The Rose of Sarifal (3 page)

The dragonborn repeated her signal then galloped on ahead. She would fight her way onto the promontory, a last, futile ride. Valeanne pulled up sharply by the water’s edge. The second one loomed over her. “Madam,” he
said, “We can do nothing more. I can buy you five minutes, not more than that.” He raised one claw to the ridge between his eyes, then drew his sword and rode back slowly the way they’d come.

“Thank you,” murmured Valeanne. It didn’t matter now. The flare had faded over the lake, and she sat waiting on her horse, the child blessedly still.

“My lady,” said Valeanne, as a second flare rose over the lake. “I’m sorry. I have failed you.”

But as she watched, two enormous shadows rose from the nest on their high perch. Angered, perhaps, by the attack on their smaller, domesticated cousin, or else furious at what they might interpret as a threat to their own offspring, too weak yet to fly, they took to the air. Evading the new bombardment, they wheeled once around the steeple and then dived, stooping above Crane Point, each of their outstretched talons the length of a man.

“I’m glad I could see that,” said Valeanne. She let the girl down to the sand and then dismounted stiffly. She’d spent a long day in the saddle. The girl was docile now, looking up in wonder as the darkness closed in again, her eyes full of tears, her red hair wild. On her neck, above her collarbone, Valeanne could see the rose tattoo.

As the second hippogriff came in and landed on the sand, the girl smiled and clapped her hands. Valeanne tried to soothe her mare as it shied away, patting her once on the rump and letting her go. Then she reached up to touch her shoulder, where a drow arrow had grazed her, deflected by her leather armor. It had scarcely broken the skin. But it was enough. Her arm felt stiff and cold.

The rider was also hurt, his armor cooked along one side, caught in the blast. He reeled in the saddle, holding on to the horn between his knees. His helmet was black with soot.

“Come,” said Valeanne. She lifted the girl up behind the rider and buckled her in. She slid a final gift into the girl’s pocket, something to lighten the darkness. Then she stepped back, and drew her short sword awkwardly with her left hand.

“I’m not going without you,” said Lady Amaranth.

New tendrils of shadow had gathered overhead, hiding the stars. “There’s no room for me,” she said. “Tell Queen Daressin that—”

But the rider touched the beast with his goad. It raised its beak, screamed once, and flung itself into the air, golden wings outstretched. Valeanne watched it climb up in a spiral of darkness out of sight. Then she walked down to the still water of the Ulls, bent to touch it with her sword’s point, and settled down to wait.

C
AER
C
ORWELL

T
HE ONLY NATURAL HARBOR ON THE WEST COAST OF
Gwynneth Island is the long firth that leads up to the ruins of Caer Corwell, once the seat of the House of Kendrick and the prettiest city of the Moonshaes. Elsewhere, in the long channel between Gwynneth and Moray, the granite cliffs tumble to the sea, without a beach or an inlet for more than ninety miles. Or else the poisonous bogs and fens blur the distinction between sea and land. Only in the extreme southwest could any boat hope to find shelter, after beating back and forth against prevailing winds and picking through the shoals and pinnacles that formed the harbor’s natural defenses, the only ones it still retained.

A hundred years ago the firth would have been crowded with merchant ships and ships of war. The harbor itself would have been full of barges and chandlers’ coracles. Any intruder would have had to pass under the towers of the fort, now roofless and abandoned. But on this crisp spring day, as the
Sphinx
came about inside the breakwater, the only creatures Lukas had seen were
gulls and otters, and the dolphins following in his wake. As the crew left the boat and pulled their skiff along the reach, all he could hear was the ringing silence, for the wind had died as they had crossed the bar.

