Warautumn (51 page)

Tryffon raised his sword in salute. Greetings and admonitions of luck followed quickly, and then it was time for business, as Rann began to uncase the royal regalia. Avall waited to be vested. It was better that way, he told himself, and helped him focus his thoughts for what he was about to attempt. Veen and Tryffon, he noted, took their cues from him.

First came the shield, then the sword, and finally the helmet. Rann made a fuss about adjusting straps and setting the helm’s chin strap, but Avall understood, even if it made him sad. That was another thing this might eliminate: these endless rounds of partings.

In any case, with the lowering of his helm, the world abruptly narrowed to what he could see straight ahead and a few degrees up and down and to either side. He could feel the gems, too, waiting there a twitch away from his palms, so eager
to taste his blood that they were already singing to it.
Had they always done that?
he wondered.
Or was this a new attribute of the regalia that had only manifested since he had used that regalia to jump through the waters?

“Time passes,” Avall said tersely, to distract himself from further speculation. “Assuming we actually manage this thing,” he added, facing Vorinn but including them all, “wait half a finger—Rann will tell you when—and follow. If you don’t arrive, we’ll assume you’ve failed and act without you. Whatever happens—assuming
we
succeed—we’ll try to jump Tyrill back here—or to the safest place we can find—and return for Ilfon just in case. Remember, the only way this is going to work is through absolute desire. And be careful: The gems can detect desires your surface mind doesn’t even suspect you possess.”

“Heard and acknowledged,” Vorinn replied soberly—“Your Majesty and my King.”

And with that he returned to his fellows.

Avall likewise turned away, then took a deep breath, and murmured a quiet, “All right, Lyk and Merry, it’s time to blood yourselves.” He waited for them to draw their weapons, but, to his surprise, they reached forward and slid their hands down the naked steel of the Lightning Sword instead. He heard Lykkon gasp at the pain, but his cousin was up to it, he reckoned, and the gems, when they had time, would heal any physical damage he might have incurred.

This was it, then. A final breath, and he closed his eyes, slammed his fist into his forehead to set himself bleeding there, and squeezed the triggers in the sword and shield. Power flooded into him at once, like a river that had breached a dam and now sent its waters outward, seeking equilibrium among three distinct tributaries. And this time—It was hard to explain, but it seemed as though the regalia felt more comfortable with him, as though it had accommodated itself to him, though it had been made for High King Gynn.

“Merry, Lyk,” he called softly, “I can feel it awakening now,
so put your hands on my hands on the sword, and as soon as you feel anything untoward start to happen, try as hard as you can to completely merge with me, and if you’re thinking anything at all, wish with all your might to be where Tyrill is.”

He felt their hands slide over his, so slick with blood he could barely distinguish them—and then it didn’t matter, because their power was pouring into him along with the power of the gems, and with it came their consciousnesses and their wills. And where they touched his deepest self, parts of that self awoke that normally stayed quiescent: parts last stirred by Strynn and Rann, not his sister and his cousin. Yet his self welcomed them eagerly, and bound them to him, and directed their power into strange new channels, which made him stronger in turn.

He wasn’t certain, but he thought the sword began to glow.
Wish now!
he thought at the others. And then there was nothing but the flow of power and the power of wishing.

He thought he heard the snap of their bodies vanishing from atop Ninth Hold, but could not be certain. The only surety was that he
wasn’t
for a moment, and then he
was
once more, and that two other shapes were pressed close against him, then falling away, gasping in surprise and relief, while their blood vanished with his into the sword.

It was Merryn’s muttered curse that warned him that things had not gone as expected, though he felt the stirring of wind against his face even as he heard it, and opened his eyes the barest instant later.

They were
not
in Tyrill’s prison cell.

Nor were they alone.

In the predawn darkness, it took Avall a moment to determine their actual location. Even then, he only truly believed when Lykkon proclaimed it aloud: “Oh Cold, cousins! We’re on the Isle of The Eight!”

And so it was. They had arrived somewhere near the center of Priest-Clan’s sacred isle in the middle of the Ri-Eron, where rose the various Fanes of The Eight. At the moment, in fact,
they faced the Fane of Fate from before its Well. Indeed, they stood where he had stood almost a quarter ago when he had come here with Bingg seeking advice, and been shown the island in the lake for his pains, then gone home to discover that Strynn had already departed in search of Merryn.

So it was full circle, then—which could not be coincidence.

But these people—

Who were these folk who stood around, staring gape-faced and—not so much fearful as mightily surprised?
He squinted in the gloom, trying to read colors or insignia, but the gloom washed most of both away. As best he could tell, there wasn’t much to see, anyway: merely the dull colors that were clanless’s lot. There were a goodly number of them, too: maybe two hundred.

And then he realized that what he had taken for a rising wind was in fact a low murmur of cautious wonder, even joy, that flowed from mouth to mouth. And in his shock at finding himself outside at all, when he had expected to confront Tyrill in her cell, it took an instant for their words to register. Yet when they did, they filled him with awe and wonder.

“Avall, Avall, Avall,” they were saying. “The King has come again and Fate has sent him. The King! The King! The King has come to feed us. The King has come to call the lightning down on those who have ruined our land. Avall, Avall, Avall.”

But in nowise so eloquently stated or well organized. Mostly it came as a rush of emotion that he actually felt as a physical force flashing through his veins. Which was reminder enough that he needed to release the triggers in the sword and shield and, as carefully as he could, ease the helm away from his face.

