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Authors: Alma Alexander

Tags: #Fantasy, #General, #Fiction, #Magic, #Brothers and Sisters, #Pretenders to the Throne, #Fantasy Fiction, #Queens

Changer of Days (9 page)

BOOK: Changer of Days
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“There. Look,” she said, keeping her voice low although there was nobody to hear her except Kieran. “They are too far to see what standard they bear. But it is Sif. Only he could lead so many, so soon. They’ve sent out an army, Kieran. If we cannot outrun them, we are lost.”

Kieran swept his eyes from the distant cohorts of men who hunted him, staring at the empty, winter-gray moors with something like despair. “Back,” he said at last, but his voice was flat, and there was no hope in it. “Back to the horses. I don’t know where we can run that he can’t follow, but I will not wait for Sif to simply pluck me like a trapped pheasant. I plan to give him as much trouble as I can.”

But Anghara sat back on her heels and turned steady gray eyes on him. “Take the others, and go for the forest,” she said, very quietly.

He whipped around to face her, not knowing whether to be angry or simply baffled. “And you? What of you? You don’t think I’d just leave you for him, do you? I didn’t snatch you from Sif’s dungeons to hand you back to him on a silver platter!”

“I’ll make for the coast,” said Anghara, with only the briefest of hesitations. “There will be a ship at Calabra that will bear me.”

“You would never make it,” began Kieran, and then the import of her words struck him. “Calabra? Where would you go? Kheldrin?”

“Would you set me on the throne in Sif’s place, Kieran?”

“I wanted to find you, to make sure you were safe,” said Kieran, after a slight hesitation. “I did not think beyond that, not in detail, but yes, that is what I would do.” His eyes blazed with love and loyalty. For the men he led, Anghara’s name had been a symbol, a word to conjure light with when Sif’s darkness became too great to bear. For Kieran, a part of her had always been, would always be, the little foster sister to whom he had once given his cloak in the rain. If she were a queen, that was something over and above this—but when Kieran had ridden the length and breadth of Roisinan, keeping Anghara’s name alive, it had not been Anghara Kir Hama he sought. It had been a little girl he had once loved.

“I came back to claim Miranei,” Anghara said, with a brittle laugh. “It was time, the Gods said. But it isn’t time, Kieran. Not yet, not now. Would you let a cripple rule Roisinan?” Something swirled in her eyes for a moment—pain, wrath, madness—then it was gone, but Kieran knew what he had seen. He shivered suddenly, not from the cold, from a prescience that was bone-deep: she was wounded, and Kheldrin was the only place that could heal her.

He fought the knowledge; it went against everything he had always believed, but he knew it for truth, and at last he squared his jaw and met her eyes. “You’ll never make it,” he repeated. “Calabra of all places will be watched. But there is always Shaymir.”

“Shaymir?” Anghara repeated, genuinely puzzled for a moment, and then her face cleared with comprehension. “You mean the mountains?”

“The Khelsies come. Somehow,” Kieran said, shrugging his shoulders.

“But I don’t know the mountains,” Anghara said slowly. “I don’t know the way.”

“If there is one, it can be found,” he said steadily. It struck a chord with her, as though she had heard the words before; and then she remembered. It already seemed like centuries ago, but al’Tamar had said it to her beside the ocean at the foot of Gul Khaima.
Paths can be found.

“As for the mountains…you won’t be alone.” Kieran reached up to the boulder on which she was still perched, and swung her down to the ground beside him. “I will be with you.”

I
n retrospect, Kieran almost wished Anghara had argued harder. Or that he had listened. The trek to Kheldrin had always sat ill with him; but the closer they came to their goal, the worse he felt about the whole thing, even given that strange, soul-deep knowledge which kept telling him Kheldrin was the one place she would find healing. Yet even so…the closer they drew, the stranger Anghara became. Kieran glanced across the campfire where she lay sleeping restlessly, her bandaged arm folded across her belly, and frowned, crushing between suddenly savage fingers a sprig of Shaymir desert sage he had been rubbing against his palm. The sweet scent of the herb lanced him, as always; it acted like a drug, cracking open sealed memories with the ease of magic. This time, with Anghara lying there before him, the memories were recent.

