Queen's Hunt Part 31

Valara shaded her eyes against the sun's glare. She could just make out a dark speck moving against the shimmering expanse of plains. A rider, galloping directly toward them. "It's Duke Karasek," she said. "The man who attacked us. I know his signature."

They could not run. Karasek with his horse could overtake either one of them easily.

"We must go at once to Autrevelye-"

"No." Ilse pulled Daya from her finger and handed her to Valara. "Take Asha and Daya. Give me enough time to distract this Duke Karasek, then attack with all your magic, and all the magic of the jewels. If he does have Rana, you will need their help."

She drew her sword and strode down the ash-strewn mountainside to the plains. Even before she reached the lower slopes, the horse slowed to a canter and then came to a halt. Karasek dismounted and waited patiently. It was that patience that unnerved Valara. Since their first meeting, he had countered every action she took and guessed her every change in plans. That he appeared so soon after Dzavek's death said he had guessed again, and arrowed directly from the Jelyndak Islands, to Rastov, to here.

Ilse paused a few steps away from Karasek. Valara murmured an invocation to the magic current. But far quicker than she antic.i.p.ated, Karasek drew his own sword. Metal flashed against the dull sky.

"No!" Valara shouted.

Winds shrieked across the edge of the cliffs. The Agnau had turned pale, and its molten surface heaved as colossal waves rolled across its breadth. Daya cried out in shrill tones, Asha's voice rose higher, blending with the winds. Sint unde waerest unde werden unde- Valara shut out their voices. She raised her fist with Daya and Asha. "Ei ruf ane gotter," she cried out. "Ei ruf ane-"

A force-like a concentrated wind-swallowed her words. A dazzling light struck her face.

"Wir komen de gotter."

Valara blinked. An incandescent light illuminated the Mantharah and its heights. From its midst, two vast figures approached, their faces like suns, one with eyes like the stars, the other with great dark voids where eyes should be. First came Lir with Toc behind. The next moment their places changed. First and last, as the legends said. Together and separate-the paradox of magic.

Lir folded her hands around Valara's numb ones. Toc clasped both of theirs within his. Together, sister and brother spoke in a language unlike any Valara knew. Their lips did not move, but their voices filled the air with rippling tones, like raindrops on a canopy of summer green leaves.

Asha thrummed. Daya grew heavy, an impossible weight.

Lir spoke a word. A light blazed. A shrill cry echoed from the Mantharah's cliffs. Asha sang, and Daya's darker voice rose into a glorious chorus of bright notes that tumbled and rolled together, pleading and crying and laughing.

Look, look, look, cried the jewels.

Look, Lir commanded, as she and her brother released Valara's hands.

Valara drew a sharp breath of surprise. The plain wooden ring she had worn for so many weeks had vanished. In its place was an emerald. Lir's emerald. But not as she remembered it. No longer plain or dark, it gleamed like burnished magic.

Lir brushed fingertips against Valara's cheek, her caress like the touch of memory. Toc's blank gaze turned toward her, his gaze as penetrating as if he still possessed eyes.

Lir who quarreled with Toc and then forgave him. Toc who carved the world's foundations with his sword, purely because he could. For all his strength, Toc had died. For all her wisdom, Lir had wept in the darkness, uncomprehending. Each night, she set her glittering tears in the sky, in remembrance of her lover and her brother, until he returned.

A warm breath tickled Valara's face. A sharp green scent, like that of wildflowers and new gra.s.s, filled the air. Lir was speaking, but her voice was too much like the wind and thunder, and Valara could not understand what she said. Her vision blurred; the unnatural light dimmed. She blinked again, wiping away the unexpected tears from her eyes.

Lir and Toc had gone.

She knelt beside the Agnau, her hands clenched so tight, they ached. Dazed, she unfolded them. Two jewels lay there, emerald and sapphire, gleaming softly against her hands.

I wasn't dreaming. The G.o.ds came.

"Your majesty."

