The Gathering of the Lost

by Helen Lowe

  “I suppose so.” Best, thought Carick, to change the subject. “Jehane Mor’s still unconscious. Or she was when I left the room.”

  Raven straightened his gauntlets. “What she did last night came at a cost. But you did well, too, you and the others.”

  Carick flushed a second time, this time for the praise. He wanted to say something graceful in reply, but no words came to mind and Raven did not seem to expect any, just nodded and passed into the hall. The sky was definitely turning light now, and when Carick dared look again he saw that Tarathan was dressed and knotting the chestnut braids out of the way. The herald buckled on his quiver and the harness for the swallowtail swords, before picking up his bow and crossing to where Carick stood.

  “You look better than you did last night.” He spoke with the clipped consonants that were all Ar, overlain by the trace of a Terebanth burr. Carick felt embarrassed by his suspicions, especially given his recollection of events in the white mist, and made himself meet the herald’s eyes.

  “I remember you shooting the beast-men that were hunting me. I . . .” He paused, the right words eluding him again. “Thank you.”

  Tarathan inclined his head, as though it was something that had needed doing, like digging the pit, and so he had done it, no more or less than that. Carick had assumed that he would continue on up the stairs to check on Jehane Mor, but instead the herald lingered. “When the attack comes,” he said, “Hamar will be needed at the gate, in Jehane’s place. Will you keep watch over her then?”

  Carick hesitated. “I cannot watch in the way that Hamar does.”

  “You can take care of the fire, at least, to ensure she stays warm.” There had been a fire, Carick recalled now, although he had barely noticed it when talking with Hamar.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he murmured, then looked away, still ill at ease.

  In the hall, Aymil was sitting opposite the door, cloth wadded around his thigh but with a crossbow, a ladyspike, and a dagger laid out on the floor beside him. On the wall, Audin was making his way from one sentry to the other, while at the gate Brania and Ilaise stamped their feet against the morning chill. In the stable, the first of the sleepers stirred.

  The sentry by the gate shouted, then blew the alarm. Raven came out the hall door, chewing as he ran, and Tarathan was already halfway across the yard when Hamar sprinted down the stairs. The sleepers in the stable stumbled to their feet, grabbing their weapons and running for either gate or wall. Outside, the horde yelled battlecries and Carick heard Raven’s voice above the din, sending archers to either side of the gate. So Hamar was right, he thought—the attackers must be using one of the fallen trees as a ram.

  The squire was already at the gate, with Girvase beside him, as Carick mounted the stairs. The damosels stood in a loose half circle around them, holding their ladyspikes, and Carick wished he could make out individual girls from amongst the turned backs and metal or leather caps. Another horn brayed in answer to theirs, echoing off the hillsides, and he fingered the hilt of his sword, guessing that he might finally get to use it. Despite the fire with its play of jewel-bright flames, he felt chill and gray as the morning when he stepped into the upstairs room.

  “Maister,” Alianor said, and Carick turned quickly toward her. For the first time since The Leas, the damosel’s eyes were clear, but she spoke so quietly that Carick had to lean close to hear her. At the same time, he was straining to interpret the clamor from the wall and waiting for the first ominous boom of a battering ram.

  “I . . . remember,” Alianor whispered. “Selia . . .”

  Perhaps, Carick thought, she has forgotten until now that Selia died at the Rindle. Alianor’s hand clutched at his. “Mal killed her. But that’s—not it.” Her eyes held his, their expression bruised.

  “You said she was glamored.” Carick remembered how Alianor had struggled to communicate that fact before, first to Raven when they caught up with Ghiselaine, and later on the old northern road.

  “Linnet was glamored. Perhaps we all were.” Alianor’s fingers tightened on his hand. “But Selia—her face was the glamor. When she drew steel on Ghis, first her eyes and then her whole face changed: she became someone else. And when Mal killed her . . .” The damosel gnawed at her lip, but her eyes remained clear despite their stricken expression. “I saw another,” she began again, and it was as though she had to force every word out. “Always there in my dreams . . . dark dreams . . .”

