by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Six
Something rumbled inside Allara’s skull. It wasn’t a physical sensation, so much as the sense of a sensation, like the awareness of someone else’s presence. It was a pull, gentle but insistent, telling her to move and in which direction to move. And it was alien, cold—the link of someone else’s brain to her own.
Her every nerve burned. The Gifted was in Lael. He had come after all. In spite of all her attempts to stop him, he had come.
She sat very still, wedged in a crenellation atop the ramparts of Réon Couteau. The letter she had been writing to her father dropped into the lap folds of her sea-green gown. To her left, the castle’s black granite walls fell away in the roar of a waterfall, leaving only the blue of Ori Réon seven hundred spans below and the silver-green of the forest as far as she could see. Along the shore, the bells signaled midmorning from the blue-roofed monasteries in the Vesper district.
Her lungs quivered. She couldn’t mistake this strange rhythmic quiver deep within her brain, this almost magnetic pull, driving her to get up, to move, to search. She had been nine years old when last she felt it. The Garowai had told her then it meant a Gifted had arrived in Lael.
Eyes closed, she crimped her fist in the letter to her father. What she needed to do was relax and let the taste of the Gifted wash over her brain. She needed to get a sense of this man who had been summoned here to do . . . something. To save Lael? Or to plunge it even deeper into darkness than had his predecessor?
When Harrison Garnett had crashed into her life twenty years ago, she had spent the first week of her search fighting back nausea. His presence had been a putrescence in her mind, the sense of him like the smell of the vile chemicals used by the embalmers in Glen Arden’s slums. Perhaps the taste of him in her mind had been only the foreshadowing of his traitorous personality. Perhaps she should have recognized that. If she had tried harder to overcome her revulsion, she might have done her own job better and prevented the treachery altogether.
This new Gifted’s touch upon her mind was sharp and smooth, like the biting smell of fresh-cut heffron wood. It was alien and intrusive, but at least it didn’t turn her stomach. His presence in her mind would only strengthen the nearer she was to him physically. What she sensed now were just the first raindrops in a tempest.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment the world swirled. Her inner balance tilted from this new weight inside her head, just as if she’d grown a third arm or a hump on her back. The mid-morning sun warmed the top of her head and prickled cold drops of sweat from the base of her scalp. She stood up slowly and faced the lake far below.
Without the force of a Gifted’s dreams pushing through from the other side, she could see no more than the white-edged waves everyone else saw. That was fine with her. She had seen enough, twenty years ago and then again in the last few months, to have no desire to look again.
Toes on the edge of the crenellation, she breathed deep. Fear of the fall rushed over her, and she exalted in the courage that came from being seven hundred spans above the world and only a step away from death. Oh, for wings! Had she them, she would lean forward, over the water, and let gravity pull her into its embrace. She would fall and fall and fall, safe in the certainty that she wouldn’t need someone at the bottom to catch her. Had she wings, she would catch herself.
But she hadn’t, so she turned to go. Where the Gifted was right now not even she could tell for certain. It was her responsibility to find him, to bring him to her father, and to stand beside him as he learned what it meant to change the worlds.
She scrambled down the battlement ladder onto the parapet and ran the length of it to her dressing chamber’s window. Ducking her head, she stepped through the open window onto the cushioned window seat. “Esta!” She tossed the crumpled letter onto her dressing table and ripped at the plaited gold of her gown’s sash. “Esta! Where are you?”
Footsteps on the other side of the oaken door heralded the arrival of her lady-in-waiting. The door heaved inward and the tall and imposing Countess Esta Larai puffed into the room, her index finger marking her place in a red leather-book. She raised one hand to support her towering blonde wig.
“My lady?” The guilty expression on her rouged cheeks likely meant she had been reading love sonnets.
“Find my riding clothes.” Allara pulled her gown over her head and cast it aside. “No, wait, go to Captain Quinnon and tell him to gather the men and saddle the horses.”
“We’re leaving?” Esta looked at the floor-to-ceiling closets and cupboards, probably calculating the packing she would have to do.
