The center of the long-house seemed to stretch out in back of him, a vast, unnaturally quiet space like the belly of a giant beast that held him in its jaws, caught but not yet swallowed. Terris’s muscles tensed and his pulse quickened. His palms, held together by the leather thongs, felt cold and slippery.
Deliberately, he shut out all awareness of where he was and what might be about to happen to him. Turning his focus inward, he imagined he was back in the Starhall, at its very center, with the worst of the stomach-twisting wrongness flooding over him. Then, as if the years of discipline had hardened into an instinctive reflex, his breathing slowed and his pulse returned to normal. His muscles softened, although he stayed balanced on his feet. He stopped sweating. His face settled into an impassive mask.
“All right,” said Jakon. His voice, although still soft, took on new, chilling undertones. “You can tell me now, or you can tell me later. But, my friend, I promise...you will...”
Behind him Terris heard approaching footsteps, the soft-soled boots worn by the northers. Jakon was no longer looking at him, but beyond him. For a flickering second, the norther’s eyes narrowed and the muscles of his jaw stood out, hard and taut.
Terris turned to see Kardith between two tall northers, each with a firm hold on her arm. Her hands were tied in front of her and her boots were missing, but she didn’t seem to be hurt.
But Kardith was a Ranger. She’d patrolled these borders for years. Who knew how many northers she’d killed or what they’d do to her now? What special kind of revenge would they devise, just for her? And there was that spark of recognition on Jakon’s face, that surge of emotion, quickly masked. Terris didn’t know what it meant, but his mouth went dry.
Slowly Jakon got up from the drum stool and walked over to Kardith. They were of a height, as he wasn’t tall, but his shoulders were heavier and more powerful, his hips leaner. Her face, framed by her ragged curls, looked dusky next to his. She stared back at him steadily.
Without taking his eyes from hers, Jakon slid the dagger from his belt and brought it to the base of her throat, the cup of soft flesh where her collarbones and breastbone met.
Terris’s hands curled unconsciously into fists. His heartbeat quickened and yet he couldn’t look away. Kardith was moments away from dying, and he could do nothing, nothing but watch. An image rose up behind his eyes, so powerful and vivid that for a moment it wiped out his normal sight. He saw Kardith pivot, a sharp spiraling movement that jerked one of her guards off balance. She jabbed her opposite elbow into the other’s solar plexus and he buckled over, gasping. The next moment her arms were free, the dagger in her still-tied hands, the point speeding toward Jakon’s heart...
But no, Kardith did none of this. She continued to stand absolutely still, even her eyes. Yet there was something in the way she met the dagger that was not courage. Not courage or bravado but simply that she had no fear of anything Jakon, or any norther, could do to her. She didn’t even flinch as a trickle of blood ran down her chest and soaked into the cloth of her shirt.
One drop, two, three...four.
Jakon lifted the dagger tip in a salute and resheathed it. He glanced from Kardith to Terris. “Is this cub under your protection?”
For a moment Kardith hesitated, surprised by the question perhaps, or puzzled. Then she shook her head.
No? Terris wondered, startled.
“No?” Jakon repeated aloud. “I may be nothing but a ‘norther barbarian,’ but I’m not entirely lacking in wits. Do you expect me to believe you’re under his protection? Or that he made it here from Laureal City on his own? Or that it’s sheer whimsy — or misguided chance — that puts a herdsman, a scholar and the best knife-fighter in all of Harth, together on my borders?”
“Believe whatever you like,” she said coolly. “You will, anyway.”
Jakon went back to the drum stool but did not sit down. He stood looking out of the nearest slit window. Silence settled like a cloak around him.
He knows it’s useless to threaten her. He’s wondering if he can get her to talk by torturing me.
Terris had no particular illusions about his ability to withstand physical pain. What he’d thought of as agony along the trail would quickly pale beside what these northers would do to him. All the tricks of self-control he’d learned in the Starhall would collapse like a house of dried leaves. In a few hours he’d be screaming his guts out, willing to do or say anything to make them stop, begging Kardith to tell them whatever they wanted to know.
