Arduwyn made a desperate grab for the Béarnide, catching a handful of cloak. The movement shot agony through his leg. “Please. I have to know. Is it really the eleventh? Are you certain?”
“Yes, of course.” The physician dismissed the question. “Do you think I would lie?”
“Then I’ve returned in time!” Arduwyn tried to rise from the bed.
The physician made a pained noise, using both of his huge hands to pin the struggling redhead to the pallet. “Damn it, Arduwyn! Lie still. I didn’t save that leg to have you reinjure it.”
Arduwyn ignored the physician’s comments, though he did go still. “Where’s Bel? I need to see her right away.”
The physician hesitated, just long enough to raise Arduwyn’s concern to a panic. “You stay here. I promised his majesty I’d call for him as soon as you could speak.”
“Sterrane can wait!” Worried to a frenzy, Arduwyn did not use the appropriate amenities. “I have to see Bel immediately.”
The Béarnide dodged the demand. “You were poisoned as well as injured. Lucky your horse knew the way home. Such a loyal girl. And who would have guessed you’d run into the captain of the guard on the return trip. If he hadn’t carried that brishigsa weed . . . it’s a broad antidote, you know—”
“Bel!” For now, Arduwyn’s wounds had to take second place to Bel’s safety. And the explanation of the details of his treatment fell to a distant third. “Where is Bel?”
“Bel?”
“Yes, Bel!” Arduwyn had begun to wonder which of them had just had his thoughts scrambled by fever. He still felt woozy, as if a dark sheet covered his thoughts, yet his simple request seemed to addle the old Béarnide more. “My wife, Bel. You know her. You treated our children.”
“Of course I know Bel,” the physician spoke with a pat smoothness that enraged Arduwyn. “Now you just lie still. And I’ll get his majesty.”
Arduwyn shouted. “Have you gone deaf or stupid? I have to see Bel first. If you don’t get her, I will.”
“No.” The physician’s expression combined uncertainty, pain, and anger. “Stay still. The orders of my king come first, and he told me that no one speaks with you before him.”
Despite his dizziness, Arduwyn knew Sterrane too well to believe the king would care whether he spoke with Bel first or second. Usually, his bargaining skills would give him the words to sway the physician to his cause. But sapped of strength by the injury and the last remnants of poison, he abandoned negotiation for desperate need. Though he knew it would hurt him more than the Béarnian court physician, Arduwyn thrashed wildly. Agony shocked and spiraled through his left thigh, lancing pain from his hip to his toes. Unconsciousness swam down on him, threatening, and he felt a deep nausea like nothing he had ever experienced.
The physician made a wordless cry of outrage. He fought to hold the hunter still.
Arduwyn continued to struggle, fighting hovering blackness as well. He lunged from the pallet. His foot met the floor and buckled beneath him with a pain that flashed a white bolt through his vision. He rolled to the floor.
“Stop it!” The physician tried to grab swirling arms and legs.
The effort of talking roiled nausea through Arduwyn. Pain coarsened his voice to a growl. “I’ll stop when you tell me about Bel.”
“All right!” the healer screamed. “All right. Just let me help you back in bed.”
Arduwyn went still. He allowed the physician to heft him gently and deposit him back onto the pallet. The Béarnide reached for Arduwyn’s leg, presumably to examine the damage. Blood stained the bandage, brown framed by fresher red.
Arduwyn scissored away, as much to avoid the pain as to hold the Béarnide to his promise. “Bel first,” he reminded, uncertain whether physical or emotional pain brought tears to his eye.
“I ought to let you tear that leg apart.” The physician mumbled, his words clearly meant for himself though he addressed Arduwyn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “His majesty thought it best if he told you himself.”
Fear spiraled down on Arduwyn, obscuring the pain. He could not even ask the obvious question.
“The consumption took her. I did all I could. I’m sorry.”
“Took her?” Arduwyn did not dare ponder the obvious euphemism. The pain dropped to a tingle.
“She’s dead.”
“Dead,” Arduwyn echoed, incapable of voicing an original thought. All hurt disappeared, and the numbness spread across his body like a rash. “Dead? Bel?”
“I’m sorry,” the healer said again.
