Return of the Guardian-King (29 page)
He shrugged. “Ill will is bred regardless. By all manner of things—good and bad. You can’t avoid it.”
They stood in silence for a time as she savored the scent of the jasmine, the chuckle of the fountain at their backs, the low conversations of the others who shared the quadrangle with them, the soft strains of the orchestra floating out from the ballroom. . . .
“So . . .” Tiris said presently. “I’m guessing you are working on a ballad of all this?”
She glanced at him, startled. Early on she had discovered they shared an interest in music. He’d known of her ballads before they had met—owing, naturally, to his interest in Abramm—and had even composed a few of his own works. Works he confessed to having performed for his courtiers from time to time, though he found it awkward and unsatisfying.
“They always
applaud you, but what else can they do? I can understand why you went out to
the taverns to do it anonymously.”
He’d made her blush with that remark, reminding her both of what she’d done as a young girl and what she’d done only months previously. She’d not thought at the time that she might be contemplating another performance quite so soon as she was.
Now she shrugged. “Working on it, yes.”
“And perhaps have finished?”
“Perhaps.”
“Ah. So it remains merely a matter of when and where to perform it— which lucky inn to select to be visited by Molly the tavern wench.” He flashed his brilliant smile at her. “I have a better idea. How about you present it next week when I introduce my Desert Salon?”
“I can’t imagine why the great Tiris ul Sadek would be inviting Molly the tavern wench to perform at the opening of his Desert Salon.”
“I’m not inviting Molly, I’m inviting the exquisitely voiced First Daughter of the realm. Who, of course, needn’t worry about the courtiers giving her false praise, seeing as her talent is completely legitimate.”
“As you needn’t, either, I’m sure, sir. But it is not proper for the First Daughter to be performing in public.”
“Not even if the great Tiris ul Sadek presses her to? I will take all the blame.”
“And not receive any of it. Everyone knows I know better.”
“Ah, but they’ll not be sending you off to a convent this time.”
She gaped at him in indignation. “How do you know about that?” The first time she’d played “Molly” she’d been fourteen and had made the mistake of agreeing to sing for the customers. Which had been fine fun . . . until her father had found out.
Again Tiris disarmed her with his smile. “I make it a point to find out about the women I take an interest in.”
She pushed away from the railing now to face him outright. “My husband is returning soon, Draek Tiris. Why would you want to herald that to all the court and join me in looking the fool?”
“I told you. It will be fun when they are all proven wrong. I love to see the chickens flustered and clucking.”
She looked up at him, head cocked. “You are an evil man, Tiris ul Sadek.”
“Yes. I am.” And the way his eyes glittered gave her an unexpected chill. Then he smiled, dropped her a short bow, and held out one gloved hand. “I hear a familiar melody coming from the ballroom. Would you join me for one last dance? We’ll get them all atwitter with the hope you will accept
my
suit.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, very well. At least it will discourage the others from trying.”
“It will be our little secret.”
The morning after Abramm made his ill-fated confession to Laud, he stood on the hard-packed snow of Caerna’tha’s gate yard, rucksack slung over one shoulder and snowshoes in hand. The yard around him roiled with activity as those who would go with him bustled about, putting on their snowshoes, making last-minute additions—or removals—to the loads they carried in their rucksacks, and saying good-bye to the permanent residents of the monastery.
Rolland came up as Abramm stood there. “Looks like we’re gonna be ready jest about the time ye guessed.” He released a big breath, put his hands on his hips, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Abramm shook his head, bemused. “I really didn’t think they’d all come, when it came right down to it—the route being what it is.” He lifted a brow at his friend. “It’s your fault, you know.”
Rolland’s grin widened. “Well, I told ye my plans. And I know as well as ye do that if we wait ’til the snow’s gone like Oakes wanted, we wouldna reach Peregris ’til midsummer. The whole war could be over by then.”
And not in our favor,
Abramm thought.
He dropped his snowshoes on the snow in front of him, then slid off his rucksack and jammed his booted feet into the bindings. Once all was fastened snugly, he stood and redonned his pack, which had somehow grown heavier just from being set down.
