by Ellyn, Court
“The hell we will,” Allaran exclaimed. Before Alovi could calm her brother, he drew his sword and spurred his mount to full gallop.
The wood came alive. Men sprang from the foliage, armed with short sword and crossbow. La’od dodged Allaran’s charge and cried for his guard to hold their attack, but too late. Bolts whistled past. Horses and men screamed. The Wyramor guard tried to whisk the carriage away, but they were falling quickly. Alovi and Etivva reached for one another and huddled low on the floorboard. The driver slapped furiously with the reins. The carriage lunged forward, but a bolt dropped one of the horses. The other kept running and suddenly the carriage was skidding around the pivot of the dead horse. Encountering the ditch, the carriage rolled. Alovi landed in the underbrush. Etivva—where was Etivva? A few feet away, the driver stared past her, his head tilted at an impossible angle. Alovi leapt to her feet, but someone shoved her back down into the underbrush. “Lie still,” Etivva said and covered them under the spread of her cloak.
Peering from the woolen folds, Alovi counted only three Wyramor guards to nine Fierans. A bolt caught Allaran in the shoulder-blade. He toppled from the saddle and landed senseless on the roadway. The three guards rushed to surround him and managed to put up an admirable defense until a sword took down one, a bolt another, and the Minister’s dagger of office the last.
The road grew silent but for the gales roaring in the treetops.
Muddy brown boots approached the woolen cloak from several sides. Alovi paid them no heed. She watched her brother for the slightest hint of life, willing him to get up. Etivva scrambled to her feet and threw back her hood, revealing her shaved head. The Fierans stopped mid-step. “You have broken trust with your Leanian hosts,” she told them. “And you have broken the law of Dwinóvia by attacking one of the Shaddra’hin. Ana-Forah will show you little mercy if you refuse to allow us to continue in peace.”
Eight of the Fierans looked uneasy, but La’od the Minister drew closer, an oily smile on his narrow face. “We most humbly apologize, Revered One, to both you and the Mother-Father. But your party initiated the attack.” He glanced at Allaran’s body. “Even after our friendly invitation. Most savage.”
Alovi clambered to her feet and drove her hand across the Fieran’s face. “You’re the savage here, you pirate.”
La’od grappled for Alovi’s wrists.
Etivva tried to intercept, but a guardsman seized her arms from behind. “You are bound by law to let us pass!” she declared, black eyes wrathful.
La’od’s smile slid off his face. “And you, shaddra, are bound by an oath of chastity, are you not? If that vow is broken, you are nothing, correct?”
The guard holding Etivva chuckled low in his throat, and La’od said to him with a wave of his hand, “Don’t take too long.”
Alovi let out a wild shriek and flailed against the Minister. Etivva uttered not a sound. The guard lifted her by her arms and whisked her away into the shadows of the wood. Alovi sank to the ground in a torrent of outraged tears, and one of her wrists came free of La’od’s grasp. By some grace of Ana, her fingers fell across the slender shaft of a misfired bolt. She clenched it to her side just as La’od hauled her to her feet and led her into the trees. “No, don’t!” she screamed.
“Don’t fret, lovely lady,” he consoled. “No harm will come to you. But you should’ve left your religious whore at home. She’s an unnecessary burden. But for your sake, we will suffer her to come along.”
Alovi tugged against his grasp. The bolt in her hand itched to taste flesh, but if Alovi used it on La’od now, the Fierans might kill Etivva. She twisted free, but La’od’s fingers hooked the neckline of her dress and brought her to heel. “Damn it, woman!” he shouted and called for a guardsman. “We shall have to bind her after all. I never expected a wildcat. I suppose the War Commander needs a regular challenge.”
“You’ve a sordid mind,” Alovi cried, “and you would provide no challenge for him at all.”
La’od ordered the guard, “Cut the reins from one of the dead horses and bind her wrists.” Alovi stuffed the bolt into a cloak pocket, and when the guard returned, she extended her arms without struggle.
As the guard finished his artful knot-work, a round of laughter lifted on the wind. The favored guardsman shoved Etivva back onto the road. His comrades grabbed at their crotches and made every uncouth proposal they could think of, then laughed some more. Alovi craned her neck around the trees and saw a face as unruffled and proud as before. Etivva walked stiffly, however, and raised her eyes toward the blackening clouds. Her lips moved with a silent chant.
