Daughter of Blood (41 page)

When they reached the horses, Malian found that her gear, together with the gray horse, had already been brought from the ruin. She could see Yris's cloak-wrapped body, too, trussed across the back of a horse as so many of the Normarch squires had been after the battle at The Leas. Sorrow for the pilot filled her, because although Yris had helped bring down her killer, Emuun's demise would not bring her back. Yet Malian knew that part of her melancholy arose from the fleeting glimpse of her own dead face. Self-pity, she told herself, and mounted up.

“Ready?” Raven asked, and Malian nodded, because however dark the road ahead, it was the only one open to her. She had made her choice six years ago, understanding the likelihood of her own death before she left the Wall. The owl's call, soft and sad from the trees, sounded like a farewell as she brought the gray alongside Raven's horse. Briefly, Malian wondered if it was the same bird that had helped her earlier. But the horses were already turning toward Hedeld and the Telimbras, their hooves muted by drifted leaves as they left the night, and the ruin, and Emuun's body to the pyre's leap of flame.

F
ire's camp was not at the Hedeld fort, but in meadows close by the last, wild reaches of the Telimbras before it joined the Ijir. Familiar with night riding from her years with the Shadow Band, Malian had dozed in the saddle once they reached the main road north. Consequently, she was alert as she dismounted in a darkness that was still well shy of dawn, and knew there were not nearly enough tents for a muster of Fire's full force.

“This is just the vanguard,” Raven said, when she asked. “The rest will wake when the preparations for the march are complete.” There was no time for more questions, because the horses were being led away, the gray together with the rest. Malian saw her gear taken into a separate tent before entering the adjoining command pavilion with Raven, accompanied by Sarathion and Aithe. The interior was brightly lit, with maps and lists stacked on trestle tables, and more of Raven's officers waiting for them.

Malian estimated at least fifteen gathered about the long, central trestle, some in Patrol uniforms but most wearing the same plain armor as Raven's escort. For the first time, she saw Patrolers with their visors raised, but regardless of uniform, the expressions regarding her ranged from neutral
to openly assessing. She detected something of the Cave of Sleepers, too, in the resolution that characterized their faces. Raven introduced everyone present, but she retained only a handful of names: Valadan, tall and stern faced, was second-in-command of Fire, while Kair was a cavalry commander, and Daile had come from the Hedeld fort . . . Learning them all was going to take time. But a night's rest, Malian reflected wryly, should also help.

Unsurprisingly, the initial discussion centered on Emuun's death and the loss of Yris. When Malian recounted absorbing the pilot's dying gift of memory, she saw she had surprised those present. “I didn't think gifting was possible outside of Fire.” Valadan frowned at Raven. “Do you think that's another consequence of the geas?”

“It turned out Amaliannarath and the sword made a second bargain.” Raven was at his driest. “The blade's return was tied to Lady Malian accepting us, but before doing so, she asked if
we
were willing to accept
her
. When I said we were, an unforeseen effect may have been that she became part of Fire.” Formally, he bowed apology to Malian. “I did not perceive that possibility until you told us what Yris did.”

I didn't either, Malian thought, concealing her surprise. Valadan was still frowning, and she could see others visibly striving to absorb Raven's explanation. Finally, Sarathion spoke. “How would Yris know, though?”

Instinct, Malian thought. In Yris's last moments, intuition could have outweighed logic.

“She must have known that she could trust you,” Daile said, his tone and look equally thoughtful.

“As for the Heir of Night taking us as her own,” Sarathion continued slowly, “I thought we were going to have to earn a new place with our service, but also our deaths if need be?”

He did not speak her Derai title in Rhaikir's cool, dismissive manner, but Malian still understood that now was the moment she had to begin winning them in her own right. “It
was a gift,” she said quietly, “as much as a bargain, just as the return of the sword was, too, in the end.” She waited, holding them with her stillness, the way Asantir had once held the Old Keep rescue party to her, before their return to Night. “By its nature, a gift needn't be earned. As for service, you have delivered that many times over during your thousand years in the River.” Her eyes met theirs, one by one. “Death may lie down every path of seeing,” she said, and perhaps because of tiredness, she felt sorrow rise again, “but I do not want yours.”

