PROLOGUE (88 page)

"So you have," said the king, with some difficulty turning away from his son to regard the count.

"We have spoken of a match between my son and Lady Tallia."

"You are frank with me, Count Lavastine."

"I always will be, Your Majesty. You know what I want and what I have paid to gain it."

"But do you know what I want," responded the king, "and what I need from you in order to achieve it?"

"Nay, Your Majesty, I do not know, but I am willing to listen..."

The king glanced up at Alain. "A good-looking lad. I have heard great praise of his courage and skill at arms this day. That he held that small hill against such a tide of Eika is incredible. I have no objection to a marriage between him and my niece Tallia...
ifitis
accompanied on your part by an oath that you and your heir will support me faithfully in all my undertakings."

Before Lavastine could reply, the prince stumbled up from his chair and fled into the darkness. The king made to rise.

"Nay, Your Majesty," said Alain, who had a sudden idea of what was wrong. "I'll go after him, if you permit."

The king nodded. Alain followed.

He had not gone six steps when Liath appeared beside him.

"What happened?" she whispered, as anxious as a hound in a thunderstorm.

"It's nothing serious," he said quietly, gentling her with a touch on the arm. "It's best if I go alone. Do you think he would want you to see him when he's not well?" Here he trailed off.

After a moment she nodded and returned to her post.

Alain and a few men-at-arms found the prince just beyond the edge of camp, vomiting. When he had done, he began to shake, resting on his hands. "Ai, God," he muttered as if to himself. "Don't let them see me."

Alain ventured forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. At once the prince started up, growling, just like a dog.

"Hush, now," said Alain firmly, as he would to his own hounds, and the prince shook himself and seemed to come to his senses. "If you've been starved, then you can't put rich food in your stomach all at once, or at least, that's what my Aunt Bel would say." He still winced when he said the name. "She who used to be my aunt," he added to no one except his smarting conscience.

"Who are you?" said the prince. He had an oddly hoarse voice which made him seem stricken with grief when in fact he was likely only exhausted and ill. But he had calmed enough now to wipe at his mouth with the back of a hand.

"I am Lavastine's son."

Dogs began to bark again, and the prince lifted his head to scent, then started back and became a man again. "God have mercy on me," he muttered. "Will I never be rid of the chains Bloodheart bound me with?"

"It is the collar." Why he spoke so freely Alain did not know, only that
—unlike the king—this half wild prince did not awe him. "As long as you wear it at your neck, then surely you will not be free of Bloodheart's hand on you."

"As long as I wear it, I am reminded of what he did to me. I am reminded of what I was and what he called me." His voice was so bitter. Alain ached for him, and what he had suffered.

But even Alain was not immune from curiosity. "What did he call you?"

The prince only shook his head. "I'll go back now. I won't forget this kindness you've shown me."

They returned to where the king sat sipping at his wine and the company ate with the self-conscious assiduousness of people who chafe with curiosity but know that their regnant will not tolerate questions. The prince sat with exaggerated care and with even more exaggerated care sipped sparingly at the wine and ate the merest scrap of meat and bread. But sometimes his nostrils would flare, and he would lift his head and search into the assembly as if he had heard a whispered comment that angered him. The rest of the feast passed without incident. They ate lustily and drank without stinting on what was left of the wine.

"You acquitted yourself well, son," said Lavastine afterward when they had retired to a tent commandeered from lesser nobles in Henry's train. "I am proud of you. Ai, Lord, Prince Sanglant is more like to one of the hounds than to a human man. But I suppose it is his mother's blood which stains him." He scratched Terror's ears and the old hound grunted ecstatically. Alain tended the gash that had opened up Fear's hindquarters. He had already bound up Ardent's leg and washed the cuts on Sorrow and Rage. Steadfast was asleep, while Bliss waited patiently for his turn under Alain's hands.

Now that Lavastine's wounds had been tended to, Alain and Lavastine and the hounds were alone in the tent. From outside he heard the low rumble of activity as wounded were carried in, scouts came and went, men looted and burned the Eika dead under the moon's light, and sentries called out challenges.

"He must have suffered terribly," said Alain, scratching Fear under his jaw.

"But he is alive. They say he came attended by Eika dogs, as faithful to him as his Dragons once were. What do you think of that?"

Alain laughed. "Ought I to think something of it when I sit here with these faithful beasts?"

Lavastine grunted. "True enough." He stretched, wincing. "When I was your age, I would have felt no ache in my bones, even after a day such as this. What a strange creature the Eika princeling was, to let us go like that in the cathedral when he could have killed us all. How fore-sighted of you to free him, Alain."

"Even if meant sacrificing Lackling in his place?" The old shame still burned.

"Who is Lackling?" Lavastine yawned, stretched again, and tied up the hounds, then called for a servingman to take off his boots. "What happened to the Eagle, do you know?"

Alain saw there was no point in reminding his father about Lackling. "She went back to her duties."

"You were wise to gain her loyalty, son. It seems to me that when you marry, Lady Tallia's consequence will allow you to count Eagles in your retinue. You must ask for that one. There is some power at work within her. It would be well to have it for our use, if we can."

Marry Tallia.
All else that Lavastine said swirled round him like the night's breeze and faded into nothing.
Marry Tallia.

