Daughter of Blood (32 page)

Humor gleamed in Asantir's expression. “He fought the glaive wielder with a sword and dagger, Teron. If I may?” she added, and lifted the longer of the two swords from its stand. Accepting it from her, Kalan drew the blade clear of its sheath. The steel was black with a blue sheen, but he could not detect any echo of the hornet song that had characterized the black spear six years before. Returning the blade to its scabbard, he exchanged it for the shorter weapon.

“A champion's blades,” the Night Commander said quietly, and Kalan nodded, because the workmanship, weight, and balance of both swords were superb. Carrying them, he would meet the Son of Blood on equal terms, at least when it came to weapons.

Asantir replaced the longsword on the stand, her expression reflective. “I acquired this pair when I journeyed into the River lands with Earl Tasarion, before he became Night's Heir. I had taken cover from a spring downpour in a dark, narrow little shop in Terebanth.” She paused. “I learned later that the trader, Gray Taan, was famous. As soon as I entered, he said that he had something that might interest me.”

“Did he know the swords' history?” Kalan asked, curious now.

She shook her head. “Only how they came into his hands, amidst an array of weapons of dubious provenance—his words—in a tinker's wagon. Too rich and too foreign for easy sale, the tinker had told him; apparently he had been thinking of melting them down.”

Teron's inward suck of breath matched Kalan's, although if these
were
black blades, the tinker might have had difficulty melting them down. What were you doing in a River
tinker's cart, so far from home? Kalan asked silently, appreciating the wave-sheen of the shortsword's blade.

“So I purchased them,” Asantir said, “and for more than I wanted to spend, although Gray Taan maintained they were cheap at the price, which was true enough.”

Whatever the swords' more immediate provenance, Kalan reflected, turning the steel so the light played across it, they were both Derai and old. “I thought,” he said slowly, “that Tasarion of Night's visit to the River was meant to be the Derai's first venture south of Grayharbor.”

Teron looked puzzled, but Asantir shrugged. “So far as we know, although rumors of our lost priest-kind persist. Fifteen hundred years is a long time, even by our standards, so it's possible not all expeditions were recorded, especially in the period following the Betrayal.” Her keen gaze studied him. “You came via the Sea Keep, so you will know that not all their ships return safely.”

Flotsam from wrecked ships could drift, Kalan supposed, and good quality metal might not be ruined by salt water . . . He handed back the sword. “Even the use of these weapons is a lordly gift, Commander, and I am no lord.”

“Tradition specifies a gift, but not its value, and you will be fighting for both my honor and the Bride's. As well as for your life,” she added coolly, “all matters I consider valuable. I will not diminish myself, or my honor, by stinting on my gift.”

“Besides,” Teron observed, “to refuse would be churlish.”

The Cloud Holder was right; Kalan knew his surprise at that was churlish as well, or at least ungenerous. He bowed his head, catching the glimmer of Yelusin's humor deep within his mind. “I would not presume,” he said, trying not to sound stiff, “to instruct the Commander of Night in matters of her own honor. Or wish,” he added, humor reasserting itself, “to be thought a churl. I accept, with gratitude.”

Asantir inclined her head. “You will need to familiarize yourself with them before you fight. Under other circumstances I would give them to you now, but we must not risk their loss ahead of this duel.” Kalan nodded, ashamed, as one
born to the House of Blood, that he could not argue against her inference. “I must preside over the remaining contests, but Garan and his eight-guard know the twin-blade style. They can bring the swords with them to train with you.”

Another risk, Kalan thought, because Garan and many of his eight-guard had also been part of the Old Keep expedition—and it was Garan and Nerys who had taken him from the Temple quarter the night he and Malian fled the Wall. I've changed a great deal in six years, he reminded himself, as Asantir spoke again. “But I shall personally ensure that you have the swords for the duel.”

Teron, rising to second Asantir's salute, bumped the desk. A scroll cylinder rolled toward the edge and the Cloud Holder grabbed for it, knocking a sheaf of papers to the floor. Kalan bent to retrieve a sheet that fluttered to his feet and saw
Dread Pass
written in cramped letters across the top. He handed the page back, and Teron peered from it to the papers he had recovered. “Garan's jottings.” He shot a look at Asantir, but addressed Kalan. “What would you say, Storm Spear, to a priest-kind rabble that left their borders undefended?”

Kalan assumed a perplexed air and waited for Asantir to close the conversation down. Instead she seated herself on a corner of the desk, her expression bland. “You'll need to give him more information, Teron.” Her gesture invited the Cloud Holder to hand the pages to Kalan.

