Call of Sunteri (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 2) (12 page)

Between the nightmare last night and all of the action today, I feel like I could burrow myself into bed and sleep until supper. Instead I force myself to get up. I don’t really know where I’m going until I arrive at the stables, where Pearl is munching happily on her oats. The creamy-white mare is new to me, a gift for my Knighting. She’s been brushed already, her hooves picked, her mane and tail braided. Someone has taken great care with her. I stroke her neck and lean against her, and she blinks at me. Something about the way she looks at me makes me feel like she knows everything, and she’s perfectly fine with it. I smile.

“Good fight,” the voice makes me jump, and I turn toward it. “Good day, Lady Knight.”

“Good day…” I say. I lean back against Pearl, who leans into me just as much as I scratch her shoulder.

“Jac.” He bows, and then straightens and smiles at me. He’s my age or a little older. Broad-shouldered, with dark hair that curls loosely at his shoulders. His eyes glint handsomely in the sunlight. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s dressed in the uniform of the Royal Guard. That seems to snap me back to my senses. I think of Rian and feel a little guilty for being so taken in.

“Good day, Jac.” I turn back to Pearl and go through the motions of checking her for injuries. “Shouldn’t you be with the prince?” I ask.

“I’m off duty.”

“I see.”

“Do you think you might…” he trails off awkwardly and I look back at him over my shoulder. His face is bright red, his thick arms crossed uncomfortably over his chest. There’s a dimple in his chin, and his jaw is strong and square. “Sorry,” he shakes his head, “It’s too forward of me. Never mind.” He turns to leave.

“No, it’s all right. What is it?” I’m curious now. I’ve never really known a guard as anything but a guard. Usually they’re very disciplined. They keep to themselves when they’re off duty. They’re always respectful. Royal guards have to go through years of conditioning and grueling training. When they come out of it, their one goal in life is simple: Serve the palace. Protect the royal family. I feel a little guilty that I’ve never considered any of them as individuals who have an identity outside of guard before.

“I was hoping you might show me that move. The one with the pivot of the blade that nearly disarmed His Highness. And perhaps the counter? My strength is with the shield and short sword, you see, but I’m trying to move up to broad.” He sees my hesitation and steps toward me. “With trainers, of course. No need to don armor.”

I nod, and we go to the courtyard together and pick up a pair of wooden swords meant for training. He’s a quick learner, and soon has me fighting to keep hold of my own weapon.

“There, you have it!” I laugh as my sword goes flying. He picks it up for me and hands it back with a smile that makes my heart skip. We spend half of the afternoon in a lighthearted spar. He’s a formidable partner, and I find myself learning from him as much as he learns from me, if not more. When it’s finally time to go in, I’m a little disappointed to have to stop. It’s refreshing to have an equal to spar with, someone who isn’t older than I am or better, or trying to prove something or make a move on me. Jac is very respectful. He’s careful not to touch me or look at me the way men sometimes do. On their own time guards are usually bawdy, but he isn’t. He’s a gentleman.

“Thank you,” he bows to me as he did in the stable, “I learned quite a lot.”

“So did I,” I grin. “Perhaps we can spar again.”

“I would very much like that, Lady Knight,” he smiles at me and tips his sword up in salute, then rests it on his shoulder. I watch him until he disappears through the door that leads back to the stables.

“I said be careful, not hey, Azi, try to kill Eron,”
Rian materializes beside me and I jump back and nearly fall into the empty fountain.

“Will you stop doing that!” I smack him with each word, and he raises his arms up to shield his face.

“All right, all right, ow!” He winces and rubs his arm. “Take it easy, bruiser!”

I roll my eyes and shake my head, and he pulls me close and kisses me tenderly. He starts to pull me into the Half Realm with him, but it makes me uneasy. After Eron’s lewdness I’m not in the mood for romance, and after Iren’s warning I’m wary of the Half Realm. I take his hand from my hair and hold it as I step back a little.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m all sweaty,” I say. It’s a lame excuse. Sweat never bothered either of us before. “I want to wash up.”

“I’ll come with you,” he wriggles his eyebrows.

“Stop,” I swat at him playfully.

“Again with the hitting?” He ducks away. “Fine, fine. Have you seen Flitt at all?” he asks as we walk to the washing room.

