Valor of the Healer (7 page)

“Good morning, Mama.” Yselde was barely four years of age, clad in a white frock trimmed with red and gold, and showed both her parents’ blood. Her skin was almost as light as her father’s, but her anxious eyes were as dark as any Tantiu maiden could wish. “Papa said you’re sick and I must be quiet today.”

“Quite sick, but if you’re good and quiet, it’ll help her get well.”

Khamsin’s face softened. “My little flower, don’t worry. I’ll soon mend. I’m strong.”

“Papa said a bad man made you sick!”

“Just so. But your lord father will protect his hall and house.” Her eyes now shining, the duchess touched a hand to Yselde’s cheek. “You and your brother will be safe.”

Reassuring a child after such turmoil as had befallen Lomhannor was nothing with which Ulima could find fault. Yet she despaired. If there was anything besides Djashtet in which a Tantiu woman of noble caste might place her faith, it was to be a strong warrior’s wife. No matter what enmity for Holvirr Kilmerredes she might bear in her heart, Ulima couldn’t deny that in the way of his country, he was precisely that. What promises he sowed in the fertile soil of his daughter’s mind would be nourished equally well in Khamsin’s.

But she couldn’t give up yet. Not with the vision still lodged like a thorn in her thoughts.

“Good morning,
akreshi
, but I must stand by my counsel that you move the girl—”

“Fie, this is hardly a fit topic to pursue when young ears can hear.”

His eyes were bright; he’d secured fresh snuff when the household guards under Captain Semai’s command had found the poisoned snuffbox at his bedside, and Ulima could tell he’d availed himself of the new supply that morning. But his liveliness didn’t dim the warning in his gaze, a warning she hardly needed. She’d learned long ago of the folly of confronting this man in the sanctity of his family chambers. And there was the child. She could speak deceptions about the little one if it would help carry out the Lady of Time’s commands, but she couldn’t wage war with words upon her sire and dam before Yselde’s very eyes.

Thus Ulima instead diverted her attention to clearing away her bottles of herbs, returning each to the basket she had brought. “Forgive me,” she murmured. “I’m simply concerned about what happened in these halls.”

Holvirr smiled the lazy, crooked smile that had charmed many of the servant women, and waved a negligent hand. “Then I’m sure you won’t dispute the value of gentle speech for tender ears. Or the affirmation of bonds of blood after the adventure we’ve had.”

Not unaware of the conversation around her, Yselde chimed in, “Papa said I may visit Mama for as long as she’s awake.”

“Of course you may, little bloom.” Her mother tickled the girl under her chin and made her giggle.

To the two of them Holvirr cast another languid smile, but to Ulima he said, “Might I beg you to excuse us? I did promise my little darling her mother’s undivided attention for the morning. I’ll call for you if Khamsin needs your care.”

The duke’s words were amiably phrased, yet Ulima recognized the dismissal in them. She went still, wrestling back her consternation. Had the man somehow divined her intentions? Logically there was no way he could have done, but her visions weren’t born of logic. She kept her features impassive long enough to incline her head to Lomhannor’s master, settle her basket upon the crook of her arm, and reply, “Certainly, Your Grace. I’ll say an extra prayer of thanks for the strength of your house and those within it.”

He waved her on her way. “May I beg you for the further indulgence of a stop in the kitchens? As long as I’m upholding vows this morning, I’d like to make certain Faanshi receives that cake I promised her.”

Startled, Ulima stopped at the door and looked back at her niece’s husband. “As you wish, my lord.” It took everything in her power to suppress the chill that shivered through her as she met Holvirr’s eyes.

“My thanks. Obedience should be rewarded. And our little Faanshi
is
such an obedient girl.”

* * *

She had erred. She’d trod her own path, in a direction Djashtet hadn’t commanded her to take. The scorpion she’d sought to plant in Khamsin’s thoughts had turned round and delivered her the bitter venom of self-realization. Ulima bore the weight of this lesson alongside her vision as she made her way into the kitchens—only to pause as she overheard the voices of one of the kitchen girls and the gardener who was her brother. They whispered together out of earshot of the other servants, the girl’s expression mortified, her sibling’s that of profound unease.

“Just hush about it, Gilbard. Hush about it right now! You know we’re not to speak of her, do you want to get us both tossed out to beg for our suppers?”

“You didn’t see her, Meighan. I’m telling you she glowed. It wasn’t natural!”

“Magic?” the girl squeaked. “I thought she was only mad.”

