Deborah Hale (2 page)

The few tales he’d heard of the Vestan Islands had long made him burn with resentment. Why had
they
never come to Um
bria’s aid during the long, bleak years the mainland had suffered under Hanish tyranny?

“Rath…”

“Does it not gall you that they summon us like this? Taking for granted you’ll have reached here and done what needed doing—as if it was some dance through a garden, rather than a near-impossible trek that might have killed you a dozen times over?”

“I’m sure they did not mean it to sound that way.” Maura entreated him with her soft, green gaze that might have moved the heart of a death mage…if such creatures had hearts.

There’d been times Rath wished he had no heart. The cursed thing was a weakness he could ill afford.

“I know it sounded rather…curt.” Maura held out the strip of parchment to him. “There is hardly room to write a long, courteous letter on something small enough to wrap around a bird’s leg.”

Rath gave a grunt of grudging agreement. For all he loved Maura, he hated it when she was right.

“I doubt the Vestan wizards take it for granted I have accomplished my task. This message is a sign of their faith that I would prevail. Now they will be waiting and watching for us to come, perhaps fearing we will not.”

Rath pointed skyward, to where the messenger bird had disappeared from sight. “When that fellow returns with his leg band removed, it should give them reason to hope.”

“True.” Maura reached for his hand with the air of a weary laborer once again shouldering a burden from which she had hoped to rest. “All the more reason we must not tarry.”

“Why should we not?” Rath demanded. “You were all but dead a few days ago, and I am not long out of the mines. Who has the right to deny us a little well-earned rest and a chance for some quiet time together? Umbria has waited a thousand years for its Waiting King. Can it not wait a few days more?”

An even more defiant notion followed on the heels of that
one. “Why must we do this at all, Maura? Any half-wit would know better than to think the two of us can liberate an entire kingdom. If those oracles and wizards on the islands have done nothing about it in all these years, who are they to lay an impossible burden upon
our
shoulders. Slag them all, I say!”

When he would not let her lead him away quietly to do the wizards’ bidding, like some tame dog, Maura headed off on her own. “You do not mean that.”

“I do mean it.” Rath had little choice but to follow her. “What makes you think I don’t?”

Maura whirled about to face him. That soft green gaze had turned as hard and fierce as glittering poison gems. Rath had not seen that look since the day he’d taunted her into crossing Raynor’s Rift. He had missed it—daft as that seemed.

“Where is the man who brought me to this glade last night?” She peered around Rath, pretending to look for someone else. “The man who offered himself as my champion? The man who promised to go wherever I bid him and do anything in my service?”

Rath growled. The only thing he hated worse than Maura being right was when she managed to turn his own words back against him. “That was different!”

“How? Was your pledge of homage just empty talk?” Beneath the scornful challenge of her questions, Rath heard a bitter edge of disappointment.

“I did mean it—every word!” Could he put into words all that had changed between then and now, in a way that would make sense to himself, let alone her? “Like you, I expected to find some powerful warrior king of legend. I would gladly have served him, and you, playing my small part in the certain success of his battle against the Han.”

A sigh welled up from the depths of his bowels. “But there is no magical warrior king. There is only me and you. Whether something went amiss, or this whole Waiting King business is
only an ancient joke, there is no way I can do what people expect of King Elzaban.”

The sharp angle of Maura’s brows slackened and a flicker of doubt muted the righteous anger of her gaze. Perhaps she was remembering the dread of certain failure with which she’d first faced her own impossible quest.

Rath had done enough dirty fighting in his life to know he must strike hard while her resolve was weakened.

“What good will our deaths do anyone? A failed uprising will only make the Han clamp down harder and serve to discourage more able rebels who might come after us.”

Maura caught her full lower lip between her teeth and a troubled look crept into her eyes, like an ominous shadow. Rath knew how she would shrink from the prospect of bringing harm to others. Part of him felt ashamed to exploit such a noble vulnerability, but he told himself it was for her own good.

If it were only his life at stake, he might have risked it. But he had felt the helpless, gnawing torment of seeing Maura in peril. It weakened him in a way he could not abide. Let the rest of Umbria perish—he must keep her safe at any cost.

“We will do a sight more good going back to Windleford, once all this fuss has settled down.” His tone mellowed as he spoke of his modest dreams. “Rebuild Langbard’s cottage, make a peaceful living, raise a family in the Elderways.”

That kind of life would be enough of a challenge for a man who’d lived as he had, but Rath felt confident he could succeed, with Maura’s love and support to anchor him.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he pictured the two of them sitting at a cozy supper table surrounded by several ruddy-haired, merry-eyed younglings.

