And now he stood at Henley’s side, just the two of them, alone.
But then the crowd shifted. At first Craig didn’t understand what was happening; the change was subtle. It took him a moment to realize that Henley and Larsen were no longer alone at the front of the mob. The entire mass had moved forward, collectively as one. Every man in the long hall had taken a step forward together. Craig stared down at the group of soldiers collected at his feet, abashed by the courage Henley and Larsen had shown that had inspired their comrades far more than his own pathetic speech.
Craig found himself in the grim position of having to choose his volunteers. He limited his choice to a dozen, selecting mostly archers. He did not pick either Henley or Larsen. He wanted both men by his side, not wasted on some hopeless venture. When it was done, he looked out over the heads of the men and saw that Garret Proctor was standing in the doorway, watching.
The Force Commander stepped forward, addressing the hall in a booming voice, “Take only what is necessary. We ride within the hour. Now, MOVE!”
Craig watched as men fsscurried in every direction. He lingered on the mound of blocks only for a moment before following after them himself. He could feel Proctor’s eyes on him as he mounted the nearest ladder to the catwalk at the top of the walls. As he stared out through the frame of an arrow slit, he almost thought he could see movement far below, somewhere down in the bottom of the pass. But it was just the roiling of ground fog, nothing more. The Enemy was not upon them; at least, not yet. He traced his hand over the dark stone blocks that rimmed the arrow slit, pondering these stark walls that had stood for hundreds of years. In the back of his mind, he could hear Royce’s speech as a distant, haunting refrain, the same speech he had delivered to every batch of new recruits: Greystone Keep holds the Pass of Lor-Gamorth. If it should ever fall, then we will lose the pass. If we lose the pass, then we lose the North. And if the North should ever fall, the Enemy will sweep southward like a storm.
It had always been Royce’s duty to hold the fortress. But Royce was dead, and now the walls he had sworn to protect were simply being abandoned. In a way, Craig was glad that his old friend was not alive to see this day; witnessing the fall of Greystone Keep would have certainly broken him.
Craig rode in silence beside his commander at the head of the long column of men that descended the dark cliffs of the Shadowspears, heading southward into the heart of the pass. Above and behind him, the fortress was visible as never before, aglow with the combined lights of dozens of fires. As Proctor had ordered, the men left behind had lingered in silence high up on the catwalk and in the wood-framed cellar until the fortress had been thoroughly overrun. Then they had set fire to the thirsty kindling piled up against the load-bearing supports under the floor of the hall and at the base of the tower. Proctor had turned Greystone Keep into a death trap. Nothing had been left behind for the Enemy. Nothing, with the exception of a half-dozen bowmen whose arrows were even now hissing down from the high walls into the troubled air behind them as the fortress burned beneath their feet.
Craig heard a distant crash and turned to see the roof of the tower caving in, consumed by the fierce orange glow of ravaging flames. Sparks shot upward, wafting high into the sky. He turned away from the sight, fixing his gaze on the black dirt of the path before him. He almost brought his hands up to cover his ears as the sound of distant screams drifted toward him, carried by the still night air. The whistling hiss of arrows slowly ceased, and a dangerous silence lingered over the remote crackling of flames.
Another sound rose behind him, soft at first, then rising to a thunderous, echoing roar. Craig did cover his ears then, closing his eyes as well, against the deafening cry of victory pealed from thousands of Enemy throats.
Devlin Craig didn’t have to look behind him to know that the fortress that had guarded the Pass of Lor-Gamorth for over five hundred years stood no more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Unveiled
DARIEN STARED AHEAD at the sheer white train of Naia’s veil, fascinated by the way it was played out at her side, rippled by the gentle current of a zephyr. He wondered at the veil’s significance, pondering its implications. It was reminiscent in some ways of a bridal scarf, a delicate badge of goodness and purity. In other ways it reminded him of his mother’s funeral shroud, elegant even as it was isolating. The veil fluttered upward, and for the briefest moment he had an unobscured vision of her face. It was as if the clouds had just parted, admitting a fragile, transitory ray of sunlight into his dark and winterish world. Then the skies closed once again as the breeze ebbed, and the veil fell back into place. It had been but a chance gesture of the wind, nothing more. But to Darien, that brief glimpse of Naia’s face had the magnitude of a sobering epiphany.
