"There were crushed leaves and broken branches to mark where he fell, but no body. We fear that it has been taken," Kather said, panting, when he had once more regained the top of the cliff. "Some say there are evil things in the Bog that scavenge what they can find—"
"Speak no further," Snolli said, his voice strained. "I will not admit that my son's remains have been eaten by monsters. Let us say instead that he is lost to us now, but that someday we will find him and give him a proper burial."
The search party bowed in agreement, though more than one face in the company bore an expression of skepticism. And in his heart, Snolli knew that what he proposed was naught but mere pretense.
Eighteen
With Royance and Florian departed and her ladies not summoned back into her chamber, Ysa sat thinking hard, tapping one fingernail against her teeth. Though she had rid herself of her son for the moment, none of her worries had lessened.
Indeed, if anything, they had magnified.
Yes, she thought, she must turn again to her messenger. She must know if what she only felt was true. The strategy of waiting and watching was not going to serve her in this coil. She sensed that time would not favor her, and she knew she must do whatever was available to her that she might keep abreast of the rush of events. At that moment, she felt that she dared anything—even a betrayal of most of her long-held secrets, if necessary.
She made a hurried trip up the secret stairs to the dizzying height of the tower and sent Visp on its way. Then she returned to her chamber, summoned her ladies, picked up her embroidery once more and settled down to wait.
While she waited, to all intents serene and untroubled over anything more serious than the selection of a color of thread for her needle, she pondered far more weighty matters. That brief episode between the Lady Marcala and
Royance—Ysa could tell that this was not fated to be an isolated incident. Also, she knew that Marcala was not entirely averse to the attentions she was sure to attract at court. That must be remedied.
Ysa had long before determined to work a spell to ensure that Harous was attracted to Marcala. It would be only prudent to secretly include a little magical extra to cause Marcala to be equally attracted to Harous, to the exclusion of anyone else. Forestalling problems, Ysa knew, was much better than solving them once they had arisen.
Pleading fatigue, the Queen dismissed her ladies and ordered a hearty dinner brought to her chamber. When the maid had set the tray on the table and started to leave, Ysa stopped her. "Where is the Lady Marcala?" she asked.
"Downstairs, in the dining hall, Your Majesty," the girl replied, a little disconcerted. Ysa had never spoken to her before.
"Go to her and tell her that I wish to speak with her before she retires. Say, at the eleventh hour."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the girl said, dropping a deep curtsy. Then she went to do as she was bid.
When Ysa had finished all the food on her tray, she made her way once more up the steep, secret stairs. By now, Visp must have returned. And indeed, the flyer came through the window almost before Ysa's breath had returned to her from the strenuous climb.
She put out her hand and Visp landed on it. She gazed into the creature's eyes and began to see what it had learned on its flight.
Indeed, events had marched even more swiftly than she could have imagined. Her heart began to pound.
So. Those Sea-Rovers who had taken the Ashenkeep for their own were on the move also? Ysa watched them venture on the broken trail of the clifftop. And also she saw others, men from the Kingdom, and recognized Har-ous. Then—danger! From overhead! Involuntarily, she flinched. With Visp, she flew high and invisible, away from claw and talon.
Though she had never before sighted the giant birds that infested the
Bog-cliffs, she had heard of them and knew just what a danger they could be.
More than one trading ship, sailing in those unfriendly waters, had reported attacks.
She knew when Visp went invisible, for the colors faded. She understood; once before, the flyer had been in peril from creatures that far outmatched it in strength and ruthlessness. Ysa watched through Visp's eyes as one of the huge birds concentrated its attack on a man who could only be the leader of the keep force. And she watched him fall.
He must be dead. This could be an aid. At the least, it would be a warning to those adventurers to stay far away from Bog-land. An alliance there—No, it must not happen.
She started to turn away, to end the connection, but there was more. What else,
Ysa wondered, a little dazed, could there be after the propitious moment of the fall of the seaman? For a moment, she was dizzied by a rapid spin of one vista after another. She saw movement at the dark edge of the cliff break.
The creature who was her eyes wheeled down and down until the Queen might be standing on a level with a woman. No, she was little more than a girl. With a chill in her soul, Ysa recognized her as the one who had nurtured the flyer when it had been knocked from the sky by a mysterious surge of power.
Come away, she instructed Visp urgently. But that was foolish. She was not seeing contemporary events, only the remembered ones. And, she sensed, the flyer felt a certain affection for the girl, regardless of its obligation to herself.
Ysa closed her lips firmly and let what the flyer brought her unfold. Even here, unwanted and unwelcome though it might be, was knowledge. The first glimpse of the girl, when she had been tending the downed flyer, had not been enough to do much more than confuse Ysa with the possibility that Alditha still lived. This girl was much too young to be Alditha, though she could surely be of Alditha''s blood.
