The Lioness

Chapter Ten

Kerian stood before her brother, but she didn’t know him. She knew the shape of his face, the cut of his shoulders, the way he held his head. She recognized him, but not the hardness of his eyes, or the way he looked at her as though across a gulf of distance and time.

“Dar,” she said.

His eyes grew colder.

Elves in their rough gear stood still. The little shadow that had been a screech-voiced old woman was gone.

“Brother,” she said.

Iydahar turned from her. Silently, he held out his hand to Ayensha. “Ayensha,” he said, and in all the years she’d known him, Kerian had never heard such tenderness in her brother’s voice. “Wife,” he said to the woman Kerian had rescued, “where have you been?”

Wife! Kerian drew breath to speak, to give words to her wonder. She fell silent, the words unshaped, for one tear, perfect and silver, slid down Ayensha’s cheek, making a shining trail through the grime of days.

“Husband,” Ayensha whispered. “Ah, I have been on hard roads.”

Kerian saw again the haunted, hunted woman jerked into the Hare and Hound, hobbled and hands bound. She watched in silence, breathless, as her brother took in Ayensha’s words and the meaning Kerian only guessed.

Iydahar opened his arms, gathered his wife to him, and held her gently.

A hand closed round Kerian’s arm. Gruff, his voice like gravel in his throat, Jeratt said, “Give ’em peace, Kerianseray.”

Jeratt led her away, across the basin to the foot of the hill. Someone came and brought her water. Kerian drank without tasting. All the elves who had been hidden in shadow stood now in the light of day, and there were at least a dozen of them. By design or instinct, they ranged themselves so that their backs were to the two weeping in each other’s arms, so that they formed a wall of privacy for the wounded pair.

Kerian did not see or speak with her brother for a week after her arrival at the outlaw camp. Iydahar and Ayensha kept to themselves. That her brother was angry, she did not doubt. No sign of it did she see, but she felt it. At night sometimes, sitting beside a fire at meal, sitting alone and looking high to the glittering sky, she felt Iydahar’s anger.

“Man’s planning,” Jeratt said to her, one evening when all slept around them. He poked at the fire, sending a plume of sparks dancing up. “Man’s planning. You can see it on him.”

Kerian could see very little to recognize in her brother. His eyes were cold when he looked at her, his expression stony, and that had nothing to do with his grief or his anger.

She thought about it often, awake in the nights, often alone. She paced the perimeter of the basin, silent-footed, careful not to disturb sleepers. They did not post watches here, Kerian marveled at that. They all slept the nights through, secure in the embrace of a warding none doubted.

“The old woman,” Jeratt told Kerian on the first night. “You don’t always see her, the woman’s half-crazy, but you can count on the ward.”

Kerian had seen that they all did, going about the nights and days as though they were safe within walls. And so she paced, and sometimes went up the hill and sat on high ground, thinking.

This band were outlaws in the eyes of Lord Thagol, hunted by his Knights and gleeful disruptors of his peace. They hated him, some with passion, some with private cause.

“Saw him once,” Jeratt said. “Pickin’ around the wreck of a supply train we tore up. Cold as winter, him. Nah, you see the mark of how mad he is on his Knights, the poor bastards he sends out to collar us and kill us. Them’s the ones look like ghosts, for all you hear about him being the spooky one. Them’s the ones.” He shook his head, spat, and pulled his lips back in a feral grin. “The Skull Knight, he does something to their minds when he ain’t happy. Fills ’em up with nightmares and such.”

Her voice thin as a blade’s edge, Kerian said, “On the parapet of the eastern bridge in Qualinost, Thagol pikes the heads of those his Knights catch and kill.”

He scratched his chin. “Aye, but he can’t pike all of us. We’re all over the hills, Kerianseray. Here in the east, out in the western part of the kingdom. Not so many of us up in the north by the White-Rage, but a few in the south, too. Some’s just outlaws, robbers and killers, but a lot of us ain’t that. A lot of us’re just drifters, not fittin’ anywhere but places like here.”

