“How did that go?” he asked as he pushed off the wall.
“Better. I think. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I grabbed some food while you were in there. Should I let you get to sleep?”
“I’m not sure if I could, right away. It might be nice to talk for a while.”
They made their way to the fountain, finding the cavern area completely deserted, the lantern dim. They sat down in silence, and she was acutely aware of his presence in a way she hadn’t been before.
“Pretty amazing about N’lahr being back, isn’t it?” Lemahl asked. “I couldn’t believe Varama already knew he was alive. Did you know?”
Sansyra shook her head, no. Varama’s thorough grasp of information often eluded her and she had no idea how to convey the privileged view she’d just gotten of a now living legend. She was still a bit stunned by it.
“Things have been hard,” Lemahl said, “but we’ve come through so far. And think where you’ll be when this is all over. You might even vault right past the sixth circle and on up to the ring, like Elenai did.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t think you deserve it?”
“Maybe.” She sighed. She’d never tried explaining her feelings about advancement. “What did you think it would be like when you joined the corps?”
He scratched at the black beard on his chin. He looked a lot more mature with it; less like an overgrown boy. It somehow balanced out his nose a little as well. “Back then, Alten Varama promised me a chance to hone my skills and talents. She said it would be hard work, but that in her workshops I’d be exposed to exciting experiments and techniques. And she was right.”
She’d almost forgotten that he was one of those rare ones Varama had directly encouraged to try out for the great games. She did that, occasionally, with young people of great artistic accomplishment, emphasizing they’d need to work hard in martial fields but they could also learn a variety of the highest skills no one else was studying.
Varama tended to mentor those with an experimental or artistic bent, but Sansyra had come under her tutelage by being transferred in at third rank. “Sometimes I think I’ve gotten too far. Everyone kept telling me that I had enough talent I ought to join the squires, so I tried out for the regional games, and the next thing I knew I’d qualified for the corps. So here I’ve been, Sansyra the squire. After the first year or two I decided I’d leave at the third or fourth rank.”
“But you stayed,” Lemahl said with a grin.
“Not because I’m after the ring, though,” she said. “I know that’s why you’re supposed to stay on to fifth rank. I could have left and become a guard captain or agency chief or something, but I just didn’t want to stop learning. I don’t think there’s anywhere else in all the realms where I’d get a chance to have been exposed to all the things Varama has shown me.” She sighed, and confessed the truth. “I think I want to be an engineer. Maybe I can help reshape Alantris when this is all over.”
“Perhaps,” Lemahl said with great seriousness, “you should stay on and become a great alten.”
She shook her head. “Then I’ll be the one who gets stuck choosing who gets sent on terrible missions, or whether I need to weigh the death of hundreds, or thousands, against the success of a plan. I might be the one who has to shoot a friend.” Her eyes were filling with tears. Stupid. She wiped them.
“This kind of thing isn’t going to happen again,” Lemahl said. “No other alten has ever had to make these kinds of choices.”
“Maybe not these specific ones, but there have been terrible ones all along. You know that. Right from the time Queen Altenera picked out the hundred warriors to stand the ridge at Rinner’s Gorge. Only seven came back.”
Lemahl nodded. He knew the history. He’d had to pass all those exams as a first ranker, just like her. And then he spoke slowly, and wisely, as if channeling one of the great Altenerai they’d both learned about. “There will always be hard times, and hard choices. When they happen, we need people of sound judgment to see us through. People who’ve been tried by adversity, who know what’s come before, and what mistakes other leaders have made, so they won’t repeat them. People like you.”
It seemed as though something inside her melted a little as he said that, and as he looked up to meet her eyes, he reached to wipe a tear from her cheek, and she shivered just a little at the electricity of that touch.
“I’m proud to serve with you,” he said. “And I would proudly follow you. You’re calm and capable and deadly. Isn’t it said that some of the best leaders are the ones who aren’t desperate to seek command?”
“I think I should like to kiss you,” she said slowly.
“You outrank me.” At least he didn’t seem surprised. Just cautious.
