Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (53 page)

Jaedren knew this road. It
stretched out north-by-northeast, a pale winding ghost that echoed the path of
the Avidan River. He had traveled it last year when Eliad invited his family to
visit the lodge and hunt the snow elk. Lesha had squealed at the sight of the
mountains all shimmery with snow. That was when Da agreed to let Jaedren stay
and be Kelyn’s squire. Even though Andy was eleven, he cried the morning Mum
and Da made him ride home with them. Jaedren still felt bad. Squiring wasn’t so
hard. Well, except for sword and riding practice. He wanted to write to his
parents and tell them Andy should be allowed to squire, too. Maybe he would,
when he got to Drenéleth. And Da was probably at Bramoran with King Arryk
anyway. Maybe he would stay when the convention was over and Jaedren could ask
him in person.

Far away to the east, the soft gray
light of dawn grew under the clouds that cloaked the summits of the Drakhans.
Jaedren glanced back toward Ilswythe and saw a plume of smoke rising over a
line of andyr trees.

Throughout the morning, the road
climbed higher into the foothills. The snowy spire of Mount Drenéleth provided
a beacon. Though Jaedren’s arse was numb from sitting on the mule’s spine for
so long, the mountain remained small and unreachable.

“Won’t Eliad be at the convention?”
he asked the duchess. The mule tried to pause and tear leaves from a shrub on
the roadside. Jaedren tugged the halter rope and dug in his heels, much good it
did him. His arms ached from fighting her. “You don’t have to taste every bush
you see.”

Showing pity, Sergeant Nael took
the halter rope and led the mule along behind his dray.

Rhoslyn rubbed a knot in her own
shoulder. “Even Eliad isn’t so irresponsible that he’d disobey Valryk’s wishes.
Which means it’s our task to convince the highlanders living on his lands that
our need is urgent.” She shook her head, uncertain. “Maybe we should’ve ridden
to Thyrvael ourselves. It’s twice as far, but it’s a stronger holdfast. Kelyn
would’ve preferred that, I think. During the last war I built ships. I’m not
familiar with retreat. If I chose badly I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

The overcast sky remained the same
color of gray at midday as it had at dawn. It was their bellies, not the sun,
that told them when to stop and rest. “As slow as these animals move,” Nael
said, voice soft and expressionless, “it might take us the rest of the day to
get there. We shouldn’t stop too long, Your Grace.”

“Agreed.” Rhoslyn tethered her dray
under a broken elm. Down in a hollow on the east side of the road, a spring
trickled from under a jumble of broken boulders, and a streamlet cut a path
toward the Avidan. This far north, the great river tumbled in a wild, white
froth, its voice an eternal, distant roar.

The cold water breaking fresh from
the ground cleansed the mud from their faces and refilled their waterskins and
slapped the weariness from their eyes. Lura untied each of the food bundles and
portioned out enough bread and cheese for everyone. Etivva reclined on her
elbows in the grass and said, “Did I tell you how I lost my foot?”

Jaedren hadn’t had the audacity to
ask.

“I was fleeing then, too.” Her
smile was wistful, fond. “Lady Alovi and I had traveled across Leania to seek
King Bano’en’s aid. It was at the beginning of the last war. We hoped to
convince the king to send his army east to help Lord Keth, but that was not to
be, not at the pleading of a desperate woman. That is not what decides kings,
it seems. On our way home we were ambushed by Fieran envoys. They wanted to
take us hostage, drag us all the way to Brynduvh with them.”

“Brynduvh isn’t so bad,” Jaedren
tossed in. He’d been there lots of times with Da and Andy.

Etivva chuckled. “It would have
been very bad for us, back then. I remember it was raining so hard, like it has
been the last few days. To intimidate Lady Alovi into obedience, one of those wretched
men cut a gash across my ankle. That is all he could reach, tucked into the
shelter as we were. But our guards did not know that Lady Alovi was no timid
rose. No, she was the wife a warrior, and she had to be stout of heart to
endure the fearful days he was away at war, to raise his sons—”

“To put up with him all those
years,” Rhoslyn snickered.

“This lady,” Etivva went on, “had
an arrow hidden in the folds of her skirt. The next time our guard crawled
inside our shelter she drove it through his eye! Out we sprang and ran into the
rainstorm.”

“Did they chase you?” Jaedren
remembered to close his mouth.

