A concussive burst of power billowed outward. Tullier screamed in surprised pain, then Gaultry felt it too—the Lanai’s death agony reverberating outward through the
Ein Raku
, through Tullier, and into her own body. A rushing rainbow of color exploded within the spirit field, dazzling her, akin to pain. Their horse screamed, whether affected by the spirit-shock or by the physical explosion, Gaultry could not determine. It rolled away from the mortally injured tribesman and his frantic mount.
Gaultry, still blinded, was thrown backward over the horse’s rump. Detached so unexpectedly from Tullier and the horse, it took her a burst of panicked will to maintain control. She landed inelegantly on her tailbone, the impact jarring but fortuitously mitigated by the lightening-magic. She sat, catching her breath, and set to reforming her spirit-self, bringing her weight back to earth, clearing the radiance from her eyes.
The horror that awaited her almost made her wish for the return of blindness. The corpse of the man killed by the
Ein Raku
blade lay twisted on the ground, his body split open by a wound that ran the entire length of his body, black and burned all through, as though he had been scoured by flame. Tullier, who had maintained his seat in the saddle through the clash of magic, was rounding the panicked and unwilling gelding back toward her, his face white, the shining
Ein Raku
blade brandished in his fist. His sleeve was covered with gore—the blade, and the hand that clutched it, shone unstained and clean, as before when they’d slaughtered the goats.
In a panicked moment it became clear that the gelding would die itself before agreeing to come any nearer the fallen corpse. Gaultry scrambled up and ran to meet them. Tullier slipped free from the saddle and released the reins, allowing the frenzied animal to bolt.
As he gained her side, he reached to seize her hand, managing a crooked, disturbing smile. “The tents of your army are not far over the next ridge. Even just a few paces on, I could see them from the horse’s back. We can try to make it.” He shoved the
Ein Raku
into his belt, guilt fleeting on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
The dead Lanai’s war party had turned their horses and regrouped.
More men had come up to join them. A pair of riders paused over the corpse of the man killed by the
Ein Raku.
One let out a piercing, desolate cry, and would have run up on them, had he not been restrained. In a sharp, angry rush, these two regrouped with their fellows, then en masse they closed in. One of them threw a lance, fortunately with more strength than accuracy. It buried itself a good foot into the dirt, just missing Gaultry’s hip. Tullier pulled the
Ein Raku
back out of his belt, and made a show of loading it back into his wrist launcher. “No,” she hissed. “Not again.”
“I won’t—”
“Use it again and I’ll kill you myself,” she spat back. “That blade is not for combat.”
“All right,” he mouthed back. “But let’s use the threat of it—”
The Lanai war-leader was a short man with a grizzled moustache. He made a signal for his men not to approach too closely, and sat back in his saddle to study them.
“Throw down your weapons,” he said, in a strongly accented voice. “You will be hostages. Throw down your weapons.”
Neither Tullier nor Gaultry moved.
“I think I am very lucky today.” The war-leader looked at Gaultry. His eyes were cold. “A beautiful Tielmaran woman and her squire. More important than she might seem. She must be important, I think, or otherwise a fool, to risk herself to the Lanaya.” He said something in a language Gaultry did not understand, and two of his remaining men moved to flank them. “Throw down your weapons, and you have my word for your safety. We would barter you for safe passage through the Tielmaran lines.”
“I have not come here to play games with soldiers.” Gaultry stared at him coolly, ignoring his shifting men. “My business is with Tielmark’s Prince. Get out of my way, or I will not leave you the time to regret it.”
The war-leader shot her a keen assessing look, and spoke sharply to one of his men. That soldier craned around in his saddle and freed a small crossbow, surprisingly advanced for a tribesman, from among the equipment tied to his saddle.
“Serjay is very good,” the moustached man drawled, taunting her. “He can certainly kill your boy, who cares for you so much that he would abandon safe passage to come back and aid you. Your words are brave, but the choice—it is yours. Surrender to us on my word, or watch your boy die.”
“I don’t think so.” Gaultry shook her head, trying to maintain her cool, even as the blood rushed through her body, so intense was her focus, her fear, her readiness. “If you don’t yield us passage to the Tielmaran encampment, you will be the ones to die.”
The crossbowman had not been instructed to hesitate. In one smoothly practiced movement, he raised the bow, sighted, and drew the trigger. Gaultry had time to react only in that swift second as he raised the bow to his shoulder, only time to take a single instinctive step toward him.