“Majesty,” a man dared finally: sturdy, tall, and bare-armed, in clanless dull brown, yet handsome and well built for all that. And without more word, the man was on his knees. “Majesty, command us and, if you will, set us free.”

Avall thought fast. He had no army at his back save Merryn
and Lykkon. Yet these people had seen what would surely to them have been a wonder, and he was not fool enough to doubt the force of faith. And as man after man and woman after woman knelt before him he realized two things together. One was that this was an extraordinarily large crowd to have assembled here at a time of night when the Isle of The Eight was supposed to be closed to supplicants—which in turn implied that either they were here without leave, or that those charged with enforcing the ban had abandoned that enforcement. The other thing was that these people were both ripe and eager to be led. And if he lacked his usual army, still these folk made up in fervor what they might lack in steel. Besides, he had the Lightning Sword against which no other blade could stand, and also the shield to ward off any harm.

And time was wasting, and he would lose the momentum of the moment if he did not act at once. Obviously it would be something akin to madness to attempt a jump to Tyrill’s cell amid so volatile a situation; he must therefore contrive some other plan—before Priest-Clan got word that anything untoward was afoot.

“Quick,” he demanded of the man who knelt before him. “Three things. First: What is your name?”

“Taravan.”

“Second: The Lady Tyrill; she is to be executed today. Will that be in the Court of Rites?”

“Majesty, it will, and at dawn, and a curse on those who do such a thing, and forget the Ancient Laws by so doing.”

“Finally: Will you be my man and follow me for this morning only? Or if not me, will you follow the Lightning Sword?”

“Ah, Majesty, we will follow.”

“But we have no weapons,” someone protested—someone young, by the sound of it.

“No,” Lykkon replied, glancing around, “but the Fane of Law lies yonder, and the fence around that Fane is made of very real swords, one added there per year. If Fate has given us an army, surely Law will see that army armed.”

“And what of Vorinn?” Merryn murmured, as Avall’s makeshift militia began to rise.

“Perhaps he even now fulfills our errand, or that on which he came. Or perhaps he will arrive here in our wake. We have no time to wait, if we would lead these good folk to the Citadel.”

“Well,” Lykkon laughed roughly, “let’s be at it, then.”

Merryn stared aghast. “And here I thought
I
was a warrior.”

And then, with a tide of two hundred hardy souls behind him, Avall syn Argen-a turned and strode away from one manifestation of Fate in order to face another.

Tyrill had been staring at the door for most of the night—ever since young Avall had come to her in what she increasingly believed had been a dream, promising a deliverance that still was not forthcoming. In spite of herself, she had almost gone to sleep after that … occurrence. Indeed, had once drifted off in truth, only to sit bolt upright in the light of the single candle they allowed her and whisper his name into the shadows: “Avall … Avall … Avall.”

And with that it had all come tumbling back to her. It had to be him,
had
to be, for she knew that he commanded that which allowed him to speak across distance, though he had never spoken to her in such a manner. But he had come to her in the night—his mind to her mind, like clandestine lovers—and she had relayed her situation, and Ilfon’s along with it, and he had promised her release.

It had been the most vivid dream she had ever experienced, too, and so she had risen and dressed, and made herself ready for anything—for Avall to appear out of a veil of smoke, she supposed.

But Avall had never come, and now dawnlight was creeping
down that maze of mirrors, and in something less than a hand, as she reckoned it, they would come for her, and a hand after that—or sooner—she would be dead.

Not that being dead concerned her overmuch, for death would bring an end to what was effectively constant pain. But it would also mean leaving a great many things unfinished, and worst of all, it would mean leaving Eron a worse place than when she had entered it—and if there was one lesson she had learned at her mother’s knee, it was to leave the world better for having been alive.

And so she sat and waited, and was only a little surprised when she heard booted feet approaching, heard the familiar tentative knock and that same nameless Ninth Face woman’s voice warning her that she was about to enter.

She found Tyrill dressed in the set of clan regalia they had let her keep since her trial—let her keep, she supposed, so that she could wear it to her execution and so be more easily identified. So that she could drive home Priest-Clan’s message that not even one as mighty as Tyrill san Argen-yr was exempt from Law.

Which was a travesty and a farce, since, as best she could tell, Law barely existed anymore. And so she composed herself to calm, and rose when her guard approached, gently took her hands, and bound them only with soft rope in lieu of chains, then stood aside for her to walk through the door and into the corridor beyond. She didn’t know if these were the same four guards who had escorted her before, because they had drawn their hoods far forward over their faces and wore mouth-masks besides. One thing she did note, however: They had left the door open behind her. She wondered whether the candle would expire before she died or after.

This was it, then: She was going to meet her doom. Avall had not come. She had been a fool to believe that he would, a fool to think that her dream had been any more than a dream. And even if it were not, even if that
had
been Avall who had
spoken to her, there were a thousand thousand things that could have forestalled his errand.

It was just as well it was early and these men around her blocking the view of the seemingly endless corridor before and behind, and that her lack of sleep was catching up with her, making her dull-headed. She yawned absently and heard one of them chuckle and say, “So eager to sleep now, Lady? When soon you will sleep forever?”

She ignored him. And then, quite suddenly, they had reached the foot of the first of several flights of steps that should take her up, then up again, to spit her out at last in the place where all Eronese traitors since time immemorial had died: a specially built platform in the midst of the Court of Rites, with all of Eron’s nobility dressed in black, gathered around to watch and—more to the point—ratify.