Dark Haven (11 page)

“We’ve taxed your strength today,” Senne responded. “I’ll work with the others to secure the wedding, and set a timetable to march on Curane. We can meet again to discuss the details.”

Soterius opened the door to the corridor, and motioned for Mikhail and the guards. Amid profuse expressions of concern for his health, Tris took his leave, grateful to escape. There were no more interruptions until they reached his chamber. Zachar the seneschal was waiting for them. Coalan hurried to turn down the bedclothes and fetch Tris a cup of tea. With Zachar was Sister Taru.

“Esme was by earlier,” Zachar said. “She wasn’t pleased that you were out of bed,” he added dryly. “And she left some more pain medicine. She said if you were going to push yourself, you would probably need a stronger dose. I’ve taken the liberty of canceling your commitments tomorrow before noon.”

Tris could feel Taru’s magic as the healer‐ mage checked the spot where the arrow struck.

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Her familiar mental presence slipped warmly against his mind, easing the pain and draining off tension. When she finished, Coalan stood ready with a cup of tea. Taru mixed a powder into the tea that smelled of berries and anise and handed the cup to Tris.

Tris breathed in the steam. The warmth felt good on his face, and the herbs’ scent began to relax him before he even had a chance to sip the liquid. “Don’t tell me you’re just hanging around for the wedding,” he said with a glance at Taru. “What’s keeping you this far from your citadel?”

Taru smiled and adjusted the sash on the brown robe that marked her as one of the Sisterhood, the elite and secretive group of mages once led by Tris’s famed sorceress grandmother, Bava K’aa.

“You catch on quickly.” She gratefully accepted a cup of tea from Mikhail and moved to warm herself by the fire. “I am the Sisterhood’s delegate for the royal wedding,” she said with a mischievous grin. “But I’m also here to confer with some of the mages from citadels in the south.

All along the Flow, magic is becoming unstable.”

“And it’s getting worse,” Tris agreed. “I can sense it, when I hold the Court of Spirits or dispel the ghosts of Jared’s victims. It’s like a dark shadow around the edges of power. It’s a drain—it makes it harder to control the power.”

“It will also affect your battle magic,” Taru warned. “The Flow runs from above the Northern Sea down through Dark Haven; it cuts across Margolan, down through Trevath, and into the Southern Kingdoms. Curane’s keep is almost directly on top of the course of the Flow. That means the problems will get worse the closer you are to the source of power.” She grimaced.

“And the same splintering that makes it harder for you aids Curane’s blood mages.”

“Damn.”

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“Sister Landis is pressuring all of the Sisters to rise above mortal politics and tend to arcane matters. She wasn’t happy that we trained you. She wants to keep the Sisterhood neutral.” Taru gave a harsh chuckle. “That’s not happening.”

“Do tell,” Mikhail leaned against the hearth.

“Arontala’s blood magic not only tainted the Flow, it scarred the land. It’s especially bad near the Dhasson border, where he called down the magick beasts. Our Sisters could easily stay busy just cleansing the land and blessing the ground where the ashtenerath were buried.

“This is personal,” Taru went on. “We’re Margolan born. Before it’s over, you’ll need battle mages in the Southern plains. Landis is likely to have a revolt. There are many of us who would go rogue before we’d turn our back on you or our kinsmen.”

“Interesting,” Mikhail observed. “The Blood Council faces much the same challenge. Lord Gabriel won a concession in letting vayasb moru fight against Arontala. But most of the vayash mora who helped us win back the throne have already said they’ll fight to keep Tris there. Some have even joined the army.”

“It’s a damn good thing, too.” Tris yawned. The medicine was doing its work. “We’re short on soldiers.”

Mikhail nodded. “You’ll need us to go up against Curane.”

“What will the Blood Council do?” Tris asked.

“Like the Sisterhood, they face a revolt. Enough of the older vayasb moru wish to support you and they won’t influence their fledglings to withdraw. Even the Blood Council can’t put down a 90

full rebellion.”

Tris passed a hand over his eyes. Crucial as the information was, he was fading rapidly.

“This can wait for another day,” Taru said with a glance at Mikhail. “We’ll let you rest.” Coalan saw them to the door.

