Telai was the faster runner, and soon lost him among the bushes. She had to get away from him. Every kind word or glance chipped away at her resolve.
“Telai!” Tenlar shouted again, his voice farther behind yet echoing wide.
Suddenly she realized the uselessness of her flight, and stopped in the middle of a large patch of open ground. Not knowing what else to do, she sat down with her arms wrapped around her knees, her stare fixed upon the brightening stars.
Tenlar’s quick footfalls slid to a halt behind her.
“Let me be!” she snapped.
“Telai,” he said softly, “I’m not going to leave you out here by yourself.”
“Why not? All this time you’ve been patting yourself on the back with your clever little mind games, leaving me to face the consequences alone!”
“I’d do anything to help you, Telai. I just don’t know how.”
She glanced up at him, then resumed her vigil. “Don’t you?”
“No, unless you’re asking for courage. But how can I give
that
to you? You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever known!”
Still she refused to answer. Patience, kindness, respect—they all meant nothing to her now. All that mattered was tomorrow’s sunrise.
“Tell me what you want!” he cried, his self-possession shattered by her silence. “Love? You won’t take that from me.”
His words set her heart pounding. A wind arose and ruffled the branches, the western light faded, and the stars blazed in the deepening blue above. But they seemed on the verge of flight, as if they, too, sensed impending evil.
“Sit down,” she said at last.
Tenlar hesitated, then lowered himself to her side. The last trace of his pity vanished, and he sat like granite, fixing his stare on the horizon.
“Would you be able to look upon him again?” she asked quietly.
He squared his shoulders, a gesture she had seen many times when he was facing a difficult decision. “A question I should ask you, Telai.”
A moment passed, at once both brief and ages long. He leaned close, a dim silhouette against the stars. Her heart skipped at the taste of tears on his lips. A desperate little cry burgeoned in her throat, and she lifted her arms to accept him.
All her fears vanished. The burden of the passing years melted away, and she was a young girl again, falling in love for the first, thrilling time. Then the man she kissed rose, reached out a hand, and the last of the dusk revealed a face that belonged to a friend, a comrade—but not the face of the man she longed to see again.
Telai fixed her tear-rimmed gaze on his hand. “I’m sorry, Tenlar. It would only make it worse for me. I can’t betray him like this, not when I’m already forced to—”
She faltered and bowed her head. The crime that lay ahead of her was like a knife in her chest.
“Tenlar,” she whispered. “By great Orand, Tenlar, help me. I don’t know if I can do this!”
He held her hands together and kissed them. “Telai—my beautiful scholar. If I could, I would take this burden for you. Perhaps instead, if we … if only one time … ”
He bowed his head against hers. A glistening drop caught the starlight. His despair helped her climb out of her own, and she lifted his chin, challenging him to meet her unflinching eyes. “I said some awful things to you, Tenlar—things I didn’t mean.” She placed a hand on his cheek. “You’ve never been ashamed of your feelings for me—I can’t help but be honored.”
She felt so close to him now—so close that she could sense the war raging in his heart. Another tear spilled down his cheek, and he touched his lips to hers again, powerless to resist.
Telai set her hands against his shoulders. “Tenlar—no. It would only make things worse for you, too.”
He drew away a little, stunned. Then he laughed softly, like at the inn more at himself than at her. But there was a tone of regret to it now, a bittersweet taint that Telai shared in some measure, if only for his sake.
As they returned to the campsite with Tenlar holding her close to his side, she offered no resistance, quietly accepting the comfort of his friendship.
♦
Clouds moved in from the sea during the night, and the light of the rising sun was brief. Flakes of snow drifted down. The Irenseni marched from one horizon to the other, their peaks shrouded in gray, their sparsely-grown flanks drab and cheerless. Telai and Tenlar woke early, ate, packed up camp, and in a stifling silence of land and air rode away to the south.
They kept to the brush, staying within sight of the hills. There was no sign of the enemy, nor any other creature besides a lone hawk gliding about in search of its quarry. A strange sense of urgency compelled her, and she begged Tenlar to hurry, pushing their teams to the limit.