And she wouldn’t, no matter how he pleaded, no matter what they did to him. Of that he was absolutely certain.
Chapter 24
Sounds filtered in through the slit windows of the long-house — muted noises from the encampment on the shore, the fir branches rustling in the wind, the slapping of the lake waters. Jakon sat silent and unmoving on his drum stool. It seemed to Terris that he was measuring each weakness of his captives, weighing each strategic possibility.
One of the norther guards brought Etch through one of the side doors. He held Etch’s uninjured arm bent back, the joints locked, yet the leverage seemed more supportive than restraining.
Terris was stunned at how desperately sick Etch looked. He’d known Etch wasn’t doing well, but he hadn’t realized how badly. On the trail, they hadn’t been able to exchange more than a few silent glances. Etch must have hidden any sign that his wound was infected, fearing the northers would kill him right then, rather than risk him slowing them down. The skin around his mouth was dull gray, his eyes strained and glassy. His beard had started to come in and it covered his lower face like a shadow. He swayed on his feet.
The first-aid kit Annelys had packed contained antibiotics, if only Terris could get to them. He remembered how Etch had fought for the gray mare’s life, his fervor and then his gentleness with Kardith the next morning.
To them he’s just another souther to be gotten out of the way. What do they care if he’s a decent man or a criminal? But if they kill him — or let him die — it will be my fault. Mine. He’s here, hurt and a prisoner, because of me.
The northers didn’t give away anything, but they might be willing to bargain. What did he have to offer in trade for Etch’s life?
o0o
Just then, the norther who’d led the party that took them prisoner entered the room and bent to whisper something to his chief.
Jakon’s face darkened as he listened. Watching the subtle shift of tension, Terris’s mouth went dry and his spine stiffened as if he’d been stabbed by slivers of ice.
“In his pack?” Jakon said. “A what? No, no...you were right to tell me...too important to wait...I’ll see it now.”
There was only one thing Terris or any of them carried that was too important to wait. The one thing that would instantly end any pretense of innocence. The one thing Terris should have thrown away, melted down, buried deep as a grave rather than risk it falling into norther hands.
And there it was, on the carpet in front of Jakon, the lacings that bound its wrappings now being untied, the soft leather now slowly unrolled.
Against all reason, against all his efforts to resist them, tears rose to Terris’s eyes, bitter tears of shame. Shame that such a thing should come from Laurea, his Laurea. Shame that this proud man should find it in his keeping.
Terris watched, sickened and speechless, as Jakon bent to examine the dagger. The air turned dense, as if the room held its breath and time itself slowed to a snail’s pace.
For an instant, Jakon’s body became an exquisitely sensitive mirror — recognition, puzzlement, outrage, each reaction sharp and clear before blending into the next. Terris couldn’t see Jakon’s face, but he heard the catch of his breath, saw the hunching of his shoulders, the infinitesimal clawlike curling of the scarred fingers.
“What is this — this thing?” Jakon said in a low, hoarse voice. “This unspeakable obscenity of a weapon? Who is the smith that dared to forge it — and for what foul purpose have you broug
ht it here?” He reached to pick up the dagger.
“Don’t touch it!”
It took Terris a moment to realize he’d actually spoken aloud, and then he was as surprised as anyone. Jakon was no fool, and he’d handled weapons all his life. He would have found out the dagger’s secret without any help. Yet something inside Terris, something that knew nothing of politics or strategy, had seized his voice and cried out in warning.
Jakon looked up, hand still outstretched. The carved bone gleamed in the softly filtered light.
Terris wet his lips. “The tip. A poison channel.”
Poison...
The word rippled through the long-house, a sudden leap in tension in the norther guards. Their eyes went narrow and jumpy.
