Ensign Maddoc had tumbled the assassin into the river and it was the young Lord Keythril, released from prison. He was dragged from the water, half drowned. Blayn smiled and pressed no charges. The next year there was another incident of this kind involving two Danasken blades, hired by an older lord, the husband of a beautiful young wife.
Blayn, warned by his sword, Ishkar, and stoutly supported by Gael Maddoc, made short work of these men. This night was lit by the full moon: afterward the stench of death filled the little fountain court where the attack had taken place, beyond what the blood of two men could have brought there. The young lord, half-gagging, insisted that the dead be left where they had fallen. He washed at the fountain and hurried on, shadowed by his faithful kedran, to the shelter of the palace, where his brother officers were waiting to dine.
Wind of this affair came to the ears of Lady Annhad, and she sent a messenger to Ensign Maddoc. Gael was leading her horse, Ebony, down a narrow lane under the palace wall when the capricious animal went backward, tugging on his bridle. She saw that a man stood in the path. He was middle-aged, dark skinned, rather tubbily built, with a bright cummerbund under his grey silk robe and a turban of the same yellow silk. He hailed her softly by name and bowed low.
“Elim,” he said, “house servant of the Lady of Pfolben. I have been entrusted to seek a token from you, Ensign Maddoc, that I may replace it with a true-handed gift and a message.”
He brought from his sleeve a little ivory coffer. Gael was experienced enough now to know it must have jewels inside, but she could not think what the man might mean either by a token or by a true-handed gift, a message. Elim saw her confusion, and he smiled.
“You have been almost three years long in your lord’s service,” he told her. “In that time, one sister has whispered words that reached another’s ear, O child of the Holywell.”
Gael’s hand went unwillingly to her throat, where for almost four years now she had worn Pearl of Andine’s lily pendant. Reluctantly, she brought it out of her clothes and held it in her hand, admiring—for perhaps the last time—the pendant’s beauty, the tiny pearl’s subtle spark. She did not know if this little bauble had ever given her the protection Lady Pearl had sworn of it, but it had served for these years as a hidden token to her bright destiny—she hoped. Now she found herself loath to hand it over, and that not even directly to Lady Annhad’s hand.
Elim smiled again, and she wondered if he found enjoyment in the confusion that must be playing across her features. Schooling her expression more firmly, she handed the little metal flower over. “This was a great gift from a gracious lady,” Gael Maddoc said, her tongue thick in her throat. “Please tell your own lady that I hold her sister in the highest regard, and ask only that she keep this token safe.”
Elim gave a half-bow, acknowledging her, and handed her in his turn the ivory box. When Gael flipped back the lid, wondering, she found a silver-colored ring with a pale green stone. In its depths there was a spark of darker green that winked at her like a single eye. She thought at once of the sword Ishkar.
“My thanks to the Lady,” she brought out awkwardly. “This is a fine gift, Master Elim. What have I done to deserve it?”
“Do you need to ask that?” purred the messenger.
“This ring comes from the Burnt Lands,” said Gael boldly, “and so do you.”
“The ring comes from the Swordmaker of Aghiras,” said Elim. “It has many useful properties. Will you put it on?”
She could feel the magic of the ring already, but she would not let him see that she was afraid. In any case she trusted her lord’s mother. She slipped the ring on to the middle finger of her right hand and it fitted perfectly.
“Here is the message,” said Elim. “Knowing who you are, your sacred heritage, the Lady of Pfolben begs you to stay by the Lord Blayn and protect him, giving this ring as her pledge to you. In the spring he will be invited to hunt in the Burnt Lands by the Dhey of Aghiras and you will go with him, as a member of the special escort.”
“I will do my duty,” said Gael, not knowing how else to answer him.
She heard some echo of her own voice replying and saw the messenger’s smile. She drew off the ring and said:
“Give me the message again, in exactly the same words!”
Elim bowed and rolled off the words in a foreign tongue that she guessed was the language of Aghiras. Yet before she had understood every word and been able to reply in the same language.
“As I said,” continued Elim in the common speech, “the ring has many useful properties. You have found out one of them.”
