Daughter of Blood (21 page)

“True enough.” Raven finished with the pan and began packing away their food. “Yet I doubt he had many siblings or playmates growing up, if any.”

Nor did I, Malian thought—but she was beginning to appreciate just how hard Nherenor's death would have struck Lightning. She frowned, recalling that misty dawn in Caer Argent and the Sworn youth laughing as he leapt to confront her. “Did you know Nherenor was Ilkerineth's son?”

Raven nodded. “Nindorith's presence in Caer Argent, and before that outside Tenneward Lodge, meant Ilkerineth had a hand in the game. When I saw the Lightning knights with their young lord at the tourney ground, I guessed the rest.”

Malian studied their small fire, still thinking of Nherenor as she had last seen him, one moment laughing and alive, the next dead on the cobbles of a narrow alley. No children, she repeated, and wondered how many in Haarth, and probably among the Derai as well, would think prolonged life worth that price. Raven shook his head when she said so.

“They might reconsider when all whom they call friend, or come to love, live far shorter lives. After a time, they would find themselves drawing back from a world in which nothing else endures as they do, and in which they alone do not alter. Among the Sworn, there have been many whose minds have darkened and their hearts cooled, losing sight of friendship and love as they saw failure, savagery, and destruction endlessly repeated.” He had not looked away from Malian in Stoneford, when he placed Yorindesarinen's sword in her hands, and he held her gaze now. “Some seek feeling at
second hand. Sun's way, in particular, has been by inflicting pain. Others retreat into themselves or interact only within a small, closed circle. Some take their own lives.”

Malian was silent, thinking that no one seemed less isolated and more alive than he did. “Even among the Patrol?” she asked.

“One reason we took up that service,” he replied, “was to stay as close to the cycle of life and renewal, growth and change, as we could. The other was to earn our place in this world through serving it.” Momentarily, his eyes dipped to the saddlebag he was opening, before meeting hers again. “Amaliannarath's argument was that children are part of life's cycle of renewal and change—and so, too, is death. Even before the sword, she felt that our alignment with the maelstrom had trapped us in stasis, which would end being worse than dying.
‘I died a long time ago, so that they might live.'
” Raven repeated the quote. “She has already shared what lies at the heart of why we were apt to the sword's will, as well as her sacrifice.”

He extracted a whetstone from the saddlebag and began to hone his sword. A swallow darted overhead, and Malian watched it for several seconds before turning back to Raven. “Given the current state of the Alliance, it's hard to see how rejoining the Derai will deliver either hope or life.”

She caught the ghost of a smile as Raven sighted along the blade. “Whatever their flaws, the Derai have been proven right on one point: what the Alliance fights for is life itself. However stubborn and unbending, they remain part of that cycle, whereas the Sworn—” He paused as a second swallow joined the first, flitting from beneath the wayhouse eaves. “Fire's choice has never been between the Sworn and the Derai. It's between atrophy and life. That aside”—now the ghost smile became the hedge knight's twist of the mouth—“Amaliannarath foresaw hope if we allied ourselves with you, Malian. I would not go so far as to say that we're rejoining the Derai.”

She smiled and raised a hand in a River fencer's gesture, acknowledging the humor, then almost immediately sobered
as the swallows darted again. Soon, she reflected, they too will be leaving, fleeing south ahead of winter while I journey north.

Raven resheathed the sword and put the whetstone away. “Time we moved on,” he said, and began extinguishing the fire.

Malian nodded and rose, stretching away the last of the night's stiffness before retrieving the horses. Hani snuffled against her coat, hoping for treats, and despite the previous night's violence, flight, and cold, as well as the darkness of her visions, Malian smiled. She also pushed the mare's questing nose away. “Perhaps tonight,” she murmured, “if we can find a decent inn.” She looked around to find Raven watching her from beside Peta. Momentarily, her smile included him, before fading as she considered what lay ahead.

