Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (29 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Dervla had not been the only one surprised by Benet’s arrangements. “The Prince’s generosity has helped me fulfill the oath I swore to see her safely homeward bound,” Gaultry said. She left silent her secret dismay that the Sharif too would be leaving her. “But I will miss her counsel.”
“As I will miss Grandmère’s, departed on a longer journey.”
They fell silent for a time, Gaultry considering the curious bond the Prince and the wild desert Sharif had formed, Martin lost in grief.
Inside the crematorium, Dervla started separating the Duchess’s ashes into the reliquaries. When she was partway done one of her acolytes came out to them, bearing a pair of the little clay pots. He was the youngest, a short youth with a crown of chestnut-colored hair. Gaultry bobbed him welcome, not knowing him by name; Martin simply inclined his head. The boy handed the thickly glazed pots to Martin, bowing and casting the Twins’ sign. “Goodman Stalker,” he said respectfully. “I understand from my Mistress that you won’t be attending the final ceremony. Nor the wake, up at the palace, neither. So—by my hand as intermediary, Elianté and Emiera held in faith, her Veneracy offers here the relicts for yourself and Melaudiere’s heir. Swear to me that you will dispose of them with due respect for the gods and their creations.”
“I so swear,” Martin said. “By the Goddess-Twins, Allegrios Rex, and all the Great Twelve after.”
The acolyte frowned at the invocation of the Water-god, but he did not allow the unexpected response to distract him from the proper form. “By my troth, by Elianté and Emiera together, I dismiss you from your mourning service with their divine blessing.” He cast the Twins’ sign again and returned inside the crematorium.
“Let’s get out of here,” Martin said gruffly, casting a last glance inward to the oven. “Help me with these, would you?” He handed Gaultry one of the vessels. Its surface was almost burning hot from the embers’ heat, or from the heat of the ash inside. Gaultry cupped one hand over the brim to protect the contents as Martin led her out from under the sheltered porch into the rain.
Below them the cemetery spread across a broad slope that descended gently toward the sea, studded in places by pitted outcrops of rock. The most important buildings and monuments were at the top of the incline where the land was most sheltered. Gaultry glanced longingly toward the outline of the palace on the ridge above, and pulled her hood up over
her hair. She was tired and chilled. She wanted—she had earned—a hot bath and a warm bed. But if Martin and the Prince planned to ride for the border this very noontime, those matters would have to wait.
The wind beating in from the sea had almost completely diminished. The rainbank of cloud passed magisterially across the sky, shedding its solemn cloak of moisture. A seabird’s shrill call sounded distantly over the water, though none were visible on wing.
Martin pointed to their destination, a spit of sand that jutted into the rain-washed waters of the sea, down past the bottommost precincts of the cemetery. Gaultry was not keen to descend a long slope only to have to reclimb it later, but willing for now to follow Martin’s lead, she left the thought unspoken.
He chose a line that took them straight down the hill. Gaultry matched his long strides, falling into a rhythm of movement at his side. It was a relief to be away from the sickly burning smells of the crematorium. Their boots crushed the long summer grass underfoot and sent up a sweet grain smell that combined with the sea-tang in the air to raise her spirits. Passing quickly out of the more densely used area of the cemetery, they were soon deep into uncut sea grass. The graves at their feet here were older, lower to the ground, and the ground was more uneven. When she stumbled over one low scoured rock, almost hidden in the grass, Martin paused to let her catch her breath.
Four lichen-covered reliquaries, tucked securely into the rock’s crevices, were visible between the straggling grass stalks. One was anciently broken, tipped on its side, spilling moss rather than ash.
“These are the oldest graves,” Martin commented, clearing the grass back from the rock with the toe of his boot to reveal the god-marks scratched onto its surface. “Anything higher up the hill will have been reused many times over. Anything lower will have been obliterated over the centuries by the high winter storms.”