  She’s not fevered, Carick thought, sitting back on his heels, even if she is finding it difficult to speak. He was recalling Maister Gervon, his face curiously featureless in death, and the way his corpse smelled—as if it had been decaying for some time, rather than newly killed. “So an attacker could look like anyone,” he said. “Be anyone.” As he spoke, he felt the line of fire run between their joined hands again, just as it had at the gate. The sense of the watcher within grew clearer: focused and intent.

  Another horn blew, sounding very near the gate now. Still no sound of a ram, though, so the archers must be doing their work. Alianor pushed herself up onto her elbow, strained and pale from the effort. “Not anyone—” she began, then broke off, collapsing back against the settle.

  “ ’Ware. Someone comes.” Carick almost jumped, because he could have sworn the voice came from the fire. And it sounded like Jehane Mor, although that was impossible. He heard footsteps on the stair and then there was no time left to wonder or ask questions as the voice from the fire spoke again: “Conceal yourself.”

  Chapter 25

  Dancer of Kan

  “Maister Carro.” Malisande stopped just inside the door, her dark head turning as she surveyed the room. “Oh. I thought he was up here.”

  Alianor said nothing as Malisande moved further into the room and stooped to gather up the cloaks where Carick had lain. The newcomer smiled at her friend. “You’ve done surprisingly well, all things considered.” Briefly, she studied Jehane Mor’s unconscious face before turning back to Alianor. “I regret the necessity, but I really cannot allow you to speak of what you’ve seen.” And gliding across the floor, she clamped the bundled cloaks across the wounded damosel’s nose and mouth.

  Alianor’s hands clawed at Malisande’s as the jewel-bright fire exploded, hurling a fireball across the room—and Carick dropped from where he had been pressed into the ceiling above the door. But Malisande was already moving, too, flinging up a hand to ward off the fireball. She muttered a word that caused it to disintegrate a split second before Carick knocked her sideways. He paused to pull the cloaks away and in that moment Malisande came at him, her eyes shifting from dark, to topaz, to carnelian. And then they were both down, grappling across the floor.

  “You!” Malisande snarled. “I should have known there was something more than luck at play, for the soft River maister to have survived the Long Pass.”

  Carick kicked free and somersaulted to his feet, grinning as she sprang upright in the same moment, a knife appearing in her right hand. “It is a wise person who knows the face of her enemies,” he said. “Especially when she wears a mask herself, damosel Malisande.”

  The face before him still looked like Malisande, but grown older and grown hard. “Malisande! A sad nonentity with her herbs and healing cantrips. At least that one”—her chin jerked at Alianor, who was struggling upright again on the settle—“has enough power to be a nuisance. But you—perhaps I should have fed Gervon’s madness and let him take your face after all.” She leapt forward as she spoke, the knife flashing, but Carick slid clear of the blow and struck back, the heel of his hand glancing off her chin as she sprang away. Crouching, she drew a second knife with her left hand.

  Carick shifted to keep between her and Jehane Mor, as well as Alianor. “So it was you who murdered him.” He was remembering the cut-down ladyspike and the blood everywhere, the chapel of Serrut polluted by violent death.

  Her expression, fixed on him, was half chill smile, half snarl. “I did. He was so far gone he could barely
hold onto the face he had stolen—and his hatred was drawing unwelcome attention.” She feinted, baring her teeth as he evaded the strike. “Then again, perhaps his madness sensed the deception in you. So what are you, River spider? Hiding in ceilings and sleight of eye—that’s an assassin’s trick.” She attacked again, the left-hand blade darting out while she held the right reversed along her forearm.

  Carick evaded, blocking simultaneously into her wrist and throat. She swayed away from the blow to the windpipe, the right-hand dagger coming into play—but he already had a lock on her left arm and snapped it into a throw, twisting the knife free. A shock of pain contorted her features as she fell back, the left arm held at an odd angle while her dark eyes turned carnelian again, flaring to topaz when he spoke.

  “The River is diverse, demon. Not all those who dance for Kan serve the Assassins’ School.”

  “Demon, is it?” Calculation replaced pain in what had once been Malisande’s face. “What, then, does that make you?”