He could tell Maura was imagining it, too, for a brooding look softened her features and her arms angled, as if cradling a phantom child. He prepared to take her in his arms again and kiss away any dangerous ideas of Vestan wizards or Waiting Kings.

But before he could enfold her, a tremor vibrated through Maura’s slender body. Her eyes misted with tears, even as they flashed with indignant fury.

“Damn you, Rath Talward!” she cried, shattering his fragile fancy of a safe, peaceful future. “Damn you!”

Then she turned and fled from the pristine enchantment of the Secret Glade into the tangled peril of the ancient forest that surrounded it.

There was nothing Rath could do but mutter a curse…and go after her.

As she fled toward the soothing sound of the waterfall they had passed the previous night on their search for the Secret Glade, Maura heard the pounding of Rath’s footfall behind her.

Contrary urges battled within her. A powerful one tempted her back to the seductive haven of his arms, and his dreams for their future. Another, less strong but all the more desperate, made her run from him as if a pack of Hanish hounds were baying for her blood.

“Maura, stop!” he gasped, catching her by the full sleeve of her tunic. “How can we…decide anything…if you will not…stay and listen to me?”

“I dare not listen!” She twisted the cloth out of his grip and ran on.

It would be as foolhardy as stopping to face a Hanish warrior in armed combat. Rath had shown he was armed with potent weapons of persuasion—weapons she had forged for him.

“I mean you no harm!” His breathless words held a plaintive plea. One she was powerless to ignore.

“That is what—” she stumbled to a halt, wilting onto a fallen tree trunk “—makes you so…dangerous.”

“Me, dangerous to you?” Rath dropped to the ground at her feet, his chest heaving beneath his padded leather vest. “What daft talk is that?”

He reached for her hand, raising it to graze the backs of her
fingers against his stubbled cheek. “I want nothing more in the world than to keep you safe.”

She had no doubt of that. He had proven it again and again on their journey. Should she not feel the same way about him?

“Dangerous,” she repeated, “because you tempt me worse than that Echtroi with his nightmare wand.”

During the few days they’d spent recovering their strength for the last leg of their journey, she and Rath had avoided speaking of their terrifying battles with the death mage.

“He made the mistake of offering me the last thing in the world I desire—power. But you lure me with visions of something I want with all my heart—peace.”

Rath clasped her hand tighter. “If it is what you want, why should you not have it, love? After all you have done and all you have risked, you deserve every scrap of peace and happiness I can wrest from life for you!”

“But don’t you see, Rath, my task is only half done. What does anything I have ventured thus far matter if I cannot persuade the Waiting King to fight for the freedom of his people? I want what you offer me, so badly my bones ache for it and my heart feels like it will tear itself in two. But I know it is an illusion.”

“You doubt I could protect you and provide for you?”

Maura shook her head. “I believe you could give me everything you promise. But how could I breathe fresh air and savor the sunshine on my face when I know there are men forced to labor in the stifling darkness of the mines, breathing that foul slag? How could I watch my children play in the yard or eat their supper, knowing hordes of young beggars run the countryside, one step ahead of the Hanish soldiers, with no one to care for them?”

Rath flinched from the harsh truth—something Maura had never seen him do before. “You are a dreamer if you think all Umbria’s problems will be solved by ousting the Han from our shores!”

“Dreamer? Is that another way of saying
fool
?” Perhaps she was both, for believing she would find a long-dead hero sleeping in this forest, waiting to be wakened by her.

“No!” Rath dragged a hand down his face. “I told you of my dreams. They may not be as grand and noble as yours, but they are good and they are
possible.
”

His arguments were sensible and sincere…and too convincing by half! Part of her wanted to forget about the mine slaves, the bedgirls and slaggies and think only of herself and her beloved. But another part clung to the beliefs in which her wise guardian Langbard had raised her. Somehow, it felt as if she was fighting for her very soul…and for Rath’s.

“Can you be so certain my dreams are not?” Her voice fell to a whisper. “That night at the inn in Prum, when I first told you of my quest to find the Secret Glade and the Waiting King, you thought
that
would be impossible. Yet here we are.”

Rath made a sudden movement toward her, his mouth opened, as if pouncing to contradict her. But his words seemed to stick in his throat. He looked around at the swaths of lacy fern, the ancient, towering trees and the misty beauty of the waterfall, as though seeing it all for the first time.

“Yet here we are,” he murmured.

“How many times did my quest appear doomed, only to be saved at the last moment? Little by little I began to believe this was my destiny.” She held out her hand to him. “
Our
destiny. If we have faith in it, I trust that whatever we risk to fulfill it may be difficult, but not impossible. I must answer this summons. Will you go with me?”

