The Song of Andiene (32 page)

Lenane and Syresh spoke in undertones, their heads bent close together. He thought that they would come to more than looks and words, soon. Blood runs hotter when summer is done.

The rain fell heavier. The river would fill and wash over its banks, but they were camped safely above its floodplain. Andiene left the fire and walked out into the rain, not caring, it seemed, if it soaked her to her skin. She stood and looked north. The raindrops drove against her face.

Kallan watched her. Bright and beautiful and unknowable. To the north, the mountains guarded the land of her birth. He walked to her side, and tried to speak lightly. “Lady, it is not healthy to wash your clothes while you’re still wearing them.”

“And your armor will rust,” she retorted. “There must be some cave we can find, to shelter for the night.” Then she laughed joyfully. “Oh! When I was little, this was what I wanted to do, to stand in the summer-ending rain. This is the first time, the first time ever!”

The rain ran down her face, and dripped from the point of her chin. Her hair lay sleek to her head like the pelt of some sea-beast. Kallan spoke cautiously. “Where were you these last eight years, that you could not do as you pleased?”

She spoke quietly, precisely, a challenge and warning in her gray eyes. “Where I was, there were no summers and no winters, no rain nor any change of season.”

Kallan took a long breath. He tried to speak coldly, as though he were not amazed. “My lady, I have followed you, and you have seen what I am. If you have any will to trust me, now is the time to tell me of your plans.” He glanced at her. Her face was calm. For the moment, at least, she had not rejected him. “You spoke to Taules Reji of an army. Do you have one?”

“None but dreams and shadows,” she said, and there was mockery in her voice but no mistrust.

“Do you trust me with your plans?”

“Yes … but let us find some shelter from this rain!”

He followed her along the cliff, till they found a place where the overhanging rocks protected them. There she told him of all that she had planned. She may have been glad to boast.

Kallan listened as gravely as though the commander of a great army were outlining strategy—where to set one squad of archers, another of swordsmen, the old fighters here, the young ones in the middle where they cannot break and run.

As he listened, his excitement grew. Here was a plan, truly, to give a handful of fighters the power to rout the greatest army that any king could bring. But when she had finished, he shook his head.

“I know the plain south of the city, where you would meet the soldiers that he commands. You do not have enough to oppose them. I know, it will be terror that wins the day, not swords, but you need swords to make the terror. Shadows will not do it. You will be facing wise ones as well as fools; we must not give them time to think.”

“I had another plan, one where swords would not be needed,” she said, “but I do not have the strength alone.”

Kallan knew her meaning. “I tell you, Ilbran will not let you use his daughter. He fears for her, both mind and body.”

She seemed unconvinced, wearing a knowing and amused look on her face. It disturbed him. “Go back to your first plan,” he said. “I can return and gather men, a good two dozen warriors to follow you.”

She did not try to conceal her amazement. No greater joy than to explain to her. “I worked as much as any man could, in summer,” he said. “I told stories of glory and glamour, and I watched to see who was stirred by them.

“A few were sons of men I knew; some had traitor fathers and had lived their lives in mistrust. Some were like Syresh, with their heads full of noble notions. He is proud to be your liegeman.”

Andiene nodded and smiled. Kallan went on, speaking eagerly. “In a few days, I can gather a group around me that you can trust, and lead them north again to where you wait. My life, if any of them are traitorous.”

For all his confident words, he knew that his task would be more risky than he had made it seem. Before he departed the next morning, he drew sketches and battle plans for her, in case he did not return; he made drawings of the plains south of the city, the foreordained battlefield for an army marching from the south. “Wait for me a week, and then travel slowly,” he said.

It was strange to walk back through the dead land he had traveled so few days before. The greening had covered burnt land and dry land alike. The lanara groves were white with big-petaled barren flowers, and he passed groups of gatherers going out from the city to harvest them. The rain was warm and did not trouble him greatly, but in evening time, when he tried to light a fire, he longed for Andiene, who could call up flames without one word.