Valara stumbled to her feet. Karasek stood a short distance away. A few steps behind him came Ilse, whole and unharmed. Ilse gave Valara a brief smile. No humor, but an a.s.surance. Of what? Her attention veered back to Karasek. Dust and sweat streaked his face, and dark bruises circled his eyes. He met her gaze steadily. "I've come to negotiate."

He took a cloth bundle from inside his shirt and unwrapped its folds. When she saw what lay inside, Valara sucked in her breath. Rana. He brought me Rana.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

"Peace. Honor, for us both."

The same demand that Raul Kosenmark had made. Again, she had the sense of history pressing in toward her.

"I am not yet the queen," she began.

"And I am no king," Karasek said. "But I think we both have some say in our governments. If we do not speak first, who will?"

He pressed Rana into her palm-a brief contact, no more-then stepped back. Valara closed her fingers around the jewels. She and Karasek looked at each other. "How did you find me so easily?"

"You and your companion left a trail. I've erased it."

So much revealed behind that simple statement. A part of her listed that as an item to remember when they negotiated in truth, with her installed as queen, and him an emissary from abroad. That would not be honorable, said a voice she remembered from lives long ago.

Honor. She had once held that above all, but then she had lost her way between lives. She remembered once, centuries ago, a chance with the same soul as this man Karasek. She could not recall exactly what pa.s.sed between them. Not dishonor, but a misunderstanding.

There were no simple patterns. No single thread that one might pluck away, and thus undo centuries of mistakes.

Dimly, she heard Ilse speaking. "Remember what you promised. The jewels are not mere things. They are thinking creatures like us. We cannot treat them as objects to bargain with."

Honor. A promise kept. Her brother's voice saying, Yes, it is time to die.

"Yes," she murmured, half to herself. "And I think I know the way."

Without giving herself time to consider, Valara spun around and rushed to the Agnau's edge. She plunged her hands into the lava. Fire burst into life-magic fire that coursed through her body, stronger than any she'd ever experienced. Her head jerked back and her throat opened in a scream.

From far away, she heard Ilse's voice, calling to her. Then Miro Karasek's. Thereafter, she heard nothing but the jewels. Their voices rose into a single note, so pure that her bones ached and her blood sang. Each gem burned a pinpoint in her palm, searing her flesh. Two pinpoints, then three, then two again, marked her palm, the count wavering with her concentration. She lost track of how many she held. Now they filled her hands, swelling to gigantic size. It was the ending. She had died and her soul taken flight into the void. One moment between, one moment of stillness and expectation, before death lifted her into forgetfulness ...

The moment ended. A voice rang out. Like the rushing tide, the magical current surged forward, and a brilliant light exploded in her mind.

Three. Became two. Then one.

For a long moment, Valara could not breathe. The magic had released her, but she could not bring herself to open her eyes, to see what the jewels had become.

"Valara?"

Ilse's voice, hardly more than a whisper. Gradually, Valara became aware of two arms holding her upright. She was kneeling, her hands still submerged in Agnau's lake. Ilse crouched next to her. Karasek knelt on her other side, holding her by the shoulders. The Agnau had smoothed to a gla.s.sy calm. Shaking, she withdrew her hands from the silvery lava, and gave a cry of shock. In spite of the agony she had suffered, her hands were unscathed, her skin seemingly untouched by the lava. Still uncertain what had happened, she unfolded her hands.

A single jewel lay in her palm. Glistening droplets of creation beaded on its polished surface; hints of ruby, sapphire, and emerald flickered in turn, only to disappear into flashes of opalescent white.

Ishya, said the jewel. Daya unde Asha unde Rana. Waere unde werden.

A dazzling light, like a miniature sun, filled Valara's hands. The jewel swelled, its shape lengthening into the figure of a man, a woman, an alien creature such as Daya had appeared in the void between worlds.

Ishya stepped onto the Agnau's smooth surface. It spoke, incomprehensible words like the silvery notes of a flute. Then it walked toward the center of the lake. With every step it grew in size and transparency, until at last it blended with the rising steam.

