The Rose of Sarifal (3 page)

Shamasar cut one of the driders from the air. But the other was on top of him, and by the light of its burning sword Valeanne could see the stumps of the arrows that protruded from the captain’s armor. Sighing, she raised her crossbow and shot Flower through the brain, six inches beyond the child’s hands—the beast was perishing in any case. With its last strength it reared away, breaking Amaranth’s hold, while at the same time Valeanne reached and grabbed the girl by the arm, pulling her up across the horse’s neck while she bit and fought. Valeanne dropped the crossbow and spurred forward with the two remaining guards. A second drider was down. But now the rest of the dark elves had reached Captain Shamasar and pulled him from his mount. Valeanne bent over her saddlebow. She clasped her hand over the child’s mouth. “Some day you will understand,” Valeanne murmured into her ear. “I’ll save your life if it kills me—I gave my promise to your mother. You disgusting little pig-shit bastard daughter of a fool, are you still too young to see the difference between good and wrong?”

Sometimes, though, the difference is unclear. Amaranth bit down on her finger, and even through the glove Valeanne could feel the little teeth. They were galloping along the lakeshore, the dragonborn up ahead. Valeanne watched the dragonborn raise her head and call out to the hippogriff in a word of flame that burst open the night, a gout of fire from her scaly jaws.

There was a stone platform at the steeple’s top, a hundred feet above the lake. In times past there’d been a temple there, an altar to the moon. That’s where the hippogriffs waited to take them to Snowdown and safety—that much was true. The plan had been so simple. Out of season, there was no one here.

Coming back had been the lie, as the girl must have understood. They’d been betrayed. The plan had been to take a cup of mulled wine at the guardhouse then ride out to Crane Point to see the pair of wild griffons nesting in the steeple at the promontory’s tip, a sight not seen here in a generation. In the evening the hippogriffs would come. But now they had to catch them on the run. If their plans were known, then there’d be soldiers at Crane Point. Sure enough, a flare went up from the lakeshore a mile and a half ahead, illuminating the high stone ruin of the steeple, the broken arches and the gaping perch about halfway up, where the hippogriffs’ wild cousins had made their giant nest. Above them at the platform of the moon, the winged mounts took to the air, trying to escape the sudden light and the bombardment that would follow it, a missile of green fire and a crack of thunder—too late. One of the noble beasts erupted into flame, its feathered wings alight, and Valeanne could hear it screaming as it fell into the lake, obscured at the final instant in a cloud of steam.

The dragonborn repeated her signal then galloped on ahead. She would fight her way onto the promontory, a last, futile ride. Valeanne pulled up sharply by the water’s edge. The second one loomed over her. “Madam,” he
said, “We can do nothing more. I can buy you five minutes, not more than that.” He raised one claw to the ridge between his eyes, then drew his sword and rode back slowly the way they’d come.

“Thank you,” murmured Valeanne. It didn’t matter now. The flare had faded over the lake, and she sat waiting on her horse, the child blessedly still.

“My lady,” said Valeanne, as a second flare rose over the lake. “I’m sorry. I have failed you.”

But as she watched, two enormous shadows rose from the nest on their high perch. Angered, perhaps, by the attack on their smaller, domesticated cousin, or else furious at what they might interpret as a threat to their own offspring, too weak yet to fly, they took to the air. Evading the new bombardment, they wheeled once around the steeple and then dived, stooping above Crane Point, each of their outstretched talons the length of a man.

“I’m glad I could see that,” said Valeanne. She let the girl down to the sand and then dismounted stiffly. She’d spent a long day in the saddle. The girl was docile now, looking up in wonder as the darkness closed in again, her eyes full of tears, her red hair wild. On her neck, above her collarbone, Valeanne could see the rose tattoo.

As the second hippogriff came in and landed on the sand, the girl smiled and clapped her hands. Valeanne tried to soothe her mare as it shied away, patting her once on the rump and letting her go. Then she reached up to touch her shoulder, where a drow arrow had grazed her, deflected by her leather armor. It had scarcely broken the skin. But it was enough. Her arm felt stiff and cold.

