by Helen Lowe
Kalan hesitated before shaking his head, thinking it might be a test. But the navigator just nodded and gestured for him to take more food. “Star maps are our business, I suppose, not that of the warrior kind.”
“Was there a reason you thought I might know them?” Kalan asked, refilling his plate.
Che’Ryl-g-Raham was studying the chart. “There’s a memorial with twelve sides in the Sea Keep, located at the entrance to the Temple quarter.” Her dark gaze flicked back to his. “Each side depicts a distinctive pattern of stars, none of which belong to this world. They chart every star system we’ve traversed in our war with the Swarm until we came through the Great Gate, and may even extend back to the beginnings of the Derai. I commissioned the engraving when I was made navigator. To remind me,” she finished gravely, “of that possibility.”
From the stars we came. As navigator, Che’Ryl-g-Raham would be more attuned than most to that tradition. Kalan studied her openly and wondered what she saw in return: a travelworn Blood warrior, or someone more mysterious, the Luck’s Storm Spear . . . Every question he asked her was a risk, but then again, the heralds would say risk was the logical extension of being alive. And he needed information. “I’m still puzzled,” he said, “why you thought I might recognize these stars.”
Che’Ryl-g-Raham set her empty plate aside. “The monument commemorates the Sea House navigators that charted the route through the Great Gate, together with those who aided them, including the rearguard that held the Swarm at bay until all our ancestors had passed through. Names from every House in the Alliance are engraved upon its stone.” She paused, her expression unrevealing. “But all the Blood names are from one fellowship, that of the Storm Spears.”
The Great Gate, Kalan thought, which saved the Derai but almost destroyed Haarth. He was still Derai enough to feel awe—accompanied by unease as he wondered whether the Storm Spears had fought solely as elite warriors or been a military order that employed the old powers. A great many warrior orders had, of course, before the Betrayal and the Oath. But if the Storm Spears were one of them, then the Luck had just increased his danger, since even a historical association with the old powers would alienate many in the House of Blood.
“I was not aware of the memorial,” he said, hoping it explained his frown. “I would like to see it, though.”
“Would you?” Che’Ryl-g-Raham continued to study him. “I like puzzles, Khar, but I am also a navigator of the Sea House, which means I value truth more.”
Sometimes, Kalan decided, the only path forward was truth, or at least as much of it as safety and his adherence to Malian’s cause allowed. “I’ve been away from the Wall for some time and I have never visited the Sea Keep before, which is why I don’t know your memorial.” He paused, thinking what else he dared reveal. “While your Luck’s greeting honors me, I do not know if there are any others she would salute as Storm Spear, either on the Derai Wall or among the realms of Haarth.” Kalan wanted to spread his hands, a gesture that sought exculpation for all he had not said, and could not, but held himself still. “The reason I’m traveling to the Red Keep now is to compete in the Bride of Blood’s Honor Contest.”
“All truth, I don’t doubt.” Che’Ryl-g-Raham was dry. “While remaining as full of gaps as facts, I feel sure of that, too.” She rose and opened a drawer, removing a package stitched into waterproof cloth. Recognizing it, Kalan’s brows drew together.
“I gave that to Rayn.”
“Rayn’s business, and the loyalties that stem from that, lie with the Sea House.” Returning to the table, she placed the package down. “I gave him money to fulfill his agreement with you regarding its contents. But a rank-and-file—by his appearance—Blood warrior carrying items that once belonged to the highest nobility of Emer is more than a private puzzle. Rayn judged that it might not only affect my ship, but also my House and possibly our wider Alliance.”
Kalan maintained his outward calm. The Luck had acknowledged him, and whatever reservations she might harbor, Che’Ryl-g-Raham was raising the package privately. “What do you judge?” he asked.
Her smile was edged. “By my leave, you said last night, and now ask what I judge, as if that were the beginning and end of the matter. So perhaps you are just another thickheaded Blood warrior, after all.” She folded her arms, regarding him with a mix of mockery and steel. “But if you can answer my puzzle, Khar of Blood, I’ll let you keep your secrets.”