“Sorry,” Arduwyn repeated.
“It happened quickly. She didn’t suffer.” He touched Arduwyn’s arm in sympathetic silence. “Should I get his majesty now? And your daughter? They’ve both had a long vigil.”
“Get his majesty now.” Again, Arduwyn parroted the physician, able to comprehend only the first few words before the other’s voice muddled to obscurity. His emotions had emptied, and he had no idea whether or not he wanted to see Sterrane. His memory brought images of Bel to mind easily, but the concept of “dead” would not register. I’m still dreaming. The demons are still here.
“Lie still,” the physician instructed for what seemed the thousandth time. “Rest, if you can. I’ll be back.”
“I got back on time.” Finally, Arduwyn managed to speak, other than with the physician’s words. This time, he had quoted himself. “I got back on time. She can’t be dead. The gods wouldn’t do that. I got back on time!”
The Béarnian physician fidgeted. Surely, he had dealt with death too many times to count, but never before in direct defiance of his king’s order. “The gods don’t always work in ways we understand.” He pulled a vial from his pocket. “Here. Take this. It’ll calm you.” He offered the vial.
Arduwyn took it. It was easier to follow instructions than to think.
“I’ll get his majesty now.” The Béarnide spun on his heels and whisked from the room, closing the door behind him.
Arduwyn closed his eye, certain that the death god, Dakoi, could have no cosmic purpose for Bel. “I got back on time.” Meaning disappeared from the words, and they became as nonsensical as his ravings in his delirium. Restlessness drove through him. He set the vial down. Sitting up, he kicked it. It skittered across the floorboards, struck an uneven edge, and rebounded beneath the mattress. White pinpoints danced and sparked across Arduwyn’s vision, coalescing to a white plain that stole all sight and reason. Gritting his teeth, he held the position, afraid to move for fear of losing consciousness. The whiteness broke in pieces, then faded, leaving the normal darkness of closed eyes.
The need to run seized Arduwyn with a violence that sent him surging to his feet. He ached, the hurt of losing Bel reducing his leg’s injury to a distant, dull throb that could not stop him. It was an agony too sharp and new to share, and the idea of facing strangers or friends seemed a chore too painful to bear. He surged to his feet. Have to go. Have to get away. Have to run. The idea seized control, and no logic could displace it. Solace would come, not from any person, city, or town, but from movement and from the woodlands. Only one regret could penetrate the irresistible, driving necessity of escape. Sterrane will take care of Sylva, and she couldn’t have a better guardian. Arduwyn limped for the door.
* * *
King Sterrane of Béarn shuffled through Arduwyn’s quarters, not bothering to knock until he reached the bedroom that belonged to the hunter’s daughter. There he raised a hand as thick and nearly as furred as a bear’s claw, knuckling it into a fist. The tears had stopped, arrested by the physician’s news, but his eyes ached and burned. His grief had dulled from the fire that had seared his gut to a flat emptiness that memory could no longer spark into wild jags of crying. Still, the task he had come to perform gnawed at him. I should never have left the room, but Sylva needed the time away. She’s been through too much. He tapped on the chamber door.
A moment of silence followed. Then the panel swung partway open, framing Sylva in
the crack. Her strawberry blonde hair lay in disarray, her dark eyes red and swollen. She studied Sterrane expectantly, needing his news too much to waste time with amenities or questions.
“Father well,” he said in his broken Western tongue.
A slight smile twitched at the corners of Sylva’s mouth, and Sterrane thought he read relief in her eyes, tempered by uncertainty. Obviously, she could tell he had not yet finished.
“Ardy . . .” Sterrane said. Unable to deal the girl more bad news, he clung to the good. “. . . well. Get all better.”
“He ran, didn’t he?” Though barely thirteen, Sylva spoke with a rare insight. No malice touched her words.
Sterrane placed a fatherly arm around the youngster, gently steering her back into the room. The bed lay against the far wall, the coverlets rumpled. A chest of clothing sat in the space at the foot of the bed. Beside it, a shelf held an assortment of knick-knacks, ranging from a smiling horse Sterrane had carved from a block of wood as a present for her third birthday, to an emerald necklace that Arduwyn had bartered on her thirteenth, to the bow and green and pink fletched arrows she and her father had crafted together. Sterrane led her to the bed. He sat, and she sat beside him. Despite the revelation that she had guessed accurately, she did not cry.
