“What’s going on here?” the heavyset man demanded in his gruff voice. “You been harassing her again?”
Neither man answered. Santon silently rode on when the string attached to his saddle began to draw taunt. He wished he had cut Pandasso’s string when the opportunity had afforded itself. But he knew that would have done no good. Using the Demon Crown Lokenna could have located her husband easily.
The thought crossed his mind that she might not bother. Santon pushed that aside. From what he had seen of Lokenna, her loyalty knew no bounds. She might not love Bane Pandasso — Santon wasn’t sure how even a mother warthog could — but Lokenna would not abandon him like castoff clothing.
Together they rode into the teeth of the snowstorm, each silent and lost in his thoughts.
“We cannot fight our way through,” insisted Lokenna. “We see only the front of the patrol. Six others back these two.”
Santon wiped the melting snow from his eyebrows and glared at the two riders. Dews Gaemock had again shown his cunning in stationing his men. Santon began to have a grudging respect for the main’s ability and wished that they were not on opposite sides. Gaemock opposed any of royal blood sitting on the throne — and Santon had promised Alarice that one twin would ascend and rule.
“Birtle, they’ve sighted us!” Lokenna’s cold grip on his shoulder tightened until it felt as if ice talons cut into his flesh.
“Damnation. May all the demons — and Lorens, too — take them!” He slipped from the shallow depression that had given them paltry shelter during their rest and moved quickly downslope. He had to position himself to keep these two from reporting back to the main patrol.
He and Vered worked well together. Past skirmishes had honed their instinct to the point that they knew how the other thought, what the other did, if the other needed help. Santon skidded and slid down a rocky slope, banging his shield and shoulder into the rocks. By the time he regained a precarious footing on a muddy patch, he faced both riders.
“What have we here, Tannay? Could it be the one Lord Dews sent us to fetch?”
Santon worked his glass shield into place and swung the axe up and into his grip. He winced at the pain this simple, practiced motion caused. The chaffed skin on his wrist had not begun to heal.
“Yes, Sergeant, he has the look about him.
Notice the arm. Look Efran himself mentioned that.”
Santon frowned. Who was Lord Efran? He had no time to consider. Living took precedence over curiosity. He lowered his head, lifted his shield, and charged, his shining axe blade singing as it moved in an arc parallel with the frozen ground. The nicked edge caught one horse’s leg just above the knee. Although he did not sever the limb, Santon heard fragile bones breaking. As the horse neighed in fear and tried to shy away, it threw its rider. All the way to the ground the sergeant of rebels cursed.
Santon had no time to finish off his fallen victim. Tannay attacked. The flat of a sword blade struck him on the side of the head and sent him tumbling. In the glass-slick mud Santon skidded farther than he anticipated. He had to struggle frantically to keep from falling over an embankment and down to a partially frozen stream.
Such determination to remain out of the water should have given an opportunity to Tannay. It didn’t. Vered had attacked from the side, driving his sword through the rebel’s armpit as he raised his weapon to kill Santon.
“You should be more careful, Santon,” Vered told his friend. “That one intended to spit you.” He carefully cleaned his glass blade in a snowbank.
“What happened to the other one? The sergeant?” Santon climbed to his feet and looked around. The unseated rebel had vanished into the whiteness around them.
“He has retreated to alert the rest of the rebels,” came Lokenna’s clear voice.
“Damn! We’ll never elude them now.”
“There is a way,” said Lokenna, her voice as distant as her gaze. “We press on quickly, to the north, toward Ionia’s troop bivouac.”
“We might be able to confuse them, get them attacking each other!” cried Vered.
“No, they won’t. They have established recognition signals.”
“You know them?” Santon shared Vered’s eagerness to learn this.
“They have exchanged soldiers and the codes are in their battle languages. I can mimic but not duplicate. They would know instantly.”
“Why seek out Ionia, then?” asked Santon.
“My brother is near. He heads for the tunnel to the river. We can join him before he begins his fight through Ionia’s forces.”
