King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (16 page)

She carried her meager belongings always with her, in a bundle tied under her skirt. It hampered her walking sometimes, giving her an odd gait that merely added to the humiliation already heaped upon her shoulders. She had nothing to go back for. Marisanna, gone. No meal would give her the sustenance she needed nor would it yield enough to stock her for a journey. Best to go now. She’d already been missing for the afternoon while under the spell of her warped mind. Ceyla heaved a sigh and stepped back. She already knew how she would get out. Like a wisp of a ghost, she could see it in her mind, playing from a dream of the past or even from this very day. These phantoms of actions danced behind her eyes until she could see little else. She had to leave. Now. And in the way she saw without seeing. She knotted her shawl tightly about her head and neck, tying it like a thin and worn scarf. She would crawl on her belly under the high rock walls of the fortress, from the kennel runs where one enterprising hound tunneled away under the wall and the kennel boy too lazy to take mortar to the stone work to repair it, merely piled up loose rock to cover the holes. She knew she would make it that far. Unfortunately, her insanity chose not to tell her if it would be safe on the other side or how far she would get. She would be blinded as to her future. Rather like the hound.

But like the hound, a compulsion had been laid on her to get away, to dig away at the fence that held her, and to escape. She could not turn back. She would run. In a day. Maybe a handful of days, but run she would.

L
AMPS LIT THE GREAT CONFERENCE ROOM on the third floor of the manor. Their light spilled out of the windows into the domain of Larandaril, blessed valley of the sacred river, which bled off to the west and into the sea, carrying prosperity and commerce wherever it flowed. Lariel gazed out the windows, as quiet murmurs rose and fell at her back. She watched for late arrivals, knowing that Bistane might be close but not yet there, and Sevryn was traveling trails of his own, after having sent her dire news.

Despite the men who sat at her table, she felt alone. Terribly, unendingly, alone. She had called for a conference, yet the man whose advice meant most to her would never talk to her again. She clenched her hands, felt a pang of pain for an absent digit in her left, and unclenched quickly, to rub her scar. She no longer looked down at her hand and felt a faint surprise at the maiming; it had finally become a part of her. Perhaps the day would come when the loss of her brother would grow as dim.

She turned about in the lamplight. Indoors, the faceted glow spread into every corner and reflected warmly off the heavily polished table that dominated the area. Dinner had been served and cleared. Tapestries were drawn against the windows that normally looked out upon the vistas of the kingdom, beautiful and lush, a land blessed with bounty, a jewel in the grasp of the Vaelinar. Inland from the hardscrabble coasts of the peninsula continent referred to by the natives as the First Home, Larandaril cupped a life that, while not easy, gave up its bounty far more willingly than the rugged coastlines. She’d remade the pact her grandfather had with those Gods and demigods of the region, and held to it, and so the land cleaved to them and their welfare. There were those, of their own race, and of the native races of Kerith, who resented that pact, but Lariel knew the price beyond even that of her flesh and doubted that anyone else would have given it over. The land held them, but they also held the land. Reflected in the lamps’ glow also were the figures of the handful gathered about it, standing and sitting, their finely boned faces and curving tipped ears lending them an arrogance they wore as easily as the fine clothes and armor upon their bodies. As she turned to face them, and their voices quieted even more, her fondness for them braced her. Perhaps she was not quite as alone as she felt. All the men in the room knew that while Lariel Anderieon might ask them for their lives, her rival Tressandre ild Fallyn was more likely to take their lives and brutally, at that. Lara could never drag out of them what they would not willingly give. Their opinion mattered, it would be listened to, before the Warrior Queen put her thoughts into action. For a moment, she saw the great bulk of Osten Drebukar at the table which made her blink and as she did, the much younger though no less doughty figure of his nephew Farlen occupied his place. Another loss she could not quite accept but must, there being no choice. The men turned to her as if knowing the moment had come.

She stirred now as if feeling the weight of their thoughts, but it was not she who spoke.

Farlen’s hand chopped the air as did his words. “The Ferryman’s hold on our enemy is weakening. He is a dam which will break. When he does, we’ll be wiped out unless we’re ready. Sevryn’s messages attest to that.”

