by Jenna Rhodes
The line of horses and ponies came to a halt again, downslope, where the vines were a bit sheltered from the wind, and tangled a little less as they put forth their greenery, spindly and yet lusciously colored, to reach the fork-like frames which would hold them and guide the runners. Sevryn stretched in his stirrups, looking back yet again. Tendrils of the vineyard curled verdantly from their posts, masking trespassers.
Keldan slipped to the ground, twisted the ear of his mount, and spoke a hushed word or two. When he stepped away, the horse relaxed into a stand, disinclined to wander off despite there being no hold upon him.
“The man’s a witch,” he said aside to Grace.
“There are a few among the Kernan. He’s always had a way with animals, especially horses. Didn’t you tell me your mother had a touch of witchery in her?”
“Supposedly she was a weather woman, but that was long enough ago that I find it difficult to remember. I don’t have any of it in me.”
She reached out, her hand brushing his knee in apology, but she said nothing as if knowing that her words might sting even more. They were opposites, he and Grace. Her mother had sacrificed herself to save her child. His mother had sacrificed her child to save herself. Or, with as little information as he had about what had actually happened in his past, so it seemed.
Nutmeg dismounted from her pony carefully, taking a moment to steady herself. She saw Grace watching her and flashed a grin. “Mom and I rigged a sling this morning. Holds the baby’s weight a bit for me, but I won’t be runnin’ anywhere today.”
“You shouldn’t even be here.”
Meg winked at Rivergrace’s scolding tone. “And miss my last chance to say good-bye for a while? What kind of a sister do you think I am?”
“Right now, I’d say it was obvious.”
“That would be the truth!” Laughing, she held her hand up for Grace’s as Grace swung down and, leaning on each other, they followed Keldan over the rocky slope to a bowl-shaped depression. Sevryn kicked pebbles aside as he trailed behind.
“Too rocky here even for vines.”
“Dad always says that it’s good to force the vines, to parch them a bit. Gives them flavor. Says a born-to-it vine-man would curse an over-wet spring, brings fungus to the grapes.”
“So last year wouldn’t hurt the crop.”
“Supposedly not.” Meg paused a moment, to tweak her hair back in place, her curls as recalcitrant as always. She wrinkled her nose at Rivergrace. “Do you suppose—?”
“Probably just as bad. Jeredon had wavy hair himself, you remember.”
Sevryn stopped behind them. “What?”
Grinning, both women looked to him. “We were wondering if the baby would have curly hair. Both at the same time, it seems.”
“Ah.” He hadn’t wondered that, although he had wondered if he would recognize his friend’s tall and slender grace in the child, broad shoulders if a boy and wide eyes if a girl. What of Jeredon would remain? Wavy hair seemed as likely as not. He looked ahead, realizing that Keldan had disappeared. “And where would our horse witch be?”
“Right here.” Keldan stepped sideways out of a boulder, or so it appeared. Sevryn craned his neck a bit as he walked around to see a natural wall of rock jutting out and switching back, a zigzag of an entrance to what appeared to be a cave. A rock-blocked cave. Behind him, he could feel a twitch as Rivergrace shuddered. She did not like closed-in places, for all that the two of them had had their adventures in them. He didn’t worry about her; she’d soldier through. She would be fearless for him, but he could not be for her. The handcuffs he kept secreted in his waistband, now wrapped in a cloth to stop them from burning his skin, the cuffs meant for her, he would fear a thousand years and more until he could find a way to permanently keep them from her. For the moment, it meant getting away from Calcort and then getting his true bearings. He put his hand up to the fallen rocks, seeing if he could put his fingers into the small crevices, worry at them, tumble one or two out of place, breaking the wall down. His touch met a different reality than his vision did: one of solid masonry, not a rockfall. He tried to look at it, at the way of it, but his gaze slid off it unfailingly, again and again.
“Grace. Come have a look at this.”
“Nutmeg says it’s a door, of sorts.”
