by Susan Dexter
Seabirds wheeled overhead, crying mournfully. Valadan outran them, leaping a snarl of driftwood as if he had been winged with feathers, too. Druyan laughed as they landed. She missed riding full tilt along a strip of fine white sand—at Splaine Garth sea met land in a tangle of quaggy soil and twisty river channels, and to ride through at other than a careful walk was insanity. Glasgerion, where she was born and raised, had broad beaches such as these, and she had regretted leaving them, all these years.
She had missed them rather more than she missed her husband, so much more recently reft from her. She never thought of Travic now, except to wonder how he would have done a particular chore, and she found that faintly shocking. She could scarcely recall him as a living man. The timbre of his voice was gone from her memory. Her skin did not recall his hand’s touch. When she strove to bring him to mind, all she could manage was a sort of general shape, and never a face on it at all. The dirt and stones heaped over his burial place had begun to sink, and he faded from her memory as swiftly, as inexorably. And she must go to Keverne as if he yet lived. It seemed impossible.
Valadan galloped through the frothy edge of the water, sending spray flying high. Druyan pulled the stallion upshe needed to catch her own breath, to compose herself before she reached the castle. Her face was wet with saltwater—the sea’s tears or her own, she could not tell.
If he was going, the soonest start would buy him the most time, the greatest distance. Time and distance were his best insurance against being run down by that incredible horse.
No use to think of taking food with him—he’d need to wait for nightfall to sneak into the kitchen larder, and he’d lose too many hours, risk aside. Kellis filled a sack with barley from the horses’ bin and threw in a few lumps of coarse salt. That was all the food available outside the kitchen itself—the vegetables in the garden were weeks or months away from harvest, and the smokehouse was too near the kitchen. He might be seen. With the lady gone, Enna would have an especially sharp eye out. He stuck the bronze knife through his belt and on consideration rolled up the most threadbare of the horse blankets. The nights were yet chill.
Slipping out of the farmyard was far simpler than slipping into the kitchen would have been. Kellis walked away as if he intended to dig peat, wooden spade over his shoulder—and changed his course once he was safely out of sight, abandoning the tool where Dalkin would surely find it. He headed steadily uphill, intending to cut through the edge of the pastureland, where it ran into the moor. He knew the way well enough, from having followed the horse. That familiarity would help him, though he would need to strike out into the unknown if he would not chance meeting horse and rider, returning from Keverne. He would steer by the sun, to keep himself very well inland—
A sharp bark caught his attention, as it was meant to. Rook stood in front of him, ears pricked, tail outstretched. The posture of suspicion. As Kellis watched, her ears slowly lowered. Her head came down and forward, and she took a step to close a little of the distance between them.
Kellis kept his eyes away from her amber ones, so as neither to challenge nor be beguiled. She’d work him like a strayed sheep if she could, perhaps bite him if she could not. He would rather it had been Meddy stumbled across him-she’d have let him pass with only a foolish, happy wag of her tail. Rook knew her business, read his intention to stray just from the way he walked, probably. He watched her black and tan body coming closer, crouching a little as she did before the sheep. Now the tail was down, curled upward only at the very tip, the rest of it following the double curve of her lowered haunches.
He had let her come close enough—she wasn’t backing off, and if he did not make some move to obey, she might spring at him, though she never would at a sheep. Or she might bark again, and Meddy nright be near. She ’d wake the rocks under the earth, Meddy would, once she got started, and for certain bring the sheep girls, maybe Dalkin, too.
Bending slowly, slowly, Kellis tore a hank of grass from the tufts at his feet. Carefully whispering the formula, he broke the grass stems into three parts. The Mirror of Three did not work well under sunlight or against cold iron weapons, but against a lone sheepdog—if she saw three of him, Rook would never be able to sort it out before he escaped her. He didn’t want to be forced to shift to wolf—Rook would certainly attack then, and he might hurt her—and as a wolf he could not carry even his own clothing, far less knife and blanket and scraps of food.
