Thawed Fortunes (23 page)

Va'ma's voice wasn't quite the cold, uncaring
thing it had been a few seconds before. "None of us will be
harmed?"

"Not so long as your ransom is paid in a
reasonable amount of time."

One by one, the Guadel all dropped their
weapons and then walked forward to have their hands and arms bound.
The guardsmen around Jain stirred uneasily, almost like they would
resist the order to lay down their arms, but an officer called out
several of their names, and repeated the command.

There were tears on many of the young men's
faces, but they finally nodded and dropped their weapons to the
ground. It took Jain several seconds to understand the tears. Jain
was confused for a moment but there was really only one answer.
Their courage hadn't failed them, they weren't crying because they
were afraid of capture or death. Instead they were crying because
for the first time in hundreds of years, the Guard and the Guadel
had been overcome without dying. In the long history of the People
none of her protectors had ever given up without a fight. Their
present circumstance was impossible, but it still felt
uncomfortably close, even to Jain, as though they'd just betrayed
everything Tor'h and the other heroes had fought and died for over
so many years.

Once the men were all
safely restrained, the women were brought forward one at a time to
disappear into the ranks of knights. Each woman went full of the
power, grasping it with all her strength as her only remaining
protection, but shortly after they left, the women still huddled
with the gurra would feel the power slowly leak away from whoever
had just been called. Gradually losing hold of the power was how
Jain had always imagined death would be, but it seemed impossible
that not even one of them would have a chance to either scream out
or use the power to actually
do
something before they died.

The passing minutes brought no answer, and
the fear around the women continued to grow until it seemed like a
living thing skittering across Jain's skin. When On'li was motioned
forward, she paused for a second to look at Mar'li and Jain before
calmly walking forward to whatever fate awaited her.

The Councilor's example did nothing to lessen
the fear arcing back and forth between the trembling females, but
it did stiffen the knees of most of the remaining women, and when
Jain's turn came she marched forward with her head held high to
mask the terror threatening to leave her curled in a ball on the
ground.

As soon as she was out of sight of the few
remaining women, a soldier approached with a skin of something.
"Drink, and be quick about it, or your friends will be the ones to
suffer."

Shaking slightly, Jain raised the bag to her
mouth and took two bitter, burning swallows. The soldier took the
skin back, and then looked at her as if waiting for something.

Jain opened her mouth to
ask what she was supposed to do, and then the ground seemed to
reach up and hit her. She had time to find it funny that nothing
hurt, that she couldn't feel anything.
I
didn't think dying was supposed to feel like this.

Almost before the thought could be completed,
blackness swallowed her up, leaving no room for anything else.

"...absolutely inexcusable that you would
allow them to speak that way to me."

The self-loathing that had covered Va'del for
so long had boiled away during the last couple of cycles, replaced
by a desire to scream back at his wife. The only thing stopping
Va'del from acting on the urge was the fact that, given Vi'en's
towering self-certainty, there was almost no chance anything he
said or did would actually get through to her. Vi'en had demanded
that he stay and talk with her after everyone else was gone, and
once they were alone, had launched into a scathing attack on nearly
every aspect of his character, most of his recent actions, and the
fact that he hadn't slapped On'li down for 'rebuking his wife in
front of everyone.'

"Bob'ae never would have allowed that to
happen. Any differences of opinion should stay between a man and
his wife, not be aired out for everyone to see."

Suddenly Va'del realized that Jain was right.
Vi'en was never going to let him marry Jain because nothing he was
ever going to do would be good enough for her. Vi'en always talked
about Bob'ae like he was a patron saint, but more and more Va'del
was certain that she'd found just as much fault with her first
husband, just for different reasons.

"You're right, things shouldn't have ever
gotten to the point where I let On'li scold you for failing to
fulfill even the slightest part of your duties as a wife. I should
have told you when we first got married that you are a sorry excuse
for a Guadel. You're more concerned with impressing your friends by
insulting me than with cultivating the trust required to fulfill
your vows."

Va'del had thought Vi'en's eyes had gone wide
when On'li had dressed her down, but that was nothing compared to
what he was seeing now. The Guadel tried unsuccessfully to breathe
for several seconds before finally gasping.

"How dare you, you jumped-up candidate. The
only reason you're even here is because I agreed to marry you out
of pity, and give you the legitimacy you've never been able to gain
on your own."

Va'del shook his head. "No, I suspect you
married me because nobody else in your bloodline would have you.
Even your friends no doubt shuddered at the thought of sharing
their husbands with you, so you were dumped off on me, despite the
fact that after all the bleeding I've done for my brothers and
sisters, I most definitely deserved better."

Vi'en looked at him, the contempt she'd held
him in for so long beginning to be replaced by the same kind of
hatred she'd displayed towards On'li, but Va'del found he didn't
care. "I want to serve the People as much as anyone, but right now
you have no right to enter my mind, and I rather suspect that will
continue to be the case since I don't see you ever really
changing."

Va'del turned and started walking along the
trail. It felt like he should be happy or at least have the
satisfaction of feeling justified. The fact that he didn't have to
try and continue to meet her expectations should have lightened his
step, but instead he just felt angry. Angry, and in some way less
innocent. Even with Cindi he'd always managed to maintain a small
but firm belief that someday she'd come around and stop hating
him.

He'd somehow maintained a core belief that it
was impossible for someone with power over him to be completely
unjust and therefore his dreams had never quite died. That was gone
now. The only way for him and Jain to be together now was for Vi'en
to die of old age in the near future before Jain got tired of
waiting and married another.

Before the sub-Guadel could
take more than a few steps towards the caravan, Vi'en gasped behind
him, and he reluctantly turned back to look at her.
Some kind of trick, no doubt.

