The Wanderer (42 page)

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Authors: Cherry Wilder,Katya Reimann

BOOK: The Wanderer
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There was a little room to squeeze by the edge of the spell, to reach the mouth of the sacred cavern. The blue fire that had kept the Aldmen out did not repulse Gael. She stumbled up the passage, lit so unfamiliar and bright by the blue green flames.
The Cup was in its proper place, in the niche over the Mother’s altar. She filled it from the font, from the blessed spring, and brought it out to her mother beneath the stars. Shivorn knew the ritual; she went from one body to the next, giving each a short sip.
Gael was there when the Cup was brought to Mev Arun. Mev had suffered a grievous cut the length of her arm, even down onto her hand. Gael could not tell if her friend would ever again have the strength to hold any tool, let alone a sword. But her eyes were quiet, did not show her pain, and her uninjured hand, raised to steady the sacred Kelch, did not waver. “Thank you, mother,” said Mev Arun, swallowing deeply of the holy water, and Gael saw that the fate the Ruith Nighean had spoken was true, though nothing so unhappy as any of them had feared: Mev Arun would stay by the Holywell; she and Bress would have a child—perhaps even love, be married. Mev would become Shivorn Maddoc’s daughter, would give her the first grandchild. A precious gift had been granted, even as the Maddocs had suffered great loss.
Gael squeezed closed her eyes, for a moment could not look upon the scene. She had only glimpsed her father’s face: the thin kind features, his curling hair, now set forever in stone. She could not look again. Later, when the spell had faded, she would look again, and see that the Goddess had blessed those features in their final moment with an appearance of calm and peace, but she could never come to believe it; in this piece of
her life, she would never live to feel anything other than regret.
Another of those they tended had received a different sort of gift. Merrin Treyes had been struck across the face with one of the whitethorn branches. Its imprint remained across his cheek, an almost pretty, seared pattern of leaves. When Shivorn brought him Taran’s holy cup, he deeply drank. Gael saw he was a handsome man. His manners reminded her a little of Auric Barry, something in the
politesse
of the way he wiped his mouth and looked past Shivorn and into the
Wanderer
’s eyes. Gael knew she was looking on a man intimate with the inner circles of the Lienish court.
Like all those who had fallen within the Stillstand, he was still weak. Gael pushed him back against the turf, opened the clothes at his neck. Yes, here was the brass wheat ear, partner to the one she had taken from Steward Nevil at Thornlee gardens. She tore it free, and watched as fresh waves of nausea swept across the man’s features.
“You have come from the Brown Brothers,” she said, accusing.
His eyes went to her mother. Shivorn was already moving on to the next man, raising his head to the Cup. “If that is true,” he said in a faint voice, “you are the one who called us here.” His tone was almost mocking. Perhaps he still thought she would kill him, and wished to die unbowed.
“What do you mean?”
“It was the Tuannan who were in Athron, was it not? Did you think one such as Sebald would rest, before he found his vengeance?”
“Sebald is in Blackwater Keep,” replied Gael, a little confused. “Or so goes the rumor.”
Merrin Treyes’s gaze fixed upon the center of the Stillstand, which had not yet diminished, on the clustered figures of Oweyn Murrin and his bravos. “A convenient rumor,” he said. “While Sebald discovered the home of the one who had deprived him of his quarry.”
Then Gael truly understood, and fresh sorrow swept her. In naming the Tuannan, she had sought to protect her winter home in Lort, sought to divert attention from her involvement with the Shee. Coombe—little Coombe had always seemed so far
out of the wide world of the
Wanderer
. Now—she was the one who had drawn this bane down upon them.
“What else has Sebald planned?” She did not believe the Brown Brother she had so briefly glimpsed in Athron, the priest with the warrior’s face, would stop at anything so simple as this punishment. “What else is that terrible man plotting?”
Merrin Treyes closed his mouth, but Gael shook her head, would not accept his silence. “If you know, you must tell me. I have lost much this night, and committed acts such as I have never in my life desired. What does Sebald plan? Why would he risk a raid so deep into Mel’Nir? What can be his hidden purpose?”