Jakon kept his gaze on Terris as he curved his fingers around the hilt. It occurred to Terris that if the poison had been there instead, in a hidden needle or some coating designed to soak through the skin, then Jakon would have fallen into the trap. Jakon had known it, too.
Jakon’s face gave away nothing, yet in that brief moment, Terris could see the man underneath the mask, as clearly as if he were made of glass. He saw Jakon burning with an inner fire that warmed everything he touched. Longing shot through him, to surrender and be part of that soaring, uncomplicated light.
Terris blinked, and Jakon became an ordinary man once more, a man of solid and slightly battered flesh.
Jakon straightened up, holding the dagger flat in front of him. One sandy eyebrow tilted upward. Do you know what this is? Do you know what this means?
Somewhere in Terris’s mind, a voice nattered at him to keep silent, to keep faith. To remember that the northers had always been his enemies, that only Laurea stood between their chaos and the very heart of human civilization.
All his life hung in balance, all the times he’d kept quiet because he was Esmelda’s son, all the things he’d done while trying to pretend that who he was had no importance. All the hours he’d spent sweating in the Starhall when every instinct shrilled at him to get out of there. Every action, every syllable, every breath deliberate.
He walked forward and, without knowing why, placed his fingertips on the dagger. It was awkward with his hands still tied, but it felt like the right thing to do. The northers made no move to stop him. He met Jakon’s eyes, like ice, like palest blue topaz, and wondered what kind of man was this, to have the truth so freely from him.
For that matter, what kind of man was he?
o0o
Terris told the story simply, without embellishment. The killing of Pateros, the rage building in Laurea against the north, the duplicate dagger meant for himself. He knew that Jakon might well refuse to believe him, might torture him, might kill him, might kill all of them. Strangely, that no longer mattered. It was as if some other force, intuitive and mute, moved through him and spoke with his voice.
Jakon held the dagger steady under Terris’s fingertips. One moment his eyes seemed opaque and expressionless; the next, they flared with a passion so hot and raw it scalded all the color away.
“Why would you betray your own country to tell me this?” Jakon asked. “Why?”
Because what has happened is wrong, and I had no part in it. “Because if this war happens — if we allow it to happen — it will be as bad for my people as for yours.”
Jakon nodded, considering this. “We had no hand in the death of your Pateros,” he said. “We are not so witless as to trade an enemy we know for one we do not. He was honorable to us in victory, something few of your southers understand. But if we had wished him gone, this coward’s weapon would not be our way.” Jakon paused. “But why the poison? What need was there? Why couldn’t Montborne have used an honest blade? He’s taken enough of them from our dead.”
“He needs to convince the gaea-priests you’ve developed horrible new weapons,” Terris said. “So he can build more of his own.”
It’s that, his passion for new weapons, and not the war itself, that makes him so dangerous in Esme’s eyes. The invisible tempest battered at the edges of his consciousness. He shivered and thrust it away.
“Things...like this?”
“Yes.”
“You can never have enough of death and treachery, can you, you southers?” Jakon flared. “You think all Harth is yours, and you can do whatever you like. First you steal the hill pastures that have been ours for the hungry years since the beginning of time, and ever since we have watched our children starve and our elders go into the night before their time. Then when our young men ride out in anger and madness, you slaughter them like sheep!
“Now...” Jakon’s voice roughened. “Now you come to me with this devil’s weapon and you say there are more to come. And worse? When will you have enough? When we are all dead and no one remembers what honor means? When you have laid waste all the north and there is no one left to stand against you?”
Terris couldn’t move. His muscles locked and his pulse raced. He tried to draw air into his lungs to speak. But the voice within him had gone silent and he didn’t know how to answer.
Was everything he’d learned in Laurea a lie? Everyone had always said the northers were a threat to civilization, the wolf at the gates, the mindless destroyers. No one had ever mentioned the children numb with hunger through the long cold nights.
He lowered his eyes, unable to find words for the feelings that rose up in him.
“Brassaford!” Kardith’s voice split the air like a whipcrack. “What about Brassaford?”