“Yes.” She reached out and squeezed his hands. “You’re right. Some other time. When we’re both promoted, or when I’m out and you’re an alten, riding through some square where I’m building a fountain in the middle of Alantris. On your way to glory.”
He laughed. “Is that what you want to do? Build fountains?”
“You could sculpt them.”
“Maybe I could. How about you decide whether or not you’ll quit the corps when we’re out of all this, and things are normal again.”
She fought off another break of tears. “You know nothing’s ever going to be normal again, don’t you?”
He spoke with great reluctance. “Yes.”
They sat in companionable silence, and she wondered if he might dare to flaunt the traditions and kiss her anyway, or if she should, but neither of them broke the strictures and she was mostly glad of that. Mostly. “Maybe an intimate relationship is forbidden between us,” she said. “But there’s no harm in two friends holding one another in a time like this, is there?”
He didn’t answer immediately and she wondered if she’d pushed too far.
“No,” he said finally. “No, I don’t suppose there is. Not between friends. And a time like this.” He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his thick shoulder. And it felt comfortable and safe there, and even if he smelled a little, that long sweet moment was the best she’d known since before they’d left Darassus, and because of it, when they left the cavern for their separate sleeping rolls, she didn’t feel quite so lonely.
19
Sealed with a Kiss
This time when the blood formed above the trough in the barn, the chair Chargan occupied was better aligned with Syrik’s wooden stool, so that he actually seemed to sit upon it.
Outwardly circumstances were much the same as the last time Vannek had spoken to his brother: the old barn, the reek of blood and horse flesh and the fear of the animals. The labored breath of Syrik, hard at work maintaining the spell.
As Vannek had guessed, Chargan hadn’t been especially moved by news of their younger brother’s death. He was more worried about Vannek holding onto power. For none of the tribal kings would trust him as well.
“Killing his assassins isn’t enough,” Chargan said. “You need to root out the Resistance and crush them.”
If it were a simple matter, Vannek would already have done that. “That’s one of my top priorities.”
“One of them?” Chargan said archly.
“Holding to power is the first. Kaneshi cavalry are here now. Sometimes N’lahr is within the city, and sometimes without. None of our own cavalry patrols return—”
Chargan cut him off. “You have thousands upon thousands of soldiers!”
“Not even a tenth of them are horsemen. And none of them are as good as the Kaneshi. They have us pinned. If we go out, they cut us down.”
“I’m not diverting.”
Vannek felt close to losing his temper, and held it just barely in check. “This is folly, Chargan! Come relieve us, here, and the city and The Fragments will be ours forever. They can’t stand against your dragons.”
“They could have stood against yours, if you hadn
’t allowed the fae to poison them!”
Chargan wasted time with arguments that led nowhere. Vannek looked over his shoulder to Syrik, eyes wide, powerful chest heaving, hands taut with fingers splayed, as if invisible threads hung from them. The spell’s complex nature was already taxing him. “Those were Koregan’s arrangements, not mine. How can you even think to conquer Darassus? The supply line will close behind you!” The more Vannek had thought about his brother’s plan, the more foolish it seemed. “Yours is a relief force, not a full-fledged army. Even if you take Darassus you cannot hold it!”
Chargan’s bloodred lips parted to show bloodred teeth in a ghoulish smile. “I never planned to hold it, sister-brother. I will smash its walls. I will tear down its monuments and trample its fields. I will behead their queen and burn their people. They will be broken for generations, and their remaining lands will retreat unto themselves.”
Vannek was astonished by the passion in his brother’s delivery.
“You want me to come help you in Alantris?” Chargan asked. “The steps I take will cripple the fae so thoroughly they will abandon The Fragments, and the rest of their separated lands will pay tribute to keep us at bay! We can ultimately take whatever we want from them! All you have to do is hold an impregnable city with a vast army supplied by immense storehouses. Soon the Dendressi will retreat forever!”
