by Ellyn, Court
With eyes sharper than a hawk’s, Rashén counted the fires rising from villages and city walls, even from a few castle towers, and took note of those wielding the blades and torches. Abominations of Avë led by the Mother’s own First Children. She had warned him about the things he would see, but seeing made it no easier to believe.
The Mother-Father had foretold this time of ash and darkness. Ages ago. Rashén himself had heard her speak the dreaded words to the Circle. He had been the one appointed to deliver the message to the Lady Dorelia in the days before the departure. A loss too deep to endure ached in his heart when he remembered that encounter; the dying and sorrow spreading across the hills below was its grandchild. A new era was being born in blood and pain. Rashén rejoiced. If he were of the Flesh he might weep, not in grief for the dead, but for the hope of redemption. Redemption for his beloved and all her people whom she had led through the mists and into a world not their own. Rashén shared the burden of their sin. He had loved her too deeply. So this era meant redemption for him, too.
The Mother had given him a new task. She had whispered to her avárithen that though her Third Children would suffer grief and pain, on the other side of that pain waited the Gate. Somewhere among the burning towns waited the Gatekeepers. They still slept, she said, and their destiny was unknown to them. Rashén was to find them and wake them and guide them on their course. He only hoped that the Exiled hadn’t murdered them yet. He feared he was starting his search too late, but then he remembered: the Mother always knew what she was doing. He had time. He had time.
He left the fires behind and careened up the flanks of the Drakhan Mountains and on again into the scentless place where no flesh could dwell. Before the Gatekeepers could open the way to redemption, they had to have help. As the Mother bid him, Rashén raced toward the sunrise and the long, golden stretch of the desert where the Miragi dwelt beyond the edge of sight …
~~~~
For the third night in a row Ruthan paced. If she stopped moving she was sure to fall asleep, and she was afraid to sleep. While the sun shone, she embroidered until her fingers were raw and her eyes ached, then she walked, walked the corridors of Tírandon, the inner walls, the skybridges, the eastern bailey and the western. All night she wandered aimlessly, desperate to keep her eyes open and her mind occupied. The Seeing tugged at her mind more insistently than it had in years.
She hadn’t ‘looked’ since Laral rode home carrying a pouch filled with Leshan’s ashes. All those years ago, she had begged her oldest brother not to ride south with his rough riders. Send them across the river to fight in his stead, she’d pleaded, but once Leshan heard that she saw him die far away from the walls he was rebuilding, nothing she said could convince him to stay. He must’ve thought she had seen his chance for redemption. To Ruthan, all she saw was blood, blood, blood, and Laral screaming for help.
Years later, she kept Leshan’s pouch of ashes under her pillow, to remind her not to See.
The visions had first come to her on the day the dragon men brought their fires to Tírandon and dragged Mother into the dungeon screaming. Ruthan’s memories of that day were dim and scattered, but she remembered that her sleep had once been sweet, her dreams peaceful and meaningless. The terror of finding a place to hide from the red blades and the fires had awakened something inside her. She saw the Great Hall burning before ever a torch was laid to it, so she ran from her nanny’s hands until she found a cool, dark corner in one of the towers. The fires wouldn’t come here, said the vision. Here she would be safe.
In the months that followed, she learned to access the Seeing on purpose. It was like opening a box in her head. As soon as she lifted the lid, the visions came pouring out. She and Leshan had won hoards of coin because she could read the dice before they fell, and that had been fun. But after he died, she shut the lid and did not open it voluntarily again. She didn’t want to see. If Seeing meant she could prevent the vision from happening, then enduring the horrors would be worth it, but she only saw what was fated to happen, and it was better not knowing. She could enjoy a cup of tea then and a sunset from the Bastion’s towers and a moment wasted.
Her wandering led her back to her suite. Was it only midnight? Surely the hour candle lied. She felt she had been walking for years, not only a couple of hours. The damp night air had settled in her hair, her bed robe, her skin. She stoked the embers in her hearth, laid another log on the grate, and warmed her hands. The warmth lulled, soothed, seduced.
“No!” she said to the flames, moving away. She mustn’t sleep.
