Funny, that such a furtive, desperate life could feel so much like the right one in this place.
She was aware of Lord Celleriant’s regard, for he paused often—to wait for her to catch up—and watched her progress through the thin woods.
“Have you walked the Green Deepings before?” he asked her.
She jumped at the sound of his voice, for he had come upon her where the trees were thickest. “Yes.”
“When?”
“You were there. Yollana led us.”
“Ah. My apologies. I meant, perhaps, at some earlier time.”
“Oh. No.”
“Yet you walk with such care.” He reached out; his hands touched leaf and branch as if caressing them. They seemed to bow and shiver with unseen, unfelt wind; they rose above the line of her brow, the unruly strands of her tangled hair. “Why?”
“I don’t think the trees here would take kindly to anything else.”
He lifted his face and spoke; the words were complete gibberish to her—but they were musical gibberish, beautiful and complex in the rise and fall of fleeting syllables.
“What did you say?”
He offered no answer, pretending not to hear the question.
But after silence once again descended, the branches seemed to rise, and although leaves brushed the skin of her face, the rise of her cheeks, the exposed back of her neck, they did not cling or tangle.
“Remember this,” he said quietly. “If you ever have cause to walk the Deepings again.”
“Remember what?”
“Your caution. The trees have little love of men.”
She nodded. She wanted to be flippant, but she knew that anything she said would come out in a thin and shaky voice.
“Could you make it safe?”
“Make what safe, Lady?”
“The forest.”
“I am safe within the forest.”
“For others. For the villagers. Could you do for them what you just did for me?”
“You misunderstand me,” he said quietly. “What I said was not said for your benefit, but theirs.” His gaze lingered a moment upon the great, standing trees. “I am not their master. Not even the Winter Queen would make such a claim.”
“But you—”
“I merely drew their attention to your passage; what they gleaned from their attempt to observe you is entirely their own.”
She stared at him, and he turned. The smile he offered her was a dark one. “Do not think of me as a gardener, as the keeper of tame trees and tame, silent plants. If the Kialli make their home in the Northern Wastes, we make our home in the wild places, and in the wild places, you have no friends. Not even these,” he added, his gesture taking in the forest’s many trees. “Perhaps especially not these.”
She wondered, then, if she would ever understand him.
The forest was still dark, but it was silent now. No ghosts intruded upon her passage through the Deepings. She wondered if they had been laid to rest. Or if, like any other living presence, they required sleep and shelter before they gathered the strength to return.
Here and there, the trees broke, opening a window into the plains beneath moonlight. She saw no village, although a lone building sometimes suggested itself in the pale gray of landscape. No lights, though; no sign of movement. Funny that she found the lack disturbing. In the desert, the endless heat and cold had demanded her full attention. But here, in the Torrean of Clemente, the weather itself was not a threat, and she felt the absence of Averalaan keenly. City girl.
Or perhaps she missed the simplicity of her old life, even its darkness and its violence, for it was not the Terafin Manse that she longed for; not the Terafin manse that she missed. It was the streets of the twenty-fifth holding.
Memory, she thought. We choose it. We let go of the things that don’t suit us.
She had never imagined, in the spare, terrible struggle of life with her den, that there would come a time when she yearned for its stark simplicity.
What I would tell that girl now, she thought, as she continued to tread her careful path. If I were Evayne. If I could walk between then and now.
“ATerafin.”
She looked up. Met Avandar’s shuttered gaze. “What?”
“Damar.”
Verragar’s voice was strongest in the citadel of the Tor. Marakas had feared to find as much. He and the Radann who had chosen to accompany him walked with quiet deliberation through the streets of Sarel, their steps lighter and more certain than the heavy fall of cerdan boots across a curve broken by wall and fount, by gate and building. But after some distance, broken and awkward as it was, their steps traced a circle whose periphery enclosed the heart of Clemente’s power.
The Radann felt no love of, and no responsibility for, the Tor’agar. He had made his interests clear, and the past that existed as wall or gap between them would not, by the action of an evening, be bridged, although it might be forgiven.
But he had left his domis in the care of the Radann par el’Sol and had led his men to night’s war, when the only Lord that lay in watch was the one they both hated and—in the privacy of moonlight—feared.
“Santos,” he said, his grip upon Verragar too tight.
The Radann bowed head once.
“We can afford to offer no warning.”
“You think the servant of the Lord of Night is within the Tor’agar’s domis.”
“I think he must be. But we have heard no sounds of battle; no sounds of slaughter. None of the serafs have fled.”
“Perhaps they were given no chance.”
“Perhaps. But . . . I believe that the servant of the Lord of Night seeks to pass as human; there are few who could unveil him if such is the case.”
“But why would he—”
Marakas waited. After a moment, Santos el’Sol nodded. “Of course. Not even the General Marente would willingly be seen to associate with the envoys of the Lord of Night.”
“Indeed. He will guard his actions with care, unless he knows he is discovered.
“It is therefore imperative that when we find him, we guard our knowledge with equal care until the location is empty of all but the warriors of our Lord.”
