by Deborah Hale
“Tale?” Rath gave a comic pretense of outrage. “Every word is the truth, I swear it.”
“Aye, and my brother-in-law’s the Waiting King!” quipped the innkeeper as he led them off to inspect the tack he had for sale.
Maura wondered if he gave them such a good price on the saddle and harness because Rath had amused him so well.
“Perhaps so.” Rath chuckled when she suggested it later. “I do not know what made me do it. I had a good story all ready, then this strange urge came over me to tell the truth.”
He glanced back at her as they climbed the winding stairs to the room they had hired for the night. “If I am not careful, you will soon have me tamed with your witchery.”
“Do not fret.” She gave him a playful slap on the back. “I am no beast charmer.”
Would she want to tame him, even if she could? Maura wondered. As with most of her feelings about Rath Talward, she could not be certain. Only one thing she knew without doubt, just then. She would be glad of an excuse to cling to him for the next several days as they rode through the Long Vale.
They had not been long on the road the following morning when Maura tapped on Rath’s shoulder. “Stop a moment, will you?”
“Aye.” He reined the mare to a halt. “What for?”
“You will see.” She slid off the horse’s flank and jumped the ditch to a small meadow.
The land looked like it had once been cultivated, but now it lay fallow, yielding only tall grass and a bountiful crop of hundredflowers. Maura picked as many as she could stuff into the wide pocket of her apron.
“Good thinking,” said Rath when she returned to the road. “We have been fortunate not to meet any Han since we reached the Long Vale, but I do not expect such luck to hold.”
As they set off again, Maura pulled a great handful of petals from some of the flowers she had gathered. Then she scattered them over herself, Rath and the mare.
“Repeat the spell after me,” she bid Rath. “That will make it more potent.”
“Talk fast,” said Rath. “I think I hear something on the road ahead.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, Maura heard the sounds, too—the swift, hard tramp of metal-shod feet and the harsh jabber of Hanish voices. Her own voice a trifle breathless, she spoke the spell in short phrases for Rath to repeat.
He slowed the mare to delay their encounter. They had barely finished reciting the spell when they rounded a bend in the road and saw a small troop of Hanish soldiers ahead. From what Maura could tell, peering out around Rath, they had stopped marching and were clustered around a donkey cart.
“Hang on,” Rath muttered over his shoulder.
He urged the mare to a brisk trot, then made her jump the ditch. The landing jolted Maura but she managed to keep her seat. When they drew even with the Han, she understood why Rath had left the road. There would have been no room for them to pass without attracting unwelcome notice to themselves.
At the moment, all the soldiers’ attention was directed toward the donkey cart and its elderly owner. Some of them were pushing him back and forth between them, bellowing what sounded like questions and orders, while others watched and laughed.
“What are they saying?” she whispered to Rath. “Why are they harassing him?”
He turned his head to watch the soldiers, and to whisper an answer back to her. “They are berating him for kicking up dust on the road that they will have to walk through. It might dirty their precious hair! By the sound of it, the old one does not know much Comtung. Some of them are taking that as an insult.”
“Metalmongers!” Maura fumed. “A great show of courage, that, picking on a defenseless old man.”
“Do not be fooled, the Han are brave enough in battle.”
“When they have their enemies outnumbered ten to one, perhaps,” Maura muttered through clenched teeth. “I would like to see one of them have the courage to march into Vang’s lair, all alone!”
The old man looked from soldier to soldier, trying in vain to find one who might show the faintest spark of compassion or decency.
“Please, good masters,” he cried in Embrian. “I mean you no harm!” He tried to bow. “I entreat your pardon if I have offended!”
One of the soldiers pushed the old man away, imitating his words in a tone of mocking contempt. When he staggered, another of the soldiers thrust out an iron-soled boot to send him sprawling onto the dusty road.
A third soldier fetched him a hard kick as he bellowed an order in Hanish. When the old man tried to stagger to his feet, Maura saw a single tear dribble down his wrinkled, dust-smudged cheek.
The intensity of her outrage made Maura’s whole body tremble. She did not notice herself sliding off the mare’s flank until Rath caught her arm.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“I do not know.” She struggled to break free. “Something. I must do something!”
“No!” Rath twisted half way around in his saddle to catch her by the waist. “They will only go harder on the old man if you do. Believe me, I have seen it a hundred times.”
Maura knew he was talking sense and yet... “Is there nothing we can do?”
Rath made a sound deep in his throat, like a vexed sigh wed to a growl. “Wait here.” He eased her to the ground. “Do nothing until I have drawn the Han off. You mind me?”
She nodded.
“Good.” Rath pointed to a nearby clump of bushes. “Get the old man off the road and keep going on to the nearest village. I will catch up with you there.”
Before she could answer, he rode off.
What was he planning? Maura wondered. Would it place him in danger? She almost wished she had not gotten him involved.
Meanwhile the soldiers continued to bully the old man who was now weeping openly, begging them to let him be. Those signs of weakness seemed to goad the Han further, making them ever more vicious in their taunts.