Three times he said the spell, and as the third died away, Rook’s head came up. She whined uncertainly, no doubt wondering at the trio of raggedy men suddenly spread before her. Kellis smiled and took a step backward. To either side of him, his mirrored selves did likewise. He took two steps sideways, crossing paths with one of the fetches that was moving mirrorwise, opposite to his direction.
Rook stood stock still, as baffled as he’d hoped she’d be. Kellis turned his back and strode boldly away.
The only warning he got was a single sniff just as he took his fourth step. There had been other sniffs, he realized as Rook’s sharp teeth seized his ankle to detain him. She had been scenting all the while, like all dogs trusting her keen nose over her ordinary eyes. He had only heard the single noise because that was the one closest to him, as she caught him, the one that verified her quarry. He froze, obedient to her.
She had him by flesh and bone as well as cloth of trews, if she chose to clamp her jaws. But Rook merely held him as she had been taught, with that grip which would not lame a sheep or damage a fleece. He could feel her fangs pressing, but she had not broken his skin, and she would not unless he forced her into it.
“Little sister, you should let me go,” Kellis pleaded hoarsely. “It really would be best—”
Rook growled, cutting him off, the threat muffled by the cloth in her mouth. He had to look back and down at her over his shoulder: and when he did, their eyes met, amber to gray-gold. He had dreaded that. Kellis lifted the corner of his lip in a silent snarl. The teeth on his ankle tightened. Rook’s mesmerizing gaze never wavered. He took the deliberate warning to heart. They stared at one another
When she saw that he was no longer minded to run, Rook released him and watched with satisfaction as Kellis tmdged back toward the farmyard, pausing along the way to collect the spade.
Druyan did not desire that her mission should become Keverne’s public gossip, so she asked the chamberlain’s leave to greet her uncle informally, and in private. Therefore it was long past the supper hour when she was admitted to Brioc’s private apartments, and very late when she stood without the ducal door once again, her back pressed tight to the smooth stone wall in a mostly vain effort to control the trembling that had seized her.
Ten years separated Brioc, the eldest, from Druyan’s father Ronan, Kessallia’s youngest son. Druyan had been prepared to find an old man awaiting her. She had seen her uncle seldom since his accession and not at all since her marriage, but Brioc appeared little changed by the years his hair had gone all white about his long face, his stature seemed a little less lofty now that Druyan was grown herself. He favored his brothers enough in the face to not quite seem a stranger to her.
They greeted as kin—she was a vassal to Brioc, as well, but where women were concerned that was seldom discussed, since women did not bear the charge of supporting a liege lord with arms and armed men. They spoke of family, of births and marriages. Druyan asked after Brioc’s grandchildren, for he had half a dozen and was flattered by any mention of them that he had not needed to coax.
When she was sure she had his favor and attention, Druyan told the duke of the increasingly frequent raids on coastal farms and villages, and tendered her remedy for the problem—a swift mounted force to protect what the army afoot plainly could not. Esdragon was blessed with fine horses, surely such a force could be easily mustered?
For answer, the duke inquired whether Splaine Garth was in any part forested, and if so of what height, what girth were the trees? Would they do for ships’ masts? Druyan, t
hrown off her stride, could barely answer that she in fact had no trees of timber quality—there were very few such in Esdragon. Much of the land was treeless moor. Along the coasts the scattered trees leaned from the steady offshore breezes and grew too crooked for ship lumber. One had to go to the hills that made the border with Clandara before there were true forests. So it was that Esdragon had fishing boats and smallish merchanters, but no ships of war such as the raiders sailed. Timber was scarce, large logs for long keels difficult to come by.
The duke knew that. Her uncle told her at great length of the raiding problem, of how a fleet of warships would be their salvation, how the threat of raiders came from the sea and could therefore be stemmed only upon the waves. His eldest son, Dimas, was anxious to captain a force to make the sea roads safe—only first the difficulty of getting ships had to be resolved, some way.