“You’ll have to take word to my father in Glen Arden.” Allara crossed the room and kicked off her slippers. Packing, indeed. The whole lot of clothes could rot on their manikins, for all she cared. “Tell Quinnon to give you an escort.”
Esta, who had stooped to pick up the fallen dress, shot up straight again. “You’re not coming with me? What am I to tell your father? He’ll think me lax in my duties. He’ll have me dismissed from court!”
Esta had been her lady-in-waiting since shortly after Allara’s mother, Queen Ranelle, had died in childbirth, along with her infant son. Allara had been thirteen. In many ways, she was already an adult by then. But Esta had still insisted on raising her by hand. Most of her ideas of childrearing and the training of courtly manners failed entirely to take into account the unique responsibilities of a Searcher. Esta was her companion only insofar as Allara was a princess. The moments in which Allara took up the mantle of a Searcher, Esta had to step aside, willingly or no.
“Find Quinnon.” Allara yanked riding clothes from an armoire and started for the dressing screen in the far corner. “Tell him it’s time. He’ll know what I mean. Tell him to gather the men and horses and ready the skycar.”
Esta threw up her hands. “Why is it neither you nor your good father listen a wit to me?”
Behind the screen, Allara cast aside her chemise and reached for a russet tunic. She had long since given up trying to explain her responsibilities as a Searcher. “Time is short.”
Esta banged the lid on the trunk. “Never mind I know it’s no job of a princess to be jogging all over the northern counties. Never mind I know it isn’t right nor proper for you to be off and about without a duenna. Never mind I’m the older and wiser—”
“Esta, we’re on the brink of war.”
“Wars are for men. It’s none of the women’s concern. Not yours and certainly not mine. I don’t know why you haven’t the dignity to stop dragging yourself around on horseback—”
“Enough!” Allara stuck her head around the corner of the screen. “For once in your life, enough!”
Esta gaped.
Heat flared in her stomach. “Now!”
Esta snatched up her skirts and ran. She left the door open in her haste, and her footsteps thumped down the winding staircase.
Allara breathed out, slowly. She had to get a grip on this new invasion of her mind and quell the swirling in her stomach. Nerves wouldn’t help anyone now, not herself, not the Gifted, and certainly not the kingdom. Her fingers trembled as she tied the drawstrings of her yoke collar and left the tassels to hang past the swirls of gold embroidery on the tunic’s fitted front.
Far below, the front doors slammed open, and Esta’s cries whispered up through the open windows. “Captain Quinnon!”
In the yard, men began to shout. Hooves clattered against the stone pavement. Iron clanged as weapons, armor, and equipages were prepared. A horse whinnied, and Allara recognized her stallion’s throaty scream.
All her muscles shuddered. She leaned her forehead against the enameled wood of the dressing screen and listened to the rumble in the back of her skull. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, this time, don’t let me fail.”
She stepped out from behind the screen and collected her sword and her pistol from the glass case beside the door. Then she left the room and marched down three flights of black marble stairs until she reach
ed the ground floor and the great foyer. With a click of their heels, the doormen snapped open the doors and admitted her to the sunlit glare of the courtyard.
Esta, standing beside the door, snagged Allara’s sleeve. “Wait, your highness. There’s a complication.” She jutted her chin to the far end of the courtyard, near the gates, where a lathered horse stood blowing. Beside it, talking fervently to the captain of Allara’s bodyguard, stood a bedraggled Cherazim youth.
Allara knit her eyebrows. Ever since the tragedies and misunderstandings surrounding the last Gifted’s demise, the Cherazii had avoided Réon Couteau in general and the royal palace in particular. For all their devotion to Ori Réon, they had little use for a Searcher who would allow her Gifted to go rogue. No Cherazim would come here without good reason.
She crossed the courtyard. The men stopped saddling horses and buckling armor to salute her. As she neared, Captain Crea Quinnon stepped aside so she could face the newcomer.
