Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 82

"There's a bridge in the forest?"

His smile was cold. Far too cold.

"There is a pa.s.sage," he said quietly. "I would advise against it, were you any other mortal."

"What the h.e.l.ls does that mean?"

"It means," he replied, drawing his sword from the air in front of his slender breast, "that you should not dismount until we are clear of the trees."

"And Kallandras?"

"Kallandras, as you call him, has walked a darker road than this in his time, if I am not mistaken."

She didn't like the way he said the bard's name. It was almost possessive.

Seven paths. "The forest-that's not a path?"

He laughed. The sound was beautiful. Funny, that beauty had come to be synonymous with things that were distant and cold. "It is not one of the seven," he replied. "I ask again, Lady, that you choose a mortal road."

"Seven paths," she said, lost in the number, the two words. "No"

"No?"

"They're guarded. There are at least seven of the kin on the edge of town." She said the words as if she were groping her way toward truth. She was. "They're probably there to make sure that no one else escapes."

He nodded. "We can-"

"Yes. We can. But not without announcing our presence."

"It is not our way to skulk."

"It is our way to skulk," she snapped back. "Are there so many of the kin?"

"They are many, in the h.e.l.ls."

"Here, d.a.m.nit. Here. Are there so many that they can just be sent out in numbers to capture one lousy village?"

"That is the first intelligent question you've asked this eve."

"Thank you, Avandar."

Kallandras raised his head; until he did, she had not noticed that he had bowed it. "No," he said. "I think that this village is of import."

"Or something in it?"

"Or something within the Torrean."

She was silent as she absorbed the words. "They can't . . . know . . . that we're here."

"Not us, no."

"Then what?"

"It is said-in the South-that the Sun Sword was crafted to be demon-bane."

"You think they-"

He shrugged. "Understand, ATerafin, that although they were rare, the immortal races were not without their seers."

"But-"

"I have had some experience," he said, and the complete neutrality of his tone was chilling.

"Lord Celleriant?"

The Arianni lord was gazing at Kallandras. After a moment, he bowed; his hair draped across his left shoulder. Across his right, he now carried a Northern bow. "I will lead," he said gravely.

She nodded. But she looked to Avandar.

He said nothing. His eyes still glittered with golden fire. A little, she thought, like the sun-the afterimage of the flames was burned into her vision for minutes, obscuring all else.

"Well, Adelos?" Alessandro kai di'Clemente said, when the strangers had disappeared into the forest's depths.

"Tor'agar," Ser Adelos said, inclining his head. He could not bow without dismounting.

"Reymos?"

"Tor'agar."

"Come. Your silence is unpleasant. We are not among outsiders now. Tell me."

The two men shared an uneasy glance. Alessandro waited for Reymos to speak. He a.s.sumed it would be Reymos, for Adelos often left the difficult words to the more quiet Toran.

Reymos ran a hand through his beard and cleared his throat. "I trust them."

"Good. Adelos?"

"I concur."

"But?"

"The man-the seraf-that serves the Northern woman."

"Yes?"

He shook his head. "I would not anger him. Not if you offered me the whole of the Terrean as reward."

Alessandro nodded again. "Come. We have two hours to travel before we arrive in Damar, and Ser Amando is not known for his patience."

Adelos spit to one side.

The Tor'agar smiled bitterly, but said nothing; although his Toran were, measure for measure, men of the Court, they had not been born to the Court, and some of the habits of old returned to them in times of duress. Fear, they had mastered. Distaste. Exhaustion. But anger?

Perhaps, in the end, he was his father's son. The time spent in Manelo, the time spent in the Lambertan stronghold, had given him the appearance, the carriage, of high n.o.bility. Certainly his t.i.tle and his birth spoke of both. But he found no disdain for the men upon whom his life depended.

"Adelos, tell Carvan that he is to keep all but a handful of his men sequestered in the Eastern half of Damar. Have fifty men prepare to secure the bridges when we arrive."

Adelos nodded.

But Alessandro noticed that the Captain of his Toran had let one hand drop to the sash at his waist; it hovered, in darkness, around the slender curve of silver horn.

In the night, the woods seemed dark and devoid of life. Although no snow was upon the undergrowth, no ice upon the branches, Jewel felt Winter in the air; she shivered upon the back of the Winter King.

