“It’s wonderful to see you.” She accepted the warmth of his arms. “Aren’t I supposed to bow to my king?”
“Bah! Regent,” he corrected her, letting her go. “Despite the polish, I’m a Mur-Vallis warrens rat at heart.” He rested a hand on Barrick-Kar’s shoulder. “I’m hoping to convince Barrick to relieve me of my duties come Summertide.”
The High Ward shuddered and changed the subject. “You look well-recovered, Catling.”
“You expected otherwise?” She planted a kiss on his cheek. “I’m in your daughter’s care after all. And Gannon, shouldn’t you be in Elan-Sia? This is a long way south.”
“I have allies to rally and provinces to placate,” Gannon replied. “The Cull Tarr released their Ellegean slaves as promised, the warrens continued to evolve, and the tier cities will elect leaders as soon as we figure out how to structure a vote. Rho-Dania and Lim-Mistral are the last holdouts.”
“They’ll comply,” Kadan handed her a goblet. “As soon as they discover they’re the only rocks in the river.”
“Thus my excuse for a visit,” Gannon said, “ensuring there are no southern rocks.”
“Is Whitt here?” Catling sipped her drink, a poor attempt at indifference. She wished for nothing more than to see him, to erase her last vision of him, blood on his lips, dying and flung to the river. She possessed no claim on him, no solid sense of his feelings. They were no longer innocent children with unsullied dreams. And though Rose wasn’t his daughter by blood, she belonged to him and Sim in her heart. Rose’s future required a discussion, at least.
“Whitt has his hands busy getting the place organized,” Gannon replied, sharing a smile with Kadan. He’s making repairs and handling purchases. As you can imagine, the work proved more than one man could manage, and he needed to hire help. He longed to join us, but I suggested he finish first.”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled, hiding her disappointment. “Does he plan to return to Guardian?”
Gannon frowned. “Not that he mentioned to me.”
“What about you, Catling?” Barrick asked. “Any plans for you?”
She cocked her head, gaze wandering halfway to the horizon. “I don’t know yet.” Finally, her life was her own, and yet her next step eluded her. She stood in a wide-open world with no path leading her feet.
Minessa wrapped an arm around her waist. “She can stay here as long as she wishes. Forever, though I doubt that will come to pass.”
The conversation slid to politics and intrigues, who did what where and how Gannon planned to handle it. Several guests quarreled about the best means to integrate the Cull Tarr into Ellegean society. Everywhere, Catling heard a rivalry of opinions, hope in the discussions, and negotiations free from influence, her influence at least.
“Councilor Edark survived,” Oaron informed her as he sampled the sweets. “Laris-Kar as well.”
“Your trio complete. Tell them I wish them well.”
“The Cull Tarr killed Fontine on the night Lelaine died.” He stared at the confection in his fingers.
“I’m sorry, Oaron. I always knew you were fond of him.” She had suspected they were lovers, and his sorrow confirmed it. He patted her hand and moved silently on.
Gannon assumed Oaron’s place, the man’s eyes glassy with drink, his curls disheveled. The old Gannon she’d grown up with briefly replaced the accomplished kingly one. “Do you remember,” he asked, his words in a slur, “when I suggested that you’d been blessed and cursed with a gift that would change all of Ellegeance for people like me?”
“That was an eternity ago, Gannon, but I remember.” Algar hadn’t hung Keela yet or murdered everyone at the stead.
“Fifteen years. You stayed with Farrow back then in her room above the Ship’s Fate.” He sighed, choking up and turning maudlin on her, an arm draped over her shoulder. “We lost a lot of friends along the way, didn’t we?”
Her own eyes brimmed as she murmured, “I remember them all.”
“I also once told you that when the warrens took their rightful place in the realm, you could go home in peace. That was shamefully arrogant of me, but I think we can both find some peace in knowing the time has finally arrived.”
A little tardy, she wanted to say but hugged her drunken friend all the same.
***
Rose woke Catling the next morning, too early for a head suffering from late night spike. She climbed on Catling’s bed like a bear cub scrambling onto a log. “Kadan says it’s time for us to go home.”
