[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (22 page)

Shikrar and the one I learned was his son spoke
at length, Ke-dra having a good long look at his father’s now-healed wound. He
did not linger once his father started to eat, but took off again, flying
northward. Shikrar finished eating, gave a great sigh, laid his head on his
forearms there in the courtyard of the ruined College, bade us good night, and
slept.

Varien and Lanen were nowhere to be seen.

I was weary as well, but my heart and head
churned too much to allow for sleep just then. I had started pacing and
thinking when I heard a small sigh. Lifting my head, I found Rella leaning
against the wreck of a wall, watching me. Her face had a glow about it that at
first I put down to being too near the remains of the fire; then I blinked and
realised that it was the first hint of morning.

The opening of another day, this one more full
of hope than I had dared trust to since that terrible morning Lanen was stolen
away. She was safe now—I had found her and got her out of that ghastly
place—though truth to tell, I wanted very much to know what in all the Hells
that was that happened when she yelled at Berys. I think that was the first
time it truly struck me that we might not have found her in time. That she
might have died at Berys s hands before we could reach her. I hadn’t let myself
even consider that before, not for a moment.

Rella came up to me and silently put her hands
on my shoulders. I closed my eyes and clasped her to me with all my strength,
like a drowning man clutching at his last hope of air. “Goddess, Rella,” I
choked, my lips against her hair, my voice fighting its way past a throat
closing, stupidly, at the thought of what might have been.

“Not yet, heart, but I’m working on it,” she
said lightly.

“Rella, she could have died. What if he had
murdered her, eh? What if I had been too late? It was near as a toucher, my
girl,” I said, starting to tremble. “Berys had us. He had me, Rella, and I
couldn’t do a damn thing.”

Her arms tightened around me, strong but
gentle. “I know, heart. I know.”

“This is stupid!” I cried, evoking a whiffle
from the sleeping Shikrar. “She is safe now, we are all still alive, all is
well—”

“Jamie—”

“Goddess, Rella,” I said, my voice barely a
whisper, “I nearly lost her!”

I wept then, at last, bitterly, loosing the
tears that I had locked away to make my anger serve me. Rella held me until the
storm passed, then stood a little back and smoothed my hair from my eyes. “What
happened?” she asked.

I told her and found that the telling eased my
heart. Rella’s staunch sense steadied me, kept me to the point, until I came to
the last of the tale. When I told her of Lanen’s outburst—“And I swear, Rella,
she glowed like a fire for a moment there”—and what it had done to Berys,
though, Rella drew in a sharp breath and made me go over everything in great
detail.

“You have no idea what she said?” she asked,
her eyes piercing.

“I’ve told you, I didn’t even recognise the
language.”

And once again, Rella astounded me.

“Did it sound like this?” she asked, and
proceeded to say the same thing Lanen had come out with, as best I could tell.
This time, though, there was no pulse of light, no shattering of something I
couldn’t see, no yelling demon-master. Thank the Lady.

“Hells take it, Rella!” I breathed. “That’s
it, or near it as damn it. What in all the world?”

Rella shivered and looked away. “Goddess,
Jamie. That’s—I thought only Her Servants ever did that.”

She fell silent until I prodded, “Did what?
Rella, what did she do?”

Still staring at nothing, she replied, “Servants
of the Lady for years and years, dear to Her, deep in Her Service, are
sometimes known to overcome some dreadful peril through the gift of the Voice
of the Goddess.”

“Which is?”

“It’s what it says it is, Jamie,” she said,
finally looking into my eyes. “Mother Shia blesses those individuals, just for
a moment, an instant, and says those words through them. Nobody knows what they
mean, but nothing can stand against them.”

“That I can well believe,” I said, frowning. “Berys
was thrown and no mistake.”

Rella shook her head. “It’s not that easy,
Jamie,” she sighed. “The balance, remember? The great Powers always find
balance.”

“And what form does that balance take?” I
asked solemnly.