Ysa drew a deep breath. Whoever she was, this person had power of a sort.
Power answered to power; there was no denying that. But what touched her through the strained method of this oblique meeting was something she could not name or understand. It flowed from a source other than those ancient books and rituals that were her own fount of learning. Untaught and undeveloped, nevertheless it was there.
Then, some movement, some glimpse of features— Ysa's lips shaped as if she would spit and cause her spittle to somehow reach that girl. The Queen cursed herself for a fool, for having hidden the truth from herself, hoping it was not so.
She watched—she had to—the dim picture unfold. One who should never have lived sought and found the fallen Sea-Rover, tended him with the surety of one who had a healer's training. And as she watched, she ground her teeth with fury. Why hadn't the wench died according to plan? And why hadn't the leader of the intruders from the Ashenkeep died as well?
Queen Ysa stopped her teeth from chattering with an effort of will. Outlanders were prey in the Bog; all knew that. Then how—
No, she told herself firmly. Her nerves were playing tricks on her. With equal resolve, she faced what must be the truth. Alditha was surely dead, long ago.
Could this be Alditha's daughter? With growing certainty, Ysa knew that this was who the girl must be. Bastard if so, and no clear claim to anything but a fast death if discovered.
Ashenkin had disowned Alditha for her folly in com-panying with a man, his identity unknown, without being wed. And because of her, they had been brought down.
Ysa grimaced. Yes, the House of Ash had fallen and she, the Queen, had had a strong hand in its fall. She knew that those who wore the Ash badge would not have shielded Alditha had she reached them. But who in the Bog would have offered her refuge? And the child—how had she survived all these years in the
Bog?
Now Ysa's grimace became the stronger. What of that other power she had long sensed rooted there? An enemy? Was this bastard a tool, held against a day when she might be used against the Queen by that opponent? The very fact that the wench had survived in a place where death was all but automatic meant that someone of outstanding authority had decreed that she live on.
That, or she was one of the Bog-folk, at least in part. How else could she have been accepted by them and al
lowed to live—that slut, that abomination? It was the only explanation as to why she could move freely about as she did while Ysa watched her through Visp's eyes. Ysa almost wished she had seen more than the girl's face. It must have sat, incongruously, above a stunted Bog- woman's body, the Ash connection plain only as far as the neck.
So. It had been the wench's misshapen hands that tended the flyer after it had been downed by that strange stroke of power. The girl's doing? No, she thought not. She herself had had to strive for years to learn what she now knew. This girl… Ysa summed up the years. Sixteen. Yes, sixteen. A child—a stupid bastard child!
Would the girl be able to accept help and return the injured man from the keep to his own? It was bad enough to risk alliance between the newcomers and
Bog-men, but to have such a grotesque one as this outcast make a common bond with them—that could prove to be a failure, dire failure, of all she had fought for during these years past. Ysa fancied she could feel the Rings grow a little looser on her fingers, as if they foresaw a time to leave her flesh and bones for those on another.
No!
A sudden curtain of darkness fell, and she knew that Visp had been released from her control. Ysa could no longer see beyond her present time and place. She gave the flyer some food and settled it into its silk- covered shelter. Then, falling back against the support of her chair, she stared at the wall—a wall on which she could suddenly picture peopled by one dire happening and enemy after another.
Harous had gone hunting along Bog borders. Did he know of or even wonder about this girl's existence? That worry, at least, could be laid to rest. He had been a child, not of an age to be at court, when Alditha's embarrassment was being whispered about behind hands. And how much of that strange power did the abomination possess? Ysa must learn. She willed herself to patience. Now that she knew what direction she must search for the knowledge she needed, she could afford not to be hasty. In fact, haste was her worst enemy.
There was another matter at hand, and what she would do now needed other aids.
She pulled herself wearily from her chair. Once more she must descend, and men re-climb, those steep stairs.
The Lady Marcala was waiting for her. "Come with me," Ysa said without formality. "I propose to accomplish some arcane matters* and I must needs draw upon your strength."
"It is yours to command, Majesty," Marcala said. Without further comment, she followed the Queen up the stairs to the tower room.
Ysa opened a book on the table to the place she had marked. "Stand behind me, with your hands resting on my shoulders," she told Marcala. "Your strength will flow into me at need."
The younger woman did as she was told. Ysa began to read aloud, but softly, from the book. Some of the things she might do this night held deadly peril. She had read, she believed she had understood, but she had never put that understanding to the proof.
Mist began to gather above the table, as if a window were opening to another world. Ysa glanced quickly over her shoulder, but the look on Marcala's face told her that her assistant did not see the blurred spot in the air. Emboldened, the Queen read on, louder, and then with a sudden, soundless bang! she found herself in what looked to be a cave. In the center of the cave writhed a pillar of fire, and captured within that pillar stood a Bog-woman.