“Does it work for all tongues?” asked Gael Maddoc.
“No,” said Elim, “only for the language of the Swordmaker. And you must be discreet in its use when acting as an interpreter. Let your own replies be imperfect as if you had learned a little of the speech from a companion in arms.”
So Gael slipped on the ring again, more fearfully than before. Would she become invisible? Would it call up demons? The green stone winked up at her, comfortably, like a cat’s eye, as if to say: “No such thing! Would I harm you?”
When Elim had gone, Gael touched for reassurance at the empty place against her throat where the lily pendant had hung so long, mimicking its light pressure. This was her second crossing with Strett of Cloudhill’s daughters, and again a gift far beyond her stature had been brought to her. In her service to her beloved lord, she had learned much and seen a little broader view of the world. With this gift … alone in her plain barracks room, it was easy for the young kedran to hope she saw again the touch of destiny—even as the slight insights she’d gleaned as the Heir of Pfolben’s loyal protector called a laugh, and warned her to make nothing of a lady’s trifles.
Soon afterward, Blayn of Pfolben received envoys from the Dhey of Aghiras, who humbly begged him to take part in the Royal Hunt of the Lakes of Dawn, together with other princes of the Burnt Lands and of Eildon over the Western Sea. The envoys assured the young lord that this chance would come only once in the lifetime of any prince.
The Lakes of Dawn, on the very outskirts of the wide lands of Aghiras, beyond the sown land and the desert, came into being after a season of heavy rain. The tussock plain grew into a marsh, then into a string of crystal lakes. Tall reeds sprang up, the plain was green overnight; the water and the lake shores teemed with wild life. For a moon, no more, the place was a hunter’s paradise, then the fierce sun dried up the lakes like so many drops of dew. Nothing was left but saltflats, to be harvested by the desert tribes. The bright caravans of the Dhey and his guests would depart with a last winding of their silver hunting horns …
Blayn of Pfolben received the envoys graciously and set about choosing his escort for the journey.
CHAPTER IV
A JOURNEY TO THE BURNT LANDS
The city of Aghiras was all white and gold, the domes and spires floating out of the sea mist as the galleys of the Southland drew near. The men and women of the special escort had been underway for ten days, with the long river journey from Pfolben to the Sea of Ara, but no one felt weary. They plunged into the teeming life of the wharves and the bazaars. Camels, by the Goddess, bobbing and sneering everywhere, and strange faces under turban and tarboosh. There was a desert warrior, white robed, and there three women, jet black, with huge baskets on their proud heads. There strode the much-vaunted palace guards of the Dhey, the Gaura, in bronze helmets.
Florus, Captain-General of Blayn’s escort, drew his men together and consulted with Captain Verreker of the kedran. Where were the marvelous horses, the steeds bred to outrun the winds of the desert, the coursers of the sun? He began to parley with the detail of the Gaura sent to meet them. Gael Maddoc, at his side, was able to tell him that the horses were waiting behind the palace, beyond the pleasure gardens. So they marched off, sixty strong, and Gael, with the rank of acting captain, after only just short of four years’ service, went in a silken litter to be near her lord.
Blayn wa
s as happy and as well behaved as she had ever known him. He did not set much store by the glamor of the Burnt Lands, their magic and mystery, but he loved to hunt. The opportunity to test himself against the other princes: Lalmed, son of the Dhey; Meed-al-Mool, called the Red Prince, from Ferss; Kirris Paldo of Eildon, his distant cousin; not to mention Noulith, the warrior queen of the Valfutta … this was the sort of competition that truly excited him.
As Blayn leaned back on the silken cushions, Gael Maddoc watched the sights of the bazaar through a gap in the curtains. In the curve of a doorway outlined in raw turquoise, she saw a man watching them: he was very tall, hawk faced, in a straight black robe embroidered in gold. On his neat white turban he wore a single emerald that flamed suddenly as if the sun had caught it.
Her ring sent out a little dart of fire onto the curtain of the litter and the sword. Ishkar moved in its sheath under Blayn’s hand.
“What the devil … ?” he said.
“See, my lord!” said Gael. “The tall man yonder, could it be … ?”
