And he knew that she spoke of a Henden in a dark, grim year. Some memories had a life of their own; they could be cozened and reasoned with, but they could not be laid to rest.
They crossed the bridge; he almost offered his arm, and he would never have presumed that when she had ruled the college. Because she had never needed it then. She probably didn’t need it now. “I think you should know,” she said, “although Sigurne did not tell me this in so many words.” Now the hesitation was strong; as strong as the curiosity that had always been part of her voice where he was concerned.
“Yes?”
“Meralonne APhaniel wishes to speak with you.”
He frowned. “He is—”
“In the royal healerie, yes. And if Dantallon sees you, you’d better be prepared to use your voice and pray; he’s in a foul temper.”
“A healer has no effect on the fevers. He knows that.”
“And he always deals so well with loss of control where life is concerned.” There, more of her edge, that snap of her words whip-like and familiar.
But beneath that edge, truth.
“How bad?”
She did not answer.
“Sioban. How bad is he?”
She did not answer, and by that, he knew she wouldn’t. But she had met him here, instead of calling him, instead of asking another bard who knew him well to call. There were at least two who could reach him across the length of a city alive with the noises of just such a celebration, and possibly farther than that. The fact that she had summoned neither, that she had come in person, suddenly said too much. He began to walk quickly.
In the darkness, Meralonne APhaniel toiled. Sweat speckled the length of his brow, reflecting light and fire; the heat passed, and the cold was upon him, as terrible in its way as any demon could ever be, but closer, far closer.
Watching him, Kallandras knew all these things as intimately as only those who had suffered the fevers could. But he knew, also, that no one suffered as the mage-born did, not even the healers. And he knew, further, that the only men and women to whom the fevers were often fatal were the mages. Still, in his life he had heard of it only thrice.
Three times was enough.
Sigurne looked up from the bedside as he entered, her face pale with lamplight, although he thought it would be pale regardless. She looked frail; she always looked frail. But beneath that, part of it, a steel surer than almost any other. The moment her eyes met his, her shoulders slumped.
“Kallandras,” she whispered, “thank you for coming.”
Sioban was at his side, and that was enough to make him cautious. But he bowed. “I would not refuse a request of yours, Sigurne, were you a seamstress and not one of the magi.”
“It was not my request, but his,” she said, looking away. “Both the ACormaris and Devon ATerafin have been to see him, and I believe—although I cannot be certain of it—that the ACormaris thought it germane to speak with him, even given his state.”
Anger, there. Brief, but certain.
“The circumstances are complex,” he said.
“Yes. But so is an old woman’s anger.” She granted him his gift, and the truth of it. “He has not rested since she came; he desires no company but yours.”
“Why?”
She turned away again, as if she could not meet any gaze, not even under cover of darkness. “He is not doing well, Kallandras,” she said at last. “And what strength he had, he . . . expended.”
“Pardon?”
“Dantallon came to see him.”
He started to speak. Stopped. Paled. “Was the healer injured?”
“His pride, and if he chose to press it, the magi would answer for Member APhaniel’s use of unauthorized magics in the healerie. But Meralonne is deemed to be—or was—in a state of dementia, and therefore I have been asked to ward and guard him. He will not have Dantallon in the room.”
“No,” Kallandras said.
“But he used strength he did not have to make that point. And he uses it now, to speak, to ask for you.” She rose. “Come, then, and speak with him, and perhaps he will be at ease.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Is it to be here, Meralonne, that you meet your end? Here, in the courtyard of Kings, and not there, upon a field that needs your skill and your knowledge of ancient magics? He moved round her gently, as aware of her presence as he was of the presence of Sioban.
He sat. “Member APhaniel,” he said. “Meralonne.”
There was no response other than the shuddering of a man who could not be kept warm. Kallandras lifted a hand, raised it, reached out—and hesitated, there, an inch from the pale, wet curve of Meralonne’s brow.
They did not touch, these two. They did not offer comfort except as it must be offered: On the edge of death, or just beyond it. And he did not want to acknowledge that this was indeed that edge. “Meralonne.”
Gray eyes widened, sudden, like the flaring of magical fire. “You must . . . investigate . . . what I cannot,” he said.
Kallandras frowned.
“You will . . . have heard this . . . no doubt. The men who died.” He lost the thread of words; Kallandras waited, listening. No one listened as well as he. “The ACormaris came. The Lord . . . of the Compact . . . has forbidden interference in this affair. She thought . . . to warn me . . . not to interfere.”
The frown fell a moment; it was like Miri to spite Duvari in some things, and he could hear her now: “I am not allowed to speak about the circumstances surrounding the death of the Annagarians because Duvari finds it strange that they died in captivity, apparently within a few minutes of each other . . .” She had told him as much.
But he did not understand why she had come to Meralonne. Not now.
Not until he spoke again, laboring over each word. “You have heard . . . their names.”