He realized that he loved her. And he damned himself for it.
They rode in silence into the bleak grayness that precedes the dawn, their horses climbing slowly out of the desert into the green foothills of the mountains. The path they followed was the same that had led them out of the Valley of the Gods two days before, now rising into the gently sloping hills that marked the beginning of the Craghorns. To the north, Darien could see the sharp peaks of snow-clad mountains ranging in the distance, evocatively familiar. The sight of the Craghorns beckoned him, drawing him like a child intrigued by the candle’s tempting flame. Aerysius was there, somewhere, high up on the vertical face of one of those white summits.
Darien slowed his horse as they approached a crossroads. The Tarkendar tossed its large head impatiently. But the mage held him back with a firm grip on the reins as he stared longingly in the direction of the mountains. His heart yearned to take the northern fork toward the Vale of Amberlie and Aerysius above. He wanted to make an end of it, one way or another. Once, he had known what it felt like to be content, to feel alive and whole inside. What he was doing now was not really living. There was only one thing in the world that would ever bring him peace, and it lay there at the end of that long and dusty road. Whether it was the bitter release that vengeance would bring, or the lonesome slumber of the grave, did not matter. Either way, there would finally be an end; that was all he dared wish.
But instead of taking the northern fork, Darien turned the black horse beneath him to the south. He glanced back over his shoulder for one last view of the Craghorns as he guided his mount toward the center of the path. Aerysius would have to wait, at least for a little while. He still had a part to play; fate wasn’t through with him yet. He didn’t know who had set his feet down this road. Be it the gods, his brother, Arden Hannah or even Garret Proctor, it really didn’t matter which. Now that his path had been chosen for him, he had no alternative but to walk it. And, right now, that path led him southward.
“You’re going to Auberdale?” Naia wondered, gazing at him with a perplexed expression on her face.
Darien nodded, the breeze stirring his hair. He hadn’t bothered to tie it back that morning, and a lock of it kept falling forward into his eyes. He brought his hand up to rake it back as he decided that the time had come to share his plan with her. He hadn’t before, because he had been afraid of what she might think of it.
“I have need of the Black Prince’s Northern Army,” he told her, pausing to watch her reaction.
The confusion on her face abated, brightening to a look of comprehension. “So that’s why you sent Kyel to Rothscard, to beg Romana for her army.”
“Begging was not what I had in mind.”
Naia pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I still fail to see how you plan to accomplish all that you intend to do in less than a fortnight. Travel alone will scarcely take us to Aerysius and back to Orien’s Finger in that amount of time, and that doesn’t include a stop in Auberdale.”
“That’s true,” Darien agreed. “There’s not enough time. Aidan will have to wait.”
Naia looked concerned by that answer. Which confused him; that was the part of his plan he had expected her to like the most. She said, “Yo
u told me that you feared to have Aidan at your back. I wondered about that at the time; your brother has done little but sit like a spider in his web ever since he gained control of Aerysius. Do you expect him to move against you now?”
Darien shook his head, wondering how it could be that she still didn’t understand. “Aidan has not been idle, I assure you. For one, there are no passes above Aerysius to admit a force through that corridor. Aidan has been hard at work creating some sort of passage through the Craghorns. And you must remember the Eight are under his command, and they have not been idle at all. Arden Hannah told me she came from Bryn Calazar. That stinks of a union between Aidan and whatever dark terror governs the Enemy.”
This time, the dawn of comprehension on her face was overshadowed by the worried lines of fear he’d been expecting. “An alliance?” she uttered finally, looking appalled. “So all of this has been Aidan’s scheme—to use the combined might of the Enemy and the Netherworld to conquer the Rhen for himself?”
“My family has always had an ambitious streak.”
