by Sharon Lee
"Is there anything else you can tell us of the work?" she asked the philosopher. "Any innovation, or . . . peculiarity?"
"Engenium, no." The man looked up, seeming glad of a chance to face away from Meri. "A simple compulsion, albeit stronger than we are accustomed to finding."
"And you are certain of your identification?"
The philosopher looked slightly less eager.
"As certain as we can be, Engenium. These matters are not as precise as we would hope. And, while we did not discover a third level, it remains . . . remotely possible that someone else had forged her signature." He hesitated, glanced down at his hand, and—unwillingly, so it seemed to him—looked at Meri. "Zaldore is quite accomplished in the Higher Arts."
"She springs from a philosopher's house," Sian added. "Though she is not herself a philosopher."
She pushed her chair back and stood; the philosopher scrambled to his feet as Meri rose more casually.
"Thank you, Master," she said formally. "You have given us much to think upon."
"Engenium." The philosopher bowed to her honor, straightened—considered for a heartbeat, and bowed also to Meri. "Master Longeye."
Meri inclined his head politely, and waited until the door had closed before turning to face Sian.
"Zaldore?" he said again. She sighed sharply and strode across the room to the table.
"Wine?"
Meri considered her. "If it's going to be that sort of answer, I'm not certain I want to hear it."
"It's a dry tale," Sian said.
"Then by all means, wine." He moved over to the table and received the cup from her hand.
"Tell me what you think of it," she said, swirling her wine lightly. "It's something new."
He failed to point out that far too many things were "new" to him since he had wakened, and glanced down into his cup. The wine was the color of heart's blood, its surface glossy and smooth. The scent was full of fruit, and the taste, when finally he sipped it, exploded into half-a-dozen distinct notes.
Meri raised and eyebrow and sipped again, appreciatively.
"You like it," Sian surmised, with a deal more satisfaction than he could account for.
"I do like it," he acknowledged. "I hope it isn't your last barrel."
"Not quite. And if we are clever in our trading, more barrels will come."
Meri raised his cup in a mock salute. "To clever trading!"
Sian smiled and sipped.
"Very good," Meri said. "Must I ask it a third time, Cousin?"
She gave him a long, direct look, turned and strode to the window. In times of stress, Meri noted, his cousin tended to favor the sea view.
"The Queen," she began. And stopped. And sipped her wine.
Meri wandered over to the window, hitched a hip onto the broad sill and looked up into her face.
"The Queen," he said, encouragingly. Sian glared at him.
"It's difficult to make a precis," she said tartly, "for someone who has less information than a new sprout."
"I can understand that it might be. Certainly, it is difficult to give good game, as worthy quarry ought."
Sian's cheeks colored.
"You are safe here, Cousin."
"So you say, and so I am certain you believe." He gave her a smile, feeling it sit lopsided on his mouth. "The chyarch assuredly believed the same."
Her lips parted; she raised the cup and turned her head, to stare out over the sea while she drank . . . perhaps more deeply than the wine deserved. Lowering the cup, she took a breath that lifted her shoulders and turned back to him.
"Zaldore sits on the Queen's Constant," she said, her voice flat, emotionless. "She has risen quickly, and gathered many allies to her cause. Very nearly, she has sufficient pledges to allow her to mount—let us say a credible opposition to Diathen."
Meri considered that, tasting his wine to give himself time to think. He had no patience with subterfuge, but he had ties—blood ties—to Sea Hold and to the Queen's house, and so he had been taught—and unwillingly learnt—statecraft.
He had never, alas, learned to like it.
"Credible opposition," he said now. "To what?"
Sian's mouth pursed, as if her wine had suddenly turned on her. Abruptly, she swung 'round and sat on the sill beside him.
"I'm sure you'll recall that the . . . New Folk . . . beyond the keleigh was the subject of much curiosity and discussion." She paused, head tipped as if awaiting an answer.
"I do recall that, yes," he said, keeping his voice absolutely even.
"I thought you might," she murmured. "Well, to say it as short as possible—the discussion has become more acrimonious, to the point where it divides the Constant and the Houses. The Queen had wished merely to maintain the balance: We, they, and the keleigh to keep us apart . . ."
"Except," Meri said, from bitter experience, "the keleigh can be breached."
"It can, has been, and will be again," Sian agreed. "Still, it is we more than they who cross it, and even we may be forestalled by the dangers. I do not see intimacy growing, under such conditions."
But if we cross the keleigh, Faldana whispered from memory, then we would know what sort of folk they are!
Meri's stomach clenched, his chest tightening. He closed his eye and concentrated on breathing, deep and slow . . .
"Cousin?" Sian's voice was concerned.
"It's naught—a moment . . ." The nausea faded. He took a sip of wine to dampen his dry mouth.
