Sword (10 page)

"
Sword shall guide the hands of men
," she murmured. Behind her, Arlen was very still. "Whose hands? Guide to what? And when?"

"So you believe now."

"I believed two years ago," she shot back, and had to clench her fists and her teeth against the dreadful feeling of certainty that washed over her. Her guts ached with it. "I believed… I believed when I saw that my father did. When I saw he was
afraid
." The memory made her want to weep again, and she dug her nails into her palms and refused to let that happen. "But I still don't know what it means and you won't say, Arlen Ulin's-son."

There was a long silence.

"It's not so simple as saying or not saying," he murmured.

"It never is." Kyali folded her arms, trying not to shiver, and bit down on her tongue until the pain of that chased away the anger. "That leaves us… where, Landanar?"

"About where we were an hour ago, student mine."

A bitter laugh caught in her throat. She sighed. Around them the trees whispered peacefully and birds wheeled through branches in the mad way they had when summer was just beginning to stretch the days out. Kyali shut her eyes. "I want an hour to myself, if you've no immediate use for me. My head needs clearing."

"Take two." Arlen backed away, a soft sound of displaced dirt and pine needles. "It will come or it won't," he said softly. "Probably it will. Probably it will be hard. Much in life is. But don't
flinch
, Kyali. You've as fine a court face as could be wished for otherwise, but right now this is a hole in your armor anyone can see."

And he wouldn't tell her what he knew about it.

There was no use in saying anything else: she had her answer. What dread Clan secrets Eairon's prophecy might touch on, she had no idea, but she was tangled in it, trapped by it, and right now she couldn't find room in herself to forgive Arlen for holding back something so involved with her life, and Taireasa's and Devin's. Something that promised disaster.

Arlen left her standing alone, with her fists clenched and her belly still full of that odd tidal pulling. After looking around uselessly for something to hit, Kyali spun and stalked off into the trees, not caring which direction. She couldn't bear to be still another minute. Branches whipped into her face, only making her angrier; she elbowed her baldric back into place on her shoulder and flung an arm in front of her eyes, unwilling to slow her pace.

Damn
this Clan and its secretive ways! Damn Arlen for teaching her everything in the world she wanted to learn except what to expect next, and damn her stupid self for trusting them all, for following blindly, for wanting so badly to be good at this, for wanting to be… to be…

Free.

The tears came back so suddenly she had no chance to swallow them. She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth, stumbling to a halt, and gasped into her palm until she regained some measure of control.

Free was a lie. Free meant no Taireasa, no family, no House. No self.

At the thought, Taireasa's face, somehow older-looking, flickered on the backs of her eyelids. Her brother's followed it. There was a pressure in her chest, like grief, or fear. The pulling in her middle grew stronger, almost enough to make her sick.

What was she to do? Ride home wearing the Fraonir sword and daggers and wait to see what shape things took around her? Hope her father would tell her what was next? Training here had made her harder to kill, but also, she began to perceive, harder to place. And her presence would not make things easier for Taireasa, with the Western provinces pressing hard for advantage and Devin increasingly likely to be named a Bard, the first in some centuries, which would remove him from all other possible titles:
she
would be the only game-piece scheming barons could use against the Marsadron line.

In that thought she found a direction, and the glimmer of an idea.

There was no such thing as free. But maybe, just possibly, she could thread her way through the maze of court intrigues and keep Taireasa out of harm’s way.

“Right,” Kyali breathed, and shook herself, beginning to walk again. “Right.”

But that answer took no account of prophecy, or fate. She saw no way to account for those things, because she had no warning of what to expect but
wind
and
storm
and
dark
. Whatever those meant.

The next branch took her unawares and caught her full in the face. It stung, and she stopped. A hand to her nose came back bloodied. The realization that she was being a fool came to her somehow out of the sight of her own blood. Here she was, running from nothing, in the middle of—

Oh,
damn
.

In her preoccupation, she had been a very great fool indeed.

The trees parted just in front of her. Two men were gaping at her from where they sat on the ground near a smothered firepit.