Naia shook her head regretfully, her gaze wistful. “To think, all of these horrors wrought by just one man. But you still didn’t answer my question. What is the danger if you put off confronting your brother until after the battle?”
Darien shrugged, thinking that he had already explained it. He hardly knew how to put his words more plainly. “Aidan commands Renquist. I’m going to have a hard enough time minding the Enemy without having to worry about being attacked by eight demons and their pets at the same time.”
Naia’s face had gone suddenly pale. “What will you do, Darien?”
“I’ll have a few things on my side,” he reassured her with a forced smile that he simply didn’t feel. “I’ll have two good-sized armies behind me. And Orien’s Vortex will afford me some protection. If he wants a piece of me, Renquist will need to move his mages in close, into the eye of the vortex itself. As I figure it, the battle will be won or lost depending on who gains the Circle first. Whoever controls Orien’s Circle will control the field of battle.”
“But, Darien, what if they’re there already? The Eight? Even Aidan?”
Darien shook his head. “Aidan would never risk his own neck; it’s far too precious to him. As for the others, they’ll not be expecting me. I’m certain Renquist thinks I’m dead, or at least Arden ought to. That’s my greatest advantage: the element of surprise is on my side.”
She looked as if she wanted to believe him, but her eyes beneath the veil were full of doubt. It was the best strategy he had been able to come up with, the only option he even saw. Using Orien’s Circle, he at least had a chance. Yet, there were so many things that could still go wrong before he even reached it. His first big challenge lay just ahead over the hills, a day’s ride to the south.
And he could not afford to spend much time in Chamsbrey’s capital. It would already be a difficult march with an army the long leagues between Auberdale and Orien’s Finger, and he didn’t want it to have to be a forced march. Faukravar was known for stalling, miring his opponents in plots and tangles of intrigue. The King of Chamsbrey had given Darien’s mother headaches on more than one occasion, and Emelda had been a strong Prime Warden. And Darien didn’t kid himself; he’d never had the patience for politics. In Auberdale, he was going to be very much out of his element.
They followed the road to the south the remainder of the day. The landscape changed gradually around them, the scattered trees thickening into a densely forested woodland. Overhead, the sky gave way to a canopy of tree limbs clad in late autumn colors of orange and burnished gold. Leaves rained down on the road as the branches stirred above them in the breeze. In just another few weeks the limbs of the trees would be gray and empty. Winter was approaching swiftly; already the air carried with it a sharp current of chill.
Naia had been conspicuous in her silence throughout most of the day, her eyes either remote in thought or cast downward in an almost meditative study of the road. Darien thought he knew the reason for her reticence; it had begun after their conversation that morning. By the time the sunset arrived, he found himself missing her company. He guided his horse off the road, looking for a place to set up camp for the night. They could have reached Auberdale easily by pressing on after dark. But Naia’s silence bothered him, and for some reason it made him reluctant to enter the city with her in such a somber mood.
Determined to do something to cheer her up, he selected a spot on the rise of a hill, a patch of green grass in the midst of a thicket of trees. The far side of the hill provided a sweeping view of the lowlands below, with the walls of Auberdale visible in the distance against the southern horizon. To his disappointment, Naia seemed unaffected by the view, merely glancing once over the rim of the hill as she went routinely about the process of helping him set up the campsite. Darien felt dismayed, wondering what it would take to bring the smile back to her face.
When he saw her digging through her pack for the dried food stores they had carried with them from Glen Farquist, it gave him an idea. Leaving her by the fire, he strode off alone into the thicket, eyes scanning the ground and the trees for any sign of movement. It took him a little while of searching, but at last he found a hare. Yet, even as he did, he was unsure of quite what to do with it. If Kyel had been there, he would have borrowed his acolyte’s bow to bring the animal down. But Kyel wasn’t there, and all Darien had was his sword. And his ability.
