Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (63 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Gaultry stared at the young woman’s face, light dawning. It was little wonder that Tamsanne, who had known Marie Laconte in her prime, had little trouble recognizing her granddaughter. Looking at Elisabeth’s features, she subtracted Argat Climens—and was left with something puzzlingly like Palamar, without the rabbity touches and plump neck. “That’s why Richielle said you were Brood-blood,” she said, in revelation.
Elisabeth nodded, a little sadness touching her. “My father was Rivière Laconte—Palamar’s father, and Marie’s sole heir. Julie tells me he was a comely man, both in character and in person. Perhaps there was some truth in my mother’s claim that she lay with him for love.”
Gaultry did not know what to say. An image of Argat’s arrogant face rose before her. “Your mother gave you a gift,” she said awkwardly. “If you had known you wore the Brood-blood chains, your life would have been very different. My own grandmother did the same for me—”
“That may be so,” Elisabeth said, in a tone that begged Gaultry to speak no further. “Certainly it did Palamar no good to know she was power’s heir. Did your grandmother tell you yet? Palamar has admitted to setting the syphon-spell which killed Gabrielle of Melaudiere.”
“Palamar?” Gaultry was shocked.
“She held the Duchess responsible for her older sister’s death, at the traitor-chancellor’s hands.”
Gaultry was stunned, then furious. “Will she be punished?”
“Oh yes. And Dervla too, for her many abuses of power. My mother was among the first of those let off her trial, but others were ill-prosecuted before her, and must receive restitution.”
For a moment, the two women stood in silence. The diggers had all but filled the hole, and were starting on raising the flat-topped mound above it.
“Enough,” Elisabeth said. “Our business here is completed.”
Charging the diggers to complete the rebuilding of the earthwork dais alone, she gestured for Gaultry to follow her, and headed toward the passage out through the earthworks. Emerging through the wall, they came to a fork in the path. One road led to the overlook where the new King’s command had gathered, the other, down among the tents. Elisabeth, preparing to leave her there, paused.
“You asked about the sacrifice. I can only tell you that I thought long and hard about Algeorn of Far Mountain. He married Tielmark’s Briessine,
and became Far Mountain’s first King. But there was nothing in the songs or legends that told of him making blood-sacrifice to earn that title. So what was it that made the gods recognize him as King? It came to me that it could only have been because of power he had already earned, sending his men across four great massifs to aid the brother of the woman he had promised the gods he would wed. I learned from a variant of one of Tyrannis’s songs that Briessine was not Algeorn’s battle-prize—she was his beloved, and Algeorn’s efforts on her brother’s behalf were the lofty bridal-price he paid to make her his wife. Those heroics—they only confirmed a power he had already consolidated as his own.
“Think on it, Gaultry. This very morning Tielmark’s armies face the King who was made the day that Briessine took Algeorn to husband. The Ratté Gon is Algeorn’s heir, and the Ratté, above all, is an honorable man, where it comes to his family. He owes little allegiance to the other Lanai tribes—and yet he has treated Tielmark to this summer of hardship, and sacrificed many of his best men, all because his daughter’s honor was threatened. The pattern remains as the gods set it, the day of Algeorn and Briessine’s marriage. Algeorn, above all, honored the oaths he made to his family. That is the hallmark of Far Mountain’s Kings.
“So: What did we want for Tielmark? In Far Mountain, they are honorable to their kin, but ruthless to outsiders. Tielmark, I hope, has a kinder future than that.” Elisabeth shrugged. “The gods were ready to acknowledge our King, when we were ready to claim him. It was up to Benet himself what kind of choice that would be.”
“So what did Benet choose?” Gaultry asked.
Elisabeth smiled. “I hope that he chose love, and to pass power forward optimistically to the future. Is that not what all expectant parents hope? To have a child who is greater than themselves? I am quite sure it was what my mother had in mind—whether or not any of us turned out the way she expected.”
Argat Climens. Gaultry could only wonder what the woman made of her daughter’s precipitous rise to power.
