The Blue Sword (29 page)

“No,” he said. “I hoped not.”

Harry whispered: “You have done me much honor—since the beginning.”

Corlath replied: “I did only what I must, for the
kelar
gave me no choice; but I—I came to believe in you, and I did not care what the
kelar
said.”

“Did you believe in me then, when I rode away and left you, my king, and I a king’s Rider, against your orders?”

The smile faded, but his eyes were still bright yellow. “I did,” he said. “Luthe … warned me you would do something mad—and I … feared something else, for thus a man makes a fool of himself, and will not accept the wisdom the gods send him. I did not realize what Luthe had told me—I had forgotten what the
kelar
had told me—till you had gone.”

“Something else?” said Harry. “What did you fear?” Her heart beat more rapidly as she waited for his reply, and she hoped he would ask her such a question, that she might answer it as her heart bade her.

But Corlath looked around them. “The Outlanders you bring to my camp are not your escort home?”

Harry shook her head violently. “They are my escort home only insofar as they would bear me company in my home, in the Hills, if you will have them.”

“I will have them, and be honored,” said Corlath, and his eyes lingered on Jack, who sat Draco quietly between Richard and Terim, “they who stood at Madamer Gate and watched the mountain fall on Thurra. This tale they will tell, I hope, and tell often.”

“And I hope I will never have to do anything like that again,” said Harry, and for a moment she could not see Corlath’s yellow eyes, but a demon-thing that had once been human on a white stallion with the teeth of a leopard.

Corlath looked down at the top of her bent head. “For you I hope that you do not either; the
kelar
strength is not a comfortable Gift.

“I saw—I watched the mountain fall. I heard you call me and knew then who it was you faced—and thus why it was that I had not seen him before me: why we were able to throw the Northerners back, for all that they outnumbered us. They did not, I think, expect us to be so strong, or Thurra would not have divided his army as he did; for Thurra’s demon blood had told him that only the demon Gifts are strong.

“I was proud of you—and I was glad that it was I you called upon.” His voice died away to a murmur, but then he spoke loudly: “There is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, to Aerin and Tor, that we do not often see today, for there have been few women warriors of late, till Gonturan rode to battle again. But tradition is that a betrothed pair may exchange sashes, and thus they pledge their honor to each other, for all to see. I will return you your sash if you choose, for I have no right to wear it, as you have not granted me the right. But I have been honored to wear it, in my people’s eyes, till you returned—for as I had had so little faith in you despite Luthe’s words to me, so I decided to have faith that you would return, to the Hills and to me, and to hope that your answer might justify me.”

Harry said clearly, that all might hear: “My king, I would far rather you kept my sash as you have kept it for me in faith while I was gone away from you, and gave me your sash to wear in its place. For my honor, and more than my honor, has been yours for months past, but I saw no more clearly than did you till I had parted from you, and knew then what it would cost me if I could not return. And more, I knew what it would cost me if I returned only to be a king’s Rider.”

Then a cheer went up from many throats, and not only from those of Harry’s company; for many of the camp had gathered in the center court before the king’s zotar to hear how this meeting would go, for they had seen Harimad-sol’s sash around their king’s waist, and those who remembered the tradition had told of it to those who did not. And there was no surprise, in those who had followed Harry or in those who had fought with Corlath, and there was much joy; and the echoes of those cheers must have come even to the city boundaries of the Outlander town called Istan, and the barred gate of the General Mundy. And the Outlanders who had followed Jack Dedham when he decided to follow the young Harry Crewe, who had become Harimad-sol and the Hill-king’s Rider, and who did not know the Hill tongue, looked around them, and at the two tall figures before them standing beside the chestnut stallion, and they cheered too; and Jack, in a lull, said to them: “In case you would like to be sure what you’re cheering, our Harry is going to marry this chap. He’s the king, Corlath.”

Under the cover of the shouting Corlath drew Harry closer to him and said: “I have loved you long, though at first I did not know it; but I knew it when I sent you into the Hills with Mathin and Tsornin for your teachers, for I saw then how I missed you. And when in the City I found that Narknon had followed you, I was jealous of a cat, who could go where she wished.”

Harry said, softly, that only his ears might hear: “You might have spoken.”

