Dawnsinger (23 page)

Light streamed from the sky and fell across a figure outlined against the backdrop of trees—a delicate maiden garbed in glistening cloth—so beautiful she seemed to shine.

Shae had no doubt she beheld one of the Feiann. She picked her way towards the bank where the maiden waited, steadying herself when one of the rocks underfoot tipped. When she looked up, the maiden had vanished.

“Why do you and your companions wander here?”
The words seemed to come from the syllid itself.

Shae’s pulse pounded in her ears, but she gathered the courage to answer. “We journey to visit my sister at Graelinn Hold in the grasslands to the east, although I seem to have lost my companions. Can you not show yourself?”

“Be still!”
The trees shook their leaves.
“You approach uninvited. Why should I grant your request?”

Shae swallowed against a dry throat. “I’m sorry. I meant no harm. Stay hidden if you wish. I only thought to talk face-to-face. I am Shae of Whellein. Will you tell me your name?”

The woman emerged from the shadows to stand before Shae.
“I have more than one name, as do you, but you may call me Sharian. Come and meet my fellows, Shae of Whellein. Remain and dwell with us.”

A wave of calm washed over Shae, but she could not allow herself to succumb. She had lost something—or someone—although she couldn’t think who or what. And she had something to do—something important. She fought to remember.

Sharian’s breath hissed, but a smile lit her small face.
“Why do you resist? Do not concern yourself with the others.”

Shae remembered now. Her companions—she had to find them. They needed to leave Syllid Mueric. She pulled Leisht from her sleeve, surprised to find that no light swirled about the blade. She didn’t understand, for surely enchantment dwelt in this place. She raised her head to find Sharian gone. “Do you hold my companions?” Shae called after her. “I demand you release them!”

Laughter carried from the shadows.
“How little you know, Shae. Put away your dagger.”

Shae came back to herself. She still lay on the flat rock with one hand in the cascade, the other clutching Leisht.

“Are you well?” Dorann’s voice drifted to her.

She sat up and blinked in the glare from the surface of the weild.

Dorann offered her his hand. Behind him, Aerlic waited for his turn to drink. On the bank where the golden maiden had stood, Kai and Guaron watched over the wingabeasts.

Shae took Dorann’s hand and stood. She touched her forehead. “I’m…I’m not sure, but pray don’t trouble yourself.” She ignored Dorann’s look of concern and hastened toward Ruescht
.
How could she explain what had just happened when she didn’t understand herself? The sooner they left this place, the better.

The wingabeasts surged into the air and followed the weild
upstream. Vista after vista enticed her eye, and the draetenns whispered her name. Streams shone with beguiling light and mists danced across green glades that called her to return. The very air sparkled.

A deep ache wrenched her soul. She had to go back!

When they landed on the banks of the river to rest and water the wingabeasts, she slipped into the forested shadows—alone. She would remain with the Feiann after all. She could not recall why it had seemed so important to leave them.

“Shae!” Kai’s call broke her thoughts. She hesitated. Kai called again.

The trees before her shook as if gripped by a giant hand. She backed away and into a pair of arms. A scream ripped from her throat.

She struggled, but the arms tightened. “Shae, you’re safe!”

What had she almost done? She turned into Kai’s embrace and sheltered there until her trembling eased. As they lifted into the air once more, weariness from the long journey and her foreshortened night’s rest caught up with her. Not wishing to fall from Ruescht’s back into the waters below, she fought to remain alert.

When the ruins of Braeth stood out in the distance, she rejoiced. The day’s journey would end there, although the prospect of a night at the forbidding stone monolith tempered her joy. She knew from her early studies that Timraen had burned the timber roofs to hasten the stronghold’s fall to ruin, thus preventing its use by garns against the Kindren. It would not be habitable.

They reached Braeth Hold in the late afternoon. The square shell still stood, weathered but intact, defiant in the face of time. Shae could picture its heyday, with the stronghold’s bulk a daunting contrast to the Smallwoods its walls kept at bay. She could almost see lights in the windows and flags fluttering atop the great towers. But the windows now gaped, sightless, and the towers thrust toward the sky, unadorned.