Still, one puzzlement remained. “Why was Richielle so certain a death was necessary? And not just Richielle—all the members of the Brood.”
“Richielle’s mistake lay in seeing only a single purpose for the Kingmaker knives. Perhaps it was because she has so long been a herder of animals—she didn’t see that even the gods allow humans choices. The others—well, she was a herder, and they followed the force of her lead.”
“So we have a King,” Gaultry said. She looked out at the rolling bowl of the land that seemed to sweep open before them, promising infinite choice. She looked up to the beautiful clear morning sky, and then out at the great wall of mountains, leading away to the north.
“I wonder where that leaves Bissanty?”
“
G
randmother.” Gaultry had left Elisabeth at the fork in the path, and returned to camp to find Tamsanne and Mervion, attending Tullier, safe in the cool of Martin’s big tent.
Tullier was laid on the bed there, his braised skin raw but cleansed, his wounds carefully bound and tended, apparently asleep. When Gaultry came in, Mervion had just returned with a fresh bucket of water. Tamsanne was sitting by the boy’s side, cleaning her own somewhat charcovered hands with an oily rag. She got up with uncommon alacrity as Gaultry entered and fervently embraced her.
“Is the goat-herder safely under?” When Gaultry nodded, she gave a relieved sigh. “It was right of Elisabeth to see that business concluded quickly. I should have warned you of her better.”
“I was well protected,” Gaultry said, portentously, squeezing her grandmother’s shoulders. It was so seldom that Tamsanne expressed her feelings in this way. “Even against her Rhasan.”
Tamsanne pushed out of the hug and looked up into her youngest granddaughter’s face. “Tell me that Richielle did not read a card for you,” she said, alarmed.
In answer, Gaultry reached into her tunic and brought forth the rimy cards she had taken from Richielle’s body. “She did, but in the end, she did not pull the card either of us expected. These were too dangerous to commit to the earth, grandmother. I want you to have them, for everyone’s safety—though from what Benet said to me, it would seem that their power has faded a little, since they were bathed in water on Andion’s Ides.” She drew a deep breath. “I want to give them to you, grandmother, but first I need to show you the card that Richielle played for me. The gods owe you that, at least.”
Before Tamsanne could protest, Gaultry put her hand on the top card, feeling as she did the ancient power of the deck resist her. She battened it back with her Glamour, unrelenting.
I am not ambitious to rule you
, she told that power,
but I
will
be showing my grandmother this card.
She turned the card, and held it out to Tamsanne, who flinched,
then paled as the image opened to her. Bent to Gaultry’s Glamour-will, it was only a little different than the card she had seen before: the ragged man, the orchid-flower. But the sun was now ascendant in the corner of the card.
“My Jarret!” Tamsanne whispered, ignoring the image’s other elements.
“I saw him,” Gaultry said, taking her grandmother’s hand and pressing the card into it. “Over in the Changing Lands. I saw him.” She paused, uncertain. “He protected me. Richielle was twisting the land beneath us, herding us, but somehow, he broke the chains of her spell for a time, ruining her timing. I don’t really understand what it was he did.”
“If you could understand the Changing Lands,” Tamsanne said, a little shakily, “you would no longer have a human soul to rule you.”
“He touched me,” Gaultry said. “Just once, here on my brow.” Her fingers went to the place, as once more she remembered the dryad’s wild beauty. “I think he was curious to see what you had made of the gift that you shared with him.”
Tamsanne looked again at the card. “He had that much of memory left?” she said. “Perhaps it is better that I never knew that.” Then she reached and took the entire deck, and shuffled the Glamour-card in with the others.
Her eyes when she looked once more to Gaultry were bright with unshed tears. “For me, losing Jarret was the first link in the chain of history that led us all to this day.” She tucked the cards out of sight, within the sleeves of her fusty dress, and wiped her face with the rag in her hand, forgetting that it was char-stained.
Reaching out, she took both Gaultry’s and Mervion’s hands. “Already, both of you have made better choices than I. You have won your Prince a crown, and you did not sacrifice your own heart’s joy to do it.”
