To his surprise, she smiled at that. “I don’t think so. Because if you hadn’t, I would have died years ago.” The smile faded, and an echo of the sorrow came over her face. “And we all must deal with grief in our own way.”
“I know,” said Ridmark.
They sat in silence for a while.
“But there is less grief today than there would have been otherwise,” said Ridmark. “Our sons are safe. Archaelon would have killed all those hoplites, and God knows how many more people if he managed to summon that army of wraiths.” He smiled at her. “And I suppose you spent the last few days healing every single wound the hoplites took.”
She sighed. “Those I could help, anyway. And only those with wounds that would have been mortal or crippling. If Khurazalin returned, I wanted to be ready. You and I are the only ones here with a solid chance of defeating him in a fight.” She looked at him and squeezed his hand. “Ridmark.”
“Yes?”
Calliande hesitated. “What are we going to do now? We got Gareth and Joachim back, but I didn’t think beyond that. We’re thousands of miles from home, and I have no idea how to get back. What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find Rhodruthain,” said Ridmark, “and make him send us back. If he’s the Guardian of Cathair Animus, presumably we can get his attention by going to Cathair Animus.”
“I don’t know where Cathair Animus is,” said Calliande, “but it’s a long way from here. Tamlin said it’s to the east of Urd Maelwyn, and between here and there are orcish Warlords and the armies of the Confessor.”
“We’ll find a way,” said Ridmark. “First, though, I think we should go to Aenesium. I promised Sir Tyromon that I would return his sword to King Hektor and tell him what happened here. We might be able to find help and supplies there.” His voice hardened. “Or Rhodruthain will come to us first.”
“If he does,” said Calliande, “I’m going to wring some answers from him, even if I have to beat them out of him with my staff.” Then she smiled.
“What is it?” said Ridmark.
“At least we’re together,” said Calliande. “You and me and the boys. If we had been separated, that would have been unbearable. Especially since I haven’t been…I haven’t been well lately.”
“Yes,” said Ridmark.
“Would you like some breakfast?” said Calliande. “Supplies are no longer a problem. It seems Archaelon had least had the wit to keep the castra well-supplied.”
“I would,” said Ridmark, getting to his feet. He still felt a little light-headed, but then he hadn’t eaten in two days.
“And I think the others would like to see you,” said Calliande. “I gather the War of the Seven has been stalemated for a long time. Victories like this are rare.”
Ridmark nodded, and he donned his armor and cloak, belted Oathshield at his waist, and followed Calliande from the room.
###
“So there are really no horses in all of Owyllain?” said Gareth. The boy looked skeptical.
“It’s true!” Kalussa insisted. “When our ancestors came here a long time ago, they brought horses with them. But this is a harsh land, and all our horses died. So, the men of Owyllain only fight on foot.”
“Then how do you ride anywhere?” said Joachim. He seemed bewildered at the thought.
Kalussa laughed. “We do not. We walk. We have scutians as beasts of burden, but the men of Owyllain must walk.”
“What’s a scutian?” said Gareth.
“A big lizard,” said Kalussa. She spread her arms as if in emphasis. “Bigger than I am. We used them to pull carts. They’re very placid, but they have sharp beaks.”
“I’ve never seen a lizard that big,” said Gareth.
“Well, maybe if you’re both good and you do what your mother and father tell you,” said Kalussa, “I will show you one later.”
“I always do what my mother and father tell me,” said Gareth.
“No, you don’t,” said Joachim.
“Yes, I do.”
Joachim smiled in triumph. “They told us not to bicker, and we’re bickering.”
Gareth frowned as he puzzled over that logic.
Kalussa laughed despite herself, drawing amused looks from the hoplites eating their breakfast in the great hall.
She had not expected to like Ridmark’s and Calliande’s sons so much. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her. Kalussa usually liked children and wanted some of her own. But after the battle, after Calliande had found the boys and Tamlin and Aegeus had helped take Ridmark to bed to rest, Calliande had devoted her attention to healing the wounded. Gareth and Joachim had followed her, clearly desperate to see their mother once more. Calliande had just as obviously wanted to keep her children in sight, but she had also wanted to spare them the sight of the blood and suffering.
