The Oracle's Queen (16 page)

“I am a knight, Lord Tharin!”

“Then you've come up in the world by quite a mark. I remember a camp runner with a talent for picking pockets and telling clever lies. I remember you,
Sir
Tomas, and your master, too.”

“So do I,” old Jorvai growled from the back of the audience chamber, where he'd been playing dice with some of the other lords. He came forward, dropping a hand to his sword hilt. “And like Lord Tharin here, I have a good memory for faces and reputations. Ursaris always wanted his bread buttered on both sides.”

Tamír held up a hand to stay them. “If your master wishes to support me, then tell him he is welcome in my court. If not, he should be gone by morning or I'll consider him my enemy.” It was no idle threat and the man knew it.

“I will report your reply, Highness.” He bowed and hurried out.

T
amír and her guard rode out by Beggar's Bridge to see what Ursaris would do. By sundown he'd decamped and marched west, taking his warriors with him.

“Good riddance!” Ki called after them, rising in the saddle and waving his middle finger at their retreating backs. “You cowards!”

“He's not, you know,” Tharin said. “Ursaris is a good leader and his men are brave.”

“They didn't believe the truth about me,” said Tamír.

“I doubt it mattered one way or the other to him,”
Tharin replied. “He's made up his mind to back Korin.” He leaned over and clasped her shoulder. “He won't be the only one, you know.”

Tamír sighed, watching Ursaris' banners dwindle in the sunset light and dust. “I know. Do you think that Korin has lost people to my side, too?”

Tharin waved a hand around at the spreading cluster of tents and corrals on the plain. “There they are, and more coming every day.”

Tamír nodded, but still wondered how many warriors Korin was gathering, with the Sword of Ghërilain and his father's name?

Such thoughts made her all the more grateful for the familiar faces around her.

Not all of them were as they had been, however.

T
anil's wounds had healed, but his mind was still unhinged. Tamír and Ki visited the squire every day, in the room he now shared with Lynx. He slept a great deal and spent most of his waking hours staring out the window at the sea. The others even had to remind him to eat. His once-lively brown eyes were dull now, his hair lank and dirty around his shoulders, except for the two small tufts of unevenly shorn hair at his temples, where the enemy had cut off his braids. It was a mark of shame for a warrior. Quirion had been made to cut off his own, when he was banished from the Companions for cowardice. Now Tanil would have to prove himself worthy again, before he would be allowed to plait in new ones.

Tamír doubted he cared. The only person he would willingly talk to was Lynx, and he said very little to him. Lynx often sat quietly with him when he wasn't needed elsewhere, concerned that he might do himself harm.

“Bad enough what those Plenimaran bastards did to him, and then left him alive with the shame of it, but he feels he failed Korin, too,” Lynx confided to Tamír and the others. “His mind wanders and he wants to go looking for
him, thinking Korin fell in battle. Other times he thinks he hears Korin calling for him. I have to set a guard on his door when I'm not there.”

“How did Korin take it, losing him?” Ki asked Nikides.

“Hard. You know how close they were.”

“But he didn't go back to look for the body, to give his friend proper rites?”

Nikides shrugged. “There wasn't time. The citadel was overrun right after that and Lord Niryn convinced Korin to flee.”

“I'd have found a way,” Ki muttered, exchanging a look with Tamír. “I'd have made sure one way or the other.”

O
ne rainy afternoon a few days later another familiar face appeared at her court.

Tamír was presiding over a dispute between two displaced millers over the ownership of a small, undamaged granary outside the city walls. She'd watched her uncle at this many times, but found it just as boring to adjudicate as to watch. She was doing her best not to yawn in their faces when Ki leaned down and touched her shoulder.

“Look there!” He pointed into the crowd of petitioners that ringed the hall and she caught sight of a head of golden hair. Leaving Nikides to sort out the millers, she hurried across the hall to greet her father's liegeman, Lord Nyanis. She hadn't seen him since the day he accompanied her father's ashes home from that last battle. His welcoming smile now swept that memory away with happier ones and she embraced him warmly. He was one of the few lords she'd known, growing up at the keep, and she'd always liked him. Even as she embraced him, however, she remembered that he and Lord Solari had once been friends, as well as her father's warlords.

