Bloodsongs (18 page)

“What about this sorcerer, Oroladian?”

“Can't help ye,” he answered curtly. “Nobody's ever seen him. People's seen his powers, but never him. An' nobody knows where he came from. There's a story, though, about a tower down along the Keled-Esgarian border. Stood empty for most o' a hundred years, but some say it's been occupied lately. Some say it's your son an' this Oroladian.”

“Where is this place?” If Kel planned to attack Dakariar, she could find his tower and wait for his return.

“Don't know,” he confessed. “Just somewhere along the Lythe River far to the south.”

Frost bit her lip. There was no choice, then, but to go to Dakariar. She prayed for better luck than she'd had in Soushane. She had to find Kel.

And when she found him, what then?

She sheathed her blade at last. “Did you tell the garrison about Dakariar?”

Dromen Illstar closed his eyes briefly. “Always hold somethin' in reserve,” he answered softly. “Ye never know when a piece o' information might go up in value.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Your information isn't worth a
minarin
now. There's nothing left in Kyr to send against my son but a handful of gate guards.”

The old man glanced down at his hands. “Riothamus has patrols searchin' for him.”

She shrugged. Riothamus and his patrols had been scouring the countryside for months. They still hadn't caught up with Kel. She took little pride in the fact, yet it was hard to count the king as much of a threat.

There was nothing more to learn here. Frost gazed at Dromen, once her friend, recalling him as he had been when they both were younger. Time had marked them in different ways, and though they both strove to hide their scars, his, at least, were plain to see. She wondered, were hers?

She moved to the door, unbarred it, unbolted it. Neither she nor Dromen said good-bye. He rose from his seat but didn't approach her. He went, instead, to the bodies of his slain customers, kneeled, and began to strip them of their valuables.

It was not the Dromen she once knew, she told herself. Quietly opening the door, she passed into the alley and into the night.

When the Rathole was far behind her, she drew a slow, weary breath and let it out. No chance to leave the city until dawn, she knew. A lie and the compassion of nervous sentries had unsealed Kyr's gates and gained her entrance. Nothing but the sun itself would open them to let her out.

Her footsteps echoed on the paving as she retraced her course through the squalid alleys. She squeezed between close walls and made her way up a narrow, filth-littered street. Apartments loomed on either side, stacked one atop another, all dark and silent, so old and ramshackle a good wind often set them to swaying.

She stopped abruptly and listened. Only her breathing broke the unnatural silence.

Kyr was one of the largest cities in the kingdom. It teemed with life, throbbed with energy. Even this slum possessed a vitality of its own. But nothing stirred about tonight. Where were the street people, the imbibers, the beggars, prostitutes?

It filled her with a kind of awe to suddenly realize how profoundly shaken the citizens of Kyr must be. Their garrison had been destroyed, a neighboring town burned.

But it was more than that, she knew. It was the sorcerer. A pungent fear nestled within the city's walls now, stifling. It was magic that drove them cowering into their homes.

It occurred to her that she might be the only soul abroad in the darkness.

No lamp lit the streets, yet she knew her way. At last she arrived at the foot of a high stone stairway that led steeply up the side of one of the oldest dwellings in this section of Kyr. The steps were small and crumbling, barely wide enough for two people to pass. Often, they were made more treacherous by the flakings of stucco that fell from the deteriorating wall.

She paused on the second level's landing and put her ear to the apartment door there. No sound stole forth; no candlelight spilled under the jamb. At the third level she stopped before her own door and pushed it open.

It had been all she could afford when she came to Kyr, a spare room with a hard rope bed and a few sticks of scratched furniture. The lamp she normally kept burning had gone out, its oil spent. There were candles, but she had nothing to light them with now. A little moonlight seeped through the room's sole window. She closed the door and threw the inside bolt.

Sitting on her bed, she unstrapped her sword and leaned it against the wall. Next, she removed her boots with a soft grunt and cast them into a corner. The skirts of her descroiyo disguise were strewn around her on the bed. She gathered them into a bunch, then dropped them on the floor.

