“What a unique point of view,” Riagil murmured, surprising Seregil with a smile. “Still, it has its merits. Adzriel brought favorable news of you from Rhíminee. Seeing you today among your companions, I believe her hopes are justified.”
He paused, his face serious again. “You are a sort of two-edged blade, my boy, and as such will I employ you. Gedre has slowly withered since the Edict was imposed, like a vine whose roots are cut. It is the same for Akhendi, who shared in the trade through our port. Klia must succeed if we are to survive as we are. Trade with the north must be reestablished. Whatever the Iia’sidra decides, let your princess know what Gedre will support her cause.”
“She has no doubt of that,” Seregil assured him.
“Thank you. I shall sleep more peacefully tonight. Let me leave you with this.” Riagil drew a sealed parchment from his belt and handed it to him. “It is from your sister. Welcome home, Seregil í Korit.”
Seregil’s throat tightened painfully at the sound of his true name. Before he could reply, Riagil tactfully withdrew, leaving him alone with the soft rustle of the kites.
He rubbed a thumb over the tree and dragon imprint in the wax, imagining his father’s heavy seal ring on his sister’s slender finger. Prying the wax up with a thumbnail, he unfolded the sheet.
Adzriel had tucked a few dried wandril flowers into the letter. Crushing the faded red petals between his fingers, he inhaled their spicy scent as he read.
“Welcome home, dear brother,” the letter began, “for so I address you in my heart even if it is forbidden elsewhere. My heart breaks that I cannot yet claim you openly as kin. When we meet, know that it is circumstance that prevents me, not coldness on my part. Instead, I thank you for undertaking this most painful and dangerous task.
“Asking for your inclusion was no sudden inspiration. The first glimmer of it was already in my mind during our all-too-brief reunion that night in Rhíminee. Aura’s blessings on Nysander’s poor khi that he told me of your true work. Take care for the safety of our kinswoman, and may Aura guard you until we embrace again at Sarikali. I have so much to tell you, Haba.—Adzriel”
Haba.
The tightness in his throat returned as he reread the precious letter, committing it to memory.
“At Sarikali,” he whispered to the kites.
9
INTO AURËNEN
The sound of small wings woke Seregil the next morning. Opening his eyes, he saw a chukaree perched on the windowsill, its green plumage shining like Bry’kha enamel work as it preened its stubby tail. He willed it to drop a feather, but it had no gift for him today; with a liquid trill, it fluttered away.
Judging by the brightness of the window, they’d overslept. The distant jangling of harness warned that Beka’s riders were already making ready to go.
Yet he lay quiet a moment longer, savoring the feeling of Alec’s warm body still wound contentedly around his own, and the comfort of a proper bed. They’d made good use of it, he thought with sleepy satisfaction.
His fragile sense of peace slipped away all too quickly. The coat thrown carelessly over a chair caught his eye like an accusation, bringing with it the memory of Torsin’s words and those of Riagil. As the khirnari had so succinctly pointed out, life among the Tír had forced him to grow up far more quickly than the friends he’d left behind. He’d known more of death and violence, intrigue and passion than most ’faie twice his age. How many of the youngsters he’d played with had killed anyone, let alone the uncounted numbers he had in his years as Watcher, thief, and spy?
He stroked the arm draped over his chest, smoothing the fine golden hairs. Most ’faie his age hadn’t even left the family hearth yet, much less made such a bond with anyone.
Who am I?
The question, so easy to ignore all those years in Rhíminee, was staring him in the face now.
Sounds of morning activity grew louder outside their window. Sighing regretfully, he ran a finger down the bridge of Alec’s nose. “Wake up, talí.”
“Morning already?” Alec mumbled blearily.
“There’s no fooling you, is there? Come, it’s time to move on.”
The central courtyard was filled with people and horses. Urgazhi and Akhendi riders were busy loading a string of packhorses; others were gathered around smoking braziers where Gedre cooks were serving a hasty breakfast. Nyal clearly had his hands full, Seregil thought, watching the man with growing dislike.
