The Lioness

Chapter Seven

The woman’s name was Ayensha, “Of Eagle Flight,” she said, gasping the information as they ran out into the yard.

Ayensha pointed up the hill. “The forest.”

Kerian cursed under her breath. In moments she was lost, blind in the night and falling over rocks. Ayensha slipped ahead of her, still groaning to breathe. Behind, the night filled with outraged shouts, with torchlight and the sound of horses stamping and bridles ringing.

“North!” cried the dark-haired boy, his voice high with skittery laughter.

“No, south!” shouted Sir Egil.

Kerian tripped. Ayensha of Eagle Flight pulled her up. Over their shoulders, down the hill, they saw torches like little red stars. Furious voices carried up the hill.

“Keep running!” Ayensha pushed Kerian ahead. “Use your hands, use your eyes.” Her voice dropped low. She pulled her torn shirt together, shivering in the chill breeze.

They ran the climbing forest in darkness. Kerian tripped over stones. Often she stumbled into trees; brush snared her, and tangling roots. Cold air stung her cuts and scratches. Her right arm stiffened, throbbing with the pain of a knife cut. Behind them and below, the lights of torches ran along the road, swift in the night. Sir Egil and his men searched south, then turned to search north.

“Look,” said Ayensha, pointing. The lights stood still, bright and sharp. The Knights had returned to the Hare and Hound, unable to find their quarry on the road. Small in the night, the tavern’s windows showed as orange gleams. “We have to put distance between us and them.”

Panting, Kerian said, “Why? They don’t dare follow us. Their horses won’t be able to take this slope in the dark.”

“No,” said Ayensha, leaning against a tree. She wrapped her arms loosely around her middle. Sweat ran on her face, plastered her hair to her forehead, her neck and cheeks.

More than sweat, Kerian thought. Silver tears traced through the dirt and blood and bruises on Ayensha’s face. She seemed unaware of that.

Like fire, the woman’s eyes shone fierce and desperate. She shoved away from the tree. “Let’s go.”

Kerian hated the darkness as though it were her enemy. She hated it with each step she took, despised it each time she fell, each time she staggered up again. A woman of the city, she was used to kinder nights and darkness tamed by hot, high, warming fires on streets outside the taverns, the cheerful flames of torchbearers leading a lord or lady’s litter through the streets, the glow from windows of houses high and humble. Here night was complete, blinding.

Ayensha was not troubled. Kerian began to think the woman had the eyes of a cat. Night-eyes, the Wilder Elves called that. Kerian herself used to have the same skill, a long time ago in Ergoth. She fell again, this time so hard the breath left her lungs in a loud whoosh. Fiery pain shot up her right arm, blood sprang from the knife wound again.

“Up,” Ayensha ordered between clenched teeth.

Kerian rose, and they traveled on. When she stumbled, she righted herself. When she hurt, she closed her lips tight to cage the groan. Once she fell and did not rise quickly, and saw Ayensha watching. In the woman’s eyes, pity.

“Come on, you’ve got to keep going,” she insisted.

Kerian followed Ayensha, running, falling, and climbing up again till all the night became an aching repetition of pain and anger and finally the simple numbness of exhaustion. It was then, with surprise, that she saw a glint of silver through the tops of the trees, a small shining. Her weary mind could not think what that shining was or imagine the cause.

“The moon,” Ayensha whispered. She turned her face to the silver, her bruises and cuts showing black in the stark light. “Ah, gods, wherever you are, thank you.”

Kerian watched the half-moon rise, and she watched the world around appear as though by magic. They had come far, and indeed, high. Around them now was more stone than tree, and the stones soared past her height. Some stood so close together they formed little shelters. Against one of these boulders, Ayensha leaned, but very carefully. The woman’s face shone white as bone in the moonlight, her lips pressed into a thin line against pain.

“Sit,” Kerian said, by habit still whispering.

Ayensha looked around, numbly. Kerian took her arm and helped her to a seat on a broad flat stone, helped her put her back to another. Sighing, the woman leaned her head against title rock and closed her eyes.

Listening to the weary rhythm of her heart beating, Kerian pressed her own back against a tall broad pine, the tangy scent of sap filling her, tickling awake old memories of the dark upland forest of Ergoth. Her breath staggered in her lungs, hitching. Muscles of her arms and legs twitched with exhaustion.

“Ayensha, where are we headed?”

Eyes still closed, Ayensha said, “Nowhere. Not now. We’re finished running for the night.” She took a careful breath and pushed away from the boulder. “We hide here, in the rocks, till morning, then see how things are and go on when we can.”