Catling cracked her sleepy lids to find Rose’s eager face inches from her nose. “Where are we going?”
“On a wagon,” Rose said, her eyes round as teacups as if wagons had suddenly grown wings.
“Wagons aren’t terribly comfortable,” Catling informed her. “I haven’t ridden on a wagon since…” Her breath caught.
Before her heart stopped racing, she and Rose lugged a leather-strapped trunk to the corridor where a guard hoisted it to his shoulder. In the salon, Gannon, Kadan, and Minessa, Oaron and Barrick awaited them, crooked smiles plastered to their sneaky faces. “I’m going home!” she said, and tears rushed to her lashes.
They descended the tiers, Rose clasping Catling’s hand and giddy with uncontainable enthusiasm. They hurried down the ramp to the riverside market. Beyond a low wall, Whitt leaned against a wagon, arms crossed, his attention on the luminescent river.
“A wagon!” Rose shrieked.
Whitt turned and smiled, arms opening wide. Rose skipped to him, and Catling folded into his arms. She would have lingered there forever if her friends weren’t whisking her life forward with tearful farewells and generous wishes.
The old road had widened, but it unfurled as rocky and jostling as ever. As it ascended toward the foothills, the hues of the native trees deepened into gold, and the maples donned swirling skirts of vermillion. Eldergreens and pole pines crowded the more vibrant colors, and new steads elbowed them all aside.
The wagon’s bed held an assortment of supplies for the farm and the coming cold. Whitt had fashioned a comfy bed of blankets for Rose, but if he expected her to nap, he’d underestimated her capacity for excitement. She sat between them, chattering like a bird.
By late afternoon, the wagon rolled into the stead’s dirt yard. The home looked just as she remembered, a long single-story cottage, except for a new wood-shingled roof and small addition on the end. The apple tree had grown unpruned and sagged with fruit, and chickens scurried on the outskirts of the tilled garden, ready for planting come the next thaw. The barn appeared unchanged, all the familiar sheds in good repair with pink pigs rooting in the troughs.
Three women burst from the stead’s door, smiling their greetings, and Catling knew instantly who they were. Mouser ran up to her, brushing away tears. Her blond curls danced on her shoulders, and she wore pearls in her ears. “Mouser?” Catling climbed down from the bench, a renewed flood of emotion escaping her eyes.
The woman laughed and embraced her with only the slightest glance at her eye. “I use my real name now, Marsia.” She twisted and introduced the two younger women. “Daisy is still Daisy. She and I traveled up from Se-Vien. My bond mate, Sirl, is here somewhere.” She flung a dismissive wrist toward the barn and rolled her eyes. “And this is Gussy… now Genah.”
The woman with honey hair and brown eyes smiled. “No one recalled my real name, and they thankfully didn’t leave me as Gussy. I’m your neighbor.”
Catling hugged both women. Daisy had been a toddler and now was a woman of almost twenty years. Genah had been a nursing baby. Catling introduced Rose who scampered off to help Whitt and Marsia’s burly mate unload the wagon. The new names would take time to get used to.
“We’re preparing supper.” Marsia gestured at the home. “You’re free to do as you please until then. Take your time.”
Catling nodded and breathed, capturing the overwhelming emotions before they rendered her insensible. She wandered the yard and garden. A sense of in
finite peace brooded over the place, and memories rose out of the rich soil to stake their old claims. Some were painful, and when she noticed the line of six simple graves, trimmed by round stones, she poured out all the remaining grief for what she’d once found and lost.
When the tumult in her heart subsided, she returned to the stead. The home was the same, the central hearth, Scuff’s old bedchamber to the left. A new, cozy room, presumably for Rose, lay to the right. She helped with the final fixings of supper and loaded plates and platters onto a makeshift table by the summer hearth as Wenna and Zadie used to do. Sirl opened a jug of tipple, and Whitt built a bright fire to warm the Harvest night. Through the branches of the apple tree, the moons shared the sentimental sky with a stippling of silvery stars in a dazzling completeness of beauty.
When the fire burned down to embers, and the breeze off the mountains chilled, Mouser drank the last of her tipple and herded her mate and sisters into the stead.
