Warautumn (34 page)

Too soon he found the bottom, but along with it, the
current found him. It dragged at him relentlessly, but he fought it, intensely aware that he had left friends in peril, but also realizing that he—perhaps—might be in a unique position to help them. Maybe. If he could find something hard or sharp—a broken limb, perhaps—with which to make a spear.

He felt about desperately, finding nothing but smooth, moss-covered stones and, now and then, a vine.

Meanwhile, above him, he could feel as much as see the chief geen treading water as it—apparently—sought to climb up the wall where his friends—he hoped—were still scrambling for safety.

No luck, and his lungs felt fit to burst. And then he had an idea. It was a long shot, but anything was a long shot now. Still … Maybe …

A quick scrabble along the bottom located another length of vine, one that seemed rooted there. An experimental tug did not free it and that one test was all he dared. A fumble in the gloom showed him that the vine was in fact quite long. Maybe even long enough to—

He acted as he thought. A quick surge upward brought him directly beneath the geen. Risking accidental evisceration, he snared one scaly leg, quickly looped the vine around it—and pulled with all his might.

The geen had apparently already found some purchase on the bank, and he met resistance at first, but then the tension released and he reeled the vine in at once, even as he backed away to where his earlier flailings had told him was a section of fallen tree trunk.

Maybe if he could loop the vine around that, he could secure the geen. Maybe, if he was lucky, it might even drown.

Assuming he didn’t drown first, for he was in dire need of air himself.

Something swished close to his face—a claw he assumed—and he flinched away.

But something else swished by his shoulder, this time close
enough to draw blood but also close enough for him to see that it was no claw but something white and narrow.

And then he could see nothing but a cloud of blood in the water above him.

He let go. He had to. At the same time, he thrust himself away from the geen and downstream.

When he surfaced again, it was to see the geen struggling to keep its head above the water while yet another carefully aimed arrow thumped home in its throat. More blood followed, and that blood seemed to have awakened the innate bloodlust that characterized all geens, so that an instant later, the victim’s fellows were tearing at their erstwhile leader, even as more arrows picked them off one by one.

Arrows that could only come from one source.

Fighting the current, Riff struck out for the farther, and now friendlier, shore, and when he thought it was safe, turned to watch as the geens, one by one, succumbed to the careful bowmanship of Div, Strynn, and Merryn. As for his other companions, it was hard to tell for sure because of the greater distance to them and the water in his eyes, but he thought they all were safe.

And then his feet touched sandy mud, and all at once he was splashing noisily up the shore toward the beach. Div drew a bead on him as he emerged from behind an outthrust clump of laurel, but her bow swung back around as quickly when she saw that he wore skin instead of scales, and sported neither talons, deadly teeth, nor tail.

“Are they—?” he gasped.

“I think so,” Div gritted. “If your friends will show sense and dive in below them, and then do like you did—underwater.”

Riff needed no further prompting. And with so much noise from confused and dying geens, functional noise was suddenly no danger. “Dive if you can,” he shouted. “Do like I did. We’ll cover you.”

At first they seemed not to hear, but then he saw Lykkon start, point, and then, when Riff had nodded again, leap into the water.

The others followed, with Myx—bless him—taking charge of Kylin.

A moment later, they were all standing dazed and shivering on the beach, scrambling into the clean (and hopefully irritant-free) clothing they had left there, while Merryn rained imprecations on them about carelessness.

“If you and I hadn’t bonded last night,” she raged to Avall in particular. “If you hadn’t mingled enough of your blood with mine that I felt your fear come upon me and knew that something was amiss—”

“I know,” Avall replied glumly as he reached for his drawers. “It was rash, and stupid, and I’m sorry.”

“You can’t be that rash again,” Merryn retorted. “Now, get dressed, we need to start traveling as soon as you can.”

“That’s no way to address your King,” Rann snapped.

Merryn turned in her tracks and regarded him coolly. “King?” she drawled. “All I see is a half dozen foolish, very lucky, and nearly naked men.”

By the time everyone was dry, dressed, and fed, and all their possessions packed and put away, it was early afternoon. At least the men didn’t insist on pissing on the embers of the fire, as Merryn had feared they might, giddy on juvenile masculinity as they all seemed to be. Still, she supposed they owed themselves some frivolity after their near brush with disaster—and found herself mildly jealous of the way Avall was so casually physical with his friends. She had once enjoyed the same kind of reckless sparring with him herself, and not that long ago.
Had she changed, or had he?
—for she could not imagine carrying on like that with either Div or Strynn.

Well, maybe with Strynn. If they were drunk. And no one was around to provide commentary.

Still, it felt strange to leave the pile of boulders, for all she had only rested there for five nights and Avall’s cadre barely one. The Wild could reclaim it now. Rain would wash away the ashes and fill in the postholes; savaged foliage would grow back, and the odd scraps of food left about would be gone before nightfall, courtesy of insects and small animals.

But it was part of history, she reckoned; one of those points at which history might well hinge, in fact; for she had no doubt whatever that they were walking into history at that very moment.

It had been decided from respect for ritual as much as royal right, that Avall, Strynn, and Merryn should ride the horses as they set out, with the rest of the party walking—at least as far as the top of the ridge that housed the geens’ cave. They planned a short stop there, in order to overlook the lake and get their bearings—which basically meant identifying a target on the horizon as close as they could manage to due north. It would be rough reckoning at best, but that was all they had to go on for now, since it would have taken most of a day to retrieve Lykkon’s maps—which, in spite of their earlier frivolity (or perhaps because of it) was a day they no longer felt was theirs to squander. With time being of the essence, the straight route was the only reasonable alternative, though backtracking the way Merryn had come would have been more certain. Still, Lykkon seemed confident that he could manage even without his maps, by a combination of star observation and mathematics. She would have to trust him to it, she supposed. The Eight knew any math beyond that required for smithing (which was mostly geometry) was as mysterious to her as the sea.

