Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga) (41 page)

In the silence, Gerhard said, "She's right. Not like this. And if she's right about the rest..."

"Varien said—" Rodar started, but stopped himself. When he spoke again, his voice sounded more certain. "Far too much of late. Far too much, indeed."

Suddenly there was a hand on Ehren's shin, just resting there. And another on his shoulder, and one over his chest, and a quiet grip on his ankle.
Guards
. Above him, Gerhard cleared his throat and said quietly, "Sire... your personal physician is at the lodge."

Rodar said, "Get him."

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sherran stood over Ehren in all her T'ieran authority, her fine brows arched in severe annoyance and her mouth pressed closed.
Foolishness, to get yourself in this state
, she seemed to be saying, and her scolding voice was sad.
How will you come back to my land?

But she was a wavery and insubstantial illusion, and she didn't stay. His vision filled with glowing bluish green light, and it swept over him like a floodwater and buried him for a long time, swirling with pain and confusion and a roar in his ears. When he came up again it was a gasping, sputtering rise with the light flowing down his hair and shoulders like liquid, dripping into his eyes and mouth and off his nose.

He took a sudden deep breath and realized he could.

"It's about time."

That was Laine's voice, with relief sneaking through. Warily, Ehren cracked his eyes open. They widened the rest of the way when he saw where he was.

The hunting lodge.
The royal quarters.
On a high, soft bed, in smooth, clean sheets. Laine sat in the corner, his chair tipped back so it rested against the wall, his chin resting on his fist. He looked, if not his usual hale and hearty self, levels better than the last time Ehren had seen him. Now, haggard had made way for what seemed like perfectly normal fatigue in the wake of a flight through the Barrenlands to Kurtane.

"I thought he was killing you," Ehren said, discovering his mouth was dry and tasted funny; his words came out like his tongue was tipped with cotton.

"I was afraid he was killing me, too. But he was just...
playing
with me." Laine tipped the chair down and reached for the pitcher that sat on the bedstand between his corner and the bed. "Shallai said you'd be extra thirsty for a while. All that blood you lost. And probably those herbs he got down your throat."

Ehren shook his head. "It took more than herbs to keep me alive."

"Yes," Laine said. "It did. Deep Hells more. But you'd expect the king's personal physician to be up to that sort of thing, wouldn't you?"

Just maybe so.

Anticipating the water, Ehren sat up. Or tried to. The movement awoke so many tender, protesting places that his whole torso seized up. He took a deep breath, relaxed, and tried again, more carefully.

"Of course," Laine added, "even the king's physician has limits."

"So I noticed," Ehren grunted, carefully reaching for the goblet. His arm felt like it belonged on someone else's body— his merely on loan, unfamiliar and uncooperative. He managed to drain the goblet of water without spilling any on Rodar's sheets, and passed it back for a refill. "Do I want to know how long I've been here?"

Laine shook his head decisively. "No. But it's been a while. I've got to give your king credit, even if he is mostly an overgrown Shette— and with less common sense than she has at that. We had plenty of time together out on that field, waiting for Shallai to come, and then waiting until it was possible to move you. He listened to us, and Gerhard listened to us, and as soon as he began to understand..." Laine shook his head. "He ordered you brought here. He's confined all the members of the hunting party to the lodge unless under Guard escort. He wants to hear every part of what you know before he returns to Kurtane, and he wants to have a strategy."

"He believes in Varien's guilt, then." Obviously.

"I think it was easier than believing Benlan gave his deepest trust and friendship to someone who was stupid enough to kill the court wizard without reason. Actually believing Varien was guilty came a little later." Laine looked down at his feet. "I let him read the journal."

Ehren nodded. "Good. But... what have you told them about— ?"

"About me?" Laine said, and tipped back into the corner again. Ehren decided it was the sort of thing designed to drive Shette crazy. No use in getting out of practice, apparently. "As little as possible. I told them about the Sight— but only that I'd seen Benlan's death. Nothing about my parents. It was easy enough— just told them it was the ring that triggered it all, because I was sensitive to such things."