An owl cried, not the mournful hooting reported in minstrel’s songs and poet’s verse, but the startling, rattling cackle of a raptor hunting. Wide-winged, the owl swooped out of a nearby pine, tail spread as it sailed low. Behind her, Kerian heard the sudden dash of something small through the brush, then a high, despairing scream. The owl rose, a rabbit caught in its talons, the corpse swinging. The sight caught Kerian hard by the throat.

“Come on,” Ayensha said. It seemed she hadn’t marked the small death at all She pushed up from her seat, looked around, and pointed to a stand of three tall boulders. “There. Help me.”

Kerian put Ayensha’s arm around her shoulders. Though they did not walk more than a dozen yards, to Kerian it felt like miles the distance growing with the weight on her shoulders. The two tallest boulders leaned together, their tops almost touching, the gap between an entrance like a doorway without a door. It seemed wide enough for two to pass through. Kerian shifted Ayensha’s weight and started through. She had not taken two steps before the woman hissed, “Stop!”

Startled, Kerian did stop, looking at her companion. Again, she saw pity in the woman’s eyes.

From between clenched teeth, Ayensha said, “Check inside. There could be a fox denning there or a lynx or bear.” She pulled away from Kerian and balanced with her hand against one of the tall stones.

Kerian didn’t think any of those things were true, but she put her hand to the knife at her belt—the knife slipped to her by the unpleasant dwarf, she suddenly remembered, wondering briefly what happened to him and his two companions in all the commotion—cold fingers gripping the bone handle as she slipped the weapon from the sheath.

“Wait here,” Kerian said, firmly as though the idea of looking were her own. She snatched up a handful of stones from the ground and pitched in one, then another. She stopped to listen, heard only the wind, and tossed in a third.

They peered into the darkness, the little cave smelling of ancient leaves and ancient earth. Faint and far, moonlight drifted through the cracks between the leaning stones, not sharp beams but a pale diffusion. Kerian took a moment to let her eyes adjust, then helped Ayensha to sit. She went outside, by moonlight found fallen boughs of fragrant pine to make a soft bed, and helped Ayensha to lie down. So weary was the woman now, so filled with pain, that she could not speak to say whether that helped her or to agree that it was good to be out of the wind or to say whether she felt a little warmer. She lay in silence, hunched over in pain. Once her breath caught in a small sob.

Kerian sat silent, her right arm throbbing, her hand on Ayensha’s shoulder. In the quiet, she heard wind, again the cackle of a hunting owl, again the sudden scream of a rabbit’s death. Shuddering, she held her breath and listened more closely to the night. As her heart quieted, she heard what he had hoped for—the faint, musical trickle of water sliding down stone.

“Ayensha,” she whispered.

Ayensha groaned.

“Lie still, I’ll be right back.”

Kerian found water behind the little shelter, a trickle shining with the light of the half-moon, like silver running.

She washed her wound clean of blood, washed her hands and dried them on her shirt. She had only her cupped hands to carry the water, icy and tasting like stone. Still, with two trips, she managed to soothe Ayensha’s thirst. She checked the woman’s injuries and knew at least one of her ribs was broken, maybe more. She could only hope that organs had not been damaged. Across Ayensha’s ribs Kerian saw the distinct print, in black bruising, of a hard boot’s heel.

“Brutes,” she muttered, helping Ayensha to lay straight.

“Worse,” Ayensha whispered, “and I’m glad you killed that bastard Barg.”

Yes, I killed him, thought Kerian, shocked that she had done it so easily and now felt so little regret.

Ayensha didn’t say more. She closed her eyes, and in the instant of closing, fell asleep.

A long time Kerian sat beside the sleeping woman. It seemed to her, there in the misty moonlight and the cold little cave, that she’d been gone from Qualinost for weeks. All her muscles turned to water from weariness.

I will never be able to go home again.

She had killed a Knight, and here in this cave she still smelled his blood on her hands, warm and spilling over the bone handle of the dwarf’s knife.

Kerian rose and sat near the opening of their shelter, the little doorway. Wind slid around the stones, small creatures with night habits rustled through the bracken. Kerian sat very still, listening to the tiny sounds of a fox lapping moisture. To test her ability for silence, she slipped her knife from the sheath. The prick-eared fox bolted, slashing away into the dark.

Kerian reached for the golden chain hanging from her neck. She pulled it out, moonlight gleamed on gold, on the topaz of Gil’s ring. Without warning, tears spilled down Kerian’s cheeks, warm when all else was cold. She closed her eyes and saw tossing seas, whitecaps like bent-winged gulls, gulls like the peaks of whitecaps, each reflecting the other. In her ears, the forest breeze changed and became the sound of the sea. The piney scents changed into the achingly beautiful fragrance of home.

