Fifth Quarter (47 page)

His desperation clawed at her, but she'd been trained to ignore pain she could do nothing about. "I'll think about it," she said at last and kicked her horse into a trot.

"If His Highness dies because of you," Karlene ground out through clenched teeth, "I'll make you sorry you were ever born!"

Gyhard smiled at her, Bannon's features adding a feral savagery to the expression. "It won't be the first time," he said and sent his horse after Vree's.

Hands wrapped around the branch, bone beginning to show through rotting fingertips, Kait watched the three riders come closer and closer to the tree.

They would not all arrive at the tree at the same time.

What would Father want her to do?

By the time the question had been sluggishly considered, the first rider had nearly passed the tree. Long before she found an answer, the second rider was approaching.

Kait surrendered. She leaned back against the splintered end of the branch and levered it free.

Loaded with rock, the cart began to roll. Shafts dragging behind, it quickly began to pick up speed on the steep slope.

The rumble of the cart whipped Vree's head around and up. Less aware of her surroundings than usual, it took her a moment to find the source of the noise. The next moment she drove her heels into the gelding's sides and bent low over its mane as it leaped forward. The cart, heading directly for the one tree of any size, would pass behind her. The chunks of hillside accompanying it, would not.

Still some distance from the tree, Karlene saw the cart crashing down toward the track, half the steep, rocky bluff falling with it. Time seemed to stop as one of the narrow wheels shattered. The cart twisted, splintered, but the fragments continued to lead the swelling wave of destruction.

Yanking back on the reins, she realized that Gyhard was directly in the path of the grinding, wedge-shaped mass. She hesitated while the bay fought the bit and tried to run, then finally screamed a warning.

He couldn't outrun it. His only chance was to get the bulk of the ancient tree between him and the crushing avalanche of rock. Jerking his panicked horse off the track, he dove from the saddle, pressed his back up against the gnarled trunk and grabbed on to the gelding's cheek straps with both hands just as the first impact shook the tree.

Whites showing all around its eyes, the gelding fought his hold. With a scream of terror, it tore itself free and disappeared into the rising cloud of dust and debris.

The noise was deafening. Gyhard squeezed his eyes shut, swore as a rock glanced off his thigh, and prayed to gods he'd forgotten for four lifetimes. He lost himself in the roar and reverberation, unable to tell where he left off and the cataclysm began.

Vree left her shaken horse at the edge of the rockfall and clambered back toward the tree. Bannon wailed in the depths of her mind, but it was a sound without words and easy to push into the background. Climbing nimbly over and through the treacherous fan of debris, she swung off the track and down to where Gyhard lay, half buried in rock.

If he's dead…

Bannon's wail grew louder, but Vree hadn't actually been thinking of her brother at all.
If he's dead
kept repeating over and over, circling the inside of her head, patrolling the perimeter. She couldn't get past it.

There were few rocks directly behind the tree although the area between it and the bluff had been filled to waist level in places. A smashed board from the cart had been flung high into a splintered fork.

Straddling Gyhard's waist, Vree squatted and slid a hand under the branch that pinned him to the ground. Her heart started beating in time to his.

"He's alive," she said as Karlene lowered herself carefully down off the track. A small ripple of dislodged rock bounced away. Both women ignored it.

Karlene had never heard two words spoken with so many layers of emotion. "Is Bannon's body all right?" she asked gently. When Vree turned to face her, the bard wished she'd held her tongue. Vree hadn't forgotten whose body Gyhard wore—couldn't forget—and the last thing she needed was yet another jealous reminder. "I'm sorry, Vree."

The shrug clearly dismissed both question and apology. "We'll have to lift this branch straight off. We'll only do more damage if we drag it."

"Cuts and bruises. Nothing big." Vree felt the arm move under the gentle pressure of her fingers and looked up to see Gyhard staring at her through bloodshot eyes. Almost without realizing she did it, she blocked Bannon's frantic leap.

"VREE!" Bannon's shriek flayed her with her name. "I could've had him!"

"And a broken arm," Vree told him, desperately searching for an excuse acceptable to them both. "Do you want that kind of pain?"