“She popped in for a quick visit just after the spar,” I say. “Why?”

“I’m sorry I missed her,” he says as we pause in front of the door. “I wanted to play the question game.”

“You
wanted
to play?” I blink at him in disbelief. Flitt’s question game has long been a source of annoyance for Rian. I’m shocked that he’d be actively seeking to play it.

“I’ve been thinking some things over,” he shrugs, “and I have a lot of questions that I’m sure she could answer.”

“She said she’d be back later,” I hug him and he kisses me. “See you at supper.”

“Love you, Azi,” he whispers softly in my ear. As always, it sends tingles through me to hear him say it. I close my eyes, and for some reason Jac comes to mind.

“Love you too,” I say. I go inside and close the door behind me.

Azi
 

Supper has a festive feel to it. The tables are laid with steaming hot venison and boar, and the cousins make sure to regale everyone with tales of the hunt, where Prince Eron was clearly the champion. They lay it on thickly, and Eron is pleased. He puffs out his chest like a proud cock and goes on and on about the chase, and the hunt, and the struggle with his prey. With Amei beside him, back to her usual smiling glow, the mood is optimistic.

Mya, on the other hand, is not quite so happy. The Elite have been moved from our usual place of honor beside the royal table to a smaller, more cramped setting toward the back of the dining room in order to make space for the young lords and their traveling companions.

I know that my actions contributed to it, and I know everyone else is blaming me. It’s a tiny guild. News travels fast. I was relieved when there was no time for Mya to give me a talking-to about it, but this is worse. I wish I could take back my actions. It wasn’t worth embarrassing my family over. To make it worse, Rian is giving me the cold shoulder, too. After my bath, he and I argued over who the impostor fox might have been, and that turned into another discussion about Viala…or Ki, and whether or not we should ask to bring her back to Cerion with us.

When those arguments calmed down, he kept trying to pull me away into the Half Realm with him and getting increasingly annoyed when I refused. We should heed Iren’s warning, I said, but as all men do at times, he’s got other things on his mind. The Half Realm is our one place to be alone together, and now that’s been taken away. Here with everyone else, there are too many eyes on us. The guild is tolerant of our affection for one another, but everyone’s watchful that we don’t take it too far. Our parents are actually quite pleased. Mum has even mentioned marriage more than she probably should, but I keep telling her I’m still young. I’m only seventeen. Rian and I don’t want to rush into anything.

Not that it matters. Things between us now are lukewarm anyway. I’m starting to get irritated by things about him that never bothered me before, like how perfectly straight he sits when he eats, and how he always has to be right about everything. Like now. He and Bryse are arguing over the border between Cerion and Hywilkin. Hywilkin is Bryse’s homeland. Of course he would know that the border is called Haigh, and that it stretches across the mountain. Rian is arguing that the west border touches the sea, while Bryse insists that it touches the Outlands. Of course Rian has a map which he unfurls across his plate and mine. Of course the map proves Bryse wrong. He starts to roll it up again and tips my dish into my lap, covering my trousers in a mess of gravy and roast.

“Sorry!” he cries as I jump up and curse. The room around us goes quiet. Mum stares at me, her mouth covered in disbelief. It’s unseemly for a Knight to use words like the ones I just shouted. I don’t even know where they came from.

“Sorry,” I mutter as Rian casts a spell to clean up the stains and mess. “Thank you,” I whisper, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. Conversations slowly resume, but I excuse myself from the table. Rian moves to follow me, but I tell him I want to be alone. I’m surprised when he doesn’t argue. Honestly, I’m relieved.

Outside, the night air cools my reddened cheeks. I look up at the stars and let their peace blanket me.

“Beautiful night,” a familiar voice calls. I look over my shoulder at the guard posted at the far corner of the inn building and realize it’s Jac.

“The sky is so clear.” I join him at his post and lean back on the wall a respectable distance away. Out here in the fresh air, away from Eron’s boasting and the shame I put on my family, I feel better.

“Ready to ride tomorrow?” he asks me.

