Deborah Hale (25 page)

The thought of calling for help flitted through his mind but did not take hold. Whoever had stolen into his tent, and whatever they wanted, they had a knife and were no doubt prepared to use it. Besides, he’d spent most of his life relying on his own powers to stay alive. That kind of habit did not desert a man easily.

It was quiet in his tent again—too quiet. But Rath had not been called
Wolf
on account of his fierce fighting skills alone. Among his outlaw brethren, he had been known for his sharp senses. Now his ears picked up the faint hiss of breathing and his searching gaze spotted an unfamiliar shadow among the familiar ones. His nostrils flared and caught the whiff of whoever was crouched nearby, waiting to strike.

Pretending to roll over in his sleep, instead Rath lofted his blankets in a swift, sudden motion, bringing them down over the intruder. That should muffle the knife and give him the very brief benefit of surprise. Taking his advantage while it lasted, Rath seized the intruder who was struggling to escape the blankets.

Strange? The fellow seemed far smaller and lighter than he’d expected. Rath was able to lift him off the ground with ease, at which point a pair of sharp heels began to pummel his knees. Beneath the blanket, the intruder twisted and thrashed like a wild thing.

What he did not do was make much noise. Rath could not
stifle a flicker of grudging admiration. The intruder knew while their fight was one against one, he stood at least a chance of escape. Any cry he made was sure to summon aid for his victim. So even in the midst of a struggle, he had the wit to keep quiet.

Perhaps it was respect for that wit kept Rath silently grappling with the intruder rather than calling for help. Or perhaps he’d have been ashamed to think he could not subdue this wriggling mouse of a fellow on his own.

Rath gave him a really sudden, hard squeeze to get the intruder’s attention, then demanded in a soft growl, “Drop the knife.”

“Let go,” came a muffled counter-demand from beneath the blankets. “My knife is sheathed. I meant you no harm.”

Was he imagining things or did that voice sound familiar? “Then why did you sneak into my tent, armed, in the middle of the night?”

“They wouldn’t let me in, would they?” At least the intruder stopped struggling. “And I have an important message for you. Wouldn’t trust those uppity islanders to pass it along.”

“Sire?” called one of those
uppity islanders
from outside. “Everything all right in there?”

Idrygon had given strict instructions the guards were not to enter Rath’s tent unless summoned.

“No trouble!” For some reason, Rath found it hard to keep a chuckle out of his voice. “Just a bad dream.”

To the intruder he whispered, “A message? Are you sure it’s for me? Do you know who I am?”

“Who doesn’t? Now let go of me so I can tell you and get out of here.”

“First things first. Hold still a moment.” Rath laid the intruder on the floor and pinned him with his knee long enough to strike a light.

Then he lifted the blankets.

“You!” The word burst out of them both at the same instant as Rath stared at the beggar boy known as Snake.

“Sire?” the guard called again. “Are you
certain
all is well with you?”

“Oh, aye. Just singing a little song to myself. I do that sometimes when I can’t sleep.”

Snake rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t imagine anyone daft enough to believe a story like that. He glanced around the tent as if looking for someone else. Then he whispered, “So where’s the Waiting King? I thought this was his tent.”

Rath shrugged. “It’s a long story. What message do you have for him. I promise I’ll tell him straightaway.”

The boy looked doubtful for a moment. “Aye, well, I reckon she’d want me to tell you, too.”

“She? Maura?” The words came out louder than he meant them to. Before the guard got suspicious and reported to Idrygon, Rath sang in a hoarse voice, “Oh Maura, my fair one, my lady…”

Snake made a face and pretended to plug his ears. “That might be her name. The one from the hay cart. Pretty. Helping folks all the time.”

“When did you see her?” Rath’s hands closed around the boy’s upper arms. “Where? What did she say?”

“Let go or I’m not saying nothing.”

“Tell me before I beat it out of you!” growled Rath. He could imagine the look on Maura’s face if she’d heard him.

“Your pardon.” He let go of the boy. “I didn’t mean that. Just tell me…please. I’m sick with worry about her.”

“Then why’d you let her wander around Westborne with that…that…”

“Delyon.” Rath whispered the name as if it were a curse. “That’s an even longer story. Tell me what you know, I beg you.”

“‘Right. I didn’t talk to her, just seen her. Two, three weeks ago. Long as it took me to get here from…” The boy spoke the name of a place Rath had never heard of. “I was in the market
that day, lifting…I mean, looking around. I hears this racket and I knew the lady’s voice, so I run for a closer look.”

Rath hoped the boy’s story wasn’t leading where he feared it might.

