“But I do,” he said. “Where will you go next? Tell me your plans.”
She was silent a moment. “I’m going to write my family. And I’m going to ask Faeber—who is the kindest man!—if I can stay here till my father or my brothers arrive. They won’t be happy that Rosurie has been left behind, but once I explain it to them—well. They’ll see I had no choice.”
“You do have a choice,” he said in a very low voice. “You can come with me to Ghosenhall.”
She smiled at him, but he couldn’t help feeling the expression was sad. It worried him; something about this conversation was going to break his heart. “Is that where you belong? Ghosenhall?”
“Time for telling secrets,” he said. “I’ll start. Yes, I belong in the royal city. I’m a King’s Rider.” The expression on her face didn’t change; wherever she lived, it was someplace they had never heard of King’s Riders. “I’m part of a specially picked, specially trained guard dedicated to the service of King Baryn. I’ve been in Neft to spy on the Lumanen Convent—to try and see if the Lestra is plotting against the king.”
“And you think she is.”
“Pretty sure.”
Ellynor nodded. “Now and then she would say things like, ‘When Daughters rule the country of Gillengaria, all this will be changed.’ I thought she just meant, you know, when the doctrine had spread from the convent to the rest of the kingdom. But I think you’re right. She’s more ambitious than that.”
At the moment, he almost didn’t care what plans Coralinda Gisseltess was making. “I have to go back to Ghosenhall with the others,” he said. “Will you come with me? I never thought I was the kind of man who would marry, but I—”
She stopped him with a finger on his mouth and that sad smile on her own. For a moment, he thought she might start crying. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t marry anyone my family does not approve of—and they will never approve of you.”
He pulled his head back and her hand fell to her lap. “They will! The king himself will vouch for me! And if it’s a dower gift they want, well, I don’t have much saved, but I know I can acquire enough gold—”
“Justin. No. Not money. No. It’s just—my family—they don’t allow—women never marry outside the sebahta-ris.”
The phrase was vaguely familiar; had Senneth used it once? But he said, “What’s that? I don’t know that word.”
“I come from the Lirrens,” she whispered. “The land across the mountains. Maybe you don’t know much about our customs—nobody in Gillengaria seems to. But women never marry where the families do not approve. If they try—”
“Their fathers and brothers come and duel with that man to the death,” Justin said grimly. “Senneth told that story once. I had no reason to pay attention, but that stuck in my mind. I remember thinking, ‘No one would fight me to my death. I could win any woman I wanted.’ ”
She put her hands on his cheeks. Now her tears were overflowing, but she kept talking as if she didn’t even notice them. “But you couldn’t, Justin, don’t you see? I love you. But I could not bear it if you killed Torrin or Hayden or my father. I couldn’t bear it. I would give you up before I saw them murdered at your hands.”
He shook his head, carefully enough so that he did not dislodge her fingers. “They wouldn’t be. Ellynor, I’m good enough not to kill someone even if he’s trying to kill me. I could disable your father or your brother. I could win the fight and walk away.”
“And they would send someone else after you, and someone else! Do you think no desperate lovers have ever thought to try that trick before? Someone I love will end up dead unless I give you up! And I cannot bear that! I cannot have such bloodshed on my conscience!”
“It’s not on yours! It should be on theirs!” he returned with heat. “What kind of cruel family forces women to make such a choice? Why don’t all the Lirren women band together and choose unapproved lovers, one right after the other, until all their brothers are dead or starting to reconsider? I guarantee you that you’d see some old traditions fade fast if enough corpses were piled up.”
Almost, she was laughing through her tears. “Maybe, but you don’t understand! We have been raised—we have always been—Justin, my family is my heart. My core. Until I came to the convent, I couldn’t even guess how I could live any other life. I cannot undo the love I have for my family, unkind and wrongheaded though they may be. And I cannot see you slaughter them, any one of them.” She leaned her forehead against his. Her hands were still against his cheeks, and it was as if their faces were behind a screen, as if their words would be uttered in absolute secret. She whispered, “Justin, I have to give you up.”
He was silent a moment, trying to work it out. It would be two months, perhaps, before he was back to his normal strength, and then there would be the time spent on the travel itself. Tayse wouldn’t like it, of course, but he didn’t much care, at this point, what Tayse’s opinion might be. He could probably convince Cammon to come with him—he would need someone with extraordinary skills to help him cross unfamiliar territory and guide him through unexpected dangers. “I have to go to Ghosenhall,” he said. “There will be reports to make, and maybe another commission to handle for the king. Look for me in the Lirrens in three months’ time. You can give me directions to your family’s place, or not, as you choose—I will find you one way or another. And then I will negotiate with your father, or face him in battle, whatever he wishes. I am not willing to give you up.”