A long time ago, his arm around her, holding his little sister close as the sea grew dark and slaty, immense between the fleeing ship and the thinning line of Ergoth’s shore, Iydahar had said, “Turtle, we’ll never be able to go home again, but there will always be you and me. Always.”

Yet Iydahar had gone to the mountains and forests to fight for a prince who had lost his crown, she to live in the city. To be a servant, Dar sneered, to lords who handed over their kingdom piece by piece to a dragon’s Knights. Dar did not know her lover was the king, and grimly, almost with satisfaction, she thought, “Dar! What would you think of me if you knew that?”

She wished she could ask him now, to his face, but Bueren Rose said no one had seen him in a long while. Where was her brother? She wondered, was he well?

Late, an hour past moonset, Ayensha woke and pushed herself to sit. Breathing hard, she asked for water. As she drank it slowly, she asked Kerian about herself. Kerian gave some detail about the life she had left behind, though by no means all. Finally Ayensha, her back resting against a stone, said, “Well, and here we are. I thank you for that. What are you going to do now, Kerian?”

Kerian sat a long time silent, listening to the night. “I’ve come out of Qualinost to find my brother. He is Iydahar of the White Osprey Kagonesti, or so we were called when we lived on Ergoth. Perhaps we—they—perhaps we are still called that.”

Ayensha said she had not heard of the White Osprey tribe. “Nobody knows all the Kagonesti there are. Is he a servant, like you, your brother?”

“No. He never was. He and my parents have always lived wild. Our father is Dallatar. He and my brother fought for Prince Porthios.”

Ayensha moved to find more comfort against cold stone. “You should go back to the city, Kerian. It’s harder out here.”

Kerian looked at her long through narrowed eyes. “It is fair hard in the city these days.” Owls hunted the opportune night. Kerian closed her eyes. In private darkness, she said, “In Qualinost there are four bridges round the city. We have always loved them, for Forest Keepers used to walk watch on the silver spans and cry the hours from the watchtowers: All is well in the East! All is safe in the South! We are watchful in the West! We see all that moves in the North!” She breathed deeply, then opened her eyes. Ayensha’s face was a pale oval an arm’s length away. “All is not well in the east now. Upon the eastern bridge Lord Eamutt Thagol has piked the heads of elves killed by his Knights—”

Again, Ayensha shifted, still trying to find ease, still failing.

“One of the heads piked up on the bridge was that of our cousin. She was Ylania of the White Osprey.”

Ayensha’s breath caught, a hissing of pain as she moved. “Well, I don’t know your brother, and I didn’t know this woman Ylania.”

An owl sailed past the opening of the shelter.

“Perhaps someone of your own tribe does.” Kerian lifted her head, met the woman’s eyes coolly. “For the sake of what I did for you, I ask that you take me to your people so I can ask.”

Ayensha laughed, a low, bitter sound. “All right. I’ll take you into the forest and you can ask your questions, but don’t blame me if you get an answer you don’t like.”

Ayensha lay down again. Kerian sat the night out, watching owls.

Gilthas dripped honey onto both halves of the steaming apricot muffin on his breakfast plate. He took a long slow breath of the scent of the honey, of the apricots and minted tea in his cup. A wealth of strawberries filled the bowl at his elbow, waiting to be dressed in thick cream. From beyond the open doors, twinned and paned in dimpled glass, the scent of his mother’s garden drifted into the small breakfast room. Rich green scents of her herb garden, and the ancient perfume of autumn as leaves changed from green to gold.

It was the autumn he thought of: leaving, going, changing. Kerian shaped his mood and all his thoughts.

Stubborn woman! He shouldn’t have let her go. He should have held her, kept her. He was not only her lover, he was her king!

His mother filled a crystal goblet with icy water poured from a crystal carafe. The two chimed, one against the other, a perfect note.

Stubborn woman… he should have forbidden Kerian to leave, ordered her to abandon her fool’s errand. Iydahar was nothing if not capable of taking care of himself.

“If you had ordered Kerian to stay,” said Laurana, picking a peach muffin from the covered basket, “if you had, my son, you would have lost her as surely as though you’d commanded her into exile.”

His mother’s words, dropping right into his thoughts, no longer startled Gilthas. They did, as at times like this, often annoy him, but they didn’t startle. Laurana had had the skill of reading her son’s thoughts from the first moment he had thoughts, or so it seemed to him. She smiled her golden smile, and went on buttering her muffin.

