Summerblood (18 page)

Still, he had to die eventually, and drowning was better than starvation.

Without further contemplation, he took a deep breath, pushed himself forward—and fell into water half a span below. The cold shocked him, making him belch out half his cache of air, but by then a current had him. He started to fight his way to where he imagined the surface to be, then realized that was stupid and relaxed as much as his hovering panic allowed, letting his body rise of its own accord. Fortunately, the runoff drained through man-made channels; thus, there were no rapids such as made rivers perilous, so that an instant later, he felt cold air across his back and realized he'd bobbed to the surface. In his efforts to flip over, his feet touched something, and he discovered that the bottom wasn't very far down at all, so that he could actually walk, though with his head less than a hand's width from the ceiling. With no energy left to choose another option, he let the current thrust him where it would, which he fervently prayed was out.

It seemed to take forever, but actually required no more than a quarter hand, for the hold, though enormous, was still no more than a shot long, measured at its major axis.

Besides which, he could hear a change in the outflow's pitch, which told him water was pouring through some opening into a larger space ahead.

And then he stepped on something slick, and fell—and was still trying to find either the bottom or the surface when he began to fall in earnest, surrounded by water that was also falling.

He
did
panic then, and was starting to breathe more water than air when something solid made him see colors he hadn't seen since going blind, and then he simply gave himself up for lost and let ultimate darkness claim him.

Kylin's breath was coming harsh and ragged, and his pulse seemed none too steady, but at least he had them. As he also had more scrapes and abrasions than Div had ever seen on a live man, even during the war. And she'd seen most of Kylin's, too, because his clothes—nice indoor velvets, she noted absently—were torn to ribbons, and he was missing his shoes entirely.

Setting her mouth, she scooted to a more viable position on the steep rock shelf atop which she'd just hauled the harper's body and slid her elbows beneath his armpits. It wasn't so much that he was heavy as simply deadweight, which, with the slope, made standing with him both unlikely and dangerous. She was therefore reduced to edging backward up the stone, while Kylin gasped, wheezed, and finally began choking and—to her relief—trying to knock her hands away.

She let him go and scrambled farther upslope to wipe rainsoaked hair from her eyes and cast a wary glance through the slanting sheets at the portion of hold visible beyond the intervening screen of laurel—which was as close as she dared approach, lest someone note her spying. It was exactly as it had been a finger ago—which was to say that it was overtly the same as it ought to be, down to the Gemcraft standard flopping soddenly above—save that no one walked its many arcades but men in white cloaks she knew far too well. As well as anyone, in fact, since men in that same livery had tried to kill her and left a scar on her hip to prove it.

And, of course, there was that substantial crack running from the hold's foundations halfway up its eastern wall, on which smoke stains had still been visible when she arrived. And a good thing they had been, for that had been the final proof she needed that things
weren't
as they ought to be when she'd come riding up shortly after noon intending to retrieve Kylin and head back to Tir-Eron.

She
had
retrieved him, too, but not in the way expected.

He was moving more vigorously now, and trying to cough, while his fingers scrabbled at the rock. She eased down to help him—an action rendered awkward by the rainwater that slid unabated over the outcrop, courtesy of a storm grown fiercer yet.

“Kylin,” she called, having remembered that he was blind and therefore unable to recognize friend from foe save by voice. “It's me, Div.”

“Div … ?” he managed through a mouthful of water. “Where … ?”

“On a rock, south of the hold. I have to get you to higher ground.”

He sat up at that—and promptly slid half a span back down the shelf. She grabbed him frantically, heard fabric rip in what was left of his tunic. “Steep slope, Kylin, below woods. You'd best back up crabwise, but there's no good way for me to help without falling. Just take it slow. It's maybe three spans.”

To his credit, Kylin didn't protest. Obedient as a child, he leaned back and did as instructed, scooting ever upward, with Div positioned above to assist how and when she could. Only when they'd reached the shelter of a copse of laurel strung between a span of oaks did he find his feet again, and that only long enough to collapse against her in a soggy, bony bundle. At least he was clean, if massively abraded. “Div,” he gasped, “I— we have to get away from here. We have to tell Avall. We— Where are we, anyway?”