“And what was your first warning? The dairyman who had two dozen Raymy drop into his pastures from out of the sky? Or mayhap it was the lace makers’ guild up the coast that suddenly found a handful of odd lace makers armed to the teeth within their circles? Indeed, I am told their guests were
all
teeth. Or did you not pay attention until they attacked at Calcort?” Tranta bit his caustic words off crisply. Only two of station occupied the vast room, the other two, scribes, sat with their pens busily scratching. Tranta ran fingers through his sea-blue hair. “I daresay it’s not the Ferryman we need to fear but Daravan.”

They spoke bitterly of the savior who had stepped into a war, a war they had been losing, and swept up their enemy in a tidal wave of river water, and carried them into a breach of time and place which only he and his brother, the Ferryman who tamed the most untamable rivers, could make. Daravan had warned them that he would lose his hold and they had better be prepared for the return. That had been two seasons ago, and the Vaelinars and their allies had no idea when the portal would shatter, when the Ferryman and his Way would collapse, the enemy spilling once more onto the lands they hoped to desecrate and conquer.

“We are like an archer with his bow long raised and string pulled tautly back, and praying only to be able to finally loose the arrow. We need an end to this.”

Lariel ran her fingertips across the mail she wore still, as she had been doing every day since deciding a war was coming which must be fought, frowned, and said, “Do either of you know if it will rain the week after next?”

Farlen knotted his lips and then his brow, pondering, before giving up and saying, “Highness, it is spring, and the rainy season, but I can’t foretell the patterns of the clouds more than common sense and a day or two will give you. I could send out and see if we can find a Kernan witch who reads the weather, but there’s no answer I could give you.”

Lariel looked to Tranta who shrugged, saying, “You ask if either of us is a diviner, and the answer is: no. Not with regard to the weather or to the collapse of the Ferryman. Such power in a Way has never been heard of or seen before, and none of us can duplicate a magic like that. Kerith seems to be shrugging off our weavings on this world. When will Daravan’s hold shatter?” Tranta shrugged. “We only know that it will.”

Farlen, looking every bit as forbidding as his uncle had looked in his heyday, merely growled a retort back in his teeth and slumped down in his immense chair. He flexed a large hand. “Has it occurred to you that these Raymy are hardly our concern? They were savaging these lands long before we arrived, and will likely do so after we return to our lawful home.”

Something flashed across Lara’s face so quickly that it was scarcely traceable, but Tranta saw it. His eyebrow rose ever so slightly at her as she put one hand, knuckled, onto the table. Underneath her chain mail, her dress of a soft but luxuriant green rustled, a sound faintly reminiscent of a rising storm wind through forest treetops. “No. What occurred to me,” she answered slowly, “is that it took the race of the Mageborn to subdue them before, and there are no Mageborn who exist now. What powers they might have held and used were not recorded precisely enough for us to know what they were. The peoples who depended on them have no one now. No one except us, the invaders of Kerith, the intruders, the exiled. Should we care? Did we take their lands from them? Enslave some of them for decades? Yes, we taught them more than they might have known through the normal course of learning, but we took more than we gave. And, Farlen, it is our lands and our people who are threatened.”

Tranta decided to wave a hand in conciliation. “I was fond of that dairyman,” Tranta added. “Estate money is barely enough to replenish the herd and keep the farm going. If the son is able to step into his father’s boots.”

“They will manage,” Lariel told him firmly. “As we all will. I know the camps in the valley of the Ashenbrook are logistically difficult to keep, but we must. The valley is where the Ferryman made his stand and the Nylara is the river to which he was anchored for centuries. I have to maintain a lookout there as well. Common sense—and hope—tell us this is likely where the Raymy will flood our land when his hold is relinquished. The Ashenbrook first, but possibly the Nylara. When he can no longer hold the thousands he swept up, when the dam breaks, it should be here or here.” She tapped her hand on the table. “We have to hope it is, because we cannot protect every small farm, village, and holding if it is not. The East remains in Galdarkan hands, and Gods know that Diort has his own burdens there to carry. We might call on him again or we might not.” Her words faltered as her own indecision in that matter echoed.