The hours crept by, and the Irenseni softly dimmed with the shadows of afternoon. Suddenly Tenlar, in the lead, leaned hard to one side and capsized his sled. The dogs plowed to a halt, and Telai reacted barely in time to miss him, swerving to the right. She brought her own team to a stop with a cry.
“Quiet,” Tenlar hissed. “Drop to the snow!”
She obeyed instantly. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Hodyn!” Tenlar reached inside his coat for the laser, then stopped, grimacing. After glancing about to assess the area, he drew out his Fetra, careful to keep the blade from ringing against its sheath. He pointed at the sheathed knife at Telai’s side, then began cutting the harnesses from his team.
“Are you mad?”
A fierce glare from the Master Raén rendered her silent. Telai understood as she hurried to obey: the dogs would run about in a frenzy, perhaps even attack the Hodyn, giving their owners a chance to escape.
Most of the dogs merely accepted this as an odd time to end the day’s run, and lay down on the snow to rest. A few, however, including Slink, stood with their ears erect, peering through the bushes and sniffing the air. Tenlar motioned Telai to the right, and they crawled several yards from the obvious target of their sleds to hide behind one of the larger bushes.
The Master Raén crouched low, still as stone. Telai drew her knife again, drawing a painful glance from her companion that confirmed her fears: they stood little chance against so many.
Minutes passed like hours. Slink, who stayed close to Telai, growled low, his mane bristling. Telai, not knowing what else to do, sidled over to the animal and wrapped her arms around his quivering shoulders in an attempt to quiet him.
An instant later all the dogs started yammering furiously. Slink leaped away, his well-conditioned muscles easily breaking free of her grasp. The force of his leap threw her to one side, and she landed against the snow with a grunt.
The bushes near their sleds exploded with men, a score at least attacking from every direction. The fierce bedlam of shouts and angry growls after days of vast wilderness silence was deafening. But the enemy quickly realized that the owners had slipped away, and they fanned out, leaving only a handful of soldiers behind. Several painful yelps signaled the quick dispatch of their teams.
Telai gripped her knife with both hands. Tenlar was already on his feet, standing over her with his sword held fast and his face grim as death. For there was no escape.
She jumped up to fight at his side, but he shouldered her to the ground again. “Stay down!”
The Hodyn bore down on him like a flood. Telai stared in horror, overwhelmed by the shouts and cries and the ringing clamor of steel on steel as the Master Raén tried so furiously to defend her. Then a gasp of pain and surprise ended the battle as quickly as it began.
Tenlar dropped from sight. A net fell over Telai’s head and arms, seemingly out of nowhere. She slashed at it with her knife, but the cords were too thick, and her movements only entangled her further. She searched this way and that, hoping by some miracle that Tenlar was still alive, but saw little beyond the gathering forest of legs and the confusing mesh of ropes.
The chaos faded at last, leaving nothing but the sound of her own hoarse breathing and the pitiful cries of wounded men. Strong arms pinned her down, and she managed to draw blood before they wrested the knife from her hand.
“Be still!” a voice yelled in Telai’s face, but she paid no heed. Panic ruled her body. She fought like an animal, kicking wildly, trying to claw through the net at her captors’ faces.
“Enough of this,” growled the same voice, and a ringing blow to her head ended the struggle.
13
The Prisoner Within
It takes the work of two to cure the loneliness of one.
- from an ancient letter found in Léiff
WHEN TELAI
finally came to, she had no idea how much time had passed. A blurred lattice of slender branches swam nauseatingly against the somber sky; her head throbbed, and her left cheek felt tender and swollen. The net was gone. Bound hand and foot, she lay on the trampled snow beneath a tall shrub a short distance from the battle scene. Hodyn soldiers ambled past, all their panic and urgency gone.
“Begora! She’s waking up.”
Being a Loremaster she was well versed in Hodynese, and she tensed, not knowing what to expect. The man who had struck her crouched down, watched her stonily, then reached forward. She flinched, but he only removed the gag from her mouth.
She gasped as the tied cloth slid up past her bruised cheek and snagged on the snarled braid of her hair. “What do you want from me?” she yelled hoarsely, her throat dry.