“What has started will not be held back,” the Aldman officer told her.
She looked at him deeply. “That is not for you to decide; besides, I hold it for an untruth. Now—you will tell me what you know, or I swear by the Goddess, I will drag you back within that stone circle and leave you there.”
Merrin Treyes was a brave man, but he looked within the circle, at the figures that lay there, so hunched and still, and Gael could see he did not wish to join them.
“Certainly, I was given a trust when they elected me to come here,” he said, speaking carefully, choosing his words. “How else could I effect that which they desired? But I am not so far into their secrets that I can in truth tell you their greater plans or purpose.”
“How were you to carry the Cup home?” Gael asked. “Across the land, or through the water? Who would have aided you on this retreat?”
Merrin Treyes made a blessing sign and shook his head. “We were sent to destroy the Cup,” he said, “not flee with it.”
Gael almost choked, but she could not disbelieve him, and she understood at last the great anger of the Ruith Nighean. She looked worriedly to her mother, still busy among the fallen men, and wished the Kelch was already safely back inside the cave. “Now you have seen the Cup,” she said to Treyes. “Can you tell me in truth you believe its destruction would be a blessing? To Hylor—to Lien—to anyone?”
Merrin Treyes lowered his eyes. “I am not a fit judge,” he
said, though she saw by his reaction that the Kelch’s magic had indeed touched his heart. When he looked again at Gael, his eyes were steady. “This, however, I do know: Kelen, King of Lien, does not have another moon of life left to him. Until Prince Matten reaches his majority, there will be a regency government. But Matten’s birthday is not far away, and the Brown Brothers do not trust him. It is whispered throughout the ranks that among the Brother-Advocates, there are hopes for a war, a war that will prolong the regency—for it is not fit that a new King be crowned while a Kingdom is embroiled in battle.”
“Who will Lien attack?” Gael cried. “The Land of the Two Queens?”
“You might think so,” Treyes said, almost grinning, though not happily. “But you would be wrong. No, here lies their madness: it is whispered among the fighting men, those who would be sent to face battle, that the good brothers are planning an attack on Mel’Nir. There have been plaints from King’s Bank, you see; a matter of some estates that were divided when Mel’Nir ceded Lien those lands. There are those in Lien who make claim that, in the south, Lien’s Kingdom has yet to find its proper border …”
IN THE BORDERLANDS
Gael stood on a large uneven plot of ground—some of it paved
with ancient stone, some of it green and fresh. The sky was dark, tinged only on its eastern rim with the pale light of predawn. Here on the High Plateau, the chill of autumn was in the air.
She looked to Druda Strawn—her sole companion, save for Tomas and the dog Bran. He nodded—the time had come—Gale raised her lance, uttering the words of the spell, the last magic Luran and the Shee had passed to her.
This time there came no sound, no crackling in the upper air: only a gentle shimmering in the predawn sky, a darkening, a thickening of shapes. There came the tall familiar double aisle of elms, the rough walls, ancient and half-corroded, that marked the outer boundary of Tulach’s gardens. Within, Gael saw the plantings of the Shee, all in silence, mysteriously making their place: pushing, or setting aside, the rougher grasses of the high ground.
At the end of the avenue between the tall elms, there stood Tulach’s portal: two great wooden doors surrounded by a frame of ancient stone—the house itself, the yard, did not follow the
gardens and the wall through to the land of the dark folk. Beyond, all that was to be seen was the ground of the High Plateau, stretching empty into the distance. As Gael uttered the final words that fixed the portal and gardens in this dark dimension, in the world of mortals, she felt a great weight lifting from her shoulders. This was all as Luran and the last of the Shee had desired.
“I never thought to see this place,” breathed Tomas in a low, reverent voice, breaking at length the silence. A whisper of wind struck the avenue of elms, delicately moving their branches. Their tops were touched gold by the early morning light; all else yet remained in darkness.
There was a movement at Tulach’s portal, half the great door opened: the old steward, Hurlas, the tiring woman, Widow Menn, others, half-Shee and dark alike, all those who had been called to people the house in the Eilif lords’ last days. They were waiting for Gael Maddoc, had somehow known of her approach. Hurlas held a great ring of keys, ready to lay them in the new chatelaine’s hands. Gael looked at Tomas. “I had not expected this honor,” she said shyly. The path, the avenue between the elms, loomed before her.