In the clear water he could see the hulks of old ships, sunk at their moorings by the fey and their mercenaries more than a hundred years ago. Now, the skiff crunched ashore. They pulled it up the dry sluice and stowed the oars, then climbed up the great stairs to the first of the stone courts, dotted with statues of ancient heroes. The gnome was first, then the Savage, then Lukas and Marikke, then the shifter and the watersoul genasi, his skin glowing with energy and cold blue-green lines of fire. Last came their leader, the only one of them unarmed as befit his rank—a solicitor from Alaron, and a distant cousin of the king.

“They should be here to greet us.” He frowned. Not yet thirty years old, emaciated and weak chinned, Lord Aldon Kendrick clapped his hands. “Hello!” he cried out. “Hello there!”

“This is stupid,” muttered Lukas, his longbow in his hand. He and Marikke had once tried to defend Kendrick to the other members of the crew, out of a sense of racial solidarity that had worn away in time as his decisions became more and more erratic. That morning, aboard the
Sphinx
, he had spent an hour below deck, curling his moustache and rehearsing a short speech before the glass, inspiring words of liberation and hope.

“Suicidal,” agreed Marikke, priest and healer to the rest of them. Red-cheeked and yellow-haired, she smiled cheerfully.

Lord Aldon carried a salutation from the king, a message for the Winterglen Claw, a shadowy and secret corps of human runaways and rebels, Ffolk and Northlander, united in their struggle against the fey. He carried a promise of money and weapons at some future date, in return for an oath of loyalty to the king, as Lukas understood. The idea seemed vague and insubstantial to him, not worth the risk, except for the money he’d been promised. But still, to sail into the harbor in the bright afternoon, climb up among the empty civic buildings as if knocking on an enemy’s front door—all that was insane.

“You there,” said Lord Aldon, addressing the gnome and the elf—Suka and the Savage—he hadn’t learned their names. “You’ve been here before. What do you suggest?”

They stood in the old Court of the Moon, a stone expanse surrounded by crumbling, yellow-brick buildings and a long balustrade above the port. A dry fountain rose from the center of the square, an alabaster statue of Selûne, goddess of the moon, her face shrouded in an alabaster veil. One of her outstretched arms was gone, broken off at the shoulder.

“You know the fey,” Aldon continued. “I suppose you are the fey, or were, in some cap—”

He broke off as the Savage turned on him. The golden elf’s handsome face was twisted with contempt. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said so far,” he protested, his voice soft with anger. “This is the date and time and place of your meeting with the Claw. I myself am not
convinced these people exist, as I have told you. Yet here we are. What do you think? Is it possible we’ve walked into a trap?”

The Savage made an imposing figure, the sun bright in his yellow hair, gold rings in his nose and lips, gold tattoos on his dark skin, his greatsword on his back. Still, his sarcasm was lost on Aldon Kendrick, who goggled at him briefly then turned to the gnome and asked, “What about you?”

Suka laughed. “I think we’re not important enough. I mean, who would bother?” She was a small example of a small race, dressed in a leather jerkin. Her hair stood out in clumps, a curious and unnatural shade of pink.

“She’s right about that,” muttered Lukas.

He turned to Marikke, but she was gone. She had ambled over to the statue, and stood by the dust-choked bowl under the goddess’s feet. Water, in the old days, had dripped down from her fingers.

“Bright Selûne,” murmured the cleric. As if in answer to her prayer, a single drop of water fell from the goddess’s finger into the stone bowl.

Lukas looked up in surprise. “Ware,” said the genasi in his whistling, eerie voice. He drew his scimitar. Cold fire sputtered along its blade.

The sun was halfway down the horizon. The shadow of the statue protruded almost to Lukas’s feet. As the ranger watched, arrow on string, the shadow faded, though there wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky. Instead, the sunlight itself had changed and weakened as the sky turned color, tending toward a deeper, colder purple,
or as if dusk had suddenly come. At the same time, as if to compensate, the empty iron cressets along the balustrade came flickering to life, first tendrils of black smoke, then a gentle radiance.

In a moment the crew had their weapons out, had assumed their postures of defense, while Lukas ran to the balustrade and looked down over the port, where the
Sphinx
still rode at anchor. Only Lord Aldon stayed where he was, winking vaguely at the sky.

