Daughter of Blood (68 page)

“And if our places were reversed?” he asked. “Would you be telling yourself that you had done all you could?”

“Probably not.” Her straight look continued to hold his. “But I would hope to have a friend, or many friends, who would continue to insist otherwise.”

A friend, Kalan thought. He could say comrade-in-arms just as easily, but
sister
still felt like an unknown country. At one level, the questions were there: about their father and siblings, and what had befallen them. At another, he felt the weight of the years between them, almost fourteen now, and the heaviness of that first exile, sinking questions before they were asked. And always, the memory of his father's closed face and cold voice:
You are no more son of mine!

“Look after Faro for me,” he said, and she nodded.

“I will. He's a Son of Blood and should have one of his own House to guard him. It helps, too, having a new service.” Taly did not add that it would never replace the old. She did not need to. Visibly changing the subject, she looked past him into the tent. “Lady Malian said you would take the web. The goods in the wagons are Faro's by right, now that he's signed the marriage contract, but most of them will be of no use to him so I've asked Nimor to see them returned to Blood. That'll create fewer arguments, too,” she added. “But when Aiv hunted out the manifest, I saw Night's betrothal gift to Lady Myr listed: a suit of ceremonial Night armor. When I asked Faro, he agreed it should go to Lady Malian, by way of being returned to Night.”

“She's Faro's guardian now
and
Heir of Night,” Kalan said. “It's for her to say.”

“You're still Honor Captain,” Taly pointed out. “And it was a personal gift to Lady Myr. Until you quit the camp, it's for you to say.” She paused. “On the way here, I saw Jad and the others with your horses. He said to tell you they were ready, whenever you wish to leave.”

So they
are
coming, Kalan thought. “Yes, to the armor,” he said. Stepping back inside the tent, he finished tying his travel roll around the tapestry. Lifting the roll onto his shoulder, he picked up the black spear. “Tell Faro I'll ride by Lady Malian's camp. And I'll be with Jad and the others soon.”

Taly saluted before turning away, while the wyr hounds rose and padded beside Kalan to the garnet-and-gold tent. Two of the marines, Tymar and Koris, had replaced Tirael's Star knights on watch, but stepped aside to allow Kalan entry.

In a saga, the minstrel would doubtless say that Myr looked peaceful in death, or serene, but the truth, Kalan thought, was that like Palla, or Orth, or any of those lost in the siege, she simply looked dead. He had told Malian that Myr meant more to him than he realized—he had loved Jarna, in Emer, when he knew that he was not truly free to do so. Worse, he had let Jarna love him in return. So he had not permitted himself to love Myr, even when she grew dear to him, and deliberately steered his affection into a fraternal channel. Yet even if he had allowed stronger feelings, there could have been no good end to such a love, not for her and not for him either, given the places they both occupied in the Derai world.

If Myr were alive, Kalan would have bowed over her hands. Now he simply bowed before her bier, formally, as a champion bows, and an Honor Captain. He could have wept as well, but did not, because tears would do her no good, and there was no more time for weeping. “I will free your spirit,” he said, to her dear, dead face. “I swear it, in my name and by all the Nine Gods. If I fail you Lady Myr, Lady Mouse, it will only be because I, too, am dead.”

And the six remaining wyr hounds—that had once borne
the essence of Maurid, the remnant Golden Fire of the House of Blood—howled their song of farewell.

W
hen Kalan crossed into the outer camp, it was not just Jad and the remaining exiles, but Kelyr and a dozen caravan survivors, including Darrar and Aiv, who waited to leave with him. His brows rose at the sight of Kelyr, and the Sword warrior shrugged. “Fighting is what I know, but I doubt I'll be welcomed back into Swords. Kin and Blood was just an excuse,” he said, before Kalan could ask. “Another of our number, Gol, had already sent written word of Tirorn's loss before we left Ij.”

Kalan had met Gol in Emer but saw no need to say so. “You know what I am,” he told Kelyr. His steady gaze went beyond the Sword warrior, first to Jad, then Rhanar, Machys, and Aarion, and finally to the caravan survivors. “I'm not only a Storm Spear, but an unbound power user as well, in defiance of the Blood Oath. A renegade,” he said, to make the matter clear.

