The Waiting King (2018 reissue)

by Deborah Hale

  This was one battle she would have to fight for herself and by herself. The only thing he could do was believe in her as he had never been able to believe in anyone or anything else. He must trust that her strength and goodness would prevail.

  As he watched, Maura’s body tensed and she twitched a little from side to side as if pulled in two different directions by powerful forces. Then, the wand in her hand burst apart with a violent crash, like a tall tree struck by lightning. Maura swayed and crumpled to the ground.

  At the same instant, the death-mage’s wand shattered, too. Rath scarcely noticed.

  From somewhere, he dredged up the strength to drag himself toward Maura. Picking up the blade that had fallen from his hand when the death-mage attacked, he prepared to defend her with what was left of his life.

  When someone rushed toward him, he swung the blade with more strength than he’d thought he possessed. Fortunately Anulf had quick reflexes.

  “Steady on, Wolf.” He dodged Rath’s blow. “It’s only me.”

  “Sorry.” Rath let his arm fall.

  Anulf knelt beside them. “We got him—the Xenoth.” He made an oddly gentle gesture toward Maura. “Thanks to the lady.”

  He gazed at Maura’s face. “That’s her, isn’t it? The Destined Queen.”

  Rath nodded. “She should not have come here.”

  “Aye, that’s true enough. Nor should you have, the shape you’re in.” Anulf spared a swift glance at the battle raging around them. “I reckon we’ll win the day now that the Xenoth is down. But there’s bound to be some fierce fighting for a bit. We need to get the two of you away from here.”

  “We need to get farther than you think.” Rath pulled a morsel of dried quickfoil from Maura’s sash and cradled it on his tongue until his strength started to return.

  He staggered to his feet. “Help me lift her.”

  Together, they carried Maura behind a clutch of small sheds. As they laid her down, a bearded old man in Hanish armor came puffing after them. “Who are you and what are you doing with the lady?”

  Rath cast a withering glance at the Hanish blade in the old fellow’s hand. “Put that down, before you do yourself harm. I am the reason the lady came to this benighted place. We only moved her away from the fighting so I might tend her.”

  “Have you skill in healing?” The old man handed his blade to Anulf with a grimace that showed he was glad to be rid of it.

  “Only what I learned from her,” Rath admitted. “If you can serve her better, then do, I beg you.”

  “I will do what I can.” The old man knelt beside Maura and bent his ear to her lips. “Could one of you fetch me water?”

  Rath caught Anulf’s eye and nodded. Anulf hurried away toward the barracks.

  “Hot if you can get it!” The old man called after him.

  Then he glanced up at Rath, hovering over him. “Clavance of Vaust at your service... and hers.”

  “Rath Talward.” Rath picked up one of Maura’s hands and chafed the limp flesh. “This happened to her once before, though not so bad. I was able to bring her around with a quickfoil tonic.”

  Clavance nodded.

  “She has a lot of herbs and things in her sash.” Rath pointed toward the pocket that now contained only a tiny amount of quickfoil.

  The grave, worried set of the old man’s features made him add. “You will be able to help her, won’t you?”

  “So I hope.” Clavance blew out a sigh. “Her strength is ebbing fast.”

  Rath seized the old man’s arm. “She cannot die! She has something important she must do.”

  Something far more important than coming here to fetch him.

  “I know.” Clavance began drawing pinches of herbs from Maura’s sash. “Long ago, I was a pupil of her guardian, Langbard. Did you know him?”

  Rath nodded. “Only a short while.”

  “Solsticetide will soon be upon us. Do you have far to go?”

  “Everwood, up in the Hitherland.”

  “I know the place.” Clavance’s wrinkled features settled into even deeper furrows of worry. “If I could heal her completely at this very moment I fear you would still be hard pressed to reach there in time.”

  “Reach where?” asked Anulf, who had returned with a steaming kettle and a mug.

