The Seer - eARC (67 page)

A blink and then another. A line of not-quite light came from him, a strange mix of true light and the various etherics surrounding them both. It wrapped around her in dull silver, as if the moon’s light had been bled to make spider-silk and she were being cocooned. In moments she felt it tighten, closing off the night’s bands of grays.

Almost a pleasant sensation, like her warm bath. She was reminded of Gallelon’s snug embrace. Babies were swaddled thus in soft blankets, to reassure, to comfort. Deep inside her was that memory, and some part of her was calmed.

Trickery, to take down her guard. She tried to shake away her body’s sense of rightness in this cocoon, but it held tight. Then it was too tight, gone from warm embrace to suffocating wrap.

In a flash, her air was gone. She struggled to poke holes in the surrounding cocoon so that she could breathe.

But no, she realized, as a new motion began, that had not been the attack, only the base for it. Now she felt his touch on her head, neck, and shoulders, delicately worming its way inside her body as she sought her grounding tethers, but they were gone, cut away in this prison of light, no stone or tile in reach. Not so much as a speck of dirt.

It was oddly simple to still her emotions. She no longer needed to fear his coming for her, because he was here. No cause to fear death, either; if he wanted her dead, she would be dead. Her terror of him, such a constant companion these many years, was gone.

But his attack was not. A three-pronged assault came at her, all at once: the blood to her brain slowed, a rapid patter at her heart, and a near-whine inside her head that signaled a coming shock.

Killing blows, each one, any one of which she might be able to deflect or undo. But all three together? It was beyond her.

Had been beyond her
, she told herself, in the days when he held her contract.

All right, then: one at a time. She drew the growing spark into the bone of her head, spreading it across the hardest part of her. It would cost her a wretched headache later, but that was far preferable. At the tattoo-touch so deep inside her chest, her heart began to tighten and clench. She held the cramp in abeyance, struggling to keep both sides of the organ quiet one moment more, to help them remember their harmony together. When she released them, they beat in rhythm.

Then the last attack, the simplest of the three. A rush of sound in her ears like a crashing waterfall. She struggled to stay conscious, head swimming as she dropped to one knee and then the other, hands flat on the ground, her vision darkening. In memory or imagination he laughed at her.

To succumb to this simplest of the three was so very disappointing.

And that was her error, she realized now, her thoughts slowing even further: she had been defending. Thinking him invulnerable, she had not attacked him, not at all.

A foolish strategy. She could see that now.

With the last of her focus she hurled at him a pinpoint of her will, like the finest of needles, piercing through the cocoon around her, sinking into his skin at the navel to find the delicate nerve that began there and wandered the body, the one that she knew so very well from her work with mothers and infants.

There it was. All it needed was a good solid push, and—

As she collapsed to the ground, she heard a sharp exhalation of surprise and pain from Keyretura. In the moment before she lost consciousness, she realized that she had never heard such a sound from him before.

Her last thought was to wonder if it had anything to do with what she had done.

Maris came awake, eagerly gulping air. Around her, the night was dark and quiet.

The cocoon of light was gone. The square was quiet. Maris leveraged herself up with her good arm, dizzy but alive, head and wrist pounding with pain. She looked around for Keyretura.

He lay some distance away, one hand on his head, the other on his chest, breathing hard. Healing himself.

Healing himself?

Had she really gotten through his defenses and stopped his assault? She sat up, for a long moment staring at him in wonder.

She had attacked her aetur. She might even have hurt him. An impossibility, she would have thought.

Minutes went by as she watched him. He moved his hands to his stomach, then back up to his chest, neck, and head. She knew what he was doing: he was repairing the damage she’d done to that critical nerve. At last he put his hands down and looked over at her. To her surprise, he smiled.

Another game?

“I abhor you,” she told him.

He chuckled. “At last, the unarmored truth.”

With a hand to the ground he slowly pressed himself to stand, moving like an old man, and shuffled toward the fountain. There he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing at the falling water. He gestured at the streams, fingers opening and curling as his hands turned.

The sound of water ceased. A fog hung in the air around the large central marble pillar of sculpted flowers. Moonlight caught and spread among the fog, each tiny droplet of water becoming a turning, perfect prism. A mist of small diamonds, converting moonlight into millions of brilliant rainbow flashes.

Her breath caught at this display. It was nothing like what he had done with the tea mid-air earlier; this was not blinding. It was magnificent.

In Keyretura’s fine mansion where she had grown up, water and glass had taken sunlight across the day to make changing and exquisite paintings of light. She had thought herself inured to such marvels now, but he had never shown her anything so splendid as this. She had not realized he was capable of it.

