Aloren (31 page)

Chureal flicked rainwater from his lump of a nose.  “I don’t know. She has yet to speak.”  He still smiled at Andrei. 

“You know,” said Andrei.  He got unsteadily to his feet.  “You know she can’t confess.”

“What?” said Chureal. “How could I, Your Grace?”

“Got hordes of djain telling you, probably.”

“Pardons can only be issued to those who confess.”  Another Ombenelvan officer stepped up beside Chureal.  “We must respect the law.”

Andrei said, “Herist––”  

“Is dead,” said Chureal.  “Our thanks.”  Andrei shook like a tree stricken by an axe.

He sat on the ground and dug his hands into his long, matted hair.

“My lord,” said a garrison soldier, and he knelt before Andrei and spoke in a whisper, “They’re a bunch of mad dogs.  They’d murder us, enslave the people.  You know what they do in the South. Think of the Girelden.”

“Give them what they want,” muttered another of the garrison.

“Be reasonable, boy––”

“She’s a far cry from mute,” said Meladrau, who’d heard me yelling at the prisoners.  “Yes or no.  She could say either.”

“One word,” said Trid.  “Just once, Aly.  It doesn’t have to mean anything.” 

“Look at me,” Andrei said, hauling himself up to my level. “You want your people enslaved? They think I’m going to torch you.” He laughed. “They don’t get it.  I won’t. You stopped weaving––I thought you’d finished.  For gods’ sake, Aly, it’s spring, why don’t you just say no? Is the sun out? No. Are we having a garden party? No.  Am I the man you love best? No--”  His head knocked against the trunk, and he saw my left hand.  He grabbed it and held it to the torchlight.  “What happened to your finger?  Smells like a––” 

He threw it away and looked at Trid.  “You said it was palendries.” 

He turned back to me.  “Did you stop weaving to keep me alive? You left your shirts alone so you could stuff me full of weeds?” 

My feet ached.  The sky was lightening.  I was going to go mad soon.  I turned my head away, to watch for morning.   “Ah,” he said bitterly, “I destroy every life I touch. Can’t be helped.” 

The rain thinned, and he sat down again.  “I can’t do this.  They can’t make me do this.”

He fell silent at a noise.  The whinny of a horse and a great crash, both far off and muffled in the wet. 

Something barreled through the sea of soldiers, leaving a path in its wake.  A sparrow’s song rang out in the dark:

A monster burst onto the hilltop, bristling with black wings and yellow eyes.

“By the blood of the earth,” said Meladrau. 

An Ombenelvan officer sank to his knees. “Orshinq,” he said, and cried out in his own language.  His countrymen shouted and fell around him, and the hillside began to writhe. 

“
Aguna nu,
” yelled Chureal.  The men from Omben stilled and watched silently as the beast came toward me.  Its many wings spread, and a pair separated and flew off when a great load dropped to the ground.

“How’d you do it?” called the beast.

“A switchblade,” it answered itself.  Then the wings fell off entirely, and I saw it was a horse––Liskara.  She bolted into the wood.

“Where’s the bag?”  An egret picked at the pile of fallen baggage. “What’s become of Arin?”

“A sign.” Chureal looked after the horse, his face wan beneath black whiskers.  “We have time yet.”  He started forward with a torch.

Andrei thrust himself from the ground, wrested the torch from Chureal’s hands, and pushed him away.

“Get back,” he snarled.  He almost set himself alight, and his convulsive, wasted limbs flailed the torch about with so genuine an aspect of lunacy that he cleared a great circle of ground before the tree.  “Get back,” he called, pointing with the fire.  “All of you.  If you want to burn her, you’ll have to tie me to the tree as well.” 

He ground the torch into the dirt and scrambled around the baggage, scattering the birds.  They watched with cocked heads.

“Cracked?” said Mordan.

“I believe he’s trying to help,” said Tem. 

Floy alighted on a bag.  Andrei took the hint and took the old saddlebag from under her.  He somehow dragged himself and the bag over to the rowan, where he demanded I hold my hands out. 

I did so, and he dumped the Marione shirts across my arms.  And he would have stood there in the way of my brothers, knocking Herist’s head around with his boots and waiting for justice to hew the earth into halves, had Trid not pulled him aside and sat on his legs.

