by Ellyn, Court
Hazel eyes flickered with mischief as much as with firelight, and Kieryn was glad the fire had put a warmth into his face so he couldn’t feel the blush. He had to clear his throat twice before he could manage, “I shall thank Lord Davhin for his hospitality. And I thank you for taking the trouble to see to my comfort, but while the weather holds, I prefer to sleep under the stars.”
“Here? So close to the Wood? Are you sure?”
“Your tents are not made of stone, if you’ll forgive me. Any monster bent on harming me will do so if I sleep inside a tent or outside one.” The better defense was the line of guards stationed amid the road.
Rhoslyn crossed her arms over her bosom. “If you’re not going in, neither am I.”
“You don’t have to prove anything, you know.”
She stuck out her chin. “To myself, I do.”
As pesky as a bee around honey, Lord Westport ambled from his tent and plopped down across the fire from them. Kieryn tried to ignore the intrusion, but Rhoslyn did not pretend to be so gracious. “Rorin?” she said sweetly. “I may grant you your heart’s desire if you go into the Wood and fetch me one of those Dragon Eyes.”
The worshipful veneer vanished from Rorin’s face. He regarded his tent with sudden longing, and Kieryn decided that he refrained from fleeing, not to convince Rhoslyn of his courage, but to keep another from usurping his place. Kieryn, however, was savvy enough to recognize a plan gone awry: as long as Rorin remained, Rhoslyn was solely Kieryn’s, and that suited him just fine.
She turned her back on Rorin and whispered for Kieryn alone, “Zellel goes into Avidan Wood all the time.”
“And he comes out unscathed?”
“As whole and as sane as when he went in. If one can call him sane. But he never tells me what he sees there. And I’ve not the balls to ask to accompany him.”
Kieryn snorted. “I should hope you didn’t, m’ lady.” He suspected the future duchess had spent too much time near her father’s ships.
She laughed and aimed a challenge at Rorin. “Why is it that men equate that part of their anatomy with courage?”
Rorin had overheard enough of the conversation to understand Rhoslyn’s meaning. He sputtered and coughed, and Rhoslyn looked wholly pleased with herself. Kieryn muffled laughter behind a hand.
A rustle under the trees put an end to the joke. Kieryn scrambled to his feet, bow and quiver in hand.
The line of guards heard it, too, and laid hands to pommels.
“I got it,” Kieryn heard himself say, notching an arrow. The guards were well aware of the young lord’s performance on the archery range and parted clear of his line of sight. The underbrush grew still, and the silence drew out unbearably long. Just as Kieryn was about to lower his bow, the fern gave another shudder, and a creature on four skinny legs leapt into the clearing. The firelight gleamed on the red coat and white spots of a fawn. Kieryn sighed in relief. A couple of guards laughed.
“Shoot it,” Rorin said at his elbow.
“What? Why?”
“Deer don’t wander toward humans when they can smell them. It’s an evil disguised. Shoot it!”
He raised the bow again.
“Don’t,” Rhoslyn protested, rising to her feet.
Kieryn sighted down the length of the shaft, aimed for the fawn’s shoulder, then dipped the arrow an inch lower and loosed. The arrow planted between the fawn’s gangly legs, and she leapt away into the trees.
“You missed deliberately,” Rorin accused.
“If my arrow had urged the beast to charge, snarling and drooling, I would’ve notched another and put out its eye. But as it fled, I can only assume that your assessment was wrong.”
More than firelight reddened Rorin’s face. Coolly he asked, “Mean to leave your arrow behind—lad?”
Kieryn lifted a hand in invitation. “I could use the company.”
“Lack the balls to go alone?”
“Lack the balls to go with me?”
Before Rorin could accept the challenge or decline it, Kieryn marched through the line of guards. “Leave it, m’ lord,” one shouted.