No—not a Bog-woman, but similar. This one was ancient without being old, and her bearing even in captivity spoke of the kind of power Ysa understood.
"You are here. Help me," the crone said. She held out her hand for Ysa to take.
The Queen hesitated. "Who are you?"
"The one you were sent to aid. My name is Zazar."
Zazar! For a moment, Ysa only stared, uncomprehend-ingly, at the legendary figure.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Zazar said impatiently.
Reluctantly, Ysa reached out one of her slender, manicured hands toward the crone's rough, wrinkled one. But before she could touch it, another noiseless explosion deposited into the cave the young woman Ysa had seen earlier. She did not look as Ysa imagined; the spell must have put a glamour on her, so that she appeared fully human.
"Zazar!" the girl exclaimed.
"I should have known it would take both of you," Zazar said, as unconcerned as if what was transpiring were commonplace. As far as Ysa knew, perhaps it was.
"Well, come on then." Zazar held out her other hand.
The girl took it without hesitation, and after a moment, Ysa took the one that had been proffered to her. As casually as though she were stepping from a boat onto dry land, Zazar moved out of the fire and it died behind her.
"I suppose you should know each other's name, since you are going to meet in the outside world sooner or later. Ysa, this is Ashen. Ashen, this is Ysa."
Then the cave and its inhabitants blinked out and Ysa staggered back into
Marcala's arms. "What happened?" she asked shakily.
"Nothing," Marcala said, puzzled. "You were reading, and then you stopped, and then you nearly fell. I caught you."
"No more than that?"
"Should there have been?"
"Of course not. No. Nothing."
"Are you all right?"
Ysa gingerly tested her limbs. They were weak and shaky, more so than she had ever experienced before. She knew that her spell-casting had had far- reaching results beyond what she knew, or was likely to know. Something sour rose in the back of her throat. "I must sit down. I feel ill."
"Can you make it down the secret stairs?"
"I don't think so. Please use the main stairway and send servants to help me. I must get me to bed."
Ashen had chosen to climb the way up over the clifftop, for no one could descend it in any safety. On the other side of the ridge it proved much easier to go down than it looked. Then she became aware that the steady beat of the sea was being overborne by the sounds of screeches and shouts—the latter from human throats. She quickly went to such cover as she could find, at the base of a tall outcropping that might have been set there as a signal for those out on the sea.
She quickly discovered that she was not the only one to take to this rough sky road. Coming from the south was a party of four who, by their clothing and armor, appeared to be Outlanders. Panic rose, blocking her throat. Was the man she had followed here one of that company?
Whoever they were, they were being besieged. The birds had already attacked them before she reached her perch. She was just in time to see that one of the men had lost his balance as a result of that attack. As he fell, she noticed that two glittering objects also fell, though in different directions. Ashen had no idea of what they might be, and she knew there was no aid for the man. His body was over the cliff rim and down, not toward the sea, but on the Bog side.
He had disappeared into a clump of tall, reedy ferns and lay at, or close to, the foot of the cliff. All she could see from her position was an outflung arm.
Some distance away, one of the bright things that had glittered in falling caught the light. A weapon he had carried? Those with him could offer no aid, for the birds were in full attack. The three left in the party separated and withdrew to hunt what cover they might as they defended themselves. One man stood up to use a weapon of a sort that Ashen had never before seen. He held a bent stick with a string taut between its two ends, and another smaller stick pressed against the string. He pulled string and stick back and let go, and the small stick lodged in the base of the long throat of one of the screeching birds. It fluttered down almost over Ashen's head in a losing attempt to remain aloft, and she watched it disappear into the waves below.
The other birds seemed to realize their danger and broke off the attack. After a time of fruitless searching for the comrade who had fallen, the men gave up and left. Ashen realized that the ferns hid the body entirely from view except from this one spot where she herself lay hidden. She realized also that she had far less-proper weapons to defend her own refuge if the birds should return. There was nothing to be done but to
go back through that passage inside the cliff and strive to find a safe way of returning to the Bog.
As she retraced her earlier path, she thought about those men. They were certainly Outlanders, and since the man she trailed was clearly one also, it must be that he was from the same place. It had been a very long time since the outer world had striven to enter the Bog. What was the reason for the appearance of an armed party now?
She could still hear the birds' screeching as she emerged from the fissure.
Dropping her pack, she wriggled forward as close to the edge as she dared. There was no way to view the clifftop from the lower position, nor could she sight where the Outlander had fallen. At least the birds did not seem to have spotted her when aloft, and there might be only a long wait before her until she could seek cover in the Bog.