The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (81 page)

Gydryn knew Loran would be unsatisfied with anything less than a decision to
vacate M’Nador completely. He settled the pacing duke a firm look. “I would that you leave tonight, Loran.”

“Tonight!”

“Tonight,” the king stressed, leaning forward to rest forearms on the table again. “Without fail.”

“Aye, I see it now,” the duke grumbled. “This is yer way of punishin’ me fer tryin’ to make ye see some sense.”

“It becomes crueler still,” the king returned, suppressing his twitch of a smile at the duke’s indignant glare. He stood and approached his general. “There are rumors of Basi spies in the city—never mind the flood of Saldarians. Let no one see you leave tonight, and take all measures to ensure you are not followed.”

All pretense of complaint vanished from Loran’s manner. He drew up short and stared hard at his king. “That’s a tall order with forty men and horse.”

The king placed a hand on the duke’s shoulder. “Which is why I can entrust it to no one but you, Loran.”

“Aye, Sire,” said the Duke of Marion resolutely. He placed a hand on Gydryn’s shoulder in return and held his king’s gaze. “Your will be done.”

“There is no standard large enough to cover the shame of war.”

- Gydryn val Lorian, King of Dannym

It took
the greater part of two hours for Trell’s party to descend from the foothills, but at last they gained a busy road leading to the limestone-walled city of Sakkalaah. Watching for a break in the traffic, they fell in among dark-eyed Khurds riding camels and merchant caravans whose turbaned guards walked with hands perched readily on the scimitars at their belts. Before they even reached the gates, Trell smelled the familiar scents of the city: the pungent aroma of spices, the acrid tang of livestock and unwashed men, and that ever-present scent of sand, which permeated all who made their lives among the lands of the Seventeen Tribes.

Trell noticed Rhys looking twitchy, his stormy gaze alighting on everyone with suspicion, and he suppressed a smile. To the Lord Captain, no doubt anyone in a turban seemed an enemy.

As they headed beneath the city walls, Trell thought of his last visit here. He wondered if Lily and Korin had yet made their way east to Duan’Bai, or if Krystos had left on his next great expedition. He would’ve liked to see his friend again and tell him how right he’d been about his origins, but his own path was still too uncertain; he’d hardly any real news yet to share.

The Espial Gerard led them through the winding streets, past crowded, colorful markets and the high-walled gardens of city homes, until they turned upon a sandstone-cobbled avenue and found the Guild Hall. Trell had never seen the building before, though its staunch limestone walls and elaborate, aging mosaics clearly bespoke its centuries-long hold upon the location.

They were admitted through the main gates by two men in blue and grey turbans. Trell knew from these colors that the men were members of the al-Haduik tribe, which was well-respected among the seventeen united tribes. In the entry yard, Gerard called them to a halt, and they all dismounted. “We shall rest here for a few hours and then proceed across the next node,” he announced. “You may take refreshment within.”

Then he handed off his reins to a groom and departed.

“Terribly chatty fellow, isn’t he,” Fynn observed, but he seemed in better humor now that they were far from Rethynnea. He grabbed a bottle from his sack and leaned an elbow on his saddle, pinning val Lorian grey eyes upon Trell. “I’ll bet you know where we are,” he noted before tearing at the cork with his teeth. He spit it out, adding, “Raine’s truth, I’ll bet you even know what everyone’s bloody saying.”

“They’re saying we should go into the shade where it’s cooler,” Alyneri offered as she slid from her mount.

Fynn gave her a flat look, to which Trell chuckled and replied, “That’s actually what the guard just said, Fynn.”

Fynn eyed Alyneri narrowly
. “Did I know you spoke the desert tongue? No, I believe I did not.”

“Forgetfulness is a sure sign of alcohol poisoning,” she pointed out.

“T’would be a fitting end for me, your Grace,” Fynn observed with a flourish of his bottle, “you must admit.”

With everyone dismounted, they followed a young steward in a white turban through an archway and into a
sahn
, a traditional courtyard bordered by an arcade on all four sides. The Guild Hall’s
sahn
had been made into a garden shaded by date palms and orange trees. A nearby fountain gave the illusion of moisture.

“We’ll all be prunes after an hour more of this heat,” the soldier Cayal remarked as they found seats beneath the shade of the vaulted arcade.

