within Maura every mile they traveled southward.
Since that fateful talk with Langbard, which now seemed so long ago, everything she had seen and experienced urged her to pursue her quest with true fervor. The night Rath had said there was nothing she could do, a small but potent voice inside her had insisted otherwise.
Her destiny was not the burden she had first thought it. Now she saw it as a precious opportunity to do something of which most Embrians despaired—driving out the Han, restoring peace and freedom. Reaching Prum, meeting with the wise woman, Exilda, and finding the map to the Hidden Glade, would be a major step toward that goal.
A step that would take her away from Rath Talward.
Three weeks ago, she would never have guessed how much the prospect of parting from him would dismay her now. How had he come to make such a large place for himself, so deep in her heart, in such a short time? That was a question she could not answer... or dared not.
Perhaps it was only because she had become so dependent upon his help to reach Prum.
“I shall be sorry to bid you goodbye, Rath Talward.” It was all she could do to keep from clutching tighter to his waist as they rode toward Prum in the pouring rain. “I do not know how I would have managed without you. You have been everything Langbard said you would be, and better.”
But if she were to accomplish the task she had been set, she must learn to rely on herself alone.
“Do not slight yourself, lass.” Though he spoke in a hearty tone, Rath’s voice sounded strangely husky. “You have taken your own part... and mine, by times. We do things differently, you and I, but our ways seem to complement well enough.”
“So they do.”
Was it possible she could entreat him to continue as her escort for the rest of her journey? “Where will you go after we reach Prum? What will you do with yourself?”
His shoulders lifted and fell in an expressive shrug. “I have not thought much about it. A man like me does not plan too far ahead. I watch what happens and see if I can turn it to my advantage. Or steer clear if I smell trouble on the wind.”
It did not seem right, somehow, for a man of his abilities to be living from day to day, with no aim beyond survival.
“I might bide the summer in Southmark.” His voice fell to a musing murmur. “Earn an honest coin herding cattle, maybe, or riding guard on the drive to market.”
True, it would be honest work, a positive step up from thieving. Still, Rath Talward as a cattle herder or drive guard seemed a waste to Maura.
He glanced back over his shoulder, water dripping from the raised hood of his cloak. “If I find myself back in Prum for the cattle fair, would I be welcome for a meal in your new home?”
“Of course!” The words had barely left her mouth before Maura remembered the truth. “That is... you would. I do not know a great deal about the man my aunt intends for me. He may not live in Prum at all.”
“How do you feel about wedding a man you have never met?”
That at least Maura could answer truthfully. “A little anxious, if you must know. But I trust he is a good man. And I know Langbard wanted this for me. It will be well.”
“I hope it will.”
They met a few Hanish soldiers on the road that day, and saw others as they passed checkpoints. Fortunately the hundredflower spell proved resistant to the rain.
It was dark by the time they crested a low ridge and saw the lights of Prum, a faint glow off in the mist.
Maura tapped Rath on the shoulder. “It is late. You must stay the night at my aunt’s house, I owe you that at least.”
She hesitated to extend an invitation on behalf of a woman she had never met. Once Exilda understood how much they owed Rath Talward, surely she would not grudge him a night under her roof. If the woman was a friend of Langbard’s she must follow the Giver and the hospitable customs of the Elderways. She would not turn away a weary traveler on a wet night.
“You owe me nothing,” said Rath. “Besides, I have coin enough for an inn.”
Perhaps it would be better if they parted tonight. Maura tried to convince herself. The darkness and the mist would swallow Rath up, as though he had never been. And tomorrow she would waken to a new day and new life, in which he would play no part.
“Which way to your aunt’s house?” Rath asked as they rode into town.
“I cannot tell you, for I have never been here. Langbard did not tell me the way... since he meant to come with me.”
“Luckily Prum is not a very big place.” Rath turned their mount off the main road onto a narrower street. “I will head toward the inn, if we do not meet one of the townsfolk to ask along the way, surely we can get directions there.”
They had not gone far when they overtook a stooped figure, with a bulky bundle slung over her shoulder.
Rath slowed the mare. “Your pardon, Goodame. Can you tell us the way to the house of Dame Exilda?”
Without slowing her pace or even glancing up, the woman grunted, “Who are you to ask, stranger?”
Rath laughed. “You are a woman after my own heart, goodame. You give away nothing until you know where it is going.”
“If you aim to flatter it out of me, save your breath, boy.”
Maura smothered a chuckle. At last Rath had come up against someone as wary as himself.
“I will use my breath,” said Rath, “to tell you why I ask. I have brought Exilda’s niece all the way from Norest for a visit. Since the hour is so late, we would be obliged to you for directions. No doubt Dame Exilda would, too.”
“Rubbish!” snapped the woman. “Everyone in Prum knows Exilda had no living kin.”
Maura felt Rath’s body tense at the woman’s words. “There must be some mistake...”
The woman rounded on them, then. In the faint light of a nearby window, her wrinkled face looked like a grotesque mask. “There is a mistake, sure enough, and you have made it, boy! Asking after she who has been dead a month and bringing a niece I will swear is no kin of hers. Now, be off before I report you to the garrison!”