Lavastine went on to discuss Henry's plans to send for Tallia and have her brought to his progress, but the words passed in a haze. When the hounds were settled and a rough pallet was set in place, Alain lay down beside his father and closed his eyes to see the terrible images of battle bursting like fire against his eyes. The rose burned at his chest like a hot coal. But slowly the pain faded. With the snoring of the hounds beside him and his father's even breath on his ear, the awful images faded into a vision of Tallia, her wheatpale hair unbound and her solemn face turned toward
him. His
wife. Bound to
him
by their mutual oaths sworn before witnesses and blessed by a biscop. He slept, and he dreamed.

Both current and wind aid him this night. He can smell the sea and the estuary before he gets too close. He beaches his eight ships on the western shore and sends scouts westward to guard against an incursion of the Soft Ones' soldiers, should they have sent any in this direction to seek out the fleeing RockChildren. No doubt they are too busy killing those who fled in disorder. No doubt they are too busy burying their own kind, for they are distractible in their grief.

The disaster brought on by Bloodheart's death will hurt the RockChildren, certainly, but only a fool would not find advantage in it. No one of Bloodheart's ambitious sons could have killed the enchanter without bringing down on himself Bloodheart's vengeance. Now that fate is reserved for another.

Now, after the rout, how many of Bloodheart's sons survive? How many had taken their followers to raid eastward and did not fight at Gent at all? All this he must consider before he knows how and when to act.

The old priest sits in the belly of the boat and sings nonsense as he wipes blood from the oozing wound in his chest and licks it off his fingers.

"How did you do it?" he asks the old wizened creature. "Why did you do it?"

"Why are you curious?" asks the old priest, who talks mostly in questions.

"Bloodheart found your heart hidden in Rikin fjall. He forced the bargain on you, to hide his heart in place of your own."

"Will anyone ever find my heart now?" cackles the priest. No doubt he is half mad. His kind usually are; it is the price they pay for their power. "What happened to your heart?" he asks again. "How did you manage to hide Bloodheart's heart in your own chest when it was meant to be hidden in the fjall?"

"Did he think he was cleverer than I?" The old priest snorts, and for an instant cunning sparks in his rheumy eyes. The creature is very old, the oldest male he has ever seen. "Did he think I would take my old heart to where there might be battle? I could have been killed!"

"Do you fear death, then? The curse of the nestbrother
—"
"The curse! The curse! Do I look like a hatchling? I turned the curse. I stole Bloodheart's voice and finished the speaking for him. Hai! Hai!" He begins to sing, but the song has an unsettling flow, like a river running uphill. " 'Let this curse fall on the one whose hand commands the blade that pierced his heart.' Ailailai!"

There is no more sense to be gotten from the old creature, so he only tests the chains with which he had bound the old priest before giving orders to his soldiers. Of those cousins remaining to him, he leaves half to guard the ships. The other half he takes with him as he trots north just above the bluffs to the very mouth of the river.

Fifth son of the fifth litter, he knows how to make use of a lesson: He was captured once by this male named Count Lavastine when his ship got bottled up at the mouth of the Vennu River. It will not happen again. If a trap lies in wait at the mouth of this river, he will be ready for it.

He smells human soldiers long before he sees the telltale lines of a small fort set upon a bluff and somewhat hidden by a cunning layer of branches and scrub. Some of the plants woven into the log ramparts still live, though he can taste the brittle decay of the others on his tongue when he licks the air.

His cousins stir and growl restlessly behind him, for they were granted no leave to fight when they fled Gent. He can taste their dissatisfaction, but they have not learned patience.

They will learn it from him tonight, or they will die.

He lifts a hand and gestures to them to fan out. The ground slips beneath his feet, sand and coarse grass and such plants as can stand the ever-present blast of the wind. He bangs spear on shield and from the depths of the fort he hears the frantic rustling of men struggling to ready themselves for battle.

"Hear me!" he calls. "Send your leader to talk, for my force outnumbers yours." He tastes the air, scenting for their essences. "You have but some thirty of your kind, and I have over one hundred of mine. I give you this choice: Fight us and die, this night, or retreat from your fort south and west to the camp of your kin, and live."

"How can we trust you?" shouts one of them, appearing only as a dark shadow of helm against the sky and a certain tang of stubborn resiliance in the air.

"I am the one whom Lord Alain freed at Lavas Holding. By the honor of that lord, I swear I will do you no harm . . . as long as you retreat at once and leave this place to me." The man spits, though the spray cannot travel so far. "You, an Eika, swearing by our good Lord Alain's honor!" Stubborn creature! He has no time to waste. Soon the other ships will come.

"Then if you have a brave man among you, send him out and I will stand hostage under his knife while the rest leave. When they are -well away, he may follow unmolested. But you must act now, or we will attack."

They confer. He can't hear them, but their fear is a bracing scent on the breeze, pungent on his tongue. By now they must know they are surrounded and outnumbered.

In the end, of course, they agree. They have no other choice except to die, and Soft Ones always struggle to live even when they must live like dogs to do so. Like the old priest, they fear death and the passage to the fjall of the heavens, and that fear can be used against them.

One of them emerges. He goes forward and lets the man stand with knife poised at his throat while the others march in a swift but orderly fashion into a night made gray by the lowering moon. His own soldiers storm the fort after them and circle down to the strand. They bark to him. There are machines within the fort, and with some impatience he stares at the man before him, who at last withdraws the knife and retreats slowly.