“It takes some getting used to,” Trell admitted. After the temperate climate of the Cairs, the relatively dry air of Sakkalaah likely seemed intolerably arid, but it was balmy compared to the Kutsamak and Duan’Bai. “That’s why we’re stopping now, in the heat of the day, I suspect. If our next nodepoint is further east, we’re likely to endure a harsher climate still.”

“And if it’s hard on us, imagine the horses,” Dorin noted.

Trell agreed. “We’ll likely be advised to pack a lot of water, for there is little enough of it between Sakkalaah and the Fire Sea.”

“Sakkalaah,” Fynn murmured. “So that’s where we are. I’ve heard of Sakkalaah.”  He looked around more appreciatively. “A man might find a good living in a place like this.”

Rhys gave him a stony glare. “I’ve heard the Khurds don’t take kindly to thieves.”

“For the hundredth time, Captain,” Fynn drawled, turning him a bland eye, “I’m an
agent
for thieves. I don’t do the thieving
myself
.”

“I don’t know that the Seventeen Tribes make such distinctions, Fynn,” Trell said with a smile. “I’m not sure there’s even a word for ‘agent of thieves’ in the desert tongue.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is criminal,” the Bull rumbled.

Fynn sighed despondently. “I am
so
misunderstood…”

As Fynn continued his lamentations loudly to anyone who seemed to be listening, Alyneri approached Trell. Her brown eyes revealed the fullness of her contrition, and he knew she was suffering from guilt as painfully as he felt the sting of her betrayal. He nodded wordlessly at her look of inquiry and headed off into the garden.

Though paling in comparison to the splendor of those at Krystos’ Inn of the Four Faces, the Guild Hall’s garden was lovely and comparatively cool. Trell walked beside Alyneri along a limestone path toward the sound of the distant fountain.

“Trell, I’m so sorry,” she whispered in the desert tongue when they were deep among the foliage.

Trell took her hand and pressed his lips to the backs of her fingers, wishing they walked in different gardens under entirely different circumstances. “I don’t want to talk about it, Alyneri.” He liked none of what he was feeling that day—the ache of distance between them, the sure sense that the Guild Master D’varre had been hiding something, and that feeling of apprehension that both dominated and clouded his thoughts.

“But—”

“What’s done is done,” he said, immediately wishing the words hadn’t sounded so cold in their accusation.

He felt her wither beside him. “Can you not…forgive me?”

Trell glanced at her and frowned. He seemed ill able to say anything productive. Shaking his head, he arched a brow and remarked derisively, “Your betrayal pales compared to my own.”

“Oh, Trell,
no
…”

But Trell refused to be baited into talking about his own betrayal in serving his father’s enemy when the wound between him and Alyneri was still so tender and raw—when he was as likely to hurt her again as repair the links already broken. Turning away, he brushed his lips across her fingers again and asked, keeping to the desert tongue, “Did you notice how uncomfortable the Guild Master D’Varre looked?”

She seemed startled by his abrupt change of subject. “No…I…” She shook her head. “No. Was he?”

Trell exhaled in frustration. “I don’t know. I thought so.”

Her lovely dark eyes seemed large in contrast to her pale hair, and she gazed at him with worry furrowing her brow. “Trell…is something else bothering you?”

He would’ve liked to confess his thoughts, but he
knew better than to share these kinds of apprehensions with Alyneri.
He
understood too well that troubling over what the future held was as like to doing nothing as sitting and watching the arrow as it comes to claim you. Alyneri, on the other hand, if left to her own devices, would chew on the bitter berries of worry until they turned to mush and then only go and gather more. So he shook his head and gave her a look he hoped was softer than the one before. “Just thinking about the path ahead.”

She sighed. “
It seems ever clouded.”

Exhaling his own agreement, he gripped her hand tighter
and murmured, “The clouds cannot last forever, I suppose.” 

“
Can they not?”

Though he only felt bombarded by that unwelcome premonition, he hoped to give her some reassurance. “
Somewhere in the world the sun is shining.”

“
Let's go there then,” she said with sudden fervor, and for a moment Trell felt the wall between them thin, that he might almost gaze again into her heart. “I would live with the sun and the sea in a place where the sky is always blue,” she whispered. “Does such a place exist?”

