0857664360

by Susan Murray

  Drew was dozing on a daybed but stirred when they entered the room at the back of the house.

  “You have visitors, Drew.” Jervin’s tone was surprisingly soft. “They must leave in the morning, and wished to reassure themselves you were recovering.”

  Drew was propped up on pillows, a clean dressing over his wounded shoulder. He smiled as he recognised Alwenna and Weaver. Already he looked much improved. Jervin reminded them the healer had stressed the importance of rest, then he withdrew, claiming urgent paperwork to do for his business.

  “I couldn’t leave without thanking you for coming to my rescue. If I can ever help you in return, you must call on me.” As Alwenna spoke she realised she had no idea where or how she might be found in future.

  “You must leave so soon?” There was disappointment in Drew’s voice.

  Alwenna glanced at Weaver. “We have an early start and a long ride ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “Of course.” Drew nodded.

  “We wouldn’t leave you if we weren’t convinced you were in good hands.” Alwenna offered.

  “The very best hands.” Drew sat up, wincing as his wound tugged. “Jervin’s an excellent fellow. If he seems a little distant, it’s only because he was worried about me.”

  They chatted for a few minutes, until Drew began yawning, then they took their leave. They were almost at the door when Drew stopped them.

  “Wait – I almost forgot. There’s something I must give you.”

  Alwenna and Weaver exchanged puzzled looks.

  “I found it in the ruins.” He gestured to the court cupboard at the side of his room. “It’s in the top, left-hand side. It’s important. You should have it, my lady.”

  Weaver crossed over and opened the door. He lifted out a cloth-wrapped bundle.

  “Yes, that’s it. I think… it’s not intended for my hand.”

  Weaver closed the door and returned to the bedside, partially unwrapping the bundle to reveal the hilt of the ornate dagger.

  “I found it when we were clearing fallen stone – I turned aside to lift a particular stone. I had to. And this was underneath.”

  Weaver raised an eyebrow. “Why think it’s not for you? You found it.”

  “I can’t keep it. The visions I had in my fever – the Lady Alwenna will need it.” Drew’s fingers plucked at his bedcover, straightening and smoothing it. “I know it’s not for me.”

  Weaver glanced at Alwenna.

  “I don’t want it.” She recalled the flash of the gemstones as Garrad plunged the blade into his throat. “It’s ill-starred.”

  “You must take it, my lady. It’ll not serve me. But one day it will serve you.” Drew’s voice was oddly modulated.

  Weaver examined the dagger. “Visions, you say?”

  Alwenna had expected him to voice scorn at the very suggestion the knife had some predestined properties. Now it was out in the open she couldn’t draw her eyes away from it. There were dark stains in the runes engraved on the blade, presumably remnants of Garrad’s blood. But the gemstones remained lifeless as Weaver turned it over in his hands.

  Drew shook his head. “It was all confusion. Shouting, and fire. The Lady Alwenna took up the blade – I saw it in her hand. I know it is hers. She needed it. To defend… her… child?” Drew looked from one to the other.

  Child? She’d never told him. Unless Weaver had? From the look Weaver sent her way he was asking himself much the same question of her.

  Weaver returned to studying the blade. “It’s a fine piece of craftsmanship. You could sell it for a pretty sum.”

  Drew shook his head. “I told you. It’s not mine to keep or to sell.”

  “Then we’ll take it with us.” Weaver flipped the cloth over the blade and wrapped it up. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, Drew.”

  Drew sank back on his pillows. “I won’t, I swear.”

  “Weaver, is it wise?” Had he listened to nothing of what she’d told him by the river?

  “The Goddess will watch over you, my lady.” Drew smiled. “I’m sure of it.”

  Weaver handed the bundle to Alwenna.

  She couldn’t refuse it, not in front of Drew, not when he so clearly believed she needed it. She took hold of it as gingerly as if it might shatter in her hands. Nothing happened and she felt suddenly foolish. A blade was just a blade.

