The Lioness

Chapter Sixteen

In the next week snow fell often, but no one believed this was a last assault of winter for the sun shone brightly and warm between the gray times, and snow didn’t last long on the roads or in the clear places. The songs of birds changed from winter-weary dirges to brighter airs. Spring came behind the snow, the changing scent of the breezes said so, and Kerian began to think of her brother. She hadn’t seen him or heard word of Ayensha or even Bueren Rose since they’d left the outlaw camp long ago. The time had come to go and speak with Dar, to let him know that some things had changed in the kingdom and with her. She would ask him to consider a request of hers, a bold demand made in behalf of a bold plan, but first, something else had to be done and said.

“Jeratt,” she said, sitting back on her heels, “I’m going to take a small trip.”

He sat closer to the fire, so the light sent shadows curling around him from behind. She couldn’t read his expression, but she knew him now, and well. This was news to him.

“I must see the king,” she said.

He sat silent.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Jeratt.”

He shook his head. “No. You tell me if you’re coming back.”

“I’m coming back.”

Simply, he said, “Then you don’t need to know what I’m thinking.”

Wind soughed around the top of the rocky bowl. Campfires glowed pale in the thin winter sunlight. Elder slept near the hottest, highest one, and when Kerian looked at her an image ran though her mind—no, behind her eyes—of a huge misshapen beast running. Ice crackled up her spine, and her heart lurched as it did before battle. Voices and the rattle of stone distracted her. She wrenched her gaze away from Elder and saw two hunters coming down the stony slope, one with a small roe deer over his shoulder, another with a brace of quail and one of hares on his hip. She looked behind her and saw Briar going to relieve the watch at the entrance to the falls.

Jeratt said drily, “Give the king my regards.”

She laughed, but the image of a loping beast still haunted her eyes, and her laughter sounded shaky in her own ears. “I’ll see you at the rising of the moon. Here.”

Two weeks. He nodded and reached out a hand. She took it in the hard warrior’s clasp, and she got up and pulled together a kit for traveling—thick woolen trews, a woolen shirt and fine boots looted from a young Knight. Then she went into the forest. Ear to the ground, nose to the wind, she learned of the whereabouts of her lover before she came within sight of Qualinost. He and a contingent of servants, his lady mother, and a covey of senators had removed to his forest lodge, Wide Spreading, for two weeks of hunting. It was there she found Gilthas, and she did so by slipping past his nominal guard, his servants, his mother and her people, and into his bedchamber by starlight.

Kerian stood in the center of a bright square of starlight, silver shafting down from a high window in the ceiling of the royal bedchamber at Wide Spreading. The waking breath of one who had been deep asleep came softly. When the king’s eyes opened and he saw her, he did not start.

“Kerian.” Gilthas sat. “I dreamed of you coming here. I dreamed I heard your footsteps.”

“You didn’t dream, my lord king.”

He opened his arms in invitation, Kerian covered the distance between his window and his bed with swift strides.

“Kerian,” he said, whispering against the tangled gold of her hair. “Kerian, is it really you?”

“You dreamed,” she said, almost laughing. “Now you doubt?”

As though to answer, the king wrapped her up in his arms. He smelled of soap, and clothing taken from scented drawers, and closets hung with sachets of shaved sandal-wood. He shone, a king well tended, and held her as though the marks she left upon his faultless bed clothing—soot and grime and sweat stains—were not more than the faintest imprint of a perfumed body.

“Come,” Gilthas said shortly, slipping out of bed. His night robe moved in silken grace around his body. “You look hungry, love, and thirsty. I’ll find you something—”

Kerian shook her head, a gesture used to still men and women lately grown accustomed to heeding her. The brusque gesture surprised him, and she did not apologize.

“My lord king, I’m feeling suddenly in need of a bath.”

He laughed, quietly for the sake of this secret arrival. “All this way for a bath? Well, then, let it be. I will summon Planchet. He will see that you have one and all else you wish. Sit. Here on the bed. It will be brought.”

There were kettles of steaming water to warm the marble tub kept in the bathing apartment off the bedchamber. With starlight glittering in through wide, tall windows, Kerian bathed long, and later she showed her king how much she had missed him. Afterward, by fading starlight, in her lover’s arms, she looked carefully at him, his face in repose, and she touched the downy cheek inherited from the mysterious human who had fathered his own father, Tanis Half-Elven. He stirred to her touch, and she hushed him.

“I’m sorry to have waked you.”

“I’m not sorry you did,” the king said.

He reached for her, but she stopped him, a hand on his chest. “You think I have come home.”

The bluntness of her statement startled him. Gilthas nodded.

“I haven’t. You said I couldn’t, my king. You said if I went away, I could not come home again. I went, and I have been to many places and done... many things I never thought I could or would. You were right: I am back now but not home. Let me tell you, love, how it has been with me.”

