Daughter of Blood (20 page)

“I could only save one.”
The mindvoice spoke out of Malian's memory of a cavern ringed with crystal torches and filled with an army of sleeping warriors.
“Time and the blades of the murderers pressed, so I had to act swiftly or lose all three Lines. Cruel,”
the mindvoice whispered.
“Bitter. But I had to choose.”

The vision swirled again: sky, hills, the narrow defile and the ambush; the assailants closing in on the last rider, screaming death and bloodlust as they reached out to drag him beneath their blades. Fire roared across Malian's vision, but the screaming and clamor of battle went on. When the fire cleared, the sky was still discolored, this time by smoke from the fires that burned both within and outside the River city of Ar. As she watched, catapults hurled rocks and more fire while siege engines lumbered toward the soaring walls.

Malian did not cry out, they had trained that out of her in the Shadow Band, but she swallowed hard against bile. She was aware that the dawn sky above Aeris was fading from fire to rose—but the vision persisted, wrapping her in the darkness of another plain that was scored by a multitude of smoldering brushfires. Their glow outlined a small hill, but it was not until Malian drew closer that she realized the mound was the ruined bulk of some giant beast, dead upon the plain. She stepped back, stumbling over metal shards, and when she looked down saw the shattered remains of a shield. A warrior's body lay beyond it, sprawled not far from the dead
beast, with one gauntleted hand still resting on the hilt of an unsheathed sword.

“I know who you are,” Malian whispered, “where this is.” But the hacked and bloodied figure did not sit up, the riven armor shimmering back into unbroken silver as it had in the glade between worlds, with Yorindesarinen's smile glinting like the stars in her hair.

We did for each other, that Worm and I.
This is the reality, Malian thought: bodies that stay dead in the middle of a devastated plain. In the distance a hound howled, a long, drawn-out cry that spoke of disaster and war. The plain stretched, becoming an impassable expanse that separated Malian from the dead, both Worm and hero. Slowly, the fire glow dwindled and the plain, like her vision, faded away.

T
he first blue was creeping into the sky, and somewhere a dog really was barking. Malian shook off the last shadows from the seer's vision and scrutinized the hillside. Behind her, she was aware that Raven was on his feet, hand on sword hilt, but she shook her head without looking around. “That dog's not hunting. And I can't detect anything out of place.” Noises often sounded close in such empty country, and she knew from last year's journey that there were farmsteads scattered throughout these hills. The dog was probably some shepherd's companion, beginning work, or a farmer's hound greeting the day.

“Sound carries,” Raven said, echoing her thought, but he studied the surrounding terrain as carefully as she had, even after the dog fell silent. Eventually he turned that careful look on her. “Still, it could be wisest not to linger.”

“Another gate will give us more distance.” She shivered in the aftermath of her visions and the night's cold, weighing risk. “It's worth it, since there's no sign of pursuit.”

They erased any obvious evidence of their presence beneath the pines before Malian opened the gate, bringing them out a good half day's journey farther west. Her locus point was a crumbling wayhouse with a straggle of orchard on one
side and a field of wild fennel on the other. She had found, when she practiced using gates during her River years, that the farther apart the entrance and exit were geographically, the more likely the time of day would have altered when quitting the gate. But she had deliberately kept this distance small, to minimize any disturbance caused by the portal, and they arrived in the clarity of the same postdawn hour.

The only signs of life were a flock of goats, their tuft tails disappearing into the fennel, and a blackbird calling from among the fruit trees. Malian could detect no evidence that their passage had attracted attention, an impression Nhenir affirmed, so decided it should be safe to eat before continuing on. In hopes of dispelling the shivery aftereffects of so powerful a series of visions, as well as thawing out, she settled into a patch of sun against the wayhouse wall and did not object when Raven lit a small fire to cook their breakfast. By daylight, the glow would not betray them, and the fuel was so dry that the smoke was little more than a shimmer against the air, one that soon dissipated. Her eyes grew heavy, but rather than dozing she reexamined the visions, particularly the one of Yorindesarinen's shield. Both Nhenir and Raven had said that it was broken, but she had imagined that meant riven into two or three parts, not shattered into fragments.

Not just broken, Malian thought now, but destroyed—which would explain why Nhenir has not detected the shield's presence since that time. She welcomed the distraction provided by hot food, and once it was ballast in her stomach she sat back, her eyelids sinking again, while Raven brewed a hot drink. When he spoke, she was hovering close to sleep: “Malian.”