Santos bowed. But his smile, as he rose, was grim. “It is seldom,” he told the Radann par el’Sol, “that the Serras invite the Radann to inspect their territory.”
“Indeed. But I do not believe that we will find our enemy in the midst of the women. The Tor’agar spoke—briefly—of an envoy within Sarel. It is there that we will find what we seek.”
“And when we find what we seek, par el’Sol?”
“Then,” Marakas said grimly, as a man does when he speaks truths that are unpleasant, “we wait.”
Ser Alessandro kai di’Clemente surveyed the men he could see in a grim silence. They stayed to one side of the bridge, by his command, positioning themselves along the East bank. The buildings in the East provided some cover, but it was scant; cover in the West was better, but it was denied them.
Orange light, surrendered by oiled wood and swinging lamp, lent glint to helm and revealed in chain a warmth of color that was in no way warm; it drew the eye. War colors, in the night. No camp had been made, although some precautions had been taken upon the Eastern road. If the Tor’agnate was canny enough to split his forces, it would not be by the Eastern road, or the thin windbreak provided by its scant trees, that they would catch Clemente unawares.
But across the river, the slender ribbon of Western road stretched into moonlight and darkness to either side of Damar. The shadows in the lee of the old forest lay across it like a shroud; even the waters seemed to shun its banks.
It was not always so, and it seemed an omen.
But of what? He was not a woman; not of the Lady. He could not say. Yet it seemed that something lay poised within the Deepings, and he felt the certainty of its presence like the cold, sharp cut of a perfect blade.
Let it, he thought, be our allies. Let it be only our al
lies.
The stag. The forest lord. The Northern strangers.
Wind replied. Wind caught his hair, the edges of his surcoat, the strands of Quickheart’s mane. Even when the sun was absent, the wind’s curtain fell; neither light nor darkness were proof against its voice.
Reymos and Adelos brought their horses to either side of Quickheart.
Above the sound of hooves, the nickering of nervous horses, the muted speech of men, above the quiet flow of water through the riverbed, came the voice of rolling thunder.
Ancient thunder; the greetings of the Tors of the plains.
“Tor’agar,” Reymos said. “He has brought the drums of war.”
“His drummers do not speak of war yet,” Alessandro replied, his words riding the crest of the steady rhythm.
“But they speak.”
“They introduce our presence.”
“Should we choose, we might introduce ourselves in a fashion of our own devising,” Adelos added. “Such drums have not been sounded in Damar since—”
“Enough.” The Tor raised fist; the words ebbed into silence. But the drums demanded response. By gesture alone, Alessandro called six more of the Toran forward. He had intended to travel with two; he now chose a complement of eight. More would be insult.
Less would be unwise.
Celleriant raised his head. “ATerafin.”
She frowned. “Thunder?”
“Drums,” he replied. “Kallandras?”
“Drums.” The bard frowned. “Among the plainsmen, drums were once a form of warning. Over time, they became a form of . . . greeting. But only between the tribal lords. The ruled did not choose to dare the drum’s voice.”
“Kallandras, is there anything you don’t study?”
“Senniel encourages diversity.” He offered her the briefest of smiles.
“So . . . what we’re hearing here is?”
“Is not a tribal greeting,” Celleriant replied, although she had offered the question to the bard.
“No,” Kallandras said, nodding. “Invocation?”
Celleriant’s gaze was fixed upon the distant source of the drumming.
“Invocation,” Avandar replied. “Be wary, master bard. Be wary, lord of the Green Deepings.”
Celleriant nodded.
I hate being ignorant, Jewel thought.
They are claimed by their element, the Winter King replied. They hear what the element hears. Although I do not understand how the mortal survives it, it is clear that he holds sway over air.
And the other?
Lord Celleriant is of the Arianni. Air, the Winter King said, but he spoke the word with less certainty, as if testing it. And earth, almost of a certainty.
You think they’ll summon fire? She spoke of the enemy, unseen and unknown.
Fire? No, ATerafin. Unless it suits their purpose, it is not the fire that they will invoke.
She turned, then. Beyond the trees at the edge of the Deeping she gazed at the riverbank.
She lived by the ocean. She understood the power—and the fury—of water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SER Alessandro kai di’Clemente crossed the bridge at the head of the tight formation of his Toran. It was more difficult than he had imagined, for Quickheart attempted to stay his ground and brought his hooves up short at the edge of the bridge’s gentle slope. Reymos and Adelos had as much luck with their horses, but they were men of Mancorvo. The horses stilled beneath their knees and obeyed their silent command to walk forward.
But their nervousness was lost to the determination of their riders, and when the river was behind them, Alessandro squared shoulders, hand falling to the hilt of his father’s sword. Damar was home to much history, much loss.
But it was his. He did not therefore choose to approach his cousin as supplicant. But he did not choose to approach in obvious anger; the greater part of the kai Manelo’s force lay within the West of Damar, and that force did not serve Clemente. Prudence did, and prudence had served him well in the past.
Even if he had cause to regret it.
Lady.
Could he have stopped his cousin’s obsessive whim on that single day of folly in the Torrean of Manelo? Could he have done more to deter him? Could he have seen the value that a simple half free clanswoman might have had to the kai el’Sol on that one day?
