“That I have been wrong about Llauron.” He tossed the oilcloth into the fire where it blazed brightly and vanished in a cloud of acrid smoke.
Grunthor waited patiently as Achmed dropped into a chair before the hearth, brought his fingertips together, and rested them on his lips. The king stared into the fire as if trying to discern its secrets.
“Llauron is not the F’dor,” he said.
“How d’ya know?”
“Rhapsody would never have said such a thing to Llauron—I doubt she even knows about this missive. The story of the illness, the decimation of the army is a lie, of course—and Rhapsody doesn’t lie. This is a message to her as much as to me; there is a coded subtext to it.”
The Sergeant nodded. “Can you tell what it is?”
Achmed’s brow wrinkled above his veils. “I believe so. For some reason of his own, Llauron has intentionally spread this lie; he doesn’t believe it himself. This is his way of making me aware of what he has done. If he were the F’dor, he would never have given me such notice.” Grunthor nodded as Achmed curled forward, staring even deeper into the fire. “Perhaps he is trying to flush the F’dor from its hiding place by disseminating the information that the Bolglands are vulnerable. That would explain the part about the destruction of the army.”
Grunthor’s face grew solemn in the flickering shadows.
“And ya know what that means, then.”
Dark rage burned in the king’s eyes. “Yes. He thinks the F’dor’s host is in a position to take advantage of the situation. I will have to think of a special way to thank him for using my kingdom as demon-bait—if we survive the attack that is no doubt massing at this moment.”
Regent’s Palace, Bethany
Come in, Evans; it’s rude to lurk in doorways.”
Evans, Tristan Steward’s elderly councilor and court ambassador, had been standing at the entranceway to the dining room of the Regent’s Palace for some time. He exhaled and crossed the vast hall, his footfalls on the polished marble floor echoing loudly against the tall panes of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, an architectural hallmark of the palace that was Bethany’s capital seat. The light from the hearth fire cast long shadows through which he passed briskly, musing.
He had swallowed his ire at the sound of the Lord Roland’s voice, thick with drink and self-pity; it was a timbre he had heard much too often over the last few weeks. Whether the regent was mourning the tragic turn of events at the winter festival, or feeling extreme pressure from his recent assumption of command of the Orlandan armies, or merely in a state of panic at his upcoming nuptials, Evans was not certain, but any of those cases seemed to warrant excusing.
The man was, after all, betrothed to Madeleine, the Beast of Canderre. The joke in ambassadorial circles was that Cedric Canderre produced fine, strong libations out of necessity to ensure that someone might one day be drunk enough to seek his daughter’s hand. Tristan must have consumed an entire full-cask by himself, and then some, Bois de Berne, the Avonderrian ambassador, had suggested mirthfully at the time the betrothal was announced. Evans remembered chuckling then; now the sound of the prince’s voice, and all that had happened since those days, only made him want to weep.
“I thought you might want to see this, m’lord,” he said as he approached the regent’s table, noting that Tristan’s supper was largely untouched, but the decanter next to his brandy snifter was empty. “It was discovered at sunset by one of the archers on the western inner tower in the leg-sleeve of a bird, an avian messenger that most likely got caught in one of the recent storms and misdirected.”
Tristan stared into the snifter, swirling the last of the brandy around, watching the light from the fire dance in rings on the heavily carved dining table. He sighed as Evans held out the oilcloth scrap, lifted his snifter and tossed back the brandy, then held his hand out for the paper.
Evans watched the Lord Roland’s expression metamorphosing each time the shadows shifted on his face as he read the note. First confusion, then shock took hold, changing to wonder, then an almost manic glee. Evans ran his hands up and down his elderly arms to stave off the sudden cold chill that came over him as the prince put down the scrap of oilcloth, threw back his head, and laughed uproariously.
In the darkness of his study the holy man could hear the Lord Roland laughing; whether the sound was carried on the wind, or through the hearth fire, or just in the depths of his mind where he and Tristan were bound he did not know, but he could hear it cleanly, as surely as he could hear the crackle of the flames.
