Brotherhood of the Wolf (68 page)

The lords went into the antechamber of the pavilion, into a room that had a ceiling eighty feet high, while a servant went to announce the party to Queen Herin the Red. The sun shining through the top layers of silk cast a scarlet glow, so that even the golden urns along the walls were bathed in a ruddy hue.

Many lords stood gaping about at the vast tapestries on either wall to the left and right. Both tapestries showed the emblem of Fleeds: a great roan mare pawing the air, while flames issued from its nostrils. The tapestries showed the mare upon a green field, and on that field, one could see every blade of grass, every dandelion, every posy, every ant.

Outside, the young knights resumed their race around the palace, blowing their warhorns.

“Well,” Sir Langley joked, “I don't know how we'll ever hold a council here with all of this racket.”

His ignorance of course was excusable. The Queen's Sanctum at the heart of the palace was virtually soundproof.

The palace was enormous. Its roof consisted of three layers of cloth, one above another, but each nearly five hundred feet across. The interior was divided into rooms by great curtains and tapestries that formed the walls.

Furthermore, wooden ramparts fashioned of logs had been built beneath the great awnings of the tent, forming floors and stairs, further dividing the pavilion into three separate levels. The framework of these logs allowed tapestries to be hung as walls. Thus, the Red Queen's palace was less secure than a palace of stone, yet far more serviceable than a simple pavilion.

Queen Herin soon entered the antechamber. The Queen had red hair and pale skin, eyes as dark blue as bachelor's buttons. She was tall, strong. She smiled, but her smile did not hold any joy at this meeting.

She knows that I must beg for troops, Gaborn thought, and she knows that she can spare me none.

Queen Herin wore scale mail, with a silver buckler at her waist that displayed the symbol of Fleeds in red enamel. In her hand she bore the royal scepter of Fleeds, a rod of gold made like a horseman's crop, with a red horsetail at one end.

“Your Highness,” Queen Herin greeted Gaborn, and did the unthinkable. She dropped to both knees before him and bowed her head.

Then she offered her scepter.

Among the horsesisters of Fleeds, no high queen had ever bowed to a man.

Gaborn had hoped to beg Queen Herin for the use of a few knights and some food for his men and horses.

Instead she offered Gaborn her realm.

41
THE SMELL OF A RISING STORM

In the late morning, Iome spurred her charger onward toward Fleeds, riding hard, with Myrrima and Sir Hoswell at her back. Having no charger that could match her pace, Iome's Days was left behind.

Iome had taken endowments at Castle Groverman—more than she'd expected, but in the end not so many as Myrrima did. She had two endowments of brawn to her credit now, one of grace, one of wit, one of sight, and four of metabolism. With that, she also bore endowments from dogs: one of hearing, two of stamina, two of smell. She felt like a wolf lord indeed, powerful, tireless, and deadly. It was a heady pleasure, one that filled her with a renewed sense of responsibility.

Yet Myrrima had bested her. The villagers had heard how Myrrima had slain the Darkling Glory, and they heaped endowments upon her. So many that Iome had felt obligated to give Myrrima more forcibles from her private horde. Sixteen men and women went under the forcibles for Myrrima, so that between those endowments and the ones from her dogs, she now had nearly as many endowments as did any captain in Heredon's guard.

Myrrima had always been large, beautiful. Now her endowments lent her an air of fierceness. So the three Runelords now rode without any other guard but their own strong arms. Yet as they rode, Iome noted that Sir Hoswell remained a respectful distance behind the women, and Myrrima avoided his presence. She did not welcome his company.

Wind rippled over the grass in steady waves, gusted at Iome's back, pushing her south. Though the sky was blue,
the wind smelled of a rising storm. The heather had sprouted tiny purple flowers after last week's rain, leaving the distant fields awash in their odd gray-blue hue. Iome ran her mare, for the morning felt cool and her mount seemed eager to outrace the wind. Though it raced at forty miles per hour, Iome felt as if it were hardly testing its pace.

In the past when riding a force horse, Iome had never been able to follow the movement of its hooves with her eyes. Now, with so much metabolism to her credit, she could follow her horse's movements easily.

The rest of the world seemed to have slowed dramatically. A crow beating its wings against the wind seemed to hang painfully in the air. The sounds of thudding steel-shod hooves on the road were too deep, more like a frowth giant pounding on a huge drum.

Even more disturbing, Iome's thoughts seemed to race. Before, without her endowments of metabolism, riding all day would have seemed a short journey. But now her journey of one day would seem like five.

She'd seldom had so much time to merely sit and think. And after the long day's ride, she would have to live through the night. With all of her metabolism, thirteen hours of darkness would seem like sixty-five. In the dead of winter, force soldiers with high metabolism often became irascible and despondent, for the nights could seem interminable to them. Iome steeled herself to face the coming winter.

She raced past a few solitary oaks whose leaves had mostly blown away, the bones of trees, clothed only in ivy twined high in their branches.

Ahead lay a shallow, muddy creek winding across the prairie, and there where the road dipped, a fellow sat on a narrow log bridge watering his horse in the spare shade of an oak.