Vannek recognized the strategy behind what his brother said. He recalled lessons from their own father, who taught them that daring action often yielded success because so many others lacked the vision and especially the courage. Probably wide-ranging Kaneshi scouts had detected Chargan’s army advancing through The Fragments via the southeastern passes, and they might have been told from captured soldiers that Chargan brought reinforcements to Alantris, as Chargan had planned with the kings. Only Vannek knew he planned to move straight on for Erymyr. By all accounts, the Dendressi had nearly emptied their central realm to reinforce Arappa and The Fragments, so if there ever was a chance to deliver one swift deadly blow against Darassus, this might be the time.
And if Chargan proved right, his hold on power would be unassailable. If. Vannek needed more. “I need a powerful victory to solidify my position. Lend me some of your dragons.”
Chargan’s red brow clouded. “Because I have bounteous numbers of them, and am overflowing with well-trained men to command them.”
“Give me two.”
“For what purpose?”
“I will send out one of the clans. They’re eager to fight. And when the Dendressi ride out to assault them, I’ll unleash the dragons in a massed attack.”
Behind her, Syrik began to gulp air, as though he was nearing the end of a long run. Chargan had to have heard it, though he fell silent in consideration.
“Your plan has merit. Especially if I send the dragons at night, when the fae may not see them coming.”
Yes, Vannek thought. Finally his brother was seeing reason.
“I will send you one,” Chargan said after another moment.
“One?”
“Yes. One of my two most powerful, piloted by my greatest dragon lord. You will then have three. Use them judiciously. Now, that is all we can say. Our Syrik is almost spent.”
“I don’t have two—one of them is still ailing from the poison!”
Chargan scowled, his displeased expression reminding him suddenly of their dread grandfather. “Make yourself worthy, sister-brother.”
Vannek sneered at that oft used insult.
Chargan continued. “Earn your place. Even two dragons, striking from different directions, should lay waste to mere ground forces. Lure them out near dusk, then send the dragons sweeping over. Now let me be. Expect the dragon in the next few hours. Let him rest through the day.”
Vannek was attempting to mask his displeasure and mime some thanks when the spell failed and his brother disintegrated into a rain of blood.
There was a clattering noise behind and he whirled to see that Syrik had fallen against a stall door and lay with his back against the wood, his legs sprawled across the floor.
Vannek hurried to his side and bent down.
The muscular mage breathed raggedly. His eyelids fluttered as his eyes rolled, as though he couldn’t quite fasten upon anything.
“I’ll call your attendants.” It was improper to show much concern over an underling, but Vannek’s tense tone unmasked his worry
“Wait.” Syrik said weakly. “We must talk.”
Vannek clasped one of Syrik’s powerful arms, pleased by the strength he felt there even as he was repelled by his own attraction. He helped the sorcerer to sit upright and then stepped back.
Syrik watched him as his breath gradually slowed and Vannek stood looking down and hating that he found the man so distracting.
“He takes too great a chance,” Syrik managed finally, “and you know it.” He breathed in and out a few times then spoke with more ease. “If he came here, we would be unstoppable.”
“He’s not coming here. So it’s pointless to talk of it. And your words are treasonous.” Vannek put his hand to knife hilt and crouched beside him. “He trained you. You know he’ll not be swayed and I’ll not give you reason to take me down for his aims.”
Syrik’s deep brown eyes swam with hurt. “Chargan may think I serve him. And we would be right to tread carefully in his presence. But I think the fae stones have warped him. He’s grown overly confident in his power. You are the one who deserves to rule. If you can hold Alantris, the clans will follow you. I know it. No one trusts a sorcerer.”
“So says the sorcerer.”
“I did not ask to be one,” Syrik said fiercely. He pulled himself fully upright and seemed to consider standing. Then he met Vannek’s eyes. “You know you can trust me. I see it in your gaze.”
“You see too much.”
“No, I see the truth. I see how you still feel. I feel the same. I am yours until the end.”
Vannek’s hand tightened on his knife hilt even as his heart raced and his skin warmed. “Don’t say that!”
Syrik refused to look away. “I don’t care what you call yourself. Don’t you see? If you hold Alantris, you can be whatever you want. We can be whatever we want.”