“Mayhap. Difficult to tell. Look at it with your eyes and tell me what you see.”
He stepped back a pace to make room for her, could hear Nutmeg’s lusty breathing at his elbow. Her body heat radiated about her, warming his arm as well. “Are you all right, Meg?”
“A-course. Just feeling it, a bit.” She gulped down a breath or two. “Be fine in a twitch. Don’t fret at me, it’s bad enough having strangers on the street gawk at me like I should have my belly in a wheelbarrow.”
“That,” said Keldan slowly, “might be an idea.”
Out of breath as she was, her hand flew out fast enough to clip her brother in the ear, bringing a sharp “Ow!” out of him. “My body might be dragging a bit but not my reach or my hearing!”
Grace smothered a laugh as she positioned herself beside the shaded rock. Here, behind the wall of a true rock, and heavily shaded from the afternoon sun, rested the blockage. She put her hand up, palm out, not quite touching. “A door, indeed. Hard to see, but I can. It keeps trying to slip away, as though it’s been greased, but I can catch sight of it well enough.”
“Well enough to what?”
She glanced over her shoulder to Sevryn. “To see it. To see the lock on it. It’s been etched by fire.”
“Can you tell the making of the door? Is it one of ours, or Mageborn, or hedge witch?”
Rivergrace shifted her weight from one foot to another as she considered the object. “That, I couldn’t say.”
Meg ducked her head under her sister’s elbow. “That’s a blacksmith lock on it, and it ought to have tumblers in it, three in all. I’d say any street thief could pop it off, wouldn’t you?”
Keldan, Grace, and Sevryn all looked at her.
“Well, it’s obvious, is it not?”
“That’s just the point. It isn’t obvious, not to any of us. It’s not even visible.”
Meg tilted her head. “I’ve had just about enough making fun of the fat lady.” Pulling a hairpin from her obstinate curls, she muscled past Grace to the rock wall. “It does slip a bit, but like Keldan, you just stare at it hard and it settles down.” She put her hands out and when her fingers met the heavy padlock she’d described, it became evident, oddly set in a jumble of rock, but easily seen. Her fingers nimbly applied the hairpin while Keldan made a sputtering noise as if he’d just discovered his sister picking pockets on the streets outside a tavern.
“Where’d you learn—never mind, I don’t think I want to be knowing. That way I won’t have to be telling Dad.”
“Who d’ you think taught me?” Meg laughed at her brother, as the lock fell open in her hands, and suddenly, a door entire came to view.
She bowed to Keldan and said, “Open if you dare” before shoving her hairpin back into her hair, catching what stray curls she could with it.
The air that tumbled out of the doorway smelled of limestone and old rock, with a hint of mosses to it, stale but not deadly, quiet but not totally undisturbed. Sevryn bowed his head a bit as he inhaled. “The other end of the passage is open.”
“But a far bit off, I’d say.”
Sevryn nodded to Keldan.
Meg dusted her hands. “Then it’s here we say farewell. For a bit.” She caught her sister’s chin. “Will you be coming back in time?”
“I don’t know. I will try, if you have enough notice. I want to be here. I do.” She put her hand about Nutmeg’s and squeezed gently.
“I know that well. We’ll send a bird on all the winds to reach you, if we can.”
“Good.”
Sevryn
stepped through the massive doorway. “We can lead the horses through, single file.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure of this far.”
Rivergrace frowned before adding, “I don’t want to be backing my horse out of here.”
“Nor do I. I can’t make promises about what I don’t know, and I haven’t got time to go ahead to scout it. We need to make time, aderro.”
Rivergrace inhaled deeply. She hugged Nutmeg as tightly as she could, then she embraced her youngest brother. Abruptly, she turned, hiding her face as she went to get their horses, leaving Sevryn standing awkwardly on the threshold. Both Keldan and Nutmeg stared at him with narrowed eyes. He held his hands up in surrender. “I know. Take care of her.”