“Because life is your gift; I foresaw that long ago.”
The mindwhisper was a breath out of air and shadow, one Malian had heard twice before: first when she conversed with a ghost in a cave full of sleepers, and more recently in Stoneford, when Amaliannarath's shade had spoken to her again through the frost-fire sword. At the time, she had assumed it was part of the geas, but now she wondered—except there was no time for speculation as Valadan spoke again.

“If it was a gift, as you say, that would enhance Yris's ability to bequeath her memories to you. Does it also mean you will honor your pledge to accept us, regardless of whether we fight for you or not?”

“Effectively, Lady Malian already made that offer on our road here.” Raven, too, spoke quietly. Several eyebrows rose, but Malian thought she detected an alteration in their regard—as if this particular group of Fire warriors was beginning to evaluate who she really was, rather than simply seeing a Derai and potential interloper. She inclined her head, acknowledging Raven, but answered Valadan.

“Yes. The alliance I have made is based on an exchange of gifts between equals: the Heir of the Derai and the Prince of Fire.” She was conscious of a hush, not just outside in the night, or inside the tent, but within herself as understanding unfurled a deeper layer. “But it is as Chosen of Mhaelanar that I have taken Fire as my own, an acceptance that reaches beyond the old ties that bind the Derai and, I believe, the Sworn.” Or severs them, she thought.

“Or severs them,” Aithe murmured, and Malian wondered if they all felt the coolness that shivered through the lamplit tent.

“Perhaps,” she agreed, and although she felt no stir of prophecy, her truth sense rang. “But it's past time for what was broken by the Sundering to be remade.”

They were just words, and the deeds required to realize them likely to prove difficult if not impossible. Those gathered about her knew that, too. But this time, Malian was sure of the alteration as her gaze traveled around their watchful faces, a shift that said Raven's officers were prepared to give her the chance to make the words real.

D
awn was in the air when she left them, although the darkness outside remained unbroken and the air chill. Daile had brought more reports from the Patrol, but that was Raven's business unless it touched on her role as Chosen of Mhaelanar.
“My focus,”
Malian told both herself and Nhenir,
“needs to be on my return to the Wall, where the Sundering is only the final item on a long list of everything that needs to be remade, starting with the Alliance itself. And the Blood Oath must be overturned, reintegrating priest and warrior kind. At the same time, I will have to persuade the Nine Houses that a Darksworn army can fight alongside the Derai.”
Her eyes lifted to where dawn would break above the forest's blackness.
“And then there's Hylcarian, and whatever others may remain from what we called the Golden Fire.”
Seeking to restore their order was both duty and debt for the Chosen of Mhaelanar—if it could even be done.

“Like the shield,”
Nhenir murmured, and Malian checked a nod, aware of the sentries guarding the command tent. She was too keyed up to believe sleep would come quickly, so crossed to the nearest fire and added branches to build it up. She heard an exchange, too low to catch, among the sentries, before a warrior brought her a camp stool and a bowl of soup from the nearby mess tent. “Duar, Lady Malian,” he said,
when she asked his name, and she nodded, recognizing his grim voice from the forest.

She murmured her thanks, and he saluted before returning to his post. The camp was stirring, with warriors and horses moving through the darkness beyond the firelight, but no one intruded on her privacy. The soup was as warming as the fire, but weariness returned in its wake, blurring the individual flames into a wash of color. Like Yorindesarinen's fire, Malian thought, in the glade between worlds . . . She had foreseen so much in its heart, without realizing it at the time: Nherenor lying dead on the Caer Argent cobbles; Raven when he was young, at the point Amaliannarath snatched him clear of Sun's massacre; and Kalan, wearing warrior's garb and accompanying a Derai wedding caravan.

“Kalan.”
Silently, she repeated his name, but knew it would do no good. The empathy bond between them, which otherwise might have allowed her to bridge the psychic gulf between the Wall and Haarth, was only one way. So although he might be able to reach through to her, she could not readily contact him.

Malian set down the empty bowl and watched the flames, absently tracing the pattern on her armring while her mind emptied of fear and doubt. Gradually her eyelids grew heavy and the flames receded, until she felt she was watching their dance from a vast distance, the colors constantly changing as the shapes disintegrated and reformed. Like figures, she thought dreamily, coming and going on a darkling plain where the aftermath of a great conflagration still smoldered . . .

