The Lioness d-aom-2

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  In a voice his own and not, Iydahar said, “By order of the invader, my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol, he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualmost, is declared outside the law.”

  Those in the circle murmured, their voices like small echoes of the thundering falls beyond their shelter.

  “By the invader’s order,” Iydahar intoned, “with Senator Rashas’s agreement, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace or benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.”

  Someone snorted, commentary on the benefit of the laws of green Beryl.

  “All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, refusing her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary, and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There she will be beheaded, this sentence to be executed in the sight of the citizenry of city.

  “All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence.

  “It is commanded!”

  A shocked Kerian stood still as stone as Bueren Rose stepped forward to speak. She spoke of the death of her father and other luckless citizens of her village.

  Her voice strained, as though freezing to ice, she said, “My father fell to a Knight’s beheading sword.”

  The news struck Kerian hard. A woman near Kerian sighed. Bueren flung back her head, wailed to the deepening sky, “By Thagol’s command, my father was murdered by a Knight his fellows named the Headsman!”

  Jeratt’s voice cut like a blade. “The bastard! Ah, Rosie-”

  Bueren Rose looked up, her tears flowing. Her lips moved, but Kerian couldn’t catch the words.

  Voices rose in outrage, thunder rolling around the stony basin, up the hill and rumbling down like storm coming. Elder shouted high, keening and bitter anger. Men and Women reached for weapons. The hair lifted on the hack of Kerian’s neck. She felt ashamed of the trouble she had caused. Worse, Kerianseray of Qualinost, the runaway servant of Senator Rashas, was to be hunted and brought back for public execution.

  She looked around, her hand on the dwarf-given knife, fingers curling round the hone grip of the little weapon that had both saved Ayensha and made an orphan of Bueren Rose. In the purpling light, she saw neither sympathy nor lack of it on the faces of the gathered outlaws.

  “You,” said Iydahar, pointing across the circle to her. “Come here.”

  Almost she thought, That isn’t my brother! So fierce his eyes, so hard his expression, she did not recognize even the shape of his features.

  Narrow-eyed, angry, she lifted her head and the breath she drew cut sharply into the silence. Before she could speak, a finger poked her ribs, hard, and Jeratt growled, “Go, Kerianseray. Don’t argue.”

  She saw, behind her brother, Bueren Rose’s face, wet with tears. Ayensha took Bueren into her arms, hushed her, and held her.

  Her voice even and cool, Kerian said, “‘Brother, do you wish to speak with me?”

  His expression did not soften, and he spilled into his hand something shining from the little pouch at his belt Gil’s ring! In her brother’s hand lay the half of the topaz ring the king had retained.

  Dar spoke, and the flintiness of his voice caused her to shiver. “Two elves of Qualinost are dead, and they should not have been killed, but feelings are high in the forest now. I wish it hadn’t happened. You, too, might regret their deaths, sister. They came to tell you your master calls.”

  Master!

  The word stung like a slap. Once out of Iydahar’s mouth, it ran round the circle, growling, until, again, Kerian flung up her head. She spoke now, and not as her brother’s small sister, not as a child or even a woman he knew.

  “You speak, brother, without knowing what you’re talking about. You make assumptions about things you don’t understand. If you wish to talk with me, find a place apart and we will talk.”

  The circle shifted, men and women looked at each other, wondering what Iydahar, so clearly used to deference, would say to his sister’s reply.

  “Sister,” Iydahar said, haughty, “I’m not used to begging.”

  “Neither, does it seem, are you much used to courtesy.”

  The breeze off the hill shifted, growing cold. Kerian saw the shadow of the hawk whirling, spinning round and round across the stone of the secret fastness, and it seemed to overlay another shadow, that of a wolf running. Startled, Kerian looked away. Her eyes now held by the keen gaze of Elder. In her heart she heard words no other did.

  Killer! You have killed, and the Invader has killed. Each of you will kill again. For what will the deaths you make count, Kerianseray of Qualinost?

