by Jenna Rhodes
Tranta made a gesture of disdain, turning away from her, his blue hair falling across his shoulders like a barrier. He faltered as if the life within his body were too heavy for him to carry.
“Do you want to know what I see, then? Do you?” Lara cried. She put her hands up and they shook. “I see a Way opening. I see our home beyond it, lost Trevilara, in all its splendor and beauty and wildness, calling for us, and it is he—he who stands between us and the Way home, Abayan Diort, with his war hammer in hand and there is no way on this or any other God-given earth that we can go home without going through him, and he will not let us pass! I know it is our home because it calls for me, for you, for all of us, and its beauty is like a cutting edge and like nothing that can be seen anywhere on Kerith. Its need for us is as sharp as our need for it, and the Way has opened. How can any of you wonder, then, why I am telling you to make war against Abayan Diort?”
“Trevilara!” cried Bistane.
“No longer the Suldarran.”
Rivergrace could hear the longing. No longer lost. The need to be home, to have a home, was almost palpable in the room, but not in her. Nutmeg’s fingers laced through hers as if instinctively knowing what Rivergrace felt.
A riot of questions broke out, probing, challenging, pleading, burying the queen.
Lara’s shout cut across the commotion. “Silence!”
Instead of silence, the room fell into absolute darkness.
Chapter Forty-Four
AVICIOUS YANK out of the abyss of darkness grabbed up Rivergrace. It tore her away from Nutmeg and propelled her, slamming her into a doorway and then into openness. The entire manor appeared to have been plunged into deepest night. No lamps had been lit for it was morning, and so nothing could be seen beyond the end of her nose. It was as though she were still locked up, awaiting trial, and she might awaken from the nightmare. But the rough hand on her arm bruised into her flesh, and she knew she would not. And she could tell that it was Lara who had her, for the hand only had three long digits and a thumb, not four.
“Who comes to rescue you?”
“A rescue? I thought we were being attacked again.”
“Answer me!” Lara shook her lightly.
“No one that I know of, I swear.”
Lara pushed and pulled her stumbling down the corridor. Raised in this manor, the Warrior Queen no doubt knew where she guided them, but Grace had no such memory and she tripped and staggered to the other’s impatient tugs. Her knuckles skinned as they rapped against one rough wall, drawing her breath in with a hiss, but Lariel did not slow. They rattled down a back stair which Grace knew had to have been the servants’ stair because of its narrow familiarity, and then into another hallway and light flared as Lara thrust a hand out to bring a wall lamp into flickering life.
“Grace, by my life, how could you do this to us?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?” Rivergrace stammered in answer.
Lara stared into her face.
“You don’t believe me.”
She did not answer.
“How can you think this of me?”
“I think you could be misled. I’ve seen you with a sword in your hand—a sword that only one or two others could hold—so I know what you are capable of, when you need to be. With Narskap as a father . . .” Lara’s words trailed off.
“He’s not my father. Narskap is a broken thing that remembers only now and then what he was, what he did, what he might have been meant to do. My father is all but dead, and the only thing he holds for me is proof that I am Vaelinar. Not more and not less as many of you reckon me.”
“Blood runs deeper than any river. You may find that you can’t dismiss him as easily as that.”
“Easy? It’s not easy. He’s all I have left of myself, and yet he is nothing of myself! How can that be easy?” Temper ate through her fear, and she shook off Lara’s hand.
Lara moved as if to slap her, and Rivergrace moved as quickly, catching the other by the wrist and holding her. Surprise raced across Lariel’s face. “You have strength you don’t even know you have. I can’t let you go as you are. I was blind not to have seen it, you for Sevryn and he for you. He has been very guarded this past season. Gods, how could I have missed it? You are both possessed. I fought the Demon-Gods of Kerith in the Secret Wars, I thought never to see the like again. I can’t leave you like this, to be used as a weapon against yourself and us. I will let you live, if I can.” She twisted in Grace’s hold, turning about, slamming Rivergrace against the wall and knocking the breath out of her. “Forgive me,” she whispered as she leaned close and thrust her mind into Grace’s.
