Reader and Raelynx (28 page)

“Well, I’m not sure we should be inviting acolytes of the Pale Mother to take up residence here and harmonize with you,” Valri said, with a touch of humor. “And surely we should not be sending you to the Lumanen Convent to pray with all the Daughters.”

Amalie answered, but Cammon lost the thread of the conversation. For the past few minutes, he had been feeling dense with uneasiness, and now suddenly the sensation intensified. Donnal had seen something that distressed him—Donnal was in motion to Kirra’s side. A few moments later he felt Kirra’s sharp concern knife through him, and then Senneth was on guard, then Tayse.

A hand touched his arm and he almost shivered. Amalie. “Cammon? Are you all right? Cammon?”

He must look as if he had fallen into a trance. His sensibilities were divided; part of him felt like he was hundreds of miles away, viewing a large, crowded hall from four perspectives. Part of him was sitting in this cozy room, with Amalie’s grave eyes on him and Valri’s face a study in worry. It was hard to speak coherently. “Something’s wrong. In Danalustrous,” he said. “I can’t tell what.”

“Something’s happened to Senneth?” Valri said sharply.

“Or one of the others?” Amalie added.

“No. They’re all just—worried—afraid—grim.” He couldn’t find the right words. “Tayse is preparing for battle.”

“Battle? In Danalustrous? At a
wedding
?” Valri exclaimed.

“I can’t explain it. There’s a mood that settles over him when he thinks he’s going to have to fight. It’s very distinct.” Tayse was preparing for combat, but Kirra was the one who was most upset.
Danalustrous, Danalustrous, Danalustrous!
“They’re under siege,” he said abruptly. “Someone’s attacking the Hall.”

Valri jumped to her feet. “I’ll tell Baryn.”

So, after all, he and Amalie had a moment alone, but it wasn’t likely to do them any good. Cammon couldn’t draw his attention away from his distant friends, couldn’t relax or focus on anything else while they were in danger. He could feel Kirra and Donnal taking the shapes of great winged predators and diving into the fray from above, gouging out eyes, slashing open faces. His arm was heavy with Tayse’s sword, relentless and unfaltering. His hands burned with the heat of Senneth’s fire.

“Cammon.” That was Amalie’s voice, curiously disembodied, strangely distant. “Cammon, I’m worried about you. You seem to have disappeared. Should I send for Justin? Or Jerril?”

He managed to shake his head. “No, I’ll be all right. When Justin was hurt, I felt like a knife had gone through my heart, and it took me a couple of hours to recover. But this is—there are four of them, all at once—there’s so much emotion I can’t push it back. But I think it’ll be all right. I think it’ll fade. I’ll be fine.”

In truth, he wasn’t so certain he
would
be fine. He had never been buffeted by so many intense emotions simultaneously. Jerril would certainly tell him he needed to pull back, to throw his mental shields up, to conserve his own strength. But he couldn’t. Not while they were so passionately engaged, not while they were in such danger. They were all, in their ways, splendid fighters, but any man could be felled on a battlefield. Any mystic could be cut down by a sword.

Amalie stood up, drawing her hand away. He felt an instant sense of loss that momentarily jerked his attention back to this room, and he saw her hurrying over to her bookcase of treasures. But then Senneth called forth an incredible burst of power and he was right back in Danalustrous, behind a roaring, impregnable wall of flame. Gods, he could feel the backlash of her power; she could set the entire country on fire.

Amalie circled his wrist with her hand, and for a moment the world went black.

No fire. No battlefield. No parlor. Just a blank and empty spasm of existence.

He gasped for air and reality shifted back into place. He was in the pretty rose-and-cream parlor, sitting in an upholstered chair, facing a window that looked out over the sunny lawns of the palace. Amalie was beside him, her earnest face creased with worry. Danalustrous and his four friends who were defending it were still there at the edge of his mind, but in a muted and shadowy fashion. He could monitor the fight while still existing in his true environment.

Her hand was still closed over his wrist, and he could feel the sharp prickle of magic in her touch. “What did you do?” he whispered.

She opened her other hand to show him the moonstone pendant she had been given by the Coravann lord. “I wanted to see if I could steal some of your visions away,” she said. She looked a little nervous, as if she thought he might wrench out of her hold or yell in fury. She also looked stubborn and determined, as if she would yell right back.

