The Sword of the South - eARC

by David Weber

  CHAPTER TEN

  Unanswered Questions

  “Is she awake?” Lentos asked, looking up from the paperwork on his desk as Trayn entered his austere office.

  “No, but I think she will be soon. She’s tougher than I expected.”

  “The young are always tough, Trayn—and don’t forget her parentage. I’m less surprised she’s recovering quickly than that she survived at all.”

  “Agreed. Agreed.” Trayn flopped into a chair and sighed in exhaustion, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “What in Semkirk’s name happened, Lentos?”

  “I’d rather hoped you might tell me. You were closer to it than I was.”

  “Closer!” Trayn lowered his hands and looked across the desk at his superior. “I was bouncing off her shields, and you know it. No, Revered Chancellor. You were better placed to observe things than I was.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t have any idea what it was, either. One moment we were losing her; the next, something ripped her shields apart—without killing her—and knocked us on our highly trained arses. Got any guesses?”

  “You don’t suppose it was…?” Trayn trailed off delicately.

  “I don’t know.” Lentos toyed with his quill. “I wondered, of course, but it seems too pat, too neat. I was sure it was Wencit for a moment, but be reasonable. Even he can’t do the impossible, and sorcery and the mage power can’t be mixed that way. The gods know he’s strong enough to break her barriers…but to not only avoid killing her himself but actually bring her out again after?”

  Lentos shook his head.

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Trayn said slowly. “Something happened—something that couldn’t happen—and given her relationship with Wencit, I don’t think we can rule him out. But if he did it, something scares me more than the fact that he could.”

  “I know,” Lentos said softly. “If he did it, then he’s lied to us, at least by implication, for thirteen hundred years.”

  * * *

  Kenhodan dismounted with a groan and swayed, massaging his posterior with both hands as abused muscles made their unhappiness known. Even Glamhandro seemed glad to stop, and both pack horses trailed with hanging heads. Only the courser seemed anything remotely like fresh, and Wencit’s shoulders sagged as he sat in the saddle. For once, even Bahzell’s exuberance was quenched, and the hradani spread his arms in an enormous muscle-popping stretch.

  Damp trees surrounded them. The foliage was too thick for the rain to penetrate, but a wet mist dripped from the saturated upper branches. The trail snaked endlessly onward between dense trunks, narrow, slick, and muddy, but some winter storm had felled a forest giant to make the clearing where they’d finally halted at last.

  “Well.” Bahzell lowered his arms, put his hands on his hips, and rotated his upper body while Wencit climbed wearily down from his saddle. The courser lipped the wizard’s silver hair affectionately, and Glamhandro sighed and blew in relief as Kenhodan removed his bridle and hung it on a branch.

  “Well what?” Kenhodan asked after a moment of silence.

  “Well,” Bahzell sighed, standing on one foot and raising the other to peer down at the sole of his boot, “it’s surprised I am I’ve not worn a hole clean through to the uppers! I’m ready to be stopping over for a while.”

  “That makes seven of us.” Wencit flipped his poncho beneath him and eased down on the fallen tree’s dripping coat of moss with a groan of profound relief.

  “Seven?” Bahzell repeated.

  “Three two-footed travelers and four with four feet.”

  “I’d say those with four have worked harder,” Kenhodan observed, stripping off Glamhandro’s saddle and blanket. The stallion shook himself, then rolled in the clearing’s moss, and fallen leaves and Kenhodan smiled as his legs waved ecstatically.

  “True, but they’d had their vengeance.” Wencit winced and eased his legs. “Old bones aren’t all I have, and everything’s gotten a lot older since Korun, somehow.”

  “Can we really afford to stop, Bahzell?” Kenhodan asked.

  “It’s a matter of must, lad. The pack horses are after needing the rest.”

  “All honor to them, but let’s have a little sympathy for this party’s senior rider, as well!” Wencit protested.

  “It’s after needing more than a little ride to be killing the likes of you!” Bahzell stripped the saddle from the nearest pack horse, set it aside, and began rubbing down the exhausted gelding. Wencit watched him for a moment, then dragged himself up, limped over to the courser, and began loosening his saddle girth.