Then, suddenly, there was a loud clang. One of the Han flinched and cried out. Another clang. Another cry. More, until the soldiers forgot their victim, drawing their weapons and peering around to locate the source of this brazen attack upon them.
They did not need to look for long.
A familiar voice roared down from a gentle incline on the opposite side of the road, along with a fresh hail of well-aimed stones. Though Maura did not understand the Hanish words Rath shouted, his jeering tone and the soldiers’ furious reaction convinced her they were grievous slurs.
Her gaze flew to a sparse clump of trees part way up the low hill. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Rath as he lunged out from behind one of the trees to hurl another small rock and another vile insult.
One of the soldiers raised his bow and sent an arrow flying. Rath ducked back behind the tree before it whistled past.
The Han with the most elaborate helmet plume bawled an order, sending the whole troop racing up the slope brandishing their blades.
“Don’t you dare get yourself killed, Rath Talward,” Maura muttered under her breath as she watched him flee up the hill ahead of the charging soldiers. “May the Giver go with you.”
She forced her attention back to the old man, who cowered beside his donkey cart.
Stealing out from her hiding place, she knelt beside him. “Come Oldfather. We must get you away from here while the Han are busy elsewhere.”
He raised his arm to shield his face. “They will be angry if they come back and find me gone.”
Maura made a gesture of respect, then took his arm with a gentle but urgent touch. “If they do return to this spot, I am certain they will have forgotten all about you. And you will be far away.”
When fear and confusion still made him balk, she pleaded, “A good man has risked much to help you. Do not let his brave deed be for nothing.”
Perhaps her words convinced the old man, for he leaned heavily upon her to heave himself to his feet. Once in motion, he proved surprisingly nimble. Scrambling into the cart, he motioned for Maura to
pass him the donkey’s reins.
When she did, he beckoned her to climb onto the seat beside him. “It is not safe for a pretty young lass to linger here, either. I can take you a ways toward Folkin’s Mills, if that is where you are bound.”
“Thank you, Oldfather.”
Once Maura had taken a seat beside him, he slapped the reins hard against the donkey’s hindquarters. The beast protested with a shrill bray, but set off at a smart pace down the road.
Remembering the hundredflowers she had thrust into her apron pocket, Maura pulled off a handful of petals and tossed them in the air to fall over the cart, the old man, the donkey and herself. Then she spoke the words of the spell.
The old man stared at her, his eyes wide and his jaw slack. “Is that twara you speak, lass?”
“It is. A spell to keep the Han from paying us any mind.” She explained about the hundredflowers and made him repeat the words of the incantation until she was certain he would remember them. “From now on, I want you to use this spell whenever you venture from home and might meet up with any Han.”
At last the old man seemed to rouse from his frightened bewilderment. “When I was a boy, my mother had a few little spells she used, the Giver rest her spirit. To make the hens lay and to patch up we younglings when we hurt ourselves. Nowadays, folks say that is all foolishness or wickedness, but I know different.”
Maura patted his hand. “I hope you will try to remember your mother’s spells, and use them... teach them to your grandkin. Tell them all the old stories you can recall. All the blessings and rituals. The Han have robbed Embria of so much else, we must not let them take our greatest riches.”
A tremor quaked through Maura when she finished speaking. Those words had not been her own. Someone or something had used her tongue to speak.
The old man stared at her, his sparse white brows knit together. In a voice hushed with wonder he asked, “Who are you, lass?”
Once again the words seemed to come from outside her, or perhaps from a deep place within her that she had never explored. She raised her fingertips to brush against the old man’s forehead, then down to his lips, his chest and the palm of his hand in an ancient blessing. “I am the Destined Queen, Oldfather. Keep hope. I am on my way to find the Waiting King.”
“Here you are,” cried Rath when he finally overtook Maura many hours later on the outskirts of a good-sized town. “I was afraid I had lost you!”
“You were afraid?” Maura raised her arm to shield her eyes from the setting sun as she gazed up at him. “After you set a whole troop of Hanish soldiers on your tail? I have been frantic with worry, wondering if you managed to outrun them. What happened to your creed of looking out for no one but yourself?”
“Did I not say you were having a dangerously wholesome influence on me?” A burst of hearty, refreshing laughter shook Rath as he extended his hand to hoist Maura up behind him.
He had no right to feel so absurdly pleased with himself and the whole world! He had just done something dangerously daft for an old man he had never met in his life. An old man who could not possibly do anything to repay him for the foolish risk he had taken.
“If they had caught you...” Maura shuddered, her arms tightening around him.
“If they had caught me,” Rath replied with witless good cheer, “I would be lucky to be dead by now. But they did not catch me.”
Perhaps it was his narrow escape that had left him with such a dizzying sense of freedom and power. Some untrustworthy instinct told him it was more than that.
“How is the old man?”
“Shaken,” replied Maura, “and confused, but not badly hurt, thanks to you. He told me to give you his thanks... and his blessing.”
“I hope you told him to give the Han a good wide berth from now on, supposing it means driving that cart of his in the ditch. They are hardest on the weak and the old. I think such folk remind them of what they will become one day and it terrifies them to the marrow of their bones.”
