He sent Fletch into a spiral. Ruescht followed suit, although riderless. He’d given Ruescht her freedom with nothing more than the command to ‘follow,’ and the small wingabeast had remained true to her training. Raeld landed beside Fletch. Kai dismounted and hurried to Aewen. As she surrendered Aewen to Kai, Murial took the babe in her arms.
“A groom comes to help you dismount, Murial.” As he stomped up the steps to the porch, the sound of merriment increased. He threw open the scarred and weathered door, and it crashed against the wall. All eyes in the common room turned toward him. Silence fell.
He scanned the room and located a tall, muscular man with hair of black, a man he knew well. Quinn the innkeeper crossed the room to pause before him, concern written in his face. “Come with me.” He climbed the stair and called down into the room from the landing. “Brynn! Send Heddwyn up, and make it quick!”
Brynn pierced Kai with a look and tossed her head, making her red hair fly about her. Too involved with Aewen’s plight, he couldn’t bring himself to care about Brynn’s continued dislike of him. The last time he’d visited this inn, he and Shae had slept in the stable loft as a precaution against the very prejudice he saw on Brynn’s face now. Quinn and Heddwyn had remained his faithful friends even when feelings ran high against the Kindren, but Heddwyn’s sister, Brynn, had only added to the general outcry.
Quinn led them down a short hall and opened the door at its end. Kai swept past him into the room and laid Aewen on the simple bed with care. Murial pressed the child into Kai’s arms as Heddwyn entered behind them, and he stepped back to let them tend Aewen. Quinn clasped him about the shoulders. “Come, Kai. That’s women’s work.” They reached the hall, and Quinn lowered his voice. “Who be she? Yours?”
Kai stared at Quinn and felt his face flush. “Mine? No, she’s Elcon’s.”
Quinn’s eyes widened. “
Not
Princess Aewen? Begging your pardon, she’s Lof Raelein Aewen now. Why comes she here?”
“War brings her.”
Quinn looked hard at him, and then nodded. “Aye.”
“She needs a doctor. Can you summon one?”
“I’ll send for Doctor Jorris, but he lives farther north and we may not find him to home.”
“Summon him.”
But the messenger Quinn sent returned with word that Doctor Jorris waited at the side of a fevered child and would not come. He sent an infusion to ease Aewen’s pain and promised to follow soon. Kai approached the door at the end of the hall with a sense of foreboding. Murial answered his knock, the babe in her arms. Her tear-streaked face told its own story. He cleared his throat. “Is she—is Aewen...”
Murial said nothing but stood back for him to enter. In the bed Aewen lay with her open eyes very blue in a white face. If he had not seen her chest lift as she breathed, he would have thought her a corpse. He drew near her side.
“Come close,” Aewen croaked.
Kai bent near her and waited as she took a few shallow, rapid breaths. “Tell Elcon I love him and—I do not blame him.” She made a grimace he understood she meant as a smile. “I know Elcon well.”
He smiled at her. She did, indeed, understand her husband.
“Let me hold my daughter.”
Kai nodded to Murial, who moved forward to lay the babe in her arms. Aewen said something Kai did not catch, but when Murial motioned for him to draw near, he bent over Aewen again.
“Promise me…” She paused to breathe, and he saw just how much the effort to speak cost her. “…return…Syl Marinda…to her father.”
“I promise.”
Her expression smoothing, Aewen closed her eyes and breathed her last.
****
Elcon woke on the cold stone floor of the allerstaed to a blast of trumpets, Torindan’s call to arms, followed by the crash of the first volley from the besieger’s catapults. An unholy uproar commenced—the sound of war. He pushed upright, his heart pounding in his chest like a caged bird. His knees shook. With a trembling hand, he pushed the hair from his eyes as he swallowed against the taste of shame. He’d not known the full extent of his cowardice until now.
“Elcon...”
His name carried as if borne on a breeze. Indeed a strange current stirred the air. He lifted his head, blinked in sudden light, and gasped.
Shae stood before him. Shae and not Shae, for her face and form were the same as he remembered but somehow inconsequential, a vision he could not touch. She wore a simple tunic of blue and her hair cascaded in a river of golden fire to her waist. She watched him with sad eyes.
He gaped at her. “Have I lost my reason?”