Druyan’s trembling increased as she recalled the words, alone in the torchlit passageway. Ships, she thought, pressing her spine to the cold wall. He wants warships, never mind we dont have them, have no timber to build them, no men skilled to crew them. The raiders have been battening on us for ten years, and it will be ten years more ere any fleet of ours is truly able to take them on. Even if no raider stepped foot in Darlith during those years, how could she keep the farm alive with only the folk Brioc’s rule left her? Probably he’d be after boys like Dalkin in a year or so. She needed her men back, not pressed into service as lumberjacks and sailors. What will be left of us in ten years? The wall was no colder than her heart.
In less time than that, Kellis’ people had been dismissed as weaklings and shoved to the bare fringes of their own land. Ten years was time a-plenty for some bold Eral chieftain to choose to winter in Esdragon, to decide he liked the situation of a fortress by a river’s mouth. Time enough for him to take it, improve its defenses, move in with his own people—burrowing into Esdragon like a tick into a sheep, till finally there was a festering wound that no physick could cure. Then the plague would inevitably begin to spread . . .
Small wonder Brioc’s army didn’t defend the people even when given the chance of a warning. They weren’t meant to. The duke wanted ships. He’d sent his standing force to the mountains, to fell trees for masts and keelsl Never mind that for most of the length of its coast, Esdragon was as hostile to ships—even its own—as any land could be. Sheer cliffs and a vicious surf, the only possible anchorages where rivers cut paths to the sea—easy enough for intrepid merchant captains to slip into such harbors on a favorable tide, easy enough for raider captains to dare for their rewards—but how did one patrol and protect such a treacherous sea, day by day?
One did not, but Brioc probably would not be confronted by his folly in his own lifetime. Dimas would be duke by the time the extent of the disaster was shown—and since the scheme was more his than his father’s, he might not recognize it even then. As for the rest of them? Druyan shuddered again.
Was that why Kellis had found it so difficult to look ahead? Because his people had lost their future, lost their hope? Whatever his gifts, he would not allow himself to see more than the short view of the day to come, and by preference would look back to the day just past, in which evil was at least over, done with, and known.
What was she to do? Work her farm and ignore it all, hoping to be spared? Continue riding out to warn the coast, every time the sunfall wind swept in over the sea? Saving scraps in her hands while the whole coast went to ruin about her? Her gorge rose in a sudden wave of hopelessness, but she had not dined, so after a moment or two, Druyan swallowed hard and abandoned the support of the wall. Suddenly she longed to be out under the open sky, the clean wind cooling her face, lifting her hair. . .
A little draft made the floor rushes rustle, brushed her ankles like a cool invisible cat winding about her feet. The torches flickered, streamed smoke in their holders. Druyan unpursed her lips, with great care, and began to walk.
She aimed herself for the ducal stables, where Valadan was housed in surroundings certainly not unfamiliar to him. She had made no arrangements for sleeping space for herself, not really thinking ahead beyond the need to speak with her uncle. By that oversight, she was free—she could ride for home within the hour, be at Splaine Garth ere dawn—but Keverne’s great gates would be shut, there would be commotion if she tried to leave. She would be better for a few hours of rest—Druyan felt worn and distraught. She didn’t require a chamber. If there was an empty stall near to Valadan, as there had been when she’d left him, then she had all she needed, for she’d only tarry till first light made leaving possible.
She needed, though, to discover the route to the stables. The chamberlain’s usher had conducted her to the duke, and doors that had been open earlier were shut fast now that ’twas night, altering routes. A winding stair took her to a courtyard, but there were many such, and Druyan had no idea which she had entered, where it lay in relation to the stables or aught else. The hour being late, few folk were about. She might, Druyan thought with distaste, need to make her way back the entire way to her uncle’s apartments, where there were guards posted, so that she might ask her way.