He passed through the gates of the city without challenge. The fear that Andiene had raised lay around him too. Still, he moved cautiously, and kept his back to the walls. He was alone now, no sorceress to protect him, and Nahil would be glad to reward any who had him killed. But spies are not bold so far from home; he did not think that he was in much danger. His greatest fear was that he might recruit the eager ones, Nahil’s spies, or those of another king.

Kallan worked carefully. Much can be learned from words, and silences, the tiny motions of eyes and hands. Voice and breath alike betray men, whether they speak or are silent. Soon, he had assembled a group of nobleman’s sons and commoners, warriors all of them, men with no wives and children to be held hostage, ones that he could trust.

In a few days he led them north again. There were no signs that anyone had followed them out of the city. They traveled swiftly and easily, made one camp, and joined the others before evening of the second day.

Andiene had waited where the mountain road began. Her little band was gathered around their campfire, an early meal. She had set no guard on watch, but this was not the outlaw land, yet; that lay higher in the mountains. Still, it was not wise.

Looking up with a smile of pleasure, she saw Kallan first. Then her eyes widened, as she looked past him to see the others, a full twice-twelve of recruits straggling along the path. “I did not know you were such a good persuader, Lord Kallan.”

“It was a noble cause, my lady,” he said, and he named off their names. “Eliad, and Mareslin. Sireles and Lanson and Tammil, all archers. Mikel fair and Mikel brown we must call them till they win better names for themselves. Karrir who was captain of the guard in Alliseja, the cold land to the north … ”

He spoke casually, using his voice to calm them, speaking as though this meeting were an ordinary one, for he saw the look on his recruits’ faces, white-eyed, most of them, like a horse that is ready to bolt. They had heard the tales, even wilder than the truth, that ran through the city.

His offhand manner eased the strain, but he thought a separate campfire seemed best, for his men were still nervous and wary. Although they had vowed to follow a sorceress, they had not understood what they were doing.

So he set them to work, gathering wood and grinding blaggorn meal for their supper, cleaning and mending their armor and gear though it was bright and new-made. He set them to any tasks he could think of, to occupy their hands and minds. And when he went from group to group and talked, he shied away from any mention of magic.

Late into the night, he heard the soft lute-sounds from the other campfire. As though Lenane had read his mind, she did not sing songs of sorcery, but songs of love and war and glory.

At last he closed his eyes, to sleep well and wake joyfully. The rains had stopped. Traveling would be easy, and all the air was sweet with the smell of new life. The men that he had brought were arrayed near their campfire, most of them sleeping soundly after the long march. He went in search of his companions. The other campfire had died down to embers, and no one was near it, a wiser plan, if this were a dangerous land, but he guessed that some of them had other reasons.

The path ran along the side of the hill. He left it and climbed up over the rocks, seeking the crest of the ridge, though there would be nothing to see but stacks of mountains rising higher and higher to the east. He meant to climb as high as he could and look back over the land of his birth, the land he would see perhaps for the last time.

The stunted mountain blaggorn was green along its stems. In a few weeks, its pollen would be blowing through the air. He saw a white robe and dark hair showing against the mossy rocks. Kare had snuggled herself into the crevice, and slept with utter concentration, as though it were the hardest work that one could do.

She had run to greet him the night before, then had turned shy, facing the strangers, and had gone back to hide her face in her father’s side. Though he knew nothing of children, she seemed to be growing well, bright and confident and merry.

Kallan climbed on, making his own path between the tall rocks. Soon this land would not be so safe. When aftersummer had burned itself out, the serpents and vipers would crawl out of their dens, but now there was no danger in the hills. It was a joyful morning. When he returned to the camp, he would speak to Andiene in private, and hear her praise him. He had done good work for her.

When Kallan thought to the future and saw Nahil in terror, defeated, dethroned, he took no pleasure from the vision, but his purpose was to serve Andiene. He had chosen, and what she wanted, he would do.

He climbed higher, seeking the true path that would guide them through the mountains. When he rounded a pile of boulders, and came upon the two of them, he was amused, thinking that he had found the nest of Lenane and Syresh—an agreeable thought, the nobleman matched with the minstrel thief, as he had prophesied.