He turned and waved reassurance and found Rorin in his wake, trying to catch up. Kieryn slowed, more to prepare a second arrow than to oblige Rorin. A shrill scream from within the branches brought them both to a halt. Only four paces away, the arrow winked up at them. Kieryn convinced himself he was as daring as Kelyn, but a second scream set his heart to thudding. Searching the trees, he saw the dark silhouette of an owl take wing and glide away. He chided himself for letting fear cloud his reason. Last winter, a pair of owls had nested in the trees near Ilswythe Ford, and Kieryn knew their calls. Feeling half a fool, he stooped for the arrow.
A light flared in the ferns, and Kieryn found himself staring into one of the Dragon Eyes. It hovered only feet from him, unwavering, unblinking. Slowly, Kieryn closed his fist around the shaft, ready to use it like a dagger should the thing charge him. But the Eye remained still, as if taking a slow measure of him. The light seemed to radiate from a black pupil and pulse softly, as with a heart’s rhythm. But the longer Kieryn stared, wondering if he should stand or flee, the more the pupil assumed the shape of a human head, as if someone stood before the light of the sun. He tried to discern a face, but the light—and any sign of a living creature—suddenly winked out.
“Damn it, come on,” Rorin urged.
Of no mind to argue, Kieryn tore the arrow from the ground and felt little shame in running back to the campfire.
~~~~
9
No one, to Kieryn’s knowledge, slept well. He didn’t sleep at all, but sat by the fire, adding kindling until dawn bled across the horizon. Camp was packed up before the sun peeked over the Drakhans. Throughout the day, Avidan Wood receded from the Highway until it became a distant nightmare, and by evening, Helwende’s torch-lit towers winked a welcome for the entourage. Lord Galt’s holding stood at a crossroads between Evaronna and Aralorr. All silk, wool, timber, wine, and silver shipped overland passed through his gates. As a hub between realms, Helwende never knew a moment’s quiet. Merchants flooded the town and the castle baileys; dwarven spokesmen yelled their voices raw in bullying one another for the best bargains before the merchants themselves finalized the deals with handshakes alone.
Galt’s inns offered guests a board of fine Leanian mutton and a warm bed relatively free of bugs. For his highborn guests, however, Galt reserved the best rooms of his keep. After two long days of travel, not one of the entourage complained about the drone of voices and wagon wheels drifting in through their windows. Only Kieryn was yet unaccustomed to the incessant surge of people and noise. The view of the market square outside his window mesmerized him; he had never seen so many people converge in a single place. He forgot his exhaustion and had a hard time closing the shutters for a brief nap before supper.
When the guests received the summons, Kieryn encountered Rhoslyn in the corridor. “Did you see the foot soldiers camped outside the gate?” she asked, as they descended to the hall together.
How could he have missed them? Militias were required to drill on occasion, to maintain a certain level of skill, but some of Helwende’s men-at-arms looked as fat and awkward as their lord. Fine though they appeared in their tabards of cerulean and Helwende gold, they had fumbled through a right wheel as Kieryn watched, and he wondered what kind of soldiers were gathering to his father.
“The Highway will soon be full of them,” he replied.
“My return home won’t be a return to rest, will it?” Rhoslyn’s voice rose in pitch, and Kieryn heard the fear in it. “Maybe I should’ve studied up on the last war. I was just a baby when it ended. And now when Evaronna needs Father most, he … oh, Kieryn, how am I to make all those decisions? Everyone will be looking to me, expecting me to know what to do. All those lives in my hands—”
Kieryn paused on the landing. “Rhoslyn, stop. You’re imagining things to worry about. Wait till it comes. Then you will do what you must.”
On the step below, she looked at him through her lashes, embarrassed rather than coy. “You realize something, don’t you? Since that night in your mother’s garden, you’ve become my shield. Whatever I see hurtling toward me, you manage to keep it at bay.”
Kieryn’s heart swelled into his throat. How could he say anything at all?
“Sweetling?” Rorin stood at the foot of the stair in lavender silk. His pointed goatee and the curls of his short-cropped hair had been meticulously shaped and perfumed.
Kieryn had neglected to dust the road off his boots.
