King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (42 page)

C
OULD ROADS BE HAUNTED? Even with five hundred soldiers and cavalrymen at your heels, stomping and marching and bellyaching? Bistane stood in his stirrups for a moment, easing his thigh muscles and knees, and fought the impulse to look over his shoulder even as uneasiness danced along the back of his neck and tingled up his spine. He’d ridden this trail before, with his father and the rest of their troops, down to where the Rivers Ashenbrook and Revela crossed to meet the enemy. Inevitably memories would plague him, but he felt more than that, a familiar touch, a remnant of a well-known tone upon the air. He thought he’d left his father’s shade at home, but it seemed not.

Lengthening shadows told him the day was nearly done, and he put up a hand in signal that a suitable place for camping should be found along the river. He watched as his captains deployed scouts on his order.

He wouldn’t pitch a tent tonight, but decided to sleep outside in the mild spring night while he could, for the farther south he went, the more capricious the weather could be until the stolid days of summer set in. Bistane toyed with the idea of camping amongst his troops or opting for solitude. He did not want to be crowded, preferring some measure of solitude, and rode up to Lamdur to tell that captain of his decision.

Lamdur looked at him dourly. The campaign had burnished his copper skin and lightened his brown hair with streaks of gold and silver to frame his sharply etched face. He’d seen much under Bistel and now Bistane. “Not wanting to sleep among the great unwashed? I don’t blame you. I’ll have a wineskin cooled and set aside for your dinner. I would appreciate it, however, if you let me know where you will be making camp, my lord.”

“Done. I’ll probably be on the river ahead of everyone.”

“Before the scouts go through?” Lamdur rubbed the bridge of his nose where it had been broken at least once. It was the only coarse bone in his face. “I would advise against that.”

“And I wouldn’t take the advice.”

Lamdur nodded curtly. “Yes, sir.” He wheeled his horse away, headed to the rear to the supply wagons, no doubt to make good on his pledge of having a cooled wineskin ready.

Bistane was more than ready for it when he shackled his horse and put the rubbing cloths he’d used on the animal over the saddle for the night. Daylight dappled the riverbank. When he looked at it closely, he could see the tiny streams of light and the minute beads of water making the bigger picture. He could not, like Rivergrace, summon the water, nor could he set fire to running along it as she had done at Ashenbrook. He could, if he wished, set the air to humming with the music he had always felt in his veins. Raise a breeze to stir the heat off the land or drive the pollen gently over the fields to fertilize the crops. Churn a twister away from its ill-fated journey, though that took almost his last heartbeat of strength to accomplish. He could make his weapons sing, sending them unerringly to their target as the metal thrummed to a beat only he could hear. His father had talked of the same phenomenon. Dayne didn’t hold a similar affinity to weapons although he had been taught to use them exceedingly well. That pleased Bistane although he knew it probably should not, but he liked being his father’s son. Verdayne had other abilities, including one or two that he had shared only with their father, secrets kept from him. Bistane attributed it to being in control, a trait he shared.

Or he had until Bistel had begun to haunt him. Bistane sat in the small clearing by the river, ahead of the noise and stink of the army following him, and hoisted the promised and delivered wineskin. He took a long draft and then rubbed eyes grown weary. Sunlight shivered and dappled its way through the canopy, and sparkled off the river, and he dabbed at his eyes again. He watched the area carefully, his eyesight not as it should be, both less and more than he expected, with a glimmering of Talent about it. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, but when he reopened them, he could not shut away the sight he saw.

“When you were a lad, you used to beg for time with me.”

“That was when you lived and breathed.” Bistane saluted the vision in front of him, Bistel clad in battle leathers as he wore much of his life, even when at the fields and groves he loved. He looked as he had always looked through the prime of his life, without even his death wound to mark him. “Now it is just plain unsettling.”

Did he see a ghost indeed—or did he see into a plane of existence where ghosts might come and go? Did he believe anything he saw? Why would such a thing befall him? He stared at his wineskin a moment but knew he couldn’t blame the vintage.

“Why?” Bistel eased himself onto a fallen log, bending his knees carefully to sit, and leaned forward with his elbows on those same knees.

“Why do I see you? I have no idea. Perhaps you have unfinished business. It bothers me that a man as long-lived and achieved as you are—were—can suffer from such a thing, and it bodes ill for my own rest in peace whenever it might occur.”

A breeze that did not exist for Bistane appeared to lightly ruffle his father’s snow-white hair. “I am surprised and that pleases me. You rarely showed such depths when I was around.”