“Indeed.” Meg closed her full lips tightly.
“Use the quarantine as a barricade. It’ll help keep you safe. When Lariel’s guards get here, get them word to come over the rooftops, and then to fortify that way as well.”
Keldan nodded. “Got it.”
“Hosmer should be all right.” He put his hand on Nutmeg’s shoulder. “I cannot certify it for you, Meg, but I think he will. And there is a good chance that, before Rivergrace set the place on fire, she warded him. She has those kinds of powers at times.”
Meg nodded wordlessly. The clop of hooves on stone stopped her from saying anything in answer, and she moved aside for suddenly there was no room for Dwellers if the horses pushed in behind the rock wall.
She stared at Rivergrace with her eyes brimming, forced a smile, and then ran out into the sunlight and the vineyard. Keldan ducked after her. Grace stood for a moment in the doorway, looking past the horses, her lips parted as though she could throw her love after them, but did not. Her shoulders dropped as she pressed reins into his hand and nudged him into the tunnel.
They walked for a while, getting used to the dankness, which reminded Sevryn of many a river’s wayside ditch in the bad streets of towns he’d grown up in, some carved by water and some by tool.
“She would not have seen that door before.”
“Before this.” Her hand cut the air about her own stomach.
Sevryn stopped in his tracks. He considered her words, her voice faint behind him.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s my sister, and something more.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so. Those were not her senses she drew upon, couldn’t have been. She’s not got Kernan witch-blood or Mageborn, or even Dweller tree and animal sense, not more than a smidge. She’s many things but filled with power like that, no.”
“How, then?”
A long pause followed, broken only by the click of horses’ shoes upon the hard ground and occasional stone, and the closed-in noise of their breathing.
“She tapped into a power within I don’t think she knew she could do.”
“The child?”
“It has to have been. Jeredon’s child, of Vaelinar blood.”
“She saw because the child within her had the power to see.”
“Yes.”
“But you and I—”
“Your Talents don’t use sight much and I—I have a Goddess that shields my sight from time to time, just as she shields my body.”
“The babe is half-blooded.”
“Yes, and yet it seems the Vaelinar blood is very strong in it. Him, I think.”
“Can you tell? That Nutmeg bears a son?”
“It’s only a feeling. No more than I can tell the future.” Rivergrace sighed softly. “If I could, things would be very different.”
He didn’t quite know how to take that, until she added, “Aderro.” With a slight smile, he went back to leading the way.
A LOUD AND VIOLENT DRUM pounded its cadence through the otherwise silent villa and sank its rhythm into Bregan’s bones. The only part of his body that did not throb was his leg encased in his Vaelinarran splint. He wiped at grimed eyes and rolled to one elbow. He hadn’t gone to bed drunk, had he? Of course he had, awash in drink, but it hadn’t lasted. He’d sweated it out somehow and now he was not as drunk as he was miserable. He hadn’t done that in years. He scrubbed his hand over his eyes again. He’d been days in this state, his foggy memory told him. His servants had all slunk out, by ones and twos, leaving one last disgruntled old retainer to throw blasphemy in his face. And what had he done, really? Told them the truth about their miserable lives.
He needed new staff. Unfortunately, there was no one left to assign for hiring one. He’d have to ride over to his father’s and commandeer old Grigenhilda, she of the one immense eyebrow you could hang socks on for drying, to take care of things. As formidable as she seemed, she was brisk, organized, and incredibly uncanny at knowing one’s strengths and faults and assigning household jobs accordingly. His father’s estate ran like an elven-made clockwork piece to everyone’s envy, and the praise could justifiably be laid at Grigenhilda’s feet. Or hung from her eyebrow. She had always been old from his perspective, but it seemed she hadn’t aged beyond the initial ravage of years, for she hadn’t changed a bit since he’d become a grown man and a trader in his own right. He ought, surely, to be able to look her in the face now. He hadn’t much choice.
