A Posse of Princesses (29 page)

Rhis pressed her fingers to her head as the
stone keened
Flee! Flee! Flee!

She struggled to think past that incessant
message. The Damatrans and her own party were getting ready for a
fight. Not a practice one, but a real one. A fight in which people
could get stabbed, even killed, in order to force the others to
give up—but they wouldn’t just give up. She could see it in Lios’s
compressed lips and jutting jaw, in Breggan’s sober gaze from which
all the shyness had vanished.

And in the Damatrans’ eagerness.

She didn’t want a fight. Nothing good came of
fights—despite the old ballads. Maybe the old ballads became fun
only after everyone’s cuts had healed, but one thing for sure . .
.

The stone vibrated against her knee, the
sound intensifying as if to wrest her attention solely to the
magical diamond and its need to be free. Rhis fought against it and
darted a quick glance around. There was the tiny bridge joining the
rocky cliff edge of the main border road, along which Jarvas and
his troop had stationed themselves. The king’s road, above them on
the same slope, curved away around the side of the tree-dotted
hill, past one of the waterfalls falling into the chasm that formed
the natural border, to the bigger bridge a small distance away. The
bridge that joined Damatras and Vesarja.

Rhis and her friends just had to get to the
bridge.

The king and his men would have to dismount
in order to slip and slide down the steep, treacherous incline to
their path below. Jarvas and his men would have to cross the bridge
one by one.

The king gave the nod to his son.

If she acted now, they couldn’t surround her.
So—just as Jarvas nudged his horse forward, his hand gripping the
hilt of his sword, Rhis slid her hand into her saddlebag and
grabbed the stone.

The singing intensified, almost
deafening.

She sucked in a breath, fighting the urge to
flee! Flee! Flee!

She leaped off her horse and stumbled onto
the little bridge over the chasm.

As Jarvas started his horse down the little
path toward her, Rhis yelled, “If you move, I will drop this
thing!”

The stone had begun to sink sweetly again
when she started over the bridge, but when she held the stone over
the rickety wooden rail of the bridge, it shrieked on so piercing a
note her knees almost buckled.

Yuzhyu gasped. “That iss what I hear! It iss
magic stone!”

“I know that noise,” the king shouted, and,
“Hold!” to his men.

“What?” Jarvas called across the chasm to his
father. “Hold?”

“Yes,” the king returned grimly. “That girl
from Nym has the kingdom protection!”

Jarvas stared, mouth open, at Rhis. She could
see his wide pale eyes. “That thing was on the roof of the High
Tower!”

“Don’t I know that,” the king said, even more
grimly.

Rhis was trembling all over, vaguely aware of
Yuzhyu whispering steadily behind her. The stone shrieked
unmercifully; Rhis closed her eyes as tears of pain escaped, and
yelled, “Let everyone pass! Or I drop it!”

She could no longer see, but she heard the
creak of gear, the clop of hooves, and then the little bridge shook
as people passed by her to safety, one by one.

The angry king shouted, “You can follow them,
girl, but we’re going to be right on your heels. I will never stop
until I get that stone back, and then personally wring your neck.”
He added, somewhat spoiling the effect of his threat, “
After
I find out how you got to the top of that tower in order to grab
it.”

Rhis was too frazzled to care about mere
kings. The stone was taking over the world, turning sound into
screaming pain.

But just before she could no longer bear it,
a hand brushed over hers, and the terrible inner shriek changed so
suddenly she half-collapsed against the bridge rail.

“Safe, safe,” a soft voice spoke next to her.
Yuzhyu.

Now the stone began to sing again, a soft,
gentle harmonic that made Rhis stagger again, her body so tired she
nearly dropped the stone.

But Yuzhyu’s small hand supported hers.
Without touching the stone, Yuzhyu helped her get it back over the
rail. And then the stone sang again, this time sending a stream of
images: soaring high against the clouds, faster than any bird could
fly. The rise of a castle—a sudden glittering cloud descending
toward an army, and smiting it away—

A great wave rising to smash over a line of
ships—

Yuzhyu gasped. She jerked her hand away.
“Stow it,” she said urgently to Rhis. “At once!”

Rhis used the last of her strength to stumble
to her horse, its ears twitching; she thrust the stone into the
saddle bag and leaned tiredly against the horse’s sturdy
shoulder.

