Firewalk (37 page)

“But what happened when you touched me?” Randon asked her doubtfully. “That’s never happened before.”

Kayli sighed.

“When I performed the Rite of Renewal to conceive your child,” she said reluctantly, “I was overcome by the energies I brought forth. Since then I have been—sensitized to the fire magic, and my control has suffered. You saw how I burned the branch when I first tried to light it. And you are vulnerable to that magic, as your own body draws in those energies. So when I used my magic without properly controlling it, just as a carelessly built fire may throw sparks out to dry grass around it, some of those energies leaped to you. But by the same token,” she added quickly, “you can rid yourself of them. I do not know how much of the fire magic Stevann has, but perhaps he could have done as much for you, if he knew how.”

“So you mean anytime I have one of those headaches,” Randon said with dawning happiness, “you can get rid of it, as easily as that?”

Kayli nodded, wincing inwardly. Randon only saw quick relief from pain that had plagued him most of his life, ignoring the danger she had placed him in. Well, she would simply have to keep her magic tightly reined, using it only with the greatest care, and preferably not at all in his presence. Perhaps Brisi would know some way to protect Randon from those energies. She sighed in irritation. How
could
any parent have been so negligent as to leave a mage-gifted son unprotected against his own power? And now it was too late.

Captain Beran leaned his head into the tent.

“Your pardon, High Lord,” he said apologetically. “I heard the two of you talking, but I’ve got your things still out here. Say, how’d you manage to get that wet wood started so quick? Mind if I take a stick to light our fire? We haven’t been able to get the blighted thing going.”

Kayli and Randon exchanged glances, their eyes twinkling.

“Help yourself, Captain,” Randon said, chuckling. “I think that between Kayli and me, we’ve got more fire than we know what to do with.”

By the time Endra brought rabbit pie and stewed turnips and carrots, the storm was venting its full fury on the camp, and Kayli and Randon had to erect a shield above their fire so that the rain coming in at the tent’s smoke hole would not douse the flames. The tent itself, however, appeared admirably watertight, and Randon told Kayli that Stevann had cast a waterproofing spell on it. Kayli was awed; nobody in Bregond would have ever thought of such a thing, not that it was often needed!

“Tomorrow we’ll reach the border, providing the storm doesn’t keep up,” Randon said, cuddling Kayli close under the furs. “It must be Stevann and his weather mages. I told him I was hoping for clear skies for the meeting, so likely he took it on himself to have mages scry out any bad weather at the border and try to move the rain somewhere else. Simple bad luck that we rode right into it. If we’re delayed, your father will wait, won’t he?”

Kayli chuckled.

“Randon, our two countries have waited hundreds of years for this meeting,” she said. “My father will not throw it away because we are a day late.”

But Randon’s worries were needless. The storm passed in the night and the new day dawned bright and clear. The ground was muddy, but Randon had chosen the high, sturdy wagons against just such an eventuality. Maja and Carada, still displeased by the previous night’s rain, danced restlessly, but Randon and Kayli were forced to hold them back because of the poor footing. By midday the caravan passed through the one part of Agrond that Kayli remembered—that narrow band nearest Bregond where rains were seldom, where Agrond’s forests slowly melded into Bregond’s arid plains. Here the ground was hard and free from ruts and the wagons moved easily, and Randon and Kayli at last let their horses have their heads, racing well ahead of the caravan.

Thus it was that Kayli and Randon were the first to see the buff-colored hide tents just across the Bregondish border, the soldiers patrolling the large camp, the dun-and-gray horses grazing in the tall grass. Randon immediately reined Carada in, waiting for his guards who were even spurring their mounts to catch up, but Kayli would have none of it; she gave a glad cry and urged Maja forward. The mare wanted no encouragement; seeing the familiar plains and smelling her own kind, she ran as though wolves nipped at her heels.

Maja had hardly slowed before Kayli slid from her back. Guards had gathered at her approach, but by the time Kayli dismounted they had lowered their bows and hurried to meet her.

“Lady Kayli!” Captain Jadovar tossed his bow to one of his fellows and bowed deeply. “High Lady, I should say! How wonderful to see you again! Come, I’ll take you to your father.”

Kayli hesitated, torn between desire and duty.

