By the Sword (27 page)

If she married Daren, she would never again be able to totally be herself.

If she didn‘t, she'd spend the rest of her life keeping her head above water, and wondering if the next sword thrust, the next arrow, was Death's messenger.

Security, or liberty?

It was enough to give anyone a headache, and she had an incredible one, when, in the pearly-gray moment of pre-dawn, someone tapped lightly on her door.

She nearly tripped over her own feet in her haste to answer it; she was expecting Tarma, but it was Daren.

He was white and shaking, and from the tear streaks on his face and his reddened eyes, he'd been crying. He tried to compose himself, his upper lip still quivering as he tried to breathe more calmly.

Kero stood, frozen, with her hand still on the door latch. She couldn't even begin to imagine why Daren would look this way; surely he hadn't been upsetting himself that much over her, had he? But his next words told her everything she needed to know.

“Kero—” he said, hoarsely, as tears began to trickle down his face once again. “Kero, it‘s—my father's dead.”

For one long moment, she couldn't seem to do anything but stand there stupidly, staring at him. Then his shoulders began to shake with silent sobs, and she reacted automatically, pulling him inside, taking him over to the bed and getting him to sit down on the side of it.

“What happened?” she asked, bewildered. Last
she'd
heard, the King was in excellent health, and Prince Thanel had been safely married off to the Queen of Valdemar.
Dear heavens, that was over a year ago. Closer to two. Daren expected to be called home then, but it didn't happen, and that was when he started making hints about getting me ennobled. Have we been here that long?

She tallied up the seasons in her mind, and realized with a bit of shock that she had been Tarma's pupil for over three years. She glanced reflexively at the mirror built into the wardrobe, and the Kerowyn that looked back at her, hard, lean, eyes wide with surprise, was nothing like the ill-trained girl that had arrived here.

Never mind that. Right now I have to get some sense out of Daren.
She held Daren against her shoulder and let him cry himself out; that was the best thing she could do for him right now. As the pink light of dawn filled the room, he got a little better control over himself, and groped after a handkerchief. As usual, he'd forgotten one. She'd never been quite so conscious before of the fact that he was younger than she by at least a year. At this moment he felt more like her brother than her lover.

“Th-thanel,” he stammered at last. “It was all Thanel. He's dead. A week or so ago. He tried to murder his wife.”

He what? But his wife-
“He tried to assassinate the
Queen of Valdemar?”
she exclaimed. “Dearest gods—but what does that have to do with your father?”

“When they told Father, he—I don't know, something happened. Maybe his heart g-g-gave out on him. There's a branch of Kethry's mage-school not far from the capital; they sent word there and one of the mages sent word to Kethry and she w-w-woke me.” He choked up again, and couldn't get anything more past his tears. She patted his back absently, one part of her intent on comforting him as best she could, but the rest of her mind putting together all the possible ramifications.

She gave herself a mental shake and got back on the right trail.
But that was just before Daren came. Valdemar took some pretty severe losses, and they can't possibly have recovered enough to declare war.

She tried to calm Daren down a little, but he was incoherent; she hadn't realized he cared that much for his father. So she just held him close, rocking him back and forth a little; it felt like the right thing to do, and it seemed to soothe him as well. He didn't utter a sound after she stopped asking him questions, and that made her heart ache all the more for him. Those silent sobs bespoke more emotional pain than she had ever felt in her life....

Finally he stopped trembling; the storm of voiceless weeping that shook him went the way of all storms. She continued to hold him until she felt a little resistance, as if he wanted to pull away from her. Then she let him go, and he slowly raised his head from her shoulder.

Sun streamed in Kero's window; ironically, it was going to be a beautiful day, but all prospect of enjoying it had just flown with the migrating birds. Daren winced away from the light, his eyes dark-circled, swollen and red, his face still white as the snow outside. “I think you should get some rest,” Kero said quietly. “I know you don't think you'll be able to sleep, but you should at least go lie down for a while.”

He bristled a little, which she took as a good sign. At least he wasn't going to fall over helplessly and let her take charge of his life.

“Really, if you don't at least go put a cold cloth on your eyes, you aren't going to be able to see out of them,” she insisted. Finally, he nodded, and stood up.

“You'll come get me if you hear anything, won't you?” He seemed to be taking it for granted that she would be with her grandmother and Tarma.

That was as good an idea as any. “I will,” she promised, and got up to lead him out the door.

They parted company at his door, and she raced down the hall to the stairs, then took the stairway down as fast as she could without killing herself.

The common room was empty, but there was light coming from under the door leading to Kethry's “working rooms.” Kero hesitated a moment, torn by the need to find out more information, and her reluctance to pass that doorway. Finally curiosity won out, and she tried the latch.

The door swung open at a touch, and Kero pushed it aside. At the far end of the room, Kethry was seated at a small, marble-topped table, bent over a large black bowl, and Tarma sat beside her, face utterly impassive. There was a light source inside the bowl itself; Kethry's face was illuminated softly from below, her unbound silver hair forming a soft cloud about her head. Kero coughed delicately; Kethry ignored her, but Tarma looked up and motioned to her to join them.

She picked her way gingerly across the cluttered room. She was never entirely sure how much of the clutter was of magical use, and how much was simply junk, relegated here to be stored. That huge, draped mirror, for instance—or the suit of armor that couldn't possibly have fit anything human, or even alive, since the helm was welded to the shoulders and the face-plate welded shut besides.

Mostly she tried not to look at much of anything. There were some stuffed animals—she thought they were animals—on shelves along the walls; shapes that didn't bear too close an inspection if one wanted pleasant dreams.