The rider was also hurt, his armor cooked along one side, caught in the blast. He reeled in the saddle, holding on to the horn between his knees. His helmet was black with soot.

“Come,” said Valeanne. She lifted the girl up behind the rider and buckled her in. She slid a final gift into the girl’s pocket, something to lighten the darkness. Then she stepped back, and drew her short sword awkwardly with her left hand.

“I’m not going without you,” said Lady Amaranth.

New tendrils of shadow had gathered overhead, hiding the stars. “There’s no room for me,” she said. “Tell Queen Daressin that—”

But the rider touched the beast with his goad. It raised its beak, screamed once, and flung itself into the air, golden wings outstretched. Valeanne watched it climb up in a spiral of darkness out of sight. Then she walked down to the still water of the Ulls, bent to touch it with her sword’s point, and settled down to wait.

C
AER
C
ORWELL

T
HE ONLY NATURAL HARBOR ON THE WEST COAST OF
Gwynneth Island is the long firth that leads up to the ruins of Caer Corwell, once the seat of the House of Kendrick and the prettiest city of the Moonshaes. Elsewhere, in the long channel between Gwynneth and Moray, the granite cliffs tumble to the sea, without a beach or an inlet for more than ninety miles. Or else the poisonous bogs and fens blur the distinction between sea and land. Only in the extreme southwest could any boat hope to find shelter, after beating back and forth against prevailing winds and picking through the shoals and pinnacles that formed the harbor’s natural defenses, the only ones it still retained.

A hundred years ago the firth would have been crowded with merchant ships and ships of war. The harbor itself would have been full of barges and chandlers’ coracles. Any intruder would have had to pass under the towers of the fort, now roofless and abandoned. But on this crisp spring day, as the
Sphinx
came about inside the breakwater, the only creatures Lukas had seen were
gulls and otters, and the dolphins following in his wake. As the crew left the boat and pulled their skiff along the reach, all he could hear was the ringing silence, for the wind had died as they had crossed the bar.

In the clear water he could see the hulks of old ships, sunk at their moorings by the fey and their mercenaries more than a hundred years ago. Now, the skiff crunched ashore. They pulled it up the dry sluice and stowed the oars, then climbed up the great stairs to the first of the stone courts, dotted with statues of ancient heroes. The gnome was first, then the Savage, then Lukas and Marikke, then the shifter and the watersoul genasi, his skin glowing with energy and cold blue-green lines of fire. Last came their leader, the only one of them unarmed as befit his rank—a solicitor from Alaron, and a distant cousin of the king.

“They should be here to greet us.” He frowned. Not yet thirty years old, emaciated and weak chinned, Lord Aldon Kendrick clapped his hands. “Hello!” he cried out. “Hello there!”

“This is stupid,” muttered Lukas, his longbow in his hand. He and Marikke had once tried to defend Kendrick to the other members of the crew, out of a sense of racial solidarity that had worn away in time as his decisions became more and more erratic. That morning, aboard the
Sphinx
, he had spent an hour below deck, curling his moustache and rehearsing a short speech before the glass, inspiring words of liberation and hope.

“Suicidal,” agreed Marikke, priest and healer to the rest of them. Red-cheeked and yellow-haired, she smiled cheerfully.

Lord Aldon carried a salutation from the king, a message for the Winterglen Claw, a shadowy and secret corps of human runaways and rebels, Ffolk and Northlander, united in their struggle against the fey. He carried a promise of money and weapons at some future date, in return for an oath of loyalty to the king, as Lukas understood. The idea seemed vague and insubstantial to him, not worth the risk, except for the money he’d been promised. But still, to sail into the harbor in the bright afternoon, climb up among the empty civic buildings as if knocking on an enemy’s front door—all that was insane.

“You there,” said Lord Aldon, addressing the gnome and the elf—Suka and the Savage—he hadn’t learned their names. “You’ve been here before. What do you suggest?”

