Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (10 page)

He hesitated, eyes fixed on her hand. Not wanting to touch her. But something of her urgency must have
communicated itself, because he grasped the back of the saddle and, avoiding
contact with Soren as much as possible, swung himself up behind.

The thing in the dark let out its breath in a puff. As Soren turned Vixen, it rushed forward,
crashing through bushes in a finally audible charge. The shouting tumult of the Rose reached a
crescendo of panic, and then the sky went away.

-
oOo
-

Vixen screamed.

There wasn't time to even glance at the empty blackness
around them as the mare began leaping in all directions at once. Strake, niceness forgotten, clutched at
Soren's waist as Vixen spun in a circle, bounced forward, tried to rear beneath
their combined weight, then leapt back the way she had come. Soren, her knees wedged into Vixen's sides,
hauled desperately at the reins. She
felt like she was swimming through treacle, and it was either this sensation or
the flat nothing surrounding them which had sent Vixen into an ears-back
paroxysm.

"Hold her!" Strake ordered, his voice strangely
blurred. He slid left, nearly pulling
them both from the saddle, then with a curse pushed Soren forward so he could
grasp the reins, adding his strength, but Vixen had the bit in her teeth and
continued to rocket back and forth like a bird beating itself against the
windows of a small room. "Look for
a path!" he shouted. "A door,
a–"

"–light?" There was a patch less black than the rest, a depression rather than a
guiding beacon.

Strake followed her direction, and immediately wrenched
Vixen's head around, the bit grating horribly. They bounced toward the depression, and this time the treacle-drag was
barely noticeable. Vixen squealed again,
then bolted.

"She'll ruin herself!" Soren gasped, clutching at
the pommel. Strake had somehow taken
possession of one of the stirrups, and was perilously close to evicting her
from the saddle, pushing her forward onto Vixen's withers.

"Better to let her run it out than stop," he
replied, the voice at her ear sounding abruptly more collected. "Stopping wouldn't be healthy."

"You know where we are?" Soren stared dizzily about at black
nothing. How could emptiness feel so
crowded, so stifling? And why couldn't
she hear Vixen's hoof-beats?

"A Walk. A path
between, a gate. A quick way to get from
one place to the next. In this case, an
escape route."

He pulled her to a safer position in such a punctiliously
matter-of-fact way that she was forcibly reminded of what had so recently
passed between them. She could feel the
rigid tension in his arms, now bracketing hers. She was still sticky from him, for Sun's Sake! Neither of them were ready to be pressed up
so close, all rushed and jolted by Vixen's frantic pace.

"I think I came here when I was
annunciated
,"
she managed to say, talking from some vague notion of keeping both their minds
away from the angry horror of that memory. "
Th
-the–" She pretended Vixen's jouncing gait had
caused that quaver, refusing to make everything worse by sounding so
mortified. "The Rose was riding me
then, though," she said quickly and flatly. "So I didn't really take it in. I can only assume we're heading to the palace
now. Why is it a bad idea to
stop?" Inane, stupid words. He'd been raped, they both had, by the very
thing meant to protect him.

"A Walk is compressed. Nothing is quite solid, or truly insubstantial, and time doesn't work
the same way. I've never managed to cast
one, not many can solo, but I know that stopping or turning from course has
caused disappearances. The travellers
never come back."

An unusually garrulous speech for Strake, especially now
they were bent low over Vixen's neck, their breath half knocked out by the
mare's pace. Soren tightened her grip on
the pommel, bracing herself, far too aware of the way their bodies surged
together, of how he must be hating her.

Still, she forced herself to ask: "Why did it do that
to us? Why does it want you dead?"

He didn't answer.

"I have to know," Soren continued, with as much
asperity as she could muster, trying not to sound so pathetically lost. "Don't you understand that? I don't know if I'm actually capable of
protecting you, but I can at least try to stop the Rose from leaving you to the
clutches of whatever that thing was. And
I have a far better chance of doing that if I know why all this is
happening."

"You'd know more about that than me." Strake was regaining the caustic edge to his
voice.

"You know what happened to you at least!" she
cried, exasperated. "Why you're
still alive, what it is that's hunting you."