Corlath smiled wryly. “I was afraid to tell you, for I had stolen you from your people, and the awakening of your
kelar
might make you hate me, for she whose blood gave you the Gift left the Hills long ago. When you knew what it was that this heritage gave you, it might drive you back all the more strongly to your father’s people, to a fate the Hills had no part of. The Gift is not a pleasant burden.

“But when I saw you were gone I looked to the west, for I knew where you must be going, and I vowed that if we both lived, when we met again I would tell you that I loved you, and ask you to stand by me not as Rider but as queen; for suddenly it seemed worth the risk, and I could not bear it that you might never know.”

Harry said: “I love you, and it has haunted me that for my disobedience I would be exiled, not from the people I have claimed as my own, though this were punishment enough, but from you that I loved best of anything and best of all. I think I knew you could not exile me, for the victory Gonturan had won for you and your Hills; but I knew that for you to have turned against me for leaving as I did, it would have been the bitterest exile, even if I sat at your left hand as Rider all my life.”

It was Innath who grabbed her away at last and danced her around, for Innath had no dignity, and Corlath and Harry seemed able to ignore the tumult around them indefinitely. Then Jack took her away from him, and then she was embraced and knocked about and swung back and forth till she was dizzy; but she laughed and was happy, and thanked everyone who touched her. But there was one face in particular that she looked for and could not find, and its absence troubled her. At last they let her go to Corlath again, and her happiness was shaken for the face she could not find, and she seized his arm anxiously and said, “Where is Mathin?”

Corlath, who had been dancing too, went very still.

“He is not dead?” she said, and her voice rose till it broke; but when he shook his head it gave her no comfort. He took her hand in his and said, “Come,” and led her away, through the tents. Now she could see the traces of battle, for by lantern light she saw blood-stained gear and unidentifiable bits and tatters moving mournfully in the evening breeze, and some few people, bandaged, limping, or lying by campfires, gently tended by those who were unhurt. Corlath led her to a long low tent and drew her inside, and the smell of death struck her at once, although the figures lying on rugs and blankets and cushions were well cared for and cleanly bandaged, and their chests still rose and fell with breathing, and there were many nurses watching over them and bringing drink and thin invalid food. Corlath brought her to the far end of the narrow tent, and the figure there turned its head toward them. Harry threw herself on her knees, weeping, for here was Mathin.

“I knew you would return,” said Mathin, and one hand moved a few inches to close weakly around Harry’s; and Harry gulped and nodded, but still her tears flowed and she could not stop them. “And you will marry our king?” he went on, in what would have been a conversational tone if it had not been so faint, and Harry nodded again.

“I wanted you to toast us at the wedding, my old friend and horse-breaker and teacher,” she said.

Mathin smiled. “I leave my honor in good hands, best of daughters,” he said gently.

“No,” said Harry, and while her tears still fell her voice gained strength. “
No
.” As she knelt, Gonturan dug a hole between her ribs, and she stood up impatiently and unbuckled her and let her fall; and as she bent down again a few of her tears fell on her own hand, and they were hot, scalding hot, and left red marks where they touched the skin; and she realized that her eyes and cheeks burned with them. She drew the blanket away from Mathin’s chest and belly, where a long mortal wound oozed through its wrappings; the blood was almost black, and green-tinged, poisoned, and there was an unhealthy smell.

“In Aerin’s day,” murmured Harry, “
kelar
was good for things. It didn’t only hurt things, and make trouble.”

Corlath came to stand behind her. Mathin looked up at his king and said, “Aerin—”

Harry felt Corlath’s hands on her shoulders, and twisted where she knelt, and seized his hands. “Help me,” she said. “You helped me on that mountaintop. It was as though you held me up, held me by the shoulders as you did the first evening when I tasted the Water of Sight.” Her eyes, wide open, were going blind; it was like the golden war-rage, only worse; it would split her skin, she would wither and blacken in the heat of it.

Corlath said, as if against his will, “Mathin fell, guarding me, while I was far away on a mountaintop; if it had not been for him, I would have had no body to return to.”