Zachar shook his head. “You really haven’t changed at all. Always demanding too much =

from yourself. You were the most stubbornly persistent child I ever saw,” the white‐haired seneschal said, chuckling. “I remember watching you learn to ride. It didn’t matter how many times you fell off or how badly you were bruised. Even when you broke your arm, nothing mattered until you could stay in the saddle.”

Zachar had been around for as long as Tris could remember. Carroway’s music might be the heart of Shekerishet, but Zachar was the brain—an able administrator who oversaw the complexities and finances with honesty and rigor. It was Zachar who had presided over the workings of the castle and its lands when the king went to war. Zachar knew every servant’s name, and could locate any piece of silver for the table or sacred item for ritual. The wiry man had looked old to Tris since Tris had been a child. In other ways, he never seemed to age. Zachar was as constant as the rising of the sun. During his exile, Tris had often wondered about the seneschal’s fate. He’d assumed the worst. Within a month of Tris regaining the throne, a robed man had arrived on foot— dirty, unshaven, dressed as a tradesman too poor to even own a donkey. The man had been rebuffed twice by the watchmen when he requested to see the king, until he refused to leave without an audience with the captain of the guard. Harrtuck recognized Zachar immediately, and had personally escorted him to Tris. There, amid tears and embraces, Zachar recounted how he had escaped Jared by slithering down a garderobe the night of the coup, pushing a cart of offal out of the city gates, and taking refuge with a rug merchant in a distant town. For Tris, the sight of the familiar retainer was almost as comforting as seeing Bricen himself. Having Zachar back at his post made their chance of succeeding all the better.

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“How are the preparations for the feast day coming?” Tris’s pain dulled, but so did awareness of his feet and legs, making him think it might be safer to just spend the night in the chair.

“The kitchen is laying in supplies, sire,” Zachar reported. If pressed, Zachar could recount precisely which supplies and in what amounts. “Carroway has the entertainment planned. The minstrels are already rehearsing. He has a new ballad about your father that is quite moving.”

“Haunts is going to be hard this year.” Tris’s voice was just above a whisper. He knew he wouldn’t be the only one for whom the memory of Bricen and Serae—and of his sister Kait—

would be as real as if their spirits were present.

“The kingdom mourns with you, my liege,” Zachar said. “We all loved them.”

“I miss them, Zachar,” Tris said quietly. “I miss them all so much. Especially Kait.”

“Shekerishet has indeed been a shadowed place since Kait left it.”

“She would’ve loved Kiara,” Tris said with a sigh. “The wedding is the only thing that keeps me going right now. Knowing that Kiara will be here with me, soon.”

Tris tried to stand, realized that the medicine had taken full effect, and gratefully accepted assistance from Zachar and Coalan to cross the room. Coalan hurried to help Tris remove his boots. Tris stretched out, pulling the blankets over him.

“Sleep well, my king,” Zachar said softly, leaving a lantern burning by the bedside. Tris heard the door latch behind him, and closed his eyes.

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CHAPTER SIX

Two days later, Tris gathered his heavy cloak against the bitter late autumn chill. Assembled in the courtyard was a delegation of the Scirranish, the families of those who had vanished under Jared’s reign. More than two dozen family members gathered, on horseback, in wagons, and on foot, waiting silently for the march to begin.

“The guards are ready,” Soterius said, riding close to where Tris waited while his horse was saddled. Tris was just as glad that protocol meant someone else saddled and readied his horse for him. With healing from Esme and Taru, his arm was mending quickly, but he had no desire to test it with a heavy saddle.

Tris glanced at the guardsmen outside the stable. “You can vouch for them?”

Soterius nodded. “I only took guards who lost family to Jared. Believe me, there was no shortage of possibilities.”

Tris swung up into his saddle. He fidgeted, knowing that the ring mail he wore beneath his cloak was going’ to make his shoulder sore by the end of the day.

“Lovely weather,” Soterius said, riding beside him. After the assassination attempt, the generals insisted that Tris take a troop of twenty armed men with him whenever he left Shekerishet.

“What do you expect? It’s only a week before

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Haunts.”

The Scirranish waited respectfully, bowing as Tris’s entourage passed. Tris promised the group of survivors that he would go out to yet another of the killing fields, to a clearing a day’s ride from the palace in the farmland around Huntwood. There, half‐buried bones and quickly‐dug mass graves were grisly evidence of a massacre.