Kelyr shrugged again, cynical where Tirael would have been light. “You're confusing me with Orth. He was the one who hated power users, whereas most in Swords hold the Oath more lightly. Besides, I saw what you did here. Without you, the Sea pair, and the Star knights, this camp would've been lost. And now that I'm forsworn for a lock of hair,” he added, “I may as well go all the way.”

Several puzzled looks greeted his last words, but mostly it was nods. Jad and the exiles' expressions said they had made their choice long since and were ready to ride. “And you?” Kalan asked the caravan survivors. “You fought well, but fighting is not your business. It's what lies ahead, though, for anyone who rides with me.”

“Yes, sir.” Darrar cleared his throat. “With respect, if Lady Malian is the Chosen of Mhaelanar returned, then war's all that lies ahead for everyone.” His boyishness, Kalan thought, had slipped away in the assault, erased by the shadow that lay on all their faces.

“You've been in the Red Keep, Captain,” Aiv said, “so
you know the ruling kin will make us suffer for the failure of their plans. And you needn't fear we'll hold you up. Envoy Nimor's given us Sea's spare horses, enough for all of us.”

Any of them, Kalan knew, could be Blood agents—but the hounds were still wyrs and remained unperturbed. He looked at Jad, since the consequences of agreeing would fall heaviest on him. “What do you say?”

Jad grinned. “I think we can knock them into shape.”

“You'd better be ready to go, then,” he told the volunteers, with a glance at the horses mustered behind them, “because I'm leaving now.”

“Yes, sir!” they chorused.

“Kelyr told us we'd have to be,” Darrar added. Kelyr's expression was part irony, part self-derision, but he wiped both clear and saluted when Kalan looked his way.

“Then let's ride.” Kalan tied on the travel roll, then swung into Madder's saddle before sliding the spear across his back. His small company formed up behind him, and Aarion unfurled the oriflamme. When Kalan turned Madder in a trampling circle, he saw that the rest of the camp was forming a ragged avenue along their route to the perimeter. Nimor raised a hand from the entrance into the inner camp, and although the rest of those gathered did not cheer, the words “Storm Spear, Storm Spear” were murmurous as the sea.

Madder tossed his mane and snorted, but stepped out smoothly. Jad followed immediately behind, together with Aarion and the banner. In only a few seconds they were past the lines of intent, watching faces and clear of the earthworks, crossing what had been killing ground to the Fire encampment.

The two hundred, too, were breaking camp, although Raven had promised Kalan a rear guard would remain on patrol, only falling back once the Night force arrived. A guard of honor was drawn up by the road, and he saw Malian waiting there, with Taly and Faro beside her. A moment later Faro broke away—or perhaps they had let him go—and pelted toward Madder, on a trajectory that seemed certain
to end beneath the roan's hooves. Drawing rein, Kalan dismounted, and the boy ran full tilt into him.

“Promise,” Faro whispered, his arms a stranglehold around Kalan's neck. “Promise me you'll come back. And that you'll come and find me. Promise me you'll live!”

“I promise to try,” Kalan said, because it seemed easiest in the face of so much fierceness. He thought he might have to disengage Faro's arms, but even before Taly arrived, the boy had stepped back, his smile valiant despite a face wet with tears. Kalan remounted and saluted him, before signing for the oriflamme to dip: first to Faro, and again to Malian. And then he let Madder carry him away, from the Daughter of Blood that he had not saved, and the Son of Blood that he had, from the sister he could not acknowledge, and from the Heir of the Derai.

W
olf was waiting when Malian arrived back at Rowan Birchmoon's cairn just on the eve of Autumn's Night. The shaman had vanished about his own business while Malian was seeing Faro and his new household, accompanied by a sixty-strong Fire escort, safely on the first stage of their journey to southern Aralorn. Passing the Border Mark had been hard for Nhairin—but it's better for her this way, Malian told herself, as it is for Faro. Raven had rejoined Valadan, but the two hundred from his personal guard, including several of Rhaikir's cadres, were still with Malian. The adepts would establish an inner perimeter about the cairn, shielding what she was about to attempt.