“Tulach is a house of retreat,” he replied. “After what has passed in Coombe … far safer that the
Wanderer
at least should make her home here, even if
Gael Maddoc
choose to dwell in other hearths.”
There was inescapable wisdom in this. Gael turned to the Druda. “Will you lead the way?”
She could not read her old master’s face, could not tell if he was happy or sad. He made the Mother’s sign, nodded, and took the first step forward.
Tomas held the horses for them, and they all went down the quiet avenue together. Through the portal, they caught their first glimpse of the yard beyond, the massive walls of the inner keep, the rambling outbuildings. Dawn opened, and the sun caught them just as they passed in through the great doors. To Gael’s astonishment, the light that was on the elms was there also in the yard of New Tulach, as if the same sun were in the sky in both places. Beneath this pale morning light, everything within Tulach’s yard appeared pale and unnaturally clean, even
scrubbed on its dark stony walls. Gael did not doubt that this was a last working of the Shee, before the hall, or at least its entrance portal, was tied to the dark folk’s world.
Druda Strawn stood tall before the people of the house, raised his strong voice, and spoke a blessing:
“Let us all give thanks to the Shee, the Bright Folk, who graced our land of Mel’Nir in Hylor with their presence for so long! Let us walk in, with respect, remembering those lost ones who have sailed into the sunset, following a golden thread.”
The vast hall was much brighter than Gael had ever seen it, with lights and fires upon two hearths and all the casements and unglazed openings in the fabric open to the sun. So they went slowly, in company with all the mass of Tulach’s people, exclaiming sometimes in wonder, through all the grand staircases and the secret stairs, the galleries and the chambers and the workrooms, the rooms containing books and other treasures. Bran the dog kept close by them and was strange and sad. He understood that the Shee had gone—Gael would have said he missed Luran his former master a little; he often came to her and Tomas for reassurance.
After a time, she and Tomas wandered alone down to the rooms deep under the Great Hall. They admired the fine, clean storerooms full of grain, winter vegetables, parsnips, carrots, turnips, and so on. There was a wine cellar next door and great tuns of ale; there were exotic foods, earth-apples or potatoes from the Lands Below the World and sacks of rice from the wet fields in Rift Kyrie.
“In any other keep,” said Tomas, “some of these rooms might have been prison cells, part of a dungeon.”
“It is too much,” said Gael, looking around at the vast riches, the plenty. “I have called Gwil Cluny—he has agreed to come, with members of his family, to help keep all this ordered.”
“A fine plan,” Tomas said. “Folk of the half-Shee will perhaps best understand the ways of keeping Tulach’s heritage fresh.”
Seeing all this food, hunger seized upon them. They made their way out of the cellars to a certain room, up the stairs from the Great Hall. It was one of the rooms she would claim for her own in New Tulach; it was Little Hearth. A small brazier had
been lit for the beginning of autumn, and there was Bran, lying on the hearthrug, perfectly at home, waving his tail when Gael and Tomas came in. There was a tray of cold food, covered, upon the table where she had seen so many things appear by magic.
After a time, the door opened, and in came Druda Strawn; he had a look that Gael remembered—concentrated but not solemn. He carried a wide band of golden brocade, woven with Chyrian symbols.
“To crown the day,” he said, “let us please the Goddess and the Gods of the Farfaring and the Shee who have moved on …”
There was some rearrangement. The Druda stood with his back to the hearth, with Tomas on his right and Gael on his left. Then he spoke to them, softly and privately; he bound their wrists loosely with the golden band, and so they were married. The two silver rings with which they had plighted their troth in the tower of the Swan lay on the tabletop, and, when the band was loosed, they exchanged the rings a second time, and so the ceremony was complete. Tomas strode round the table and kissed his bride. Gael was crying and laughing together, trying not to let herself wish that her mother was here, not to think on how her father might have felt … Bran, catching at least the happy part of their mood, bounced for joy, leapt up to lick her hands and face.