The birds stood before me, blending together in the half-light.  “Go on,” said Tem.  “The sun won’t wait.” 

It was light enough to see the wind ruffling Floy’s feathers.  I had no idea what would happen to her when the sun rose.  But I wouldn’t think on that.  I must make our spirits whole again. 

My aching fingers could scarce open the garments.  The first drowned Leode completely, Tem received the next, and then Mordan, and finally, uncertainly, I bent from the waist and pulled the second-to-last over the swan as best I could.  But I kept my own draped over my palms, frowning at it.

“Quickly, Reyna.  They won’t be held in suspense for long, these men.”

“Why are you waiting?” said Mordan.  They held their heads erect, awkward in the thorny garments.  No asters.  I knew what they intended.

“Put it on,” said Tem.  “Forget about us.”

“No,” I said.

“Do as I say.  I’m eldest.” 

“You’ll die,” I said.

“Better than going mad.”

“We want you to live,” said Mordan. 

I didn’t need for them to explain.  I knew what would happen: we would forget each other.  They would pass away––shot in the breast, frozen in a cold lake, old and sad in the corner of a mew––and melt back into the mud as simple beasts, while an empty pocket of earth who used to be Reyna lived on.  

Madness would be rest of a sort.  But it was cowardly.  My father stood in front of me.
Be brave.
  He was smiling, holding out his hand.

I shook my head.  I couldn’t do it.

Be brave. 

I took a painful breath and slipped the tunic over my head.

Sunlight caught in the branches above me, and the wind changed.  The tunic whipped against me, just strings and knots, for the blossoms had torn loose and formed a funnel in the wind. 

The point pierced my chest. My soul thawed and sang. 

“Yes,” I said, and I didn’t care who heard it.  “Yes.  See what I did?”  I pointed toward Arin.  “He should’ve had strong arms to fight with, and legs for kicking, and teeth for biting.  But he didn’t, and because of me.  I would I’d never wished them useless wings on him, and all the rest of them, too.”

Andrei took this as a confession, and pulled away from Trid to saw through the rest of my ropes.  I hardly noticed for the beating in my ears.

I saw wings, an albatross beating its great, white wings.  For an instant the yew wood seemed to grow, to circle round us, a sea of ancient trees stretching from horizon to horizon.  A second wind came up, cold as the moon, and a thousand black feathers blew past. 

Then they were gone, birds and feathers. 

The wood dwindled to its normal size.  A boy was sprawled over the logs at my feet, his black hair blowing across his face.  He was crumbling.  Behind him the others stood in a line.  They crumbled too, and the sun burst through them, setting the dust sparkling.  Mordan said, “You did it?  You wished us into birds?”  He laughed, voice rusting through.  “And you’ve renounced it.  Goodbye.”

Andrei stumbled under me.  I reached to steady myself, and pulled him down by the shirtfront. 

An ice aster blew out of his shirt––the last one I’d tucked next to his wound.  It caught, a warm, spidery, white thing, in the hollow below my collarbone. 

Tem knew what it was.  “Give it to Leode,” he said.  He was so good. 

“Wait.” Mordan’s voice was very faint, as though it came from deep underground.  “Composites.  Composites!”  I couldn’t guess what he was talking about.  “Don’t you remember, any of you?” 

Then I remembered.  The scent of meadowsweet, like almonds. 
They’re composites.  Got lots of little flowers on each head
.

“Maybe he’s right,” Leode said, and as if this were the final word, they held out their arms. Their hands were gone, so I tore the magnificent white flower to bits and pressed the pulp against their arms, sides, legs, wherever there was flesh––until I felt nothing. 

I reached out, searching the air for Arin, who should have been right here. And the ground here was hot, like a palm.  I placed in it the last bit of aster.

The air warmed and became a real palm, and I yanked my hand away. 

“Reyna?” said Tem. I shook my head, too distraught to believe it. 

“I saw him, Tem,” said Mordan, “right after the man snapped his neck.”

“Reyna, look.” 

I put my head between my knees and vomited.  

“She’s in shock.”

“He was alive and kicking, Tem.”

“One last push?”

“Quite a push if his neck had already been broken,” said Mordan.  “Reyna.”  I looked up, and he crouched and put his ear to his little brother’s mouth.  His hands moved over Arin’s body, feeling for something.  “Arin may be high-tempered.  His head may be in the clouds.  But he hasn’t got a foot of vertebrae in his neck anymore.”

