by Jenna Rhodes
“This is where the queen’s friend Azel healed.”
“He’s here yet, but sitting in a small patio now. I thought you might like to visit.”
She frowned. “Hosmer said you were ill.”
“I was. Am. A revelation,” he answered, “not unlike the one that sent you running from here.” He took her hand and drew her close.
“I won’t answer any more questions.”
“You won’t be asked any, not like that anyway.”
“Then why am I here?”
He looked into her eyes of river-blue, and sea-green-blue, and stormy ocean-gray-blue. “Because I needed you with me. Forgive me for that.” He walked her with him then, and she didn’t answer, but at least she didn’t push him away as she had been.
Azel d’Stanthe looked up, and a broad smile spread over his face. He held both great hands out in welcome. “Sevryn! Rivergrace! Come, seat yourselves, tell me what is going on in the great world.”
She sat on a wide, low foot ottoman, and Sevryn perched on a nearby stool after moving a few books first. “I apologize—” she began in her low, quiet voice, but he harrumphed loudly and waved her words aside.
“I’m the one, charging like a wild creature through all your perceptions. How are you faring?”
“I am settled into the role of seamstress, with some little talent,” and she gave a wistful smile. She held up her fingers, one or two pricked from needles and still healing.
“You are flesh and blood, then.” He chuckled.
“So it seems.”
“I find that a relief.”
“So do I!” She gave a fleeting but genuine smile.
Azel looked at Sevryn quizzically. “You?”
“The Conference is nearly over and I’ll return with Queen Lariel. She has much to digest and decide upon.”
“Do I hear true rumors?”
“That she is indeed a Warrior Queen. Yes.”
“Hmmmm.” Azel said nothing further on that, but Sevryn was sure he would, if not that day, then another. The historian sat straighter in his chair. He’d gained a bit of weight back, and he looked far stronger than Sevryn had a right to expect. “What brings you here?”
“I brought her hoping you’d tell a story.”
“Me? A talespinner?”
“A true story. I want you to tell her of the Four Kingdoms, and of the Ways.”
“Oh, lad. Well. I will have to shorten it down a bit, not only out of pity for the two of you but because,” and he coughed then, and finally managed, “because I am short of breath as well.” He poured himself a drink from a nearby pitcher, making a face as he swallowed a long draft from it. “Why do things good for you always taste as if they can’t possibly be?”
That brought another flashing smile to Rivergrace’s face, and Sevryn felt a spike of envy through him, that Azel could make her smile and he could not. If the afternoon went as he hoped, as he planned, she would like him even less.
Gesturing with one large hand, the other resting on his knee, Azel drew in the air. “In the beginning, we came without warning to ourselves or anyone else. In the years that followed as we regained what little history we could, we fought with each other and with this new world. There are far more to these years than I could possibly tell you, and there are those who would stop me from giving you that history. But my library is free,” and he leaned forward with an intense light in his eyes. “Free as it should be as long as I have a say in it. Come visit me at Ferstanthe and learn all that you care to learn.”
“Someday,” she answered him softly.
“Good.” He took another drink, stalling a cough. Sevryn watched his face, fearing that the drink might drug him into slumber, but Azel merely cleared his throat before speaking again. “Mine is the smallest of the kingdoms Sevryn mentioned. It isn’t really one, except that we were established by a Stronghold and a House, and we’re maintained free and independent. The sole purpose of Ferstanthe is to collect and preserve knowledge so that it can be known by any who have a need, any of Vaelinar blood, that is. I train scribes from all walks of life there, Kernan, Dweller, Galdarkan, even a Bolger once, most of whom go on to work for traders or other guilds and have little interest in Vaelinar ways, and they don’t see our true library, our Books of All Truth.” He traced a line through the air.