Gaultry, drawing her hands into her cuffs for warmth, looked down toward the water. This grave was still high above the obvious tideline, on the last grassy plateau before the final descent to the beach. As an inlander who had never witnessed the sea under storm conditions, she found it hard to picture the force that could sweep waves this high. “It’s so calm today,” she said. The pellucid, rain-dimpled blue of the water had turned an extraordinary turquoise color under the morning’s low slanted light.
“I think the folk who had their ashes left here must have been seaworshippers,”
Martin said, staring across the little bay to the open sea. “They would have known the surf would take their dust.”
Gaultry shrugged. She had wanted to support Martin through the rites of death that were familiar to him, but she was not entirely comfortable with the necromantic touch she detected in the elaborate dispersion of the ashes. If there was power in the sad remains of the dead, she wanted to know nothing of it. “Are you going to put your share of the ashes in the sea?” she asked.
Martin nodded. “I’ll save my cousin Gavin’s until I meet with him. But my own—this war with the Lanai is a serious thing, and I want to dispose of things properly before I ride. I know Grandmère would prefer going into the water off the cliffs of Seafrieg, but the sea is one land before the gods, and this will have to serve her.”
“I wish I were going to Haute-Tielmark with you,” Gaultry said.
Martin took the vessel he had given her to hold and nestled it safely into the grass by the funerary stone’s side. “We share that desire,” he said. “But this is not a good year to introduce you to the field of battle. If this summer’s campaign were limited to the traditional ground at Llara’s Kettle, I would want you to travel with me. The lake there, and the great waterfall—they’re so beautiful, I would love for you to see them. But this year the war has three fronts. The hills of western Haute-Tielmark are in dangerous upheaval. The Lanai skirmishers aren’t limited to the usual war parties. They’ve been reinforced by Far Mountain’s warriors, men who’ve earned their living as raiders and mercenaries. Those warriors live a motto more complex than guts and glory—though this summer their honor is at stake too, considering the disgrace their king has shouldered. He has sworn to rebuild the herds his son-in-law saw slaughtered in what should have been safe pastures.”
Martin took Gaultry’s hand. His flesh was warm from the clay pot. “There is also the no small matter of the role that may be played by the Bissanty genius who orchestrated the Lanai defeat in the High Mountains. Report has him as a military prodigy, half Bissanty, half Dramaya, and combining the best of both those ancient tribes. He’s barely the age of your boy Tullier, and already he’s showing brilliance. He and his men have been recalled to Bassorah City. Who knows what could happen if the Emperor sends him to march on us from the north?”
Gaultry cast the goddess-sign worriedly. “The border in the north is God-pledged. Elianté and Emiera will protect us.”
“That’s true,” Martin said. “For all the good it will do us, if our warriors
were engaged there while the Lanai were still tearing into our backs from the west.” He shook his head. “Let’s not speak of this now. I have other matters I wish to share instead.”
He had retained his hold of her hand. The heat of his palm—
Gaultry realized abruptly that something more than the pot’s fire had warmed him. Her cheeks reddened, and she would have pulled away, but he gently tightened his grip. “Gaultry. Before we journeyed to Bissanty, you and I spoke plainly once of the ties that bind us. Magic fueled our passion from our first meeting, but the bonds we share go far beyond enchantment. Before I leave you today, I need to tell you what happened to me in Bissanty.”
“It changed you,” Gaultry said. “You are wilder now. Do I need to know more than that?”
He nodded. “You do. Before Bissanty, I warned you that something in me was withdrawing its ability to feel emotion. The spell-fire of the geas your father laid on me to protect you had burned away more than a decade of numbness. But once the geas ran its course, I could feel myself freezing up, returning to that numb state. Without the power of magic to heat me, I feared that the years I’d spent serving as a soldier had extinguished my capacity to love.”
“You told me that just before Tullier made his appearance at the Prince’s Feast,” Gaultry said. Martin had come to her then in a strange fever of emotion—a fever that had not touched the calm beat of his heart. “You scared me, but I didn’t see what I could do.”
Martin nodded. “My head and my body seemed separated by a wall of ice. I did not understand then what was happening, only that it felt so unreal, and yet so strong. But then the feast was interrupted, and we learned of the Sha Muira’s orders to kill the Brood-members. I broke my father’s sword that day, releasing the magic that would whisk me away to protect Helena and her son.”