It was the first time, she realized, forcing her eyes open, that he had spoken her Derai name without the honorific “of Night.” Raven was concentrating on the small, dented pan over the fire
,
so she could not read his expression—but whatever he was brewing smelled remarkably good. Malian inhaled deeply, trying to decide what it was as he looked up, his level gaze meeting hers. “Seeing your strength,” he said quietly, “but also knowing your Derai upbringing and
Shadow Band training, it's easy for me to forget how young you are.”

I suppose I am, she thought. And then, with a spark of humor: although anyone would be, compared with you.

“Also to overlook other things,” he went on, still in that quiet voice. “Like the way the Band see themselves as champions, despite being Dancers of Kan.”

“Because of Kelmé,” Malian said, then wondered why, when he must know the story better than she did. Besides, she knew what he was trying to say.

“Because of Kelmé,” he agreed. His expression remained steady, but she heard a smile in his voice.

“It's all right,” she said. And then, because something more seemed required, “I understand.” That you weren't attacking me with your explanation of the Sundering, she added silently, or not intentionally, anyway. She could see, too, how he would have assumed that a story so integral to the Sworn would also be remembered by the Derai. “But you're right about the Shadow Band. As well as what you do not say,” she added. “That we Derai also like to think of ourselves as champions.”

Heroes, she thought sadly, as she recalled Yorindesarinen, dead on the plain. Despite every unpalatable implication of the shield's loss, that was still what caught at her throat. She lifted her face to the sun, thinking how it never shone on the Wall of Night. The first time she had experienced anything but leaden skies and pale daylight had been in Jaransor. Her Derai teachers had said the invisible sun was just another star, one of the many the Derai had encountered in their long conflict with the Swarm—a vast history that now seemed to dwindle to this one moment, as small as a campfire in the back country of Haarth.

The contents of the pan bubbled and Raven lifted it clear of the flames, pouring hot liquid into their tin cups. “I do understand,” Malian repeated, taking the one he held out. “And we've forgotten so much, or suppressed the knowledge, that I need you to share what you know, however difficult I
may find it.” She paused, sniffing, then peered at her drink. “Is this Ishnapuri chocolate?”

“It is.” He lifted his cup in salute. “Hedge knights are good at foraging.”

“I think,” Malian said, very dryly, “that unless you paid out the gold needed to buy it in Emer, having Ishnapuri chocolate might count as looting.”

He smiled slightly. “Foraging, looting . . . Either way, I thought we both needed something to counter last night's cold. And when we heard the dog barking, you looked like you'd seen a ghost.”

Several, Malian thought bleakly, but kept both voice and expression light. “If it gets me chocolate, I'll see wraiths more often.” She blew on the chocolate's surface to cool it, before taking a long sip. “Or perhaps whole legions of them, this is that good.” Immediately, Malian remembered the armies in her vision and wished she had chosen a better jest. Curling her hands around the cup's warmth, she watched him over the rim. “I saw you,” she said, “in my seer's vision. I'm almost sure it was you, anyway.”

Raven raised his eyebrows, which she took as sufficient invitation to describe the ambush beneath a bruised sky. “I've
seen
it once before,” she finished, “only some years ago now, before I met you.” He was right last night, she decided: the young man on the horse had looked very different from the one sitting opposite her now. “This time I heard Amaliannarath's voice, saying that she could only save one. And in Stoneford, you said that you were the last from all three Lines of the Blood of Fire.”

His expression had grown shuttered. “Yes,” he said at last. “If that was your vision, then it was indeed me that you saw, on the day Amaliannarath snatched me from beneath the swords of Aranraith's killers.”

Malian hesitated, because his expression was not inviting. But if she was truly to take the House of Fire as her own, she needed to know what she was dealing with. “Was it because of the sword?”

“It was.” Malian thought that might be all he was going to say, but then Raven set his cup down. The metal clinked sharply against a stone. “There is always a price,” he continued quietly, and Malian's heart jumped, because they were the words from her fever dream in Stoneford, the ones whispered out of Rowan Birchmoon's cairn. “What we can never know is how that price will be exacted. Khelor took the sword and triggered the geas it laid on him, and through him, on us all. Yet possession of such a weapon, and so great a secret, are difficult to conceal.”

He paused as the blackbird sang again from the orchard, although she guessed he was not listening to its song, but gazing back down the tunnel of years to those long ago events. “Sun is by far the largest of the three nations of the Sworn, and Aranraith has been its prince for a very long time. He wanted the hero's arms for himself, but the helm had vanished before we reached the battlefield. By the time Khelor recovered sufficiently from dealing with the sword to take thought for the shield, its shards, too, were gone. Aranraith was furious, and it was inevitable his wrath would fall on Fire, believing we had appropriated all three weapons. For that reason alone, Amaliannarath said that we would have to flee.”

“But Aranraith struck first?”

