Rangers of Linwood (The Five Kingdoms Book 1) (11 page)

Ryder blinked. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What won’t I believe?”

“Tesni has figured out how to manipulate dreamscapes and travel between them,” Arya said, her voice growing ever more excited.

That
woke Ryder up. He sat up and immediately began pulling on his boots. “How did you figure this out?”

“Because she came into mine,” Arya said. “Not only did she manage to enter into my dreamscape to speak with me, your clever little girl somehow tricked Agrona into letting slip the means of waking her!”

“Well then what are we waiting for?” Ryder asked, his own excitement growing. “How do we break the curse?”

“Tesni was unable to get anything specific,” Arya admitted. “However, apparently Agrona has not yet heard about your discovery regarding Tesni, because she taunted Tesni about her father being dead-” This drew a snort from Ryder and Arya rolled her eyes as she continued, “-and then she admitted that only her father’s love could save her.”

Ryder had never run so fast as he did just then to the healer’s tent. His entrance, not exactly designed for stealth, woke Enid up. “What is it, Ryder?”

Ryder didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled Tesni into his arms. The girl had been getting worse. Though it had been a struggle, her breathing had at least been steady, at first. By the time they had gone to bed, it had been shallow and ragged. None of them had been sure exactly how much time they had until Tesni had managed to inform Arya, as the bow-mistress had said on the way over, that the girl would almost certainly die at the next sunset.

Not now, though, and not ever. Not before she had lived a long and full life would Tesni be allowed to die if Ryder had anything to say about it. He cradled his daughter gently in his lap and softly kissed her forehead. “It’s alright, Tesni. Daddy’s here. I’m here, and I love you, and you are not allowed to die yet. Do you hear me? I don’t care what that witch says. She was wrong, Tesni. But then, how could she have known that I’m your father? I didn’t even know until your mother finally told me. But it’s all going to be alright, Tesni, because I know, now, and I love you.”

It didn’t seem to work, at first, and Ryder found himself wondering several things. Could Cliona have been mistaken in whether or not he was Tesni’s father? Could it be that it was a different Tesni who just happened to have the same necklace? Could Agrona have known what Tesni had been trying to do and given her false information? Could Arya have been mistaken and not actually speaking to Tesni in her dreamscape?

And then the girl’s eyes fluttered open, and Ryder knew that none of it had been a mistake. For ten years he had thought that turning to Cliona had been nothing more than a drunken mistake. Now, here was this beautiful nine-year-old girl, his own daughter, and he knew that he would gladly do it all over again.

He was grateful to Alastar for taking Tesni in, even if it had meant she was, for a few years, on the wrong side of the law. He was even more grateful to Arya for not turning Tesni over to the authorities that day nearly a year ago. He laughed, then, and hugged Tesni tightly, filled with the joy that only a parent could know.



Tesni had settled into her favored seat up in her apple tree when she first heard it. “It’s alright, Tesni. Daddy’s here. I’m here, and I love you, and you are not allowed to die yet.”

She continued to listen. Did she dare believe what she was hearing? Arya had promised to fetch her father as soon as she was awake. Could her father have been so close at hand? Again, the voice told her that he loved her, and for a moment, Tesni thought that the voice sounded familiar. She was unsure, at first, but then she knew it. That was Ryder’s voice!

Everything seemed to shift, and she was suddenly falling again, but it was a soft, slow, gentle fall. Everything went black for a moment, and then she woke up. Her eyes fluttered around. She saw a curious Enid, an anxious Arya, and then her eyes focused on the face closest to her own. She had not been mistaken in identifying Ryder’s voice as the one who called to her.

Before Tesni knew it, Ryder was laughing and hugging her. She supposed that if it had been some stranger whom Arya had identified as her father, she might have felt a bit more shy and awkward about it all. As it was, she already knew and loved Ryder, had already looked at him as a father-figure, and she wrapped her arms around him, as well. “I love you, too,” she whispered, her voice only a little hoarse from lack of use.