But all was still. Above them, the light had lost its force, and it grew cold. In the center of the square, the fountain overflowed. Lukas could hear a light, sweet laughter, and looked around for Suka—it didn’t come from her. The gnome crouched beside an overturned stone urn, crossbow raised. But from the Palace of the Moon on the west side of the square, someone stepped out of the shadows of the long colonnade, a single eladrin, empty hands upraised, her long black hair braided down her back, dressed in a diaphanous gown of red and green that moved around her when she moved. In the square the water and the fire followed her, flowing from the goddess’s stone hands and rising up from the broken cressets, until the rest of the city and the world beyond the stone balustrade lost substance, faded into shadow in the middle of the afternoon.

The Savage, the golden elf, stood in front of her, his weight on his back foot, his greatsword in his hands. Only he was undiminished by the lady’s brightness, her opposite, perhaps, his yellow hair glowing in the torch fire, his black clothes a source of darkness as she seemed
a source of light. She stared at him, spoke a few soft words in Elvish, then lapsed into the Common tongue, “Please, my cousin, put up your weapon. I mean no harm. I believe you have a secret you might share with us someday, or else share with yourself, but I won’t say anything about that. You also, my little cousin,” she continued, pointing her slender forefinger at the gnome. “You have nothing to fear. I have not come here for revenge, whatever crimes you have committed. You see in me a simple eladrin maiden, here to greet you on behalf of … whom? The Fingernails, is that it? No—the Talons. Forgive me for my lack of skill in your language—no, the Claws, that’s it. The Claws of Winterglen. Such a violent name! You must excuse Captain Rurik—he could not come himself. He had an engagement that could not be broken. So he sent me.”

She shrugged a little, turned in a half circle, then took a few staggering steps. “You must forgive me. I had something to drink while I was waiting. And I’ve brought something for you. I thought you might be hungry after a tenday of biscuits and dried sausages.”

Behind her in the Palace of the Moon, a new light shone among the columns of the portico and from the stone window frames, a row of empty arches save for the greenish glow. None of the crew had for a moment relaxed their vigilance, unless you could count Lord Aldon Kendrick, besotted by the beauty of the girl in front of him. He wiped his lips, wagged his big head back and forth on his long neck. “Yes,” he said, making a motion to the others. “You may stand down.”

They didn’t move until Lukas gave the signal, stepping forward as he replaced the arrow in his quiver. They found themselves moving, he imagined, through a trap made of spider silk rather than steel, and it was not with steel that they could free themselves. And though the air was thick with menace, he felt instinctively it was not meant for them, the members of his crew, and that the trap would tighten only if he resisted.

Aldon Kendrick, though, was already caught. The golden elf sheathed his greatsword on his back and stepped aside. Kendrick replaced him, and as the lady stumbled from feigned drunkenness he took her by the elbow. She thanked him with her smile and drew him forward into the portico, where Lukas could see a table had been spread for them, or else for Kendrick alone—there was one silver plate, one knife and fork, one silver goblet, one chair. It occurred to him she knew the others were not so stupid as to eat or drink anything she gave to them, which left only Kendrick.

Even two days before he might have intervened to save the man from his own innocence and foolishness. But he had brought this danger on himself. Lukas already knew that Kendrick—weak when he should have been strong, obstinate when he should have given way—would tolerate no opposition to his orders, and he had ordered them to lay their weapons down. Lukas was nothing if not dutiful. He raised his hand, and his crew gathered round.

The lady favored him with a complicit, conspiratorial smile as she drew Kendrick to the carved chair and sat
him down and poured a cup of wine for him. So vain he was, Lukas imagined, that it never occurred to him to wonder why there was only one place set. It was the honor due his rank. On board the
Sphinx
he’d never dined with them. He was too proud. Instead he had preferred the single cramped, uncomfortable cabin below decks.