“It was her, all right. The Han had her and that
Delyon.
If she’d kept her mouth shut, they might have got off. But she hollers out right in the middle of the market, ‘We ain’t spies for the Waiting King.’ Might as well spit on a death-mage.”

Once Rath got over the feeling that Snake
had
slashed him hard across the belly with his knife, he puzzled why Maura might have done something like that. Now and then she could be heedless when she got caught up in helping someone, but provoking the Han like that was something else again. “What happened to them?”

“Han marched ’em off to the garrison.” Snake’s hard young features tensed. “Reckon I should’ve done something. Tried to help, like. Made a row so they could get away. It wouldn’t have done no good, though. There was too many Han and
zikary.
”

Rath shook his head. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to get yourself in trouble, too.”

The boy scratched his chin where the first delicate shadow of a whisker was starting to grow. “While I was watching the garrison and trying to figure what to do, a pair of Han rode off with them, tied to horses. Heading for Venard, I reckon. Since I couldn’t do nothing else, I thought I’d come tell the Waiting King. If the lady claimed she wasn’t his spy, I reckoned that’s what she must be.”

Snake’s news acted on Rath’s heart the way the growth potion did on his body.

“That’s alls I know,” whispered the boy, as if expecting more questions that hadn’t come. “Been on the move ever since.”

“You…must be hungry.” Rath picked up a basket of Long Vale peaches and thrust them at the boy. “Thank you for bringing word.” He almost heaved his supper saying that.

“So…” Snake grabbed one of the peaches and took a great,
juice-squirting bite. “What are you going to do? About the lady, I mean?”

What could he do? Order his army over the mountains to besiege Venard? Run off and try to rescue her himself? If she and Delyon had been in Hanish custody that long, were they even still alive?

Snake spit the peach pit into the basket and grabbed another piece of fruit. “I’d go with you.”

Their whole exchange had been in whispers, but the boy’s last words were even quieter. Caught in a web of dread, Rath almost didn’t hear.

“I’d go with you.” Snake spoke a little louder. He stared at the peach as if addressing it instead of Rath. “When you go to fetch her back.”

A lump rose in Rath’s throat that felt as big as one of the peaches. He shook his head. After several tries he managed a gruff whisper. “She wouldn’t want that.”

“No?” Snake slurped down another peach.

No. She would want him to believe she could fetch herself back, even from the clutches of the Echtroi. She would want him to believe in destiny and the Giver’s providence.

For her sake he would try. Though there were few things in the world he found harder to do…than believe.

For the first day after they made their escape from the Hanish guard post, Maura kept glancing back for signs of pursuit, then ahead for fear of ambush. She only calmed when she realized Songrid was every bit as fearful of being caught.

The two of them shared a horse while Delyon rode the other, which also carried their supplies for the journey. Whenever Maura spoke to him, he replied with no more than a word or two. With his handsome features clenched in such a forbidding expression, he looked more like his brother than Maura had ever thought possible. He did not seem to fear falling into the enemy’s clutches again—he fully expected it at any moment.

“Let us stop here for the night,” said Maura after many hours’ riding up a winding mountain pass.

With a glance at the setting sun, Delyon shook his head. “We have another hour of daylight at least. We should press on.”

That was more words than he had spoken the rest of the day combined. Was he beginning to relent?

Perhaps not, for he added in a tone of bitter mockery, “Did you not say we must press on an hour after the Hanish army and begin an hour ahead of them if we are to reach the eastlands in time?”

“That was before we had horses.” Maura reined hers to a halt. “They carry us more swiftly, but it can be dangerous to take them over such a steep trail in the dark.”

She tried to sound both conciliatory and authoritative. She understood Delyon’s anger and suspicion, but she would not cater to them.

“There’s water here.” She pointed to a trickle sliding down the rocks. “And a bit of grass for the horses. We might come across another spot as good as this before nightfall, but I wouldn’t want to count on it.”

With a grunt of grudging surrender, Delyon swung down from his saddle.

Maura felt a tug on her cloak. She glanced back at Songrid. “Your pardon. I should have asked what you think on the matter. These are your horses, after all.”

As he led his mount to drink from a shallow basin carved in the rocks, Delyon grumbled in Umbrian, “
Ask
her, but
tell
me. We’ll be slaughtered in our sleep.”

Maura ignored him.

“Do you reckon this would be a good place to stop for the night?” she asked Songrid. “Or should we keep going?”

The Hanish woman answered with a question of her own. “What does the man mean about ‘reach the eastlands’? Are we not first going to one of the mines to look for your husband?”