"What opposition does this Zaldore—does she offer?" he asked at last. "Does she wish to bring the keleigh down?"
Sian looked at him soberly. "Indeed she does not. She invokes the memory of the war—too vivid in those of long memory—and argues that the Newmen are best shaken from the land, and that speedily, before they learn how to threaten us."
Meri was on his feet without quite knowing how he had gotten there. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, his flesh burned—
"Meri!"
A hand on his arm. He focused on it. Drew a breath in. Let it, unsteadily, out. And again.
"Meri?"
He opened his eye and gazed into Sian's eyes, reading only concern there.
"They know," he gasped. "They know how to threaten us, cousin. That metal—"
Her eyes widened. She moved her hand from his arm to his scarred cheek.
"Meri. Cousin. I am so very sorry . . ."
"No more so than I," he whispered, pulling away from her and seating himself again on the sill. "Forgive me, Cousin; I'm a fool."
"Not a fool," she said softly, sitting beside him. "Never a fool, Cousin Meri."
He drank his wine, draining the cup, and looked back to her face.
"So you say the Queen's former path of imperfect isolation loses favor before this . . . proactive Councilor Zaldore?"
"It does. And the Queen being the canny woman that we both know her to be has shifted her ground."
"Ah."
"Yes. She has put forth the notion of strengthening the keleigh."
Meri blinked.
"I am no philosopher, but—would that not have the effect of increasing the damage we have already incurred, and thrusting what we are pleased to call our land even further out of true with the whole?"
"It would," Sian said serenely, "require much study by the philosophers."
"She means to stall them, then. But Zaldore does not wish to be stalled, does she? And she very nearly has what she needs to carry her point."
"There are some," Sian murmured, "who are done washing their hands in blood. And others who see the damage we have wrought. The Queen has made some gains. It is possible that she will carry the day—or at least win a delaying action."
Meri nodded, looking down into his empty cup.
"And all of this has something to do with Zaldore's attempt to . . . assassinate me?"
Sian finished off her own wine. She rose, took his cup and walked back to the table.
"I do not believe," she said over her sho
ulder, "that Zaldore wished to assassinate you, Meri. I think she created the letter and the necklace as a ruse."
"A ruse?" He stared at her narrow back, and shivered at the memory of the fessel shell necklace, the compulsion roiling off it like poison. "I could not have borne that geas to Sea Hold and survived it!"
"Precisely! And it is my belief that you were never intended to carry it so far. The note was meant to force the chyarch to wake you. The necklace was to put you on the road. Once you were traveling, and in a known direction, it would have been simplicity itself to pick you up, relieve you of the necklace, and enlist you in their cause."
She walked over to him and handed him a refilled cup.
"Enlist me? I have no standing in the Constant."
Sian laughed. "You do yourself too little honor, Cousin Meri. Indeed, what better way to further her ends than to display a hero, bearing the so very visible marks of his treatment at the hands of the Newmen? Even better if the hero, wakened too soon and feeling his losses too keenly, would speak against the Newmen and call for their annihilation." She raised her cup in an ironic salute.
"And it would be fitting, as well, to carry on that which Faldana Camlauf had begun, at the urging of her dear cousin Zaldore."
She drank, her eyes holding his.
There was a high, hurtful buzzing inside Meri's ears. He tried to ignore it, to focus on Sian.
"You accuse Faldana of . . . conspiring to bring me over to her cousin's politics?" His voice sounded thin in his own ears.
Sian moved her shoulders. "The possibility exists," she murmured. "She was of the House, by blood."
"Faldana sacrificed herself, that I might have a chance to win free of our imprisonment."
"That is not," Sian said softly, "inconsistent, given the situation in which she found herself." She sipped wine, her face taking on a ruminative cast. "I own it is merely speculation. Zaldore had not yet risen so high, though she was under Nanterik's wing by then." She sighed. "No. I have steeped too long in the stew of politics. . . . Forgive me, Cousin."
Meri shook his head, and came deliberately to his feet. Politics, statecraft, lies and deception. And the fact that she spoke at all was nothing more than a ploy, designed to shake the roots of his assumptions and make him rethink all of his certainties.
The joke being, of course, that he could see very well what she had done—and still his certainties shook, like a sapling in a strong wind.
"Your pardon, Cousin," he said to Sian's waiting eyes. "I am—I require time to . . . consider these things."
"Of course," she said politely, stepping back to let him by. He was at the door when she spoke his name. He paused, his hand on the latch, and looked at her over his shoulder.
"I think it would be best for you to remain at Sea Hold for the foreseeable future," she said calmly.
Meri felt anger flicker through his bewilderment. "And do what, noble Engenium?"
Sian smiled. "I'll think of something," she said, and waggled her fingers at him. "Go. Think."