Sif. Miranei. The army on the moors.

 

Once Anghara had made up her mind, back by the hill crowned with the Standing Stones, there had been no real discussion. Adamo had taken her decision better than Kieran had expected.

“Kheldrin?” he asked quiedy. “Was that where you’d been hiding all this time?” He rooted in his horse’s saddlebags, digging for something which had migrated to the bottom, and hauled out the small package of Anghara’s
an’sen’thar
finery he had rescued from the inn in Calabra. “Is that where these came from?”

Anghara received the bundle and sat staring at it for a long moment before lifting her eyes to meet Adamo’s. “Yes,” she said, and her voice was oddly emotionless, flat. “That’s where these came from.”
I wonder if I will ever have the right to wear them again…
an uneasy thought, brushing the surface of her mind. Unspoken.

Charo had had to be almost forcibly restrained from adding himself to the party which was to go on to Kheldrin, but eventually it was Anghara’s word that held him. “Stay,” she’d said. “Raise me an army for you to lead.”

After that, it was only a question of trying to figure out a way to make Sif abandon the chase long enough for them to slip away. As usual, it was Adamo who thought up the means, and Kieran who pieced together the plan.

“Isn’t Ram’s Island close hereabouts?” Adamo had asked speculatively.

It had taken Kieran less than a second. He clicked his fingers. “The boat.”

“What boat?” Anghara asked. She had yet to mount Melsyr’s horse again after coming down from the hill. She stood leaning against it, her eyes half closed.

“There’s always a boat hidden there. The island’s midstream, too small and overgrown to be of any interest to anyone but a bunch of brigands like ourselves,” said Charo with a limpid grin. “It comes in useful in emergencies.”

“Let’s go,” said Kieran. “It’s only for a little while longer, Anghara. Can you manage?”

“I’ll have to,” she said; but she spoke through clenched teeth and it took her three tries before she could regain her saddle. After long months in a tiny airless cell she was exhausted. Kieran and Adamo exchanged worried looks behind her back—but that back, once she’d managed to remount, was straight. She was asking no favors.

They rode like the wind, aware they were leaving a broad trail for Sif to follow—but the subterfuge Kieran had in mind would start later, and Kieran had nothing against Sif’s knowing his quarry had made for the river. There was little chitchat as they pushed forward. Night caught up to them, and, like the night before, they paused for only a few hours before moving on. They rode most of the next day, until the exhausted horses began to flag, keeping just a step ahead of Sif’s army, with only the low hills denying the hunters a clear sight of their quarry. Twice Charo and another man circled back; twice they returned with splashes of fresh blood on their clothes, and riding fresh horses. Anghara had taken one look, and forbore to ask for the details; of course Sif would send out scouts, fast riders who would be able to shake free of the bulk of the army and chase after the fugitives on swift steeds. It seemed few of these men would live long enough to return to report to Sif.

But the dispatching of a few scouts was not enough.

“We’ll never make it,” one of the men muttered, as the sun began to sink on their second day out. “We’ll kill the horses first.”

For answer, Adamo pointed ahead, where sunlight glanced off something bright and lanced into the eye. “Water,” he said economically.

Here the River Hal made a shallow loop northward, wending its way through the hills, and it was this loop they finally gained in the dying hours of their second day as fugitives. The horses snorted and pricked up their ears, scenting water.

“Don’t let them drink too much,” Kieran said, easing his own horse close to the bank and slipping off its back, glancing swiftly up- and downstream. “Where is the island?”

Charo gauged the lay of the land with a quick, experienced eye. “It’s upstream,” he said. “Not too far away. Which horse is the least winded? I’ll go for the boat.”

“He’ll have to swim out for it,” said Adamo, before Anghara could ask.

If she could have asked. By now she was drooping like a scythed flower; it was doubtful she could have lasted much longer on horseback. In Adamo’s opinion, it was already miracle enough she had managed to stay with them thus far.

“Perhaps it’s just as well you’ll be taking to the water,” Adamo said to Kieran in a low voice. “She’ll need a rest before she will be able to ride again. Given a choice, she should have been taken from that thrice-damned dungeon straight into some goodwife’s feather bed, and fed herb infusions and chicken broth until she got her strength back.”