“It’s about time!” Beka called, seeing them. “Klia’s looking for you. You’d better grab something to eat with us while you can.”
“No one woke us,” Seregil muttered, wondering if the slight had been intentional.
Begging fry bread and sausage at the nearest brazier, he and Alec ate as they wandered among the riders, picking up details.
Two of Mercalle’s six remaining riders, Ari and Marten, were remaining behind with Corporal Zir to serve as dispatch couriers, carrying messages that would come by ship from Skala. The others would do the same from Sarikali.
Braknil was short a few riders as well; Orandin and Adis had been too badly burned at sea to continue and had remained aboard the Zyria for the return voyage.
The remaining members of Urgazhi Turma seemed out of sorts.
“Did you hear?” Tare grumbled to Alec. “We have to ride blindfolded parts of the way, for hell’s sake!”
“It’s always been that way for foreigners, even before the Edict,” Seregil told him. “Only the Aurënfaie and Dravnian tribesmen who live in the mountains can pass over freely.”
“How are we supposed to get over a mountain pass blind?” Nikides muttered.
“I’ll just move my patch over to my good eye,” Steb offered with a grin.
“He won’t let you come to any harm, Corporal,” Seregil assured Nikides, pointing to the Akhendi clansman sitting his horse nearby. “It would blemish his honor.”
Nikides glowered at his escort. “I’ll be sure to beg his pardon when I’m falling to my death.”
“He’s worried about falling,” Alec explained to the Akhendi.
“He can ride double with me,” the man offered, patting his horse’s rump.
Nikides scowled, needing no interpreter. “I’ll manage.”
The man shrugged, “He can suit himself, but at least get him to accept this.” Pulling a piece of wild gingerroot from a belt pouch, he tossed it to Nikides, who examined it distrustfully. “And tell him my name is Vanos.”
“Some get queasy riding blind,” Seregil explained. “Chew this if you do. And you might thank Vanos here for the consideration.”
“The word is ‘chypta’,” Alec added helpfully.
Nikides turned rather sheepishly to his escort and held up the root. “Chypta.”
“You welkin,” Vanos replied with a friendly grin.
“Looks like they’ll have lots to talk about,” Alec chuckled. “Hope you brought some of that root for me.”
Seregil took a piece from a wallet at his belt and presented it to him. “A disgrace to one talímenios is a disgrace to both. It would reflect poorly on me if you showed up covered in puke. And don’t worry, most of the time you’ll ride with your eyes open.”
Riding to the head of the column, they fell in behind Klia and her hosts.
“My friends, we now begin the last leg of your long journey,” Riagil announced. “It’s a well-traveled route, but there are dangers. First among these are the young dragons, those larger than a lizard but smaller than an ox. Should you meet with one, be still and avert your eyes. Under no circumstances must you hunt or attack them.”
“And if they attack first?” Alec whispered, recalling what Seregil had told them aboard the Zyria.
Seregil motioned him to silence.
“The youngest ones, fingerlings we call them, are fragile creatures,” Riagil continued. “If you kill one by accident, you must undergo several days purification. To willfully kill one invokes the curse of its brethen, and brings that curse on yo
ur clan unless your people see to it that you are punished.
“Any animal that speaks is sacred and must not be harmed or hunted. These are the khtir ’bai, inhabited by the khi of great wizards and rhui’auros.”
“If we’re not supposed to harm anything, why are you all armed?” Alec asked one of their escort, who carried bows and longswords.
“There are other dangers,” he told him. “Rock lions, wolves, sometimes even teth ’brimash.”
“Teth’ what?”
“People cut off from their clan for some dishonor,” Seregil explained. “Some of them turn outlaw.”
“I’m honored to guide you,” Riagil concluded. “You are the first Tír to visit Sarikali in centuries. Aura grant that this be the first of many journeys shared by our people.”
The road into the mountains started out broad and level, but as it left the foothills and twisted along the edge of a jagged precipice, Alec began to share Nikides’s doubts about riding blind. Looking up, he could see the gleam of snow still clinging to the sides of peaks.