With the slightest wrench of his mind, the rabbit collapsed on the spot. There was no writhing or squirming; the animal simply dropped and was dead. Darien felt himself shiver involuntarily as he walked toward the fallen hare. He knelt over it, staring bleakly down at the limp carcass. He had never before used his ability to take a life, even a small one. It was a new experience, and unsettling. What disturbed him the most was how effortless that action had been. It had taken almost no thought whatsoever to transfer what he already knew from his study of healing and adapt it into a killing strike. He had taken the wondrous gift of life and had corrupted it into its converse, the ignoble gift of death.
As Darien grasped the limp rabbit by its hind legs, he felt wretchedly soiled. This was not the use his gift had ever been intended for. He thought of Grand Master Ezras, the mage who had given up his life to pass on his ability to him. The act he had just committed seemed to slight that great man’s noble sacrifice. Ezras had held fiercely to his Oath his entire life, even in the most desperate of circumstances. At the Battle of Meridan he had stayed his hand, looking on as old friends fell all around him. The man would have gladly yielded his own life before slaying so much as a simple hare with the use of his gift. He had lived his entire life by the letter of the Mage’s Oath.
Feeling sickened, Darien took out his knife and slit the rabbit’s plump belly, scraping its guts out with trembling fingers. He skinned the carcass and drove it through with a branch sharpened into a spit, then knelt to wash up in the crisp water of a stony brook. By the time he returned to their campsite, his hands had finally stopped shaking. Naia looked up as he threw himself down on the other side of the fire from her, bracing the spit hare at an angle over the flames. Her eyebrows raised in appreciation at the smell of the cooking meat. Darien tried his best to smile, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Thank you,” she said simply, kindly.
Darien just nodded. His entire motive for killing the hare had been to cheer her up. But now that his efforts seemed to have worked, at least a little bit, he found that it was now his own self in need of cheering. He leaned forward to turn the meat on the spit, but the motion was really just a way of avoiding her eyes.
“What is wrong?”
She had seen through him anyway. It was an uncanny knack that she had; no matter how well he tried to hide his feelings from her, she seemed to always know them. Before her eyes, every wall he ever threw up crumbled to sand and ashes. Darien leaned forward, folding his arms across his legs as he struggled to think of how to put his emotions to
words.
“I’ve never killed anything with my gift before,” he admitted finally. He felt ashamed; it had been only a stupid, tiny hare. Whether it had died in a trap or by the force of his mind shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
The priestess seemed to sense it, too. Her expression darkened, a look of sympathy forming on her face. The look made him angry; he didn’t want her pity. Of all the range of emotions he wished he could elicit from her, that was the one thing he simply couldn’t take. He stared down at the campfire’s flickering flames as if drawn to them, mesmerized by the fire’s orange-yellow glow.
“I care for you, Naia.”
The look of stunned shock on her face wounded him even more than her pity. Darien pushed himself up, not knowing where he was going as he stumbled unsteadily away from their campsite toward the edge of the hill. He paused there, surrounded by the whispering branches of the forest, gazing down into the darkness below. In the distance, he could see the lights of Auberdale glimmering, a dim glow receding on the dark line of the horizon. He considered the lights, or tried to. But all he could think about was Naia. Why had he said that to her? He couldn’t even imagine what he had been thinking. Without intending to, he had been cruelly unfair to her. He hadn’t even considered the decision he was forcing upon her, asking her to choose between his own selfish desires and her life’s work and ambitions. He had no right to put her in such a position. He was a fool.
He watched the lights below him flicker on the soft tides of air, wishing that he could be anyone else in the world.
The crack of a twig snapping behind him made him turn. She was standing not a foot away from him, her dark gaze intent upon his face. Darien squeezed his eyes shut against the torture of her presence, feeling horrendously confused. Why had she come to him? Didn’t she know that he did not have the strength to deny her?
As she moved into his arms, he grimaced against the anguish of knowing that he was doing her a terrible wrong. At the same time, he felt such a thrill of exhilaration that everything else in the world seemed remotely trivial. He drew her against him, pressing his face into the silken softness of her veil as he reveled in the scent of her. Her hands slid up his back, stroking through his hair as he closed his eyes and immersed himself in the tender compassion of her touch.
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