As she neared the two women, she saw that there was movement down in the bottom of that bowl; the light eddied and changed, casting odd little shadows across Kethry's face. When she finally reached them, she saw with a start of astonishment that there was a tiny man looking up at Kethry from the bowl, gesturing from time to time, and making the light change. Behind the man was a kind of glowing rose-colored mist, and the light appeared to be coming from that soft and lambent haze.

“It's only an image,” Tarma said softly, as Kero found a stool and placed it beside her. “It's Keth's son, your uncle Jendar.”

“—so, according to the Herald, the prince had been part of this conspiracy for some time. One of the other Heralds, their Weaponsmaster, somehow got wind of the assassination attempt, and when Selenay rode out for her exercise, he took a group of young warriors with him and followed her at a discreet distance. So when the conspirators ambushed her, they got something of a surprise—first of all, none of them expected Selenay to be much of a fighter, second, they didn't expect the rescue party. Thanel was fatally injured during the fight. He died a couple of candlemarks later.”

“That's just as well,” Kethry replied, her posture relaxing just a bit. “Is there any sign that Thanel might have gotten any help from Rethwellan?”

“None that anyone there has come up with, and no one at Court seems very inclined to look for it here.” The bearded figure cocked his head to one side, a gesture that made him look very like his mother. “Mother, do you want me to look into it?”

“No, not really,” she replied. “I'd just as soon leave that to Valdemar. At this point it isn't a threat to Rethwellan or the royal family, and I hope you'll forgive me for being insular, but that's really all I care about.”

Jendar shook his head. “If you insist. I will have to admit that I'd just as soon not deal too closely with the Heralds. They're well-intentioned, and really good people on the whole, but they're too intense for my taste. Too much like you when that sword wanted you to do something.”

“And the one time I was in Valdemar was enough for me,” she replied. “I'm glad I was just barely across the border. Have you ever been there?”

He shivered. “Once, like you, just barely across the border. I kept feeling eyes on the back of my neck, but when I'd try to find out what was watching me, I could never find anything. I got the feeling that whatever it was, it was very unfriendly, and I had no intention of staying around to find out what it was and why it felt that way.”

“It gets worse if you work any magic,” she replied soberly. “Quite a bit worse. By the way, this is your niece, Kero.”

The tiny man peered up at Kero out of the depths of the bowl. “Looks like she takes after the Shin‘a'in side,” he said, with what Kero assumed was a smile of approval. “Kero, if you are ever in Great Harsey, look us up. The school is just above the town, on the only hill within miles. We're not hard to find, there're only about forty of us here, but the town itself doesn't number above two hundred.”

She swallowed, with some difficulty. “Uh—thank you. I—uh—I'll be sure to do that.”

The man laughed merrily, and Kero saw then that he had his mother's emerald-green eyes. “Just like every other fighter I've ever met—show her magic, and she curls up and wilts.”

“Yes, and what do you do when someone has a sword point at your throat?” Kethry retorted with a hint of tired good humor.

“I do my best to make sure I'm never in that particular situation, Mother dear,” he replied. “So far that strategy has worked quite well. Kero, child, if magic bothers you, I suggest you try Valdemar. They seem to have some kind of prohibition against it up there. In fact,” he continued thoughtfully, “I seem to have one demon of a time even mentioning magic to them. Don't know why. It might be interesting to see what happens to Mother's nag of a sword north of the border.”

“That's an experiment I'd rather not see tried,” Kethry told him. “Is that all you have for us?”

“That's all for now,” Jendar said, dropping back into a serious mode. “I'll contact you the usual way if anything more comes up. I know they'll want the young man here as soon as possible; get him on the road tomorrow, if you can. You might tell him, if he seems interested, that his brother is definitely assigning him to the retinue of the Lord Martial with a view to making him Lord Martial in a few years. I'd guess three years at the most; the poor old war-horse is on his last legs, and losing Jad has done something to him. He was looking particularly tottery this morning. Tarma, I hope the young man is up to the challenge.”

“He's up to it,” she said firmly. “I wouldn't turn him loose if he wasn't. Remember, I held him back when Thanel went north because he wasn't ready.”

“Good enough, I'll let the word leak into the Council. Take care, Mother.” The man bowed once, and the light in the bowl winked out.

Kethry raised her head, slowly, as if it felt very heavy. “Thank the Windlady I'm an Adept,” she said feelingly. “The Pool of Imaging took it out of me when I was young. I hate to think what I'd be feeling like these days.”

What—oh, right. Adepts can pull on energy outside themselves to work magic,
Kero remembered. Learning the capabilities of the various levels of mages was something both Kethry and Tarma had insisted she and Daren learn.
“Knowing what your enemy's mages can and can't do may help you win a fight with a minimum of shed blood,
” Tarma had stressed.
“Daren, that blood should be as precious to you as your own, if only because each fighter lost is a subject lost—Kero, you're talking about the fighters to whom you are obligated in every way, and they in turn are your livelihood, so a fighter lost may well represent next year's income lost. Sounds cold, I know, but you have to keep all of that in mind. ”

“What was that?” Kero asked carefully.

“It's a spell only Masters and Adepts can use,” Kethry said, pulling her hair off her forehead and confining it with a comb. She looked terribly tired, and her eyes were as red as Daren's had been. “It's basically a peacetime communication spell—it's draining, it's as obvious as setting off fireworks, and it leaves both parties open to attack. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages to my way of thinking.”