Outlaws
. And she was completely alone here.

For a brief instant, not even a whisper of wind marred the perfect silence, and then one man gave a wild shout, leaping to his feet. The other lunged at her from where he knelt, a flash of metal in his hands. She felt the shock of whatever it was as it grated off her vest.

Her sword came free of its sheath and cut his feet out from under him. His scream was terrible. The rest seemed to happen as if at some distance—the arc of blood following the sweep of steel, the bewildered agony on the man’s face as she drove her sword through him. It was far too easy.

Her own ragged panting brought her back to herself.

Kyali backed up a step and then another, and moaned in what she first thought was horror and then realized was pain. At her side, her blood leaked out. A great deal of it was already soaking the leather armor.

A
very
great deal of it.

Not so easy after all, it seemed.

The second man held an old dagger, now stained brighter red. The pain, when she let fall her sword and tried to release the side buckle of her vest, loosened her knees. She dropped to the ground. The locket around her neck leapt up and swung. She stared fixedly at the Corwynall dragon engraved on it as she worked at the armor’s catches, hissing through clenched teeth, trying to ignore the pain, which was rising rapidly past endurance.

The buckle came undone. Her fingers found the wound at once, and she drew in a ragged gasp and shrieked at the feel of her hand against it. Unable to do anything else, Kyali pressed both hands against the outpouring of blood, rolling onto her back.

The peaceful trees grew shadowed, then faded altogether into a strangely gold-flecked dark.

C
HAPTER
6

T
here was something crawling on her nose. Devin must have found one of the barn spiders to disturb her sleep with, but she was tired enough to ignore it and disappoint him. Any moment now, Father would come in and make him remove it and leave her be. She burrowed deeper into the blankets, smiling at the thought of her brother's frustration. The bedclothes rustled oddly and smelled peculiarly of—

Dirt?

"Kyali.
Kyali.
Wake, child, can you hear me? Hells, I think this is all
her
blood—Arlen, help me lift her—good gods!"

She knew the voices, but her mind swung wildly back to the outlaws and the blood and the unbelievable pain of being stabbed, and she was suddenly on her knees in the dirt, her sword waving in her shaking hands as her vision came in flashes and gold flickered over everything. "No,
don't
—"

Saraid knelt in front of her, wide-eyed, hands spread out. Her silver hair was crawling with gold flecks; her lined, gentle face was covered with them. Arlen, stepping into view and then halting as she lifted the sword, was in a similar state. Kyali squeezed her eyes shut, opened them to the same sight, and realized she was holding the edge of her sword to her teacher's throat.

"Sorry," she rasped, and lowered the blade carefully. "I'm sorry, Saraid."

"Child…" Saraid rose, leaning in to press a hand to her cheek. "You're bleeding."

"I'm not—I am? I was—I think I—"

"They're dead. You're safe. Let me see
now
, Kyali, there's too much blood."

She went still and dropped the sword, trusting, and tried to stay still as the old woman peeled back blood-soaked leather and pressed gentle fingers to her skin, first lightly, then harder. Saraid felt around for a long, uncomfortable moment while Arlen inspected the dead men and retrieved a blood-slick dagger. Kyali looked away.

"There's no wound," Saraid said, slowly, as though she didn't believe her own words.

Arlen knelt beside them, tossing the dagger into the brush, and shoved Kyali down on her side. She muttered half a curse, but didn't struggle as both her teachers pushed armor and tunic out of the way. The gold was beginning to retreat to the corners of her eyes. The sick pulling in her belly was tenfold worse than it had been.

"There
was
a wound," Arlen said, sounding both bewildered and frightened, as he had never before sounded. "It's… gone. But it's clear where the armor was pierced."

Kyali twitched under their fingers for another moment, then rolled away and dragged herself to her knees, ignoring their objections. She felt her side, already knowing there was nothing there but unbroken skin sticky with drying blood.
Her
blood. Her hand came away covered in it. The flash of the dagger caught her memory, the awful draining pain. She hadn't dreamed it.

