by Jenna Rhodes
He felt it the moment they happened upon the hidden trail, his awareness of it filling him, and he stopped Aymaran. “We’re near.”
“I know,” she told him. “I can feel the under mountain.” She put a heel to her mare’s flank, riding around him. He hurried to keep up.
They rode in through piles of felled wood, old timber, bleached gray by the years and rotting. If they’d once been gates, he could not tell it now. Their gazes swept the clearing. A bowl carved into the utmost top of the mountain, its appearance was neither natural nor unnatural as it lay empty. He remembered dense shrub and brush although few trees, above the timberline as it was. Now, nothing.
“Old burn,” he said. “Already overgrown, and most of the char gone. If anything stood here, no one would know unless they’d been here before.” Voice soured with disappointment, he jumped from his saddle, searching the ground in long strides, kicking at clods of brush and bramble, hoping to dislodge something. He threw his hands up. “There’s nothing here!” His voice echoed and broke. “There were barracks and a hall and two forges, and stables, outbuildings. Gilgarran and I came here, and they cut him down, and took me as a slave for nearly eighteen years, and there’s not a sign of any of it. Torn down and burned, not even a hearthstone left.” He loped over the grounds, coursing like a hunting dog for a scent or hoping to scare prey into breaking cover. He ran faster, breath harsh in his throat.
“Who needs to believe? Queen Lariel . . . or yourself?”
Sevryn stopped. She studied him from atop her cherry mare, her face calm but concerned, and met his look evenly. He touched his chest. “I know. She needs to believe.” He kicked at the ground again, sending gray-and-dun dirt flying.
She slid off to join him. “Are we in the right spot?”
He sank into a crouch. “If you ask, so will she.” He ran a hand over his hair, pulling it back roughly from his brow. “What I saw here years ago, Rivergrace, will cut her down, but she doesn’t believe that, and there’s no evidence left. They want her in a war, they’re baiting her, and then they’ll cut her down because if they try again to assassinate her, she’ll be a martyr, a cornerstone of the Vaelinar resistance, and they might lose everything they’ve planned. He has a sword that devours whatever it slices, Demon-ridden, God-ridden, I couldn’t say, but it will hew down legions facing it. I can’t let her walk into that. She doesn’t believe Bistel’s reports on it, but she would believe me.”
“What can I look for?”
“Anything. A hammer, tongs . . .” He muttered to himself as he wandered. “They had bellows here as big as two houses, and nothing remains. They must have razed it before burning and moving on.”
She took the lower circle on the hill. His voice stayed in earshot though she lost sight of him over the crest, him saying, “He built like a cursed nomad, no foundations, nothing . . .” until she lost track of even that.
The mountain peak stared at her, rugged and craggy, with as many crevices and boulders to its features as a nightmare. Even a heavy blanket of snow would not be able to smooth over its countenance, she thought, as she wended her way slowly toward it. A maw of darkness opened toward her, growing larger as she neared it, and she realized it wasn’t a shadow cast by a boulder above or to the side, but a cut into the stone, a cave mouth, and she stopped. She could sense water behind it, running below in caverns. She turned her head away from it, tearing herself from the call of it, not wanting to enter. Her heart pounded at the thought. Her boots scuffed over a worn path leading down into it and back the way she’d come, a path she hadn’t even realized she’d followed, a depression in the pebbled dirt.
With a sigh, she ducked her head and went inside, the sun at her back to light her way. Once inside, she froze in her tracks, and her breath shuddered in her chest. The sound of the underground river grew louder in her ears, competing with the thunderous drum of her heartbeat. Only the river kept her from bolting her way back, out of the tunnel, out of the dark that threatened to crush her. Her sight wavered.
Oily torches burned fitfully in different anchorings along the way. Carts rumbled up and down the railings, as Stinkers lumbered behind them, pushing. Now and then a slender figure would ride the cart, being brought up from the depths, pickaxe over a shoulder. She would sit on the cold bank of the river and watch them, and they would never see her. She stayed in nooks and crannies as she’d been taught, and watched a world of shadows go by.
