The Summoner (30 page)

“Don’t even say it, Jonmarc,” Linton growled.

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” Vahanian replied with mock innocence. Carina frowned and bent over him once more.

“No more talking tonight,” she ordered, with a glare at Linton. “That means you. He needs rest. I have no mind to heal him over again just because you give him no peace. Now, shoo,” she commanded, pointing toward the tent opening.

Linton opened his mouth as if he intended to argue, then closed it wordlessly and stalked out.

Cam walked to the tent flap and crossed his arms, a human door.

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“Thanks for the chivalry,” Carina said, making one last inspection of Vahanian’s newly healed wounds. “It would have been very impressive… if you could have stood up.” She managed a surprisingly mischievous grin. “We’ll just let that be our little secret. Cam and Soterius won’t tell, will you?”

Cam didn’t even try to hide his smile, exchanging a grin with Soterius. “Not us. Your secret is safe.”

“Thanks so much,” Vahanian replied. “And I might have surprised you,” he said tiredly. “I’ve been thrashed worse than this… more than once.”

“Amazing you haven’t reconsidered your line of work,” Carina rejoined, packing up her kit and shouldering it. “This was a favor to Maynard. I don’t usually fix up the damage from bar fights.

Just encourages more of them.”

She started toward the tent opening. “Carina,” Vahanian called after her. She turned. For once, the mercenary’s face was completely serious. “Don’t change your mind about Kaine’s detour. I don’t trust him, never have. He’s right about the danger ahead on this road. But I’ve got a gut feeling that there’s something he’s not telling, something worse in the Pass.”

Carina looked as if she were about to make a retort, then reconsidered. “Thanks for the warning,” she said. “I had the same feeling myself,” she added as she gathered up her shawl and slipped out of the tent.

“For the two of you, that went well,” Cam remarked, keeping a careful eye on Carina as she crossed the camp.

Vahanian closed his eyes and groaned. “I didn’t end up with more damage than when I started, 250

so I guess you’re right. Anyone ever mention that your sister could rile the dead?”

Cam laughed. “She’s really rather pleasant around most people, Jonmarc. You bring out the worst in her.”

“I have that effect on a lot of people,” Vahanian remarked dryly. “Got me where I am today.”

“I rather suspected that,” Cam said noncom‐mittally.

“You’re a very effective doorman,” Vahanian replied. “Oh, hell, you’re a very effective door.”

“Nice of you to say so,” Cam chuckled. “Maybe there’s a future in it.”

“Go to bed,” Cam said to Soterius. “I can handle this watch. It’s almost dawn.”

“Soterius,” Vahanian called, and the soldier turned. “Tell Tris I’ve got a message for him, a warning—from a friend.”

Soterius looked puzzled, and nodded. “I’ll do that,” Soterius agreed, and there was a rustle as he left. Vahanian opened his eyes and glimpsed Carina’s tent through the open flap. By candlelight, he could make out the forms of her companions within her tent, Tris and the hedge witch, and he wondered just what it was that Cam interrupted. Bounty hunters and mages, he thought dryly. The two things I like least. It’s got to start getting better, he thought. But as the flap fell, shut and a cold autumn breeze made him shiver, he doubted it.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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Kiara Sharsequin nudged her horse onward and wrapped her cloak closer against the autumn chill. The most dangerous part of the ride was now behind her, the perilous crossing through Margolan’s northern reaches.

Kiara avoided taverns, preferring to sleep outside rather than chance an encounter with any of Jared’s troops. But staying clear of the taverns had not kept her away from other people, since the roads were thronged with merchants and peasants alike, their horses, mules, wagons and shoulders loaded with all they possessed, seeking to escape the heavy hand of Margolan’s new king.

It was impossible to keep to the road and avoid the refugees. They were farmers and traders, and most said little, moving as quickly as they could toward the northeastern border and freedom.

Others tugged livestock and a procession of dirty children, urging on stubborn mules or lugging their own loaded carts. Kiara had still not decided whether she was safer apart from the crowd or hidden in their midst, although she doubted that any among this dispossessed lot held love enough for Jared Drayke to turn in the brown‐robed stranger with the gyregon.