At sight of the prayer on the shaddra’s lips, the mocking laughter withered. The guards looked at one another, fear emasculating them. One said to his neighbor, “She’s cursing us, sure as the sunrise.”
“Stop cowering, fool,” La’od spat, “and bind her as well. The rest of you, clean up all traces of this needless massacre.” He had the ladies put atop horses vacated by the dead, then led his party into the King’s Wood. Merely a mile ahead, the Crown’s Inn occupied a bald hilltop on the west side of the road. The Fierans rode deep into the trees on the eastern side, hoping to bypass the Inn without being seen. Once out of the Wood, they would strike out across open pasture for the port where their boat waited.
Maneuvering through the trees in the dark was difficult enough, but when the rumbling clouds unleashed a fury of rain, neither horse nor man could see more than a few feet ahead. “We’ll have to stop here and wait it out,” La’od called to his men. Alovi and Etivva were lifted from their mounts and deposited beneath a broad-leafed andyr, which did nothing but converge small drops into larger, heavier ones. The ladies hunkered low inside their cloaks; the guards erected a lean-to out of limbs and the collected green cloaks of their dead comrades, then ushered the ladies inside.
Throat tight around a sob, Alovi muttered to Etivva, “I’m so sorry.”
Etivva lifted her chin. “It meant nothing. It accomplished nothing. These men are fools. They think they have the power to break my vow for me. And that creature, that lamentable creature, he … strange, I had no trouble looking him in the eye. I told myself to lie perfectly still and look him in the eye. Then I noticed he was more scared than I ever was. It was not like that at all, the first time.
“First time?”
“It had been done to me before.”
Alovi pressed her fingers to her lips. “Oh, Etivva …”
“When I was eleven years old, my father insulted a man, and that man avenged himself by attacking my father’s most prized possession. If his daughter could be proven a whore, he could expect nothing for me upon my marriage—if another man would have me at all. But my brothers found the man with me and killed him. And because he could not tell, neither did we. My shame could be endured then, it can be endured now. We should be more concerned for your injuries.”
For a long while, Alovi hadn’t noticed the pain, but when the carriage rolled, she’d landed hard on her right side. The underbrush had clawed her cheekbone and torn a sleeve loose; the flesh of her arm was bruised and bloody, and her wrist throbbed. Though it swelled, she could move it freely.
La’od tapped on the cloak-tent with his dagger and peered inside. “Comfortable, ladies?”
“Rot in the Abyss, will you?” Alovi snapped.
In reply, La’od swept his dagger, slicing Etivva across the ankle. “Any resistance you offer, my dear lady of Ilswythe, your shaddra feels the pain. Understand?”
“You’re worse than an animal,” Alovi cried.
La’od poised his blade again.
“Yes, yes, I understand!”
“Very good,” he said, rising. “And no talking, please. You don’t want us to mistake your idle conversation for plans to escape our company.”
Wind and lightning battled overhead. Upon the next thunder crack, Alovi produced the crossbow’s bolt from her pocket and whispered, “Run straight east. If we get separated, wait for me beyond the trees
.”
Next crack of thunder, Etivva protested, “Run into the Gloamheath? Ogres live there.”
“You believe that?”
Next thunder crack: “Kieryn is avedra and speaks to fairies. I will believe anything, my lady.”
“Just do it,” Alovi commanded. “We must go before the rain lessens.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I used to be fast.”
“So did I. And across desert sand.”
The guard who hovered over their tent poked his head into their lean-to. “Disobeying orders, are we?”
Alovi clenched her teeth and rammed the bolt through the man’s eye. He fell away, dead without uttering a sound. Etivva dove for the sword in his fist and grabbed Alovi’s hand. The ladies hitched their skirts and raced into the sodden dark. A guard dove after them, snagging the hem of Etivva’s robe. With a desperate yowl she spun with the sword. The guard’s hand rolled into the wet leaves. His screams pursued them as they raced deeper into the trees.
From somewhere in the dark, La’od cried, “Go after them, you worthless curs!”