They landed below the silent gatehouse on a circular patch of green grass ringed by a cobblestone path. Dark walls encompassed the outer bailey, but the sun beat down here, in the open. They walked by unspoken consent across the cobblestones and into the shade of a lone strongwood.

Shae’s heart thudded and she gave a small cry as a pair of large birds burst from the tree and weaved toward the hold in ungainly flight. Their feathers shone in the sun, pure and white, and their long tail feathers streamed behind them. They could only be—

“
Kaerocs
.” Aerlic lowered his bow, arrow slotted but unfired. “We had them in the woodlands of Glendenn Raven.” He smiled and shook his head. “I can remember trying to catch them in my early days. They roost in tall trees.”

She followed Aerlics’ gaze a long way up to where gnarled branches twisted, and pendulous leaves rustled in stray breezes. The tree stood near an external ramp which ran upward to a gatehouse.

Kai gathered them with a gesture. “Aerlic and Dorann, remain with Shae. Guaron and I will search the inner ward. I doubt we’ll find anything, but we don’t want any surprises this night.”

She shivered, for his words reminded her of the dry wind and the thing that had brushed past her at Paiad Burein. She misliked these places of ruined lives and broken dreams. Did Braeth possess its share of restless dead? “Must we sleep here?”

Kai turned back to her. “Either here or in Syllid Mueric
.
Braeth Hold can hide us and provide a measure of security.”

She tossed her head. “You might be right about the advantages of sheltering here, but I fear these walls will prove more trap than refuge.”

Kai gave her a tolerant smile. “I’ll make sure it’s safe before taking you inside.” He turned away but glanced over his shoulder at her.

She shook her head even as a smile tugged at her lips. Retreating into the shade, she turned her back on the devastation created by hatred and let herself rest, for a time, in the strongwood’s shadow.

****

“Careful there!”

As if to illustrate Kai’s warning, the trapdoor he and Guaron skirted slid from its rotting hinges and fell with a faint thunk into the dark pit below. They navigated around fragments of wood and rusted metal—all that remained of the twin portcullises which had once secured the gatehouse. A strongwood log with a pointed metal tip lay amidst the splintered wood, telling the story of what had happened here.

A short flight of graystone steps that bowed toward the middle brought them into the inner bailey, where stone paths edged a rectangular cushion of grass sunken over what Kai knew was a mass grave. These paths, built with care and trodden by many, now kept silence.

No hooves or voices rang out from the stable’s stalls, which stood open to the sky. They turned away.

Even now, the smell of burning lingered in the great hall, and marks of fire blackened the high graystone walls, darkest at the tops. They stepped around piles of unburned cinders at the base of scorched remnants of fallen roof timbers that canted across the central wall and into a scene of utter devastation.

Partially burned boards would serve no more diners, for they lay akilter, having fallen from collapsed trestles. Candle branches, spoons, and knives littered the chamber where they had fallen long ago. It seemed Braeth’s remoteness kept it from pilferage, or none had the heart to touch its remnants. Neither would Kai disturb them, for he could not fight the feeling that they visited a tomb.

They left the great hall as they found it and move on to the keep. The main archway opened to a square entrance chamber. Beneath their feet stretched a marble floor, scoured dull by wind and weather. The hangings at the tall, slender windows rotted to dust. Bleached benches, one of them overturned, flanked a cracked marble fireplace still bearing a raised relief of rampant gryphons. Guaron shook his head at the sight.

A sound came then—faint, like the scrabbling of bird claws.

Kai drew Whyst
and signaled Guaron to follow him through the largest archway and up a short flight of marble steps.

Screeching and a flurry of batting wings greeted their entrance into the presence chamber—more kaerocs. Great nests, constructed in part from stuffing plucked from the tattered blue and gilt throne cushions which had somehow escaped the fire, sat atop the walls.

They backed out of the chamber and glanced into other rooms before taking a flight of marble stairs to what remained of the upper stories. Most of the floor timbers were gone. The two front corner towers had fared little better, although the marble steps remained intact.

With a feeling of relief, Kai stepped from the keep into the inner ward. “There’s only the chapel and kitchens left to check. Are you ready to return to the wingabeasts?”