You may like puzzles, Kalan thought, but if you agree with Rayn, why give me the chance to keep my own counsel—unless that’s part of your riddle, too? He frowned, considering both his visions and recent events. The Luck had to be the key, he decided. She had not only spoken to him—when Temorn had been adamant, that day in Grayharbor, that she would not—but her voice was uncannily similar to the one in his second dream of the Sea Keep fleet. He was also remembering the way both navigator and ship had the same name, and what Che’Ryl-g-Raham had said to Orth, that first day in Grayharbor: “The ship decides who quits its decks, no one else.”
Not the navigator, he thought now, or any member of the crew: the ship. “We,” the Luck had said as well. “We know who he is.” The voice in his dream, though, had said something more: “We remember everything.”
It was obvious once you looked at the puzzle pieces the right way—but Kalan still felt shaken, his emotions a turmoil of excitement and wonder. “And now I,” he said silently, knowing that no amount of wards, however deeply layered, would prevent the one he addressed from hearing his mindspeech, “know who you are.”
“Well?” Che’Ryl-g-Raham demanded softly. “Do you understand, Storm Spear?”
Her dark gaze was intent, and Kalan guessed that she had already read the emotions he could not keep from his face. “The Ship’s Luck spoke, but it was the ship that vouched for me.” He waited for her nod. “That’s also how you knew that Faro was no darkspawn and I had nothing to do with his being on board.”
She nodded again. “It’s not possible to stow away on a Sea House ship. Che’Ryl-g-Raham allowed the boy to board and concealed his presence until now, even from me. Ship’s business,” she added, although the twist to her lips suggested she was not happy about the course this particular affair had taken. “Which is now Blood—or at least Storm Spear—business.”
The implication of that, at least, was clear. The ship—or ships, Kalan was not yet sure on that point—wanted Faro with him. He grimaced, and her mockery glimmered again.
“Look on the bright side. When the Luck spoke, she didn’t just answer Kelyr’s challenge. Effectively, the ship has sponsored you.” Che’Ryl-g-Raham laughed, only a little grimly, at his expression. “Believe me, I was taken by surprise, too.”
“So what does sponsorship mean?” This time Kalan did open his hands. “Consider me just another thickheaded Blood warrior who is well and truly out of his depth.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” she said. “But think of the sponsorship as a form of guest friendship, at the very highest level of our House.” She must have seen him swallow, because her mockery returned. “Oh yes, Sea Count and High Priest level. So when we send our embassy to this Red Keep contest, you and Faro will be able to travel in their company.”
Which means a far safer journey, Kalan reflected, including not having to watch my back trail for the Sword warriors. Yet he was surprised as well. “Will Sea really send an envoy to honor the new Bride, when the Earl of Night’s first wife, the one he set aside, was blood kin to your Count?”
Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s last glint of mockery vanished. “We have not forgotten Lady Nerion or her wrongs, but this union between Blood and Night is too large for any allied House to overlook. Whatever the circumstances, Sea will pay its respects.” She hesitated. “Laer said to warn you that the Red Keep may not welcome the return of a Storm Spear. Our envoy should be able to advise you further, since it’s the sort of thing ambassadors know about.”
Kalan frowned, his misgivings about the Storm Spear d
esignation returning. “I can’t just ask Laer what he meant?”
“You can try.” She shrugged. “But weatherworkers have their own ways, and holding sensible conversations isn’t always one of them. Personally, I’d save my breath for bending our envoy’s ear.”
She seemed convinced the envoy would be forthcoming, which Kalan found encouraging. And although he might have to wait for the embassy to depart, the delay would allow him to see the Great Gate memorial and more of the Sea House fleet, a reflection that returned his focus to the dream ships. We remember everything, they had told him, but what Kalan recalled now was the damage to almost every vessel. Fear touched him, chill as winter. “What happens if a ship is lost? Can it be replaced?”
“I see you really do understand.” Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s gaze was on the gray heave of ocean beyond the cabin’s square windows. “If both ship and crew are entirely lost, and there is no one to carry even a spark of the ship’s essence back to the Sea Keep, to be rekindled within a new vessel, then yes, the whole of what our fleet is diminishes.” Her somber gaze swung back to him. “But the fleet cannot stay in port. For House and Keep and the Derai Alliance itself, the ships must sail.”