It was enough. Her power scorched the air like golden lightning. Bow and quarrel together exploded in a haze of golden light, the quarrel a mere flash of a handspan free of its cradle. The bowman’s pony went wild, arrowed by slivers of bone and wood, and the crossbowman himself fell to the ground, wounded in many places by his shattered equipment, and screaming. Gaultry opened her palms, wailing with anger and sorrow together as she thrust her power outward. She had never before channeled her power in this way, but now—finally—was a time for no hesitations, no holding back.
In the past, she’d depended on physical contact to anchor her spells. Now, in her fury, she struck out without mercy. Who were these men to play at running her and Tullier through the valleys, when Tielmark’s life and future lay in the balance? Tielmark’s life, Tullier’s, Benet’s, and perhaps even her own. As her wrath rose, her power scorched free of her with a purity, a cleanness, that was entirely unfamiliar. The channels of her power burned, but not with pain. Unsuspected blockages vaporized, seared by the cleansing flame of her power, and were swept away in the blistering torrent that was her magic finally releasing itself in its full freedom, its full strength. For so long, she had feared that to allow her magic free rein would offer her only blood, self-immolation, loss of control. Now she stood, as if at the eye of a roiling hurricane, watching the storm of her power precipitate outward, obedient to her focus. The war-leader and his men—after the first flash of her power had destroyed the bow—were thrown violently backward against the ground, eyes blank with fear, mouths rounded in terror, helpless even to raise their hands in a vain gesture of protection.
She quelled the storm as abruptly as she had summoned it. The men who had stood in the front rank had fallen with twisted limbs and would not soon again be moving, but others, even as the magic died, struggled, if feebly, to regroup. Gaultry had had enough. She raised her hands and
made a swift wiping motion, blinding them, to the last man, with a washing like gilt foil.
“You are right,” she whispered, watching as one man, then another, cried out and raised their hands to their faces. “I am more important than I seem.” She turned to Tullier, who had fallen a little aside, and was staring at her with an awed expression. “Let’s go. I haven’t blinded them permanently, and when their sight comes back who knows what they will do.”
Tullier, in a rare moment of vulnerability, groped for her hand. “I don’t think they’ll come after us again,” he said. “But better not risk it.” Together, the two of them began to run in the direction of the Tielmaran lines, their uneven gaits soon jarring them from that contact, though Tullier kept close by her.
The boy had not been exaggerating about the closeness of the Prince’s camp. When they gained one more ridge, they could see the points of the Tielmaran tents, rising over the curve of the land, closer even than Gaultry had hoped.
“Someone is coming for us!” Tullier gasped out. “Hear the hoofbeats?”
“Perhaps Yveir got someone through!”
Only one ridgeline away, a rider burst into sight. He was wearing half armor and mounted on a massive grey stallion. The horse was blowing and snorting, obviously being pushed harder than it liked, and angry for it. Recognizing the animal, Gaultry’s heart sang with relief and joy. “It’s Martin!”
There was barely time for her to wave before he thundered down on them.
“My heart!” he said, swinging down from his saddle. He did not mean it as an endearment. “It will most surely fail if you pull another stupid trick like this again! What do you think you are doing here?”
“We don’t need your approval!” Tullier countered angrily. “We were doing perfectly fine without help from you!”
She ignored the anger on both sides and threw her arms around Martin’s shoulders. “Elianté’s eyes, it’s good to see you. Did Yveir bring word we were coming?”
He stopped her words with a hasty kiss, a smile spreading through him. “Yes, he made it through hours back. I’ve been waiting all afternoon for any sign that you were near. But why have you come?” He cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder toward Tullier. “Yveir could tell us nothing, and Benet, even more than I, is hungry for an answer. The Brood
were supposed to stay in Princeport, where you’d be safe.” He grinned. “That order was meant for you too, you know.”
Gaultry nodded. “It couldn’t be helped. The Common Brood has been divided since its founding. I’m afraid it’s divided still.” She sighed, thinking of all that had transpired, at court and on the road, since she had last seen him. “It’s a long story, and it got longer as we traveled. But Tamsanne thought it would be safest for Tullier to be with Benet—and now, from what’s happened on the road, I’m certain she was right.”
“Safest for whom?” Martin offered her a stirrup up onto his horse’s back. “No, let’s get you both back to camp. You can tell me then.” He gave her a boost into the saddle.
His stallion was much taller than the brave gelding that had carried them across the limestone plain and through the gullies. Gaultry, from her high perch, craned around, wondering what had become of the animal, but it was nowhere to be seen. The Lanai warriors she could hear, still screaming and terrified, but out of sight beyond the stony ridge.