Whitt held a sleepy Rose in his lap, a sheepish smile quirking his lips. “I hope you don’t mind that I told them to help themselves to the beds. I thought we might sleep in the loft.
Catling smiled, the gesture sweet. Toting a lantern, she followed him as he helped Rose up the ladder. He’d created a nest in the loft with layers of blankets, and he settled Rose to sleep while Catling sat in the hay remembering Piper and the twins, Rabbit and Bruiser. Did they have real names? Did it matter? To her, they would always be the children Scuff named them.
Whitt sat beside her and placed a small sack in her lap. She felt the coins through the coarse fabric and something else. She looked inside and pulled out a wooden waterdragon, the one Raker carved for her more than twenty years ago. The rest of the bag jingled with coins, a few handfuls of chipped, split, and whole coppers, a child’s treasure.
“They’re not the original ones,” Whitt said. “I used those to follow you to Ava-Grea, but I replaced them. I promised I would keep your treasure safe, and I wanted you to trust me.”
She smiled at the promise kept despite an unsparing world that broke a child’s faith. Whitt had kept his word, and she knew he would keep another promise made in the moonlit barn long ago. With an exquisite perception of a life lost, longed for, and once again found, Catling had finally come home.
Epilog
Raker poled the raft nearer to the bank while Jafe aimed his spear at the crajek hiding in the shallows. Two bulbous eyes blinked lazily by a tangle of water-soaked weeds and branches. Sunlight streamed through the canopy, dappling the gleaming water, and the last of the warm weather circulated across the steaming hummocks. Moss covered the swamp with a green skin and hung from the giant caliph trees. The goddess lolled on the luminescence.
“Eiya!” Jafe’s spear flew, split the scale coating the creature’s thick skull, and bounced into the ferns. The rafter leapt into the channel, knife bared, intending to wrestle the beast for its life.
The goddess arched her eyebrows. “I suppose you expect me to save him?”
Raker frowned. “You owe me.”
“Truly?” the woman cooed, drifting to her back, her hair rippling with the current. “You’re ungrateful after all I’ve done for you.”
The channel roiled, a cauldron of liquid light as Jafe held the crajek on its back, the narrow jaws in the vise of his armpit. He stabbed the neck as the powerful tail thrashed, and talons scraped at the air.
“Crajeks!” Raker yelled a warning as other beasts slid from the banks into the water. “Get out of there!”
The goddess rolled over, chin propped in her hands. “It’s remarkable any of you survive without assistance.” The blood attracted razorgills, their sharp fins slicing the luminescence. Two of the approaching crajeks sank below the surface, not an encouraging sign. Jafe waded in the chest-high water to the raft, dragging the dead reptile in his wake.
Raker gripped his pole in two hands ready to pound an underwater predator if it swam shallow enough to see. “Hurry. You’re not immortal.”
“The crajeks are afraid I will kill them and make boots of their backsides.”
“They’re going to make a meal of you first.” Raker narrowed his eye, a challenge to the drifting woman. She sighed, stretched, and sank into the channel.
Jafe reached the raft, heaved the crajek to the planking, and pressed himself up. He flipped to his seat and lifted his legs as a pair of jaws broke the surface and snapped at the air below his heels. The beast disappeared below. “You are slow, Ellegean. Where is your spear? We should kill two and feed the whole village.”
“I plan to live longer than you.”
“What of your passion for life?” Jafe wrung out his flaxen hair. “I will never understand your people.”
“Not my people.” Raker resumed poling the raft between the hummocks.
The goddess wrapped her arms around him from behind, startling him. “You’re a man of both bloods, but truly you are all mine,” she whispered, lips on his earlobe. “You’re the redeemer I imagined you to be.”
“I’d rather you didn’t need me at all,” he said.
Jafe snorted thinking the comment for his amusement. “Who will push the raft?”
“I no longer need you, my love.” The goddess hummed a sigh. “You served your purpose in more ways than you can imagine, and I’ve had my reckoning. The world is newly whole. Those who distilled our essence have vanished, and the rest will die with time. We’ve restored a manageable balance, and your little strays will be lovers for their whole lives.”
