Reader and Raelynx

by Sharon Shinn

  Amalie went to stand at the window and look out over the sloping lawns. The moon was small and high; the grass mustered a subdued sparkle under its light. At this time of night, it was impossible to tell how green the lawns had become in just a few days. They had pulled away bodies and found new grass underneath.

  “When armies ride to war, death rides with them,” she said. “I love so few people in this world, and any of them could lose their lives in this endeavor.”

  Cammon settled in one of the extremely comfortable chairs and watched the back of her head. “I had the identical thought.”

  “I wonder if it might be better to abandon Ghosenhall, indeed, but not so we could make a stand in another place. Cede the palace, cede the crown, spare all these lives.”

  He was silent a moment. “There is probably not a single one of your friends who would agree that is a good idea.”

  “Even you?”

  “I’m hardly qualified to advise.”

  “But you can tell me your opinion.”

  “My opinion is that war will follow you wherever you go. If you hide in the Lirrens, Halchon Gisseltess will track you down there. If you are alive, you are a threat to him. He would prefer to see you dead or in his power.”

  She reflected a moment. “And if I were dead?”

  “Amalie!”

  “I’m just asking. I’m not planning to kill myself.”

  “If you were dead and he could take the throne—yes, I suppose it would avert a great deal of bloodshed. Every mystic in the country would be put to death, though. And I suspect the rebels would still war against Merrenstow and Rappengrass and the Houses that have shown loyalty to the throne. And I have to believe that Halchon Gisseltess would make a bad king—unjust and violent. His sons would rule after him and be equally brutal. Is that the legacy you would leave for Gillengaria?”

  She sighed. “It is just that I do not want anyone to die.”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t know how to keep them all safe. I don’t even know how to keep safe the ones I care about the most.”

  She stared out the window during another short silence. “Valri is grieving over my father’s death,” she said presently.

  “I know,” he said again.

  “She thinks he didn’t know that she loved him. She thinks if she had told him so, she would not be so distraught now.”

  “I always thought your father knew everything,” Cammon said with a touch of humor. “I’d be surprised if he hadn’t realized it.”

  “Still, you should tell people the important things, while you can,” she said, turning away from the window and coming straight for him across the room. Before he could stir from the chair, she dropped to her knees, clasped his hand, and cradled it against her cheek. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have let you think that I am merely playing at love when I am with you, learning things I need to know, but that’s all been pretense. I truly do love you. I don’t know how I’m going to give you up when the time comes that I am supposed to do so.”

  His heart, at the same time, compressed with grief and expanded with joy. “Amalie,” he said urgently, trying to pull her off her knees, into his lap, but she would not budge. So he slipped from the chair and joined her on the floor, drawing her into his arms. “Amalie, you won’t have to give me up. We’ll think of something. I’ll stay on as a footman or a groom—I’ll work in the wine cellars or the gardens. Maybe I’ll have Kirra do some magic, change my face. No one but you will even know that I’m still here.” She laughed against his chest, as if he had been joking, and he added, “I’m serious.”

  “I don’t think that will be good enough for me,” she said unsteadily.

  He stroked her hair. “I haven’t been able to bear to think about it,” he said. “I sat there all those days when the serramar of Gillengaria came courting you! Knowing that one of them would marry you, and how would I be able to stand it? I was already wondering where I should go once you were married. Except where would I go? Justin and Tayse and Senneth are here, and no one ever knows where Kirra and Donnal will be, and I have no one else. But I have been afraid to let myself love you too much, because I don’t know how to walk away from love. I don’t know how to let it go. But what do I do with that love if I don’t have you in my life?”

  She lifted her head, and so, of course, he kissed her. She had started crying, but the kiss made her smile. “And I have been afraid that once you left the palace, you would forget all about me.”