“Death, usually. Oh, not the Servant, unless
they are very old,” she said quickly, “but—Jamie, every single time someone has
been granted the Voice of the Lady, someone close to the Servant, someone they
value dearly, has died within a se’ennight.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears—she, my rock, who
was strong and held herself distant from such displays, had tears in her eyes.

I took her by both shoulders and gazed into
her eyes. “Rella, what will happen will happen. She is safe. Lanen my daughter
is safe. I’m not worried about what happens to me now.”

“Damn you,” she snarled, shaking my hands off
and dashing the tears from her eyes, “I am! Don’t you dare die on me now,
Jamefh of Arinoc, I’ll never forgive you!”

I reached out again and drew her to me, held
her so close I could feel her heart beating against mine. We stood there,
comforting one another in silence, until false dawn gave way at last to true
and a shaft of brilliant sunlight suddenly blazed across us both. I shivered.

She drew away from me gently and shook her
head. “Besides, that girl seems to break all the rules. Maybe she’ll break this
one as well,” she said quietly, blinking in the brightness of dawn. “And you’ve
never asked what happened while you were being a hero here in Verfaren. You
missed a lot by leaving the rest of us early.”

“I saw them land,” I said, smiling.

“More than that, Jamie. Beyond belief more
than that.”

I waited.

“The Lost have been restored,” she said
quietly. “It was amazing, remind me to tell you all about it when I’m awake.
That’s why we took so long to get here. There were nearly two hundred of them.
It was Shikrar who did it, and Varien, and”—her voice fell to almost nothing—“and
Maran.”

“What!” I cried.

“Yes, she’s here,” she said, her voice still
calm and soft. “And with her, by chance or Fate or the Goddess Herself, has
come our best hope of finding Berys again, if you’re still determined to do so
now Lanen is safe. There’s a good chance we can learn where he is this very
day.”

Oh. Of course. “Maran’s brought that
Hells-be-damned Farseer, hasn’t she?” I growled.

Rella sighed. “Yes. Still, I’m not disposed to
object too strongly. Demon-made as it is, we can make it serve us. In fact it
already has, that’s how the Lost were restored. All three of them touching the
Farseer.” She turned her head away for a moment. “It wasn’t like the little
ones, the Lesser Kindred. There was precious little joy in any of them,
and—Goddess—some of them had been aware the whole time. Five thousand years.”
She shuddered and looked back to me. “Those were the ones that killed
themselves.”

“Hells,” I muttered. “What of the rest?”

“They seem to be doing well enough, for now. I
don’t think we’ll really know how they are until they’ve all had food and
sleep. They all went away to a quiet place a friend of Will’s is providing. For
a consideration,” she said, managing a smile. “Salera’s with them for now as
well, though I don’t think she’ll stay away from Will for long. Or leave Varien
and Lanen unattended. She and all her people practically think those two are
gods, after all.” She snorted. “The Lo—oh, no, they want to be called the
Restored—they could barely stand to look at either Varien or Maran, despite
what they’d done, and they studiously ignored the rest of us.” Rella sighed. “I
think that was the best they could do. Then-hatred of humans runs awfully deep.”

“Maran,” I said, shaking my head, which was
now filled with the most amazing visions, and smiling despite myself. “Helping
dragons restore the Lost. And before today I’d wager my life she’d never seen
one before. Took them in her stride, did she?”

Rella nodded, her own smile more strained now.

“How in all the Hells did she end up here,
anyway?” I asked. “Unless she was—ah.” I faded to a halt. “She came looking for
Lanen, didn’t she?”

Rella nodded.

I turned away, a mad mixture of relief,
delight, anger, and hope fighting for first place in my heart. “Why now, after
all this time?” I muttered, mostly to myself, but Rella’s hearing is excellent.

“Seems she saw what was happening to us all
and decided she had to—I don’t know—make her peace. Help her daughter. Do
something.” Rella’s tone of voice was decidedly dry. “Just don’t ask me why she
didn’t damn weD do this years ago. I’ve tried to persuade her to it since I met
her.”