“I saw it with my own eyes. Smacked her with my trowel, I did, when I was bricking up the cellar window. She fell, and she glowed.”

“Himself must know! He’ll tell the Hawks—” A feminine mirror image of his own freckled countenance, Meighan’s features took on her brother’s troubled frown. But she didn’t glance toward Ulima, scant steps to the right down the corridor.

Neither did Gilbard, who looked rattled enough that she didn’t doubt he spoke the truth—that he’d somehow triggered Faanshi’s power. “The Hawks were
here
,” he whispered. “Two of ‘em, riding with the guards all day yesterday, and they didn’t take her. Shouldn’t they have taken her if they knew?”

Holy
Djashtet
be
praised
.

Ulima allowed herself only that brief, fervent prayer of gratitude for a second chance. Then, once more summoning the veil of her will, she stepped forward and showed no surprise or disapproval when the two siblings snapped up frightened glances at her interruption.

“Perhaps the Hawks haven’t taken the girl because they don’t yet know of her. Perhaps you should go and tell them.”

Chapter Six

“You’ll tell me again, Vaarsen, why you and your partner were at Lomhannor Hall,” Shaymis Enverly bellowed, his fist falling like a boulder on his oaken desk, “because I can’t have heard you correctly the first time!”

Rigid discipline held Kestar at attention. Beside him Celoren stood stoic-faced, only a twitch to his jaw betraying the same unease now roiling through Kestar in a fervent prayer.
Blessed
Mother
,
get
us
through
this
and
I’ll
light
a
dozen
candles
in
Your
name
. “We were investigating the possible presence of magic on His Grace’s estate, Father.”

“The possible...presence...of magic.” Enverly bit off each word as he pronounced it, stumping around the desk to stand before Kestar. The priest took full advantage of his greater height, leaning forward to pin him with his gaze, contempt turning his eyes the hue of polished steel. “The Knights of the Hawk do not concern themselves with the
possible
. Either there is magic, or there is not. The sacred amulets speak, or they do not.” His hand shot up, seizing the knotwork pendant at Kestar’s neck. “What did yours have to say about this
possible
magic?”

His throat dry, Kestar said, “It didn’t speak, Father.”

“I must have misheard you again, boy. What did you say?”

Nothing about Father Enverly looked amiss. His white cassock was immaculate, the amulet he wore brightly gleaming, his iron-hued hair humbly tonsured. Decades of sedentary duty in Camden’s church had merely blurred the fitness of his youth rather than erasing it, and military service as well as Hawk training still showed in his carriage.

But Kestar was exhausted. He and Celoren had ridden with the Lomhannor guardsmen and the Camden watch for most of the previous day and night, scouring the countryside for the escaped assassins. They’d found nothing save a bewildering trail that split and rejoined itself over and over again, while their amulets slept beneath their uniform shirts. They’d returned to Camden only to receive a summons to the town church, where they discovered that Camden’s resident priest was beside himself with wrath at their involvement in the search. Nor was it a summons they could refuse, for any priest or priestess of the Church held higher rank than a member of the Order—especially when that priest was himself a former Hawk.

Enverly’s outrage made Kestar feel like an errant cadet and, moreover, it made no sense. Resentment stirred beneath his unease. It needed no further impetus than the scent of the man, rich but sour underneath, like too little incense burned to chase away the smell of something unclean—and the man’s hand on his amulet, a contact that felt inexplicably wrong. Kestar had to struggle to keep from pulling it from his grasp as he repeated, “It didn’t speak.”

“That’s what I thought you said.” The priest flicked the amulet back at him and shot his gaze to Celoren. “And you, sir? Your amulet also remained silent during this escapade?”

Hazel eyes fixed on the wall he faced, Celoren reluctantly replied, “It did, Father.”

The truthful answer only deepened Enverly’s scowl. “Thus you took it upon yourselves to intrude upon the private estate of a nobleman of unimpeachable repute, in the middle of the night, without the slightest indication from your amulets that magical activity was taking place?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Kestar cried.

“Pray tell me, then, what it was like?”

“I received information that strongly implied that acts of magic would be committed at Lomhannor.” It was the same half-truth he had offered to Holvirr Kilmerredes, and for no reason he could name, Kestar balked at the thought of offering more. “Celoren elected to search with me despite the hour, but the decision to search was mine.”

“Received information from whom?”

“I can’t reveal the identity of my source, sir.” That too was truth, as far as it went. That Kestar had no idea where his premonitions came from was, to his mind, also not anything the priest needed to know.

Undeterred, Enverly leaned toward him once more. “Then how did you receive this information?”