When they had got Bran settled, Tomas drew a package from the deep pocket within his scholar’s robe. “Your family could not be with us today,” he said seriously, “but look, see what they have sent along, in honor of our wedding!”
This was hard for Gael, for she knew that her parents had been long in planning for this moment, even if the Druda had not been able to carry along all the contents of the troth chest they had prepared for her. Now there was a bracelet for Gael and a set of ivory pens for Tomas, and with these fine things there was a sheet of parchment, in fact a broadsheet. The ballad was called
THE WANDERER—Battlemaid of Destiny
. The Druda glanced at it, smiling, and wondered if it might be sung to some air. Gael looked, too, and did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“Who writes such stuff?” she cried.
“Hush, wife,” said Tomas, grinning. “There’s great deal of knowledge in here.”
So Tomas read out the first verses of the ballad:
O Wanderer riding through the world,
Tall Kedran, bold and free!
With Chyrian banner wide unfurled,
How great your destiny!
 
Rulers of Hylor know her well,
The Bright Shee know her worth,
But it is for the common folk
Our Wanderer roams the earth!
 
By Wildrode and by Wennsford Town,
By Silverlode she goes,
The Wanderer heals ancient wounds
Brings mercy to her foes …
Then Gael indeed began to cry, for all she could think of was the battlefield that yet lay outside the Holywell, the frozen figures of stone, her father among them, who once had been men. Yet this must be Bress’s gift to her, Bress her brother who must think no more of battles, must take his father’s place to guard the Cup … Tomas did his best to comfort her, while the Druda stood back, a certain sadness in his expression.
“There is one more chamber here you must visit,” said Coombe’s Guardian-priest, when Gael at length recovered herself. Then Gael saw upon her chatelaine’s chain a certain key, ancient in its appearance, that she had not previously beheld—a last, softly jangling tap of magic.
“What is this room? Where is it?”
They descended to the Great Hall; Hurlas the Steward was waiting for them. He bowed his head, pointed out a faded tapestry. Gael saw then that the cloth was a mere magic shade; a word, and it had vanished, revealing a broad passageway beyond, deep cut into the earth, ancient. This time, Gael led the
way, descending the wide, shallow steps. The walls were illuminated to either side with the bright light of magic, with beautiful swirling patterns. At the bottom of the steps was a beautifully carved door. The lock yielded to Gael’s key …
This was the shrine of the Shee, the “tigh-Aoraidh,” a place of worship. There was no altar, only a place for kneeling and a simple wooden table beneath a high window, cased with precious colored glass, leaded in images of blue summer flowers and green leaves. Gael caught her breath: waiting on the table was a black lance, a black so fine it truly did absorb the light, bound round with cracked golden tape, and beneath it a sheet of parchment:
This is the Krac’Duar, the sacred Hallow of Mel’Nir. It remains here that Gael Maddoc, the Wanderer, a woman whose blood balances the old magic of the Chyrian people with the new strength of Mel’Nir, shall come to hold it.
Ghanor, the Duaring King, lost this sacred Hallow for his people through the matter of the foul slaying of Mel’Nir’s last true Champion, Simeon Red-Letter, called “the Fair, the Gracious,” son of Ethain of Clonagh, and Effan Swordmaster, a dark man of the Great Eastern Rift.
This parchment was signed, in a firm straight hand:
Lady Ethain of Clonagh, ever-in-mourning
Gael settled her hand upon the weapon. The ring of Lady Annhad flared like a star, then died down. She read again the parchment: this Simeon Red-Letter would have been Lord Luran’s half-brother. The sad story was not known to her—perhaps Ghanor himself had suppressed it, along with the name even of the Duaring Kings’ great Lance, of Mel’Nir’s own Hallow.
Grief overcame her. Her own loss, her father, was too fresh. Hot tears stung her cheeks, and she was filled with doubt and sorrow. One man’s death—was that the source of all these decades of doubt and sorrow for her land, all its hardships? War-leaders contending for power, kings who did not have the power to rule them? Yet she could not know, would never know, for the
Shee had gone, and this was all the explanation left behind them. Could she have served the Shee any better? How could
any
dark ones, any mortals, have gained their understanding, their love? And what was the meaning of this, the weapon in her hand, their repayment for her service?