  He gave a little snort. “That doesn’t seem to be how it works for me. When they’re gone—Senneth and the others—I can still feel them. I know if they’re safe, if they’re afraid, if they’re hurt. It doesn’t matter how far away they are. As long as they’re in Gillengaria, I can hear them.” He kissed her again. “I was thinking I would have to sail to Arberharst if I wanted to get you out of my heart. Or, well, not Arberharst anymore, I suppose. Karyndein or Sovenfeld. Somewhere so distant that even your memories couldn’t follow me.”

  “I don’t want you to go that far,” she said. “I don’t want you to go at all.”

  He hugged her closer, feeling both elated and hopeless. She loves me warred with I still can’t have her. “There are no answers, not now,” he said quietly. “Maybe when the war ends, the world will have changed. Or maybe we will both just be so glad to be alive that we will be able to stand it better, whatever happens next. But, Amalie, as long as you want me with you, I will stay. And if ever you want me to go, I will go. I love you. For now, at least, maybe that’s enough.”

  For her it was. She lifted her mouth and kissed him again, straining against him as if trying to meld her body to his. Death and destruction loomed immediately ahead; separation and heartbreak lay inevitably beyond. But, for tonight, there was no course open to them but to prove their fealty by making love. They feverishly pulled off their own clothes and each other’s—laughed to see Amalie’s dagger still tightly buckled to her leg—and sprawled on the floor, tangled together, swearing vows and whispering each other’s names. The moon watched through the window; the raelynx, asleep at the hearth, did not seem to notice at all. But Cammon wondered, just before he fell asleep, how many other gods had tiptoed through the room, offering or withholding their blessings. Surely whichever goddess watched over him must be celebrating tonight; surely she was moved by honest emotion and unguarded passion. Surely she would want to grant her most dutiful acolyte his heart’s desire.

  IN the morning, the troops moved out, ranks of royal soldiers marching beside borrowed fighters from Merrenstow, Kianlever, and Helven. Amalie rode at the head of the army, Cammon and Valri on either side of her, Riders in a ring around them. Romar Brendyn, acting as commander, followed shortly behind her. The raelynx traveled near Amalie, sometimes roaming far ahead, always returning when she called it to her side. Sometimes Cammon saw three raelynxes bounding along beside them—sometimes a raelynx, a wolf, and a lion. Donnal and Kirra, choosing to accompany the army in animal form.

  The lead Rider carried a two-tiered standard: the royal flag, a gold lion splashed on a black field; and a new device that Amalie had adopted as her own, a red raelynx rampant on a gold background. The Queen’s Riders wore new sashes that alternated lions and raelynxes. Even some of the common soldiers had tied scarlet scarves around their arms or braided crimson ribbons into the manes of their horses. They were the princess’s army; they were riding to protect her.

  A small regiment had stayed behind under the command of Tayse, to engage and distract the enemy troops as they advanced on Ghosenhall. Justin and two other Riders had also joined this perilous venture.

  Senneth and Ellynor waited with them.

  CHAPTER

  33

  SENNETH knew it was risky, of course. They might all die. But Justin and Tayse had spent hours planning an ambush, an escape route, and an alternate plan. They seemed to think they could inflict some damage on the oncoming army, then whisk their troops away with a minimum of loss.
r />   Tayse had been less than thrilled with Senneth’s plan to confront Halchon Gisseltess.

  “I won’t let him near enough to touch me,” she said. Something about his skin, his body, was anathema to her. She could not call fire, she almost could not summon rational thought, if he had any physical contact with her. She wondered sometimes if he possessed a peculiar magic, a kind that rendered other kinds of magic inoperable, and if so, what kind of strange god might watch over such a man. “But I think we need to take one last chance to try to bargain with him.”

  Predictably, Justin’s comment had been, “The only bargain he understands is a blade through the heart.”

  “It will come to that, no doubt,” she said. “But I feel compelled to try.”