A Stinker fell before her once, dragged by the cart’s weight as it rolled back into the cavern, and when he’d stirred with a groan to open his eyes, he’d seen her. She crept out of her hiding spot and gave him a drink of clean water scooped out of the freshets off the main riverbed and tunnels, and then a crust of hard bread from her breakfast. He’d gobbled everything down as if starving and she thought that he was even hungrier than she.
He’d visit now and then after that. She would give him leavings carefully gleaned from her meals, and he would bring her things from outside the caverns. A butterfly, once. A tiny mouse another time. A handful of wildflowers, wilting as soon as picked but still wondrous in her small fist. He came to her once with a frightful burn, a branding, and she’d made ointment from the cold water and mud to put on it to draw out the heat and then, the next day when he came, she’d cleaned it carefully and put a scrap of bandage around it. She’d cried for his pain because he could not.
One day he began bringing her extra sticks for firewood when the caverns grew icy cold and her teeth chattered so she couldn’t talk to him easily. At first, she hadn’t been sure if it was always the same Stinker, but after he’d been branded, she could tell by the scar on his arm. He wore chains like she did, but he smelled of the wood burning and the hot metals melting and the coppery smell of blood for some reason, and he was not at all like her mother and father.
He played sticks with her when he had a bit of time, and brought small objects to her mother as well, and she looked forward to the brief visits. She had until that day when other Stinkers came to hold her when the shackles were put on.
She felt herself thinning, growing cold, shredding apart like a wisp of a cloud in a high, wind-driven sky. This was where she was made. In such a place, she’d be undone. She thought she felt it beginning.
“Grace?”
Sevryn found her. He wrapped his arms about her chilled body. “Aderro. What are you doing, standing here in the old mine? I thought I’d lost you.”
She pointed down into the caverns. “Here. Here is where I started.” She began to weep.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
SEVRYN GUIDED HER TO the sunlight, chafing his hands up and down her lightly, worried at the chill emanating from her body. Her shivering came from more than cold, and it was far from cold even this high up this time of day. He wondered if she’d stared her last moment in the face and run from it. He pulled her close to warm her and keep her.
Aymaran trumpeted across the clearing in sudden alarm, throwing his head up. A shower of dirt and gravel rained down from above on the peak and the smell of Bolger enveloped them, that heavy musky sweat. He threw Grace to his left arm as he pulled his katana free. The debris clouded their vision, but the target could be plainly smelled.
The Bolger jumped to the ground in front of them, landing in a crouch and leather vest flapping open as he rose to thump his chest. “Remember,” he said. “Rufusss.”
He wasn’t likely to forget and opened his mouth to tell the Bolger that, but she stopped him with a small cry.
Rivergrace shrugged out of his hold and stumbled forward, catching herself. She put her hand out toward the Bolger and touched his arm, tracing her fingers over the crude branding, a clumped scar, on his forearm. “You brought me flowers and a butterfly.”
Sevryn watched and listened to her, realizing that she had pulled recollection out of the caverns.
His green-brown face split into a grin. “This high,” he managed, and held his rugged hand just so high off the ground. “You hide in mines.
Give me food. Little bites, like you.”
She said, “What happened to my mother? My father? I had a family, didn’t I?”
His face fell back into its somber expression, twisted by the Bolger tusks which all of them had, though his had been filed down. “You escape. On river, heavy rains.” He swung his arm toward the mines. “You gone.” He jabbed a thumb at Sevryn. “We capture him. Many years, bad. I wear chains. He wear chains. He run. Big man angry. Tear place apart. I lead hunt. Find you, still this high. I puzzle, but it you. I leave you free. No more chains. Big man burn this place.” Rufus threw his head back and stared about the mountain and clearing. “I learn smithing. I earn freedom.”
Sevryn said to her softly but pitched clearly for her to hear, and Rufus seemed unaware of his speaking as he did so, “He hasn’t a sense of time. He tells the truth, but not in a way we can count on.”
She let her breath out in a long sigh. The truth in pieces, a handstitched quilt of memories whose journey she could not follow. Yet. She caught Sevryn’s hand and held it tightly.
“Do you remember the sword?”