She spoke past his doubts, she told the tale of her outlawry, of the first killing at the Hare and Hound, of the burning of the Waycross. She told of finding her brother and losing him. She did not—and this surprised her—speak of Elder, but she spoke well of the half-elf Jeratt, of his band of outlaws and young Ander whose silence on her behalf had made him one of them. She told the king of the elves of the dales, of Felan and his widowed wife, the child orphaned before it was born. She told him all this and more.

“We are outlaws all, my love, and yet, in truth, we should stop calling ourselves that. We must stop naming ourselves outlaws, for though others say so, we are not. We are more.”

Gilthas sat forward, eager to hear what caught his imagination.

“We are some of us outlawed.” Her smile twisted wryly. “All the gone gods know that I am, but many of us are Kagonesti, shunned for being who they are. Others are old soldiers, Gil, forgotten warriors of Silvanesti and of your own kingdom, who once served your Uncle Porthios.”

Outside his chamber, Planchet spoke with a servant, and they heard footfalls come near and retreat as though a message had been given and sped.

“My lord king,” she said, pride shining in her voice, “we are the ones who through the summer and autumn harried Lord Thagol’s force of Knights in the western part of your kingdom, and we have fought not as brigands and outlaws. We have fought as warriors.”

Planchet had long ago taken away her worn clothing to be washed and mended, but he had not touched her weapons, her bow and quiver, the dagger and the sword she had taken from a Knight after she’d killed him. She now slipped the blade from its sheath. The steel gleamed in the moonlight, sliver running on the edges.

“This sword, my king, I have brought you. This, and the fealty of my heart and the loyalty of men and women who have not forgotten the days when they were free.”

His eyes shone, his poet’s soul leaped with fire as he took her meaning. Outside the window, the sky grayed with the coming day. Gilthas let his glance dwell there for a time, and then, his kindling glance darkened.

“Things aren’t going well for us, Kerian.”

“The alliance?”

He nodded. “My mother has hung her hope on an alliance with the dwarves for as many years as I’ve been alive, Kerian. It’s become more urgent now. The dragon is building her cache and her war trove. The Senate has been told the tribute in weapons must increase.” He twisted a bitter smile. “Of course, the tribute in gold, silver, and gems must not decrease. We hear from friends outside the kingdom that the dragons are growing restless. Once Beryl gets all she needs of us, what will she do? We need a way out. All of us, Qualinesti and Kagonesti.”

A way out!

Like the sudden glint of starlight on the sword’s blade, Kerian knew her moment, the moment when something bright would be born.

“My king, my love, you need time. There is no way to truly end the dragon’s hold on us or Thagol’s grip. That isn’t the goal anymore, is it? The goal must be to confound and confuse them until Thorbardin can make up its mind.

“I have come with the coin to buy you the time you need. I have come to bring you warriors. They are few now, but the Wilder Kin in the forest have reason to appreciate us. I think this force of warriors I offer can be as many as you desire.”

Gilthas looked at her long, his face alight, his hope shining. “Who are you?” he whispered, and she thought she heard a note of superstitious wonder in his voice, as though some mage of old had cast a change-spell upon her.

Kerian took his hands in her own. “Why, I thought you knew. I am the King’s Outlaw, my love. I am your weapon, I am your warrior, and I am your lover, my lord king. Never doubt it.”

In the golden firelight he looked upon her as though upon something magical, powerful, and his.

There, in his bed, they began to speak of something no one else had ventured to discuss in all the years of the dragon’s occupation, through all the depredations of her Knights. While Senator Rashas and his fellows enjoyed the hospitality of the king they professed to honor and yet in truth despised for a weakling, the king and his outlaw began to speak of resistance to all they had until now endured.

The King’s Outlaw left Wide Spreading the next day, a freezing day of black and gray. She left with her breath pluming out before her, carried by the following wind. Gilthas had provided food and a pouch ringing with steel coins. A fat quiver of arrows hung at her hip, a fine long bow across her shoulders. In its sheath was the bone-handled knife she’d had from a dour dwarf, the sword she’d taken off a battleground.

Kerian went up into the forest with her hope rising. What she’d said to Gil about the Kagonesti having reason to be grateful to her and her fighters was true. She would try to rally them all, the elusive tribes, and ask if they would join her and make the elf king’s cause their own. First, before all, however, she would try her brother, for these were kin.

She knew the way to Eagle Flight’s encampment, though her brother had not told or shown her. She knew because Jeratt knew, for he came and went when times allowed, to see his niece Ayensha. He used to say to Kerian, “You know the way, but don’t go unless you have to,” and by that she knew that her brother would not have welcomed her. Now, this snow-threatening day, she decided she would go, and it wouldn’t be up to Dar to decide whether she should come.

When she found him, she found him standing as one who trembled on the edge of the legendary Abyss.

Kerian’s nostrils filled with the nauseating stench of burnt flesh and bone. Under an iron sky the earth Iydahar stood upon stretched out to a purling river, a great gaping blackness of ash and burning. He didn’t see her, or if he did, he didn’t care. He knelt before a pit still steaming from a great burning, grey tendrils ghosting up from the charnel pit and wolves lurking across the river, staring. He didn’t care about wolves, for he carried no weapon, not even a knife at his belt. He dipped his hand into the pit, into sooty ash, and he stood.