Guaron made no reply. Behind Kai, sunbeams broke through the clouds and slanted across wind-ruffled grasses above sunken graves.

Guaron was nowhere in sight.

****

Shae slumped against the strongwood’s trunk. Better to sleep here in the open air than trapped somewhere within the inner ward. Perhaps, after exploring the ruin, Kai would agree. She lapsed into a state between waking and sleeping but could not relax into true slumber in such an uneasy place. She woke to shifting shadows and, as a movement claimed her attention, sat up. In the circular sward nearest the outer curten wall, one of the wingabeasts, Aerlic’s Argalent, fanned silver wings.

How much time had passed? And how long before Kai returned?

The strongwood’s leaves rushed above her. The wind had picked up while she slept. Muted light streamed from the sky and the heat no longer held an edge. Kai should have returned by now.

Aerlic bent over his bow, oiling its string with deft fingers. He spoke in quiet tones to Dorann, who sat beside him. Shae caught the timbre, if not the words, of their conversation, and a fist of fear clenched in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

She encountered two pairs of eyes, one green and the other amber. Aerlic gave her a nod. “Kai and Guaron should have returned by now. Perhaps they have forgotten us amid the wonders within.” She could see he did not believe his words either. “We’ve decided Dorann will search for them while I remain here with you.”

She cast a glance at the hold looming above them, which, in the changing light, seemed to gather mysteries. “I’ll come with you.”

She waited for their protests to die before speaking. “It’s no safer in the outer bailey, and Kai would not want us to separate.” She did not say what they must also know. Kai would want them to continue without him. “We’re better together.”

Aerlic inclined his head. “Well spoken, but I’m sure Kai would not want us to take you into peril for his sake.”

“With Syllid Mueric just outside the walls, peril can as easily creep upon us here, especially at night. I’ve heard tales.”

Aerlic’s expression told her he’d heard them too. He lifted his bow in a decisive movement. “We’ll stay together then. May Lof Yuel protect us.”

In a movement both graceful and rapid, Dorann drew a knife from his boot. As the light glinted off the blade balanced in his hand, he looked altogether dangerous.

She drew Leisht from her sleeve and gasped. The swirlstones in its hilt glowed with many colors.
“Magics.”

Dorann’s amber eyes gleamed. “Don’t concern yourself, gentle maid. Aerlic’s a trained fighter, and I know a thing or two.”

“I well believe that.” She accepted the lighted lanthorn Aerlic extended to her and did not say that the best of fighters might find themselves helpless against magics.

Aerlic commanded the wingabeasts to wait, then took the lead. With reluctance, Shae turned from Ruescht, who watched her longingly, and climbed the long ramp behind Aerlic. The lanthorn swinging from her hand lent her courage. Darkness would soon fall. Dorann followed.

They entered the ruined gatehouse and emerged into the inner ward. Shae shuddered at sight of the uneven bailey sward, remembering something about hurried burials after the fall of Braeth. She followed Dorann along the path. Her every nerve tingled. Her fingers ached, and she eased her grip on Leisht. The dagger would do no good if wielded by a cramped hand. The stables were empty, so they paced toward the great hall.

Something warned her, although she couldn’t say what. Perhaps she sensed it when Aerlic’s posture changed to slackness, or in the fact that Dorann drew even with her and no longer acted as rear guard. Why did they drop their vigilance just as chills crept up her spine? Something was very wrong.

Aerlic bypassed the great hall and slogged toward the keep.

The knife slipped from Dorann’s hand to fall against the stone path with a ring that penetrated, but he trudged onward as if nothing had happened, his footsteps heavy.

“Wait!” Shae retrieved the weapon. “What are you doing?” She caught up with him, but he didn’t acknowledge her or take his knife.

She stepped in front of him. “Are you well?”

His face blank and his eyes unfocused, he stepped around her without pause.

She gasped and turned to Aerlic, only to find the same vacant look on his face. Realization hit her like a fist in the stomach. Dorann and Aerlic had fallen victim to an enchantment.

The crimson of sunset lay across the tops of the walls and stained the silent buildings as Aerlic and Dorann walked on. Shae had never felt so alone. As her companions entered the keep, she trailed behind, but hesitated in the entrance archway.