Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands (44 page)

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Authors: David B. Coe

BOOK: Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands
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She bowed again before leaving.
For a moment Kearney continued to stare at the door, as if he could still see her standing there. Then he looked at the swordmaster, as if finally remembering that he was still there.
“Is there anything else, Gershon?”
Nothing that I can say, nothing that wouldn’t end our friendship forever
. “No, my lord. I’ll prepare the men and speak with the quartermaster.”
“Thank you.” He glanced toward the door one last time, before returning to his table and the message for Aindreas.
The swordmaster left the duke’s chamber, closing the door quietly behind him. The first minister was still in the corridor, making her way toward the court tower and the archway that opened onto the upper ward. Gershon hurried after her. His footsteps echoed off the low stone ceiling and he was certain that she could hear him. But the Qirsi didn’t turn. If anything, she appeared to quicken her stride.
“First Minister,” he called.
Still she kept walking.
“Would you stop!”
She halted, standing with her back to him for just an instant before turning. “What do you want?” Her cheeks were flushed, the blood beneath her pale skin as dark as bruises, and Gershon was struck by how young she looked.
“You’re hiding something from us. I want to know what it is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He gestured over his shoulder toward Kearney’s chamber. “I was watching you in there while you were talking to the duke. You weren’t telling him everything. I can’t tell if you want him to go on this journey or not, but whichever it is, there’s more to your reasoning than you’d like us to know.”
She chewed her lip, her eyes darting to his face, then dropping again. She looked so much like a child that Gershon couldn’t help but wonder how old she was. Few of the Qirsi, he knew, lived to
their fortieth year. And in that moment he thought she couldn’t have been much more than half that old.
“Do you believe that I love him?”
He blinked, not certain that he had heard her correctly. “What?”
“I know that you hate me, that you hate my people. No doubt you fear our powers and see us as a threat to the kingdom. You think we can’t be trusted. Probably you even think us strange-looking.” She smiled, though the look in her eyes was sad. “I see from your expression that I’m right. But putting all that aside, do you believe that my love for the duke is real?”
“What does this have to do—?”
“Please just answer me.”
It was more than he wanted to admit, but having confronted her, having demanded the truth, he could hardly give her less. “Yes. I think you love him.”
She actually smiled. “Thank you. That couldn’t have been an easy thing to say.”
“Whether you love him or not has nothing to do with my question.”
“It has everything to do with your question. Do you have any idea what it’s like being his minister and his lover?”
He couldn’t help but grin. “I can’t say that I do.”
The first minister laughed, though there were tears in her eyes. “That may be the first time you’ve ever made me laugh, swordmaster.”
Gershon felt his cheeks coloring. “Your point?” he asked.
She wiped a tear from her face. “Every time I offer my counsel I’m torn between what I think the duke of Glyndwr should do, and what I want Kearney to do. He has to go to Kentigern. Both of us know that. But I’m afraid he’s going to die there.”
He was a warrior. He dealt with such fears quite often and had learned long ago to control them. But hearing these words from a Qirsi was another matter entirely. It almost seemed to Gershon that Bian had placed a deathly cold finger on his heart, chilling his blood. “Have you gleaned something? Is the duke in danger?”
“No, not that I know of. My fears aren’t founded on anything I can name.” She gave that same sad smile again. “This is just what I mean. I fear for him because I love him, and it makes being his minister … difficult.”
Gershon wasn’t sure whether to believe her. He had spent too long thinking of their love affair as a threat to the House of Glyndwr.
None of this had ever entered his mind. “It seems to me there was more to it than that,” he said at last. “The message that came this morning didn’t seem to surprise you at all.” It was little more than a guess, but apparently it was a good one.
“You’re right,” she said. “There is more. But I assure you, it won’t compromise my loyalty to the duke, nor will it endanger our journey to Kentigern.”
“You think I’ll just accept that?”
“I’m afraid you have no choice.”
“Of course I do! I can—”
She held up a finger, silencing him. “I didn’t have to tell you anything, swordmaster. I could have lied, told you there was nothing more, and that would have been the end of it. But if we’re to ride together off the steppe and keep Kearney alive, we have to begin to trust one another.”
“This is your idea of trust?”
“Actually, yes. I trust that you won’t tell Kearney what I’ve told you here today. And in return you trust that I will keep the best interests of the duke and his house foremost in my mind and heart, no matter what.”
“Can you give me one reason why I should believe you?”
“I don’t have to; you already know it.”
Which brought them right back to where they had started. She loved the duke. She had wanted to avoid this confrontation—she had practically run from him. Yet Gershon abruptly felt that their entire conversation had gone just as she planned.
She turned from him, as if intending to leave.
“This thing you’re not telling me,” he said, stopping her again. “Is it dangerous for you?”
“Would it matter, swordmaster?”
“If you’re in danger, I should know.” He faltered, but only for an instant. “Perhaps I can help.”
Her eyes widened slightly, as if, for the first time that day, he had surprised her.
“Once again,” she said, “you have my thanks. I wish I could answer you, truly I do. But I don’t know.”
They gathered two mornings hence in the lower ward, Kearney in his riding clothes, mounted atop his great bay, looking as much the
warrior as Gershon. The sky was the color of smoke, and a light drizzle darkened the pale stone of the castle. Row after row of the duke’s soldiers stood in the grey light and mist, waiting for their orders. They filled the lower ward, spilling up the broad stairs at the south end into the upper ward as well. Gershon had said seven hundred the day before, but to Keziah it seemed that there were thousands of them.
All of them were Eandi, of course, and unlike even the most ancient armies of her own people, the armies of Eibithar’s houses, great and small, included only men. She felt like a cleric from Morna’s Sanctuary in the middle of one of Ean’s cloisters. She did not belong.