Kerian began to see that Jeratt wasn’t so bad, and she thought that there were worse places to be than in the basin among the outlaws. They were cordial, if not friendly. This, for Iydahar’s sake and for the sake of what she’d done for Ayensha.

“Ayensha is my niece,” Jeratt said gently. “Her mother was my own mother’s sister. I love the girl well, and I thank you for the saving of her.”

“Are Iydahar and Ayensha part of your... band?”

He twisted a wry smile. “She is, he ain’t.”

Dar held a kind of sway over them, though. They looked to him; they heeded him. The mystery of that was not one Jeratt was willing to unfold, and Dar himself never came into the light of the fires to share the truth of it.

The days changed, nights brought warning of winter, and sometimes frost sparkled on the stones in the morning. Perhaps Kerian could have moved on, but she still hoped to speak with her brother. Most days there was no glimpse of him. Truth to tell, she didn’t feel much like leaving this safe place.

On one of those frosty mornings, Kerian said, “Jeratt, am I a prisoner?”

Jeratt shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Maybe you’re a guest. You sit here among the fires, eat our food and use our blankets to keep you warm, and no one’s stopping you from using the privy places, but you walk up the hill too far—” He shook his head. “Yeah. Maybe you are a prisoner, something like that. You walk too far, you don’t get anywhere fast.”

Kerian knew what he meant. She’d twice before felt the distortion of her senses and the lost feeling brought on by the forest. She had no interest in feeling that again.

Jeratt chewed on a strip of tough venison, working his jaws until it was soft enough to swallow. He offered her some. She chewed for a while and drank icy water to wash it down.

Into the gilded bedchamber of the elf king came news of death. Word came several nights after he’d seen Nayla and Haugh return to the wood with his order to find Kerian, his token to give to her. He had watched for their return, for Kerian’s return. He had gone to sleep nights waiting, hoping. No word had come.

Now, this night, when he had no court function to attend, no meeting with his mother, no claim at all upon his time or attention to distract him from worry, the king sat reading in his library. He sat warm before a high fire, listening to the sounds of Planchet in the bedchamber, his servant muttering to himself, talking to others, ordering the rest of the night for his master.

Gilthas smiled, hearing his servant’s voice. Planchet had been the first to know how things stood between the king and the pretty servant of Senator Rashas, the Kagonesti woman Kerianseray. He had been the first enrolled in the secret of their love and the secrets that had grown from it. Gil imagined his trusty man now, going around the bedchamber, his hands full of the clothing the king had discarded throughout the day—the morning robe, the robes of state for the afternoon’s session with the Senate, a riding costume, for he’d hunted in the Royal Forest in hours after that. When Planchet knocked, he was not prepared to see what he did see, the white face, the darkening eyes as Planchet stood in the doorway between the bedchamber and the library.

“My lord king,” he said. He held no armful of clothing, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They hung, empty by his sides. “They are killed, sir.”

Gilthas closed his book, his heart loud in his ears. The breath of the fire in the hearth was a roaring. The red glow of the tame flames made Planchet’s face shine whiter.

“Nayla Firethorn and Haugh Daggerhart. Dead in the ashes of a burnt tavern. The burning, it was the work of Sir Eamutt’s men. The killing of your mother’s folk…” Planchet’s eyes glittered. “My lord king, that was the work of others. Kagonesti, they say.”

“Kerian—”

“The burning was of the Hare and Hound in Sliathnost, and many houses in Sliathnost were also burnt. In payment for a Knight’s life, they say. Two other taverns have been burnt, one at Ealanost, another ten miles south at the waycross where the north-south road from Ealanost meets the road to Qualinost. In all cases, it is said by survivors that Knights have come to demand that Kerian be hunted and captured and brought to Qualinost for—” he stopped, then swallowed hard—“for beheading, my lord king.”

Planchet, faithful servant, winced to see his king take each word in, winced to see his poet king’s eyes fill with dread.

“Find her,” said the king, his voice grating, hoarse and thin. “Send more men to find her.”

Gilthas turned his back on the library, on his servant then leaving to do his king’s bidding. He opened the glass-paned doors to the balcony and stepped into the night.