Iydahar turned slowly. She saw that his hands were dark with soot, as he rose and came toward her. He moved as though stalking. She wasn’t sure he recognized her. Kerian’s hand drifted to her knife, then fell away. She did not challenge her brother but took a step away to let him know she was no threat.

“Sister,” he hissed, “you’ve come to visit? Too bad, too late. Knights came before you did, with torches and swords. We stood as best we could, but…”

They were a dozen Knights with swords and maces. They were a dozen Knights and encased in armor like midnight. Their war-horses were weapons, steel-shod hoofs trampling any who resisted, and then any who got in the way. Old people, little children, they died under the steel shoes as warriors scrambled for arrows that in the end did little damage to armor-cased Knights.

Dar gestured around the blackened ruin of what had once been the encampment of the small tribe of Wilder Elves, a winter home by the river. Looking at him standing in the ruin, Kerian heard, faint, the echoes of that killing, as though the cries of the slaughtered yet clung to the woodland and the hills beyond.

“There’s no one here but me now.”

Ayensha! Ah, gods! Bueren Rose!

“No,” he said, understanding her frantic glances around, but the sound was a growling, hardly a word. “They’re not there. My wife survived the burning, and Bueren Rose. A few others, too. They are off and away, gone to be with your outlaws.”

His hand shot out, grabbing her wrist with grinding strength. She did not pull away or force him to disengage. Dar bent. She watched, fascinated, as he ran his fingers through ash and soot like a painter’s brush on a palette. He rose again, making one stroke and then another; he painted her face in patterns of soot.

Finger pressing the flesh of her face roughly, he made a mask of darkness on her, and he said, “Do you remember, Kerianseray? Or have you so far fallen that you’ve forgotten how the Wilder Folk mourn? Do you remember how to paint your sorrow on your face?”

He blackened her brow. Kerian let him. He smudged her temples. He ran a sooty thumb down her nose, and he smeared her chin with the heel of his hand. His teeth flashing in a terrible grin, he darkened her cheeks, and when he was done, he flung back his head and he raised his fists as though to threaten the sky.

“They are dead!” he shouted, to her, to the forest, to the sky where people used to turn their faces and imagine they could speak with gods. “They are dead! The children! The mothers! The fathers!”

As he turned, she saw that the strength had run out of him with the shouting. Kerian leaped. She caught him before his knees gave way. He bore them both to the ground, but she dropped first to her knees and so was able to lower him gently.

She knew how to mourn. Though she had not practiced the Wilder mourning in many long years, she had not forgotten how to grieve. They wept the grief-storm, brother and sister. They washed away all the colors of sorrow with their tears. One wept for all the people he knew, the other for all the people she would never know.

In the end, with night falling, they began to talk. Iydahar spoke of his rage, while Kerian spoke of her mission. He told her how well and deeply he hated the Knights, how little love he had for her king.

“The boy who sold his throne. For what? A year or two to play at being king?”

Anger rose in her, flushing her cheeks till then cool with sorrow. “No, Dar, don’t speak of Gilthas that way. He’s—”

His expression grew hard. It was as though a door had suddenly swung shut. “Ah, you, Keri. No one could miss the secret you hold, girl. It’s all over you, all the time. So you keep his bed warm, do you? Aye, well,” he growled bitterly, “good for the little king, then. If he doesn’t get to rule or wield armies, he gets some of the privileges and rights of kings. “

Coldly, she said, “What are you going to call me now, Dar? The king’s whore?”

Iydahar regarded her, hard from narrowed eyes. “No one’s calling you his wife, are they? No one’s looking at you in the streets and naming you his queen. Is he ashamed of his Wilder Elf woman?”

The loud crack of her palm across his face startled them both. He sat gaping. She leaped to her feet, cheeks flaming. The print of her hand showed white where Dar’s grief-paint still clung, red on the naked flesh.

Though she had planned to tell her brother about her plans for a resistance, counted on it, Kerian realized she could not. She did not dare ask him to join a rebellion intended to buy time for a king he despised.

“Dar, is there anything I can do here?”

He shook his head. “I’m not staying.”

“What about Ayensha?”

His eyes flashed, anger and pain. “She thinks she’s found a cause.” He sneered the word. “Go look for her with her uncle and your outlaws.”

Kerian looked around at the scorched earth, the charnel pit, the wolves padding. Softly, night crept down, the howl of the sky turned deeply blue and the pale sliver of the new moon showed in the east, high beyond the tops of the trees. Dar rose. He looked at her long, and she felt a hollowness in her heart, feeling his eyes on her, his distant gaze. He was already thinking about his path away from this black and burned place.

“You’re going?” she asked.

“Away.”

Kerian heard that in silence, then she said, “Don’t go south, Dar. There are draconians there. Don’t go west, they hold every road, and the Knights are with them.”

He didn’t thank her for her warning, and she didn’t wait to hear more from him. She rose and left him. She did not expect to see him again.