“Be careful with her ankle,” Enid said, suddenly. “She reinjured it in her fall, and I’m still keeping an eye on it.”

“What fall?” Ryder asked. When Arya had told him about the curse Tesni was under, she had neglected to tell him anything about a fall.

Tesni shrank down a little, embarrassed. “In the ropes course,” she admitted. “I got bored and decided to try it. I was almost done when the balance rope snapped.”

Oh, yes, that fall,
Ryder reminded himself. Now he remembered Arya saying something about it. He had been so concerned about the curse on his daughter that he hadn’t truly been paying attention to anything else about the situation.“Has the rope been fixed?” Ryder asked.

“I fixed it as soon as I made sure Tesni was safe here in Enid’s tent,” Arya said.

Ryder sighed. “Come talk to us the next time you get bored, alright?” he told Tesni, who nodded. “Well, Tesni is safe, and as much as she shouldn’t have been in there without informing someone who could supervise, her fall did alert us to the fact that the course needed some maintenance.”

“I went through all three courses because of it,” Arya said, “while you were in town. It helped me to keep busy so that I wasn’t hovering over Tesni and bothering Enid.”

“So, you would have let me on the course if I had asked permission?” Tesni asked.

“Well, I would have gone over the safety rules with you first,” Arya said, “and made sure I was there to supervise.”

“I agree with Arya,” Ryder said. “If you must go on one of the courses, I’d very much like it if you just stick to the ropes course for now. You haven’t even started your training. You are nowhere near being ready for the other two courses. Just, please, let one of us know. So long as one of us knows and you have a Ranger with you who has already earned his or her bow or blade, you can be on the ropes course.”

Chapter 10

So it was that Tesni ended up adding a new part to her routine. Now, every morning after her run, she could be found on the ropes course. She still did the rest of her chores and tended to the horses in the evening, but the morning was
her
time on the ropes course.

Once in a while, one of the other Rangers would join her, urging her on. Word had spread quickly through the camp about Ryder and Tesni’s newly discovered relationship and Cliona’s deathbed confession. Tesni suspected that she should mourn her mother, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Though she had lived with her for the first four years of her life, her memories did not go beyond a smiling face and a few notes from a lullaby.

She supposed that her earliest days must have been happy ones. Ryder had assured her that Cliona had loved her dearly and had searched for her every day from the time Tesni was four until the day Cliona died. How could Cliona have known that Tesni had been found and taken in by Alastar Redleaf?

Somehow, though, the darling of the Ranger camp could not bring herself to cry for the lost mother she didn’t truly remember, and in the end, she gave up feeling any sort of guilt about it and just chose to enjoy now knowing her father and the mother she would gain in Arya when the bow mistress and horse master wed.

The proposal had been a very informal one, and when Tesni heard that Ryder had made his intentions clear while she was still under the curse and that Arya had accepted, she was slightly resentful if only for the fact that she had not been there. Still, a week later, she had been there when Ryder had given Arya an engagement ring, slipping the silver band, as was tradition amongst Elves of any type, onto Arya’s right forefinger, and Arya placed a similar one onto Ryder’s hand. They had also promised that they would not hold the wedding feast if, for any reason, Tesni would not be able to be there, and so the girl was satisfied.

“And who knows?” Arya had said. “It is traditional to wait a year. Perhaps by then, Agrona will be defeated and the true heir to the throne found.”

Arya and Ryder set the date for the summer solstice after Tesni’s tenth birthday. Because his was a tent made for a bachelor, Ryder decided to just let Tesni stay with Arya, an arrangement both girl and bow mistress were comfortable with. It would do, at any rate, until a tent fit for a family could be put together.

And that was what the three of them had become. A family. Alastar visited regularly, never begrudging Ryder for gaining what had once been his, happy merely because Tesni and Arya were both happy. He became a favored uncle and brought Tesni treats on a regular basis, though he was never allowed to give them to her unless he solemnly swore that they were obtained legally. He complained about this regularly, but it was well understood that it was in a joking manner.

