The Pearls

by Deborah Chester

  But it was only Rinthella. Her beautiful, dead-white visage stared down at him. With the black hood thrown back, her dark hair escaped to writhe about her pale features. Her eyes held a dark fury that made him quail. She pointed to him with a hand glowing white.

  “You have it,” she said.

  Her voice was awful to hear, no longer vibrant with laughter, no longer alive. “You have it.”

  Some instinct made him reach into his pocket and draw out the opal he’d taken from her dead hand. How pale it shone, as though the moon had somehow been captured inside it and fought to escape. He held it up. “This?”

  “The stone of sorrow,” she said. “The stone of despair.”

  “I’m sorry I took it,” he told her. “You can have it back.”

  But of course he could not touch her. Nor had he any way to move the jewel from his world into hers. Her eyes, fiery and insane, glared into his, and he feared that baleful look would somehow petrify him into rock. Yet no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

  “Rinthella,” he whispered, “what do you want?”

  She pointed at his hand. “The stone of mourning. She warned me what it was, but I did not heed her. Put it back. Put it back!”

  “Lady Lea,” he said eagerly. “You mean Lady Lea. Where is she? Which way have they taken her? Show us, Rinthella. Guide us through the world of shadows and help us save her.”

  “Put it back.”

  “Yes, yes, I shall. I promise. Only tell me where to search for her. Please, Rinthella. Help us.”

  As Rinthella turned her head, her dark hair blew toward him. He flinched, but the strands never touched his face.

  “Why did you bring us here?” Fyngie asked, startling him. “Why? Why? The valley of sorrow. The valley of death.”

  “I’m sorry. But if there’s any chance at all to save Lea, help me. Both of you, please.”

  “Before dawn, Vineena will join us,” Fyngie said, her voice growing shrill. “Her soul will scream to the heavens. Why did you bring us to the valley of death?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t help you now. I’m sorry. Guide us to Lea. Please!”

  “Vineena is afraid to join us,” Fyngie continued as though he hadn’t spoken. Her enormous, shocked eyes stared at Hervan in rebuke. “She suffers. Death comes not easily to her.”

  “I’m sorry. But where is Lea?”

  “Our blood lies on you, Olivel Hervan. Our blood lies on you!”

  “Let me avenge you,” he said earnestly, extending his hand to show her the glowing opal. “I swear on this stone that I’ll make the blackguards pay for what they’ve done. But show me where to go. In Gault’s name, guide me to them.”

  “Put it back!” Rinthella screamed.

  “Avenge us!” Fyngie said.

  They circled him, faster and faster, screaming words he couldn’t understand until he was nearly deafened. After a few moments, the sound reached a crescendo of noise that became a shrieking gale of wind, a storm blowing him in all directions. Buffeted, half-blinded, his ears ringing, he staggered to keep his balance, throwing his arm across his face in defense.

  “Lea!” he shouted.

  Fyngie reappeared, her heart-shaped face forming in the wind, her hair streaming wild. “Look to the stone.”

  “What?”

  “Look to the stone,” she said, and pointed northeast. “It will guide you.”

  Rinthella had shed her black robes, reappearing as tattered as Fyngie. “No, no, no!” she screamed. “Put it back! Its curse will strike you down. Put it back!”

  And then both were gone, along with the wind that had buffeted him so violently. Dazed, he sank to his knees, his grip tight around the opal. He was panting for air, his senses swimming, his mind still filled with the sight and sound of them.

  He realized that Rozer was holding him, clamping a hand across his mouth. Hervan tugged at it weakly, and Rozer took his hand away.

  The men lifted Hervan back on his feet. He swayed and might have fallen if Rozer hadn’t steadied him.

  “Captain,” Sergeant Taime was saying urgently. “Captain, are you all right? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  Rozer patted Hervan’s face. “Snap out of it. And for Gault’s sake, don’t scream like that again. You’ll rouse the whole camp.”

  Hervan stared at them blankly, struggling to regain his wits. “I—I—”

  “Give him this.”

  A flask, warm from someone’s pocket, was shoved at him. He could not hold on to it with his numbed fingers.

  Impatiently, Taime pressed it to his lips.

  Smoky mead. Hervan drank, choked, sputtered, and drew in the first truly deep lungful of air he’d inhaled since the ghosts of Fyngie and Rinthella appeared.

