Bloodsongs (14 page)

“Twice across?” Telric said. He turned over on his back and watched the clouds speed by. “You're lucky you didn't drown. The Lythe is a wide river.”

“I nearly did,” she confessed. “I thought I
was
drowning.” She paused, chewed the tip of her thumb as she remembered the cool waters closing over her, the leaden fatigue that had numbed her limbs. “In fact, I thought I was dead.” She hesitated again. Telric said nothing but waited for her to continue. “I know I quit fighting the water and just gave up.” She stared beyond Soushane to the far horizon. “I saw my husband, then, and he called to me. I thought I'd made it to the nine hells.” She forced a weak smile. “Or one of them, anyway. He kept calling my name over and over. I remember how much I wanted to go to him, and somehow I found the strength to answer his call. I started moving toward the sound of his voice, but I couldn't seem to reach him no matter how hard I tried.” She tilted her head curiously, feeling a chill. “I must have passed out. When I woke up I was on the shore. Of course, my husband wasn't there. It had only been a dream.”

“The mind can play strange tricks when we're under duress.” His hand flicked out, and he tickled her nose with a blade of grass.

She looked at him with a sudden wistfulness. He reminded her so much of Kimon. Then, aware she was staring, she averted her eyes. There was still a dull ache when she thought of her husband, a sore that the Rholarothan's presence forced her to pick and prod.

“And your son, Kel,” Telric continued. “How did he come to lead this rebellion?” He tickled her nose again, then her ear.

She brushed him away. “I don't know,” she admitted. “There's a lot I don't know about Kel. He ran away a long time ago. A few months back, he turned up again, and Riothamus's troops were after him.” She bit her lip. “It was the first I'd heard about a rebellion.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You
must
have been isolated. Even in Rholaroth we'd heard rumors. Nothing specific, just little incidents that indicated something bigger might be afoot.”

“I didn't think I was isolated,” she said defensively. “I just thought I was . . .” She searched for the right word. “Content.”

There was nothing more to say after that, or so it seemed. Telric rolled to his back again to watch the clouds. Frost gave her attention to the windows of Soushane, wondering what went on behind those curtains and closed doors. What of the men and women eating their suppers or curling up for the night down there? Farmers and shopkeepers and herdsmen, mostly. Were they content? Or did they pass their lives in isolation and ignorance?

She would never again sit down before a fireplace for a quiet evening. Those times were behind her; she felt that in the deepest part of herself. Sadly, she shook her head. Her life had been filled with adventure and terrible events that had shaped and molded her and led her to a philosophy that had all but worshiped the sword.

But somehow, with Kimon to guide her, she had found a sense of innocence again, some tiny, dormant piece of herself that had not been drowned in the bloodshed or trampled in the adventuring. In her inn with her husband and children, she had nurtured that little piece and allowed it to grow until she had nearly forgotten what she once had been.

Her hand strayed to the sword lying on the ground at her side. It had a cold, ugly feel, a utilitarian feel. It knew what it was for.

What I once was,
she thought darkly,
and what I am again.

It hurt to realize that innocence was lost. Far, far worse to find it and lose it a second time.

“Look!” Telric interrupted. He had rolled over onto his belly. Her gaze followed where he pointed.

On the eastern edge of the sky, a long, dull streak of violet lightning illumined the lowest clouds. She groaned. It hadn't rained for two months. Now, here she was again in the open with no hope of shelter. She hadn't even a cloak this time.

Telric sat up. “Could Illstar have lied to you?” he asked. “Or could he have been wrong?”

Her fingers dug in the cool, moist earth. She rolled a handful of soil on her palm, tossed it upward, watched as it scattered on the wind. “Dromen served me well in the Korkyran Wars,” she answered. “I don't think he lied.”

“He sold your information to the garrison commanders,” Telric reminded her.

“I only paid him to find my son,” she explained, “not to keep quiet about it. My error. He has a very literal mind.”

Telric crossed his legs and tugged at the grass. “Why are you doing this?” he said finally. “Why chase Kel? When you talk about him there's such bitterness in your voice.”

