by Kirby Crow
“You need have no fear on that account. He will not be anywhere near the battlefields.”
Margun again glanced at Scarlet. “Will you also remain behind the lines, sire?”
“A king must not go to war himself.”
Margun stared back at Liall unblinkingly. “I was a Setna once, sire.”
Liall sensed a deeper meaning in those words. “And what do you think you know, Setna?”
“That some knowledge is better left buried.”
“You are dismissed,” Liall commanded brusquely. Whatever Margun suspected, he was bound by oath to obey. That, or he could see those threats become reality. “Strike your camp nearby and keep a sharp watch. Some of the Uzna men will be curious about him. I would rather their interest remain unsatisfied. Am I plain enough?”
“Very plain, sire.” Margun bowed himself out, leaving Liall unsettled.
Did Margun suspect that he intended to take Scarlet inside the sacred mountain, against every law and taboo that existed? Had he overheard something or was he just guessing? Tesk had vowed that Margun was trustworthy, but how far did his loyalty go?
Damn it all, I need the man.
Trust Margun? There was no one he could trust, not even the Ancients, who had their own reasons for wanting a Hilurin in their debt. To give Scarlet life, he would have to commit a blasphemy so heinous that just the whisper of it could topple his kingdom. Taking a lenilyn inside the sacred mountain of the Shining Ones would defile it forever in the eyes of his people. It was unthinkable. Unforgiveable.
And I’m going to do it. I'm taking him into war after all, into the very heart of Fanorl. If his magic is real, then the miracle Ulan promised could be real, too.
FOR PRACTICAL PURPOSES, Jarek's ger was larger than the king’s. Sensible, since Liall wouldn’t be holding any war councils in his ger. Her brazier was not even lit, so Liall sat chilly and annoyed while Mirchen stood outside and Kamaras unrolled maps. Ogir poured che first for the king and then Jarek.
After the pleasantries, Liall drank his che and waited. He sensed Jarek's grave disapproval and suspected it had to do with Scarlet's unwelcome presence. The hard looks she exchanged with Kamaras seemed to confirm that.
As if Kamaras could have prevented me from bringing Scarlet. As if Jarek could.
Jarek selected one of the maps and unrolled it on the table. She pointed a blunt, sword-callused finger to a point north of Magur, just beyond the river.
“There is where we caught up to them last year, Sire,” Jarek said. “The river was frozen, but the ice slowed them down.”
“I already know this.” Liall pointed to Magur on the map. “The Ava Thule crossed the Greatrift to their rebel allies in Magur and tried to make a stand with them there. They lost and fled, and what was left of Magur burned.”
Jarek nodded. “By the queen's order. It was also by the queen's order that we spared some of the young, as we were able. We sent them eastward to Jadizek and H'nir, scattering them widely. It has not turned out well. Most of them are gone now, either by attempting to cross the ice back to the Tribelands or just running off to avoid serving their new lords. We haven’t tried very hard to find them. What would be the point? But what I want to know now, my lord, is if you intend to spare any of the Ava Thule this time.”
“My lady mother's commands were hers alone,” Liall said, avoiding the real truth: that the Ancients had implored his mother to show mercy to the harried Ava Thule many years before that day, when Liall was still a boy, and that if she had not relented and done as they asked, the Tribeland Campaigns and the slaughter of Magur might not have been necessary at all. The Ava Thule did not know how to react to mercy. Likely, they saw it as weakness.
And they breed like lice, he thought, fighting down his loathing of them, knowing he must if there was to be peace, and if Scarlet was to be saved.
“I might have ordered the same,” he said. “I cannot know. I was very young the last time I commanded in the field against the Ava Thule. The Greatrift, you remember? You were right to turn us back when you did.”
“Was I?” Jarek asked archly, prompting Liall to wonder how much she had known of the doings between the Ancients and his mother. “Well, it’s hard to refuse an Ancient. They said too many of us would die, so I turned us back. This time, you will be in command of the field. You can order the battle as you like.”
“I won’t be in command.”
Jarek looked at him sharply. “My lord?”