“Oh, yes, but not too far. Even
grown men fear to enter the Gloamheath. We ran into the bogs, and long after those
men gave up, we kept running. Those waters were septic with disgusting things
and soon I was limping along in terrible pain. By the time we made it to
safety, my poor foot had, well, it was rotting off and the surgeons had no
choice but to lop it off. What do you think about that?”

Even Sergeant Nael’s lip curled in
disgust. Lura choked on a bite of cheese. Jaedren laughed. “Ew, that’s grosser
than Andy coughing up gobs of yellow stuff.”

Etivva tossed back her shaved head
and laughed, too. It felt good to stop being afraid for a while, and he guessed
that was why his tutor told the story in the first place. “Now, what was that
song the bard sang about our escape?”

Jaedren groaned. “Boy, do I
remember
that
song. My stupid sister sings it all the time. Or she used
to. I hope she found something else to sing by now or Mum might stab out her
ears.”

“Sing for us!” Rhoslyn pounded the
grass as if it were a tabletop in the Great Hall. “Sing, sing!”

“Aw, Your Grace, you’re kidding,
right?”

“Better you than us, Master Bard.”

Jaedren squirmed in protest but
climbed to his feet anyway. Maybe they needed a song after all the screaming.
Da called Mum his ‘wren’ for a good reason, and she said Jaedren’s voice wasn’t
bad either. Andy’s was raspy from coughing all the time and would start
changing soon anyway, but Jaedren’s was still fine and clear. The bass of the
distant river and the sharp, high staccato of the furred crickets played along.
Face as hot as a brand, he began:

From gray mists ran the eldritch
mare,

Seaspray white and eyes aglow

With fairy light and fire aflare

That told of Magics long ago.

On her back rode Lady Fair

O’er Gloamheath’s baleful—

One of the drays whinnied. A mule
brayed and tugged against its tether. Aster pulled a lock of Jaedren’s hair. In
an instant he was searching the hollow with Veil Sight. Nael whipped his sword
from its sheath as he scrambled to his feet. “Everybody mount up,” he ordered.

They ran up the hill to the elm tree
where the animals were tied, taking no time to gather the food or water. At the
top Jaedren stopped and shrieked. Four ogres surrounded by pulsing gray
lifelights ran across the meadow, straight toward them. The ground shook with
each footfall. Axes glinted over their shoulders, but the ogres did not draw
them. Small red eyes pinned Jaedren. He grabbed a handful of the mule’s mane to
pull himself up, but the animal bucked and flung him onto the roadside. An
enormous hand studded with yellow claws reached for him. “Aster!” he screamed
and crab-crawled away, but the ogre snagged him by the hair. A blue light
flashed past, whirring angrily. Jaedren lurched, tore the hair from his scalp,
and rolled free. Sergeant Nael leapt over him, swinging his sword blindly. A
massive fist struck him in the chest and sent him sprawling into the grass.

Jaedren raced after his mule, but
an ogre grabbed the halter and with his tusks ripped out the animal’s throat.
The mule brayed and kicked and collapsed. An arm as thick and knotted as a tree
trunk swept Jaedren off his feet. The stench of dead animals gagged him, and
someone was screaming his name.

Sergeant Nael roared, picking
himself up with sword in hand, and charged. He managed to draw a stream of dark
orange blood from one of the ogres before another grabbed his skull like a
melon and squeezed. Red on the road.…

Jaedren kicked and punched and bit
into that rancid green skin, but the ogre held him fast. “Help me!” he
screamed, reaching for the ladies, but what could they do? Rhoslyn’s face was
red with sobs as she called for him, searching, searching, unable to see him. Etivva
had the dray’s halter in hand and dragged the duchess away. The mules didn’t need
any incentive to flee the stench and the panic. If they bolted the right direction,
the ladies might make it to safety.

A bright white lifelight engulfed
Jaedren’s vision. A beautiful shimmering face grinned at him. This wasn’t the
elf he’d seen at Ilswythe. This one wore suede and supple leather that let him
move fast on foot. His curling hair was almost dishwater brown. “Gotcha,
avedra,” he said, voice like velvet.

“Nuh-uh,” Jaedren grunted, pushing
against the ogre’s arm locked about his ribs. “Aster will sting you to pieces
until you let me go.”

The elf raised a glistening silver
box that hung from his finger like a lantern. Inside, a hummingbird’s voice
screeched in agony or rage or both. “Is this Aster?”

