Lorth had earlier sent a messenger with a note for Ithsion written in Maelgwn. Aran had helped him to write it. In the hunter’s hand, which Aran had joked looked like pieces of a bird’s nest, it said: Pick a horse that speaks to your heart. I’ll come soon.
Lorth breathed the cool, fresh air. He could still feel Leda’s body in his arms as he had lowered her gently onto a bed in the Hall of Light. She slept deeply in the Old One; during the last two days, she had awaked only long enough for her healers to nourish her and care for her needs, and for Eaglin and Regin to tell her what had passed. No one had called Lorth, and none of his frequent visits had coincided with her waking hour. Early this morning, he had tried again, to no avail. He must have looked pitiful; one of her priestesses actually smiled and told him not to worry, because Scrat slept by his Mistress’s side. Pale comfort.
He turned as a shrill whistle cut the air behind him. He pushed back his hood. Above, on the edge of the path, stood Cael and Freil. The young wizard beamed on the crutches the red-haired guardsman had made for him. As Lorth gathered his things to leave, he heard his companions arguing. Before he could rise, Cael had taken the boy into his arms and began pick his way down the rocks.
When they reached Lorth, he said, “Eaglin is going to feed you to his wolfhounds if he finds out you came down here.” He put his arm around Freil protectively as the boy lowered himself on the edge of the rugged plunge.
“Na,” Freil said with a blithe air, leaning over to see the river crashing like a beast through the gorge. “He’s too busy fighting with the Raptors.”
Cael settled into a spot slightly below Freil. “Some respect would become you, boy.”
Lorth became aware of the contrast between the shadow on his heart and the peaceful evening, the moon, his companions and the army returning home on the road above. The Raptors who commanded Eyrie’s forces in Os had ridden in the day before with less joy than had the warriors of Ostarin. It was rumored that one of the Raptors sat on the Aenlisarfon, the high council of wizards who, according to Barenus, had marked Lorth to the siomothct. As if to emphasize their dominion, they had escorted Prince Setarin and his sister Setriana to the palace for questioning.
To avoid war with Sourcesee, Tarth had allied to Morfaen and the Keepers to rid their borders of Faerin occupation. Lorth still didn’t understand why Tarth had gotten involved with Faerin to begin with. But the presence of Roarin’s—and more painfully, Icaros’s—murderer under the roof of this place that Lorth had given so much to call home reminded him that while war with Faerin had ended, his personal war raged on.
He planted the tip of the scabbard he had taken from Lefors into the rocks and said, “Cael, you still haven’t told me how Forloc got my blade. When I saw it on him, I gave you up for dead.”
Someone on the bridge shouted the guardsman’s name; he smiled and waved. Then he glanced at Lorth. “I gave it to one of his men so he’d let me out of the kitchen with that damned motherblack remedy. You know an old cook in there actually had a bottle of it? Said she’d had it for fifty years.”
Freil added, “Eaglin said he had to drink it all, because it was so weak. Made him sick.”
Lorth stared at Cael. “You bribed a Faerin with my sword? I asked you to take care of it!”
The warrior leaned back with his hands in the air. “Relax, sneaky wolf! Blade’s identity marked. It’ll always find its way back to you.”
Lorth gazed at the moon rising into the deepening sky. “You owe me a new scabbard.”
Freil leaned against his shoulder and looked up at him. “Eaglin’s looking for you.”
“Aye, what else is new,” Lorth muttered. He lifted his stolen scabbard, pulled the blade out a few inches, and slammed it back home.
“He used your name, instead of calling you ‘hunter’ like he usually does.”
Cael laughed. “That’s serious.”
“He says you’re avoiding him,” Freil added.
“That’s because I am.” He looked down at the young wizard. “Did he send you down here to wheedle me?”
The boy shook his head with a wide, earnest stare. “He just entered my mind.”
Lorth squeezed his shoulders and said, “It’s getting dark. Let’s go.”
Late that night, after they had put Freil to bed, Cael and Lorth sat before a roaring fire in a gathering room in the Hall of Thorns. Antlers and ancient swords covered the walls. Many were missing.
