The Wanderer's Mark: Book Three of Imirillia (The Books of Imirillia 3) (9 page)

Telford shifted his mouth. “How does one
lose
somebody exactly?”

“I arranged for her escape to the eastern coast, as my letter informed you,” Basaal said. “But, on my way down to Marion, I found out she had been taken by the slavers of the Shera Shee.”

No reply came from his cousin.

“I sent one of my best men to a place, a slave market of sorts, where we know they were taken, to search her out, unbeknownst to my father.” Basaal sat up and placed both of his hands on his knees, forcing whatever composure he still had to take the lead. “I suppose your connections have not heard anything yet of her return to Aemogen?”

“No.” Telford looked wholly serious for the first time. “But, if you’ve got a man on it, I shouldn’t lose heart completely.”

While making a sound of desperation, Basaal raised his eyebrows and made a gesture with one of his hands.

“Oh dear,” Telford said.

“What?” Basaal asked, his voice thick with the emotion he had been trying to control for the last several weeks.

“Nothing, my boy.” The courtier was all sympathetic sincerity. “Nothing.”

***

Eleanor’s feet could not move fast enough for her as they left the foothills. After two long and careful days, they had found themselves on easier footing, for the snow had long since retreated in the crags they had come down through. After another day and a half of traveling, they reached one of the roads north of High Field fen. She felt so hungry to be home that the pain of forcing her body to hurry seemed a small price to pay for reaching Ainsley sooner. Zanntal, carrying Sharin, had followed her pace tirelessly. It was on this lonely road that she saw a rider, a fen rider. One of her own men.

“You there!” Eleanor called out to the fen rider. He looked towards them with a wary expression on his face, and she did not blame him. The three of them were a spectacle, to be sure, having run out of food two days previous and with little to live on the days before that. Eleanor was sure her own hollowness was accentuated. Even Zanntal’s cheekbones were more pronounced.

The rider pulled his horse around. “May I help you?” he said, anxious to continue on his way.

The moment caught Eleanor’s tongue in her throat. What a tremendous difference must have taken place for her own fen rider not to recognize her face. Eleanor straightened her shoulders and tiled her head sideways, stifling her exhaustion.

“I—” she began.

“Your Majesty!” The rider’s face went terribly blank as he dismounted his horse and fell to the ground, kneeling. “Forgive me. I was not—I did not expect—”

“Thaniel,” she said as she motioned him to stand.

The rider nodded, his mouth hanging open as he rose to his feet. “I offer you my horse,” he said, “my—my—anything, My Queen.” His eyes searched Eleanor’s face, resting on her marked lower lip and chin. Eleanor cleared her throat, and he looked away.

“What I need, Thaniel,” Eleanor said firmly despite her light-headedness, “is for you to ride for help. My companions and I are in need of food and rest and conveyance to Ainsley as soon as possible. Can you secure horses and food from the nearest fen—High Field, is it not?”

“Yes.” Thaniel bought his chin down sharply. “I will find horses and food—and help,” he said. “An honor, My Queen.” He mounted, spinning his horse around so fast that Eleanor was afraid it would fall on him. “Stay on the road, and we will find you!” he yelled back. And his horse was racing through the trees before Eleanor had a chance to say anything else.

“One of my fen riders,” Eleanor breathed out to Zanntal in complete happiness as if that were all the explanation that he would need.

***

“Annan!” Basaal yelled at the approaching rider as he rose up in his stirrups. Before his father could call Basaal back, he spurred Refigh forward. He dismounted with haste, practically throwing himself into a run, as Annan did the same, and then they embraced. Basaal laughed, so relieved to see his friend—so relieved to finally be away from Staven’s court.

“We are yet five days out from camp,” Basaal said, “only having left Marion City yesterday.” Basaal hit his friend on the shoulder. “What brings you out?”

Annan motioned behind Basaal, and they grabbed their reins, leading their mounts from the road. They bowed respectfully as the emperor and his retinue passed, and then Annan turned to answer Basaal’s question.

“When word came you had entered Marion, I decided to meet you,” Annan answered. Mounting their horses, they fell back to the rear of the company, beyond where anyone could overhear their conversation. “I came across the emperor’s men on my way. Six thousand?”

“Yes,” Basaal said, and he blew the air in his lungs out deliberately. “Add that to my seven thousand, waiting near the pass, and we will be thirteen thousand strong.”

“This conquest does not require those numbers,” Annan said, creasing his eyebrows.