She did not offer any other explanation, and Gaultry and Mervion, sharing a sisterly glance, did not press her. Soon after, Tamsanne quietly laid down the rag, and retreated from the tent.
“You can wake up now,” Gaultry said, a little sourly, taking Tamsanne’s seat by the bed. She took the boy’s hand in her fingers, and was relieved to feel the steady pulse that beat within.
Tullier’s eyes slitted painfully open, and she saw that he was less far from pretending to sleep than she’d imagined.
“Your chain is in the ground,” she told him. “It shares Richielle’s grave. I hope that was right.”
“You know that the Sha Muira don’t bury their dead?” Tullier asked sadly. “They just weight them down, and dump them into the sea.”
“Well, the chain is buried,” Gaultry said. “With all of its secrets.”
“If Llara loves me, it will stay there.”
Gaultry gently folded his hands beneath the blanket. “I don’t think anyone can have any doubts about that, after today.”
“She means me to go back to Bissanty, doesn’t she?” Tullier said weakly. “That was why she wouldn’t let Andion have me for Tielmark.” There was no question who he meant by “she.” Llara Thunderer.
“I think so,” said Gaultry. “But the time has not come yet. Rest, and recover yourself.” She had no idea how the thrones of Bissanty would realign, now that Tielmark was truly lost to the empire. Bissanty’s Orphan Prince of Tielmark was no more. So what did that make Tullier? No less a Prince, that was clear, if the Grey Thunderer’s response this morning was anything to go by. She stroked his cheek, and her hand came away ash-covered, despite all Tamsanne and Mervion had done to clean him. “Go to sleep, my Prince of Ashes,” she told him. The words seemed fitting. That was how he had seemed, when Benet, newly crowned with the King’s fire, had stood and revealed him, following the great blaze of Llara’s wrath, and Andion’s submission.
She and Mervion stayed by his side until he had completely fallen asleep.
I
t was a rout. The Lanai were not fools. They had seen the clash of godly magics, they had heard the surging victory cries that had followed. On such a day, they had known from the beginning of the Tielmaran’s charge that they were not likely to prevail. A realignment of the ruling powers came but seldom and there was not a single ballad that told of the gods failing to reward it. The Lanai might come back to fight next year, but for this year, they knew they were finished.
Gaultry and Mervion had watched the turning point of the battle from the King’s command overlook, straining to see the action in the valley. It had been thrilling, standing in safety and seeing the Tielmarans push the Lanai back, but also unpleasant. Witnessing the Lanai in retreat all the way into its heights had of course been exciting, but it had taken much longer to resolve the tangle of fighting men, about a third of the way up. Martin, Coyal, and Benet had all been in the Tielmaran vanguard.
The sisters had agreed that the only worse thing would have been not to watch.
This aside, the uncertainty was all worth it, for being able to stand witness to the moment the Lanai discipline at last completely broke and the mass of fighting Lanai shattered into scattered groups of men, some crushed by their opponents, some fleeing, some attempting to surrender, but at last, all of them, save for small knots of hold-outs-quickly surpressed or called to order by their captains—ending the fight.
Organizing the surrender took fewer men, and a shorter time, than Gaultry would have imagined. It was not long before the first of the ducal armies were sent back down the valley. They came, running, laughing and urging their horses at incautious, heedless speeds, plunging past the Tielmaran camp, and on into the shallow, balmy waters of the lake. The victory was truly the Sun-King’s—the heat within the rocky limestone valley where the fighting had mostly taken place had been intense, and many of the men, despite their exhilaration, were close to heat stroke.
The second army to be withdrawn flew the yellow rose of the Vaux-Torres on its standards. Vaux-Torres’ war-leader was Beaumorreau, the High Priestess’s brother, and when the clarions finally called their retreat Elisabeth, who had been standing throughout at the center of the Prince’s command, eagerly called for a horse, mounted up, and galloped out to meet him.

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