Firebrand

  “I do not expect your duties to change overmuch,” Estora said, “except that you will be interacting with higher level officers. You may want to consider promoting a few of your Riders to absorb some of your old duties. At your discretion, of course.”

  Laren forced back an irrational fit of laughter at the absurdity of it all. She wondered what Stevic would have to say about it.

  “I will still expect you to serve as my advisor as before.”

  Laren finally found her voice. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  They spoke some more about how Laren could claim larger quarters if she wished, and of the other benefits of her new position.

  An ebb came to their conversation, and Laren asked, “You are truly well? And the children?”

  “Yes.” Estora smoothed her hand over her rounded belly. “Master Vanlynn and Ben have both determined all is well. But I must tell you, I would be much better if Zachary were here. You’ve had no word? None of your Riders have returned?”

  “No, my lady. I’m afraid not. It is still very early, and the country is large. There is no telling where the elemental took him.”

  Estora’s expression grew decidedly downcast. “I will miss the meetings and conferences, for they took my mind off his disappearance, and my loneliness.”

  “I think about him, miss him, in quiet moments, as well. You have done an exceptional job in his absence.”

  “With a great deal of help.” Estora shook her head. “I ask the gods every day to bring him back.” Then she lifted her gaze to Laren, her eyes haunted. “What if he never comes back? My children will never know their father, and I—I will be alone.”

  “I try not to consider that possibility.” Laren, of course, had thought about it a lot, but she did not want Estora to lose hope. “But should it come to that, my lady, you will not be alone. I will see to it personally.”

  “Thank you, Laren, your words comfort me. And now, I should probably release you to your work, or Vanlynn will never let me hear the end of it.”

  “I understand.” Laren stood, the coffer tucked beneath her arm, and bowed. She started to leave.

  “One more thing,” Estora said.

  Laren paused. “Yes, my lady?”

  “I meant what I said earlier. You are to be my eyes, ears, and voice when it comes to military matters. I think those officers believe me a witless woman with nothing useful to offer, and I would rather be sure I was being well informed.”

  “Then they’d be more than wrong.” Laren feared, however, they’d have much the same opinion of her, no matter her rank.

  “Yes, well, they would not willingly admit they were wrong.”

  No, they wouldn’t, Laren thought. “I will be sure that they do not make that mistake.”

  “I am depending on you, Colonel.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Laren bowed once more and left Estora gazing out her window. She paused outside the queen’s bed chamber, wondering just what in the name of the gods she was in for.

  SPIRIT

  Karigan parted the branches of evergreens, and driven by a curiosity that had built during all their days of travel to follow Enver from their campsite and into the woods, she peered into the clearing. The light of the waxing moon puddled on a ledge of smooth granite softened by clumps of snowy deer moss. Enver stood in the center of the clearing, his back to her, the moonlight gilding his hair. He gazed into the sky, his muna’riel cupped in his hands.

  She shouldn’t be watching, she thought, this thing that Enver was doing. It was private, but she couldn’t help herself. Was he praying? To whom would an Eletian pray? They did not worship her gods, though she could not say she actively worshipped her own gods, either. Feeling guilty for spying, she decided she ought to return to their campsite. She’d left Estral there writing in her journal. She turned to leave.

  “Galadheon,” Enver said, “will you not join me?”

  She froze and squeezed her eyes shut in even greater shame that she had been caught. She turned around and stepped hesitantly into the clearing to stand with him in the moonlight. The way the moon’s glow lit his face, he looked a mystic.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have followed you, spied on you, but I was curious.”

  “I am pleased,” he said to her surprise, “by your curiosity.”

  “You are?”

  He nodded. “I have long hoped that you might take an interest.”

  “In listening to the voice of the world? It’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “It is always there as an undercurrent singing in every living thing like water that travels from the roots of a tree all the way to its leaves.” He made a graceful gesture toward the night sky with its expanse of stars. “But when I still myself, that is when I hear it ever clearer.”

  “Sounds peaceful,” Karigan said.

  “It is. Listening helps me maintain balance in a time of unfolding. It promotes discipline over other more primal instincts.”

  A time of unfolding? she wondered. Primal instincts? What sort of primal instincts? But before she could ask, he continued, “Sometimes I receive insight to a problem when I listen, or my aithen, which resides within the aithen’a, will offer me wisdom or counsel in some way.” Her expression must have looked perplexed, because he added, “The aithen is a guide and usually appears as an animal, or in an animal-like guise. The aithen’a is the realm of spirit.”

  “You get advice from an . . . animal, in the realm of spirit?”

  There was laughter in Enver’s eyes. “It is perhaps more involved than that, but on an elemental level, yes.”

  She shifted her stance, her feet sinking into soft moss. “Dare I ask what animal guides you?”

  “Most Eletians’ guides are magnificent creatures—bears, lions, porpoises, even dragons and gryphons. You will recall Graelelea? She had an affinity for the winter owl that transcended the aithen’a into our world.”