Lord Celleriant knew no such cold. Although he stopped frequently as he traversed the thick of trees grown tall and majestic in the fringes of the forest, he did not notice the weight of their impenetrable shadows; he was at home in this place. Still, he did not lead them into the forest's heart; where he strayed, he kept the flats and the plains of Mancorvo to one side or the other, as if they were anchor.

She could not have done as much; the trees seemed to absorb the whole of her attention, and any glimpse she had of the cleared lands began to seem strange, drab, almost repulsive. She could not have walked in safety here.

The Green Deepings were his home, the Winter King offered, in silence. Warmth nestled in the words. And in some fashion, this forest remembers them. He need know no fear here.

No fear that is not for you, Lady.

Don't call me that, she said, but her heart wasn't in it.

Celleriant raised a hand. The Winter King came to a stop. Jewel noticed that the stag's hooves were placed, with care, upon the ground; that although he moved quickly, he moved with a precision that spoke of dance. Dangerous dance.

She heard voices in the fringes of this forest.

Whispers, things that carried words just beyond the edge of her hearing.

Do not listen, the Winter King said sharply.

I'm not an idiot, she said, as sharply, although her hands gripped his fur. And anyway, I can't hear a d.a.m.n word they're saying.

No; that wasn't true. She could hear a voice. One voice, resolving itself now into something that tugged at memory.

The darkest of memories. Her rage.

She couldn't help herself; she turned back.

Saw the dark trunks of trees, like an iron wall, extending into the distance for as far as the eye could see. Which was, all things considered, far indeed.

Jewel, the Winter King said quietly.

Carmenta.

She heard the Winter King's voice. Was grateful, for the first time, for the way she heard it. Because sound was lost to the snarling, agonized accusation in a voice she hadn't heard for half a lifetime: Carmenta's voice. Carmenta, whose gang had once controlled the streets of the twenty-sixth holding.

You killed me, he said. She searched the darkness for him; the darkness was-for the moment-merciful.

"Yes," she said out loud, her voice much thinner than she'd've liked. "I did."

The voice was silent a moment. She had no illusions; it would start up again, and soon.

Jewel ATerafin, Jewel Markess, Jay.

Three women, one woman. She had never lifted dagger in anger, although she'd certainly lifted hand-or pot, or whatever else happened to be in easy range. She had never played the games that the House Council immersed themselves in. Prided herself on that, but in silence, especially when Avandar was around.

But she had, just once, killed. She had given a demon the location of Carmenta's den. And she had known, when the words left her lips, what that would mean.

No, she had known before they left. She had taken their lives in payment for Lander's. Her den-kin. Carmenta's gang had chased him into the labyrinth that lay beneath the sprawl of the hundred holdings in Averalaan. The maze had swallowed him whole, and she knew now that the death he suffered had been slow and terrible. They had never found his body.

"Yes," she said again, but quietly. "I killed you."

There was no triumph in the words.

She felt the Winter King beneath her stiff legs; he had stilled.

Not in self-defense.

No, she told him flatly. Revenge.

Ah. He was surprised. She took no pleasure from it. It had been many, many years since she had taken pleasure from the death.

But not none. Not none. She closed her eyes; the voice grew sharper.

I didn't kill your den-kin, it said. And it spoke inside her, the words contained, as the Winter King's words were, but made of ice.

She could have argued. Even wanted to. When she had been sixteen, she would have. And what would she have said? Yes. Yes, you did. You killed him. You forced him into the maze. You sent him straight to the kin.

It was true.

You wouldn't shed any tears if you'd killed me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

That was true, too.

But sometime between the then of lean streets, terrible cold, and fear of starvation, and now-even the ridiculous now of being seated upon the back of a creature that hadn't even been one of her childhood stories-she had lost the ability to make that argument stick.

Because it made her Carmenta.

It was the only thing that she had ever done that made of her life something akin to his.

"Yes," she said again, into the dark that was suddenly too familiar. "I killed you."

He came out of the shadows then, her acknowledgment giving him form and shape. His face-aiee, what was left of his face-was twisted and broken.

Rage she could have accepted; it would have given her something to fight against. But all she saw was his fear and his torment. She had killed him. She had brought him to this.

"They killed us all," he said, the words coming from broken lips. "Do you know how?"