The Oracle's Queen (52 page)

“Almost to the Osiat, apparently.”

She went to the witch and knelt in front of him. “I have visions, too, and dreams of the west. Can you help me with those?”

“I try. What you see?”

“Arkoniel, do you have anything to draw with?”

The wizard went to a table covered in magical paraphernalia and fished around in the mess until he found a lump of chalk. He guessed what she was thinking, but it seemed rather improbable.

Tamír cleared away some of the rushes strewn over the floor and began drawing on the stone paving beneath. “I see a place, and I know it's on the western coast below
Cirna. There's a deep harbor guarded by two islands, like this.” She drew them. “And a very high cliff above it. That's where I'm standing in the dream. And if I look back, I can see open country and mountains in the distance.”

“How far away mountains?” asked Mahti.

“I'm not sure. Maybe a day's ride?”

“And this?” He pointed to the blank floor beyond the little ovals she'd drawn for islands. “This is western sea?” Mahti stared down at the map, chewing at a hangnail. “I know this place.”

“You can tell, just from this?” asked Arkoniel.

“I not lie. I have been to this place. I show.”

He brought his fist up in front of his face, closed his eyes, and began to mutter to himself. Arkoniel felt the prickle of magic gathering even before the pattern of intricate black lines appeared on the witch's hands and face. He recognized the spell.

Mahti blew into his fist and made a ring with his thumb and forefinger. A disk of light took shape, and then grew as he framed it with his other hand and drew it larger, to the size of a platter. They could hear the call of seabirds through it and hear the wash of the tide.

“Master, he knows your window spell!” Wythnir exclaimed softly.

Through the window lay a view from atop a high cliff overlooking the sea just as Tamír had described. It was dark already here in Atyion, but there the setting sun still cast a coppery trail across the waves under a cloudy sky. The ground at the top of the cliff was broken and overgrown with long grass. Huge flocks of gulls sailed against the orange sky. Their cries filled Arkoniel's room. He half expected to smell the sea breeze and feel it against his face.

Mahti moved slightly and the view changed with dizzying swiftness, so that they were looking over the edge to a deep harbor far below.

“That's it!” Tamír exclaimed softly, and Arkoniel had to
catch her by the arm to keep her from leaning too close to the aperture. “Maybe this is why Lhel brought you to me, rather than someone else.”

“Remoni
, we call it,” Mahti told her. “Mean ‘good water.' Good to drink, out of the ground.”

“Springs?”

Arkoniel interpreted and Mahti nodded. “Many springs. Much good water.”

“Look, see how there's enough land at the base of the cliffs for a town?” said Tamír. “A citadel on the cliffs above would be impossible to attack the way Ero was. Where is this place, Mahti? Is it near Cirna?”

“I don't know your
seer-na.”

Arkoniel cast a window spell of his own, showing him the fortress at Cirna, on its narrow strip of ground.

“I know this place! I came close by it when I was looking for Caliel and his friends,” he explained in his own language, leaving Arkoniel to translate for Tamír. “But I saw the great house in a vision, too. Caliel and the others came from there. There's evil living in that house, and great sadness, too.”

“How far is Remoni from there?”

“Three, maybe four days' long walk? You southlanders don't go there, to Remoni. We still have sacred places by this sea. Boats come into the protected water behind the islands sometimes, when people come to fish, but no one lives there. Why does she want to go there?”

“What's he saying?” Tamír asked.

Arkoniel explained.

“It might be only two days, riding hard,” she mused. “Tell him I'm going to build a new city there. Will he guide me?”

Arkoniel translated, but Mahti was rubbing his eyes now, as if they hurt him. “Need sleep. I go there.” He pointed out the window at the garden. “Too many time in this house. Need sky, and the ground.”

“But there's so much I want to know!”

“Let him rest a while,” Arkoniel said, sensing that Mahti had some reason for not answering her. “You should rest, too, and be ready to speak with your generals.”

As she turned to go, Mahti looked up and tapped himself on the chest. “You have pain. Here.”

“Pain? No.”

