Shadows of Destiny

by Rachel Lee

  “Aye,” Tuzza said. “And for the want of that wisdom, the world was torn.”

  “Many will think we have abandoned them,” Tess said quietly.

  She and Archer had left the valley of the Aremnos River, climbing up into the deep pines that blanketed the shoulders of the Panthos Mountains. The terrain looked very like what she had first seen of this world, on the banks of the Adasen River outside of Whitewater. However, when they crested a ridge, they could look back down the valley to the mesa, two days behind them and still seeming as if it were hard on their heels, an ominous, shimmering black abyss. It was as if its desolation was mirrored in the emptiness of what lay ahead.

  “There is no other road that leads to victory,” Archer said. “Were we to stay and fight with them, all would die. Worse, all who have died thus far, and who will die, and who would die if we fail, would have died for naught.”

  “Aye,” Tess said.

  It was obvious that two people alone could travel more stealthily than an entire army. Even with Ardred’s scouts in these hills, there was no way to guard every trail that wound through these forests. And, far more often than not, Tess and Archer followed no trail at all.

  For Tess found that she had an instinct for how the terrain ahead would flow, where box canyons or ravines that would block their paths lay. It was not Ilduin magic, she knew. It was yet more of the knowledge she carried from a past that had been scarred and shaped by war and training for war.

  War and death had been the organizing focus of her entire life. She hoped that would end with this coming battle. With each passing day, she longed more for a life of peace, of the ordinary tasks that carried one through the rising and setting of suns, the passing of seasons, the cycles of dream and thought and breath and pulse.

  “You are weary,” Archer said.

  “Aye,” she said. “I am.”

  He pulled up his mount. “Let us rest, then.”

  She shook her head. “The weariness I feel will not pass with an hour’s rest, nor even a day’s. We must press on, for the rest I need cannot come until all of this is finished.”

  He nodded silently.

  Too much of their time had been spent in silence. In part that was so they could listen for the telltale sounds of followers, or the preternatural quietness that presaged an ambush. But the greater weight of the silence seemed to lie in burdens each carried within and alone, unwilling to share lest they only add to each other’s trial.

  Hours later, when they had found a mountain cave large enough to bear themselves and their mounts, after they had brushed, watered and fed the horses and tended to their tack, after they had measured out and shared a portion of their provisions that seemed far less than either of their bodies needed, only then were they still enough to speak.

  “By this time tomorrow night,” Archer said, looking up at the canopy of stars, so bright in the thin mountain air that they seemed near enough to touch, “we will be at the gates of Arderon.”

  “Aye,” Tess said. “We should find shelter outside the city for the night and approach it in the daytime.”

  He nodded. “We cannot come as thieves in the night, lest the city guards fall upon us with their black swords dripping Ilduin Bane.”

  “You are certain they will be thus armed?”

  “I have no doubt of it,” Archer said. “Nor do I doubt that Ardred has reserved those men bearing Ilduin Bane for this final battle. He knows he must slay a Firstborn to win the Weaver. He will be ready to do so.”

  “You told the others that only your own sword could claim your life,” Tess said.

  “Aye, I did. Ilduin Bane will not kill me, but even the Firstborn are not wholly immune to it.” He held up an arm. “It would take only a slash here to render my arm limp. And while I would heal from it in time, if Banedread falls into the hand of another…”

  He did not need to finish the sentence.

  “I will not let that happen,” Tess said.

  “Be careful how much you expose of your powers,” Archer cautioned. “He will try to turn them against you. And he knows what you can do, better than you do.”

  Tess nodded. She drew a breath and tried to quiet the feelings of futility that rose like bile in her stomach. “That is the worst of it. Too often I feel as if all I can do is draw and loose the arrow, half blind. More than once has he then steered that arrow to a target of his choosing, and not of mine. When I have done great good, it has come as much a surprise to me as to those around me.”