“You are the better strategist. You will command as you always have while I remain behind the lines.”
Jarek nodded slowly. “That is wise, sire,” she said carefully. “And I’m relieved to hear it. You are the last of the Camira-Druz. Too valuable to risk in war. I was going to suggest just that.” She smiled briefly. “But I thought you would shout me down.”
He tilted his head rakishly, counting on her affection and confidence. “Like I tried to do during the campaigns?”
“I remember that you said that if we didn’t kill them all while we had the upper hand, that we would never be rid of them. Perhaps you were right. Had I stayed my course, we might not find ourselves where we are today.”
“And where is that? Ressanda has not sent his twenty thousand, I see. Do we have a barony in open revolt?”
Jarek hesitated. “He has sent word.”
Liall's brows drew together. “Speak.”
“His ships are due to arrive on the coast within a day, or so the beacons confirm. They would not lie.”
He was surprised. “Ressanda cannot have fifty frigates on our coast within a day. Not unless they had already left Tebet when I last spoke with him.”
The voice that answered him was soft and feminine, as unlike Jarek’s as silk to gravel. “They had, my lord.”
Mirchen moved aside from the entryway, revealing a young woman with bright reddish-blonde hair, richly clothed in furs and silk. Ice-pale jewels glittered at her throat.
Ressilka entered and curtseyed low. “The journey to Starhold is much swifter by sea, sire.”
Liall pushed his cup away and stood, looking down at Ressilka’s bright, bowed head. Now he knew why Jarek—and Mirchen—had seemed so unsettled by Scarlet’s presence.
Jarek had never accounted Scarlet of much importance. She would feel much differently about the noble Ressilka.
“What am I to make of your presence here, lady?” Liall shot an acid look at Jarek, who found her maps suddenly fascinating.
Ressilka unbent from her curtsey and looked Liall in the eye. “Make of it a happy turn of fortune, sire. My lord father thought I should be the one to deliver proof of our fealty to the crown.”
“Proof that he should have rendered himself, in Sul, the moment he was asked. Fealty? I call it insolence, if not open defiance. Were you aware that he departed from Sul without assuring me his men would be here?”
Ressilka bowed her head deeper. “I was, sire.”
“And you chose not to divulge this information to your king,” he ground out, “but instead allowed the good baron to haggle with me at Arrowgate like I had come to buy a kettle of fucking fish.”
Ressilka's head came up and her blue eyes flashed. “My king has no doubt noticed that I'm a woman. I know I should not remind my king of that which he is already very much aware: a woman in Rshan has precious little power of her own. Unless, of course, she happens to be queen in her own right. If not, all her power derives from her relatives. Her male relatives. I have no brothers; no other man I could have turned to for advice. I must obey my lord father and follow whatever path he chooses for me. If he did, as you say, defy you, then I am prepared to pay for his defiance myself.” She bowed her head again. “Do with me what you will.”
“Oh, stop it,” Liall scorned. “Do you imagine I’ll toss you from the cliff? Ressanda's acts are Ressanda's to bear, not his child's. I will deal with him when the time comes.”
“I am not a child, sire. I am of an age with your t'aishka. Three years o
lder, in fact.”
Liall bridled. “That will be enough of that, lady. Go to your women and stay with them until I decide what to do with you.”
She touched her mouth delicately. “I had thought to journey onward with you to the Blackmoat, sire. I have never seen the towers of the Setna.”
“No,” Liall said at once. The Blackmoat was eight days travel by road. That meant eight days where Ressilka would be in Scarlet's eye, and eight nights of tension where Scarlet would try to hide his hurt and his worry, still believing he had only a brief future to look forward to.
It won't happen like that. If magic exists, then miracles exist.
Ressilka folded her hands in the sleeves of her gown. “Am I the king's prisoner, then, my lord? Am I not free to go where I will in my own country?”
“You are my subject, and you will go where I send you.” Liall turned away.
Ressilka would not let it be. “I had hoped to get to know you better, sire. If one day—”
“My lady, I have told you no in every polite way that I can,” Liall snapped. His hand cut the air and he glared at the others in the ger. “Leave us.”