It put her in mind of Samnt and his hunger to see magic. She felt an unfamiliar craving to do this thing her aetur had done, to make something so beautiful.

For a long moment, the mist of moon-fed rainbows hung in the air. Then the arcs of fountain resumed their fall. Water splashed into the pool, the diamonds of light gone.

She got to her feet, bemused.

“Why do I still breathe, Aetur?”

“What do you think I wanted here, Marisel?”

“To show me how much I still lack. To end me.”

“What petty motives you ascribe to me. I spent twenty years creating you. Why would I destroy you now?”

She walked to the edge of the pool and sat there on the marble, considering. “I have never understood you.”

“That much is clear. Hear me, Marisel: it is no small effort to create a mage. Did you know I had two uslata before you?”

“I had heard this.”

When she had asked Gallelon, he had confirmed the rumor. “Not mine to tell,” was all he would say, so Maris knew little more of Keyretura’s earlier uslata than that they were no longer mages. For years she suspected Keyretura of killing them.

In encounters like this one, perhaps.

She could barely make out his expression in the shadow of night, backlit as he was by moonlight, but for a moment it seemed to her that sorrow flickered across his usually stoic features. “I failed them. I created them weak and fearful.” He looked back at her. “I could not bear to lose another.”

His meaning sank in. “You did all this for me?”

“You are surprised?”

“But why would you trouble yourself to . . .” To what?

To let her win?

“Marisel, you are my
koacha
. You are my child.”

Behind her eyes was a sudden pressure. The threat of tears. No. She would not let him.

“It was feigned, then, this encounter?” She gestured to take in the night, letting herself feel the outrage of insult.

From him a guttural sound of derision. “You think I pretend to this?” He gestured to his stomach. He snorted, then held her gaze, his arms out to his sides. A clear invitation.

Never had she sent an etheric touch into her aetur’s body. He would not have allowed it. But he opened the way now, taking down his protections so fast that she was dizzied.

She extended the slightest of touches into his body. There she found the nerve she had attacked, still hot and thickened, even with the healing he had done.

A killing blow, it would have been, had he not been Keyretura. It had been no pretense.

She withdrew her touch, shaken as much by his invitation as the evidence she had found.

“You must have held back,” she muttered.

“How foolish that would have been, given how little you trust me already. No; I would have taken you to death’s door had you not truly stopped me.”

At this, she felt chilled.

“But,” he added, “I would not have let you step through.”

She looked at him anew, and the rest of the pieces fell into place. “Dirina. Pas. You abducted them to force me here.”

A nod. “I could wait no longer for you to come to me of your own accord.” Keyretura seated himself on the edge of the fountain, a pace away from her. “Maris, I am pleased with what I see in you. You have learned well.”

Again his words threatened to reach through her protections. She thought of her parents, brought their faces to mind. Of Dirina and Pas kidnapped and his violation of her home. Of the decades of wrenching agony under his tutelage.

“I do not forgive you, Aetur,” she said, voice rough.

“I do not ask you to. Give me your arm.”

She hesitated a moment, then did as he asked. He took her wrist between his palms and the pain lessened. Next he reached up a hand to her head, and she pulled away. He waited, and after another moment, she brought her head back. He laid three fingers on her forehead, and the headache was eased.

They sat a time in silence as the moon rose. How strange, she thought, to sit by his side and not be afraid. She gave him a sidelong look.

“I would ask your advice,” she said.

The flicker of surprise across his face gave her an inordinate amount of satisfaction.

“Yes?”

“I am . . .” It astonished her, that she wanted to ask him this, but she did. “I am considering taking on an apprentice. You will say I’m not ready, I suppose,” she added quickly, “but—”

“You suppose wrong. Readiness comes from need, not before.”

“Yes,” she said, startled to find herself agreeing with him.

The need to face him. The readiness to do so. Had he said such eminently sensible things in the years before, and she not listened? He must have changed. Or she had.

Perhaps both.

“I was seven when we forged our contract. Is sixteen too old?”

“Not if he is sufficiently determined.”

Samnt, stubborn? Yes. Enough? Perhaps.

“You—” She took a deep breath, looked away and then back at him. “You took everything my parents had,” she said. “I will not do that. I would instead pay them for the loss of his labor on their farm.”

“Then he will not survive the study, Maris. The price must be high or the student will leave to do something easier, and anything is easier. Like it or not, you know this.”