  More horns blew before Carick could reply, one on a deep somber note, the other sharp and clear. Malisande’s face stretched—then widened again as she flowed forward, changing shape as she came. Her teeth extended into incisors, her hands into claws as her body became a sinuous panther leaping for Carick’s face. If he dodged, the beast would land on the herald’s body: except that Jehane Mor was no longer prone but rolling to her feet. Her hands came up, the air between them twisting—and the creature that had been Malisande hurtled backward, sliding hard into the foot of Alianor’s settle.

  Carick sprang forward, intending to finish her before she could recover, but Malisande was already moving. So, too, was Alianor, raising herself up enough to catch the shapechanger by her mix of hair and fur and draw a knife across her throat.

  “That for our Malisande,” the damosel said, but the changeling’s eyes were on Carick, cloud shadows chasing across them even as her face stilled for the last time. He had the uncanny feeling that someone other than the shapechanger was looking out at him, perhaps more than one someone. And then the eyes glazed over and the face was not Malisande’s anymore.

  Alianor fell back against the wall as Jehane Mor joined Carick. “How did you come awake so quickly?” he asked her. “Was it the fire?”

  The herald sank onto her heels beside the corpse. “It was a trap,” she said, studying the body more closely. “When we performed the healing on Alianor, we realized that someone had placed a compulsion on her—that was part of what was sapping her strength. Girvase and Malisande were the most likely suspects, being closest to her, but it could have been anyone.” Jehane Mor paused. “If we had removed the compulsion entirely, the culprit would have fled or gone to ground. And we didn’t want to frighten whoever it was into precipitate action.”

  “Hence the trap.” Alianor’s voice sounded strained, but her eyes did not waver from the herald’s face, even at a renewed outburst of yelling from the walls.

  Jehane Mor nodded. “We countered the compulsion sufficiently for your returning strength to begin to fight free naturally—and for the one compelling you to realize the coercion was weakening, but still believe there was time to remedy the situation.”

  “I saw her at the Rindle,” Alianor said, “when she killed Selia. I knew then that she wasn’t Malisande. But I lost consciousness, and too much blood from the knife wound, and she always stayed close to me after that. I tried, but I couldn’t shake off her hold. I could only do what she allowed me to.”

  “And yet—” Carick turned his head, because the horns had fallen silent and the yelling sounded more like cheering now. “She could have joined with Selia and killed Ghiselaine,” he continued. “Yet Ilaise said that she argued against the expedition from the onset. And then she helped you to escape the beast-men.”

  “In the mists last night,” Jehane Mor said, rising to her feet again, “the were-beasts were trying for her as much as they were for you, Maister Carick. She eluded them quite easily, but the situation did make us wonder.”

  “Whether she was with another hunt?” Carick said slowly. “One with a goal other than slaying Ghiselaine . . .” He studied the herald. “Given your suspicions, you took quite a risk having both Girvase and Malisande in the Seven.”

  “Life is a risk,” Jehane Mor murmured. “The fact that both Ghiselaine and Alianor were still alive, despite the compulsion, suggested interests at least temporarily aligned with ours. And the situation was desperate.”

  What, Carick wondered, would set facestealers at odds? And this one had expressed regret over the need to kill Alianor. Yet he felt empty, almost bitter, as he recalled the shadow he had seen lurking outside the Normarch inn so soon after his arrival there. Was that the evening when it happened? Had the facestealer lain in wait for Malisande and killed her between inn and castle? Whatever the circumstance, a girl he liked had been murdered, possibly while he stood by and did nothing. Although, Carick thought wearily, I will probably never know exactly when the facestealer struck. And self-recrimination won’t change anything.

  The uproar outside, he noted, was dying away—and Alianor was staring at him, her brows drawn together. “Maister Carick,” she said, as though testing the name. “Yet she called you a dancer of Kan, a River assassin. Is that really true?”

  Ah, thought Carick: truth. “I have been trained by the Shadow Band,” he said, “which follows Kan, but in service to the princes of Ar. To protect them from our fellow dancers who serve the School and others of ill intent. I am also,” he added, “a cartographer, trained at the university in Ar.”