“Ferstanthe rests against a forest of trees, and along a great, lazy lake which grows reeds by the thousands. We use both the trees and reeds for paper and writing quills and such. Ink comes from the ores and other minerals around us. Vegetable inks are easier to make, but they fade rapidly.” He paused and quickly added, “but I bore you with that. Imagine then immense trees, trees that were seedlings when we Vaelinar Strangers first came to Kerith, in 312. They yet grow, towering over buildings of marble and granite, domed buildings that are immense once you’re inside but look as nothing against the trees. You can hear the ocean’s roar in their branches when the wind blows and when it snows, it dapples their branches but cannot possibly cover them, for they are majestic among the hillsides. Among their trunks grow groves of smaller trees, vastly inferior, and it is those we log, for they grow quickly and flourish while our gentle giants take their time in everything.
“That is the kingdom whose guardianship I hold.” Azel looked at her, then at Sevryn. “It is different from the other kingdoms,” he stated, “in that it is not founded on a Way. It is founded on the need to communicate, from the past to the future. Without wishing to distress you, you must understand how and why the others came to be.”
A slight tremor ran through Rivergrace’s body. She laced her fingers upon her lap. “The Ferryman is a Way.”
“Yes. A phantasm, a being that does not exist yet does, whose sole purpose is a passage that neither earth nor water can block. Have you seen him?”
“Several times.” Her voice was barely audible.
“You are not like him,” Azel said to her.
“We don’t know what I am.”
“True, but he was created to be imposing, unknowable, a foreboding mystery. Let me tell you of another Way, the vast tree of life on the plain Hith-aryn, its roots woven like a great net below the plains, holding water within it, keep both the wind and flood of erosion from them. Most of the tree grows below the surface, you see, and it is this tree which keeps the northwestern plains green, unlike those of the warlands. The aryn has young saplings sprinkled across the plains as far as the eye can see and rolling hills move, and the grounds are fertile because of its creation. You’d like to see that, I think. The House of Hith-aryn, of Bistel and Bistane Vantane established itself with the making of this Way. There is nothing of death in the aryn, although it does bow to nature as we all do. It loses boughs and grows new ones, ever-green in its stand upon its kingdom.”
They all paused as Azel coughed a bit, and blew his nose and had to gain his breath back.
“Look then to the ocean, overshadowing all the lands in its size. Tomarq is a fortress, as you know, built upon a Way that is meant to shield the coast. Two houses created it, Drebukar with its Talent of Earth that mined the jewel from its depths and Istlanthir of Fire, that cut and shaped it and brings the power through it that burns any it looks upon and perceives as enemy. Istlanthir is a House of fairly pure bloodline and retains its distinctive skin of light blue and hair of sea green or silvery blue to this day. The Jewel, or Shield, of Tomarq sits on a great sea cliff over the vast natural harbor of Hawthorne, with the Istlanthir fortress just below. It is tended regularly and with great caution, for it is an Eye which kills if it looks upon you as an intruder.”
“Still, it is a wonder, this beautiful red-and-gold jewel. Immense, child, you can hardly imagine. As big as a house.
It sits in a golden cradle which moves from side to side so that its eye views the ocean from north to south in a sweep which varies, so that one can never be sure which way the Eye looks. When filled with power, it glows like a beacon fire over the sea cliff and can be seen for province
s away.”
Rivergrace stirred. “I met Lord Tranta. He’d been injured. Did the Eye look upon him?”
“No, lass. If it had, he would be nothing more than a puff of gray ash on the wind. He fell from the cliff to the ocean below, and is lucky to be alive,” Sevryn answered for Azel who took the pause to drink once more, and to gather his breath before speaking again, saying to her in his deepest tone. “Tomarq is but a Shield. What would our lands be without its Sword?”
“Queen Lariel?”
“Our Warrior Queen, no other.” Azel nodded at Rivergrace. “Because Larandaril is the Sword, her Way came from a pact with the Gods themselves through the River Andredia, and I know very little of it. The making of all Ways are closely kept secrets within the families who made that magic, but their intent and purposes are usually well known. Larandaril is shrouded. The river is sacred and to be kept that way, in penance perhaps for the life of a warrior and sword. The kingdom itself is a river valley, blessed in peace and orchards, in groves gentle and small brooklets running through dales and down soft hillocks. It is a place which I’ve visited only once or twice in my lifetime and where I think I would go for my last days, if I knew when my last days were upon me, for it must be as close to heaven as we can imagine...” Azel’s voice drifted off, and his eyes misted. He reached for a clean handkerchief to blot them. His complexion grayed a little and he began coughing again. Rivergrace put her hand on his knee in concern as his shoulders and chest heaved.
