And that was how Idril, Jewel of the High Lands, found them—seated in patches of melting snow, the horses dozing in the sun, and the men sitting around drinking cups of broth made with dried meat, joking, laughing, and all singing the praises of Kiriah.
“Lord Israel,” Idril said when he helped her off the grey stallion that her father normally rode. She glanced around with the very faintest of frowns between her delicate silver-blond brows. “I come in answer to the message of your arrival. I suspected you might try the pass rather than the sea. I brought extra horses, assuming you had been caught in the storm, and would have need of them, but I see I underestimated your resourcefulness.”
“I would have been desperately glad of your horses and aid a short while ago had not Kiriah heard my plea.”
Idril gave him one of the same cool smiles she had bestowed upon him during the short time they had been wed. It was wholly impersonal, and he wondered if love for anyone or anything had ever truly touched her heart. His son claimed she was heart-sworn to him, but Israel saw no signs on Idril’s lovely countenance of any emotion other than mild interest. “It doesn’t surprise me that Kiriah would listen when you beseeched her for help. You have long been in her favor. Do you need food? We brought supplies as well as horses.”
“What I would like is a hot bath and dry clothing,” he said with his usual straightforwardness. Israel didn’t suffer fools gladly and believed in saying what he thought without playing any of the verbal games that were common to other members of the Council of Four Armies. “If you can provide that, my men and I will be most appreciative.”
She inclined her head and allowed him to assist her into the saddle. “Ilam is but an hour’s journey from here. If your horses are too tired to travel now, my men can remain with them—”
“They have had a rest. We will push on together,” Israel said firmly. Although he had a long history with the Tribe of Jalas, not all of it was as amiable as in recent years, and he was loath to splinter his company, small as it was.
It took closer to two hours for their tired mounts to wind their way through the mountain pass to Ilam, the city that sat pressed at the base of a craggy, snow-mantled peak, which was home to Jalas. Kiriah had seen fit to melt away all the clouds between the pass and Ilam, making their travel less fraught with peril, although Israel noted the clouds had begun to gather again behind them just as they approached the tall black iron gates.
“And how does your father do?” Israel asked as they entered the keep. “The last I heard from him, he declared himself at death’s door.”
Idril allowed three of her handmaidens to remove her long white woolen cloak, gloves, and the assorted outer garments that were intended to keep the cold from her fair skin. “He does like to believe himself mere seconds away from departing this world, but in truth, he seems well enough. He refuses to leave the keep, however, saying his limbs are weak and give him great pain. The doctors can find nothing wrong with him, but I can’t help think…” Her words trailed off as she looked across the great hall.
A figure stood shadowed in an alcove, barely visible in the dim light of the hall. For a moment, Israel thought it was a statue, but as the flame from a lamp on a nearby table flickered, he saw the glint of eyes.
Eyes that for a moment, he could have sworn regarded him with hostility so intense, it sent a pang of concern through him.
Then the figure was in motion, and Israel dismissed his impression as a figment of his tired brain.
“Lord Israel! My daughter did not tell me you were expected.” Jalas limped forward using a great hawthorn stick, his face gaunt and grey, with two red spots on his cheeks beneath the bristles of his braided copper-colored beard. “What madness has brought you out during this storm? Idril, my chair. No, I have changed my mind; the hall is too cold for my thin blood. Come to my chambers, my lord, and you shall tell me news of the world. Idril is too busy to spend time with her failing father.”
Idril said nothing at the chastisement, but Israel noted the way her lips tightened. It was a telling point in a woman who had such extreme control over her emotions.
A short while later, after seeing that his men and horses had been accommodated, Israel found himself in a large wooden chair pulled up to a fire that was almost uncomfortably hot. Across from him, Jalas allowed Idril to get him seated, several pillows having to be adjusted just so, in order to pamper his aching joints, before she poured out a huge flagon of ale for him, and a smaller one for Israel.
“Now then, I believe I can bear sitting up long enough to hear why you’ve come to the High Lands,” Jalas said after taking a long pull on the ale, wiping his mouth with one hand before he leaned back, giving Israel a piercing look.
“Do you wish me to remain or leave, Father?” Idril asked in her soft, placid voice.
“Eh? You might as well stay,” Jalas said, then grimaced and added to Israel, “She will have control over the Tribe soon enough. Much good may she get from it when I am gone, since the clans are even now fighting amongst themselves, something Idril seems to be unable to stop.”
Idril dismissed her handmaids, and sat in a chair next to the window, picking up an embroidery tambour, apparently uninterested in what her father was saying.
Israel didn’t want to get into the politics of the Tribe members, but he didn’t care for the way Jalas so easily cast blame upon his daughter. Idril might be many things, but he knew from experience the lengths to which she was prepared to go in order to keep the peace. “The clans of the High Lands are known for their fierceness. I have no doubt they have tempers to match,” Israel said in what he hoped was a noncommittal tone. “It must be difficult to lead them without a good deal of experience. I’m sure Lady Idril does her best.”