“It may predict where the Ferryman feels he can make his last stand when his strength to hold the army of Raymy fails . . . but it tells us nothing of what Daravan will make of the situation. The brothers may have disappeared as one, but it is Daravan who manipulated us for centuries, to keep us from learning of our true origins and our path home. His strategy nearly divided us even as we moved against the Raymy. And that, my queen,” Tranta Istlanthir said as he turned to face her squarely, “that was what nearly lost us the first battle and may well undo us for the final.”

Scribes wrote furiously.

“I can’t wage a strike against an enemy which hasn’t yet appeared. And I think all of you forget that Quendius had no small hand in this.” Lariel raised a hand, rubbed her eyes, remembering the tiny fret lines she saw every day now in the mirror. Her blonde hair had always been shot with platinum, as light and gold and silvery as early morning light, so if the platinum strands had become more abundant, it was plain only to her. She fought to keep the strain of her emotions showing through her face and hands. “The weaponmaster gathered those troops and brought them down on us.”

“He killed my brother and destroyed the Shield of Tomarq. That, we also know.”

Lariel read the expression on his face.

Tranta lifted a shoulder and dropped it. “I am close to admitting defeat in restoring the Shield of Tomarq.”

Lariel gave a slight tilt of her head. The fiery Jewel which rode the cliffs above the only natural harbor on the coast, and a considerable harbor it was, had been destroyed by Quendius and although she knew that the Istlanthir felt its loss deeply as part of their foundation, she had never held much hope for its restoration. It was a Way, the making of which gave the Istlanthir the foundation for their House, but those who had made it had passed, the secrets of their great working dying with them. That the Jewel had stood at all, taking the fire of the sun into its heart, and burning to cinders whoever trespassed on the waters below, had been nothing less than miraculous. Should one expect miracles to last forever? She said gently, “The Jewel was shattered. How could you hope to fuse it back together?”

“Because it always was, and is, more than a gemstone. I had hoped that the Way which ran through it might be instrumental . . .” His words trailed off, unwilling to surrender to a certain truth that he could not remake the shield. Yet Tranta had taken it upon himself to do just that, knowing that the great red stone, which moved in its cliff top cradle to eye the sea, had been one of the most significant and conspicuous of the elven Ways upon the lands. It knew those who trespassed against its watch over the shores and bays. It called down the fire of the sun and moon and stars to burn away those who did so, and it had been unfailing in its trust in the centuries it had stood. Tranta had spent a lifetime climbing the sheer stone peaks above the harbor to reach it and make what minor repairs of the cradle were required from time to time. The stone itself had been immutable. He had first seen the spidery flaw in it to his great dismay, and it had been his brother who had died defending it when Quendius fired a Demon arrow into its depths, shattering gem and flesh.

Farlen cleared his throat. “Even if Drebukar could find another such gem in our mines, the size of a horse that one was, we could not say if it would replace the old one. And it was your parents who worked the magic within it. You know that, Tranta.”

Tranta inclined his head for a moment, his throat pulsing as he swallowed. Then he looked up. “We have many fronts to protect and sitting on our asses in one place, the Ashenbrook, does not address our problems.”

Farlen turned his big broad face toward Lariel. “On part of that, Istlanthir is correct,” he said grudgingly. “But we dare not strike camps. We need to be in place, for when that wave breaks upon our shores, it will be nothing less than a tsunami. We know this. We’ve talked of little else for weeks.”

“If it comes as a wave. What if it comes as fitful rains instead, drops here and drops there, until we’re flooded? What if we are faced with hundreds of simple farmers who open their barns, walk to their pastures, visit their wells, only to find a company of the enemy ready to spring upon their throats? Pockets of them holed up in our countryside? A battalion ranging the streets of any of our cities?”

“What if, what if,” Lariel answered bitterly. “What would you have me do?”

“Be flexible,” both men answered in unison and then stared at each other a moment before looking back to her.

“I have Bistane traversing the northern portions. He guides his father’s—” she paused to correct herself tersely, “
his
cavalries at will. That’s all the flexibility we can afford and Bistane is only one warlord.”

“The ild Fallyn have cavalries, too.”

She raised her eyebrow at Farlen.

He muttered sulkily, “Well, they do.”

“I’ll never give an ild Fallyn command. They will go to war and ride at my request, and only then. That’s the only way they can be contained because they only act when it suits them.”

“You can’t let old grudges keep you from a victory.”