Yet Kiara knew that when stakes were high, spies could be anywhere. So she kept to herself, coming to the supper fire only after most of the refugees slept, sleeping lightly within reach of her horse and her sword. It was not easy to avoid the stories of the refugees around her. She 252

caught snatches of conversation as the walkers talked with each other, sharing their tales of mistreatment. If only a third of what she heard was true, then Jared Drayke had indeed managed, in his brief reign, to become one of the vilest kings in the history of the Winter Kingdoms.

She could not doubt her own eyes. They passed a village, burned to the ground, the survivors picking amid the ashes for their belongings. Burned, they said, by Margolan troops, on the order of the king who was displeased with their taxes. Once, she stopped by the side of the road to eat and, as she settled down, discovered bones sticking up from a hastily buried, shallow grave.

Then, two days ago, they came upon a copse with oddly swaying branches. As they drew closer, they could see the truth: that the trees were gibbets, and that a dozen unfortunates hung in the fall breeze. Even a cursory glance confirmed

a military hand in the matter. The nooses were too regular for it to be a local lynching. It was easy to guess that Margolan troops had taken vengeance for some infraction, real or imagined.

Yesterday’s encounter was the one which would stay in her mind forever. They spotted a woman cradling a baby by the side of the road, and called her to join the group. Only then did they see the madness in her eyes and realize that she cradled, not a baby, but a log wrapped in a tattered blanket. She raved wildly about the coming of soldiers, about fire and her family being put to the sword, even the children, she cried, all but her tiny one, she declared, hugging the log fiercely. As the refugees streamed past, she did not join them, but railed on in her grief and madness, stopping only to put the log lovingly to her shoulder, or, with a gentle caress, against her breast.

Kiara was not prepared for how deeply the refugees affected her, nor how her distrust of Jared Drayke could move first to revulsion, and then to white‐hot anger. She was taught as heir to Isencroft’s throne to rule with firmness, but with genuine caring for her subjects. Although her upbringing gave her limited time among those not of noble birth, her glimpses of peasant life provided an impression of hard work and sparse possessions, but not the wretchedness these souls experienced at Jared’s hand.

Your Journey is to find a way to save Isencroft, not to save the world, she reminded herself 253

sternly. But the longer she spent among the refugees, the more moved she was by their plight.

And, trained as she was to be a fighter, a part of her longed to see Jared displaced, although she knew that Margolan’s affairs were none of her business.

Always, she thought of Cam and Carina, and the frightening scrying she had seen in Isencroft.

Had the vision come to pass? Had Cam and Carina survived? If they hadn’t, if they weren’t on the way back to Isencroft with a cure, would father live to see my Journey completed?

It was nearing sunset when she reached the rolling hills that marked Margolan’s northeastern border. Just on the other side of those large stone markers, she thought to herself, and one danger will be behind me. But her relief gave way to concern as the group slowed, then came to a halt, and the refugees began to buzz with conversation. Kiara stood in her stirrups for a better look, then swore and dropped back into her saddle. Two Margolan guards blocked the roadway, extorting passage money from the refugees.

For the better part of a candlemark, the motley stream of emigres filed past the guards, able to satisfy the demands for something of value in exchange for permission to pass. Kiara readied two gold skrivven, easily a guard’s wages for a week, and held them in her glove.

The guards’ mood soured after an altercation with an elderly man, nearly coming to blows until the bent old trader anted up two gemstones from the hem of his ragged robe. Now, the guards appeared intent on taking out their bad moods on the next hapless family.

“Please sir,” begged a farmer, “I’ve given you all the coin I own. For the sake of the Lady, please let us pass.”

Behind him, his gaunt wife and their half‐dozen ill‐clad children huddled together. Unlike most of the refugees who led horses or mules laden with packs or harnessed to overloaded carts, the family looked to be traveling with only the clothes on their backs.

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“Surely you didn’t leave all your coins buried in your field?” one of the guards taunted, stepping closer to the ragged man. “Everyone knows that farmers hide their money. You’ve only given me enough to get seven people through.”

“By the name of the Goddess, sir, it is all I have,” the farmer pleaded. One of the guards was already walking past him, toward the huddled family.