In a dizzying moment, Rivergrace lost the sense of herself captive in a rough-hewn corridor, hemmed in by inky darkness with only a small lamp illuminating the two of them. She felt the rush of the wind against her face, under her wings, and saw the treetops as they dropped below her flight and she was free, but she was not. She was Lara and a war falcon, she was a wisp of cloud holding the merest promise of rain, and she was winter with the sun trying to chisel away at her icy back, and she was an abyss of memory which Lara began to stir. She could feel herself falling through Lara’s fingers, slipping away, as the other made a noise of determination low in her throat.
She had been violated like this before when the Goddess had unwoven her life and soul down to nothingness before reweaving her threads, but that had been done with a ruthless gentleness and this . . . this was like being chopped at. Uprooted. Having her heart pulled out of her by a hand thrust down her throat. She struggled and fought, gagged and spit. Then she felt the thread at which Lara pulled.
It was that which made her Vaelinar, which gave her eyes like seas and lakes, which gave her the power to know water and fire and summon them, it was that which was etched into every bit of her, and Lara’s touch was like a firebrand which sought to cauterize every morsel of her that held that power. She fought back as only she could. Fire here, then she brought water to quench it. Burning embers there, then she brought up a cooling mist. Lara entwined their powers, seeking to yank Rivergrace’s out, and she became as insubstantial as the dew, slipping out of Lara’s hold.
“No!”
Did that cry erupt from her throat or Lara’s? She could not tell. She could feel her body again, forehead to the wall, arm bent behind her, Lara’s breath hot against her cheek. She would not give up herself. Not any part of her, not even that which she feared and hated. She could feel Lara draw in a deep breath and steel her body and knew that the next attack would either succeed . . . or kill her.
“Surrender, Grace. Give in. Or what you will become will destroy all you love on Kerith, your Dweller family, your Kernan friends, everyone. Trust me. I know what the Demon-Gods are able to do. Give in, and it will hurt as little as possible. . . .”
She would not give up that which she had fought so hard to win. Not her beloved family or Sevryn or even the friendship which Lara burned to ashes now. Not a moment of it. As much as the gift of the River Goddess had betrayed it, it was nothing like this, and she turned to it, made herself as the mist, the dew, the light rain that favors spring, the fog that blesses the sun-torched ground, the small puddles which nurture the smallest drinkers of the forests and plains, and Lara could not uproot her for she was everywhere, in a million droplets. In that moment, Lara was as she was, not the steel hand in a glove digging out her soul, but the freshness of sweet water, and she felt both her resolve and her regret, her love and her sorrow and the extreme loneliness that was the Warrior Queen’s heritage. Rivergrace tasted her, and knew that her own taste lay open to Lara, if she would but drink.
And then, her cheek turned to grind against the harshness of the wall’s planking, and her eyes focused. She saw a gathering in the darkness that swallowed them both, a tall being coalesce out of the nothingness, hooded cloak and vast presence and it reached for her, tearing them apart, and Rivergrace felt herself being Taken.
Chapter Forty-Five
WINTER CHURNED THE SEA
waters to an icy gray, yet even that angry tide did not slow the landing of boats from the great ships anchored just outside the harbor, nor could fog entirely hide the troops as they made shore.
Bregan bumped a shoulder against Garner. “They cannot be men,” the trader murmured.
Under any other circumstances, Garner would have wondered why the trader had made an ally, a confidant of him, but what they’d seen together had bonded them. And each realized that he needed a good fighter to guard his back. Two of them increased their odds of living through what lay ahead. He nodded his head. “No. They don’t move like men.”
“I’d hoped for smugglers. Pirates. Thieves.”
“There are Ravers among them, the smaller ones wrapped in black cloth. I don’t know the others.”
Bregan shot him a look. “You know Ravers?”
“Fought them, a few times.”
“And lived to tell about it.”
Garner could see his worth had gone up in the trader’s eyes. “For the moment, aye. But the big ones. They’re the commandin’ types, and I’ve not seen their likes anywhere.”