Rufus tore his eyes from her and looked to Sevryn. He gave a nod. “Hungry. Big man call Cerat.”
“Cerat,” Sevryn repeated. “Drinker, in Vaelinar. Only it means more than that, rather like the night drinks the day, or death drinks life.”
“A fell name.”
“Yes.” Sevryn drew himself up as he made a decision. “We’ll go down the mountain and through the lower pass to Larandaril. Come with us, Rufus.”
“Watch her?”
“Yes.”
“I go.”
“We can’t go yet.” Rivergrace inhaled slowly, holding onto Sevryn’s forearm, taking both strength and warmth from him. “I have to see the river.”
“Aderro . . .”
“We came for this. I came for this. I can’t let it go.” She shifted, removing her still-cold hand from his, and retraced her steps into the caverns. Rufus grunted. They had little choice but to follow.
Inside, the Bolger lit torches, old ones, but still so soaked in crude oil that they flared sullenly, and smoky orange halos flared out from them. Rivergrace walked ahead, her steps so quick and sure, he would have bet she didn’t need the torches to see. They kicked through old campsites, evidence of occupation of the most menial kind, remnants of poor attempts to survive. The sound of the underground water grew louder, although it dripped from cave walls everywhere. She headed toward a main canal with a malevolent odor permeating the close air of the caves. They heard her when she stopped because she began to sing in soft, unsure and halting words and melody.
He would not let her end in a place like this. Her destiny to cleanse the water or not, he wouldn’t stand by and see her disintegrate to clean up refuse Quendius had left behind. He put his hand on her shoulder to drag her back, to swing her up in his arms and carry her out if need be. Touching her brought him into her line of power. He felt his own senses snap to awareness of her. He knew Vaelinar power, he used it, had had it around him most of the last few decades, freely, unhidden, unfettered, unconstrained, and even in Tressandre’s case, unwanted. The touch of her power shocked him. It was and was not Vaelinar. It thrilled through his body and took from him, coaxing, draining, exhilarating, and frightening. Most of all, he could not refuse it. Benevolent but determined, it would cleanse this water.
Rivergrace waved her hand. “Move the stones, Rufus.”
The Bolger jumped into the black, sluggish pool. He found the sluice and began to turn it or tear it out. Water rose behind it, dammed, runoff from the vats in the forges and the mining operations. He could smell the minerals and oils floating in it. The dam held it back, but not successfully, and kept fresh water from diluting it. She leaned over, combing her hands through the river, always singing and he could not resist her music. Sevryn closed his eyes to feel the golden lines and silver lines in him being spun out and taken. He felt thinner and thinner as they were until he fell to his knees.
“There.” Her voice, tired but triumphant, snapped his eyes open. She sat next to him, leaning on him, her body so insubstantial he hadn’t felt her weight. As transparent as a ghost, he saw and felt her come back. On the cave flooring, piles of slag and goo glistened in the torchlight, beginning to dry and harden where her hands had combed it from the waters and thrown it aside. Rufus bent his shoulders against the rising current, holding the rotten wood dam in place, and she said, “Get out now. It’ll sweep through.”
Sevryn gave him a hand up, and wood splintered wetly, and the sluice and dam came apart, water foaming up iridescently in the cavern depths, and swept by them.
They helped each other back out. Sevryn looked at the piles as they passed them, seeing the black and copper and even blood-red rivulets turning into solid heaps of refuse. That she had done this.
He knew then that she was meant for the Andredia, that they could lose her yet, and he didn’t know how to tell her or how to lead her onward. He put his head down and kissed her forehead, hiding his anguish in the daylight as they emerged.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
“NO WORD FROM SEVRYN?” Lariel stripped off riding gloves as she asked, each tug on the soft leather punctuating her words, her forehead pinched as she did.
“None.” Jeredon, already dismounted, gave the reins over on his gray gelding to the horse boy, a wizened, silver-haired elder who always cackled when called by his title.
“Daravan, I could expect this from. We don’t hear from or about him for decades, but Sevryn I thought more of. If he’s not dead, I might kill him for this.” She swung her leg over, jumping down lightly from her tashya mount.