He swallowed. “You succeeded.”

Now she looked anxious. “And is it all right? Should I let you go? It’s just that—you seemed so far away—and it seemed dangerous. I was afraid you would slip away completely, and I didn’t know how you would get back.”

“I don’t know. That’s never happened before, but it’s never been so intense before,” he said, his voice a shade closer to normal. “Now—I can still feel them, but it’s a little more bearable.” He attempted a smile. “That’s a trick
I
would use on somebody. How did you learn it?”

Her smile was timid. “I don’t know. I just thought I’d try.”

With his free hand, he gestured at the moonstone. “And how did you keep it from burning me this time?”

She shook her head. “I just tried to. I didn’t know if that would work, either.”

Despite his pressing worry, despite his continued abstraction, he felt a tremendous excitement begin to build up in his chest. “Amalie,” he said. “Do you realize what you’re doing? You’re teaching yourself to use your magic. And you’re using it to help and to heal. You’ve been afraid of it, but Ellynor was right. You can make it benevolent. And you can figure it out completely on your own.”

Now her smile widened. She was pleased that he was pleased with her. “And I helped you come back? I made you feel better?”

He put his free hand on the back of her neck and drew her forward so that their foreheads were touching. She released his wrist, but only so she could lace her fingers with his. The conflict at Danan Hall was still playing out on the edge of his vision, but Tayse was convinced of victory, and even Kirra had grown calmer. “You made me feel wonderful,” he said.

That was how they were sitting when Valri came back in the room and found them.

T
HE
afternoon passed in a tangled blur. Baryn wanted whatever details Cammon could supply, and Cammon had to repeat them all to Tir when the older Rider came in for a briefing. They were already armed for war. There was little else they could do to prepare for an assault on the palace, should one be coming, but everyone was shocked at the news from Danalustrous.

More bad news was to follow. As the day wore on, Cammon became oppressed by other intimations of hostility, and he spread his attention outward toward all the borders of Gillengaria. Violence had always been what registered most sharply in his consciousness, and violence was unfolding throughout the Houses. He had never been good at geography, never been able to tell exactly where something was occurring, but he could tell that blood was being shed in multiple locations throughout the realm.

After all, Amalie brought Justin into her study. The Rider unrolled a huge map on the floor and weighted its four corners. Then he made Cammon stand on the spot marked as Ghosenhall and face the northern border. “Give me directions,” he demanded.

Cammon waved to his right. “That way. Not very close to us.”

“Kianlever,” Justin guessed, placing a rock on Kianlever Court. “Where else?”

“That way. East. But farther up. North, I guess.”

Justin’s voice was grim. He placed another stone. “Brassenthwaite.”

“Although it’s not as intense there,” Cammon added. “I think the battle is already over. Maybe it was just a skirmish.”

“Where else?”

Cammon pointed behind him. “Pretty far. Almost at the edge of what I can sense, so maybe at the coastline.”

“Rappengrass.”

“And that way. Toward the Lireth Mountains.”

“Coravann.” Justin’s voice was cold with fury. “Uprisings at all the loyal Houses, timed to occur on the same day. To make the marlords think twice about sending any reinforcements to the palace once they learn that Ghosenhall is under attack.”

“Merrenstow’s a loyal House,” Amalie said. She and Valri had watched this whole exercise.

Justin laughed mirthlessly. “Royal forces have been bivouacked on Merrenstow land for the last six months. It would be difficult to plan an uprising there.”

Valri was on her feet and pacing. “So does this mean that the Houses where there have
not
been confrontations are Houses that are not loyal to the crown? So many of them! We always knew that Fortunalt and Gisseltess were against us, and Nocklyn and Tilt have been questionable for a long time, but Storian? Helven?”

Justin looked grave. “I don’t know. Perhaps those Houses have maintained better relations between the marlords and their vassals.”

Valri pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Baryn must know.”

Justin nodded. “I’m assuming the marlords will send word as soon as they can to confirm Cammon’s suspicions.”

“They’re not
suspicions
,” Cammon said.

Justin’s face almost relaxed into a smile. “I know. You’re always right.” He sighed. “I wish Senneth and Tayse were here.”

So does Senneth,
Cammon thought. “They’ll be on their way tomorrow.”

T
HE
next day, Cammon was briefly confused by the pace at which Senneth and Tayse were covering the ground on their return journey, for he could tell they were keeping up with Kirra and Donnal, which was hard to do.