As soon as she wasn’t touching it, the
stone’s allure faded to the old faint singing note.

“Dat stone ver-ry dangerous,” Yuzhyu said in
a low voice.

Rhis crumbled onto the ground, dizzy, weak,
and thoroughly miserable. She didn’t even care when Jarvas edged
his horse cautiously down the trail, dismounted at the other end of
the bridge, and started across, step by step.

Yuzhyu stretched out her short arms, guarding
Rhis, the horse—and the stone. “Do not ze touch. Or I take stone.
Use.” She smacked her front.

“Grab ’em,” the king called to his son, who
took another step on the bridge, his face even more grim than his
father’s.

“Then I make you ze mushroom on log,” Yuzhyu
said fiercely, and Jarvas promptly backed up, hands out.

“Jarvas,” the king warned. “Take those two
prisoner.”

Jarvas lifted his head. “You do it. And if
she turns you into a hoptoad—”

“Mushroom,” Yuzhyu said. “Worse.”

The Damatrans did not disagree. The king
sighed. “That’s why I really,
really
hate mages.”

“And they hate ze pipple with ze swords,”
Yuzhyu muttered, as the king motioned to his guards to dismount and
start down the hill, swords at the ready, to surround the
girls.

Rhis struggled to her feet again, though it
took almost all the strength she had left. She was careful not to
touch the saddlebag. So far they had not been taken prisoner, but
neither were they on the safe side of the border. Meanwhile, had
Lios and the rest had the sense to ride to safety? No. They’d
halted a little ways from the Damatrans, on the Vesarjan side of
the road. Lios and Taniva stood at the verge, Taniva with her knife
in her hand, her brows a long furrow over her eyes.

The horse twitched at a nearby crunch of
gravel. There was a short exclamation as one of the guards almost
slipped on the slope.

Yuzhyu clenched her fists. “I stay wiz you,”
she said to Rhis.

Rhis tried to straighten. The guards, slowly
closing in, did not look any too happy. Menacing, certainly,
holding their swords, but the way their eyes kept flicking to her
saddlebag almost made Rhis laugh.

It was that tiny bubble of laughter that
enabled her to straighten up. She gulped in a breath, and that
helped, too. The stone was still singing, which echoed through her
skull, but not nearly as horribly as before.

She looked up at the King of Damatras there
on the road, his own sword in hand.

Rhis’s mind cleared a little more. She saw
how much danger she and Yuzhyu were in. But beyond that, she
understood why she was in danger—because she’d been a thief, for
the first time in her life. And she’d stolen the protection magic
for an entire kingdom.

“I’ll give it back,” she called to the king.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to let us go. I’ll give it back.”

The king raised his sword, and the men
halted. Some of them with quiet exhalations of relief.

“Why did you take it in the first place?” the
king demanded.

Rhis shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t
mean to. But it—well, it just sang at me.”

To her surprise, the king did not scoff at
that answer, silly as it sounded in Rhis’s own ears. He waved his
sword in a lazy circle, rounding up his men, and then put the sword
back in its sheath. “Go on home, young Princess from Nym,” he said.
“You’ve got guts, I’ll tell you that, and I admire guts. But I
wouldn’t sleep of nights if you married my son, wondering what you
might be up to next. I just
really
do not like mages. And if
you can stomach handling that stone, you may’s well be one.”

“We’re free,” Yuzhyu whispered, smiling.

The king lifted his head, addressing his son,
who still stood at the other end of the bridge, ten paces from
Rhis, Yuzhyu, and the patient horse. “Jarvas, I have done picking
wives for you. From now on, you’re on your own.”

“Then this subject is finished for at least
ten years,” Jarvas called back promptly. “Twenty!”

“
What?”
That was from Iardith, still
sitting on her horse, looking perfect—except for her angry
expression.

“I don’t know why you insisted on riding with
us,” the king said to her in his hearty boom as he climbed back
into his saddle. “But now I’m glad you did. You can ride right
around the road there, in perfect safety, and return to your father
in the same safety. All honorable and right,” he added in a louder
voice. “Do we agree on that, young Vesarjan prince? Everything
perfectly honorable, no harm to anyone?”

