Duality (5 page)

Laying the weapon aside, he removed the saddle, brushed Hani`ena down and covered her with the saddle cloth. The mare sighed and lipped at his hair. “
My thanks, warrior
.
”
She moved off to graze on the thinning season-browned autumn grass, while Loren hauled his equipment in and stashed it beneath the table.

Dara poured soup into bowls. “I’m hungry and you never finished.”

“My thanks.” He took his bowl from her and sat in one of the straight-backed chairs. There was fresh herb butter, a loaf of heavy dark-grained bread, two fired-clay cups and a jug of—he sniffed—water.

Dara grabbed two spoons and also sat. “I’ve never known a horse that talked.”

“They mind-speak to anyone they want, although usually just their chosen rider. Hani`ena says what she thinks.” He took a mouthful of rich soup, chewing salty rondane root. Good for replacing lost blood-strength. “You breed strength and fighting spirit. Asides sentience and intelligence, we focus on agility, speed and endurance.”

Dara sawed off the end of the loaf and buttered it. “I’ve never met an elder afore, though my mother bespoke your existence. You looked like a riever at first, but changed when I sense-cast to examine your injuries. Who are you, Loren?”

Loren took a sip of water. Where to begin? “I am as you see me now. We can appear as whatever we are among. In this case human. For me, the seeming extends to Hani`ena and my weapons. But my injuries weakened me and your spell overcame the seeming, nullifying it.” How had she done that so easily?

“And your family?”

“My father is Cedric. I have an older brother, Deane, and a younger brother, Brannan. As Deane inherits I was free to choose the path of the warrior. Brannan is the scholar in the family.”

“What about your mother?”

“Her name was Ayala. She died when Brannan graduated from page to squire. My father never speaks of her.” His tone forbade further discussion.

“What of Hani`ena?”

“Upon my graduation from the academy she chose me as her rider. We have never separated until now. Lucky I am she forgave. Usually oathbreakers are repudiated, but good intentions must count for something.”

Dara leaned toward him. “She loves you.”

“It is more than that. We are partners for life. We know each other’s feelings almost afore our own. We think and move as one. In battle partners are formidable opponents because of our ability to communicate and react at the speed of thought. Separate, we are not so invincible.”

“So noted. What are you doing in Riverhead?”

Loren paused. What to tell her? Best not mention the ensorcelled sword’s influence. “Hengist and I have been friends for a long time. I knew of Jalad’s dissatisfaction with paying to use the waterway to transport his goods to the sea. My grandmother had a dream about this attack. I came to warn Hengist to gather his army, but someone had already beaten me to that.”

“Rufus did.” Waves of sorrow warred with nebulous control.

“Warriors do not leave on the eve of battle, so there was I in the thick of it.”

“On a stupid mortal charger in ill-fitting armor with cheap weapons
,
”
Hani`ena snapped. “
I should have let you die. You are too stupid to live
.
”

“We already covered this ground.”

“I did what I could, but your chargers react to knee and rein too slowly for what needed doing. I was wounded and the mare killed.” He regretted her death. Strong and courageous within the limitations of her mortal body, she had tried to do his bidding. His needs had been more than she could provide. “I sought hazel aid. That is where you found me.”

Dara nodded. “You saved many Eagles from the Boar. Rufus swore me to save you. I followed the power and there you were.”

“Goddess power, the Lady of Light.” He frowned as he rubbed the lace tablecloth. “Where did you get this? Who made it?”

“My grandmother. My mother said to treasure it always.”

The “Kahn Androcles” name again stirred to sluggish life some hidden memory that refused to come forward. “Knowledge of Her is forbidden humans, by your own priests of the One Truth.”

“I don’t follow a ‘forbidding’ that makes no sense. I’m not good at obeying men’s rules. Asides, my mother followed the Lady.”

“What of your blood father?”

Dara shrugged and sipped her water. Discomfort enveloped her like an almost tangible shroud. “Mother never told me his name.” Her gaze challenged his. “Does that bother you? Who knows what my lineage might be?”

