Donnal came awake quickly and completely. Cammon moved more groggily, as if coming back from the brink of death. He had guarded the camp for half the night, Senneth thought; it was a wonder he could force himself to open his eyes at all. Her attention shifted to Justin, pacing back and forth between the camp and the road. His uneasiness unsettled her, even though she knew Justin could be volatile. But Tayse was not, and Tayse should have been back by now. It was just that she had gotten so used to relying on Cammon to sound the alarm in the face of any real danger—
Her gaze went back to Cammon, just now taking advantage of a huge yawn to shove a square of bread into his mouth. But Cammon, of course, had been sleeping so soundly—
He caught her eyes on him, or the worry in the forefront of her mind. His mouth snapped shut and he glanced around the camp. “Where’s Tayse?”
Justin spun to look at him. “We don’t know. Scouting. He’s supposed to be—”
Cammon scrambled to his feet, a wild expression on his face, and cast about like a hunting dog. Donnal and Kirra rose more slowly, alarm in their eyes. Without warning, Justin flew across the camp and grabbed Cammon by the arms, giving him a hard shake.
“What is it?” the Rider demanded. “What do you see? What happened to him?”
Cammon looked small and frightened in Justin’s menacing hold. His eyes went over Justin’s shoulder and sought out Senneth. “I think someone’s taken him,” he said.
THEY were too far behind to do much good—an hour, at least, Justin estimated by the tracks. It was Donnal who had led him to this exact spot, taking the shape of a bloodhound and sniffing his way down the southern road. The scents were fresh, and they had a pretty fair idea of what had happened, so he loped along at a good clip, nose down, ears flopping beside his long face. He had come to a churned-up section of the road and paused there a few moments, snuffling the mud and crossing the road multiple times as if to follow four or five different trails.
Justin had crouched on the side of the road and seemed to be trying to count the hoofprints. When Donnal flowed back into human shape, the Rider came to his feet and they all clustered together in the middle of the road.
“Here,” Donnal said quietly. “I’d say there were at least ten soldiers surrounding him. Laid a trap, obviously—probably hoped they’d catch the whole lot of us.”
“Did he fight?” Senneth asked.
Justin gave her a quick look, full of morbid humor. “No blood,” he said. “No bodies. He didn’t fight.”
“Where are they taking him?” Kirra asked.
“Depends on who has him,” Senneth said. “If it’s Gisseltess men—”
“I saw moons on their cloaks last night,” Donnal said.
She nodded. “Then—to the convent, I would guess. For—interrogation?”
“For ransom?” Kirra asked doubtfully.
For execution?
No one wanted to say the words out loud, but they hovered at the back of Senneth’s mind. It was as Justin had said, not an hour ago. A man—or a woman—intent on declaring war against the king could make no stronger statement than to assault a Rider.
“He’s still alive,” Cammon said. “But I can’t tell much else.”
“Maybe unconscious,” Donnal said.
Senneth shrugged. “He was never easy for Cammon to read.”
Cammon rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said in a subdued voice. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t been sleeping—I would have felt something—even sleeping, I should have felt something—maybe I did, maybe I was too tired to realize it—”
Senneth put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” she said gently. “Tayse is the last one who would have said
you
had to protect
him.
”
Justin flung something violently into the road—a rock, Senneth thought—and strode back for his horse. “Enough talking! We ride to find him
now
!”
Senneth hurried to catch up with him, grabbing one of his arms and pulling him around to face her. He turned so fast she thought he was going to swing his fist and hit her, but he restrained his impulse. His face was wild with fury and fear, and he wrenched free of her with one hard tug.
“Let go of me!” he cried. “He is—Tayse is—I have to go to him! Stay here if you want—all of you—but I must find him! He is—he is—”
And he stood there in the middle of the road, that sneering, cynical boy, and began to weep with grief.
“Justin—Justin,” Senneth exclaimed, pulling him back to her with one hand on his arm, putting her other hand up to his cheek, his forehead, pushing some of her own heat and strength into him. “Justin, listen to me, we will get him back. Justin, do you hear me? We will go to him. I will go after him. I will not abandon him, Justin, I swear to you.”
He tried desperately to stop his crying and made an effort to turn away from her, humiliated and terrified and paralyzed with helplessness. “You can’t—you won’t,” he sobbed. “You would save Kirra or Cammon, but you won’t go after Tayse—you hate him, he’s not important to you—”
“Justin,” she said, catching his arm again, pulling his face around so he must look in her direction even if he refused to look at her. “I would go after any of you. The Riders, the mystics. I would save you—I will save Tayse. Look at me, Justin. Tell me you believe me. Tell me you trust me. I will not let him fall.”
He sniffled and drew his sleeve across his face, trying to clean it, trying to hide it. “It’s Tayse,” he whispered.
“It’s Tayse,” she agreed. “We will go after him. But we have to have a plan. Are you with me, Justin? Will you trust me? I can do this. But you have to help.”
Finally he looked at her, his eyes swollen, his face blotched with tears and terror. For a moment she saw the boy Tayse must have seen so long ago on the streets of Ghosenhall—fighting for his life, knowing it was such an easy thing to lose. She put her hands again to both sides of his face and drew him closer so that his forehead rested against hers. “I trust you,” he whispered. “What do you want me to do?”
FOR the thousandth time, as they cantered down the tricky road, Tayse wondered if he should have fought to what surely would have been his death back there at the ambush. Had he had even one Rider next to him—Justin, or any of them—he would have risked it, because he knew that he could have accounted for at least five of them, and there had only been twelve arrayed against him. But alone he could not have taken them all on. And if their orders had been to fetch him alive, they would not have dared to kill him outright, but they would have injured him seriously to avenge the deaths of their companions. And injured, he would have less chance to escape, less ability to plan.