For Haarth, too, Kalan thought, although he knew that was rarely foremost in Derai thinking. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I believe you are.” She pushed the waterproof package toward him. “Take back your belongings, Khar of House Blood. I will retrieve the money I gave Rayn when I’m next in Grayharbor.”
The package’s contents had betrayed him once, and Kalan did not want to risk it happening again, particularly in the Red Keep. He moved the package back. “Will you keep them for me, until I return again?”
“And if you don’t?”
He considered that. “Then return them to Falk of Normarch, the lord who gave me the dagger, together with whatever word you may learn of my fate.”
Che’Ryl-g-Raham was silent, before finally nodding. “I will keep them for you. Until you return again or news of your passing reaches us.”
“Thank you.” Kalan rose and bowed. “When I do return”—he would not say if—“the coin I shall offer to redeem them will be the whole of my truth.”
Her smile was warm this time, with no edge to it, whether of steel or mockery. “You name a fair price, Storm Spear. I shall look forward to that day.”
“As shall I.” The mindvoice was light rippling on water. “In the meantime, Kalan-hamar, I bid you carry our name with you, as we shall remember yours.” The voice sighed, or it could have been the sea, curving along either side of the ship.
I know who you are, Kalan had said only a few minutes before, but now doubt seized him and he waited for the voice to name itself.
“Now we are many, but once, in the time before, we were Yelusin, the Golden Fire that infused the Sea Keep.” Stillness and light enclosed Kalan, the voices of wind and wave ebbing away. “It is not only our name that we ask you to bear, but a spark of our power concealed within yours so that we may join again with our brother, Hylcarian. We were severed from him and all our conjoined Fires on the Night of Death, in the instant before Yelusin-that-was disintegrated. Afterward, we thought we alone had survived—until we saw our brother in your memories, alive still in the Old Keep of Winds.”
The Night of Death, Kalan repeated silently, feeling the full weight of that bitter, five-hundred-year-old history. Every Derai child learned it young: how the peace feast meant to end the civil war had ended in bloody slaughter, and the priestess, Xeria, had broken the Alliance’s oldest law, calling down the Golden Fire against the Derai. Kalan had been with Malian, six years before, when Hylcarian, the now-remnant Golden Fire of the Keep of Winds, had described Xeria’s act as a soul wound that nearly destroyed him. “And dispersed you among the Sea House fleet at the same time,” Kalan said now.
“Without the ships, nothing of Yelusin-that-was would have survived. Even then, it was a long time before our fractured consciousness reemerged.”
A time, Kalan knew, in which the starvation and plague that followed the loss of the Golden Fire had continued the civil war’s decimation of the Alliance. He frowned, recalling how he could not touch Hylcarian’s twelve-sided table in the heart of the Old Keep—because although born to the House of Blood, he was not of the Blood, the kindred of power bound to the Golden Fire since the beginning. “So I may not be able to carry your power.”
“You are of the line of Tavaral, the Faithkeeper. That is as much honor as most Derai who call themselves the Blood can lay claim to, in these days. And the power you will carry is no more than the fragment of a fragment.” The murmur of memory and regret strengthened. “We have also seen who you are, Kalan-hamar, and that your road leads to the Keep of Winds and our brother. It is enough.”
“By way of the Red Keep,” Kalan cautioned, as the sounds of the day returned. He registered Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s focused look and wondered how much she had absorbed of his exchange with her ship.
“Am I her ship? It would be as true to say that she is my navigator.” The voice of light was amused. “As for the Red Keep, you’ll need me, as well as your layered wards, if the wyr hounds there are not to bay whenever you pass by.”
Wyr hounds: Kalan felt the trail of winter’s fingers down his spine. “And this business of being a Storm Spear?”
“For that reason, too,” Yelusin replied, as Che’Ryl-g-Raham spoke.