Loren could not imagine such a gap. Family and lineage were sacred to the eastdawn elves. Each of them traced their parentage back to the very founding of the lands.

“When Mother died, Rufus and Fanny raised me as their own.”

“Rufus taught you to fight.” A matriarchal family in a patriarchal land. Rufus must have been an extraordinary man, like Hengist. Not so hidebound by tradition as to be blind to what was right and not necessarily proper.

She nodded. “Rufus taught me to be expert with knives. Fanny taught me healing. My mother Sheena taught me the old lore. She would’ve loved meeting you. Mother said Grandmother Lena told the most fascinating stories about Cymry Hall. Grandmother met High King Pari ta Lir afore my mother was born. Your grandfather must’ve been named for him.”

Loren choked. His grandfather Pari had not been high king in five hundred years. Cedric ta Pari was the current high king. That would make Lena Kahn Androcles…but that was impossible. Dara
felt
entirely mortal. “Dara, when was your grandmother east?”

“Many years ago. Mother didn’t say.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen. I’ll be twenty on the first day of the new year. Maybe someday I’ll visit. Wouldn’t you be surprised to see me walking out of the Great Marsh of the Wyldes?”

So young.
She must have begun fight training young indeed to be so skilled now. He wondered what in her past necessitated training a woman to fight in a land where such a thing was not permitted under the harshest of penalties. He knew of but one other woman with such a capability. Moira, an archer without mortal equal. He frowned. “The Wyldes are dangerous.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I am not disputing that, but—”

“I did all right by you, didn’t I?”

“Granted.” Loren ran a hand through his hair. “I would be honored.” What would Granther make of Lena’s granddaughter? Why had he never mentioned a prior visit?

“Have you ever seen the king?”

Spoon in his mouth, Loren choked on his soup. “Once,” he wheezed. “From a very great distance.”

“I’ll bet he’s all-powerful, good and kind.”

“He is known as a fair and just ruler.”

“Good thing you have never been exposed to the crown,”
Hani`ena commented.
“Truth would never let you get through this little fabrication.”

“Thank the Lady that is Deane’s headache, not mine. Justice is enough to handle.”
Loren shuddered in horror at the chains attached to that crown: Truth. Justice. Mercy. He would take wings every time: freedom over power. If only Alani understood. They had grown up together, but she knew him not at all.

He leaned over and changed the subject. “So. What is for dessert?” He stiffened. “Someone comes. From the south.”

Chapter Three

Dara sense-cast. The acrid scent of violence clung to blood-still-living about an hour’s brisk walk away. “More injured,” she observed, puzzled.

Loren shook his head, frowning. “This is something else.”

She laid her instruments and medicines across the table. ’Twas nice to be surrounded by the familiar scents and trappings of Fanny’s legacy. For all her skill as a warrior, she took solace in other abilities. After the death and destruction of the last few days, any healing was a victory.

Loren pulled his weapons from beneath the table and strapped them on with the ease of long practice. “I shall scout our visitors. Do not leave. I shall bring them here if it is safe. If not—”

“They come here for help. Don’t interfere. ’Tis what I do.”

His face was a cold mask. “I can allow no harm to you.”

That’s all I need.
One kiss did not give him the right to order her about. She wasn’t one of those weak-willed village women. She was not. She’d fought too hard for her independence from such male dominance. “Just go.”

He was gone in the next breath with the white mare alongside. Part of her soul left with him—she felt a strange pull at her heart. Frowning, Dara rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She’d a bad feeling about the newcomers. Injuries from violence were a poisonous vapor on her spirit. The weight of all that need pulled her down. There’d been no recovery time. She must rest, soon.

She glanced outside. Bright and sunny, warm for harvest time. Not the type of day some ominous portent showed. She sense-cast again to the south. Loren’s glowing light of Other snuffed out at her touch like a candle at bedtime. When she tried again, there was no Loren, no mare, no gap in the world. Just the expected—woods, birds, insects, small animals. Hide from a magic search? What a handy ability for a warrior.