They were to rendezvous with the rest of Fire near the trading post at Hedeld, on the Telimbras, country that was almost far enough north to count as the Wild Lands rather than the River. The Patrol had a fort and training grounds there, ideal for a large muster—and apart from the main road through the Barren Hills, the Telimbras offered the clearest route north. Malian knew the country from her years in Ar, but now her thoughts returned to Amaliannarath's whisper, ghosting through the Cave of Sleepers:
I died a long time ago, so that they might live.

The dead Ascendant may have thought alliance with her would offer Fire hope and the potential for renewal, but events in Aeris, together with her visions, had deepened Malian's doubt over what lay ahead. The Shadow Band adept had learned to keep her own counsel, but the Heir of Night, raised between her father's scrupulous justice and the flame of Asantir's valor, felt that in this case honor compelled honesty. “The Shield of Stars was broken.” Malian relived
seeing
the metal fragments underfoot as Raven swung into the saddle. “The Derai Alliance can no longer rely on the Golden Fire. And Amaliannarath, whatever hope she may have foreseen, is dead.” Death down every road: Malian
felt the chill touch of fear although she kept her voice level. “Whoever stands with me will bear the brunt of the conflict that is coming, and despite your longevity you can still be killed. So riding in my shadow may not bring hope but the extinction of your House.”

Raven was motionless as a statue on Peta's back, his expression unreadable. “What do you propose?”

Malian frowned up at him. “The Patrol has kept the road and river safe for a millennium, so taking it out of the River lands would be the same as taking the Ara-fyr away from the Aralorn-Jhaine border.” She resisted folding her arms in the face of his continued silence. “I'm not being altruistic. The peace of the River, even more than that of Emer and the rest of the Southern Realms, is vital to our supply. Disrupting that successfully, let alone militarizing the River against us, could well win the war for the Swarm.”

Raven was regarding her as closely as she had seen him study unknown terrain. “So you think the Patrol should stay on the River?”

“Yes.” Strategically, he can't disagree, Malian thought. Unless taking the Patrol to the Wall will defeat the Swarm quickly—but we both know that's not going to happen.

“I think you are being altruistic.” Raven, too, was level. “The River argument has merit, but the counter is that even if Fire won't turn the tide of the war, having an armed force to command may open up opportunities you can't foresee or won't be able to exploit on your own.”

He's right, Malian acknowledged silently. Sooner or later—probably sooner—I'll need Fire. Yet the moment she thought it, the vision of Ar assailed by war rose before her, together with the aftermath of Yorindesarinen's battle with the Chaos Worm. Foreseeing might never be certain, but both visions had been very clear.

“I'm the Chosen of Mhaelanar as well as the Heir of the Derai.” This time Malian did fold her arms. “If the prophecy of the One is going to work out in my favor, then arguably it will do so regardless of armies and powers. If it isn't”—if prophecy is going to fail me as it did Yorindesarinen, she
added silently—“then having the House of Fire with me isn't going to change that outcome either.”

“You left out being a Dancer of Kan, a scholar, a sometime bargee, and a priestess-queen of Jhaine.” Peta tossed her head at the same time as Raven spoke, momentarily distracting Malian from the fact that he was smiling at her: not with the hedge knight's sardonic expression, or Aravenor's graver smile from the Stoneford chapel, but an easing into light and warmth. The smile reminded her of Nherenor—and she wondered if she was catching a glimpse of another young prince of the Sworn, before war and betrayal, long years and bitter loss, transformed him into someone that even Emuun, a close kinsman, did not recognize.

I'm staring, Malian thought. But then Raven spoke again, with the hedge knight's familiar intonation, and the moment, like the smile, had passed. “I think we both know that prophecy doesn't work that way. Fortunately, Amaliannarath was farsighted and gave us the means to hedge against exactly the concerns you raise. Fire
will
march, but the Patrol will not leave the River.”

