Fall of Angels (53 page)

  
"My pleasure, Ryba. My pleasure."

  
Nylan and Ayrlyn exchanged glances, and Ryba shook her head.

  
Gerlich frowned.

  
"We'll have solid meals tomorrow," Ryba added. "Might I have some bread?"

  
Nylan passed her the basket. The soup was more tasty than many previous efforts, and hot, for which he was grateful. The bread was bitter, but the bitterness didn't bother him. His shoulders were tight and ached, and while the tea helped, it didn't help enough.

  
Later, after a meal of small talk and speculation about how soon the snow would really melt, Nylan dragged himself up to the top level, following Ryba.

  
He sat on the end of the couch. "Gerlich isn't telling everything."

  
"He's lying," Ryba said tiredly, shifting her weight on the couch. "I didn't need you and Ayrlyn to tell me that. He's lied from the beginning."

  
"Are you going to let him keep doing this? You killed Mran."

  
"Gerlich hasn't openly defied me, or you, or anyone. We know he's lying, but knowing and proving it aren't the same thing." Ryba eased her legs into another position. "I hate this. Now my legs get swollen all the time. I'm already regarded as a tyrant by some, and I can't throw him out or kill him until he gives some obvious reason. He won't, though, because he can't stand the hot weather below, and that makes it even worse. He wants to be marshal, and he's plotting to replace me."

  
"How? No one likes him, except maybe Selitra."

  
"Who said anything about liking him? He's using Narliat, I'm sure, although I can't see it clearly, to try to find some local backing."

  
"Local backing?"

  
Ryba laughed harshly. "Gerlich is a man. He can make the argument that the locals can't take Westwind, but they can ensure that one of their kind-a good old boy-runs it. He'll try to join the local gentry, or whatever passes for it ... and, if we're not careful, he could."

  
"What about your ... visions?"

  
"They show Westwind surviving. But it could survive under Gerlich's descendants as well." Ryba took a deep breath and shifted position again. "I hate this."

  
Nylan frowned. Like Gerlich, Ryba wasn't telling the whole story. Then again, were any of them telling the whole story? He licked his lips.

  
"We need some rest." Ryba leaned over and blew out the small candle, then stripped off her leathers and eased into her tentlike nightgown.

  
Nylan undressed in the dark.

LXXI

NYLAN SET THE cradle-pale wood glistening in the indirect light that filtered through the single armaglass window of the tower's top level-where Ryba would see it.

  
Then he drew into the dimness behind the stones of the chimney and central pedestal and waited, sensing her climbing the steps. In time, the sound of her steps, slower slightly with each passing day and heavy with the weight of the child she carried, announced her arrival.

  
Nylan watched as she bent down, as her fingers touched the wood, stroked the curved edges of the side panels, as her eyes focused on the single tree rising out of the rocky landscape in the center of the headboard.

  
"Do you like it?" He stepped out from the corner. While the cradle was no surprise to her, he had tried to keep the details from her as he had finished the carving and smoothing-all the laborious finish work.

  
Ryba straightened, her face solemn. "Yes. I like it. So will she, when she is older, and so will her children."

  
"Another vision?" he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

  
"You make everything well, Nylan, from towers to cradles." Ryba sank onto the end of the bed.

  
"I didn't do so well with the bathhouse."

  
"Even that will be fine. We just didn't have enough wood this winter to keep it as warm as we needed."

  
"The water lines needed to be covered more deeply." His eyes went to the cradle again.

  
So did Ryba's. "It is beautiful. What do you want me to say?"

  
"I don't know." Nylan didn't know, only that, again, something was missing. "I don't know."

Part III - THE SPRING OF WESTWIND

LXXII

IN THE COLD starlight, the short man struggles through the knee-deep snow, snow that is heavy and damp, that clings to everything but his leathers. The snow glistens with a whiteness that provides enough light for him to continue. His boots crunch through the icy crust covering the road that will not be used by others for at least another handful of eight-days.

  
The soft sound of wings mixes with the light breeze that sifts through the limbs of the pines and firs, and a dark shadow crosses the sky, then dives into a distant clearing.

  
The traveler shivers, but his feet keep moving, mechanically, as if he is afraid to stop.

  
Occasionally, he glances back over his shoulder, as though he flees from someone, but his tracks remain the only ones on the slow-melting snow. On his back he carries a pack, nearly empty.

  
As he lifts one foot and then the other, his mittened fingers touch the outline of the cylindrical object in the pouch that swings around his neck under jacket, tunic, and shirt. He tries not to shiver as he thinks of the object, instead continuing to concentrate on reaching the warmer lands beyond the Westhorns, the lower lands where the heights do not freeze a man into solid ice.

  
He puts one foot in front of the other.

LXXIII

NYLAN GLANCED FROM the bed to the half-open tower window. Outside, the sun shone across the snowfields, and rivulets formed pathways on the snow, draining off the grainy white surface and into the now-slushy roads and pathways. In a few scattered places, the brown of earth, the dark gray of rock, or the bleached tan of dead grass peered through the disappearing snow cover. Despite the carpet of fir branches, much of the road from the tower up to the stables was more quagmire than path.

  
The east side of the tower was half ringed with meltwater that froze at night and cleared by day, so much that from the eastern approach to the causeway, the tower resembled the moated castle that Nylan had rejected building.

  
His eyes flicked from the window back to Ryba, whose own eyes were glazed with concentration and the effort of measured breathing. On the other side of the lander couch stood Ayrlyn, her fingers resting lightly on Ryba's enlarged abdomen. Beside her was Jaseen.

  
"I'm hot," panted the marshal.