“Very much so.” I’m looking forward to the last leg of the trip. I feel like the journey lately has been cloaked in darkness. Once we see Eron and Amei to the safety of Kordelya Keep, I’m hoping things will settle down some. We should reach the crossroads tomorrow. Then I’ll go to Kythshire to see about Ki. Hopefully Rian will come, too. If not, then I’ll just have to do it on my own. I stand there in silence for a long time, thinking about the journey ahead and all that has happened recently. Jac stands beside me, watching into the darkness, silent and steady. I realize that between Rian and Flitt, I don’t get a lot of quiet anymore. Not like this. It’s nice.

“
New friend?
” Flitt asks. I close my eyes. So much for that.

“Well, goodnight,” I say to Jac.

“Goodnight, m’lady.”

The guards at the rear entrance to the inn nod me through, and I listen to the supper revelries as I make my way back to my room. As soon as I close my door, Flitt bursts forth in a flash of light.

“Hello!” she says, her multicolored ponytails swaying excitedly. “Want to play?”

“Not really,” I say wearily. I sit on my bed and tuck my knees under my chin. “Rian wanted to, though.”

“Oh, yeah?” she chirps. “Okay! I’ll go get him.”

Before I can say anything, she blinks away. I wait a while for her to return, but she’s gone for so long that eventually the sleep I’ve been battling against for hours wins out.

I’m woken hastily in the morning by Mum, who is already dressed, packed up, and halfway through doing mine, too. I feel a pang of guilt. She’s the knight, I was the squire. I’m the one who should be packing her things up, not the other way around. That pang is followed by another. I never said goodnight to Rian last night.

Thanks to my laziness and the barking commands of Baron Stenneler’s Captain of the Guard, breakfast consists of cold bread on horseback, and I don’t even get to eat until we’re through the throngs of well-wishers who’ve come to see their prince and princess out of the small village. A cold wind has blown into the valley. It blows the horses sideways and snaps the banner hard against my helm as we quicken our pace. Rian gets whipped by it several times before he decides to slow his own horse and ride a few paces behind me. Flitt tucks herself into the space between my shoulder armor and my neck and chatters endlessly into my ear.

“…
and then Crocus said maybe we should just put a block on all of the tethers, and Scree said ‘Yes, that would be best, until we can determine the threat.
’” She deepens her usually squeaky voice in a fairly accurate impression of Scree, the stony companion to Crocus, both of whom lead the Ring in decisions made concerning the wellbeing of the fairies of Kythshire. “
And then Ember said that tethers are a bad idea anyway, and that we should all just stay inside of the borders from now on and let the men fend for themselves. And then Shush said that we should be free to go where we want, and he said remember Azi? She’s trustworthy. Not all people are bad.
”

“
You haven’t gotten to the part about why you have to stay with us, yet.
” Rian reminds her. The two of them have been playing the question game since we left, all in Half-Realm talking. I feel like my head will split open.

“I’m getting there,”
Flitt says.
“So then Twig showed up, and he looked terrible, like he’d been drained out for a week! And he told us that his tether was stolen, too! And when he woke up, he was trapped in a box! And some strange fae and a boy from Sunteri let him out. So then everyone started to argue about the Sunteri fae, and how stupid they were to lose control of their Mages, and how they should have been more careful with their Wellspring. And then that turned into an argument about whether they deserved to lose their magic, and whether they should be allowed to try and restore it, because you know, we still have that pebble with Emris’s magic inside, and nobody knows what to do with it.”

“Can’t you just put it in your Wellspring?”
Rian asks. My head throbs with every word.

“I’m still answering your other question, Greedy. Typical.”

“Sorry, go on.”

A horse approaches my other side, a white steed five hands taller than mine. Mum sits tall in the saddle, her armor sparkling in the sunlight that dances through the bare branches of the trees.

“It’s terribly quiet up here,” she says, glancing at Rian and me. “Everything all right?”

“Sure,” I say, thankful for the break from the chatter in my head.

“Your father and I were talking,” Mum goes on, lowering her voice. “Perhaps you should take a day in Kordelya before you go on to Kythshire, Azi. We all deserve a rest. It’s been a long journey.”

“I had a break from riding yesterday,” I reply, a little annoyed by her coddling. “I’m fine, Mum.”

“It wasn’t much of a break, was it?” Mum presses. She knows what we were up to yesterday. Rian must have told her about our jaunt to Kythshire. I glance back at him, but he and Flitt are too deep in conversation to notice.