Now it was Malian's turn to remain unmoving, keeping her arms folded and her regard cool while she traversed her first recollection of the Cave of Sleepers, from the moment of her arrival until she spoke with Amaliannarath's ghost. The cavern had been immense and entirely filled by Fire's sleeping warriors. Yet when she had returned during the Midsummer rite, while walking the path of earth and moon, the cave had been empty, even its ghost presence departed. Reality or illusion, Malian wondered now, knowing that in the realms beyond the Gate of Dreams the dead were always more powerful than the living. Illusion, though, was the only solution that matched Raven's riddle. “The Patrol isn't all of you,” she said. “Some of Fire never woke from sleep.”

His answering look was grimly appreciative. “Initially we all woke, but it was part of Amaliannarath's spell that we could sleep again at will. A few have stayed awake throughout, but the rest have taken turns through the long years, serving with the Patrol and then sleeping again, while dream
ing the passage of events.” The appreciative look grew rueful. “I intended discussing all of this once we reached Hedeld, but I should have known you would be thinking well ahead.”

Not far enough, Malian thought, to have decided on a strategy for when I reach the Wall. Afraid Raven would read that truth in her face, she shifted her gaze to the swallows, chasing each other through the bright air—and her seer's power coiled around her again, swifter than the snake that the Aeris caravan guard had called war. Only this time, Malian's inner sight opened into the oak forest that was the Emerian portal into the Gate of Dreams.

Drifts of mist lay between black trunks, and a russet fox slipped out of the undergrowth, stopping with one paw raised to gaze at her from eyes she knew would be the color of barley ale. Above its head, a knot in an oak trunk twisted into a fox's mask, before shifting into the face of Lord Falk, Castellan of Normarch and leader of the Emerian Oakward. The russet fox slipped away.

“Ah,” Lord Falk's expression was as inscrutable as any Raven could muster. “I wondered when you would come calling on me again.”

“I believe we need to talk,” Malian told him. “Keep the horses close,” she added to Raven, as the blackbird trilled again from the abandoned orchard—and she opened up a portal through the medium of her vision, stepping out of the daylight world and into the Gate of Dreams.

T
he far side of Thanir's portal was hot, the air dry enough to suck the moisture out of every breath. Yet despite his armor, he showed no sign of being affected by the heat. Instead he waited, one hand resting on the pommel of his curved sword as he studied this particular pocket universe within the Gate of Dreams. Ahead of him, dunes climbed ochre and tawny through layers of heat, their crests wavering toward the baleful glare of a molten sun. He turned, the shield on his arm flashing, and took in a wide, dry riverbed, dotted with spines of thorn brush, and low brown hills beyond. Nothing moved, but he could hear a steady insect drone nearby.

The body was staked over mounded earth on the far side of a thornbush. The drone was from flies clotted on the wounds where eyes and nose, lips and ears and genitals, had once been. A pattern Thanir recognized as runes had been carved into the victim's skin, and he could see the red lines where the blood had run, despite the skin having burned raw in the sun. His gaze swept the surrounding terrain again but it remained empty, motionless except for the layered heat. Returning his attention to the corpse, he placed his shield against the thornbush, snaring the sun's reflection in its bur
nished surface. Yet neither Thanir nor the shield cast any shadow across the arid ground as he stepped away from the body. When he spoke, his tone was conversational. “It's always surprised me that you and Aranraith don't get along better. You have the same appetite for pain and death.”

The sun in the shield wavered, its zenith and nadir extending into a line around which all other light bent. Slowly, the line wavered toward Thanir, and although he did not look toward the shield's surface, he smiled as though at some secret jest. Keeping his eyes on the heat shimmer between the staked out body and the dunes, he spoke a single, grating word—and the shimmer parted around a flaw in the air that matched the image in the shield.

“The difference,” Emuun's voice said, out of the rift, “is that Aranraith perpetrates his cruelties because he loves them, whereas my object is to terrorize and so weaken my enemies.” As he spoke, the fissure spat a small cloud of grit toward the shield, but it exploded in midair, well clear of the burnished gleam.

