Shawford Crale and the Crown of Kings. That was her business. Her part in the battle to come.
Decided, she let the magic come from her body. Let loose a secret that Roskel Farinder could not know. Not yet. Ethereal light flowed from her eyes, until the light caressed her entire body, like a sheen of red water. She became thin, and then she was gone. Gone to Shawford Crale.
*
Chapter Eight
Durmont's bones were old and the growing cold of winter reminded him of his age most every minute that passed, despite the fire that burned in his hearth.
Most of his teeth were gone (leastways, the useful ones, it seemed), and yet his mind was still sharp. Sharp enough to see the Lady's hand in the new orders he drafted for the Council of Ten - the assembly of Thanes, although since Roskel had killed one of their number it was only strictly a Council of Nine. A replacement had yet to win out in Orvane Wense's old seat of power, with in-fighting and assassinations rife. It meant the country was weakened in its defence against Drayman incursions. But then the Draymar nation had not invaded for many years. Sturma's barbaric neighbours were quiet, and that suited Durmont just fine. The passes through the Culthorn Mountains in the west would still be manned, were still manned - he had made sure of it - and that would have to be enough.
Sturma had bigger concerns than the Draymar.
The Hierarchy were coming.
For a moment, at the thought, Durmont felt an even greater chill in his bones, and shuddered, as though he were outside in the falling snow instead of beside a roaring fire.
That Thanedom would be next to useless in the coming battles. The southern Thanes, however, would answer a call to war, whether they were to muster east along the coast to wait for the invaders there, or north along Thaxamalan's Saw.
The northern Thanes, too, recognised the Steward's power. They would answer the call...reluctantly, perhaps, but they would march.
So, they could count on Naeth's standing army, and the two remaining northern Thanes...they would be able to muster soon. Word would take time to reach the six southern Thanes...Redalane, Durmont's old friend and liege among them.
Redalane, he knew, was a warrior born. Roskel was canny enough, but he knew nothing of war. Redalane was a veteran of the War of Reconciliation.
Yet he had the furthest to travel, from the Castle of Light in the Spar, Sturma's southern most region.
He might well be late to the party, thought Durmont grimly.
It might present a problem, too, as the northern Thanes would march before the south would even receive word of the imminent war. The coming winter would play its part. Messages would be delayed. The armies marching would be hampered by the snow that would inevitably drift its way south as the year wore on.
In the north, the power struggles ever present would surface. Old tensions would come to the fore and there would be the usual jostling for power and influence.
Durmont wished his liege Lord, Redalane, the most powerful of the southern Thanes, would arrive first. In name alone were the Stewards rulers...the Thane of Spar, Redalane, alone had the force of will to hold an alliance between the Thanes together.
Durmont permitted himself a small sigh as he sealed the last missive, this one to Redalane, with a personal message attached for his Lord, and his friend. Muster east, along the coast. Their entire force. The assembled might of nine Thanedoms, all in one place, waiting for a threat to come by sea.
Leaving their entire northern flank unprotected.
It left a bad taste in Durmont's mouth. He did not trust the woman Selana, Queen of her domain or not. He did not trust her network of thieves. What fool would?
A Thief King, he knew.
Sometimes he despaired of his station. Roskel was an astute man in many ways, but a fool when it came to a pretty face.
He sighed. Roskel wouldn't be the first man to be undone by a beautiful woman.
Roskel's trust for the Queen was a dangerous thing. The two played each other, circled, like lovers frightened to embrace lest they impaled each other with their ardour.
Durmont sighed again. He was getting too old for the duties he swore to uphold, but he wasn't in his grave yet. He rose on weak legs, but even here, in his private rooms, he would not let himself show how weak he had become.
He took to the letters with the official seal of the Lord Protector of Sturma to the stables. Setting his reservations aside, he walked the long corridors to the stables on old legs, with a heavy heart full of fear.
Leaving the entirety of the northern border unmanned?
Folly, surely. Not even the mountains would hold such a force as must be coming at bay. Such a force that could light the entire sky with fire.
He passed out the letters one by one to the waiting horsemen, passing each letter with an admonishment to mind the roads, and making sure each rider understood the import of the message he or she carried.
Then he returned to his rooms, well past midnight, to sleep for his usual five hours. He always ensured he was up before his masters, for he was a lifelong servant, and perhaps, he thought, more the fool for it.
*
Part II.
The Journey North
Chapter Nine
Rena dipped her long curling blonde hair in the frigid stream. Under the shelter of the trees at the edge of the Fresh Woods the snow on the ground was light, but the stream water was still near freezing. Ice ran down from the hills to the west, and at some point this stream might reach a river, and that ice would travel until it hit the sea.
Asram thought on this, the passage of ice to the sea, as he looked at Rena's back, in this one of her few unguarded moments.
Her hair was so completely tangled and matted that she could not even run her fingers through it. She was a witch, but not yet a very accomplished one, maybe, wondered Asram. She might be able to mix various poultices and make effective brews from herbs, but she couldn't tame her hair.
Asram Fell, her protector, watched her wash her hair with the baby Tarn in his arms, guarding his thoughts as Rena guarded her emotions.