“Then I will find another way to give him sufficient motivation. I will prove you wrong, Aetur.”

He smiled again. “Do that, Koacha.”

“Where are Dirina and Pas?”

“I will not break my contract to Innel by telling you, though I may bend it somewhat. I will say this: they are well and whole and in his hands.”

“And Amarta?”

“At the Rift, where Innel has brought an army to Otevan.”

“Why did you accept this contract? Did you not tell me, again and again, to stay clear of empires and their squabbles?”

“I told you many things. Did you believe them all?”

“No.”

“Good. I am here, instead of with Innel, to protect the queen, though she seems able to do that herself with some competence. Go to the Rift in my stead, Maris. Ask him about your Iliban. Help him if you care to.”

“I don’t.”

“Then don’t. Either way, I am done. I will leave after you do. I have what I took this contract to gain.”

“Which was what?”

“This,” he said with a gesture at her.

“This?” She exhaled. “You have an odd way of showing your care, Keyretura.”

“I am sometimes fallible.”

He held up a hand, fingers extended, and she felt the etheric connection between them spark and warm. For a moment she considered how she might sunder this cord, once and for all.

She could stretch it, as she had these last decades. Let it thin and fade. But no matter how quiescent, it seemed to her that it would always be there: a pressure, a touch. A connection.

It was a door between them. While she could not remove it from the world, she could, she realized, force it shut, if she wanted to.

Did she?

“Before you leave for the Rift to reclaim your people, Marisel, come and have tea with me.”

The tone and words were the same, but for some reason they now sounded like an invitation instead of a command.

She laughed at this, at herself, perhaps even at him. They sat a while in silence, watching the moon rise, as she considered how she would answer.

Chapter Thirty-six

It should not have been possible.

Innel watched the sparks and smoldering columns of smoke rise into a half-clouded, moonlit night. He strode back to the pavilion, taking Nalas aside. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Nalas said. “Be far worse, though, if not for the—water.” His eyes flickered to Amarta.

“How did they get inside our lines? Was someone bribed to look away?” He would like to think that impossible, too.

“Don’t think so, ser.” Nalas eyed the five Teva sitting under guard at the long table. “Their horses jumped the perimeter. Shot fire arrows. Their aim is—very good.”

Better than good—nothing short of astonishing. And the horses—even Arunkel jumpers bred for the purpose wouldn’t have cleared the height and width of the wagons and fencelines that were supposed to defend the camp.

Now every able soldier was on the line, cavalry on patrol, archers standing ready. A little late.

“How many days of food do we have left?”

“Four? Three? We won’t know for certain until we see the damage in the light. Sunrise in a few hours.”

Four days.

“How many of theirs did we injure or kill?”

A pause. “None, ser.”

“
What?
”

Nalas grimaced. “The shaota move like cats. As if they can see in the dark.”

Innel whirled on Amarta. “You. Why didn’t you tell me this was going to happen?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Do you think I see everything? I saw fire. That water could change the outcome. I told you this as soon as I could.”

“Another few minutes warning and we could have prevented this.”

“No, you couldn’t,” she said adamantly. “There was no future in which it didn’t happen. Shall I tell you about every unavoidable thing, ser, despite that you don’t listen? Very well: tonight the moon will set. Tomorrow the sun will rise. The ground will be down, the sky up. Shall I go on?”

He came close, hungering to grab her, shake her, slap her until she spoke to him properly. He pulled his hands back, remembering the last time. “Need I remind you—”

“Of our contract?” She raised her bandaged hand. “That you have my family? Which one is it this time?”

Innel wondered what Restarn would have done with her. Not have let her speak this way to him, of that he was sure. But how? “I could send a bird right now,” he said, letting the bite into his voice, “directing that your sister and nephew be—”

“But you won’t,” she interrupted. “Don’t you have more important things to do than try to threaten me with a future I can see and you can’t, Lord Commander?”

His hands were clenched into fists. “When our supplies run out, Seer, how will our troops eat?”

Her voice dropped. “They won’t need to, ser.”

“Damn you, give me another answer.”

“Give me another question.”

“How do we win against the Teva?”

“You don’t.”

“Unacceptable.”

Lismar entered the pavilion, shot a glare at Amarta, her gaze settling on Innel. “Lord Commander, no one will sleep more tonight. The troops are angry. They know a lot of our supplies were destroyed. They don’t want to be hungry. They want revenge.”

Fear of hunger might be well-founded; there might not be enough to finish this campaign, even if it went well. Which it had yet to do.