  “I know you great warriors would never want to weaken my character by showing me pity or suggesting in any way that I’m not as hardy and capable as either of you. Still, I hope you’ll be able to see your way to assisting me in caring for this noble creature.”

  The courser snorted in obvious amusement and swatted the wizard gently with the side of his head.

  “I’m not so sure of all that.” Bahzell winked at Kenhodan. “I’m thinking as each rider should be caring for his own mount, even if some of ’em are after being a mite bigger than the others.”

  “Let me rephrase that,” Wencit said pleasantly. “I know you’ll help me look after him properly—and help with both pack horses—just as I know you won’t find your breeches full of Saramanthan fire ants.”

  “Well, now! Put like that, it’s after seeming reasonable enough!” Bahzell said hastily.

  “Why you to start on that, I’ll find some dry firewood,” Kenhodan offered with equal haste.

  “The light’s going fast,” Wencit said, “so you’d best hurry.”

  “I imagine you won’t have time to do more than groom the horses and throw up a lean-to before I get back,” Kenhodan said, and slid into the concealing forest with a grin as the wizard shook a fist at him.

  He carried a strung bow, not that he really hoped to chance across anything for the pot in such dim light. Nor did he, but he did find a dead stump, sodden and punky on the outside but dry and hard at its core, and he chopped away the outer husk and cut a plentiful supply of chips and slivers of dry heartwood to nurse wetter fuel alight. He bundled the tender in the skirt of his poncho and moved noiselessly back towards the camp, pausing beside the fallen giant whose death had made their clearing to watch thoughtfully.

  Wencit and Bahzell had finished with the courser and the pack horses and started on the lean-to, and he grinned. It wouldn’t take them long to finish it, and there was no point distracting them from their work. He found a spot under the fallen trunk and stretched out on the relatively dry moss with his poncho load of tender for a pillow, whetting Gwynna’s dagger slowly and glancing out occasionally to see how they were coming along.

  Bahzell dumped another load of boughs and helped Wencit spread them over the frame, weaving them together into a crude roof that wasn’t completely watertight but was close enough to it to keep off the worst of the wet. The hradani glanced up and started to speak as Wencit’s hands paused, then stopped as he recognized Wencit’s distant expression. No one had truly seen Wencit of Rūm’s eyes since long before the fall of Kontovar, but he appeared to be gazing off into depths only he could see. Then he began to smile.

  “Wencit?”

  “A moment, Bahzell.” Wencit chuckled and his fingers curled strangely. They seemed to twirl briefly, and his eyes pulsed once. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “Let’s finish this up; Kenhodan will be back soon.”

  “And will he now? I’m thinking he’s found a comfortable spot to watch us work from, and it’s little I blame him.”

  “That’s because you are a charitable soul, Bahzell, while I… Well, let’s just say I’m a little less generous than you.”

  Wencit’s hands paused again and the wizard glanced over his shoulder at the precise moment Bahzell heard a yelp of outrage.

  The hradani straightened with a jerk, turning toward the sound and reaching for his hook knife, only to pause in amazement as Kenhodan levitated
over the fallen tree and dashed into the camp. Bahzell had never seen him move so quickly, nor had he ever heard sounds quite like those Kenhodan emitted as he ran. The hradani’s eyes narrowed as the red-haired man yanked at his belt while he danced in place like a madman.

  Bahzell glanced at Wencit as Kenhodan dropped his breeches to stamp on them with both booted feet. Wencit began to chuckle, and Bahzell grinned. Surely not. Even Wencit wouldn’t really—!?

  Kenhodan stopped yelling and stood in his drawers, glaring accusingly as the wizard mastered his chuckles. Wencit looked back imperturbably as the red-haired man picked up a crushed insect and thrust it under his nose.

  “And what, do you suppose, might this be?” Kenhodan snarled.

  “Why,” Wencit said innocently, “it looks like a Saramanthan fire ant to me. Did you bring the firewood, Kenhodan?”