He had no idea why the prince was laughing, but the bloodlust he could hear below the surface of the merriment cheered him immensely.
35
Gwynwood, North of the Tar’afel River
The stream that flowed from the waterfall was crusted with ice, broken in patches by snowfall. Ashe knelt beside it beneath the boughs of the bare crabapple trees, lost in thought. He had come to cleanse the blood from his sword in the clear water of this place that he thought of as his own, as his safe haven, but was regretting the decision now. It seemed wrong, selfish even, to befoul the icy water, the pristine snow, with the gore he had carried since his last fray in the gently rolling forest of northern Navarne.
After leaving Stephen’s keep he had come upon a Lirin raiding party, small in number but keen in murderous intent. The villagers of the forest settlement, scarred still from the slaughter of the winter solstice festival, were making a good rally of it, fighting for their homes with pitchforks, harrows, and scythes. Ashe could smell the burning cinders from the thatched huts that the Lirin had set aflame from several leagues’ distance, and so turned his sword and his attention first to melting the snow that burdened the heavy boughs of the forest evergreens which sheltered the village. Kirsdarke’s blade had run in intense blue-white rivers as he held it above his head, commanding the element of frozen water to thaw and pour down from the trees, quenching the fire.
For a moment both villagers and attackers had stood in silent amazement at the sight of him, staring as if entranced by the waves of light from the gleaming water sword. But a moment later a deeper enchantment took over, and the Lirin thralls resumed their mayhem. Ashe was left with no choice but to join the villagers until the last Lirin was dead. He had broken through the clutching gratitude and stumbled away through the smoke of the forest, heading here, to this place, where he could cleanse the horror from his blade and his soul.
But even now, as he knelt beside the stream, he felt uneasy.
We are not alone, the dragon in his blood whispered.
He took a deep breath in agreement. At the edge of his senses someone was approaching. The dragon itched beneath his skin in excitement.
Let me sense, his wyrm nature insisted.
Seeing no alternative, Ashe sighed and surrendered to his nether side.
A moment later he had his answer. The dragon in his blood recognized its own kind.
Anborn was approaching the stream.
Ashe slid Kirsdarke back into its sheath. His hood was down, so no doubt Anborn had an inkling that he was there as well. He took off his gloves and broke through the ice, scooped some of the frigid water into his hands, and slapped it on his face, bracing himself against the sting. He cupped his hands again, drank deeply, then turned to face his uncle.
Anborn had dismounted and approached the stream on foot. When he came within a few yards he stopped and nodded.
“Nephew.”
Ashe smiled. “Uncle.”
Anborn snorted. “We can revert to our old nomenclature if you prefer—I can call you ‘Useless’ and you can refer to me as ‘That Pompous Bastard.’”
“I only did that once, Uncle, and I apologized, I believe. I can feel my father’s grip on the back of my neck to this day; it made a lasting impression.”
The Cymrian general nodded. “I just came from your father’s palace. He was alive when I left him.”
“I had no doubt he would be, Uncle,” Ashe rep
lied pleasantly. “What I don’t know is why you are here, so deep in Gwynwood.”
Anborn chuckled. “I knew this glade nine centuries before you were born, lad. I am the one that showed it to you, if you recall.”
Ashe nodded. Anborn had, in fact, once discovered him in the woods at play as a youth, and had shown him the crabapple glen, had taught him to hurl the small, hard projectiles side-armed, much to the eventual consternation of his father, who later had to ameliorate the complaints from the Filidic priests whose window shutters were his prime targets. He felt a strange sense of awkward warmth; he did have one pleasant memory, however brief, of his uncle.
That warmth was coupled with trepidation. The crabapple glen was the doorstep of the waterfall, and the waterfall hid his secret sanctuary—a one-room turf hut secreted behind the shale wall of the vertical stream. To his knowledge only one other person in the world knew the location of the hut—Rhapsody.