  Karigan remembered Graelelea very well. She had led the Blackveil expedition with skill, but had not survived, her body left to rest within the tarnished walls of Castle Argenthyne, the snowy feathers of the winter owl braided into her hair.

  “My aithan is humble by comparison.” He looked very proud. “It is a turtle.”

  Intrigued though she was by this rare insight into Eletian spirituality, she was also skeptical. And yet, she wondered, who was she to judge when she had come face-to-face with the steed of the god of death? She suspected, however, this was not in any way similar. There was no equivalent to an aithen that she knew of in the religion or philosophies of her people.

  “The wise find many meanings for the turtle, but for me, it is its dual nature, its ability to live in water and on land, that resonates with me. I am half-Eletian, half your kind. I may exist in either realm.”

  An owl hooted, and in the distance came an answering call.

  “Would you like to try?” he asked her.

  “Er, try? Try what?”

  “Listening to the voice of the world. Perhaps you would find your aithen.”

  “I’m sorry, Enver. I do not think it’s for me. I’ve never been religious, anyway. I don’t leave offerings for the gods, pray, or go to chapel, or anything like that.”

  “It is not about rituals or worship or gods, though your gods could be perceived as part of the energy in nature, the world.”

  “The priests,” she said, “would maintain that the gods created nature and the world.”

  “Perhaps it is so, I do not know, but this hearing the voice of the world is more about finding accord with the universe. Harmony.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned to leave.

  He placed his hand on her arm. “I am making this too complicated. Think of it as feeling the sun on your shoulders and being fully conscious of it.??
?

  She shook her head and walked on, leaving Enver in the clearing. If she wanted to feel the sun on her shoulders, she had but to stand in the sun. Doing so, she thought, was safer than communing with forces beyond her ken, forces that might take an interest in her as others already had. She had no desire to invite new ones in.

  Estral looked up from her journal as Karigan entered their camp. “Where did you go?”

  “A walk.” Karigan tossed a piece of wood onto the campfire, which sent a galaxy of orange sparks hissing up into the branches of trees. She stood there, gazing into the flames. What had she sought when she followed Enver to the clearing? She had been curious, but there was more to it, like an itch she could not satisfy, and an emptiness of sorts. She was about that which was real and in front of her, what she could see and touch, not illusory phantasms of the air.

  Enver returned shortly after her. With a sideways glance, she noted Estral looking back and forth between the two of them as if trying to figure out what it meant that they had both returned from the same place in the woods just moments apart. Karigan knew exactly what conclusion she would draw.

  Enver halted a few yards from her. “Galadheon, it was not my intention to offend you.”

  “I am not offended. I just don’t think that stuff is for me.” She could almost feel Estral dying to ask questions.

  Enver took a step closer, and then a second. “The path of spirit is not for all. There have always been warriors who are of the physical world only. To travel the path is to divert their energies from the task at hand.”

  Was he calling her a warrior? If so, she liked it.

  “And yet,” he continued, “there are warriors who embrace the path, for it sharpens their focus, allows them to surpass ordinary skills. Your Black Shields were once of this nature.”

  She turned to him in surprise. “What?”

  He nodded. “It is so. The forms you learn as a swordmaster are not only moves you use to combat an opponent, but embodiments of focus, and communion with spirit, a joining of the inner and outer worlds.”

  “How in the hells do you know this?”

  “While at the castle, I had some conversations with the one called Fastion. He has an interest in history, particularly that of his vocation. Many Black Shield traditions are descended from such thought, not just the swordfighting. Alas, they have lost, through time, their spiritual connection.”

  Fastion. Karigan sat hard on a stump. She was going to have to have a talk with Fastion. It made sense, the association between the forms and spirit, though clearly it was not taught as such. At least, not to first order swordmasters.

  “There were various schools at one time that emphasized the connection between body and spirit,” Estral said, “but they faded from existence centuries ago.”

  Karigan turned to face her. “You know about this, too?”

  “Daughter of the Golden Guardian here, if you’ll recall, with access to all the histories.” She shrugged. “I just remember mentions of it, though. Nothing specific. Had I known you were interested, I could have done some research for you.”

  “I don’t think I’m interested.” Karigan kind of was, but didn’t want to be.

  “Hmm.” Enver gazed at her through the flames and smoke of the fire, then shook his head as though to himself. He strode to his tent.

  Hmm, what? she wondered. Then she stood and headed for the tent she shared with Estral. She would forget all this stuff about aithen and aithen’a, spirit and animal guides. There was enough else in the world that was real and troubling to worry about without adding superstition into it.

  • • •

  The next day, with the sun shining brightly, all talk of spirit was far away and inconsequential. Before they left camp, Karigan pored over a map of the north she had brought along and tried to ascertain where they were so they did not end up blundering into Second Empire. However, because they were following Eletian ways, it was more difficult to pinpoint their specific location.

  “Enver,” she said, “can you help me out here?”

  He gazed over her shoulder, then peered into the sky as though making some mental calculation. Then he turned round, facing in each direction. She was beginning to get annoyed when finally he returned to her, peered thoughtfully at the map, and pointed.