“So here you are!” he laughed, hugging her like he had when she was a child at the keep. “And Ki, too. By the Four, look how the pair of you have grown! And fine
warriors, too, by all reports. Forgive me for not coming sooner. I was still in Mycena when word of the Plenimaran raid reached me, and the spring storms on that coast forced us to march back.”

Tamír pulled back. “Have you heard about Solari?”

Nyanis' smile faded. “Yes. I always told him his ambition would be the ruin of him, but I had no idea he'd throw in with the likes of Niryn. I'd seen nothing of him since your poor father's passing. If I'd known, I'd have tried to reason with him and do more to protect you. As it is, I do have news for you, though it's not good. I've had word from Solari's eldest son, Nevus, on my way here. The fool wanted me to help him oppose you and take Atyion.”

“I hope you told him no?” Tamír said, grinning.

Nyanis chuckled. “Your father was my liege, and I'll pledge my sword to you, if you'll have me.”

“Gladly.”

He looked her up and down; she'd come to expect such scrutiny from those who'd known her before the change, and recognized the wonder mixed with disbelief.

“So this was Rhius' great secret? I spoke with Tharin on my way in. He says I'm to call you Tamír now. Or should it be Majesty?”

“Highness, for now. It's important that I follow the laws and rituals.”

“That would include getting back the queen's sword.”

“Yes.”

“Then I will see it in your hand, Highness.” Nyanis knelt and presented his sword to her, right there in the bustle of servants and milling plaintiffs. “In the meantime, I repeat the pledge of my heart and my sword to the scion of Atyion. I will see the crown of Skala on your brow and the Sword of Ghërilain in your hand. I will gladly give my life for that, Princess Tamír.” He stood and sheathed his sword. “Let me present some other allies I brought to you.”

Arkoniel happened by as she was greeting the knights and lords. “Lord Nyanis! I'd not heard of your arrival.”

“Wizard!” He clasped hands with Arkoniel. “Still minding your charges, I see. Were you ever able to teach either of them to write properly?”

“One of my greatest accomplishments,” Arkoniel replied, smiling.

T
aking a bitty of the red
. That's what Lhel had called the spell when she first taught it to Arkoniel. Away from prying eyes, he pressed the tiny drop of Nyanis' blood from beneath the sharpened corner of his little finger's nail and spread it over the pad of his thumb, then spoke the words she'd taught him. Like Tamír, he wanted to trust the man, but Solari had been a harsh lesson. He felt the tingle of the magic working, and then relief when no hint of evil intent came to him from the blood.

He'd used this spell often, and had already found a few lords who weren't to be trusted. Satisfied about Nyanis, he returned to the audience chamber, looking for more newcomers to greet.

M
ahti's first vision for this journey had been a river, and so it seemed, though his feet never left dry land. The trails he was drawn along led him east and north for the next two turnings of the moon.

For the first weeks he traveled through valleys he knew, following each one down from the peaks like the spring melt trickling down in little streams to swell the larger ones at the bottom, where the villages lay. He met with those he'd healed and those he'd bedded, and learned the names of children he'd fathered. Some begged him to stay, but the old ones who knew how to read the marks on his oo'lu gave him gifts of food that could be lightly carried and sang parting-forever songs when he moved on.

He soon left the valleys he knew, but Mahti was not lonely, for the ghost witch Lhel was often with him. She came into his dreams at night, telling him of the girl she'd shown him in that first vision. Her name was Tamír, and she'd been a boy until recently, sharing a body with her dead brother. Lhel had made that magic, with the Mother's blessing, but she'd died before she could see the girl completely into womanhood. This, and the unhappy ghost of the boy, kept her own spirit earthbound. Like many witches, Lhel was at ease in spirit. That she stayed for love rather than for vengeance had made her a
pagathi'shesh
, a guardian spirit, rather than a
noro'shesh
, like the girl's twin.