Rath stared at her hand for a long, anxious moment. What would she do, Maura wondered, if he refused? Did she truly have the resolve to go on without him?

At last a sigh shuddered through his powerful frame and he reached for her hand with a shrug of surrender. “Stubborn wench. If I could not let you go back in Prum, do you reckon I can now?”

The force of her relief sapped every ounce of strength from Maura’s body. She pitched toward Rath, throwing her arms around his neck. “It will be well,
aira.
” She used the ancient Umbrian word for dearest or beloved. “I know it will! Think how we dreaded coming here last night and the parting it would mean for us. Instead, the Giver blessed our union.”

At length Rath drew back. “If the Giver had offered me a choice last night, between following the Waiting King to certain victory with you lost to me as his queen, or risking almost certain defeat with you by my side—this would have been my choice. Do not expect me always to behave in noble ways, just because you saw a crown of stars on my head. I am still an outlaw at heart, whose first instinct is to save his own hide and fill his own belly.”

She would hear no ill of him, not even from his own lips. “Even when you were an outlaw, there was more of a king in your heart than you ever guessed, Rath Talward. The first time I saw you, you were rallying others to escape a Hanish ambush. If they had trusted in you and held together, instead of scattering…”

Rath leaped to his feet, brushing away some bits of bracken that clung to his breeches. “Let us go, before my doubts get the better of me. Perhaps if we travel fast enough, we may outstrip them.”

Before he had a change of heart—or she did—Maura rose and took his arm to begin their new journey. She only hoped they would not be rushing into an ambush of fate.

A
s Rath and Maura picked their way down the narrow stone step beside the waterfall, he strove to quench the memory her words had kindled in his mind. Of that day in Betchwood when he had failed to keep his outlaw band together long enough to gain the relative safety of the forest.

He told himself he had done all he could. Those men had each thought and acted for themselves. When a few had taken fright and bolted, splintering the strength of their cluster, it had doomed the rest. That was why he preferred to act alone. He could always count on himself.

But one man alone could not hope to defeat the Hanish army that occupied Umbria, any more than a single drop of rain could quench a wildfire.

Spying a hollowed stone filled with water at the base of the rock staircase, he asked Maura, “May we stop long enough for a drink, at least?”

She nodded, then stooped and gathered the clear water into her cupped palms. “A wise outlaw once taught me I should always eat, drink and rest when I have the chance. Otherwise I
might find myself hungry, thirsty and tired at a time when I dare not stop.”

In spite of all the worries that weighed on him, Rath could feel an impudent grin rippling across his lips. “If you want good advice about staying alive, ask an outlaw.”

A musical chuckle bubbled from the depths of Maura’s throat, in perfect harmony with the splash of the waterfall. “So I shall, outlaw.”

As she sipped the water from her hands, Rath bent to drink.

He had never tasted anything like this! If Maura’s life magic had a flavor, it would taste just so—clean and wholesome, with a wild, vital tang that quenched more than thirst. For a moment at least, it seemed to ease his foreboding and self-doubt, nourishing fragile seedlings of hope and confidence.

“This is better than ale!” He drank until he could hold no more, then he filled his drink skin and bid Maura do likewise.

Then he jerked his thumb toward the waterfall and the pool at its base. “Do you reckon we have time for a washup before we head off to Duskport?”

“The message said ‘Come at once,’” Maura reminded him with an air of apology. “Besides, I fear the longer we tarry here, the harder it will be to make ourselves go. Who knows but we may already have been here longer than we think. Did you not tell me the local folk claim time runs slow in Everwood, and what feels like only a few hours may be months or years in the outside world?”

“Aye.” Rath forced himself to turn his back on the inviting pool and walk in the direction of a giant hitherpine some distance away. “I always reckoned such tales were only fanciful nonsense. Now that I have been here, I am not so sure.”

“A pity it could not have been the other way around.” Maura hurried to catch up with him. “Then we might have dallied here a long while with only an hour or two passing in the outside world.”

“That would have been fine indeed.” Rath reached for her hand.

Together, they followed the trail of six tall hitherpines until it brought them to the path they had traveled the night before. Now and then, Maura paused long enough to gather a sample of flowers or leaves from some unusual plant they passed.

“Perhaps one of the Vestan wizards can tell me what magical or healing properties these may possess.” She tucked a cluster of tiny, red, bell-shaped flowerlets into one of the many pockets in the sash she wore over her tunic.