"I want my body." But the shriek had become a sob, and she knew he'd clutched at the chance to believe she still thought of him first. It hadn't taken much effort; she'd spent her life protecting him from pain.

"I'm going to have to set this," she muttered, needing to fill the silence.

Gyhard—who more than anything in the world wanted to know why Vree had stopped her brother from killing him—dragged his tongue over dry lips. "You sure you know how?"

Vree snorted. "No. If we get injured in the middle of an enemy camp, we go looking for a healer. Karlene hold his elbow. Brace yourself," she added as the bard grabbed on where she indicated.

Vree lightly brushed the backs of her fingers over the dark bristles that delineated her brother's jaw. "Do you remember when you took that quarrel in the leg and I had to threaten to carry you before you'd stop telling me to go on alone because you'd only slow me down."

Gyhard's horse lay panting on its side, unable to rise. A gash deep enough to show bone over one eye explained why it had remained quiet for so long. As Vree and Karlene approached, it began to thrash, as much in terror as pain.

Karlene couldn't believe what she was hearing. The horse screamed again. "You just killed your own father!" The accusation carried the shrill edge of hysteria.

"He was going to kill me. I had to survive." Her voice held the echo of a hundred lessons then it broke. "But I can't kill a helpless animal. I can't. I can't." She sank down to her knees and covered her face with her hands. "I just can't."

"It's all right." Karlene touched the younger woman gently on the shoulder. If Vree needed to react to this when she'd reacted to almost nothing else, the bard wasn't going to stop her. "Give me your dagger and tell me what to do."

There was a great deal of blood on the ground before the injured animal finally stilled. Karlene kept one hand pressed against its side and Sang comfort in time to its failing heartbeat. She didn't know if it helped— bardic theory was split over animal reaction to Song— but she figured it couldn't hurt. When the last heartbeat faded away, she Sang the horse into the evergreen pastures of the Circle and slowly stood.

Vree still knelt where she'd left her, staring blankly at the crimson puddle and thinking… or possibly, not thinking. Karlene wanted to help but didn't have the first idea of what to do or say. She was afraid Vree would have to find her own Song.

Otavas pushed himself into a sitting position and stared around him in confusion. The brilliant eyes that one besotted courtier had compared to onyx in moonlight were dull and ringed with shadow, the thick fringe of lash broke into crusted clumps. "Where… where are the cousins?" he asked as he did his best not to see Kait and Wheyra, Hestia and Iban.

Fighting to shove aside the hours of Commanded sleep, Otavas scooped the warm mush up on two fingers and wondered when he'd learned to eat like a peasant. Or had he always known? He couldn't seem to reach the memories of his old life—his life before the old man and the dead.

"Eat it quickly, my heart," the old man told him. "For we must flee."

"Flee? Flee what?" When the old man hesitated, Otavas grabbed at a skinny arm. "You have to tell me."

"Demons." The ancient eyes locked onto the young ones. "I never meant to bring you into such danger, my heart, but I will protect you. I swear it."

Chapter Sixteen

"They rested here." Vree straightened, one hand curled around the dagger at her hip, the other curled into a fist—both hands positioned so that her companions couldn't see the fingers tremble. They trembled nearly all the time. She couldn't seem to make them stop. With the side of one foot, she kicked more dirt over the small fire pit. "And not very long ago."

"Then we're close."

"Very close," Vree amended, squinting up the narrow canyon. They'd lost time by following the cart's trail to the top of the bluff for Kars and the dead and the prince had doubled back nearly to the track.

"It goes to an old Imperial mine and smelter,"
Karlene declared, falling into a light recall trance.
"It played out during the reign of the last Emperor although a few families are still scraping a living out of it."

"I don't see how," Gyhard muttered. "The area's been destroyed. There aren't two trees standing next to each other for miles."

To Vree, it merely looked like the southern parts of the Empire; only without the lizards. There were plenty of trees in other places; she couldn't understand what both Karlene and Gyhard had been so upset about. "Between the dead and Kars, they'll be moving slowly cross-country," she said. "And without the cart, they'll have to stop to sleep."