The Swans' War 3 - The Shadow Roads (3 page)

She felt as though she were being torn in two.

"I'm as divided as my appearance," Llyn whispered.

The night air required a light shawl, and she drew this close around her where she sat, hunched as she would never normally be. Her thoughts jumped between two men—both of whom were gone—missing. Yet they were ever present in her thoughts.

If only one were to return, she could stop feeling so divided. At this thought, which had appeared not for the first time, she shook her head.

This was all ridiculous. Toren did not feel toward her they way she did toward him. He did not have the feelings for her that Car-ral did. How foolish she was being!

Her head knew this. But feelings were not wise. That was the sad truth of them. Feelings made fools of the wisest, even the eldest. They did not care if you were noble or if you were an uneducated costermonger. All were treated the same—fools in their turn.

And yet her feelings for Carral were not feigned. They, too, were strong. And he felt the same, and even more so—she could sense it.

Unlike Toren, he would never see her face, never look upon her with horror, as did all who saw her. No,all of her thoughts and feelings for Toren were foolish, utterly misplaced. She had no doubt of this.

Then why could she not put Toren out of her mind? Out of her heart?

"You sit up late, my lady," a familiar voice said.

Her breath caught. "Have you not injured me enough, Alaan?""More than I ever meant to. No apology will suffice for what I have done." He was in the dark, some dozen feet away. She, too, was in the shadow of a tree, hidden even from starlight.

"Then why are you here?"

"To offer my humble apologies, even though they will mean nothing.""I do not accept them," she said firmly. "Begone."But he did not go. She could sense him there, lurking in the darkness.

"What is it you want of me, rogue?"He shifted from foot to foot. "There is a man here in Castle Renne—he is called Kai—""Yes, the man in the barrow. I have heard all about him.""You can't begin to know Kai's story. His life has been longer than any mortal man's. Had you heard that?""I had not… How would you know this?""Because my memories, Lady Llyn, stretch back to times for-gotten. To times when the Kingdom of Ayr was a wildland, a vast forest we called Tol Yosel—the River Lands. The forbears of the Renne and the Wills were hunters, or fishers of the great river— later called the Wyrr, after my father."She tugged her shawl closer, as a chill seemed to wash through her heart. "You frighten me, rogue," she said. "Tell me no more. I do not wish to know why you have come. Leave me in peace.""Peace is no more. We are at war." He took a few steps across the walkway, gravel scuffing beneath his feet. His voice seemed to have aged; though melodious yet, it was heavy and world-weary. "You know that Hafydd is a sorcerer.""I know that you are a sorcerer!" she said angrily.

He did not respond right away, and when he did his voice was quiet, conciliatory. "Kai cannot fall into the hands of our enemies. Hafydd cannot find him. It is of the utmost importance.""Why?""You would not believe me if I told you.""You do not think me intelligent enough to understand?""I think you too intelligent, Lady Llyn. That is why you wouldn't believe me.""You are a flatterer and a rogue. Where is it you go now?" Llyn asked, not sure why.

"I have a task to complete, and then I go to war, I think."He stood still a moment, as though expecting her to speak.

"Luck to you then, Alaan," she said, feeling confused and weak, unable to maintain even feelings of anger.

"Luck to us all, Lady Llyn." But he did not go. She could hear him breathing, almost, she imagined, hear the beating of his heart. "May I offer an observation?""Of what?" she asked apprehensively. He had never asked for permission to speak his mind before.

"Of Lady Llyn."

"You may not!"

She imagined the shadow gave a slight bow and turned away again, taking a few purposeful strides.

"What is it?" she called out. "What is it you would say?"He stopped, farther off, now. For a maddening moment he said nothing. Llyn felt herself lean forward,holding her breath, her heart racing.

"You shall regret this choice you've made, Lady Llyn. I will tell you this—when you stand before Death's gate you will wish you had lived, for it is a place of regrets." He hesitated, then said very quietly, "You will wish you had lived."And he was gone.

For a moment she sat utterly still, unable to rise, as though the wind had been knocked from her. And then she was striding to-^ward the stairs. She snatched up a lantern that stood there and went quickly down the path Alaan had taken. He was not to be found. But then she stopped. There, beyond the doveplum tree was a narrow cleft in the in the shrubbery that she knew had never been there before. She stared into this dark void, the light dancing as her hand trembled. There was a path into her garden! She almost felt an urge to walk down it, to see where it led. But she only stood and stared, her arm quickly tiring as she held the lantern aloft.

In a moment she turned and hurried away, breaking into a run. She dashed up the stairs and slammed the door behind her, almost dropping the lantern to the door.

"Your grace?" came the voice of her maid of the bedchamber. "Is something wrong? Your grace is as pale as a cloud.""Call a guard. Quickly!"Two guards came, at the run, and Llyn's servant led them down into the garden.