“I should wait for Randon,” she said reluctantly.

Captain Jadovar gazed eastward, shrugging.

“It looks as though he’s staying where he is,” he said.

Kayli turned to look. The caravan had stopped on the other side of the border, and Randon had stopped with it, heavily surrounded by his own guards. He beckoned frantically to her to come back.

Kayli scowled. What was he waiting for, an official invitation? Likely exactly that, afraid that if he crossed the border of Bregond there would—

“Kayli! At last.” Kayli whirled at the familiar voice and threw herself into her father’s arms, fighting back tears as she embraced him fiercely, then her mother. Then there was Kairi, and Danine and Melia and Kirsa all clustering around her and laughing even as Kayli laughed and drowned in their chatter, all of them speaking at once and making no sense at all. For a moment she thought that this happiness was too much, that she would simply fill up and then burst altogether, but she glanced at Kairi and hurriedly composed herself.

“Thrice welcome, you and your husband with you,” Kairi said, embracing Kayli warmly. “But he appears hesitant to join us. Do you suppose he thinks us Sarkondish raiders in disguise, waiting in ambush?”

“Sarkondish raiders do not embrace their victims,” High Lord Elaasar said with a trace of a smile. “No, Kayli, your husband only shows proper caution. This is a delicate matter, not to be leaped into headlong as you have. You should have stayed at his side.” He glanced at her sternly. “That is where you belong now.”

“The day I must wait for permission to greet my own father and mother, I will know that all our efforts are for naught,” Kayli said stoutly. She sighed. “Never mind, I will return nicely to my husband. May I at least give him word that we will all sup together tonight?”

“Very well.” Elaasar gave her hand a last squeeze. “But for tonight, only you and your husband, agreed? For advisers and guards and official talk, tomorrow is soon enough.”

Kayli rode back more slowly; halfway she realized with a start that Kairi had worn the soft buff robes of a priestess instead of her gray Initiate’s robe, and Kayli had not even noticed, much less congratulated her. For a moment she felt a pang of bitter envy, and she forced it down. There was no turning back from her path now.

Kayli knew a rebuke awaited her when she crossed back
into Agrond, but to her surprise it came from Lord Kereg, not
Randon.

“High Lord, I must protest!” the minister said angrily. “There are protocols to be observed, procedures to be followed in so delicate a situation as this.”

Kayli felt a flash of anger, but she quickly suppressed it as she dismounted, handing Maja’s reins to Endra.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Kereg,” she said politely. “I was precipitous in my actions, as you say. But I knew that we and my father would be forever sending messengers back and forth to carefully negotiate our first meeting, and wanting my supper before midwinter, I appointed myself messenger instead.”

She turned to Randon, who was grinning good-naturedly.

“My father has invited us to supper,” she said. “Only Randon and myself,” she added pointedly.

Lady Tarkas’s face went red, and Lord Kereg’s turned positively purple.

“High Lord—” he began ominously.

Randon held up a hand.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked mildly. “Refuse the High Lord of Bregond’s kind invitation, or merely tell him that we don’t trust our own safety in his company? I think not. You’ll have your day, lords, Lady Tarkas. We’ll have a grand dinner tomorrow, and that’ll be soon enough for politics, I think. Now let’s make camp, if you please, so that my lady and I can have a tent to wash and change our clothes in, or would you prefer we meet the High Lord of Bregond for the first time looking like vagabonds and smelling of the road? And put together those gifts, too—the box I put in our wagon, not the others.”

When Kayli had bathed and dressed, however, and she and Randon had sent the maids and attendants away, she said quietly, “You should not take the gifts tonight.”

“Oh?” Randon looked surprised. “Why ever not?”

“Because those are official gifts, and tonight is not for official business,” Kayli told him. “Tonight we are not High Lord and Lady of Agrond, we are kinfolk.”

“Well, these particular gifts are the
unofficial
ones,” Randon told her, grinning. “The sort of thing a man might give his wife’s family. Don’t worry. I haven’t been High Lord long enough to completely forget how to treat friends.”

Lord Kereg insisted that the guards accompany Kayli and Randon, and the two attendants carrying the chest, to the edge of Elaasar’s camp, where his own guards would meet them.

