Banner of the Damned (66 page)

These thoughts took no more than a pair of heartbeats, then he said, “Tell the rest of your people.” And he walked away.

So I would not lose my magic lessons, I thought happily as I ran upstairs to tell Anhar and Pelis and to pack up my few belongings.

As soon as I reached the courtyard, Lnand and Tesar emerged from the gloom, bulky in their snow-stippled winter gear, their noses red and faces scarf-hidden. “How is Retrend?” one asked, and the other, “How is Fnor?”

I gave them a quick report on the two, who were recovering steadily, then:

“Mount up,” Haldren called.

As the noon bells clanged we clattered out of Darchelde’s great court, the walls lined with people in spite of wet, sloppy snow. Ivandred saluted the towers and the gate, and then we were off.

We each had horses to ourselves. Birdy rode directly behind us. Knowing he was there made me a little less afraid. I hadn’t spared a single thought for Tesar since we’d first arrived at the castle, but I missed her steadying presence as I rode.

How soon we forget unpleasant things! The unending cold, the discomfort of fast riding, the horrible travel food, had faded out of mind. Each came back with an unpleasant jolt.

We rode hard that day. The prince had sent scouts ahead so that fresh horses were waiting, which meant a great deal of galloping.

It was difficult to see anyone inside the bulky woolen hats, mufflers, gloves, coats, and the like. As the sun set, and we slowed not to camp but to change horses again, I overheard someone cursing and the tail end of someone else saying, “… dead long before New Year’s.”

I remembered what the king had ordered:
I want you back by Convocation!
Ivandred was expected to execute his orders and cross half the kingdom by New Year’s Firstday. But that was only three days off. I’d seen the big map on the wall down in the dining room enough times to gauge distances. Even if we galloped all the time, we could not possibly reach Choreid Dhelerei in three days.

We rode through the night, torches streaming.

The first dawn was bleak and blue. I shivered with cold, hands and
feet numb. Ivandred called a halt at last when we reached a frozen river. A check made it clear that we could get across, we did not have to seek a bridge.

As the warriors dismounted to lead the animals across the ice, I became aware of squeaking snow near me, and hoped to find Birdy. Instead, Ivandred gazed down at me through bloodshot eyes as he clutched a carefully wrapped roll of cloth against his chest.

“Come,” he said hoarsely.

Too cold and tired for anything beyond the briefest spurt of astonishment, I bent into the wind and followed him some paces away, until we lost sight of the others. The howl of the wind guaranteed we would not be overheard.

“We can talk here.” I could only see his blue eyes, which seemed so expressionless to me as he went on, his breath clouding, “The Herskalt says that he is teaching you.”

“Yes.” I made The Peace. “Our queen ordered me to watch over her sister, and learn about magic if I could.”

His head turned. I saw how exhaustion-marked his eyes were. I could see the effort it took for him to speak.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I learned magic for the same reason. To protect the kingdom. My father… does not know.”

So that’s why the Herskalt lived at Darchelde, I thought.

Ivandred looked around. “He said you read Fox’s record.”

“I read some of it,” I said, hoping he was not about to examine me on its details.

He shrugged, his arm holding the rolled cloth protectively against him. “There is the Marlovar Bridge,” he said.

Snow obscured all but an arched line over the river.

“I used to come here often,” he continued, “whenever I rode either way. By transfer, once I learned how. Somewhere nearby was where Inda hid. He was not quite twelve. Saw the shape of the attack. Within four years he was famed over the world. At sixteen, I…” He gazed into the whirling white of the departing blizzard. “It’s a merciless measure of success,” he said finally, his voice rough.

Then he gestured with the rolled thing. “Here is his wedding shirt, worn by my ancestors for several generations. We have not had a gunvaer—that is our word for queen— for a century, but everyone knows of this shirt. In their eyes, I will not be married to Lasva until I wear it and we say the vows before Convocation.”

Another pause.

“My father forced Andaun-Sigradir to ward the castle so that it is impossible for me to transfer. I can only use transfer tokens made by Andaun. They alert the Sigradir to my presence, and he tells my father.” He looked my way. “Or I can be sent, which will not alert Andaun. I will give you the Destination pattern for the royal castle. You must transfer me.”

“I can do that,” I said.

I’d transferred myself enough times by now to know how to do it. Transferring another was essentially the same—except for the knowledge that another’s life depends upon your skill. He described a Destination that he’d made outside the city gates and beyond the perimeter of the wards. “Got that?” he asked.

“Please repeat it once more?”

He did. I took off my gloves so I could see my hands, as I couldn’t feel my fingers performing the right gestures. Wind flayed them with tiny needles of ice, but I was fast, and he vanished.

I struggled back into my gloves, stumbled downwind and discovered the rest of them had crossed the river. I found them awaiting me on the riverbank, and shortly after that we encamped on a farm, in a barn, the exhausted warriors busily caring for the animals.

