by K. C. May
The barmaid thanked Gavin with a full tankard, free of charge. He kept his eye on the boorish patron, partly so that the barmaids wouldn’t have to put up with the man’s intolerable behavior, and partly because Toren Meobryn’s deception had put him in the mood to fight someone. Unfortunately, the obnoxious patron had been too willing to cooperate. Besides, if Gavin got into a brawl, he could impress his lovely companion with his prowess.
She intrigued him, this brawny woman sitting across the table with her unbelievably light blue eyes. The more time he spent looking into them, the more he wanted to know what was behind them. He wished the swordswoman desired him, but more than that, he wanted Daia to like him. She exuded competence and strength, but she still had a distinctly feminine quality that made her more than just a battler with tits. His sense of humor was mostly lost on her, but a few times, he’d caught her trying to hide a smile. If he could capture her interest with his personality and charm, then he would stand a better chance winning her affections later, when she accepted the fact that he wouldn’t be Thendylath’s king.
All right, maybe his strengths didn’t include a charismatic personality, and he certainly didn’t have the cultivated charm she’d grown up around. But what did a man like him have to offer a woman so high-bred? Surely, she would be unimpressed with how many tankards he could down in five minutes’ time or whether he could belch nursery rhymes to amuse small children. As a battler, she had to respect a man’s fighting skill.
He wondered whether she could fight as well as a man with similar training and experience. Of course, she had some skills he hadn’t even known existed until yesterday. “Arlet said something about you that didn’t make sense,” Gavin said. “She said you’re a conduit. What does that mean?”
“Conduit. Now I understand. I’ll tell you about it if you tell me about the runes first.”
Gavin smiled and leaned toward her, resting his forearms on the table. “You can ask about that when it’s your turn.” They shared a long laugh. He raised his tankard to her. “To what I hope will be a lasting friendship.”
“Hear, hear,” Daia agreed. After draining her tankard and signaling the barmaid for another, she explained, “When I was a girl, I noticed that my younger sisters sang and stitched their embroidery better, my mother won more arguments with my father when I was around. Even my father, thick as he is, eventually realized that my presence benefited him in his business matters. They all drew upon something within me to achieve greater success and better concentration.
“Once I joined the Sisterhood,” she continued, “and learned to focus my spiritual center, I found I can help others at will. I just reach out with my mind – my awareness – and connect with them, giving them greater access to their own strengths.”
Conduit. Made sense. “So if I challenged that battler over there to an arm-wrestling contest, you could help me win?”
Daia nodded. “I could. Or I could help him win.”
Gavin raised his eyebrows. “You’d do that?”
“I was just making a point. Do you want to try it?”
Gavin leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I don’t need your conduit help to beat him.”
Daia smiled. “Of course not.”
“What about the barmaid?” Gavin asked. “Could you help her beat me?”
“No, she doesn’t have nearly enough strength to beat you. I can’t make a scholar out of a fool. That is, I can’t give people qualities they lack, only enhance those they have to help them reach their highest potential. I can help you in other ways too, not just with physical strength.”
“Like?”
Daia tapped the rune he’d carved into the tabletop. “The fourth rune. You don’t know what it is, right? I’ll help you figure it out.”
“No!” he barked. The answer would come sooner or later, whether he wanted it to or not, but he was in no hurry. “I don’t want to know it.”
Daia said nothing. She looked at him, not with a casual gaze, but with eyes glassy and staring as though she was deep in concentration.
An icy feeling washed over his mind, cooling his thoughts to infinite clarity.
Tayewessin!
The rune’s name came to him without bidding and without warning. It flooded his mind. No, not just the name -- the knowing of it. The intensity. The depth. If thoughts could sparkle, the knowing of the rune would have been as brilliant as a hundred suns. As its luminosity intensified, he felt increasing pain behind his eyes. He put his hands up to shield his eyes from an imagined light.