And if not—and he had not—could he not have lifted sword in his cousin’s defense?
As he cleared the bridge, the Western half of Damar stood revealed, and it was a much changed place. Some fires had burned too near the walls of buildings, blackening their surface, and the center of the village, reserved for the wagons and stalls that farmers built, had been cleared for Manelan use. At the heart of the market, built up from new wood, a platform rose; it was surrounded by the shoulders of cerdan.
Of the fount of contemplation, there was no sign.
He almost stopped, then, and his hands became fists. They would not dare. But they might; the fount itself was of little value; its history of less.
The Tor’agnate, Ser Amando kai di’Manelo, stood on the platform’s height, arms by his sides, helm raised. He wore sword, surcoat, a shield upon his back; he stood beneath the lee of a banner that the wind barely moved. In and of himself, he was remarkable—but he was not alone: to his left and right, the drums stood, and behind them, men with flattened hands, beating asynchronous rhythm. The men were not armored and armed; they wore robes.
The first sign.
The pulse of the drums was loud and insistent, like a heartbeat that was somehow devoid of life, but not of blood.
They made their demand, as he approached them.
He bowed to their pressure in silence as Reymos allowed the weight of the Clemente banner to fall, at last, in the silver and gray of moon’s light: the colors of Clemente. They were dark, here; they existed in spirit and memory, but the lamps did not give them the voice of hue; only the gold embroidery of the rising sun caught light, but the light was that of fire, not of day.
Ser Franko kai di’Manelo’s father awaited him, like a final judgment.
Yes, he thought, bitter now. He could have attempted to deter his cousin; to distract him. And failing that, he could have raised sword against the kai el’Sol. Of the two cousins, Ser Alessandro had always been the better swordsman.
But he had done neither. Had chosen to do neither. He had offered his cousin his blood after the fact of an ignoble death, but that was all. Not even the vengeance laid upon kin was within his meager ability.
He had hated the kai el’Sol. He had raged against him in the bitter heat of silence. He had all but vowed his revenge.
But he had taken the girl and her husband from the Torrean of Manelo, and he had brought them here. He no longer remembered their names; they no longer used them. That had been wisest. He wondered where they were, this eve; if they hid in hovel or hut, if they slept in a simple bed beneath a flat roof, surrounded by growing fields, sleeping fields.
Or if they had already perished; if Ser Amando had managed by some trickery or torture to find them here.
For Alessandro had chosen to bring them to Damar.
To leave them in Manelo was to guarantee their deaths, and in the end . . . in the end, although he hated the price that his cousin had paid for his crime, he accepted the judgment of the kai el’Sol. He could not speak to them; not to the girl, and not to the boy who had tried to protect her and had almost died a failure. But he could not leave them to die.
Sin against honor.
Sin against kin.
What would he pay, in the end, for the folly of that choice?
“Ser Alessandro kai di’Clemente seeks words with Ser Amando kai di’Manelan,” Ser Reymos intoned, over the beat of drums.
The line of Manelan Toran stood unbroken before the dais; the drums answered, louder now, a threat and not a greeting.
Alessandro waited with a patience he did not feel. Such was the way of the High Clans: to wait; to hide be
hind the perfect composure of waiting all anger and all fear.
“Ser Amando kai di’Manelo,” one of the Toran said, “will speak with you now.”
The drums roared; their beat grew loud now, wild. The horses reared in terror.
Beyond his back, Alessandro heard something like the rumbling movement of earth; heard above it the cries and shouts of voices made unfamiliar by fear. He could not turn—not easily—until he had mastered Quickheart. But he did not need to turn in the saddle, for Quickheart’s leap was a dance, a circular movement that almost unseated him.
Part of that dance brought him to the East, where Alessandro could see what he had heard, although in that instant neither made immediate sense to him.
The water in the river had risen from its bed like a wall, sundering bridge from either side of the village as if the wood and stone that anchored it were kindling and pebbles, children’s toys.
They crested the edge of the forest as if the forest itself had finally chosen to draw curtains and reveal the outer world. Jewel stumbled over a root and bit her lip; she righted herself, palm planted in damp earth. But she did not curse; did not cry out. There was a watchful silence in the village of Damar that reminded her of storm laden sky before the beginning of a torrent.
Avandar offered her a hand, and she accepted his aid before she realized what it meant: he had dismounted. Her eyes narrowed, but he shook his head in warning, and she subsided. Time, later, for argument.
Celleriant lifted a slender arm. In the distance, she could see the village wall rising into the dark of horizon.
And she remembered, as she looked at its odd shape, that Damar had no walls.
“Yes,” Celleriant said quietly, seeing the shift in her expression. “The river has risen.”
“Where is the Tor’agar?”
“I cannot see him,” the Arianni lord replied, after a pause. “The dwellings are in my way.”
Hers too. Now what? she thought, watching the moon’s light against the surface of moving water.
“Now, ATerafin, we play a dangerous game.” Avandar’s voice was soft.
So what else is new? Her legs ached. She wasn’t sure why. “If they see us—”
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