A slight figure, in Derai armor but with a fearful, tear-stained countenance, crept close to a dead warrior, only to flee again as an army drew near, its banners like streaming flame. The army's leader bent and picked up a sword as the dance of flames leapt high. When they died away, a lone warrior stood amid the destruction. His black armor was honed to spur points at shoulder and elbow, but he ignored the dead hero and went to the Worm that lay nearby. The flames
gusted as he stooped—and the warrior that straightened up again wore crimson and bronze. The banners that flew above the armed company behind him were crimson, too, flying beside garnet-and-gold pennants. They were the only color on all that vast plain, where the last brushfires had burned to ash and two mounds rose where Yorindesarinen and the Worm had lain.

The last warrior stood by the smaller mound for a long time, although he did not weep. Instead he turned and issued orders, and an eight-guard from among his following disinterred Yorindesarinen's body, transferring it to a coffin they had brought with them. Before the lid was closed, the commander took a ring from his finger and placed it on the dead hero's hand.
A friend gave it to me long ago . . .
He looks like Kalan, too, Malian thought, only older.

As if the thought had been a summons, the colors ran together and Kalan's face appeared in their midst.
“I am to fight a duel to the death,”
he said. A wood knot snapped out sparks.
“. . . I have failed you . . .”

The face dissipated as swiftly as it had taken form, and Malian was falling, falling—as though she could plumb the blaze and find Kalan, just as Tarathan had once found her in Yorindesarinen's fire. Only she was not within the Gate of Dreams and it was not Yorindesarinen's hand checking her pitch forward—

Malian jolted fully awake and sat back as Raven sank onto his heels beside her, his expression quizzical. “That wasn't quite what I envisaged when I said you had become part of Fire.”

Surprised, Malian laughed, and saw heads turn in the periphery of her vision. Raven smiled, although that expression, too, was quizzical. “I believe we gave you a tent, if you want to sleep.”

“You did. Initially, I wasn't sleepy.” She paused as another of the escort brought Raven a stool as well. “I wanted to think,” she added, when the guard had withdrawn.

“About last night? Or what was said in the tent?”

“Both.” The recollection of Emuun's hoarse, gasping
voice intruded, filled with a mockery directed at both the Sworn and her. Silently, Malian repeated his words without the gaps and hesitations:
Even Salar believed that a scion of the witch
's blood would be the stake we finally drove through the heart of the thrice-cursed Derai Alliance. And all the time it was you.
Emuun had referred to a witch before that as well. The words had been mumbled, but with hindsight, Malian was sure that what he had said was
Ilkerineth's
witch. Before he fell, Nherenor had told her that he was Ilkerineth's son—while afterward, she had studied the Sworn youth's dead face and realized how closely he resembled her.

I guessed the truth then, Malian thought, but I wasn't prepared to admit it, even to myself. “‘A scion of the witch's blood,'” she repeated aloud, “‘and all the time it was you.'” Briefly, she outlined the gist of what Emuun had said, but kept the stake and his insinuations about Raven to herself. “If there's any truth in what he said, then Ilkerineth's witch has to be my mother: Nerion, daughter of Nerith,” she added formally, “of the Sea Keep. My father told me she might have gone over to the Sworn, and it explains why Nherenor and I looked so alike. He was my half-brother.”

We fought, she told herself, but it was the lurker poison that killed him. His death was not fratricide.

Raven's expression was as close to gentle as she had ever seen it. “Emuun knew that information can be most effective as a weapon when it comes in the guise of truth.” He paused. “Ilkerineth lost his wife and children prior to the time of the Chaos Worm, when the maelstrom was quiescent and the Derai in the ascendant. So for him to have a son among the envoys in Emer, he had to have married again. The only question was who.”

Especially since she bore him a child, Malian reflected, and began to comprehend the hope that might have led Amaliannarath to make her bargain with the sword. As for Nerion, in view of the circumstances surrounding her exile and suspected abuse in the Keep of Stone, Malian could see why she might have gone over to the Sworn. Yet Emuun's
claim that Nerion had worked with Aranraith to bring about her own death was far more difficult to accept.

I've known it was a possibility since the attack on the Keep of Winds, Malian told herself now, but suspicion is one thing, confirmation entirely another . . . She thought she would have recognized the deceit if Emuun had lied outright, which made Raven's suggestion more likely, since truth slanted to achieve contrary ends was far harder for a truthsayer to detect. Nerion
might
have been trying to capture her six years ago, rather than to kill, but reexamination of those events—from the assault on the New Keep and Malian's escape into the Old, to the final flight into Jaransor—made her mother's intentions look doubtful at best.