Читать книгу Shadowborn - Katie MacAlister - Страница 9

Chapter 3

“Any news, Lord Israel?”

Israel Langton, leader of the Fireborn, turned from where he had been staring out into the night, his eyes on the bonfires that dotted the town of Abet, and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the woman before him.

“I saw your headman return earlier,” explained Sandorillan, head priestess at the temple of Kiriah Sunbringer. Although her brown eyes were downcast, and her demeanor was suitably placid and contemplative as befitted her profession, Israel was not deceived. He’d known Lady Sandor for several hundred years, and a fiercer protector of her people—short of Queen Dasa herself—he had yet to find.

“Marston traveled as far as the Neck,” he answered, glancing back at Abet. He and his handful of men and women were all that remained of his company. They were camped on one of the three heavily forested hills ringing the east side of the capital city, ostensibly to await further members of his force, but in reality he feared it was more a matter of licking their wounds. The battle that his arrival at Abet had triggered had been quick and decisive, leaving him well aware that Jalas had not been idle during the time Israel had spent in Eris rescuing the queen and their son. “He found none but the infirm and elderly, those unable to raise a sword, or indeed, even to sit upon a horse. Crops lie untended, houses are abandoned, and the towns are empty of all but those who are least able to care for themselves.”

“Jalas has taken them for what purpose?” Sandor asked, disbelief and horror in her eyes. “Do not say he has put to death all of the Fireborn?”

Israel returned to the small camp table at which he’d been sitting, writing messages. “Not slaughtered them, no. Marston said that great trains of people, horses, oxen, and other such beasts were reported to have passed through the Neck and onward north, to the High Lands.”

Sandor’s eyes widened. “Jalas has taken prisoner all of Aryia? How can he do so? What does he intend to do with everyone?”

“Put them to work as slaves is my guess.” Israel spilt the wax of a candle onto one of the messages, sealing it with his signet ring. “Which makes it much harder for us to retake Abet.”

“Is it hopeless, then?” the priestess asked, her stillness making Israel feel twitchy.

A veteran of many battles, most of them against the Fireborn’s long-held foes, the Starborn, Israel was well aware that times of inactivity were as necessary as those when fighting exhausted his body and mind. And yet, the fact that he had been denied entry into his own city, the one he had built over the course of the last two hundred years, grated on him. He felt restless, driven to action, but knew that until his small company received reinforcements, it would be folly to try to drive Jalas from Abet.

The last such attempt had cost him two men and Idril.

“If it was hopeless, I would have withdrawn immediately,” he answered after giving one of the men-at-arms the sealed parchments to pass along to the messengers. “Marston told me that it is rumored several towns along the west coast escaped Jalas’s tribesmen; the people hid in the caves that dot the shoreline. If that is true, and Marston can convince them that Aryia has need of their service, then all will not be lost.”

“I will pray to the blessed goddess that is so,” Sandor murmured, bowing and withdrawing almost silently to her tent.

Israel’s gaze flickered back to the dots of yellow and orange light that were visible along the parapets of his beloved home. “Let us hope Kiriah hears that prayer. We desperately need her help.”

Sandor, pausing at the flap of her tent, turned and gave him an odd look, opening her mouth to speak, then with a little shake of her head entered her tent instead.

* * * *

The next two weeks passed with tedious slowness. Israel, driven by the need to be doing something, anything, spent his days hunting, both for game to feed the company of twenty-two who had followed him to Eris and back, and for any survivors of Jalas’s purge.

On the fourteenth day, he arrived back at camp with a handful of his men, hauling the carcass of a buck they’d taken down, only to discover a messenger just setting off to find him. Marston had returned at last, and with him another score of men and women.

“You are a most welcome sight,” Israel said, clapping Marston on the shoulder and greeting the newcomers. “You all are, for we have sore need of strong sword arms.”

“Lady Idril has not been released, I take it?” Marston asked when Israel ordered the newcomers be given food and places to sleep, and for the mounts to be fed and watered.