Tem knelt beside us.

Mordan placed my fingers onto Arin’s neck, and I could feel a pulse. Like wings flying away.

Tem began to laugh––it was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. 

Floy drew her hands around her knees, and wept.

“The sun,” Leode whispered, watching it fall over his skin.

Thirty-Two

I touched them again and again, wouldn’t stop, until Leode laughed and pushed me away, and Mordan grabbed my hands.

“You’re gross,” he said.  “If you fell in the river it’d go brown.” 

“Djain.”  Chureal’s voice was sibilant with horror.  “The girl’s a witch.  She summons djain––”

Tem stood up, and so did Mordan. 

“Why should that worry you?” said Mordan.

“Touch my sister,” said Tem, “and you’ll see a demon, right enough.”

Leode climbed to his feet, too.  “We can make the trees squeeze your ugly heads off.”

Chureal disregarded this and looked over Leode’s head.  His hand touched his scabbard and he muttered something to the soldiers alongside him.

“Boy,” said a man’s voice behind us, “I hope you don’t mean to threaten us with that nonsense.” 

He spoke in the trader’s tongue.  We turned and watched as he strode toward us.  He had a dented breastplate with a strange insignia––a bounding hare––and a sopping wool cloak. He was short for a human, middle-aged, with dark skin.  

The undergrowth stirred behind him; branches whipped water about, and twenty youngish men walked out of the wood.  Dew shone on their mail.  Their surcoats were rain-blue, and they had golden six-pointed stars on their breasts. 

“Commander Chureal?” The man stopped in front of the Ombenelvan officer, and there was a loud scraping of metal as Chureal drew his saber. The other man put up a hand.  “You’re surrounded by my men. We have fire artillery, and it’s horrible, grim stuff.  Aclunese.”

“By Ayevur’s light,” said Trid..

“We are seven thousand,” the man said. “More are coming.”

Trid wiped wet grass off his breeches.  “They found you.  They really found you.”

The man eyed Trid curiously.

“Behind you,” called one of the blue soldiers as Chureal raised his saber.  The Evenalehn man turned, drew his own sword, and made a neat flick; the saber flashed in the sun and landed on the ground.  There was a hiss like steam escaping from a pot as all the Evenalehn soldiers (there were more than a hundred by now) drew their short swords.  A dozen stood behind their officer and the rest walked briskly down the line of Ombenelva, who fingered their sword belts, looking at Chureal. 

“Sit,” said the Evenalehn man, and he pricked Chureal’s neck with his sword.  “Command your men to sit.”

Looking thoroughly annoyed, Chureal barked an order.  The Ombenelva sat as one.  It looked like a vast fortress falling in on itself.  I could just make out, beyond the dark of the Ombenelvan contingent, a crescent of blue, like the sun pulling out of eclipse. 

“This whole region’s got the blight of a standing army,” the Evenalehn officer said to Trid.  “We didn’t know where the army was, though, until those”––he looked Trid over again––“They must have been friends of yours.  Not sure who you are.  A human, obviously, raggedy as a pot boy, but you speak like a gentleman.”  He shrugged.  “The consul’s better at formalities, but he’s got to heave himself up here.  I’m Officer Detrador of the twenty-second Benmar regiment.” 

The man gave a little bow.  And then he saw, really saw, the rest of us.  “You look like hell.  Have you all been ill?”

Trid looked at my brothers.  He cleared his throat.  “A bit more complicated––”

“A very long illness,” said Tem.  He was an odd sight: icicle-white in the sun and smiling like it was his birthday.

“A stranger night I’ve never lived through,” said Meladrau, relief wilting his shoulders.  “It’s a fact, sir, a fact.” 

“We’re thrilled you’re here, Officer.” Mordan took the man’s hands and kissed his cheeks.

“And who are you, my good young Gireldine?” said Detrador.

“Mordan Lauriad, who was a very unhappy bird.”

“A––a bird?”  Detrador scratched his beard.

“What’s this?” An older man came clear of the trees with the help of a young soldier.  “What’s going on?”  He pushed the boy’s arms away.  “I’m not
that
old, Prini.” 

