by Helen Lowe
She could tell by the way he spoke that the last words must be part of the rite. Her fingers freed another braid, unraveling its full length as he had unbound her queue. She had loosened enough of the braids now that his chestnut hair was a fall of silk, heavy down his back. Malian smiled, thinking how it would sway as he moved, following the line of his spine—and swing around them both, shutting out the world, as their bodies came together. He was smiling, too, as she leaned forward and kissed the hollow of his throat.
“Malian of Night,” he said again, in the tone that was dark as wild honey.
She lifted her head and kissed him on the lips, silencing speech as his eyes met hers and body answered body, sinking to the grass. And far off in the shadowed woods the nightingale was singing again, sweet and sad beneath the twin moons, blue and twilit green, of Imuln’s blessed isle.
Chapter 45
First Night
Kalan was so tired that sleep eluded him. The thick walls of the Normarch town house muted the noise of roisterers in the square outside, but every muscle in his body ached and his mind refused to be still. And dwelling on his need for sleep, only kept him wider awake. Eventually he got up and went to the window, where the full moon overhead seemed larger than usual. The silvery face was almost liquid, as though it were swimming in the sky.
“Imuln’s moon.” He repeated Jarna’s words from their ride into the city and hoped that her first true knight’s service outside their company was going well. The roisterers’ latest song ended and the ring of shod hooves on cobbles sounded in the lull. A large number of hooves, Kalan decided, and coming from the direction of the palace. He crossed to a window that provided a clearer view of the town house gate, with the square beyond, and a few moments later a company of armed horsemen passed.
Ducal guards, Kalan thought, his night sight picking out the green and black in their livery. They seemed purposeful, and he listened until the hoofbeats faded eastward. Even the noisy occupants of the square seemed subdued by the guards’ passage, for a few minutes went by before they began another song.
Kalan recognized the spring song of Rolan and Lyinor, and guessed the singers would grow maudlin over the last sad verses. For some reason he felt melancholy himself, listening to the refrain with its promise of parting and loss—and he was still wide-awake. He sighed and decided to check over his arms again, ahead of the morning’s finals. Rather than relying on the bedside candle, he went to fetch the hallway lantern and saw a gleam of light beneath Audin’s door. The town house steward had given the Duke’s nephew the largest of the guest rooms, and when Kalan knocked, then peered around the door, he saw Audin sitting at a table scattered with scrolls, the lamp beside him turned up high.
“I’ve turned scholar,” Audin told him. “Maister Carro would be proud of me.” Despite his light tone he was pale beneath his outdoor tan, with dark smudges under his eyes. Kalan guessed that the injured arm was causing him considerable pain, even if Jehane Mor had been sure it was not broken—and his friend’s shoulders and ribs were heavily bruised as well.
“Why?” Kalan asked, shutting the door behind him then crossing to the window seat. He bit back a groan as he sat, and Audin grinned.
“Ombrose looked in on me last night,” he said, the grin fading, “to tell me I had done well against the northerner. He also mentioned the queen’s visit because he thought it would amuse me, especially her expectations in terms of my uncle and this so-called Great Marriage.” Audin did grin again, briefly. “Apparently Hirluin will do just as well as my uncle—if he ever gets here. Alli spoke of the Great Marriage, too, when she and Ilaise visited today, because Queen Zhineve-An asked Ghiselaine if it was still practiced here. But when Ghis asked her what it was, exactly, the queen clammed up.”
Audin eased back in his chair, frowning at Kalan across the disordered tabletop. “I had nothing better to do, so I asked Ilaise to go to the temple of Serrut for me and ask for any information about Jhaine and the Great Marriage in their records. Not that the temple here is anything like the university in Ar, but still—” His voice implied a shrug. “I gave Illy my signet ring, in case the priests proved difficult, and one of them turned up late this afternoon with these.” He gestured at the scrolls. “Mostly they just contain snippets, the odd reference here and there to the backwardness and oddities of Jhaine, but there’s more in some of the older records.”
