Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (45 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“He thought I got your mother in my belly by riding on a corpse?” Tamsanne made a small sound, deep in her throat. A choked laugh. “What is it you have been thinking? Sieur Jumery’s land-tie ran deep, but his imagination ran shallow, and he was predisposed to believe that anything he could find about me would be ugly. He could hardly have been more wrong. Your grandfather was a beautiful man. Tall and golden. Fiery like the sun. A huntsman in Gries Village, the place where I was born. His name was Jarret. He was not like the men you and your sister have chosen. Here at court, he would have been called simple. Jarret never left the woods. They were his home. His destiny.” When she turned back to
Gaultry, somehow she had recovered her humor. “Did you truly imagine you were a child of necromantic origin? After all I have taught you to fear such things?”
“I did not know what to think,” Gaultry said humbly, softened by her grandmother’s smile. “However I turned it in my head, it did not make sense.”
“You are like your grandfather in many ways,” Tamsanne said softly. “You and your sister together. More ever than your mother was. She—she might have been a clever woman, but there was a wildness in her that kept her from so many things. I can tell you now, your likeness to my Jarret has given me much secret pleasure.”
“I am like him?” Gaultry asked shyly.
“Like you, he was a hunter, and greatly skilled.”
In her contentment at learning these things about her grandfather, Gaultry did not realize until much later that her grandmother had not said anything as to why Sir Jumery might have drawn the wrong conclusion about her mother’s conception. Indeed, thinking on it, she realized that Tamsanne must have told her so much deliberately, to distract her from this line of thought.
S
he should have known better than to promise she would leave Princeport if Mervion agreed to stand in for her. Mervion, when she found her in her city lodgings with Coyal, was more than ready, she was eager.
“I will stand for you,” she said, her eyes agleam. “And Coyal—by my magic, Coyal will stand for the boy—look—the dog already likes him. Who will know the difference?”
Gaultry looked doubtfully at Coyal’s slim but well-muscled figure, the gleaming wreath of his blond hair, the sturdy shape of his head and jaw. As he and Tullier bent together over the boy’s thin, half-grown dog—it had gained weight in the palace kennels but still retained its woeful hungry look—Gaultry did not see how it could be possible to mistake the one for the other. The knight was not overtall, it was true, but he was nothing like Tullier. Most obviously, he had come fully into his man’s figure, leaving gangly adolescence well behind him. “They are not much alike,” she said aloud.
“No,” said Mervion, “that is true. But no one will know the difference after I have disguised him. The boy’s dog—that will be a nice touch. A further level of misdirection.”
Already, her plans outpaced the things that Gaultry had thought of to make this work. If the dog was here—it was because she and Tullier had not finished the argument of whether to take or leave it.
At least trusting the dog to Mervion and Coyal would settle that small point.
“The dog should stay with us,” Coyal volunteered, friendly and concerned. “The border will be no place for it, without proper training.” A compelling logic that Gaultry had failed to present to the boy herself. He had been struck with an uncharacteristic boyish worry that the dog would be miserable without him.
“Why are you doing this?” Gaultry asked her sister. “I have told you about the most recent attack—it could be very dangerous. You may have to use your magic in ways you won’t like.”
Mervion critically held up Gaultry’s new blue court dress, to see how it would fit her. “I need to,” she said. “For Coyal and for myself. Coyal must prove his loyalty to Tielmark. I—” Mervion turned at last to look Gaultry in the face. “I was angry with you earlier. I can hardly describe how abandoned I felt, when you left me alone at court, and hied off in aid of Martin.”
“It would not have been my first choice,” Gaultry said defensively. “And it would not have been my choice at all, if you had only told me half your Glamour-soul was locked in Tullier’s body.”
“It was foolish not to tell you,” Mervion admitted. “At first, you were so busy, I thought you did not need the distraction. Then later—it was too late.”
“Mervion,” Gaultry said. “I have made many mistakes too. I have demanded too much—”
Her sister shook her head, cutting her short. “I have felt that sometimes, but Coyal often reminds me, in these troubled times, it is not quite so. Our lives will not be our own, until the Brood-prophecy is over. That is why I must do this—why I want to play this charade.”