She shut her eyes as memories engulfed her. A thin, acrid smile parted her lips. “Let me tell you a story.” She sat up suddenly beside him, so close their knees almost touched. “Before Kimon and I married, we were part of an adventure which caused us to ally ourselves to an old sorcerer and his demon familiar. Near the end of that, the demon broke his pact with the sorcerer and deserted our fellowship.” She hesitated, then looked straight into Telric's black eyes. “But not before . . .” Her shoulders bunched up around her ears then sagged. “Before he raped me. For a brief time I was pregnant with his unwanted spawn. Fortunately, Orchos, the lord of death himself, saw that the child never developed in my body.”

Telric started to speak, but she waved him to silence. It was hard enough to tell the story without answering questions. “When Kel was born, Kimon insisted on choosing his name. I always thought he took it by shortening Keled-Zaram, as if he were trying to emphasize our ties to our adopted homeland.”

“Kel,” Telric repeated to himself. “That makes sense.”

She bit her lip. “But Kimon always had a rather bizarre sense of humor. That demon I mentioned? Its name was Gel. Kimon used to tease me that he'd named the baby after the demon.” There was a sharp bitterness in her voice. “In fact, when Kel misbehaved, Kimon often claimed some part of the demon seed had survived and infected our child.” She planted her hands behind her and leaned back. “In the past few months I've sometimes wondered if he wasn't right.” She shook her head and closed her eyes again.

The Rholarothan pulled another blade of grass and brushed her knee with it. “That doesn't explain why we're sitting out here in the weeds.”

She watched the clouds. They made strange patterns, fantastical shapes that raced across the night. A star winked briefly through, as if an eye had opened and closed. Occasionally, the wan moon peaked through.

Talk of demons has warped my fancy,
she thought caustically. All the clouds seemed to her the shades of lost souls. They flew with frantic speed, searching for the peace of the afterlife.

A long, emerald streak lit up the eastern sky. Heartbeats later, distant thunder echoed.

“I don't know my son anymore,” she confessed. “Something has touched him, twisted him into a cruel mockery of my Kel.” She met Telric's gaze once more and sat up straight. “I need to know if it was something I did,” she said forcefully. “Or something I didn't do. Or if something did it to him.” Her fingers curled into tight fists. She rubbed her knuckles together in her lap. “I've got to talk to him,” she stressed. “I've got to know.”

Telric scoffed. “You think you can change him.” He tossed the blade of grass over his shoulder. The wind caught it and carried it tumbling away. “Well, forget it. Sometimes, woman, people just go bad and nothing can be done about it. You met my brothers, Than and Chavi.”

“But there's more,” she said, leaning forward until their faces almost touched. “The four fingers that were cut from Kimon's hand. Only a sorcerer, a necromancer, would do something like that. Kel is involved with a sorcerer, someone called Oroladian. Supposedly, the two of them lead this rebellion.”

“It could have been a madman who killed your husband,” the Rholarothan argued. “I've seen cruelties that had nothing to do with magic.”

“I've been to lands,” she said thoughtfully, “where the warriors take trophies from the men they kill. Bits of hair or an earlobe or something.” She leaned away from him, fighting the tension that knotted her shoulders. “But what I found on
Sha-Nakare
was purest magic. Someone stole something that belonged to me. In my hiding place they left a mystic entrapment that could only have been arranged by an adept of considerable power.”

Telric tore a handful of grass from the earth. The dirt that clung to the roots spattered them both as he cast it away. “And you want to tangle with that kind of power?”

Frost reached inside her tunic and extracted a small leather bag that hung on a thong about her neck. “I haven't shown you this,” she whispered. “It isn't pretty.” She opened the bag and reached inside with thumb and forefinger. Telric moved closer, then jerked away, eyes wide with disgust.

She held up the finger for him to see. It had been severed between the first and second joints. A bit of the bone and torn vein could plainly be seen even in the dark. It had a very faint odor, though the flesh appeared almost petrified.

“Gods,” he grumbled. “You carry that with you?”