After a moment of dead silence, they filed out, leaving Liall alone with the Rose Lady of Tebet.
“I have tried to be courteous,” Liall said to her with icy calm. “I have tried to discourage you from this path. I have tried every way to act in a manner that my mother would have approved of when dealing with a lady of noble birth, so hear me well: You do not want to marry me, Ressilka. I like to drink, I like to fuck, and I like to fight. I'm finding that I have a taste for rule and I like that, too. I’ve spent sixty years traveling as an adventurer, a bandit, a pirate, and a thief. I've killed men for saying a wrong word to me or just for looking at me in a way I didn't care for. I've slept with gutter whores, scrats, and cutthroats, with soldiers across three nations, with trained and perfumed ghilan girls, and with bhoros boys as soft as cats. I've killed more men than I can count, or even that I remember. Not many deaths were for virtuous reasons. Perhaps none were. I am everything they whisper about me, and worse.” Liall looked down at Ressilka and refused to let his expression soften. “What kind of girl would want such a husband?”
Ressilka looked away. “I do, lord.”
“Your father wants it.” He seized her chin in his hand, jerking her head up to look at him. “This is his will, not yours.”
“It is not only my father,” she said in a rush. “I wish it, too. I love you.”
He groaned and refrained from rolling his eyes, not wanting to make the scene worse. “Love me? By the gods, girl, you don’t even know me.”
“But you know my father, sire. He will have his way in this, or there will be war.” She reached up and curled her hand around his, pressing it to her cheek. “Am I so repulsive? Is not marriage to me a very small price to pay to avoid bloodshed?”
“I’m not afraid of blood,” he answered grimly. He pulled away from her. “My barons may not love me, lady, but they love your father even less. They will not join a rebel revolt simply over his injured pride. If he stays to this course, it will ruin him. It will ruin you.”
Her eyes flickered, and he saw a hint of Shikhoza’s coldness in them. “You say ruin, but I hear death in your voice.”
He did not answer. She nodded as if hearing a reply she had already anticipated.
Liall gave her a moment to compose herself. When she looked at him again, she was perfectly in control.
“Thank you for your candor, sire,” she said calmly. “Thank you for the truth.”
“You wanted Cestimir, I know,” Liall said, softer now. “He was so gentle and fine. He would have been perfect for you. Now he rests in the Kingsdal, and not all our prayers and regrets can ever bring him back.” His throat grew tight. “I will deal with your father in my own time, and I will be fair. For now, go home, lady.”
“I will go home and dream of a sweet husband with silver hair. Tell me I might hope for him one day, and I will leave.”
A marriage with Ressilka would unite the two halves of his kingdom, and their children—if they had any—would not be pure Rshani, but they might be all the stronger for it.
It does no harm to promise, Liall thought. “You might hope,” he said, watching her eyes light up and a tentative smile curve her red mouth.
She came up on her toes and kissed his cheek. He allowed it, wondering at himself.
It does no harm at all to promise.
IF THE NAUHINIR WAS the jewel in the crown of Rshan, Starhold was its monstrosity.
Nothing about Starhold welcomes the living, Liall thought blackly. The Ancients were not dead things, but they were so removed from the pains of mortality that they might as well have been spirits of the air.
The snow continued to fall in light flakes as soft as feathers. Over Tesk’s objections, Liall had dismissed his guards to wander the deserted heights of Starhold alone, searching one stone tower, then another. All were vacant, the hearths pristine and never touched by fire, the open casements allowing the wind to blow through with an empty sound. Liall's cloak was a black bear pelt from Morturii, heavy as armor. He pulled it more closely about him and chose another stair, another direction. One of them would hold what he sought.
Built to a giant scale for beings who had no need of protection or provisions, the great towers had no doors, the wall-walks had no battlements to shield the unwary, and the inner keep had no roof. It was a place for stones to age and ice to form, and for the stars to shine down upon year after endless year. Centuries could pass in such a place, and not leave a single mark.