“What about Tullier?” she asked.
“I’ll jog alongside,” the boy said sullenly. He stood for a moment, alone, a closed look on his face as Martin shortened the stirrup strap on that side and seated Gaultry’s foot. The contrast between them was suddenly intense: Martin’s assured ease of strength and Tullier’s skinny boyish frame, his promise yet unfulfilled.
“We should get moving,” she said uneasily. “I exposed my magic back there, and Tullier killed two men.”
Martin cast a quick look at Tullier before looping the reins over the horse’s head to lead it. The huge animal shook its head, protesting, and Martin chucked it under its chin to quiet it. “I felt two bursts of magic,” he said. “One I knew at once was you. The other—I thought it must be from the Lanai side. It was very dark.”
Tullier made a sound that might have been a swear. “I already admitted I was wrong to Gaultry,” he said angrily.
“Admitted what?” Martin asked.
Tullier flexed his wrist, and shot the Kingmaker blade into the turf at Martin’s feet. It went straight in for a few inches, then touched rock and skittered sideways. “Admitted that.” The boy was almost trembling with feeling. “I knew it was a mistake as soon as I used it!”
Martin looked down at the narrow blade, and then back at Tullier. “What is this?” he said softly. “No—I know what it is. The
Ein Raku.
”
He picked it up. Securely sheathing it among the weaponry tied to his saddle, he turned back to Gaultry. For one moment he reached out to her—then let his hand reluctantly drop away. “We need to get back to camp and find Benet. It’s obvious you have a great deal to report.”
They attended the Prince in his tent, for reasons that were
immediately evident. Benet lay prone on a sumptuous camp bed, one leg elevated under wadded blankets. From the strained look of him, he had been wounded and then treated by an overzealous healer, causing the pain to rebound in his body. The only cure for that was rest, which, from the look of the fussing retainers around him, was just about the only thing he wasn’t getting.
The Prince’s tent emptied as Gaultry and Martin entered—Tullier had been left to wait in a covered, guarded area outside the main tent. A trio of knights wearing the household colors of the dukes of Haute-Tielmark, Ranault, and Arleon were among those being ushered out. Their aggrieved muttering as they departed bespoke an unsatisfactorily shortened meeting.
Benet’s clerk cleared a table at the Prince’s side. While the slight, serious-faced man returned scrolls to an iron rack in one of the tent’s side alcoves and Benet gave him some last instructions, Gaultry had a chance to examine the prince covertly. Benet, never a fleshy man to begin with, had lost considerable weight in the three weeks since Gaultry had last seen him. He had the look of a man with a suppressed fever: His blue eyes were overbright, and even his simple directions to the clerk were spoken with discomfiting intensity. The carpeted interior of the tent was overheated and stuffy. Despite this Benet was dressed in a full-length riding coat, long enough to conceal his legs, along with whatever wound
he might have taken. His tawny blond hair was slightly damp across his temples, and there was a slight tremor in his hands.
When the clerk gathered up some final papers, he finally turned to Gaultry. “Well?” His manner was somewhere between humored and disapproving. “I will waste neither my time nor yours asking why you have once again disobeyed my orders. We both know that you should not be here. Spare me the excuses and just tell me why you have come.” He held out his hand, the Princely signet glinting in the tent’s dim light.
Gaultry bent and kissed the Twins’ double spiral. “The Great Twins are kind,” she said, making the goddesses’ sign as she looked up to him. From the floor, she could see the neatly wrapped bandages that bound nearly the entire length of his thigh.
She had suffered great hardships to reach this man. Now, looking upon him, she was suddenly uncertain. The Prince, in convalescence, did not look fit enough to oppose one such as Richielle, should she make her appearance at these battlegrounds. Yet Gaultry had to submit herself to his judgment, or her journey would be wasted. “If the Great Twins had not been with me these past weeks, I would not be here today,” she told him.
“Doubtless true.” Benet lapsed back on the couch, his expression still intense. “You have a tired look about you, lady. Tell me what has happened.”
As she recounted her adventures, Gaultry soon discovered that the Prince had a better idea of many of courts’ doings than she could give him, at least up until the fateful morning when Tullier had met with the Bissanty Envoy. But after that, much of what Gaultry had to tell him truly came as news. He sat up, freshly intent, when she described the fetish-crown that had been found in her bed and Tamsanne’s near-death when she had spelled the fetish to determine its maker.
Then she came to the part of the story where Elisabeth Climens had told her of the High Priestess’s plan to turn Tullier over to the Bissanties, along with the Kingmaker blade. At the mention of the
Ein Raku,
Benet exploded.
