The Four Forges (69 page)

“You serve the queen, and she needs you.”

“You need me more.”

She waved her hand helplessly. “What if I return, to the beginning, and . . . and all it does is unmake me. What if what I face is being emptied of all I am?”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Can you fight Gods, Sevryn?”

“Sometimes I think that is all I’ve spent my lifetime doing.” He brushed his mouth against her cheek. “I’ll find a way for Lariel to let me go.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Come, lass! Were you raised by Tolby and Lily Farbranch or not? There’s no lack of spine in your family!”

“No,” she murmured, “there isn’t. Just remember, that vessels don’t always choose what they carry, and they often shatter.”

He left her in reverie by the well.

Daravan cloaked himself as he always did upon the roads, and when the sentries stopped him at the camp, they knew him but not as himself. He spat upon the ground. “Take me to Quendius.”

The younger one, still round of face, Kernan, told him, “Disarm yourself,” and his partner, lean, wiry, missing an ear and scarred, grunted a laugh.

“Try it,” Daravan answered. He balanced his weight alertly on the balls of his feet. The veteran poked an elbow into the youth’s rib. “This one allus carries.”

“We were told—”

“The smith knows this one.”

The young one shifted uneasily, then gave over to the other’s authority. “You take him in, then.”

“That I’ll do. I’ll bring back a pail of beer for us as well.”

Daravan moved between them in the direction of the canopied, double tent he knew Quendius favored in the field, not waiting for his escort or the quarrel between them to be settled. He had word he wished to deliver, and wished weigh the effect. He brushed past the curtain netting at the doorway, with the wizened sentry at his back calling out, “Halt!” as he entered. The man stumbled in at his heels.

Quendius sat, elbows on a campaign table, playing at a game of pegs and falcons. He made his move, the chair opposite empty, and looked around.

“The Warrior Queen seeks to buy arms and armor,” Daravan announced.

“If you hope to earn a few golds by telling me that, you’re late.”

“Did your informant also tell you Abayan Diort has offered to meet her needs?”

Quendius dropped his peg. An anger ran through him that darkened his ash-gray skin to a soot color, and his eyes went entirely black. “You’ve proof of this?”

“Copies of letters. May I sit?” Daravan glanced at the empty chair.

Quendius waved at him. He jabbed a finger at the sentry. “Next time anyone comes in here without detainment, you’ll hang for it.”

Bowing and gasping apologies, the sentry made a hasty retreat. Quendius remained leaning on his elbows.

“What else have you for me?”

“That is not enough?” Daravan felt the chair creak under him as he took it, the leather sling giving to his frame.

“Should it be? I’m not where I am because I settle for the first crumbs offered me.”

“These aren’t crumbs.”

“Perhaps they are. Perhaps I know more of Diort than you do.”

Daravan picked up an eagle and moved it swiftly. “And perhaps Diort thinks you don’t look too closely at him, feeling that confidence. He has a war hammer that can take down a mountain.”

“He also has allies.”

“As long as they are useful. He’s Galdarkan back to the ages of the Magi. The queen is Vaelinar. You are Vaelinar. In part.”

Quendius bared his teeth in a smile. “What proof of this have you?”

“That he seeks to play one against the other? None but his actions. He’s like you, Quendius. He’s canny and shrewd and has the loyalty of his men to the teeth. He won’t be caught easily.”

“You offer to catch him?”

“Not I. That’s your business. I merely deliver news.” Daravan reached inside his cloak pocket and took out a packet of letters, throwing them over to Quendius.

“Tell Queen Lariel I will meet with her to sell her what she needs.”

“Tell her yourself, and I’ll deliver it.”

Quendius made a noise, then yelled for his scribe. The little man came in, hair fluffed about his head and bedroll wrapped about his waist, his satchel banging against his rib cage. He threw himself on the ground and began to write what Quendius dictated to him, dried it, handed it over for a seal, then tied it and left it on the table in front of the weaponsmith.

“That’s all.”

The scribe skittered out of the pavilion, reminding Daravan of a mouse scampering to stay just ahead of a fox.