His white hair was closely clipped in the patrician style of Evenalehn, and his robes were heavy with mud at the hem.   He surveyed us, twisting a finger in his ear.  “Detrador,” he said, “I’ve never seen a sorrier looking bunch of people.”

“Consul.  This one thinks he’s a Lauriad.”  Detrador pointed at Mordan.  “And a bird.  Must’ve been put through extreme torture.”

“You’ve no idea.”  Mordan was bouncing on his toes.

“I thought this might happen,” said Tem, stepping forward.  “Consul, you must believe us. We are Lauriads, the King’s own children.  We were presumed dead but we’d only hidden ourselves.”  He frowned.  “After a fashion.”

“Poor boy.” The Consul’s old voice wavered.  He took out a handkerchief and touched it to his eyes.  “Poor boy.  We’ll find you a bed––”

“It’s true, you bag of bones.”  I looked behind me.  Andrei still sat against the rowan trunk.  His head drooped, as though he didn’t have the strength to keep it up. 

The Consul walked under the tree and said, “You might mind your manners.”  And then more gently, “You look the worst of the lot.” He stood up straighter, digging in his pocket for something--an eyeglass. “I know you.  You’re––”

“The Queen’s bastard. Let’s not waste time.”

The Consul walked back to my eldest brother, studying him through the eyeglass.  “And I suppose you’re Temmaic?” he said, watching my brother closely.

“Yes.”

“How many siblings have you?”

“Four.”

“All brothers, right?”  He eyed Tem keenly.

“My sister is right behind you, sir, and will you grill her, too?”

“Ha!”  The Consul turned round. “I believe he’s telling the truth.  Is he telling the truth?” he said to me.  “Are you Lauriad’s little girl that got her head smashed in by a brigand?

“I don’t know about Lauriad’s little girl.” My feet were stinging and it made me sharp.  “But I’m about ready to deck you in the face.”  I stopped then, and looked more closely at the face.  I imagined a beard on it. 

“By God!” I said.  “Don’t you know me?”

Confusion passed over Calragen’s face.  “I’ve known a lot of people.  Tend to get them confused.”

“We went down the river together.”  I thought I might cry.  “You called me Aloren.”

“Aloren…”  He took my face in his hand and wiped the mud away with his sleeve.  “There they are.  The freckles.”  He laughed and shook his head.  “Aloren!  A princess with four brothers.” 

“If you don’t mind,” said Floy, who sat next to me, stroking my hair, “there are people here who need to be looked to.”  I smiled at her and went to sleep.

***

“Where’s Andrei?” I asked upon waking.  My blanket slipped from the cot onto the floor.   Afternoon sun poured into the tent through the tied flap, bathing my legs.  I was wearing a clean nightshirt, and my feet were wrapped in a cloth wet with carron oil.

“I couldn’t have asked for a merrier greeting.”  Arin was on the cot next to mine.  “Not a word for me, her own kin, and here I lie on the verge of death.”

“I’ll give you the verge of death,” I said.

“It’d be too easy,” Arin said lazily.  “Half my body’s already jumped over it.”

“What?”  I sat up.  “What’s happened?”

“Doesn’t hurt.  Better than being a swan.”  He sat up against his pillow.  I could see it took a tremendous effort.  “It’s my left half.  Won’t do what I want.”  He changed the subject.  “Andrei?”

“The boy who looks like shit.”

“The Queen’s brat?”

“How is he?”

“Very much an enigma.  His mouth’s been too busy to tell us anything.  He’s done little but eat since this morning.  Now he’s sleeping, see?”  He pointed to the other side of the tent.  There was someone bundled in the cot there.  “And you, out like a candle, wouldn’t tell us much, either.  Mordan, though, he told the whole damn story.  And now you’re awake we’d better get--” 

The door flap fluttered and Calragen stuck his head through.

“Little else can be done, boy, very little.”  This was said to Trid, who came in after him.  Once inside his voice dropped to a whisper: “Ten thousand?  Without that amulet, there is very little I can do––”

“I’m afraid it’s gone, sir,” Trid said.  “Gone.  You’ll get no more out of him.  He needs bed rest, not an old man badgering––”

“
You’re
afraid it’s gone? They won’t leave with good grace.  And there’re two thousand up here alone.  They might demand another victim.”

