The Song of Andiene (25 page)

A shameful thing, to grow sallow, ready to faint with fear. This was what Nahil had felt. This was the madness that drove him all these years. Though her eyes told him nothing, still he feared to look away.

“Can you tell me why I should not destroy you?”

Her voice was clear and childish. But this was no child. He struggled to speak. The discipline of many years came to his aid. At last the iron grip let loose of his throat. He was able to speak calmly. “I tried to save you, long ago.”

Andiene nodded. “‘The maimed one, the mute one.’ I remember. Traitor!” The dagger bit a little deeper.

“I never swore to your father.” It was a shabby excuse, one he had never made, not till now. “I joined his court, true enough, the same as any other man, but that binds no man’s honor.”

“He trusted you!”

“He should not have. There are spies in every court, up and down the land.”

“If he had known what you were, your death would not have been so easy!”

“I know,” Kallan said.

“Who killed him?”

That was a deadly question. If she had eyes to see, she could read the answer on his face. Kallan answered the best he could. “Nahil gave the orders.”

He spoke desperately. “The one I served had saved my life and bound me with the straitest of vows.” She glanced toward the man who lay in the corner, and his heart beat faster, with a touch of hope. “Is he your liegeman?” She nodded. He had won no victory, but he had a chance she would understand. He pressed on.

“You know the meaning of that, then. I was to serve him utterly, or else fall on my sword, in token of what I would have been without his aid. I loved life more when I was young, and Nahil needed soldiers, to get him a kingdom.”

He did not dare to meet her eyes. There was little more that could be said, he thought. He looked down at his hand, holding the dagger steady, close to his heart.
So little distance. A man’s life runs close to the surface. Indeed, I have loved my life more than I should.

“What are you doing so far to the south?” she asked, and the change in her voice gave him new hope.

“Exiled, my lady. Blood-price and shelter-death, like so many others. All who saw you win your way to freedom, he feared us all. A terror seized him that hour that has not left him yet. And so we died to ease his fear. And so all vows were broken at last. But I won free.”

He was speaking almost randomly, hoping that she would not strike while he was speaking. “I found the fisherman and his daughter in the forest to the north. I may have saved their lives,” he said quietly, trying not to show that he had clung to the words as his last desperate chance.

“I see,” Andiene said. She stepped forward, pulled the dagger from his hand, and tossed it to the floor between them. The grip that had held his hand and mind was gone, shockingly gone. He sagged, loose-jointed like a puppet set free from its strings. Stepping backwards, she gave him room to fall, and waited quietly, unsmiling, while he scraped together the shreds of his dignity and strength, and stood to face her again.

“You came to our aid when you could have rested safe in shelter,” she said, and it was almost a question.

“I heard the sobbing of the grievers,” Kallan answered. “They can be fought with swords. I was taught that men are not enemies in the forest, that we have enough to fight here. I went, and my companion followed me.”

“Then let us call truce … ” Andiene hesitated, seeming much younger. “But I do not want you thinking that I was afraid of you.”

He laughed at that, and could not stop himself, full of the foolishness of sudden relief. “My lady, I think you should be afraid of no one and nothing.” He looked at her in awe. That powerful child whom he remembered had grown to be a woman as beautiful as a winter morning.

He spoke his thoughts as simply as a child. “If you could do that—such power—why could you not protect your comrades from the red ones?”

“You are magicless.” She spoke deliberately. “It was as simple to hold you as it would be to send swordsmen against children.” She did not seem to realize what she had said. Then her voice shook. “The grievers? They may die like beasts of this world, but they are born of sorcery.”

Unbelievably, her hands were trembling; she was shivering. “I thought I was so powerful, and I am not. I welcomed our duel, I looked for it, and they overwhelmed me. They broke my power like a child’s toy.”

Kallan went to her, then, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sit down and rest. You fought as hard as any of us.”

She obeyed him without a word. He turned to look at his injured comrades. The woman, she was a lucky one. She lay quietly, in a healing sleep. The other man was awake, trying to prop himself up on his elbow. “Lie still and you will heal sooner,” Kallan said.