“Yes,” he said, rising and peering through the curtains, “it might be Zallibar, the Swordmaker. I glimpsed him once in the Dhey’s train when they came to Pfolben four years past. When I received my sword.”
“He is surely a great magician as well as a craftsman,” she said. “He watches us.”
“Have no fear, Maddoc,” laughed Blayn. “He serves the Dhey, and old Lalmed the Fat still has hopes that I will wed his daughter Farzia.”
Gael gave him a questioning look, although she had heard the tale before. Blayn shook his head.
“One day you must come to it,” she said, smiling.
“Maddoc, stop talking like my mother!”
Gael Maddoc glanced again into the streets of Aghiras and caught sight of a poor woman carrying a waterskin and a slender, curly-headed lad who ran after her on dusty feet. She thought of her own childhood; she seemed to see her brother Bress following as her mother did the chores and drew water from the well. She held fast to the moment and the memories it conjured. Through all the ceremonies in the palace of the Dhey, she remembered who she was, Gael Maddoc, from Holywell Croft on the Chyrian coast of Mel’Nir.
Later she saw the Dhey himself, overflowing his jeweled throne; she saw the silken luxury of the palace, where even the kedran were housed in perfumed splendor. Beyond the pleasure gardens with their fountains and groves of tamarisk, she went with the other men and women of the escort to choose a horse, one of the coursers of the sun, from the Dhey’s stable.
It was here that she first met Jazeel. She examined a black mare in its box and knew that two of the Gaura and a woman house servant stood behind her in the shadow of a palm tree. One voice said in the language of Aghiras:
“That is the one … tall as an afreet with fox-red hair.”
“Walks like a man. You know what they say about women warriors.”
“Find out!” ordered the old woman. “Find out her secret heart … .”
Then he was before her, bowing gravely as he said his name.
“Madame Captain,” he said in the common speech. “Let me show you the horse I would choose …”
“My thanks, good Jazeel.”
Gael Maddoc laughed to herself and thought of the night back at home in Pfolben when she would be telling the tale to her friends Amarah and the light-laughing Mev Arun. The man sent to gain her favor was tall and strong; he had a rugged face and a ready smile. She knew why he was sent to her and could guess who had sent him. The Princess Farzia, a languorous, dark beauty, still cherished hopes of a match with Blayn of Pfolben. She wished to know his heart.
It had all happened before: she had been offered presents of one kind or another, she had been courted. So far she had proved incorruptible. She asked no favors of her lord Hem Blayn, and she told none of his secrets. There were times when she wished she had put in a word to her master. Sergeant Witt had said that the kedran escort for the Royal Hunt were showy and lightweight; they needed a leaven of experienced soldiers. The desert held uncalculated dangers, and everyone had heard of hunting accidents.
Now, far from her friends in Kestrel Company, Gael Maddoc did not put off Jazeel.
If Hem Blayn kept the poor princess dangling, why shouldn’t she do the same with this guardsman? The voluptuous air of Aghiras worked its magic upon all the visitors … a month spent by the Lakes of Dawn was bound to be a month of pleasure. She allowed Jazeel to lead her to an inner stall where there was a fine-boned brown mare with a burnishing of black along her spine and on her delicate muzzle, mane, legs, and tail. He waved away a groom who said the visitors must all choose from the loose boxes. The mare was called Azarel, which was a name of the Goddess in the hunting field.
The caravan moved southeast from the city to the sound of flutes; the outriders, two hundred strong, were bowmen of Sarcassir, who ringed the caravan by day and by night. The palace guard rode next, then a long train of snow-white oxen with gilded hooves, who pulled the wheeled carriage of Dhey Lalmed. Under the wide canopy of cloth of gold, the Dhey rode with a few chosen men and women of his court.
Next came racing camels, led by Young Lalmed and his friend, the Red Prince, Meed-al-Mool. Then, behind his escort, all finely dressed and well mounted, came Blayn of Pfolben, fretting because the Red Prince was placed before him. Kirris of Eildon came up to ride with his cousin and grumble about roughing it in foreign lands. The baggage train of the expedition, with silken bails of provender, with furled tents and carpet rolls, with coffers of precious herbs and donkey loads of kitchenware, trailed behind like the tail of a kite.