Jalas grunted, and drained half the flagon, belched, wiped the foam from his moustache, and asked again, “What news have you?”
“Little enough that would interest you,” Israel said. “Hallow sent me a message saying that he is concerned about Darius, the Starborn steward.”
“Hallow? Oh, the mad arcanist who was in your company?” Jalas finished his ale. “I heard a nasty rumor about him, that he tied himself to that pox-marked female who was tainted by your son.”
“I doubt if even Deo could have tainted Allegria,” Israel said drily, but was aware of an uncomfortable feeling in his belly. Jalas hadn’t taken it well when he’d been told that rather than destroy his son, Israel had only banished him…for a second time. He didn’t want to get onto that subject again, so offered up information that would hopefully serve as a distraction. “And you are correct in that Hallow and Allegria were wed in late summer, at the temple where she’d served. Lady Sandorillan insisted they perform the ceremony there.”
Jalas grunted and gestured for more ale. Idril rose, and without glancing at Israel, refilled their flagons before returning silently to her seat. “More fool he for binding himself to one who will likely try to kill him one of these days. What was it about Darius that concerned the arcanist?”
“Evidently there are signs Darius feels he no longer needs to abide by the rules the Council has set down.”
“The Council of Four Armies is disbanded,” Jalas said, and for a fleeting second, his expression was sly.
Israel frowned. Perhaps Jalas was merely feeling the strain of his illness. “I wouldn’t use the term disbanded when ‘at peace’ is more appropriate.”
“Oh?” Jalas’s eyes narrowed on him. “Do you maintain the army you had summoned for the battle with the Harborym?”
“Not the full force,” Israel answered, a sense of something in the air—suspicion? Resentment?—making him wary. “But I always have need of a standing army. The Fireborn are, on the whole, a reasonable people, but it does not mean they are willing to live in complete harmony. You must know how important it is to remind your people of the repercussions should they cross you.”
Jalas murmured it was so, drinking from the flagon as he did so.
The next half hour left Israel with a definite idea that something was very wrong with Jalas. Although he expressed interest in Darius, he appeared distracted and didn’t once inquire what Hallow and his fellow arcanists were doing.
It wasn’t until later that evening, when Idril had escorted him from her father’s chambers that he gave voice to the concern that most bothered him. “Your father is a changed man.”
“Yes.” Idril stood in front of the fire in the great hall, her demeanor as mild as ever, although her shoulders rose in a slight shrug. “He did not take our divorce well.”
“Considering he knew our marriage was one in name only, it was unrealistic of him to expect us to continue it.”
“My father has ever been a man who follows his own counsel,” she said evenly, her gaze still on the fire. “Even when he knows he is in the wrong.”
Israel frowned, remembering the thinly veiled barbs that the older man had cast at his daughter. “Does he maintain no control over the Tribe any longer?”
“No. He claims he is too weak for it.” She turned to him, her gaze as steady as her seemingly unruffled emotions. “The clans are threatening to form their own leadership. He blames me for that, but will not allow me to do anything to assert my dominance, much though I would like to. A more ungrateful, obstinate group of men I have yet to meet.”
“Your father?” Israel asked in confusion.
“The Tribesmen.” She clicked her tongue and corrected herself. “And yes, my father, too.”
He searched her face, looking for signs of distress, but despite her bitter tone, her expression was as placid as ever. “Is there no other way of rallying the Tribe to your banner without your father’s blessing?”
“Of course there is. It’s simply a matter of whether I wish to fight my father at the same time I bring the Tribe to heel, which is what will happen if I try to claim control.”
“Idril…” He stopped, not sure what he could say to her. He had not wished to marry Idril, but had agreed when it became clear that Jalas would remove himself and his people from the Council if he did not do so. Neither Idril or he had ever believed the marriage was anything but a temporary legality, one that would allow Jalas to save face, and Israel to keep from having a contentious neighbor to the north.
He picked his words carefully now. “I don’t know why your father has changed so much since the Battle of the Fourth Age, or what estrangement is between you and him beyond the dissolution of our marriage, but I feel obligated to offer you sanctuary should you require it.”
“Sanctuary?” Surprise flickered through her eyes. “From what?”
“The Tribe. Your father has ruled your people for many centuries, but it has not been an easy rule, and if you find yourself unable to keep them in control—”
“It is not the Tribe from whom I need protection,” she answered.
“What do you mean by that?”
Her gaze went past him, causing Israel to turn to see who had entered the hall.
It was Marston, who gestured a question that clearly asked if he was needed. Israel shook his head, and the other man left the room as silently as he’d come.
Idril turned and fetched the wine from where it had been mulling on the hearth, pouring him a goblet of the steaming liquid. “You did not endure the hardships of snow and travel just to see how I was faring leading my father’s people. Yet you spent two hours with Father and did not ask him anything. It makes me wonder why you would go to so much trouble to be here at Ilam.”
Israel smiled and sipped at the spiced wine. Although he’d changed into dry clothing earlier, the memories of the cold passage to Ilam were all too fresh in his mind, and he relished the warm burn of the wine. “I see the six months we’ve spent apart have done nothing to dull your astuteness.”