As if to prove the point, Marwan, the prelate of Glyndwr Castle’s cloister, was there as well, his bald head damp, tiny drops of silver rain clinging to his brown robe. He prayed to Ean for the safety of the duke and his men, without bothering to mention Keziah, without even looking at her.
Gershon wouldn’t look at her either. She had hoped that with their conversation the day before they had at least started to move beyond the enmity that lay between them. It seemed, though, that her hope was misplaced.
Worse still, Kearney had made a point of telling her, late the previous day, what she already knew: they could not be together during the journey.
“There’s no privacy in an army, Kez,” he told her. “Everyone would know.”
She didn’t argue. She merely nodded and left him, so that he could dine with the duchess and spend the night with her.
Here she was, about to be escorted to Kentigern by over seven hundred men, and yet it promised to be the loneliest journey of her life. It should have been funny, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
The prelate finished his invocation and stepped back to stand beside Leilia, who had come to see her husband off. Like just about everyone else, the duchess refused to look at her, but Keziah knew that her presence in the company had to be gnawing at the woman like field vermin. It was small consolation really, but it was something.
Silence fell over the castle, as heavy as the mist. Gershon’s grey
horse whinnied, and a number of the men shifted uneasily on their feet, their eyes fixed on Kearney.
“We ride to Kentigern,” the duke said, his voice ringing suddenly across the ward, “not to make war, but to stop it. We have no quarrel with the other houses, but we will not sit by, allowing them to destroy the kingdom. I wish to save Eibithar from the ravages of a civil war, and I need your strength and your skill to do so. You are to be the blade I wield in the name of peace. Men of Glyndwr, are you with me?”
The soldiers responded as one, raising their swords and bows over their heads and giving a thunderous roar that reverberated off the castle walls until Keziah thought the stone must surely give way.
“To Kentigern!” the duke cried.
“To Kentigern!” came the reply.
A moment later, Kearney started slowly toward the castle gate. A young man rode on each side of the duke, one bearing the silver and black banner of Glyndwr, and the other the purple and gold of Eibithar. Gershon and Keziah rode behind them, followed by the soldiers of Glyndwr, who were on foot. Emerging from the castle, they found hundreds of cheering people lining the broad lane that led from the castle’s north gate to what was known as the highlands gate, at the west wall of the city. Children stared with wonder at the horses and the soldiers’ weapons, and women waved to their husbands and brothers and sons.
“You’d think we were going to fight the Aneirans,” Gershon said over the din.
At first Keziah said nothing, thinking that he had been speaking to Kearney. But a moment later she realized that the duke was riding ahead of them, and that the swordmaster had addressed the comment to her.
She nodded and made herself smile, not knowing what to say.
“These men have dreamed of this day all their lives,” he said. “Marching with their duke is the greatest honor many of them will ever know.” He gestured at the people along the rode. “Their families realize that as well.”
“You make it sound like they want to go to war,” she said, having to shout to make herself heard.
He frowned. “That’s not what I meant at all. It has nothing to do with fighting or killing. They’re serving their duke and their king.
They’re journeying under the banners of Eibithar and Glyndwr. That’s all the matters to them.”
Again, she wasn’t certain how to respond.
“You don’t understand, do you?” He shook his head and faced forward again, as if dismissing her.
They soon reached the gate and rode out into the highlands, leaving the cheers behind them. Even on this day, with the sky dark and the fine rain falling, a wind blew across the high grasses and grey stone. They hadn’t felt it in the city, but out here, among the tors and boulders, it stung their faces and eyes, keening like one of Bian’s demons.
“I do understand,” Keziah said at last, drawing Gershon’s gaze once more. “I’ve devoted my life to serving the House of Glyndwr and I’m risking my life to save Eibithar. Don’t tell me I don’t understand, swordmaster. You don’t know me well enough to judge such a thing.”
She kicked at her horse, spurring him ahead of Gershon’s. And for the rest of that day, she and the swordmaster rode separately, trying their best to ignore one another.
Despite the wind and the difficult terrain of the highlands, the company managed to cover nearly three leagues before stopping for the night beside a small tributary of the Sussyn River. They forded the river the following morning, continuing west until they met a second watercourse, which they forded as well. They made camp that night beside the third and last branch of the river, fording it the next day and riding on until they came within sight of the end of the steppe. Fording the streams was no small task, particularly for the quartermaster’s men and the wagons they drove. But though these tributaries came together farther north, closer to the edge of the steppe, the river they formed was far too powerful and wide. Better to brave three smaller streams than chance crossing the Sussyn in all its might.
Even with the river crossings, Keziah found the journey tedious. Since their encounter the first day, Gershon had avoided her. Most of the men were either afraid of her or too wary of Qirsi sorcerers to come near her. It almost didn’t matter which; the result was the same. No one spoke to her. Few of them even looked at her. Except Kearney, of course. The duke spent at least a part of each day by her side. Occasionally they spoke of what awaited them in Kentigern,
but mostly they just rode in silence, savoring what little remained of the intimacy they had left in Glyndwr.
The nights were no better, though in truth she had little cause to complain. Several of the men took time each evening to erect a small tent that she had to herself, giving her comfort and warmth that no one else save Kearney enjoyed. Her evening meals consisted of more than just the hard cheese and dried meat rationed to the soldiers. She ate with Kearney and Gershon and so partook of whatever the quartermaster managed to find for the duke. The first night it was coneys, killed by several of the men as they marched. The second and third nights they ate ptarmigans roasted on spits and flavored with highland sage. The quartermaster had even brought a small amount of wine, which the duke insisted on sharing with the minister and swordmaster.

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