Rath also wondered what those innocent-looking little blossoms might do—make his mouth lock shut or knock him into a dead swoon? Since meeting Maura, he had learned the difference between the gentle vitcraft she practiced, using plant and animal matter, and the lethal mortcraft wielded by the Echtroi with their wands of metal and gemstones. Though he had come to respect the capricious power of her life-magic, he still had trouble trusting it.

When he spotted a familiar-looking boulder, draped with moss, Rath beckoned Maura off the path, though part of him wondered where it might lead them if they continued to follow it.

“Where next?” asked Maura.

“A brook, wasn’t it?” Rath glanced around, his ears pricked for the sound of flowing water. “Why don’t you check the map, just to make certain.”

“I thought you had it.”

Rath shook his head. The last time he recalled seeing it was yesterday night, after they’d climbed the rock stair beside the waterfall. The appearance of the massive goldenwolf who’d led them on the final leg of their journey had driven all thought of the map from his mind.

Maura patted the pouches of her sash, then checked the hidden pocket in the hem of her skirt. “We must have left it back in the Secret Glade.”

Rath shrugged. “That could be for the best. I reckon either of us could remember how to find the place again in need. But I would not want that map falling into the wrong hands.”

Not that the Han would find anything of value there. But the thought of them invading Umbria’s last sanctum set his blood afire and made his sword hand itch.

“True enough,” said Maura. “And you were right about the brook. I hear it over that way.”

The brook led them back to a small glade, just inside the bounds of Everwood, where they had left their horses the previous evening. So much had changed since then, it seemed much longer to Rath since he and Maura had entered the ancient forest.

“Our mounts are still here.” He gave his an affectionate pat on the rump. “And their manes are no more gray than when we left them. I take that as a good sign Everwood has not bewitched our time here.”

“Unless the horses were caught in the spell, too.” Maura chuckled to show she was only joking, then quickly turned sober again. “I
hope
our time is not out of joint. I would not want the friends who helped us get here to have waited in vain for our return.”

Rath nodded, remembering the men he had led in the miners’ revolt, the struggling farmer’s family from the south and the beggar boy who had reminded him of his younger self. What would they think if they knew he was the Waiting King?

With his mind less than half on his task, he retrieved some food from their saddle pouches. “I reckon we have enough to get us as far as Duskport, if we are careful. I only hope this Captain Gull will not want big pay for taking us to the Islands.”

He had heard of smugglers who kept open tenuous ties between the tiny part of Umbria that was still free, and the rest—whispered tales of the lavish ransom they charged to ferry human cargo. Many of whom were rumored never to reach the
destination for which they’d paid so dearly. Rath did not fancy putting his and Maura’s fate into the hands of such men.

They wasted no time consuming their bread and cheese in thoughtful silence. Now that Maura had persuaded Rath to accept his destiny, she did not want to linger in Everwood for fear he might change his mind…or she might. After washing their breakfast down with swigs of delicious water from the falls, Rath helped Maura onto her mount and they set off for the coast.

Nothing about the countryside beyond the borders of Everwood gave a clue as to how much time had passed in the rest of the world while they had sojourned in the enchanted forest. It was clearly still midsummer, though of the same year Maura could not tell. Yet some vague stirring in her heart told her this was still their own time.

Whenever she glanced at Rath, he appeared to be lost in thought. Though she knew two horses would bear them more swiftly and easily than one, she found herself yearning to ride pillion behind him, as she had through the Long Vale—telling him legends from Umbria’s past, sometimes falling asleep with her hands clasped tight to his belt and her head resting against his back.

The sun was high in the sky by the time they came upon a narrow river.

“If we follow this, it will lead us to Duskport.” Rath slowed his mount. “Let us stop for a bit to rest the horses.”

When he helped her dismount, Maura pressed herself close against him as she slid off the horse’s back. And even when she had firm ground beneath her feet, she did not loosen her arms from around his neck. Rath accepted the invitation of her lips as she raised her face to his, but he broke from their kiss far too quickly to suit her.

“This is not Everwood.” His answer to her unspoken question trailed off in a tone of regret. “We cannot afford to be caught off guard by the Han or whoever else might be lurking.”

Maura did her best to hide her disappointment. This protective vigilance of Rath’s was a practical token of his love for her.

“May I hold your hand, at least?” She tried to tease a smile out of him. “And stand close to you? Or will that interfere with your efforts to keep watch?”

The tense furrow of his brow eased. He raised his hand, then let the back of it slide down over her hair. “Both will distract me worse than I can afford, but I will do my best to bear it.”

Maura laughed. “You favor me with your tolerance.”