In the meantime, Tesni’s friendship with Fiona also continued to grow. The older girl had quickly become proficient with throwing knives, and Branwen regularly beamed with pride at her protégé’s skill.

“She has me working on a swinging target, now,” Fiona said one day. “She also wants me to pick a close-range weapon.”

“I already know what kind of close-range weapon I’ll take up,” Tesni said. “Arya says that it’s common for archers to take up dual blades.”

Fiona blinked in surprise. “Truly?” she asked. “You have more than two years before you can even start training, yet. How do you know that you will even be suited to archery, let alone that you will have a secondary preference for dual blades?”

“How did I know that I was meant to come here instead of stay with the Thieves Guild?” Tesni asked in return. “I just know.”

The truth was, of course, that it was Arya’s influence, as always, that had Tesni knowing what she wanted. The girl adored her soon-to-be step-mother, and the simple fact was that anything Arya said, Tesni was bound to listen to. It was already obvious exactly who Tesni’s mentor would be when she turned twelve and was finally old enough to train formally.

In the mornings, Tesni was now up to three miles on her morning runs. Because she still could not keep up with Arya’s five miles, she ran with Fiona, whose endurance was about the same as her own.

The day before Tesni’s tenth birthday, however, the girls did not come back from their morning run on their own. Arya returned to find Ryder in tears, Tesni missing, and Fiona in Enid’s tent, sitting up but with a massive gash in her leg.

“Branwen went after them when it was well past their normal return time,” Enid explained. “She found Fiona injured and unable to walk and brought her back. She couldn’t find Tesni.”

“It was so odd,” Fiona added. “We never heard the horses coming. When we saw them, though, I realized why. They were sent by Agrona. She has spells on her horses so that they move silently and without leaving a trail. One of them slashed my leg so that I couldn’t run for help, and another one grabbed Tesni.”

“I’ve just been waiting for you,” Ryder said. “I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid if I go after her alone.”

“Don’t worry, Ryder,” Arya said after hearing everything. “We will rescue her and bring her home, and her birthday party tomorrow evening will go on without any more problems.” In her mind, she was already trying to figure out how to get more security around Tesni.

As fast as they could, Arya and Ryder got their horses ready and mounted off, riding hard towards Agrona’s castle.



Tesni was not impressed by Agrona’s latest attack. The woman seemed to get less intelligent as time went on. Yes, the two henchmen who had grabbed her from her run that morning had certainly had nerves of steel to be taking Tesni so close to the camp. She and Fiona were nearly within sight.

Agrona, however, did not seem to even be really trying. The witch was down to straight threats, as far as Tesni could tell, and the girl was starting to get frustrated.

“Look,” she said at last, “I am never going to work for you. You might as well give up. Besides, even if I was willing to steal for you, I don’t even know what it is that you want stolen or what it looks like.”

Agrona looked at Tesni, angry with the girl’s insolence. “It is a golden orb, you foolish child. It is about as large as both of my fists combined, and studded in emeralds. It sits in the Ranger camp. Don’t tell me that Arya and Ryder haven’t told you about it?”

“If they haven’t told me about something, then I’m not ready for the information,” Tesni said defiantly. “I’m sure very few even know about it. Maybe Father and Arya don’t even know, themselves, and you are delusional. That’s what Arya calls you.”

The way Tesni referred to Ryder raised Agrona’s interest. She had been wondering how the girl had gotten out of the curse that had been placed on her. She had been certain that the child was an orphan. What else would she have been doing with the Thieves Guild? She knew that Alastar Redleaf wasn’t the girl’s father, only a guardian. Alastar had admitted as much during her interrogation of him.

And yet, now, here was Tesni, proudly referring to Ryder Greenblade as her father. She had been very specific in the wording of the curse, which meant that Ryder had, indeed, sired the child now before her. That meant the servant girl, Cliona, was Tesni’s mother. She remembered, now, seeing Ryder come up to the palace to visit Cliona regularly for a few weeks eleven years prior. She, herself, had helped Cliona through the birth when the midwife, busy with Agrona’s sister-in-law, had been unable to attend the young lady-in-waiting.