The newcomers had no such ability. One, male, hurt but coping. The other, female, broken and bloody. She willed them to hurry. The female’s blood darkened, slowed. Much longer, there’d be no cause to come at all. The irony was not lost on Dara. A full-scale battle sent everything into hiding. A single dying human female troubled the morning sun-dappled autumn woods not at all.

They appeared within the hour. Hani`ena bore a big rawboned man with a ruined face and a bloody wreck of an old woman cradled in his arms. Loren stood watch with a drawn sword at the mare’s shoulder, but sheathed the blade as Hani`ena halted and her new rider handed the woman off to the elven warrior.

“Lady healer,” the stranger gasped. “I come from Safehold. What’s left of it.” No sign of pain showed in his carriage as he slid to the ground, but ’twas a miracle he’d carried his burden so far. Hani`ena stood like a rock while he found his balance.

Dara blanched. He’d been blinded; judging by the ravaged skin, either by hot metal or coals. How had he managed to make it through the woods so far, wounded himself and bearing another? She searched his face as she helped him into the hut and one of the chairs at the table. His name escaped her. “Who—”

“Auger Xavier, Moira’s seer.” He fell into the chair.

A seer. Well, that explained it. He’d compensated for his stolen vision with sight.

She glanced at the woman as Loren swept past her and laid the old woman on the bed. “Mag.” The last time she’d seen Moira’s old nurse and chief lady’s maid, Dara had given her a jar of blended hotroot oil and beeswax for her painful twisted joints. The old woman’s breath gurgled in her chest, and blood frothed at the corners of her pinched mouth. Marks of torture were unmistakable: open burns, the crunch of broken bones. That Mag breathed at all bespoke the old woman’s tenacity. Dara fought nausea as she sent her healing self into Mag’s broken body. That someone could do this to a harmless old woman…

The damage was irreversible. Dara returned to the here-and-now, lunging out of the hut door in time to vomit. When she returned, Loren was giving Xavier a cup of water. Loren’s eyes met her gaze with concern. She shook her head and poured some water for herself. Tears stung. “I’m sorry, Xavier, there’s naught I can do.” She cursed the quaver in her voice, the trembling in her hands. Later, she’d mourn. Now was the time to be strong.

“I couldn’t leave her to those bastards.” Xavier shuddered. “I wanted her to die among friends and be sent off with the Lady Goddess’ blessings.”

Loren’s eyebrows rose. “I had no idea so many followed Her in these lands.”

Xavier turned his face in Loren’s general direction. “She belongs not to just your kind, son of the dawn.”

Loren paled.

The man nodded. “The Lady gave me Her gift of sight, to see both what is as well as what may yet come to be.”

“Xavier, what happened? Who did this?” Dara knelt by Mag and stroked her blood-matted grey hair. Her heart ached. Did Mag even know she was there?

“Jalad. We barely got Moira out afore Safehold fell.”

Dara gasped. “What? How?”

“Someone poisoned the guards’ food and opened the gates. All male servants who resisted and the wounded survivors of the battle found within the keep were put to the sword. Those lost souls who bowed a knee to Jalad were spared. As was I.”

Blood roared in Dara’s ears as she looked over to Loren’s white face. “Because of your gift?”

“Jalad thought foresight useful to him. It let me warn them to get Moira out, but you know the Goddess’ gifts aren’t always predictable. Jalad tried his mightiest, but we couldn’t tell him what we didn’t know—where Moira went. Mag gave a false location, but Moira wasn’t there. Jalad was…displeased.”

She nodded toward Mag. “I can do naught for her. I
can
help you.” She tried to tug his shirt up, but Xavier swatted her hand away. “Xavier.” Dara’s voice brooked no argument. “Let me see.”

Xavier clenched his jaw and removed his shirt.