“Goddess bless me,” she said softly, knowing this at least for truth: “That this weapon come to my hand for peace, and not for the making of war.”
Gwil Cluny rode in two days later, come late afternoon, on a fine warm day followed by storm clouds, the last of the summer weather. He was followed by a cart that bore his new bride, his pretty young cousin, Lyse, who had once served as tiring woman to Lady Malm, back in those heady days after Silverlode. He had come to serve at New Tulach, brought all his household with him, but also he bore great news:
“The Council has met in the Eastern Rift—Keddar has been chosen Lord of the Eastmark!”
Tomas looked at Gael, half amazed, as if to say “it has begun!” And truly, this was a matter of amazement. Mel’Nir, the land so long unbalanced between its marches, East, West, and South—and now, within just days of the Hallow’s recovery, already this happy portent!
“This has been long in the planning,” said Gael, taking Gwil’s hands in greeting, for she did not want to lay too much of this good fortune to the simple matter of her hand upon the Krac’Duar. “I heard talk of it last winter. But it is great good news!”
“Keddar is a good man,” said Gwil. “The documents and patents, even as I speak, are being sent to King Gol at the Palace Fortress.”
“He’ll do better than Huarik the Boar, or Corvin, his Wilding son!” Tomas smiled.
“Come,” said Gael to Gwil. “You must see the great house, for all within is cleaned and new. By the Goddess’s good graces, there will be a happy home here.”
They turned to go inside. Yet, before the closing of the great door, she chanced to glance to the west. There she saw that great palaces of cloud had reared up over distant King’s Bank, far away, and below the High Plateau’s heights. She shivered. The trouble Merrin Treyes had foretold for King’s Bank had not yet appeared; Yolanda Hestrem’s warning back in Eildon had yet to come to pass. She hoped these ominous clouds were not a warning, and sent up a prayer.
The clouds outside continued to thicken as the day came to its closing, followed, just after dusk, by strange torrential rains, such as were seen more commonly in coastal towns like Coombe, not up on the high ground. Then, at night, there came a dark-clad rider, riding in terror along the great avenue of elms. Her horse was foundered, blowing its breath in agony as it sank down before Tulach’s great door. The servants brought this rider to the Great Hall; Gael and Tomas descended, hastily pulling on their clothes.
It was the lovely woman-child Zarah Beck, the innkeeper’s daughter from the Swan, half-dead with cold and exhaustion. At first, she could not talk. The Widow Menn brought her a warm posset, wine, then stronger liquor. The last loosened her tongue, and then tears began to fall.
“Danger has come from King’s Bank,” pretty Zarah at last brought out, hardly above a whisper, “and gods alone know how many precious souls are in danger, by Goldgrave!”
“Tell us, Zarah,” Gael said, leaning in to better hear. “Who is now at Goldgrave? Is your good father there?”
“He was,” Zarah replied, weeping, “but now he has gone closer to the border. Brother Robard the Carrahill Tutor is there, among the battle sites, with three young scholars.”
“This is bad news,” said Gael. She thought of Brother Robard, so lean and sharp, and many happy nights at the Swan, with Robard and Terza, passing a scholar’s jokes, sharing good wine.
“O Captain Maddoc,” cried Zarah, gathering her breath. “You have not heard the worst of all, the names of Brother Robard’s callants: They are Till and Tomas Am Chiel, the sons of Princess Merilla Am Zor, in the Chameln lands. They are with their younger cousin, Prince Gerd Am Zor, the brother and the heir of Tanit Am Zor, the new-wed Queen!”
Gael took it in, and understood. This again must be Sebald’s doing, the feared blow against Mel’Nir, combined with one against the Chameln, as chance brought that land’s young heirs within range of a fast-acting strike. This action must be completed before Degan of Keddar had taken on the full mantle of Eastmark’s charge, perhaps with the intention of sending the marches of Mel’Nir, East and West, spinning back out of balance. For the King’s Bank lay between the Eastmark and the West, touched also by the smaller Dannermark, where King Gol held the titles. There would be much laying of blame, much arguing, which march of Mel’Nir must hold responsibility for allowing such a raid its success.