Lhel showed him that spirit, too, and he was fearsome, bound to Lhel and to his sister by rage. Playing his vision song, Mahti saw the spirit cords that bound them all together. They were very strong.

“I watch over her, but I wait for him,” Lhel confided, lying next to Mahti on his pallet in the darkness under an oak. “I will guide him on when he is ready to let go.”

“He hates you,” Mahti pointed out.

“As he must, but I love him,” she replied, resting her cold head on Mahti's shoulder and wrapping her cold arms around him.

Lhel had been a beautiful woman, with her thick hair and ripe body. The marks of the goddess covered her skin like twig shadows on snow and her power still clung around her like a scent. She inflamed Mahti's flesh as if she'd been a living woman. Because she was a pagath-i'shesh, he lay with her like a living woman under each full moon, but only then. By the full light of the Mother's face they might make more guardian spirits together, who could be incarnated as great witches later on. Any other night risked making the souls of murderers and thieves. But she often lay with him, even without coupling, and he wished he'd known her in life.

She was also his guide, and in his dreams showed him rocks and trees to look for to keep him on the path he'd chosen. She told him of other people around the girl who had been a boy, showed him faces: a boy with brown, laughing eyes; a fair-haired southland warrior filled with love and sadness; the young oreskiri he'd seen in the first vision, who was filled with pain; and an old woman oreskiri with a face like flint. He would know the girl by these people, Lhel said.

The way grew harsher as he pushed ever east and north, and so did the people who lived there. They were still his own kind, but they lived too close to the southlanders to be generous or welcoming to a stranger heading in that direction. They showed him scant courtesy, just enough not to offend the Mother, and sent him on his way with silence and suspicious looks.

On and on he went, and the mountains shrank to hills. The Retha'noi villages grew smaller and meaner and farther
between, then there were no villages at all, just the occasional camp of hunters or a lone witch.

Another two days and the hills gave way to forest and spring rushed up to meet him, even though at home he knew people would still be breaking ice on the water buckets in the morning. Here the grass was green and lusher than any meadow he'd known. The flowers were different, and even the birds. He knew from the old tales that he had at last reached the outlying lands of the southlanders.

The first ones he met were a family of wandering traders who'd had dealings with the Retha'noi and greeted him with respect in his own language. The patriarch's name was Irman and he welcomed Mahti into their tent like kin and sat him at his side by the fire.

When they'd washed their hands and eaten together with his wife and sons and all their wives and children, Irman asked after hill people Mahti might know, then asked the nature of his journey.

“I'm seeking a girl who was once a boy,” Mahti told him.

Irman chuckled at that. “Can't be many of those about. Where is she?”

“South.”

“South's a big place in Skala. From where you're sitting, it's just about all south from here. Go north and you'll soon find yourself in the Inner Sea.”

“That is why I must go south,” Mahti replied agreeably.

Irman shook his head. “South. All right then. Your kind has a way of getting where you need to go. You carry a fine oo'lu, too, I see, so you must be a witch.”

The man said it with respect, but Mahti caught an undercurrent of fear. “You people distrust my sort of magic, I'm told.”

“Like poison and necromancy. I don't think you'll get very far if people know what you are. I've seen some of
the good you folk can work, but most Skalans would burn you without a second thought.”

Mahti considered this. Lhel had said nothing of such dangers.

“Do you speak Skalan?” Irman asked.

“Yes, I have learned it from a boy,” Mahti answered in that language. “Our people are learning it from traders, like you, so know to protect ourselves. I am told to say I am from Zengat, to fool them.”

At least that's what he thought he said. Irman and the others stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“I am not saying the words?” he tried again.

“You're getting a few of them, here and there,” Irman replied, wiping his eyes. “People will take you for simpleminded rather than Zengati, talking like that. And the Zengat aren't exactly loved in Skala, either.”