But it had gone sorely against the grain to remove his hand from his sword hilt and lift both arms into the air and meekly surrender.
Now his hands were tied before him, and he rode in the center of the entire troop, all twenty-five of them. That their leader was delighted with their catch was obvious, for he hadn’t been able to hold back a smile when the smaller party came riding in with the hostage. But he hadn’t said much, hadn’t let any careless words fall, and the whole group was too well-trained to talk a lot during the journey south. Tayse overheard scraps of conversation but nothing that really helped him, nothing that told him for certain who these people were and where they were going.
Although he knew.
As Donnal had reported, they all wore the black and silver of the Pale Mother. Most were young—in their early twenties, he thought—though a few appeared to be more seasoned. He was guessing that the youngest ones were third and fourth sons who could easily be spared from the lower ranks of the gentry, while the veterans were probably lifelong soldiers who had shifted allegiances to a cause that seemed to them more meaningful than merely guarding a noble or a town. Indeed, here and there, Tayse caught glimpses of a pair of gloves embroidered with the Nocklyn crest or a cloak pin ringed ’round with the pearls of Fortunalt. They were believers, most of them, or so Tayse would guess; and that made them, if not as skilled as the Riders themselves, in many other ways just as dangerous.
They stopped only once, to give everyone a chance to take care of personal needs, and were back on the road in less than fifteen minutes. They ate on the run, someone handing Tayse utilitarian rations without comment. He drank from his own water bottle, using his bound hands to lift it to his mouth. He was not sure how far they were from their destination, but he was fairly certain this group didn’t plan to stop for the night. And that despite the fact that the whole lot of them had to be even more exhausted than Tayse’s small party, since they couldn’t possibly have gotten much more sleep.
When they reached an east-west intersection, they turned to the right. West. Then Tayse had been correct: They were heading to the convent that housed the Daughters of the Pale Mother. Well, he had said he wanted to see it. Looked like he would get his chance.
It was close to dusk, and Tayse could feel his own weariness reflected in all the men around him, when he took the chance to speak to one of the men riding nearest him. The recruit looked young—maybe not even twenty—with short brown hair and an eager expression. Tayse could spot no colors on him except for the ubiquitous black and silver, and wondered if the boy might be a merchant’s son, or a farmer’s. No one important. Not likely to rise in the ranks. Maybe a touch indiscreet.
Tayse leaned over and caught the young man’s eye. “How much farther?” he asked.
“Another hour,” the soldier replied. A pause, while he apparently determined whether or not he should actually be having a conversation with the prisoner, and then he added, “That’s a good horse.”
Tayse nodded. “I think he’d last longer than I would. And I’m a heavy burden.”
“Big man,” the soldier acknowledged. “But strong, I bet. Impressive reach with your sword.”
Tayse almost smiled. “So they tell me.”
The young man hesitated, then the words burst out of him. “Are you really a Rider?”
Are you really a traitor?
Tayse wanted to ask in return, but he knew better than to antagonize the first person who had showed him the slightest sign of friendliness. “I don’t think I should be discussing who I am until I’m talking with someone—a little more official.”
“Oh! Right! Yes, and I—stupid,” the soldier said and seemed to blush. He must not have been with this outfit for long, Tayse thought. His skills probably weren’t very good, either. Something to keep in mind if Tayse had a chance to try to hack his way to freedom. Go for the young ones, the inexperienced ones. They would fall faster to his sword.
“Where’s your home?” Tayse asked, trying to put the young man at ease again. “Originally, I mean.”
“Helven. Fellows here from all over, though.”
“Even the northern counties?”
“Not so many of those. But one or two.”
“How’d you hear about it? The Daughters—this place.”
The young man shrugged. “Some soldiers came to town, talking about it. Well, we’d all heard about the convent and a couple of women from town, they went to join. I didn’t think there was a place for men. But my ma, she’s always had a little shrine out in the woods—gone to it since her grandmother’s day. Took me there when I was a little boy.” He looked earnestly over at Tayse. “There are plenty who don’t follow the Pale Mother—who don’t understand her. But I’ve felt her presence since I was a kid—I always knew she was real, that she was with me. So when the chance came to serve—I don’t know who wanted to pack me up the fastest, my ma or me. I never cared for woodworking anyway. It’s not like I was leaving anything behind.”
“They train you? In swordfighting, other soldier skills?”
“Yes,” the young man said proudly. “And I’m good. Or I will be good. And I get better every day.”
“How many of you are there?”
The soldier opened his mouth to answer, and then stopped and considered that he was speaking to an enemy. He blushed again, deep red this time. “Plenty of us,” he said stiffly. “And more every day.”
Tayse tried to think of something else innocuous to ask, just to keep the conversation going, but it was clear his young informant was not about to accidentally let slip any more facts. The soldier nodded at him, just to be polite, then spurred his horse forward and rejoined the ranks of his fellow guards.
No one else spoke to Tayse for the rest of the ride.
Finally, just before full dark, Tayse got his first glimpse of the building that housed the Daughters of the Pale Mother. The sight would have brought him to a dead halt if he hadn’t been swept along by the other riders. They were in deep forest now, and the path ahead was more often than not obscured by heavy growth and the solid bulk of ancient trees. There was a flash of luminescent white—then a turn in the trail hid it from view. Another quarter mile and the block of white became bigger, more lustrous, but still hard to make out—and then the winding of the path put it out of sight once more. Finally they broke free of the forest and into a monstrous clearing—and sitting at the heart of the open space was one of the prettiest sights Tayse had ever seen.