A twinge of sadness caught her in that unguarded moment. Across the room by the small table, Telric had stood with his back turned while she had changed from the skirts into her riding leathers. She imagined she could see his tall shadow there now waiting and watching.

She bit her lip. Confidences had been shared along the road to Soushane. Telric had proven easy to talk with. They had shared a brief time together long ago, and now another very brief time. Yet his deep, gentle voice had warmed a spot inside her.

That spot was cold again. There was nothing she could do for Telric. There was nothing she could do at all but sleep and when the sun finally rose start out for Dakariar.

She stripped and lay back naked on the coarse blanket. Though she closed her eyes, sleep eluded her. She turned her face to the wall, then rolled onto her back. The woven ropes felt like hard stones through the thin bedclothes. She rolled to her stomach.

But it wasn't the ropes that kept her awake.

The room was full of Telric. It echoed with his voice, his footsteps. He moved half-glimpsed in the shadowed gloom. It wasn't the breeze through her window that kissed her bare skin, but Telric's scented breath.

She sat up suddenly and seized the skirts she had dropped on the floor. Among them was the purse she wore as a descroiyo and inside that her deck of cards. She took them out, untied the leather thong that bound them together, spread them on the bed beneath the window where the moon illumined them best.

It was impossible, insane.

She searched through the cards, finding ones she had turned up before, combing her memories. She had sat at the Broken Sword. Telric had not yet come through the door. . . .

The Sword-soldier, the Ace of Swords, the High Priestess. Yes, she remembered. Then, the Prince of Demons.

The door had opened, then, and he had come, cloaked and hooded, into the inn and straight to her table. She turned the cards, remembering, scattering them over the blanket.

The Sword-soldier again. The Queen of Swords—the Night's Angel herself. Then, the Silver Lady. Frost glanced out the window at the moon, then back at her cards. The Six of Cups. Yes, there it was! That meant an old friend.

The reading had gone no further. Telric had stopped her and pushed back his hood. “Do you remember me?” he had asked. Those words reverberated in the air, tormenting her.

Finally, she shook her head. For a long time she stared at the faces and symbols on those particular cards, denying what they suggested. She rose and paced the room, then returned to the bed to stare at the cards again.

It was impossible.

She could not tell the future. Even the simple magic in the cards was beyond her. The witch-power had been stolen from her long years ago by her own mother's curse. The fortunes she told at the inn had always been lies.

But those cards . . .

It had to be coincidence, she decided. Such things could happen with the cards. Even for a fraud they were unpredictable. Many people—especially street people—tried to earn a
quinz
or a
minarin
by telling fortunes, and few had any idea at all of what the cards truly meant.

Her breathing slowly calmed; the rapid beating of her heart slowed. She put away the cards and sat back on her bed with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up so the moonlight could not touch her.

Coincidence
, she repeated to herself.

But there was a nagging element of doubt.

It seemed that through the cards she had predicted Telric's coming.

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

When I was young

The sea rose up in ire at my command.

When I was young

The Gift of Tongues

Was mine, wind and fire flowed from my hand

And every lie was golden, each illusion grand

When I was young.

 

Frost passed through the gates of Kyr as the first morning light crept into the east. The sentries hesitated when she approached. The sight of a woman bearing weapons was no common thing in Keled-Zaram. She wondered briefly if they recognized her as the kohl-eyed descroiyo who worked the Broken Sword. Or did they recall the story of the woman who had killed the lover of King Riothamus and shamed the rite of
Zha-Nakred Salah Veh
? She strode ahead, and wordlessly they cranked back the massive doors.

She was tempted to laugh as she walked away from Kyr. The events of the previous night had left deep marks on the gate guards. The blood in their veins had turned to milk. It was never the cream of the garrison that drew gate duty, but men of uncertain courage, oldsters or the very greenest of recruits. There was only a handful of them now to guard Kyr; the slaughter of all their comrades had plainly shriveled their spirits.

But they were good men in their own way, she allowed. Frightened they were, but they stood their posts. And out of compassion they had allowed her inside last night. Nor could she forget that it was her son, flesh of her flesh, who caused their fear. Any temptation to laugh died within her, replaced by an angry shame.