“I was talking to some of the escort,” Mum goes on. “It seems there may be a candidate or two for squire at the keep. Eager to serve in Cerion. You could interview them, if you’d like.”

Ever since I was knighted, Mum and Da have been on me to choose a squire or a hopeful. I don’t see the point. I manage fine on my own.

“It couldn’t hurt,” I agree, simply to keep her from pressing on the subject.

“Think about it, Sweeting. And you’re falling behind again.” I look ahead at the carriage and quicken my pace to close the gap. Behind me, Rian catches up.

By the time we arrive at the keep, I’m chilled through to my bones and exhausted. My thoughts are swimming with new information from Flitt and Rian’s incessant conversation. Apparently, the use of tethers has been suspended by the fairies of Kythshire. Flitt was forced to make a choice: travel to me and stay until we’re ready to return to her land, or remain in Kythshire and wait for us to arrive. She chose to come to me one last time and stay as long as it takes. I’m touched that she’d make such a choice. It softens my mood to know that she’d rather stay with me. I want nothing more than a hot bath and a warm bed, but as soon as I reach the rooms that were assigned to us, a Page knocks on the door.

“His Highness wishes to see you,” he says with a bow. In my mind, Flitt groans.

“
Creep,
” she says.

“
Stay with Rian,
” I push to her.

“Of course,” I say wearily to the Page. I haven’t even had time to pull a brush through my unraveled braid. I follow him through the keep, which is vastly different from the small inns we’ve had to squeeze into for the larger part of our journey. This keep is a stronghold, the last defense before the Kordelya Castle where Eron and Amei will spend the final weeks of her pregnancy.

The keep is very well protected, with sturdy walls of thick stone and parapets where trebuchets and catapults stand oiled and ready for battle. Its custodian is Baron Stenneler, one of King Tirnon’s most trusted subjects. He is a stout bachelor with a stern brow and an even less hospitable disposition. It’s obvious that he believes his keep is a structure that’s meant for battle, and not for entertaining. I find that interesting, considering that Cerion hasn’t seen a war for a century and a half now.

Still, it’s warm and safe, and the corridors that lead to the prince and princess’s temporary rooms are far from plain. Tapestries and crests line the rough stone walls, all well cared-for. Portraits of the royal family dot the walls closer to the Royal rooms, and I wonder if they’re always here or if they were just put up on display for Eron’s benefit. The page stops at a door, and two guards reach to open them. I look at both of them, hoping one might be Jac, but they’re not familiar to me. My heart sinks a little as the page ushers me inside.

“Sir Azaeli Hammerfel,” he announces, and I dip to my knee at Eron’s feet.

“Thank you, Page,” Eron says with a condescending tone. I wonder if the prince has even bothered to learn the boy’s name.

Just like in the courtyard, Eron doesn’t relieve me from my bow as the page goes out. Instead he lets me kneel in my armor, weary from my ride, with my head bowed low.

“I have heard,” he begins coldly, “that you’ll be making a little side journey on your way home. Is that true?” His voice is so thick with disdain that the hairs on my arms raise up with chills.

“Yes, Your Highness.” I try to keep my own voice steady. My orders came from the King. He told me to keep them to myself. No one was supposed to know, least of all Eron. It was better this way, His Majesty said. He didn’t want to burden his son with such things. He wanted him to be able to focus on his impending fatherhood. His princess.

“And where will you be going, Azaeli?” His boots come into view, and the smell of mead is strong on his breath. If he knows I’m going on a journey, I’m certain he knows where. “Kythshire?” he guesses before I can reply. I close my eyes. I don’t want to answer. He takes my chin and raises it roughly. Reluctantly I look into his face. He smirks. “I thought so. You’re going to fetch her, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Good,” he says, tightening his grip on my jaw. “Bring her back here, and I will deal with her myself.”

“Your Highness, I’m sorry, but—”

“You will bring her here, Azaeli,” he says angrily. “Or I will have you hunted down and arrested for treason for that stunt you pulled in the courtyard. I have twelve witnesses who will attest to your actions. You will bring her here to me, or you might as well say goodbye to your perfectly untarnished reputation. Do you understand?”