Storm Warning (20 page)

“No,” she agreed readily. “You aren’t. Ordinary people do not have the ability to rend people limb from limb with little more than a thought. But ordinary people do have the ability to rend other people limb from limb, period, if they are angry enough. It just takes a little more effort on their part, and as I said, Heralds see the aftermath of those episodes of jealousy and rage all the time. The gods know that in this city alone there are plenty of beatings and knifings and other kinds of mayhem inflicted every day to prove that perfectly ordinary people can be driven to kill over jealousy. The only difference between them and you is that they will use perfectly ordinary physical means against the object of their rage.” She coughed and rubbed her nose. “It’s horrible, it’s tragic, but there it is.”

“But my point—” he tried to interject.

“What makes you
different
from those stupid, ordinary people,” she continued inexorably, “is that you stopped yourself from acting. You
controlled yourself.
You were horrified by the very idea you could have hurt Darkwind, even though you were already hurt by him.”

“But I might not have!” he cried, panicking again.

“But you
did
,” she replied with emphasis. “You did, even when you didn’t know it was a game and meant nothing. You did control yourself, when you thought you had every reason to strike back.
Now
you know what the silly teasing-game looks like between two very good friends, and you won’t make that mistake again. You know how much we value you, and that we would never knowingly hurt you, and I hope that you will ask one of us before you jump to any conclusions.”

He stopped and never completed the sentence, because he frankly did not know what to say. She
had
an answer for every one of his fears and his arguments. She could even be right. He had no way of knowing.

She waited patiently for him to say something, then shrugged. “Right now I think we ought to do something to salvage this situation. I don’t think you want anyone else to know that you came running up here, hurt. If I were you, I wouldn’t.”

Well, he had to agree completely with that, anyway. He felt enough like a fool; the last thing he wanted was for everyone else in the gathering to know he was a fool.

“In that case, we need to think of some logical reason for both of us to have come up here.” She nibbled a fingernail for a moment, deep in thought. “Food, maybe? Or something to drink? Do you two keep those things here?”

“Yes,” he replied, nearly speechless with gratitude at her quick thinking. “And surely everyone is thirsty by now.”

“Good. Let’s go get some drink and bring it down to them; maybe something in the way of a snack as well.” She rose to her feet and gave him her hand. He took it and she helped him to his. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

Her brief tunic had dried, and so had her hair; it curled around her face in a wispy silver-streaked cloud. He wondered how it was that she could be so earthy and so unearthly, all at the same time.

“Lead the way,
ke’chara.
I’m not a lot of good as cook, but I can carry a tray with the best of them.” She winked at him, and he found himself smiling back at her as he led the way to the tiny kitchen where he prepared meals from time to time.

They assembled enough food and drink to have accounted for their absence, and she used a damp, cold cloth to erase any lingering traces of his hysteria. He allowed her to persuade him to rejoin them all by promising that she would make
certain
he was not left out of things from now on.

But he did not go back down those stairs without an invisible load of misgivings along with his other burdens. She was very likely right when it came to her assertions about Darkwind and Firesong—but when it came to himself, he was not so sure.

And despite Elspeth’s kind words, Falconsbane
had
left traces inside him, in the form of knowledge and memories. Even if he was able to control his emotions forever-more, there were things he could never have faith in again. There were too many things he could not blindly believe in now, after hosting a madman in his body. No, when it came to the future, he could not seem to muster Elspeth’s level of hope. There was no blind optimism left in him, no confidence that he’d control his rage next time, and he was very much afraid of that uncertainty.

There was more than one way for a madman to be born.

Horses were never suited to traveling by night, especially moonless nights.
Karal was a good rider, and the gelding’s tension communicated itself to him through a hundred physical signals he felt in his hands and his legs; the horse was nervous as well as tired, and all of his nervousness stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t see.

Trenor stumbled on the uneven road, and Karal steadied him with hand and voice. The gelding whickered wearily, and Karal wondered if he ought to tell Herald Rubrik he was going to have to dismount and lead the poor horse before he took a tumble and ruined his knees.

“We’re almost there. Just over the next rise, Karal, you’ll see it in a minute,” Rubrik’s voice floated back through the moonless dark. He could have been a disembodied spirit or hundreds of paces ahead; there was no way of telling. “Or rather, you’ll see the lights. Once your horse can see where he’s going, he’ll have an easier time of it.”

“I’m not foundering Trenor,” he replied stubbornly. “I’m not going to ride him to exhaustion, and I’m not going to let him take a fall with me on his back. One more stumble, and I’m walking him in.”

A white shape loomed up in front of him, and he realized that Rubrik and Ulrich had pulled up on the road verge to wait for him. “No one is asking you to hurt Trenor, lad,” the Herald said in a tired voice. “I’d spare you both if I could, but there’s nowhere to stay but hedges between here and Haven, and once we reach Haven we might as well go to the Palace. I’m sorry I had to push you like this, but I had word there’s more wizard-weather coming in, and that last bridge was about to go.”