“About a shot south of the hold, where the river makes a turn and there're sandbars—which you didn't have the grace to wash up on.”

Kylin released his grip abruptly and slumped back against a tree. “Is it … ?”

“I've got a camp two shots south of here. A cold camp, I'm afraid. I didn't dare build a fire for fear of being seen. We can talk there.”

“But …”

“We can talk
there
,” Div repeated, hauling Kylin to his feet.

“You're alone?” he ventured, as he found reasonable footing and she got her arm around him, the better to lead him along.

“Not anymore,” she grunted. “But if you're asking whether I have a dozen armed knights with me, the answer's no. I have myself, my horse, and a packhorse for the furs I was going to trade away at the hold.”

“Maybe that's just as well,” Kylin sighed as he trudged along. “That way we can make better time to Tir-Eron.”

And then the rain came harder and conversation turned to the more basic demands of overland travel through stormwracked woods.

Kylin shrugged the blanket loosely around his shoulders and reached down to unknot the drawstring that snugged his drawers, letting them fall in a heap at his feet before stepping clumsily out of them. At that, he lost his balance and flailed out—until he felt Div's strong grip behind him, steadying him. “Thanks,” he murmured as he regained his balance, then hugged the blanket more closely around him. At least it was dry. So was the ground underfoot—a blessing, that, after what seemed like an eternity of slippery leaves, dripping branches, and the rain itself that still came down in torrents beyond the edge of the rocky overhang beneath which they sheltered. It was too shallow to be called a cave, Div said, merely a shaded indentation in the ledge above the river they'd followed to get there. They were south of the hold, which made sense, for not only did
her
hold lie in that direction, but the land was wilder there. The South Road followed the opposite bank of the river above which they were sheltering, while fishing was usually confined to the cleaner water north of the hold, since, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, a thousand people housed in one building produced a lot of wastewater that had to go somewhere.

“You're welcome,” Div replied offhand, as Kylin folded himself down in place and waited. “If you don't mind, I'll get dry; then we'll talk.”

Kylin nodded mutely, accustomed to waiting, though he didn't like it. To his right he heard the sounds of Div stripping, and decided that from her point of view there were advantages to sheltering with a blind man. Not that she was very modest anyway. More sounds ensued, likely her laying out clothing on rocks. He wished the rain would abate. The steady rush of the drops themselves, coupled with the roar of the wind through heavy summer foliage, made it hard to catch the more localized nuances of sound that helped define his environment. He compensated with his other senses, though touch was mostly confined to the roughness of the blanket against bare skin and the occasional trickle of water from his hair down his back. Drying his hands as best he could, he patted the ground round about, finding it an even mix of naked rock, sand, and small stones. Probably material that had washed in during the spring floods, which explained why birkits hadn't denned there— though it might also be too exposed.

His sinuses were still too clogged with river water for smell to be very reliable, but he did catch the scent of horse from the blanket and what might be sharp cheese and some kind of liquor.

Div had evidently finished changing now, and eased close enough for conversation. He could feel the warmth of her body near his and was insanely grateful for it. A final bit of fumbling on her part, involving leather, glass, and metal, followed by wood being filled with liquid, and she eased a cup into his hand. “It'll warm you inside, if not out,” she informed him tersely.

Kylin drank, recognizing the fumes of one of Brewing's more potent products—a thrice-distilled whisky, if he wasn't mistaken, mixed with honey and some kind of herb that could be either mint or tarragon. It numbed his tongue, soothed his
throat, and flashed through his nose like cold fire, even into his eyes. He blinked away tears, but found his head far more comfortable.

For the rest, he was bruised and beaten, but alive.

Div was slicing bread, so he thought. An assumption that was confirmed when she passed him a slab, augmented with some of the cheese he'd smelled earlier. “Your tale first, or mine?” he asked, after a pair of very welcomed bites.