  “Thank you, Drew. I remain in your debt.”

  They took their leave then. The anteroom was empty and Alwenna paused there. “Did you tell him? About… this?” She set her hand upon her lower abdomen.

  “No. I never would.” Weaver hesitated. “You didn’t?”

  Alwenna shook her head. “No. Drew’s sight is perhaps stronger than Gwydion believed.” Were they right to leave Drew behind here? But what alternative did they have? He wished to stay. “Jervin is not at all keen to have us here, is he?”

  “I’ve known warmer welcomes.”

  “But we’re safe enough here, surely?”

  “I’ve no wish to be beholden to his hospitality a moment longer than necessary.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “He should show you more respect, my lady.”

  The candle in the wall sconce had gone out, and the only light in the antechamber came from fading embers in the small hearth. The darkness pressed about Alwenna. And waiting for her in the darkness were the voices. There was just enough light to see Weaver move over to the door. Any second now he’d open it and step through it to rejoin the others.

  “Weaver, wait. You said we need to leave early tomorrow. Was that just for Jervin’s benefit? Only… You haven’t discussed it with me.” She didn’t mean the words to sound like an accusation, but his back stiffened and he stepped away from the door. At the back of her mind the whispers began. Somewhere the unknown lovers were stirring. She heard the sigh of a robe sliding to the floor.

  “I wanted to see how he reacted.” He hesitated, one hand moving to the back of his neck.

  “Why?” Her heightened sense could almost taste his unease in the dim room. What was causing it? The lovers were already engrossed in the contact of fingertips on warm flesh… She pushed them to the very back of her mind. “You could have asked me what was in our host’s mind: I knew he didn’t want us here. Gwydion’s gift is not entirely without use.”

  “I never thought of–” He paced across the room. “You can do that? Tell what people are thinking?”

  It was so tempting to tell him yes. The lovers were kissing, she knew, in that darkened room she was trying to close her mind to. “No, not in so many words.” She was losing the thread of their conversation. “I can tell when people are lying. Sometimes. Not always.”

  Weaver cleared his throat. “I’d have stopped Gwydion that day. If I’d known what he was going to do.”

  “You made that clear at the time.” She looked across at Weaver. His embarrassment was plain even by the dim firelight. “Tresilian himself told me to go to him. I’ve never understood why.”

  Weaver shifted awkwardly. “That reminds me. There’s something I haven’t had time to tell you.” He folded his arms.

  Somewhere in the darkness flesh goosebumped, exposed to the night air as more clothing fell away. Alwenna shivered. “What about? Tomorrow?”

  Weaver pressed his hand to his chin. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  This was going to take some time. “Well? Tomorrow’s almost upon us.” The other voices had stilled. Right now she and Weaver were alone with the two lovers.

  “It is, my lady.” He looked down at her with an unreadable expression on his face. Maybe the only emotion he could express was anger. “We will ride east, to meet with a freemerchant named Marten. He claims…” Weaver hesitated. “Well, there’s a faction there who would restore you to your birthright.”

  “Indeed?” She took a step closer to him. “And when will you ask whether I wish to fall in with such plans?”

  Weaver stared at her. “Why wo
uldn’t you? You are queen of The Marches.”

  “And I’ve been tugged back and forth between rival factions all my life.” Her skin burned with the lovers’ hunger. All she wanted was to lose herself as they were. “Have you any idea how it is to be raised for duty? To be told every day what you must do for other people, because it is your duty. Twice now I’ve been obedient and given up my own hopes for duty and this time I’m done with it.”

  “But, my lady–” He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “I have a name. Just for once, why don’t you use it?” She turned her back on him as she tried to regain some semblance of control. Damn those lovers. Their willing flesh. Their hunger.

  “But, my–”

  She spun round to glare at him. “Didn’t you hear me?” The bundle in her hand slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor, the fabric flopping open to reveal the knife. Muttering in annoyance, she stooped down to pick it up.

  The gemstones in the hilt glowed faintly in the dim room.