Upon the bridges of the elven capital, the silvery spans that had stood to ward a fabled kingdom for centuries, the king saw that no guard walked. Beneath the starred sky, the moon just rising, no black armored Knight marched. The towers stood dark, no light of brazier gleaming from slitted windows, yet in the misty moonlight, he imagined he saw subtle motion, drifting images of ancient Forest Keepers. He imagined—it seemed so clear to him!—that he heard the tread of their booted feet, the rattle of their armor.

Gilthas shook himself, banishing the fantasy.

Behind him, Gilthas was aware of Planchet returning to the library, the chime of a crystal carafe against a crystal goblet. The king did not turn but remained looking out to the bridges. The severed heads of elves perched upon the eastern bridge. His belly turned as he smelled the stench of rotting flesh brought to him on an unkind breeze. He wondered where Thagol’s Knights were, the ever-present patrols used to marching above the captured city.

Across the city, a tall dark figure walked out from the unlighted eastern tower, illumined by starlight and the new-risen moon. The elf king’s eyes narrowed. The figure stood at the inner parapet, leaning upon the wall with a hand on either side of a severed head. He didn’t seem to notice them or care that he breathed the stench of decay. The night breeze caught the figure’s cloak and tugged it back from his shoulders, flaring like wings. In the starlight, the man’s face shone white as a scar.

The king’s face flushed with anger, his pulse thundered hard, high in his throat. He formed the Knight’s name in thought—Eamutt Thagol!—and the man turned, as though he heard himself called.

Gilthas blinked. Behind his eyes, fire flashed, torches and flames, and smoke roiled up to the sky, blotting out stars. In his ears were the voices of elves screaming, men and women. He heard a child shriek, and the shriek suddenly cut off, as though by a knife.

Anger became mounting fear as Gil saw the evil in the eyes of Sir Eamutt Thagol. For a moment, his stomach lurched. The elf king drew a settling breath then heard the thunder of a draconian march. The air filled with the clank of steel and mail, the hissing laughter like poison on the air. The puppet king and the Skull Knight stood eye to eye across the distance, and when they broke, it was the elf king who broke first. Head high, Gilthas nodded, once, curtly as to dismiss. He turned and went into his library. In his ears still rang the sound of draconian feet. He thought of Kerian, his heart heavy with fear for her.

He called, “Planchet, I have changed my mind. Recall what men you sent after Kerian.”

Planchet reappeared, his eyes widening a little in surprise. “My lord king?”

“Recall them. We will not pursue her; we will not seek her.” He looked back into the night at the Skull Knight in his wind-caught cloak. “We will not lead Thagol to her.”

We will leave her to her fate, thought the king. Bitterly, he thought, we must leave her and hope some god finds her.

Time passed, and in this season, more quickly than in others, for autumn is short-lived. At the end of Kerian’s second week among the outlaws, she smelled cruel frost on the morning air. In the morning, watching hunters come down the slopes with braces of hares and fat quails, Kerian poked the central fire awake, scooting close for warmth as she slipped her knife from its sheath. She was not permitted to go out with the hunters, not even to set or check traps. She was, however, expected to clean and prepare their catch.

“Workin’ for your supper,” Jeratt said, twisting a smile. She had grown used to his companionable jibes.

One after another, trappers and hunters dropped their catch beside her. This cold morning, Kerian scented snow in the winds crossing the Stonelands to the east. That morning and all the day she sensed change. Later, sunlight fading before purple shadows, the outcasts, all the folk who sheltered in the rocky fastness behind Lightning Falls gathered round the old woman they named Elder.

One other came to the council circle with them, and sight of her filled Kerian with astonishment. She was Bueren Rose, white as a winter moon. In her eyes shone a light like funeral fires ablaze. Kerian drew breath to call her name, moved to take a step toward her old friend, to ask how she had come to be there. Jeratt’s hard hand held her.

“No,” he said. “Be still, Kerianseray. Let her be.”

The sky above grew deeply blue and a thin crescent moon, ghostly yet, rose early over the trees. Bueren didn’t look around or try to see the people she stood among. She did not seem to care about more than whatever consumed her.