He reached out then, caught Meralonne’s hands in his own. Felt them shaking with fever’s strength. “APhaniel,” he said, voice low, denying nothing because in the end there was nothing to be gained by denial. “There were not nine names.”
“No . . . I did not think so. But there were at least eight.” He slumped, then.
Ice, here, as if the cold could be transmitted by touch, and perhaps it could. “Brother,” he said quietly, his word for Meralonne alone.
The mage smiled, lips moving up in a rictus of emotion so alloyed with pain it was impossible to separate them. “Go.”
He released the magi’s hand, and then turned back. Speaking with the bardic voice, speaking with a fury of something that he had thought himself beyond, he said a single word.
“Live.”
Eight names. Eight names.
Had he been stupid? They were eight, and he had thought that number high, and it had been weeks ago—but he had not thought that those eight would be part of this nine. And why?
Because the names had been taken in Annagar; of that he was certain. They had been taken, and they had been given back, to the Lady. To his Lady.
Over the years, he had come to peace, of a kind, with his life, and the death that would follow it. He had betrayed Her. He had betrayed his brothers. There was truth in it, but it was not so bitter now as it had been. He had come to peace, of a sort, because he had seen the demons, and he understood the whole of what they presaged.
Still, he knew when another brother became one with the Kovaschaii, for he was still one with them, in his fashion. And he knew when one died; that, too, was given to him. They dwindled, those that he had loved best, those that he had known.
Years had passed since he had been given a task such as this. Years, and the passage of time had dulled his senses, had given him a false security. One of his brothers was here, in the city. And somehow, although he did not understand the how of it, the Lady had given him permissi
on to take those lives. She had refused it for the Kings, and for the Exalted; he knew it for fact. She had refused it for Valedan kai di’Leonne not once, but twice.
The stars were light and low above the seawall.
“Kallandras,” she said, and he did not turn; he knew her voice, knew her age by it, knew everything he needed to know.
“Evayne.”
“He is not finished yet,” she said quietly. “He is not finished; they have come, and he will be given four names. Four names, and you will recognize all of them.
“I am not your master here. I have not come to order you; neither you nor I are what we were when we first set out upon this road.”
He turned then, bitter, angry as he had not been angry for decades. “How generous of you, Evayne. Am I now so well-trained, to be trusted to kill my brothers without even the threat of the end of everything?”
She flinched; it surprised him into silence. They stood a long moment, the sea’s waves gentle against the seawall.
“It is almost over,” she said softly, with a bitterness to rival his own. “I thought we were beyond our beginnings.” She raised a hand to the collar of the robes by which he—and any others of her victims—knew her best. “Three names, Kallandras; the fourth will take care of herself.”
“Does it matter?” he asked, containing the emotion in the cold of the words. “Does it matter, if he walks the world? Have we not already failed?”
“We are alive. We are free. While these two things are true, there is no failure.” And then she lifted her hands to her face, and he saw, in the moonlight, that her left was slick with blood.
“Where have you walked, Evayne?”
“Does it matter?” she said. “Your suffering is so much greater than mine, after all. You must meet again the men that you betrayed once, a lifetime ago—and I must meet anew people I have yet to betray. You loved your brothers, and your Lady—and I?
“I leave behind those that I barely know at all. Barely.”
Rawness there, anger, and hurt, all rushing inward to fill a terrible, terrible emptiness. He had taken two steps before he could stop himself. I am not what I was, he thought, and knew it for truth. In his youth, he had had no pity.
“Where were you?” he said, and she said only one word, and because he was a bard, it was enough.
Askeyia.
He had heard the name before, once or twice, although he did not immediately remember from where. It didn’t matter. The word itself was like a curse, a prayer, a darkness, and a secret; it was a wound that had scarred, that would scar, when it healed. If it healed.
She did not weep because she was far too old for weeping. But he heard the youth in her voice this eve, as he felt the youth in himself, tangled up with the mesh of experience and the certainty of necessity—and the terrible burden of guilt, the desire for peace.
What world, he thought, although he did not say it, is worth this? What world can we leave behind that can justify what we have done, and what we have yet to do?
Beyond the question itself, the answer came back over the hush of the sea’s night lull: voices raised in merriment and in argument, in joy and in anger, in hope, in glee, and in momentary despair. Softer, but not completely hidden to a man who knew how to listen, the blend of those sounds as acts of love.
“Are you finished with me?” She tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible; it was hard. It was hard to speak at all. The day had been longer than she had thought possible and the end of it kept receding as she watched. She could barely believe that Duvari had no more use for her.
If she’d had the energy, she’d have been angry. Didn’t.
Devon ATerafin looked up from the balcony; his hands tightened a moment on the simple stone rails. The only acknowledgment at all that he’d heard the question.
Daine and Avandar waited in the room at her back in the uncomfortable silence the domicis often produce with people who feel some need—no matter how slight—to converse politely. Avandar was worse than most. She wondered what he would be like as a man stripped of responsibility; she couldn’t imagine that he would be any friendlier than Duvari.