Even half a mile away, Iome recognized his tunic. He wore a courier's colors, the blue of Mystarria with the green man emblem embroidered on the right side of his chest. In
addition he bore a saber on his hip and wore a steel helm with a long visor. A common courier. The fellow was small, with long silver hair, as if it had gone gray prematurely.

Iome raised her hand in signal for Myrrima and Sir Hoswell to slow. There was something odd about this one. Myrrima had met several of Gaborn's messengers before, and she could not quite name her concern.

The messenger saw them, climbed up from his spot on the bridge, dusted off his tunic. The fellow mounted his horse, rode out of the shadow of the oak, letting his horse plod along. He studied them intently, as if he feared they might be outlaws.

Iome reined in her mount as the fellow approached.

He was a strange one, Iome decided. He was grinning, but not shyly or fearfully. Instead she decided that he had an impish grin, mischief in his eyes.

She urged her own mount forward, until she felt close enough to hail him. “Where are you going, sirrah?”

The courier stopped his mount. “I bear a message for the King,” the fellow answered.

“From whom?” Iome asked.

“Funny,” the messenger smirked. “The King did not have tits, last that I saw.” It was his crude way of rebuking her for asking too much about the King's business, yet Myrrima had never heard such comments from even the roughest Mystarrian.

“But the Queen did—last I saw,” Iome said, trying to keep the rage from her voice.

The messenger's smirk disappeared, yet his deep brown eyes glittered as if he laughed at some private joke. “You're the Queen?”

Iome nodded. His tone suggested that she somehow disappointed him, did not live up to his expectations. Iome had taken several endowments, but none of glamour or of Voice. She did not look like a queen. She was trying to decide whether to have the man beaten, or merely dismissed from service.

“A thousand apologies, Your Highness,” the messenger said. “I did not recognize you. We have not met before.”

Though he mouthed an apology, there was none in his tone—only mockery.

“Let me see the message,” Iome demanded.

“My apologies,” the fellow said. “It is only for the King's eyes.”

Iome found her pulse racing. She was angry, yet suspicious.

This man spoke quickly. She knew that he too had more than one endowment of metabolism. That was not common for a courier. She smelled him, but could not detect anything amiss. He smelled of horse and the road, of linen and cotton and perhaps some liniment that he'd used to service a wound on his horse's leg.

“I will carry the message,” Iome said. “You're going the wrong way, and doubtless your mount is fatigued. You'll never catch the King.”

In consternation, the messenger glanced behind along the road he'd been traveling.

Surely if he'd come from Tor Doohan, he'd have spotted Gaborn on the road. Which meant that he'd not ridden the most direct route last night, but had traveled along some side road.

“Where can I find him?” the courier asked, looking back.

“Give
me
the message,” Iome demanded.

The fellow caught her tone, turned and studied her with one eyebrow cocked. Sir Hoswell caught her tone, too. She heard him slide his horseman's hammer from the sheath at his saddle.

Still the courier did not hand her the message pouch. “I demand it,” Iome said.

“I… I only meant to spare you the trouble, Your Highness,” the messenger said. He reached to his pouch, pulled out a blue-lacquered leather scroll case, and handed it to Iome. “For the King's eyes only,” he warned.

Iome reached for the thing, and the Earth King's warning rang clear in her mind. “Beware!”

She hesitated for a moment, studied the messenger. He did not lunge at her or draw steel.

Yet she knew for certain that he presented some danger. From a distance she examined the pouch's exterior. She'd heard of southern assassins who placed poison needles on implements. Perhaps something like that might be at work.

But she could see nothing ominous on the exterior of the case. The pouch was sealed with wax, but no signet ring marked who might have sealed it.

The messenger leaned forward, stared hard into her eyes. A taut smile turned his lips upward as he offered the case.

He's daring me to take it, Iome thought.

She reached out and snatched—not for the case, but for the fellow's wrist. His eyes went wide.

He shouted and spurred his mount so hard that flecks of blood flew from the horse's flanks.

He was a small man, hardly taller than Iome, and without quite as many endowments as she had. He struggled to urge his horse past her, and Iome clamped down hard on his wrist.

As she did, her own forearm brushed the surface of the message pouch. The sensation she felt on doing so was almost impossible to describe—she felt movement over the surface of the pouch, as if thousands of invisible spiders skittered across its surface, bumping into her arm.

In horror she squeezed the courier's wrist and twisted, hoping to force him to drop the case.

To her surprise, the fellow's bones snapped. She had taken endowments of brawn hardly more than an hour ago, and so had not learned her own strength.

The message case went flying to the ground.

The fellow's mount surged forward, but Myrrima had already reacted. She charged to Iome's defense. Sir Borenson's massive warhorse slammed into the messenger's smaller mount.

The courier's horse floundered backward and stumbled.

Torn from his horse, the courier rolled to the ground.
Myrrima fought to remain in her saddle, ended up clinging to her horse's neck.

Iome wheeled her charger, fearing that the courier would leap on Myrrima. Though Gaborn had warned her to beware, she saw that they were three against one, and she felt confident.

“Hoof!” Iome commanded her mount. The warhorse reared and pranced forward, pawing and kicking.

The courier leapt up, wild-eyed. He laughed maniacally. Sir Hoswell shouted and spurred his horse forward, wielding his horseman's hammer.

Seeing that he was outnumbered, the courier suddenly leapt into the air—and flew!