Israel frowned as he turned back to Marston, gesturing for his old friend and first in command to take a seat at his table, pouring them both goblets of wine. “She has not. Jalas might find his daughter’s tongue sharper than an adder’s bite, but I doubt if he would be foolish enough to simply turn her out. Holding her as a hostage guarantees Deo’s good behavior.”

Marston rubbed the whiskers on his chin, the lines of strain and exhaustion on his face revealing the speed at which he’d traveled from the other side of Aryia. “That is curious, most curious, my lord. One of the women I found upon the road was a handmaiden to Lady Idril. She said that she’d received a message a sennight ago that Lady Idril had need of her aid. I thought that meant she had escaped the hold her father had on her.”

“A sennight ago?” Israel cast his mind back. “There was no action then that we witnessed. Yesterday there was a great coming and going of men. Mostly coming, but enough men patrolled outside the town that our scouts made note of it. That is the only sign we have seen of Jalas stirring.”

“Surely Lady Idril would come here, to you, should she make her escape?” Marston asked.

Israel was slow to answer, his mind turning over the question. Though it was on the tip of his tongue to answer that Idril would naturally turn to her nearest allies, his familiarity with her stubbornness—rivaled only by that of his son—had him qualifying that statement. “She would if she had need of our protection. But it has been many years since I have understood the paths that Lady Idril’s mind walks.”

Marston shared a rare grin. “She is well matched with Lord Deo in that regard.”

“Aye. And the less said about the sort of half-mad children they will have, the better. Tell me of what you found on your way to the coast.”

The next hour was spent hearing of Marston’s journey, of the fields left fallow and others filled with crops consumed by birds, of empty villages, and the old and infirm who were slowly starving.

Israel let his gaze wander over the people milling around the encampment, the men and women busily setting up pallets and tents, eating, tending their animals, or just lying on the ground, resting. A company of forty-two was not enough to challenge the Tribe of Jalas when he was protected by the strong walls of Abet.

“Take five of the Easterners you brought back, and give them supplies, a cart, and a horse. Send them to each region, and tell them they must travel from village to village, relocating those who are willing to do so, and making sure the others do not starve. They may draw on our reserves to feed those who were left behind, although I would prefer that local resources be used whenever possible.”

It was evening before the logistics were taken care of, and Israel felt more anxious than ever to be doing something. Just as he was about to propose to Marston that a covert trip to Abet might be managed without rousing too many of Jalas’s guards, he noticed something odd.

“Do you see what I see?” he asked, nodding toward the port side of Abet, and handing over his spyglass.

Marston took it, looked, then lowered the glass, his eyebrows raised. “Where are all the ships?”

“That is a very good question.” He thought for a few moments. “I wonder…could Jalas be so foolish as to have sent his tribesmen away from Abet?”

“He might if he thought the sheer number of captives he drove north could turn on their captors and take over the High Lands,” Marston answered, watching him closely.

“It is an interesting thought, and one that leads me to believe that a little exploration of Abet under the light of Bellias is in order.”

“That is not needed if all you wish to know is how many members of the Tribe remain in town,” a female voice called out of the darkness. There was a ripple in the company, from which emerged a woman with the lithe, elegant grace of a doe.

Idril, Jewel of the High Lands, strode forward with three handmaidens in her wake. She looked annoyed, Israel was amused to note, her gown torn and dirty, her face showing signs of mud that had washed off none too well, her hair poking out at odd angles—in fact, everything about her was unlike the coolly collected perfection that was the norm for Idril. But more unusual than the state of her clothing was her agitation. Israel had grown accustomed to seeing an invariably placid, unemotional expression on her face.

“Lady Idril,” he said gravely, keeping the amusement from his voice at her unkempt appearance. He knew it must be costing her pride a great deal. “So the rumors were true, then? You escaped your father’s grasp? Or did you make him see reason?”

