Sword (18 page)

The fire swallowed her, leaving no room for love, scorching even sorrow from her as it raged through her bones and made them flame.

In the blinding gold-flecked light, there was an end to the pain; there was even something like peace.

Then the shadows faded, and all around was the quiet of old stone, the scent of blood. Someone was curled in sleep next to her. The stillness of night hung heavily in the air.

A man’s voice laughed raucously somewhere else, and in the dark, flame opened its eyes.

* * *

Campfires made small bright points against the pitch black of a nighttime forest, throwing the shadows of men up against the trees. Devin huddled toward the flames, though the night was warm, and tried to swallow stew down a throat raw with smoke and shouting. Across from him, motionless as a statue, the lines etched deep in his face by the flickering light, Arlen Ulin’s-son of the Darachim Clan watched his every movement like it were something fascinating.

This man spoke of the prophecy. He claimed that
his
people, not Devin, had brought their ragged company from a lonely Faestan road to the second highest peak of the Baar mountain range, a claim Devin was all too willing to believe. It was easier than thinking he might be capable of such things. Arlen also claimed that Kyali and Taireasa were alive, a thought Devin clung to even more desperately. He could no longer sense his sister's presence in any way.

The source of this astonishing knowledge, this unbelievable power, was apparently sitting next to the Clan leader, spooning stew into her mouth with trembling hands. Saraid's long silver hair was tangled as if from sleep, her eyes red-rimmed and her face deathly pale. She looked like he felt.

Why
she looked so was a question he had not yet found the courage to ask.

She left off eating and stared right at him. "You surely don't think you're the only one grieving tonight, Devin Corwynall? We were all surprised by this move—though I wish to the gods Niall and Farrell had done less to provoke it. Your part in this will be very different now, boy, than it would have been if things had gone as we planned."

Several things came clear, suddenly; several more were called into question. "
What
?"

"Easy on him, woman," Arlen muttered, darting a sharp glower at the old woman, who scowled. "Ignore it," he suggested to Devin. "She does it to everyone."

Devin set his stew down with deliberate care; he wanted so badly to pitch the bowl into this woman's face that he was afraid he'd do it before he could stop himself. "I couldn't care less about what she hears of my thoughts, sir," he said, trying hard to sound calm. "I want to know what
plan
this is that was set aside tonight."

Saraid raised her head abruptly, looking stricken. "Devin, it was not—"

"And when, precisely, did it go awry, lady? Before or after the king and queen were murdered?" Even Arlen had paled now, but Devin couldn't seem to stop, though he knew how unlikely it was these folk had anything to do with the West's treachery. "My home burned?" he spat. "The capital overrun with the armies of the Western barons? My father… my… my… before they… "

The soft murmur all around them had fallen to silence.

Devin clenched his teeth over the rest, words and grief and rage rising like a scalding tide in his throat. He shoved himself up and away from the light and the presence of his father's men. The shadows of the trees splintered into dim prisms. He made it as far as a boulder and leaned heavily against its rough side, shaking with sorrow, shattered by it. He couldn't breathe, and for a moment he didn't want to: it would be easier, gentler, to die now, before he could get anyone else killed on his behalf.

But Kyali, oh, Kyali. Taireasa.

A choking sound tore out of him.
Now
he could breathe, and he gasped, air scraping into his throat. He pressed his face against the unforgiving rock and wept, trying to be quiet, not wanting to give the men of the Third something else to worry about, or a witness to this moment. He wanted to be alone with this simple, merciless truth for a while.

"Devin."

The old woman. Of course.

"Go away," he said, but he pushed away from the stone, wiping his face.

"I can't."

"You can," he assured her. It would have sounded more impressive if his voice weren't still thick with tears. "Just turn around and head for firelight."

She knelt next to him. Devin fought the urge to fling an arm out and knock her over. "I can't," she said again. She sounded far too sure about that. "There isn’t time enough to grieve right now, child, much as I am sorry for that. Things have gone badly, and we've so small a window in which to push events in our own direction. You must leave
now
."