Teron hesitated, looking as though he regretted his impulse, before passing the sheaf across. Kalan's mind raced as he laid the maps on the desk, wondering why Asantir wanted him to see them. “These show the Towers of Morning country,” he said finally, and glanced at Teron. “Is that what you meant by undefended borders?”

The Cloud Holder nodded. “They're wide-open to attack, but it's their responsibility to rectify that, I say!” He shot another look toward Asantir, but she appeared absorbed by the swing of one booted foot.

“What if they can't, though?” Kalan repeated a variant of the Commander's earlier question. “Morning was decimated in the civil war and hard hit again in the plague years.” In
the face of Teron's silence, he changed tack. “Traditionally, the Swarm have focused their assaults on our Alliance. So in effect we've always fought each other and rolled over anyone else who got in the way. But prior to the last five hundred years, the Alliance never depended on others for resources the way we do now.”

Because we've lost the Golden Fire, he added silently: at least as it was before the Betrayal. The resource implications of the Fire's loss had been one of Brother Selmor's pet themes, but Kalan had never seen its consequences illustrated as clearly as he did now, studying Garan's maps. “So if an enemy force did take the Towers,” he continued, as Teron shifted his weight, “they might not necessarily attack the Houses on Morning's flanks next. Instead, they might push through into the Gray Lands, cutting the rest of the Alliance off from both the Sea Keep and the route through the Barren Hills.” Ostensibly he spoke to Teron, but his eyes went to Asantir, and this time she looked back, her gaze steady. Of course she sees it, he thought. “The Alliance's maritime and landward supply routes would both be severed.”

Teron practically shoved Kalan aside to stare down at the maps. “And,” Kalan said, still looking at Asantir, “once they got that far they could just sweep on south and into Haarth. There's nothing between the Border Mark and Grayharbor to stop them.” Mentally, he flinched away from the vision of the Swarm pouring into the peaceful country he had seen as the
Halcyon
sailed from Ij to Grayharbor. But if Morning and its Towers were as vulnerable as Garan's maps suggested, and the Alliance remained divided—or asleep, he thought, with inward despair over Blood's insistence the Swarm was a fireside tale—then it might not be possible to prevent it.

“We would be starved of resources.” Teron's hand clenched, crumpling paper, then as hastily smoothed the sheet open again. His tone, however, matched the violence of his initial gesture. “
We
should take the southern lands first and make sure of what we need.”

He sounded, Kalan thought, like someone who had been listening to Lord Anvin and Lady Sardonya, who were both
New Blood adherents. Asantir shook her head. “Shoring up the Wall's defenses would be more prudent. They are still considerable and our forces insufficient, even if the Alliance truly stood as one, to wage war on two such widely disparate fronts.”

Teron grunted, but he was preoccupied with the maps again, so Kalan was not sure he fully took in the Commander's point. He was debating whether to point out that the Wall itself was the source of resources that ensured the Alliance's favorable trade with the rest of Haarth, when a knock sounded and Aeln looked in. “The Blood guards are asking if you'll keep the Storm Spear much longer, Commander?”

They had been closeted some time, Kalan supposed. He took his formal leave when Asantir excused him, although he had to wait in the anteroom while Morin retrieved his weapons. Teron departed a few moments later, leaving the office door wide enough for Kalan to see Asantir, still seated on the desk. She was looking toward the chessboard, her expression deeply thoughtful, but turned as Aeln reached for the latch. The Commander nodded as she met Kalan's gaze, although it was clear her mind was elsewhere.

Even after Morin returned with the weapons and he rejoined Jad's escort, Kalan's own focus remained on the business with the maps. The reason Asantir had encouraged the discussion, he realized finally, had to have been for the benefit of Liankhara's listeners in their spyholes, while also being aimed—through Teron—at others within the ruling kin. The Cloud Holder would doubtless believe he was being close-lipped, but Kalan felt sure Asantir was relying on him revealing more than he intended, presumably to try and get Blood to rethink where their focus on the Southern Realms could lead. Especially, he reflected, as they passed the wyr hounds and sentries again, with passes like Dread leveled like a weapon at the collective Derai throat.

Yet the Commander of Night's game was fraught with risk, since as with Teron's initial reaction, the vulnerability she had highlighted might simply reinforce Blood's Haarth
ambitions. Alternatively, the warrior House might decide to take preemptive action in support of its larger goals and march on Morning, as it had once before during the Betrayal conflict.

Struck by the force of this possibility, Kalan almost stopped short—because if Blood did pursue the latter course, it would almost certainly reignite the still-smoldering embers of the Derai's five-hundred-year-old civil war.