  “Is that not true of all of us, Tess? We step out with one intention, and find that intention turned this way and that along our journey, and often find ourselves at a place we had not intended to go.”

  “Aye,” she said. “But that makes it no less disquieting. Perhaps if I were a painter, I would feel blessed when my creation emerged in ways that were not strictly my original vision. I would have no worry of creating a new Plain of Glass. Instead, I am the Weaver, and yet I cannot set myself to weave with confidence.”

  “We are all cast into roles that we could not foresee,” Archer said, his voice tinged with sadness. “It is as if we came onto this earth bearing secret orders that not even we could read. It is a cruel fate, to be the subject of myth, the object of prophecy, the engine of destiny. We live in that awful shadow, Tess. All of us. More than once have I wished for hearth and home, planting and harvest, wife and children. A life in plain light, however dreary and ordinary that light may seem.”

  Tess looked away, hearing her own thoughts echoed. Tears stung her cheeks. Let this cup pass from me. Words she had learned in the religious beliefs of her childhood. Thoughts she had harbored for so long she could not recall a time when she lived “a life in plain light,” as Archer had described it. If ever she had.

  Had she ever been in love? Had she ever known that most basic human experience, of looking into the eyes of another and seeing the light that Sara saw in Tom, or Cilla in Ratha? If she had, the memory of it still lay locked in the missing filaments of her past.

  She felt Archer’s hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and realized she was sobbing.

  “What is it, Tess?”

  She turned to face him. “I have never known love.”

  If she had kicked him in the stomach, he could not have looked more ashen. “Oh…Tess.”

  “What did it feel like…to love her?”

  Tess had expected his eyes to turn that deeper gray that they did when he sank into memories of the First Age, but they did not. Instead, they stayed on her.

  “I can speak only of what I feel now,” he said.

  For a moment, she thought he would avoid the subject, but then his own eyes began to leak star-glistened tears.

  “My life is only complete when I am with you, Tess.”

  Her heart thundered. She closed her eyes, unable to meet his, lowering her head. Did she? Could she?

  “Archer…I…”

  “I felt it the first time I held you, on the road to Whitewater. When you emerged in white robes, it was as if my heart would burst. The first time I heard you speak the Old Tongue. You were her. You were Theriel, my long dead love. But—”

  “I have no wish to be the incarnation of another,” Tess said softly.

  “No,” Archer whispered. “You were not Theriel. She is but memory, a wisp of smoke I could no more clasp than I could sit astride the wind. Whatever I felt with her, the emptiness in my heart when I lost her, the sorrow that lay over every day I spent walking this land…she is gone, Tess. She is gone and will never be again. But you are here. And if my heart lifts when I see your eyes, it is not the memory of her that lifts them, but you and your presence here. Whatever shadow cloaked our paths, it has brought you into this world, into my life. If in shadow I must walk, that shadow is lightened when you are beside me. And, for an instant, I can see that plain light.”

  The words seemed to melt in the tears that flowed on her cheeks. She felt as if she could not pull them in fast enough, that her angu
ish and confusion might sweep them away before her heart could receive them and let them seed.

  His arms enveloped her, pulling her to him. She was limp in his embrace, a tiny child again, lost in a world she could not fathom or master, sleep torn by a dream that haunted her waking, and the only safety lay in this moment, with his arms around her, at once shielding her from the world without and the world within.

  Every safe moment she had known had been when she had lain in his arms. From the first moment when she sagged against him astride the horse on the road to Whitewater, a dead child in her arms. Time and time again, the world had rent her as completely as her forebears had rent the world, and the only security had come in a moment like this one, when in weakness she found what strength she could in him, in his arms, in his broad, firm chest, listening to his heartbeat, her head rising and falling with his drawing of breath.

  And she knew.

  “Please do not let go,” she whispered between sobs, her fingers knotted between her breasts.

  “Aye, Tess,” he said.

  “Is this…?”

  “This is what is given us,” he whispered.