The trees thinned and the ground began to descend toward the mire. Tufts of long grass were as hampering as the forest vines, but the ladies hurtled on. The wind from the sea provided a hand at their back, and the rain filled their tracks. The ground soon turned spongy; running became impossible. The squelching bog was quick to claim both of Alovi’s shoes, and Etivva grunted with the pain in her ankle.
“Let us stop,” Alovi suggested, unable to catch her breath.
“No—”
“I must.” She rested on a mound of grass firm enough to keep her from sinking into the bog. Swiping rain and hair from her eyes, she tried to measure how far they’d come. On the high ground, some half mile or more distant, the King’s Wood was a black silhouette against the purple clouds and frequent lightning. She saw neither torch nor lantern in the trees. “I don’t think they’re pursuing.”
“They must know the Gloamheath’s reputation,” Etivva panted. “That of their Shadow Mounds is nearly as frightening.”
“We have to make a plan,” Alovi said. “When the sun comes up, we’ll know where we are. I want to circle round to Wyramor, but I’m afraid the Fierans will be lurking there. We could go north to Dravahyll, the next holding, or we could circle back to Graynor.”
“Graynor,” Etivva said.
“Yes,” Alovi agreed. “We’ll go a little farther into the Heath tonight, then head south in the morning.” Searching the dark for pursuers, she added, “They went to a great deal of trouble to get their hands on us, even … Allaran … only to let us go without a chase.”
“I am afraid we will have other dangers to worry about, my lady.” Etivva wasn’t looking back toward the Wood, but into the darkness ahead of them. “There are worse things in the Gloamheath than a few stray Fierans.”
~~~~
22
About the time Alovi and her brother were preparing for their audience with King Bano’en, Kieryn stumbled from a tangle of trees and followed Laniel Falconeye onto a wide, flagged avenue. Winding east-west through Avidan Wood, the road traced the curving course of the river. So expertly were the flagstones fit together that moss and weed barely found purchase between them. Boughs of trees arched overhead, shaping a swaying tunnel, bright with shafts of sunlight.
The party was able to pick up the pace at last. Kieryn climbed into the saddle and rode in the fore alongside Laniel. Since leaving camp that morning, Kieryn hadn’t acknowledged Zellel’s existence, but he frequently heard the brown mule bawling and Zellel cursing her. Lyrienn was never far away. She complained only once about the path her brother chose and about his cautious pace, which she called tedious. But after one scathing glare from him, she followed in haughty silence.
After traveling the road for several miles, Laniel halted and raised a fist. The low silken chatter of the dranithion hushed. Pulling Diorval up sharply, Kieryn searched the surrounding trees. He hadn’t the stomach to fight another ogre and decided to climb a very tall andyr instead.
The undergrowth on the south side of the road parted, but rather than ogres, another troop of green-marked dranithion emerged into the sunlight. The Elari leading them wore the brow and chin markings of a captain, but where Laniel was golden, this Elari was dark, with hair as black and glossy as polished onyx. Eyes the pale, cold blue of glacier ice scrutinized Laniel’s young guest. If the Elarion of Laniel’s troop had seemed suspicious of Kieryn, the elf barring their path regarded him with blatant disgust, perhaps even malice. His lip curled and he spoke to Laniel in their own tongue. But Laniel stuck to his appeal for courtesy and answered in duínovan: “He is. Her Ladyship expects him by nightfall. I shall be proud to tell her that this young avedra may one day be as adept at ogre-hunting as Zellel.”
Kieryn lifted his chin, trying to feel adept, as the icy glare slid over him.
“The thrushes warned us of your excitement this morning,” the dark elf said to Laniel. “Ana-Forah watches over you, and we won’t keep you longer. Forgive us if we do not attend the audience.”
“I’m sure Aerdria will understand. Fully.”
The dark elf stepped aside. “We’ll watch your back, Brannië.”
Laniel swept forward a hand and his troop resumed their journey. When Kieryn turned in the saddle, the dark elf and his troop had vanished back into the trees.
“That was Iryan Wingfleet,” Laniel told him. “Captain of the Dranithion Uthiel, Guardians of the Southern Trees. A faster runner you’ll never find, but he doesn’t laugh enough. Almost as grave as Zellel.”