"No," he said, with immense reluctance. "I don't."

Chapter Nine

So far as Soren could tell in the stifling absence of the
Walk, they had been travelling for less than an hour when the dark went
abruptly away. Fortunately Vixen had
slowed to a tired walk and simply stopped as the world returned, lifting her
head. The Garden of the Rose, already
outlined by the nebulous light of early dawn.

Nothing moved. No
coil of thorn and jagged leaf whipped down, and not a hint of pressure touched
Soren's mind. It could very well just be
a plant. Overgrown, neglected, mute.

Strake immediately slid from Vixen's rump, eager to get as
far from Soren as possible. After
admitting ignorance, he'd fobbed her questions off with such a sudden return to
anger that Soren had given up the argument. It was impossible to debate with a man who was pressed up against your
back, saying curt, furious things directly into your ear.

With mixed feelings, Soren dismounted as well and patted
Vixen's sweat-damp neck. The mare would
be thirsty, but Soren was reluctant to let her near the small rectangular pond
which lay toward the back of the Rose's Garden. The birds never drank from it. Birds didn't enter the Garden at all.

Turning, Soren forgot all about her horse. Strake was standing arrested, staring up at
the dark, velvety blossom which represented his life. The colour was leaching from his face as she watched,
leaving him a peculiar waxy tan.

"What wrong?"

"It's black." He spoke like a man returned from a visit to a neighbour to discover his
house burned to the ground: the dismay was almost drowned by astonishment. He could not quite believe what he saw.

"That means something?" Soren spared a nervous glance toward Fleeting
Hall. There were always guards posted at
the doors to the Hall of the Crown. She
could see the warm glow of their lanterns, but they were surely too far away to
hear. Other palace staff passing through
were far more of a risk, one which would increase as the sky grew brighter.

Her moment's inattention had given Strake the chance to
regain his composure. He never seemed to
lose it for long, and had reverted to impatient and unfriendly. "It doesn't matter." He glanced back at the flower as if he would
rather it wasn't there. "You have a
duty to fulfil, Champion," he continued, giving her the title with angry
sarcasm. "Perhaps you should stop
wasting time and do so."

He meant that she should pronounce him King. The ideal moment, when they were before the Rose,
and no-one knew that the heir was anywhere near Tor Darest. She wondered how she was supposed to go about
it.

And if she should.

"First tell me what it means, that the rose is
black."

The anger was immediate. He seemed to grow taller, bridling up so that it was suddenly impossible
to deny that this was a Rathen, royal blood, heir. Even Vixen felt it, tossing her head and
stepping back. Her hooves struck the
paving like a summons.

"You think this a matter of choice?" The words were calm, but he looked as if he
were about to hit her.

"Not at all," Soren replied, also standing as
upright as she could, clutching Vixen's reins until the leather was sure to be
imprinted into her skin. The muscles of
her shoulders tightened in anticipation of a blow, but she forced an entirely
false calm into her voice.

"You're heir and I'm supposed to proclaim you,"
she continued. "But this seems to
be one thing that the Rose isn't rushing to force me to do, and I want to know
why. Stop acting as if I have anything
to do with what's happened to you, for you know – you must know – that it's the
Rose which will make you King and the Rose which did that to both of us. Both of us, mark you. You can stand there and glower at me all you
want, but that will only make it more likely we'll be spotted. And then...I guess you'll have to gamble on
other people's loyalties."

"Trying to blackmail me will get you nowhere,"
Strake retorted. He was flint, perfectly
inclined to wait and see how the palace would react to him.

"Oh, will you get down off your high horse?! Do you think that instead of stamping about
making the worst of everything you could attempt to work with instead of
against me? You've the temperament of a
fest-hall cook, but you're to be King. I
have just as little choice about that as you. But if I'm to spend my entire life running around trying to keep you
safe, I need to know what's going on. You mightn't know for certain why you're alive, or what's chasing you,
but I'd wager you've a better idea than I do. You know what happened to you before you all of a sudden turned up in
Teraman. You certainly know what it
means that your rose is so dark. Stop
sulking and give me an explanation."