“The ship holds that if a Storm Spear is to enter the Sea Keep again and visit our memorial, then he should do so under his true colors.” She smiled faintly. “In this matter, we are of one mind. With your permission, I’ll have our ship’s armorer engrave the Storm Spear device onto your mail and weapons before we make landfall.”
Kalan was about to say he could do it himself, then realized he did not know what the device was. Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s smile was so bland that he guessed she suspected his dilemma, while beneath wind and wave and the fall of light, he caught the ghost of Yelusin’s laughter—echoed by the firefly spark settling deep within his mind.
PART III
Autumn’s Eve
12
The Lonely Grave
Nhairin’s leg, overworked from constant travel and too many detours to avoid long-range patrols, finally gave out when she was crossing a bare stretch of plain. To stop where she was meant death, so Nhairin crawled on for what felt like hours, until she reached a pile of tumbledown rocks. Once she had worked her way between the outlying stones, she found a narrow path among the larger boulders that eventually led into a small cave where the ground was more sand than pebbles.
Once inside, Nhairin collapsed into the sleep of exhaustion, despite the agony of her leg. When she woke—whether hours or days later, she could not be sure—her entire body was so stiff that moving was anguish and the lame leg still would not bear her. But it was only when thirst, and the need to relieve herself, made her crawl outside, that she realized the sense of an invisible thread guiding her was gone.
Initially she was too exhausted, and then too hungry, to feel the same level of fear that had driven her away from Westwind Hold. The first few days among the rocks she mostly slept, only dragging herself as far as the small seep of brackish water on the Jaransor side of the rock pile before crawling back into her hideaway. Once, she roused to the sound of voices. Derai voices, Nhairin thought, but the wind blew the voices away and she decided they must have been a hallucination. She thought the hound was a hallucination, too, when she woke to a rare, clear dawn and saw it standing in the entrance to her cave.
I know you, Nhairin thought. By the time she was fully awake the hound was gone. Later, though, she found pawprints in the entrance, so knew the dog had not been either the aftermath of a dream or a figment born of exhaustion and gnawing hunger. Curiosity drove her outside, and this time she climbed higher up the rockpile in an attempt to work out where she was.
Closer to the Wall than I would like, Nhairin decided, frowning. She had not realized the thread was
leading her back that way. A cairn lay in the opposite direction, marking the far side of a hollow that lay just beyond the seep. She did not have to get closer to recognize the cairn as a Derai burial marker, the sort raised for captains or ruling kin who fell a long way from House and keep. The hound was lying in front of the cairn as though keeping watch, its nose on outstretched paws. And although it did not look her way, Nhairin felt certain it knew she was there.
I really do know you, she thought, studying the hound’s long, graceful body and white, feathery coat. I might, she added, even be able to name you, in which case . . . She stopped, reluctant to pursue what the identity of the hound and its presence here suggested, but eventually moistened her cracked lips. “Falath,” she whispered. Nhairin thought she had barely spoken aloud, but the hound’s elegant head lifted, turning as though the dark eyes could look through rock, straight to where she lay.
“You’re Falath,” Nhairin whispered again. Her hunger, weariness, and fear were all temporarily forgotten, for if this was Falath, then the cairn the hound guarded must mark Rowan Birchmoon’s grave. Yet the Winter Woman, Earl Tasarion’s consort, had been alive and well when Nhairin left the Keep of Winds . . . Which made her wonder again, as she had several times on her stumbling progress across the plain, exactly how long the Madness had held her in its thrall. Still, at least she knew now that it could not be longer than a hound’s lifetime.
We were friends once, the Winter Woman and I, Nhairin thought—in our way. Or perhaps, honesty compelled her to admit, in my way. She had liked Rowan Birchmoon well enough, while simultaneously resenting her hold on Earl Tasarion, who was Nhairin’s childhood companion as well as the leader of Night—and head of the Derai Alliance, in name at least. Old emotions stirred, including Nhairin’s bitter conviction that the Nine Houses would never follow an Earl who had demeaned himself, and by implication the Derai, by taking an outsider consort. Sometimes I did wish her well gone, Nhairin admitted, chewing at an already ragged nail. But never dead. Despite the whispers and the Madness, she felt certain she had never wished that.