They neared the Fresh Woods, and respite from the road at the new settlement of Haven, but the road was long yet. Naeth was at the furthest point north of Sturma and they had started out from the Spar, the southern-most tip of Sturman lands.
The dangers of the journey were far from exhausted.
Yet as Asram held the child in his arms and watched the young widow and witch wash her hair in the freezing stream, he was more content than he had been in many, many years.
He could think of worse things to be doing than travelling the wilds with a beautiful woman.
Watch your thoughts, man, he told himself. She was no man's for the taking, were a woman ever a man's for the taking. He sighed, quietly, acutely aware of giving Rena any sign that he watched her so intently. But she was beautiful. There was no avoiding it, and he couldn't deny that she was growing on him.
The Outlaw King's widow, he chided himself, as though he had forgotten for one moment on the road. His liege Lord Roskel bid him watch over her, and that was all he would do. She was untouchable, unfathomable...not merely because she was a witch. But he was a creature of duty and his duty was to see her and the babe to Naeth safe and sound.
But, Gods...
She wrung her hair dry and turned her gaze on him, and he was reminded of the other reason she was untouchable. Looking into her eyes now, he had nearly forgotten just how damn cold she was, and a man was liable to get burned touching a woman as cold and hard as ice.
Perhaps, he mused as he thought back to their first meeting, in the blood and snow, it was no wonder.
*
Chapter Ten
The woman who would have been Queen of Sturma, had things turned out differently, the woman who was mother to the last of the line of kings, came from her humble witch's hut behind Asram Fell.
Her mother had just been killed. Asram had killed the attackers - all bar two, who Rena had seen to herself
. Looking at her now, soot from the fire on her face, he imagined her a warrior Queen, rather than a young witch. There were no tear tracks on her cheeks. Perhaps witches grieved differently to mere mortals, thought Asram. Perhaps, though, she would mourn later, and shed her tears when they were safely away on the road. Maybe it was for the best.
'Asram,' she said. She had been inside her home with the body of her mother for some time. He didn't want, or need to know, the business of a witch in mourning.
'My lady,' he said.
'Rena,' she said. 'Please. I am no one's lady,' she added. For some reason Asram felt the words held a deeper meaning than he grasped. 'Help me bring the assassins inside the hut,' she said.
She did not need to ask twice, and he thought nothing of the order. He was Roskel's man. Before that he had been the Queen of Thieves' man. Now he was Rena's, until his duty and his debt were fulfiled and repaid.
He nodded and pushed himself to his feet, slinging his bow across his shoulders. There were no sounds in the night. Nothing to make him think that there were any more killers out in the quiet snows. But he was ever careful, and because of his care was still alive despite the number of men he'd faced with bow and blade.
Together, he and Rena dragged the first corpse across the threshold. Rena's mother was laid out, wrapped in a linen cloth, before a small fire that burned still in the hearth. Laid to rest.
'Dump the bodies wherever you want,' she said.
Asram nodded again. His orders, from the Steward himself, but more importantly, perhaps, coming through the Queen of Thieves, to serve Rena in all things, but moreover, to protect her life with his. To Asram, should she order him to, he would do most anything. He was a man of honour, though from his looks one might not think so. He had the look of a ruffian, though with a certain glint in his eye that made people perhaps more inclined to give him the time of day than try to run him through. Still, in his line of work, plenty of people tried to run him through - charming eyes or not.
When he had dumped all the bodies in the hut, Rena thanked him.
'Spread this around the hut,' she told him, passing him a large vial containing some kind of noxious liquid. He did so without question, flicking the potion or whatever it was around the hut liberally.
Meanwhile, Rena took a bowl and filled it with pungent moss. She placed the bowl on her mother's chest.
Then she set fire to the fluid that she had Asram sprinkle around the hut. Flames leapt up swiftly. Almost immediately the bodies of the assassin's caught alight and the air was full of the stench of roasting flesh. Asram waited patiently in the midst of the growing fire for his lady.
'Madal's Gates be closed to you,' she said of the assassins. She spared a last glance at her mother, then shouldered a pack and led the way out into the night. Whatever words she had spoken over her mother's body while Asram had waited out in the snow would forever be a mystery to him.
That suited Asram fine. He knew well enough of witches to steer clear of their business. The Queen of Thieves was frightening enough. For a man who'd face perhaps a hundred foes and won out, witches and magic caused fear in him like nothing else ever could. He did not like that which he could not understand, could not see...could not slay.
Asram took a second to look at the strange face of one of the assassins. A fey creature indeed. Humanoid, but without doubt inhuman. He looked at the face while the flames licked the body and vowed that none of their kind would ambush them again.
Without a further look back he stepped out into the night.
The snow was already melting from the sod roof, and the timbers of the hut caught with blue fire.
'Your hut...' he said, though he knew what Rena would say.
'I shan't be coming this way again,' she said.
And Asram was not surprised.
'North, Lady...Rena,' he said.
'Of course,' she said.
But through it all her voice was flat, like all the love had gone from her heart, and with the babe in a sling around her waist, her pack on her shoulders, they turned for the north in silence.