“Nor I. We’ll be marching in front of them, I’ve been told.”
“But will we be leadin’ them, or are we bait?” Garner’s jaw tightened as he watched the troops assemble, black shapes moving indistinctly through freezing sea mists.
“We can only pray. I’m told the Gods are listening now. Let us hope so,” Bregan answered dryly. “What happened to the boat that smashed on the rocks? Where are the dead?”
Garner reached out with a green stick to stir the coals at the very small fire he had warming their booted feet. He took a breath. “This may be the most efficient army ever assembled,” he told Bregan. “There are no dead because the officers ate their foot soldiers where they fell.”
“They what? They ate them?”
“Every last scrap, except for the armor and weapons. If you can call the carapaces armor. More like shells, licked clean.”
“They eat their own,” the other repeated, as if he could not quite comprehend that.
“They do.”
The color drained from Bregan’s face. “May the Gods have mercy on us.”
“If They’re listening, amen,” Garner said. He got to his feet as a ripple of movement began, both in the mists where the unknown army gathered, and among the caravan guards. The muted noise of hundreds getting to their feet, the leather and armor moving, boots stamping with weapons clanking dully as they did, the sound of an army getting ready to mobilize, hung in the heavy air. It made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He had never thought to hear such a noise, let alone be immersed in it. He had grown things for most of his life, killing only out of necessity, and tipped his hand in gambling for fun and levity. He had no place in war. There were reasons to go to war. To protect the innocent. To defend yourself. To face that which only you could face, whether it be fear or bullying or hatred. But he had only one reason to be where he was now. He put his hand on Bregan Oxfort’s forearm.
“This is not right.”
Oxfort looked into his face, mouth thinning, saying nothing at first, and then, quietly, “Hawthorne has closed the Seven Sisters. The city is safe enough for now, but they’re ready for a siege. Indications are that Quendius and this army will not hit them until . . . after. I have no love for the Vaelinars, everyone knows that, but I will not turn my people over to an enemy that eats their own.”
“I will do whatever I can to stop them.”
“And I. Watch your back, though, Farbranch, for I doubt many will stand with us. Fear is a powerful whip.”
Garner nodded his understanding. Bregan moved away from him then, and his voice could be heard powerfully cutting through the noise of the caravan guards as they geared up. “Find your units. Stand ready!”
He could hear the command passed down, and feel the thinning sun try to beat down on his head. He pulled on an old hat, one he and his brother had made years ago, when they were plying their trade to earn extra money by selling goods to Mistress Greathouse. He had been young, only a lad then. Now he was a man. He doubted he would get much older. His chest burned at the thought, and something stung the corners of his eyes.
He shouldered his pack and moved into step with his command.
Quendius alone stood out of the fog, surprisingly, for his white vest should have mingled, and his sooty skin taken on the aspect of the shadows but he had found a patch of newly risen sunlight and thrust himself into it as he stood on a rocky platform overlooking all of them. Narskap squatted at his heels, more skeleton than man, in battered leathers, his eyes burning hollowly in their sockets as he watched Quendius.
“We march!” Quendius declared, and swung his hand about, and a cave mouth which Garner had not discerned before, yawned out of the mist and shadows and tumbled rock. “Only death and scavengers are triumphant on a battlefield, and we follow those footsteps. Keep up,” he added, his obsidian gaze sweeping the humans close to him. “You won’t like it if you fall behind.”
A chill lanced through Garner. Quendius was not a particularly truthful man, but he uttered it then.
Quendius spoke a word, and the mountainside shuddered open even wider, as he shattered the safeguards on the Pathways of the Guardians, and his army stepped inside.