His eyes held, and then there was a split second when Vannek wasn’t sure if he would drive the knife into the fool’s neck.
Instead he pressed his lips to Syrik’s. The shared hunger was so great that it left Vannek breathless and he wished to lose himself completely in the man’s embrace. His fingers tore into Syrik’s dark hair even as his own pressed against Vannek’s back so that their bodies grew ever tighter. He straddled the mage, felt the press of his desire against his thighs and moaned a little for want of him.
Then he forced himself back and away, sitting on his haunches just beyond Syrik’s bootheels. They stared at each other wonderingly, and from the mage’s dazed, predatory look, Vannek knew his cousin longed to throw himself forward and resume their embrace. More than anything, Vannek wished the same. But such a coupling would destroy everything he’d managed to achieve.
He forced himself to stand, hand on knife hilt. “I will hold this broken city,” he said, pleased that his voice sounded stong. “I’m placing you in charge of the dragons. Find out exactly how they work. See that the injured one is healed faster. I think Chargan’s dragon lords lack imagination.”
“Yes,” Syrik said, and gulped. “What clan are you using to draw the Dendressi?”
“The Snowbird,” Vannek said. “With any luck, Tarjezhan will get killed.” The Snowbird king was ever eager for combat, a troublemaker who was quick to critique his rivals and even quicker to flatter his betters.
“And if he comes back a victor?”
“Few like him, and if he does win, it will only make them more jealous. Besides, it will be the dragons who win this conflict.”
“It will be you who wins this conflict,” Syrik said, and dusted himself off as he climbed to his feet.
Vannek n
odded, not daring to speak further, and then turned and strode for the door, lest he meet the mage’s eyes again.
20
The God in the Wastes
Silent and still were the wastelands beyond the realm of the ko’aye. Tiny islands of reality lay every few miles, and to a one they were empty of anything but sand-scoured blue rock. The nearby shifts reflected their appearance completely, so that for hours on end the only sound Elenai heard was the clop of hooves on stone.
Kyrkenall seemed uninterested in talking. Though he’d said nothing, Elenai recognized that he feared his course of action meant he was failing N’lahr, Kalandra, or both. Maybe even the present company, despite which he pushed them and their animals to their limits.
Of the three of them, only Ortok made much noise, from time to time mumbling a tuneless chant about the lands and the hardy kobalin who lived within them. Elenai had asked him if he thought he might find an army in this direction, but he’d looked doubtful, saying only that an army might find them if they violated a holy place.
Eventually, evening came to the inhospitable run of fragments and splinters, and with it a chill wind that brought sound at last, as though the emptiness itself were given voice, or that all those who’d been lost in this vast beyond were crying out for warmth and company.
Ortok called them to a halt as they finally came upon an area they recognized from Drusa’s description: a rocky embankment with a little pool of orange water, twisted yellow trees, and scrubby gray grass. Kyrkenall asked Elenai to picket the horses while he started a fire.
The night fell, starless and cold. There was only the blackness, and the mottled corpse of the moon, hanging overhead at the wrong angle. By its light she saw Kyrkenall’s breath as he spoke. His voice was low and somber, as befitted the haunted landscape. She could barely make out his words at first.
“In the halls of Kantolus’ central palace there’s this painting I visit.” He didn’t look at either of them; the fire flickered under a particularly fierce blast of wind. Kyrkenall shrugged his cloak higher on his shoulders. “It’s mostly black, and sort of … representational? Anyway, there are dozens of white ghostly figures streaming away from the viewers, heading deeper into the painting. Every one of them is straining after this floating globe of light that wafts a few feet away from and in front of each, until the lead figures are lost in the distance. I’ve never seen anything so lonely. They don’t seem to notice each other, or the fact that someone else’s light is within closer reach. They’re just after their own.” He looked out into the night. “The painting’s titled Chasing the Dream. I wouldn’t be surprised to spot some ghostly figures chasing light spheres in that landscape out there.”
Upon the Flight of the Queen Page 33