So Kalussa had kept the children distracted as their mother went about her work. She had taken to them almost at once, and the boys seemed to like her. Which was a relief, because Kalussa had come to admire their parents so much.
Truth be told, watching the children made Kalussa…well, if not happy, at least content. Again, she felt a pang. She wondered what her life would have been like if she had not been Swordborn, if she had not been born with the so-called “gift” of magic. Perhaps she would have been a lady-in-waiting to one of Aenesium’s noblewomen, tending to their children. Maybe she would have been a concubine with children of her own already, perhaps even a wife.
Instead, she had been born with magic, and so she had been trained as a Sister of the Order, forced to fight in defense of her homeland and people.
Well. It could have been worse. Archaelon might have made it far worse.
“You look sad,” said Joachim.
“I’m not sad,” said Kalussa, which almost true. Mostly, she was grateful. “I was just thinking about…”
A stir at the other end of the hall caught her attention.
Kalussa saw Ridmark and Calliande emerge from the stairs. Ridmark looked tired, with dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and the lines in his face seemed somehow deeper. Using the power of the Shield Knight obviously took a severe toll upon him. Yet he was walking with his usual vigor, and Calliande smiled as she looked at him.
A stab of jealousy went through Kalussa, followed by guilt. If Calliande had been some sort of loathsome harridan, that would have been one thing. But she wasn’t. Kalussa found she respected Calliande a great deal. She was like one of the old legends about the ancient Keepers come to life, and without her, Archaelon would have been victorious.
Several of the hoplites rose and bowed to Ridmark as he passed, and he stopped and thanked them for fighting valiantly in the battle. Both Gareth and Joachim ran for their parents, and Kalussa found herself forced to run after them. She supposed that was beneath the dignity of a daughter of Pendragon blood, but she didn’t care.
“Mother!” announced Joachim. “Kalussa says there aren’t any horses in Owyllain!”
“Well, she’s right,” said Calliande. “Did you behave for Lady Kalussa?”
Kalussa smiled. “They did, my lady. They were perfect little knights.”
“I told you so,” said Joachim to Gareth.
“Thank you for looking after them,” said Calliande. “You’ve been a great help.”
“Thank you for your efforts in the battle as well,” said Ridmark. Kalussa wasn’t sure she had done all that much that was useful, but the compliment pleased her.
“Come,” said Calliande. “Let’s have some breakfast.”
Kalussa watched them, thinking.
She was not naïve. She wanted children, but Kalussa knew she might become the concubine or even the wife of some thuggish brute or a cruel idiot. Certainly, she had not met many men like Ridmark Arban. For that matter, she knew that both Ridmark and Calliande thought the custom of concubinage in Owyllain immoral.
They thought that now, of course. But if they were trapped in Owyllain…
W
ell, the passing of years could change someone’s mind.
And Kalussa thought she could be patient.
###
Tamlin dreamed as he slept, and this time he dreamed of Tysia.
The memories flashed through his sleeping mind. The games they had played at the Monastery of St. James as children, chasing each other around the keep and the cloisters. When he had met her years later in Urd Maelwyn, exhausted and wounded. He had been overjoyed to see her again and stunned by how attracted he had been to her.
Their first night together after they had been married, the first time he had been with a woman.
Lying with her in the dark silence of his cell, whispering about what they would do when they escaped.
Inevitably, the dreams turned dark.
The looked of stunned surprise on her face, Khurazalin’s bloody blade jutting from her chest. Tamlin screamed and ran to her, but he was too slow, just he had been in real life, he was always too slow…
Then he stumbled and found himself somewhere else.
Somewhere he had never been before.
Startled, he turned around. He was in a huge domed chamber of weathered, crumbling white stone, at least as large as the Agora of Connmar in Aenesium. Shafts of sunlight leaked through holes in the crumbling ceiling, falling upon the weed-choked floor. A round pool filled the central third of the floor, rippling water lashing at its rim, and within the pool…
Tamlin blinked in surprise and stepped closer, his hand falling to his sword’s hilt.