“I should think,” whispered Trid furiously, “Herist would make a fitting sacrifice.  We could just set him alight.  He’s more unlikely to complain than even she was.” 

The two of them looked over at me.  “She’s awake.”  Calragen bent over my bed with a great creak.  “My Lady.  You’ve proven exceptional at keeping secrets.  Surely you can help?”

“Look in the coat pockets,” I said.

“What?”  He looked at me charily, scared I’d finally cracked, probably. 

“There.”  I pointed to a grey coat draped over a chair.  Herist’s coat.  “Check the pocket. He took it when he searched me.”  Trid reached for the coat, and shook it over the floor.  The broach––the dragonfly that I had taken from the smithy during the insurrection and carried all the long way north––clapped on the dirt.  Calragen snatched it up and turned to me in stupefaction.

“You found it.”

“No,” I said.  “Nefer made it from your sketch.  Open it––he made the other piece without looking at a design.  He was amazing.  It’s in there.  It’s almost exactly the same as the other.  If you thought it was the original, they will, too.”

“But what’s this to do with––?”

“Open it!”

“How?”

“Give it here.”  He did so, and I folded back the silver legs and dropped the tiny urn into my lap.  “Use this to get the Ombenelva out.  It’s not really a bottle.  But they’ll never find out.  They wouldn’t dare try to unscrew the cap.  They’d––I expect they’d be too yellow.  They’ll never know there in’t nothing inside.” 

“But this? What is it?” 

“The
Aebelavadar. 
A fake one.
” 

Calragen’s jaw worked, his eyes moved from the broach to the lump in the bed across from me.

“There it is,” I said.  “There’s no way around it.  That’s the boy you want.  It’d be funny if it weren’t such a mess of blood.”

“The Queen’s bastard?” said Calragen.

“What?” Trid moved his head from me to Calragen.  “What?”

“He’s the Ravyir’s missing son,” I said.

“Really?” said Trid crossly.  “I can tell there’s some big story needs telling.  But leave him alone for now.”  And so we did.

***

Later that day the boys carried Arin outside, and we ate a supper of last autumn’s beans and potatoes on the grass outside the tent. Calragen ate with us, and so did Trid, who was getting on splendidly with Tem.  The late sun cast its honey light between the trees, and the evening birds started twittering.  I could no longer understand them, not directly.  What grace had been given me was gone.  It made me a little sad.

We told tales, and after a small, initial struggle I slipped back into the normal way of speaking, and wondered how I had ever got by without it.  And just to make sure I knocked Mordan’s bowl of hash into his lap, and said, “It was me did that.”

The sun sank low, and Mordan was smearing hash on me, and Trid looked up and said, “What are you doing up?”

Andrei stood in the entrance of the tent.  “I’m hungry.”  He looked better after a day of sleep, but his eyes were still strange.

Trid got up and spooned hash from from the pan into a bowl, and gave it to him.

He stared so fixedly into the bowl I though there might be a mouse in it.  “I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Why are your eyes brown?”  I didn’t know what else to say. 

“Stay here,” said Tem.  “The Consul wants to tell a story.”

“About Faiorsa,” said Arin.  “She wasn’t your mother.”

“Which ought to cure you quicker than food ever could,” said Leode through his mouthful of hash.

“You rogue,” said Calragen.  “Sit down,” he said to Andrei, “and let me work it out.”  He picked a bean off his shirt, and Andrei sat next to Trid. 

“Funny thing is, I thought I
had
worked it out.  Too weeks ago Caveira just as good as told me the  Ravyir’s son was dead. But the story starts fifteen years back. As you know, a woman named Yelse murdered the Ravinya of Lorila and stole the baby prince.  Caveira caught Yelse on the border. Though he knew the baby, he didn’t turn the woman in, because she was beautiful, and a witch.  Caveira––oh, the rascal was very desperate two weeks ago and could hold it in no longer––but I shall get to that later. 

“Caveira let her go, thinking she would repay him by performing the happy dispatch on the Ravyir’s son. His family was next in line for the throne, you see. So Ravyir Gavorian of Lorila, thinking his son was dead, turned to Caveira, who was childless, and it was tenuously decided that he would be heir presumptive to the kingdom, and his nephew Natridom after him, in lieu of, you know––”