The situation struck her as absurd. The most twisty trail through head-high grass in Splaine Garth’s salt marsh never confounded her, yet now she was lost in a warren built by her own ancestors’ hands. She could look into the bowl alongside Kellis, glimpse any bit of Esdragon and know where ’twas—but she had no least idea how to reach Keverne’s stables, certainly less than a thousand paces distant from her.
Voices, and then torchlight approached. The yellow flare of light revealed two young men clad alike in sea-blue wool, doublets and breeches, with gray cloaks thrown casually over all. Druyan smiled and stepped forward. Post riders would of a certainty know the location of the stables.
“Riders, may I impose upon your kindness?” she bespoke them politely.
“How many we aid you, Lady?” asked the one who held the torch, smiling back at her. He had dark-red hair, unless the torch lent it color, and a countenance that would have graced a statue. The other, grave-faced and less flamboyant, stopped in his tracks, staring at her.
“Druyan?” He named her as if ’twas beyond his belief.
“Robart?” Druyan held both her hands out, and her brother took them in his own. “Oh, well met! Let me look at you!” Her surprise was as great as his, though she might have expected him to be at Keverne from time to time, and by chance at the same brief time she was there.
It had been years since they had seen one another Robart’s youthful softness of face was replaced with a leanness, the bump on the bridge of his nose, broken in a long-ago scuffle Druyan well recalled, was more pronotmced. His skin was weather-browned—darker even than Kellis’—the same shade nearly as his wavy hair, which was cut chin length and pulled back into a tail. Her brother’s eyes were unchanged—dark blue, the left one bearing a very distinctive fleck of gold amid the azure. His cloak was pinned back at the left shoulder with a brooch of bright si]ver, shaped like a breaking wave. Druyan touched it lightly. “We were all of us proud when we heard, Chief-captain.”
Robart colored slightly, pleased. “It’s not such a great matter as all that, to rise to a captaincy,” he said modestly.
His companion—who likewise wore a captain’s badge laughed, and Robart scowled at him through the torch glare. “What brings you here, sister?”
“Valadan brought me here,” Druyan answered, for the delight of watching his brows shoot up.
“You still have that old fellow? But he must be—”
She could see him trying to reckon the years in his head. “He must be what I said he was, all along, else he would be too ancient to amble from Splaine Garth to the sea, much less bear me cheerfully all the way to Keverne. You can judge for yourself—I stopped you intending to ask the way to the stables. I knew Riders would know. I had no idea ’twas you.”
“You’re leaving at this hour?” Robart frowned at the notion, ready to forbid it refle
xively.
“I only came to chat with our uncle,” Druyan said hastily. “And I didn’t expect I’d be here long enough to bespeak a bed. As matters stand now, I believe I’ll sleep better out on the heather.
You’d rather that than the duke’s roof?” the red-haired captain inquired pleasantly.
“I’d rather get homeward before my farm’s raided and robbed again,” Druyan answered, not wanting her dissatisfaction to tempt her into indiscretion with a stranger. For all she knew, this captain was one of B1ioc’s sons, a cousin she knew too slightly to recognize without his name.
The furrow between Robart’s brows deepened. “Did you sup with the duke? No? Then forget this foolish talk of riding out in the middle of the night.” He took her ann. “Come with me now, we’ll talk while we have at some food. There are reports of raids coming in from up and down the coast, but Darlith is remote—we hear little. Whatever you can tell us of matters there would be useful.” He gestured toward his companion. “This is Yvain of Tolasta, one of my fellow captains.”
Yvain gracefully inclined his chestnut head. The torchlight caressed him. “Your servant, Lady Druyan. Your churlish brother has too seldom mentioned you, and never done you close to justice with his less than nimble tongue.”
“She’s a wed woman, Yvain,” Robart warned.
“As if I’d no manners,” Yvain observed with a wry smile, ignoring him. “Let me light the way, Lady. These cobbles are treacherous even to those of us who know them, and not so clean as they should be. The duke himself never comes this way—”