Garner did not have to duck at the mouth’s overhang as so many did, but once inside, he saw that the slick tunnels had been carved for much taller folk. The tunneling was wide, enough for eight to march abreast. Gravel underneath gave way to a patterned grooving, rather like tile, and he eyed it as he trod over it. His horse tugged at the reins, not liking the sound of its own hoof falls, nor could Garner blame the creature. It was as if a living mountain had swallowed them, and they would be eaten or spit out. Neither fate sounded desirable. Turning back was not an option, not with the army of Ravers and their even more dire masters on their heels. Something fluttered in his pack. He opened the flap and took out the small bird he had wrapped gently inside. It shook its wings faintly, and he could feel its quivering fear. He had no message for it to carry, for he knew nothing he had not already sent on, but he felt . . . he felt horrible this tiny thing was under the stone with him. He removed it from its wrappings and let the alna go. It took to wing swiftly, flitting one way and another, back over the heads of the army, escaping swipes of arms and surprised shouts until its silhouette cut across the faraway mouth of sunlight at the tunnel’s beginning and it found freedom with one last visible wing stroke.
That tiny movement gave Garner a flicker of hope. He closed his pack and turned to go on, and found Narskap squinting at him. “Dinner,” he grumbled, “but not enough to share nor worth th’ trouble.” He shrugged as he moved past the one called the Hound of Quendius as if it made no matter to him that he’d been observed or frowned at. He waited to see if his bluff would be called, but no action followed him. He could feel time move along with him as if he strode into a sluggish river, unseen but felt, with every stride he took. He could not explain what he sensed, nor was there anyone he dared to ask. He heard murmurs around him. The Mageborn had carved these tunnels, and they’d done it to move an army quickly and unseen.
Sevryn and Nutmeg reached Lara first, as the inky cloud which enveloped the manor slowly began to dissolve away. Eyes dazed, her hair in a cloud of disorder about her pale face, Lara sat up carefully as Nutmeg went to her knees beside her. “Where is Rivergrace?”
“Here, isn’t she?” Lara put a hand to her brow, wincing. “I had her . . .” She withdrew her hand, looking at it as if she could not believe that Grace had eluded her grasp. She made a fist.
“She’s gone,” Sevryn said. “Did you give her over?”
“No. Rivergrace is mine, and mine alone, to deal with.” Lara scrambled to her feet with Sevryn’s help, and pushed her hair from her face, as the last of the darkness spun out of existence. “She’s been taken. Unless you took part in it,” and she stared, her eyes narrowing, into Sevryn’s face.
&nb
sp; “Not I. Although I would have.” His jaw tightened and his words sounded like stone.
“We’ll go after,” declared Nutmeg.
“No. No one is to go after her. I have to get my troops to Ashenbrook. ” And she let her hard gaze bear down on Sevryn until he seemed to crumple under it as if all the strength had left his bones and he swayed back against the wall, putting a hand behind him for support.
Nutmeg drew herself up. Whatever the queen had done to Sevryn, she could not fear. “Beggin’ your pardon, Your Highness and all, but you keep overlookin’ me. You’re not the queen of me, and although I count you as a friend, I don’t think much of what’s been going on.”
“There are matters about which you have no concept. If I were going to grow a tree, I’d ask your advice, but there are destinies here beyond you.”
“Destiny is just another word for high and mighty ambitions which us common people are supposed to be too stupid to consider. You think to turn the world like it’s on your spinning wheel, but you forget that it’s th’ likes of me who live within that cloth! Well, I won’t be forgotten. Who I love and what I intend to do with my life is just as important as any great fates you’ve been imagining! I’m going, and I’ll be finding her!” With that, Nutmeg darted off, Dweller nimble and quick, and even Lara whirling around to halt her, could not do so. She had disappeared into thin air, much as Rivergrace had.
“Let me go after,” Sevryn begged.
“You go now and even if you find her, you will never have a moment’s peace on Kerith. I will make it so.”
Heat flared in Sevryn’s face and in his storm-gray eyes, the eyes that marked him as less than Vaelinar pureblood for their singular rather than dual color, as powerless, although magic did course in his veins.
Lara cried out to him. “I will be obeyed!”
Cerat rose in him, heated and flushed with anger and power. He ground his jaws together, trying to swallow down the fiery surge that filled him. He would kill his own queen and friend if not. He clenched his hands, fighting down the Demon, and sank to his knees on the floor to keep himself from lunging at her in fury. He would not, would not, give way!