Shae’s laugh carried the upward lilt he remembered, although it sounded far away. “Brother, take courage.”
“How can a coward take courage?”
“We all feel the bite of fear, Elcon. You must not let it devour you.”
“How do you suggest I avoid that? Fear clads itself in armor and marches now on Torindan.”
“You must stand, Elcon, and wield Sword Rivenn. If you do not, your armies will lose heart, and Torindan will fall.” She faded as she spoke.
He lurched forward. “Wait, don’t go!”
“My strength fails. I must leave the gateway.” But she lingered, growing fainter.
“What is this of a gateway? Can you not return to us through it? Or do you speak of the veil of death?”
She shook her head. “I have not crossed beyond that veil yet.” Her words sighed, just above a whisper. “There are many gateways, Elcon, and many worlds.”
Her form shifted and vanished. But her words remained, seeded inside him, sprouting to bear fruit.
We all feel the bite of fear, Elcon. You must not let it devour you.
He steadied himself and turned away from the place of refuge. It was too late to right the many mistakes he’d made, but he would not allow the manner of his death to further shame the House of Rivenn. Despite all his sins, he would stand before his people as Lof Shraen of Faeraven.
18
Journey Home
Quinn closed the coffin lid, shutting Aewen from Kai’s sight.
At his side Murial swayed in grief. “Sleep well, little flitling. May you find the peace denied you in this life.” After combing her mistress’s dark hair and plaiting it with deft fingers, Murial had watched over Aewen’s body until Quinn and Kai placed her in a strongwood box normally used for carrying grain. The makeshift coffin sat upon trestles in the small room where Aewen had died.
“On the morrow I’ll take her to Cobbleford for burial.” The words tasted bitter in Kai’s mouth. With Torindan under siege, he couldn’t bring her body to Elcon, and she shouldn’t be laid to rest here among strangers.
“You must leave now.” Quinn informed him in an apologetic tone.
“But it’s yet night.”
“I’m sorry, but the other guests won’t welcome death in their midst.”
Murial dashed away tears. “I can’t abide with you to Cobbleford. Without Aewen to shield me, Queen Inydde will turn me away.”
Kai had heard and seen enough at Cobbleford Castle to know she spoke the truth. “You must remain here, with the babe, if they have room for you to stay.”
“I would take her to my sister’s homefarm in the north, but I doubt she’d allow a baby in the house. She’s lived alone so long it’s made her into a curmudgeon, I’m afraid.”
“That is well. Syl Marinda is too young to make the journey to Westerland now, and perhaps there will be no need. Torindan may stand against Freaer. If that happens, she can go into her father’s care as Aewen wished.” He did not pretend to know what would happen if Torindan fell.
They loaded Aewen’s coffin on a rough cart in the stableyard, and Kai set out by land. Fletch pulled the cart into the mountain heights and crunched through the thinning snow of early spring. Although rutted from the wheels of the carts which journeyed this way, the common road still provided the quickest route across the hilly farm country that bounded Norwood on the south and east. The road followed the contours of the hills and traveled around obstacles, bending in sudden turns with dizzying frequency. He made slow progress, obliged to pause often to steady the coffin. He traveled through the night and day, but at the next nightfall sought shelter in an abandoned barn just where the road curved into the kaba forest. Although the northern part of the forest could not be called wilderness, he would not enter it until morning. Bruins and shaycats might still roam by night despite the scattering of homefarms located there. Besides, he needed rest.
He set off again as the first rays of sunlight searched the morning mists. The predators of the night would lie down now, but as the forest closed about him, he kept his eyes and ears open and his weapons ready. Although the cold and Murial’s anointing herbs would preserve Aewen’s body, he still carried with him the scent of death.
The road climbed all morning before leveling at a low pass. He dismounted and rested on a flat-topped boulder, averting his face against the nip of the steady west wind. From here he could see as far as the mists curling above the lands of Darksea and Whistledown to the gleaming waters of Maer Ibris. To the north and west a barren salt marsh edged Muer Maeread, the Coast of Bones where his brother, Daeven, was said to have met his end in a shipwreck.