  * * *

  Kenhodan mopped the last savory stew from his bowl with a piece of bread. Bahzell was an astonishingly good cook, and Kenhodan felt almost human again as the stew warmed his belly. Of course, “almost human” wasn’t quite the same thing as “comfortable,” and he shifted and fingered the rudely stung portion of his anatomy. He wanted to be angry over it, but he couldn’t. He’d deserved it, and the experience had been a sort of initiation. He could no longer doubt he truly was part of the wizard’s inner circle, or Wencit would never have done it to him.

  He stretched gratefully. Adventures weren’t all they were reputed to be, but his present relaxation was all the sweeter because of the strenuous exertion which had preceded it.

  “That was delicious, Bahzell,” he said lazily, “but I’m a little uneasy about taking things so slow now.”

  “Never fear, lad. I’m thinking they couldn’t’ve reached the bridge before midmorning, and they’ve no knowledge at all, at all, of the trail. They’ll not be making up much on us through the trees, even if they’re mad enough to press on all night.” He shook his head. “We’ll not see them before sometime tomorrow.”

  “Then at least we can have a night’s rest,” Kenhodan said.

  He glanced up past the corner of the lean-to and fell silent. Their clearing ripped a hole in the canopy of leaves, and he could see the sky. The misty rain had paused, and as he watched the clouds parted to free the moon. He stared at it, and an inarticulate longing woke within him. It didn’t clash with his languorous content; rather, it seemed a part of it, like a soft, sweet ache, and his hand reached for his harp case almost involuntarily.

  “Lad,” Bahzell rumbled, “I’m not so very sure that’s after being wise. It’s certain I am in my own mind we’re well ahead of them, but—”

  “Let him be, Bahzell,” Wencit said softly.

  The hradani’s eyes narrowed, but Kenhodan never noticed. He opened the harp case, his gaze fixed on the moon, and there was a strange, answering glow in his green eyes. He felt himself drifting on the impossibly bright moonlight, and he sensed a distant thrill as something within him stirred.

  He sat up, settling the harp on his knee, and his fingers curved to the strings. He touched them with his fingertips, and they seemed to quiver, begging him to give them voice. His brow furrowed dreamily at the thought, for he had no idea what he wanted to play. He had no ideas at all—he’d been emptied of thought by the silver light. Emptied so suddenly and gently he hadn’t even noticed.

  Yet if he had no idea what to play, he had no choice but to play it anyway. A compulsion was upon him as the wounding beauty of the cloudy moon possessed him, and his fingers struck the strings with a will of their own.

  They wrought merciless magic in the night.

  Music poured up from the harp, rich and vibrant, singing through the trees. The Forest of Hev hushed. Animals and birds froze in the darkness, as mesmerized as his companions by the loveliness flowing through the quiet, misty aisles of silver struck green and black.

  Kenhodan knew no name for the music he made. It was sweeping. Powerful. Too beautiful to endure. He drifted on it, less important than the wind, but even through the wash of notes he saw the glitter of Wencit’s eyes. The wizard’s seamed fingers quivered as if they, too, longed to caress the strings, yet Wencit’s face and body were rigid as the music surged like the sea.

  Kenhodan never knew how long he played. He lived with and in the music, floating on it, reaching out through it, and wondering from whence it had come. It poured through him like the sea itself and spent itself in the heart of mystery, and he was one with it, caught up in something greater than himself, wondering where the music ended and he began—or if there actually was a division at all.

  And then the harp notes changed abruptly. The melody’s haunting beauty remained, yet it took on a darker, harsher, harder edge that hurled him down dizzy corridors of light and dark, flashing towards destruction even while he knew he sat under a dripping lean-to and stroked the harp. Images stabbed him—dreadful images, and he knew they were the half remembered nightmares which haunted his sleep. Cavalry thundered across waving grass, beating it flat, exploding into an army of horrors and soaking the earth with blood. He saw screaming men, dwarves, hradani and elves, hewing and hewn, dying in agony as steel ripped flesh. He saw the boil of sorcery, a red banner with a crowned, golden gryphon, and cities flaming as they were sacked. He saw temples blaze under lurid skies, alters defiled with butchered priests and ravished priestesses.