He cast Gaultry an apprehensive look, hesitating. “That was when everything changed for me—when I broke Dinevar and released the magic. There was more in that release than I had bargained for.”
Gaultry closed her eyes. She saw again the flowing magic, the scintillating shards of metal as the great sword disintegrated, releasing the full force of its magic on Martin’s body. Her own father had died on that sword, taking his escape from the noose of magic in which the traitor-chancellor had bound him. Who could tell what powers had been constrained within its metal? “Is this what you needed to ask Melaudiere
about, the night we returned to Princeport?” she asked.
Nodding, he released her hand. “After Morse died, Grandmère took certain measures, as she thought, to protect me,” he said. “Perhaps they did, but she should have asked me first if it was what I wanted. She bound me with shielding oaths the day she buckled Dinevar to my belt—but those oaths shielded more than my body. They also froze my ability to love and feel. Shattering the sword set me free. Perhaps to meet my death, but also once again to love those in the world around me.” He threw his cloak down next to the stone and shucked off his boots. “I am free now,” he said. “Nothing can keep me from reaching for the things that I desire.
“Come with me.” The grey eyes bore into hers, lit from within by a sudden fiery gladness. “I’m going to return my part of Grandmère to the sea, and I want you with me.”
Gaultry, unsure what he intended, doffed her cloak and boots and put them neatly beside his, her movements a little exacting, compensating for her uncertainty.
“Are we going to get wet? I’m a little chilled already—”
“You won’t be cold,” he said. He pulled his tunic up over his head. At the open collar of his shirt beneath, he wore a blue glass amulet, cut with the sign of the water-god. “The water here will not be cold like the harbor’s. The whole bay is shallow—you’ll see.”
With his reliquary vessel cupped in one hand, his fingers protectively covering its mouth, he turned and sprinted, impetuous, for the beach.
What would Dervla think? Gaultry removed her tunic more slowly, glancing self-consciously up toward the roof of the crematorium, just visible over the curve of the land above her. From the beach, there would be a clear view to the crematorium’s porch. Was this a known ritual Martin intended to perform, or something more intimate?
She was wearing the strange silver ring the Duke of Haute-Tielmark had given her at Sieur Jumery’s manor, still hidden on a string that she wore around her neck. She held it in her hand for a moment, trying to decide if she should wear it into the surf. The Duke had said he thought it was a key—would she ever find the lock? The hammered silver flower of its decoration was distinctive, but she had yet to see anything that came close to matching it—not that she had any time to actively look. She nestled it safely into the toe of one of her boots, giving a guilty glance up the hill toward the crematorium. What would Dervla do if she discovered it in Gaultry’s possession?
By the time she reached the beach, Martin had already run ahead to
the end of the spit of sand. She followed, a little diffidently, keeping above the waves’ sweep. The sand was surprisingly warm under her feet, and the water, when one wave curled to slap her ankles, was positively comfortable, compared with the chill drizzle that sprinkled her arms and face. She realized then what Martin had known from his seaside upbringing—the heat of the past days had remained in this shallow water even as the rain chilled the air that flowed above it.
Martin knelt in the shallows at the farthest reach of the sandy bar, the vessel held between his palms, the foam of the surf lashing at his knees. He began to pray in a low, shifting language with which Gaultry was unfamiliar. The words started susurrating and gentle, then began to rise. Soon, no longer echoing the sound of the surf, his prayer began to lead it. It rose, with a gentle, rippling power until, to Gaultry’s astonishment, the waves began to curl away from Martin’s body.
A path extended outward from the shallow spit into the water, a sandy, wave-rippled path with walls of seawater inclining in from both sides. Martin, chanting, fixed his gaze and concentration on this path as it spread open before him. The strength in his voice pounded back the surf, pushing the narrow sandy line out almost a field’s length, until, at its end, the waves swept back and revealed a grey, deeply pitted rock. Beneath its mantle of seaweed, the stone was cut in many places by the sea’s force—and by human hands.

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