They stood in the old Court of the Moon, a stone expanse surrounded by crumbling, yellow-brick buildings and a long balustrade above the port. A dry fountain rose from the center of the square, an alabaster statue of Selûne, goddess of the moon, her face shrouded in an alabaster veil. One of her outstretched arms was gone, broken off at the shoulder.

“You know the fey,” Aldon continued. “I suppose you are the fey, or were, in some cap—”

He broke off as the Savage turned on him. The golden elf’s handsome face was twisted with contempt. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said so far,” he protested, his voice soft with anger. “This is the date and time and place of your meeting with the Claw. I myself am not
convinced these people exist, as I have told you. Yet here we are. What do you think? Is it possible we’ve walked into a trap?”

The Savage made an imposing figure, the sun bright in his yellow hair, gold rings in his nose and lips, gold tattoos on his dark skin, his greatsword on his back. Still, his sarcasm was lost on Aldon Kendrick, who goggled at him briefly then turned to the gnome and asked, “What about you?”

Suka laughed. “I think we’re not important enough. I mean, who would bother?” She was a small example of a small race, dressed in a leather jerkin. Her hair stood out in clumps, a curious and unnatural shade of pink.

“She’s right about that,” muttered Lukas.

He turned to Marikke, but she was gone. She had ambled over to the statue, and stood by the dust-choked bowl under the goddess’s feet. Water, in the old days, had dripped down from her fingers.

“Bright Selûne,” murmured the cleric. As if in answer to her prayer, a single drop of water fell from the goddess’s finger into the stone bowl.

Lukas looked up in surprise. “Ware,” said the genasi in his whistling, eerie voice. He drew his scimitar. Cold fire sputtered along its blade.

The sun was halfway down the horizon. The shadow of the statue protruded almost to Lukas’s feet. As the ranger watched, arrow on string, the shadow faded, though there wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky. Instead, the sunlight itself had changed and weakened as the sky turned color, tending toward a deeper, colder purple,
or as if dusk had suddenly come. At the same time, as if to compensate, the empty iron cressets along the balustrade came flickering to life, first tendrils of black smoke, then a gentle radiance.

In a moment the crew had their weapons out, had assumed their postures of defense, while Lukas ran to the balustrade and looked down over the port, where the
Sphinx
still rode at anchor. Only Lord Aldon stayed where he was, winking vaguely at the sky.

But all was still. Above them, the light had lost its force, and it grew cold. In the center of the square, the fountain overflowed. Lukas could hear a light, sweet laughter, and looked around for Suka—it didn’t come from her. The gnome crouched beside an overturned stone urn, crossbow raised. But from the Palace of the Moon on the west side of the square, someone stepped out of the shadows of the long colonnade, a single eladrin, empty hands upraised, her long black hair braided down her back, dressed in a diaphanous gown of red and green that moved around her when she moved. In the square the water and the fire followed her, flowing from the goddess’s stone hands and rising up from the broken cressets, until the rest of the city and the world beyond the stone balustrade lost substance, faded into shadow in the middle of the afternoon.

The Savage, the golden elf, stood in front of her, his weight on his back foot, his greatsword in his hands. Only he was undiminished by the lady’s brightness, her opposite, perhaps, his yellow hair glowing in the torch fire, his black clothes a source of darkness as she seemed
a source of light. She stared at him, spoke a few soft words in Elvish, then lapsed into the Common tongue, “Please, my cousin, put up your weapon. I mean no harm. I believe you have a secret you might share with us someday, or else share with yourself, but I won’t say anything about that. You also, my little cousin,” she continued, pointing her slender forefinger at the gnome. “You have nothing to fear. I have not come here for revenge, whatever crimes you have committed. You see in me a simple eladrin maiden, here to greet you on behalf of … whom? The Fingernails, is that it? No—the Talons. Forgive me for my lack of skill in your language—no, the Claws, that’s it. The Claws of Winterglen. Such a violent name! You must excuse Captain Rurik—he could not come himself. He had an engagement that could not be broken. So he sent me.”