“Oh, that.” Maura scrambled down from the horse. “Let’s talk about it while we eat.”

To her relief, Songrid did not seem angry to have been…misled.

“You are a good liar.” She sounded as if she approved, even admired Maura for it. “When you told Kez of your husband, it sounded so true.”

“It’s true I am eager to see him again.” Songrid’s acceptance of her deceit shamed Maura more than anger would have. “Only,
over
the mountains, not
in
them.”

“That is better.” Munching some bread, Songrid gazed back the way they had come, on the broad plane of Westborne, lit by the sun’s last rays. “I will feel safer when we reach your eastlands.”

Maura shot a look at Delyon, but he paid her no mind, as he sat some way off from the women, his back all but turned on them. He continued to eat, but with a different manner, somehow—as if he were no longer
certain
every bite must be poisoned.

“What about your husband?” she asked. “Were you not sorry at all to leave him?”

“Kez is not my husband.” Songrid stared into the gathering darkness. “I was given to him as a…sort of servant when my lord cast me off for being a bad breeder.”

“I’m…sorry.” It sounded so inadequate, but Maura could not think what else to say.

“Do not pity me. My people scorn women like me, but I reckon we are the lucky ones.”

No Han attacked them in the night, which seemed to surprise Delyon. He and Songrid did not exchange a single word the next day, and he pretended not to listen when she told Maura more of her story. But when she fell the next evening and twisted her ankle, he whipped up a poultice and bound the injury almost before Maura knew what was happening.

The next morning he hoisted Songrid in his arms and lifted her onto the horse’s back. By the time they reached the Long Vale, he’d become positively attentive to her. Did he repent his
earlier suspicions? Maura wondered. Or was he trying to prove that not all men were like the others Songrid had known?

As they neared the end of their journey, part of Maura rejoiced that their quest might still succeed and that she would soon see Rath again. Another part dreaded having to face him, knowing what she now knew about herself.

A
fter another long day in the saddle, Rath stumbled into his tent tired, hungry and troubled. He told himself he should be grateful for the Giver’s blessings. His army’s progress through the Long Vale had been nothing short of triumphal. After their victory at Prum, other Hanish garrisons had fled before them.

He’d kept up the pressure, advancing each day as far as his men could march. The last thing he wanted was to give some vindictive Hanish commander time to organize a slaughter of Umbrian countryfolk like the one he’d found in that mine.

His men were not able to move quite as fast as he’d have liked, though. For every day their progress was slowed by the crowds that gathered to cheer them. Who’d have thought nodding and waving and acknowledging the adulation of his subjects could be so wearying? Rath could have told them.

Every stooped grandam who blew him a toothless kiss, every child hoisted on its father’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of the Waiting King, every young man who flocked to join his makeshift army—was another pebble added to a bulging pack he carried.

They were his responsibility—his burden. He worried his hungry troops were depleting their harvest. He fretted that once his army passed by, they would fall prey to outlaws. Most of all, he feared the Han might rally and strike back, leaving them worse off than before the rebellion.

Some nights it was all he could do to keep from stealing out of his tent and slipping off into the darkness to become another nameless outlaw in whom no one placed their hopes and of whom no one expected anything.

He would have managed better with Maura by his side. Almost from the moment he’d met her, the lass had brought out everything that was noble and heroic in him, no matter how deeply buried. But Maura was not here. After what he’d learned from young Snake, each day that passed with no word of her made it harder for Rath to hope that he might see her again.

His armor was beginning to hang loose on him. Rath pulled it off and wrapped himself in a woolen robe that seemed snug at the moment but would become ample once he returned to his proper size. Then he turned his attention to a heaping tray of food that had been left for him. Though the growth spell made him constantly hungry and Long Vale farmers sent him the choicest fruits of their harvest, he hardly tasted what went in his mouth.

Once he’d finished, he sank onto his bedroll and bowed his head against his bent knees with a sigh dredged from the depths of his heart.
Giver, I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Just help me get through tomorrow, will you?

He’d have welcomed some sign or answer, even the faintest whisper in his own thoughts. Approval that he was doing the right thing, no matter how wrong it felt sometimes. Encouragement to keep on. Assurance that this would all end well—for the kingdom at least, if not for him. But no answer came. His mind and heart felt as empty and hungry as his belly had a while ago. And he had nothing to feed them.

Hearing the soft rustle of his tent flap and the sound of footsteps, he stifled another sigh. This time one of impatience. He
might not know what he needed just then, but he knew what he did
not
need—another lecture from Idrygon. Reluctantly he raised his head and opened his eyes.