Lios called across the chasm, “Agreed.”

“What?” Rhis said, hopelessly trying to
follow. But her head ached, her body felt worse, and she longed to
just lie down and sleep for a year.

“Pest cannot make trouble,” a new voice said
just behind Rhis, and suddenly Taniva was there, having run down
the old trail past Jarvas and all his young guards, to join the two
girls. “Up you go,” she said kindly to Rhis. “Give bad thing to
king, and we get out.”

With her strong arms she boosted Rhis back
into the saddle. She held up one of her kerchiefs, rescued from her
own saddlebag for the purpose. Rhis took it, reached into her
saddlebag, and eased it around the stone, which rang mercilessly
inside her head.

But she captured it inside the kerchief, and
pulled it out.

Meanwhile, the king himself had urged his
horse down the slope. He rode up next to Rhis, Yuzhyu and Taniva
backing away. The two animals sniffed curiously at one another as,
with care, Rhis handed over the stone, and with equal care, the
king took it. “That’s one of the duties of the Damatran monarch,”
the king said in a low voice, for Rhis alone. “Checking on it, once
a year. And I will tell you what until now I only told my son—it’s
the one duty I really hate.”

Rhis looked unhappily into the king’s face.
“I don’t know why I took it.”

“Oh, that much is clear,” the king said. “Or
as clear as anything is, around magic. That thing lured you in.
Your mother’s a mage—you’ve got the same head for magic or that
thing would have complete control of you by now. That’s why I hate
checking on it. You’d think that stone is alive.” He hefted the
kerchief. “Well, now to find a better place for it.” He grinned.
“Where even a princess from Nym wouldn’t look.”

Rhis smiled back, feeling worse than
ever.

The king motioned to his people, who mounted
up again. The king’s horse clambered in a rustle and clatter of
stones back up to the main road.

Jarvas and his young guards also mounted up,
and rode past Rhis into the lower path toward the forest. Jarvas
lifted a friendly hand to Rhis in passing, but then he stopped and
cast one glance back—at Taniva, who stood in the middle of the
bridge, arms crossed. Jarvas grinned in challenge, and patted the
hilt of the jeweled knife in his sash.

Taniva’s mouth curled up at one corner, as
she gave him a look that so clearly said,
I’ll get it
yet!

And Jarvas sent her one back that said,
I’ll be waiting
.

He called to his father, “Race you back!”

“Done,” the king said, and within moments all
that was left of the Damatrans was a cloud of dust, and the rapidly
diminishing thunder of hoof beats.

Rhis, Taniva, and Yuzhyu proceeded the rest
of the way up the old trail.

And when they reached the main road and
stepped into Vesarjan territory, there was a weird flicker in the
air, and one—two—three—five mages appeared, standing in a circle
around where the Damatrans and the young rescuers had been
earlier.

One of them was Rhis’s own sister, Sidal.

The tallest, oldest, and most forbidding was
a gray-haired woman. “And now that the political questions are
resolved,” she said to Rhis. “You will answer to
us
.”

“Not until the child has had rest and
something to eat,” Sidal said firmly.

“We will transfer to Hai Taresal,” the
gray-haired mage responded, and no one argued.

Rhis found herself wrenched away into a kind
of non-space. It felt like someone had shoved her through a wall
and then out the other side. She staggered, finding herself in a
small room with the patterned tiles of a Destination on the
floor.

Sidal appeared a moment later, and took her
arm. Yuzhyu was gone—all her friends were gone, leaving her
surrounded by mages.

But Rhis was beyond questions. She listened
to the swift murmur of voices without comprehending a word, walked
with her sister, and finally she reached a room with a nice, soft
bed. Sidal helped her through the cleaning frame, helped her get
rid of the Damatran rider outfit. Someone had brought a soft
nightgown, which Sidal slipped over Rhis’s head.

Then she slid into a cool, soft bed, and that
was all she remembered for quite a long while.

oOo

She actually woke several times, but each
time it was just long enough to drink down the waiting steeped
listerblossom, eat a few bites of bread and cheese, then back she
went to sleep again. Next couple of times she woke she ate a bigger
meal, and stayed awake long enough to watch the rain against the
windows—but before she could consider whether or not to get up, she
fell right back to sleep again.