"You're not speaking sense," Devin snarled—but unfortunately, her words were a familiar sort of nonsense: she sounded like the court wizards whose instructions he'd spent so much of his life ignoring. It caught his attention, even when he didn't want it to. "
What
events? What
plan
, lady?"

She made an impatient, wounded sort of noise and swiped a hand over her cheek, which was when he realized she was crying, too. Gods! Who
were
these people?

"Your sister's teachers," the old woman said, answering, as she had done before, his unspoken thought. It was thoroughly unnerving. "And
no
plan, Devin Corwynall: nothing that has survived this night. We spent many long years studying Eairon's rhyme, and it still caught us by surprise. And I cannot speak of it, boy: there is no time, do you hear me? Quiet," she snapped, before he could even get his mouth open to protest. "There is too much to do, and you have your part to play—in some ways the hardest part, but you are strong enough to bear it. You are
Song
, Devin Corwynall."

The words sent a shudder through him.

"Song," he echoed roughly. "A Bard, in a war. What exactly do you think I shall do, win battles with my voice?"

"Perhaps."

He glared at her, infuriated, but her face was solemn. "You
mean
that," Devin said, in wondering scorn.

"I don't know
what
you shall do. I know there is magic in you, boy, magic enough to bring you and a whole company of men to us. We could never have done it without your strength. I know that you carry the weight of
geas
, of fate, in you, and it's bending everything in your path, myself included. Devin Corwynall might not win peace with his words, but Song—
that
man might."

He wanted to laugh. It caught in his throat. "I am not that man."

"You will be."

Her certainty was
awful
. Devin looked away, but Saraid set her hand on his arm again, insistent. "Listen to me now. The other side of this ridge is the kingdom of Cassdall, and a company of foreigners near the size of your own. They are exiles, just as you are tonight, and they are in search of help and home, just as you are. They are your allies, though they don't know it yet. Ride tonight, Devin. Find them and bring them here."

"You want me to..." Gods, it was so outrageous he couldn't even finish saying it. He gulped and tried again. "You want me to
leave
? To hare off into the kingdom next door in search of strangers? Are you
mad
? No!"

"
Yes
. You need them. Your
queen
needs them."

He realized, after a moment, that she meant Taireasa, and a fresh fit of shivers twisted through him. Taireasa was queen, good gods. He stared at the old woman, mute with horror.

"Devin, there is no time. You must decide."

That was Arlen, who had apparently decided to join this ridiculous discussion. Behind him, little more than a gleam of armor and a diffident posture in the dark, was Peydan, awaiting orders.

Damn it. He was not going to be pushed into something, tonight least of all.

"I can't leave Kyali and Taireasa," Devin said, finding, in that thought, a direction.

"You aren't, boy. They are coming
here
, I tell you. Everyone is. That will likely include your enemies, Devin Corwynall, and your numbers are not great. You need all the help you can get."

"Gods, how do you
know
all this?!" Devin cried, driving a fist into the soft dirt under his knees. He could feel his face crumpling with fury and confusion. "How? And if you see so much, how
not
what happened tonight? Where was our warning?"

There was a painful silence after that. He wiped at his face, and didn't even flinch when Arlen's heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

"We're not gods, boy. We have a better view from up here, and a few men in the lowlands, that's all."

"And magic my people can't even
imagine
. And years of studying a prophecy you didn't speak to
its subjects
about. And some way of knowing more about my sister than I do that has left the old lady haggard and exhausted, which does not bode well for what state Kyali is in. I am not a fool, sir. I'd prefer not to be lied to as if I were one."

Arlen ducked his head and heaved a sigh, then looked into his face with a wry expression. "No, you're clearly not. Neither are we—but we're only men, as you are, fighting off the dark with whatever tools we have to hand."