Her dressing room was cold enough to turn her fingers and toes to ice. She sat at the vanity and brushed her hair. The wind on the battlements had blown it into a hempen tangle. She tore at the mess, clenching her teeth. Why should the Seeing plague her now? “Leave me alone!” she whimpered into the mirror. How long before it would let her sleep? Maybe when the convention was over, maybe then. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. The Convention of Kings would decide the fate of three kingdoms. Of course, the Seeing wanted to trouble her over it.
“Think about something else,” she told herself, throwing down the brush. She rearranged her gowns and shoes by color, then by season, and nearly rang the bell for her handmaid, just to have someone to fill her ear with words, but it was her keepsake chest that drew her. She hadn’t straightened it in a while. It was probably full of moths and dead rose petals that needed to be cleared away.
She sat among her silk slippers and opened the chest on her knees. On top lay the things her niece and nephews had made for her. A little knight and horse made out of sticks and twine that she and Andryn had fashioned on the sunny bank of the Thunderwater; a sheet of music that Lesha had composed for her aunt, a love song, of course; a picture that Jaedren had painted of his family when he was first learning how to hold a brush. Ruthan was the one with the big yellow halo.
She missed Laral and the kids, but Father wasn’t going to be at Assembly long enough this year for her to slip away. Laral and his family would probably be at the convention anyway. Perhaps Father would see his grandchildren then, and his heart would melt as Ruthan’s had the first time she saw them, and he would forgive Laral for marrying his enemy. She could only hope. Then maybe Laral would stop at Tírandon for a visit on his way home.
The box in her head shuddered, and she knew without peeking inside that this wasn’t to be.
Underneath these treasures lay things excavated from the fire. One of her mother’s rings. The sapphire was cracked and the silver badly melted, but Ruthan remembered Mother wearing it at one ball or another; she’d been laughing and dancing. A small silver inkpot, discolored with soot. One of the rose-shaped finials that had adorned the lamps in Father’s study. A finger bone. No one knew she had kept that, but it belonged to someone she had known and loved. Maybe Nanny. Maybe Harge, the kennel master who always let her hold the wolfhound puppies and name them. Throwing it away felt like losing them twice. Nothing of her own had survived.
She lifted out a wooden doll so well-loved that the cloth body was floppy and brown, even the lace dress it wore. Ruthan had found it in a dusty chest at Lanwyk Manor. Old Lady Lanwyk said the doll had belonged to her daughter but she let Ruthan keep it when the Black Falcon’s army returned to Bramoran. Looped around the doll’s neck was Leshan’s bag of dice. She opened the drawstrings and dumped the six dice into her palm. The ivory was yellowing, turning brown in the cracks, the paint on the faces worn thin. They had won every hand, she and her brother, to the detriment of the other Falcon Guards.
Grinning, Ruthan shook them and tossed them. The box in her head broke wide open.
A falcon as white as fresh fallen snow shrieked and fell from the sky. Blood stained its feathers. Her father ran through a field of ghosts, terror on his face. “My son, my son,” he cried, searching among the ghosts, then blood ran from his mouth in a great gout and Ruthan stood over his body and the floor was carpeted with the dead. In a dark corner, chains rattled.
How shiny they were, those chains hanging from the murky stone wall. The wrists inside the shackles festered, and the fire in the girl’s fingers had gone cold. But the girl … the girl’s blue eyes glared stubborn and fierce. Teeth gnawed on bone. “Unbalance,” breathed a voice made of light. “Listen, Seer. Do as he says.”
Someone walked into the dressing room and crouched beside her. Leshan was smiling. He used to smile often. How had she forgotten that? “We never lost,” he said. “Thanks to you, Ruthie.”
Ruthie. No one called her that but her brothers. His fingers touched her hair, her cheek, and they felt so real, so warm. But it was just a vision. Wasn’t it? This wasn’t like the others. She had never seen the faces of the dead, only those doomed to die, and none had acknowledged her and spoken to her. They had the same eyes, she and her brother, large and dark and brooding.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “Father is dead?”
Leshan nodded. “And more will die unless you stop it. They’re on their way, Ruthie. They will arrive before dawn.”
“Who?”