Most of what he carried was food—flour, crystallized honey, and a load of shriveled apples from last fall’s harvest. That in addition to his meager belongings, which had this morning increased by two more items, courtesy of Professor Laud. The man had caught him at breakfast, early. He’d said nothing about their conversation the night before but presented Abramm with a book-shaped parcel wrapped in brown parchment and tied with string, and a leather drawstring bag. “To remember us by. Perhaps to remember yourself by, as well,” he’d said.
The book he hadn’t unwrapped yet, but he guessed that Laud was giving him the copy of
The Red Dragon
. The bag held the speaking stone he’d seen the professor using the night before. Since he and the whole group would be without a kohal for a while, Laud thought they would have greater use for it than he did.
Now as Rolland handed him his staff, Abramm went over to the gatehouse porch to say his good-byes to the professor. The older man looked down at him, his expression calm but sad. Abramm thought of offering his hand but wasn’t sure Laud would welcome that. Instead he said stiffly, “I’m sorry I haven’t turned out to be what you’d hoped. But I deeply appreciate all you have done for me.”
Laud allowed himself a small smile. “I’m still hoping you’ll reconsider.”
“I won’t.” He paused. “But if it’s possible one day, I would like to return.”
“With that family of yours?”
“My wife would love this place. I would probably have a hard time pulling her away.”
Laud seemed to startle. “Your wife is a scholar?”
“A scholar and a bard.”
“That is unusual for a woman.”
“Particularly a Chesedhan woman.”
Laud frowned at him, and Abramm couldn’t help but smile. Best to end this before things got prickly. “We thank you again for your hospitality, professor.”
“It has been my pleasure. And fair journey to you.”
Abramm stepped back, started to turn his snowshoes, one after the other, when Laud said, “Alaric—” Abramm looked over his shoulder.
“Don’t let your ambition or your desire for vengeance get the best of you, son,” the old man advised. “It will only bring you ruin. Whatever Eidon has for you, it won’t be accomplished through deception and trickery.”
Abramm regarded him a moment; then he chuckled briefly, shaking his head. “I know that, sir. Have no fear.”
He took up the place Trinley had assigned him—at the end of the line— and trudged down the slope toward the center of the valley where the stream gurgled merrily between deep banks of snow. First to freeze, it was also first to respond to the sun’s heat, flowing downward to meet the Ankrill.
The day was bright, the sky an inverted blue bowl over their heads, ringed with a crown of white peaks. The group—almost thirty of them with the children—moved down the slope eagerly, following the path Abramm, Rolland, and Cedric had made a week earlier when they’d gone down to investigate the alternate trail. Now the creak of Abramm’s snowshoes melded into the collective rustling, clinking, and chattering of those ahead of him, and he couldn’t help but pick up their excitement. Finally he was on his way!
Their progress was slow. The women needed to rest, especially Jania, and the children had to be let down to move about and relieve themselves periodically, so it took them half a day to reach the village. At their first sight of it, Abramm blew out a breath of relief to see it largely as he remembered from their scouting expedition the week before—still deserted for the winter, the haphazard circle of huts buried to their eaves. Except for the tracks from the men’s previous excursion, the snowfield stood undisturbed. As Abramm had hoped, the villagers had yet to return from their lowland wintering grounds.
Nor had Tapheina and her pack been there. He’d half expected to encounter them when he’d started out from Caerna’tha, even though none of the tanniym had appeared since the night of Jania’s child-birthing. Trinley argued that, having failed to get Abramm to open the gate and knowing they’d not have another chance—he’d been locked in his cell every night since—they’d given up and gone away. Abramm had refrained from pointing out that the tanniym preferred to travel in darkness and that their own party had many leagues yet to travel and many nights to spend in the forest.
As had also been the case last week, the canyon downstream of the village, where the more widely used route snaked alongside the river, stood swathed in a veil of mist he knew was not natural.