Within the pool was a storm.
He had never seen anything like it. A storm, more violent and powerful than any he had ever experienced, a whirling vortex of black clouds and snarling lighting, spun in silence beneath the waters. It looked colossal, and Tamlin had a sudden sense of vertigo as if he stood on the edge of a vast precipice. Looking at the storm filled him with a strange and indescribable dread.
As if he was looking at a storm that would end the world.
He took a step back and looked away from the well, and the vertigo and dread started to fade.
“You begin to understand, then,” said a woman’s voice, formal and a bit acerbic.
Tamlin turned and saw the Dark Lady watching him, tattered cloak shifting around her in the chill wind rising from the strange well.
“You know,” said Tamlin, “if this is a dream, you could make it more pleasant. More naked women, for one.”
The Dark Lady rolled her eyes. “You spend enough time thinking about that in your waking hours, Tamlin Thunderbolt. Now it is time to attend to more serious matters.”
“What is this place?” said Tamlin.
The Dark Lady stepped closer to the well, her sigil-carved staff tapping against the stone floor. “Where it began.”
“Where what began?” said Tamlin.
“In a way,” said the Dark Lady, “the history of your realm of Owyllain. It was here that the gray elves began. It was here that the Sovereign began.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tamlin, exasperated. The Dark Lady’s warnings had saved his life more than once, but by God, she loved her blasted riddles.
Her black eyes met his. “It is where the New God will rise if it is not stopped.”
“Find me again,” said Tysia in his memory. “The New God is coming.”
“Tell me more,” said Tamlin.
“If you want to stop the New God,” said the Dark Lady, “if you want to understand what your wife told you before she died, then stay close to the Shield Knight and the Keeper. Make sure they are safe. For Rhodruthain the Guardian is mad, but beneath his madness is brilliance. He brought them here for a reason.”
“What reason?” said Tamlin.
“The Shield Knight and the Keeper of Andomhaim,” said the Dark Lady, “are the only ones who can stop the return of the New God. Otherwise, Archaelon’s and Khurazalin’s prophecies shall come true. The New God will rise, and all shall be its slaves.”
“Then tell me more,” said Tamlin.
“Not yet,” said the Dark Lady. “You are not yet at the proper point in time.”
“For God’s sake,” said Tamlin, annoyed.
“Stay close to the Keeper and the Shield Knight,” said the Dark Lady. “For both they and the realm of Owyllain have enemies that you know not, and those foes shall be waiting for you at Aenesium.”
“Fine,” said Tamlin, still irritated.
She gazed at him for a moment and then offered a fond smile.
“You did well, Tamlin Swordborn,” said the Dark Lady. “Khurazalin would have slain Ridmark if not for your intervention.”
“Then perhaps you can reward me by saying something plainly for once,” said Tamlin.
“Very well. Do you know why I chose you?” said the Dark Lady.
“My dashing charm?” said Tamlin.
She laughed at that. “Because Archaelon was right, in a way. You are an anomaly. A flaw in the dark plans of the New God. You were never supposed to have been born, but you were, and that is the key. The Keeper and the Shield Knight are the only ones who can stop the New God…but without you, they will fail.”
The dream dissolved, the Dark Lady and the ruined chamber and the terrifying storm-choked well vanishing into nothingness.
Tamlin awoke in the courtyard of Castra Chaeldon, wrapped in his cloak, and for a few moments, he alternated between sorrow at the memory of Tysia and vast annoyance at the Dark Lady.
Well. She had saved his life. He did owe her gratitude.
But her riddling speech was still irritating.
He worked off his frustration by dueling Aegeus with practice bamboo swords taken from the castra’s armory. Though Tamlin was a better swordsman than Aegeus. Without either false pride or false modesty, Tamlin knew he was one of the best swordsmen in Owyllain.