Gaultry moved to embrace her. Mervion freely returned the hug. “Travel well,” she whispered. “May the Twins ride with you.”
“Take care of Tamsanne,” Gaultry said. “She is weaker than she lets on.”
The rest of the business was quickly settled. Coyal took Mervion’s hand as Gaultry and Tullier descended the dark staircase down from their apartment into the cobbled yard below.
“Go safely,” he told them, “and may the gods ride with you.”
Gaultry, trying to set aside her dislike for him, tried to return this with a gracious farewell.
In the street outside, Gaultry glanced up the thoroughfare toward the palace. The far towers gleamed under the early morning sun, bright and clean and welcoming.
She sighed, and turned away. For now her road lay away to the west.
“Are you ready to ride, Tullier?”
He nodded, eager.
“We’ll start out on hire horses,” she told him. “I’ll wait to use the Prince’s sigil until we’re farther out.”
On the strength of the Prince’s sigil, they were able to commandeer
horses all the way to the edge of the Bissanty Fingerland. Four days of riding, a day of rest, and another day of riding. Gaultry was saddlesore at the end of it, but beginning to believe they really would reach the battlegrounds at Llara’s Kettle before the Ides were on them.
But when they reached the border, things did not go so smoothly there as Gaultry had expected. The Tielmaran High Road ran through the Bissanty Fingerland to reach Haute-Tielmark. The two-hundred-year-old terms of the peace Briern-bold had secured against the Bissanty guaranteed it would remain open to free passage. Yet on the morning of their arrival—the border was closed.
The Tielmaran border guards were philosophical about the closure. “It shut the day Benet and his men went through,” the senior man told them. “The order came down from Bassorah just a few hours after the Prince had already crossed over. I’m sure that wasn’t what the Emperor’s officers intended!” When they showed him the Prince’s sigil, he sent a man to get them refreshment.
“It happens this way every summer,” he assured them, in response to Gaultry’s expression of outrage. “The Emperor shuts it down—just for a week or so—to keep us on our toes.”
“We’re supposed to be at Llara’s Kettle for the Ides!”
The man counted the days on his fingers. “You might make it yet,” he said, doubtful. “It’s been over a week that the border’s been shut. That’s unusually long. You could wait—and it could reopen tomorrow, or the
next day, or the day after. Otherwise, you’ll have to travel the long way round, skirting the Fingerland border.”
“Or we could just cut across, at a place where there aren’t Bissanty guards.” Gaultry had done that very thing, earlier in the spring. “I’ve done it before, easily enough.” Almost getting gored to death by the wildlife didn’t quite count as a difficulty; that ill fate had not, after all, actually come to pass.
“In high summer?” the man scoffed. “You won’t make it two miles in. It’s green-fly season. Those bastards haunt the low grounds, thick as the air itself. During the day, they swarm heavy enough to carry a grown man off. And at night, the air is choked with mosquitoes.” He shrugged. “Try it if you must, if your business is so important. But go south a fair way before you do. The Bissanties keep an eye on things, at least for the first couple of miles.”
This was familiar, from her last visit to the Fingerland.
“How do the Bissanties avoid the flies?” she asked.
“Smudge-pots, burning all day and night. Makes the main postings easy enough to see, but don’t let that fool you. They do send some men scouting, with mesh bags on their head and fly-bane rubbed all over. When the Emperor sends word that the border is closed, they take the order serious.”
Gaultry thanked him. He ordered them fresh mounts from his stables on the strength of the sigil, then watched rather dubiously as they mounted up.
“If I see them coming back this way alone, it won’t surprise me,” he warned them. “Those flies—they’re something fierce, and a fine piece of horse flesh—it only draws them worse.”
“Then we’ll send them back before we go over,” Gaultry said. Later, she would regret having been a trifle haughty. “Someone will reprovision us on the other side.”
“That’ll do,” the senior man nodded. “Loose the reins, and they’ll try to come running back here in any case. The land is thin out this way—they know where to come when they want a full manger of feed.”
T
he border guard had not exaggerated about the flies. At noon, Gaultry decided they were far enough south to make a first attempt. She’d thought they had found a good place to cross over: the last Bissanty military posting, clearly marked by the smoke of its smudge-pots, was far behind them,
and the ground across the border, though furrowed with low, muddy black trenches, did not look so different from the land on the Tielmaran side.