“Dervla possessed the blade all this time? Gods above, what can she be thinking? She lied to me directly. For that, I could revoke her Priestess’s chain.”
Gaultry shrugged unhappily. “My Prince, I cannot tell you with truth that I trust or admire your High Priestess, however strongly the power of
the Great Twins runs in her. But Tullier and I left Princeport before anyone confronted her with Elisabeth’s accusations. I cannot say with all certainty that she possessed a Kingmaker blade.”
“Oh, she had it, I’m sure,” Benet said grimly. “Hints she made—I can see now what she intended with her words. I have been a figure of fun for her, no doubt.” His mouth thinned. “My own recent heroics,” he rolled his eye ironically at Martin, “suddenly take on an embarrassing flavor. I have been a fool, imagining I could stand on my own for my country.”
Gaultry stared blankly between the two men, not sure if it was safe to ask the Prince what action exactly it was that he was bemoaning. In the short time it had taken Martin to escort her to the Prince’s tent, he had filled her in on little to nothing that had touched on Benet’s recent activities.
“Don’t say anything, Martin,” Benet went on bitterly. “You gave me fair warning, and I would not listen.” He turned to Gaultry. “Perhaps if my High Priestess had seen fit to share the Kingmaking tool, I would not have botched my chance for summoning the Gods.”
“You did well, Sire,” Martin said. “Few better.”
Gaultry shook her head, not following their conversation. “With all due respect, my Prince—what are you talking about?”
“On the night of the Ides, the King of Far Mountain challenged me to a duel,” Benet explained, taking pity on Gaultry’s obvious confusion. “Three bloods before the setting of the sun. He wanted to take the Lanai home to their mountains—all of them—and he knows we are ready to end this season’s fighting. It was a clever challenge—as the superior power, I would not stake my life on a Lanai withdrawal, but neither would I wish to reject an honorable chance to abbreviate this summer’s campaign. I agreed to meet him.”
Gaultry made an unconscious noise of dismay, and Benet looked at her sharply. “It was well worth the risk. A little blood shed from my body, or the Ratté’s, to preserve the lives of my soldiers. A small price. The Lanai who remain trapped in Tielmark have become increasingly desperate, and the fighting has taken on a nasty tone. Just this past week they made a reckless attempt to muster their strength and break through our lines. Your man there,” he gestured to Martin, “routed them. It was a sorrowful and expensive victory, but we could not show weakness and let them through. Many died on both sides before the Lanai disengaged. The Ratté was most affected by the display we made of the heads: On his
side of the lines, with their backs protected by the mountains, they seldom suffer such losses. That was when he sent his heralds with the offer: If we would allow his men safe passage, he would declare the season of war ended, and retreat back up to the high plateau.”
“You agreed?”
Benet nodded. “After much discussion among my war-leaders. After all the Ratté’s men have perpetrated in my valleys, our soldiers were not eager simply to let them go.” He closed his eyes, briefly, as though sudden pain had stabbed him, and shifted his injured leg among the blankets. “Though of course some were eager to see if I had courage enough to rise to the Ratté’s challenge.”
“The Lanai will be returning to the mountains soon enough,” Martin interjected. “Whether or not the Ratté’s men rejoin them. Once the Lanai go, the stragglers will make a separate peace, however little they like it. Andion’s moon is almost done, and lovely Sennechrys’s month is not a timely season for war. The Golden Lady is a harvester of fields, not men.”
“That may well be true,” Benet said. It was evident from his tone that he and Martin had argued this point many times over. “But this is not an ordinary season, nor is it an ordinary campaign. The Ratté didn’t only retrieve his honor by seizing our cattle. He gave the rest of the Lanai tribes a taste of what they can accomplish, driven by a real leader. Whatever the turning of the Gods’ moons, few of them are ready to ride back up into the mountains. Not, at least, until they have accomplished something that looks like a valiant victory. If only I could have bested the Ratté, they would have retreated in disorder. And perhaps they would have been less keen to descend on us in strength next season.”
Benet’s wandering gaze again found Gaultry. “Right or wrong, the Ratté and I fought to a most unsatisfying denouement. We will each go to our graves bearing the other’s scars—but nothing more to show for our combat. The gods laughed at our pledges. We fought for almost an hour. I touched him twice, a scratch and a running wound to his side, before he hit me square across my leg. But between ceremony and the time lost between rounds to attend our wounds, the sun fell below the mountains before either of us made third blood.” His hand unconsciously reached to rub his thigh, and Gaultry understood at last the rushed work of his healer, trying to patch him together so he could return to the duel and try for that third cut. “Damn Dervla to Achavell!” Benet swore. “If she had been
honest, I might have faced the Ratté armed with the Kingmaker blade. Two God-sworn rulers battling, man to man, for victory. Surely Andion himself would have held his chariot to see that!”