Or Devon, this eve.
“ATerafin,” she said.
“I am not the seer, Jewel. You are. You are the best judge of your duty here.”
She waited; music was being played, and song sung end to end, out of sight of the balcony, but below it all the same. No night was a quiet one, not during the Challenge season. She had thought that somehow Avantari would be different; it was the Palace of Kings, and the Kings were dignity defined.
On the other hand, King Cormalyn at least was probably smart enough to cut his losses.
“Yeah,” she said, speaking into the night. “I’m finished.”
She turned, almost angry; moved too quickly. Must have.
She heard him say something, brushed his words away with the heavy wave of a hand, took a step toward the doors and teetered there, on the edge of night.
And fell in.
The darkness when she woke was alleviated by light, but the light was gentle and soft-edged; the sleeping room of a rich or a powerful woman might be lit in just such a fashion.
And she noticed it, too. Because when she woke out of nightmare, when she woke out of the grip of a dream that propelled her through all levels of sleep and its nuance in her need to flee it, the first thing she wanted was the light.
Avandar, who was no comfort in anything else, was a cold comfort in this; he came with light, either lamp or, on rare occasion, open fire. He had, in the beginning, carried magelight—but she took no warmth and no calm from its sight; things magical were often no small part of the fears that drove her.
“Jewel,” he said, and she realized the moment she heard the voice that it wasn’t Avandar who held the lamp aloft.
It wasn’t Avandar because she wasn’t in her room, her wing, or her house. She was in a small room, in a small bed, with an open window to her left; the window was her height, from the floor up, and three times her width. Real glass, although two of the leaves had been opened to the cool night air.
“Jewel,” Devon said again, quietly.
She turned to look at him; he hovered in the doorway, and she saw that his foot was almost, but not quite, across the threshold. She pushed the bedclothes away and stood, shakily; important to get her footing and keep it.
“Where am I?”
“You collapsed,” he told her. “I had you carried down to the healerie.”
I carried you. She blinked. “This is part of the healerie?”
“It’s a room reserved for convalescents. As you well know, the healer himself does not attend everyone who enters.” He lifted the lamp; it illuminated the side of his face. “You called me,” he said softly.
“I was having a nightmare,” she replied, equally quietly.
The silence was almost painful.
“No,” he said again. “You called me.”
She shrugged and looked away, to the open window. “Maybe,” she said at last. “Where’s Avandar?”
“He’s outside the room. As is the young healer. The healer, though, is wise enough to sleep. He would have come to you himself had you not called me.”
“Devon,” she said, “I can’t trust you. You’ve told me as much in more words than I care to remember. And in less.”
He said nothing in reply; she turned back to him, spread her hands out in front of her, palms up. “But I’m stupid. I do trust you. I don’t know why.”
“Why did you call me?”
Her eyes flickered, much as the lamplight did, off the side of his face. “We were down in the tunnels,” she said, averting her gaze. But that wasn’t the dream’s point. “You need to get Meralonne.”
“Meralonne is indisposed.”
/> “I’m not kidding, Devon.”
“Neither am I. At Dantallon’s best guess, there’s a greater chance that he perishes from the mage fevers than that he survives.”
She reached up and cupped her face in her hands; sat back on the bed as if her legs wouldn’t support her. “Mage fevers?” He started to explain, and she wanted the explanation, but she knew it wasn’t the time or the place; he couldn’t come. It didn’t matter why.
“Why Meralonne?”
“I don’t know. But there’s—there’s a demon somewhere, waiting for Valedan. I saw him.”
“You . . . saw him?”
She nodded.
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. We were too far beneath the surface; it was too damned dark. And I knew—I knew that if we could reach Meralonne, we’d be safe.”
There was a long pause; a longer pause.
“Kiriel?” he said softly, almost—but not quite—hesitating. As if he knew that she was one of the den, and he was trying—damn him anyway—to leave her what little bit he could. He probably did know. Living as close to power as she did, she’d come to learn that nothing was secret. And nothing, not a single thing, was safe.
“Not Kiriel,” Jewel replied. “I don’t know why—but that was a death, and not the demon’s. Not her.”
He stood there, in the doorway, as if he were part of it. As if, Jewel thought suddenly, he had closed the world out for a moment, while he held light with which to banish nightmare. How could he offer her this and refuse her aid when she needed it so desperately? At last, he bowed, stiffly. Formally.
“Where, Jewel?”
“I don’t know.” And then, taking a deep breath, she added, “the Challenge.” It came out of her as if it were a force of its own—and that force, all the strength she possessed. Good damned thing she’d already bent her knees enough to touch bed again, because she knew, by the distinctly wobbly feel to them, that they’d no longer support her weight.
“Sleep.”
“But Meralonne—”
“Sleep, Jewel.”
The damnable thing was that she was so tired. “But—”
The Uncrowned King Page 54