  She looked into his eyes and put a finger to his lips. “Just for now,” she whispered, “pray do not speak of what is. Just for now, let us be two ordinary folk. Please.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded and drew her deep into the cave, away from the cold’s deepening bite.

  “I will build us a fire,” he said as he helped her settle into a protected niche. “Then I will see to our mounts and we shall eat something to warm us against the night ahead.”

  With sodden eyes she watched him work his magick of fire, building a small smokeless blaze that bathed her with welcome warmth. Then she heard him bring the horses within the opening of the cave, listened to him talk in his deep voice as he soothed them and spread feed for them.

  Finally he returned to her, carrying the extra blankets and the pack full of their food.

  Her eyes began to dry as the warmth stole into her bones, but the ache in her heart did not ease. Not one whit. This man, this immortal, this king who was the son of a king, had come to mean much to her. Much more than she could put into words. Yet, he had spoken true: this was what had been given to them, and in it she could see no prospect of happiness, no prospect of an ordinary life in the plain light. He was Annuvil and she the Weaver, tools of destiny. Not even the death of Ardred would change that. They were forever doomed to live in the Shadows of the Gods, both greater and far, far less than ordinary mortals.

  Grief for all that could not be, and grief for all that had been stolen from them, savaged her heart. Unendurable pain filled her, and her heart cried out to do something, to seize this moment, to make of it something special, even if nothing else in her life ever brought her joy.

  But silent she remained, eating what he fed her though she tasted it not, listening to the bitter wind whistle past the cave entrance.

  This journey would end in death, though whose she could not say. Perhaps all three of them would die and leave the world to its own devices, ending forever whatever game the gods played with them.

  However it ended, she was sure of only one thing: She was entitled to this night. This one night.

  If only he would have her.

  Together they lay on the pallet he made, blankets beneath them, their cloaks over them, and huddled together against the encroaching night. From time to time he murmured something, and then for a while the fire burned brighter and hotter.

  She told herself to sleep, but a tension deep within her persisted in growing. When his arms tightened around her, she knew what it was.

  Eager hands met eager flesh, eager mouths joined, then bodies came together in a cataclysm of need.

  For this little while, though the frigid wind howled just a few feet away, though death awaited them just over the next mountain, they found warmth and life together in a paradise where not even the gods could touch them.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Lord Ardred, we cannot afford such losses,” Ras Lutte said. “Even under the guidance of the crone’s hive magick, my men are but wheat to be hewn and sheaved. We must pull back to Arderon and hold behind these stout walls.”

  His liege did not answer, lost in thoughts that Lutte dared not interrupt further. Instead, Lutte stood and waited for Ardred to come out of the abyss that claimed his mind more and more each day. It was if a vortex were claiming Ardred, its suction growing ever more irresistible. Lutte knew it was the looming battle. Archer had matched Ardred step for step thus far, and with the Weaver and four other Ilduin among them, the Enemy was no lot to be discounted.

  Nor could Lutte honestly claim that he had done all he could in his master’s service. He had given his full skill to training the men, but he had despaired of training good officers to lead them. Perhaps he might have found among their number a handful who were capable, had he been more attentive, had he been more receptive to Ardred’s strategy of laying out a cordon of fortified strong points to hamper the Enemy’s approach. In truth, he had never thought it a viable plan for the campaign.

  Thus, he had focused on rudimentary training, on the premise that this would be sufficient to hold Arderon when the Enemy broke upon the carefully woven layers of abatis—sharpened stakes implanted securely at an angle almost level with the ground, their tips pointed outward—that surrounded the moat of the fortress. A hail of arrows would greet the Enemy as he tried to force the abatis, and cauldrons of pitch were already mounted on the walls, ready to pour down upon the few who might cross the moat itself.

  Any enemy that somehow survived this gauntlet would then face the task of scaling walls studded with shards of black glass that Ardred’s men had harvested from the remnants of Dederand. The basic training his army had undergone would have been adequate to deal with the lucky few who made it into the city itself.