  Rath hesitated for a moment. But what was the good of secrecy, now, among friends of proven loyalty? “Everwood. We must get there by Solsticetide.”

  They must get there by Solsticetide. The intense urgency that pulsed within him convinced Rath that he believed the whole preposterous story, whether he wanted to or not.

  Clavance sprinkled the herbs in the mug, then poured hot water over them. “Even if you had fast horses, none of the roads in this part of the mountains lead north.”

  Anulf nodded toward the sound of the fighting. “After this, the Han will even be turning their court boys out of Venard to watch the roads.”

  Rath lifted Maura’s shoulders so Clavance could dribble the hot tonic into her mouth.

  “Perhaps...” Anulf mused. “No. It would be folly!”

  “What?” demanded Rath. “Tell me.”

  Even if Anulf’s suggestion was daft, it might distract him from his fear for Maura.

  “None of the roads go north,” said Anulf, “but the river does.”

  “The river?”

  “Aye. It is how the Han get their cursed ore down to the plain—in barges. If you rode one of those down, and could get ashore before it reached the off-loading ports near the mouth of the river...”

  “If you can make it that far,” said Clavance, “I can give you names of some twarith in downriver towns who would help you on your way from there.”

  “How can we?” Rath passed his hand over Maura’s hair. “With her still like this?”

  For all the tonic Clavance had given her, she showed no sign of reviving.

  “There is nothing more I can do for her here,” the old man said, “than you could do on your ride down the river. Perhaps getting away from here and closer to the Secret Glade might help her. Her wounds are not of the body, but of the spirit.”

  Rath knew that well enough. And he knew what Clavance said might well be true. Yet something held him back.

  When he had been captured and brought to the mines, he’d made a kind of peace with losing Maura. Now that he truly believed she would find the Waiting King in Everwood, could he bear to lose her again of his own free will?

  Suddenly, a tumult of barking and baying rang out above the noises of battle.

  Slag!” Anulf spat. “They have loosed the hounds!”

  Rath lurched to his feet. “Show me the way to the barges.”

  She had lost. She had failed.

  The sense of that loss haunted Maura in the dark, desolate void into which she had fallen. The weight of her failure threatened to crush her spirit.

  Was she dead? If she was, then neither Rath nor any of the twarith had survived to launch her into the afterworld with the ritual of passing. She would be forever lost.

  Some intuition told her if she surrendered to the darkness she would find a kind of peace in oblivion. It was bound to come sooner or later. To struggle would only prolong her suffering.

  No one could help her now.

  Perhaps that was the very reason she needed to fight.

  From the beginning she had felt unequal to her fate. Always in need of help—from Langbard, from the twarith and always from Rath. But she had helped him and others, too.

  She had stood alone against the grim power and temptation of the Xenoth, and she had prevailed. She would not give up now. She would keep fighting—until she found her way back to herself once again, or until her strength failed at last.

  She marshalled her weapons for the battle. The wisdom Langbard had bequeathed to her. The sacrifice of Exilda. Memories of all the people who were relying on her. Tender thoughts of Rath and all he meant to her. If she gave up now, he might lose his budding faith.

&n
bsp; She thought of the Waiting King, too. Not as some mythical, heroic figure of legend, but as a real person, like herself. Perhaps he had been caught in a dark void like this for a thousand years. Perhaps if she could find her own way out, she would be able to help him find his way, when the time came.

  As Maura armed her spirit with all of these, the weight that pressed down on her began to lighten. And the darkness around her began to shimmer. From an enormous distance, she heard the rush of flowing water and the beguiling whisper of a voice.

  Though she could not make out the words, she followed it.

  The roar of the river assaulted Rath’s ears from every direction—ahead, behind, from both sides and beneath. Even above, when the bow of the ore barge plunged into a wave, sending a great spray of cold water splashing over him and Maura. He tried to shield her from it as best he could, though part of him hoped a good dousing might jolt her awake.