A
fter the door closed, Asantir turned away from the chessboard and picked up the dispatch pouch Garan and Nerys had brought her. The messenger's blood had dried in a thick clot above the seal, but she prised it open. She expected to see Earl Tasarion's hand on the folded paper within, but instead found Haimyr's flowing script. As she read, her expression grew somber, and she sat for some time afterward, her gaze on the wall.

Nhairin, she thought:
Nhairin
—and swung back to the chessboard. Black's line straggled across the field of play, while white maintained several strategic groupings. The largest of these dominated the center of the board, although several lesser pieces had been removed, opening up gaps. Asantir considered these before returning to the scattered line of black. The Earl piece—what her long ago Terebanth opponents would have termed the king—was located well back, with the powerful and versatile Heir strategically placed to both defend the Earl and support black's forward line.

Slowly, Asantir extended a hand toward a black pawn, out on its own to one side, then paused, considering the two black pieces that had reached white's end of the board. One was still a pawn, but its former companion had been replaced by a black Honor Captain, what both Haimyr and the Terebanthans called a knight. White's Heir stood close by both, but currently offered no overt threat to either.

Asantir continued to study the pieces intently, before the ghost of a smile touched her face. “There you are.” The fire in the grate flared, as though answering her reflective murmur,
and firelight washed the new Honor Captain with vermilion before the flames steadied and the red glow faded, restoring the piece to Night's black. Gently, Asantir reached out and tapped the Honor Captain's horsehead crest. “After all these years, here you are again.”

K
alan kept walking, turning when his escort did and automatically marking the detail of corridors, adjoining halls, and separate wings branching off, as well as units of guards on their regular patrols, and guests returning from the banquet. The expressions directed his way included curiosity, doubt, and outright hostility, but he ignored them, still intent on the implications of the Dread Pass maps and subsequent conversation in Asantir's office. High stakes, high risk, he reflected—but that was no different than the game he and Malian were playing, with the fate of a world, not just the Derai Alliance, hanging in the balance.

Although to continue playing, he would have to win the duel against Lord Parannis. That, by implication, meant killing a Son of Blood before his kin and gathered House—which will only create a fresh Wall storm of problems, not end them, Kalan reflected grimly, as they passed the great arch into the muster ground. The gates were locked and the hydra above the arch unlit, but he still felt as though every shadowed eye was marking him. He might jeer at himself for shying from a representation carved in stone, one of hundreds throughout the Red Keep—but it was at that moment the first sense of being followed crawled across his shoulder blades.

They were turning into the adjoining Temple quarter when he heard footsteps jogging to catch up. Two warriors, Kalan decided, as one of the Blood guards turned his head, listening too. “What's the odds that's for us?” the guard said, with a less-than-friendly glance Kalan's way.

Jad just grunted, but stopped to wait. A few seconds later Morin caught up to them, accompanied by another Night guard. “Two separate messengers came looking for you,” Morin told Kalan. “Apparently there's trouble with your horses again, and the Sea envoy says your page has gone missing.”

“We're close to the stables,” Jad said, before Kalan could respond. “We can deal with whatever those devils you call horses are about, then talk about looking for your page. If you don't think he's just playing truant.” His tone said he thought this likely.

Kalan thought it likely, too, but whether Faro had gone adventuring with Liy or was trying to rejoin him was another matter. With any luck, by the time he settled the horses, the boy would have turned up. “What's the quickest way there?” he asked.

Another of the Blood guards pointed to a small chapel adjoining the darkened Hallows of Tawr. “Through there. The rear door opens onto the main service stair for this part of the keep.”

“You lead, Dain.” Jad waved the guard forward while he remained beside Kalan, and the Night guards fell in behind them.

“The Commander,” Morin explained to Kalan, “ordered us to assist you as required.”

Jad compressed his lips, and Kalan wondered if he would order the Night guards away on principle. Instead the eight-leader asked Morin to light a torch from one of the corridor lanterns. “So we don't fall over each other, getting through the mausoleum.”

Kalan felt unease prickle again as he turned toward the entrance with the rest, which suggested that whatever he had sensed following them could not have been the Night guards.
Alert for danger, he paused before stepping through the unlit door into what Jad had called a mausoleum. “Although it's more of a memorial,” the eight-leader explained, as Morin's torch illuminated the interior. A sequence of faded banners hung to their right, facing the bas-relief of a young, stern-faced warrior in full Blood panoply.

“Ammaran,” Kalan said, reading the inscription beneath the warrior's mailed feet.

Jad nodded. “He was the last Heir of the old line of Earls. The family died out shortly after the Betrayal War, when he and his Honor Guard escort were lost.”