The expression on his wife's face, and the
fact that she'd collapsed to her knees, quickly convinced Va'del of
her seriousness. "What happened?"

"The female Guadel are holding the power. For
me to be able to feel it this far away, they must all be linking.
Something's wrong."

Va'del helped Vi'en up as he thought. "There
wasn't anything this way that could possibly threaten the whole
caravan. Everything the villagers told us pointed towards this area
being safe enough that Si'mon agreed to leave the two of us alone
by ourselves."

Vi'en nodded, hurrying to keep up with
Va'del's longer legs. "It can't be bag'ligs this low unless they
passed the village and then circled around from the west."

Va'del didn't say anything, but picked up the
pace slightly as the pieces of this particular strategic puzzle
began to fall into place for him. The danger had to be either
bag'ligs or the Baron. There wasn't anything else in the area that
could possibly threaten a group that big.

Vi'en tripped and nearly fell, but Va'del
grabbed her arm and kept her up until she'd regained her
footing.

"It's getting weaker."

"Good, that means that they've dealt with
whatever the threat was. We should still hurry though."

Vi'en jerked away from him. "No, you don't
understand, it isn't the sudden weakening of victory as everyone
drops out of link about the same time, it's the steady weakening
that results when Guadel are killed a few at a time while the
survivors continue to pull in as much power as they can hold."

Va'del's mind tried to reject the idea. "They
have wounded who have to be healed--that would explain it."

"No, they are all dying, and it's your fault.
If you hadn't rejected my attempts to link we could have been there
and helped, or at least died with them. Instead we're all that
remains."

All kinds of responses made their way through
Va'del's mind, but he kept his mouth shut and kept walking.

"Don't walk away from me."

"I'm not walking away from you. I'm walking
towards where I'm needed. You can stay here or you can follow, it
doesn't matter to me."

##

In the end Vi'en chose to trail along, but
Va'del could feel the disapproval and fear radiating off of her for
the entire two cycles they were walking. The sub-Guadel knew he
should slow his frantic pace and be alert for traps or ambushes,
but couldn't bring himself to do it. The worry that Jain might be
somewhere ahead slowly bleeding to death made him hurry forward on
the slight chance that him arriving a few minutes earlier might be
enough to save her.

It was easy to tell when they arrived at the
site of whatever had happened. The previously hard-packed dirt road
looked almost like the freshly-plowed fields they'd passed on their
way out of Crimson Rocks.

Va'del tried to make sense of all the
confusing imprints, but although some of the Guadel learned basic
snow tracking, he wasn't one of them.

A mounting sense of helplessness threatened
to wash away the last traces of rationality, but Va'del focused on
the fact that there weren't any bodies, or even any blood, and used
it to calm himself slightly. Whatever had happened to the caravan
in this spot, it didn't look like anyone had died. It hadn't been
bag'ligs, so the odds were that Jain and the rest were alive
somewhere, which meant that there was still a chance they could be
rescued.

Vi'en had informed Va'del more than a cycle
previously that she could no longer feel anyone touching the power.
She hadn't said anything since then, and now stood staring
challengingly at him as if waiting for him to ask for advice.

"Let's follow the trail and find out for sure
where they were taken."

##

The trail, it turned out, was easy to follow,
even for someone without any tracking knowledge. The Baron's
horsemen hadn't bothered to stay on the hard-packed road, ranging
off to each side, presumably to ensure that none of their prisoners
were able to escape. Even if Va'del hadn't been able to follow the
wide swathes of churned-up dirt, the corpses of gurra pushed too
hard in the hot weather would have been sign enough they were still
on the right trail. The pitiful forms tugged at Va'del's heart with
unexpected strength, and he welcomed the need to concentrate on
staying hidden from the increasingly heavy traffic on the road.

The first time they'd encountered other
people, Va'del had been so surprised he'd just frozen for a moment
before returning their curious but largely-unconcerned wave. There
was so much that was different down in the lowlands. In the
mountains it was almost unheard of to pass anyone else while a
party was moving between villages.

After that first encounter, Va'del had done
his very best to hide anytime he heard other people approaching.
Vi'en hadn't liked diving into bushes, but hadn't been able to
argue with the fact that their clothing was much too distinctive to
blend in with the lowlanders. She'd accepted the necessity with her
usual bad grace.

Va'del wasn't positive that they'd been
successful in hiding from everyone, but the only other way he could
think of to go unnoticed would be to travel at night, which would
guarantee that they would miss the spot where the tracks left the
road.

Of course given the lateness of the day, if
he and Vi'en didn't find the caravan soon, they'd be travelling in
the dark regardless. Already the sun was starting to disappear
behind a distant set of mountains, and Va'del suddenly realized
he'd never seen such a brilliant sunset during his brief travels
outside. The way the clouds had taken on varying hues of dark
orange was more than a little unsettling. It was beautiful still,
but the way the light hit the rocks seemed to turn them the color
of drying blood, as if a terrible battle had taken place just a
ways away from them.

Pushing away thoughts of signs, or warnings
by the Bright Powers, Va'del closed his eyes for a moment,
promising himself he wouldn't look at the sky as he opened them
back up.

Just before dusk, they came to the edge of
the forest. A moderately-sized castle was just visible in the
distance, but surrounded as it was by cleared farmland, there was
no way for the pair to continue forward in the light.

Vi'en looked at the complete lack of hiding
places and backed further into the trees.

"We can't go out there; we'll be seen and
captured just like they were."

"We'll wait until night. It will be
fine."

Va'del had underestimated just how scared the
Guadel was.

"No, it won't be fine. I came along so we
could figure out where they'd been taken. We've done that. Now we
need to go get help instead of charging in there and getting
ourselves killed for no reason."