The other one looked at him with the brilliant eyes of someone in whom a fever is already beginning to burn. “You fought well, Lord Kallan.”

Kallan dropped to one knee beside him, studied his face, nondescript enough, but yes, he recognized him. “One of the palace guards. More pride and high lineage than rank … Syresh … Syresh Mareenfil.”

Syresh smiled. “Since you left, I rose in rank. High enough to find myself bound in heavy ropes, named for treason.”

“You and so many others,” said Kallan. “Here, drink some water and think no more about it. Try to sleep.”

Syresh took a few gulps from the waterskin, then slumped back onto the floor. Kallan looked at the last two, huddled close together.

Kare lay in a death-like stupor. There was nothing he could do. Her wounds were the kind that no medicine but time can heal. Ilbran concerned him more. No color in his face, his heart beating thinly—the grievers had torn him cruelly.

Andiene sat leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her face drawn and weary. When Kallan went to her and touched her shoulder, she raised her head and blinked her eyes as though waking from some dream. “Do you have power to heal?” he asked.

She shook her head, her face bitter. “I do not know as much as a village herb-wife would.”

“I know that much,” he said. “Of wound-craft, at least, if not of love-tokens. Can you protect me if I go outside? I need leaves to dress their wounds.”

She rose slowly to her feet. “If you stay close by my side, and we do not go far, I can hold a circle around the two of us.”

Her powers were not put to the test. The grievers, the ones that lived, had fled into the forest. Still the ground was littered with the bodies of their mates, lean short-haired creatures, red as a rusty sword. Their heads were barely wider than their muzzles; their narrow jaws were filled with long broken teeth.

“How do they live?” Andiene asked in amazement. “So many of them, and there is little for them to feed on in the forest.”

“Though they are mortal, they are not completely of this world,” Kallan said. “They can live long on the memory of blood and death, or so the songs say. Their masters, who rule the forest, have many servants.”

“How did they come to attack us in daylight?” Andiene asked.

“It is the dark daylight, the time when the star patterns have broken and gone. There is always more danger then, a chance that the protection of the forest ways will break. We had stayed in the safehold for some days, waiting for a more favorable time to travel.”

She nodded, a sardonic look on her face. “I was warned … ” and she gave a little laugh. “What are you gathering?”

“Vulnese.” He knelt to pick the wide soft gray leaves. “This is better than any cloth, once the blood is sealed in the wound. Sandray will grow near the forest trees. Remember: ‘Where evil does endure, there grows evil’s cure.’”

Andiene stayed close beside him, his own guard against evil, though she walked unsurely, like one who has just risen from a fortnight’s sickbed. Under the very shadow of the trees, sandray grew, lush and green. The wide, crinkled, strong-smelling leaves made a fragrant bundle.

When they were gathered, Kallan turned to go back. Though vulnese and sandray were the only herbs he knew, there was one more thing that could be tried, something he had heard only in one tale of the forest.

He kicked one of the grievers, then another. All dead. The red ones were fragile creatures, living as they did on the borderline of mortality. At last, he found one that snapped feebly at his boot. He held it up, and slit its throat, letting the black blood drain into a waterskin.

Andiene looked at him in disgust. He spoke defensively. “I have heard that their blood will burn out the poison of their fangs. At least, it cannot be a greater poison, I am sure.”

But he had doubts, for all his confident words. Andiene helped him, as they worked on Syresh first, and then on Ilbran, cutting the broken fangs from their wounds, rebandaging them with crushed sandray leaves and vulnese. When the griever’s blood was poured into the wounds, it seemed to boil and smoke. Syresh woke and fought them; Ilbran lay as quiet as death.

The other one, Lenane, they left to the last. Her wounds were lighter, with only one broken-off tooth to remove from a tear in her arm.

“Lucky as any catlen minstrel,” Kallan said. She healed quickly. The next morning, she was up and walking at first light, though with a heavy limp, and one arm hanging unusable. She watched Kallan warily—another one, it seemed, who had no use for a kingsman. When she saw Andiene, she tried to make a courtesy. “My Lady Andiene.”

“I never gave you my name.”