“Instead she gets this crazy escape, a wild ride across the fells, and is dropped from the spit into the fire,” said Kieran with a grimace. “If only Sif had got back a day later…we wouldn’t have had to run like this. There would have been time.” He stirred, glancing back over his shoulder uneasily to where two of his entourage had gone to keep an eye out for Sif’s forerunners, then threw a restless glance in the direction Charo had vanished. “Come on. If the horses have had enough, let’s follow Charo.”

They found him sitting beside a small coracle drawn up on the shore, his sword naked on the ground beside him, pulling his boots on. Hearing their approach he’d reached for the blade and then relaxed as he realized who they were. Beyond him, some distance away, a dark blot in midstream, bathed in dark shadows; it was already twilight, with a pale moon riding a sky still bright with traces of sunset.

He’d glanced up with a smile, some crack at the ready, but before he had a chance to speak one of the rearguard came galloping back on his exhausted gray. “It’s too close, Kieran,” the man said as he came to a shuddering halt a handspan away from Kieran’s own horse.

“Where’s Keval?”

“Dead,” came the shocking response. Only now did they register the dark stain on his tunic, the way he sat with an arm folded painfully against his ribs. “There were six this time. We did for four, and I think we wounded number five, but Keval paid for that—and number six is on his way back to Sif even now. I hadn’t a hope of catching him, not even if I’d taken one of his friends’ horses. Whatever you’re planning Kieran, do it now. My guess is that you have perhaps an hour before Sif falls upon us.”

Kieran slid off his horse, tossing the reins to Adamo. “You take care of him for me,” he said. “Come, Anghara. It’s time we were away.”

It looked as though he’d simply gone over to help her down from her own beast, but it was painfully obvious to Adamo, who was watching closely, that he lifted her bodily off the horse, and that if he had not she would have fallen. Kieran supported her firmly but unobtrusively the few paces to the boat, and lifted her inside.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Kieran…” She’d reached out and caught the edge of his sleeve, eyes wide and ringed with bruised purple circles, shocking against the pallor of her face.

“What is it?” he asked, turning back.

She’d glanced back past him at the three who waited beyond, her gray eyes filled with tears. “Kieran…don’t let anything happen to them…”

She might have turned seventeen, but Kieran suddenly, heartbreakingly, saw the nine-year-old Brynna Kelen in her face, and something in him rose now, as then, to stand over her and shield her from harm. Unexpectedly, surprising even himself, he bent forward to kiss her lightly on the brow. “It will be all right. Wait for me here.”

Charo had pulled on his boots and gone to stand with the other two waiting in the moonlit twilight. Three of them. Not enough—surely not enough…Sif could reach out and crush them without trying. But then Kieran squared his jaw and strode across to the waiting men.

“I want him to think we’ve all crossed the river,” he said quietly. “Once across…there’s three of you, seven horses. Split up three different ways—Adamo, you take care of Sarevan for me, the rest of the horses go with only one of you—perhaps Sif will think that the biggest group…We’ll see. Ditch the uniforms, for all the Gods’ sakes, as soon as you have a chance. Rendezvous at the forest base, but only once you’re sure you’ve shaken them. Go to ground somewhere first, if you have to. Those who lived through the obliteration of Rochen’s camp are bound to do the same. Link up with whomever you can—and then go, spread the word. We will return. And when we do, we’d better have an army at our back.”

“We’ll have one waiting,” Charo promised. And then, the clown in him unquenchable, he glanced down at his boots with comic consternation. “You mean I’ll have to get these wretched things off again? The dainty lad whom I took them off had feet three sizes too small—that’s punishment enough, but pulling them off and on like this is torture. It’s a good thing I won’t have to walk…”

“Shut up, Charo,” Kieran said affectionately. “Get going. Tell Rochen…” he stopped, swallowing a sudden lump. Rochen had been a good friend, a marvellous lieutenant, but there was no guarantee he would be amongst the survivors of that fateful camp, no guarantee he would be receive any message Kieran might think to send him. Anyway, the important things…he’d know without being told. “Go,” he said instead, reaching out to clap Adamo on the shoulder. “The Gods go with you.”