“How you know?” Sterrane asked.
“Because Mama . . .” Sylva’s voice broke on the word, but she managed to continue without losing a word, “. . . always said he was a runner. She said that whenever something bad happened or he had to take too much responsibility, he would go off into the forests looking for ‘something.’ She had to make him take vows just to come home each night.”
Sterrane knew he needed to make Sylva understand, to keep the vital bonds between father and daughter alive. Still, though his block to learning languages hampered his ability to soothe with speech, it never occurred to him to use anything but the native language of Sylva and her parents. “Ardy love you. Not run from you.”
Sylva spared Sterrane the need to explain. “I know. I spent enough time with Papa in the woods to know lots of things Mama couldn’t ever understand.” She patted Sterrane’s hand, switching into the role of comforter. “It wasn’t his vow that kept him coming back, it was his love for her. He just needs to work things out for himself, before he can help me. The forest puts him in the right mind-set. When the time comes, he’ll return.”
Sterrane stared, shocked by the girl’s calm acceptance. He had seen her just after Bel’s death, racked by a grief that left no place for logic. Yet, clearly, she understood her father as well as any man or woman could. “Me love him and you. If need, me always here.” He emphasized the important word, hoping she would understand that no affairs of state, kingdom, or family would take precedence over her need. “Always. You my daughter until Ardy comes back.”
Sylva wrapped her arms around Sterrane’s huge waist, pressing her cheek into his soft, ample belly. “I love you, too, Uncle Sterrane the bear.” She addressed him by the play name she and her half-siblings had used for him since childhood, when the high king had romped and growled with them on the floor.
A sudden warmth replaced the emotional void, and Sterrane began to cry again.
CHAPTER 28
The Symbol of the Coiled Serpent
Colbey Calistinsson rode at the head of the band of Renshai, his mood setting the tone for the day. Despite their triumph at Wolf Point, his companions remained generally quiet, whispering amongst themselves, and Colbey made no attempt to overhear their comments, especially those concerning Shadimar. He had simply told his companions that the Eastern Wizard had left. Only Mitrian had dared to question the reasons and whether Shadimar would return. Colbey’s silence about the first and ignorance of the second had pacified even her. He scarcely noticed when Garn caught up with them on the trail and related his story, Mitrian tending to his scratches and bruises. That Rathelon had died was all Colbey needed to know.
The day seemed attuned to Colbey’s somber disinterest. Clouds obscured the sun, scudding across the dark sky, leaving just a hint of coming rain. Although he had attended his practice, as always, Colbey had ignored his own grooming as well as Frost Reaver’s. The soiled ribbons and elegant braids had fallen from the charger’s mane, and its shaggy hair flew as free as its rider’s. Colbey took to riding farther and farther ahead of the party, on the pretext of scouting. Apparently recognizing his need for solitude, or perhaps to escape his disposition, the others did not press.
Near midday, Colbey discovered a town amid the fields, one among many farm villages in the central Westlands. Cottages lined both sides of the main street, which was wide and cobbled, dirty and completely deserted. Its stillness awakened deep, sweet memories of panicked townsfolk cowering behind the walls of fortresses or temples, raining arrows, rocks, and less lethal objects upon the Renshai warriors. Colbey forced this thought aside with a toss of his head and glanced cautiously at the shuttered windows and bolted doors. Frost Reaver’s hooves clopped down the thoroughfare, bouncing echoes across otherwise soundless streets.
A dark head poked through a nearby doorway. “Hey, old man! Come here. Quickly.”
Colbey drew rein.
“Quickly,” the man cried urgently. “The streets aren’t safe.”
Though afraid of nothing, Colbey dismounted, wondering if he would soon face another demon like Flanner’s bane. The challenge lifted his mood enough for him to head toward the call, leading Frost Reaver by the bridle.
At the door, a man met Colbey. Behind him, a plump Western woman clutched a baby to her breast. A girl with hollowed eyes and a dripping nose peeked from behind the woman’s leg, shying from the white-haired stranger. A mangy dog growled, but it kept its distance.