“How fresh and lovely you are tonight, my dear lady,” Rorin said with a gallant bow. The compliment may have been inappropriate and overdone, but it was true. Despite the discomforts of travel, Rhoslyn carried herself with a buoyant grace, as if she were ready to tackle the next hundred miles. She wore a sensible day gown of blush-colored velvet and smelled of lilacs. Kieryn wished he’d thought to praise her first.
Rhoslyn riposted, “And you look ridiculous, Rorin. We are not at court, nor are you courting me.”
Surely, Kieryn thought, the blunt denouncement would discourage Rorin at last, but he said, “My lady is ever gracious. Do allow me to escort you to dinner.”
For a brief moment, Rhoslyn merely gaped at the man. Her throat flushed with angry blotches and she said, “Is my present escort suddenly invisible? Or have you lost your sense of—”
Kieryn calmly took up Rhoslyn’s hand and placed it on his arm. To Rorin he said, “Do excuse us, my lord.”
As they passed him by, Rorin’s gaze scored Kieryn head to heel and he gave a derisive shake of the head.
Lord Galt’s table was long and grease-stained, and despite the rules of etiquette, his cooks delivered every course at once. Before Kieryn realized, his plate was full to overflowing; he had two full soup bowls and half a round of white bread that someone expected him to eat, along with half a roast duck. Princess Rilyth called Galt’s manner common and lewd. She refused to look down at her crowded plate, much less touch it, but allowed Erum to feed her the better morsels from his own plate. They did this without discussion, as if the arrangement were customary while they were prisoners of Helwende’s copious hospitality.
Seated among his guests, Lord Galt mixed humor with complaint in an attempt to be entertaining, but it was tiresome bellyaching nonetheless. His discourse might’ve been endurable if he spoke after he swallowed, or even glanced up from his plate once in a while. Kieryn soon understood why Galt’s wife had long ago severed their bonds and returned to her family’s holding in the Silver Mountains. She hadn’t even bothered to fight Galt for their two sons. Geris, the oldest, now in his mid-thirties with a family of his own, was a placid ghost of a man who no longer competed with his father’s incessant voice, but sat at one corner of the table, brooding in silence.
Galt’s younger son, Garrs, was of a different mettle. Somehow he had remained thin, and he showed more interest in his guests than his food. His smile was engaging, his questions solicitous, his gaze direct. When Rhoslyn introduced him to Kieryn, Garrs laughed. “Ah, the archer. Father told me you cost him half the year’s profits.”
“Did I?”
“Aye, and marvelously done. Give him something to really complain about.”
Galt’s complaints inevitably turned toward the war. “Unfortunately, my cooks have made me fat,” he said to his lentil soup. “They’ve made it impossible for me to lead my own troops. They put all this food down in front of me. What am I supposed to do, waste it on the hounds—or the beggars at my gate?” He paused long enough to gnaw on a duck’s wing, but like a dog, he hardly took the time to taste it. “My sons have yet to let their bellies outweigh their mounts, so I’ve placed the burden on them. Poor bastards. Neither are master of the blade. Likely, they’ll both end up dead. Abandoning me with one idiot grandson to raise for an heir. Soon as they leave, I suppose I shall have to get their pyres in the make.”
Princess Rilyth gasped. “How unlucky and unpatriotic! And with your sons present? Let us not talk of war at supper.”
At the somber end of the table, Geris reacted to his father’s commentary by draining his goblet. Garrs, on the other hand, toasted his sire. “I look forward to riding south, my lord. You have no idea how much.”
Early the next morning, the entourage divided into two parties. Rorin, Erum, Drem, and the princess continued west toward Brimlad and Westport; Lord Vonmora, Rhoslyn, and Kieryn turned north for Windgate Pass. In parting, Galt provided dire encouragement, “The Pass got a late snow while we were at Assembly. Be careful you go slow, and mind the narrows. The cliff edges are closer than you think.”