She moved across the plain, one hand gripping the hilt of her sword. Quick, purposeful strides took her away from the city until the high walls were only distantly perceived and the smells of industry no longer spoiled the air.

Then Frost put two fingers to her lips and blew a long, piercing note. Instants later she spied the unicorn. He raced from the east out of the sunrise, charging toward her over the hard ground. His black mane lashed the wind, tail streamed straight behind him. The earth churned up beneath his heavy, pounding hooves.

A flash caught her eye—the morning light rippling along the ebon spike upon his brow.

It didn't matter what kind of creature he was, she told herself again. It was enough that they belonged together.

The unicorn stopped suddenly, then paced up to her with lowered head. His deadly horn slipped past her ear as he nuzzled her shoulder. She smiled, drew a hand through his tangled forelock, and scratched his ears.

“Time to ride, my friend,” she said, grabbing a handful of mane, swinging onto his broad back, “just as we did in the old days.” Ashur snorted, tossed his head high. She touched booted heels lightly to his flanks.

The ground flowed past, an endless and undistinguishable series of gentle slopes and rises, grasslands and barren fields. She lost herself in the rhythm of her ride, forgetting time, oblivious to the scorching sun that burned the exposed flesh of her neck and face, to the wind that chapped and cracked her lips. Ashur's mane tickled her as she leaned close; his muscles and hers worked as though they were one, together in sleek, swift harmony.

She could not draw breath enough to sing for the rush of the air. Yet music swelled within her, filling head and heart, powerful melodies that set her blood to singing. Old tunes from her youth sprang unbidden into her memory. Potent, stirring lyrics lost over the years suddenly returned. The thunder of the unicorn's hooves and the beating of her own heart set the cadence. It was the wind that blew the tune and the sun that sang the high notes.

She could have ridden forever like that; Ashur could have carried her off to whatever land of myth he came from, and she would not have cared. Instead, they reached the peak of a low crest that suddenly was familiar. She jerked gently on a handful of mane, and Ashur stopped.

She looked down at the ruins of Soushane. The music within her abruptly died. She slid to the ground, took a few steps down the slope, and stopped. Ashur came quietly to her side.

A host of carrion birds circled over the rubble, artfully winging among the wispy tendrils of smoke that still curled upward into the blue sky. Beyond the town, a small sea of black ash extended nearly to the horizon, marking how the field fires had spread into the grassland before the heavy rain must have finally extinguished it.

The smell of burning still lingered in the air, but it was the scent of charcoal and ashes, old smoke. There was another scent, too. She knew what it was. In the town it would be stronger. Stronger yet as the sun grew hotter and hotter. Tomorrow, no man who wandered by would dare approach Soushane's ruins. The air would stink with rotting and contagion.

What had become of the citizens? she wondered. Surely some had escaped. She had seen them flee. Would they not return to mourn their dead? At the very least, wouldn't they come back to scavenge what remained of their belongings? Hoe blades or rakes, even eating utensils, were all expensive and could be salvaged from the aftermath of fire.

She walked slowly down the hill, and Ashur followed. The odor of death was not yet too strong to bear. The earth, however, was slick with mud; she picked her way carefully and didn't hurry. Once she nearly slipped but caught herself by stumbling into Ashur. “Thanks,” she mumbled. He only regarded her with those weird, flickering eyes.

Soushane's people would never come back, she realized. Ashur's unnatural eyes had given her the answer to that puzzle. The fire that burned their homes had been unnatural, too, sorcerer's fire that came in the shape of an immense, evil hand, that spread with impossible speed, leaving no building untouched. To Keleds who had little traffic with sorcery or wizardry it must have seemed that all their gods had deserted them, and that all the hells had come to claim their pathetic world. She recalled the terror of the gate guards in Kyr and how that city's people had shuttered themselves inside their homes. Kyr had not experienced the fire, nor the slaughter that followed. How much greater must be the terror of the farmers and herdsmen who had survived those events!