“We should go.”
Azel looked as though he would protest, but nodded his head wearily. He said, his words now hoarse and thin, “I hope you have seen some of the Ways through my eyes, child, and been comforted.”
She stood, bent over him, and kissed the top of his head. She walked out of the patio ahead of Sevryn, stopping only when they were a corner and hallway beyond.
“He doesn’t know the Andredia is poisoned.”
“No. Lariel hasn’t told him.”
“I don’t know if that’s a kindness or cruel.”
“For now, I think, a kindness. Grace . . . come with me.”
“Where?”
“Up the Silverwing. I was given a gift or a curse, I don’t know which, but I’ve memories now that I’d lost, and somehow they’re braided with you, with a past you lost, too, and we need to go back.”
She touched her wrist at the branding scar. “Why?”
“We’ve answers there.”
“Any answer I find out now will probably unbind me, unmake me. I exist from day to day as though walking on a very thin and unsecured plank across a raging river. One misstep, and I’ll be swept away, I know it.”
“Listen to me.”
“I can’t.” She turned her face from him, and it wrenched at him.
“I hold love for you.”
“Oh, don’t. Don’t do this to me! Love someone who exists, who has a chance at living a life.”
He reached for her chin, to tilt her eyes up to meet his, and she shivered at his touch. “It only hurts because you are living a life, Grace. Trust in me. Come with me. I have to find the forge, the mines, the slavers who marked you, and marked me.”
“No. I can’t.”
“You can. You will.”
She wrenched from his grasp. He did then what he’d planned and hit her, catching her limp body before she touched the ground.
Chapter Sixty-Five
“WHAT ARE YOU crafting?”
Narskap paused, his roughened hands in midair over a camp table, glittering shards below his palms reflecting the torch and lantern light. “A conceit,” he answered. “Nothing more.”
Quendius folded his legs and sat down. He watched as Narskap tapped one way, then another, as if cutting a fine jewel although he wasn’t, removing a small flake from the shard he shaped. The smith picked it up to ponder, a needle-sharp fleck that glistened as though dipped in freshly shed blood before dropping it to the side. It reminded Quendius of a thought that touched him often. “I wonder what color Gods bleed.”
“In Their own form or if They take mortal flesh?”
“Either.”
“It’s unlikely we could wound One, either way.” Narskap answered him as if he, too, had considered the thought. He put aside the item he’d been working on and examined another closely.
“I’ll have a guest in the pavilion next eve. Do not come visiting.”
Narskap nodded.
“We’ll return to home base after this next mission.” The direction they’d been moving in was obvious, but he thought he would confirm that to Narskap. Narskap was the weapon he wielded, a buffer between himself and that which he ached to hold but could not. Like any weapon, he needed to be oiled and sharpened and treated with respectful care.
“Good. I must meditate.”
“Our hostage grows restless.”
“A hostage now rather than an ally?”
Quendius wrinkled his nose. “However Diort prefers to refer to himself is immaterial. As long as I have suspicions that he intended us to be pinned between himself and Bistel’s forces, he is not a free man. I need him, at any rate, to front us when we move to sell to Larandaril. He prowls his confines as though a hungry man, anxious to have his war hammer at his side once more.”
“I felt no life in it when I took it from him.” Narskap shrugged. “It is bonded to him. Our sword is uncontrollable, perhaps his hammer merely goes dormant. It is not for me to understand the Demons within them.”
Quendius thought to himself that if Narskap did, he would be a dead man. Quendius could not afford him to have more power.