Falath came to greet Malian as she dismounted in the gathering dusk, but drew back again as Wolf emerged from the nearby rocks.
“Remember your debt.”
The wolf's eyes glowed topaz as the shaman's voice spoke in her mind.
“You promised Rowan to do all you could to save Haarth. Do not use her bridge to bring another Cataclysm.”

“I have not forgotten,”
Malian replied.
“I seek to honor both my debt and my promise to her in what I do now.”
She could feel Maurid and Yelusin's power, concealed within hers—and the thread of answering magic from the walking stick in her left hand, imbued with the name of its parent
Fire—
Kamioriol
—that lay hidden in the one surviving rose vine in the Court of the Rose. The two soldered shards of Yorindesarinen's riven shield she carried on her back.

“Ammaran may have sought power in Haarth,
” she told Wolf,
“but I am the Chosen of Mhaelanar, and even without Yorindesarinen's shield I still have Nhenir and the frost-fire sword, as well as my armring. I'm carrying the essence of three remnant Fires as well.”
Briefly, Malian's gaze shifted to Rhaikir, who still regarded her with reserve from among his adepts, before returning her attention to Wolf. She touched the breast of her jacket, where the seven rune scrolls from the Blood camp lay above her heart, together with the two from Morning and Peace: one for each of the Nine Houses of the Derai.
“I have these, too. But I still need Rowan's bridge into Haarth as my anchor. Because,”
she admitted,
“I don't know how deep into the Gate of Dreams this journey will take me
.

Wolf's regard was unblinking.
“That is also why I came. My shaman's power and blood kinship to Rowan will help
moor you to her bridge.”

Blood is always strongest.
Malian repeated Faro's words to herself.
But locks of hair are strong as well.
The only rune scroll that did not have both was the one for the Rose. But she had the walking stick, and a tress of Lady Mayaraní's hair—which Kalan and Taly had removed from a locket that belonged to Mistress Ise, both having been adamant that Lady Myr's body must lie undisturbed.

It will serve, Malian thought, and turned toward the cairn.

The day had been clear, so Nimor's pilot star and the waning moon both hung overhead, marking the opening in the roughly dressed stone as she rested a gentle hand on Falath's head. The darkness beyond the cairn's mouth was immense: a reminder, had Malian needed one, that she had no idea whether this would work, only whatever hope the remnant Fires saw—and the certainty that she had to try. Behind her, Rhaikir and the cadres were silent, Wolf a shadow in the dusk as she gave Falath a last pat and stepped into the mouth of the tomb.

Malian felt the stir of Wolf's magic, sealing the threshold behind her as Rhaikir and his adepts invoked their shielding circle. She had a brief, dizzying sense of the corvids' wings from her Stoneford fever, spiraling about her, before they dissipated into the murmur of Haarth's song, rising through the cairn's wellspring of power. Stepping forward, Malian placed her left hand on the pale boulder that served as a plinth. The armring flamed into silver life and the shadow of a gate rose before her, shaped out of mist and darkness. But before Malian could step forward, a phantom cavemouth appeared between it and her.
“We made a bargain, the sword and I.”
Amaliannarath's mindvoice whispered out of the cavern's mouth and echoed from the frost-fire sword.
“As you did also, Namesake, in the Stoneford chapel.”

“To take Fire as my own,” Malian said slowly. She hesitated, wondering if taking the ghost of one of the three sundered Ascendants on her quest to restore the Golden Fire could bring about Emuun's prediction that
she
would be the stake driven into the heart of the Derai Alliance. Yet having accepted the sword and pledged her word to Raven, Malian could see no alternative
.
She remembered, too, how Amaliannarath's ghost had spoken out of the blade in Stoneford. “So as long as I have the sword,” she said aloud, “I will always carry you as well.”