Chapter Twenty-Five
They caught up to the wounded boar at twilight, deep into the rocky badlands at the edge of the keleigh's influence. Conditions favored animal over hunter, except that the animal was ill and exhausted and a danger to herself and everything in the Vaitura. She had already savaged a Low Fey hamlet, leaving several badly mangled; and had gone on to gore Indella Lachenlauf, the Wood Wise summoned by the Brethren to deal with the problem. From Indella, the charge had gone to Faldana Camlauf, roused from the arms of Meripen Longeye to take the message.
"Heading toward the rocklands," she said, looking worried, which was only sensible. Boars were chancy at the best of times, and a threat even to Rangers. A wounded boar could do incalculable harm. A wounded boar in the badlands, on its choice of terrain? Not something a single Ranger wished to face alone, no matter how seasoned or skilled.
Two Rangers would scarcely be sufficient to bring such a creature down, Meri thought, arms crossed behind his head as he lay in their mossy nest, looking up into Faldana's face as she considered the situation once more.
He did not offer to go with her—Faldana was a canny and competent Ranger, and the charge had come to her. It was not his place to offer advice or assistance. She would ask for what she needed, and of whom.
"It's in bad shape," she said, holding up the bit of tusk that constituted the physical part of the charge. "Blackened fur along its left side, and something . . . unfortunate going on with the rear legs."
"Sounds as if the poor beastie was caught in the lightning and hail a few days ago," Meri offered. Faldana nodded.
"If a tree came down on those hindquarters . . ."
Meri understood. It took a lot to hurt a boar; even if it had taken its death-wound, it would linger overlong. Had already lingered overlong.
"I'll go at once," Faldana said, raising her head to give him a rueful, tender smile. "It's hardly the sort of sharing we had envisioned, love, but—I would like it, if you would hunt with me."
"Of course I'll come," he said, sitting up and reaching for his shirt. He felt a pang for the lovingly constructed nest, and the thorough sharing they had promised each other. The Wood Wise, especially those who followed the Ranger's calling, tended to be solitary, meeting seldom and in small groups to drink and tell tales, make love and share kest. He had met Faldana Camlauf at one such seldom gathering, and had taken note of her, as she of him. They had shared then, and several times after; then their paths had diverged.
Four seasons passed before their wandering feet brought them along the same path again, and each had immediately felt the old bond rekindle. Thus, they had agreed to meet, and renew their relationship.
They pledged each other that this sharing would be deep, complete; and had taken the time to construct the moss nest.
Meri shook his head, giving Faldana a wry grin, which she returned.
"The Wood waits for no one," she quoted.
"A boar," he answered with a quote from his Sea Wise mother, "is the most inconvenient creature alive."
"Inconvenient is not the word I would have chosen," Faldana remarked. She pulled on her shirt and reached for her vest.
Meri grinned and extended a single finger to trace the line of her cheek. "Nor I."
Faldana leaned forward and kissed him, lingering somewhat longer than a Ranger on charge ought, then stepped back.
"Come. We should find it before it does more damage."
They had at least managed that much, sending those Brethren who were willing ahead of the beast with warn-aways and cautions. Still, and among plentiful signs that the animal was weakening, they had not been able to close with it. It almost seemed, Meri thought, as if the boar knew it was being followed and was hurrying to advantageous ground before its strength wholly failed.
And so it had been.
"I don't like this at all," he muttered. He went down on one knee and ran his fingers over the stony ground, feeling the boar's hitching walk, and the depth of her rage, fright, and hatred. They were close, for him to pick up so much.
Faldana stood a little ahead of him, nearly invisible in the dusk and among the scant growth. "Meri, what is that?"
He was at her side in a heartbeat, sighting along her pointing finger. There was a . . . shimmer at the very edge of his left eye.
"Surely, it's an aurora," Faldana said, but there was a thread of doubt in her voice.
And she was wise to doubt it. An aurora was transparent to the eye; it did not thicken the air upon which it danced, nor belch sickly green flame toward the milky sky.
"The keleigh," he murmured.
"I . . . hadn't realized that we were so . . . very . . . close . . ." Faldana shook herself. "The boar—could it have been bred—here?" She sounded profoundly troubled, nor did Meri blame her.
Boars tended to range wide, and to return to their home ground in times of stress. And every Wood Wise knew that animals which had been born inside the keleigh's influence were . .
. strange. Odd.
Wrong.
"As if a wounded boar weren't bad enough . . ." he muttered.
"We have to go in after it," Faldana said firmly. Meri thought she might be saying it for herself as much as for him. And she was of course correct.
A wounded boar was dangerous, and this one had already killed. If it . . . shared something of the nature of the keleigh . . .
"Under other circumstances," Meri said, trying for a light tone, "I would have counseled waiting until the morning gave us better light."