All at once, his hungry heart filled to bursting, for there stood Maura. Rumpled, travel-stained and exhausted, she was still a feast for his eyes.

She hung back a little as if uncertain what manner of welcome she would receive. Rath ached with regret that he had ever given her cause to question. A sob caught in his throat as he surged up from his bedroll and caught her in his arms. It took every morsel of restraint he could muster to keep from crushing her in his embrace of welcome.

“Aira!”
His lips blundered over her face, eager to kiss every beloved feature.
“Aira, aira, aira!”

He seemed to have forgotten every other word he’d ever known, but the lapse did not trouble him, for he recalled the most important one. The only one he needed at the moment.

She melted into his arms with a whimper of longing and love, both so intense they pained her. The weeks of their separation seemed like an eternity, and some long-slumbering part of him roused with ancient echoes of a reunion that even death and time had not been able to thwart.

How long they clung to one another, trading kisses and whispering garbled endearments, Rath could not tell. But when his surprise and joy tamed enough to think of anything beyond their passionate welcome, Maura felt larger in his arms than when he’d first embraced her.

“Come,
aira.
” He drew her down to his bedroll. “You look weary and you must be starved. Let me call for food.”

“In a moment.” She smoothed back his hair in a tender, possessive caress. “Just now, I am only hungry to be near you.”

Her gaze roved over his face, as if eager to satisfy herself he was not some elusive vision that might vanish the instant she looked away. When their eyes met and he looked deep into hers, Rath thought he glimpsed a shadow lingering there.

Perhaps it was the reflection of his own foolish worry that their reunion might be only a dream. Or did she fear that once the passing thrill of it had faded, the earlier strife between them might return to blight their marriage?

He would soon ease her mind on that score. “I feared I’d never see you again,
aira.
All these weeks I’ve longed to beg your forgiveness for how I behaved before we parted. I swear I did not lack faith in you, only in fate. I feared our love was too good to last. And I let that fear poison it.”

Maura’s arms went around his neck and she clung to him like a rock in a storm-tossed sea. “Is that truly all it was?”

“Is that not enough? What else could it be?” He held her close so she would not draw back, search his gaze and guess the truth if she had not already.

“Nothing.” Her cheek nuzzled his shoulder as she shook her head. “It all seems so foolish now to have come between us when we ought to have savored our time together.”

“The day you sailed, I came looking for you to ask your pardon. Grant it now, I beg you. I cannot bear another moment without it!”

“You have not been without it.” She pulled away just far enough to cradle his face in her hands. “If there was anything to forgive, I did long ago. I was at least as much to blame.”

“Never! You were being true to yourself and to our people.”

His words did not seem to reassure her as he had hoped. “Even if you believe that, humor me with your pardon.”

“To humor you and for no other reason.” He wrapped his hands around hers and brought each to his lips in turn. “Now let us put that all behind us, except to take a warning never again to part in anger.”

Like the soft, pink, magical petals of a queensbalm flower, her lips blossomed into a wondrous smile. “You have a bargain.”

They sealed their pact with a kiss that made Rath ache with the memory of every night they’d been apart. Sensing his de
sire, Maura slid her hand beneath his robe to fondle him with a tempting touch that kindled fire in his flesh.

“Hold.” He spoke the word almost in a groan. “You must have food and washing water to refresh yourself after your journey. My need can wait.”

“Can it?” Maura planted a kiss at the base of his neck, then parted her lips to swipe her tongue over flesh that tingled with his barely curbed desire for her. “I fear mine cannot.”

The whisper of her breath on skin moistened by her tongue gave him a ticklish chill. Though he tried to resist, his hand rose and cupped the gentle fullness of her breast through her clothes. Her nipple puckered at his touch.

With a wanton chuckle, Maura began to shed her traveling clothes. “Once quick and hot, to appease our appetites. After, I can eat and tell you of my mission.”

Her mission, of course! Rath wanted to smack himself on the brow for not asking or even thinking of it. What kind of king let affairs of the heart distract him from such a vital matter?

“The staff—have you brought it?” Surely if she was here it must mean she and Delyon had succeeded in their quest.

“It was not in Venard. But we know where it is and hope to recover it soon.” Her clothes shed, she untied his robe and slipped her arms into the now-loose sleeves with his. The soft fullness of her backside settled on his lap while her bosom nestled against his chest.

“Delyon is briefing his brother about everything that happened in Venard, as I will you…in due time.” She raised her face to his, offering an invitation he could not resist a moment longer. “There is nothing we can do about it tonight, certainly not this very moment.”