Bregan kicked off his last remaining blanket and staggered to his feet. The room swung around alarmingly before the drum trapped inside his skull settled down to a reasonable hammering and his ears buzzed along to keep time with it. He realized as he walked down the hallway, at a lean with his right shoulder brushing the wall, seemingly unable to stand up straight just yet, that his stable was no doubt as near empty as his household. Damned, superstitious staff. Willing and able to take whatever coin he’d stuffed in their pockets and unwilling to stay when their view of the world and its Gods turned just a bit risky. That was like a Kernan, his own people though he grudging allowed it was so. If only he’d been born tough and practical like a Dweller. His friend Garner Farbranch, now there was a man worth his salt, and a fair gambler, too. They had met at cards more than once, but it was the war in the tunnels and on the fields of Ashenbrook that took their real measure. Garner took a shrewd measure on whatever life dealt him, and handled it accordingly. Mayhap Bregan could suggest to Grigenhilda to contact Garner and see if he knew any likely candidates for household and stable staff. But he’d have to warn Garner off Sevryn Dardanon first. Yes, or he was a dead man. Bregan sighed. Must everything be so complicated?
In the meantime, though, there was this pesky problem with a hallway and subsequent staircase which would not stand up squared and impeded his progress more so by every foot. Bregan came to a last slide at the bottom of the stairs, his legs going out from under him, his brace no help at all since both limbs had gone the way of limp noodles. Bregan gave a frustrated snort and managed to sit straight up. At least he thought it was up. Without a light in the house or any shutter or door thrown open, he could barely see his boots on the end of his feet. “Is there nobody about?”
Silence answered the cadence inside his skull. It made an odd combination, one muffling the other, only to be overcome by the noise eventually. He ground his teeth before bellowing, “Come on, there must be one of you left, cowering in the pantry or thereabouts if only to rob me! Throw open a window, a door. Light a candle! I’ll pay for it.” Help me back on my feet.
His voice echoed dimly back at him. Something scurried at the far end of the house, noise so faint that he imagined it to be a wee rodent of some sort, frightened out of its whiskers, nothing bigger or of any use to him.
Bregan dragged in a deep breath. He clicked his teeth shut on it. He wasn’t drunk, and he had no damn excuse for lying on the floor near helpless in a darkened house. Aye, he’d preyed on his fellows, and that had come back to kick him in the ass, good and hard, and he’d no one to blame but himself. If the Gods were paying attention, they would be laughing. There was a just
ice to it that he could not deny. He’d lined his pockets on the deliberate spread of rumors and the ready supply of goods to fulfill those rumors. It had seemed harmless if highly profitable at the time, and he’d never had regrets until he had been taken in by his own scam.
Bregan scrubbed his chin. The pounding in his skull settled to a steady beating that no longer felt as if it might shatter his excuse for a head, and feeling had returned to his legs. He got up and stood, as shaky as a newborn colt on legs that felt as if they did not quite belong to him. In truth, one did not. He smiled ruefully as he straightened the brace on his right, workmanship that had no equal in all the lands of the First Home or even in the wide stretches to the east. Even as he cursed the Vaelinars, he needed them.
He slapped his hand on the wall as vertigo threatened to undo him all over again. If he had light, he might convince his body which way was up. Bregan hastily searched his pockets, but not a strike met his touch. The toback that the Dwellers prized so much was not his vice, he reflected, although he might take it up if it kept him from being left in the dark. He slapped his hand on the wall again in frustration.
“Kitchen, you fool,” he muttered. “Get yourself to the kitchen and quit yammering like an orphaned babe.”
His eyes adjusted to the lack of light as he made his way, tripping once over a fallen object . . . a coat tree was it? . . . that lay hidden at shin height. Bregan roared in his anger and self-disgust. “Light! I need light by Tree’s blood!”
The room flared, white flame, about him. It stunned him as neatly as a backhand across the face and knocked him on his ass.