“They’ve been
changed
,” he told Justin that night. Just the thought of it had given him his first true smile of the day. “
Tayse
let Kirra change him! Can you imagine?”

“Are they birds, then?” Justin wanted to know. “Because that’s fast, but, gods! It’s a tricky body to master.”

“I can’t tell what they are. Just that they’re all together and they should be here tomorrow night.”

“Finally you have
good
news.”

Ellynor made him bundle up for the long walk back from the cottage to the palace. It was almost spring, but the nights were still uncomfortably cold, and Cammon moved as briskly as he could without actually breaking into a run. By habit, he let his mind search the palace to locate the people who mattered to him. For once, Valri did not seem to be in the same room as Amalie; he thought she was with the king, for he could catch the stately aura that he associated with Baryn.

I’m on my way back to the palace,
Cammon sent hopefully to Amalie.
If you’re alone and you’d like to meet me somewhere.
But she stayed stationary in her room, and he sighed. She might be asleep already. She might—with the kingdom in such turmoil already—be unwilling to add any more drama to her life. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

But as he entered the palace and climbed the stairs, it became clear that each step was bringing him closer to Amalie. As he turned down the hallway toward his own room, he felt her presence more strongly still. His pace quickened; he was almost running as he reached his door and pulled it open.

Amalie stood inside.

Even more hastily, he shut the door behind him.

Then he turned to stare. She was wearing a long white nightdress and holding a single white candle. There was no other light in the room. She looked like a column of moonlight topped with a halo of sculpted fire.

“How long have you been here?” he demanded.

“Maybe an hour.”

“If I’d known that, I would have come back much sooner!”

She smiled. It occurred to him that she was a little nervous. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t exactly ask you.”

“Of course I don’t mind! But are you sure Valri won’t come looking for you?”

“She was pretty tired. I think she’s had so much else to occupy her thoughts in the past few days that she’s forgotten to pay as much attention to me.”

But she still seemed tentative. He went straight up to her, pushing aside the hand holding the candle, and kissed her soundly. That made her smile; that made all her uncertainty disappear. The glow that seemed to emanate from her very skin intensified.

“I like that so much,” she exclaimed in a low voice.

He laughed. “Time to put the candle aside, I think.”

She blew it out and let it fall to the floor with a clatter. Now they were both laughing. He put his arms around her and gathered her close, his mind again filled with imagery of moonbeams and reflected fire. She lifted her face and responded to his kisses with curiosity and delight and awakening desire. He was being careful, keeping his hands primly around her shoulders, but she was starting to explore. Her hands slipped under his shirt and flattened against his back. He could feel how much she liked the sensation of skin on skin, how marvelous it seemed to her, how extraordinary. Every kiss seemed to turn her a little brighter, as if she was absorbing all of his own sensations and turning them luminous.

“This feels wonderful,” she murmured against his mouth.

“A little too wonderful. We need to stop a moment.”

She clutched him tighter. “No. No, not yet.”

He kissed her. “I just want to build up the fire. It’s freezing in here.”

So he knelt at the hearth, blew on the coals, and built a fine fire that would burn a good long time. He could hear Amalie moving around the room, and before he could stand up, she had dragged over a thick blanket and began spreading it before the grate.

“Let’s sit and watch the flames,” she suggested, and dropped down beside him. He put his arm around her and felt heat from all directions—from the fire, from her skin, from his own body.

“More kisses,” she whispered, and twined her arms around his neck.

Easy to comply; easy to toss aside thoughts about what anyone else might think of such an assignation. She was so pleased to be with him that his own happiness multiplied. They could have been mirrors, each endlessly replicating what they found inside the other. She was like the moon itself, he thought, taking whatever he had to offer and making it visible, reflecting it back to him. And she liked all of this, every touch, every murmured word, every caress.

“When do I take off my nightdress?” she whispered against his mouth. “I will even take off the sheath with my knife in it, but I will mind Wen’s instructions and leave it nearby.”

He laughed against her lips. “I think you don’t take off the nightdress
or
the weapon,” he said. “And I don’t take off my clothes. And soon you go back to your room.”

Now she pouted. Instantly, much of the light faded from the room. “You don’t want to make love to me?” she asked.