She kissed him on the chin. “If you resist much longer, I may think you are not as pleased to see me as you claim.”

“That will never do, will it?” A husky chuckle rumbled deep in Rath’s throat.

They both knew that was nonsense. But it gave him an ex
cuse to surrender to his desire without feeling like an inattentive husband and an undutiful king.

“Very well.” He eased her back onto his bedroll. “Let me show you how much pleasure I take in being with you again.”

His mouth closed over hers, hot and eager. Into a single, deep kiss he distilled all the regret, worry and longing that had wrung his heart during the endless weeks they’d been apart. Then he sweetened it with the joy of reconciliation to create an intoxicating brew. “And let me show you how much pleasure I can
give,
now that we are together again.”

“Together.” Heat shimmered in Maura’s gaze, like the air of the Waste in high summer. “Is there a lovelier word?”

“None that I know,
aira.
”

“So the Staff of Velorken was never in Venard at all?” Rath asked a while later as Maura consumed a tray of food he’d ordered for her. “Then your going there was all a great waste and put you in danger for nothing?”

He looked ready to throttle Delyon.

Maura shook her head and hurriedly swallowed the food in her mouth. “If we had not gone to Venard, I’d never have found out what the Han are planning. Then everything you have done might have been for naught.”

Nor would she have discovered the distressing truth about her parentage. She had almost swooned with relief when Rath made it clear he suspected nothing. Now that the first blissful rush of reunion had ebbed a little, she wondered how and when she would tell him…and where she would find the courage.

“What are the Han planning that we cannot overcome?” Rath gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “When we first landed on the Dusk Coast, I would not have wanted to meet even part of their army in open combat. But that was weeks ago. Every day more Umbrians join us. We are a great host now. I believe we can beat them, even without the Staff of Velorken.”

His brow furrowed. “Which may be just as well, for I doubt I have the wisdom to use that kind of power.”

“I trust that you do,” said Maura. “And I fear we
will
need it, even with the army you have gathered.”

She told him what she had overheard while hiding beneath the High Governor’s council table—how Rath’s army had been lured eastward to be crushed between a Hanish army from Westborne and another sent from Dun Derhan to help put down the rebellion.

“I don’t understand.” Rath flinched as if a hard blow had hit him from out of nowhere. “How do they know there
is
an uprising to put down?”

“One of the death-mages claimed to have mastered a spell for communicating with the Imperium.” Maura described the underground chamber where she had found him with the large crystal. “It must tap some line of power that runs deep beneath the earth to carry thought messages.”

While they were on the subject, her conscience urged her to tell Rath what else she had discovered that night. But where could she begin?

“Thank the Giver you have returned to me,
aira.
” He raised his hand to graze her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Even if you had not brought this news. Even if you had no idea where to find the Staff of Velorken. Without you, the burden of playing king grinds me down. But when I have you by my side, I feel I can do whatever I must.”

Then perhaps she had better keep silent a little longer, if Rath needed her for support and to find the staff. After all, it was not as though discovering her parentage had altered her loyalty. Her blood might be some unfortunate mingling of two enemy races, but her heart was Umbrian. Nothing would change that.

“About the staff,” said Rath. “How did you come to figure out its true hiding place?”

“Delyon deciphered an ancient scroll with a spell that helped me tap memories buried deep in my mind. The ones handed
down from Abrielle through all her line to my mother and through Langbard to me.”

Rath’s eyes widened. “It is a good thing you insisted on ob serving the ritual of passing with Langbard the night he died. Or those memories might have been lost.”

She had not thought of that. “It is a good thing you gave me time to do it rather than dragging me out of danger like you wanted to. It was the first kindness you ever did me.”

“I thought it was the daftest thing I’d ever done.” Rath rolled his eyes. “I’m glad it turned out well. So what was this memory Delyon’s spell helped you uncover? Where did Queen Abrielle hide the staff if not in her castle?”

“She
did
hide it in her castle,” said Maura between bites of food. “A different castle. An old castle that must have been very fine in Abrielle’s day, and not yet hemmed in by forest.”

“Aldwood, you mean? Vang’s camp?”

Maura nodded. “If I had not been captured by his men, I might never have recognized it when I saw it in my memory vision.” A shiver rippled through her. “It gives me the strangest feeling to look back and see how so much of what has happened to us, both good and bad, served this destiny of ours.”

“It comforts me in a queer sort of way,” said Rath after a thoughtful silence, “to think that if some ill befalls us, there may be a hidden purpose to it. One we may only fathom later.”

“Highness!” called the guard outside Rath’s tent. “Lord Idrygon craves an audience with you. May he enter?”