As Colbey stopped directly in front of the cottage, a soft-eyed youth slipped past his mother and siblings. Pushing the mutt aside with his leg, he slipped into the street, reaching for Frost Reaver. “Is that an Erythanian charger?” Hope filled his expression.
“It is.” Colbey refused to relinquish his grip on the bridle.
The older man studied Colbey’s lean, grizzled figure doubtfully. “You’re a knight, then? We could use your sword arm to defend Sholton-Or. Let my son take your steed to the stable and please come inside.”
Again, the boy reached for Frost Reaver and, again, Colbey refused him. “No. I’ve only come for supplies. If I join your battle, it won’t be cowering behind locked doors.”
The youth dropped his hands to his sides. The elder frowned. “At least accept our hospitality long enough to hear our story. We can pay you for your help, if not in money, then with the supplies you need.”
Colbey saw no reason to let his own troubles drive him to rudeness. No matter Shadimar’s doubts, the Renshai had pledged to aid the Westlands. He removed the bridle, exchanged it for a halter, and tethered the lead rope to a ring post next to the cottage.
The younger man returned to the cottage. The woman and her children retreated, and the father gestured Colbey inside.
Colbey entered a room furnished simply with stools, crates, and chests. A fire burned in the hearth, and doorways led to the pantry and sleeping quarters. Taking the baby, the youth sat on a crate, balancing the infant on his knees. The woman disappeared into the pantry. The girl skittered through one of the other doorways, studying Colbey from around the corner. The father motioned toward the most comfortable-looking stool nearest the fire. “Sit. Please.”
Colbey obliged, and the man took a perch on a nearby chest. “A stranger came to Sholton-Or two days before you. A Northman, our chieftain believes.”
Colbey suddenly became fully engrossed in the story. The woman appeared from the pantry, offering each of the men a steaming mug of tea. Colbey accepted his, but caution did not allow him to sip it. He set the drink on the floor beside him, untasted.
The man took a small drink, then put his mug aside as well. “The stranger joined us at the tavern. He seemed a quiet and mysterious man. He called himself Eksilir.�
� He gave it a reasonably proper Northern pronunciation.
Colbey translated the name silently. Exiled One. By Valr Kirin’s vow, the Northmen should all have returned home. Curiosity soured to suspicion. He thought of Olvaerr and the loyalty to father that had driven him to break Kirin’s promise and nearly send his father’s soul to Hel. Perhaps his attack against Kirin’s oath might have earned him exile. The idea saddened Colbey. If I could forgive the transgression, his people have no reason not to do the same. “Could you describe this Northman?”
“Ach.” The man waved a hand in testy dismissal. “All Northmen look alike to me. Yellow hair, pasty skin, armed with swords. I—” He broke off suddenly, as if noticing his guest for the first time. Golden hairs still wound through the white, and Colbey’s fair features betrayed his heritage. “Are you really an Erythanian knight?”
“Pledged in the service of King Sterrane. You needn’t fear me.”
The peasant cleared his throat, continuing more carefully. “He did have one identifying mark: a coiled serpent etched on the back of his hand. It looked scarred, colored, and permanent, though perhaps not fully healed.”
“A serpent.” Colbey considered. He recalled no such symbol on Olvaerr nor on any other Northman. “I still don’t understand. Why do you fear the streets?”
The man glanced around. His gaze fell on the girl peeking from the room, and he dropped his voice too low for her to hear. “Jake, our tailor, invited the Northman home. The stranger raped his daughter. When Jake tried to intercede, the Northman killed him. He left Sholton-Or a warning that won’t leave my memory, even for a moment.” The elder lowered his head. “He said: ‘In three days, a small band of Northmen crueler than I will descend upon your city.’” He made a gesture that Colbey did not recognize, though the crisp ease of it made him certain it was a well used religious warding. “Please forgive my language. I am quoting.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “He called them . . .” He lowered his voice, peeking around as if afraid someone might spy on him in his own home. “. . . Renshai. Led by the Golden Prince of Demons himself. He said they’d kill everyone. Women. Children. Everyone.”
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