Kalan found that he was interested, despite it being the middle of the night. “So is it a true marriage,” he asked, “or just a ceremony?”
“Both, I think.” Audin was thoughtful. “But what gets invoked depends on the circumstances. The most auspicious time for the ceremony, the one when it bestows the greatest benefit, is at Midsummer during a Great Year—which is why we have Queen Zhineve-An here now, I suppose.”
“To what end, though?” Kalan asked.
Audin leaned forward. “That’s where it gets interesting. Everything I’ve found alludes to the rite being one of binding. I think its oldest form bound rulers to the health of the land, because the mysteries of Imuln here in Emer derive from that, too. But the big legend out of the dark years is that the priestess-queens of Jhaine used the rite to bind the world back into calm when the Cataclysm threatened to tear it apart.”
The Cataclysm that we caused, Kalan thought bitterly, when our Derai Alliance arrived on Haarth. “That would be a very powerful magic,” he said slowly.
“Goddess wrought, is what the story claims. And paid for in human blood.” Audin made a face. “From what I can gather, the rite almost always involves blood being shed.”
“Human sacrifice?” Kalan asked, shocked.
Audin nodded. “I think that’s exactly what the Cataclysm story refers to. I don’t know how prevalent the blood aspect is now—although if it is still part of their rites, it might explain why the priestess-queens keep Jhaine so closed. In terms of the bindings made, there’s a passage in this scroll here”—Audin picked up an age-spotted parchment—“that suggests the Great Marriage ritual can be perverted to bind one participant’s will to that of the other partner.”
“Enslavement?” Kalan asked, with a quick flash of loathing as he remembered his own forced confinement in the Temple of Night. The Jhainarians and their rite, he thought, still tasting that loathing, were sounding more unpleasant by the moment.
“A puppet,” Audin agreed. He tapped the scroll against the tabletop, his expression grim. “I think my uncle needs to read this passage as well.”
Kalan straightened, his pulse quickening. “Do you think that’s why the Jhainarians are really here? Trying to create a puppet Duke of Emer?” The idea almost defied belief. Yet, he admitted to himself a moment later, I would never doubt the potential for such a plot if we were talking about the Swarm.
Audin spread his hands wide. “I know. It sounds impossible when you say the words out loud, the stuff of Oakward tales from the dark years. Not many people believe in those old magics now . . .”
But we know they are real, Kalan finished silently, at least in terms of the Oakward and our experience of the Swarm on Summer’s Eve. So if real in Emer, why not also in Jhaine? He glanced out the window at the Midsummer moon. “Queen Zhineve-An seemed very keen to keep her vigil tonight,” he said finally.
Audin’s eyes held his with painful intensity as he set the scroll aside. “Do you think she would harm Ghis? Especially if she saw the Ormondian treaty standing in the way of whatever her ambitions may be?”
Kalan shook his head. “This vigil has been too public.” Yet now that doubt had been sown, he could not quite shake it off.
“We’re standing guard as well, I suppose. And I can talk with my uncle tomorrow, before he leaves for the tourney finals.” Audin still sounded unhappy, though, as he knuckled his eyes. “You need to sleep,” he added abruptly, frowning at Kalan. “You’re going up against Ombrose tomorrow and he never gives any quarter.”
“I think it might be today,” Kalan replied, then paused as his ke
en hearing caught an almost silent step from the main hall below, then the tiny click of the front door opening. He turned, peering down from the window, and saw a cloaked figure carrying a ladyspike cross to the open gate. “Ser Raven,” he said. The knight stopped within the shadow of the gate and remained motionless, looking out across the square where the revelers had stopped singing altogether after their spring song. Probably still weeping on each others’ shoulders, Kalan thought wryly, given the influence of the drink.
“I suppose he’s going to the temple.” Audin had crossed to the window as well. “Although I thought I heard Raher leave a while back, to relieve Girvase.”
Someone had gone out, Kalan remembered then, although he had been too busy trying to fall asleep to pay attention. “Maybe Ser Raven can’t sleep either and has decided to spell Ado anyway.” He surprised himself with a yawn as the knight left the gate. “You’re right,” he told Audin. “I should sleep before my turn on watch.”