  They had learned quite by accident that the Arberharst men were not immune to Lirren magic. Only a handful of attackers had survived the assault on the palace, and a few had been so wounded that they could not be expected to live through the night. Kirra had been unable to heal them, but Ellynor had brought two of them back from the brink of death. She had then made herself invisible in order to eavesdrop on the manner in which Romar Brendyn questioned the enemy soldiers. “Because if he tortured them, I wasn’t going to help him again, and I’d let him know that,” she confessed to Senneth. Romar hadn’t seen her there—but neither had the soldiers from Arberharst.

  And that had gotten Senneth to thinking.

  They laid their trap a few miles outside the city limits, on a low stretch of road that Justin called a natural ambush, since it passed between high ridges on either side. They had barely a day to wait before their scout came racing back to pant out that the armies were only a few hours behind him.

  Senneth didn’t think she had quite prepared herself for the sight of ten thousand men advancing to war.

  They made one undulating, multicolored river of motion, ten men across and a thousand men deep. The three armies had blended into one, but she could still discern pockets of soldiers who rode with hundreds of their fellows—Lumanen guards dressed in black and silver, for instance, or Gisseltess men in black and red. It was no surprise, she thought, to find among the enemy troops rows of men wearing the topaz sash of Storian. The blue uniforms of the Arberharst soldiers, several thousand all told, were scattered throughout the Gillengaria masses. A deliberate move on Halchon’s part, Senneth thought with grudging admiration; he knew the foreign recruits were much less likely to be affected by homegrown magic.

  But today that decision would work against them.

  Senneth, Tayse, and their small force hid on top of the northernmost hill, watching the army march closer. An advance guard of perhaps twenty men led the way, carrying the flags of all three armies. Behind them rode the heads of this villainous alliance: Rayson Fortunalt, a florid, heavyset man with small eyes and a perpetually sneering expression; Halchon Gisseltess, square-faced, dark-haired, powerfully built, and purposeful; and Coralinda Gisseltess, whose black-and-silver hair mirrored her flag, her cloak, the colors of her goddess. She looked like an older, smaller version of her brother—no less purposeful, no less powerful. Senneth could not remember the last time she had seen them together, though she vividly recalled her last few meetings with each of them, and none of those memories gave her pleasure.

  Senneth could pick out the small red flowers on Halchon’s vest before Tayse turned to her and gave a small nod. Now.

  She balled her hands into fists, then spread her fingers wide. A wall of flame leapt up in the middle of the road.

  Horses screamed; men shouted. There was a terrific clamor of confusion. Above it all she could hear Halchon’s voice calling out, “Stay calm! It is sorcery! Halt your horses! Stay calm!”

  As if she was lifting a long, unwieldy boulder, Senneth slowly raised her arms, palms upward, fingers splayed. The flames whipped higher and began to travel, racing back along both sides of the massed men, following that endless line of oncoming soldiers. More shrieks, more sounds of struggling horses. It was impossible to see through the coruscating flame, but she could hear the clang of swords and shields. Blades drawn, no enemy to fight but fire.

  A line of blue-clad soldiers galloped through the orange wall, weapons raised, bodies unharmed. Emboldened, a few Gillengaria men attempted to follow. Senneth heard their shouts of pain, the wild stomping of their horses’ hooves. Three of them burst through the fire, their uniforms alight, their horses wild with terror. They each used one hand to beat out the flames, one hand to grasp their swords.

  The defenders flowed downhill from their hiding place. Every enemy who broke through the wall was met head-on by a Rider or a royal soldier.

  The conflicts were quick and decisive, always favoring the defenders, for, while combatants trickled through, royal soldiers had the numerical advantage. Senneth could hear Halchon shouting again, hear Rayson’s furious questions. “What’s happening? Who’s fighting? Call them back!” But still more Arberharst soldiers worked their way past the fire. About fifteen cantered up from the rear ranks of the army, ready to engage. A few more Gillengaria soldiers staggered through, scorched but determined.

  All of them were cut down.

  Finally, after a bloody hour of combat, no more soldiers attempted to breach the wall. The Riders and the royal soldiers still sprawled across the road, waiting for another assault, but for the moment, all was quiet.