"Sulking?" He said the word with infinite affront, but spoiled it with a wry twist
of his mouth. Shaking his head, he
looked down.

"I–" The
full weight of what she'd been saying crashed down on Soren. Arguing with a Rathen mage, with the future
King. This wasn't what being Champion
was about. But apologies weren't going
to solve the problem, and he had at least stopped fuming. "I'm not your enemy, Strake," she
added simply.

"Maybe not." A short stride took him directly beneath the rose, and he inspected the
fragile silver rims of the petals intently. "It means I'm about to die."

Soren hadn't been prepared for this, and stepped back as if
she could escape the implications of his words. Vixen, standing just behind her, nudged her in the ribs, but Soren
couldn't spare any attention. "Die?"

"I've only once seen a rose go black, when my uncle lay
half-alive for three days before finally giving in. More usually, the flowers only get blown with
age – more open. At the moment of death,
all the petals fall. A black rose...they
happen very rarely. Cases of poisoning,
sickness beyond the ability of any to cure, broken skulls."

"You haven't a broken skull."

"Not yet." He gave her one of his sour looks. "It seems I soon will. Is
that enough explanation for now, or shall we wait for an audience?"

Soren stared up at the black rose. "What of the thing chasing you? And how you came to Teraman?"

Strake was looking toward Fleeting Hall. "Later," he said. "You have my word, if you need it."

There were footsteps approaching, steady but not hurried,
and very near. Soren, the implications
of Strake's impending death unravelling in her mind, looped Vixen's reins over
her neck and moved to stand next to him. The black rose dipped to meet her and she paused, because she did not
know what to say.

It was at this precise perfect moment that Aristide
Couerveur walked into the Garden of the Rose. He was wearing a light, silky dressing gown over loose trousers, but was
otherwise as impeccably presented as the last time Soren had seen him. He didn't even seem surprised.

There was no time to freeze or panic. Soren lifted her hand to brush the very tips
of the fragile petals and looked straight into the eyes of the man she was
about to disinherit. "Aluster Veristace
Rathen," she said, then added with exacting simplicity: "King."

Several things happened at once. The rim of silver on Strake's rose flashed
bright enough to hurt, the light shifting gold before it vanished. Strake made a small noise, a grunt of pain or
effort. And a thousand bells rang.

Metal tongues in metal throats, falling over themselves in
eager triumph. High as birdsong, deep as
night, cascading everywhere and through everything. A clamour of acclamation so powerful that
Soren's chest vibrated in sympathy, and only Aristide Couerveur's interested
gaze kept her from covering her ears.

It wasn't easy to think in the midst of joyous
cacophony. Soren's thoughts kept being
bounced from their course as she tried to divide her attention between Strake's
expression and the possibility that Lord Aristide would be rash enough to attack
them in the Garden of the Rose. And a
strange sense that she'd suddenly acquired a dozen extra eyes.

Since it was impossible to be heard in the riot of noise,
and Strake and Lord Aristide were just standing surveying each other, Soren
concentrated on herself first. An
unlooked-for section of her mind seemed to have suddenly opened up, or been
invaded, by...locks. Locks which were
home to spiders, locks which were frozen with rust. Locks which were in part tiny killers; cold
and patient. Shining locks, recently
oiled, warm with use. A dozen hundred
locks. And their doors. In every direction, doors. And musty stairs and cobwebbed windows and
tiled roofs enduringly whole beneath their burden of leaves and dirt. Gardens, bright and blooming, and one
parched, desiccated from neglect. Rooms
empty and still, others warm with life. People. Walls and corridors and
floors of stone and wood and marble, held together by a coiling all-pervasive
force. All around them, everywhere. Infesting, upholding every part of the
palace. The Rose.

And bells. She'd
never known there were so many in the palace, indeed that there were any
outside the Chapel of the Sun. But there
were two at each corner of Fleeting Hall, warm and mellow. A cluster of twenty at the very entrance of
the palace, turning and rocking above the great golden doors. And one massive cup of metal, just beyond the
throne room, exulting the new King in a voice of silver thunder.