Her tone had, he thought, contained just a note of the acerbic. The Queen Mother had a true liking for Kerian but also the kind of respect that could sometimes appear cautious.

“Mother,” Gilthas said, seeking to turn Laurana’s thoughts from his. “I’ve had all the news Rashas is willing to give this morning, which is news hardly worth having. The watch was kept calmly through the night. There was only a minor altercation at a tavern near the western bridge where the Knights go to drink. The festival will move out into the countryside today, people will light bonfires in the fields. Rashas isn’t as happy about that as the people themselves.”

Laurana looked up, only a small glance. Morning breeze ruffled her golden hair, nothing seemed to ruffle her composure. It was always that way with her, Gilthas thought.

“Mother—”

“Listen,” said Laurana, she who in lands beyond Qualinesti was yet known as the Golden General. She held up a hand to still her son. She placed a finger to her lips.

In the garden beyond the open doors, birds sang. The whisper of voices washing in from the city lay under those songs, and the sound of the gardener speaking with her apprentice, ordering the final clipping of the roses for the season.

Gilthas frowned, his mother mouthed the word again.

Listen.

He did, and in the next breath he heard the click of nails on the marble floor of the patio beyond the doors. He saw the hounds before he saw the elf woman, two long-legged beasts trotting across the patio with perfect confidence. They cast shadows behind them, and it seemed the woman appeared from those very shadows, the substance of her rising from the darkness. Gil caught his breath, startled. Here was Nayla Firethorn, a woman of his mother’s household. Times were when the woman would be gone from the city for days, even months. Sometimes she would come and go alone, sometimes with Haugh Daggerhart, a man said to be her lover. These two, and others like them, were the voice and will of the Queen Mother beyond Qualinesti’s borders, her trusted warrior-heralds.

“Nayla,” said the Queen Mother.

Laurana lifted her hand and Nayla dismissed her hounds, sending them in to the garden before she came forward to the open door. A beautiful woman, Nayla wore her golden hair in a thick braid hanging as far down as the small of her back. Gilthas imagined that, unbound, the woman’s hair would cover her like a shimmering cloak.

Nayla saw Gilthas and swept him a courtier’s bow, a flourish of the arm, a bending of the knee.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she said, rising. One flickering glance she gave to Laurana—it was not lost on Gilthas!—then, having received some signal indiscernible to the king, she seemed to relax. She stepped into the room and stood before Laurana. “Your Highness, I have returned early, leaving the completion of the task to Haugh. All will be well.”

Clear as water on a windless lake, Laurana’s expression never changed. “I see you have come back by unusual means, Nayla. You felt the need for secret haste?”

Nayla reached into her shirt and withdrew a small leather pouch. She spilled the contents into her hand, a gleaming emerald shaped like a leaf half-furled. This she put into Laurana’s hand. “I have, Madam, and I thank you for the use of the talisman. As magical talismans work these days, it served well enough.”

She hesitated, then, when she spoke, she spoke directly to Gil.

“I’ve come with unexpected news for you, Your Majesty. I hope you will understand that although I might not understand the full weight and import of what I saw last night, I give you news of it with the best will possible.”

Puzzled, Gilthas frowned. “Please speak freely.”

She drew a breath, and she stood tall, trusting her instinct better than she trusted the king to hear her news calmly. “Sir, while I was upon my errand for your mother, I chanced to witness an incident at the Hare and Hound—”

Gil’s heart jumped.

“—Haugh and I had sat down to supper when an elf-woman came into the tavern.” Her glance jumped from Gilthas to the Queen Mother. “Madam, the rumors we’ve been hearing are true. There’s something...” She shrugged. “Something wrong in the forest.”

Gil leaned forward. “Wrong? What do you mean?”

“Your Majesty, it’s as though something bewitches one’s senses in there, in the deepest parts of the wood. On the road, one may be fine. Farther in—and with no regularity of pattern to discern—a kind of… it feels like magic takes hold, and all the senses are muffled. In the villages and towns, they mutter about the Kagonesti and say the Wilder Kin have something to do with it. I don’t know about the cause, sir. I only know the effect.” She paused. “It is the elf-woman I want to talk about, Kagonesti.”

“At the Hare and Hound.” Gil’s voice was unsteady. If his mother or Nayla noticed, neither acknowledged it.

“She is Kerianseray, Your Majesty, servant in the household of Senator Rashas. I believe you know her, and I believe you will not welcome the news I bring of her.”

“Tell me,” said the king, startled by the coldness of his voice.