Gazing now upon the long coastline where foaming surf wreathed dark rocks that stood in sharp warning, he longed to search for the truth of Daeven’s end. If, as his father believed, wreckers had by night lured Daeven’s ship onto the rocks and lain in wait for survivors to emerge from the shipwreck, his brother had been murdered. Because Kai had been needed to protect Shae on her journey to Gilead Riann, he’d denied himself the chance to learn the truth, and, if he admitted it, avenge his brother’s blood. Now duty to Elcon and Elderland held him fast.
He returned to the cart. He had made his choices and would not sway from them. He could hope, however, for the day he might walk in freedom upon the shores of Muer Maeread.
The road trended downward, Fletch’s hooves striking with renewed fervor. As the road passed through Lancert, it broadened but also congested with traffic. When Elders who drove carts or rode horses and donkeys saw the burden he pulled, however, they yielded. Many gazed upon him in mistrust, for few Kindren ever ventured this far into the Elder lands, and a winged horse should not pull a common cart. He kept eyes and ears open, but none challenged him. When he left the city with its dust and noise behind, he sighed in relief.
He passed through the heart of Westerland now, with its small hamlets and homefarms carved from virgin forest. The day darkened, casting fields and forest in purpled shadow, for storm clouds gathered. The very air crackled with pent energy.
Kai turned from the main road at Cobbleford. As the cart crossed the bridge over Weild Aenor, known to the Elder as the Cobble River, the roar of the swollen waters nearly drowned the thud of hooves and drum of wheels. The castle loomed ahead, brown and ungainly against the beauty of the weild. Kai stopped at the gatehouse.
“Name yourself and your duty!” The cry came from the battlements above. Kai squinted, for in the dim light he could not well see the figure behind the crenellations. “I am Kai of Whellein, sent to King Euryon in the name of Lof Shraen Elcon of Faeraven.”
Silence fell, followed by the hiss of whispering. “How do we know you speak truth?”
He sighed. His body ached from the journey, he hungered, and he had little patience remaining. “The matter is urgent.”
Silence, followed by more whispering. He could just see the guard’s face peer from one of the embrasures. “What is in that box?”
“I bring the body of one dear to the king.”
“Hold there.”
Kai sighed again. The shadows lengthened, and a crack of thunder preceded rain, which rolled off the thick perse of his cloak to soak his woolen leggings. Fletch picked up his feet and put them down again, flicking his ears.
“You there!”
Kai squinted upward. He thought he recognized the captain of the guard.
“What brings you here?”
“I would rather speak that to King Euryon in private, for it’s a tale of sorrow.”
“Sorrow, you say?”
He shifted to ease his cramping muscles. “I will tell you, since it seems the only way to gain admittance. I bring the body of Aewen of Westerland home.”
At last the portcullis rose, screeching, and the wooden doors opened. He rode into the gatehouse, where the captain met him. “I will alert the king to your presence.”
The wooden doors thudded and chains clanked as the portcullis lowered again. Now in the gatehouse, Fletch
shook his head, water spraying from his mane. Rain hammered the ground outside the gatehouse and shimmered silver beyond the arrow slits.
Kai kept his eyes and ears alert, a habit formed during his early training as a guardian of Rivenn. He did not allow his mind to think ahead to his audience with King Euryon or to wonder what happened at Torindan.
The captain returned. Euryon, flanked by two guards, followed him. The king wore such a wild look Kai knew at once the captain must have broken the news to him. Kai dismounted and bowed. Euryon paid him no heed but went straight to the cart and placed his hands upon the coffin. “Open it!”
The captain signaled one of the guards, who hurried from the gatehouse but came back almost at once with a pry bar.
Kai flinched. He’d not considered the possibility that the king would want to open the coffin. Nor had he steeled himself to see the raw pain on Euryon’s face as he gazed upon his dead child. Euryon did not weep but reached as if to touch her, only to draw his hand back again. With a curt nod he turned away, his shoulders slumped. “Put the lid in place but do not nail the coffin shut, for Inydde may want to look upon her daughter. Take Aewen to the chapel and advise Brother Robb.”
The coffin lid clunked back into place. Euryon faced Kai. “How came this?”
“She died after giving birth. The doctor arrived too late.”
Euryon’s eyes widened. “Doctor? Not praectal? How came she to dwell among the Elder? Why do you bring her to me rather than bury her at Torindan? Has Elcon cast her off?”