The person she had come all this way to find was dead?
A pit of seething doubt gaped in Maura’s belly, but she mastered it long enough to call after the woman, “Please, can you at least direct us to wherever Exilda lived before she... died?”
“I could.” The woman’s voice rang with grim satisfaction. “But there is no use you looking for lodgings, there. It burned to the ground the night Exilda died.”
Chapter Fourteen
A TEMPEST CHURNED inside Rath Talward as he thrust Maura through the open doorway, into the cramped little closet of a room tucked under the eaves of Prum’s oldest and smallest inn. He strode in behind her bearing a stubby candle, the flame of which flickered wildly.
“Now, then...” Rath shut and bolted the door behind him. “Out with your story, and make it a good one.”
Ignoring her woeful look, he stooped to light a small fire laid in the hearth, then set the candle on the narrow stone mantel.
“Well...?” He peeled off his wet cloak and hung it on a high peg beside the door. “Have you nothing to say for yourself? Or are you too grieved by the news of your dear aunt’s death to speak?”
“I am grieved.” Maura’s whispered answer trembled in the air. Her face was pale as whey.
As far as Rath was concerned, her pose of distress was only a different kind of weapon, dangerous in its subtlety.
Maura heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. “But not because Exilda was my aunt.”
“What did bring you here, then? Why did you lie to me?”
His anger seemed to strike an answering spark in her, for the line of her mouth tightened and one delicate brow arched. “Who are you to condemn me for one harmless falsehood? The reasons for my coming he
re are nothing to you.”
“Who says they are not?” He needed to move, but the room was so small Rath could do no more than circle Maura while he spoke. “Langbard was killed and his cottage burned on the eve of our departure. Now I hear the woman you came to meet was also killed and her house burnt. Strange chance, that.”
Maura flinched at the stinging sharpness of his tone. “I doubt it was chance. But you knew coming with me would be dangerous. My true reason for coming did not make it any more so.”
Though her words sounded positive, even defiant, her faltering gaze told Rath she did not fully believe what she was telling him.
“As for what right I have to condemn your falsehood,” he growled, “I never claimed to be a model of truth or virtue. Now, tell me why you came to Prum so I can reckon how deep a snare you have lured me into.”
“If this is a trap, then I am the prey, not you.” She nodded toward the door. “Go, if you fear for your safety. I will not stop you.”
Fear for his safety? Was she trying to shame him into staying? He should go. Whatever she might tell him, true or false, would make no difference now. Except to the vexing itch of curiosity within him.
“The truth first,” he demanded. “Or do I not deserve it?”
His question to Maura raised another in Rath’s mind. Was the truth such a valuable commodity that the right to it must be deserved or earned? Until lately, he had not thought so. Then Maura had made him believe otherwise... all the while she had been lying to him.
“If it is a matter of deserving,” said Maura, “then of course you do. I have not forgotten all I owe you for bringing me here, even if things have not turned out as I’d hoped.”
Did she mean to chide him? Perhaps he deserved it. Whatever her reasons for coming to Prum, they did not lessen the help she had given him when he’d needed it.
“Take off that cloak,” he bid her in a gruff mutter, “before you are soaked to the bone.”
Maura glanced down at her cloak, as if she had just remembered it was wet.
“I do not grudge you the truth.” She fumbled with the tie at her neck.
Rath’s fingers tingled with the urge to help her, but he ignored the sensation.
At last she worked the stubborn knot loose. “But I fear you will be like that innkeeper when you told him about stealing Vang’s horse. The lies I told you were far easier to believe than the truth.”
She hung her cloak beside Rath’s, while he settled himself on the edge of the bed. “This man you were supposed to marry—is he real, or was he just an excuse to keep me at bay?”
That was the only part he cared about, Rath admitted to himself, not that Exilda woman or Maura’s reasons for coming to Prum. But he could not decide what answer he wanted to hear.
Slowly Maura turned to face him again. After a moment searching for the right words, she said, “There is a man I am meant for. Though not some match made by an aunt for her niece.”
She inhaled a deep breath. “I came to Prum in search of an ancient map that shows the way to the Secret Glade... of the Waiting King.”
The she fell silent, like the expectant hush after a crash of thunder. She held herself so still, she might have been a statue carved of wood, or stone... or ice. Except her eyes. They roved restlessly over Rath’s face, watching and waiting for his response.
What response, though? Rath’s first urge was to slap the bed and roar with laughter, but Maura had warned him he might. Suddenly it felt vital not to behave as she expected.
“You have wasted your time, then, and mine. There cannot be a map, for there is no Waiting King. He is the biggest lie of all—a story for simple souls who are so starved for a scrap of hope they will swallow anything.”
“I did not expect you would believe.” Maura sighed. “That is why I did not tell you sooner. A part of me still has doubts. Not about the Waiting King... about myself... that I could be his Destined Queen.”
That was the one part of the story Rath might have been tempted to accept. “I have often wondered if the Han did not spread the tale of the Waiting King. To keep Embrians idle, biding their time for deliverance by some great figure of legend, rather than rising up in rebellion themselves!”