This time his eyes grew heavy as soon as he lay down and sleep claimed him swiftly, pulling him into a sea of white fog in which hoofbeats drummed, reverberating through the Emerian earth. The fog billowed, melting into long fingers of mist between the black oaks that marked the Emerian portal into the Gate of Dreams. Kalan swallowed, feeling sweat prickle along his palms, and then as quickly chill as he wondered what power could have reached through his careful barriers and brought him here against his will.
He could still hear the hoofbeats drumming out their steady, imperative tattoo, but could detect no hint of any power he recognized: not the Oakward, or the Hunt—or even Malian, despite the empathic link that had existed between them since the Old Keep. Kalan was no seeker, but he extended his psychic awareness as far through the mist as he could, pushing down fear at the same time. For throughout the years that he had been in Normarch and Malian on the River, the link between them had always endured, a faint but tangible part of his world.
Perhaps there is something there after all, Kalan thought—but it was almost an echo of what he was used to. As though—and here fear rose up again—Malian was somewhere much further away than the River. And this was the Gate of Dreams, with its profound uncharted deeps, that both he and Malian could enter in their physical bodies as well as through dreams.
So if she’s done that, he reflected grimly, she could have gone anywhere at all, either through her own volition or because she’s encountered an enemy like Nindorith again.
She’s strong, Kalan tried to reassure himself. She just needs someone reliable to guard her back. Someone like you? the cool little voice from the tourney ground jeered. When you have already let her know that you’re only returning to the Wall because of the debt you owe Rowan Birchmoon? And now she’s learned that you’re shutting out dreams as well. So why would she confide in you, if she had plans that involved going deep within the Gate?
Kalan could not think of a satisfactory answer to that question, so he settled onto his heels and waited, as the Oakward had taught him, for the Gate—or whatever power had brought him here—to reveal its purpose. The fingers of mist deepened, flowing around him so that even the nearest oaks faded into ghostly silhouette.
“ . . . trust me in this. They are vital to the influences that oppose us.” The whisper through the blankness was so faint that even Kalan had to strain to hear it. It’s like overhearing a wisp out of memory, he thought, concentrating, rather than actual mindspeech. A pause followed. “Make no mistake, the heralds’ deaths are required.”
Kalan held very still, letting his thoughts assume the same chill whiteness as the fog surrounding him. The weight of the black pearl ring around his neck grew lighter, but he clamped his mind around it, refusing to let it glow. He was remembering something the Huntmaster had said, the first time they met in a brume very like this one: There are too many who walk here heedlessly, sure of their own power. They never think to ask who may ghost through the mist beside them, or overhear when their words or thoughts plummet like stones into the deep places.
After a moment another voice spoke, hissing out a single word. “Emuun!”
A man answered, deep and dispassionate. “ . . . this pair evaded our hunters for a long time in the north . . . driving them into Emuun’s hand should have been enough. But the fist refused to close.” The deep voice strengthened, no longer memory’s echo but the clear tone of someone standing just beyond the bank of mist. Kalan waited, careful to keep his breathing soft. “Of course, with Nindorith out of the game for the moment—”
“Because of Ilkerineth’s whelp.” Kalan heard satisfaction in the hissing voice.
“As you say.” The man’s voice was indifferent. “But we are now free to pursue our own course and deal with Emuun at the same time.”
The voices faded, but Kalan could not see the oak trees at all now and suspected that the world of dreams had shifted around him, away from paths frequented by the Oakward. The herald pair who had evaded the Swarm hunters in the North had to be Tarathan of Ar and Jehane Mor. But who was this Emuun whose fist had failed to close around them? The speaker with the hissing voice had suggested that he had been close to the heralds for some time—and with Swarm facestealers in the game, that was entirely possible. It could be anyone, Kalan told himself, anyone at all.
“Token-bearer.” The remote voice shivered through the mist and Kalan jumped, because no one had called him that since he left the Wall of Night. He waited, half dreading what the mist might reveal, but the whiteness remained blank.