“Always Lorens,” muttered Vered. “If he sees either of us, we’re dead. He has to know we stole the crown.”
“He…he thinks his court jester is responsible. Harhar. He speaks of him with great rancour.”
“Lorens would execute us on sight, just to stay in practice,” insisted Vered.
“You will have the crown and follow. He will never see you. If you are afraid, Birtle, you can remain with your friend.”
“You’d trust us together with the Demon Crown?”
“You did not have to give it to me. This Alarice of whom you speak so highly trusted you. I feel that I can, also.”
“We ought to take the crown and throw it into the river — or bury it or somehow get rid of it,” said Vered.
“No,” snapped Santon. “Alarice said that the crown was Porotane’s only chance for peace, for unification.”
“She had not met Lorens when she said those fine things.” Vered went to the fallen soldier and began pilfering the body for anything of value. He tossed most aside until he came to a metal tag.
“What do you have?” asked Santon.
“A name tag for identification.”
“Lokenna,” asked Santon, “how long before the rebels overtake us?”
“At least an hour. Why?”
“There is time,” said Vered. He began piling rocks to make a crypt. As he worked, Santon joined him.
From above came Pandasso’s querulous voice. “What are you doing? We must ride to save ourselves!”
“We’re going to bury him,” said Santon. “Vered and I have seen enough phantoms wandering the pass to add to their rank. It won’t take long and we know the man’s identity.”
Lokenna smiled. “You risk your lives to save a fallen enemy from eternal anguish? Indeed, I can trust you two with the crown — and my life.”
Vered grumbled as he worked. Under his breath, he said to Santon, “Little does our new queen know that we plied our trade as thieves for many a year.”
“Does that matter to a woman able to see any pilfering, no matter how well concealed?” Santon heaved the last rock into place and let Vered lower the slain soldier into the crypt. They began the tedious chore of piling the rocks backs. The burial site would keep out all but the most determined of scavengers.
Vered said the service laying the rebel’s phantom to rest. He finished quickly, putting the metal tag on a rock above the grave.
“Rest well,” Vered said softly. He vaulted onto his horse and never looked back as he rode off after Lokenna and her husband. Santon brought up the rear, his ears straining for some indication of pursuit by the rebels. Within minutes the softly falling snow blanketed out every sound but the click-click of his own horse’s hooves on the rocky road through Claymore Pass.
Santon drifted, feeling as if he had entered a land without dimension or form. Whiteness greeted him in every direction. He rode along, nodding off and coming awake with a start, unsure of the passage of time. It might have been an hour or a day when he overtook Lokenna. Vered and Pandasso had already stopped.
“Ahead,” she said softly. “Ionia’s troops have set up guard posts to block travel. A league beyond lies the tunnel.”
“What else?” asked Santon, hearing the edge in her voice.
“What else could it be?” Vered said with some bitterness. “Lorens lies between us and Ionia’s troopers.”
Santon looked at the
Demon Crown perched on Lokenna’s brow. The green was still warm and cheery rather than the corrupted colour when Lorens had possessed it. Santon was unsure how to take this omen. Lokenna had worn the crown constantly since leaving Fron, but how long had that been? A few days, he was sure. Tiredness and hunger gnawing at his belly robbed him of his normal measures. How long must the woman wear the crown before it began to infect her as it had her twin?
“I feel nothing unusual, Birtle,” she said, reading his expression. “I have seen what my brother has become. I’ve never known him but from all you have said, he was not always like he is now.”
“Would that the tyrant were dead,” grumbled Vered.
“He is my brother and I truthfully cannot say I remember him. If you say that we were kidnapped as small children — ”
“Not that small,” cut in Vered. “Alarice said you were five or six at the time. You should remember Lorens.”
“I should,” Lokenna said, “but I do not. This is all the more reason to see him. So much of my early memory is…gone.”
“Magic?” suggested Santon.