Lorth lifted the jug of mison from the stool between their seats and poured himself a cup. He had lost track of how many preceded it.
“You can’t avoid Eaglin forever, you know,” Cael said. “At least give him the chance to honor you for what you’ve done.”
Lorth took a long sip, and lowered his cup to his thigh. “I saw him two days ago.” Cael looked at him in question. “I told him everything that happened since I left him by the Northpass that evening. And he verified what we had guessed about Astarae.”
“He’s suffering over that, but he’s not blaming you.”
“I know. But I still wanted to leave him alone.”
Cael cleared his throat. “You left him to avoid dealing with the Eye. Are you worried they’ll put another hunter on you?”
“I’m worried I’ll give them a reason to.”
Cael let out his breath and grabbed the jug. “You know Eaglin has authority here, even over that lot. And Barenus will likely lose his Darkstar over what he did. Do you really think Eaglin wouldn’t defend you now?”
“It isn’t about that. I don’t care what the Raptors think, and Eaglin knows it, if anyone does. This is about Setriana. I have a score to settle with her, but I can’t dishonor Eaglin or this hall by settling it here. He doesn’t want a meeting with me to exchange praises. He wants to know my intentions.”
“Setriana murdered two Ravens, one of whom you loved. I doubt Eaglin is questioning your intentions!”
“Don’t assume that.” Lorth drained his cup and glanced at his friend. “Anyway, the last time I listened to your advice about honoring Eaglin, I made an enemy who almost single handedly toppled this place into Forloc’s palm. If I do what I’m hankering to do here, I’ll end up with my neck under a blade again. I don’t think the Old One will save me this time.”
Cael stood up. “Eaglin knows you, Lorth. He’s letting you come to him. If he wanted to interrogate you about your intentions, he’d have hauled you in on his terms.” He placed a hand on Lorth’s shoulder. “Do sleep on it, lad.”
As the guardsman’s bootsteps faded from the room, Lorth leaned his head on the back of the chair and wondered if Leda had awaked yet. He set his cup down. The only thing he would sleep on tonight would be her bed in the Hall of Light. With or without Scrat.
~ * ~
Lorth opened his eyes to the faint shades of dawn as an imperious knock sounded on the door. The sealing spell he had put on it with his returning powers didn’t protect it from minor physical intervention, apparently. But the healers he had thrown out of the room the night before wouldn’t be able to open it.
The knock sounded again.
Leda stirred in his arms with a spring-breeze sigh. The hunter drew her close, kissed her hair and let a hand move over the soft curves and hollows of her body. He breathed her name as his desire rose up like a beast, aching and dark with hunger.
A short time later, fully dressed, he tucked her into the warm covers, kissed the tears from her eyes and let her sleep in the fading glow of his ardor. He donned his weapons and released the spell on the door. As he opened it, two of Leda’s healers half-tumbled over the threshold. He stepped over them with a casual glance.
Several robed priests and priestesses milled around in the hall. One of them, a man in the moss-green robe of a master herbalist, said, “I reported this to the Raven of Eusiron.” His eyes burned with anger. “Our Mistress opened a vein to the Destroyer. She needs care.”
Lorth grabbed a small loaf of bread from the breakfast tray one of the women held. She m
ade a face in protest. As he tore it in half he said, “I gave her what she needed.” He returned half the loaf to the tray and bit into the other. With his mouth full, he added, “I’d let her sleep a bit longer if I were you.” He flashed a wicked grin and strode down the hall.
“Bloody cad!” one of the women called out behind him.
“You’ll hear about this!” said the herbalist.
Lorth waved over his head as he rounded the corner and headed in the direction of the Great Hall. Eaglin had come to him in a dream the night before and asked him very nicely to attend a meeting with him and the Raptors of Eyrie.
Fair enough. What was one more chasm? As he drifted down the hall, his loins relaxed, he cast a request into the mind of the Dark Warrior: Just let them give me a reason to start trouble. Just one.