  He gasped and sputtered and shivered in his sodden garments, half wishing he’d kept the Hanish armor on. But Maura did not flinch, nor did her eyelids so much as flicker.

  Empty of its usual heavy cargo, the barge rode high in the river’s swift feral current.

  “You should open your eyes a moment, Maura,” he urged her. “The trees on the shore are rushing by so fast, they fair set me dizzy.”

  When not sputtering from a wave of spray, Rath had been talking to her like that ever since Anulf had set them adrift. He doubted she could hear him, but on the slender chance that she could, he kept talking. Besides, it distracted him a little from his heaving stomach and his stark terror.

  “There is another stream flowing into this one, Maura. I suppose there must be another mine up near its headwaters. When you find the Waiting King, I hope that will be one of his first tasks—to liberate all the mines. Then I expect you will find a way to wean those poor creatures from the slag. A proper team the two of you will make. Him to battle the Han and you to heal all the harm they have done to folks.”

  The barge lurched again, sending another wave of spray over them. With the cuff of his sleeve, Rath wiped the drops of water that clung to Maura’s face like tears.

  He shook his head and forced a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “There. You will be happy, now. My hair is getting washed again. I am glad to have that cursed mine dust out of it. A pity I did not have some of those sweet-smelling herbs you forced upon me when you barbered me back in Windleford. Remember?”

  Perhaps she did not. No matter. He recollected it well enough for both of them. And afterward, that bantering walk into the village when he had threatened to kiss her.

  He kissed her now, upon the forehead, with all the tenderness he had come to feel for her since then. “Come back, Maura. Please. Embria needs you. I need you... even if you can never be mine.”

  The barge hurtled on down the mountain, the way events had driven him and Maura these past weeks, at breathtaking speed over abrupt, stunning drops and through treacherous rapids. But Maura lay cradled in his arms—cold, silent and still. If she could come back to him, he believed with all his heart that she would.

  He had only one hope of getting her back, though he shrank from asking.

  “Giver...”

  Rath phrased his appeal in Embrian, for he feared he could not find the right words in his limited twara. Surely a spirit wise and powerful enough to create the whole universe would understand his ordinary speech just as well.

  “... likely I have no right to ask such a boon, since I have come to you so late. I have done plenty of deeds in my life that go against those Precepts of yours. I wish I could undo them, but I cannot.”

  All at once, in the roar of the water, he sensed the power of the Giver. In the cool caress of the breeze, he felt its mercy. He had the attention of the force that quickened all living things. It made him feel small, trifling, yet in some strange way, he felt important, too. As if he and what he wanted mattered.

  “Anyway... it is not for myself I am asking... at least... only in part. I mean... Maura is the Destined Queen, and a fine choice if you ask me. How can she fulfil this quest of yours if she cannot walk or speak? You have gotten us out of some tight spots in the past. Surely you would not let us falter, now, when we are so close?”

  The river continued to roar and the breeze to blow, but Rath could not hear the Giver’s answer in either. Perhaps he had not made himself plain enough?

  “I know I have not believed in you before, but I do, now. I am grateful for what you have given me. I swear, from now on, I will try to give as I have been given. And I will trust in your Providence. Only, please, please rescue her spirit from wherever it is trapped.”

  After one final jarring lurch, the barge settled into deeper, slower-moving water.

  Rath held his breath, waiting for Maura to open her eyes or even for her heartbeat to rally. But nothing changed. She lay there in his embrace, her beauty taunting him with its empty perfection.

  Chapter Ten

  THE DEPTH OF his disappointment surprised Rath. He had been so ready to trust in a power greater than himself. Then the strangest thought blossomed within him and he had the baffling sensation of entertaining an idea that had come from outside his own mind.

  Look for my power within yourself, Elzaban.

  Rath made a wry face at the thought of his preposterous birth name. How much ridicule and how many beatings had he taken as a boy before he’d had the sense to call himself something less high-flown?

