by Jocelyn Fox
“Your Knight’s sword is on display with our other weapons to the left of the fire,” she said. “If you can get me an axe, it would help me, but I will be fine with this. Focus on getting to your sword.”
“What about the Princess?” he asked through numb lips.
Rye sighed. “She has agreed to whatever necromancy he has proposed.” She shook her head. “We may be able to save her if we are fast enough, but the preparation for the ceremony was what gave me the cover to do my own sorcery.” She shivered. “Don’t you feel it?”
Finn nodded. “Yes.”
Rye took a deep breath. “He’s going to kill her, Finn, and she’s agreed to it.”
His mind began to race. “Will they put the manacles on us?”
“I doubt it. They haven’t, these past weeks.”
“So, I must act weak,” he said to himself.
“No acting for me,” she said with a smile. She looked at him with a strange determination on her face. “Tell my brother that I’ve fulfilled what was foretold, if you see him. And Ramel, if he survived…tell him that I wish with all my heart for him to be happy.”
Finn couldn’t stop the tears that gathered behind his eyes. “I will tell the Queen of your bravery,” he said. “I will tell anyone who will listen.”
“Perhaps it will change some Knights’ minds about allowing women to train,” she said. “And that would be a great thing in itself.”
Tears slipped down his cheeks. The drumbeats increased in volume and tempo. He took Rye’s face in both his hands, looking earnestly into her eyes. “Rye,” he said, “you are the best of warriors and the best of women.”
She smiled, reached up and wiped away a tear from his cheek. “Do not weep for me, Finnead. I go singing my song fiercely.”
“Fiercely,” he said with a nod. “Aye.” He kissed her forehead and then stepped back as the sound of footsteps echoed down the passageway.
Rye’s pale eyes gleamed in the sudden light of the torches. “You’ll know when,” she said to him in a low voice. “Don’t hesitate, and don’t look back.”
Finn nodded, the strength from her runes coursing through him. He knew in that moment that she was right: she had poured her life force into giving him a chance. Even in all his studies, he had never seen any of the runes that she had used. He had never thought it possible to heal someone so completely in body and mind…but Rye had paid the price. He took a deep breath as the sorcerer’s slaves approached. Rye had secreted the black dagger somewhere on her person. He let them drag him as though he didn’t have the strength to stand.
Outside the cave, daylight faded quickly, as though the sun had no wish to witness what was about to occur. A ring of torches encircled a crude stone table, a slab of black-veined stone propped over two smaller slabs. A chill ran down Finn’s spine at the sight of it, though he couldn’t articulate the reason for his fear. He resisted the urge to look at Rye, letting his head hang and loll as they roughly dragged him toward the stone table. They forced him to his knees and then released him. Rye swayed on her knees next to him.
Drumbeats sounded in the circle of torches, though he could see no drums. The air shivered with a strange and convulsive power as twisted and ancient as the slithering of a snake. Finn couldn’t understand why the sorcerer had brought them out of the cave; they saw nothing except this empty stone table and the circle of torches and his enslaved men. The drumbeats reached a crescendo, and then there was sudden, expectant silence. Finn glanced at Rye. She nodded to the stone table, and when Finn turned back he let out a low cry. The sorcerer stood behind the table, holding Andraste in his arms.
Finn knew with a certainty he didn’t question that the Princess was dead. He drew in a shuddering breath as the sorcerer laid her body on the stone table. A dagger hilt gleamed against her chest. She was dressed in a thin white gown, her skin paler than the cloth. Finn felt his heart shudder in disbelief. Another failure to add to his illustrious list.
“Finn,” hissed Rye in a low voice. “Your sword.” One of the slaves cuffed her for speaking.
As the sorcerer laid the Princess’s body on the stone table, Finn slid his gaze over until he saw his sword, plunged blade-first into the earth a few paces to the left of the table. The rest of their weapons were arrayed around his blade: their daggers and Rye’s axes. The weapons were displayed as though offering a choice, and Finn looked back to the stone table in growing horror, recognizing the hilt of the dagger in the Princess’s chest. She’d been forced to choose the instrument of her death from the weapons of those who had been charged with protecting her.