“Your Majesty,” said Nayla, “while we were there three Knights came in with a Kagonesti woman for a prisoner. She had been badly beaten. The leader of those Knights is Sir Egil Galaria, one of those beholden to Lord Thagol.”

“Speak of Kerianseray.”

“Sir, Your Majesty, there was a sudden altercation. Somehow she rescued the prisoner and fled the Hare and Hound with her.”

A smile twitched at the corners of the king’s lips. His heart swelled with sudden pride.

“She fled, sir, and on the way out, she killed a Knight. With luck, Lord Thagol doesn’t know it yet, but when he does learn the news …”

She need not have finished the thought. Beyond Laurana’s garden, past the grounds of her residence, the span of the eastern bridge shone in the morning sunlight, mist curling around its towers, wisping like ghostly tendrils of hair around the piked heads.

“Thank you, Nayla,” said the king softly, after a long silence. “I appreciate your effort to bring me this news.” He looked at her with faraway eyes. “I appreciate your discretion, as well, for you must have many thoughts on the subject of Senator Rashas’s servant and reasons why I would be interested in her well-being.”

Nayla bowed, again a courtier’s sweep. When she stood, her green eyes were clear and bright. “I have no thoughts on the subject at all, my lord king. I hope you will trust me ever as your lady mother has. I hope you will know that in all matters, Haugh’s heart and mine are as one.”

He knew it. He had not known the Forest Keepers, that shining legion of warriors who had been the buckler and sword of a kingdom. Fate had commanded that he disband them, the breaking of that valiant army part of the fee to be paid for an uneasy peace that would keep his kingdom intact, his people alive. He saw in the eyes of this messenger the kind of loyalty few but kings would ever know.

Gilthas dismissed her with his gratitude and turned to his mother.

“My son,” she murmured, “it seems your Kerian has become an enemy of your enemy.”

“She has,” Gil said, “and her head is no safer now than her brother’s. She’s a headlong fool, mother.”

Laurana raised a brow. Her lips moved in a small smile, and Gil was reminded that the same had once been said about her by his father.

Laurana took a sip of water, another taste of the cooling peach muffin. “Let’s give Nayla a chance to rest and eat, then let’s see if we can find Kerian before Thagol does.”

The glint in her eye, sudden and keen, was like that of sunlight on dangerous steel.

On the misty plane where Skull Knights can roam, what was fresh news to the royal family of Qualinesti was old news to Thagol Dream Walker. He wandered the dangerous roads between consciousness and dreams, listening to the sounds of death—the scream, the whimper, the moan. He listened for the sigh, the bittersweet acceptance, and the final silence. In him, his dream, his heart, his chilly soul, were the strains of a dark, descending symphony.

He knew the very moment when Sir Barg died, the Knight who in better times, older days, would not have been so much as a groom in the stable of the lowliest Knight of Takhisis. He knew the murderer, who was a slave in the house of Senator Rashas. It had often been she who ran messages between the Lord Knight and the senator. Kerianseray, her name. Kerianseray. In his mind, he tasted the Knight’s death, knew all the bitterness of his dying, felt the shock of it, the knife scraping on ribs, sliding into the beating muscle that was his heart. Like ice, he felt what rushed in as Barg’s blood rushed out.

By the time Gilthas had begun his meeting with the elf woman Nayla, Lord Thagol had left his dreamwalking and completed a meeting of his own with Senator Rashas. The two spoke only briefly, then the Lord General was standing before his assembled garrison, dark-armored warriors like pieces of night come to life.

In the minds of the men was only one thought—each knew he must stand well before the Skull Knight, never moving, his breathing hidden inside the shell of his armor, his eyes straight ahead, hands still. They might wish the sweat didn’t run on them, the small motion of a salty bead sliding down a cheek, something to draw the Lord Knight’s attention.

He had but two things to impart to his garrison, and Lord Thagol did that swiftly. One was the command that the elf woman Kerianseray be brought back to Qualinost for killing. His thought leaped from his mind to theirs. In their minds they saw the woman, the golden mane of her hair, the tattoos that marked her as a Kagonesti. They saw the killer as though in a flash of lightning. They saw a murdered Knight as though his body lay at their feet. With one motion, ten Knights stepped forward to volunteer for the work. Thagol wanted more Knights than those. He commanded that those ten take patrols of four and range the roads of the elf kingdom, stopping in every town of note, every waycross with a tavern.

The other thing Sir Eamutt Thagol told his men was that the watch rotations on the four bridges would double, and in short order no Knights would be required to keep post at the doors to his headquarters, the ugly stone building that so irritated the Qualinesti.