“Aaaahhh!” he cried out. He couldn’t escape the pain searing his mind from the back of his eyes to the back of his head. Several points on his body from the top of his head to his groin lit up, burning. He had to get away.
Then, it was gone.
He felt no after effects: no residual pain, dizziness, aching or tension. The pain was just gone.
He opened his eyes and found himself on the floor of the tavern. The table and his chair had both been toppled. The lap of his trousers and shirttail were wet, he hoped with ale. Two tankards rolled to a stop, one at the wall, the other against the leg of a chair. He could have heard a mouse twitter. All eyes were on him.
Daia offered a hand, and he gripped it.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He nodded as he climbed to his feet. What the hell had just happened?
“Go back to your drinks,” she called in a loud voice. “He’s all right now.” She righted the table and tossed two copper coins on it, then escorted Gavin from the tavern through the stares and whispers.
The air outside felt cool and refreshing. He tossed his head back and gazed up at the sky, deep black pricked with millions of bright points. He flinched, as though the stars would attack him with their radiance.
“What the hell did you do to me?” he asked.
“I just thought that with you being so stubborn, you’d need an extra strong push.”
“I told you I didn’t want to know it.”
She grinned apologetically. “I’m sorry. I was curious. I wanted to see if you could know it.”
“The whole damned town prob’ly knows it now. Don’t ever do that to me again,” he snapped.
She stood watching him, her head cocked. Her pale blue eyes seemed to glow as though they were lit from behind. “So you do know?”
“Yeh. I know.”
Chapter 28
The leaves whispered of promises unkept as they shivered in the trees and tumbled across the forest floor. A copper-haired girl with tiny freckles on her nose beckoned him. She was Caevyan, yet he called out “Dagaz!” as he ran after her. His legs were wooden and unbending. The ground was soft like sand. “Papa!” she called, then ran away. Always elusive, staying ahead of him. She turned and waited, beckoning.
Her eyes were the color of the sky.
Gavin jerked himself awake and sat upright in bed. He looked around in the darkness. Not the cave. A room. An inn. The Lucky Inn. He pulled on his trousers and paced barefoot in his room, biting the insides of his cheeks raw as thoughts of little yellow chicks and gems of different colors swirled through his mind.
Tayewessin.
Something must be done about the rune. If he just solved this one, then he could go to Lalorian and speak with Edan about being king. By then maybe the meaning of the last rune would come to him and they could travel together to the cave.
No, he had to continue with Daia. Risan was in danger. And Gavin wanted his sword.
Tayewessin.
The name of the rune did not just whisper through his thoughts; it ran through his blood. Every movement of his twitching fingers, the sensation of the wood floor against his bare feet and the cloth around his waist and thighs sent shivers across the surface of his skin and ended in whispers deep within his mind.
Tayewessin.
He heard a rap on the door. More than that, he felt it sing down his spine as though it too, whispered the rune’s secret to him. “Gavin, ar
e you awake?” Daia’s voice tickled his ears, his skin, his soul with whispers of the rune.
Tayewessin.
“Come in. I’m awake.” He stopped pacing, but his muscles twitched with rune-knowing. He began to pace again. “Whatever you did to me’s making me mad. I can’t sleep. I can’t even sit still, for Arek’s sake.”
Tayewessin.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea it would affect you so profoundly.”
“Let’s get going.” He wondered how he would keep from going raving mad while they searched for Risan. The sooner they found him, the better -- for the sake of them both.
As they readied their horses for travel, Gavin‘s hands fumbled with the girth strap, and he kept dropping one side or the other before he could hitch the buckle.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
“Let me help,” Daia offered. He started pacing while she cinched the straps. “Are you all right?”
“Yeh. No. Hell, I don’t know.” He hawked and spat onto the ground. “Let’s just get Tayewessin.”
“Beg pardon?”
He climbed into the saddle. “Well? Hurry up. Let’s go.”