The town, Hanatha, was the obvious solution. It would have supplies. Overprotected with the double walls, especially for such a remote location. Were they expecting the empire to come calling? What were they hiding?

Regardless, the town would have food aplenty and provide excellent protection for their next move, whatever it was.

He looked at Amarta.

“Attend to
me
, Lord Commander,” Lismar said sharply, “not her. She knows nothing of military campaigns, whereas I know rather a lot, as you will recall, if you give it just a moment’s thought.” Lismar was furious, her tone far from respectful.

First among generals, he reminded himself. The king’s sister. One of the oldest of the Anandynars. He needed her and her good will.

“I do indeed recall, General, and I consider myself fortunate to have you at my side. Hanatha will have food and provide a stronghold from which we can properly address the Teva. Assemble a force at first light.”

“Finally,” Lismar exhaled.

Amarta’s expression was uneasy. What concerned her most? Her family? Her own safety? Where did her loyalties truly lie?

“We will take half the companies,” he told Lismar, turning to study the map of Hanatha and the land around it. “Infantry, archers, and cavalry. The rest to defend the camp.”

“That’s far more than we will need to take the town, Lord Commander,” Lismar said.

“That’s why we brought force, General. To be certain. Ready the battalions and horses.”

Tayre found it wasn’t only the cook. There were also a number of axle breaks, tools gone missing, bootlaces cut. Someone was trying to make sure this campaign did not have too many advantages.

The cook had changed what she was adding to the huge stewpot. Judging from her body language this new ingredient was not as extreme as whatever was forcing soldiers to make the latrine smell so much worse than it already did. Now, instead, they were falling asleep, sprawled wherever they had been sitting, some even dozing through the Teva’s night attack on the camp.

Clever. Different symptoms would confuse the mistrustful.

Tayre could think of a number of agencies that might want to undercut this campaign or sully the Lord Commander’s reputation, for any number of reasons. But which was she working for?

He took her by the arm on her way back from the latrine, giving her a warm smile and whispering in her ear with intriguing gossip as if they were old friends, holding her attention long enough to draw her into a recently vacated whore’s tent that he had rented for the purpose. Once inside her eyes went wide as she realized she didn’t, after all, know who he was. “I saw what you put in the stew,” he said. “Every drop. Now tell me who put you up to it.”

“What? No, I don’t—”

“Hush,” he said. “You’ve nothing to worry about if you tell me the truth.”

Her eyes went wider yet, her mouth slack. She glanced down at her left leg, then lifted her trouser to reveal a twined cord around her ankle. Grain yellow and dirt brown. House Elupene’s colors.

He made a show of considering this, but the tightness in her shoulders and turn of her mouth told him she was lying. A cover story, then.

“The right answer,” he said with a knowing smile, watching her already weak pretense crumble into uncertainty. “I’m only here to check on you. Make sure you have this well in hand, and it looks like you do. You didn’t think we’d send you out to do something this important with no support, did you?”

The sudden relief on her face verified his guess.

“No,” she said, nodding eagerly. “I understand.”

“We take care of our own,” he said. “We’re all around you. Protection if you need it. You’ve done well.”

At this she straightened. “It wasn’t easy. I had to mix it with some of my best spices, just in case someone was watching.”

“Good. Here.” He handed her a small pouch. “To show our ongoing backing.”

She looked inside, mouth fell open. “Falcons?”

“Not so loud. Now, we need something more from you.”

“Yes, ser. Anything.”

“Your loyalty.”

“Ser. I’m very loyal.”

“We know you are. So this, a simple thing: renew your oath to us. Now.”

“I’ll say whatever you want.”

“No, no. Use your own words. It means more to us that way.”

Her voice dropped to where he could barely hear it. She started, stammered, stopped. Started again. “I serve Helata. In this. In all things. On my life.”

“On your life indeed,” he answered. “Well done. I’ll report to our masters you are most faithful.”

He pressed her shoulder affectionately and led her out, waving her off.

So, Helata pretending to be Elupene. With all the rumors of gold, Tayre had expected Etallan to be in motion here.

Well, no reason it couldn’t be both. Or more. Though if the Houses were cooperating to undercut the monarchy’s army, that would be very bad news indeed for the monarch.

Also Helata was not usually known for this sort of intrigue; to be this direct they must scent blood in the water. If the Lord Commander lost here at Otevan, with Cern’s authority still so immature, Tayre could imagine a number of shifting alliances that would cost the queen dearly.

An intriguing answer, both dangerous to know and potentially worth a great deal, in whatever currency he might like.

