Warautumn (5 page)

She had to tell Rann!
Breathless with joy, she turned and dashed back into the chamber. But it wasn’t Rann who rose from his bed to meet her, it was a hollow-eyed Strynn rising from where she had obviously been busy reviving the cooking fire; and this wasn’t the bright and wonderful place, it was the darksome cave in which they had sheltered from the storm. Div’s heart sank, even as she felt the remembered joy like an ember of warmth in her soul. The birkit was happy, too, she saw. Why it was almost smiling—as much as a birkit could—in its sleep and, barely audibly, purring. Strynn, however, looked more troubled and nervous than ever. “What?” she demanded, as she saw Div’s grin.

The grin wilted. “I dreamed … a good dream—though I suppose that’s all it was. I’ll tell you later. What’s wrong? Besides the obvious, I mean.”

Strynn shook her head; then, to Div’s surprise, stumbled forward and hugged her: not as a friend, but as a child would clutch its mother. “Oh, Div,” she sobbed wretchedly. “I … I dreamed I was the birkit, and then I dreamed about Merry. I don’t know where she was, because it was dark. But I know she’s in terrible danger.”

“Where are we?”

“How did we get here?”

“What about the war?”

“What about the gem?”

“What about Avall?”

“What about Kylin?”

“I’m cold.”

“You’re shivering.”

“So am I.”

The words were a litany of shock, surprise, amazement, and alarm as they echoed around what was not quite a cave yet more than a cove inset in solid rock.

Six voices. Six young men who were conscious, and a seventh who was not. Four clad mostly in bright silver mail and the maroon velvet livery of Eron’s Royal Guard, one in the similar garb of a royal page, one in a stark white prisoner’s robe, one nude. Two half brothers, two sets of bond-mates, one legally linked to no one at all. The youngest: thirteen; none older than twenty-three. Three smiths, two stonemasons, a musician, and a shipwright-warrior.

All shouting their confusion in a place human voices had never stirred.

And then, from the most coherent of the lot, orders:

“Riff: firewood.”

“Bingg: fire. Then find some wine; we need it.”

“Myx, see to Kylin.”

“Lykkon, check the sky and see if you can find out where we are.”

“But Lord Regent—”

“We’re alive; we’re apparently well, and we all have some idea what’s happened. Anything else can wait a finger. Now, Avall, if you would, come with me.”

And with those commands, chaos sank back to order and seven lives began to progress again—untold shots from where they had been a scant fifty breaths before.

“It’s the place in my visions,” Avall murmured after a pause so protracted Rann feared that his friend and Sovereign had once more lapsed into unconsciousness, though he had walked to the ledge unassisted and now stood with his bare feet on solid stone, staring out at a place neither he nor the others had ever seen—with their physical eyes. Rann stood beside him, one arm around his bond-brother’s shoulders, as much for his own sake as for Avall’s, though chills still wracked both of them from when the gem had sucked life-warmth away during that insane, desperate act that had brought them here.

Wherever
here
was.

Here
was …

It was away from the war, for one thing.

Away from anyone who wanted things from Rann he was not prepared to give.

Away from decisions, duties, and responsibilities.

Away from anything he did not want to do beyond seeing to his friends and himself.

Here
was also a sheltered slot in the face of a cliff: a slot ten
spans wide, four deep, and two high; set—apparently—halfway up a mountainside, which in turn overlooked a lake that disappeared from view to either hand. Treetops showed below, and vines crept in at intervals, while the far shore—which looked to be two shots away—was a curving file of cliffs, pocked with caves and fissures similar to the one in which they were ensconced.

“My vision,” Avall repeated softly, like a man in a dream. His eyes were dilated, Rann noted. Probably his own were, too—from shock. Night wind ruffled Rann’s hair and flipped the cloak that Avall had wrapped around himself against Rann’s legs. Avall shivered again.

“What vision?” Rann dared finally, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, because anything Avall said was bound to be strange past knowing, and he faced too much strangeness already: six grown men and a well-grown boy jumped from a soldier’s tent near Gem-Hold-Winter to a place none of them had ever seen before, all in the blink of an eye.

Avall took a deep, shuddering breath. “I … saw it in Fate’s Well when I drank from it back in Tir-Eron before we embarked on this escapade. And I’ve seen it a few times since: an island in a clear blue ring of lake. But I didn’t think it was real.” Then, even more softly: “And even if it is … how can we
be
here, Rann, when none of us have ever seen it—and the gems only take us to places we’ve already been or—apparently—to people we know?”

“But they give us what we want, too, sometimes,” Rann murmured. “And if I had to guess, I’d say someone—probably you—wanted this place very, very badly indeed.”

“A place
like
this, perhaps,” Avall conceded, clutching the cloak more tightly. “A place where everything is new and we’re free to start all over.”

“Some of us,” Rann muttered. “But we’ll have to go back, you know. Too much depends—”

“I didn’t
expect
this to happen, Rann,” Avall flared. “I only wanted to destroy the gem so it would never ever hurt anyone
I love again. The rest—No, never mind: you’re right: We have to get back. That is I do—if I can.”

“If you can,” Rann echoed. “But can you? With the gem destroyed?”

Avall frowned, which segued into yet another shiver. “I don’t know,” he whispered through his teeth. “We’ve all undergone so much; maybe we
need
to anchor ourselves in familiarity before we venture away from it again. It’s too late to do more than police our quarters tonight. But tomorrow—Tomorrow—Well, I suspect I’ve taken care of that, right and proper, by smashing the gem. But I have no choice but to try—if there’s anything left—”

Rann regarded him keenly. “That’s a perilously big ‘if’—and I frankly don’t think you’re up for it, brother. Your skin’s as cold as ice, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Avall shook his head, but otherwise didn’t move. Then, slowly, like a man in a dream: “Maybe you’re right, Rann. And maybe my heart’s telling me what my conscience wants to deny.”