“Perhaps. If the kidnapping was as brutal as you suggest, I may have simply blocked it out. If so, meeting Lorens might help return this part of my past.” Lokenna smiled and Santon felt his coldness vanish in its warmth. “I do remember wandering and being taken in by an elderly couple who lived outside Fron.”
“She married me when she was about fifteen,” Pandasso added. “We’ve been happy till now.”
Santon watched the gentle smile turn to wry amusement. He saw that Lokenna was content but not happy. With a man like Bane Pandasso how could any whose birth had been noble be happy?
“Let me wear the crown for a few miles more until we approach where my brother prepares his men.”
“They are going to attack Ionia’s position? In this blizzard?”
Santon couldn’t believe it but Lokenna nodded slowly. She turned her horse and got it walking. Santon followed blindly, one direction no different from another.
Santon heard Lorens haranguing his soldiers long before he sighted them. The snow flurries had lightened and gave visibility of almost a hundred yards. For the kind of travelling they had done, this seemed extraordinary. He reined in and waited for Lokenna to decide her course of action.
“There he is,” said Vered. “Your brother readies his men for a suicide mission. Without the crown, there is no way he can know how Ionia’s troops are deployed,”
“He might be crazy but he is not stupid,” she said. She shivered. Santon did not think it was from the cold. “He still possesses a modicum of magical power. I see it boiling around — or swarming about his head. It is difficult to describe. He appears to be surrounded by hundreds of black insects.”
“Those reflect his ability?”
“Who can say?” Lokenna took off the crown and held it out for Vered to take. He recoiled. “I am sorry,” she said. “It is incredible to me that others find this wondrous device so deadly.” The woman fumbled in her pack and came out with the glass box and carrying pouch. She put the Demon Crown within, closed the box, and handed it to Vered, who gingerly accepted it.
“I can feel its power, even through the case,” he said.
“Resist, friend,” urged Santon. “Remember what it can do to you.”
“Aye, I remember too well. You need have no fear on that. There are other matters that concern me more.” Vered cleared his throat before continuing. “My queen, it pains me to ask this. What happens if your brother does not greet you with open arms and sibling love?”
“Lorens is incapable of either, but still I must meet him. He suspects another’s presence. The Demon Crown is potent and he is hungry for it. If necessary, I can use it as a bargaining point.”
“No!” Santon and Vered cried at the same time. Santon motioned his friend to silence. “You dare not, Majesty. Better the crown is destroyed and Alarice’s quest dies.”
“Along with it all hope for peace in Porotane,” added Vered.
“Lorens is cruel and capricious and not in his right mind. All that is true.” Lokenna stared down the slope. “There is much I must learn from him. He has worn the crown longer than I. Questions rise in my mind and asking another lessens the danger to me should I be forced to find out the answers by experiment.”
Santon shook his head. Lokenna had seemed a simple serving wench in Fron. Such a comment from that woman would have been out of place. But it fit well with the different Lokenna, Queen Lokenna of Porotane, wearer of the Demon Crown.
“You will do nicely on your own, Vered. I trust you. Come along,” Lokenna said, a hint of steel in her voice.
Santon and Vered exchanged glances. Vered shrugged and motioned for his friend to ride on. Santon rode slowly, his horse picking out firm spots in the muddy hillside.
Lokenna played a dangerous game, but he had to trust her. She had used the Demon Crown and seen the troop deployments in Claymore Pass. And he could understand her need to speak with her long-lost brother. But what other motives drove her?
He had no idea, and that worried him.
CHAPTER VIII
Birtle Santon looked over his shoulder to see if Vered watched, also. He did not. The younger man had wasted no time in finding cover. Santon hoped that his friend withstood the lure of the crown. The last time Vered had worn it, he had been drawn into a maelstrom from which return had been difficult — and without Santon helping, Vered would have perished.
The Demon Crown gave immense power. It also extracted a great penalty from anyone wearing it.
“Let me do the talking,” said Lokenna.
“This isn’t right and proper,” her husband protested. “I speak for the family.”
“She is queen. She speaks for the kingdom,” said Santon.