On New Year’s Firstday, I felt Lasva’s scrollcase fill with notes. When we camped, Haldren brought out some hoarded distilled drink and passed it from hand to hand. The Marlovens began to sing the
Hymn to the Beginnings
:

At the same time, two weeks away in Choreid Dhelerei, Ivandred stood beside Lasva, who shivered in a gown of royal blue silk. Ivandred gripped her hand tightly. He wore the four hundred-year-old shirt, which was far too wide for his slim body, and too short. It came down to the tops of his legs instead of mid-thigh. Lasva had been afraid that the
sight would cause smirks and averted eyes, but the moment they walked out to stand below the king on the royal daïs, the entire room went silent with awe at the appearance of that age-yellowed cloth. They all knew what it was, covered over with crooked embroidery of birds and horses, ships and suns, and animals that Lasva couldn’t identify.

Lasva could hear Ivandred’s breathing and feel the tension he tried to lock inside as he took the sword the king handed him, and gravely held it out so that she could close her hand over part of its hilt, the second time she had ever touched a weapon. His fingers in the icy air were cold, and so were hers, but together they made a little warmth as they spoke the words of marriage-union, which bound them in the eyes of the Marlovens.

She had learned the words but they meant little to her. Meaning had shrunk to the steady pair of ice-blue eyes meeting hers, and the quiet desperation she saw there, that he tried so hard to hide. So she spoke the words, pitching her voice to be heard, as she’d been trained, and shuttered away the ironic knowledge that for all those listening her marriage in Colend, brilliant as it had been, had no significance.

When they finished, she felt Ivandred’s fingers tighten, and his hand guided hers as together they lifted the sword skyward, signifying prince and princess, future harvaldar and future gunvaer.

Then the king’s raspy squawk rang out as he led the
Hymn to the Beginnings
:

In the king’s hall, and in castles all over the kingdom, as well as around our low fire in a barn, people sang words similar to those I’d read in the record, up there in Darchelde tower—but then, the language had changed. As yet I had no interest in why.

As soon as the song finished, someone started another, and then another, as a fiery beverage was followed by jugs of cider. Though we had so little in common with these Marlovens, for this brief time, we were
united in our humanity, our shared exhaustion and wish for comfort, and our hope in the year’s turning.

The hot cider and the distilled liquor warmed us. It was followed by the local beer, which I’d never tasted before my arrival in this country. It was delicious, made from barley and oats. It warmed the insides as effectively as the cider, and it tasted better than that sticky-sweet, rye-based travel bread, which I nonetheless choked down until the edge of hunger was gone. I joined Pelis and Anhar, where bedrolls had been spread out against one wall of the barn. Pelis soon fell asleep. Anhar gnawed determinedly at travel bread gripped in both hands, wisps of her black hair—usually so tidy—draggled around her blotched countenance.

I stretched out between the two dressers. Anhar’s shadow slipped over me, but I was comforted by her presence, remembering how she’d cared for me after that terrible fire. She seemed unaware; yes, her eyes were closed as she worked determinedly at the bread.

Rhythmic movement caught my attention, the whirl of color in time to a galloping rhythm. On the other side of the barn Birdy sat, juggling his silks in small circles, the rhythm steady, the circles perfectly described, braiding the air in a neverending pattern. Watching it was oddly soothing. He smiled at me, but then his gaze shifted to Anhar, and the quality of his smile changed. I can hardly say how. Something in the muscles beside his eyes, the upper lip, conveyed tenderness. Special meaning. I lay down to sleep, a last drifting thought,
He knows how to juggle. When did that happen?

H

Lnand leaned over. “We’re nigh the city.”

Anhar muttered, “They have to furbish up for that?”

“I suspect it’s like arrival at Lily Gate,” I said.

“Ah-ye. I didn’t think they had any manners at all,” Anhar said cheerfully.

We mounted up, riding in strict column over a hill, and there, on the horizon, was Choreid Dhelerei, the biggest walled city I’ve ever seen. It appeared, through the light snow, to be built on three hills, with too many towers to count. When we neared enough to see the figures on the gate, Haldren raised his fist, and the horses moved from trot to canter and thence to gallop.

Horns blew from the walls, echoing from tower to tower. As we approached the gates people scattered. We galloped through the gate without a check, the banners streaming, clattered up a street that was lined with people, most of whom either cheered or touched fingers to chests.
The walls here had poles from which banners flew. The highest tower flew the great stylized gold eagle against the black of Marloven Hesea.

We approached another gate, only somewhat narrower than the city gate, and stopped in an enormous courtyard, the animals blowing and steaming. Stable hands ran out to the halters as we dismounted.

Among the many runners in subtly different versions of the typical austere Marloven coat or robe were women in dark blue belted overrobes with fine bleached linen robes beneath. They picked Anhar, Pelis, and me out and led us up a crowded spiral staircase made out of stone. Bare stone. The only thing that made many parts of this castle seem less than a prison was the stone’s warm sandy color.

Ah-ye! How dismal I found that castle! It was cold, the air was stuffy from inadequate venting and far too many people walking the halls, and the halls were unconscionably long and determinedly bare of any attempt at civilization. Servants in various dull colors moved to and fro. The hallways were no more than long stone tunnels.

Anhar’s eyes were wide. Pelis walked head down, her brow contracted. We stopped before a wooden door carved over with Venn knots of barley-beards and little four-petal flowers. Women carrying steel weapons stood guard at these doors, but after exchanged glances and some signal I did not catch, they let us pass.