The attempt with the horses was a complete failure. Almost immediately after they crossed into the Fingerland, a cloud of biting flies descended, bottle-green and golden-eyed, with wings that let off a teeth-grating whine. Though scarcely larger than the nail of Gaultry’s smallest finger, they were fierce biters. They went for skin, for scalp, for the tender flesh at their mounts’ noses and eyes. Gaultry had never experienced anything like the insect ferocity with which those flies assailed them—and she found it impossible both to keep control of her horse, and to protect herself.
They retreated in ignominy.
“We’ll try again without the horses,” Gaultry gasped, determined.
“I’m not eager,” Tullier admitted.
“He said it was better without horses.”
“No,” Tullier said. “He only said it was worse with them. He didn’t use the word better.”
They rode on another couple of miles, looking for a ridge of higher land that might aid them in their passage. Then they repacked their equipment to be carried afoot. “We should tie up the horses,” Tullier said. “We’ll need them when we come back here.”
“We aren’t going to need them,” Gaultry said stubbornly. “And we can’t tie them up here if we aren’t coming back.”
“We will be.”
“We won’t. Elianté’s Spear! Even if we do come back here, we’ll still have the Prince’s sigil. We can keep heading south, and beg fresh mounts from the farmers in the next village when we come to it.”
“Will there be villages?” Tullier asked. “So close to the border?”
“It’s not going to come to that,” she said confidently. “We’ll cross successfully here, and that will be the end of it.”
“
I
never realized the Bissanty border here was so well defended.” Tullier had been right, and they were back where they started—only this time they had no horses, and they were half a day’s walk or more from the High Road.
“I think you
wanted
to get rid of the horses,” Tullier groused. She gave him a sharp look, then saw that he was only trying to make the best of the situation. He knew she hated riding.
“A small consolation has to be that no one from the capital is likely to follow us out this way.” Gaultry looked around at the scanty country. The land by the Fingerland border was desolate and scruffy, with uncleared growth under the trees—the mark of thin farming. “And we
will
reach Llara’s Kettle going this route—eventually.”
Tullier, his face red at the scalp with bites, nodded agreement. “From the map, we’ll lose four days of travel if we have to march all the way around the low land,” he said. “Maybe five. Less if we find remounts.”
“Either way, we’ll be on the road come Andion’s Ides,” Gaultry said worriedly. “Though I suppose there’s no help for that, with the High Road closed.” It was maddening. Traveling due west, crossing the Bissanty Fingerland took well short of a full day’s ride. Going around the long way—Tullier was right. They’d lose the better part of a week.
But there was nothing for it. The road south toward Pontoeil along the Fingerland border was grassy and thin, trending toward high land well above the swamp. With the border so recently closed, they were among its first travelers this season—and most certainly they were the first without horses.
“We’ll beg some food from the farmers in the next village when we find it.” They were carrying provisions only for a few days, but this was a game-rich land. They wouldn’t starve before they found fresh mounts.
Or so she continued to assure herself, for the first two dreary days of walking.
B
y the eve of the second day, they had yet to find a village. Worse, they had lost their way. What Gaultry had thought was a wood turned out to be a dark, round knoll.
Where on earth are we?
she wondered, stopping and staring at the fast-moving grey sky above. Night had overtaken them, and they had still found nowhere to rest. She did not like the featureless yet rolling land, with its dark trees and scraggy fields. And the road—she feared they’d lost the road a little after dark.
“We’re lost,” Tullier said at last, waiting for her to move.
“We’re lost,” she admitted. “But let’s walk on a ways. I don’t fancy making camp on this ground.”
They circled the knoll and found themselves at the edge of a shallow hollow, long since plowed over, now abandoned. The cupped ground had the appearance of a cauldron with sloping sides. Several upright stones stood in its center, a collapsed head-piece lying between them, like an
old burial mound where the earth had been cleared away, leaving only the stone supports. There seemed to be no choice but to cut across it, though the hollow itself was so still and silent, cut away from the winds that raced though the clouds above, that Gaultry felt deeply uneasy. It took them an unfathomably long time to descend, all the while the shadows slipping and sliding around them inexplicably, as fast-moving clouds above them swept high over head. It was almost airless in the shallow hollow’s bottom where they had to walk, giving an unpleasant sensation as they looked up at that swift sky. The tall, thick grass on the hollow’s floor was wet and lank; it felt clammy and horrible to walk through.