By day and by night, as Gael rode in her place near Hem Blayn, Jazeel came by with a basket of figs, a jar of honey, a coral amulet. They talked most companionably together and strolled about in the twilight after the camp had been set down. The low tents were spread out, first among the fields, then upon the sand. The cold air from the desert was full of music and voices. Gael kept watch for the Swordmaker and thought she saw him more than once. He descended from the Dhey’s carriage; he lurked, in a different guise, among the horse pickets. He stood in a field, drawing water from an old well, as the caravan went by.
So they came at dawn to the Lakes of Dawn; in the light of the rising sun, the sheets of water seemed to hover like a vast mirage, just above the horizon. There, in the tender green of the reed forests, rose the pavilions of Noulith, the warrior queen, and the hunting platforms of the Dhey. The unearthly beauty of the place troubled Gael Maddoc; the lakes would vanish away, she knew that, but she would remember them always—they would remain in her dreams. The hunt began and she was more than ever troubled, though the killing of wildfowl and antelope had always been the sport of princes.
“Nay, come,” said her friend Jazeel, “I know you do not like to see the trophies spread out, the feather carpet, but these birds must be culled. They are an overgrowth like the lakes themselves. Come the season’s end, they will flock to the sown land and spoil the planting.”
They sat in the reeds, and round about there were other men and women, drinking a little wine, strumming upon a lute, then growing quieter in their own green bowers. Gael Maddoc let her head rest upon Jazeel’s shoulder and thought of nothing but the shimmer of the lovely lakes, so soon to pass away. So they made love, but before dawn she always slipped away and returned to the door of the tent where Blayn of Pfolben had his bed. The young noblemen had their own diversions; every night there was a feast, with music and dancing.
Blayn was having a marvelous hunt. He outran with the number of his trophies all but Meed-al-Mool, the Red Prince. There were one or two of those unfortunate incidents that seemed to pursue the young Lord of the Southland. A beater of the Valfutta was shot with one of Blayn’s arrows; there was a disagreement over the count of blue antelope: Young Lalmed swore he had been robbed.
Every morning when she saw Blayn ride out or step into his boat Gael Maddoc felt the same wonder and pride … she served this noble lord, she was his kedran.
In the evening when they trailed back from the hunt she was relieved if things had gone well. Slowly, slowly the weather grew hotter, the reeds withered and turned brown, the lakes became more shallow. At last, before the season was quite ended, the caravan packed up and took to the desert road to return to Aghiras.
Gael Maddoc had passed the time of the hunt in a dream, and now, one day from the lakes, the dream became a nightmare. She was riding with Jazeel behind Blayn and Captain-General Florus; the trumpeters of the Dhey had just sounded the call to make camp for the night. Then a brace of camels came racing, stiff legged, through the ranks, horses reared and shrieked. Gael saw a camel boy she knew, his face a mask of fear. He cried out:
“Afreet! Afreet!”
Jazeel uttered a curse and pointed off to the west Something moved like a cloud of oily smoke, blue and black against the pale sand. Lightning crackled at the edges of this strange cloud as it came rolling swiftly into the midst of the caravan. For a moment, holding her brown mare steady, Gael saw the cloud take shape. It reared high above the mounted columns: a blue cloud giant with a fearsome grinning face, blazing red eyes, and mighty arms, outstretched to grasp its prey.
Then she was struck to the ground, together with her mount; she saw nothing but flailing hooves. She dragged herself free of the poor struggling mare and was surrounded by howling blue darkness. The shapes of weapons, harness, pieces of cloth whirled upward and she heard a terrible voice, the voice of the Afreet, speaking in a strange tongue.
She lunged forward to the place where she knew Blayn had been riding, fell across his splendid white horse and found her lord unhurt. She dragged him upright and together they raised the horse and pressed away to the east, bent low. She heard Florus shouting and saw him still mounted beyond the cloud, with a few of the Southland escort gathering about him. She came to him with Blayn, and they all ran together, hardly looking back, and came round the shoulder of a dune.
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