Soterius gave the signal to move out, and the soldiers fell into place. Tris and Soterius rode in the middle, with Coalan behind them. They rode in silence until they were outside the palace gates and on the road headed north.

“Do I need to mention that Zachar didn’t think this was a good idea?”

“Should I be surprised?”

“Twenty guards isn’t a lot.”

“It seems ridiculous to march a regiment out here just to turn around and go back home again.”

Soterius shrugged. “Army training is full of pointless maneuvers. Dig a hole and fill it in. Build a wall and knock it down. Marching out and back is one of the saner things we do.”

Tris watched his friend. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Soterius did not answer immediately. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” he said finally. “But I have to give them their rest.” His voice caught. “Danne said that father died thinking me a traitor. I would give anything to set that straight.” Coalan’s expression was stony, but his eyes were painfully unguarded. “Danne and Anyon will meet us there. They’ve been trying to get some 94

crops in. I sent them all of my share in the reward money from King Staden to rebuild, but it’s been hard. Barely any men left around there to help with the farming, let alone to rebuild the house. Some of Mikhail’s brood have been doing what they can—Jared slaughtered their kin as well.”

With an early start, they would reach the killing fields by twilight, when the line between the realms of living and dead stretched thin. The soldiers carried provisions for a night in the field, and the Scirranish had brought their own supplies.

“I actually feel safer now than in Shekerishet.”

“Oh?”

Tris inclined his head toward the rag‐tag band that followed the soldiers. “The Scirran‐ish are as close as kin. They found each other while they searched through fields looking for bodies. They support each other—food, clothing, looking after orphans. By losing a family member to Jared they gained a new family— the family of the disappeared ones. A stranger among them would be noticed as quickly as an outsider in a hill country village.”

“Which would be when they were a day’s ride away.”

“Exactly. No one in the kingdom has more reason to keep me alive and keep Jared’s supporters off the throne.”

“I’ve heard rumors that some of the kitchen staff actually tried to poison Jared, he took so many of their daughters.”

Tris nodded. “Carroway told me that, too. You know he always has the below‐stairs news, and 95

the kitchen staff love him like a son.”

“So do the dowagers. Now that you’re almost married, I think more than a few of the court matrons have an eye on Carroway as a prize for their daughters.”

Tris grinned. “And what about you? I’d think being a general would make you all the more marriageable.”

Soterius rolled his eyes. “I’ll pick for myself, thank you. You know,” he said, “I did finally find a girl who caught my eye, while Mikhail and I were out rounding up rebels. She was a bar maid up in the high country, but she could throw a knife as well as Carroway. She and the bar owner were helping bards get out of Mar‐golan before Jared could arrest them.”

“And?”

“I sent someone to find her, but she disappeared. Maybe it’s for the best,” he sighed. “I don’t imagine the court would be kind to her.”

The roads were nearly deserted, and the weather turned cold as they made their way north.

Their horses picked their way through the wagon ruts and mud, while bare trees on either side of the roadway shivered in the wind. Tris saw the soldiers flinch with every click of branches, scanning for danger.

We can’t stay on knife‐edge forever.

They rode without incident, reaching the killing fields as the sun was low in the sky. Although the soldiers rode much better mounts than the Scirranish who followed them, the Scirranish 96

managed to keep up. The delegation had grown as they traveled, and now numbered well over one hundred people. Tris admired their determination. On the outskirts of the fields, Soterius gave the signal and the procession stopped. Tris and Soterius dismounted. Sahila, the Scirranisb leader, slipped down from his plough horse and ambled toward them.

Sahila bowed awkwardly. “Your Majesty,” he said. “When you’re ready, we’ll show you where the graves are.”

“Let me prepare.”

Looking out over the land, Tris‐ could see where the muddy ground had been trampled. Mounds and sunken places marred the field. In the distance he could make out the ruined shadow of Huntwood. There will be time to feel later, he told himself. But not now.

If the families of the dead seemed unperturbed to have a Summoner as king, the men of Margolan’s army were still coming to terms with the idea. Tris had. no doubt that Soterius had chosen soldiers as much for their openness toward magic as for their unquestioned loyalty. It wasn’t that military men doubted the existence of magic—any fool who’d been to war and faced an enemy mage knew that magic was real. Healing magic and charms for luck or love were common enough. But few had seen high magic worked up close, and fewer still had been in the presence of a true sorcerer‐caliber mage.