Trinley and the others crossed the frozen Ankrill and climbed the bank to the flat without incident, but as Abramm started across—last in line—a flock of crows burst out of the mist downstream. They flew straight over him, cawing erratically, and disappeared behind the high bank’s brow. Everyone stopped and stared at the sky, but after a few moments, when the birds did not return, they moved on.
Abramm climbed the bank and crossed the snowfield without incident to join the others where they’d congregated at the base of the far canyon wall.
The alternate trail snaked precariously across the steep face of the cliff, and the sight of it had unnerved the group. Already Kitrenna Trinley was pressuring her husband to abandon it for the wider, safer trail down on the river’s bank. With the villagers gone, she argued, why risk trying to follow a narrow, rocky trail that could very well end in a cliff when they had a much easier and safer route at hand. Her husband pointed out that it wouldn’t be safer with all the snow, that there were ice-glazed cliffs to negotiate where they could as easily fall to their deaths.
Abramm knew better than to enter into the discussion, for Trinley would only see his contribution as an attempt to assume leadership. Sure enough, the alderman asked every man but Abramm his opinion. After too much discussion, Rolland finally pointed out the strong possibility that they’d run into the returning villagers on the lower route—and were also more likely to meet up with tanniym there—and that decided them. They would take the high road as originally planned. Any who didn’t feel comfortable with that would go back to Caerna’tha and wait for the snow to melt. As it turned out, no one went back.
The trail, wide enough to have permitted the horse to pass had they brought her, switchbacked up the face of the steep slope, then curved around the sun-drenched cliff face on a southeasterly course. Below them a pillowy layer of mist filled the canyon and hid the bottom of the drainage from view. Across the way, the facing ice-clad walls stood in shadow, constant reaffirmation of the rightness of the travelers’ choice. There were places where the trail had fallen away a bit, but never enough to make the passage dangerously narrow. Sometimes melting snow above trickled down the rock face and across their route, but that, too, presented little problem. In fact, their biggest discomfort came from the sun, for they’d not traveled very far before it became hot, and Abramm was not the only one to shed his heavy overcoat and woolen mittens.
The crows returned in late afternoon, flying low over the mist, circling the travelers twice, then heading on down the canyon and out of sight. Taking note of the Kiriathans’ position, it would seem, just as night was falling.
Shortly afterward, Kitrenna Trinley’s fear of no place to camp was put to rest when they reached a narrow ravine carved into the canyon wall where a grassy flat provided space enough to set up tents and lay out bedrolls. A snowmelt stream tumbled downward toward the river beside it, and a screen of spruce trees blocked the chill wind flowing down the canyon. There was even a ring of soot-stained rocks to hold a fire, kindling piled nearby to start it.
Kitrenna was so amazed and thankful she went so far as to credit Abramm for his most excellent judgment in leading them to such a fine place, which did not make her husband very happy.
As the others bustled about getting settled and starting the fire, Abramm did a quick scout of the area. He’d been thinking all day of how to protect them should the tanniym pay a nighttime visit. Laud had suggested last week that he might conjure a Light shield, and even taught him how, though his success had be sketchy at best, Instead of just making the net and throwing it into place, he had to lay out a ring of kelistars first, using them as a primer from which to build the shield itself. Since any wind at all would send them rolling, or put them out entirely, it was not the best method for outdoor use. Thankfully there wasn’t any wind yet. Even better, the terrain was rough and steep, good protection in itself. He saw quickly enough that his best approach would be to lay the kelistars around the outside of the ledge and simply enclose the immediate campsite.
Though he fully intended to climb back up to the ledge and begin, somehow he found himself on the narrow footpath that followed the snowmelt stream down to the river. And it was only when a dense mist closed about him and snow once more blanketed the ground that he came to his senses and stopped. He stood in utter silence, nape crawling with the realization that the tanniym were indeed out there, and thankful he’d had the wit to bring his staff with him.
At that point the cliff face had flattened out into a ledge, thick with leafless, prickly berry bushes, clotted with ice. The path disappeared into their midst, where no doubt his enemies lurked. Now his awareness of them suddenly intensified, as gravel rattled at his back. He whirled, bringing up the staff—