  He saw the ruin and anguish of conquest, and the images filled him with a burning fury more terrifying than any battle madness. They twisted him on a rack of sorrow, and the music raced—furious and savage now, hurtling towards a conclusion far worse than simple death. He saw an island in the sleeping sea, its rugged coasts sheer, and a city of white walls and towers that gleamed under a weeping, blood-red moon. He floated above it, his brain afire with the surge of music, confused as glowworm lights crawled in the sky. They gathered, weaving together, growing stronger, burning like Vonderland’s northern lights. He cringed before their power as they hummed and crackled in the night sky, and then they exploded. They streaked away like lightning bolts, and the harp music crested in a crescendo of anger and sorrow that hurled him from his dreams.

  The song—if song it was—ended in a wild flurry of perfect notes, and Kenhodan sagged forward across his harp, drained and spent. He was torn by a terrible desolation, his heart ripped by grief and an inexplicable sense of crushing guilt, and tears streaked his face as he crouched over the harp like a wounded animal, gasping, and stared at the wizard.

  “You know,” he whispered. “You understand.”

  Wencit looked at him for an endless moment, and the night held its breath. The wizard’s face was still, calm as iron, and Kenhodan sensed the effort which kept it so.

  “Yes,” he said softly at last. “I know.”

  “But you can’t tell me,” Kenhodan said bitterly. He was riven by the music, reeling in that strange whirlwind of loss and confusion, yet even as he thought that he realized he’d gained something, as well. He was shaken and drained, but the fissures within him seemed less yawning, as if for the first time his soul was truly his. As if even in his amnesia he’d begun to find himself at last.

  “No,” Wencit said, and his voice was shadowed with warning. “I can tell you what that song was, if you wish. I can tell you that…but not why you played it.”

  Kenhodan tried to see the wizard clearly, but his vision had dimmed somehow. All he could make out was the glow of Wencit’s eyes, blazing in the night, and he heard ghosts flutter in the old man’s voice. Fear touched him—a sudden fear that tried to back away, retreat once more into the safety of not knowing—but the one thing, the only thing, he couldn’t endure was more ignorance.

  “Tell me,” he croaked.

  Wencit bent his head as if all the years of his weary existence pressed down upon him. But when he raised his face once more, it wore a hard-won serenity.

  “What you have just played,” he said with careful formality, “is an ancient lay. Men call it ‘The Fall of Hac
romanthi.’”

  Kenhodan stared at him, his thoughts swirling. That name…That name meant something…He gripped the harp, his head throbbing as if to burst, and then he staggered to his feet as another presence filled him. He towered over the wizard, glaring down at him, and his face was twisted with grief and loss and a terrible, terrible torment.

  “You didn’t warn me, Wizard!” The words seared out of him, spoken by someone else in a voice of molten fury and endless grief. “You didn’t warn me about this!”

  And then he crashed down into a darkness without even dreams.

  * * *

  There was no rain in Torfo and glimmering towers reared into a windy darkness that was unseasonably dry, their banners clapping like unseen hands. Starlight gleamed overhead, moonlight poured down from the heavens, and night ruled the land, but night often came unquiet to the fortress of the sorcerous Wulfra.

  This was such a night, for a golden-haired woman stirred in her darkened room and sat up, pressing her hands to her eyes. She sat that way for several seconds, then lowered her hands slowly, her fingers flickering in a strange gesture, and the chamber’s candles lit as one. Baroness Wulfra didn’t even blink against the sudden light as she stared into the distance of her thoughts, and her head swung as if in search, though her eyes were closed.

  She rose, her body turning, and her lips tightened as she sought to isolate whatever had disturbed her slumber. Her turning slowed and she came to rest facing north. Her hands clenched slowly at her sides, and a bleak expression crossed her stern, willful features.

  She shrugged into a blue robe, blonde hair cascading over its silk, and her snapped fingers summoned a silver-blue radiance that rode her shoulder like some exotic pet as she stepped quickly out the door. Its dim glow lit a dark landing as bare feet carried her to a handle-less slab of ebony, and her eyes blanked as she spoke a word and traced a symbol. Her globe of light flared, the door sighed open, and she passed through it like a barefooted ghost.