Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (14 page)

◆ ◆ ◆

Her new horse was named Verka, a Lonak word which meant North Star in honour of the single blaze of white on his chest. He had been Brother Hervil’s mount and was, Sollis assured her, the most placid horse in the Order’s stables. From the way Verka reared and tossed his head as she hauled herself into the saddle she suspected the dutiful brother was merely attempting to salve her trepidation. However, despite her initial misgivings, the warhorse proved an obedient mount, responding to her touch willingly enough as they followed Davoka’s swift-trotting pony.

She led them south for several hours, setting a punishing pace, the journey unbroken by any rest stops. Sollis rode in front of Lyrna with Ivern behind and Smolen bringing up the rear, their eyes constantly scanning horizon and hilltop. Lyrna had been similarly vigilant when the journey began but lost her enthusiasm as the strain took its toll.
Why couldn’t I have been more interested in physical pursuits?
she grumbled, feeling every step of Verka’s hooves on the rough ground.
One hour away from my books wouldn’t have killed me. But this bloody horse might.

They turned north again before twilight, spending an uncomfortable and fireless night in the lee of a great boulder, the others taking turns on watch whilst Lyrna huddled in her furs, exhaustion for once ensuring sleep, albeit fitful. Her dreams were different this night, instead of the dying King, Nersa came to stand before her, back in Lyrna’s private garden at the palace. The lady smiled and laughed, as she often had, bent to smell the flowers and run a hand through the cherry blossoms, and all the time blood flowed from the arrows jutting from her chest and neck, leaving a red trail wherever she walked . . .

Despite the many aches and pains that greeted Lyrna’s waking, she was thankful when morning came.

◆ ◆ ◆

Lyrna met the ape that afternoon. For hours they had pressed on through a succession of gully and canyon, laboured up a score of hills, always climbing, the air growing ever more chill and the trail ever more narrow.

Davoka called a welcome halt when they had climbed an especially rock-strewn path to a summit of sun-bathed boulders. Their onward course was obvious; an ever-more-narrow and winding trail atop a ridge snaking away towards two great mountains, the largest they had seen so far. The ridge seemed to disappear into a gap between the peaks. Eyeing the constricted and winding path, Lyrna could appreciate why Davoka had insisted on keeping their party small. Guiding a full company of guards along this path would have taken days if not weeks.

She slid from Verka’s back with the now-customary groan and found a large boulder behind which to evacuate the royal bladder. She was rising from the crouch when she saw it, no more than a dozen paces away. An ape. A very large ape.

It sat regarding her with black eyes above a doglike snout, a sprig of half-chewed gorse in its leathery paw. Seated, it was at least five feet tall and covered from brow to rump in thick grey fur, ruffling in the wind.

“Don’t look at its eyes, Queen.” Davoka stood atop the boulder behind her. “Pack leader. He’ll take it as a challenge.”

Lyrna duly averted her eyes from the ape’s face, keeping it in sight with furtive glances as it rose to stand on all fours, a wide yawn revealing a set of vicious fangs. It raised its head to utter a short coughing hoot and five more apes appeared out of the surrounding rocks. They were marginally smaller but no less threatening in appearance.

“No moving, Queen,” Davoka said softly. Lyrna noted she grasped her spear with a reverse grip, ready for throwing.

The pack leader gave another hoot and bounded away, leaping from one rock to another with soundless precision, the five others following with similar expertise. Within seconds they had vanished.

“Don’t like our smell,” Davoka said.

Lyrna walked back to their temporary camp on weak legs, her heart hammering, slumping down next to Smolen with an explosive sigh.

He frowned at her. “Is something wrong, Highness?”

◆ ◆ ◆

“You are mad, woman!” Sollis barked at Davoka. “This is your safe path?”

The mountain loomed ahead of them, slopes of black ash broken by huge boulders ascending to a summit wreathed in roiling smoke, lit by the occasional burst of orange fire accompanied by a vast rumbling that made the earth tremble beneath their feet.

“No other way,” Davoka insisted. She was busy divesting her pony of tack, throwing the saddle down the slope and freeing its head of the bridle. She gave the animal an affectionate scratch on the nose then slapped a hand against its rump, sending it trotting back along the ridge-top trail they had followed for the five days it had taken to get here. “Can’t take horses,” the Lonak woman said. “Slope too steep and they don’t like fire.”

“
I
don’t like fire,” Lyrna told her.

“No other way, Queen.” Davoka hefted her spear, shouldered her leather satchel and began to ascend without another word or a backward glance.