Close behind, Zellel harrumphed. “And you laugh too much for the lot of us, Falconeye.”
Happy to prove the old man’s point, Laniel shrugged and chuckled.
Late in the afternoon, Kieryn felt a change ripple through the troop. The volume of their voices increased. A few Elarion began divesting themselves of weapons. If the Elaran city was near, Kieryn saw neither wall nor tower.
Zellel took note of his puzzlement and explained, “The bath. Elarion who’ve seen battle must cleanse themselves before they enter the gates.”
The dranithion took a wide earthen path toward the river, and the avedrin dismounted. “Us, too?” Kieryn asked.
Laniel answered him, “You may if you wish. The waters have been blessed. They cleanse us of more than sweat and blood. Upstream is the Forathad Le’an. That’s for us. Downstream is the Thyrra’ad Le’an, for the women.”
They reached a fork in the path, and Nyria led her female companions down the right-hand arm.
“The baths are named for the moons?” Kieryn observed.
“When we came to this land,” Laniel said, “we came under a banner of two moons. They have always held significance for us, it seems, but no one knows why. Perhaps, one day you will tell us.” He pinned Kieryn with a curious stare. Was he hoping for a premonition? Kieryn hated to tell the Elari that he would be sadly disappointed, for who was Kieryn to discover what these creatures had not?
“I, for one,” Lyrienn chimed in, “have been too long away from the comforts of home and welcome the long soak. I fear I’ve begun to stink like a common tree walker.” She took off down the women’s path, sniffing at her blue silk blouse.
Zellel threw back his head and crowed.
Laniel frowned after his sister. “Did she just insult me?”
“You should bring her along more often, tree walker,” Zellel said. “She would win our little war for me.”
“Common tree walker,” Laniel pouted, taking the left-hand path. “I don’t stink. It’s the ogres that stink. It’s not my fault …”
Forathad Le’an, the waters of Forath, trickled from a red sandstone basin into a circular bath twenty feet in diameter and five feet deep. Thick walls separated the bath from the river that here flowed lazily in a wide, deep channel. Just as fairies kept Zellel’s library free of dust and cobwebs, water sprites were employed to keep leaves, insects, and algae from c
louding the blessed waters. Merely six inches tall, with skin as delicate and transparent as soap bubbles, the sprites scattered as the Elarion neared. Stripped down to white breechclouts, the elves entered the water with chants on their lips.
“Ana, yora h’uranië,” Laniel said.
“Yora h’uranië,” the dranithion echoed, pouring handfuls of water over their heads.
“Forah, yora yanorië.”
“Yora yanorië.”
“Dorréahad arghel uhv olahn.”
“Tha h’uhv ola.”
“And upon you,” Zellel said with them. Only then did he join them in the pool. Kieryn followed timidly, until he saw that the dranithion relaxed after the formality of their prayer. The sprites brought them river sponges to scrub away the ogres’ taint, then labored to lift the discarded clothes as if they weighed a hundred stone and laid them across low branches where sun and breeze freshened them. A dozen sprites together failed to lift the avedrin’s robes, so they left them lying on a flat boulder near the riverbank.
“Never offend a sprite,” Zellel warned, scrubbing with a sponge until his skin turned red. “Else you’ll find your pants atop the tallest tree. Isn’t that so, Amyrith?”
Seated across the pool, one of the troop flushed scarlet; his comrades laughed and proceeded to elaborate upon the tale. Kieryn was careful not to laugh too loudly. By now the troop had become accustomed to his presence, but he wasn’t sure they had warmed up to him. They still preferred to talk around him instead of to him. They might’ve snubbed Zellel in the same way if he didn’t impose himself on them.
To dry off, the Elarion found patches of sun where their pearlescent skin shimmered gold or pale silver. Kieryn moved aside the velvet robes and stretched out on the flat boulder. The warm sun and ageless glide of the river soon lulled him to sleep. But Laniel didn’t permit a lengthy delay to the end of their journey. A clap of his hands roused the dranithion and startled Kieryn from vague dreams. He looked around for his clothes, but both robes were gone. In a panic, he searched the high branches. The leaves were thick and might’ve hidden a hundred robes. “Zellel,” he cried, “the sprites!”