“I think it belongs to Kimon,” she answered. “After I woke up on the bank of the Lythe, I climbed back to the top of
Sha-Nakare.
In the daylight I found this in the hole where I'd buried a box years ago. The empty box was still there; this was under it.”

“It might not be Kimon's,” Telric cautioned.

It was her turn to scoff. “I think Kel's sorcerer used it in some way to find what I had hidden on that hill.” She looked away, turning cold all over. “There are things,” she explained in a reverent voice, “necromantic things a sorcerer can do with parts of corpses.” Her hand strayed to the hilt of her sword. She laid the blade across her knees, ran a finger along its edge. “I think this Oroladian killed my Kimon; then, with the fingers in his possession, the sorcerer commanded my husband's spirit to betray the location of my dagger.”

“A dagger?” the Rholarothan interrupted. “That's all you had hidden?”

Alizarine lightning crackled, nearly blinding, tracing a frightening lacework over the sky. Thunder shook the steppe. A wind howled and whipped at them. Frost felt her hair lifted straight behind her, and dust stung her eyes.

“It doesn't matter what was hidden,” she snapped. “It was mine!” The sudden wind died, and the world turned eerily quiet. Frost listened for a moment, then continued in a lowered voice. “I'm going to find my son. He came to the inn that day asking about the dagger. That wasn't coincidence.” Her lips compressed into a thin, taut line. “Then I'm going to find Oroladian.” She looked upward again at the racing clouds.
Lost souls all, searching for the peace of the afterlife.
She had thought that earlier, and the image still remained with her. “Then, I'll put Kimon's spirit to rest.”

“Vengeance?” Telric prodded.

“Vengeance,” she affirmed coldly.

He leaned back and casually stretched, but his gaze fixed her intently. “Vengeance poisoned my father,” he reminded her. “It consumed him until the day he died, cursing a woman he never found.”

She put the finger back into the leather bag and returned that inside her tunic. Her hands fell upon her sword again. It seemed to radiate with its own life, and it cried with a hunger.

“You're like that card in your fortune-telling deck,” he said at last. “The queen of Swords—the one you called the Dark Angel.”

She shut her eyes and rocked herself slowly upon the earth. “Night's Angel,” she corrected. “The bringer of retribution.”

“Retribution is something best left to the gods,” he replied heavily.
 
He looked away from her and gazed out across the landscape, then rose suddenly to a half crouch. “Still, maybe you didn't come alt this way for nothing. There come riders.”

She leaped up, fastening her sword belt around her waist, sheathing her blade, staring where he pointed.

A small forest of torches marked the riders' progress. She made a vain effort to count them, but the wind fanned the flames too wildly. She settled on fifty as an estimate. It was impossible to distinguish the riders from her vantage, impossible to spot Kel among them.

Telric whispered to himself, but loud enough that she overheard, “Why bother with such a sleepy, harmless town?”

“I've got to get closer,” she said, moving toward the horses. “They won't see me in this dark.” She grabbed the reins of her mount and swung up into the saddle. “You don't have to come. Kel isn't your problem.”

Telric didn't waste breath answering. He mounted and started down the low grade, leading the way.

The riders stopped before they reached the edge of the town. Soushane had no walls for protection, no gates, no guard towers. Candles and lamps continued to shed pathetic light through the windows, and smoke poured guilelessly from the chimneys.

On the far side of Soushane an orange glow began to color the sky. Frost sniffed. A thick smoke rose on the wind. It rolled over the steppe like a gray tide.

“They're burning the fields,” Telric said needlessly.

She stopped her horse. “Something isn't right,” she muttered. She stared toward the rebels. Still fifty by her best guess. Another force, then, had sneaked around to set the blaze while their comrades waited to advance.
How many altogether?
she wondered.

But something else troubled her more.

The streets of Soushane remained empty. The doors stayed shut; candles burned innocuously as if nothing were happening. Yet the fire in the fields was too high, the air too full of the smell of smoke. No one in the town could be so unaware.

“I'd run to the door to see what was happening,” she said aloud to herself. “I'd try to save my crops. I'd warn my neighbors. I'd shout and scream and try to wet my roof.”