"Easy enough," Ehren repeated, unconvinced. Likely not. Likely Rodar and Gerhard had enough answers to ponder that they chose not to pursue what Laine
wasn't
telling them.

For now.

But Laine looked at him with the easy humor of old, and with the naïveté to believe what he was saying. Ehren decided to let the issue rest.
For now.

Laine got to his feet. "Jada wanted to see you when you woke up," he said. "She won't stay long, I'm sure. It's just nice, after all these days of watching you lying there deciding whether or not to breathe, to actually talk to you. Besides, Rodar and Gerhard want to talk to you, too. And it's not polite to keep a king waiting."

Especially not if you had usurped that king's own bed. Ehren marshaled his thoughts to order, and discovered that foremost among his own questions was the location of the chamber pot. Even kings had to wait for some things.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

Autumn in Kurtane was as it had always been.

The courtyards and gardens were a splash of color, the carefully tended foliage shouting reds and bright yellows. This day was crisp-aired and brightly sunny, and the paths were littered with carpets of brittle leaves. The vine-draped arches dropped leaves down the collars of the unwary, and no one went anywhere without announcing their arrival in crunching footsteps. The kind of day to be savored.

Ehren sat on a comfortable wooden bench in the midst of it all and knew this was no longer his home.

The courtyard was a busy one, much more so than it had been this spring when he warmed this same wooden bench and contemplated his place in Kurtane. The nobles and young apprentices moved with alacrity and purpose, and had time for no more than a surreptitious glance at him.

But glance they did, as Ehren soaked up the sun and let it warm all the still-stiff places inside him.

He still knew what they saw, even if it was somewhat different from the man who had been here the previous spring: one of King Benlan's men, his last, who had finally earned a permanent place in young Rodar's court— and wasn't sure he wanted it. A faded scarlet shirt, cleverly mended but showing obvious signs of swordplay. Tall boots that had finally been resoled; today the greave straps were buckled to themselves and jingled only faintly when he moved. The temples of his black hair... and never mind that strand or two of grey... were tied back; next to the honor feather there was another, much smaller feather, a secondary from the wing of the same royal bird.

Rodar wasn't shy about creating new tradition. A man could only wear so many beads, he'd declared, bestowing upon Ehren the secondary. It had been done at a small— for Rodar— celebration, when Ehren still walked like an old man. And when Ehren realized once again that the number of people in the room that he trusted and respected could be counted on both hands and a toe or two.

Crunch crunch crunch
.

Someone else walked the leaf-filled path, coming around the curve of the garden to where this bench sat up against a still-green hedge. Ehren recognized that carefree stride and didn't bother to turn his face away from the sun. "Laine," he greeted the younger man. "You about ready to go?"

"Tomorrow," Laine said. First to Sherran and Shette at Grannor... and then?

Laine openly admitted he wasn't sure. Back home to see his parents, undoubtedly. And then, maybe on to that caravan-route run with Ansgare— although Ehren privately felt that Sherran would co-opt him for some service or another to the Grannor. He was, after all, about to carry the first official words of communication between governments since the tensions a hundred years earlier, chosen only because Sherran already knew and trusted him.

Solvany still did not yet know of his heritage, only of his Sight— and of that, very little.

Rodar's missive was a humble one, drafted by his own hand in his first true act as a monarch: an offer of collaboration in the matter of the mage lure. He'd already sent word out amongst the wizards of Solvany informing them of Varien's death— and the end of the mage lure supply. Unless Therand was willing to cooperate, anyone Varien had addicted to the drug now faced unpleasant death— but Ehren was willing to bet the T'ieran would try to obtain a supply of the drug, at least until alternatives could be explored.

"Guard escort all the way to the Barrenlands," Laine was saying, shaking his head. "You'd think they didn't trust me or something."