  
The joined couches had been moved toward the window because the ice and snow melting off the slate stone roof had revealed more than a few leaks that dripped down into the top level of the tower.

  
Nylan used the clean but tattered cloth to blot the dampness off Ryba's face, then put his hand on her forehead.

  
"That feels good."

  
"Good," affirmed Nylan.

  
"Just a gentle push ... gentle . . ."

  
"Hurts ... tight. .." the marshal responded. "Dyliess?"

  
"She's doing fine, Ryba," said Ayrlyn.

  
"I'm ... not..." Ryba shivered. "Cold now."

  
After he drew the blankets around her shoulders, Nylan blotted Ryba's damp forehead again. "Easy," he said. "You're doing fine, too."

  
"Easy ... for you ... to say."

  
"I know." Nylan kept his tone light, although, with his perceptions, he could sense that Ryba's labor was going well, if any labor, and the effort and pain involved, could be said to be going well.

  
"Push ... a little harder."

  
"Am pushing ..."

  
"Stop..."

  
". . . tell me to push, then not push . . . make up your mind.. ."

  
Nylan held back an inadvertent grin at Ryba's asperity.

  
"We're trying to do this with as little stress on you and Dyliess as possible."

  
".. . little stress?"

  
Jaseen nodded, but said nothing.

  
Nylan patted away the sweat on Ryba's forehead, then squeezed her arm gently.

  
"Push!" demanded Ayrlyn.

  
The marshal pushed, turning red.

  
"You have to breathe, too," reminded Ayrlyn after the push.

  
"Hot..." gasped Ryba.

  
Nylan eased the blankets away from her shoulders.

  
"All right... get ready .. ," said Ayrlyn.

  
Through it all, Nylan stood by, occasionally touching Ryba, infusing a sense of order, though that order was not essential. In the end, a small head crowned, and Jaseen eased the small bloody figure into the light, and onto the Roof of the World.

  
"In a bit, you'll need to push again," said Ayrlyn.

  
"I... know ... let me see her," panted Ryba.

  
When the cord was tied and cut, Ayrlyn eased the small figure onto Ryba's chest. Dyliess seemed to look around, then turned toward her mother's breast, her mouth opening and fastening in place.

  
"You little piglet," murmured Ryba.

  
"Like her mother," affirmed Nylan. "She's concentrating on what's important."

  
His senses extended over his daughter, taking in the hair that would be silver and the narrower face that was also from his Svennish heritage. In some ways, almost, she felt like Kyalynn, Siret's silver-haired daughter.

  
Nylan swallowed, then looked away toward the window, back out to the spring, and the melting snow, back out to the few green shoots that hurried through the patches of white.

  
Not now, he thought, not now, and he forced a smile, which turned into a real one as he watched Dyliess, even though his chest was tight, and a sense of chaos swirled through his thoughts.

  
"They're both fine," Ayrlyn affirmed.

  
Jaseen nodded.

  
Ryba's eyes closed, a half-smile on her face.

LXXIV

"DON'T WE KNOW where we're heading? Or when?" Hissl walks to the barracks door. By looking out and down the street, he can see the haze of light green-the grasslands that stretch all the way from Clynya to the South Branch of the River Jeryna.

  
Koric shrugs. "Lord Sillek is not telling anyone. We know we will be moving against either Lord Ildyrom or against those angels on the Roof of the World. One way or the other ... we have to be ready."

  
"He hasn't said?" asks the white wizard.

  
"No. Rimmur said he almost took off his head for asking." Koric laughs. "I can't say as I blame Lord Sillek. If people knew where or when, they'd be ready, and our armsmen would be killed. As it is, everyone's waiting for him to make a mistake, any mistake. Everyone talks. You know how hard it is to keep things quiet. Ildyrom probably has spies in every tavern in Clynya, and a few other places as well, if you know as to what I mean."

  
"Yes, I know." Hissl smiles faintly.

  
"You seen any sign of the Jeranyi, yet, in your glass?" Koric asks.

  
"Not anywhere close to the grasslands, but the grass is short, and the way's still muddy."

  
"Could they come up the river? Don't you wizards have trouble with running water?" Koric fingers the hilt of the big blade on the bench before him.

  
' "I can see what's on the water, not what's in it or under it. But they wouldn't swim all the way upstream from Berlitos." Hissl forces a chuckle.

  
"No, Wizard, I guess they wouldn't. But you be looking for them. I wouldn't want any surprises. Neither would Lord Sillek."

  
"I'll be looking," Hissl replies. "I'll certainly be looking"

LXXV

FROM THE CAUSEWAY, Ayrlyn and Nylan looked at the fields and the stretches of mud that had been crude roads the previous fall and snow-covered trails through the winter. The fields and meadows were white and brown, still primarily white, although long green shoots poked through the white in places.

  
"Snow lilies." Ayrlyn pointed to a green stem rising from the snow.

  
"Some things will grow in the strangest conditions," mused Nylan. "They grow through the snow, and we can't even walk up the hill without sinking knee-deep in mud. We're not moving much anywhere for a while."

  
"The stables are even more of a mess because all that packed snow turned into ice and then melted all at once. Fierral's in a terrible mood. Then, I'm surprised she's not that way more often."

  
"Why?" asked the engineer.

  
"How would you like to be the chief armsmaster under Ryba? Fierral knows that nothing she does will ever match Ryba. That means she'll always be the chief flunky."

  
"Hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense."

  
"Of course it does." Ayrlyn snorted.

  
"We won't be seeing any bandits or invaders for a while, I'd bet."

  
"No traders, either," pointed out Ayrlyn.