  Alianor’s eyes had widened as he spoke and now she leaned forward. “I do believe—” she began. She paused. “You’re not even a man. Are you?”

  Jehane Mor’s eyes met Carick’s, her smile wry. “Your illusions have been deep spun, my dear. But I fear they’re slipping.”

  The damosel looked from one to the other, with an expression that said she was beginning to fit all sorts of pieces together. “Who—” she began, but footsteps thudded outside and Hamar burst into the room.

  “Mal—” he began, then broke off, staring at the body on the floor.

  “She’s dead,” Alianor told him, then sobbed, a single harsh wrench of breath. “But she wasn’t our Malisande.”

  “No,” said Hamar. He reached out and clasped Alianor’s shoulder, a brief reassuring gesture. “But I didn’t mean Malisande, Alli.” He released her shoulder and took a step forward. “I was talking to Maister Carick.”

  Alianor’s expression became a mix of concentration and puzzlement, but she said nothing. The herald, too, was silent as Hamar lifted off his helmet, shifting it into the crook of his left arm. His eyes did not leave Carick.

  “Or rather, the person behind the cartographer’s mask,” he said in Derai. “If we are done with this masquerade—Malian.” He finished in the tone of an adept speaking a word of power, one that could be either invocation or closure. And the last of the self-imposed illusions that had concealed Malian even from herself, hidden behind the impenetrable mask that was Carick, burned clear. All her memories snapped back into place, integrating with everything the youthful maister had observed, and she allowed an echo of Haimyr’s slight, mocking smile to touch her lips.

  “Whose masquerade, Kalan?” she replied, also in Derai. “But what happened at the gate?” she continued immediately, reverting to the language of Emer, which was so similar to that of the River. “I never heard the ram.”

  Kalan scrubbed a hand across his hair, a gesture that was still all Hamar, the Emerian squire on the verge of knighthood. “Did you hear the horns? They were ours—Lord Falk and the force that went to the Hills.” A smile broke through the grief and weariness of his expression. “Herun didn’t go to Normarch. He knew there was no one there to come to our aid, or the castle’s if the horde got through. So he set off to reach Lord Falk instead, but found he was already on his way back.” He scrubbed at his hair again. “They found the tracks you see, all heading away fr
om the Hills, and guessed what must have happened. And Lord Falk and Manan have a form of empathy link, enough for him to know when the Summer’s Eve trouble broke. Once they met Herun, well—” He shrugged. “Obviously they were already close and force-marched last night to reach us.”

  With Lord Falk scouting through the Gate of Dreams, Malian thought, remembering the fox mask.

  “Lord Falk’s troops attacked as soon as they arrived,” Kalan said. “The ram bearers were caught in the open, making their way to the gate, and the rest just broke and ran when they heard the horns. So no more losses here, thank Serrut.”

  Serrut, Malian noted, aware of Jehane Mor watching them both. No doubt the herald was wondering how much of the old Derai bond still endured after so many years apart. Malian wished she felt more certain on that point herself as she studied the young man before her and tried to decide whether she was imagining the hint of reserve in his expression. The squire Hamar had been quick to befriend Maister Carro, but he might well feel differently now that the Heir of Night had resurfaced. Or perhaps he was simply searching for signs of the girl she had been, just as she sought signs of the novice called Kalan behind Hamar’s Emerian exterior.

  “And then,” Kalan said slowly, “I saw Malisande go up the stairs.”

  The puzzlement in Alianor’s face deepened. “So did you suspect her, too?” she asked.

  Kalan shook his head. “Tarathan and Jehane Mor already knew from our first meeting on the hill that I was no enemy agent and took me into their confidence. And Lord Falk and Herun joining Solaan meant three full Oakward here, as well as the heralds.” He shrugged. “I guessed that might spur the culprit to tie off loose ends and was sticking as close as possible to Gir when I saw Malisande move.” The weariness settling back into his face made him look older, Malian thought. “I feared the worst then.”

  “And hoped,” his mindvoice added, “that whatever disguise you had woven was not so deep-layered that you would be unable to protect yourself.”