In any case, it was a fine afternoon, with the sky as blue as flawless glass and the landscape as beautiful as a dream, for all she knew that dreams often concealed dangers unsuspected. So it was that she found herself surveying the eaves of the forest anxiously, searching for other geens that might still be lurking around. But the woods were empty of any obvious threat, more proof of which came from the horses’ utter lack of
concern for anything but ambling, and the birkit’s sudden urge—perhaps prompted by her human companions’ antics of the morning—to act very much like a cub.

So it was that they traversed the meadow and entered the woods half a shot west of the trail that led to the cave where the geen den lay. Nor were they long in finding a place where the slope was gradual enough for easy going. And then, quite suddenly, they reached the summit. The ground fell away precipitously a dozen spans ahead, but a new trail—probably a game trail—kinked left there, paralleling the ridge crest for another quarter shot or so, aiming slightly uphill toward what looked to be an open space among the trees.

Caught up by the spell of the place, they all turned toward the clearing in silence, with Avall and Strynn still in the lead. A moment later, the trail ended abruptly atop a slab of stone big enough for their entire party—and twice as many more—to stand upon. And then Merryn gasped indeed.

There was the lake, and there was the island within it: a near perfect circle of dark, vitreous stone, festooned by swags of greenery. But that wasn’t what amazed her, though it was as beautiful as any mortal place she had ever seen. No, what took her breath was what she saw when she looked left.

The land sloped steeply to that side, curving around a sort of bay or cup in the side of the ridge that encircled the lake, as though some impossibly huge creature had taken a neat bite from the rim. That, with the slope, permitted the first truly comprehensive view they had yet achieved of the land to the southwest. And there, halfway toward the horizon, lay a sheet of what could only be water: water that Merryn knew with absolute conviction was the signal mystery that had haunted her imagination since she was a child: the much-rumored, seldom-seen enigma that could be nothing else but the western sea.

The presence of gulls wheeling in the sky thereabouts all but confirmed it, as did the fact that Avall had said that the lake water held a faint salty tang, as though the two bodies were in somewise connected.

“Well,” Merryn announced happily, “I’ve seen what I came west to see; now I can leave this place content.”

Lykkon, however, looked more sober. “So near and so far. It’s a pity we don’t have time to investigate more. It would be wonderful to say one had swum in both seas.”

Avall nodded in turn. “It would indeed. But in any case, the trail looks to run that way for a while, so we’ll at least get to come a little closer. And there’s another thing,” he added. “It’s one more reason to return.”

Merryn grinned at him. He grinned back. But Myx was the first to turn his face away and gaze, yet again, at the opposite horizon. “That way lies Gem-Hold—and Eron,” he said solemnly. “And that way, for now, lies the future.”

“There’s a herald on Gem-Hold’s ramparts,” Veen announced breathlessly, from the entrance to Vorinn’s tent. His guards rushed up on either side of her, barring nearer approach with crossed spears, their faces flushed with chagrin beneath their duty helms.

Vorinn tried to suppress a grin. Veen would have brushed right past them in her haste: she who was most conscientious of the entire Regency Council about ceremony and propriety. But then the import of her words struck him in fact.

“A herald?”
He was on his feet in an instant, reaching for his formal cloak, sword, and helmet. “Is that all? Was Zeff with him? Has someone informed Tryffon and Preedor?”

“He’s got a parley flag,” Veen replied quickly, dodging deftly aside as Vorinn brushed by her in his haste. “He’s alone—and I’ve already sent my second to inform the Chiefs.”

“Took long enough,” Vorinn muttered in passing. And with that, he thrust through the outer entrance and into the brighter light of the morning camp.

It was the first day of autumn, he realized—or of the quarter that contained it, more precisely; the Eronese calendar was
quirky that way. Summer and winter were honored with entire quarters—one for joy, one from fear—and lasted forty-five days either side of their respective solstices. Spring and autumn had to make do with eighths centered on the equinoxes and crowded, in autumn’s case, by Near-Autumn and Near-Winter before and after. Which didn’t change the fact that summer was to all intents over and winter not impossibly far away.

In any case, this was an auspicious day—because he had already decided, long before the herald had appeared, to call Zeff down to parley at a hand past noon. That Zeff had preempted him was not important, though he could think of any number of possible reasons why that might have occurred, the most plausible being the same one that had prompted Vorinn himself to act: that only another eighth remained in which an army might return to Tir-Eron in time for Sundeath and the Proving of the King. Who that King would be, if not Avall, Vorinn had no idea. He himself nursed aspirations in that direction, but perhaps Zeff did as well; it would be just like him. And a sovereign from Priest-Clan would certainly be one solution to the current disaffection—though not one Vorinn could endure.

He supposed he would know how things lay soon enough. The way he saw it, Zeff would either call for Vorinn’s surrender or offer up his own. Vorinn had long since prepared replies to either eventuality.

He had reached the palisade now, and saw its primary gate opened before him by a tide of eager-faced soldiers who seemed to have caught the same impatient excitement that had infected Veen. His horse was waiting, too, but he eschewed it. Now that Zeff’s moat effectively filled Megon Vale, it was only a dozen strides to the siege engine that had become the royal viewing tower. He mounted it in haste, waiting for those to catch up who would.