“Reason,” she said with a sound that in any other woman he would have called a snort. That, too, was unlike her. Idly, Israel wondered if the few weeks she’d spent in Deo’s company had cracked her cool, calm exterior. “My father wouldn’t know reason it if came up and bit him on his gigantic pink—”

“Lady Idril, you are with us again? Blessings upon you, child.” Sandor’s voice cut across her words without effort.

Marston choked, and bowing at Idril, murmured something about seeing to his duties.

Idril managed to get herself under control, her features smoothing out to an expression of blithe unconcern. “Greetings, Lady Sandor. I am, as you see, although no thanks to my father. To answer your question, Israel, my father has not been smitten upon the head with the reason stick. If such a thing existed, I would happily volunteer to be the one to beat him about the head and shoulders with it. I managed to get out via the Captain’s Swain.”

Israel blinked at the name of the seediest, rowdiest of all taverns in Abet, one frequented only by women who paid no mind to their reputation. “Via the trapdoor to the bay?” he asked, eyeing the wrinkled and filthy gown, one that bore all the signs of having been much abused.

“Yes.” A fleeting grimace passed over her face as she lifted her chin. “My ladies were waiting for me, and assisted me ashore.”

“Lady Idril fought us most strenuously,” one of the handmaidens piped up in a high, bell-like voice. “She does not swim, and struggled so hard when she was in the water that we had to knock her insensible in order to drag her ashore, and then we had to hide in the swineherd’s hut when Lord Jalas’s men rode past.”

“Yes, I don’t think we need to go into all the details of my escape,” Idril said swiftly, shooting a glare at the maid in question.

“And then she woke up just as the guard noticed Noellia outside the swineherd’s hut, so we had to knock Lady Idril senseless again because she began to yell, and the guard came in to see, but luckily, we had just pushed Lady Idril out the window into the wallow, and the pigs hid her from view. Well,” the second handmaiden added with a glance at her compatriots, “that and the mud, which was up to our knees.”

Lady Idril looked as if she would happily murder her handmaidens, but after a moment’s obvious struggle with such violent emotions, she lifted her chin again, and graced Israel with one of the cool, impersonal looks that were all too familiar. “My journey here was fraught with many trials, but I am at last free of my father, and able to help you take control of the city again.”

“Indeed.” Israel eyed her, his nose twitching with the scent of what must have been her time spent in the pig’s wallow. “I will naturally welcome any assistance you can give me. Has your father called up more of his tribesmen? Is that where the ships have gone?”

“Just the opposite,” Idril said, ignoring the soft, wet noise that followed when a bit of fern tangled with hay fell off her shoulder and hit the ground. Her chin rose, her eyes daring him to comment. “My father feels that you no longer pose a threat to him now that he’s taken away your army and sent them north, to serve the tribes. There was evidently a skirmish that he felt boded ill—I admit to perhaps playing upon his paranoia—and thus, he sent the tribe north via the sea, so as to quell the insurrection that I hinted would be raging all over Poronne.”

“That was astute thinking,” Israel said, pretending not to notice when another clod of mud, straw, and leaf mould fell from a particularly spiky bit of her hair.

One of the handmaids giggled.

“Astute and prescient, perhaps,” Lady Sandor murmured, her gaze on Israel.

Israel raised his eyebrows in an approximation of innocence. “If you are implying that I left behind a set of instructions for the people of Aryia to follow when I went to Eris, I have little to say except it would be most unlikely.”

“Most,” Sandor agreed, her mouth twitching.

Israel met her gaze with equanimity, knowing full well that although the priestess might adopt a staid and circumspect persona, she had a wicked sense of humor that she had once told him had led her into no end of trouble. That she’d been naked at the time and riding him like a rented mule had nothing to do with the assessment. If Dasa hadn’t fought her way into his heart, making herself welcome in that inhospitable organ, he might have taken up the offer in Sandor’s soft eyes.

He gave himself a little mental head shake. “So the city is empty? Then we shall retake it. Immediately. Marston!”