The room leapt into sharp focus — the complex, unreadable symbols of the carpets and hangings, the yellow-streaked blood seeping through the bandages on Etch’s arm, the guards with knife scars and weather-grim faces. Jakon whirling with inhuman speed to bring the dagger point to Kardith’s throat.
These people are not all innocent victims, Terris thought, stunned. And we’ve been enemies for a long, long time.
The poisoned tip almost touched the dried blood on Kardith’s neck. Her pupils dilated, her eyes huge and dark. Jakon’s hand quivered, then was still.
“Desperate people,” he said, “do desperate things.”
o0o
“Desperate things,” Jakon repeated as he slowly lowered the dagger. He balanced it in his hand, weighing its solidness. His brows drew together but he kept his eyes on Kardith. For a long moment, they stood facing each other, unmoving except for their breathing.
Kardith shimmered in Terris’s vision, her body poised and taut. The poisoned dagger lay only an instant from her fingers. Terris was again reminded of a great hunting cat, but this time no blood-filled images rose up behind his eyes. Instead, he saw two glittering figures, a man of fire and a woman of copper and amber, creatures of sun and molten earth, matched in grace and deadliness.
Terris’s heart caught in his throat. He’d never seen Kardith as beautiful before.
“Will you swear to keep from harm any living thing among us, man or beast,” Jakon asked her, “to share in our bread and our salt, to honor our holy laws as your own?”
A ritual formula, Terris thought. A prisoner’s parole? A test? Or some kind of guest code?
Kardith didn’t seem to have any doubts about that Jakon meant. “I am a Laurean Ranger,” she said, “and I am your prisoner.”
“And you?” Jakon’s eyes sought Etch. The older man, his eyes fever-bright, glanced at Terris, then shook his head.
As Jakon faced him, Terris realized with a start that he was slightly taller than the norther chief, just as he was slightly taller than Kardith. He could feel Etch struggling to stay on his feet and Kardith’s eyes on him, waiting. She’d said he wasn’t under her protection, and it had made no sense to him at the time. Now he understood what she meant. He was the one who led them. He was the once to choose — and quickly, too, before the moment passed.
The decision was his alone. Kardith and Etch would follow him. The voice at the back of his mind whispered that the future of Laurea might turn on his next words.
But by all the undiscovered gods of Harth, they would be his words! Not Esmelda’s, not Montborne’s, not Pateros’s.
His.
“I’ll give you my word,” he said. “My word for all of us.”
“How do I know what your word means?” Jakon demanded. “You have no gods, you southers. Your promises are like water, like wind. What can you swear by?”
The gaea-priests would say, By All Grace or The Living Tree. Etch would swear on Harth’s sweet ass, Kardith by The Mother.
For me, what?
He could swear on the dagger. He could say, “I swear by this thing that lies between us, this thing that is as loathsome and despicable to me as it is to you, this thing that violates everything I believe in. I swear by this weapon aimed at the very heart of our world.”
No, he couldn’t say that. It was as pompous as anything he’d recited in his dissertation proposal. Jakon would see through it in an instant and laugh in his face.
“You asked me before why I would betray Laurea to tell you about Montborne and his plot,” Terris said. “I wasn’t completely honest with you. The truth is that it’s Montborne who has betrayed Laurea and everything we stand for. The truth is that I have to stop him — and I need your help to do it. If I must swear by anything, let it be by that truth.”
A ripple of incredulity passed around the assembled northers.
“Need our help? Who are you to ask us for anything?”
“I am the son of Esmelda of Laurea.”
Jakon’s eyes widened, a fleeting expression of surprise perhaps, or confusion...or amazement. “Es — melda. Ah.” He nodded slightly, as if some great mystery were now made clear. “And what were you, Terricel son of Esmelda of Laurea, doing on our borders? You’re not the sort your mother would send to spy on our little trading camp. And you certainly didn’t ride all the way here to ask my help in dealing with your renegade general.”
Northlight Page 21