*
Chapter Eleven
People mourned in many different ways, thought Asram. He had seen them all. Some raged and smashed the things they held dear. Some removed all trace of those they had lost so that they would not be reminded any more than they must. People swore revenge on killers and accidents and disease and even the Gods.
Rena did none of this. She turned to stone.
Asram could only imagine her terrible pain. She had lost her husband and now her mother. She only had eyes for her babe on the journey north, and few words for Asram.
But he knew many ways to grieve, and perhaps the worst was to turn the pain inside. Asram was perhaps not a smart man, but he was wise enough in the ways of life and death. He tried to draw her out, to lance the wounds and let her grieve in the open, but she was cold toward him, as cold as the snow that settled upon their shoulders on the long walk.
Winter was in full bluster as they travelled. When the snows did not fall, the days were cold enough to frost Asram's beard.
The babe, for his part, did not complain at the cold. Perhaps he was the best off of the three of them, swaddled most of the day at Rena's breast. He was a good child - quiet, perhaps...maybe too quiet. Maybe even at such a young age the child understood tragedy. Asram did not know. Who knew what babes thought?
The rode was long and hard on a grieving mother and a toddling child. In the heart of winter, struggling on through fresh snowfall. They could have rode, but witches did not ride. Witches walked. Asram knew this. Some things were set in stone. Dragons breathed fire. Hath'Ku'Atches lived in lightning. A witch did not ride.
Witches were a strange breed, as far as Asram could gather. He couldn't say he'd known that many. The two that he did know - Rena and The Queen, too...although he wasn't too sure what the Queen was...did not go in for showy displays of power. And yet, the Queen aside, for she did seem somehow apart, Rena was stoic, never complaining...Asram thought perhaps she had some inner strength. He knew she would need to be strong on the journey north. It was a long road, and they were beset by the weather and bandits and assassins, too.
Asram watched the young woman from the corner of his blue, twinkling eyes when he could. Other times he scanned the road they travelled - the wilds, he supposed. He dare not take her along the road for fear of unknown travellers and more assassins that he was sure would be hunting them. An enemy as mighty as the Hierarchy, whom he knew little of, but enough to feel a healthy dose of fear, would surely have more than a few assassins at their beck and call.
Avoiding the road was wise, perhaps, stupid, perhaps, because these were no normal assassins. Asram and Rena soon discovered their folly on the long path through the fields and across the streams toward Haven and respite from the road. They found out their assumptions about safety off the road were wrong as they came to a stream with a man standing the other side. But like the assassins before, he was no man. He was a Hierarch.
*
Chapter Twelve
The Hierarch facing them wore a short bow across his back and a sword at his hip. He also wore a malicious grin across his alien face, tempered with surprise - he was as shocked to find Rena and Asram across the stream as they were to find another Hierarch on Sturma. And one out of the way in the wilds, as though hunting far and wide...yet how could he have found them?
Questions for another day. Another moment.
For Asram, time slowed. A man of his age should not be able to move so fast, but Asram was accustomed to living. It was a habit hard learned.
His initial surprise lasted but a moment.
With a grunt, Asram was moving. Despite Asram's speed and skills, the Hierarch was faster still than Asram, but the alien creature had three targets and chose the wrong one. He should have shot down Asram first, because Asram was the sole threat. But then, maybe he just wasn't very good with the bow. Instead of taking Asram Fell cleanly with his arrow an
d allowing him time to murder the child and his mother, his arrow passed the warrior's ear and took Rena in the shoulder.
Asram had his bow in hand. An arrow, nocked. Loosed, and the arrow took the Hierarch through the creature's left hand. The Hierarch dropped his own bow. He could do nothing else, his left hand now useless.
Asram did not spare a thought for where the Hierarch's first arrow had gone, though in some distant part of him he'd heard Rena's grunt of pain. Time enough for worry later. Unlike the Hierarch, the warrior knew his priorities. His next arrow thudded into the Hierarch's knee, felling him. The assassin, now with two arrows jutting from his flesh, still did not cry out in pain.
Asram wasted no time. He ran, splashing through the stream, knife in one hand and bow still clenched tight in the other. Just because he did not see another threat in the instant he scanned the wilds, did not mean that further threat was not present.
Dripping water from his deerskin trousers, Asram knelt above the Hierarch and placed the blade in his left hand at the assassin's throat.
'Wait!' shouted Rena. Her voice was strained from the pain of an arrow in her shoulder. The arrow had missed the baby's head by mere inches. Asram increased the pressure with his blade. Maybe her heard her. Maybe he didn't. He fully intended to slit the assassin's throat, and then he would give it no more thought.
'Asram, do not kill that man!' she commanded as he finally flicked a glance in her direction.
He gave a brief nod. He put all of his weight on the Hierarch, holding him down. The Hierarch spat at Asram and laughed, but Asram did not fall for the ruse. Had he shifted his weight to wipe off the vile fluid, the assassin would have bucked him off. Asram knew plenty of tricks himself. He grinned back at the assassin while Rena waded across the stream toward them.
The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Page 3