  “What did they say to you?” Rozer demanded. “Did they tell you where to look? Will they take us through the Hidden Ways?”

  Hervan wiped his brow with the back of his hand, then unclenched his fingers and stared down at the opal. It had stopped shining brightly, but when he stared hard at it he thought he saw a tiny spark of light in its center. Thank you, Fyngie, he thought.

  “Can’t you hear what I’m saying?” Rozer said. “Captain, do you still have your wits? Did they tell you where to look?”

  “Yes,” Hervan replied, and cleared his throat. “Yes. They—they did. Northeast.” He pointed. “Those hills.”

  Triumphant looks of relief flashed around him.

  “As we thought,” Rozer said. “As I said before.”

  Hervan ignored him. “Does anyone have a map?” he asked. “I don’t want to rouse Barsin for the map case. Rozer, what about yours?”

  “Pawned.”

  Hervan gestured awkwardly. “Then try to get mine. Inside my—”

  Rozer reached beneath his trussed arm, digging around to the pocket inside Hervan’s tunic. He drew out a supple doeskin map, Mahiran made and frightfully expensive. In the moonlight the beautiful coloration of its drawings and illustrations were muted to inky shadows.

  Hervan gestured for him to unroll it atop a stone. The men gathered around close as Hervan held the opal over the map approximately where the valley was located. “Lea,” he said. “Lady Lea E’non.”

  At first nothing happened, and he felt Rozer fidget impatiently at his shoulder. Hervan moved the opal diagonally across the map, northeast from the valley, and the stone began to glow as though lit from within.

  Taime stepped back with a muttered oath, and even Rozer seemed startled.

  “As close as that?” he asked. “But why? If they can use the Hidden Ways, why not go straight to their destination? What are they waiting for?”

  “Us,” Hervan said. “Clearly it’s a trap.”

  “Shall I rouse the camp?” Taime asked.

  “No,” Hervan said, trying to make his voice sound brisk and assured. “We’ve no fight left in us tonight.”

  “They might not either,” Rozer said.

  “True. But I’m not going into their ambush. We’ll break camp at dawn. Leaving behind the wounded and all nonessentials, including servants. Barsin can be left in charge, told to bury the dead and prepare reports. That will get him out of the way.”

  “What about the protector and priest?” Rozer asked.

  Hervan frowned. “We may need them. Taime, I want the archers assigned to remain as guards.”

  “Sir!”

  His confidence growing quickly, Hervan glanced around. “We’ll come at them in a way they don’t expect. With this guide, we can’t lose them now.”

  “Unless they use the Hidden Ways again,” Rozer said.

  “That’s a risk we’ll have to take. But I think Poulso may be right about their magic being weak.”

  “Didn’t look so weak this afternoon,” Taime said sourly. “Not when the jaws of hell opened right before you. My heart fair stopped, Captain, when I thought you might ride straight inside after them.”

  So that’s what had happened, Hervan thought.
He nodded as though he faced such dangers every day. “We’ve sworn to use the Hidden Ways, should it become necessary. At the moment it isn’t, and that’s what the ghosts you raised were trying to tell us. If Gault is with us, this”—he held up the stone—“should be sufficient.”

  The men nodded approvingly, looking rather relieved.

  Grateful to Fyngie for turning the opal into a talisman for finding Lea, Hervan pocketed it and lifted his fist in salute. “Trust in Gault and do our damnedest.”

  They laughed, returning the salute. “Our damnedest!”

  But there was no laughter the next day when, just after noontide, they found the corpses of three men, stripped naked and stacked like firewood. All three showed battle wounds, dark gaps in gray, half-frozen flesh. All three had more recent stab wounds to the heart.

  “Killing their own wounded,” Thirbe muttered, stumping away from the bodies to rejoin Hervan. “Looting their own dead.”

  The captain sat atop his horse, watching while his men searched for tracks. If the renegades had waited for them, they’d long since given up and moved on. Cold, tired, and aching despite the haze of smoky mead in his head, Hervan squinted grimly, longing for some confirmation that he was right and Thirbe wrong.

  “These bodies are proof that we’re on the right trail,” he said now.

  “Who’s to say they were among those lawless bastards we fought yesterday?” Thirbe muttered, climbing onto his horse with a grunt of effort. “Could be anyone.”