The sorcerer arranged the Princess precisely, his gloved hands combing through her dark hair and laying it in a fan about her head. He still wore his hood. They had never truly seen his face. He stroked the Princess’s gray cheek with one hand and then turned toward his slaves.
“It is time to afford them the quick death that the Princess bought for them,” he said. Finn could hear the triumph in his voice. They were pawns to him, nothing more than instruments to secure the Princess’s agreement. He cared little for their quick death, but he knew that Andraste did.
The slaves moved to obey his command. There were six of them, but Finn knew there were more, and other creatures besides. The sorcerer turned back to Andraste, surveying her as though he looked upon a sleeping lover. Finn envisioned driving his sword through the sorcerer.
“Stay the course,” murmured Rye. He saw her shifting incrementally as she readied to draw her stone dagger, and he tensed as the slaves approached them, their milky eyes and scarred faces showing no sign of life.
Before the slaves laid hands on them, Rye leapt at them, her movement silent and fierce. Finn sprinted toward his sword, throwing himself into motion so violently that he stumbled and put a hand down and then he was there by the weapons, his hand closing around the hilt of his sword. He grabbed one of Rye’s axes in his other hand.
The fight remained silent as the slaves gaped at Rye for a moment in dumb shock, and she plunged her dagger into one of them. Two others, perhaps more freshly departed from life and quicker to adapt, ran toward Finn, crude swords in their hands. He ran his blade through one of them and knocked aside a sweep of the other’s sword with Rye’s axe.
The harsh clang of his axe meeting the slave’s sword triggered a cascade of sound. Rye howled a Northern war cry as one of the slaves shouted in a garbled language that Finn couldn’t understand. The sorcerer hissed in fury.
“So, you will not die slowly,” he said from within the darkness of his hood, his voice rolling over them like thunder, “but you will die all the same.” He flicked his wrist and the air filled with the snarling of his misshapen creatures. In the darkness beyond the torches, malevolent eyes flared into life. Finn wrenched his sword free and shouted to Rye. She held up a hand and he tossed her axe. She caught it and grinned wolfishly. For a moment, he forgot that they’d been held for almost a year, tortured, brought lower than he’d thought possible in body and spirit. Their eyes met for an instant, Rye’s gaze shining with the fervor of battle as she hefted her axe in her hand.
Then chaos engulfed them.
Finn fought two of the slaves and a garrelnost. There were other creatures he couldn’t name flowing out of the darkness, snapping and snarling as they crawled over each other and leapt at Finn and Rye. As he whirled to spit a toad-creature on his sword, he saw that Andraste’s body was gone, a patch of dark blood on the stone table the only evidence that they had indeed seen the sorcerer lay her body on the cold bier.
“Finn!” shouted Rye. A cat-creature leapt onto her and sunk its teeth into her shoulder. She snarled and tore it away from her by the scruff of its neck, flinging it into the fire of one of the torches. “Go, Finn! You must!” She lunged forward and heaved one of the torches from the ground, using it to spear a garrelnost.
Finn fought toward the edge of the circle of torches. The sorcerer’s slaves all lay slain beneath the teeming mass of creatures. Teeth pie
rced Finn’s leg. He growled and kicked away the slinking ferret-like creature. Behind him, he heard Rye shouting challenges to the creatures and the sorcerer in the Sidhe tongue and in the language of the North. A light other than the torches began to illuminate the clearing; he glanced back and saw Rye glowing with her taebramh, her axe a shining blade of white fire slicing through the misshapen beasts.
Then a silent explosion rocked the clearing, almost sweeping him from his feet. The sorcerer stood on the stone table, intoning an incantation, his hands sketching runes in the air.
“Finn!” Rye yelled again. “Go! Now!” She turned to face the sorcerer, spreading her arms and raising her chin challengingly, her axe burning brighter than the torches, magnificent in her defiance. “You have tried to break me, Dark One, and you have failed! Now you will taste my bright fire and you will know that you will never conquer the light!”