“Queen,” sneered Pandasso. “There you go
calling my Lokenna queen again. What does it mean? She puts on that fancy shining green crown and that makes her high royalty? Don’t go giving me any of that. You been lying to me and her. I don’t know what your scheme is, you petty cutpurse, but — ”
“Silence.” Lokenna’s tone cut off her husband’s tirade. Pandasso stared at her open-mouthed with astonishment.
To the guard posted at the perimeter of the camp, Lokenna called, “We seek a truce. We have come to parlay with Lorens.”
“Parlay?” came the sceptical reply to her request. “Who makes such a claim?”
“Let Lorens decide. I refuse to bandy words with a commoner.”
The way she spoke startled Santon. Lokenna fell into the role of a monarch quickly. Too quickly, for his taste. Had the Demon Crown infected her as it already had her brother?
“Who causes such an uproar when quiet is needed?” Lorens came out of a crude tent and stood, hands on hips, glaring up at Lokenna.
All around the trio of riders the would-be king’s soldiers fingered their weapons, unsure of what to do. But Santon saw — felt — that Lokenna and her brother were two poles of an immense energy. The others felt it, too, and this added to their uncertainty.
“Who are you?” asked Lorens. His face lost the rigidity and turned to a constantly flowing mass of conflicting emotion. Santon marvelled at the way Lorens’ eyes finally bugged out and he exclaimed, “Sister! You are my sister! I feel the power in you!”
“I feel no kinship with you,” Lokenna said coldly. She sat stiffly in her saddle. “However, it seems that our paths have crossed and we travel side by side for a time.”
“Kill her!” Lorens’ face underwent another transformation, this time to stark hatred.
“Do so and you’ll never recover the Demon Crown.” Lokenna’s voice was pitched so low that only Lorens and Santon heard. “What would you be then, brother? A nothing, as you are now.” Lokenna spat. Beside her Pandasso protested this unladylike behaviour. Santon silenced the woman’s husband with a prod to the ribs with the edge of his shield.
“You have it?” Cunning came into Lorens’ f
ace, making him appear feral. “Yes, of course you do. You could never have found me this easily without it.”
Lorens signalled his loyal guardsmen to close in. Santon allowed the soldiers to disarm him. Fighting a full score of them would accomplish nothing but a quick death — and he still thought that Lokenna had the upper hand.
“Do you think me foolish enough to ride into your camp with it? Hardly, brother. It seems that our parents birthed only one idiot — you.”
Lorens held his madness in check through urgent need to again assume the supreme power offered by the Demon Crown. “Where is it? My torturers can make you tell.”
“My name is Lokenna. And it will do you no good trying to force information from me that I cannot divulge. Another has the crown.”
“Harhar!”
“You mean Lord Efran?” Lokenna asked. “Perhaps he has it. But that hardly seems likely, does it, brother? We must return to the castle. By the time we arrive, the crown will also be there. Other than this, I can tell you nothing about the crown’s location.”
“Who has it? If not Harhar, then it must be — ”
“Lorens.” Lokenna’s voice cracked like a whip. “We share common goals at the moment. Both of us wish to return unharmed to the castle. To do so requires us to sneak past Ionia’s troops. I know where they are posted.”
“You’ve used the crown!”
“I have,” she admitted. “Many days ago.”
“You lie!” Spittle ran from the corners of Lorens’ mouth. A lieutenant supported his liege. Santon saw how easily won over these fighting men would be. They had seen nothing but madness from their leader. Lokenna offered more than sanity — she offered safety and return to the protection granted by the castle walls.
“Officer,” Lokenna said briskly. “Ionia has twelve men posted in the following locations. We must fight through her troops, but this is the weak spot.”
“Yes, milady, it is,” agreed the lieutenant, staring at the diagram Lokenna scratched in the snow with her boot. “What good does it do us to win through to the tunnel? Lady Ionia has hundreds of soldiers camped inside.”
A Symphony of Storms (Demon Crown Book 3) Page 5