Jaedren reached for the cage, but
the Elari snatched it away. “You stupid elf,” he shrieked. “You’re hurting her!
If you don’t let us go, Thorn Kingshield will kill you!”

Pearly fingers popped Jaedren
across the cheek, then grabbed him by the jaw. Hard gray eyes stabbed like ice
picks. Jaedren tried to look away, but the fingers didn’t let him. “We have
plenty planned for Thorn Kingshield, and he’s not going to like any of it.” The
elf turned to one of the ogres. “Give me the basin.”

Jaedren didn’t care what the elf
did with grimy old water in a bowl; he squirmed and kicked as he watched
Rhoslyn, Lura, and Etivva gallop away. None of the ogres bothered chasing them.
Of that he was glad. They rode over a hill and out of sight. Only then did
Jaedren yield.

~~~~

N
ear the place where the
winds of the world gave way to the cold hard stars, Rashén Varél soared. Fires
lit the rounded belly of the horizon and it was toward the fires that he bent
his flight. The light of the father moon washed his silver skin crimson, and as
he dived lower, lower through banks of cloud, water gathered on his wings and
streaked them like racing tears. He was not susceptible to cold, but the feel
of the rain delighted him. It had been too long since he had been permitted to
taste the air of the Realm of Flesh. He had missed it more than he realized.
Pungent odors of earth and leaf, musk and rain mingled this night with the
stench of blood, smoke, and fear.

He skimmed through the lowest
layers of the clouds, though he was not worried about being seen. The humans
had more urgent troubles tonight; there would be few stargazers and dreamers
left among them. When the sun rose, the people of the Northwest would count
their dead and the sky would fill with the sound of keening.

With eyes sharper than a hawk’s, Rashén
counted the fires rising from villages and city walls, even from a few castle
towers, and took note of those wielding the blades and torches. Abominations of
Avë led by the Mother’s own First Children. She had warned him about the things
he would see, but seeing made it no easier to believe.

The Mother-Father had foretold this
time of ash and darkness. Ages ago. Rashén himself had heard her speak the
dreaded words to the Circle. He had been the one appointed to deliver the
message to the Lady Dorelia in the days before the departure. A loss too deep
to endure ached in his heart when he remembered that encounter; the dying and
sorrow spreading across the hills below was its grandchild. A new era was being
born in blood and pain. Rashén rejoiced. If he were of the Flesh he might weep,
not in grief for the dead, but for the hope of redemption. Redemption for his
beloved and all her people whom she had led through the mists and into a world
not their own. Rashén shared the burden of their sin. He had loved her too
deeply. So this era meant redemption for him, too.

The Mother had given him a new
task. She had whispered to her avárithen that though her Third Children would
suffer grief and pain, on the other side of that pain waited the Gate. Somewhere
among the burning towns waited the Gatekeepers. They still slept, she said, and
their destiny was unknown to them. Rashén was to find them and wake them and
guide them on their course. He only hoped that the Exiled hadn’t murdered them
yet. He feared he was starting his search too late, but then he remembered: the
Mother always knew what she was doing. He had time. He had time.

He left the fires behind and
careened up the flanks of the Drakhan Mountains and on again into the scentless
place where no flesh could dwell. Before the Gatekeepers could open the way to
redemption, they had to have help. As the Mother bid him, Rashén raced toward
the sunrise and the long, golden stretch of the desert where the Miragi dwelt
beyond the edge of sight …

~~~~

F
or the third night in a row
Ruthan paced. If she stopped moving she was sure to fall asleep, and she was
afraid to sleep. While the sun shone, she embroidered until her fingers were
raw and her eyes ached, then she walked, walked the corridors of Tírandon, the inner
walls, the skybridges, the eastern bailey and the western. All night she wandered
aimlessly, desperate to keep her eyes open and her mind occupied. The Seeing
tugged at her mind more insistently than it had in years.

She hadn’t ‘looked’ since Laral
rode home carrying a pouch filled with Leshan’s ashes. All those years ago, she
had begged her oldest brother not to ride south with his rough riders. Send
them across the river to fight in his stead, she’d pleaded, but once Leshan
heard that she saw him die far away from the walls he was rebuilding, nothing
she said could convince him to stay. He must’ve thought she had seen his chance
for redemption. To Ruthan, all she saw was blood, blood, blood, and Laral
screaming for help.

Years later, she kept Leshan’s
pouch of ashes under her pillow, to remind her not to See.