For as long as he could recall, the myth of the Waiting King had riled him. Perhaps because Ganny had believed in it with her whole simple, trusting heart. And it had betrayed her faith. If the Waiting King truly existed—if he woke tomorrow and fulfilled every daft prophesy about his return—it would be twenty years too late.
Now Maura had risked her neck, and his, in the cause of that despised fantasy. Rath ached to draw his blade and lash out. At what, though?
“It hardly matters, now.” Maura sank to the floor in front of the hearth and chafed her hands before the fire. “Whether you believe, whether I believe, whether the Waiting King is real or just a story. With Exilda dead and her house gone, there is no map for me to find the Secret Glade. I have barely begun this quest and already I have failed.”
Rath tried to hold on to his anger. Without it, he felt unarmed and vulnerable. Yet the tighter he clutched it to him, the faster it seemed to dissolve. Maura needed him, now, as much as she had needed him back in Vang’s stronghold. More, perhaps, and not just for this one night.
What would she do? Where would she go? Those questions mattered to him far more than he wanted them to.
He knelt beside her in front of the fire. “Lie down and get some rest, why don’t you? Things are bound to look better in the morning.”
Maura cast him a sidelong glance. The ghost of a smile hovered on her lips. “When did you become such a hopeful fellow, Rath Talward?”
He made a droll face. “I did not say they would look much better. But some, surely?”
“Will they?” Maura’s gaze strayed back to the fire’s dancing flames. “With Langbard’s death, I lost my past. Now I have lost my future and my purpose. I have nothing.”
“You still have me.” Rath’s heart had not knocked this hard against his ribs when he’d challenged Vang to fight. “If that is worth anything to you.”
Slowly Maura turned toward him. Slowly she raised her hand to his cheek.
Rath fought the urge to nuzzle into that touch, for fear she would see how he hungered for it.
“Having you still here is worth everything to me. In fairness, though, I cannot ask you to linger. Any claim I had on you lapsed days ago. I only continued to impose upon your generosity for the sake of a worthy cause. Now that cause has miscarried, I must set you at liberty, with my deepest thanks.”
Her hand climbed higher until her fingers played through his hair. “You have sat guard while I slept, too many of the past nights. Tonight, let me do this last small favor for you. I doubt we are in any immediate danger, and I need time and quiet to think.”
Suddenly Rath’s eyelids felt too heavy to lift. He fought an urge to yawn, but lost the fight. Had Maura cast a dreamweed spell without him knowing it? “I reckon I could sleep, at that.”
Enveloped in a weary haze, he rose from the floor to perch on the edge of the bed. Maura pried off his boots, then reached for his waist.
“What are you doing?” he roused himself enough to ask.
“Unbuckling your bladebelt—what do you think?”
Rath was still master enough of his wits not to answer that.
Maura ungirded his blade and his dagger. “I will lay them beside the bed, within easy reach. Though I doubt you will need them.”
She twitched the bed covers down. Then once Rath stretched out, she tugged them back up over him. “Rest well.”
Rath mumbled a vague reply.
It did not take long for sleep to overcome him, but in that short time he mulled over what Maura had said. She was alone now, with nothing and no one. He recalled that feeling with bitter clarity. Many years had passed since it had first befallen him. It had persisted until a short while ago, when Maura Woodbury found her way into his life.
If they parted co
mpany tomorrow, Rath sensed he would be every bit as bereft as she.
In some strange way Maura could not begin to fathom, the soft, sonorous buzz of Rath’s breathing comforted her through the long, bleak hours of that night.
What now? Over and over the question tumbled in her thoughts until it made her quite dizzy, but never coming closer to an answer.
Should she make her way back to Windleford? To Sorsha and Newlyn—the only people who might offer her a home she would be tempted to accept?
Someday, perhaps. But when she thought of Hoghill Farm, Maura remembered the menacing shadow under which she and Rath had fled. After all that had happened in the meantime, that night seemed long ago, but it had not been. If she returned to Windleford too soon, she might place her friends in danger.
Could she stay here in Prum? Work for her keep? Her heart quailed at the prospect of trying to make a place for herself so far from everyone and everything she had ever known. Besides, danger might lurk here, too, if the same forces that had destroyed Langbard had also slain Exilda.
What choices did that leave her? Continue her journey in search of a safe haven? North to Tarsh, or the wilds of the Hitherland? Search for a ship willing to sail the dangerous passage to the Vestan Islands?
For all her uncertainty about the future dismayed her, Maura was forced to confront a secret shame. Part of her was relieved to be spared the burden of her quest. What would Langbard think of that, if he knew?
Langbard...? Giver...? Anyone...? What am I to do?
No fond, exasperated voice came to her from the afterworld, only the muted crackle of the dying fire and the unlikely reassurance of Rath’s steady breathing. No sense of calm certainty enveloped her, as it had in Vang’s dungeon and when she had told the old man that she was the Destined Queen.
Could Rath be right about the Waiting King? Was he, at best, a fantasy, and at worst, a lie? To accept that would free her of responsibility.
How tempting she found that notion.
But she had made a promise, of sorts, to that old man on the road... and to Sorsha... and to Langbard.