“Highness,” Sollis said, “Forgive me but I must advise . . .”

“I know, brother. I know.” She waved him to silence, watching Davoka ascending the ash slope with her long-legged strides. “Does it have a name? This mountain.”

It was Brother Ivern who answered. A much younger man than Sollis or the fallen Hervil, he had nevertheless acquired an impressive knowledge of the Lonak and their lands. “They call it the Mouth of Nishak, Highness,” he said. “Nishak being their god of fire.”

Lyrna took hold of her skirt, lifting it clear of the ash and starting forward. “Well, let’s hope he’s sleeping. Loose the horses, good sirs.”

But Nishak, it seemed, wasn’t sleeping today. Several times Lyrna found herself stumbling to her knees as the mountain shook, feeling a rush of heat as the summit belched fire into the sky. The air stank of sulphur and the ash made her cough to the point of retching, but she kept on, endeavouring to keep Davoka’s striding form in sight. Finally the Lonak woman paused to rest, sheltering on the cooler side of a boulder, taking a sip from her water flask as Lyrna collapsed beside her.

“This.” Davoka slapped a hand on Lyrna’s riding gown. “Too heavy, take it off.”

“I don’t have anything else,” Lyrna gasped and gulped water from her own flask.

Davoka opened her satchel and extracted a jerkin and trews of soft leather. “I have. Long for you, but I make them fit.” She laid out the trews for tailoring and drew her knife. “You strip.”

Lyrna glanced at the three men standing nearby, all studiously looking elsewhere. “If any of you turn, I’ll see you in the Black Hold,” she warned them.

Sollis said nothing, Smolen coughed and Ivern suppressed a chuckle.

Standing naked on the slopes of a volcano whilst a Lonak woman dressed her was one of the more bizarre experiences Lyrna could recall, made somewhat more awkward by Davoka’s frank words of appraisal. “Firm thighs, hips not too narrow. Good. Strong children you’ll bear, Queen.”

Brother Ivern snickered, earning a harsh rebuke from Sollis.

It was done within the hour. Princess Lyrna Al Nieren stood in Lonak clothing, ash staining her face and her unwashed hair hanging in a long greasy mass. Davoka had offered to shear it for her but she refused, tying it back with a leather thong which at least kept it out of her eyes. “How do I look, Lord Marshal?” she asked Smolen, knowing he was the most likely to lie.

“Glorious as ever, Highness,” he assured her with impressive sincerity.

“Brother!” Ivern called to Sollis, pointing down the slope.

Sollis shielded his eyes to take in the view. “I see them. About fifty, I’d say.”

“Closer to sixty,” Ivern said. “We have perhaps five miles on them.”

Lyrna followed their gaze, seeing a line of ponies making their way along the ridge.
Sentar.

“Good,” Davoka commented, resuming her climb.

“Good?” Lyrna said. “How can this be good? We were supposed to lose them by coming here.”

Davoka didn’t turn. “No, Queen. We weren’t.”

Lyrna sighed, gathered her things and started after her.

◆ ◆ ◆

The sun was beginning to dip behind the mountains by the time they reached the summit, a caldera fully half a mile across. Smoke rose in unending billowing columns and the stench of sulphur was so thick Lyrna had to fight her rising gorge. She risked a glance over the rim of the caldera, beholding a vision of roiling lava pools spouting gobbets of molten rock into the air, before the heat forced her back. Davoka sat a few yards below the rim, gazing intently at the sun as it descended below the jagged peaks to the west. Her gaze occasionally flicked to the dim shapes of their pursuers, a rising cloud of dust betraying their progress.

“Ready your bows,” she told Sollis and Ivern. “Might need to slow them down.”

“We’re just going to sit here?” Lyrna demanded. She had tried to keep her temper in check so far but the circumstances were fast eroding her self-control. “Shouldn’t we, perhaps, be moving on with all possible haste?”

Davoka shook her head, speaking in Lonak.
“Nishak will kill us if we take another step. We must await his blessing
.
”
She shifted her gaze to the sun again, waiting until it was fully concealed by the mountains, then closed her eyes and began to chant.

“Are you . . .” Lyrna sputtered and spat ash from her mouth. “Are you praying to your god? Have I followed you here and doomed myself and these men so you can seek aid from an imaginary magic man who lives in a mountain?”

Davoka ignored her, eyes closed and chanting.

Lyrna was tempted to shake the Lonak woman but realised it would most likely earn an angry blow which in turn would force Smolen to kill her, or at least try to. She could only stand and watch, fuming like the mountain they stood on, as darkness descended.