The visions had first come to her
on the day the dragon men brought their fires to Tírandon and dragged Mother
into the dungeon screaming. Ruthan’s memories of that day were dim and
scattered, but she remembered that her sleep had once been sweet, her dreams
peaceful and meaningless. The terror of finding a place to hide from the red
blades and the fires had awakened something inside her. She saw the Great Hall
burning before ever a torch was laid to it, so she ran from her nanny’s hands until
she found a cool, dark corner in one of the towers. The fires wouldn’t come
here, said the vision. Here she would be safe.

In the months that followed, she
learned to access the Seeing on purpose. It was like opening a box in her head.
As soon as she lifted the lid, the visions came pouring out. She and Leshan had
won hoards of coin because she could read the dice before they fell, and that
had been fun. But after he died, she shut the lid and did not open it
voluntarily again. She didn’t want to see. If Seeing meant she could prevent
the vision from happening, then enduring the horrors would be worth it, but she
only saw what was fated to happen, and it was better not knowing. She could
enjoy a cup of tea then and a sunset from the Bastion’s towers and a moment
wasted.

Her wandering led her back to her
suite. Was it only midnight? Surely the hour candle lied. She felt she had been
walking for years, not only a couple of hours. The damp night air had settled
in her hair, her bed robe, her skin. She stoked the embers in her hearth, laid
another log on the grate, and warmed her hands. The warmth lulled, soothed,
seduced.

“No!” she said to the flames,
moving away. She mustn’t sleep.

Her dressing room was cold enough
to turn her fingers and toes to ice. She sat at the vanity and brushed her
hair. The wind on the battlements had blown it into a hempen tangle. She tore
at the mess, clenching her teeth. Why should the Seeing plague her now? “Leave
me alone!” she whimpered into the mirror. How long before it would let her
sleep? Maybe when the convention was over, maybe then. She might be crazy, but
she wasn’t stupid. The Convention of Kings would decide the fate of three
kingdoms. Of course, the Seeing wanted to trouble her over it.

“Think about something else,” she
told herself, throwing down the brush. She rearranged her gowns and shoes by
color, then by season, and nearly rang the bell for her handmaid, just to have
someone to fill her ear with words, but it was her keepsake chest that drew
her. She hadn’t straightened it in a while. It was probably full of moths and
dead rose petals that needed to be cleared away.

She sat among her silk slippers and
opened the chest on her knees. On top lay the things her niece and nephews had
made for her. A little knight and horse made out of sticks and twine that she
and Andryn had fashioned on the sunny bank of the Thunderwater; a sheet of
music that Lesha had composed for her aunt, a love song, of course; a picture
that Jaedren had painted of his family when he was first learning how to hold a
brush. Ruthan was the one with the big yellow halo.

She missed Laral and the kids, but
Father wasn’t going to be at Assembly long enough this year for her to slip
away. Laral and his family would probably be at the convention anyway. Perhaps
Father would see his grandchildren then, and his heart would melt as Ruthan’s
had the first time she saw them, and he would forgive Laral for marrying his
enemy. She could only hope. Then maybe Laral would stop at Tírandon for a visit
on his way home.

The box in her head shuddered, and
she knew without peeking inside that this wasn’t to be.

Underneath these treasures lay
things excavated from the fire. One of her mother’s rings. The sapphire was
cracked and the silver badly melted, but Ruthan remembered Mother wearing it at
one ball or another; she’d been laughing and dancing. A small silver inkpot,
discolored with soot. One of the rose-shaped finials that had adorned the lamps
in Father’s study. A finger bone. No one knew she had kept that, but it
belonged to someone she had known and loved. Maybe Nanny. Maybe Harge, the
kennel master who always let her hold the wolfhound puppies and name them.
Throwing it away felt like losing them twice. Nothing of her own had survived.

She lifted out a wooden doll so
well-loved that the cloth body was floppy and brown, even the lace dress it
wore. Ruthan had found it in a dusty chest at Lanwyk Manor. Old Lady Lanwyk
said the doll had belonged to her daughter but she let Ruthan keep it when the
Black Falcon’s army returned to Bramoran. Looped around the doll’s neck was
Leshan’s bag of dice. She opened the drawstrings and dumped the six dice into
her palm. The ivory was yellowing, turning brown in the cracks, the paint on
the faces worn thin. They had won every hand, she and her brother, to the
detriment of the other Falcon Guards.