The tied letter stayed on the table between the two men. Neither reached for it.

“Name your price for the delivery.”

“You have a sword—”

Quendius put his head back and roared with laughter. Daravan waited for the humor to ebb. “A sword for a letter? Perhaps I’ll put one through your ribs and deliver it myself,” he said when he’d caught his breath.

“You should know me better than that. I want a look at it.”

“Any sword?”

Daravan did not answer. Quendius stirred after a very long moment, then yelled, “Get Narskap.”

The spare man entered the pavilion. The lamplight played unkindly with him, making his face look even more skeletal than daylight did. He folded his arms over his chest and waited for Quendius to tell him why he’d been sent for.

“Show him the sword.”

“No.”

Quendius thumped a heavy hand on the tabletop. Game pieces jumped from the peg board. “Hand it over, then.”

Narskap did not make a move. A cord in his neck twitched a little, and Daravan thought he could hear a hum just out of the range of normal hearing, drawn across the edge of his nerves rather than heard.

Quendius said to Daravan, “The sword is never drawn without blooding.”

“A barbaric rite. Who made it for you? A Bolger?”

“A fine Vaelinar craftsman made that sword. Give him a look at it in the sheath.”

“Why?”

“Because he has brought me information, and this is the payment he wants. And because I told you to.”

Wiry arms flexed and untied the back sheath, swung it about, and laid the greatsword flat in front of him, across both forge-scarred hands, Narskap unmoving under its weight. Daravan stared at it. The hilt and guard gleamed in exquisite workmanship, no doubt of that, and from what he could see of the blade, it, too, was of incomparable caliber. He wanted to reach out for it, hold his hand near its aura, but feigned indifference instead. “A pretty, long knife.”

“There is nothing pretty about this blade.” Narskap swung it about and secured it.

He would learn nothing more, he knew, other than the accounting one or two frightened men from Bistel’s small army had survived to give him. Did it leap out for blood like a hound? Did it swallow souls like the very heart of hell? Likely not. But whatever it could do, Quendius stayed cautious of it, only one man was allowed to wield it, and Narskap looked as if the burden would be the death of him.

Standing, Daravan reached for the letter. “Consider it delivered. You will know if there is an answer.”

“Good.” Quendius steepled his hands as he watched him leave, and Daravan had the unnerving feeling that the back of his neck seemed very vulnerable as he did so. Between those knobs of bone, swords could strike for a swift beheading.

He melted into the night, relieved only when he’d retrieved his horse and put the camp out of range.

“HOW CAN YOU ASK THIS OF ME?”

“Because it needs to be done. Lariel, one day you’re going to make her your avandara, and the next throw her away like an old rag? Explain it to me.”

Lariel put her hand on a stack of papers in front of her, her slender fingers curling about a writing instrument she’d just freshly sharpened for use. She wet her mouth to answer, looked away, and then looked back. “If she is what Azel believes, then she is not a person, Sevryn. She is a Way unto herself and likely an unstable one at that, her powers unknown, her makers unknown. Her effect could be one of total chaos. I need you with me, and Larandaril needs you. I can’t afford to let you go again on a chase to find a past that in all probability doesn’t exist for her.”

“Because you want to go to war.”

“Because we may
have
to go to war.”

“Have you an enemy? A front? An incursion which must be answered?”

“Not yet.”

“And you may never! What Abayan Diort is doing, he has a right to do. Galdarkans are his people, and if he wishes to unite them—”

She slapped her other hand down. “Don’t you ever dare tell me that one being has the right to subject a people to his will by bringing them to their knees in battle! No one has that right. If these people wanted him to rule them, they’d have gone to him long ago.”

“It’s a civil war, Lariel, and you’ve no right in it. They’ll unite just to turn on you, then. We’re the strangers here. You know that. There’s no winning a war when you step in between clans, tribes, who have lived for centuries fighting one another and the only thing they’ll fight even more fiercely is an outsider.”

“You speak of the Galdarkans as if they were Bolgers.”