She raised an eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Did you think I would fade away to a colorless drab in your absence?”
“No,” he said, turning his mind back to the question of Jalas’s behavior. “I assumed you would fare as you always do. Since you have guessed as much, I will admit that I am here for a specific reason. You took note of what I said about Hallow?”
She seated herself in a wooden chair that seemed to be made up of elegant curves. “That he is concerned about Darius? Yes. What I found puzzling was what you did not say: exactly what it was Hallow did with regard to Darius. You simply mentioned them, and then encouraged my father to be distracted with gossip about the priest.”
“You haven’t lost any of your shrewdness, either. Tell me, do you really have an interest in Deo, or is that yet another of his wild imaginings?”
“Deo,” she said, smoothing the fabric of her gown. Her gaze was averted so that he couldn’t look into her eyes, and as usual, her expression told him nothing. “Deo is lost to us.”
“He is in Eris,” Israel corrected.
“Which we cannot get to.” Her fingers traced the golden threads embroidered on the creamy white fabric of her gown. “No one has ever been able to sail to Eris without perishing most violently.”
“No one has been able to sail to it, but there is another way to travel there,” Israel said.
She slid him an unreadable glance, the single wrinkle back between her brows for a moment before it smoothed out. “Ah. The portals. But those were created by the Harborym.”
“Not by them…but their leader.” Israel fought the sense of anger that followed whenever the memory of Dasa rose in his mind. “Their captain, Racin, is the one who sacrificed many Harborym in order to generate the power needed to opened the portals, or so the queen told me years ago. I can’t imagine that has changed.”
“Indeed.” Idril appeared to consider this. “I conclude you are not planning on inviting the Harborym leader back to Aryia simply so that you will have access to his portal leading to Eris, and yet, I can see no other method of getting there.”
“I assume that if he had the means to open portals here or on Genora, he would have already done so. Regardless of whether or not he has regained the ability to open a portal, I have not spent the last eleven months reassuring the people of Aryia that they are safe only to bring that monster back,” Israel said, feeling suddenly weary. It had been a very long time since he had been able to rest without feeling as if he was being smothered by sorrow.
Her pale lips curved into a faint smile. “Like me, you sacrifice much to keep your people content. But that said, neither are you willing to sit back when there is a fight to be had.”
“You confuse me with my son,” Israel said, setting down the now empty wine goblet and striding to the fire, welcoming the warmth it brought to him. “I do not run off on a whim to join whatever battle is at hand.”
“But Deo is, as I have said, lost to us.” Idril eyed him with gentle interest. “That returns us to the subject of the portals, which I gather is the purpose of your trip to the High Lands.”
“It is. Or rather, the means of accessing them without bringing Racin down upon our heads.”
Idril thought for a moment; then both eyebrows rose a smidgen. “Ah, the moonstone.”
“Exodius said he planned on safeguarding the stones since they were too powerful to be used by those who did not understand their strength. He did not name Jalas as one of the stones’ guardians, but Hallow has learned from his arcanists that the stone is here.”
She inclined her head. “It is. I have not seen it, but before he took to his bed, my father sent away all but his most trusted body servant and hid something in the keep. I knew only that it was an artifact of great power that he dared not use. I thought it might be a talisman or token that he…liberated…from the queen’s holdings when we were in Starfall City, but if the runeseeker gave him one of the moonstones used to destroy Deo—”
“Banish Deo,” Isr
ael murmured, and wondered again what was in Idril’s heart. “Sending him to the Isles of Enoch was the only way to save him from your father’s wrath. I had no idea that Exodius would separate the stones afterward. That turned out to be much more problematic than I imagined it would be.”
“If Father had a stone of such immense abilities, it would make sense that he would hide it close to hand. But I’m afraid if you are here to plead for the stone, he will not yield it. He is very much like a magpie in that regard—once he has a treasure, he will not give it up.”
“I am here to explain to him that the stone is needed for a purpose that Exodius did not anticipate,” Israel said.
She shook her head. “You do not understand; Father will not resist because the runeseeker asked him to guard it—he will not allow it out of his possession because it is now his, and he does not give up what he holds.” Her gaze slid to the side, to the stairs that led up to Jalas’s chambers. “Unless that possession is his daughter.”
“Regardless, I must have the stone.” Israel sat, suddenly so tired he felt as if he could sleep for a week solid. “Hallow will gain access to the one that he says Lady Sandor holds, and I have no doubt his arcanists will locate the third one shortly, but he barely knows Jalas, and will have little ability to convince your father to relinquish the stone he guards.”
“Whereas he will do so for you?” Idril shook her head again, so that the silver-blond hair that covered her like a shawl of silk shimmered with the movement. “You are mistaken, my lord.”
Israel’s jaw tightened. “Then I will take it from him, by force if necessary.”
Idril watched him for a few moments, then leaned forward and touched him lightly on the knee. “You risk death simply to open a portal to Eris?”
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