“There's no flame,” Morin said, his voice hushed against the silence. Kalan knew what he meant. If this was a memorial, a votive flame should be kept lit in a niche to Hurulth, the Silent God.

“The House of Adamant, who are Blood's enemy, follow Hurulth first amongst the Nine.” Jad's voice was colorless as Dain headed toward the rear door. “We follow Kharalth of the Battles, and the only flame kept burning is in her sanctuary.”

Morin said nothing, but Kalan sensed his shock. Traditionally, all Derai believed that the Silent God kept his hall for their dead. In order for the souls of the fallen to enter, the vigil of Hurulth must be kept and the rites for the dead spoken. Failure to do so risked the spirits of the dead remaining trapped, hungry ghosts clinging to the fringes of the living world until their essence either dissipated, or worse, was consumed by the Swarm.

“Here in the Red Keep, anyway,” Dain said. “Most of the holds still follow all Nine Gods in the old way.” He glanced back as he reached the side door and shrugged at Jad's frown.

That tallied, Kalan thought, with what he had gleaned from the Sea Keepers' conversation on the road here. They had not said why all the Red Keep temples except Kharalth's had been desanctified, but he assumed part of Blood's motivation was to minimize priest-kind numbers. The Emerians, he reflected, would say mourning rites were not essential anyway, because everyone came to Imuln in the end. They
held, too, that the goddess was great enough to find every soul, no matter how far from home a body might fall. Yet the essence of what it meant to be Derai derived from the ancient powers that flowed from the Nine Gods, together with the bond to the Golden Fire and the commitment to withstand the Swarm.

Still, Kalan could see the path Blood had taken. Having lost the Golden Fire and turned against those with old powers, then consigned the Swarm to fireside tales, the next logical step was to abandon the Nine as well and trust solely to armed strength. Kalan wanted to shake his head as Dain finally persuaded the rear door to open, because he had spoken with two surviving aspects of the Golden Fire now: Hylcarian in the Old Keep of Winds, and the remnant of Yelusin housed in the Sea Keep fleet. He had also passed the Gate of Dreams and met both the dead hero, Yorindesarinen, and the power known as the Huntmaster. He had fought Swarm demons and the Darksworn as well, not just the low-level minions the House of Blood now termed Wallspawn.

Fools, Kalan thought. Unfortunately, they were also dangerous fools, given their numbers, wealth, and ambition—and the fact that the Derai Alliance relied on Blood's strength as the rearguard, anchoring their battle line of keeps and holds.

Dain waited until everyone had cleared the memorial before turning onto the service stair, which plunged downward in a series of narrow flights. Despite the need to concentrate on his footing, Kalan still felt the prickling awareness of pursuit and regretted the suppressed shield sense that would have told him whether the pursuit was physical or psychic in nature. Nonetheless, they reached the stables without incident. Another hydra reared its nine heads above the gate, the stone eyes fierce and each fanged mouth snapping in a different direction. The complex beyond was vast, with row on row of stalls and loose boxes interspersed by tack rooms and grain stores. Even before he entered, Kalan could hear the commotion from the far side of the complex where Tercel and Madder were stabled. His stride quickening, he sifted the thud of a horse's hooves against
wood, and the simultaneous crack of timber, from a mutter of voices: “. . . attacked . . . Oathers . . . let out . . . did anyone see . . . killer . . . I'm not going near . . .”

When Kalan and his escort emerged from a long line of stalls, they found a small knot of grooms watching Madder from a safe distance. The door into the loose box adjoining Tercel's stood wide, and a trail of splintered wood led to the roan destrier, standing his ground in the entrance to a narrow alley that ended in an open storeroom door. Madder's ears were flat against his skull and he struck a hoof against the flagstones as the newcomers approached. Kalan's gut tightened as he saw gore on the destrier's metal shoes, and a swift glance along the alley revealed at least two bodies. “What happened?” he asked the grooms.

“I heard a noise,” one of the grooms began, “like people creeping—”

“There's another body in here.” Straw rustled as Jad entered the loose box. “An Oath Holder, by his badge. His skull's broken and his rib cage crushed.”

Oath, Kalan recalled, was the hold of Lord Parannis and Lady Sarein's maternal kin, but another groom spoke before he could reply. “That horse's a killer.” When she took a step close Madder pawed the flagstones in answer. Snaking his head forward, he bared long yellow teeth.

“Stay back,” Kalan commanded, although he kept his voice calm. “In this state he won't let anyone but me near him.”

“Put the brute down,” another groom muttered, but Kalan ignored him, beginning a deliberate, unhurried approach toward the roan destrier.