“Where Lhel make magic bind to you, there is pain,” he insisted, looking at her very intently as his hand stole to his long horn again. “I make dream song for you. Take away some pain.”

Tamír hastily shook her head. “No! It's healed. There's no pain.”

Mahti frowned and went back to his language. “Oreskiri, tell her Lhel's magic is not broken yet. She had no witch to help her cut the spell. There are still threads that bind them. That is why her brother demon still comes to her.”

“I'll try to explain to her,” Arkoniel replied. “She doesn't trust magic very much, though. The only magic she knew as a child was hurtful or frightening. That fear still haunts her, even with everything else she's seen. She doesn't like it practiced on her, even for her benefit.”

Mahti looked thoughtfully at Tamír, who was regarding him more warily. “She cannot be completely herself until she is freed of these last threads, but I will not without her consent.”

“Give her time.”

“What's he saying?” Tamír asked, looking from one to the other.

Arkoniel walked her out to the corridor. “You're still bound to Brother somehow.”

“I figured that much out for myself.”

“Mahti is quite concerned about it.”

She stopped and folded her arms. “You trust him already?”

“I think so, yes.”

For just an instant she looked unsure, as if there was
something she wanted to say, but instead, she just shook her head. “I've had enough of that magic. I'm a girl now. That's enough. I can deal with Brother.”

Arkoniel sighed inwardly. Even if he could have forced her, he would not.

Returning to his room, he found Wythnir and Mahti sitting on the floor together. Wythnir had one hand extended, a silvery orb hovering over his open palm.

“Look what Master Mahti showed me how to do,” the boy said, eyes fixed on the orb.

Arkoniel knelt beside them, caught between curiosity and protectiveness. “What is this?”

“Only water,” Mahti assured him. “It's one of the first spells witch children learn, for fun.”

Wythnir lost his grip on the spell and the orb of water fell, splattering his hand and knees.

Mahti ruffled his hair. “Good magic, little keesa. Something to teach your friends.”

“May I, Master?”

“Tomorrow. It's time for you to go say good night to them. I must make our guest comfortable.”

T
he moon was almost full. Mahti sat down on the damp grass near a rosebush, savoring its sweetness and the good smells of earth and air. Arkoniel had sent all the southlanders from the garden so he could be alone here under the sky. He was grateful for the solitude. Being confined in a room so far above the ground for so many days had been difficult. The unhappiness and fear of the three southlanders he'd cared for had filled the room like a fog.

Lutha and Barieus were happy now that they'd spoken to Tamír. He was glad for them; they'd treated him well from the first. The older one, Caliel, was darker in his mind, and not only because of his fear of Mahti. He carried a deep hurt in his soul. The betrayal of a friend was a bad wound to carry, and very hard to heal. Mahti had mended Caliel's bones and played the poisons away as they tried to
gather, but his heart stayed dark. It was the same with the one named Tanil. Mahti saw at a glance what had been done to him. He wasn't sure even he could help that one.

And then there was Tamír. She was hurt very deeply, but she did not feel the wounds. When he'd looked at her from the corner of his eye, he could see the black tendrils still issuing from the place where Lhel had made her binding. Tamír's spirit was still bound to the noro'shesh, and that tie kept her from healing completely into her new form. She was a young woman, certainly, but some vestige of her old self held on. He could see it in the hollowness of her cheeks and the angular lines of her body.

He tilted his head back and filled his eyes with the white moon. “I have seen her now, Mother Shek'met. Did I come all this way just to finish the magic of Lhel and heal her? She does not want that. What must I do, so that I can go home again?”

Holding these questions in his mind, he raised the oo'lu to his lips and began the prayer song. The pregnant moon filled him and lent him her power.

Pictures began to form behind his eyelids and after a time his brows drew down in surprise. He played the song to its end, and when he was finished he looked up at the moon's pale face again and shook his head. “Your will is strange, Mother, but I will do my best.”

What do you think of them, my girl and my oreskiri?
Lhel whispered to him from the shadows.