“We don’t know what he’s doing.”
“No. We just know that we’re two days from meeting with the weaponsmith and armorer, and that he’s nowhere about. He has Gilgarran’s stubborn lack of regard for protocol.” She reached back and pulled a long hairpin, and her silver-and-gold hair tumbled down to her shoulders and back, freed.
“He’s already given you an opinion on that meeting, I believe.”
“You disapprove as well.”
“I’ve always found that if you draw a sword, you’d best be prepared and able to use it, for you’ll be forced into using it. You know that far better than I. You won the title of warrior.”
She gave her reins over to the horse boy who bowed before leading them away to the tether lines. “Jeredon, our home is being destroyed. Slowly, agonizingly, and the Andredia with it. I don’t know if they’ve opened some fell Way into my kingdom or if they’re poisoning the waters. I don’t even know yet who they are. But I won’t stand idle. I will destroy them before their work is done.”
“You’re meeting with Abayan Diort who raises armies in the east.” He paced her easily, shortening his long strides to do so, as they crossed the camp toward the pavilion tent of the Captain of Arms, Osten ild Drebukar.
“He isn’t the one attacking us. Yet. He’s too busy consolidating himself in his homelands, and between us lie the barren stretches of the warlands. You don’t bring an army across that lightly, there is no way to live off that land. The logistics alone keep him away from us for the time being.” Lariel paused outside the captain’s quarters. “It’s the man partnered with him that I want to size up, this Quendius.”
“And I agree with her,” Osten boomed, exiting his pavilion, extending his hands to Lariel. The youngest scion of House Drebukar, his older brothers tied to Istlanthir for the holding of Tomarq, he’d come to Lariel as Captain of Arms, welding their houses together in politics and support. Tall, broad, dark-haired, and green-and-caramel-eyed, his shoulders and arms impressively muscled from years of swinging a sword and lance, he had had little work to do in Larandaril, going back and forth between the two kingdoms, training personal guards mostly. Now, his eyes gleamed with the knowledge that his skills might finally be of use. He rubbed the scar which divided one side of his face from the other, a reminder of an errant blow which had marred
his handsome features but not split his skull as intended. It was said to have been a training accident struck by Garran ild Fallyn in defense of his sister, but with that House, one never knew. “Quendius has eluded most of our efforts to find out who he is, what he can do, and where he bases himself, but it seems he’s been selling weapons for some time, in defiance of the Accords.”
“Which have been laid aside.”
“But which, when followed stringently, greatly limited arms manufacture and sales.” Osten held the insect netting aside for Lariel as she ducked her head to enter his pavilion.
“It doesn’t seem to have deterred either him or Diort.”
“No. It will be interesting to see how this partnership of theirs functions, eh? Quendius is a mix of our blood, and Diort’s purebred Galdarkan guardianship must boil in him for treating with the weaponsmith.” Osten pulled out a campaign chair for his queen and seated Lariel with a flourish.
“I think you thrive on this.”
He seated himself, still smiling broadly at Lariel. He adjusted his tabard divided into halves of both Tomarq and Larandaril. “It is your presence I thrive on.”
She gave a feminine snort, and he winked at Jeredon. “I hear I have a rival! Bistane hardly left your side during the Conference.”
She flicked her fingers at him.
“Enough teasing,” Jeredon muttered. “We enter the site day after tomorrow at high sun, and what do we expect?”
“We expect them to already be camped and waiting, with wagons and crates of the goods they intend to supply. I’ll be posting the men tomorrow as we move into the area, and the day of, I’ll inspect the cargo. Tiiva will be there for an accounting, and we’ll dicker on the prices.”
Lady Tiiva had already retired for the evening. Despite her affinity for hunting jaunts, her delicate constitution did not lend itself well to trips of this sort, it seemed, and they’d made a forced march to keep this appointment. Lariel had found only a few days of peace at home after fleeing the Conference, when this meet had been set up. He tapped a broad finger on the fold-up table beside Lariel. “Jeredon will be making his way through their entourage, seeing the quality of the weapons on his men, and the maker.”