  Hervan shot him a look of exasperation. “Must you always see the wrong side? Of course they’re who we’re looking for. They have army tattoos. And I know battle wounds when I see them.”

  “Not good enough,” Thirbe said. “What sign of her?”

  “Sir.” It was Taime, saluting at Hervan’s stirrup.

  “Well?”

  “There’s been a camp, over there.” The sergeant pointed at the nearby trees. “They’ve brushed out their tracks, but the scouts are searching now to pick up their trail.” He paused, his gaze steady on Hervan’s. “And we found a sheltered spot, where a fire was built and pine boughs cut fresh, to make a bed.”

  Thirbe leaned forward. “For m’lady?”

  “Anything else?” Hervan asked.

  “Only this.” The sergeant handed up a small pebble.

  Turning it over in his fingers, Hervan rubbed some of the soil away and saw the gleam of an emerald. Very poor quality, pale in color and flawed, but it told him that Lea had been there. When he held it next to the opal, both stones sparked light.

  Startled, Hervan nearly dropped them both. But already they’d stopped glowing and looked like inert jewels once more.

  “What in the name of—what was that?” Thirbe asked.

  Hervan carefully stowed away the opal before he handed over the emerald.

  Thirbe peered at it, turning it over and over in eager fingers. “Not one of hers. Not off her necklace.”

  “But there because of her. Great Gault, man, can’t you be grateful for this evidence?”

  “Slim evidence.” Thirbe kept the emerald. “I won’t be grateful till I see her safe and sound.”

  Hervan frowned, and Rozer caught his eye with a meaningful little tilt of his head in Thirbe’s direction. Hervan swiftly shook his head, dropping his gaze from Rozer’s.

  “To think she was here, this close to us all night, and we’ve come too late,” Thirbe muttered.

  Hervan flinched, but held his tongue. His own frustration was enormous, and he didn’t need the steady reproach in Rozer’s and Taime’s eyes to remind him that he’d made a mistake in not moving out last night as they’d suggested.

  As predicted by Fyngie’s ghost, Lady Vineena had died at dawn, delaying their departure and putting all the men into an ugly mood. Now there would be no battle to avenge her and the others.

  Caught between the excitement of the ghosts, the pain of his aching shoulder, and worry about Lea, Hervan had slept very little. His eyes were sore and gritty from lack of sleep, and his head felt stuffed with wool. The smoky mead was slowing his wits more than it numbed his shoulder.

  He needed to devise another plan and quickly, but he couldn’t think of anything except to follow his quarry’s tracks, if there were any to be found.

  “Come on,” he muttered beneath his breath. Last night, caught up in the excitement, his senses stirred by the blood potion he’d drunk, he’d been willing enough to enter the Hidden Ways. In the bleak light of day, half-frozen and hurting, he found himself hoping for tracks. He did not feel up to the task of coercing Poulso to open the Hidden Ways, if the priest could even do it, much less going inside.

  “Captain!” Sergeant Taime returned. His cheeks were flushed red with cold and excitement, and his eyes were snapping. “Compliments of the scouts, sir. They’ve found tracks.”

  “Excellent!”

  Relieved, Hervan kicked his horse forward too eagerly. It bounced into a trot that jolted his shoulder and sent pain lancing through him. Reining up with an oath, he gritted his teeth hard until the agony subsided.

  “Young fool,” Thirbe said gruffly beside him. “You’ve no business out here. Ought to be back in camp, bedded, and mending that shoulder.”

  Hervan’s eyes were watering. As soon as he could find his voice, he sniffed and lifted his head. “I have vowed to save her.”

  “Oh, aye. Of course you have. But you’re no war hawk, boy. Just a chicken with one wing.”

  If that was his notion of sympathy, Hervan thought furiously, he could damned well keep it to himself.

  “I was right about pursuing her!” he said through his teeth. “And now we’ve found the trail and—”

  “The one they’ve left for us,” Thirbe said, and spat. “Might not be the one we ought to take.”

  Hervan glared at him, tired of his constant pessimism. “I’ll find her.”

  “Unless they vanish back into the Hidden Ways, damned shadow spawn that they are. They can play cat and mouse with us all they like.”