"It's not you they don't trust," Ehren said dryly. "The Upper Levels have been altogether too quiet since Varien died. Even the candidates for Court Wizard are acting civilized. Someone's hiding something."

"They're
all
hiding something, as far as I can tell," Laine said.

A wry grin tugged at the corner of Ehren's mouth. "That's true, too."

Laine sat down next to Ehren, stretching his legs out in front of him. They sat in silence for a moment... or as near to it as they could get, with the paths as busy as they were. The syncopated crunch of the leaves alone made it clear how many people paused to take a second glance at Ehren.

"I don't get it," Laine said, finally. "You know there are ministers in the First Level— and no doubt below— who were helping Varien. But no one seems to be overly concerned with finding them. All the Guards have done is close off Varien's rooms and wait to install his replacement elsewhere."

"We're still learning from those rooms," Ehren said. "Don't you worry— we'll get through Varien's security spells and find the ministers who were in league with him. But for now, those people are hoping we don't have a clue. And they're doing their best to make sure things run smoothly, so we don't
get
any clues. As long as things do go smoothly, time is on our side."

"You're not worried that they're still plotting? What about Loraka?"

Ehren shifted, rubbing his leg. Of all the things done to his body this summer, the old avalanche wound still bothered him the most— the scarring from the infection had affected the outer joint, Shallai had told him. The other things— the broken ribs, the internal injuries, the bone-deep bruises— had healed well enough on their own, once the physician had taken him out of danger. It was best that way, the surgeon had said, although not without understanding at Ehren's impatience.

He shrugged at Laine. "We may never discover just how deeply Loraka was into this— but their moment has passed. They've withdrawn most of their building military presence, and we're bolstering ours, so..." He shrugged. "Once again, time is on our side. Without Varien to spearhead the whole thing, it's fallen apart." He looked at Laine with amused satisfaction. "Did you hear that the border incidents are falling off?"

Laine snorted. "That, I
did
hear, even if most of the rest of it manages to pass me by. Seems like Varien— and whoever— thought of a lot of different ways to stir up trouble, and used them all at once." He rubbed the back of his neck, offering Ehren a sideways glance. "I did my best to ferret some of this stuff out on my own, but court folks seem to be awful good at changing the subject, no matter how many times you turn it back in the right direction."

Ehren gave a gentle snort. "Can you really blame them? Right now, no one trusts anyone, and they're all trying to pretend that they trust everyone."

"I have to admit," Laine said, "I never thought of you as at home in this kind of atmosphere."

Ehren laughed outright. "I'm not." He shook his head, thinking about it for a moment. "It was different, under Benlan. Somehow."

Because he'd been among friends, he thought. People he knew, people beside whom he'd fought and lived and sometimes saved. Serving a man who was like an older brother to him, arranging for physical safety and not embroiled in the personalities in the court. Walking over them, in fact, when they got in the way of Benlan's welfare.

Which is what had probably gotten him into trouble in the first place.

That and an unquenchable need to find the man who had killed his king.

"Shallai is just about to clear me for full duty," he said. "I've been ready for half a month, but he's... overprotective." That was mostly true. It was stiffness, now, mainly, and that wouldn't leave for a long time. Ehren met Laine's two-colored gaze, and shrugged. "Who knows? There are already agents in Loraka, trying to track down the wizard Typhean— the one Ileen mentioned. Maybe they could use some help. Besides, sounds to me like there's going to be some fresh activity with Therand— and her intriguing T'ieran— through the Barrenlands." He offered a decidedly rakish grin, his thoughts on the spelled stone Sherran had given him. "You know I like to be where the action is."

Laine snorted. "It doesn't take Sight to see
that
."

~~~~~~~~~~

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The Changespell Saga:
Dun Lady's Jess; Changespell; Changespell Legacy

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Author Bio & Website

http://doranna.net

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