Valara ma.s.saged her palm, which felt warmer than the rest of her. "And so they are free," she murmured.

She tried to stand, but her legs buckled. Karasek caught her and lifted her into his arms. He was speaking to Ilse, something about his packs, but Valara was too exhausted to make sense of what he said. Words like rain and thunder and wind, she thought, recalling Lir's speech, though she knew Karasek was just a human male.

She tried to tell him so, but her tongue got tangled. Karasek carried her away from the Agnau to a shaded nook beneath the cliffs. Ilse tucked blankets around her. One of them brushed a hand over her forehead. They murmured the invocation to magic, and she dropped into sleep.

ILSE WITHDREW HER hand from Valara's forehead. The woman slept-she could read that swift descent into slumber, the sudden stillness, which reminded her of the moment when a soul left the body for Anderswar. Not death, but something like it. She wondered if sleep were a reminder, sent by the G.o.ds, of that void between lives.

"And what next?" she murmured. "What next, indeed?"

"Water," Karasek said. "Firewood. A hot meal."

At her startled look, he smiled. "It's an old campaign strategy. Solve the practical matters first, and the hard decisions become ... not easy, but easier to address."

He spoke for himself, too, she realized. Dark bruises under his eyes, the creases etched around his mouth and eyes, deeper ones between his brows-all those spoke of grief and weariness. And underneath it all a palpable air of tension.

I have seen that look before. I have seen you before, in lives past.

Karasek held out a hand, to help her stand. She regarded the hand first-he had removed his gloves to handle the jewel, she noticed-then lifted her gaze back to his face. "How many did you kill?" she asked. "Back there, on Hallau Island?"

He flinched. "I ... do not know."

So. No a.s.surance that Raul lived. Others had died, however. She had a vivid recollection of Katje, run through with a sword and falling limp to the ground, the strings of life suddenly cut. Another image followed, of Raul stabbing a Karovin soldier. Her own hands felt sticky with blood, though she had cleaned them long ago. She rubbed them absentmindedly.

Karasek was observing her closely. "You are-you were Milada."

Again he had surprised her. "I was," she said with some difficulty. "And you?"

He made a quick gesture of denial. "n.o.body. No, that is a lie. I was a captain in the army. Leos Dzavek sent me to arrest you that night, when you met with the emissary from Veraene."

Something in his voice, the way his hand swept up and outward, recalled another moment in a different life. A laughing voice, an exaggerated politesse. It was a memory far removed from this moment and this life, but now Ilse knew when she and the jewels had met this man for the first time. "You were a commander for the emperor before. You sailed-"

To Morenniou. Five hundred years ago. I was there, as was Raul Kosenmark.

Raul. Her last glimpse of him had been a blur of shadow, the golden gleam of his eyes in fire and moonlight as he fought against the Karovin.

All the tears she had refused these past weeks broke through. She wept, a silent flood of grief that she could not restrain. For Raul. For Galena, lost to her family. For Katje and the others who died on Hallau. For herself, bound to an exile that no longer served any purpose.

I want him. I want Raul. Not Lord Kosenmark and heir to Valentain. I want the man I came to love. I want ... to be Anike, and he Stefan, so we might live our lives in quiet, far away from the affairs of kings.

But however pa.s.sionately she wished it, her dreams could never come true in this life. Raul had died on that miserable island. She almost wished that Karovi's soldiers might overtake her, so that she would not have to struggle on alone.

Later I will think what I must do. Not yet. Not yet.

Karasek made no move to comfort her. He stood in silence, as if he understood she could not bear the least touch of sympathy. His patience was like the jewels', waiting for deliverance in Anderswar. It was the best gift he could bestow her.

At last her grief emptied out. Ilse released a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "You are right," she said. "I do need sleep. You, as well."