He stared up into the ceiling of the tent, bleak disappointment on his face. “Twins in me, I was stronger than the Ratté. He had the experience, the years of combat, but I was stronger. Also fresh to the front. Had the stakes been higher, I could have found the power to beat him, I am sure. The Gods would honor the courage of a Prince who slew a King in single combat, driving to with the
Ein Raku.
Such things are spoken of in legend. By that act,” his voice shook, “surely the mantle of Kingship would have fallen on me, and Tielmark would have been extracted, for once and always, from this web of Bissanty subversion.”
“Either that, or the Ratté could have killed you, leaving your throne empty save for your unborn child, and the tribesmen overrunning our borders.” Martin shook his head. “Those aren’t odds on which a Prince can stake his life.”
“Your Highness,” Gaultry said hesitantly. “About the Kingmaker blade … There is more that I must tell you.”
Martin looked at her sharply. “Don’t encourage him. There won’t be a second duel. You see the marks that the Ratté put on him? The Ratté received as good in return, and the Lanai healers are considerably less skilled than our own. For Benet to propose a second duel to a man in recovery from such wounds—there is no honor in that.”
Gaultry shook her head. “That may be so.” Could Martin really hope that she—that they—would be able to keep Richielle’s Kingmaker dagger from the Prince? “But Benet must know the full truth. Show him the blade we brought from Richielle.”
Reluctantly, Martin drew forth the
Ein Raku.
Benet’s eyes lit avidly. “The sacred blade! But—you told me you did not know for certain if Dervla had this knife.”
“This knife did not come from Dervla,” Gaultry said slowly. The look in Benet’s eyes—it had too much of the eagerness she had seen in Tullier before a fight. “It came from the missing member of the Common Brood. The goat-herder, Richielle.”
“Richielle? I thought she was dead.”
“Very much not so.”
The Prince opened his hand. Martin reluctantly handed over the blade. “It is unclean,” he said. “The boy used it today in battle.”
Benet tilted the blade upward, turning the flat to the light. “So this is the blade that could kill an Emperor’s son,” he said softly. “A man born to Great Llara’s blood burning his veins. I never thought to hold it in my own hand.” Noticing Gaultry’s expression, he grimaced. “Allay your fears, Lady Gaultry. I have made your boy a promise of my protection, and I am not one to break my pledges. I only wonder what can be the source of this blade’s power. Why do the gods heed it? What is in this knife that they should care?”
“Richielle must know,” Gaultry said. An uneasiness crossed her. “My Prince, I must tell you what happened when we met Richielle.”
T
ullier was waiting outside, seated on a narrow camp bench between a young knight and another ducal messenger. Gaultry went to him and lightly clasped his shoulders. “You are safe,” she whispered. “Benet will honor his pledge.” She released him, ruffled his hair, and turned once more to Martin. “Where would you have us stay, now we have reached you?” She was a little unsure how things would stand now between them. His manner all the while they had been with the Prince had been very formal.
“I’ll requisition some tents.” He beckoned to a young ensign, waiting beyond the shelter of the Prince’s canvas. Gaultry recognized the man as one of Martin’s grandmother’s men. “Lebrantine here will soon see you comfortably settled.”
“Aren’t you going to show us the camp?”
Martin passed a weary hand across his face. “I have to go out again. The men may have managed to round up your companions. Your Captain Yveir got through this early this morning. Indeed, he was the one who told me to expect you, and where you were likely to try to come through. I hope he will soon be reunited with his wife.”
Gaultry had not known that Yveir and Fredeconde were married. She had made no assumptions as to what those two had pledged. She found herself picturing a homey cot, a little run wild, and perhaps two or three children, waiting in the care of doting grandparents. A brief pang of envy pierced her. “I hope they’re safe. We lost them only a little before you found us.”
“A matter to be quickly determined.” Martin bent and kissed Gaultry’s hand. The wolfish grey eyes were warm, filled with a smile for her
alone. “As you can see, with Benet off his feet, I’ve become something of an errand boy. But I’ll return to you soon. I am very glad you have reached us safely.”
“I hope Fredeconde escaped,” Tullier interjected brusquely, interrupting their moment. “She at least was kind.”