“The Mother’s First Children. They bring a terrible army that destroys everything it tramples on.” Even as he said it, she saw them. Hordes of gray-skinned monsters with hungry red eyes and yellow tusks rising obscenely from their mouths. They were marching in a quick-step, axes and armor clanking. A black sword with a broken blade swept before them. “I built Tírandon for these days, Ruthie. The Mother told me so. They cannot get in if you shut the gate. You must shut the gate. Then you’ll be safe. Do you understand?”
She nodded, terror a knot in her throat.
“Do what you have to, but shut the gate. Go now.”
“But you …”
He was already gone. Like mist on a sunny morning. The lid closed on the box in Ruthan’s head, and she sat among the shoes in her dressing room trembling. Six dice laid at her feet. She read their faces: a sword, two roses, three skulls. The skulls won.
Ruthan tossed aside the keepsake chest and scrambled to her feet. “Close the gate, close the gate,” she muttered to herself as she hurried across the Great Hall. Before the lord’s hearth, one of Lander’s wolfhounds tapped his tail in greeting.
The red face of the moon glared through ragged rents in the clouds, its light briefly glinting on the helms of sentries drifting sleepily on the wallwalk. The inner portcullis was raised, the massive andyr-and-iron doors open to the western bailey. Far away at the outer gate, between the two massive towers of Andett’s Bastion, a moonlit countryside shone through the black iron grate of a second portcullis. But there were three portcullises inside the Bastion and no one had thought to lower the other two or close the inner doors or raise the drawbridge. And why should they? Tírandon needed only minimal precautions against Fieran cattle raiders, and they were wise enough to stay well away from the eyes in the castle.
Ruthan flung open the guardhouse door. “Captain Reynal!”
A pimple-faced youth glanced up from the captain’s chair in surprise, hauled his feet off the desktop, leapt up to straighten his uniform, and stood at a attention. “Please, m’ lady, I wasn’t sleeping! Swear I wasn’t.”
“Where’s Reynal? Get him.”
“He went to bed hours ago, he—”
“I don’t care! Get him.” She paced wildly in the tight space of the castellan’s headquarters until the youth returned, leading the captain in. Reynal was cursing and grinding his teeth. His surcoat, blazoned with silver and black chevrons, was askew and his pants were only halfway tucked into his boots. The scent of sour wine wafted ahead of him. He and Lander butted heads often because they were much alike. That’s why Father kept him around, truth be told. Neither put up with anyone’s nonsense but his own, and so the house stayed in order. He saw Ruthan behind his desk and stopped his blustering and teeth-grinding. “M’ lady. An odd hour. What’s the trouble?”
“Captain, I’m sorry to wake you, but we have to secure the gates.”
“They are secure. I saw to it myself.”
“You don’t understand. Something terrible is on its way. We have to raise the drawbridge and sound the alarm.” She tried turning him for the bell tower, but he freed his arm. At least she had his attention.
“Fierans?” he asked. “Did His Lordship send a missive?”
“Captain, my father is dead! It’s not Fierans, it’s worse. Sound the alarm.”
“Lord Lander? Dead? But the—” He straightened, cast Ruthan a sidelong glance stinging with skepticism. “How much sleep have you had in the last couple of days, m’ lady? I seen you walking at all hours, and others have reported it, too.”
“This has nothing to do with sleep—”
“I think m’ Lady Ruthan has had a bad dream.” His big hand swept her past the pimple-faced sentry and from his office as effectively as a flood moves a pebble. “His Lordship is fine. You’ll see. In a couple of days he’ll be home safe.”
Ruthan clenched her teeth and ducked from his touch. “I am not a child, Captain, nor am I mad! You cannot see because you are blind. You cannot hear because you are deaf. And I’m telling you an army of darkness is about to attack Tírandon, and I won’t stand by while you let them in.”
“Now just one moment. I’ll not be accused of—”
“Raise the bridge!” Her shouting brought half a dozen drowsy, glowering men from the barracks tower.
Reynal pursed his lips, taking a slow, grudging measure of her. At last he nodded and gestured at the youth. “Run down there and get the lads on the winch.”
“And the portcullises, all of them,” Ruthan called after the boy as he struck out across the bailey, too slowly to suit her.