He wondered what, if anything, he would do with it.

Amarta sat by herself in a corner of the pavilion and tried to make sense of what had happened.

She had foreseen the camp burning, quite clearly. Though when it would happen, she could not have said, until just before it did. That was how the future was sometimes: highly changeable. Built out of decisions and the people who must make them.

Before her now, one future seemed to be coming to the fore, crowding out other possibilities, becoming more vivid as the moments passed. Nearer and nearer to the same sort of inevitability as the attack in the night. Again, caused by the choices people were making. The Lord Commander in particular.

A blanket of soldiers rippled over the valley to overrun the town like ants over an injured grasshopper. A slamming, tearing sound. Piercing cries.

She could try telling him that he could not win this, but again he would not believe her.

What does he most need, to come closest to his intention?

Too big a question, the answers too convoluted. Hundreds of strands that quickly became thousands.

And now he watched her from the map table.

His face twisted in pain and fear, he gave her a pleading look.

A surprised sound escaped her.

“What?” he asked, coming close. “Tell me.”

Well, she had given him her oath. “You are gravely injured, ser. You beg me for help.”

His disbelief was plain, bordering on outrage. He shook his head and turned his back on her, went to his maps.

From the other side of the room, Jolon caught her attention.

If they attack Hanatha,
he signed,
it is bad. The town is our children.

What? Your children?
That did not quite make sense. Maybe she misunderstood, misremembered the signs.
You care for the town?
she asked, trying to clarify.

He shook his head then nodded.
Yes, we do, but—
A gesture of frustration.
Our children defend the town. If they attack Hanatha, the children will kill them. Many will die.

That much she already knew.

Innel did not like the look in people’s eyes when Lismar was around. When he gave orders, they looked at her. He could not put from his mind her words of the previous day.
When was the last time you did, Commander?

“I’ll lead from the field,” he had told her the previous night. Was that a twitch of a smile on her face? “You disapprove?” he asked.

“No, ser. But we’ll have you well-protected. I won’t be the one to tell Her Majesty that something happened to her royal consort while I looked on. I’d never be invited to dinner again.”

“You are welcome to lead the vanguard instead of me, General.”

“No need. My list of victories is sufficiently long. Let someone else have this glory.” Meaning him, of course. “You take too many troops for a town.”

“A walled town.”

“A double-walled town,” she replied. “Even so, we send as many soldiers as the town beds. I am not overly concerned about your safety.” Her tone was, he thought, condescending. “Indeed, they will trip over each other getting inside.”

“I will tell them to step lightly.”

She smiled at this. Tolerantly, it seemed to him.

For a moment he wondered if Lismar might prefer to see him to fail here. But that would make no sense; she must know that Innel was part of what kept Cern’s rule whole, and Cern’s rule kept the Anandynar line intact.

Furthermore, she had sworn her loyalty to him, in return for the safety of her descendants.

Unless that was pretense intended to make him complacent.

No—it was too easy to see treachery everywhere. He could not move forward without relying on someone. On many someones.

He missed Srel keenly. As soon as they were established in the town he would again question Nalas on the camp’s mood. Some of the troops were advocating putting the shaota carcass in the stewpot. Practical, perhaps—now especially—but not knowing how the Teva might respond to that, he had instead set a guard around the body, which no one liked. Another thing to resolve once Hanatha was in hand.

And so now he stood in the field, commanding the vanguard but surrounded by a substantial mounted guard at Lismar’s insistence. He could not quite blame her; in her place, with the queen’s consort putting himself at the head of an invading force, he might do likewise. Still, he could not shake the sense of being treated as a princeling at first battle.

Or would he, in her place, having been passed over for the Lord Commandership, instead look for a chance to show him wanting?

No. If he saw plots in every dark corner, he would be his own worst enemy.

Now he gave the signal to march. A horn blew. Lines of soldiers moved down into the valley.

Where were the Teva? Not around the buildings of Ote. Not on the walls of the town outer or inner, higher by some twenty feet. It made no sense. Where was the town’s defense?

The infantry assembled outside the front gate of the town, lines of archers behind, all waiting for his signal.

First he wanted to give Hanatha a chance to surrender. Given his numbers, to take the town in blood would look less like a victory than a slaughter. His first real battle. What he did here would matter.

It was hard to wait here motionless, feeling the eyes of thousands on him. He wondered how long Lismar would wait, or if she even would. He could have asked her the night before but had decided not to. It seemed a small thing. Now it did not.

He wanted to move. No doubt those under his command did, too. He forced himself to count. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.