The Betrayal (16 page)

“My lady?”

Though his words were formal, his gaze was intent. Eliani swallowed, suddenly nervous.

“I wished to be sure that you reached your border in safety, my lord.”

“That is kind of you. I would not have put you to such trouble.”

Eliani stared at him, wanting to say more, unable to find the words. He was leaving. She realized she did not know when she would meet him again.

Something in his face shifted, a warmth coming into his eyes. “Lady Eliani, will you walk a little way with me? I would speak—I would talk with you briefly.”

A shiver crossed her shoulders. She shrugged it away.

“Very well.”

She dismounted and left her horse to graze. Turisan joined her, and they walked down the gentle slope while the others waited. Behind them the moonlight grew golden as the orb approached the mountains.

He did not offer his arm, but Eliani felt Turisan's presence almost as if they touched. Her skin tingled all along the side nearest him. At last he stopped and turned to face her, his voice low and soft.

“I hope I do not err by telling you this. Your coming here has given me heart. Do not answer now, but hear me and then think on this as long as you will.”

He paused to draw a breath, his eyes near black in the fading moonlight. Eliani waited, wondering what arguments he would choose. He wanted her to accept the mindspeech, to yield her thoughts to him; that much she knew.

“I believe that our paths lie together, that we should use the gift we share to aid our people. I am willing to pledge my life to it, and to you.”

Eliani took a step back, fear leaping in her heart. She opened her mouth, but Turisan stayed her with a gesture.

“Please—please hear me first.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “I will do anything I must to assure you of my commitment. I will handfast with you if you wish it.”

“Ah! No! Y-you speak without considering!”

“I have considered, my lady, and know my heart.”

“But we are strangers!”

“We
were
strangers. Since that moment at the Shades, I feel I know you.”

He smiled slightly, a small shift but enough to make her feel the wind at her back, the drop beneath her feet. Her body ached to accept him, to embrace him this moment, but she dreaded what would follow, and her kindred were nearby, waiting …

“I will not speak of our people or the service we could give them. You know what is at stake. Only let me say this: I swear by all the spirits of Southfæld that I will never hurt you, not if I can help it.”

Eliani gazed at him, unable to sort a response from her jumbled feelings. A ray of dying moonlight lit the edge of his cheek and glinted in his fair hair. His face was controlled, the perfect courtier's. Only his eyes blazed with ardor as he bowed.

“I thank you for hearing me. Think on this as long as you will. You may send me your answer.” He gazed intently into her eyes and lowered his voice. “Or you may tell me yourself.”

Eliani glanced down at the forest floor. Panic cleaved her tongue to the roof of her mouth. He wished her to handfast? She, who had failed so miserably at a mere cup-bond? Surely he must realize how impossible was the suggestion. She heard him step away and looked up to see him waiting, ready to start back.

Slowly she set one foot before the other, and Turisan followed. In silence they returned to where the others waited. Did he think her foolish to have brought them? Yet she truly had been concerned.

She cared for him, she realized. More than mere desire, which she was well-practiced at ignoring. She wanted to believe his vision of the future they might share, to believe they could find happiness together, but she knew her own failings. She had sought such a partnership before, and it had ended in ruin.

When they reached the horses, Turisan swept a formal bow. “I thank you, lady, for the hospitality of
your house. Alpinon is a fair land, and I hope to visit it again.”

Eliani nodded, finding her voice. “You will be welcome whenever you return, Lord Turisan.”

“I will send a guardian back with the horse.”

“Have him turned loose at the edge of this wood, and he will find his way home.”

They mounted and rode forward all together. Eliani glanced up as they passed beneath her oak, and a flash of memory made her halt. She stared up at the dark, twining limbs, a cold tingle running down her spine.

“Stay a moment.”

She left her horse to climb the tree. At its top she looked up at the sky crowned with stars. The moon had gone, leaving the night deep dark.

From her treasure crook she claimed the scroll she had left there days before. She gazed at it a moment, then glanced skyward once more, wondering what spirits watched over her and in what strange ways they guided those who walked in the flesh-bound world.

Returning to the forest floor, she stepped toward Turisan's mount and handed the scroll up to him. He looked back at her as he accepted it, question in his eyes.

“That is what I was reading when I heard you come into the wood four days since.”

He unrolled it and glanced at the text, then looked sharply up at her. “‘The Battle of Westgard.’”

Eliani nodded. A look of wonder crossed Turisan's face, then was gone as he schooled his features to disinterest. He was well trained, this lord of Southfæld's high court. He offered the scroll to her, but she shook her head.

“Keep it.”

“Thank you.”

He slipped it into his tunic, and the party rode on. At the edge of the South Wood she and the others halted, watching from beneath the boughs while Turisan rode on toward Midrange. He turned and raised a hand in farewell.

Eliani returned the gesture, knowing she certainly would see him again. She owed him an answer, and if she chose to decline, she would not add to his pain by doing so at a distance.

Luruthin rode back to Highstone in silence, paying scant attention to the others' conversation. He was watching Eliani, who seemed lost in thought.

He longed to know what the Greenglen had said to her. He sensed that their formal farewell had concealed stronger feelings, and not altogether happy ones.

In his heart he made a silent pledge. If Lord Turisan showed any sign of hurting Eliani, he would intervene. It would likely lose him even the reserved friendship she now gave him, but he could not bear to see her suffer further.