“Sure, why not,” the castellan said, waving the boy on. He was only humoring her. It was the quickest way back to his pillow.
Ruthan’s palm across his cheek drove the complacency off his face. “I am the daughter of Lander, Lord Tírandon, and my father has been murdered. I am your lady now. You will not cross me as you crossed him, Captain. Ring the alarm!”
He backed slowly for the bell tower, veins protruding from his neck he was so furious.
“Ring the fucking bell!” she bellowed in his face. “Ring it, ring it, ring it!” He ran, and she rounded on the soldiers gawking at her from the barracks door. “Arm yourselves and get to the wall. Move!”
She breathed easier only when she heard the great bronze bell singing across the grounds and out into the night. Even the villagers would hear it booming across the plain, awaken and be ready for whatever came. Four great chains hauled up the drawbridge; the other portcullises rattled into place. Men donned chainmail and helms, slung quivers over their shoulders and sword belts around their waists as they trammeled up the towers and across the skybridges to the outer curtain. Ruthan hurried to the Bastion and listened for the clank of axes and jingle of armor. What if she was mad? Leshan had spoken to her, she was sure of it. Yet how could that be? Please, Goddess, don’t let me be mad. The alternative, however, was more frightening still.
Under the roar of the gusts in her ears, she heard it. The marching of feet. Please, no, she prayed. I wish I were only mad. She sagged against the battlements, high over the dark sea of the plain, and sobbed.
At dawn she raised her head from her arms and saw a banner standing alone in the middle of a field. On undyed sackcloth fluttered a broken sword painted black.
~~~~
25
Valryk smelled the stink of blood, though he was locked away in his secret parlor. He sat before a blazing hearth with his head in his hands and the taste of vomit in his mouth. Dried tears stiffened his cheeks. He had been a fool to think this task would be easy. Watching his father die slowly had been sickening. Reeling his people into the safety of his walls, then listening to them scream was worse, a torment beyond bearing. The walls were too thin to block out the high, desperate wailing.
Lasharia provided his only comfort. When he made his excuse to leave the King’s Hall, she was already here, waiting for hi
m. She wore her armor, however, rather than a gown. Today was not a day for softness or beauty, even though her smile had been tender, her lilac eyes full of affection.
At the first scream, Valryk broke. He raced for the door, but Lasharia stopped him before he unlocked it and put a stop to the bloodshed. “No, there has to be another way!”
Her fingers gripping his jaw were iron. “A change of the watch. You and the Captain agreed this was the best way to ensure our future, your rule. You can’t risk any traitors among them, you said so yourself!” She held him until the screaming stopped. Shrieks of terror suddenly cut off. Cries of pain that dwindled to whimpers, then to silence. It seemed to last for hours, but it must have been only a short while. It didn’t take unarmed people long to die. Then the thunder started and the walls shook, and Valryk was sure the wrath of the Goddess had come upon him, that she meant to bring the castle down atop his head.
The stillness that followed was just as bad. The smells seeping in under the door turned his stomach. Soldiers’ feet tramped past, accompanied by gruff shouts and the whimpering of the squires and servants whom the highborns had toted along. These were stuffed into the ballroom. The killing wasn’t over yet.
“Do you want to see if she’s there?” asked Lasharia. Her face was pressed to the wall, her eye to a peephole. It looked out into the ballroom.
“She’d better not be,” Valryk said gruffly, lurching unsteadily to his feet. He’d had one goblet of wine too many. “Or I’ll have Dashka’s hide.”
Four peepholes were spaced across the molding. Valryk eased one open and saw a couple hundred servants milling about in the bright light of the chandelier, along with perhaps a hundred boys and girls in squire’s livery. One of the thrones obstructed his view. He moved to the next peephole. The towers of sweets and delicacies were long gone from the room, the windows bolted shut. Night turned the glass into black mirrors that reflected sullen faces, tear-streaked faces, angry faces. None of them Carah’s. Dashka had followed his orders after all and locked her safely in her room. Valryk shouldn’t have bothered sparing her. Once she learned what happened to her father, what was happening to her mother, she wouldn’t make a willing queen. She wouldn’t do at all. He could give her a quick, painless death, however. Yes, he could do that much.