Raven nodded, his face obscured as he refilled her cup, so Malian watched the movement of his hands and the tattoos that circled his wrists, the lines blue in the early light. “Salar, Sun's Ascendant, is subtle, although some would just say cunning. Between the two of them, they left nothing to chance.” Raven's voice remained as steady as his hands, although he had glanced toward the sun, so Malian still could not see his expression.

“They asked Amaliannarath to undertake a deep seeing for all the Sworn, tying her power up in that, but Salar must have been blocking her, in any case. It was only the first deaths that broke his working. By then the worst was already done, because Aranraith's forces had fallen on all three Lines of our Blood at once. Everyone died: Khelor of the First Line
and Iriseult of the Second, with all their kin—and my extended family as well.” He set the pan down again, and now Malian wished she could look away from the bleakness in his face. “I was riding to my betrothal with a few close friends, our retainers and honor guards. You saw what happened, how they all died. I would have, too, except Amaliannarath snatched me away at the last.”

Raven paused, his bleakness shifting into the stern lines Malian recognized from the Cave of Sleepers. “She only had an instant, from becoming aware of the attacks to deciding how to act. Afterward, I raged against her for saving me and not Iriseult or Khelor, but she would only say that it was already too late for them and she very nearly could not save me.” If my vision was accurate, Malian thought, she was right. “Later, I was sorry for the recriminations I hurled at her. But at the time I was beside myself with grief, shock, and fury.”

Amaliannarath would have understood that—although Malian wondered if the Ascendant might not have been suffering from shock as well. The whole story had a similar ring to that of the Derai and the Night of Death, and despite the sun's warmth, she wanted to shiver. “So it wasn't just that you were sick of war,” she murmured, recalling Stoneford. “That you fled to Haarth, I mean.”

Raven's smile was grim. “War-weariness was why we were apt to the sword's influence. The reason we fled so far was survival. Fire had always been the smallest of the Sworn's three nations, and we were reeling from the loss of almost all our Blood. We didn't know whether Lightning had been part of Sun's scheme either and we couldn't wait to find out, not with Aranraith pressing his advantage.” The grimness faded. “But the reason we came here, in particular, was Amaliannarath's decision, part of her foreseeing. From what you've said, it may also have been driven by her private bargain with the sword. And she said that she would take us all, that she was capable of the feat.”

Malian heard the grief, raw still after all this time, beneath his level tone. “
‘I died a long time ago, so that they
might live.'
” Softly, she quoted the words from her conversation with the ghost in the Cave of Sleepers. “But what she did . . . She must have opened a Great Gate long before the Derai did, crossing time as well as worlds to bring you all here. And she did it on her own.”

Raven nodded. “Largely on her own, because as with the Derai, our Blood provided our greatest adepts.” The familiar sardonic edge touched his voice. “Aranraith's efforts in that respect left us with a disproportionate number of immunes, which has been useful to us as the Patrol. But it did not help Amaliannarath.”

No, Malian thought. She half closed her eyes, studying the sun dots against her lids and recalling the Emerian folklore that whispered that the Patrol were demons, hiding their true nature behind masked helms. Once, if she had known they were Darksworn, she would have said that was true . . . Lifting her gaze, she met Raven's again across the dwindling flames. “I
am
young, so perhaps that's why I find it hard to comprehend just how long you've lived—that you were alive when Yorindesarinen died.” She drank the last of the chocolate, while the blackbird called again from further down the hill. “I know you crossed time with Amaliannarath and slept in the cave, but it's not
just
you and Fire. Emuun and Thanir and Aranraith, they were all alive then, too.” Hylcarian had also warned her against Nirn in the Old Keep, which meant the sorcerer had to be at least five hundred years old. Malian guessed it was a lot more than that, though. “We thought the Golden Fire was immortal, or close to it, although the Derai never were . . .” Briefly, she wrestled with the enormity of it all. “Are you immortal now? Was that part of your bargain with the maelstrom?”

“One does not bargain with the maelstrom.” Raven had begun cleaning out the pan. “But one outcome of prolonged exposure to its power turned out to be greatly extended life. We can be killed, but none of us have died of old age for a very long time. Whether we are immortal or not remains to be seen.” He paused. “As our life spans extended, all three nations of the Sworn had fewer and fewer children; I was
born into almost our last generation. And no children have been born to Fire since we came to Haarth, despite being separated from the maelstrom for so long.”

No children at all, Malian thought, shocked. There had been few enough in Night, compared with the River or Emer, and she wondered if that could be because her House stood farthest forward on the Wall of Night, closest to the maelstrom. Finally, she found her voice. “But Nherenor, the Darksworn envoy in Caer Argent, was young. I'm sure he was no older than me, if that.”