“No,” Basaal agreed. “Nor such personal attention from the emperor. But, this has turned from a conquest into a political statement. No doubt King Staven is meant to take note of it as well as the Aemogen council.”

Annan eyed Basaal. “There are rumors—” he began, pausing before continuing, “that have come down with the messengers. Many are about you, your father, and your marriage to the Aemogen queen.”

Basaal adjusted his weaponry and gave Annan an exaggerated grimace. “You tell me the progress we are making at the pass,” he replied, “and I will answer what I can about said rumors.” The concern in Annan’s face did not dissipate with Basaal’s words—it increased.

***

Weariness did not stop Eleanor from moving her small company forward, her eyes straining in hopes of seeing the rider returning on the road. Sharin was asleep on her shoulder, having cried herself to sleep from hunger. They walked slowly, finally stopping for a long while at a stream that came near the road.

Sharin whimpered, still shivering from the cold, and Eleanor now felt strange comforting a child. She was home. She was Queen. She would command her armies in war. And now there was a child in her arms that she had taken full responsibility for by bringing her home to Aemogen. Whatever maternal strengths the journey had required of her felt ill fitting now, like a garment sized for another person. But Eleanor did her best to comfort Sharin, helping her drink the fresh water, watching the road eagerly for whatever help Thaniel might have found.

When no one came, they continued, despite the late-afternoon sun growing yellow and low on the horizon.

“There,” Zanntal finally said, pointing not down the roadway but across a wide field, green with spring grass. A band of horses was barreling towards them. With relief, Eleanor slipped Sharin to Zanntal and left the road, walking—running almost—waving her arms.

“Thaniel must have found soldiers,” Eleanor called back. “They are no farmers.” She thought she spoke loudly, but Zanntal did not seem to hear her words, neither did Sharin stir. Too tired to speak again, Eleanor turned back towards the riders, her eyes finding any kind of focusing difficult.

They were now almost upon Eleanor, calling out to her. And then the lead rider swung down from his horse and ran to her. In a single motion—a grace Eleanor had not thought she would see again—Aedon gathered her into his arms, lifting her tired body from the ground.

She was home.

Chapter Six

Eleanor slept for three days. It was a deep sleep—endlessly falling into the layers of her mind—and she felt, if she chose, she could be lost to it forever. Part of Eleanor would not have cared; she was so weary. Her dreams were the texture of the desert, the gold and heat, and sometimes, she could almost feel the touch of her Imirillian prince.

When Eleanor woke, Aedon was sitting at her bedside, reading a dispatch. The indescribable comfort of this private room—in whatever farmhouse Aedon had found—caused her to lie quiet. She watched him without speaking, noting his familiar expression, and the customary mannerisms of Aedon in concentration.

Eleanor smiled. And, as if Aedon could hear the sound of it, he looked up and met her eyes.

“You’re awake.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. She cleared her throat and began to cough. Aedon waited patiently and offered her some water, which she took gladly. Try as he might, Aedon could not ease the worry from his eyes. “I am so relieved to see you.” These words came from Eleanor as a deep, overdue breath.

“When you failed to return,” Aedon said, stretching back into his mind to find the words, “I had supposed this prince had broken his promise. Day after day—the months that passed and all of Aemogen pulling together—” He paused, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on her bed, and took her hands in his, being careful with her raw fingers.

Several moments passed before Aedon could again speak, his face caught in a grief she did not understand. Eleanor, too tired for words, creased her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes to ask him what he was thinking.

“The farmwife bathed you,” he said, his voice came slow and measured, and Aedon looked down at the quilted blanket as he spoke. “Before she dressed you, she asked me to come into the room, for she was disturbed by the scars on your back, your wrists, and feet, and by the mark on your arm.” He looked up, directly into Eleanor’s eyes. “I asked for discretion—that she not tell anyone what she saw—for I could not bear the thought of you becoming the subject of any speculation.” Aedon bit at these last words and took his hands away from hers, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “Oh, Eleanor, you have been so long away.”

“I can’t recall how long—”

His answer came quick. “Two hundred and twenty-seven days.”

“In truth?” The weight of all those months now felt heavy on Eleanor’s chest. “I suppose that it must have been.”

Aedon’s mouth quivered, and he wiped his eye, reclaiming her blistered hands in his. “What happened to you?” he asked gently.

Eleanor tried to answer, but she was so tired that the words would not come.

“Sleep,” he said, seeing her expression. “We’ll talk afterward.” The afternoon light from a small, thick-paned window accentuated the lines in Aedon’s face, revealing where a tear had run down his cheek. “And, I will be here when you wake up.”