She should be dead.

She wished in sudden, aching homesickness that Devin
were
here, spiders or no—to mock her, to make her laugh in spite of herself, to chase away the dread that was making it impossible for her to think. He would say something to make her blush to the roots of her hair, but he would help her stay upright.

She felt her chin trying to quiver and bit fiercely into her own tongue.

"I've never heard of such a Gift," Saraid murmured.

Gift? A Gift that made mortal wounds disappear? "Starting fires isn't enough?" Kyali muttered, and knew she wasn't making sense.

Saraid smiled ruefully. "It seems not, child. Be grateful. This one saved your life. If only I could instruct you in it… but I wouldn't even know where to start, I'm afraid. We'll have to muddle through. Come now, can you walk? We can carry you, if not."

She'd had quite enough indignity for one day. Kyali rose, needing their steadying hands to do it, and stood on legs that threatened to buckle any moment. The pulling sensation in her gut grew with the effort, becoming so strong that for a moment she felt like she was going to fall off the mountain. Her knees
did
buckle, mortifyingly, and Arlen caught her in a strong grip. She tried to push away, but the world swung around her and the air was filled with a blurry shimmer that made everything immediately in front of her appear to be under water. Arlen grabbed her shoulders again and jerked back as though burned.

"What," she rasped, hardly able to get the word out, "
is
this?"

"Geas," Saraid murmured, a word Kyali had never heard, sounding both awed and grim. "That explains it. Oh, child—"

"I have to go."

The moment she spoke the words, the haze left her eyes and everything was clear. Too clear: oh gods, every fragment of news about the kingdom and the border coalesced in her mind in an instant, painting a landscape still shadowed with all the things she didn't know—but dark, so dark. The barons. The border. Her heart began to pound with panic.

She'd stayed away too long.

She had to see Devin. She had to see Taireasa. Thinking of their faces gave the pulling feeling in her middle a direction, and a strength that was agonizing. "I have to go
now
," she gasped, both hands pressed to her belly, and Saraid took her face in a gentle, firm grip, peering intently into Kyali’s eyes. Her own, almost as pale a silver as her hair, held worry, thoughtfulness, and what looked, to Kyali's bewildered gaze, like fear.

"We'll get you back to camp and packed," the old woman declared. Behind her, Arlen made a small sound of protest. "
Now
, Arlen," Saraid scolded, and Kyali spared a thought for the tension between them, for all the things they weren't telling her.

Damned Clan secrets: she would have no chance to learn them now. She hoped that wouldn't be something she regretted later.

When they arrived, Saraid sat her at the common hearth and sent Clansfolk into a flurry of activity. Kyali gripped the timeworn edges of the bench. When Arlen appeared next to her, looming like angry statuary, she looked at him only from the corners of her eyes. She was afraid she'd do something mortifying if she turned her head, like fall over, or throw up.

"You're not fit to ride," he grumbled.

"I will be."

There was a pained silence, then the bench creaked as Arlen sat next to her. "Kyali…" His voice trailed unhappily off, and she dared a glance his way that made her head spin. He was sitting hunched and he held something in his hands: a book. An ancient-looking, leather-bound book with lacings and parchment pages that crackled in brittle protest as he gripped it a little too hard. He set it in her hands. She squinted down at the worn binding, turned the first page to see the word written there, and felt the skin all over her body prickle.

Eairon.

She flattened her palm over the faded ink, as though she could pull all the secrets it held into her through her skin. "What is this?" she asked.

"A bad idea," her sword teacher muttered darkly. She darted another, sharper glance at him, and turned another page.

The earth is old,
the first line read, and Kyali drew a shaky breath and shut the book. "This is what you won't tell me," she ventured, and Arlen heaved a sigh.

"No. Yes."

"Which?"

"Both," he snapped, not looking at her. "And neither. There aren't answers, girl. Not the kind you hope for. No clear ones. Just hints and suggestions. And I shouldn't be doing this: you've a path of your own to find and this is—" he waved a hand. "Meddling. Dangerous."