  “If you want, turn back now. You can send for your reinforcements and toast by the fire until they arrive, for all the good it will do you, or Lady Lea, or anyone. I intend to take action!”

  “So I see,” Thirbe said in a dry, unimpressed voice. His gaze raked Hervan up and down. “Still playing the hero, with no notion of what you’re doing.”

  “Enough.” Hervan tightened his reins. “You are dismissed!”

  Thirbe’s gray eyes narrowed. “Try to force me back, and it’s the last thing you’ll do. My duty’s here, same as yours. You’ve got no authority over me.”

  They glared at each other, while Hervan longed to be fit and well, able to run his sword through the old man’s gullet. No duel, he thought resentfully, still smarting from Thirbe’s contemptuous refusal of his challenge. When the time comes I’ll cut you down like a sick Madrun and leave you in the road.

  In the silence, a scornful little smile quirked the corners of Thirbe’s mouth. Seeing that, Hervan felt his resentment blaze hotter than ever.

  But he was the first to drop his gaze. “If you’re to stay with us, then stop complaining.”

  It sounded weak and churlish the moment he said it, but it was too late to retract his sullen remark.

  Thirbe leaned back in his saddle and grinned. “I’ll say what needs saying as long as you keep making mistakes.”

  “I—”

  “And I got no intention of leaving you to go after her on your own. You’re likely to get her killed with your bumbling.”

  “Insult me no further, old man. I warn you now to take care.”

  Thirbe nodded, cocking one gray brow. “Oh? Going to have someone knife me in the back and leave me for the crows, like these?” He gestured at the bodies, his expression harsh. “Don’t try it, son.”

  Hervan stared at him coldly, haughtily, refusing to answer although he hated the old protector’s wily knack of seeming to know just what he was thinking.

  “That’s enou
gh, now,” Thirbe said, his voice unexpectedly kinder. “You’re trying, I suppose, but you ain’t up to this job with your shoulder—”

  “Spare me your sympathy. I’m in command, and we’ll catch them soon. Then I’ll fight that bastard in black armor until he—”

  “Sure,” Thirbe broke in. “Let’s hear you jabber about how you’re going to whip a praetinor one-handed with a broken shoulder. You can barely sit that horse. Seems to me, it’s you who ought to return to camp. Leave this business to those capable of doing the job.”

  “Leave it to you!” Furious, Hervan found himself almost sputtering. “Abandon my command to you? Impossible! You? I’d sooner cut my throat than put you in charge.”

  “You’ll find her throat cut if you don’t cool down and stop yelling at the top of your lungs,” Thirbe said. “Sound carries far in hills like these. You want them to know how close we are?”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Hervan muttered, hot-faced at the reprimand, which this time he knew was deserved. “You can stop treating me like a child and remember I’m in command here.”

  “Ain’t fit for command, no matter how many times you boast that you are. Not today.”

  “That’s for me to decide, not you.” Hervan turned to the impassive sergeant, waiting at his stirrup with one hand resting casually on his sword hilt and his gaze steadily on Thirbe. “Sergeant, pass the word. Let’s move out.”

  Chapter 15

  Finished with his council for the day, Emperor Caelan strode through his recently completed palace, passing bowing courtiers, messengers, idlers, and the curious. Wearing his sun-streaked hair loose on his shoulders and clad in a scarlet tunic edged with imperial purple, his tanned, muscular arms bare save for wide gold bracelets on each forearm, he towered head and shoulders above nearly everyone else. His eyes—once blue, but altered to a light silvery hue after his battle with Beloth—were keen and quick, missing little that went on around him.

  In his wake came his lords of service, his chamberlain, his priest adviser, attendant scribes and pages, and his armed protector. Unlike Kostimon, the old emperor, who’d ambled along, taking time to acknowledge those who greeted and flattered him, and giving people in the palace sufficient time to prepare for his arrival, Caelan moved in a whirl of activity. He never strolled, never dawdled. When a meeting ended, he was the first out of his chair as though propelled on springs, whisking out the door before some of his councilors had finished bowing and murmuring their appreciation of his presence. There was no lolling in the shade on a hot autumn day, drinking chilled wine and nibbling on candied figs. Caelan was busy, always busy. He had endless ideas and wanted to set them in motion, and the most frequent complaint he uttered was that his days were too short.