The Cherazim’s pale face was flushed blue with the heat of his ride, and sweat glistened against the angular bones of his face. His serrated ears poked up through his white-blond hair to frame a tri-corner hat. He saw her, and the poise and pride of his race pulled back his shoulders. The Cherazii might blame her for the last Gifted’s treachery, but they esteemed the time-honored role of Searcher too much not to pay her at least a grudging respect.
“Master Cherazim.” She greeted him in the custom of the Cherazii, with her fist against her heart, then looked at Quinnon. “What is it?”
Crea Quinnon raked a hand through his wild gray mane and cocked his mouth to one side, as he always did when weighing information and options. “He says there’s Koraudian troops on our side of the border, in the Thyra hills.” His good eye gleamed at her from within the scarred and pitted battleground of his face; his bad eye, all but dead in its socket, wandered blindly to the side. “Says they took him prisoner, and by the time he got loose, he was closer to here than Glen Arden.”
She clenched her fists. Koraudian troops in Lael right now was tantamount to a declaration of war.
The Cherazim’s eyes darted to her face, then away, as if uncertain where to look. “They’ve been attacking the Cherazii caravans fleeing across the border.”
The Koraudian pogrom against the Cherazii had intensified of late with the growing rumors of Mactalde’s return. Hundreds of Cherazii, perhaps even thousands, if the worst of the rumors were to be believed, had been killed. Those that could were fleeing Koraud. For all that they disapproved of Allara and her father, they weren’t so foolish as to let their pride keep them from the safety Lael offered.
But never before had they asked for help. They would fight and they would die before they submitted themselves to the aid of anyone, especially the monarchy. This young Cherazim wasn’t likely to receive accolades from his elders should they learn of his actions.
She licked her lips, then looked him in the eye. “There is no garrison here. But I’ll send what men I can.” She addressed Quinnon, “Arrange an armed escort to take Lady Esta back to Glen Arden with the news that Koraudian troops have been seen in the Thyra hills. The rest of my Guard can go to the Cherazii’s aid.” She left their search for the Gifted unspoken. In days such as these, even a Cherazim could bear tales to the wrong ears. Perhaps especially a Cherazim.
Quinnon swiveled to cast his affirming gaze upon the men, but they were already checking their girths a final time and securing arms. They might technically answer to Quinnon’s authority, but they all knew Allara’s word was only a whisper away from law.
She and Quinnon stepped back, away from the Cherazim, and Quinnon held her reins as she secured pistol holsters on either side of her saddle pommel.
He stayed by Rihawn’s head and steadied the horse as he pawed. “So your Gifted’s arrived, then?” He spoke in a gruff undertone.
“Yes.” She didn’t have to say anything more. He knew what to do.
A professional bodyguard from across the eastern hills in the neighboring country of Rivale, Quinnon had arrived in Lael twenty years ago and taken the job as the captain of her personal guard. He had ridden beside her, fought for her, and protected her every day since. His bad arm and his hunched back belied a dangerous strength and speed, and she had never seen his equal with a rapier.
He had never shown an interest in what she did or felt as a Searcher. Likely, he didn’t even believe in it. But Crea Quinnon would follow her wherever her duties led, be it mountain, ocean, or the darkest reaches of hell. For now, those duties led her to search for a man whom she had never met and whom she would send back to his own world in a twinkling had she the choice.
Quinnon busied himself snugging a buckle on the rifle scabbard attached to her saddle. “Know where he is?”
“Not yet.”
At the far end of the courtyard, the glass-encased skycar glided down its steel cables and bobbed to a stop. The skycar trains ran on a basic pulley system, operated by steam engines at stations spaced along the tracks. Depending on variables such as rain and wind, the skycars could maintain the speed of a horse’s gallop all the way across half the kingdom, gliding half a league above terrain too rough with hills and lakes to offer straight roads.
Right now, the royal skycar hung from its cable, just above the courtyard paving stones. The engineer and his crew had hitched up the horse cars, which were large enough to hold three mounts side by side. A partition in the front enclosed three green velvet seats, on which the human passengers could ride in comfort.