  Frowning, Kerian lifted her chin, firmed her shoulders. The red-tail screeched across the sky, its whirling shadow vanished, taking with it the phantom of the wolf. She turned from Elder and met her brother, eye to eye. Her hands were fists. She lifted one and opened it.

  “Give me the other half of my ring, Dar.”

  He snorted. “This ring you got from your master, the puppet king?” His fingers closed over the glittering gold and the topaz. “Will you go running back to him now, Kerian? Will you scurry home safe to your lover’s bed?”

  Her eyes narrowed at the insult. Murmuring rose up from all those gathered, questions, and again the cry, “Spy!”

  Kerian ignored the suspicion turning suddenly threatening. She spoke to Dar alone and felt the eyes of Elder on her. “You are a fool, brother, but one I loved well enough to leave the city and come to find because I saw our cousin dead and thought you might be in need. It is true I killed a Knight and caused this sorrow to fall on Bueren Rose. It is also true that I rescued Ayensha and took chances with my own fate. I see now that you are not in any danger and have no need of me. I see that you have plenty of friends for yourself.”

  She glanced at Bueren Rose, swiftly, then back.

  “Give me what is mine, Dar.” She lifted her head, and from her lips came words to startle her brother, the outlaws gathered, and most strongly-herself. “Never again in my presence refer to Gilthas as a puppet He is our king, Iydahar-he is mine, and he is your king and lord of all these here as long you feed and clothe yourselves on the fat game of his forests.”

  She said no more. She walked out of the circle and felt the eyes of all upon her. Most keenly, she felt the eyes of Elder. Surprised, she knew it in her bones that the ancient elf woman was pleased.

  * * * * *

  That night winter came, and it was a night filled with snow falling, kissing the cold cheeks of sleepers. Kerian, sitting before the highest fire, that in the center of the stony basin, watched the flakes fall. She did not watch them gather upon stone or cluster upon the boughs of pine trees. She had eyes only for those spinning madly down into the flames. Dar had left, Ayensha and Bueren Rose with him. Kerian had not heard their departure or said farewell. She did not know where they’d gone, into the forest alone or to some hidden camp of Kagonesti. Now she knew that she had a decision to make: go or stay. Her brother no longer mattered. She’d learned what she came to find out, that he was alive.

  Kerian sat a long time in silence before the fire until she looked up to see Jeratt sitting outside the light.

  She said, “What?”

  He came closer and sat across the fire from her. For a moment he watched the snow as closely as she. Then, “This king of yours, Kerianseray of Qualinost, is he worth anything?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Is he worth your brother? Because Iydahar didn’t leave happy.”

  Kerian shrugged. “We come and go, Dar and me. I didn’t trade him for the king; I’ll see him again.”

  “So. That king?”

  She drew closer to the hissing fire. “ He walks a tightrope, balancing between a dragon and a Senate that spends all its time and mind trying to rec
kon how to stay comfortable and alive rather than how to take back an ancient kingdom from the … invader.”

  Jeratt edged closer. “Your king, he’s got a sackful of trouble.” He looked around at the sleeping outlaws. Many, Kerian had learned, were one-time Forest Keepers dismissed from service under an edict Gilthas had been loath to sign; some were Wildrunners from Silvanesti, come out with Porthios in his noble-hearted and ultimately doomed quest to unite the elven nations. “Trouble your king’s got, but he’s got no army.”

  “No,” she admitted. “He doesn’t have an army.”

  No army yet.The thought startled her.

  As winter came down, locking the eastern part of the forest into a cold season and Kerian into her decision to seek shelter among the outlaws, the startling thought stayed with her and became, through familiarity, less and less startling.

  Chapter Eleven

  Practice with borrowed bow and targets drawn on trees,” Jerrate ordered her, “but you’re not gonna step a foot out to hunt until y’ve made your own bow, strung it with your own string, and fletched your own arrows. Till then, y’sit and clean the catch.”