Grinning, Ruthan shook them and
tossed them. The box in her head broke wide open.

A falcon as white as fresh fallen
snow shrieked and fell from the sky. Blood stained its feathers. Her father ran
through a field of ghosts, terror on his face. “My son, my son,” he cried,
searching among the ghosts, then blood ran from his mouth in a great gout and
Ruthan stood over his body and the floor was carpeted with the dead. In a dark
corner, chains rattled. How shiny they were, those chains hanging from the murky
stone wall. The wrists inside the shackles festered, and the fire in the girl’s
fingers had gone cold. But the girl … the girl’s blue eyes glared stubborn and
fierce. Teeth gnawed on bone. “Unbalance,” breathed a voice made of light.
“Listen, Seer. Do as he says.”

Someone walked into the dressing
room and crouched beside her. Leshan was smiling. He used to smile often. How
had she forgotten that? “We never lost,” he said. “Thanks to you, Ruthie.”

Ruthie. No one called her that but
her brothers. His fingers touched her hair, her cheek, and they felt so real,
so warm. But it was just a vision. Wasn’t it? This wasn’t like the others. She
had never seen the faces of the dead, only those doomed to die, and none had acknowledged
her and spoken to her. They had the same eyes, she and her brother, large and
dark and brooding.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “Father is
dead?”

Leshan nodded. “And more will die
unless you stop it. They’re on their way, Ruthie. They will arrive before
dawn.”

“Who?”

“The Mother’s First Children. They
bring a terrible army that destroys everything it tramples on.” Even as he said
it, she saw them. Hordes of gray-skinned monsters with hungry red eyes and
yellow tusks rising obscenely from their mouths. They were marching in a
quick-step, axes and armor clanking. A black sword with a broken blade swept
before them. “I built Tírandon for these days, Ruthie. The Mother told me so.
They cannot get in if you shut the gate. You must shut the gate. Then you’ll be
safe. Do you understand?”

She nodded, terror a knot in her
throat.

“Do what you have to, but shut the
gate. Go now.”

“But you …”

He was already gone. Like mist on a
sunny morning. The lid closed on the box in Ruthan’s head, and she sat among
the shoes in her dressing room trembling. Six dice laid at her feet. She read
their faces: a sword, two roses, three skulls. The skulls won.

Ruthan tossed aside the keepsake
chest and scrambled to her feet. “Close the gate, close the gate,” she muttered
to herself as she hurried across the Great Hall. Before the lord’s hearth, one
of Lander’s wolfhounds tapped his tail in greeting.

The red face of the moon glared
through ragged rents in the clouds, its light briefly glinting on the helms of
sentries drifting sleepily on the wallwalk. The inner portcullis was raised,
the massive andyr-and-iron doors open to the western bailey. Far away at the
outer gate, between the two massive towers of Andett’s Bastion, a moonlit
countryside shone through the black iron grate of a second portcullis. But
there were
three
portcullises inside the Bastion and no one had thought
to lower the other two or close the inner doors or raise the drawbridge. And
why should they? Tírandon needed only minimal precautions against Fieran cattle
raiders, and they were wise enough to stay well away from the eyes in the castle.

Ruthan flung open the guardhouse
door. “Captain Reynal!”

A pimple-faced youth glanced up
from the captain’s chair in surprise, hauled his feet off the desktop, leapt up
to straighten his uniform, and stood at a attention. “Please, m’ lady, I wasn’t
sleeping! Swear I wasn’t.”

“Where’s Reynal? Get him.”

“He went to bed hours ago, he—”

“I don’t care! Get him.” She paced
wildly in the tight space of the castellan’s headquarters until the youth
returned, leading the captain in. Reynal was cursing and grinding his teeth. His
surcoat, blazoned with silver and black chevrons, was askew and his pants were
only halfway tucked into his boots. The scent of sour wine wafted ahead of him.
He and Lander butted heads often because they were much alike. That’s why
Father kept him around, truth be told. Neither put up with anyone’s nonsense
but his own, and so the house stayed in order. He saw Ruthan behind his desk
and stopped his blustering and teeth-grinding. “M’ lady. An odd hour. What’s
the trouble?”

“Captain, I’m sorry to wake you,
but we have to secure the gates.”

“They are secure. I saw to it
myself.”

“You don’t understand. Something
terrible is on its way. We have to raise the drawbridge and sound the alarm.”
She tried turning him for the bell tower, but he freed his arm. At least she
had his attention.