  Alwenna froze, her hand inches away from the knife. “Do you see that?”

  Weaver moved round until he blocked the light from the fire. The stones still shimmered. “I see it.” His voice was impassive.

  “Tell me it’s some trick of the light.”

  “Move away from it, my lady.”

  He’d told her what to do once too often. She stretched her fingers towards it and the colours in the gemstones intensified. Such a beautiful thing…

  Weaver flicked the knife out of reach with his foot. It spun away across the floor with a clatter, the gemstones fading as it came to rest.

  Alwenna straightened up, sending a burst of pain through her ankle. “How dare you?”

  Weaver picked up the cloth from the floor, and scooped up the knife with it, wrapping the cloth around it.

  All the fight fell away from Alwenna. She pushed open the door to the great hall and hobbled over to the corner where Erin had laid out her blankets, ignoring the startled looks from the others. She curled up beneath the blankets, hating the smell of horse that lingered about them, hating her so-called freedom, hating everything.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  The stable yard was still deep in early morning shadow when Curtis returned with the horses he’d acquired for Erin and Alwenna.

  Erin jumped down from the rail where she’d been sitting. “I hope you didn’t pay too much for these.” She circled the horses, eyeing them critically.

  “There wasn’t much choice at such short notice. Likely the army cleaned out the best of their stock a few weeks back.”

  Weaver had been lounging against the stable wall in frowning silence as they waited, but he roused at this news. “Tresilian’s army? Any word on where they went?”

  “None.” Curtis shook his head. “If they knew where they were bound they kept tight-lipped about it. But there’s word from Highkell. Vasic was injured in the collapse, but he survived.”

  “More’s the pity.” Erin looked up from inspecting the new horses’ feet. “You paid too much for these animals.”

  “They’re both sound.” Curtis pretended to be affronted by her close inspection. “I had them trotted up to be sure.”

  “Next time you have to buy a horse, send me to do it.”

  Curtis grinned, looking pleased with himself. “Fine way to thank a man for going to all that trouble.”

  “It’s a good job we’re both light, that’s all I’ll say.” Erin removed the saddle and ran her fingertips over the underside, before checking the horse’s back.

  “As soon as you’re done counting that horse’s legs, we can go.” Weaver fastened his saddlebags into place.

  “It’ll take me five minutes to check the tack. Or would you rather lose hours down the road when there’s a problem?” Erin set the saddle back in place and tightened the girth. “This one will have the easiest paces for my lady.” Erin handed the reins to Weaver, before subjecting the other horse to a similar inspection.

  Weaver led the horse over to where Alwenna waited. “If you’re ready, my lady?” His expression was closed.

  “So we go in search of this freemerchant?”

  “Have you a better suggestion?”

  She scowled at him. “You know the answer to that.”

  “Well, then.” He gestured towards the waiting horse.

  She readied herself to mount and he legged her up. Right now she needed his help, but they would have a day of reckoning. Soon, she promised herself. She took up the reins. “The dagger. Do you still have it?”

  “Yes.” Weaver looked up, his expression revealing nothing of his thoughts. “Do you want to carry it? It’s yours.”

  “No.”

  “Very well.” Weaver turned away to his horse. “Aren’t you done yet?” he asked Erin, who was still fussing over her tack.

  “I’m done.” She vaulted into the saddle. Grinning, she turned her horse to face the gate. “Never let it be said I’m the one holding us back, windbagging.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  The healer stowed the last of his equipment in his bag. “Your back continues to mend well, your highness, and I can find no sign of serious illness. I can bleed you again if you wish, but I doubt it will improve matters.”

  “No, I’m tired enough as it is.” Vasic gestured the man away irritably.

  “As you wish, your highness.” The man bowed low, the bald centre of his head sun-tanned in contrast to the grey hair surrounding it. “Ensure you eat red meat at every meal. That will help counter the tiredness.” He took up his bag, bowed once more, and backed out of Vasic’s private chamber. What the healer lacked in insight he at least made up for in deference.