Beneath the surface his dragon nature stirred again, bristling with nervousness. The security of the tiny cottage was paramount to him, one of the few places in the world he knew he was safe from detection. More than that, he had encouraged Rhapsody to meet him here should she ever be in need of him, or to come here to hide. Anborn’s presence seemed to indicate the folly of that offer.
Mine, the dragon whispered furiously. His uncle, and his presence, was now a threat.
Just as the jealous rapacity of his wyrm side began to rise, his pragmatic human outlook descended. Between a single pair of heartbeats he reached down inside himself to the place where he was tied to the element of water, the pure, elemental liquid core of his soul. That water bond, dormant within him, rose to glistening life and sang to the waters of the frozen cascade, banished now to a mere trickle beneath the hoary frost of winter.
At first the stream was silent; then, quietly, from beneath the frozen strata of ice shards, the voice of the slumbering waterfall answered.
No one has come, the waterfall whispered. He does not know. The place I guard is still yours alone. I have protected it well.
My thanks, Ashe replied silently through the elemental bond. If the woman should come, let her in—guard her well. Protect her for me.
A crackle of breaking ice answered him; only a heartbeat’s time had passed.
“Indeed,” he said to his uncle. “Yes, you did. So why have you come here now? Surely not out of concern for my technique of throwing crab-apples.”
“Surely not,” Anborn agreed testily. “I have come to tell you that I have granted you a boon.”
“I don’t remember asking one of you.”
“No, but I assume you will appreciate it nonetheless.”
“Oh. Well, thank you, then,” Ashe said mildly. “Do you mind if I ask what it is?”
“Not at all. I have spared your father from the thrashing of his life, one that is long overdue, and well deserved. He lives, untouched, because of your kindness to my man-at-arms, and only because of it. My debt to you is repaid now, nephew. The scales are balanced between us.”
Ashe smiled slightly at the strange Sorboldian expression, trying to sort out the confusion he felt.
“I certainly appreciate your forbearance. What was it that you felt the need to thrash Llauron over? I might have been willing to help you if it had been well enough deserved.”
The Cymrian general regarded him thoughtfully, then flexed his hands within their leather sheaths. “You might have at that,” he said after a moment. “Any man with a beating heart would have, had he seen the woman your accursed father left to die in the snow of the southern forest.”
Ashe shook his head. “Llauron? Left a woman to die?”
“Do not deny his capability to do such a thing. Your father has committed more atrocities than you have hairs on your head—as have I,” said Anborn sullenly.
“I do not doubt the depth of my father’s capacity to do anything, good or ill, that benefits his plans,” Ashe replied. “Still, it seems out of character that he would have left a woman so compromised, especially were she one of his followers.”
“I doubt that she is.”
“Was she Lirin?”
“Partly.”
Ashe’s stomach constricted suddenly. “Who was she?”
Anborn looked away and whistled. The dragon in Ashe’s blood followed innately the vibrations from the sound to the ears of the horse a thousand paces away, hidden in a copse of winter birch; the noise reverberated against the animal’s auditory bones and sent a signal to its brain to come, which, seconds later, it obeyed. He could feel the thudding of the animal’s hoofbeats long before they reached his ears, instinctually measured its tides of breath, the blinking of its eyes, the compensation in stride that it made to favor the sore knee of its right foreleg. Ashe shook his head; the dragon was lurking much too near the surface, much too acutely aware for comfort.
The general turned back to his nephew. “It matters not—she was someone who came to him for aid, for advice in an important matter, and he steered her into harm’s way. The disguise in which he clothed her would not have kept her safe from frostbite if she were inside in the warmth near a hearth, let alone outside in the frozen wastes of the southern forests, and in a black storm to boot. No food, no water, no reinforcements, no aid of any kind. Despicable, and stupid, and above all else, proof that Llauron is as blind as he is heartless.”
Ashe breathed shallowly, trying to control his pounding heart, feeling the flush that had started with his face move through the rest of his body, enflaming his wyrm nature even more.