The man’s pernicious scent clashed with the memory of radiance in his dreams, and Kestar wrestled back panic, searching for an answer and finding none. But before Enverly could press him further, Celoren interjected, “Kestar received a message in the night, Father, while we slept. We didn’t rouse in time to see who came to our door.”

Enverly’s gaze whipped to the older Hawk. Kestar flashed his partner a grateful smile, and as Enverly rounded back on him, Celoren winked.

“So this mysterious missive,” said the priest, disbelief dripping from every syllable, “led you to believe that
possible
magical activity might occur at Lomhannor Hall, and you took it at its word and intruded upon the privacy of the most influential nobleman in the western provinces?”

“We had no intention of intruding upon His Grace’s privacy.” Enverly had every right to emphasize that point—Kilmerredes
was
the most powerful lord in the western half of the realm—and yet Kestar was disturbed. No Adalon citizen was above holy law, man or woman, wealthy or indigent. Why then this insistence that Lomhannor was inviolate? “We rode up the mountain to see what our amulets might tell, and only when we met the guards hunting the assassins did we seek permission at the Hall to search the grounds.”

“The assassins might have used magic,” Celoren said. “The duke owns many slaves. He must have enemies among the elves.”

“Did you find any evidence to support such a theory?”

Now it was Celoren’s turn to hesitate, Kestar’s to uncomfortably confess, “No, Father.”

“And did this message you received claim that the heathen, inhuman rebels would attack Lord Kilmerredes’s Hall?”

“No, Father.”

“Did it provide any evidence whatsoever to justify your presence on private land? Names? Locations? Descriptions of the alleged magic which would be committed?”

Kestar’s hands tightened their grip on one another behind him. “No, Father.”

Enverly’s patrician features twisted into a profoundly expressive sneer, honed by the traceries of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Have you at least retained the message, so that I might peruse it with my own eyes?”

There was nothing to retain but the memory of sunlight shining like a star within him. Kestar could have offered that, but every last one of his instincts clamored against it. “No, Father, I have not.”

“We destroyed the note,” Celoren hastily supplied. “It pled for us to do so, as though the author feared discovery.”

Enverly paced, and at last lashed out at them both. “In other words, you interrupted your assigned patrol to investigate an unsubstantiated warning of
possible
magical activity, and you can’t even substantiate the warning itself. Therefore I’m back where I began—with two Hawks who invaded a private estate on the strength of nothing more than their own whims.”

“Sometimes the Blessed Anreulag guides us in unfathomable ways, Father,” Celoren said.

“Do not preach to me about the Voice of the Gods!” His face livid, Father Enverly thrust his amulet forth like a blade between his fingertips. “I saw Her in Her glory on the battlefields of Tantiulo when the two of you were still learning your prayers. Do you think me ignorant of the workings of Her will?”

Celoren’s eyes grew more earnest as he dipped his head. “We wish only to serve our all-seeing Lady. The course we took seemed the only one.”

Kestar followed his partner’s example, bowing his head and closing his eyes. “If we’ve erred, Father, we must of course ask absolution.” That allowance was difficult; the part of him that had withheld the premonition insisted that he and Cel had done the right thing. “But wouldn’t it have been a greater sin to fail to seek and perhaps fail to find users of magic upon His Grace’s lands? To be the Blessed Anreulag’s eyes to see and Her swords to strike is our duty.”

“
Arach
shae
,” breathed Celoren.

“Indeed,” Enverly grunted. “Keep this within your sights, then. Holvirr Kilmerredes is a powerful man—not only in Adalonia but in Tantiulo as well, for he married into one of their greatest noble clans. If he takes offense at your excursion, it’ll be you, young Hawks, who’ll be struck.”

“We’ll remember, Father.” That too was difficult, for even as Kestar spoke, fury rolled through him. He couldn’t lay a finger on the why of it, but he didn’t doubt what he heard in the priest’s tone and saw sparking in his eyes.

A threat.

“See that you do.” Enverly scrutinized Kestar. “Your father was in the Order, boy, was he not?”

His tone was strangely casual given his earlier ire, and it prickled uncomfortably along Kestar’s taut nerves. Just barely, he refrained from growling as he answered. “Yes, Father.”

“See that you do not disgrace his name. That will be all.”

* * *

“Do you want to tell me,” Celoren said as they left Father Enverly’s office and made their way out into the nave of the church, “why I’ve just lied to a priest?”