  Vasic pushed himself up from his chair. Even that small effort was a struggle. His limbs were leaden, and the pain in his side deepened as he moved – the pain the healer swore was nothing more than trapped wind. And then there was the dream. Every night now, for how long?

  That was the worst of it. Every night, over and over, he was forced to relive Tresilian’s death in his sleep. If it had been the collapse of the tower, the warmth of Garrad’s blood as it spurted against his face, or the horror on Alwenna’s face as she and the servant girl were swallowed by the rubble… That he could have understood. Events like that could – should – haunt a man, unless he were less than human. But Tresilian’s death?

  That had never haunted him. It had been a simple matter of expedience – the only common-sense action for a usurper to take. Of course, only she had dared call him that. Alwenna. His half-cousin. The driving force behind everything he’d done for as long as he could remember.

  He took up his ornate walking cane – he would never use the thing in front of witnesses – and made his way over to the window. Once it had looked along the curtain wall to the main tower. Now it perched above the massive cleft torn through the curtain wall. At the bottom ran a desultory trickle of water from the spring for which Highkell had been named.

  Below, masons and labourers were erecting a wooden framework from which to begin repairing the broken wall. The engineers had pronounced the remaining structure sound. According to them the old watergate had been too narrow to allow floodwater to escape and the heavy rain had proved the final straw. Their explanation was sweet reason.

  Everyone knew the power of water. The engineers proposed to build a larger watergate, supplemented by others at intervals through the curtain wall so the water would never be so disastrously dammed back. The expense would be ruinous, but he would save money by not rebuilding the fallen tower. And they could salvage stone from the wreckage, once they’d repaired the road through the gorge. That had to be his first priority: without the tolls from passing trade, Highkell was nothing. If the road remained washed out for too long the merchants would find other ways to move their goods around the Peninsula. And all his machinations would have been for naught.

  He leaned on the window sill, watching the workers move over the broken curtain wall. And for the first time he dou
bted he would live to see the wall restored to its former strength. Did grief affect a man that way? He could abandon Highkell. Leave it now, return to his fortress in the south. Yet his need to control Highkell had driven him so long he couldn’t imagine life without it. Just as he couldn’t imagine life without the Lady Alwenna. But they’d pulled no one alive from the rubble. And after the second collapse of the curtain wall had taken a whole contingent of archers with it, they’d abandoned any hopes of reaching anyone buried on the lower slopes.

  He turned away from the sunlight, which only seemed to taunt him, and shuffled back to his chair, leaning heavily on his cane. The healer insisted his illness was spiritual, not physical. But the healer hadn’t been there to sense the raw power unleashed when Alwenna invoked the Goddess. Only after that had the floor begun to shake.

  It was nonsensical, of course. And it was Garrad whom Alwenna had cursed. She’d told Vasic he had nothing to fear, yet his strength had fallen away day by day ever since. Should he return to the south? Better, perhaps, than staying here among the ruins of all his hopes. He could leave a steward to oversee the repairs. But he doubted he had the energy to undertake the journey, certainly not by horseback, having wrenched his back, scrambling clear as the floor collapsed. And his carriages were trapped in the stable yard at Highkell until the road was reopened. The indecision was worse than anything else. He lowered himself into his chair, distributing his weight carefully on the cushions. There had to be some cause for this accursed weakness. And if the healer insisted it wasn’t physical he would investigate other possibilities.

  He summoned a servant. “The high seer from Lynesreach is waiting in the guest lodgings. Bring him to me now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Alwenna’s eyes stung from the grit and dust that billowed over the Blighted Sea. Her face burned, scoured by the thin wind despite wrapping a scarf about her head as the freemerchants did. She ached from a long day spent in the saddle. Her damaged ankle throbbed even though she’d slipped it out of the stirrup early on in the journey so she could keep the joint moving. Even Erin, riding at her side, was slumped in her saddle, head bowed as she tried to keep her face out of the wind.