Since they’d passed that last bridge right at sunset, and Karal had been able to see for himself just how shaky the structure was, he hadn’t argued with going on at the time, and didn’t now. And since he had also seen the remains of the huge tree that had caused the damage to that bridge mere hours before they had reached it, he also didn’t ask why such an important bridge hadn’t yet been repaired.

Thinking back on it, he recalled something else he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to at the time. That tree, which had a trunk as big around as two men could reach with their arms, had been torn up by the roots. It hadn’t simply washed down into the river, it had been torn up and flung there. He really didn’t want to think about the kind of weather that tore up trees by the roots and sent large rivers into flood in a matter of hours.

Once they’d crossed the bridge, they’d found there were no rooms to be had at any of the inns. Everything was full up, in no small part due to the effect the weather was having in disrupting travel during the heaviest months for trade in the year.

So they had pressed on, knowing that once they reached Haven, at least there would be rooms and meals waiting for all of them. But once the sun set, the going had gotten a lot rougher than Karal had thought it would. It was a moonless night, and heavy clouds obscured the stars; that might not trouble a Companion, but poor little Trenor found it rough going, and so, probably, did Honeybee. A couple of handfuls of grain and some grass snatched as they rested was not a satisfactory substitute for his dinner and a good rest in a stall.

Karal’s mood matched his horse’s, even if he knew the reasons why they were moving on through the middle of the night. At least it was better for Ulrich to ride than to rest beside the road, perverse as it might sound. Honeybee had carried him on all-night rides in worse conditions than this, and while he was riding, his joints stayed warm and flexible because they were being exercised. If they stopped beside the road to rest until the sun came up, he’d be too stiff to move after a night without shelter.

The thick darkness smothered sounds because there were so few visual reference points; even the insects by the side of the road sounded as if they were chirping behind a wall.

“I promise, I’ve sent messages on ahead of us,” Rubrik continued. Karal believed him, even though there was no way he knew of that messages could be racing ahead of them. Except magic, of course, there was always that possibility. Ulrich had been taking it for granted that their escort was reporting regularly to his superiors
somehow,
so it must be by magic. “There are servants waiting for us, and the Queen’s own farrier will be taking care of your gelding as soon as we reach the Palace.”

Karal patted Trenor’s neck without replying. Tired as the gelding was, he wasn’t winded or strained yet. For all of his stumbling, he hadn’t actually taken a fall or an injury. A good hot mash inside him, a good blanket covering him, and a warm stall to sleep in, and Trenor should be all right in the morning.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “I’d rather take care of him myself—but I’m as tired as he is, and I’d do something stupid, like let him drink too much or too fast.”

“This is the last rise,” Rubrik promised. “It’s a long slope downhill from here.”

Rubrik’s promise was good; a few moments later, from his vantage point in Trenor’s saddle, the lights of Haven appeared as they crested the long hill they’d been climbing for the past half mark and more. There weren’t many of those lights, late as it was, but it was obvious from how spread out they were that Haven was a good-sized city. It was possible to guess the general shape and size from here, in fact.

A few years ago, Karal might have been gaping with amazement, but that was before he’d been taken to Sunhame, the capital of Karse and the site of the first and biggest Temple, as was proper for the Throne of Vkandis. Sunhame was at least the size of Haven, and might even be bigger. So he wasn’t impressed, except by the fact that the city was closer than he had thought.

“Not long now,” Rubrik repeated. “We’re almost at the outskirts. With no traffic, we should make excellent time through the city streets once we’re within the walls.”

Trenor lifted his head and sniffed; he must have liked what he scented because he arched his neck tiredly and picked up his pace a little. Beside him, Honeybee did the same, though her call was not a soft whicker but an asthmatic bray.

“They probably smell the other horses, and possibly the river down there,” Ulrich murmured to himself, clearly not even aware that he had spoken aloud.

The first building that could properly be said to belong to the city appeared on the right; it was too dark to make out what it was, but from the scent of cold, damp clay, smoke, and heated brick, Karal guessed it might belong to a large-scale pot maker or something of the sort.

That, too, was similar to the way that Sunhame was set up; a lot of tradesfolk on the outskirts, warehouses, even mills and the like. Smiths and manufactories. Not too many people wanted to have their houses where there was noise from people going about their trades, so those trades tended to get shoved to the outskirts of the city.

Other buildings appeared soon after, mostly just unlit shapeless bulks against the sky on either side of the road. One or two candles or lamps burned behind curtains, but not enough to cast any kind of light. The hooves of their beasts echoed dully in the silence, a silence broken only by the occasional bark of a dog or creak of wood from an unseen sign swaying in the scant breeze. A few insects called, but no birds, and no other animals. They might have been riding in a city of the dead.

Karal shivered; he did
not
like that particular image at all.

A few more lights appeared up ahead, lights which proved to be lanterns mounted on posts outside closely-shuttered shops. There were still more of these lanterns up ahead, evidently placed along the road at regular intervals. As they passed the third set, Karal finally saw a living, waking person approaching—a young man leading a small donkey laden with a pair of stoppered pots and a short ladder.