“What’s that?”

“That if I did anything else even marginally magical tonight, it might … kill me.”

Rann nodded bleakly—but made no move to rejoin their companions. “Food, fire, and shelter. That’s all we really need—for now.”

Avall reached out to seize his hand. “Food, fire, shelter—and
friends
,” he corrected fiercely. “Always and forever, friends.”

A cough from behind startled Rann.

“There’s plenty of firewood,” sturdy blond Riff announced, padding up in his hose feet to stand beside them. He had also shed his surcoat and mail hauberk, Rann noted, less by sight than the relative silence when he moved. Which was a good sign, he supposed, for it meant that at least one of their number was already acclimating to what was clearly the heat of more southern climes than they were dressed for. And to suddenly being … somewhere else.

As for the others—young Bingg was building a fire in the wide sweep of stone floor behind them, letting new flames replace the old flames of the fading sun. Slim, narrow-faced Myx was sorting through the odd array of material that had come with them when Avall had jumped them here, and Avall’s look-alike kinsman, Lykkon, was standing on a precipice to the right, staring at the sky and scowling.

Which accounted for the more functional members of their band. The little blind harper, Kylin, was still asleep—or unconscious—though now covered to his chin with Lykkon’s spare cloak. And dreaming who knew what, save that it was surely strange past knowing—for he had lapsed into a kind of babbling madness instants before they had all come here: a madness, Rann suspected, that was a function of contact with the death that had lain hidden within the gem he had used to jump himself and Avall away from the place they had both been captive. Maybe Avall had been right to smash it.

Yet still Rann remained where he was, as emotions warred within him. He ought to be sick with fear, he knew, for he had no idea where they were beyond the obvious.
Ought to be
, but for some odd reason wasn’t. Eight! He ought to be in
shock—
they all should be. But—

Heat washed up his back, and with it came ruddy, flickering light, exactly as the sun’s light faded. A few stars already spangled the sky.

“Let’s go face it,” Rann sighed, and steered Avall back to the fire Bingg had lit, using an abandoned raptor’s nest for tinder and lamp oil to get it started. He was already adding larger twigs from the small pile Riff had brought, courtesy of a dead tree that had fallen athwart the overhang’s southwest corner. Myx checked one last time to see that Kylin was comfortable, and scooted over to join them. Avall hugged his cloak closer about his body but made no move to seek more clothing. There were chafed red bands around his wrists and ankles, Rann noted for the first time, legacy of his being manacled to a
tabletop for most of the day. He still looked dazed, too. Or more preoccupied than anyone had a right to be. Or both.

By unspoken consent, they ranged themselves around the fire. Bingg had indeed found a bottle of wine, which he opened and extended solemnly to Avall. “Your Majesty …”

“No King, I,” Avall murmured, though he accepted it, “save maybe King of the Mountains, the Lake, and the Woods.”

“And what better to be King of?” Rann challenged, then glanced at Lykkon, who had just rejoined them.

“What happened?” Riff dared at last. “I
think
I know but … did the gem?”

Avall nodded solemnly. “Apparently when I struck it with the hammer, it … jumped us somewhere I’ve never heard of except in visions, never mind visited. Why here … I have no idea.”

“The war? How far are we, do you think?” Myx inquired casually, but his usually merry eyes were hard as stone.

A tired shrug. “Far away, I suspect—and hope, right now. How far depends on what Lyk’s been able to determine about where we are.”

Lykkon took a long draught of wine and passed it on. “If I were to guess,” he said carefully, “I’d say we were west of Gem-Hold, not only because we can’t see the Spine from here, but because the sun wasn’t as close to setting when we awakened as it was back in the camp. Of course some of that depends on how long we were unconscious.”

“If we even were,” Rann countered. “I know I was, but jumping doesn’t usually knock one out. And in any case, it only felt like a hand of breaths.”

Lykkon cleared his throat. “I’d also say we’re farther south, based on where the stars are. You can see several southern stars you shouldn’t be able to see this early back at Gem.”

“Across the Spine and south, then,” Myx summarized. “Where no one lives that we’re aware of.”

“Which is both good and bad,” Avall observed. “At least we have some supplies,” he added, after an expectant pause.

Riff glanced at him in mild confusion. “So we’re not going back?”

“If you mean
jumping
back, we probably can’t,” Avall told him frankly. “I smashed the gem, remember?”

“And why
did
you do that?” Myx demanded testily, legacy, perhaps, of earlier intoxication, though jumping seemed to have burned most of it away.

Avall glared at him—not because he disliked him, but because the man was already awakening old angers when he wanted everything new again. “Because, by using it when it was mad, it drove Kylin mad in turn, and I didn’t want that to happen to anyone I care about again—ever.”

“I’ve kept the fragments,” Lykkon confessed, looking a trifle sheepish. “Just in case.”

“As you should,” Avall conceded sourly. “We’ll still need to study the thing.”

“Things,” Rann corrected with unexpected bitterness. “Now that it’s been smashed.”

“Which makes me wonder whether the fragments have the same properties as the whole,” Avall mused. “Not only madness, but the other, more useful things. If we’re stranded here—well, it pains me to say it, but they could very well save our lives.”

“Which brings us back to
here,”
Myx growled. “Can someone be more specific than ‘southwest of Gem-Hold-Winter’?”

Avall took a deep breath, steeling himself for contention, should it appear. “If this is indeed the place in my visions, then we’re on an island in the middle of a lake with a file of cliffs encircling it.”

“Let’s hope it’s an island with food,” Bingg muttered. “Lyk’s stash of delicacies won’t last long.”