The voice spoke again, cool across his dreaming mind: “You need to impose your will on it.”
Kalan frowned, because that was not the Oakward way. Then again, his inward self pointed out, you are not truly Oakward—are you? Cautiously, he extended his awareness again, pressing against the white mist. At first he thought nothing was happening, then gradually the mist receded, its whiteness thinning. He saw a streetscape that he did not recognize between the strands, with a warrior in Darksworn armor sprawled on the pavement. Not Nherenor, he thought, puzzled: that’s not even Caer Argent. And then he saw Orth approach, drawing a long, wickedly curved knife before he wrenched the fallen warrior’s helmet off and cut his throat. Having made sure of his enemy’s death, the Sword warrior proceeded to mutilate the face and sever the fallen warrior’s ears, finally kicking the body before he walked away.
Serrut! thought Kalan: why do I need to see this? He prodded at the mist again and it boiled into his face, making him jerk back. When his vision cleared he found himself poised above a ruined hall, looking down at a tangled garden growing over fallen masonry and charred beams. He recognized the old Sondcendre mansion from the previous night, noting every overgrown walk and hiding place he had used to elude his Darksworn pursuers—and picking out the warriors who hunted there now. Darksworn again, he thought, seeing the lightning bolts on their helms. And Derai. He recognized Orth from his bulk and the knife he was using to cut another opponent’s throat.
The moon over the broken garden was the same full, silvery orb he had seen from the Normarch town house, and Kalan guessed that one side must have pursued the other into the city tonight. Interpreting the truce as belonging to the tourney grounds, he supposed: the Darksworn leader had more or less said as much earlier. He was sure the Duke would not agree and wondered if this was where the ducal guards had been heading—but could see no sign of any others involved in the conflict. Nor could he believe that this was what he had been drawn into the Gate of Dreams to see, since the Sword warriors and the Darksworn were welcome to exterminate each other, as far as he was concerned.
Grimly, Kalan extended his awareness and his will again. A last tendril of mist wrapped itself around him, then drifted away, leaving him staring into the room beneath Imuln’s dome. Jehane Mor was there, sitting cross-legged in the deep trance of one who holds a shield of concealment. But also protection, Kalan realized, a little puzzled by the shield’s strength, even though Ghiselaine and Queen Zhineve-An were keeping their First Nig
ht vigil in the old chapel. He was not entirely sure that he could have generated and held so powerful a shield by himself—and where was Tarathan, who should have been protecting his herald partner while she was sunk in so profound a trance?
Kalan widened his vision and saw shadows slipping through the temple woodland toward the old chapel. Fear twisted in his stomach as he caught the Swarm taint and saw one of their number kneel, directing a long rod carved with runes, first at the main temple and then the courtyard where Rastem and his companions stood. Warding them out, Kalan thought. He could almost see the dark power emanating from the deeply carved rod.
He tried to reach through to Jehane Mor and Alianor first, but the mindcall fell away from him as though into a well, without any echo back. Either the rod is blocking me even through the dream, he thought, or Jehane Mor’s shield is too strong—or both.
Stay calm, he told himself, and delved for Malian or Tarathan again, but only found the same uncanny absence. In the temple grounds, a cloaked figure halted in the bulk of the main precinct, studying the moon-bathed cupola of the old chapel. When he threw back his cloak and drew his sword, the blade gleamed beneath the moon—and Kalan saw that he was wearing parti-colored hose, one leg black as his cloak, the other royal blue.
“Wake up, you fool!” The remote voice cut like ice. “You’ve no time to waste!”
No time at all, Kalan agreed. He touched Girvase’s sleeping thoughts with an Oakward alert and threw one last mindshout at Malian, as far as he could reach across the gulf that was the Gate of Dreams: “Danger! Beware!”
And then he was rolling to his feet in the Normarch town house and reaching for his sword.
Chapter 46
Moonset
Malian only saw the potential trap in the last searing flash before the fire of their seekers’ powers, coming together as one, fused in light.