Kerian kept to the outside of the circle. If Bueren saw her, all the better, for she imagined the taverner’s daughter would like to see a friendly face in this strange place. Elder lifted her hand.

Iydahar left his wife’s side and parted the circle. He did not stand before the old woman. Rather, he kept his back to her. Head high, he looked into a middle distance, some place no one else could see.

“Hear!” Iydahar’s voice started Kerian. Strong and deep, the one word was weighty as stone. Those gathered grew even more still, and it seemed to Kerian that no one breathed. “Hear, for a thing has been said, and a thing has been done, and all must know.”

Kerian stood still. Around her the outlaws did the same, attentive.

“It is commanded!”

In the sky, a red tailed hawk sailed, its shadow rounding on the stone.

In a voice his own and not, Iydahar said, “By order of the invader, my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol, he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualinost, is declared outside the law.”

Those in the circle murmured, their voices like small echoes of the thundering falls beyond their shelter.

“By the invader’s order,” Iydahar intoned, “with Senator Rashas’s agreement, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace or benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.”

Someone snorted, commentary on the benefit of the laws of green Beryl.

“All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, refusing her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary, and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There she will be beheaded, this sentence to be executed in the sight of the citizenry of city.

“All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence.

“It is commanded!”

A shocked Kerian stood still as stone as Bueren Rose stepped forward to speak. She spoke of the death of her father and other luckless citizens of her village.

Her voice strained, as though freezing to ice, she said, “My father fell to a Knight’s beheading sword.”

The news struck Kerian hard. A woman near Kerian sighed. Bueren flung back her head, wailed to the deepening sky, “By Thagol’s command, my father was murdered by a Knight his fellows named the Headsman!”

Jeratt’s voice cut like a blade. “The bastard! Ah, Rosie—”

Bueren Rose looked up, her tears flowing. Her lips moved, but Kerian couldn’t catch the words.

Voices rose in outrage, thunder rolling around the stony basin, up the hill and rumbling down like storm coming. Elder shouted high, keening and bitter anger. Men and women reached for weapons. The hair lifted on the back of Kerian’s neck. She felt ashamed of the trouble she had caused. Worse, Kerianseray of Qualinost, the runaway servant of Senator Rashas, was to be hunted and brought back for public execution.

She looked around, her hand on the dwarf-given knife, fingers curling round the bone grip of the little weapon that had both saved Ayensha and made an orphan of Bueren Rose. In the purpling light, she saw neither sympathy nor lack of it on the faces of the gathered outlaws.

“You,” said Iydahar, pointing across the circle to her. “Come here.”

Almost she thought, That isn’t my brother! So fierce his eyes, so hard his expression, she did not recognize even the shape of his features.

Narrow-eyed, angry, she lifted her head and the breath she drew cut sharply into the silence. Before she could speak, a finger poked her ribs, hard, and Jeratt growled, “Go, Kerianseray. Don’t argue.”

She saw, behind her brother, Bueren Rose’s face, wet with tears. Ayensha took Bueren into her arms, hushed her, and held her.

Her voice even and cool, Kerian said, “Brother, do you wish to speak with me?”

His expression did not soften, and he spilled into his hand something shining from the little pouch at his belt—Gil’s ring! In her brother’s hand lay the half of the topaz ring the king had retained.

Dar spoke, and the flintiness of his voice caused her to shiver. “Two elves of Qualinost are dead, and they should not have been killed, but feelings are high in the forest now. I wish it hadn’t happened. You, too, might regret their deaths, sister. They came to tell you your master calls.”

Master!

The word stung like a slap. Once out of Iydahar’s mouth, it ran round the circle, growling, until, again, Kerian flung up her head. She spoke now, and not as her brother’s small sister, not as a child or even a woman he knew.

“You speak, brother, without knowing what you’re talking about. You make assumptions about things you don’t understand. If you wish to talk with me, find a place apart and we will talk.”

The circle shifted, men and women looked at each other, wondering what Iydahar, so clearly used to deference, would say to his sister’s reply.

“Sister,” Iydahar said, haughty, “I’m not used to begging.”