The brutal training of the dvargir gamemasters had seen to that.
“Well,” said Aegeus, lowering his bamboo blade and wiping sweat from his forehead, “what do you think we’ll do now?”
Tamlin shrugged and glanced at the jagged top of the damaged keep. “We’ll probably need to return to Aenesium. Someone needs to tell King Hektor what happened here.”
Aegeus snorted. “In other words, we’re waiting for Lord Ridmark to wake up and tell us what to do.”
Tamlin laughed. “More or less. That’s one of the benefits of not being in charge. Someone else gets to make the hard decisions.”
“I suppose you could have command of Castra Chaeldon if you wanted it,” said Aegeus.
“So could you,” said Tamlin. “We’re both Arcanii. You have as much right to it as I do.”
“God, no!” said Aegeus with a laugh. “What would I do all day? No, King Hektor needs to appoint a new commander to hold the castra, and that is that. We…”
He fell silent and turned his head.
Ridmark Arban approached from the doors of the keep. For some reason, he was carrying that bamboo staff again, though he didn’t seem to be limping. Lady Calliande came after him, as did Lady Kalussa and Ridmark’s two sons. It amused Tamlin to no end to see the haughty Lady Kalussa playing nanny to two small children, but she seemed to enjoy it.
Odd. He wouldn’t have thought that of Kalussa. But sometimes people were surprising.
“Lord Ridmark!” said Aegeus. “It is good to see you on your feet, sir. By God, you looked like death itself when Lady Calliande had us carry you to bed.”
“You should have seen my opponent,” said Ridmark in a dry voice.
Aegeus laughed at that. “I did before the Keeper had us burn his body. He looked quite the worse for wear.”
“It seems I owe you my life, Sir Tamlin,” said Ridmark. “Thank you.”
“It was only my duty, sir,” said Tamlin. “And between you and Lady Calliande, you saved the lives of nearly five hundred hoplites, a score of Arcanii, and kept a strong fortress from falling into the hands of King Hektor’s enemies. I suppose I would have to save your life five hundred more ti
mes before we were even.”
“Hopefully, you shall not have the chance,” said Ridmark. “I think it would be best if Rallios stayed in command of the castra until King Hektor appoints a replacement. I am leaving for Aenesium tomorrow, and I would like you, Sir Aegeus, Sir Parmenio, and Lady Kalussa to come with me. We’ll need guides, and frankly, King Hektor and his men will be more likely to believe our tale if you came with us.”
“My father is a fair and just man, Lord Ridmark,” said Kalussa at once. “He will believe you.”
“For once, I agree with Lady Kalussa,” said Tamlin. “It is only King Hektor that has kept King Justin or the Confessor or the Necromancer of Trojas from conquering all of Owyllain.”
Ridmark nodded. “I would like to find Rhodruthain and force him to send my family and me back to Andomhaim. But if that is not possible…well, best to be on good terms with King Hektor.
“Very well,” said Tamlin. “I would be honored to travel with you.”
And, in truth, it was what he wanted to do anyway.
The Dark Lady had told him the key to understanding his wife’s final words lay with the Shield Knight and the Keeper.
Unease went through him at the thought.
Her warnings had come true before.
So, what unseen enemies awaited them at Aenesium?
Tamlin didn’t know, but he vowed to be ready.
Chapter 24: The Company
The next morning, Ridmark walked through the gate of Castra Chaeldon. Calliande walked alongside him, and Sir Tamlin, Sir Aegeus, and Lady Kalussa followed. With them came twenty hoplites and Sir Parmenio, who would send scouts ranging over the hills in search of enemies.
Five wagons holding supplies came after, each one driven by a hoplite and drawn by a pair of scutians. Both Gareth and Joachim were fascinated by the big, placid lizards, which was just as well because they would spend some time riding in those wagons. Ridmark intended to have them walk as much as possible to build their strength, but an eight-year-old and a three-year-old boy could only walk so far in a day.
He looked to the south, at the road winding its way over the hills and past the sea, and looked at Calliande.
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