It wasn't truth, but it was such a vivid description of what his night had been like that he was rendered speechless. Arlen stood. Devin did, too—he could hardly sit on the ground and speak to this man.

"Kyali," he said stubbornly. "Taireasa."

"Safe," Arlen shot back. "My word on it, they escaped. They will be leaving the castle soon, coming to us. We'll be making ready for them."

"You don't know they'll come
here
, sir."

"Where else could they go?"

That was a point.

These were his father's allies. And Kyali had lived with these people for two years.

And there really would be nowhere else safe, not once the Western troops started crossing the border in numbers, which they had no way to prevent now.

"You're sure?" Devin said weakly.

"Yes. They won't be more than a few days before leaving. Your sister… has something to do first."

The wooden mask of the man's face thinned on that last statement, showing something far less hard and far more hurt underneath. Oddly, it did more toward convincing him to trust the Fraonir than any of their words. Devin knotted his hands into fists in helpless tension and nodded once.

Peydan turned toward the fires and the men without a word. They could hear his shouted orders echo back through the trees, and then the sound of weary soldiers making ready to travel.

"You'd better be right," Devin said quietly.

"I am. We
do
have scouts. Just head north by northeast and keep a watch out," Arlen said. "They are there. It shouldn't take you more than two days to find them if you ride hard."

Peydan returned, bringing torches and also Savvys, saddled and huffing at having his rest interrupted. Devin mounted, heart thudding, half panicked at the thought of riding farther away from Kyali and Taireasa—but there was something pulling in his guts again, and the direction was not down the mountain; it was north. He trusted it blindly, shaken and terrified that this would all go wrong.

Arlen laid a hand on his ankle and passed something heavy and awkward up to him. Devin had it in his hands before he realized he was holding a harp case. He pried it open, bewildered—it was odd timing, to put it mildly—and sucked in a startled gasp at the sight of the shining wood, the silver insets, the arc of the neck. The strings hummed softly as he shifted. He brushed one finger reverently over them and gasped again as the pulling feeling in his middle bloomed, for a flicker of an instant, into something potent and far too sure of itself.

"Dear gods," he whispered.

"Song you are," Arlen said, looking gravely up at him. "Song you shall be. Fare well, Devin Corwynall."

Devin closed the case before anything else could happen and settled the thick leather strap carefully over his shoulder. The weight of the harp felt disturbingly right against his spine.

"What do I tell these foreigners to convince them to come back with me?" he asked, having little hope of an answer. Answers were not easily come by here, it seemed. But Arlen surprised him again.

"Tell them," he said, “that they are welcome to shelter in our mountains. Tell them the Fraonir Clans offer aid."

C
HAPTER
11

T
he stones were trembling.

Taireasa raised her head off an old cloak serving as a pillow and met High Chancellor—
former
High Chancellor Maldyn's worried gaze across the room. His tired eyes glittered in the dim candlelight. Beside her, Marta sat up, searching after a knife tucked in her skirts. All around, folk rose silently, guards straightening from a weary slump against the walls, servants and shopkeepers pulling themselves up from an exhausted sprawl on the dusty stones of the abandoned passageways.

Above their heads, shaking the very floors, was the sound of many booted feet.

"’At's another one, then," one of the villagers pronounced in a low, certain voice.

"Shh," a woman hissed. "Herself is thinking us a way out o’ here. Be still."

Herself wasn't, though. Herself had spent nearly two days under the noses of the enemy, hiding in the very walls of the castle she'd grown up in, and Herself was no closer to a plan to take back her capital than she had been the night she'd lost it.

She wished her father were here. She wished the Lord General were here.

She wished most of all that Kyali were here.

But Kyali had vanished from what Taireasa had been sure was her deathbed almost two days ago. Vanished with her terrible wounds, her sword and her daggers, and not a word. And three Western barons had died since then, killed in their bedrooms. Only Cyrnic remained—guarded, it was said, by ten men who went with him everywhere.