Where had that notion come from? Rath wondered. It had never occurred to him before he heard the words coming out of his mouth. Yet it had a ring of truth.
“I thought the Han were not afraid of anything.” Maura sounded as if she were talking to herself. “Everyone in Windleford was afraid of them, but I never saw them harass ordinary law-abiding folk as bad as they did that man.”
“Windleford is a haven compared to most places.” Rath did not like to dwell on memories of some places and things he’d seen. “And this side of the mountains is a hundredfold better than the other. I hope you never have to see...”
The words caught in Rath’s throat and he almost gagged on them. The fleeting elation he’d felt after escaping the Han soured into something vile, even poisonous.
At first he had not recognized the contorted shapes in the large tree ahead of them. Then he had wondered if they might be children, climbing in the branches. But the forms were too large to be children. And they were not moving.
“Don’t look, Maura!” The instant those futile words left his lips, Rath wished he could recall them. He had never yet met a person who heeded such a warning. Curiosity ran too strong in most folk.
“At what?” Maura shifted her perch to peer around him.
She gave a strangled cry, then pressed her face against his back... too late to shut out the gruesome sight.
Rath struggled to keep his last meal from coming back up.
Those things in the tree had once been men. Now their mangled corpses hung from the branches as a brutal warning.
“From the mines.”
Buffered by the layers of cloak, vest and shirt, Rath still felt Maura’s head move against his back as she nodded. “That could have been Newlyn.”
He plundered his mind for anything he could say to comfort her—to comfort himself. “They are better off now than when they were alive, poor devils.”
There was no question of Rath and Maura eating after that. But he insisted they take a room at the town’s small inn.
“The horse needs to rest and feed,” said Rath. “I rode her hard to get away from the Han. And, spell or no spell, I do not fancy being caught on the road after dark.”
This time he did not jest with the innkeeper or draw attention to Maura or himself in any way.
Once they were safely inside their room he slid the floor with his back propped against the door and his dagger drawn.
Catching Maura’s eye he nodded toward the bed. “Sleep if you can. Prum is still a good way off. I mean to travel as far as we can every day until we get there.”
“Very well.” Maura removed her boots, then laid down on the bed, her face toward the door.
For a time, the only sounds in the little room were the muted voices and rattle of crockery from the kitchen below.
Then Maura sat up. “It would make more sense if you take the bed. I can always sleep tomorrow while we ride. You will need to have your wits about you.”
“I am fine here.” Rath yawned. “I have slept in far worse.”
“I cannot sleep,” said Maura. “So I might as well sit guard while you get a proper rest.”
“Sit guard?” Rath could not keep a hint of amusement from his voice. “Do you mean you would use my dagger if you had to?”
“N-no,” she admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “But I would have my spider silk ready, or dreamweed.”
“Why not use that dreamweed on yourself, then?” Why was he resisting. If Maura did not want the bed, who was he to argue? “I cannot bear to close my eyes. I keep seeing those bodies in the tree. One had his eyes gouged out, and a crow was...”
“I warned you not to look! Have you nothing in that sash of yours to purge such evil memories?”
If she did, he might beg her for a dram to soothe his mind.
Maura shook her head. “If I did, I would not use it.”
“Are you daft?”
“Perhaps.” She rose from the bed and walked to the window where she sta
red out into the night. “I do not expect you to understand, but it feels wrong for me to forget.”
She was right about one thing at least. He did not understand. “Why make yourself unhappy when there is nothing you can do to change it?”
In the luminous dusting of moonlight through the tiny window, Rath saw her turn. Two strides brought her to the door, where she knelt before him and clasped his hand in both of hers. “We did change it, though.” She spoke in a rushed, eager whisper. “Today. You and I. For one old man. If we can, others can, too. And if enough do...”
Her newfound zeal might seduce him, if he let it. But he must not. Maura had only the barest notion of what the Han had done to Embria. Rath wanted to keep it that way.
“That is all well and good, lass. But your new husband may have different ideas. I doubt he will want you risking your neck or attracting the wrong sort of attention from the local garrison.”
Rath hoped the fellow would be capable of protecting Maura, the way Langbard had. “The best thing you can do for yourself and for Embria is to lead a quiet life in Prum. Sow your door yard with hundredflowers and herbs. Teach your children vitcraft and the Elderways. Make your home like a tinderbox that keeps an ember glowing until the day comes when it may kindle a fresh fire.”
Who was he trying to fool, her or himself? The Han would only get stronger in the years ahead while Embrians sank deeper into bondage. Any hope of resistance had been squandered years ago.
“I thought you mistrusted vitcraft and despised the Elderways.” Maura’s words exposed a vulnerable spot within him.
“I thought so, too.”
In another week, he and Maura would part company. And not a moment too soon, if he ever hoped to get his old life back. The question Rath asked himself many times through that long, dark, silent night was—did he want it back?
Their next day’s journeys were longer, but less eventful. For several of them, a soft, gray mist shrouded the countryside, muffling sounds and limiting vision to a few yards in any direction. What brutal sights was it protecting her from? Maura wondered, not truly wanting to know.