“Gavin,” Daia said as she went to her horse and mounted, “you don’t seem well. Are you sure you’re up for this? I have enough clues--”
“No. I ain’t letting you go against Tyr and Ravenkind alone. They’ll kill you.”
She shrugged and nudged her horse toward the village gate. Gavin rode beside her. “Perhaps you’re simply distracted.”
He exhaled heavily and nodded. Distracted was one word for it. Brainsick was probably more accurate.
“Let’s go to the Rune Cave first so you can get the rune out of your mind. Sohan’s not much farther going that way.”
Gavin didn’t answer. The thought of putting off Risan’s rescue for his own sake did not sit well with him. True, it would take only a day longer to go that route, but that could be a day more than they had.
“Look, you’re in no condition to go against a three-legged puppy, let alone a wizard. Gavin, let’s go to the cave. Risan will thank you for it. And I promise I won’t help you decipher the final rune.” She gave him a teasing smile.
She was right. He’d be no good against Ravenkind in this condition. Gavin nodded with relief.
Along the road east toward Saliria, Daia rode beside Gavin silent and lost in thought. From time to time, she glanced surreptitiously at him, trying to reconcile what she saw with what she knew. To deny that this man, this unshaven, foul-mannered peasant would become the realm’s next king was futile, but she continued to try.
For most of her adult life, she’d held nobles in contempt. Far from being the respectable people they pretended, they let their wealth and snobbery distance them from the people they were supposed to serve. Yet, years of the education and grooming Daia had received as a child, intended heiress to the lordover title, had instilled in her the idea that those in power were cultured, sophisticated, educated and fastidious. Every time she looked upon the man riding beside her and imagined him sitting on the throne with a crown of jewels atop his head, the foundation of her beliefs about humanity and social structure crumbled a little more.
How could a man such as Gavin Kinshield be king? He would make a good champion to the king perhaps, or captain of the guard, but to lead a country? To reign superior over lordovers and the wealthiest, most powerful men and women in Thendylath? Would the people respect him, follow him? Did they have a choice?
He claimed he wouldn’t be king. If he was solving the runes, he would eventually receive the King’s Blood-stone and that would make him king whether he liked it or not. Whether the entire country liked it or not. King Arek put the gems in the tablet for a reason, and nothing Gavin did would change that. Or, for that matter, Sithral Tyr.
A horrid thought occurred to her. “You know,” Daia said, “if Risan’s still alive, it’s because Tyr thinks he’s the one solving the King’s Runes.”
“Sure,” Gavin replied. “But if the fourth rune’s solved while Risan’s in Tyr’s custody, that would prove he ain’t.”
“And Tyr might kill him the minute he finds out.”
“It could be weeks afore he finds out. Besides, he has the sword,” he argued. “And it has the Rune Stones in it. That proves Risan knows who Tyr’s really looking for. Risan won’t become useless to Tyr unless he gives up my name, and I ain’t pinching my little limb waiting for that to happen.”
Perhaps he spoke like a peasant, but he was no dunce. Whether he truly knew the meaning of the fourth rune remained to be seen, but Daia knew one thing: if he solved the rune and still clung to the belief that he would never be king, he would be deeply disappointed.
Chapter 29
Only the light clinking of silver on china disturbed the silence in the dining room while Brodas and Warrick took their afternoon meal. Brodas answered his cousin’s attempts at conversation with a distracted hmm. The problem of having too few gems kept his mind occupied. Warrick hadn’t managed to purchase gems in the market, as the two remaining gemsmiths had closed their shops following the murder of their competitor. Word traveled fast. Warrant knights swarmed the city, undoubtedly hoping to earn valour-gild for capturing the perpetrator. This presented Brodas with few alternatives, none of which were apparent to him yet. Should Lilalian’s battlers find the rune solver, Brodas had no means to extract the information he needed to get the King’s Blood-stone.