~ * ~
Dawn touched a cloudy sky threatening rain above the Great Hall of Eusiron. Lorth sat near the edge of the Ofthos and gazed sullenly at the stumps of the ancient trees that had once surrounded the hallowed circle. The Faerins had cut the trees at random, it seemed, leaving a ragged hole in the canopy that looked like a dull knife wound. Fortunately, most of the trees in the hall remained. The air smelled of early spring, and everywhere on the floor lay puddles, wood chips, forest debris and piles of melting snow. Men and women moved here and there, cleaning up the mess. In addition to managing the spells that protected the bridges and tunnels into Eusiron, Eaglin had also protected this hall from the elements.
Once again, the hunter sat before the judgment of the Keepers of the Eye. He had been fielding their stony questions for the better part of an hour, questions he had already answered to those he loved. They sat near the dais in the center of the circle, two Ravens and an Osprey. Raptor blood red trimmed their cloaks. They wore the dress of Eyrie’s elite warriors: delicate chain mail, weapons with exquisite details on the straps, hilts and scabbards, fine boots and leather breastplates containing a pressed pattern of Eyrie’s standard: an eight-pointed star interlaced in symmetry with the roots and boughs of a tree. The Eye gazed down from above.
“We aren’t questioning your loyalty to Eusiron,” a Raven named Oban said in a gravelly voice. He had grayish eyes and braided black hair streaked with white. Blood stained his thigh. “But you seem to think you’re above the laws of the Amethyst Waeltower.”
“Did Barenus tell you that?” Lorth said. The Raptor had come in earlier, spoken to Eaglin in low tones, and then departed.
“What laws do you think he’s breaking?” Eaglin asked the Raptors. He sat by Lorth’s side like a cat with its tail moving in irritation. Beneath his black cloak, he wore simple clothes of white and gray, and a tunic that contained a silver tree like the ones that had adorned Lorth’s old scabbard. Though thin and pale from his time under motherblack, the light of his stature showed clear.
Somewhat beyond the circle sat Regin and Cael, observing the formalities. At some point, Eamon entered and joined them. As his blue gaze touched Lorth’s, the tall guardsman tilted his head into a slow, sober nod of acknowledgment. What Lorth had heard about the Northman’s reception of Lefors had left him satisfied that vengeance had been served.
The second of Lorth’s black-cloaked inquisitors, a Raven with a seal of the Aenlisarfon emblazoned in gold at his throat, had pale blond hair and dark brown eyes nearing black. He leaned forward and addressed Eaglin, his cavernous gaze moving to Lorth in pointed intervals. “This assassin works outside the structures of our awareness. The Aenlisarfon cannot keep balance unless the patterns of magic used in Ealiron are known.”
Lorth drew a breath to sink a retort into him, but Eaglin said:
“The Old One also works outside our awareness. She expands our vision by destroying the boundaries that limit us, thus allowing new awareness. This man is a Web. He sees the weak spots.”
The Keepers stirred, shifting positions in their seats and sharing glances. Oban said, “It would seem the Mistress of Eusiron has bent your mind from the tenets of our Order. The Old One can’t be used to justify negligence or misuse of the Eye.”
Lorth rolled his eyes up to the trees with a silent wolf laugh. Answer that one!
“My mother is the vessel of Ealiron’s Will to Seed and, as such, beyond your speculation,” Eaglin returned with frosty equanimity. “Leave her out of this.”
Leda. She had wept as Lorth made love to her. So devastatingly soft, her need; though she wielded the most powerful forces in creation, she was still as fragile as a dragonfly. He broke from his aching reverie as the blond-haired Raptor said:
“Does being a Web give you the arrogance to bed Ealiron’s woman for your own purposes?”
Request answered. In one fluid motion, Lorth rose, drew his sword, padded over the floor and leveled the blade at the Raptor’s throat, just above the shining seal. The Destroyer gathered around his heart like a recoiling viper. With visible unease, the wizard eyed the space around the blade, but he didn’t move. “Watch where you tread, Keeper,” Lorth said. “I came in here at Eaglin’s bidding because I respect him. He earned that. I do not answer to you.”