Seregil had other concerns.
“I’d say a bond was forming there, wouldn’t you?” he asked under his breath, his expression neutral as he nodded slightly toward Beka and the interpreter.
“He’s a handsome man, and a friendly one.” Alec rather liked the garrulous Ra’basi, in spite of Seregil’s reservations. For Beka’s sake, he hoped that his friend’s celebrated intuition was off its mark this time. “How old would you say he is?”
Seregil shrugged. “Eighty or so.”
“Not so old for her, then,” Alec observed.
“By the Light, don’t go marrying them off yet!”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Alec teased.
Beka waved and rode over to them. “I’ve been bragging up your archer’s skills all morning, Alec.”
“Is this the famous Black Radly?” Nyal asked.
Alec passed the bow to him, and Nyal ran a hand over its long limbs of polished black yew.
“I’ve never seen a finer one, or such wood. Where does it comes from?”
“A town called Wolde, up in the northlands beyond Mycena.” Alec showed him the maker’s mark scrimshawed on the ivory arrow plate: a yew tree with the letter R woven into its upper branches.
“Beka tells me you destroyed a dyrmagnos with it. I’ve heard legends of these monstrous beings! What did it look like?”
“A dried corpse with living eyes,” Alec replied, suppressing a shudder of revulsion at the memory. “I only struck the first blow, though. It took more than that to destroy her.”
“To harm such a creature at all is a wizard’s task,” Nyal said, handing the bow back. “Perhaps someday you will tell me of it, but I believe I owe you a tale today. A long ride is a good time for a story, no?”
“A very good time,” Alec replied.
“Beka tells me you did not know your mother or her people, so I’ll begin at the beginning. Long ago, before the Tír came to the northern lands, a woman named Hâzadriël claimed to have been given a vision journey by Aura, the god you call Illior in the north.”
Alec smiled as he listened. Nyal sounded just like Seregil, launching into one of his long tales.
“In this vision a sacred dragon showed to her a distant land and told her she would make a new clan there. For many years Hâzadriël traveled Aurënen, telling of her vision and calling for followers. Many dismissed her as mad, or chased her off as a troublemaker. But others welcomed her until eventually she and a great army of people sailed from Bry’kha; they were never heard from again and given up as lost until many generations later when Tír traders brought tales of ’faie living in a land of ice far north of their own. It was only then that we learned they had taken the name of their leader, Hâzadriël, as their own. Until then, they were simply referred to as the Kalosi, the Lost Ones. You, Alec, are the first to ever come to Aurënen claiming kinship with them.”
“Then I can’t trace my family to any one Aurënen clan?” Alec said, disappointed.
“What a pity not to have known your own people.”
Alec shook his head. “I’m not so sure. According to Seregil, they didn’t take much of Aurënfaie hospitality with them.”
“It’s true,” Seregil told him. “The Hâzadriëlfaie have a reputation for enforcing their own isolation. I had a brush with them once, and almost didn’t live to tell about it.”
“You never told me that!” Beka exclaimed indignantly.
Nor me, Alec thought in surprise, but held his tongue.
“Well, it was a very brief brush,” he admitted, “and not a pleasant one. The first time I traveled to the northlands, before I met Beka’s father, I heard an old bard telling tales of what he called the Elder Folk. Alec here grew up hearing those same stories, never suspecting it was his own people they were talking about.
“I hounded the poor fellow for all he knew, along with every other storyteller I met for the next year or so. I suppose that was the beginning of my education as a bard. At any rate, I finally got enough out of the tales to trace them to a place in the Ironheart Mountains called Ravensfell Pass. Hungry for the sight of another ’faie face, I struck off in search of them.”
“That’s understandable,” Nyal threw in, then gave Beka an embarrassed look. “I mean no insult.”
Beka gave him a wry look. “None taken.”
“I’d been in Skala for over ten years and was terribly homesick,” Seregil continued. “To find other ’faie, no matter who they were, became an obsession. Everyone I talked to warned that the Hâzadriëlfaie killed strangers, but I figured that only applied to Tírfaie.