“When you were around,” Bistane pointed out, “we were generally at war with someone. When we weren’t, you were off gardening.”

His father’s mouth twisted to one side. “I never puttered around. I did not garden.”

Bistane took a draught from his wineskin. “No, you didn’t. I apologize. You were as good a farmer and orchard man as any ever born on this world. Verdayne follows closely after you in that, far more closely than I although I have my Talents.”

His ghost nodded. “I am blessed with two very strong sons.”

“Might I ask why you don’t haunt the other one?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

That startled Bistane for a very long moment during which he capped and uncapped his wineskin several times, thoroughly uncertain if another drink would help the situation. He finally lowered it and pondered the brilliantly blue stare of his father’s eyes. “I think Verdayne would say something.”

“Your brother keeps his silence on a good many things. I believe he’s decided that, since his time is much more finite than yours, that learning is a priority for him, and he cannot listen when he is speaking.”

“Now that is unfair.”

“But likely true.”

“Its veracity doesn’t make it any easier to accept.” Bistane opened his wineskin after all and took a third long draught from it, feeling it warm his gullet and belly as he did. When he closed the skin up this time, he wrapped its lace about it, and threw it to one side. Bistel raised a white eyebrow.

“I never argued better when I was drunk.”

“Most can’t. Have you a meal on you?”

Bistane paused in mid-movement as he reached for his saddlebags. “What? Do you eat? Are you hungry?”

“Of course not. I meant for yourself. An army is best kept only a little hungry.”

He stretched to draw the leather bag into his lap. “Fresh bread, a hunk of cheese, and some jerky. However, I told the cooks to slaughter three of the herd for the men tonight, before you scold me for poor rations.”

“They deserve a full belly before tomorrow’s march.”

Bistane spread his napkin out over his leg to balance his dinner upon it. “And that brings us, no doubt, to why you’re here tonight.”

“Am I here? Or are you seeing where I am?”

“I don’t know. Are you in a mood to tell me?”

The corner of Bistel’s mouth quirked. “I’m afraid I have no answer for this, other than you seem to have a hold on me.”

“Then, dear father, I release you. Both of us need our peace.”

Moments ticked by and neither moved.

“It doesn’t seem to have worked,” Bistane remarked.

“No.”

“Moving on, then. You were saying something about tomorrow’s march.”

“You have only a few days to bring the army to where it will be sorely needed.”

“Is this why I’m seeing you?”

Bistel raked his fingers through his snow-white hair. “Again, I can’t answer that. But I do know a few things about warfare and mounting armies and strategies, and I know where your army will be most needed.”

He lifted his bread and cheese to his lips. “Then I am listening.”

And so he did while the ghost told him what was on his mind.

Nutmeg couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t heard from Grace since she’d left, and the short words she’d had from her replacement guards told her only that Sevryn and Rivergrace were not currently in Lariel’s favor. Why? What events had turned and which way? She would gladly have tortured any of the guards if they’d have said more than that little, but Vaelinars were famed for their tight-lipped ways, brought up amidst plots where a single word might give a kingdom away. The only thing she had gleaned from them in the past few days had been surprise at Verdayne Vantane’s arrival. They had neither expected him nor quite knew what to do about him. They gave him the deference of a lord—he was Bistel’s acknowledged son, after all—but they didn’t care to do it. Nutmeg had never been immersed in court intrigue, but she knew when a bow had been slighted by both its depth and length. Verdayne got their minimal respect. She didn’t know if he knew it, but his words with her suggested that he did. Was that why Bistel had sent him? Oh, Bistane had issued the orders, but she’d little doubt that the old warlord himself had told Bistel that, when the time came, he should send Verdayne to the Farbranch holdings in Calcort. But why? Had he sensed even then she carried a child, a child who would face all the disadvantages his own son faced?

What did Verdayne see in her?

Nutmeg leaned as close to the edge of the bureau as she could get, notwithstanding the current size of her belly, and peered at the mirror fastened to the wall in front of her. She could get closer if she shoved the dresser aside, but the noise of that might awaken the house and she had no intention of any of her family (brothers) crowding into her room to see what the commotion was. Besides, it wasn’t her belly she was looking at.

It was her eyes. Filled with merriment, usually, Dweller good humor at the rest of the world. She knew it. Jeredon had told her often enough, but she didn’t need the telling of it to know she had good eyes. Bright. Set off by thick lashes and a dusting of freckles below, across her nose. She was a comely lass, for all the dark circles now and the faint lines of worry at the corners of her eyes.