“So I do.” Rath feigned a stern look, but the flesh of one cheek twitched from the effort to maintain it. “Do not impose upon it more than you can help.”

“How far is Duskport from here?” Maura wedged herself into the cleft under Rath’s arm so he had no choice but to drape it around her shoulder.

He stared off downriver. “It has been a long while since I last made this journey. After Ganny died, I was fool enough to reckon I might make an honest living crewing on a fishing boat.”

“And?” Maura scarcely needed to ask. If he had succeeded in finding honest work after the death of his foster mother all those years ago, she would never have encountered him that day in Betchwood, fleeing a Hanish ambush with his outlaw band.

Rath’s lips curled in a sneer at his own childish stupidity. “I was lucky to escape the place with my throat and a few other parts of me unslashed. I know the Han spread many false rumors to frighten ordinary folk of wizards, outlaws and smugglers, but I believe the one about Duskport fishermen using human flesh for bait. I swore I would never go back again.”

Maura shuddered. It was no use saying she wished Rath had told her all this before she’d urged him to take her to Duskport. She would not have let it stand in her way…at least she
should
not.

“Then again,” murmured Rath, tilting his head to rest against hers, “I’ve done a good many things I never thought
I’d do before I met you, enchantress. Are you sure you haven’t bewitched me?”

“If I had, it would only be a fair exchange for you stealing my heart, outlaw! Now, are you going to tell me how far it is to Duskport? A day’s ride? A week’s?”

“If we can keep up the speed we have this morning I reckon we should reach the coast in two or three days.”

As it turned out, their ride to Duskport took every hour of three days, because Rath refused to risk the least chance of them meeting up with Hanish patrols in open country.

“How can your hundredflower spell make us blend in with the crowd when there’s not another Umbrian around for miles?” he demanded, leading her in a wide loop to avoid a ford he guessed might be guarded.

They passed a few scattered farms and two small villages, both of which Rath insisted upon giving a wide berth. “It is warm enough to sleep out of doors and we have supplies to last us until we reach the coast. I’d rather not draw any more attention to ourselves than we have to. Besides, if anybody nasty comes following our trail, I’d just as soon the folk around here have nothing to tell them.”

Was that all? Maura wondered. Or did Rath not want anyone else guessing who they might be and raising hopes he feared he could not fulfill?

“Well, there it is,” he said at last as they crested a bit of rising ground.

“There is what?” Maura peered down the far slope toward a thick bank of dark fog. If she squinted hard enough, she fancied she could make out a cluster of rooftops rising from the mist.

“Duskport.” Rath pointed in the direction of her rooftops. “The rest of the year, it is a good deal warmer than most towns this far north. But in summer, that gray fish soup of a fog rolls in. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘Better a winter in Bagno than a summer in Duskport’?”

“Cold, is it?”

“Aye.” Rath gave his horse a little nudge forward, and they headed down into the fog. “The kind that settles right into your bones after a while. The smugglers and cutpurses like it well enough, though, for it hides their crimes…or hides
them
if they get caught. Whatever you do, stick close to me, and maybe pull a wee bit of something from that sash of yours to have handy in case of trouble.”

Swallowing a lump that rose in her throat, Maura edged her horse as close to Rath’s as she dared without risk of their hooves getting tangled and pitching both riders to the ground. After weighing the merits of a few defensive magical items she carried in her sash, she extracted a generous pinch of madfern and cradled it in her clenched fist.

Bless the
twarith
of Westborne who had refilled the empty pockets of her sash! A pity they’d had no cuddybird feathers. Where she and Rath were headed, it might be very useful to be able to disappear at the first sign of trouble. As it was, they’d have to make do with confusing any enemies they encountered. Fortunately, it was a good strong spell if the madfern was fresh—capable of befuddling quite a large crowd.

Once they reached the edge of town, Rath signaled Maura to slide down from their saddles and lead the horses. “We’ll draw less notice that way. Besides, most of the streets are narrow and crooked—easier to get about on foot.”

They met only one Hanish patrol—three soldiers and a hound, whose gazes roved warily, as if expecting an ambush at any moment from any direction. For all their heightened caution, the soldiers took no notice of Rath and Maura thanks to the hundredflower spell she had cast on them both before they’d entered town. The hound seemed aware of them, though, straining in their direction on the end of its short chain, a menacing growl rumbling in its throat.

Once the patrol passed without challenging them, Maura breathed easier—though not for long. She and Rath spent the next little while approaching some of Duskport’s less threaten
ing citizens. To each, Maura murmured a phrase in Old Umbrian that followers of the Giver might understand and respond to.