“An observer might be forgiven for mistaking professional pride for pleasure, since the end result is the same.” Thanir did not appear to expect a reply, for he added, “I'd forgotten your anteroom into Haarth's deserts, until I realized the only way you could have escaped my portal was via another that opened inside it.” His tone grew dry as the heat. “I imagine your allies did that for you, since your abilities, however impressive, don't include gates.”

The air within the rift swirled, momentarily assuming the form of a man. “My dealings with the great djinn are founded on mutual aid. Having such dealings does not make me a traitor.”

“You won't be the first, on either side of our conflict, who's turned native.” Thanir was dispassionate. “But you've been using our runes to feed them blood and magic.”

“They have a taste for it, and once sated, offer gifts in return. If benefiting from that equates with turning native, then I'm guilty.”

“Yet still deny the treachery.” Thanir studied the bulge of
light and shadow around the rift. “Why not come with me, then, and defend yourself to Aranraith and Salar?”

Emuun's laugh rasped through the heat. The line within the shield had stopped moving but continued to ripple, bulging out and in like the split in the air. “As you yourself said in the night fair, their way of asking questions is too similar to my own. You've nerve coming here, though, even with Aranraith driving the hunt. Not,” the facestealer added, “that you are precisely here, are you?” His laugh rasped again: “Wise.”

Thanir shrugged. “We all know your liking for sending unambiguous messages to your enemies, as you have done with the Ishnapuri magi through torturing their adepts.” He paused. “That seemed as good a reason as any for me to mindwalk, rather than coming here in my physical body once I decided to speak with you privately.”

The flaw in the air hung motionless—but within the shield its mirror image began drifting toward Thanir again. When he spoke another word in the grating language of stone, the fissure wavered first one way and then the other as though caught in contrary winds. Finally it split apart to reveal Emuun, who made a show of applauding his adversary.

“You know your runes. And how to manipulate the Gate of Dreams. But if you want to talk rather than bringing your shadow hunt after me, something must have changed . . .” He frowned. “Surely you're not concerned by a sword-for-hire with a few adept's skills thrown in? You know how common that is here. Most of them are barely aware they have power, let alone knowing what to do with it. Easy meat,” he added, a feral grin displacing the frown.

“Your crow warrior had a very interesting sword.” Thanir was measured. “She also countermanded my spell holding the exits from the building closed.”

Emuun grunted, his frown returning. “I agree, that does go beyond a few adept's skills. But it doesn't explain why you're suddenly interested in talking. You could hunt her down yourself, if you wanted to.” His hard eyes narrowed, considering possibilities. “Something you saw but I didn't, beyond the hedge adept and our little conflict.”

“The crow warrior countered my closing spell.” Thanir spoke softly. “But
before
that, someone else put an axe through the main doors.”

A ripple shivered across Emuun's stolen face and as instantly stilled. His eyes remained old and dark, twin pits focused on Thanir. “Another immune—and in Aeris. You're right, that is interesting.”

Thanir's smile did not reach his eyes. “An immune was involved in foiling our coteries in Emer as well.”

Emuun bared his teeth. “So now that doubt has been sown in your mind, perhaps you'd best see where the trail leads.”

This time, genuine humor touched Thanir's expression. “You know that's not how this works. You're the one Aranraith wants, whatever the truth of events in Emer. But if you find the Aeris pair and learn exactly who they are—” The barbed shoulders shrugged again. “If you can prove there is at least one other immune operating in Haarth, that should persuade Nirn and Salar. Nothing will sway Aranraith in your favor, but if you were to bring him the sword and both heads, a native immune and an adept for his trophy wall, he may be appeased. So long as I know you're on that trail, I'm willing to suspend the hunt.”

“Hunting is one thing, bringing down the prey another.” Emuun's gaze rested on the mutilated corpse, his tone more thoughtful than aggressive. “You obviously think this Aeris business is important, so why not pursue it yourself? Why make bargains with me?”

“The Aeris pair intrigue me, but I have more pressing business to resume in the north.” Thanir rubbed one gauntleted thumb against the pommel of his longsword. “While your only hope is to deflect Aranraith's wrath. Even you, Emuun, won't be able to elude his hunters forever.”