“And my blessing. And my gratitude. And my love.”

Anghara. Somehow she’d clambered out of the coracle and approached unheard; now she stood a pace beyond Kieran, swaying but straight. It had been another abrupt metamorphosis; there was nothing about this figure of moonlight and shadow that recalled a little girl called Brynna. This was all queen, the Kir Hama name mantling her like a cloak. Adamo was the first to move—to take the few steps that separated them, and fall to one knee before her, taking her hand in both of his.

“My queen,” he said, but his head was not bowed, and in his eyes was all the love given to a sister. “We will be here when you return.”

Charo came next, bending over the same hand with the gallant grace that was the essence of him. And then, equally characteristically, he ruined it all with a fierce grin that lit the twilight like a beacon. “Yes! When you come back…it will be to ride into Miranei and claim more than just a dungeon for your own! And I’ll be there to open the gates for you!”

The last man, Bron, had been bound to her through the rescue from Sif’s dungeon, and, before that, through Kieran’s tireless, faithful search. But he didn’t have the bonds the others shared with the young queen. Not for him these intimate farewells. All he could do was kneel before her, as Adamo had done, and reiterate Adamo’s promise—but Anghara raised him, gently, and her smile for him had no less warmth than she had bestowed upon the others. Taking him in; his had been a mad adventure, and he was part of the family now, tied with blood. His own, shed in Anghara’s cause, even now stained his tunic—a blood brother, then, where the rest shared closer ties. But there was always a blood price; the old Gods of Kheldrin had taught her to accept the gift this one had bought.

And then it was over, and Adamo, with a last glance at Anghara, was on his horse, the reins of two of the empty-saddled beasts tied securely to his saddle. The other man, Bron, had the other two. Charo had paused to haul off his stolen boots once again and bundle them up in his cloak, high up on his back, before mounting his own horse, wincing as bare feet slid into cold iron stirrups.

“No point in getting one’s shoes wet when one doesn’t have to,” he offered by way of explanation as he urged his horse past.

Adamo’s mount was already fetlock deep into the river. Bron’s followed. Charo urged his in at a canter, and plunged into the water with a yell only partly muted by his recollection that there might be an army close enough to hear. And then they were all no more than bobbing dark shapes in the moonlit river.

“Come,” Kieran said. “It’s time we were moving.”

The boat was conspicuous on the pale water, but Kieran couldn’t help that—he could only hope Sif’s men weren’t watching their silent progress upstream. Anghara’s farewell seemed to have taken the last of her strength; she lay huddled in the prow of the coracle—asleep or unconscious—while Kieran rowed them up the Hal, toward the forest.

It was full light when Anghara woke, to find the small boat pulled into a stagnant rush-filled pool at the river’s edge. Kieran, stretched out on a piece of dry, sandy ground nearby, was dozing, but sat up as her eyes opened as though pricked by some sixth sense.

“Morning,” he said, smiling warmly. “So far, so good. How are you feeling?”

“Like all my bones have been broken, and reset in the wrong places,” Anghara answered truthfully.

He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes thoughtful. “It won’t do,” he said at last. “You won’t last a week. You need some place to lie low for a few days, sleep safe, eat properly.”

She roused. “Kieran, I told you, I don’t want to put anyone in any danger…”

“Even Sif,” said Kieran stubbornly, “is hardly likely to go bothering every woodcutter for news of you just yet. And we’ll have to leave the river before we get to Tanass Han anyway. There’s an old man who lives at the edge of the forest; his wife bandaged a festering arm for me once. They’ll take you in.” And, when she looked as though she would protest again, he raised a peremptory arm to forestall her. “No arguments,” he said. “Anghara, don’t you understand? You’re riding the ragged edges, even now…Sif is quite possibly only hours behind us, and there is no way we can outrun him, not with you as weak as a day-old kitten. You’ll be safe with old Miro and his wife. It’s just for a few days; you need to get your strength back, and this is a start.”

BOOK: Changer of Days
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