  “We shall be outside the Green Cloak by the end of the day.”

  That meant they were indeed getting closer to the Lone Forest and Second Empire territory. The lumber camp Captain Treman had mentioned as a place in which Lord Fiori had expressed interest was not so far off. They would try to find it so she could satisfy Estral’s need to investigate for a sign of her father; then they’d launch into the more perilous part of their journey, following the Eletian ways that passed near the Lone Forest.

  As she mounted Condor, she thought that if she were more attuned to the nonphysical world, she’d find that other forces were inevitably leading them to the Lone Forest. Her own inner voice was silently screaming against it.

  PYRE OF THE DEAD

  Karigan insisted on scouting ahead on foot, while Enver and Estral waited with the horses. She moved carefully through the woods, the ground half-frozen and half-sodden with slushy snowmelt. There were even a few early biters circling over puddles, too dull-witted and slow to be a bother.

  The woods she traveled through, here on the northern edge of the Green Cloak, consisted not of evergreens, but the pale gray bark of younger deciduous trees, their fallen leaves decaying underfoot in the mud adding to the earthy, fecund scent of approaching spring. This patch of woods had been logged maybe some fifteen years ago, and it would be decades before the mighty pines and firs once more reigned over the land.

  A brightening appeared ahead, where the sun fell unimpeded into a cleared area, and she continued her careful progress forward. When she reached the edge, she saw that she had come upon the lumber camp they’d been looking for. There were a few log buildings—bunkhouses, a main lodge, kitchen, and work pavilion, crude stables. Something about it looked wrong.

  She skirted the clearing, and as she did so, the changing view revealed that a couple of the buildings had burned. One of the bunkhouses was a shell. Little stirred in the clearing but squirrels and birds. What had happened here?

  She tripped over a tree root but caught herself before she fell headlong into a pool of mud. When she turned to give the root a piece of her mind, she realized it wasn’t a root at all, but a human arm protruding from a half-melted snowdrift. She leaped back clamping down on a scream. She attempted to calm her racing heart and catch her breath as she processed the sight. An arrow also protruded from the snowdrift. It was an ordinary arrow with goose feather fletching that looked as if it had been exposed to the weather for some time.

  She gathered her courage and scooped away snow. Beneath, she found a man in woodsman’s garb lying face down, the arrow deep in his back as though he had been trying to run away. It was hard to tell how long dead he was for the snow and cold would have slowed down decomposition.

  She found no more corpses on the perimeter, and when she was convinced there were no threats lurking about, she searched the camp’s grounds. She found five more corpses, but as they were more exposed, their bodies were more decayed, and in some cases, partially eaten and torn apart by scavengers. One had a couple arrows stuck about its ribs. It was harder to tell what had killed the others. Blades?

  She hastened back to Enver and Estral, trying to dispel the images of her gruesome discoveries from her mind. Condor whickered at her approach. She went to him and hugged his neck.

  “What is it?” Estral asked. She had found a boulder in the sun on which to sit, and now stood.

  Karigan faced her and Enver. “I found the camp.” After a drink from her waterskin, she explained, finishing with, “There was no one there. No one alive.”

  “My father?” Estral asked in a qu
avering voice.

  “I—I don’t think any of them were your father.” After a pause, she added, “I think we should go there, put those men to rest.” Not that she wanted that grim task, but it was the right thing to do. “And maybe we can find some clue about who attacked them.” The arrows hadn’t looked like crude groundmite arrows, though groundmites were known to use stolen weapons, but she was already pretty sure the men must have been cut down by Second Empire.

  They rode in silence to the camp. When they reached the clearing, Karigan directed Estral to care for the horses, and she and Enver started collecting wood for a pyre. The ground was too frozen for digging, and the job of raising a cairn too great. Karigan sacrificed a tarp for the carrying of remains. Fighting her revulsion, she searched the corpses for anything that might identify them or the attackers, but found only one ring, some dice, and a couple pipes. As she worked, Estral joined them, and to her surprise, gazed hard at the bodies. Karigan had sent her to take care of the horses to spare her the gruesome sight.

  “None of them are my father,” Estral said.

  “I didn’t think so,” Karigan replied. None had had his stature or golden hair.

  “I had to make sure.”

  Karigan nodded in understanding. She searched the nearby woods to make sure she hadn’t missed any other corpses. She could find no more, and when she returned, they covered the dead as much as possible with the one tarp, piled more wood on top, and lit the pyre as Estral sang a mournful song of leave-taking.

  When all was done, they retreated into the main lodge of the camp to escape the smoke and stench of the pyre, and to regroup. Taking care of the dead men had occupied most of their afternoon, so it was decided they would spend the night there.

  “I think we should keep a watch tonight,” Karigan said. The dead lumbermen were, to her, a warning. “And no more fires.” She was beginning to regret the pyre—no doubt the smoke could be seen for miles. Would it draw those who had attacked the camp to investigate? The Lone Forest was still a day’s ride away, but what if there was a Second Empire patrol somewhere in the vicinity?