“It’s not empty, no, but the five tribe leaders who were there sailed north yesterday,” Idril answered. “Noellia, whatever that is on the back of my neck, remove it. No, don’t show it to me. I would prefer not to know what it was that slid across my flesh. My lord, wait!”

Israel, who had started to move off to his tent to gather up his sword, and the roots and bones used to cast spells, paused at the imperious tone in Idril’s voice. “If you are going to tell me it’s folly to attack Abet again—”

“I am not. There is nothing I would like more than to see my father your prisoner, especially after he wed me to Parker, the most brutish of all the Northmen, in exchange for their support. I wished to ask you if there is news of Deo.”

Israel couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows at the woman who once, for a few weeks, had been his wife…in name only, he couldn’t help but remember, fighting the urge to smile. Deo had yet to forgive him for the political marriage meant to calm Jalas and bring him into the Council of Four Armies, although he had resolved his differences with Idril during the voyage from Eris. “Your father wed you off for political reasons? Again?”

Idril’s nostrils flared at the emphasis on the last word, but she waved away the question with an impatient gesture. “It is of no matter. I am betrothed to Deo, as my father well knows.”

“You’re going to have a hard time marrying him if your husband objects,” Israel pointed out, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch. He steeled his lips into composure.

A martyred expression was visible on her face for a few seconds before it melted into her usual one of polite disinterest. “It is, as I said, of no account. Have you heard from Deo? Did he reach Genora? Has he found his missing Banesmen?”

“I have not heard from him directly, no, but Deo and the others should be in Genora by now. The Queen sent word that she was going straight to her kinfolk to seek the aid of the water talkers, and I expect she will communicate once she comes to an accord with them. Now, I must leave you. Since you just escaped from the city, perhaps you might prefer to stay here while I take advantage of your father’s folly in leaving Abet so under-guarded. You could…er…avail yourself of my tub.”

Idril’s eyes narrowed into the meanest look he’d ever seen, aimed directly at him, and he had a suspicion that if she’d been given the ability to smite him where he stood, she would have done so. Instead, she inclined her head, causing a small snail to cascade off her hair, bounce off her left breast, and fly forward to land on the back of Israel’s hand.

He removed it without a word.

Idril sent a scathing look at her three handmaidens, all of whom schooled their expressions into ones of humility when she marched into his tent to bathe.

It wasn’t until dawn that Israel and his company, now armed with as many weapons as they could gather, approached the gate and demanded an audience with Jalas.

“Lord Jalas is not to be disturbed,” the tribesman who guarded the gate called down from where he stood on the rampart. “Go back to the rotten log whence you slunk, Fireborn.”

“My lord,” Sandor said softly, touching Israel’s arm. “There is something here…a sense of futility that disturbs me greatly. Perhaps this attack would be better left for another time, one when Kiriah is present to bless us.”

Israel considered her for a moment. There were lines of strain around her mouth that he hadn’t recalled being there before. “Futility regarding what, exactly?” he asked, loath to abandon the chance to take back the city that was by rights his. He respected Sandor and her ability to commune with the goddess, but he doubted if another opportunity so perfect as this would present itself again. He had to take advantage of it before more troops reinforced Jalas’s contingent.

She hesitated a moment, one hand going to her throat. “I cannot see clearly the threat. I only know it is present. It leeches up from the ground like a poisonous vine, tainting everything around it.”

Worry was evident in her eyes, and for a moment, Israel considered withdrawing. But just then, the guard on the rampart, evidently feeling himself in a position of power, shot an arrow that missed Israel’s horse by a foot. “Stay to the rear,” he ordered Sandor, pulling the splintered rocks, bones, and roots from a small leather pouch that was embossed with silver stars and moons at the same time he gestured to Marston.

The latter let loose with a war cry while Israel, focusing his attention on the Grace of Alba with which Kiriah had blessed all Fireborn, drew upon the living things around them. With his eyes on the guardsman, who had turned to call for reinforcements, he unleashed the power of the Fireborn, causing a flurry of feathers to swell up around the man, lifting him from the rampart and dropping him to the cobblestones below. Grappling hooks were thrown at the stone wall, and in a matter of two minutes, Israel and half his company had scaled the walls and swarmed the three guards who raced toward them.