  Senneth cupped her hands around her mouth and called out, “Marlord Halchon! I would have a conference with you!”

  There was a moment of silence while she imagined Halchon first cursing her name, then wondering how he might turn this confrontation to his advantage. “Serra Senneth,” he shouted back. “I would be delighted to parley. I do not particularly wish to be incinerated in my attempts to communicate with you, however.”

  “If you will agree to meet under a flag of truce, I will rescind my flame. There is a place two miles ahead of you on this road. Come alone to meet me there in one hour. Leave the rest of your army where it stands.”

  “I am not fool enough to come by myself.”

  Tayse had practically scripted this for her. “How many men will make you feel safe?”

  “How many are in your army?”

  “Bring no more than twenty,” she said. “Otherwise, we have no deal.”

  “I will agree to that. When do you put out the fire? Our horses are ready to bolt.”

  “I will douse the flames when we have withdrawn to our position.”

  “I will see you in one hour, then,” he said.

  This first part had been tricky; the next part would be trickier still. Coeval led most of their troops toward an agreed-upon rendezvous some distance past Ghosenhall. Tayse, Justin, Senneth, Ellynor, and about twenty men moved up the road to the second spot they had chosen. Again, they had commandeered the high ground, arranging themselves on a hillock that brushed against the road. Still on horseback, Senneth took a position close enough to the road to allow her to speak more or less comfortably to any traveler passing by. Justin, Tayse, and the other soldiers deployed behind her, weapons out. Ellynor cloaked herself in darkness and pulled her mount so close that Senneth could feel the animal’s body heat—though she couldn’t see the Lirren girl at all.

  With a lot of effort and a bit of luck, Senneth could turn herself invisible, too—but she had the uneasy feeling Halchon would not be fooled by her spell. For this maneuver, she wanted to take no chances.

  Halchon Gisseltess and a small escort arrived precisely at the appointed time.

  “That’s near enough,” Senneth called when he was fifty feet away. He lifted a hand and his riders came to a tidy halt.

  “Senneth,” he said, and his beautiful voice was warm with pleasure. “I am, as always, delighted at the chance to visit with you, though I must confess this venue is not entirely as civilized as I would like.”

  “Uncivilized men must make do with the opportunities afforded to them,” she said.

  He laughed softly. “Come, did you separate m
e from my army merely to insult me? Surely not. What offer do you have to make? Or what appeal?”

  “The king is dead, you know,” she said baldly. “But Amalie still lives. What bargain would you strike to end this here, now, before another death is recorded?”

  “You know my terms,” he said. “I want to be king. Amalie may abdicate in my favor.”

  “You would make a very bad king,” Senneth said, shaking her head. “I fear you would destroy Gillengaria within a year of taking the throne. A man who uses violence to attain his ends will use violence to enforce his will.”

  “Richly ironic, coming from a woman who herself married a soldier.”

  “He fights to defend. You fight to acquire. Those are two very different things.”

  “Spare me the philosophy, Senneth. I want to be king. Hand me the crown and I will dismantle the armies.”

  “Surely there are other solutions,” she said. She felt like a traitor even as she said it, but the next option had to be presented. “There might be a man of Gisseltess whom you would be glad to support as a suitor to the princess. A marriage between Ghosenhall and Gissel Plain would afford you some of the power you crave.”

  He appeared to reflect. “My oldest son is almost fourteen. Not a bad match for a nineteen-year-old girl, and a fine one in a few years’ time.”

  She should have expected that, and she tried not to let her revulsion show. “I cannot broker a marriage on Amalie’s behalf but I can promise that she will consider him, and will meet him with an honest and true heart.”

  Halchon’s smile turned into a leer. “But here’s a possibility that brings me even closer to the throne,” he said. “My own wife is missing. I’ll wed the princess and rule Gillengaria at her side.”

  She couldn’t repress her gasp. “No! Amalie would rather die.”

  He laughed at her. “Just because you would rather die than come to my bed doesn’t mean every woman feels the same way.”