  So over the weeks of winter Kerian practiced, savaging the trunks of trees with skill that grew from both practice and the return of memories of her Kagonesti childhood. Those memories, it seemed, resided in muscle and bone, in the sure understanding how to draw a bow, how to sight a target. She remembered how to account for even the slightest breeze when preparing to loose her arrow, how to sight only a little bit higher than one would imagine must be correct. With delight, she knew again the swift satisfaction of seeing her arrows hit where she sent them, and if this required yet another set of muscles to become used to long-forgotten work, she stretched these sore muscles with the contentment of one who has earned the right to grin and groan.

  All the while, she strove to make her own bow, a thing she’d at first thought impossible without the tools available to even the poorest bowyer in Qualinost. With Jeratt’s guidance, she’d found a fine yew tree, assured herself of the goodness of the wood by testing both its strength and its ability to yield. Under Jeratt’s direction, with borrowed tools crudely made but well kept, Kerian freed the heart of the wood, the strong dark center.

  “No one around here uses anything else but yew-heart for bow-wood,” he’d said. Then he’d laughed, as though over a fine joke. “Unless we can get a bow for free.” Stolen bows, reclaimed arrows, a sword taken from the hand of one it had failed to defend-these were free weapons not always the most trusted. “We like the yews from our own hands better.”

  Kerian had accepted that for the sake of learning but wondered why a bow crafted in the forest would be better than one made by an elf who had learned his craft from his father. Jeratt had only told her that in time she’d know the difference.

  Kerian planed the wood until it became a stave, one long enough for her reach. She bound a stop onto the stave in the middle, a piece of wood no thicker than her finger, only enough for an arrow to rest before flight. This she placed just a bit higher than the exact center of the belly of the bow. In the making of the bow, she learned the names of all the parts.

  “Know your weapon,” the half-elf told her, “the way you know a lover. Youil be counting on it like a lover.”

  In the making, Kerian learned to twine gut and make a strong bowstring. No one had to tell her how to keep her bow polished and clean and dry. Memory of things like this came back to her with dawning delight. Over the weeks of winter, she studied the craft of arrow making until she began to know it for an art-the making of the slender shaft, the crafting of the deadly point. She learned to survey closely the small bodies of the fowl she had to clean and to salvage especially the feathers of geese for fletching her arrows.

  A drop of blood sprang from her finger, splashing onto the white snow. With all she had learned, and that had been much, Kerian had not managed to learn the art of fletching.

  “It’s because you’re slitting the arrow too wide,” Jeratt told her scornfully, around a mouthful of breakfast. “Y’got no patience here, Kerian. Here’s where you need it” Swiftly he reached across the fire and snatched the failed arrow from her hand. He tossed it into the fire and handed her another naked shaft. “The arrow’s always going to bite your finger when you try to fletch into slits too wide. Try again.”

  The stink of burning feathers stung her nose. Kerian took out a small-bladed knife and began the work of etching the slits the feathers would sit in. Too narrow, the feathers would fail to settle, too wide …well, she knew about that already.

  Around them, outlaws came and went, men and women going about the business of hunting, fishing, and trapping. Some had other missions, and now and then one would call Jeratt aside. These conversations were short, out of Kerian’s hearing. They always resulted in a handful of outlaws drifting out of the basin, up the hill and away from the falls.

  Once, when they came back, she’d noted their flush of victory. A ringing pouch of steel coin hung at a hip, an ornately decorated sword over the back of another, and two pairs of gleaming leather boots roped and slung round the neck of a third. Later she learned that two Dark Knights lay dead in the forest, ambushed and killed by these outlawed elves.

  A black cock feather slipped neatly into the top slit; Kerian did not stop to rejoice. She settled in the two gray hen feathers on either side. As though casually, she lifted the arrow to inspect it. Jeratt watched a moment, then snatched it from her hand.

  “What?” she demanded. “It’s perfect!”

  “Maybe for someone else.” He held it close to the snapping fire. “But shouldn’t Kagonesti choose white feathers in winter?”