“I don’t care for it either,” Kestar said. Agitation propelled him down the aisle between the pews, and his hands were as restless as his feet, pulling his handkerchief from a pocket and wiping his amulet as he walked. “But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I just...couldn’t. Something’s wrong here, but gods forgive me for a wretched pair of eyes, I can’t see what.”

“Wrong with Father Enverly?” Celoren’s longer legs easily matched his stride, and his gaze, already grim, went sharp.

“With Enverly, or at Lomhannor Hall. Perhaps both.” They reached the narthex doors, but rather than continuing through them Kestar paused. His right hand slid his handkerchief back to its pocket, but his left gripped his amulet tightly. “Cel, you’re my partner, my friend. Do you trust me?”

“That’s a ridiculous question—”

“It’s one I must ask. You said yourself you’d find the nearest priest to excommunicate me if we found nothing that warranted Hawks’ eyes on the mountain—but we’ve found nothing yet. And we just left a priest.”

Celoren cast a pensive glance back the way they’d come, but to Kestar’s heartfelt relief his uncertainty seemed momentary, giving way to swift resolve. “Kes, I don’t understand this gift of yours, but it hasn’t led us wrong yet. I trust it. I trust
you
. Besides, for a man who was once one of our own, the good Father seems overly enamored of reminding us where humble Hawks such as we stand against a duke.” Then he paused. “Not to mention that he had to bring your father into it.”

With a grimace Kestar released his amulet and rubbed his brow. “That sat ill with me,” he admitted. His head hurt, from weariness and from the mere passing mention of Dorvid Vaarsen. All around him was the beauty of a lovingly tended church, needing only the sunlight glowing down through the stained glass windows high upon the walls to give it the sanctity of the divine. Yet he found no peace in it. It was bad enough that the light reminded him of the premonition. Shaymis Enverly’s invoking of his father’s name had wrecked what little composure he’d had left.

Would he ever be able to stand before a Hawk, priest or priestess over the age of twenty-five who would not look at him and see only the son of the Deliverer of Riannach?

Put
it
aside
. “But that isn’t the problem. If you trust me, Cel, then trust me when I say that there’s a...a
light
at Lomhannor, and when I saw that man he was like a cloud across the sun.” His hand shot out to point back toward Enverly’s office with all the vehemence he dared not release into his voice lest he be overheard. “There’s something at that Hall we’re meant to find, and he doesn’t want us to see it.”

“Kestar, that man’s a priest, and before that he was a Hawk. If you mean to charge him with obstructing our sworn holy duty I’ll stand with you, but we’re going to need—”

The deep groaning of the church’s heavy outer doors and the crash of them swinging shut again cut him off, and both Hawks snapped up their heads at the cry of an anxious voice.

“Father Enverly! Father Enverly!”

As the inner doors before them opened, Kestar and Celoren jumped back just in time to avoid colliding with the lanky orange-haired young man who barreled into the nave. The youth froze as he saw them, his freckled countenance flooded with awe and somber purpose. “M’lords, praise the gods I’ve found you! I was going to ask Father Enverly how I could get you a message, but here you are, and—”

“You’ve found us.” Celoren stepped forward again, lifting a hand to invite the newcomer to speak. “I’m Celoren Valleford. This is Kestar Vaarsen, my partner. And you, sir?”

“Gilbard Hetch, m’lords.” The man tugged his forelock at them both. “I’m a gardener up at Lomhannor Hall. Tend the grounds for His Grace, I do.”

“How may we help you, Mister Hetch?” Kestar asked, with as much calm as he could muster. But he knew what the gardener would say even as he asked the question, and if the sudden stiffness of his partner’s frame was any sign, so did Celoren.

“It’s like this, sirs. I’m here to report a mage.”

* * *

In the end they had to suffer Shaymis Enverly’s presence on the ride to Lomhannor. The gardener’s shouts drew the priest from his office, and when Gilbard Hetch gave him the same fervent report, Kestar could find no excuse to prevent the man from accompanying them. While it was the Order of the Hawk’s pledged duty to seek out the elf-blooded users of magic, it fell to the priesthood to purge them of the abomination that gave them their strength. So the gods, and Their Eternal Voice the Anreulag, had always decried. Father Enverly was the nearest priest at hand, and it was his duty, right and privilege to conduct the Cleansing that would purify Lomhannor’s mage.

Enverly in fact uttered those very words as he sent one of the boys who tended the nave out to fetch his horse. Yet Kestar noticed cold determination in the priest’s eyes, a look that convinced him that against all the Church’s teachings, the man wished them far away from their quarry at Lomhannor Hall.