“War is our most primitive state. It brings us all down to our lowest levels, even though you may see the greatest acts of courage and self-sacrifice within it. That can’t be reason enough to encourage it!”

Her fingers tapped. “Don’t lecture me on what runs in my very lifeblood.”

“Because it doesn’t run in mine? Or because my blood is thinner than yours, weakened, tainted?” Sevryn rocked back on his heels.

“I never said those words.”

“I’d like to see you deny that you’ve thought them.”

Her hands twitched from tapping to shuffling papers between them, trying to restore order to a pile already impeccably stacked, a never-ending resource of dialogues and recordings from the daily meetings. Somewhere in the Great Halls must reside a legion of scribes and copyists. She took a deep breath. “You yourself brought me confirmation that we may need to face the Ravers in swarms.”

“If we wait until they build an army as well, then we’ve already lost. It’s not a war we face there, but an infestation, and we need to root it out before they raise themselves up. There won’t be a front, uniforms, officers. They’ll raid and their groups will grow, but you won’t be able to fight them with rules of strategy and engagement.”

“Bistel wasn’t fighting Ravers. He speaks of inhuman weapons, of God-touched fighters who cannot be stopped without great sacrifice!” She shoved her paperwork aside. It went flying across the desk and into the air, drifting down like autumn leaves, covering the room in parchment.

He said quietly, “You brook criticism from me that you’d never accept from anyone else.”

“Jeredon, perhaps.” She leaned back in her chair to survey the mess. “Tell me again why you must leave me for Rivergrace, in the face of all I’m worrying about.”

He bent over, picking up the sheets as he spoke. “I don’t think I’ve ever lied to the two of you . . .”

“Omitting the truth isn’t lying.”

“No.” He put some on the table and continued to gather. “I lost those years in slavery.”

“Tell me what Jeredon and I don’t know.”

“I never faked not having the recall, but I ran across something I kept from you. I left a message for myself. When I escaped, I had a mind or enough of a mind to know I had to do that, that I had to lay clues to what I’d learned, what Gilgarran had gone to learn, so that it could never be forgotten in case I was caught again and perhaps to be understood by another if I didn’t survive.”

She sat forward intently. “And you’ve found it?”

“It’s not that easy, m’lady queen. I wish it were. I’ve been years trying to decipher it, and I still don’t have the answer.” On one knee, still gathering the fallen paperwork, he recited:

 
She frowned at him. “Where have you heard that?”

He could feel his face warm as he feared her mocking the verses. “I know it’s a child’s rope game, commonly played in the streets. It resounded in me, and I pulled the players aside when I first heard it, thinking I’d found the key, the answer to my lost years.”

“And?”

“And they told me I taught it to them. In rags, a wastrel on the streets, but a man who stopped to play with them, and taught it to them by rote. They stared at me as if I were a madman for not knowing what I’d done.” He gestured helplessly. “Outsmarted myself, it seems. I devised such a cleverness that I can’t unknot it. I’ve nothing beyond that, nothing I can tell you, and it haunts me. I learned something when Gilgarran died, that I dared never forget, and it’s lost to me.”

She shook her head. “Not entirely a child’s game. Four forges dire of earth, wind, water, and fire comes from our very first days here, a warning. It’s an old prophecy, Sevryn, very old. Like Trevilara, it’s ingrained in us so deeply that it wasn’t quite forgotten, although the sense of it, the need to remember it, has been. It’s also not widely known. It’s been passed from leader to leader, and kept, quietly. I don’t know how you heard it, unless Gilgarran passed it to you without your knowing it.”

“Yet you would equip an army from such a forge.”

“I can’t very well send men out facing death without equipment, without armor, without weapons. I won’t go to battle without a plan and without hope of winning. Prophecies are always couched in riddles, Sevryn, and they seldom say what they actually mean. It’s often been interpreted that a forge is meant as an event or one of our own Houses, since the elements are strongly entwined in the wording. We likely won’t know till all is said and done, and what Bistel deigns to tell me only reinforces that.”