  He did not have much time to ponder those bitter memories. Ahead on the river, one of the small Hanish vessels that towed ore barges hove in view.

  Slag! He had not realized the barge-tows plied their work this far from the mouth of the river.

  Rath had no time to plan, barely any to think. If he did not act quickly, the current would carry the barge to the waiting ship where he and Maura would be captured.

  He had no intention of letting himself fall into Hanish hands again. Nor Maura, either, even if she was beyond their power to harm.

  The temporary strength he had gained from that tiny scrap of quickfoil was rapidly wearing off. With as great an effort of will as he had ever mustered, he lifted Maura up to the rim of the barge. Then, twining his arm through her sash to lash them together, he dove into the river with her in his arms.

  The water closed over them in a cold, primal embrace that entreated Rath to yield. If he had been alone, he might have. But for Maura’s sake, he struggled up, until his head breached the surface of the water. He had only strength to lift her head free, too, and let the current bear them where it would.

  Suddenly ahead of them loomed the remains of a tall tree that had fallen into the river. Some of its roots still anchored the trunk to the shore.

  Catching hold of an outthrust branch, Rath slowly inched toward shore, towing Maura into the shallows. There, he collapsed into the warm mud until he revived enough to haul Maura into the cover of a small thicket near the river’s edge.

  He pressed his fingers to her throat, searching for a pulse, however faint. He lowered his ear to her lips, scarcely daring to breathe, himself, as he listened for hers.

  Maura showed no signs to life.

  Magic had not worked. Prayer had not worked. There was only one thing left to do.

  Wringing a few drops of water from his sodden garments, he moistened her brow with them.

  “Guldir quiri shin... hon bith shin...” He spoke in a hoarse, hesitant murmur. “Vethilu bithin anthi gridig aquis... a bwitha muir ifnisive.”

  Wash the cares of this world from your thoughts and let them be made pure for a better life in the next.

  It tore at his heart to do this, but he had made Maura a promise. And she had promised he would hear her voice and share her memories.

  He needed that.

  Their last parting had been too abrupt, and their reunion had been no more than an exchange of gazes in the midst of a battle. If she was on her way to the afterworld, there would be no harm in revealing how much he
cared for her.

  He trickled a few drops of water on her lips, then on the palms of her hands, reciting the ritual words in a broken voice. Then he bent his head over her and opened his spirit.

  Maura, where are you? You told me I would hear you.

  No reply came. Not even within his thoughts.

  Had he been right, after all? Was there no Giver? No afterworld? Nothing but this one, too brief life in which folk had to look out for themselves first and last?

  Once he had been afraid to believe otherwise. Now...?

  A stubborn little seed of faith had taken root within him, and it refused to die no matter how many disappointments might wither it.

  Rath?

  It was no more than a distant whisper. But it filled him with a sense of wonder, hope and grace.

  Their bodies did not move—hers there on the ground, his hovering over her. But in a baffling way Rath could not describe, their spirits sought each other and came together in a haunting embrace of selves. Closer and closer, until suddenly... they were one.

  He saw her past, through her eyes, and he felt her do the same through his. He saw himself through her eyes and tasted her love for him—with all his senses as well as some sweet, mysterious knowing that went beyond the limited scope of sense. It did not feel like she was dying, but rather like he was being reborn.

  Take me with you! his spirit pleaded. I cannot bear for this to end.

  Nor I.

  All at once, they knew they had a choice. He could go with her, to be one in the afterworld together. Or she could return with him to a life where destiny would part them.

  There was no need for words. No way to hide their true feelings from one another. Together they felt the pull of two much-desired futures that would be forever contrary.

  When at last the decision blossomed, it bore no blight of discord. And their shared wistfulness for what might have been only shaded its color to a softer, more delicate hue.

  Rath opened his eyes. Maura opened hers.

  The ache and loneliness of separation from her trembled on his lips in a mute cry. But when their gazes met, he knew that in some baffling way a part of each of them would always remain with the other.