Rye’s taebramh expanded, immolating any creature in his path, a blinding wall of light. He could only see her silhouette against it, and he realized that she was guarding him against the sorcerer’s attack. The ground shook as the sorcerer struck her shield. Finn sliced his way through several smaller creatures and then found himself face to face with a garrelnost. He hefted his blade in his hand and reached out for one of the torches, gripping the staff and feeling the heat of the flame on his face.
The sorcerer struck at Rye again, the impact jarring Finn. The garrelnost paced slowly toward him, slavering in anticipation.
“You have not won,” yelled Rye from within her cocoon of light. Finn felt rather than saw the cracks in her shield. He felt the tendrils of dark power reaching for him, and he knew if they caught hold of him, Rye’s sacrifice would be in vain. He leapt at the garrelnost, sweeping the flame of the torch down its stinking hide and setting it ablaze. The beast yowled like a kicked mongrel and tried to snap at him, but he slashed at it with his blade, dancing back as the flames singed his skin.
“I go to my death with a glad heart, knowing that you will never triumph!” Rye shouted.
Finn leapt past the convulsing garrelnost, finding his path suddenly clear. He knocked aside a small beast with his torch, throwing the fire aside. He could see the trees ahead of him, the edge of the forest beckoning. Even as he ran, he felt his heart wrenching in his chest. The ground shuddered and the sorcerer let out a scream of fury. Finn ran harder than he’d ever run before in his life, faster than during training, faster even than during the gauntlet, spurred by the sound of Rye’s voice raised in a Northern song, still challenging and defiant.
He reached the trees, his chest heaving and his legs burning. With a massive crack that sounded like lightning splitting a tree, Rye’s blazing shield of silver light shattered, her song silenced. Finn clenched his jaw and gripped his sword tighter, running deeper and deeper into the forest, unsure of his path to Darkhill but certain that he would find his way to the Queen to tell her of all he had seen. There was no other way he could honor Rye, best of warriors and best of women. He ran, his sword glinting in the darkness, wind whispering through the boughs of the trees above him, the night air cool on his face.
Chapter 35
They had offered him Knight Finnead’s quarters after the Queen had presented his sword to him. Ramel had wanted to refuse, but he thought about it and accepted, letting others think what they would and knowing in his own heart that he was merely keeping Finnead’s quarters ready for his return. For the first few nights he couldn’t bring himself to sleep on the bed, preferring the floor. But gradually he made small changes, hanging his new armor alongside Finnead’s in the wardrobe and stocking the cabinet by the fire with his own choice of tea and herbs. He brought his old, battered copper kettle from the squire’s quarters.
The rest of the journey back to Darkhill had passed in a blur. His memories of it now were strange and warped. Some moments he remembered with crystalline clarity, like when Guinna had put her hands on his shoulders that first morning after their rescue. Other days were lost to him in a gray fog, as though he’d sleepwalked through them. His wounds had been slow to heal. Knight Valence and Knight Balaron had ridden within arm’s reach of him for most of the journey. Lady Guinna had refused her own mount, riding instead behind Ramel on Midnight.
He’d slept for almost two days when they’d finally arrived back at Darkhill. Knight Valence hadn’t approved of letting Ramel return to the squire’s barracks, but Balaron had pulled the other Knight aside and conferenced with him in a low voice. Ramel awoke to Murtagh sitting in a chair by his table, reading one of his history books. Once he’d realized Ramel was awake, Murtagh looked at him and said simply, “It took you long enough to get back.”
Ramel had smiled, the expression feeling foreign after so long. “Well, I had a lady to protect and garrelnost to fight, so…” He shrugged.
“It’s still unforgivable to make your friends think you’re dead,” Murtagh replied. “Unless, of course, you survive and return a hero. In which case, you’re forgiven.”
Ramel had sobered immediately, his voice low. “I’m not a hero.”
Murtagh hadn’t argued with him. The Walker had merely shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. I hear that your Walking skills stood you in good stead.”
“They did indeed,” said Ramel. He’d stared into the fire for a long moment. “Can we speak of something else?”