There was something she knew she wanted to speak of, that had consumed her mind, but now it had fled. So Eleanor nodded and she closed her eyes, her hands still in his as she turned towards him, pressing her cheek against the pillow. It would come, she thought. Tomorrow, it would come.

“Oh, yes,” Eleanor said, finding these words just before she lost consciousness. She had wanted to ask him about the fighting at the pass.

***

“We are at war,” Eleanor said the next morning when Aedon entered her room. If he was surprised to see her up, dressed, and sitting at the small table, he hid it well. Shoes had been left for her in the room, and Eleanor had braided her hair up, hoping it would not look as strange, but the braids made it worse. She had procured a quill, ink, and scraps of paper and was scribbling numbers and dates as best as her hands would allow.

“You knew?” Aedon asked.

“Yes.” Eleanor motioned for him to take the other chair. “Only a few days before I escaped from Zarbadast—”

“So he did take you to Zarbadast?” Aedon interrupted.

Eleanor brushed past Aedon’s question. “Prince Basaal received a missive saying that fighting had broken out at the pass. It was a mild winter, then?”

Aedon knit his eyebrows and sat down. “Shouldn’t you be resting one more day?”

“The war calls me to Ainsley immediately. You know this,” Eleanor said, looking Aedon in the eyes.

“Yes,” Aedon replied with the tone he always used in council meetings. Eleanor almost smiled, the familiarity of it being such a complete feeling of home. “You also look half dead,” he continued. “You’ve no weight on you—your bones show through your skin—and you have dozens of unaccounted for scars on your body. It is important that I see you back to Ainsley, yes,” he added. “But, it is more important that the queen, leader, and figurehead of our government gets there alive.”

“I am not ill,” Eleanor insisted. She raised her hand to quiet Aedon as he moved to speak. “Assuming we are near High Field fen, it is a two day ride to Ainsley Rise. I will agree to take it in three if we can leave today.”

“Four days,” Aedon countered.

“Three,” Eleanor insisted stubbornly. “I need to know if the emperor has arrived in Marion.”

“The emperor?”

“Yes,” Eleanor stated. “As a warning to Prince Basaal, he has come to supervise the conquest personally—with six thousand of his own troops.”

Aedon’s mouth twitched. “Six thousand? Combined with those already in Marion, we now face thirteen thousand men?”

“Yes,” Eleanor responded.

“Well, that will change Crispin’s plans,” Aedon said, and he sat back in his chair and ran his fingers across his chin. “We should send a fen rider immediately.”

“How did you come to be here?” Eleanor asked, frowning, remembering a question she had forgotten to ask Aedon yesterday. “Why were you at High Field fen?”

Aedon looked down at the table. “There was a casualty at the pass, a friend of mine, who was from High Field,” he explained. “I came with the company delivering his body to pay my respects personally to his family.”

“Doughlas is from High Field,” Eleanor said as she leaned her elbows across the table and rested her face in her hands, still looking at Aedon. “Did he know the man?” As Aedon looked away, Eleanor froze. “Aedon?” she said, using his name with the full weight of a question behind it. “Aedon, was it Doughlas you brought back to the fen?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor stood up, causing the chair behind her to clatter against the floor. Not Doughlas
.
Aedon watched her, his expression torn. She could hear movement outside the door—worried voices.

“We go now,” Eleanor stated before Aedon could protest. “Prepare the company to ride for Ainsley Rise.”

Then Eleanor turned and marched from the room.

***

Zanntal did not wish to be left behind. Eleanor was preparing to mount the horse Aedon had found for her while trying to appease her friend. Aedon, Thaniel, and the rest of the company were waiting.

“I would ride with you,” Zanntal stated plainly in Imirillian, no other option a consideration in his mind.

“And I would have you,” Eleanor said, equally as frank. “But I must ride in haste, and you told me yourself Sharin has come down with a deep fever and should not be moved.”

The soldier looked at Eleanor with obvious consternation. “My place is with you. There is a family here to tend the girl.”

“Zanntal.” Eleanor took a long breath and laid her hand on his forearm. “She is tired and scared. We are the only people she knows. I ask you, please, to patiently wait until Sharin is well. Then both of you will ride for Ainsley.”

“And, if the fighting breaks out before then?”

“I will send for you if we go to open war sooner than expected. I promise you that.”

Zanntal surrendered. “May the Illuminating God bless your way,” he said. “I will come when I can and stand beside you in the fight.”

He helped her mount and then stepped back, watching, as Eleanor and her company rode on to Ainsley.