Harry shivered and the heat plucked at her nerves and ate up her strength, and blindly she reached out one hand to touch Mathin, and her fingers touched the bare skin of his upper arm, and she felt him shudder, and his breath hissed between his teeth. Whatever it was thundered through her veins and filled her lungs and stomach, her hands and mouth; and she let go of Mathin and turned to the next bed, and scrabbled with the bedclothes, for she could see nothing but the golden storm and feel nothing but one of Corlath’s hands tight in one of hers, and she touched the throat of the occupant of the pallet next to Mathin. She groped her way down the long length of that tent, stumbling, almost crawling but for Corlath, touching foreheads and hands and shoulders, and the nurses turned back the bedding, and the eyes of the dying looked into her blind eyes and hoped for her touch but feared it, and none but Corlath who were themselves whole came near enough even to brush the hem of her tunic, for it was hard just to breathe if she, with the power that was in her, was too near. The fire rose through her and crackled in her ears, so that she was deaf as well; but at last they came to the door, and Corlath led her out, her feeble feet not sure where they would find the earth with each step; and she felt the evening breeze, and the fire began to subside, reluctantly at first. But as it drained out of her, back to where it had come from, it took with it the marrow of her bones and the elastic of her muscles, for such was the fire’s fuel, and she leaned against Corlath. He put his arms around her, and when the fire flickered at last and went out and she crumpled, he picked her up and carried her back to his zotar, and she lay in his arms as limp a burden as when he had put the sleep on her, the night he stole her from the Residency.

Harry woke up feeling as if she had been sick for a year and was now approaching convalescence. She stared at the peaked roof of the zotar and slowly realized where she was. Even her thoughts were too weak to entertain the idea of moving. Narknon, by some extra feline sense, knew when she opened her eyes, and without moving from her sprawl across Harry’s legs, began to purr.

With the purr came Corlath, who had been sitting just beyond the curtain that had been hung by Harry’s bed to give her peace from the comings and goings of the king’s tent. He put back the curtain when he heard Narknon. He was himself weary, for much of the strength Harry had used the evening before was his; and he had not been able to sleep that night for watching her. He watched her sleeping, hoping only that she would awaken and still be Harry. His heart was in his mouth as he dropped down beside her.

The look on his face brought Harry more strongly back to herself, and she sat shakily up; and he put an arm around her shoulders, and she was happy to rest her head against his chest and be silent.

She did not want to ask, but she could not help herself, so at last she said: “Mathin?”

His voice sounded deeper than ever with her ear against his chest when he spoke. “He will carry a handsome scar, but he will carry it lightly, and he will be strong enough to sit on Windrider when we leave this place to return to the City, in a few days’ time; although his right arm still pains him somewhat, from the long raw burn near the shoulder, as though a fire had scorched him.”

Harry remembered how she had known the fire was eating her, that it would leave nothing of her; and she opened her right hand, the hand that had touched Mathin. It looked as it always had, but for the small white mark across the palm, which was only two months old.

“And the others?”

“None will die, and while none is as quick to recover as Mathin, none either bears the mark of where Harimad-sol touched them.”

“And—my people? Jack, and Kentarre, and those who follow them? And Nandam, and—and Richard? Have you met my brother Richard?”

“Your Jack has introduced us.” Corlath had remembered Colonel Dedham when he saw him standing in the twilight behind Harry; remembered him as the one man who had seemed to listen to what Forloy said, and believe that the men of the Hills might be speaking the truth, even to Outlanders. It was that sight of the man who had offered the Hill-king his loyalty while standing on the Residency verandah that had given Corlath the courage to declare his love for Harry the night before. It had seemed a fine bold thing to him at the time to bind her sash around himself and wear it openly; it hadn’t occurred to him till he saw her with her company at her back, and her pale eyes fixed on him with an expression he could not read, that it would force him to face
her
with it and what it meant immediately, whenever he saw her again—if he saw her again. It would doubtless have been kinder or more courteous—and less dangerous—to choose his time and place; and not make such a public display of it. But then, without the sash around his waist and his people watching eagerly for the outcome, it was so extremely possible that his courage would have failed him again, for all his noble words about risk-taking. All these things he would tell Harry later. “But Richard has the face of your family, though he has not the eyes, and I would have guessed who he must be.”