“Mine's simple enough,” Div replied with her mouth full. “I was coming to the hold to retrieve you, pick up our escort, and head back to Tir-Eron, just as we'd planned. I'd already seen smoke where there shouldn't be that much smoke and become wary. I'd also seen horsemen riding toward the hold, all in white cloaks I recognized as belonging to those who attacked Avall, Rann, and me last winter. Unfortunately, they were too far ahead of me to catch, and in any case, the smoke was all the proof I needed that they'd already taken the hold, or at least attacked it, and that these were simply reinforcements. I assume they wanted to control the source of the gems,” she added, “if not the gems themselves.”

“You're correct there,” Kylin agreed, through another mouthful. “Go on.”

“At that point, my intentions became twofold. I wanted to find out as much as I could without betraying myself, so I picketed the horses in the safest place I could find and put the place under surveillance.” A pause for another drink, then: “I also knew you were in there, and I doubted things would go well for you if anyone found out that you were one of Avall's intimates, so I decided to try to find out what had happened to you, and free you if necessary. If I'd known about the water gate, I might've tried earlier, but the fact is, I wanted to take it slow. I was trying to get a sense of when sections are guarded, when they're not, and when the guard changes—and that takes time. I'm sorry if you suffered while I scouted.”

“You couldn't have found me,” Kylin assured her, rubbing
absently at a particularly vicious scrape on his wrist and wondering if it looked as bad as it felt. “I was holed up inside the walls. Speaking of which, how
did
you find me?”

“Luck, if you want to call it that—or Fate. I'd been favoring this direction because this is where my camp is, and where the best shelter is that's still reasonably close to the hold. I'd just gone out to see if the rain changed anything about the patrol habits and saw something floating down the river. Turned out to be a certain harper.”

“Without the harp he came for, I'm afraid,” Kylin sighed.

“No time soon,” Div agreed wearily. “But I'm thinking I won't be going back with the things I came for, either.”

“Not after you've heard what I found out.”

“You've been spying, too?”

Kylin grinned in spite of himself. “Let's say I've been in a position that
allowed
spying. But maybe I should tell you from the beginning …”

Div listened without comment to the tale he relayed, speaking only to clarify a few points, most having to do with how he'd found his way around the hold. “I was trying to determine what quarters the invaders were using,” she admitted finally. “If we're going back in there, that'll have to be our goal.”

“Going back!” Kylin all but shrieked. “I can't! Not that I'm afraid, but you have to know how urgent this is. We have to tell Avall the real story: that there's a good chance they'll destroy the hold anyway, so he'll be blamed for it.”

“Now repeat what was said again,” Div urged.

Kylin did, word for word, for the art of complete and accurate recall was one of the skills a musician mastered early on, though it was properly the province of Stagecraft.

“We'll have to hurry if we're going to be of any aid,” Div conceded finally. “And the only way we'll be of much aid is if we get to Avall before these folks deliver their ultimatum. After that, it'll be a hard call. Avall may take the battle to them; he may not. He may try to call their bluff; he may not.”

“But he's got the Lightning Sword,” Kylin protested. “They'd be mad to stand against that.”

“They might not have to, or they might have weapons just as deadly by then. We're in a double race, Kylin. We have to reach Tir-Eron before the ultimatum, and Avall has to deliver a quick and decisive reply before the invaders can find gems of their own. That's his key advantage right now. They want him to think they have gems and are willing to use them. We know that, as of a day ago, they don't. We also know that they'll do anything to access the mines. It'll take at least three eights to get word to Tir-Eron and bring an army back here. They can do a lot of digging in three eights.”

“You're forgetting that Avall can space-jump. He could be here two breaths after he gets word.”

“He can jump with the master gem,” Div corrected. “But he can't
use
the master gem—or won't. The others—I understand he's tried but failed. They're not all alike, but we don't— yet—know how they differ.”

“But Merryn …”

“Merryn, very recklessly, used Strynn's gem and the Lightning Sword
once
under extreme duress and jumped,
with Strynn
, to where Eddyn was—and half destroyed one of Barrax's camps in the process. It scared her to death and almost drove her mad—madder than she's ever told her brother. So no, I don't think she'd act unilaterally, even assuming she could get hold of the Sword, which she can't. In any case,” she finished, rising, “those are decisions for Avall's council to make, not us. And if we're going to have any input on that council, we need to ride.”