Allara and her men could take the car all the way to Glen Arden if she so commanded. But should the pull of the Gifted direct her otherwise, she could order the car to a stop and disembark at any station south of Réon Couteau. A shudder touched her skin. She could only hope he would be that near.
To find one particular man, out of all the men in Lael, could take a lifetime. Some Searchers spent years looking for their Gifted. One story, from nearly seven centuries ago, told of a Searcher who scoured the world for her Gifted before finally finding him in the steamy jungles of a land known as Ariad, on the far side of the world. Allara herself had spent eleven months on horseback in her search for Harrison Garnett, tracing him to the rocky Riall coast in the southern reaches of Lael.
Ever since she had known a second Gifted was coming, provisions had been packed in readiness, horses and men standing by to leave at a moment’s notice. With another war looming on the horizon, it was a bad time for a princess of Lael to be traveling abroad, but she had no choice. And, anyway, perhaps this Gifted wouldn’t be so far away as Harrison had been. His presence wasn’t just different from Harrison’s; it felt stronger, nearer.
“I think he’s in Lael,” she murmured. “This side of Glen Arden, even.”
“That’d be handy for a change.” Quinnon took his own horse from a groom. “The men will stay on the skycar until Thyra Junction. If your laddie’s north of Glen Arden, we’ll all be headed in the same direction anyway, and I’d like to keep them near you as long as possible.”
The company stood at their horses’ heads, waiting. Every man among them was a Guardsman, specially chosen to ride as her bodyguard. They all wore sleeveless tabards: hunter green linen embroidered high on the chest with a rearing stag. The hem hung to mid-thigh, front and back, and, instead of sleeves, an equally long strip of material swung free from either shoulder, also embroidered with the stag.
They stood at attention, eyes on Quinnon, awaiting his order. Their helmets rested on their tall saddle horns, ready to be donned at a moment’s notice. Armed with rifles in their saddle scabbards, pistols at one hip, longswords at the other, they appeared every bit as lethal and proud as they had a right to be. Their broad-brimmed leather hats, cocked over one eye with the brim folded up on the right side and cockaded with a sweeping white feather, signaled to the world they were the elite of the elite, the Searcher’s personal Guard.
“We move out,” Quinnon said. “There may be Koraudian troops awaiting us,
so we move with speed and caution. Our lady goes on her own business, and I go with her, so it may be we have to separate before we reach the battle. If that’s so, you’ll dispatch the enemy with all haste and rejoin your princess as soon as possible.”
Tension knotted behind Allara’s breastbone. If she failed now—again—all would be lost. Even after she found the Gifted, so very much could go wrong.
Quinnon looked at her, awaiting her signal. “Appears the time’s come.” His face didn’t soften, but the gruff edge left his voice. He had been there for the last Gifted. He knew what she feared. Perhaps he feared it as well.
She took a breath and gave him a smile, as much for her own benefit as the men’s. “Yes.”
She stepped forward and led Rihawn, prancing, to the first skycar. The groom waiting inside the wide door took the reins from her, and Rihawn leapt aboard without hesitation. At the front of the car, she allowed the conductor the courtesy of offering his hand to help her up the three gilded steps into the snug passenger area. She sat in the farthest seat and swiveled it so she could see through the glass wall.
In the courtyard behind, the men boarded their cars in a clatter of hooves and boots. Her own car rocked on its cable as Quinnon’s horse boarded behind her.
Quinnon took the three gilded steps in one stride and slammed the glass door behind him. He stood in front of his seat, arms crossed over his chest, and watched as the engineer and his first mate entered the tiny two-person forecar. At Allara’s nod, he raised an arm and circled his forefinger in the air.
The car lurched forward, and she released her held breath.
And so it began. The Gifted’s pull on her mind dragged her east. Every second she moved in that direction relieved some of the pressure, even as it filled her head with his presence just a little bit more. Soon she would find him. And she would know the worst of what was to come.