"It is just here," Llyn called from a shadow, as the guards ap-proached the place where the path had opened. The two guards stumbled into the bushes, breaking branches and trampling the flowers. Llyn drew nearer and watched them go, their lantern growing smaller and dimmer, as though they walked off into a wood. And then it disappeared altogether, though there was a wall not three yards away.

It was some hours later when the two guards returned, looking flustered and out of sorts. They had followed the path into the wood for some distance, but when they tried to retrace their steps they could not. Instead, they found themselves several furlongs away, near the river—and they had not walked a tenth that distance they were certain.

In the garden the path could no longer be found.

Llyn shut herself up in her room and bolted the doors, looking around as though the walls might open up, or a man appear out of thin air. That night she did not go to bed but sat up, awake, feeling as though she were being torn apart, like everyone in Castle Renne could walk unannounced into her little kingdom.

For many hours she paced, forth and back, like an animal in a cage. Finally, she stopped before the window where her reflection floated, faint and ghostly, against the night. She turned her face so that only the good side could be seen, peering out of the corner of her eye.

Half a beauty, she thought.

Very slowly she turned her head, seeing the teeth clench and the lips turn down, bracing herself. The ruined landscape of her face appeared; the eye with its lid greatly burned away, the bubbled skin across her cheek, red and coarse. Even her lips were reduced to thin red lines, as though someone had made her mouth with the haphazard slash of a dull knife.

She realized the thing floating in the dark glass looked like a creature out of nightmare. "You will have no pity from me," she whispered to the creature and a tear rolled down its ruined cheek.

They did not wait for morning but set out by the light of the waning moon, which lit the road faintly and made monsters of tree stumps and spies of every bush. Above them, a small flight of crows swarmed from tree to tree like a wayward breeze. Alaan set a good pace, as though the shattered moon was bright as the morning sun, and the night passed with hardly a word between them. Many times they dismounted and led their horses through shadow, and twice Alaan used a flint to light one of the torches he carried. The smell of burning pitch assailed Tarn's nostrils, but a small province of light spread around them. Beyond this, the kingdom of night lay hidden.

"The land between the mountains is behind us now," Alaan said quietly, "but we mustn't relax our guard. Once I've opened a path-way it remains open for some time. We could be followed."Tarn had not asked where they were going, assuming it was into the hidden lands, and any destination there would mean nothing to him, but as their horses trotted along the dark road the Valeman pressed his mount forward, drawing up beside Alaan.

"Where is it we go, Alaan?" he asked. "What place could be more perilous than the places we have been?"Alaan did not answer right away, but kept his gaze fixed on the dark ribbon of road. "We go into the borderlands of Death's king-dom, Tarn. A place from which only one man has returned.""Who? Who returned from Death's kingdom?""No one who passes through the gate returns, but I went once into the borderlands. We will try our luck again." He glanced up at Tam, his face ashen in the moonlight. "I will tell you honestly, Tarn— Death will not suffer our presence there. He will send his servants to find us."Tam let his horse drop back, falling in behind Alaan. He found himself wishing that he'd never left the Vale of Lakes, that he was there still in the late-summer light, walking through the ripening grain or drawing water from the spring that murmured the names of newborn children—or so it was said. Anywhere but following Alaan to this place he had named.

They carried on by torchlight, stumbling over rock and root, until faint light began to devour the shadows, and the stars overhead snuffed out, one by one. By a small lake, Alaan stopped to water the horses and let everyone rest. Cynddl kin-dled fire, and they made a meal as the morning spread west across the world.

Alaan had produced enough gold that night to buy them horses and tack, arms and supplies. No one asked where this wealth had come from. Nann had given them new bows, and Tam decided to try his, stringing it for the first time. Light re-flected off the polished grain of the yaka wood, as he nocked an arrow and drew back the string. The sound of an arrow hissed over the grass, followed by a sharp thwack as it lodged in the bark of an old butternut.

"You won't get that one out Tam," Cynddl said. "The grain will be too tight and old.""I took care not to shoot it that hard. How is your new bow, Cynddl?"In a moment there was an archery contest under way, with everyone but Alaan and Crowheart involved. Tarn noticed that Alaan watched over them without a hint of a smile, his eyes dart-ing often to the tree line, then along the shore of the lake.

He is a wary traveler, Tarn thought. And we should take a lesson from that.

Cynddl was the best archer that day, though only slightly better than Tarn. Fynnol came third, but did not seem to mind, as the competition was very stiff, and he had acquitted himself well.

"Time to go," Alaan announced, as Fynnol proposed a rematch.

Their horses had been grazing nearby, and were soon saddled and packed again. As Tarn tightened the girth strap on his horse, Fynnol and Cynddl came near.