“She’s not praying, Highness,” Ivern told her, watching the Lonak woman with an intense curiosity. “She’s counting.”

“That’s three hundred yards by my reckoning,” Sollis said, eyes fixed on the Sentar below, bow in hand. The slopes were bathed in an orange glow, the mountain’s fiery breath reflecting from the smoke clouds. He took an arrow from his quiver and notched it, drawing and loosing with only the barest hesitation to fix his aim. Lyrna watched the arrow arc towards the cluster of pursuing Sentar, falling amongst them with little sign of having caused any injury or delay.

Ivern moved off to the left and both brothers began loosing arrows in a slow, deliberate repetition of notch, aim and release. Lyrna fancied she saw a brighter plume of dust rise from the onrushing Sentar which might indicate one or more had fallen. In any case, they showed no sign of slowing.

“I’m not to be taken alive, Lord Marshal,” she told Smolen.

Davoka stopped counting and rose to her feet. “Sentar don’t want you alive,” she said, then called to Sollis and Ivern. “Save your arrows. No need now.”

“So where is he?” Lyrna said, too tired and defeated to even feel angry. “Where is the great Lonak fire go—”

The mountain shook with a violence they hadn’t felt before, tipping them off their feet, a fresh blossoming of black smoke rose from the caldera and barely fifty yards below the summit molten lava erupted from a dozen different places. It gushed forth in glowing streams, flowing down the slope and coalescing into a great river of fire, the Sentar disappearing amidst the fiery current, the roar of the mountain drowning out the screams they must have voiced.

Davoka got to her feet, arms raised to bathe in the heat, reciting in Lonak, 
“At the count of two hundred and twenty past the fall of the sun on the third day of the sixth month, Nishak speaks and blesses the south face of the mountain. Know this and mark it well, for Nishak is the most generous of gods.”

◆ ◆ ◆

The descent of the north side of the Mouth of Nishak took most of the night. There was less ash on these slopes and Lyrna found the going easier, though the growing chill as they left the fiery warmth of the mountain behind made her pine for her heavy riding gown.

They made shelter on a narrow ledge snaking alongside the base of the mountain, a rocky overhang providing shelter from a fresh downpour. Davoka allowed their first fire in days, fashioned from the stunted gorse bushes that sprouted between the rocks. Lyrna kept as close to it as she could, too chilled to sleep. Davoka took the first watch as the men slept, the brothers in eerie silence, Smolen tossing fitfully. She sat on the lip of the ledge, long legs dangling over the sheer drop of more than a hundred feet, spear within easy reach.

“I regret my anger,” Lyrna told her through chattering teeth. “My words were foolish. I didn’t mean to insult your god.”

Davoka shrugged, replying in Lonak.
“Your insult means nothing to Nishak. He has always been here. He will always be here. Whenever the Lonakhim have need of fire.”

“I-I’m sorry, also, for your . . .” Lyrna spasmed with cold and forced the last words out. “. . . sister. A death like that, is n-not to be wished on . . . anyone.”

Davoka turned to her, eyes narrowed in concern. She rose and knelt by Lyrna, taking hold of her hands then touching knuckles to her forehead. “Too cold, Queen.”

She shrugged off her fur vest, placing it around Lyrna’s shoulders then pulling her close, arms and legs wrapped tight around her. Lyrna was too weak to protest.

“
My sister lives, Lerhnah,”
Davoka whispered to her.
“My sister who is not my sister. I feel it. She rages out there in the dark. She’s lost us for now, but she’ll find us soon. Whatever took her chose well, her skills are great indeed.”

“Wh-whatever took her?”

“It was not always this way with her. She was . . . never a warrior. A skilled huntress yes, Kiral means wildcat in the ancient tongue. She could track prey with such skill many thought she carried the gods’ blessing. But she never sought battle, not even against your kind.

“Then came the day she happened upon one of the great apes of the western hills. It was birthing season and they are fierce in protecting their young. Kiral was badly mauled. She lingered for days, seemingly beyond the shaman’s skills. The Mahlessa had given me leave to be at her side for the end. I sat and watched her until all breath was gone. She died Lerhnah, I saw it. It shames me but I wept for my sister, the only tears I have ever shed, for she was precious to me. Then she spoke, she was dead but she spoke, ‘Tears are not fitting for a Mahlessa’s guard.’ I looked into her eyes, her living eyes, and I did not see my sister there, nor have I since.”