“It was a long, cold journey and I’d decided to go alone. I started through the pass in late spring, and a week or so later finally came out in a huge valley and saw what looked like a settled fai’thast in the distance. Certain of a warm welcome, I headed for the closest village. Before I’d gotten a mile down the valley, though, I ran into a group of armed horsemen. All I saw at first was that they were wearing sen’gai. I greeted them in Aurënfaie, but they attacked and took me prisoner.”
“What happened then?” Beka demanded as soon as he paused.
“They held me in a cellar for two days before I managed to escape.”
“That must have been a bitter disappointment,” Nyal remarked kindly.
Seregil looked away and sighed. “It was a long time ago.”
The column had slowed steadily as they talked, and now came to a complete halt.
“This is the first hidden stretch,” Nyal explained. “Captain, will you trust me as your guide?”
Beka agreed just a tad too readily, Alec noted with amusement.
Skalan riders paired off with Aurënfaie, handing over their reins and tying white cloth blindfolds over their eyes.
A pair of Gedre riders approached Alec and Seregil.
“What’s this?” asked Seregil as one of the men sidled his horse up next to Seregil’s and held out a blindfold.
“All Skalans must ride blind,” the man replied.
Alec choked down a hard knot of resentment, almost grateful when his own blindfold hid the scene. How many more little ways would the ’faie find to underline the fact that Seregil was returning as an outsider?
“Ready, Alec í Amasa?” his own guide asked, clasping his shoulder.
“Ready.” Alec gripped the saddlebow, feeling off balance already. Renewed grumbling among the Skalans came from all sides, then a brief chorus of surprise as a peculiar sensation came over them, a tingle on the skin. Unable to resist, Alec lifted a corner of the blindfold just enough to peek out from under it, then pulled it hastily back into place as his eye was assaulted by a stinging burst of swirling color that sent a bolt of pain through his head.
“I wouldn’t do that, my friend,” his guide chuckled. “The magic will hurt your eyes, without the covering.”
To make amends to their guests, or perhaps to drown out the complaining, someone began to sing and
others quickly joined in, voices echoing among the rocks.
Once I loved a girl so fair, with ten charms woven in her hair.
Slim as the tip of the newborn moon,
Eyes the color of a mountain sky.
For a year I wooed her with my eyes
And a year with all my heart.
A year with tears unshed,
A year with wandering feet,
A year with silent songs unsung,
A year with sighs replete.
A year until she was the wife of another and my safety was complete.
The play of sun and shadow across Alec’s skin told him that the trail twisted sharply and it wasn’t long before he dug in his pouch for the root Seregil had given him. It smelled of moist earth, and the pungent juice made his eyes water, but it did settle his stomach.
“I didn’t think I’d be sick,” he said, spitting out the stringy pith. “It feels like we’re riding around in circles.”
“That’s the magic,” said Seregil. “Whole miles of the pass are like this.”
“How are you doing?” Alec asked softly, thinking of Seregil’s frequent difficulties with magic.
Warm, ginger-scented breath bathed his cheek as Seregil leaned close and confessed, “I’m managing.”
The blind ride went on for what seemed like a dark, lurching eternity. They traveled beside rushing water for a time, and at others Alec sensed walls closing in around them.
Riagil finally called a halt, and the blindfolds were removed. Alec rubbed his eyes, blinking in the afternoon brightness. They were in a small meadow bounded on all sides by steep cliffs. Looking back, he saw nothing but the usual terrain.
Seregil was bathing his face at a spring that bubbled up among the rocks a few yards away. Joining him, Alec drank as he studied the stunted bushes and clumps of tiny flowers and grasses clinging in clefts of rock. A few wild mountain sheep clattered among the rocks overhead.
“Would fresh meat be welcome tonight?” Alec asked Riagil, who was standing nearby.
The khirnari shook his head. “We have food enough with us for now. Leave these creatures for someone who needs them. Besides, I think you’d have a hard time making such a shot. They are a good distance off.”