“I’m not happy about this whole thing,” he said. “Even you, High Lord, must appreciate what an ideal opportunity this would make for an assassin—Agrondish, Bregondish, or Sarkondish. With all that high grass, an army could hide right under our noses.”

“That”—Kayli chuckled as she and Randon walked—“is exactly how Bregond has managed to hold its lands. And why, of course, our land ends with the tall grass.”

“And that,” Randon replied amusedly, “is why nobody lives on the far west edge of Agrond where the forests end. Your folk keep to the tall grass; mine keep to the cover of the trees.”

Randon gazed a little dubiously at the Bregondish camp, and Kayli knew what he was looking at—there were few fire-pits, and the fires in them were very low indeed; the Agrondish camp was bright with fires and lanterns, and in comparison the Bregondish camp was hardly lit at all. But Randon did not know the rapidity with which the tall grass could ignite, nor did he appreciate how much more easily raiders could see the Agrondish camp in the darkness. Peat for fires, too, was expensive and hard to haul long distances; one could not simply pick up handy deadfall here as Randon’s folk did.

Captain Jadovar and four men met them at the edge of the camp, bowing but saying nothing, gazing rather sternly at the attendants and the guards until the two attendants lowered the chest to the ground and they all retreated.

“Welcome, High Lord Randon, High Lady Kayli,” Jadovar said, bowing again. “Please follow me.”

He conducted them to a large tent at the center of the camp, more brightly lit than the others. The two guards with the chest entered first; then Jadovar held open the tent flap, announcing, “Randon and Kayli, High Lord and Lady of Agrond.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t a formal occasion,” Randon muttered as he stepped into the tent with Kayli. “I didn’t wear my surcoat.”

Kayli only smiled. Randon had listened to her recitations of Bregondish etiquette, but he had memorized rather than understood it He did not understand the difference between a formal political occasion and the ritualized courtesy showing respect to a guest.

She was surprised to see that her father had actually brought a table all the way to the border for this occasion, or perhaps he had borrowed it from one of the villages on the way. Unlike Agrondish tables, Bregondish tables were low, to accommodate the diners sitting on cushions on the floor instead of chairs—that and the short legs conserved the precious wood. Her family still stood, of course, all dressed casualty except for Kairi still in her priestess’s robe.

“Randon,” Kayli said, “I make known to you my father and mother, High Lord Elaasar and High Lady Nerina, and my sisters Kairi, Danine, Melia, and Kirsa. My family, I make known to you my husband, High Lord Randon of Agrond.”

Randon half extended his hand, then withdrew it rather awkwardly, bowing to each member of the family instead. Kayli knew it was hard for him to remember that Bregondish did not touch in greeting, and was grateful when her father stepped forward, clasping Randon’s hand firmly.

“Welcome to Bregond, or to the edge of it at least,” Elaasar said amiably. “Come and sit beside me as my son and share our meat.”

Randon was not awkward in seating himself at the short table; he’d had no table at all since they had left Tarkesh, and Kayli had warned him that they would most likely sup at an eating cloth, which was still traditional through most of Bregond. Kayli was proud, too, that Randon showed no surprise when Elaasar took the first sip and bite from each plate before he passed it down the table.

“It is an ancient custom,” Kayli had told Randon, “from the time when Bregond was only a group of independent clans. The head of the clan tasted all food first, to assure visiting clan leaders that they were safe from poison.”

Kayli noticed that Elaasar had somewhere acquired Agrondish-style forks and knives, with which the table was set. Forks were used in Bregond by the nobility, who could afford them, but eating daggers were still worn at the hip, not placed on the table as in Agrond. Randon had raised his eyebrows when Kayli told him that in Bregond it was polite—indeed, necessary—to lift his bowl of soup to his lips after the solids were eaten, and sop up the remaining liquid with bread. After months in Agrond, Kayli herself might have been more comfortable with a spoon.

By custom conversation was left for after dinner instead of during the meal; Kayli knew her father would have been shocked to learn that in Agrond politics and business were discussed while eating. Randon seemed unnerved by the silence, and Kayli wondered whether he had ever actually had the opportunity to enjoy a meal in peaceful quiet in his entire life. As a High Lord’s son, likely not.