He sucked in his breath, caught completely off guard. “Amalie! I didn’t—you—is that why you came here tonight?”

She pulled back, affecting haughtiness to hide her disappointment. “Naturally not. I simply came to your room because I was bored.”

He caught her and drew her closer, giving her one hard squeeze and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. Surely it was his imagination that even such a small mark of affection could make some of that glow return to her skin. “Don’t be hurt. Don’t be offended. You have to speak plainly. This is risky for so many reasons. I need to know what you want from me.”

She peered up at him through red-gold hair that was rather mussed and disordered. “But what if I say something and you don’t like it?”

“Well, that happens between people all the time. And sometimes it turns them awkward with each other, and sometimes it makes them angry, but unless they tell the truth it’s all just guessing and mistakes anyway.” He pressed his lips against her cheek. “But I don’t think anything you say will make me angry.”

She leaned into him, comforted but still unsure. “I am terrified that war is coming, but a very small part of me is glad, too,” she said in a soft voice. “Because there will be no more lords arriving at the palace to court me. And there will be no time to arrange for my wedding. And I don’t want to get married.”

“You don’t ever want to get married? Or just not now?”

She spoke slowly and deliberately. “I’m pretty sure I’ll marry someday for the sake of the throne. But I want to know what it’s like to love a man before I end up married to one I don’t love for the rest of my life.”

“You might end up loving the man you take as a husband,” he pointed out.

“Not if I have to pick from the ones I’ve seen so far.”

“There must be dozens of eligible men who haven’t made it to Ghosenhall yet.”

“I want my first lover to be someone who isn’t thinking about a throne when we fall into bed. I want him to be thinking about me.”

“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I find it hard to think about anything
but
you.”

She shifted in his arms to look him more fully in the face. “You don’t sound shocked.”

“Nothing shocks me,” he said.

She lifted her hands to put them on his shoulders, watching him intently. “But you’re not sure this is something you want to do.”

He kissed her; in a very short time, he had learned that a kiss would always please her. “I’m trying to decide if what you think you want is what you really want—”

“It is!”

“And even if it is, whether it might be so harmful to you that I just can’t do it anyway.”

She was still watching him. “You didn’t say whether this is something
you
would want,” she said presently.

Of course
that
needed to be answered with a kiss as well. “I adore you,” he said simply. “You’re in my thoughts night and day. I always know where you are, and I always look for ways to be beside you. I don’t know that much about how men and women fall in love. I don’t know what would have happened by now if you were just an ordinary girl.” He smiled, imagining it. “If you were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I probably just would have showed up at your door every day, asking you silly questions or bringing you stupid presents.”

“Presents aren’t stupid,” she murmured.

“But I would have brought you shoe buckles and coins that had been smashed into funny patterns by carriage wheels, and maybe bird feathers. Not
real
presents,” he said. “And every time I left, your father would have said, ‘What’s that strange boy doing, hanging about here so much? What’s he after?’ And you’d have said, ‘I don’t
know.
He makes calf-eyes at me, but he never flirts or gives me pretty compliments.’ And your father would say, ‘Well, is he courting you or isn’t he?’ And you’d say, ‘I don’t know! I can’t even tell if he likes me!’ Because I wouldn’t know how to go about it, you know. What to say. How to tell you that I thought about you every day.”

She was giggling now. “If I were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I’d wait till the next time you came by. And I’d invite you in and say, ‘Come to the back room with me, I have something to show you.’ And my father would be shaking his head, but you’d follow me, and when we were alone I’d put my hands on my hips, and I’d say, ‘Well? Do you like what you see or don’t you? Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you, young man, but if you don’t, stop cluttering up my father’s shop.’”

“You probably would,” he said. “And you’d probably have to! Because I’d be so clumsy and tongue-tied I wouldn’t know how to say the words myself.”

She slipped out of his hold, rearranged herself so she was kneeling in front of him, her hands on her hips. On her face was an expression that was part exasperation, part sassiness. “Well? Do you like what you see, or don’t you?” she said softly. “Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you.”

“I want you,” he answered quietly. “But you’re not a shopkeeper’s daughter.”

Now she put her arms around his neck and leaned in for the kiss he could not have refused her to save his own life. “And shouldn’t a princess get what she wants at least as often as a merchant girl?”

“A princess has so much more to lose,” he said. But his own hands had come up to wrap around her back, to draw her closer.