Begora tossed the gag aside. “I won’t waste time answering stupid questions. I must perform the duty assigned to me. Within those limits, I’ll treat you as well as I can.” He shook his head. “Damn those Raéni cowards. A woman!”
She only glared at him. He rose to his feet to talk to a nearby soldier. “What did you do with the other one?”
An arm swung to the west. “We hid him under a bush, about a half mile away.”
“What about his sword?”
“No good. Those thin blades of theirs break too easily.”
A despairing cry interrupted their exchange. Telai shook with grief, her limbs stiffening against her bonds. She tried to control it, to deny them the satisfaction, but her grief was too potent, too sudden. Heads turned, and there was a cruel chuckle or two; Begora remained silent.
“For what it’s worth, I pity you,” he said finally. “No one under my command would dare send a woman on that kind of a mission.” But Telai was deaf to his words, and he turned away. “Keep guard over her until we’re ready to leave. Know this: if any harm comes to her, after you deal with me I’ll give what’s left of you to the Bringer.”
Terror snuffed out her grief in an instant. Heradnora. The only hope remaining to her now resided in the latent halves of the Lor’yentré: invisible now, but she could feel them pressing against her skin beneath her arm. Did they already search her for weapons? She hoped so, though she shuddered at the thought of their rough hands traveling over her.
The day began to wane. In time a pair of soldiers hoisted Telai by her arms and legs. She did not struggle, yet neither did she cooperate, hanging limp and heavy as they carried her away to the south. She tried to get a glimpse of the battle scene. But the Hodyn had dragged off and hidden all the dead, animals and soldiers alike, leaving only wide furrows and streaks of blood-soaked snow in the fading light. The sleds were broken up and scattered among the bushes, their supplies plundered. It struck a blow to her heart to think she would never have closure, never see the body of the man who surrendered his life for her—the ultimate testament of love.
Her captors only traveled far enough to keep a prudent distance from any signs of battle. Some had already gone ahead to prepare the campsite: a small clearing strewn with crude paraphernalia and a few hastily erected tents. Into one of these ragged enclosures they deposited Telai, none too gently, with a moth-eaten blanket thrown on the ground near the center pole.
They left her alone for a while. Then the flap opened again, and one of the soldiers set a tin plate of food before her. After a moment’s regard he untied her hands and stood watching her from the entrance.
Telai felt a strong impulse to refuse, a defiant spirit born of her loyalty to Tenlar. Yet it also bestowed a grim sense of duty upon her, honoring his death, and she snapped the plate up in her hands. She wolfed down the food with her fingers, then flung the empty plate at the guard.
She held her arms up, wrists together. “Get on with it!”
The soldier met her glare calmly. “There’s no point. You’re not going anywhere—at least not tonight, and not on your own.” He threw the flap wide and vanished before Telai could decipher his words.
It was not long before she did. Doubtless they had already sent word of her capture by falcon, here at the edge of desolation where there was no place to run to.
The slow winter night descended. Though the knots were too tight she managed to loosen the ropes around her legs, for they were beginning to cut off her circulation. Afterward she wrapped herself in the blanket as best she could, but the tent was ill-fitted and drafty, and she shivered against the hard ground.
Worse than any discomfort, however, was a complete and utter sense of isolation. It drained all hope, as stark and uncompromising as the frozen wasteland around her. There was no one left to aid or comfort her, not even Slink. She trembled, not from the cold but from the futility of Tenlar’s sacrifice.
Hours passed as she fought to maintain her spirits. The night seemed endless. Scattered sounds and low voices about the camp gradually faded, lights were extinguished, until only the wind ruffling the heavy canvas of her tent offered any evidence of her plight. Exhaustion fell upon her in waves, but she could not afford to sleep. Each passing minute brought her closer to her doom.
The separated halves of the Lor’yentré clinging to her side were of no use to her, especially now there was little chance of reaching her parents. And what if she could? Heradnora had killed her own mother by pure instinct, and Telai would probably meet the same gruesome end before she learned how to defend herself properly. She would be trapped forever in a prison with no door, no escape—and all in vain.