“This is too weird,” Gaultry said, a pricking feeling rising at the back of her neck. The way the layers of clouds flew overhead seemed almost unearthly, unnatural. She supposed it must be a visual illusion, caused by the evenly sloping angles of the hollow’s sides, but Tullier, from his expression, obviously agreed with her. “Let’s climb to the top of that knoll,” she suggested, “and take our bearings from there.”
He readily assented.
The knoll was covered with rough tussocks of grass, making the climbing easy, though sweat had broken out under Gaultry’s shirt by the time she reached the top, a little behind Tullier. It was a tremendous relief coming out in the open—coming out in the open and once again feeling the air moving against her face.
“What is it?” she asked, sensing something odd in his stance.
“Just look,” he whispered.
The wind that had been surging above them since dark had at last swept back the edge of the cloud, revealing the great fathomless bowl of the night sky and all its rich splendor of stars.
“Elianté’s Spear!” Gaultry swore as the sickle and dog star swept into view from under the clouds’ canopy. “We’ve come totally out of our way. We should be heading west by now—and we’ve been walking due south.”
But Tullier’s eyes were not on the stars. The knoll sat at the edge of an enormous plain. A broad river skirted it, curving away in a wide semicircle along the plain’s southern edge, otherwise the vast outlines could be distinguished only by their blackness from the blue emptiness of the air. After their long trek through the intimate snarl of hill and vale, all that emptiness was overwhelming.
“We’re not alone,” Tullier murmured. “Look there.”
A little farther on, in the angle formed by a hill and the edge of the plain, a single fire flared, almost out of sight around the hill’s edge. Figures
clustered around it, too distant to be distinct. “Traveling folk?” Gaultry said. “Or maybe drovers.” Some of the strangeness she’d felt in the cauldron hollow slipped from her. “We can camp with them, and move on in the morning. Maybe even bargain with them for mounts.”
“Will it be safe?”
“Of course it will be safe,” Gaultry said, annoyed. “This is Tielmark, not Bissanty. We just offer the traveler’s sign, and they give us welcome. The least they’ll provide will be the protection of their fire.”
The boy hunched his shoulders, misliking the rebuke. If he had further concerns, he left them unspoken.
They made their descent safely, but had hardly advanced more than a few paces along the flat when a pair of ragged dogs came hurtling toward them, barking angrily. Shrill childish voices called out from the direction of the fire, and two or three short figures jumped to their feet.
Gaultry had been mistaken in assuming that the people by the fire were travelers. They were, she now saw, farm children from the local villages, keeping guard over the village horses. During the hot summer weather, the horses were driven out at night to graze, avoiding the daytime flies. She had seen the same thing in Paddleways, her home village, where driving the cows out before nightfall and back again at first light was considered a great treat among the younger children—a responsibility to be aspired to.
“Let me introduce us,” she told Tullier. “You’ll be a little strange to them.” She made a warning sign to the dogs that quickly quieted them.
There were seven boys and two girls, all visibly relieved when Gaultry made the traveler’s sign and shared her name and Tullier’s. When they heard Gaultry’s intended route, they were at once sympathetically, childishly dismayed. “You’ve come miles off your route,” said Machen, the eldest of the boys and clearly the leader. “Perhaps the pine-witch fuddled you. If you want to reach Haute-Tielmark proper, you’ll have to take the track west toward Pontoeil and turn north at the Brekker Crossing. But that’s best left for the day.” He glanced significantly into the darkness, and then back at Gaultry and Tullier. “Safer, you know?” He winked, as one elder to others, and gave a quick glance at the younger children. From his talk, Gaultry guessed that they had been telling each other ghost stories before she and Tullier had appeared. She could see Tullier looking them over as he opened out his pack and settled, barely able, at least to Gaultry’s eye, to conceal his disbelief. It took her aback a little too, to
see the children’s relaxed and easy manners. Clearly the battles that raged through Haute-Tielmark did not touch them here.

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