Red appeared in the doorway and knocked on the wall. “Sorry to disturb your meal, m’lord, but I found out who sells those gargoyle things.”
Brodas’s eyebrows shot up, and he waved Red forward while he chewed hastily and swallowed. “Come in. Tell me what you’ve discovered.”
“The merchant’s name’s Yardof. He went to Tern to sell his gargoyles. His neighbors said he goes every year and returns after a few weeks. The rest of the year he spends carving and selling them from a shop here in Sohan.”
“Excellent. I need you to ride to Tern after him. Do you know what I want you to do when you find him?”
“Find out how to get the gargoyle thing off the chest.”
“I want you to find out how to open the chest,” Brodas said. “Tell him your father recently passed and as you were sorting through his belongings, you came upon the gargoyle-locked chest.”
Red nodded. “That’s a good story. I’ll tell him that.”
As the stocky swordsman turned to leave, Brodas said, “You must leave him alive in case we have more questions.”
Red spun as he walked to the door, and saluted with two fingers. “Alive he will stay.” His footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Are you sure you want to send Red?” Warrick asked. “You know how he can be. Maybe Domach’s better suited for this task. He’ll be back soon.”
Brodas scowled. “You assured me that Red follows orders well. Anyway, Domach’s soft. I’d like to keep him nearby for a while and see just how hungry he is. See how reliable he is.”
Warrick smiled sympathetically. “Old wounds ache in stormy weather, don’t they?”
Neither could ever forget the soldier who betrayed them five years ago, or the priceless gem he stole. “They do, Warrick. They certainly do.”
Chapter 30
“It’s getting too dark to see,” Daia said. “We should stop for the night.” She disliked sleeping outdoors, but she saw no point in complaining. They dismounted and stretched. Daia looked up, trying to spot movement overhead.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Gavin asked. He began unstrapping Golam’s armor and saddle.
“Nothing. Can’t see much of the sky through the trees,” she answered, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’m exhausted. How about you? We’ve pressed hard the last couple of days.” She unbuckled Calie’s saddle and pulled the blanket out from under it, flapped it out and guided its drift to the ground. Then she set the saddle on the blanket and started brushing Calie’s coat. Behind her, Gavin likewise looked after his horse.
/> When Daia took the last of the dried beef she had from her satchel, Gavin said, “I’m going to hunt for somethin’ to eat. You might as well save your food.”
“What can you hunt with a sword?”
“Not sword. Knife. Watch and be amazed.”
“Gavin, wait. Don’t--” leave “--forget where we’re camped.”
He snorted and walked off into the darkness.
She busied herself by gathering dried sticks and starting a fire, and tried not to dwell on what might be flying overhead.
Something fuzzy touched the side of her neck. She squealed and slapped at it with both hands as an icy shiver swept down her spine. She let out a shudder of relief at the sight of Gavin’s huge warhorse. “What are you doing, beast?” she asked with an embarrassed chuckle. She stroked the downy nose, then ran her hands across her arms to smooth the goose-flesh.
Beyonders she could handle. Murderers, thieves or rapists, predators of the wilds – none of them troubled her. As a girl, she would catch harmless green snakes and chase her two sisters with them, delighting in their shrieks and tears. It never occurred to her that she could have such a reaction to anything. Not until she saw her first bat.
There are no bats here, Saberheart, she told herself. No bats. Just a quiet night in the woods. She shuddered at the thought of the furry winged creatures. Large or small, it did not matter. A dead bat on the forest floor could have her whimpering in terror. Even the word ‘bat’ whispered at night within the safety of her own room at the garrison sent a shiver down her back.
Golam reached for her ear. Daia giggled at the tickling sensation and squirmed away. Surely, a bat wouldn’t dare come close with the warhorse nearby. She hooked an arm under his jaw and patted the side of his face, hugging his head to her.
“I leave you two alone for five minutes and look at you,” Gavin said, stepping out of the darkness and into the pale light of the campfire.