He had long cherished the hope that patience and loyalty would win her back to him. She had been so very young when they were close—too young, he now knew—and then Kelevon had turned her head.

Dashing, hot-blooded, and wild as the Steppes that were his home, Kelevon had dazzled Eliani with tales of his travels and brought tumult and discord to her house. Within two seasons he had tired of her. He had not broken his cup-bond that Luruthin knew, but he had violated its intent, flirting publicly with others, dishonoring Eliani. Spirits knew what else had passed between them in private. As far as Luruthin
was concerned, Kelevon had broken the creed, for he surely had harmed Eliani.

For a full year after Kelevon's departure Eliani had scarcely smiled or laughed. She had abandoned her music, cut her hair short, and gone into Alpinon's Guard, spending more time on patrol than at home. Luruthin had found her pale, wounded silence more heartbreaking than her initial rejection of him in Kelevon's favor.

She was just beginning to recover her spirits, and now this Greenglen had ruffled them again. Another Kelevon she did not need. If Turisan showed the slightest sign of following that path, Luruthin would pay any price to prevent it.

It was well past midday when Turisan arrived at Hallowhall, the governor's palace in Glenhallow. Though covered with the dust of four days' riding, he made his way straight to his father, finding him in the audience chamber.

Hundreds could gather in this hall, but just then only two sat at its high table, a long piece of white-wood carved in an arc matching that of the chamber walls. Seated at the center of its curve were Lord Jharan and Lord Rephanin. Jharan wore one of the formal long tunics he commonly wore in the palace, the magelord a simply-cut robe of velvet the dark gold of tarnished bronze.

“Turisan!”

Lord Jharan rose and, abandoning his customary formality, embraced his son across the table. Turisan smiled, glad to feel the familiar comfort of his father's khi. When they parted, he made a slight bow to Rephanin.

“Lord Rephanin.”

Rephanin nodded. Turisan had always been somewhat
uncomfortable near the magelord; since his early youth he had carried the unsettling feeling that Rephanin was dangerous. It might have been the strangeness of Rephanin's foreign appearance—he had the black hair of an Ælvanen and still claimed allegiance to that clan though he had presided over Glenhallow's magehall for centuries. Unlike the blue eyes that were common to Ælvanen, his eyes were gray and piercing. Turisan had never been able to bear their gaze for long.

A mindspeaker, or so he claimed. Turisan wondered if he should ask Rephanin about mindspeech but was hesitant. Eliani would not thank him for mentioning it to another. Best to wait for her answer.

Jharan beckoned him to come around the table. “Come, join us. You look as if you just arrived.”

“I did. I have—news to bring you.”

Turisan glanced a silent question to his father, uncertain to what degree he should be candid in Rephanin's presence. With the slightest of nods, Lord Jharan gave him permission to speak freely.

Turisan opened his satchel. “Lord Felisan thought you should see this.”

He withdrew the small box Felisan had given him, set it on the table before his father, and opened it, brushing the salt away from the desiccated kobalen ear within. Rephanin leaned forward to peer at it. Jharan's nostrils flared slightly.

“Well. That is something never before seen in Hallowhall.”

“I have seen its like before. The ring, that is.” Rephanin's deep voice echoed in the chamber despite the heavy tapestries on its walls. He glanced at Turisan, then at Jharan. “I know this work. If I may examine it more closely?”

Jharan nodded, and Rephanin picked up the kobalen
ear, brushing away grains of salt as he peered at the tiny silver ring that pierced it. Turisan watched him, waiting uneasily, conscious now as he had not been before of the many discomforts of long travel.

Rephanin turned the ear over, frowning as he rotated the ring within it. “Yes. This is the craft of Farnathin. I saw his early work when we both dwelt in Hollirued. He came there from Glenhallow to study smithcraft.”

Jharan tilted his head, frowning. “I have never heard of him.”

Rephanin glanced at him before replacing the ear in its box. “He left long ago to join his kindred in Fireshore.”

Turisan felt a wave of dread. “Clan Darkshore.”

“Yes. Darkshore.”

Jharan drew himself up and reached forward to close the box. Its lid fell shut with a small click.

“So this ring was made by alben.”

“It was made by Farnathin. If he is yet in flesh, he may well be alben.”

Such statements were uncomfortably in conflict with the concept that the alben were not ælven. An artisan who once had been ælven had become a member of a separate race because of a war? Turisan wondered, not for the first time, what the spirits must think of this attitude. Were there ældar who watched over the alben, as there were for every other creature? Were they different from the ældar of the ælven?

Jharan looked at Turisan, a shadow of concern in his face. “Only one of them bore this mark?”

Turisan nodded. “It may have been their leader.”

Jharan glanced down at the box before him. “Perhaps the alben are securing the loyalty of kobalen leaders with gifts.”

Rephanin shook his head. “I think there is more to it than that. Remember, ‘preserve.’”

Turisan regarded him, then spoke quietly: “What if we brought you a kobalen to question? You could find the reason in its mind.”

Gray eyes met his, narrowing. “And if the kobalen you select from the thousands that roam the western wastes happens to have no knowledge of such a ring? A futile effort.”

Rephanin leaned against the high back of his chair, averting his gaze. Turisan was surprised, for it almost seemed that his suggestion had discomfited the magelord.