“Since you don’t have the coin, you can pay for your passage with trade,” he leered, and seized the oldest daughter, a child perhaps a dozen summers old. The girl screamed in terror as the guard pressed a knife against her throat.

“I beg you sir, let her go!” The farmer threw himself to his knees and the child’s mother pros-trated herself at the feet of the other guard as the children began to wail.

“Turn her loose.” Kiara drew her sword, and the crowd parted for her warhorse as she advanced on the guards.

The captain regarded her with a snide grin. “Well, well. A doxy on a horse with a bit of steel.

Ought to mind your own business, wench. Of course,” he added, “you’re welcome to mind mine.”

“Turn her loose,” Kiara repeated. She moved forward until Wraith stood between the guards and the hapless farmer, and she knew that, despite the guard’s taunts, he could not help but notice that her horse was a soldier’s mount.

The guardsman drew his sword. “This is none of your business. Be gone.”

“I’m making it my business,” Kiara replied, hoping the girl had the good sense to run if the 255

opportunity presented itself. “Now turn the girl loose and let us pass.”

“All we’re doing is making a trade,” the guardsman said as he moved forward, his sword raised menacingly. “Now leave, before you get hurt.”

“You want trade?” Kiara retorted, “then trade this!” Her sword glinted in the sun as she jerked back on Wraith’s reins so hard the horse reared. A hand signal, sent Jae streaking through the sky as Kiara set her horse riding straight for the guards.

Jae dove at the guard holding the child, and his talons raked across the man’s face, lifting eight deep streaks of blood. Cursing in pain and anger, the guard dropped his hold on the girl. She scrambled away, and caught her father’s hand, running for all she was worth with her family.

Kiara sidestepped her horse toward the guards, knowing how imposing Wraith could be and how obvious his training for battle would appear to a military man. The effect was not lost on the

soldiers, who stepped back a pace. From behind her, the refugees cheered and pressed forward, waving their staffs and tools in anger.

“Be gone, woman,” he ordered gruffly. “This is none of your affair. Ride past, and be thankful we don’t clap you in irons for what your hell‐spawned dragon did!”

Kiara did not move. “The way I see it, you’re outnumbered,” she said evenly. “I think you’d best be gone!”

Jae shrieked a warning just as Kiara caught the glint of the dagger out of the corner of her eye.

She lurched to one side, deflecting the worst of the dagger’s course with her sword, and bit back an oath as the dagger sliced against her shoulder.

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The captain drew his sword, expecting an easy win. He was unprepared for the speed of Kiara’s strike, or the power with which she wielded her sword. The unwary captain gaped as his sword flew from his hand and landed in the dust. His companion eyed Jae warily as the gyregon circled overhead, screeching menacingly and diving toward the two guards, pulling up just short of making contact with his sharp beak or long talons.

For emphasis, Kiara reared her horse once more, its hooves flailing inches from the captain’s head, easily able to crush a man’s skull with its heavy iron shoes. Once more, the refugees roared in anger and pressed forward, their staves and hoes no longer waving, but raised as if to strike.

“Whore take you,” the captain spat, scrambling to reclaim his sword and holding it lowered in defeat as the two soldiers began to back away. “You’ll pay, bitch. I promise you that.”

In response, Jae dove full speed at the captain’s head. With a cry, the hapless man turned and ran, following his companion. Jae kept up the pursuit, diving and shrieking, until the two soldiers were almost out of sight. Then he flapped contentedly back to Kiara and perched on her shoulder, preening with self‐satisfaction.

The refugees thronged around Kiara, exclaiming their thanks and congratulations.

Uncomfortably aware that she had lost all hope of traveling unnoticed, she sighed and accepted their thanks quietly, anxious to pass the border without further incident and ride on her way as quickly as possible. As the excited group began to move forward once more, a man threaded his way toward Kiara, and she recognized him as the farmer whom she had rescued.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” he said, his tattered cap in hand, “but I’m grateful for what you did back there. We had nothing more to give, but I couldn’t have borne to lose Tessa,” he said, with a nod to the wide‐eyed young girl who followed a pace behind him, looking in awe at Kiara’s horse and sword.