"So what did Alaan say last night?" Fynnol asked quietly. "Did you ask him where we go?" He stroked the nose of his horse, which he had positioned to shield their conversation from Rabal and Alaan.

Tarn lengthened one of his stirrups, the worn leather warm and supple in the sun. He realized he did not want to be the bearer of this news. "We go into the borderlands of Death's king-dom, Fynnol."Fynnol blinked several times. "But no one returns from Death's kingdom.""Alaan said we will not pass through the gate—and that he made a journey there… once." Tarn hesitated. "Dangerous, but not more so than other places we've been." He tried to smile reas-suringly, but neither of his companions appeared to be reassured.

By the time they set off around the lake and up the slope into a shady wood, the morning was advancing. Beyond, Tarn thought he could make out hills, all but obscured by haze.

A whole morning's toil was needed to break out of the trees. The wood began to thin, then turn to scattered pines and firs. Weather-worn rocks broke through the surface, here and there, like the backs of ancient whales. And then the tree line was behind them.

They were on the side of a low, rounded mountain, the world spreading out below.

For a moment, they all stopped to let the horses catch their breath. They had traversed the slope back and forth, not attacking it directly, but even so, the climb had been difficult. An empty wind blew at this elevation, and the only sound was the occasional call of a distant crow.

"Well, Tarn," Fynnol said, breaking the silence, "we set out to trade for horses and look! Did you ever expect to own ones as fine as these? And they were free.""Oh, I think you've paid dearly for your horses," Alaan observed.

"Let's hope the price will not be more than we can afford," Fynnol answered quickly.

On the shoulder of the mountain, crows seemed to be the only animals. A few were always near at hand, but many more could be seen at a distance, perched on the branches of stunted pines or dot-ting stacks of lichen-yellowed rocks.

Prince Michael had told Tarn that his company had been at-tacked by an army of crows in the Stillwater, and he'd displayed the scars on his face and hands to prove it. Tam looked over at Crow-heart sitting on his horse, staring out over the lands below. The horses all seemed to perk up their ears when Crowheart was near, as though they listened for him to speak. He had a way with ani-mals, that was certain, speaking to them quietly, calming them with a touch of the hand. Tam only hoped that he had control of his crow army, for their bills looked fearsome.

A dark bird lit on the branch of a fire bush. Tam caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and thought at first it was another crow. But the nearby crows all took to wing, crying out in alarm. And then Tam heard, whist, whist.

The little bird hissed loudly, but it didn't seem to be scolding any of them, for it looked pointedly out over the distant lowlands.

Cynddl's hand shot up. "There!"Far below, by the small lake where they'd rested, a dozen riders traversed the open meadow. Fynnol cursed, but Alaan sat impas-sively on his horse, his eyes fixed on the riders.

"I feared as much," he said grimly. "Hafydd has many spies. Some must have been watching the Fael encampment." He stared for a moment more, then turned his horse but paused before push-ing on. "They would catch up with us, now," he said looking over his shoulder. "There are greater dangers in these lands than Hafydd's spies. Beyond this mountain is a wide valley that we must traverse. There is no way around it. I'd hoped to wait and cross it at first light, but we may be forced to travel by darkness now. Keep your weapons to hand." He spurred his horse and set off up the slope.

The whist leapt into the air, circling up, until it became a black speck in the sky—a fragment of night lodged in the blue.

They hurried on, pressing their tired horses up the mountain-side where cliffs, broken and jagged, loomed over them. Tarn glanced up from guiding his horse over the uneven terrain. There was, no doubt, a way among these, or Alaan wouldn't be leading them on, still he didn't like their situation. He twisted a bit in his saddle, the leather creaking in complaint. The riders were just dis-appearing into the trees below, having rounded the lake.

Tarn felt a sudden familiar tightening in his stomach. Memo-ries of the black guards pursuing them down the Wynnd, of the fight at the ford at Willowwand, of the night Baore was struck by an arrow beneath the north bridge. He pulled a drinking skin from his saddle to put a little moisture back in his mouth, sud-denly dry as sand. And what was this Alaan was saying about the valley beyond?

The base of the cliff was a jumble of broken rock, some pieces larger than barns. Alaan led them among these, never once hav-ing to double back. Tarn wondered if he'd been here before, or if this was his arcane sense that found paths where other men couldn't. Alaan never said that he created paths but always that he "found" them. As though they were there all along but hidden from others.

They were forced to dismount and lead their horses over a field of stone, but only Alaan's sorrel and the dark bay Crow-heart rode went along willingly. Twice Crowheart turned and spoke to Fynnol's horse when it balked, and then the gelding fol-lowed docilely.

They picked their way among house-sized boulders, crows gathering now in numbers on the tops and on ledges. The crying of the birds in the hollow wind added a sense of urgency, andTam hurried on, feeling a prickling on the back of his neck, as though the men behind were gaining—within arrow range.