The switchback that snaked up the mountain’s southern flank made the going easier than Kieryn expected. But only halfway up, Diorval was winded and required a brief rest. “Lowland bred,” Davhin jested in his mild, benign manner. Kieryn was surprised by how far they had climbed already; Helwende had diminished to a jumble of pebbles amid far-flung, verdant hills. Merchants’ wagons were the size of ants, the merchants themselves indistinguishable. Above, the peaks glared brilliantly with their new raiment of snow. Though Rhoslyn’s party had passed half a dozen carts willing to risk the pass with their goods, Lord Davhin pointed out that no one had come down from the other side. “I’d rather not spend another night in Lord Galt’s congenial company, m’ lady, but it may be necessary.”
While they debated, a large four-wheeled wagon emerged from the shadows of the pass. The sheaths of snow clinging to the wheels and the mules’ hooves attested to the driver’s determination to win through. Slowly the wagon descended, and as it turned onto the arm of road above them, Davhin hailed the driver by name. “One of my overland distributors,” he said.
The driver pulled his mules to a stop alongside the entourage and exclaimed, “Me lord! Fine day for an avalanche, it is. Thought I might see ye this time o’ the week, Mother bless ye.”
“Can Her Ladyship make it safely over?”
“Buried bloody deep, it is,” the driver said. “And the wind’s nasty strong, like to blow the mountain down. But me girls here beat a nice path for ye. Keep to me track, you oughta make it without mishap.”
“We’ll do that,” Davhin said.
Shortly after they resumed the climb, the road dwindled away beneath a thickening plane of snow. Eventually, the switchback straightened out and the mountain on the right bent away, leaving the riders exposed to a sheer, jagged crevasse. Kieryn’s head swam when he noticed the broken shards of a carriage half-buried in snow at the bottom.
Riding beside him, Rhoslyn saw his bloodless face and laughed.
“I’m lowland bred, too,” he admitted, casting another glance over the edge.
“Well, don’t look, silly.”
Taking her advice, he looked up instead, but the snows hanging heavy from the clefts frightened him just as badly.
At the summit of the pass, the road widened and flattened out; here, Kieryn understood why the pass was called Windgate. Every breath of air in the north of the world seemed to funnel through this gap in the range. The gales were bitterly cold, biting through the layers of Kieryn’s clothing and searing anew the raw nerves of his hand. He tucked his fingers close to his chest and ducked his head against the clouds of snow kicked up by the horses leading the way.
None too soon, the flying snow cleared. Kieryn blinked clumps of it from his lashes and found that Davhin and the vanguard had rounded the first corner of the descent. On his left, Rhoslyn shook snow from her hair. Behind, two wagons heavy with trunks struggled to keep to the merchant’s tracks. The Duchess’s handmaids rode alongside, scarves wrapped about their faces, hands gripping the sides of the wagons for guidance. And below, the golden lowlands of Evaronna stretched out lazily in full sunlight. The Liran River cut a gentle path east to west. Clinging to the banks, Vonmora and her village appeared no larger than a falcon’s eye.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Rhoslyn asked.
“Unders
tatement,” Kieryn replied, admiring the silken flow of the hills, old gold shot through with new spring green. A gleam on the farthest horizon, as of a vein of silver, caught his attention.
“That’s the Glacier Flow,” Rhoslyn explained, “and the end of Evaronna. Zellel says that’s Thanisia where the Ice Elves dwell.”
“Ice elves?” Kieryn echoed dubiously. “I thought the ice dwellers were human.”
Rhoslyn laughed. “A human, living in that frozen waste?” Her torrent of golden hair whipped loosely around her face, her nose and cheeks seared red in the frigid blast. She seemed the personification of the golden land below, on the bold edge of wildness, conforming to the demands of civilization because someone had told her it was proper thing to do. Kieryn tore his eyes from her and reminded himself why he was here. But how could he concentrate on the fire in his hands when he didn’t want to think about anything but her? Stop, he chided. This Zellel may send me straight back home, and I can’t forget that I’m just Safe. No prospect, I. Keep a straight head, fool.
Diorval danced fitfully, reacting, Kieryn thought, to his emotion, but she did not heed his quieting whispers. Rhoslyn’s golden filly, too, danced and shook her head. So did the drays pulling the wagons. A low thunder trembled inside Kieryn’s skin, and one of the drivers bellowed, “Move it!”