He glanced over his shoulder, her confession burrowing beneath his skin. “Did you plan this? Twenty years ago in Mur-Vallis, did you know how it would end?”
The goddess pouted at his sour expression, and Jafe eyed him as he skinned the dead crajek.
“Why, of course, I planned it.” She blew apart and reformed on the water beside the raft. “Not all of it occurred precisely as intended, but I am a goddess. Well, not a goddess exactly, but the term satisfies most mortals.”
“You’re the kari,” he said, knowing he guessed true. He pressed the pole into the channel’s muck and propelled them forward. A last question begged an answer before he’d believe her intrigues had spiraled to an end, before he’d trust her. “What of Rose?”
“There are two children, in fact,” she informed him. “The boy in Mur-Vallis will match the girl’s skill. Both are unique healers and guided by kindness. Thus, I’m unconcerned. If necessary, they will hear me speak.”
“You plan a long life.” He pushed at the channel.
“Millennia.” She sat at his feet, looking up at him, as beautiful as the first day he glimpsed her, the day he lost his eye. “I’ve grown fond of you, Raker, over these decades. You don’t really desire my departure, do you? That I neglect your heart?” She drifted into him, and her heat rose up his legs and spine into his head.
He closed his eye and smiled.
***
The End
About the Author
I am humbled and grateful to every reader who took a chance on a fledgling writer and her book. This vocation is a solitary one, a pouring out of one’s heart to an unknown audience with fingers crossed. If you found my little creation worthy, a review would bring a huge smile.
About me? I started writing late in life when other demands on my time eased. I live in the coastal mountains of Oregon amid the moss and rain and giant forests. I share a log cabin with my husband, two dogs, and Pinky the Cat.
For excerpts and updates on books, sales, maps, and book club questions, visit: http://dwallacepeachbooks.com
For my blog of writerly musings, writing tips, and a glimpse into a writer’s life, visit: http://mythsofthemirror.com
Books by D. Wallace Peach
The Melding of Aeris
Sunwielder
The Sorcerer’s Garden
The Bone Wall
The Dragon Soul Quartet:
Myths of the Mirror
Eye of Fire
Eye of Blind
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br /> Eye of Sun
The Rose Shield Tetralogy:
Catling’s Bane
Oathbreakers’ Guild
Farlanders’ Law
Kari’s Reckoning
Ready for another adventure?
Sunwielder
Prologue
The warrior rode in silence. Black oaks and silvergreen, dark with summer leaves, swathed the trail in shifting shadow. Shafts of sunlight speared the forest floor, altered only by the graceful sway of branches in the heated wind. She directed the mare with her knees, an arrow nocked in the recurve bow, a full quiver hanging from her pommel. A short sword with a breath of a curve rested in its scabbard at her belt, the ornate guard and curling quillon studded with moonstones.
Even this far from the battlefield, the land of Aldykar was riddled with brigands, deserters, and the soldiers hunting them. Yet she wore no armor, only the leathers of her homeland, tawny jerkin and breeches, soft-soled boots laced to the knee. Her hair, the red of old blood, flared in the filtered light, brushing her cheeks. Slanted gray eyes, pale as winter clouds, scanned the dark recesses of rock and fern in the hollows beneath the trees. The meeting place lay in a foreign wilderness, a place not unknown to her for she’d traveled the roadways and trails between Edriis and Mastrelle before, as maiden and warrior. Why the old woman chose the woods of Casbonny caused her wonder and filled her with wariness.
An owl’s solemn voice hooted in the moving shadows. The clearing lay ahead through columns of black bark, the round glade sunbathed and thick with fine grass. A young silvergreen grew in its center, branches filigreed steel in the pool of light. Her grandmother stood before the tree, arms at her side, gray hair plaited at her back. An odd expression imprinted her smooth face, a blend of relief, hope, and terrible resignation. “I am alone, Estriilde,” she said.
Songbirds quipped and called in the trees, offering no warning of predators. Estriilde relaxed her bowstring and slipped the arrow into her quiver. A long leg swung over the saddle, and she landed lightly at the shadow’s edge. “We live today, Grandmother,” she said in greeting.
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 28