  But Ardred had insisted on a forward defense, and Lutte had carried out those orders as best he was able. The early results had seemed promising, but Archer’s army had reacted with alarming speed. In the course of a single day, the Enemy had learned to counter Lutte’s hives and had slain his men by the hundreds.

  “He comes,” Ardred said, his voice rumbling like an angry mountain.

  “Aye,” Lutte said. “The Enemy army is no more than four days’ distant, m’lord. And our army cannot contain them. Not in the open. I beg you, m’lord, let us withdraw to the city.”

  Ardred waved a hand as if Lutte had been speaking of a fly circling the castle’s sewer. “It will not matter. He comes to me, and he brings the Weaver with him. The rest of his army…”

  Lutte waited for him to finish the sentence, until it became apparent that he would not. “Shall I give orders to withdraw into the city, m’lord?”

  “Do as you wish,” Ardred said. “Only I say, do not attempt to detain my brother or the Weaver. I will deal with them myself. Once I have done so, their army will fall, whether at the gates of Arderon or in the valleys beyond.”

  “But m’lord—” Lutte began.

  “You have never understood this,” Ardred said. “You and the men who served you were but bait. If my brother thought I had no army at hand, he would have dismissed me again, as he did in our youth. He has not. You and your men have served your purpose. Now the moment is mine.”

  “So many dead…” Lutte said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “And I would have given ten thousand more, had it been necessary to draw out my brother!” Ardred thundered. “Go, Lutte, before you speak that which you should not, and I count you as yet more chaff for the fire. Go and issue your orders. Make yourself feel worthwhile. But leave me now, lest my wrath be diverted from more worthy aims.”

  Lutte bowed and left without a word, betrayal bitter in his belly. His considered surrendering his army, but he had no doubt what would become of captured traitors. No, he and his men would hold Arderon. Not for its founder, but for themselves.

  “
The Enemy has fled,” Alezzi reported at the evening council. “It would seem our new tactics shattered the will of the hive leader.”

  “How many have you captured?” Maluzza asked.

  “Only a few stragglers,” Alezzi said. “They melt into these forests and it is impossible to follow in strength. I do not wish my men to fall into one ambush after another chasing a beaten enemy.”

  “I do not think he is beaten,” Maluzza said. “If he were, we would be capturing deserters, not stragglers. No, Overmark, he is not beaten. He is withdrawing of his own will and to his own plan.”

  “Into Arderon,” Tuzza said.

  Maluzza nodded. “Aye. He means to hold us at the city walls.”

  “And well he might,” Alezzi said, his eyes dark and lips drawn tight. “If my scouts are to be believed, the city might be impregnable. They speak of walls of jagged glass, bounded by a moat thirty paces wide, ringed with layer upon layer of abatis. A dozen legions could crash and break against such defenses. And we have but four.”

  “Then four will carry them,” Maluzza said, obviously in no mood to brook doubt.

  “Waste not your men upon those fortifications,” Tom said, speaking for the first time. “We must go to Arderon. But that outcome will be decided for us, by Lord Annuvil and the Weaver.”

  “But…” Alezzi began, his face incredulous.

  Tuzza nodded to Tom before speaking. “The Prophet is right, cousin. Who can know what further sacrifices might have been called for, had we not safeguarded Lord Archer and Lady Tess thus far, or had we not crushed the enemy’s hives in battle these past nights.”

  After a moment the emperor nodded and sighed grimly. “The Prophet is correct. We have laid the table for the brothers. Now we can but march to Arderon and stand at the ready for whatever lies ahead. But we will not waste brave men upon that fortress, unless the gods permit us no other fate.” He turned to Ratha. “Bozandar and Anahar have marched and fought side by side. Let no Bozandari ever again doubt the mettle of your people, nor your title to liberty.”