“You can’t come to the Lirrens looking for me!”
“Well, I will. I walked through the gate at the Lumanen Convent to see you, and I will cross the Lireth Mountains to find you again.”
“Justin,” she whispered. “You will be killed.”
He shrugged. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have saved me after all. If I was only going to die for you.”
Now she grew a little frantic. She pulled her head away, she dropped her hands to his shoulders and gave him as much of a shake as her strength and his size would allow. “And you don’t care that it will break my heart? You don’t care that if you die, part of me dies, too? Justin, I love you! I love you enough to never see you again! Please don’t make me go through the rest of my life knowing you are dead because of me.”
“Please don’t make me go through the rest of my life without you,” he replied.
Now she did start crying, breaking into tearing sobs and beating her small fists against his chest. She tried to pull away from him, escape from his embrace, but he held her more tightly, refusing to release her. “I love you,” he said, over and over, as she shook her head and pushed against his shoulders and begged him to let her go.
Into this scene of panic and despair Senneth came calmly walking. Justin didn’t even realize she was in the room until she stood right beside the chair, observing them with her thoughtful gray eyes.
“I see Ellynor has told you her secret,” the mystic said.
Justin gathered Ellynor even closer, mostly to stop her struggles enough for him to carry on a conversation. “Senneth! Did you know? She’s from the Lirrens!”
Senneth nodded. “I knew as soon as you described her to me, that first time we passed through Neft. Her hair. A Lirren style.”
Ellynor managed to turn in Justin’s arms, though she could not break his hold. “Senneth,” she begged. “Please. You’re his friend. Tell him. He will die if he comes to the Lirrens to find me. He must let me end this here.”
They were both addressing Senneth. “I won’t give her up,” he said fiercely. “You can’t convince me, and Tayse can’t force me.”
Senneth settled on the edge of the bed, facing them. Her expression remained tranquil as always. “I think there is another option,” she said. “I have talked to Ellynor’s father.”
CHAPTER 33
AT the mystic’s words, Ellynor started so hard that she almost broke Justin’s grip. Not quite—she knew that would require more strength than she possessed—and the Great Mothe
r knew Ellynor wanted him to hold her forever. But Senneth’s pronouncement made her whirl around in Justin’s arms and stare at this strange, serene, powerful woman in hope and awe.
“You have talked to my father?” she repeated. “When? Why? How did you know—why would you think—I don’t understand.”
Senneth nodded. “Six or seven weeks ago. Justin mentioned meeting you.” The mystic smiled. “Well, he did more than mention you. He was clearly becoming very attached to you. And I was alarmed, because I had guessed you were a woman of the Lirrens. I have lived across the Lireth Mountains. And I knew how badly your story must end if, indeed, he loved you and you loved him in return.”
“You lived in the Lirrens?” Ellynor repeated. “With a sebahta?”
“I am an adopted daughter of Ammet Persal. I lived with his family for more than a year.”
It took Ellynor only a moment to trace the connection. “We are kin,” she said.
Senneth nodded again. “We are indeed kin. A fact I made plain to your father and brothers.”
Ellynor sat up even straighter. “You met all of them? Were you across the mountains?”
“No, I had gone to Coravann to speak with the marlord, and your family happened to be present. I met your uncle and one of your cousins as well.”
This was more and more bewildering. “And you talked about me?”
Senneth laughed. “Well, not at first. We talked about the sebahta . We talked about the king. We talked about the war that may be coming very soon to Gillengaria. And then I invited Torrin to a duel.”
“You fought with Torrin? That was brave!” Ellynor paused to give Senneth a doubtful inspection. “I can’t believe he would agree to take up arms against a woman. It’s not very honorable.”
Senneth was smiling. “I goaded him into it, I’m afraid. Insisting I could beat him.”
“Well, you can’t,” Ellynor said.
“But I did,” was the mild reply.
There was a moment’s silence while Ellynor absorbed this shocking fact. She could feel Justin shift and lean forward as if he had suddenly become very interested in the conversation. “Torrin’s the one, isn’t he?” Justin asked from over her shoulder. “The one who’d be most likely to meet me in a fight for Ellynor.”
“That’s what I guessed,” Senneth said.
“Yes,” Ellynor said, wonderingly. “But no one ever defeats Torrin. I don’t think he’s ever lost a fight.”
“I told him I had been training with the King’s Riders, who are legendary in Gillengaria.”
“You told him you had just dueled with me and you had lost,” Justin said.
Senneth laughed aloud at that. “In fact, that’s exactly what I said.”