Nutmeg squinted hard and pushed against the bureau, jutting her chin out and staring at herself. The babe didn’t like the hard edge of wood pushing into his domain and pushed back with a stubborn hand or foot. She rubbed her stomach ruefully and gave way just a touch.

“I have to see,” she told her irritable child. She rubbed her hand across her brow. She leaned close again.

Her eyes. Staring back. Frowning at her from the mirror’s surface. Nutmeg started to let her breath out in a slow, measured, exhale of relief.

And then the shadow came up.

Oh, no
, Nutmeg said silently, her mouth moving but the words stifled.
No.
Another color shadowed her eyes, over her caramel-brown eyes, a ring of golden, with bright sparks of green.

Vaelinar eyes.

She shut her eyelids tightly.
No.

N
UTMEG LIT TWO MORE CANDLES and peered into the flaring light. She couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing, but the extra illumination only sent more shadows darting about her rather than clarity. Her nose practically pressed to the glass, going cross-eyed, she finally closed her mouth in dismay. Perhaps in the morning light.

And if the daytime showed no difference? Hurriedly, Meg swept up her hair and looked at one ear and then the other. They remained the same, round-edged, delicate shells of Dweller ears they’d always been. Not like Garner whose ears seemed a bit jugged, or Keldan who had ears with very little lobe to them, still normal but not as pretty as hers—and hers were still hers.

The candle flames wavered, as the bureau translated her trembling and shook itself, making the illumination dance. Nutmeg backed away from her dresser before bending over and blowing all the candles out, leaving her in the dark and still shaking.

She curled up on her mattress. Once her body had begun to change, she knew she would inevitably no longer be the same. In a way, she had welcomed the rest from chasing about the countryside, involved in the intrigue that Vaelinars lived and breathed, only to find that it had followed her home. It was not the home she had thought she would have at this point in her life, but her parents’ home. She had envisioned one of her own, perhaps even a home that was a tinker’s wagon like the Dweller Robin Greathouse’s, a woman Master Trader with a bit of her own magic. The days she had come to their old home on the banks of the Silverwing had been filled with new goods, do-hickeys and sometimes toys that delighted all of them, news from faraway and, occasionally, a magical prophecy or so from Mistress Greathouse. Lily wove some beautiful fabrics which could be traded for a great deal, and sometimes she tailored outfits from her best yardage, outfits that fetched a pretty price from the trader and would be sold for even more elsewhere, after being tucked away in the wagon Robin called home. A home that indeed traveled about but still provided security and sanity, the only intrigue being the laws and taxes placed on those who traded. Or perhaps even a home like the herbalist down the street had, a small fence in front to keep her favorite flowers and herbs from being trampled by passersby, a whitewashed house with an arch over the front door, and fragrant from the drying flora hanging from the rafters. With, of course, at least one pair of childish feet racing to and fro.

Nutmeg pressed fingertips to her temple. No, she hadn’t foreseen a bit of this, and that was her own shortcoming, not thinking ahead. A Dweller, an orchardist, a rancher thought ahead season to season, crop to crop, and she had that ingrained in her—she who could plan for a decade ahead in seeds and grafting and harvesting—and she hadn’t thought more than a handful of days ahead in her own life. When she finally closed her eyes and slept, it was only because she was so tired that she had no choice, her thoughts having raced her into the ground.

The heat of the sun streaming through her curtains warmed her cheek, waking her. She uncurled stiffly and made her way to the mirror, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Hunger rumbled deep in her stomach and Nutmeg curved one hand over herself. She was always hungry! She could hear sounds throughout the house that meant her parents were up, Tolby’s low voice registering as his deep tones vibrated through the wood. Leaning close, she stared at her face in her mirror again.

When had she gotten dark circles under her eyes? The tiny cut of a wrinkle at each corner? She brushed at her face as if she could whisk away the flaws even as she leaned closer to look for what she feared most. She knew the laugh lines at the corner of her mother’s eyes. And there were mornings when Lily awoke, and dark circles marked her worries from the night that carried into the daylight. Nutmeg knew her mother’s face well and celebrated every facet of it, a gem honed by life and laughter. Yet her eyes, though sometimes crinkled in cheer and sometimes dewed by sorrow or thoughtfulness, had always been her mother’s without the deep etchings.

Nutmeg blinked several times and then leaned close, opening her lids wide. In the next moment, she held her breath. The candlelight had not lied to her. She saw herself looking back with Vaelinar eyes.