But as he started to noiselessly retreat, he glanced again. Pale hair and darker hair side by side, but the pale was a cap of true-silver, next to a rough-cropped shock of fair curls … Andiene and Ilbran, half-covered by a cloak, his arms around her, both of them sleeping a deeper sleep than anyone would wisely lie in, even on these quiet hills, where there were no great hunters of animals or men.

Kallan stepped backward silently. They did not wake. So she had been so eager, like any animal hot to mate when summer is done. She had chosen a fisherman’s son, a lout who held a sword as if it were a club, and did not have enough to wit to ward with a shield and still remember that he held a sword. One who boasted that he cared nothing for kingcraft and politics, proud in his ignorance.

The hills were newly green; the silent summer was over. The locusts sawed their tuneless songs, and the birds courted in the air. Here and there, the grasskits danced in the little clearings to try to win their mates.

Kallan walked in chill loneliness. Anger was useless. A queen could mate where she chose. The city people would welcome a fisherman as readily as a nobleman, and a hundred times more readily than one such as Kallan was. So he fought with himself and convinced himself, but the taste in his mouth was bitter, when he went down to the camp again. He remembered words that he had spoken. Nothing so pitiful as a jealous man with no rights in the matter. Nothing indeed.

No wisdom would keep his anger from rising, when he saw Andiene return to camp wearing a crown twisted of silver bittery. He saw her look at Ilbran and smile. In the midst of friends and strangers was no room for privacy, but she would touch his wrist for a moment, lean against him as though by accident, meet his eyes for a moment’s exchange of messages. Ilbran watched her constantly, with a look that was loving and possessive. The two of them kept no secrets, though they might think they did.

Kallan went back to his own recruits, and set them to ordering their camp. Though they seemed less afraid, after their night’s sleep, they still huddled together, watchful and untrusting. Reason enough, he said to himself, to stay with them and try to reassure them. No need to speak to the others. There was nothing to be said.

In the weeks that followed, they walked far along the sweet-smelling mountainside. They had to pick and choose their way, aiming for the road that would take them through the low passes.

“Look!” Eliad said, and pointed far up the slope. They straggled out along a narrow path cut in the side of the mountain, great boulders above them, and sheer cliff below them.

Kallan glanced upward. “Albanet.” Wonder filled his voice, though there was little to be seen, only two blurs of white traversing the rocks above them.

“Not horses?”

“No. Larger than a horse, and less beautiful. But wiser, as wise as the grizanes, some say. By the ones who led us to this land! Wiser than any man, and yet willing to serve … some of us … ”

“Have you ever tried to win one?” asked Eliad. He was a young man, not many years past his second naming. He had never gone far past the gates of his city.

“Yes,” Kallan said. “Their riders seem the same as us, no reason why they would be chosen.” He wished he had not answered. His companions, Ilbran and Kare, Syresh and Lenane, all the men he had brought from Oreja, had heard the conversation and stood looking up also. The albanet did not turn their heads to see the ones far below who watched them.

A silence, a sudden waiting silence filled the air with emptiness. Ahead of them, Andiene stood motionless, listening, where the path bent in a huge bow of stacked and splintered rock.

She called, “Come!” and beckoned for them to run forward. “Hurry!” They obeyed, slowly at first, then urged on by a compulsion that Kallan alone recognized. She stood on the very cliff’s edge and let them push past her. “Go on!” she cried. Ilbran obeyed her, the last one, and she was left alone on the long path.

And then, she turned and backed away from where she stood, her arms held out in front of her like one who shows his empty hands in a sign of peace. The air was expectant. There was danger enough, of an earthly kind, simply in walking backwards on the narrow trail.

She did not once glance down, or behind her at the path. Her head did not move; her hands did not tremble; she moved as though there was some enemy before her that she must fix and hold motionless. She backed away, until she stood by Kallan and Ilbran, an hundred paces from the cliff corner where they had stood when she first called warning. Then her hands fell.