A sense of rightness filled him as the company swept through the town, heading for the keep that towered over Abet proper. He was surprised for a moment at just how still the town was, for the residents of Abet were not known for their quiet lives. It occurred to him as he reached the central square, passing the well and a small fountain that had been put up to mark the birth of Deo, that Jalas had sent all the citizens north with their country relations.

It was just as he started up the steps to the keep that he realized why Lady Sandor had been so hesitant. He stopped midway up the steps when three men moved out of the shadows of the great double doors and stopped, their figures as black as the crows that wheeled overhead.

“Banes,” Marston said in a gasp at the same time that Lady Sandor drew in a deep breath, the whisper of a prayer to Kiriah following immediately.

Israel held up his hand at the sight of the Banes of Eris, halting the company behind him. “Keep them back,” he said quietly to Marston, knowing that the Banes would slaughter the men and women prepared to fight for him.

“Aye, my lord.” Marston slipped away, herding the company back across the square with him.

Israel took a moment to study the face of each of the three Banesmen, not recognizing them. “You are part of my son’s company?” he asked the three men, adding before they could answer, “You must be the men that Lord Hallow spirited away after the battle at Starfall. What do you here in Abet?”

“We seek revenge for our liege lord,” the middle man snarled, his skin, a dusky blue, turning a darker hue while his eyes positively snapped with anger.

“For Deo?” Israel frowned. “Then you would do better to sail to Genora, for he is not on Aryia.”

“We do not seek his grave, wherever you had him buried,” the leftmost man said, making an abrupt gesture toward him. “But we will avenge his death, you may be sure of that.”

“His death?” Israel shook his head, realizing that the men believed the scene that had played out in Starfall. He thought of explaining to them what had really happened, but knew instinctively that they would not believe him.

In their eyes, he was guilty of killing his own son, and little but Deo’s presence before them would shake them of that conviction. No, the only way he’d get past them into the keep was by removing them from the picture. He wondered if he had the strength to defeat the three Banes on his own. One, perhaps, but three? He gave another little shake of the head.

“Jalas told us how you had planned to destroy Lord Deo the minute you realized that he had done what no one else could—he had mastered chaos power. Jalas said you feared the power Lord Deo held, that you wed the woman to whom he was betrothed, and that above all else, you sought a reason to have him removed from Alba, and when that chance presented itself, you took it. We are here to avenge Lord Deo’s death upon you. We, who believed in him when you did not, will see to it that all know the truth.”

A light touch on his arm had Israel turning his head to where Sandor stood, her gaze on the three men. No, he could not fight them alone, but he was not alone. Sandor stood in Kiriah Sunbringer’s favor, and had magic of her own.

“Are you up for this?” His voice was soft, but he knew she could read the intention in his face.

“Always,” she said with a little smile, and he had a suspicion she was remembering the time some three hundred years in the past when they had celebrated—in the most primal way a man and woman could—a hard-won victory over the Starborn. “Work our way from right to left?”

“Of course.” He was making a mental note that sometime in the near future he would have to inform Sandor that Dasa, despite having been his enemy for centuries, held his heart, and nothing would change that. Those thoughts, along with the general sense of worry that had gripped him since their return from Eris, were pushed out of his mind, however, as his fingers clasped the bones, roots, and feathers, the old familiar words coming to his lips.

“Kiriah, bringer of life

surround me with the heat of your truth

touch my spirit with this place

and banish the energies that would act against me.

May the four forces heed my plea:

From the ground, I beg strength

From the rock, resilience

From the life around me, intention

And Kiriah above, power.

So it is, so it was, so it will be.”