Don't be a fool, he told himself, they will take some time to climb that hill, even if they don't spare their horses, as we did, and go straight up.

He wondered who these men were. Certainly it was Alaan they were following. Did they know he was a sorcerer? Surely they must. Did this not intimidate them at all, or had Hafydd taught them ways to deal with Alaan?

Of course Tarn still had no idea of what these children of Wyrr were capable. Hafydd had revealed himself a little in the Stillwater, but Alaan was still a mystery. He could travel paths no one had ever seen into lands unknown. He was a formidable swordsman and far stronger than he appeared, Tarn was sure. But could he match Hafydd's control of fire? Or Elise's apparent command of water? Tarn hoped there was more to Alaan than he'd revealed so far. They would have need of all the arcane knowledge they could find to fight Hafydd, he was sure of that.

Almost at the base of the cliff, Fynnol called out to Alaan, point-ing up. There, silhouetted against a quickly clouding sky, stood a man. Tarn blinked once, and when he opened his eyes, the man was gone. Alaan cursed, but went on, offering no explanation.

Tarn felt his anxiety increase dramatically. Who had that been atop the cliff? Alaan did not seem pleased, whoever it was. Tam loosened his sword in its scabbard and pressed on, his eye flitting over the landscape as though the very rocks threatened them.

Their efforts brought them to the foot of a narrow draw that wound up through a deep cleft in the broken cliff. A game path clawed up the steep draw, meandering from one side to the other, and Alaan urged his horse up this.

"Tarn," the traveler called, looking back once, his face dis-turbingly apprehensive. "Give your horse to someone. Take a bow and follow behind. We need a rear guard."Tam took a bow and quiver and gave the reins of his horse to Crowheart, who was already leading his own mount and a pack-horse. Rabal made a quick string of his charges and set off after Alaan, Fynnol close behind. Cynddl took his own bow and quiver from his saddle and placed himself just ahead of Tam, where he kept looking back warily. Tam could see sweat on the story finder's brow, his gray hair plastered tight to his forehead.

"If you see any movement, Tam, I have my bow ready.""I'm just as worried about men ahead of us, or overhead," Tam said, glancing up. "Certainly the riders who follow are two hours behind us.""I don't think so," the story finder said, puffing as they climbed. "Alaan made sure that we traversed back and forth across the face of the hill, saving our mounts, but these men saw us and will come straight on. Their horses will be tired, and perhaps they will be too, after they've led much of the way on foot, but they are likely not far behind now.""Then hurry on, Cynddl," Tam said, "I've seen enough of Hafydd's guards to last me a lifetime."Tam glanced up, wondering, unable to suppress a feeling that rocks or arrows would come raining down on them at any moment.

Before they reached the crest the first man appeared behind. He was horseless and carrying a bared blade that glittered in the sun. Tam called to Cynddl and heard the word pass up the line to Alaan. They pressed on more quickly, all of them gasping for breath now, unable to speak. Tam stumbled, trying to look back and forward at the same time. He bloodied his knee, but pulled himself up and hobbled on.

Another man appeared below, a bow in his hand. Above him Tam could hear the panting horses, hooves clattering over frost-shattered stone.

Another archer appeared and let an arrow fly.

"They're shooting at us!" Tam called up, watching the high arc of the arrow. It plummeted down toward them but well wide, hav-ing been caught by a breeze above the walls of the draw.

"Shoot back," Alaan called, hardly able to spare the breath.

Tam stopped and took aim. He was shooting downhill, which was never easy. He might waste an arrow to find the range. He drew back the string, finding the bow stiffer than his last. The arrow flew down the draw, the Fael bow every bit as good as its reputation.

The men at the bottom scattered as Tarn's arrow passed among them, but he thought no one was hit. He could see heads rising up above stones and shrubs. That might slow them a little.

Tam turned and hurried to catch up with his companions. Cynddl had given his horse to Fynnol and came back to join Tam, bow in hand, his young-old face drawn tight with concern, gray hair plastered to his sweating brow.

"Shall we make a stand here for a while and let the others reach the crest?" Tam wondered. He gazed down the draw, where there was movement among the stones.

"Alaan says to keep them back but not to fall behind." Cynddl pulled back his arrow and let it fly, then quickly nocked another. "Alaan's attention appears to be drawn up, in the direction we're going, as though the threat from below is not the real concern."Tam glanced at the story finder, then back down the draw. "That's not what I wanted to hear.""Well, perhaps I'm wrong," Cynddl said. "Let us hope so."The two scrambled up the draw, their eyes darting back and forth between the path and the men below. Tam tripped again and had to catch himself with a hand. Nothing was broken but an arrow, and he quickly had another from his quiver.