“They miss you,” he whispered back, and felt her sadness. “Do they hold you here?”

I stay for them. When all is finished, I will rest. You will do as the Mother has shown you?

“If I can, but our people will not welcome her.”

“You must make them see her as I do.”

“Will I see you anymore, now that I've found her?”

He felt an invisible caress, then she was gone.

A man stirred in the shadows by the courtyard door.
Arkoniel had come into the garden while he was dreaming. Without a word, the oreskiri disappeared back inside.

There was great pain there, too.

Mahti laid his horn aside and stretched out on the grass to sleep. He would do as the Mother required, then he would go home. It was tiring, being with these stubborn southlanders who would not ask for help when they needed it.

A
rkoniel sat by his window, watching Mahti sleep. He looked very peaceful there on the bare ground, head pillowed on his arm.

Arkoniel's heart was in turmoil. He'd heard Lhel's voice, smelled her scent on the air. He understood why she had gone to Mahti, but why had she never come to him?

“Master?” Wythnir asked sleepily from his bed.

“It's all right, child. Go back to sleep.”

Instead, he came to Arkoniel and climbed into his lap. Curling up there, he tucked his head under Arkoniel's chin.

“Don't be sad, Master,” he murmured, already half-asleep. By the time Arkoniel recovered from his amazement the boy was fast asleep.

Touched by this innocent affection, Arkoniel sat there for some time, just holding him, the sleeping child's trust a reminder of the work that lay ahead.

T
amír found the reunited Companions in Nikides' chamber. Lutha and Barieus were stretched out on their bellies across the wide bed. Ki and Tharin sat on the edge beside them, and made room for Tamír between them. The rest were sprawled in chairs or on the floor. Ki was telling Lutha and Barieus about the dragon they'd seen in Afra. “Show them your mark,” he said as Tamír came in.

She held out her finger.

“I wish we'd been with you,” Barieus exclaimed enviously.

“Next time you will be,” she promised. “Tell me more about Korin. Is there any chance he can be reasoned with?”

Lutha shook his head. “I don't think he can ever forgive you, Tamír.”

“And now he'll have an heir,” said Ki. “All the more reason for him to fight.”

“Lady Nalia's with child? Well, I don't wonder,” Lutha muttered, coloring a little. “Korin was trying hard enough. I guess it finally took.”

“What do you know of her?” asked Tamír.

“Almost nothing, beyond what Korin said. He keeps her shut up in the tower most of the time. She was always pleasant to us when we did see her, though.”

“Is it true she's ugly?” asked Ki.

“More like plain, with a big pink birthmark on her face and neck.” Barieus traced a pattern on his own cheek. “Sort of like that one on your arm, Tamír.”

“What else can you tell me, now that we're away from Cal?” she asked.

Lutha sighed. “Now I do feel like a spy. Korin's gathered a sizable force—riders, men-at-arms, some ships, mostly from the northern holdings and the mainland territories. He's sent out some raids against those loyal to you.”

“I've been doing the same.”

“I know,” Lutha replied. “It galled him no end, along with the reports of your second victory against the Plenimarans. I don't know if it's Niryn's influence, or just Korin's own jealousy, but now that he is ready to move, I don't think he'll settle for anything less than an all-out fight.”

“Then that's what he's going to get. We've only got a few good months left before winter closes in. Tharin, ask Lytia to have a complete inventory of supplies ready for my audience tomorrow morning. I need to know how long a siege we could withstand here, if it comes to that. Send out runners to all the camps and heralds to all the lords
who've gone back to their holdings north of here. I mean to march as soon as possible.”

“With your own Companions at your side,” Ki said. “At least those of us who are fit,” he added with an apologetic look at Lutha.

“We're fit enough!” Lutha assured him.

Looking around at the fierce smiling faces of her friends, Tamír wondered how many more would be lost before this was over?

T
houghts of war fled for a moment, however, as she and Ki walked back to their rooms. Reaching his own door, Ki paused, looking uncertain. Tamír realized he was waiting for her to say where he would sleep.