“She’s not an easy one to persuade into doing
anything, as I’m sure you’ve discovered,” I said wryly, evoking a muffled “ha!”
of agreement. I turned back to face Rella. The sunrise had brought a flush of
youth to her face, mantling her cheeks for that brief moment with the gentle
rose of dawn—but the marks of old pain and a hard life were etched in her skin.
They gave her a singular character, showed a deep inner strength that simple
youth could never hold a candle to. “You look well in the light, you know,” I
said, reaching out to stroke her cheek.

She moved away from my touch. “You know that
Maran has loved no one but you all her life,” she said, locking her gaze on me.
“It’s very powerful, that kind of thing.” She lifted her chin. “Seductive.”
When I didn’t rise to the bait, she sighed and just looked at me. “What are you
going to tell her, Jamie?”

“What is it you fear, my heart?” I asked,
quietly. “That I will race back into her arms and forget all about you?” I
frowned. This wasn’t simple jealousy, which I might have expected. I should
have known, nothing about Rella has ever been simple. It had the same tang to
it, indeed, but it was something else.

Rella held her head high. “Lanen’s the very
image of her, Jamie. The years have been kind. She’s tall and strong yet, she
hardly looks her age—”

“Rella, what is this?” I interrupted.

She ignored me. “And her back is straight, and
she’s a good soul, and I have never seen anything but sheer adoration in her
eyes when she speaks of you.”

Rella, you wonderful idiot, I’ve got you now,
I thought, for I realised now exactly what was troubling her. Goddess, I wouldn’t
have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. “And she doesn’t have your sharp edges,
and really any man with eyes could only make one choice, is that it?” I said
sharply, challenging her. Rella, risen to prominence in the demanding ranks of
the Silent Service, a warrior with a brilliant mind and enough character for
any three people, had no confidence at all in herself as a woman.

“That’s it,” she said stiffly.

I stared at her for a moment. “The dawn light
really is lovely on your skin, you know,” I said, touching her cheek gently.
She sobbed and made to turn away, but I drew her to me and held her close with
all my strength. “Do you think I’d let you go now I’ve found you?” I muttered
into her hair. “And here I thought you J were meant to be bright.”

“Bright enough to know when trouble’s coming,”
she said softly.

“No, my heart. At least, there’s no trouble
coming between the three of us.” I loosed her enough to look into her eyes
again. “I’m yours, Rella, as long as you want me,” I said. “I won’t pretend
Maran isn’t dear to me, of course she is. Lanen is my daughter in every way
that matters, and Maran is her mother. I can’t escape that connection, nor
would I want to.” I kissed her gently. “Maran walked out of my life more than
twenty years gone without a word of farewell. It took me years to forgive her,
but you may take my word upon it that I do not harbour any visions of lost love
for her.” I smiled. “At least I don’t want to punch her anymore.” Rella
answered my smile with a rather more mischievous one. ‘The honest truth is that
you fill my heart, Rella. There is room there for friendship, there is room for
Lanen, but as for my heart’s own—that room is taken by you alone.”

After a rather longer and more intense kiss, I
sighed.

“What now, dear?” she asked, comfortable in my
arms.

“It has occurred to me that I may well have to
introduce Maran to her daughter.”

“Ow,” said Rella, wincing.

“Indeed. I don’t expect it to be a
particularly loving meeting.”

Rella grinned wickedly. “I do admire your
capacity for understatement. I expect they’ll hear them in Elimar.”

I grinned back at her. “Well, in the end it’s
their headache, not ours. Still, it strikes me as strange. She must have left
Beskin months ago. How could she know what was going to happen?”

Rella gazed at me. “It’s not so very odd. I
know Maran well, Jamie, better in some ways than you, now.” She drew back, her
arms still around my waist. “She has a damned strange way of showing it, but
she has always loved her daughter fiercely.”