“She was comely, then, this woman?”
The horse trotted into the clearing, a beautiful black stallion with a plaited mane. It stopped beside Anborn and nickered softly; the general patted its cheek, then in a fluid motion pulled himself into the saddle. He took up the reins, looking down at Ashe, and smirked.
“One might think so.” He clicked to the stallion, and it followed the nod of his head to the icy stream, where it drank deeply at a thawed spot in the shallows. When its thirst was slaked it raised its head, and Anborn tossed his cloak back over his shoulder, preparing to depart.
Ashe leaned casually against a tree in an attempt to quell the trembling of his body, struggling not to succumb to the rising ire of the dragon. His head ached with the intensity of the hum that vibrated in his blood as the beast within him searched the minutiae of Anborn’s cloak. It was stained with specks of blood from more than one person—Shrike’s was there, without question, because it matched similar smears on his own saddle blanket. And then, tucked away in a fold of the hood, his dragon sense found what he feared it would.
A strand of golden hair, pure as sunlight.
“Was she all right, this woman?” he asked, his voice betraying his worry with a slight tremor. “Did any harm befall her?”
Anborn chuckled and pulled up his hood. “That depends.”
“On what?” Ashe gripped the tree more tightly as waves of alien power flooded through him, making him nauseous.
“On whether or not you believe I could reign in my base nature when left alone with a ravishingly beautiful woman—a grateful woman—compromised, naked, alone within my domain. A gambling man with any sense would wager against it. Goodbye, nephew.” He patted the horse’s neck and trotted off into the forest.
As soon as Anborn was gone from his sensibilities, Ashe released the tree he was clutching. He grasped the hilt of the sword and drew it angrily from its sheath, then turned and plunged it into the clear-running stream, staining the sparkling water, sweeping it around in the currents until they ran red.
36
The Tree Palace at the Circle, Gwynwood
Llauron sighed as the heavily carved door of his house swung open and slammed with the force of a thunderclap. He had been expecting that Ashe would show up sooner or later ever since Anborn had practically torn the thing off its hinges two weeks before. He raised a hand as the guards forced it open again and spilled into the front hallway.
“It’s all right, gentlemen. You may go about your business.” He rose and walked past his glowering son, then closed the door gently himself. “Well, good day to you, too, Gwydion. Was the back entrance blocked, or has destroying the antique door of the Crossroads Inn become a hobby for you and your uncle? I see you have chosen to reveal yourself to him; do you really think that was wise?”
“Give me a good reason I shouldn’t burn this place down around your head right now.” The fire in Ashe’s voice could have ignited the tree palace by itself.
“Hmmm, let’s see: how about the sheer waste of it? What did my home do to deserve your ire? Really, you must learn to control your temper. Your outburst makes you look ridiculous; as Lord Cymrian it would make you seem asinine.”
“You presume there will be a time when that will matter. At this point, I expect you will be looking at a Lord Cymrian outside of our line, as both Anborn and I are considering renouncing our claims and dissolving any tie with this family.”
For the first time since his arrival Ashe saw his father’s dark brows furrow together and black anger spread across his face. “Careful, Gwydion; that sounded like a threat. I don’t need to remind you how I respond to threats.”
Ashe was far past the point of caring. “How? How could you do that to Rhapsody? Why are you trying to kill her?”
Llauron’s face returned to its previously placid state. Obviously Anborn had told his son of Rhapsody’s rescue, but not of the plan. “What rot. I won’t even dignify that statement with a response.”
“What in the name of your sacred One-God was she doing for you in the southern forest anyway? You have any number of foresters and scouts who know that area; she doesn’t.”
“I am not going to discuss this with you. Besides, would you have preferred I went ahead with the plan as she understood it? I had intended to send Khaddyr as her reinforcement. Unfortunately, while you were otherwise engaged, distracted by whatever it is that keeps you from making your meetings at the assigned times, it was revealed that he, in fact, is the traitor in our midst.”