“See that Ebony is prepared,” she called to Hurlas as she strode across the Great Hall and upstairs toward her chambers. “Prepare my weapons.”
For Mel’Nir’s honor, she would ride out with the Lance, she would bring succor to these Chameln Princes—
all four
, she thought. For if “Rolf Beck” had reached the young princes to give warning, the time must surely have come to share the good innkeep’s secret with all the world.
“Will you ride with me tonight, Tomas?” she asked, as she fumbled within their room, making ready. He had come to stand, silent, by the door, his hand upon the good dog Bran’s great head.
“I will come,” he said softly, “if you would have me by you.”
“I need your steady head,” she told him. “We must make our way to the border, and I am not sure what we will find. I will not make war on these poor folk of Lien,” she said, pulling on her riding gauntlets. “They are pawns in a cruel master’s game. This raid—it is ill planned, but those poor soldiers are not the ones who made the decision to act. Tomas, my heart, it is time to teach this Brother Sebald a lesson—and it is not the lesson of punishing violence the Great Mother taught him when he sent his men to violate her Well.”
No—she would not have him arm himself—only a sturdy staff, to keep a man at distance, should this prove necessary. Then they were outside in the blessed cantreyn where Gael had started so many journeys, only this time it was the Krac’Duar, the Black Lance, that she held up to call the magic.
“The Gods go with you!” cried Gwil Cluny, and it was a cry taken up by the entire house of Tulach as Gael and Tomas, mounted on their horses—Zarah Beck riding pillion, her arms clenched tightly about Tomas’s waist—were taken by the spell.
 
 
They made landing in a rain-drenched wood amid a flash of powerful lightning and a resounding thunder peal—Gael was
not quite sure
that this was not caused by her spell. Rain poured down in a dark torrent through the frail roof of leaves overhead as the two horses from Tulach and their riders made their appearance, and the mist of their arrival was torn apart by the wet. Gael saw before her a dark line of soldiers, of fighting men spread among the trees; the miserable prisoners’ cart, drawn by a pair of unhappy looking ponies, heads bent down beneath the downpour, lay directly before her, surrounded by guardsmen. She would not repeat the horrible melee of the Holywell: even before the mists of the spell had cleared, she raised again the Krac’Duar, calling the Stillstand. The Lance’s power was both sweet and harsh, strong, yet with this casting, she felt herself completely in control; it was not like the terrible magic set upon her by the Ruith Nighean that night at the Holywell. With this weapon in her hand, it was but a small matter to shield Tomas and her-self, the horses, Zarah; then all that was needful was to step within the circle, open the shutter at the back of the prison cart and count the men within, all uninterrupted as the guardsmen lay in postures frozen around them.
Five of the guards who had escaped the Stillstand’s first effects—no six—threw themselves within the charmed circle in the short time it took to make that count, and were instantly trapped; those who remained outside saw the effect, hesitated. There was much calling and crying among the force: here a raid that had gone forward with such high success was of a sudden disrupted. The Lienish force had been hieing homeward in great good soldiers’ humor despite the rain; self-congratulation was in the air; now all that was gone, set awry, and this by just one woman and her companions on a single second horse.
Gael Maddoc spoke up in a voice clear and proud, once again raising the Black Lance. “It has been given to me in good
understanding that Lord Vane, the Governor of King’s Bank, is a moderate man. Whoever sent you here today—accept that your mission has failed. Fall back upon the good governor’s mercy, beg his pity, say you were sent unwilling into Mel’Nir—Lien’s good neighbor—on an errand, successfully consummated, that could only have brought our two nations to a bloody and unneedful war. For you indeed have not succeeded here today because I will not allow it, and I am the
Wanderer
, the last gift of the Shee to all good Hylor’s lands, and I will not see war and ravages visited upon our nations where the power lies in my hands to hold this back!”
There were cries around her of rage—these must be Aldmen, carefully chosen, who could only find outrage at being so spoken by a kedran. But Gael only brought down her lance—there was no cantreyn, no blessed round here, only magic, powerful and direct. The mist shrouded all, and they were gone: cart and horses together, and nothing was left, save for guardsmen still frozen within the Stillstand’s hold.