For the first time since she’d left Aemogen it was a complete relief to be back up on a horse.

“I
can
ride,” Eleanor had said shortly to Aedon earlier, when he had questioned her conveyance. “If I can grit my way through the Shera Shee, I can ride a horse to Ainsley Rise.”

“Fine,” Aedon had said as he set his face and shrugged.

For the first several hours, Eleanor peppered Aedon with questions regarding the state of affairs. Aedon answered comprehensively.

After she had ridden out to stop the Imirillian army, Aedon stayed at Colun Tir with a small company until a spy confirmed the news that the Imirillian prince had ridden towards Marion City with Eleanor. Edythe, upon hearing the news, had been distraught, frozen in grief and immobilized only for one day, before taking her place as regent, and fully occupying the role.

“She has grown up,” he remarked with no further information. He also explained that the explosions had left the pass completely damned up, and it would have remained so until late spring, but the winter was unusually mild.

“Even the mountains seemed to catch little snow,” Aedon said as he motioned towards the northern range at their right. “Were it a normal year, we would be working frantically to prepare ourselves against the inevitable drought. As it is, I’ve a small committee of fen lords seeing to that problem while the rest are involved directly in the war. They are all at Ainsley now, save Danth, who insisted that every man was needed at Common Field,” he added.

“It was not too long into the winter,” Aedon continued, “that the guard at the pass reported Imirillian troops were investigating. Despite the cold, there was little snow to keep them away. So, they began to send men every day to begin the task of clearing a way through. But Crispin deployed several companies of archers, who worked on keeping them at bay. The Imirillians, in turn, sent their own archers to protect the men clearing away the rubble. And, not long after that, small skirmishes began.

“And so,” Aedon said, “it has continued the last several months. A few weeks of snow slowed any hope of Imirillian progress, but there was enough of a thaw that they have again begun their work. We always have five hundred men, stationed to guard the pass, while the others spend their time at home: working in their trades, preparing for spring, and training for combat. Now that spring has come upon us it is only a matter of time before the Imirillians come again in force. Word from our Marion sources confirms what we’ve long since suspected: the Imirillians will only go so far, until their prince returns to begin the conquest in earnest or until he sends a message authorizing a steady attack.” Aedon gazed across the greening fields. “So, while we have been at war, we have been spared far more than we otherwise might have.”

“How many casualties?” Eleanor asked. She had hoped Aedon would supply the number himself, but he had not.

“Just shy of two hundred men,” Aedon said, clearly considering this a small number. “We’ve done well, considering it has been nearly five months of struggle.”

“Two hundred men?” Eleanor said, looking at Aedon in disbelief.

“We’ve come off extremely light. Crispin has been miserly with those fighting in the pass. Cautious almost to a fault.”

“Yes,” Eleanor grimaced. “I applaud you for the caution. But two hundred men? That’s the size of a small fen, gone. Two hundred families—” she faltered.

“Yes. Two hundred mothers and widows,” Aedon said practically. “And we will be lucky if we do not lose ten times that amount.”

“We should have surrendered,” Eleanor said, struggling with the guilt of the lives lost.

“No,” Aedon disagreed.

“Bringing down the mountain has made Emperor Shaamil so angry he’s declared openly that the people of Aemogen will not be spared.”

“We met with the fen lords,” Aedon said. “The decision was to fight. We all decided to fight, and we are a long way yet from defeat.”

“But can you see a way to victory?” she asked.

“Crispin and Thistle Black have been working on that,” Aedon replied.

“And what does Gaulter Alden think of their ideas?”

Aedon’s expression dropped. “I forgot I haven’t told you yet,” he said, chastising himself. “Gaulter Alden is dead.”

“What?” Eleanor reined her horse up sharp, forcing Aedon to do the same. “When? How? At the pass?” The ground was spinning, and Eleanor lifted a hand to her eyes to steady herself.

“No,” Aedon said, regretful. “He passed away no more than a month after you’d left. He was old, Eleanor. A fever took him, and he was glad of it. His wife had been gone long enough, and seeing you rushing out like that—” Aedon paused and held up his hand. “Stop, Eleanor. I see that look on your face. He would have died had you been there or not. The man was old and past his time.”

Eleanor closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. “I need to get down, Aedon. Help me get down.”

Aedon dismounted and signaled to the other riders to move ahead and set up camp. Then he helped Eleanor dismount. She dropped the reins of her horse, walking off the road into a field, her face in her hands.

“Do you need water?” Aedon asked as he followed her, offering Eleanor a drink from his water pouch.