“Let him work,” Jad said, just as quiet, and the watchers fell silent. Kalan took another slow step forward, gradually extending his arms wide and speaking to Madder in Emerian, adopting the same soothing drone he had used in the
Che'Ryl-g-Raham
's hold.

“That's right, Madder, you know me, don't you? Easy boy, gently there.” The destrier rolled the whites of his eyes and stamped, but eventually first one and then both ears lifted,
swiveling toward Kalan's voice. “Easy, Madder, easy. Softly, my braveheart.” Slowly, Kalan reached out, and although the destrier snorted, he let Kalan put a hand to his halter and lead him away from the alley.

“Was that some Storm Spear tongue?” a groom asked, and Kalan answered in Derai, using the same soothing tone for Madder's benefit.

“No, it's Emerian. These are great horses out of Emer, and at times like this it's best to use the language they know best.”

The grooms' reaction suggested they saw the sense in that. “Although I still say he's a killer,” the woman reiterated.

“They are both warhorses and trained to kill. Especially,” Kalan added, “if they're attacked. Now I need to secure him in another stall, somewhere quiet and away from the scent of blood.”

In the end he moved both horses, judging Madder would be calmer with Tercel's familiar presence. When he returned to the body in the stall, the duty groom was telling Jad about the intrusion. “I heard something odd and then the ruckus broke loose. By the time I got here the box door was open, and the intruders fleeing with the horse after them like a Swar—Wall demon.”

“And there's this.” Jad picked up a sickle blade from beside the dead Oath Holder. “I'd say they intended to either kill or maim the horse.”

Kalan saw two of the Blood guards exchange significant glances. “It would be of service to me now,” he said to Morin, “if you could bring the Sea envoy here.”

Jad frowned and turned to the guard whose manner had suggested he saw Kalan as trouble. “Rhanar, if we're to have envoys here, you'd best get Captain Banath.”

The eight-leader's expression remained tight after Rhanar left, although he still joined Kalan beside the first of the alleyway dead. The body, which had once been a man, was pounded to pulp and splinters. The corpse a few paces further on was untrampled, the Oath Hold insignia on the tunic clear, but the victim was also smaller. A squire, Kalan
guessed from his age and garb, and killed by a blade through the throat. “A page's dagger,” Jad said, and Kalan guessed they were both thinking of Faro, missing from the Sea envoy's accommodation. “This reads like the Oath Holders entered the stall, doubtless to kill or cripple your horse, and found they'd taken on more than they could handle. But they also surprised someone else there.”

“It could have been Faro. He liked to sleep in my horses' stalls.” Kalan's eyes went from the squire's bloody knife, lying just clear of his hand, to the blood drops leading into the storeroom. “Is there another way out of there?” he asked the duty groom.

“Only an air well,” the man replied. “The vents open into both kennels and stables.”

If the fugitive was Faro, then he would find that air well—so long, Kalan thought, his eyes on the blood, as he can still move. “I'll check in here. But we should send guards to the kennels' side, in case I flush out something other than my page.” Several of the grooms nodded. Many of their number were guards who had been discharged because of injury, but their old instincts, whether for 'spawn or enemy agents, would still hold good.

“Dain and Palla,” Jad said curtly, “see to it.”

Kalan flattened himself to one side of the storeroom door, clear of an arrow or spear's trajectory but where he could slant a look inside. Nothing moved, and the only scents were timber and grain, cool air and dust. Gradually, he shut out the stable's background noise and isolated the storeroom's smaller sounds: the skitter of a mouse, the draft out of the air shaft—and finally, the shallow, suppressed breath of a hunted creature. Kalan could almost feel it, crouched down in darkness and listening, as he was listening.

He debated calling out, but if it was not Faro in there he would only spook the quarry. Instead, he signaled Jad to take the nearest lantern away, to avoid being silhouetted against its light—then kicked the door wide, dropping low and rolling behind a feed bin. Still nothing moved, except when Jad took his place outside the door.
Wait
, Kalan signed, and
eased into a crouch, patient as the concealing bin. Finally, he stood up and began to close in on the breathing, setting each footstep soundlessly down. He heard Jad enter the storeroom behind him but did not look back.

The blood trail ended between stacked grain sacks, and Kalan could see where Faro, or a creature of similar size, had tunneled through them. Into the air well, he wondered, or some other hiding place—but paused as exclamations and stifled curses sounded from the stable, followed by a
click-click
over the flagstones. Not an attacker, he decided, reluctant to look away from the area where the blood spots led, and aware that Jad had not moved.