Emuun scowled. “Not if he calls on Salar. I do know that. But why is the great Lord Thanir suddenly so concerned for my well-being?” Sand eddied around him, although there was no wind, and the flies rose, too, replicating the spiral of sand. The outlines of both warriors blurred as the facestealer's gaze quartered the horizon, from the crest of the
dunes to the rim of the low hills. “This place is starting to disintegrate.” Slowly, both sand and flies resettled, and his eyes narrowed. “That had better not be your doing.”

“You know what this is, or should. It's the same reason I prefer not to lose one of our most experienced and ruthless agents—so long as we can be sure you're not behind recent setbacks in the River and Emer.”

“The maelstrom,” Emuun said slowly. “Nirn has hinted, but you know he's no longer what he once was.”

Thanir said nothing. In the mirror, a shadow darkened the reflected dunes, although no cloud marred the sky overhead. Emuun studied it, his expression set. “Aranraith likes playthings,” he observed, “as does Salar. Perhaps they might prefer the Aeris pair alive—if I accept your offer.”

Thanir's image was fading. “Do as you will, Emuun. But there is no more time: you must decide whether you are for us or against us. If you are with us, then you must prove it, or flee fast and far.” His waning gaze rested on the mutilated corpse. “And cease feeding Nirn's assassin agents, but more importantly, the taste of his magic, to your djinn allies. The recoil of this one's death was felt by his acolytes in Grayharbor, and although they thought it was weatherworker magic, I suspect Nirn knew better. And if word were to come to Salar—” Thanir left the sentence hanging, like the threat, as his form vanished from the portal. A moment later his shield, too, disappeared.

E
muun cursed, a pithy necklace of expletives, while the sun's eye blazed and the air roared like a furnace. “If the fates are kind, they'll give me
him
beneath my knife, before I'm done.” He spat on the corpse. “Assassins, adepts, the high-and-mighty Blood of the Sworn: they all think they're strong, but every one of them screams and begs in the end.” He kicked the corpse and the flies stirred, but did not rise. Drawing a dagger, Emuun scored the tip across his palm, dripping blood along the lines carved into the assassin's flesh. “At least I put his death to better use than Nirn was making of his life.”

“Your enemy was too cunning for you.” The voice sighed out of the air, a susurration of wind through sand. “A spirit
sending is far more difficult to ensnare than a physical form, and he used the shield as a mirror to prevent me manifesting and springing your trap.”

Emuun grunted. “He's clever, no question. And knows too cursed much about what we're about, Amaliannarath take him.” He paused, watching the careful drip of blood slow. “He's right, though. If the maelstrom is rising, even vengeance will have to wait.”

“You promised us blood and magic, as well as your enemies' deaths to feed our power.”

“I have given you both many times over since we made our bargain.” Emuun licked at the last drip, lingering over blood and salt and sweat. “Thanir is doubly right, curse him. I need Aranraith off my back, else I'll be dead and there'll be no more of this brew for you. And we'll all be dead if the maelstrom rises and we let the wave edge overtake us.”

“So you say.” The murmur rustled from all sides.

Emuun shrugged. “You felt what touched this place before; the way the whole construct shivered. Believe in that if you don't believe me.” He knelt, his forefinger tracing fresh blood over the section of pattern where the drips had fallen. “But you've had your magic and death, and now I've given my own blood to fuel this hunt, in lieu of what you hoped for. It's time for your side of the bargain.”

“A bargain is a bargain,” the voice of sand and wind agreed, “even if we did not taste the greater death you held out to us.”

Slowly, other voices whispered through the first, rustling together like flames in a grate.
“We will aid your hunt. A bargain made must indeed be kept, and the greater death was not a promise, only a possibility. Besides, given what rides on your hunter's back, the trap may well have turned and bitten us.”

Emuun rose and began using swift, bold gestures to draw the same pattern as the freshly blooded runes onto the air. Wisps of steam curled around the invisible inscriptions left by his hand, and if he heard the whispered observation, he did not respond.