“A promise made to the dying,”
the ghost whispered.
“The sword carries a fragment of my essence as you now carry sparks of what were once Yelusin, Maurid, and Kamioriol. You will need us all, Child of Night.”

Did the sword foresee that, Malian wondered, as well as my need of Fire: is that why it made the bargain that binds me now? Nhenir was silent, and the fragments of Yelusin and Maurid were quiescent, too, which implied that this was her decision.

“It is.”
Now Nhenir did speak, silver in her mind.
“The Chosen of Mhaelanar must determine her own path.”

Only in this case, Malian thought, there is no other path.
“So be it,
”
she said. The specter of the cave mouth vanished, leaving the gate of mist and shadow clear. Raising
the armring high, Malian spoke the words inscribed inside its band: “
‘I move through worlds and time
. . .'” And she did, stepping out of Rowan Birchmoon's cairn and into the Gate of Dreams, to stand before the psychic manifestation of the Gate of Winds that guarded the Derai realm—which had remained closed to her throughout six years of exile. Now, for the first time since she had ridden away from the Keep of Winds and her old life, Malian reached beyond the psychic barrier.

“
‘. . . I seek out the hidden, the lost I find.'
” Silent as a ghost herself, inexorable as the passage of time, she descended through the vast, abandoned layers of the Old Keep and into the room that lay at its heart. “Hylcarian,” she said, both aloud and with her mind's voice. “I have returned as I said I would.”

At first only silence answered, but gradually Malian felt the unfolding: as though a small space had opened to reveal a greater whole. Flame danced at the periphery of her vision.
“Child of Night.”
The voice was fire's crackle through parched grass.
“Is my waiting done?”

“It is. With your permission, I shall enter your secret heart, as I did once before when need drove me. But I do not come alone.”

“So I perceive.”
The flicker of light became a sun rising in fire and gold. The voice was summer thunder, rumbling out of a clear sky.
“You are welcome into my heart, Child of Night. Yet although a child no longer, to enter you must still take the step of trust.”

Out beyond worlds, Malian knew, and time as well, like the tower she had climbed in Jaransor, and the cave Amaliannarath had made for her sleepers. Closing her eyes, Malian emptied her mind and heart, until all that remained was the murmur of Haarth's song and the darkness between worlds. Finally, her soul's eye opened into the heart of a blazing sun.

In the waking world, gazing into the face of the sun meant going blind—but the eye that was Malian's soul could not look away, and the brilliance was liquid fire along her veins. She was burning,
burning
, held in a crucible in which she,
too, must be remade or die.
“Malian.”
The whisper was a tendril of silver spun across molten gold. She had heard it once before when she hung between life and death, only then it had been Darksworn sorcery that reached out to engulf her.

“Yorindesarinen.”
Malian was not sure whether she spoke in words or her entire being rang with the hero's name. The tendril became a kindling of white and indigo flame in a glade between worlds, and although Malian was still on fire, the surrounding conflagration was no longer molten. She watched Yorindesarinen's fire burn to gray ash, only to ignite again, brighter and stronger than before. A silver phoenix appeared in the flames, its tail an aurora and its eyes spring stars.

“I am Iriellirin. Your helm is wrought in my likeness and you bear my image on your back.”
The voice was both keen edged and bright as the bird soared out of the fire and settled on Malian's shoulder.
“
You are dear to the greatest and most beloved of my daughters; my youngest son has given you a lock of his hair.”
Silver claws dug deep but caused no pain, and the fire in her veins cooled.

“I am Yelusin.”
The spark within Malian danced free, expanding into an ocean of light. A mer-dragon swam out of it and curled about her, gazing down from the eyes painted on Sea House ships.

“I am Maurid.”
The hydra's essence also left Malian and grew, rearing multiple heads.
“My daughter is lost, but you protect my son. And you have left my new Blood free.”

“I am Kamioriol.”
Roses blossomed in the heart of the fire, exploding in fireworks, only to rebloom again.
“
Myrathis was also mine and you bring Mayaraní with you. I mourn them both . . .”

“I am Yyr.”
The gryphon of Swords circled.