“Then you will address him as Master,” the wizard rejoined, his breath condensing in a cloud on the end of the sword.
Eaglin leaned forward. “This is my hall, Aniron,” he reminded him, making a point to use the Raven’s name without the title. “Here, I shall enforce protocol as I see fit. You’re out of line.”
Aniron lifted his chin and moved his throat away from the blade.
“Lorth,” Eaglin said quietly. “Please stand down.”
The hunter stood there a moment longer and then returned to his seat, slamming his blade into its sheath.
The guardsmen had watched the exchange with buoyant interest. Cael brushed his hand over his mouth to hide a smile.
“A tighter leash on your Web would be prudent,” Aniron said, sliding back in his chair as if to release the tension.
Eaglin’s rough laughter rattled through the trees. “If not for what you think of as this hunter’s transgression of order, this hall would be ruled by Faerin now, I would be with my father to await another incarnation and you would be blackringed for setting a siomothct on a man for nothing but hearsay.” Aniron lowered his gaze at this. “It so happens, this hunter is in high favor with Eusiron himself. It’s a good thing he is. I suggest you act accordingly.”
After a few heavy moments in which the Keepers absorbed this information, Eaglin cleared his throat and gestured to the guardsmen. “Regin, bring them.”
The captain of the High Guard bounced up and strode for the door.
Lorth turned to Eaglin in question as a knot hit his gut with the force of a breaking watch-web. When the wizard didn’t respond, he got up and paced into the trees to escape the brooding aura that hung around the Raptors.
After a moment, Eaglin joined him. Lorth leaned against a maple tree and rubbed his face. The Raven drew close and said, “You smell like my mother.”
“And she smells like me,” Lorth returned, dropping his hand.
Eaglin cast a glance at the Keepers, who huddled together talking in low tones. “Your timing could be better.”
“I wanted to see her three days ago. I honored that herbalist as long as I could stomach. If he had his way, I’d never have gotten in.”
Eaglin gazed up at the canopy of the trees as it started to rain. The drops vanished in the air before hitting the lower reaches of the hall. “That’s why I didn’t stop you. How is she?”
“She blames herself for doubting me.”
“She’s not alone in that,” Eaglin said quietly. Something raw fled over his face.
“Eaglin...” Lorth began as his solar plexus seized up with a fresh wave of angst. “What are you doing?” He threw a look in the Keepers’ direction. “Are they demanding my presence while they question Setriana?”
“Not exactly. Barenus convinced them you would go for her throat if you saw her. He made a point to describe the first time you did, at the solstice
feast. I couldn’t refute it. I’m giving you more credit, now—but I want you to understand the way of this before you act.”
“Barenus is bedding her, I assume you know that.” When the wizard didn’t respond, he continued, “What I don’t understand is why you lot allied to Tarth after what they did. Roarin may have defied the Eye, but Icaros was innocent. Do you actually believe Setriana didn’t kill him? Your mother doesn’t.”
The wizard drew a troubled breath. “Roarin and Icaros died by her hand. That much is true, though according to my mother, there’s more to it. Prince Setarin swore to me—he even let me use a truth scrying command—that Tarth had no part in or knowledge of the murders, or that Setriana made a deal with Forloc. She did that on her own.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I intend to find out shortly. But rest assured: Tarth wants no part of Sourcesee. They’re willing to sacrifice Setriana to keep peace.” His eyes darkened. “In other words, you may get your wish yet. But do honor me at least by letting it unfold.”
Lorth recalled something Leda had said to him after Eaglin had nearly killed him for attacking Setriana. Don’t assume you know how the threads in this run, Lorth. You don’t. “Very well,” he agreed. “You have my word.” He fingered his blade strap. “But I’m still going to put Barenus into a basket for marking me.”
“You’ll have to get in line.” They both turned as voices echoed at the end of the hall. “Keep it sheathed,” the wizard said sidelong, as a colorful entourage strode through the trees in their direction.
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