“I heard you last night.” A flash of mischief lit up her face, showing Kallan her nature, bright as mid-day. “All are not asleep who have their eyes closed. Now I know why my songs please you so.”

Andiene gave her a resigned smile. “Very well, since you are up and walking, you may do the cooking.”

Lenane moved awkwardly but cheerfully to brew a pot of savory broth, taking spices and herbs and dried meat from her pack. “Where did you get the meat?” asked Andiene.

“I forget.”

It seemed an innocent answer to Kallan, but Andiene laughed and choked on the broth she was drinking.

He rose and made the rounds of the wounded ones. Syresh was awake, alert, and had no great fever. Kallan spoke lightly as he held the cup of broth up for him to drink. “Well, it seems that I will make no more use of my surgeon’s skills today.”

The younger man flinched and glanced down at himself, as though to reassure himself that all his limbs were there.

“We cut the grievers’ teeth out of you. Does your head ache?”

“Yes.”

“Natural enough. I may have hit you a little harder than I needed to. You’ll mend.” Kallan went on to where Ilbran lay, knelt beside him and tried to pour some broth down his throat.

Syresh lay back. Lenane limped over to him. “You fought valiantly,” she said.

“And you also.”

“I marvel that we all live. My claws were not made for such things as that.”

“I know,” he said. “They were meant for punishing insolence.”

She grinned, but then her face became sober. “I have never seen such wonders. Is she truly Andiene—of my song?” He nodded. “And you? You have no look of the magician about you, but you traveled with her. What kind of a creature is she?”

“Mistress of fire and storm, I know that much, but little more. I serve her, that is all.”

She smiled at him, and then limped over to where Kare lay.

“How is she?” Kallan asked.

Lenane gave him a bright and wary glance. “The child? She sleeps soundly.”

“Too soundly?” He joined her, and bent down to shake Kare by the shoulders. She made no response, no movement even. “She was like this once before,” he said, but the memory did not reassure him.

This time, her pulse was fainter, her skin was cold, and blanched as a lanara petal, no hint of warm blood in it. His hand looked brown as wood beside hers. Nothing else to do, so he began to comb her hair as he had seen her father do, so often, so clumsily.

Andiene came and stood beside him. “I lay like that for some days, so they told me. What is her name? Kare? He named her after her mother. They were gentle people.” She smiled a sweeter smile than any that Kallan had seen on her face. “Where are they now, I wonder, his father and mother?”

“I fear they came to evil,” Kallan said. “They are dead. They died … by the king’s orders.”

Andiene looked to the north, as though she could see through the safehold wall, and all the leagues of field and forest and mountain. “Another score to settle. Still another one!”

Chapter 18

Before their wounds had healed, the summer heat was upon them. Kallan thought to himself that no man’s life was so long, his experience so great, that he could watch and be ready for the summertime. If he had studied the star patterns more carefully, he would have realized that the time was near. But he had been too busy caring for his companions, dressing their wounds, gathering their food.

Kare still lay in her swoon. They watched her and fed her broth, spoonful by spoonful. She lay quietly, and they had to look and listen closely to feel her breath or hear her heartbeat.

“Nothing I can do,” Andiene said. “No power in me to do anything but kill.” Her voice was bitter, but resigned. “Is there anything that you can do?” she asked Kallan.

Kallan shook his head. “Wounds I can bandage, and bind with healing plants, but whatever wounded her is nothing I can touch. I think she is lost in a maze, and will have to find her own way out.”

He walked over to Ilbran’s side. “Now, here is where my skills lie,” he said, an unwise boast. “His skin is cooler; his wounds are clean.” He put his hand on the fisherman’s forehead, to check his fever. Ilbran opened his eyes at the touch, and smiled vaguely.

“Well, now are you glad I taught you swordwork?”

“What of Kare?”

Kallan hesitated.

“What of Kare?” Ilbran clutched at the other man’s sleeve, trying to drag himself up to a sitting position.

“Lie still, unless you want your wounds to open. You have already lost enough blood to kill two men.”

“What of Kare?” Ilbran’s voice rose frantically.

“She is alive, and well, but she lies some place we cannot reach her,” he said reluctantly.