“Of course. Oh, you’ve a dog now.”
“What?” Ramel had sat up in bed at the shock of Murtagh’s casual statement.
“She found her way to your room. Twice. Wouldn’t stop scratching at the door until I let her in.”
Ramel had looked to where Murtagh motioned at the foot of his bed. Rye’s great black hound Mira raised her head and regarded him solemnly. He’d climbed stiffly out of bed and walked over to her barefoot. Her ears had perked as he crouched in front of her. She’d leaned forward to smell him, her black nose twitching. He’d placed a hand on her warm head and her tail had thumped three times on the floor. Since then, she’d slept at the foot of his bed and followed him to the practice yards when he allowed.
By the time the Queen had summoned him, he’d told his story enough times to enough people – Knight Balaron, Knight Valence, Murtagh, Knight Arian, the bard Tyr – that he didn’t feel nervous. He had told the story as best he could, standing with his head slightly bowed and his hands respectfully clasped behind his back, the Queen listening silently from her silver throne.
“Vaelanbrigh,” she had said in a low voice when Ramel finished. “You will lead the searches.”
“Yes, my Queen.” The Vaelanbrigh bowed.
“And you, Squire Ramel.”
Ramel had raised his head and met the jarringly powerful gaze of the Queen. He felt like an insect caught in a spider’s web, powerless to struggle.
“You discharged your master’s orders well,” the Queen said. “I look forward to seeing you among my Knights after this Solstice.”
“Thank you, Majesty,” he’d said through numb lips, feeling very dizzy. Only Knight Balaron’s guiding hand had steered him out of the throne room.
The first time he had walked into the training yards after his return, the other squires had fallen silent and stared at him until Knight Balaron had bellowed at them to tend to their lessons. Ramel had found that he didn’t like the way they looked at him with awe. Was that how he had looked at Knight Finnead? It just made him feel alone, even when he sparred with them.
Lady Guinna and Murtagh seemed to be the only ones capable of talking to him without any sort of veneration or pity. Ramel wasn’t sure which he despised more, the reverence on the faces of the other squires or the sympathy and whispers of the well-bred ladies when he served at the high dais. But he knew that Knight Finnead would expect him to uphold his reputation, and so he hid his unhappiness beneath a veneer of courtesy and good humor. His quick wit served him well once again, and he only occasionally stumbled in conversation when a flash of memory assaulted him unexpectedly.
His
body had healed and he’d felt strong going into the gauntlet. The trial had been difficult, but it still hadn’t touched the cold core of him that had survived the battle in the clearing, Walked to Darkhill and survived in the forest. Knight Balaron had been his final opponent in that last duel. He was the first squire to emerge from the woods on the second dawn, walking under his own power. A senior page that Ramel vaguely remembered – Moryn, the lad introduced himself quietly – had silently helped him to his quarters in the squire’s barracks. Moryn had stiffened as Mira lunged toward him, but the hound had sniffed at his hands and then turned her attention to Ramel.
Ramel hadn’t felt the triumph that he’d always envisioned when he emerged from the gauntlet, and he didn’t feel the jubilation at being made a Knight when the Queen handed him his sword at the Solstice. But at least he’d felt something. He’d felt…satisfied. He’d felt that he had honored Knight Finnead and the Princess.
The Vaelanbrigh continued to lead patrols searching for any sign of the lost Princess. He’d returned just after the Solstice and asked Ramel if he’d wanted to join them on the next set of patrols. Ramel had said yes without hesitation, and now he stared at his saddlebags on his table after repacking for the third time.
Murtagh sat by his desk, rubbing Mira behind the ears. “I think this patrol will be good for you.”
“What would be good for me is finding Finnead and the Princess,” he said. He paused. The last name was always the most painful. “And Rye.”
“Her brother Tyr has become something of a recluse,” Murtagh said. “He hasn’t performed for the Queen lately.”
“I wouldn’t expect him to sing after losing his twin,” replied Ramel.
“You went through the gauntlet not half a year after you returned, and now you’re going on patrol. Why shouldn’t he sing?”