He climbed. At this height, the sounds of the army encampments on the high plateau below him were muffled and faint. He caught a wisp of laughter, the clink of metal, before it was stolen by the wind. Of the main camp closest to the sea, he could hear nothing at all, but he saw flickering orange of their fires among the blue tents, and the tiny men moving about like ants.
Finally, he came upon a hollow space chiseled into a facing of black stone, framed by a border of red-veined marble. Icicles followed the curve of the upper frame like a row of gleaming teeth, and inside, deep in the gloom of the recess, shone a pair of amber eyes.
Looking deeper, Liall could make out the shape of knotty arms and long, ropy legs as thick as tree trunks.
“Ulan.”
The shape inside the hollow of rock stirred and writhed like wind over summer leaves before those burning eyes blinked. “Nazheradei, king,” came a throaty, inhuman rumble.
Liall bent his head. He gave Ulan time to come back to himself. An Ancient could stand dreaming for months, unmoving, unblinking, seeing the word pass and change before their gaze. To wake one caught deep within the dreaming could be hazardous, but Ulan could not have been here for very long.
“We leave for the Blackmoat in two days,” Liall said quietly.
Ulan rumbled an inarticulate sound. His limbs creaked audibly as he stirred. “You go to war against the Children of the Longwalker?”
“The Ava Thule. The Tribelanders. And yes.”
“There are no lands called tribe,” Ulan crooned like a great wheel turning. “There is only our land and the stars above. You will take the Temple Road to the Kingsdal. You will bring the Anlyribeth to Ged Fanorl.”
Liall nodded. “Yes.”
Ulan took a breath like the soughing of wind through a forest. “You are eager to make this war?”
“I’m not eager for it, but it was necessary and now I hardly see how it can be stopped, just like I don’t see how I’m supposed to abandon my army at some point and bring Scarlet to the mountain with only a handful of men. It’s impossible.”
“Not impossible. We have seen it. We have seen peace, as well.”
“Seen it,” Liall scorned. “What peace can there be? Have you seen the Ava Thule and the Rshani united in song over cups of ale, too?”
“The king does not want peace,” Ulan said, with the first hint of disapproval Liall had ever s
een in him. “But it must be.”
“My people don’t want it, either. They want revenge. They’re tired of raids, and the constant fear of their children being murdered or stolen if they stray too far from their own doorsteps. If the Ava Thule would have simply submitted and been content to bend their neck to the crown, obey our laws, we would have fed and sheltered them. You once claimed that the savagery they committed was necessary for them to survive. Wasn’t it only their pride that made that true?”
“Pride,” Ulan said slowly. “Pride of people. Pride of kings. If this short time with Scarlet is all that fate has seen to grant you, could you not be content with that?”
“Fuck the fates,” Liall spat.
“Pride of kings.” Ulan then fell silent again so long that Liall worried he had dropped back into the shadows of his dreams. Finally, he stirred, his limbs moving in slow-motion.
“You will take the Temple Road to the Kingsdal,” Ulan said, as if they had not spoken at all. “Be wary of the Setna once you have crossed the Ironspell. At a place of your choosing, you must leave the army and bring the Anlyribeth to the sacred mountain. You must do this alone.”
Liall's mouth hardened. Margun, like Alexyin and Tesk, was a Setna. Despite Ulan’s conditions, to leave the protection of his army and travel alone through lands thick with Ava Thule would be impossible. Many of his own people would try to stop him, by force if necessary. Also, the glacial winds between the Ironspell and the Kingsdal were deadly cold. How would they affect a Hilurin?
“I told you before; that’s not possible.”
The moonstone eyes very slowly dipped low and then back up. “It must be done. The prophecy. The king’s hand shall return the Anlyribeth to Ged Fanorl.”
Damned precise, your prophets, Liall thought irritably. He wished he’d had the clearness of vision to argue this point earlier with Ulan, but opportunities to meet with the Ancient had been rare.
“Perhaps the prophecy is not meant to be interpreted quite so literally. It was my hand that brought Scarlet to Rshan. Wherever he goes in this land would be the same, wouldn’t it?”