Her voice sounded harsh to her own ear. She could not begin to guess what Karasek made of her. They had been enemies once, in lives past. Of that she was certain. They had also been friends, but lives and centuries could change anyone. She had just witnessed that fact made flesh and act.

If he shows any pity, I shall stab him.

To her relief, he had the grace and intelligence to guess her needs. In a quite ordinary tone, he said, "I'll take first watch and start a meal cooking." He hesitated, then added, "And afterward, we will talk. All three of us."

WHEN VALARA WOKE, the sun was directly overhead, a white disk against the hard gray sky. Someone-Karasek, no doubt-had erected a length of canvas to make a screen for her. Above the constant scent of magic, she smelled rain and lightning. She stretched underneath her blankets, as memory slowly collected. The Agnau. Karasek. The three jewels.

A strange, strong emotion flooded her, a sensation akin to that of magic flooding her body.

I have done what the jewels and the G.o.ds required. What my soul wished these past four hundred years.

Her palm ached with the memory. She rubbed it with her thumb. The flesh felt thick and ridged where she'd gripped the jewels, and when she stretched her hand, the skin pulled tight. A scar of magic, she thought, as she examined it. In the center, a knot the color of new milk, bluish-white against her golden skin. Dark pink threads spiraled out between her fingers and around to the back of her hand. On impulse, she summoned the current to change the scars to ordinary flesh.

Ei ruf ane gotter. Komen mir de strom ...

Nothing. She felt nothing, not even the least wisp of current. Frightened, she repeated the invocation, but the words stopped in her throat and even her thoughts stuttered and died away. Nothing. Worse than nothing. She saw magic's current, felt its presence pulsing around her, a vast ocean spilling over from Mantharah, from the imperfect divide between spirit and flesh. But when she reached out to touch it, it receded.

What has happened? Why can't I work magic?

She pressed her hands against her eyes. One felt warm and soft. One burned with an unnatural fever. A mark of magic and the G.o.ds, she thought, laughing silently. It was not as she had expected. The laugh caught on a sob. She bit down hard on her tongue. No tears, no. It was not as she had expected, but she should have known better.

It took her several long moments before she could breathe steadily, before her heartbeat slowed from its first panicked rush. Later, she would examine the situation. She would be calm and dispa.s.sionate. It was not the end after all. She was still queen of Morenniou, or she would be, once she took the throne. Even if she no longer had magic, she still had her duty. It would have to serve. So she told herself.

Later, I will tell myself all this a second time, a third. Until I can believe it.

She rubbed away the tears. Drew in a long breath. Ran a hand though her knotted and tangled hair. Appearance did not matter, her father had once told her. Only courage did.

Time for courage, she told herself.

She crawled from the half-shelter to find Karasek and Ilse Zhalina speaking together by the edge of Mantharah's lake. They had built a fire, and she could smell the rich scent of black tea brewing. Karasek's horse was tethered nearby. Valara caught the words patrol, search, and perimeter. She listened closer and gathered that the general confusion at Zalinenka had worked in their favor, but soon that dearly bought time would run out.

I came for honor, he had said. An honor that ran deeper than his oath to Leos Dzavek. What else had he done in honor's name? What had such a decision cost him?

She stood, catching their attention immediately. Karasek broke off his conversation. Sometime during her sleep, he had washed away the dust and sweat.

"We'll eat, then break camp," he said. "I've done what I could to delay pursuit, but unless I return within a few days, my fellow councillors will take additional measures. And I have several tasks I must accomplish before then."

More hints. She ought to insist on precise information, but she was strangely afraid to at this moment. Perhaps later, in private, she could question him more thoroughly.

"What have you told them?" Ilse asked.

"That I was tracking Leos Dzavek's murderer."

"Ah." Ilse glanced toward Valara. "So you were, in a way. What comes next?"

"For you, evasion," he said. "For me, I must return as quickly as possible and report my findings to Duke Markov. I planned to tell him that we were mistaken, and that Morenniou's queen had nothing to do with King Leos's death. She most likely returned home at once, when she escaped my patrol."