“I am Iluthys . . . Thuunoth . . . Sirithilorn.”
The centaur of Peace gave way to the sphinx of Adamant, and then the sweep of the simurgh's wings.

“Namesake, I am Amaliannarath. The power released into Haarth through my dying reawakened my long-estranged sister, Yelusin. I crossed the void with Fire and
brought you the hero's sword.”
The golden conflagration stilled as the phantom voice spoke—before the crucible flared back into life. This time the protective entities were a firebreak, enclosing Malian as she stepped into its burning heart, the same way Tarathan had once entered Yorindesarinen's fire to find her.
Tarathan . . .
His element was also fire, the magma that lay at the heart of the world, and momentarily, the Song of Haarth was all about her with its myriad voices. But the furnace roared again, and Malian spread her arms wide, expanding mind and heart and spirit to embrace it. When she opened her physical eyes at last, she was standing in a room with twelve walls and twelve doors, which blurred into a star-filled firmament.

The last time Malian had been here, the door frames had been golden flame and the space within them shimmering mist. Now each door was a sheet of fire and the arches above them constellations. The circular table still stood in the center of the room, its base an immense tree trunk, its surface divided into twelve equal parts by fiery lines. Six of the twelve parts remained as Malian had first seen them, cloudy and filled with indecipherable moving shapes. Five were now fields of gold containing a single, sharp-edged image: the phoenix of Stars and mer-dragon of Sea, the bloom of the Rose and the hydra of Blood, and the winged horse of Night. A sixth section glimmered white with a hint of rose-gold in its depths. Within it, the silhouette of a firedrake lay coiled amid silver and gold flame.

“Child of Night, Heir of the Derai, Chosen of Mhaelanar.”
Hylcarian's voice was light and warmth and heat.
“Welcome again, Malian, into my heart, which is also the heart of the Golden Fire.”
The summer voice paused
. “Welcome, also, to our sister, long sundered.”

“Welcome,”
the others voices murmured, and then, speaking as one voice that resounded through Malian and the room,
“The maelstrom rises, Child of Night, and need presses. You must begin what you came here to do: restore us.”

Malian bowed, her palms placed together in the Blood of the Derai's ancient salute to the Golden Fire, which she had
used to acknowledge Faro's gift of the rune scrolls. When she straightened, the table had altered shape so that she now saw it entirely as a tree, one so vast Malian was not sure even her soul's eye could encompass it. The trunk extended far below the tabletop and the roots delved deeper still, far back along the twists and turns of time. The canopy above her head held myriad stars and worlds, the slow spiral of galaxies, and the unfolding and closing in again of universes. “It's so huge,” Malian whispered, mostly to herself, but of course they heard her.

“Once,”
Hylcarian told her,
“we were flame that moved in the darkness between its branches, before we acquired thought and will and form. When the ancestors of what you call the Derai and the Sworn were first born, we were drawn to the galaxy of their smaller sparks, shaping and reshaping ourselves until your forebears could see us clearly. Only then could they also hear us when we spoke, and learn to speak to us in return.”

“Until the maelstrom rose.”
All the entities present spoke as one, Amaliannarath's whisper weaving through the rest.
“Now, follow the sun's path about the table and lay each of your scrolls in their place.”

East to west, Malian thought, only where's north? But when she looked up, Nimor's pilot star hung over the winged horse, while one of the new constellations she had seen on her journey into southern Aralorn was rising above the phoenix opposite.
“Three times is best, one circuit for each of the Derai's three castes.”
This was Nhenir's mindwhisper, but no voice of fire gainsaid the helm's advice. So Malian paced east to west around the table, laying down three of the nine scrolls with each pass: first Tirael's fair hair for Stars, with one of Nimor's cabled locks for Sea, and Lady Mayaraní's dark tress for the Rose. The second time around, she set down the scroll with a scraping from Rook's close-shaven head for Adamant, followed by the two that Garan had brought her from Peace and Morning. She kept her own for the third circuit, together with Faro's offering, and finally—and far from least, she supposed—Kelyr's scroll for Swords.