“That’s why you pushed for a fight that night!” Justin exclaimed. “It was so strange. One minute we were talking about Ellynor, and the next minute you were telling me you thought you could defeat me. You knew then—you were planning to challenge one of Ellynor’s champions to a fight.” He stopped. “But how did you know—I mean, you didn’t even know her family name, did you? Why would you think you’d find her relatives in Coravann?”
Senneth sighed and leaned back on the bed. “Last summer. When we were at Coravann Keep. Some of Heffel’s Lirren relatives were there and I had a chance to talk to them. They told me about the two daughters of the Lahja sebahta-ris who had been sent to the Lumanen Convent. So I knew that Ellynor was in some way related to Heffel, and that any Lirrenfolk who might be in Coravann were likely to be kin to her in some way. It was extreme luck that her father and brothers were the ones who were present.”
Ellynor shook her head, still amazed at the tale but unable to see how it changed anything. “So you defeated Torrin in battle. And you told him that somewhere there was a man, a King’s Rider, who could defeat you, so that Torrin would have no hope of standing against him. That doesn’t mean that my brother threw down his weapon and said, ‘Fine. I will not fight for the honor of my sister.’ ”
“Maybe not, but it will make him think hard when I come calling,” Justin said, sounding excited. “If, going into a battle, he knows that I will win, perhaps he will choose not to fight.”
“You don’t know Torrin.” She looked at Senneth more closely. “But did you even mention my name? After you dueled with him? You had never met me! What could you possibly say?”
“It was more complicated than that,” Senneth said. She pulled over one of the bed pillows and propped it under her ribs as she turned onto her side. “Next, I had Tayse duel with Hayden. Well, Tayse is even better than Justin, so you can guess who won that round. Then we talked at length about the Riders, their strength, their skill, their status throughout the kingdom. You can imagine that by the end of it Torrin was considering crossing the Lireth Mountains to try for a position in the king’s guard.”
Ellynor could hear the grin in Justin’s voice. “I wonder what Tayse thought of all this.”
“Oh, he thought I was merely recruiting—as, to some extent, I was. I would like to see the king’s army swelled by a few hundred Lirren men, who are fierce and fearless fighters. I didn’t talk about Ellynor until I was alone with Torrin, Hayden, and Wynlo.”
“Who?”
“My father,” Ellynor answered.
“I told them that one of the Lirren girls at the convent— pretending I did not know which one!—had been befriended by a King’s Rider after she had been assaulted on the street. I might have embellished the story a little, but I certainly made Justin seem heroic. And honorable. The sort of man any member of the sebahta would be proud to call kin.”
Ellynor felt her mouth fall open. “You didn’t.”
“I did. Torrin himself said it. ‘I would like to have such a man as cousin.’ Those were his very words.”
“But not, ‘I would like to have such a man marry my sister!’ ” Ellynor retorted.
“Not quite,” Senneth admitted. “But we talked literally through the night. Very delicately. About what might happen if a King’s Rider came courting a Lirren girl. What kind of reception he could expect. Whether it would ever be acceptable to permit a Lirren girl to marry such a man.”
“I can’t believe this,” Ellynor said. She was feeling a little faint.
“Your father was, at first, very much against the idea,” Senneth continued. “And he called your uncle in to confer. Torrin and Hayden thought it might be acceptable if a family could be found to adopt this Rider. I said—”
“I’m willing to be adopted by anybody,” Justin interrupted. “Who do I talk to? What do I have to do?”
“I said I thought the Persals would be willing to adopt him, but your uncle didn’t like the idea. He said such a thing would only be acceptable if the woman in question were to become bahta-lo.”
There was another moment’s silence while Ellynor absorbed that news and Justin waited for someone to explain. “What’s that?” he asked finally. “What does it mean? Does it involve anyone hurting Ellynor? Because if it does—”
“No,” Ellynor said slowly. “It involves—it means, basically, that I’m no longer part of the clan. I’m separate. I can return, I am not ostracized, but I am not part of the rituals. Not part of the daily life. I am outside the sebahta-ris.”
“And that might be a sacrifice too great for you to make,” Senneth said quietly. “But it was a solution that appealed to the men of your family. They all were willing to accept it. Even Torrin said, ‘If my sister or my cousin were bahta-lo, then I would allow one of these King’s Riders to cross the Lireth Mountains and expect no harm from me.’ He said that, Ellynor. Those very words.”
For a moment she could not breathe; the implications were too vast. Then she realized that Justin’s arms had tightened around her waist so much that she simply could not draw in air. “I can’t—it’s almost too much to take in,” she said, and her voice sounded dazed and dizzy. “All this time—I have been thinking—there is no hope. And now there’s hope, and I—I can’t—the idea
is too big. I can be with Justin if I become bahta-lo. Two things I have never considered as possibilities before.”