He released the power gathered in his talismans just as Sandor, who had been kneeling, her hands clasped together as she called upon the goddess to bless them, suddenly stood up and lunged forward in one smooth movement, a sword that had been strapped beneath her overdress flashing with the golden light of Kiriah Sunbringer. The rocks and stones that made up Alba answered Israel’s call, the ground rumbling as cracks appeared beneath the three men’s feet, the long lines turning black as they leached life from the Banes.

Sandor swung her sword, the runes on it glowing so brightly they left little trails of sparks on the air when she struck the rightmost Bane. His head bounced down the stairs before the other Banes realized what had happened.

The middle Bane roared, spilling red chaos outward in a wave that knocked Israel back several yards. Hastily, he scrambled to his feet, hampered by the long red tendrils that seeped out of the cracks in the rocks, twining around his legs and capturing him. He roared an oath, yelling for Marston to help Sandor when the two Banes turned their attention to her. Pain whipped through him with burning intensity, ripping breath from his lungs and causing the muscles in his legs to buckle from the strain. He felt as if he had been chained to anvils and tossed into an inferno—a sentient inferno, one that turned an eye to him and laughed in a mocking manner while he desperately summoned the Grace of Alba, throwing protective ward after ward onto the figure of Sandor. Despite the Banes’ magic, her sword danced, flashing white against the dark wooden doors of the keep.

Before Israel could do more than send a fervent prayer to Kiriah Sunbringer to grant help to her priestess, the two Banes broke free of his magic and both turned to face Sandor. For a moment, Israel thought she was going to do the impossible and slay them, but in the space between heartbeats, the chaos magic they wielded snapped out. As it slammed into her, Sandor’s screams rose high into the still morning air.

And then she was gone, a thick, wet puddle of chaos magic on the ground all that remained of the vibrant woman who had stood against legions of enemies for more centuries than Israel could remember.

Marston had reached him by that point. Israel stood stunned, refusing to accept that Sandor could be cut down so swiftly, just as if she was nothing more than a bit of ash ground underfoot.

“My lord,” Marston said in a harsh, rushed voice, pulling on his arm. “We must retreat. The company will be slain by these monstrosities.”

“She’s gone,” Israel said, his mind reeling for a few moments before he drew himself back from the brink of rage. The two Banes were now facing him, clearly gathering power to wipe out the rest of them. Israel threw a couple of hasty binding wards onto the men, pain pricking his palms when suddenly the bones and roots cracked under the strain of his spells. He threw them down, casting one last agonized glance at the spot where Sandor had stood, before giving in to Marston’s demands.

They escaped while the Banes were still bound to the steps of the keep, allowing Israel and his company to retreat to their camp atop the southern hill. For a horrible few hours, Israel feared the Banes would pursue them, but to his relief, they remained in Abet. He stared absently at his hands, noting the scars of past battles, and the new, bloody lines caused by the breaking ofhis talismans. “I will have to get new ones,” he said to himself, sorrow, guilt, and fury spinning around inside him in a complex knot of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.

But he had not been a leader for most of his life without learning a few valuable lessons, one of which was that loss was inevitable.

“A senseless loss, though…no. That I will not stand for. She will be avenged,” he swore under his breath. Idril, who stood next to him holding a wooden flagon, simply raised an eyebrow.

“The priestess will be in the spirit realm, waiting for Kiriah to call her to her side. Sandor is beyond such things as revenge,” Idril said softly.

“I am not,” he answered in a voice that was as bleak as the gray stones that formed the hill beneath their feet. He turned away from Idril, spurning her offers of attention to his wounds.

“What will you do now?” she called after him, her normally placid voice scraping sharp as a razor on his flesh.

He hesitated at the entrance of his tent, his eyes on the one next door. It belonged to Sandor. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply of the scents of pine, sun-warmed earth, and green, growing things. It was poor balm to the deep well of sorrow that filled his soul. “We can’t defeat Jalas and the Banes that now serve him. We must have an army…and Deo. We will sail for Genora as soon as we locate a ship. The queen will have raised her army by now; we will join forces with her. Then with Deo, we will return and destroy the rot that has taken hold in Abet.”