Nutmeg took a step back. Her hands shook, fluttering on the air like butterflies that she could not catch and still. Her heartbeat, once so familiar, now thumped heavily in her chest. She forced her hands down and took a deep breath. She backed up slowly across her room, not so many steps to take although her knees felt as if they could not bear her weight or even work properly, and one of the floor planks creaked as she stepped over it. The noise filled her ears and mind, driving everything else out for a blink of a moment. When her thoughts roared back in, the first one was of her book. Bistel’s book. She had questions. It had answers.

Nutmeg spun on her heel and lunged at the hiding place, fumbling until she got the book free and open. Vaelinars remade things. They twisted and tangled the very threads of creation on Kerith until they created a Way. That Way might stabilize, in spite of being out of the order, or it might snap back into place, creating a—well, Bistel hadn’t explained it quite so that she could understand it, but the reaction was invariably lethal. Ways that remained were workings that paralleled nature most closely, so that the threads that had been rewoven did not or could not revert to their natural state. Vaelinar eyes could see the possibilities, could differentiate the fibers of the world that might be tweaked.

She had to narrow her eyes to read the writing as the pages danced in and out of focus. The baby jumped in her stomach, a hard kick to the ribs, pushing out what little breath she had left, and Nutmeg bent over, gasping. She breathed deeply until her ears stopped sounding like the Silverwing River in full flood tide and her heartbeat slowed so that it no longer drummed in her chest and throat. She lifted her chin and then straightened carefully, putting her shoulders back.
You gave me Vaelinar eyes.

So that you can see.
A small voice from within said. The voice of common sense, or an echo of her parents’ voices, or . . .

She curved the book over her stomach, as if it were a shield.

You can’t give me that which I don’t already have. I have eyes, so you changed them.

I could give you another eye, if you wanted it.

She felt a tingle in her forehead, between her knotted eyebrows. She clapped a hand to the spot.
No!

The tingle stopped.

She could feel her child squirm inside her, as if uncomfortable, cramped inside her. Then, the barest of whispers in her mind.

I can do this.

Her mirror groaned. Nutmeg whirled to see it . . . its silvered reflective surface . . . turn to wood. Apple wood, smoothed and varnished and beautiful, but wood. Indisputably wood. She retraced her journey across the room to test it with her fingertips.

Now you can’t see your eyes and be unhappy.

She could feel the grain of the wood. Where it had been planed and then gently buffed for a finish. She could almost smell the scent of apples imbued in it. Wood, where there had been glass and silver paint. Not one thing evolved to another part of its natural state but one thing taken away and another element replacing it altogether.

Not possible.

Nutmeg took a step back. She couldn’t let what her mirror had become be seen. Questions would be asked that she feared she couldn’t evade properly, not for long. “Change it back.” Her voice shook. She cleared her throat. She stretched out her hand and flattened her palm upon the surface. “Back to glass. A mirror, as it was.”

She did not get a voice in return, but a feeling of great weariness swept her. Her hands began to tremble again, this time not from shock but from fatigue. She tightened her jaw. “It must go back. It must. I have no safe way to explain what happened.” She clutched Bistel’s journal in her left hand so tightly her knuckles went white.

The wood grain under her touch began to grow chilled, so icy she snatched her hand back. She could see the surface roiling, a silvery brew that boiled within the frame, a storm of change that had none of the control from before. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and slid down her temples, the bridge of her nose, the side of her face as though she stood in a wintery rain. The wood did not want to give way to the glass. The metamorphosis fought itself, wavering from one element to another, bubbling in and out as it warped, filling her small bedroom with the stink of molten metal and glass as well as the aroma of fresh sawed wood. The frame bowed out as though it might fly into a hundred pieces, shoving Nutmeg back a few steps in fear. Then, suddenly, it sank into itself, metal frame with glass and its silvery paint backing it, not quite the same as before but close enough, for this mirror looked fresh and new, not the fading and slightly spotted mirror that had reigned above her dresser for as long as she could remember.

Her stomach cramped, hard, and Nutmeg let out a cry of pain. Her right leg gave out from under her as though it had suddenly gone boneless and she began to fall. Her cry rose in fear as she thought, “I’m going down.” She threw the leather journal as far under her bed as she could, as her body, traitor, gave way and another hard, long cramp ruled her, squeezing the breath from her and she thought she could feel her child’s body arch in pain and then go horribly still inside her.

She hit the floor as the door was flung open, her vision filling with the sight of Verdayne’s tall form on the threshold. “Nutmeg!”