“Neither, does it seem, are you much used to courtesy.”

The breeze off the hill shifted, growing cold. Kerian saw the shadow of the hawk whirling, spinning round and round across the stone of the secret fastness, and it seemed to overlay another shadow, that of a wolf running. Startled, Kerian looked away. Her eyes now held by the keen gaze of Elder. In her heart she heard words no other did.

Killer! You have killed, and the Invader has killed. Each of you will kill again. For what will the deaths you make count, Kerianseray of Qualinost?

Frowning, Kerian lifted her chin, firmed her shoulders. The red-tail screeched across the sky, its whirling shadow vanished, taking with it the phantom of the wolf. She turned from Elder and met her brother, eye to eye. Her hands were fists. She lifted one and opened it.

“Give me the other half of my ring, Dar.”

He snorted. “This ring you got from your master, the puppet king?” His fingers closed over the glittering gold and the topaz. “Will you go running back to him now, Kerian? Will you scurry home safe to your lover’s bed?”

Her eyes narrowed at the insult. Murmuring rose up from all those gathered, questions, and again the cry, “Spy!”

Kerian ignored the suspicion turning suddenly threatening. She spoke to Dar alone and felt the eyes of Elder on her. “You are a fool, brother, but one I loved well enough to leave the city and come to find because I saw our cousin dead and thought you might be in need. It is true I killed a Knight and caused this sorrow to fall on Bueren Rose. It is also true that I rescued Ayensha and took chances with my own fate. I see now that you are not in any danger and have no need of me. I see that you have plenty of friends for yourself.”

She glanced at Bueren Rose, swiftly, then back.

“Give me what is mine, Dar.” She lifted her head, and from her lips came words to startle her brother, the outlaws gathered, and most strongly—herself. “Never again in my presence refer to Gilthas as a puppet. He is our king, Iydahar—he is mine, and he is your king and lord of all these here as long you feed and clothe yourselves on the fat game of his forests.”

She said no more. She walked out of the circle and felt the eyes of all upon her. Most keenly, she felt the eyes of Elder. Surprised, she knew it in her bones that the ancient elf woman was pleased.

That night winter came, and it was a night filled with snow falling, kissing the cold cheeks of sleepers. Kerian, sitting before the highest fire, that in the center of the stony basin, watched the flakes fall. She did not watch them gather upon stone or cluster upon the boughs of pine trees. She had eyes only for those spinning madly down into the flames. Dar had left, Ayensha and Bueren Rose with him. Kerian had not heard their departure or said farewell. She did not know where they’d gone, into the forest alone or to some hidden camp of Kagonesti. Now she knew that she had a decision to make: go or stay. Her brother no longer mattered. She’d learned what she came to find out, that he was alive.

Kerian sat a long time in silence before the fire until she looked up to see Jeratt sitting outside the light.

She said, “What?”

He came closer and sat across the fire from her. For a moment he watched the snow as closely as she. Then, “This king of yours, Kerianseray of Qualinost, is he worth anything?”

“Plenty.”

“Is he worth your brother? Because Iydahar didn’t leave happy.”

Kerian shrugged. “We come and go, Dar and me. I didn’t trade him for the king; I’ll see him again.”

“So. That king?”

She drew closer to the hissing fire. “He walks a tightrope, balancing between a dragon and a Senate that spends all its time and mind trying to reckon how to stay comfortable and alive rather than how to take back an ancient kingdom from the… invader.”

Jeratt edged closer. “Your king, he’s got a sackful of trouble.” He looked around at the sleeping outlaws. Many, Kerian had learned, were one-time Forest Keepers dismissed from service under an edict Gilthas had been loath to sign; some were Wildrunners from Silvanesti, come out with Porthios in his noble-hearted and ultimately doomed quest to unite the elven nations. “Trouble your king’s got, but he’s got no army.”

“No,” she admitted. “He doesn’t have an army.”

No army yet. The thought startled her.

As winter came down, locking the eastern part of the forest into a cold season and Kerian into her decision to seek shelter among the outlaws, the startling thought stayed with her and became, through familiarity, less and less startling.