 
 
The young men came up from their stupor, gasping; Zarah Beck, reunited with her father, embraced him, weeping, in the shadows at the back of the cart. They had come away from the raiding party to the cantreyn near by the Adderneck, where Gael had one time before landed, on her journey to the Royal Chameln wedding. She was not sure why she had chosen this place: the little corner where the lands of the Chameln, Mel’Nir, and Lien all came together at the Dannermere’s edge.
It was not raining here: the night lay calm and peaceful around them, with a settled feel, as though perhaps an hour had passed since hard rainfall. They were uncomfortably close by the Lienish border, but the ride from here toward Lort was an easy one, along the Nesbath Road, and they needed only pass across the bridge at the confluence of the Ringist and the Bal to be securely on the road to safety.
Brother Robard was the quickest of those rescued to make his recovery—he was excited to see Tomas, asked many questions, one scholar to another, seeking to gain full comprehension of all points of the action that had just gone forward. Gael
almost smiled to hear him posit the possible strategies, the likely source, of those soldiers who had ambushed him and his highborn pupils. Not for nothing was Robard renowned as an expert in military affairs.
“Unlucky venture for the man who planned this!” he said meditatively. “It must have been pressed forward in secret—how else? Now, without hostages—royal hostages—these raiders will have started a wave of trouble that will be a long time settling. Balbank—King’s Bank—holds three distinct areas of command, and large forces split between them. The Governor’s household men; the Brondland regiments; and, near at hand, the Border Regiments, often associated with the Brotherhood. In all the confusion—for our Melniros soldiers will certainly rally against them, we saw three villages burned, upon the retreat—these forces of Balbank will set upon each other like suspicious dogs, each blaming the other for provoking such an unwelcome fight! It will need a strong hand come down from Balufir, from the King’s own court, to settle them. But with Kelen so lowly …”
“Your Highness,” Gael turned to the young Gerd Am Zor, known in his own land as a Seer. She wondered what he was making of all this uproar, whether he might have had time to glance within “Rolf Beck’s” mind, to see what had brought the good innkeeper of the Swan running to bring warning, to see why this man had proved so loyal to the Chameln at this crisis moment … By Gerd’s expression, the glances and keen attention he was giving to Brother Robard’s words, she guessed not. “There is little time for talk here,” she told the prince. “We must go along the road—a few hours riding, and we will come to Nesbath town, where we will find you and your cousins good sanctuary. I am afraid you must make do with your current contrivance—” The closed prison cart was worse than inconvenient, but what could be done about that? “We must move swiftly, I would see you—all of you—safely home before this night ends.”
She turned her horse within the small light of the cart’s single lamp—Robard, for the first time, caught sight of the great black lance. Recognizing the weapon at once, he could not contain a cry of sheer joy, excitement:
“It has come again!” he cried. “It has come again!”
The young princes wanted an explanation—Gael looked at her own Tomas in dismay. She was tired—the long lift of the cart, as well as the horses, without the aid of a cantreyn at one end, had taken much from her. Besides, she was not certain that the recovery of the Krac’Duar was meant to be widely known. The sacred Hallows—it was not for nothing they were called “Secrets.” They were not toys for political games; they were the gods’ gifts to Hylor, not intended for any one person’s aggrandizement. “Dear Brother Robard,” she called, rushing to interrupt him before he spoke the Lance’s name, its history. “It is just as you have said. Much
indeed
has been found this night.” Here would be a diversion indeed: she called a bright blue light to the Lance’s tip, illuminating in one quick moment all whom she had saved, princes, scribe, and innkeeper together.
Prince Gerd Am Zor, yes, he was a powerful Seer, she could almost see the touch of the Sight running through him—he was puzzled—she could see that reflected on his handsome face. Then he flinched as though he had been struck, turned, and met “Rolf Beck’s” eye.
“You,”
he said, in a voice filled with shock. “You are Carel—my Uncle Carel Am Zor. I never thought to cast my eyes on
you.
”

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