  Kerian lunged and grabbed back her arrow. She jerked her chin at the feathers and said, “I’ll do that when your hunters fetch me white geese.”

  Jeratt’s laughter rang around the stony basin. Here and there, outlaws looked up to see what amused him.

  “All right then, Kerianseray of Qualinost. The snowy geese are gone away to warmer places now, but you go fletch yerself a full quiver of arrows, and day after tomorrow we’ll go see if we can find something else to take down and make you a hunter.”

  * * * * *

  Wind blew a scattering of old snow across the stony distance between Kerian and Jeratt. The wind bit her cheeks, stung the tips of her ears red. She wore a tight-sleeved, long-cuffed bleached woolen shirt, which she had got from one of the smaller men in exchange for first cut of whatever she brought down this day. Her coat of tanned elk hide, warmly lined with the beast’s own fur, came from an end of autumn raid on a trader’s cart headed into Qualinost. Had they been outlanders or Knights, the traders would have fared hard, but the man and his two sons were elves, and so Jeratt’s outlaws left them roughed up and bruised, one a little cut, and all angry.

  “Ought to know better than to bring that kind of thing through here,” Jeratt had laughed, displaying the plunder. “Outlaws all over the Qualinost road. Didn’t the fools know that? Nice of ‘em, though, to come by with supplies.”

  Warmly outfitted, still Kerian shivered and longed to slip her stiffening fingers into the sleeves of her coat for warmth, hut she did not. A silver ribbon of water streamed between her and Jeratt, leaping over rocks and lapping the dark lines of mud at either side. The mud on both sides of the water was churned by tracks, the marks of a deer’s passage, Kerian had said upon spotting them. Jeratt had nodded agreement and positioned her deep in shadow on one side of the stream, himself concealed on the other, and said no more.

  Wind-whipped, Kerian watched the stream. A blue kingfisher darted down and came up with a flash of silver in its beak. In the forest, a jackdaw called, its raucous voice drowning out smaller birds, and another answered. Kerian did not so much as glance in the direction of the sounds. She was held in aching stillness by the thought of Jeratt’s mockery, his own jackdaw laughter should she so much as shift her weight from one foot to another.

  “Dancey-footed folk go hungry
,” he’d snarled the first time he’d seen her do that. “Find your place and stay.” He sounded like Dar when he said that. She could almost conjure up a memory of the ancient days when he let her come along while he hunted. She had not hunted to kill then-in those days she was just learning her bow skills-but here, in this place far from home, she heard an echo of Dar’s gruff tones and frustration with her impatience.

  It felt like a week of waiting, listening to the wind in the forest, the stream purling over stone, the rustlings of small animals in the fern brakes. She had a boulder at her back, one upon which she could sit with some ease. Even so, it seemed to Kerian that every muscle rebelled at stillness. Her left leg cramped, her right foot itched….

  She shifted her gaze from the half-elf to the forest beyond. She thought she saw something move in the green darkness, then the illusion vanished as the wind dropped. Very slightly, Jeratt lifted his head, for all the world like an old dog sniffing the air. He sniffed again, then resumed his stillness, his back against an old high pine, his bow strung loosely, heel on the ground, head against his hip. Kerian kept stone still.

  The iron sky shifted, clouds parting, and she squinted as Jeratt seemed to vanish in a sudden flash of sunlight, then reappear when the clouds shifted again. In the after-glare, Kerian widened her eyes to adjust her vision to the change of light. Above, the sky resumed its lowering, clouds growing thicker. Now she smelled what Jeratt must have, the sharpening of the air that heralded the coming of snow.

  The forest grew quiet, birds stilled, squirrels fell silent. Kerian looked to Jeratt, but he, as she, heard only the stilling, not the cause.

  She lifted her head in question: What?

  He lifted a hand to signal silence. In the same gesture, he took up his bow.

  Kerian slipped an arrow from the quiver at her hip, nocked it neatly to the bowstring. Along her shoulder, down her arm, her muscles quivered with excitement. She drew a calming breath.