His smith stirred his project with one finger, selecting another piece to work upon, asking, “The queen has responded to your offer?”
“Yes. She’s decamped from Calcort and is moving to the rendezvous we agreed upon at the border. She’ll be within our hands.” Quendius stretched and rose to his feet like a great, supple, charcoal-colored feline. “I’ll leave you to your hobby.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Narskap spared him a brief glance before going back to his intent study of what he chiseled and shaped ever so precisely.
Quendius dropped one last look at the table before leaving. If he were to venture a guess, it would be that Narskap shaped arrowheads. He would force an answer from Narskap when he was ready, when he had a need to know what his smith was doing.
Chapter Sixty-Six
SOMETHING POUNDED ON HIM in his deepest sleep, and Hosmer tried to raise eyelids that felt grainy and glued impossibly together. The pounding on his shoulder continued with a rhythm that jarred his teeth in his clenched jaw. This was why he preferred to sleep at home rather than the barracks. He burrowed deeper into his cot.
“Wake up. Tree’s blood, Hosmer, wake up!”
He put his hand out blindly to stop the jolting. “Mmmpf.” It sounded as if he was home.
Insistently, Garner turned from pounding to shaking. “Up!”
“A’right, a’right.” He pried one eye open. His disheveled brother looked down at him, lean face, intense eyes.
“You awake?”
“Almost.”
“You smell like a spoiled root cellar.”
“You woke me to tell me this?” Hosmer rolled over and pulled his blanket over his head to blot out the daylight. Garner snatched the blanket back as he did.
“No, I didn’t. What happened?”
Grunting, Hosmer sat up to glare at his brother. He narrowed one eye down into what he thought was an effective stare, as it seemed to work on unruly crowds in Calcort streets. His brother curled a lip back at him. “They rioted at the Great Hall. Unloaded bushels of rotten food at us, threw their empty mugs, brawling, you name it. Last Cause Petition was canceled, and the Vaelinars pulled out in a hurry, in the middle of the night. We formed a wall to keep them safe. I think my new tabard is ruined.”
“Ah, so that’s it, then. The queen is gone? I’m glad I decided to talk with you before worrying Da and Mom. I knew Bistane was gone
. He didn’t show up for his usual hand of cards. I make good coin off him; he’s not as good at keeping a smooth expression as he thinks he is. So Rivergrace went with her?”
Hosmer scrubbed his face with his hand. He did stink, and he had tried to bathe before he fell into his blankets early that morning. His mother would give him a hiding of sharp words and looks. He tried to grasp the sense of what Garner said. “Grace? No. Queen Lariel went with her brother. What’s this about Grace?”
“She’s been gone a day and night and day. Looks like time to worry them, after all.” Garner vacated his cot.
“Wait. No, wait. She never came back with Sevryn?”
“Should she have?”
“I took her to meet him. He asked for her.” Hosmer got up and started pulling clothes on. Clean clothes, but his skin seemed sticky and the process took a bit of doing.
“Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn’t worry them yet.”
“Garner, you’re making my head ache.”
“There’s feelings between the two of them, brother. For all she’s been quiet lately, I know there is. Nutmeg would shout it from the rooftops, but our Grace is still, deep water.”
“You think he took her?”
“I don’t know.” Garner wrinkled his nose at Hosmer. “Wash up a bit, and we’ll find Tolby. Better he be told, and do the thinking.”
“They’ll come after me.”
“I’m sure they will. I would. We’re almost to the Nylara, though, and I doubt they’ll catch up with us.” Sevryn leaned out of his saddle to pat Black Ribbon on her cherry neck. The mare had shown her versatility, pulling the small, one-person horse cart as easily as she carried a rider in the saddle. Rivergrace stared at him, her chin high, tied hands in front of her, her body bouncing about in the cart despite Ribbon’s smooth trot.
“I would like to stop. I need to pee.”
“Of course, m’lady.” He reined off the small dirt road, into a clearing with suitable brush and soft grass, yellowed by the summer but still providing forage for both horses. “I could do with a stretch myself.”