He
kissed her hand again, thinking of a bit of land along an isolated coastline that he knew quite well. “I think it may indeed, your Grace.”

As the midday hours passed and they prepared to be
off again, Fynn regaled them with a story about Carian vran Lea and a Vaalden barmaid. The story had Trell laughing loudly in spite of his mood, set Alyneri to blushing, and even managed to draw the quirk of a grin from the Lord Captain.

As Trell had predicted, the
grooms had laden their horses with waterskins, and they'd all been instructed to refill flagons and any other receptacle available from the Guild well. Everyone regrouped in the courtyard, wherein the laconic Espial Gerard began instruction for the next leg of their journey.

“Once we depart Sakkalaah, the next nodepoint is far to the east behind Akkad-held lines,” Gerard said. “I have traveled it once in order to map the way. We will travel overland for two days to reach the next node, which, once crossed, will place you within a day’s journey of Tal’Shira. Upon crossing that final nodepoint, our business, per contract, is concluded.”

He settled a steely eye upon the assembled group. When no one raised any objections, the Espial continued, “I will do my best to keep you out of harm’s way.”

“How close to the lines will we be?” Trell asked.

“I am not certain. The node lies deep in the mountains far from any settlements.”

“In the Kutsamak.”

“Just so.”

“The Akkadian forces are centered in Raku.”

“The node is yet several days west of Raku, in my estimation. There is no other way but upon this route, my lord. Do you wish to continue?”

“Yes, yes,” Fynn waved impatiently at him. “Get on with it, man. If I’m to be forced to endure this heat, I want to be moving eastward at least.”

“Worried Ghislain is coming after you already, Fynnlar?” Alyneri teased.

The royal cousin gave her a round-eyed look. “You have no idea the intensity of that woman’s desire for me, your Grace.”

“Desire to see you drawn and quartered, perhaps,” Rhys muttered.

Fynn waved airily. “I do not profess to approve of Ghislain’s vast and varied entertainments…only to have participated in many of them.”

“You are a truly dissolute man, Fynnlar,” Alyneri sighed, smiling at him.

“One cannot but walk the path before one,” Fynn remarked philosophically. “Isn’t that what you always say, cousin?” and his gaze alighted upon Trell.

“I don’t think I put it in quite the same context, but yes,” Trell murmured with the ghost of a smile.

“My lords,” Gerard announced, opening his eyes at last, “The node is prepared. Please proceed as before.”

And so they did, trading the Guild Hall in Sakkalaah for a vast, arid plain that seemed the barren delta of a once-great river. To the near north, ochre mountains defied the sky to wash the brilliant color from their slopes, while the single wall of a vast escarpment reared several miles to the south.  

Looking across the dry delta toward that high ridge, Trell saw a caravan line of tiny men and camels backlit by the angle of the equally westbound sun. Suddenly he knew exactly where they were. “That’s the Ruby Road,” he said under his breath, feeling ever more ill at ease.

“Is that bad?” Alyneri asked.

“No, it’s just—” 

“Come,” announced Gerard, trotting his horse to the front of the group. “This way.” 

He led off eastward, toward a distant point in the delta where the northern mountains seemed to join the southern ridge. Trell had his eye out for a particular peak.
Too many coincidences
, he was thinking.
First Sakkalaah, and now the Ruby Road…

Yet why should these be coincidences at all? They were traveling eastward to Tal’Shira through the Kutsamak. Logically they ought to cross some part of his earlier path, and yet…

By late afternoon, they’d traveled deep into the mountains. Trell had taken a different route in his journey toward the Cairs, but he knew they couldn’t be too far from the winding trail that led back to the Mage and his strangely wonderful guests. A part of him wished he and Alyneri might tear away and find again the path to the Mage’s distant sa’reyth, though he remembered too well Balaji’s comment that he hoped Trell need never return there.

“What is it?” Alyneri asked in the desert tongue just as the horses were rounding a rise and they gained a distant view of the arid mountains ahead of them. “Don’t tell me nothing is wrong. You’ve not been yourself at all today, and you keep searching the sky for I don’t know what.”

He regarded her pensively, wondering what he could tell her. He’d never had such a strong feeling of unease with no logical reason to account for it. Instinct pushed him to turn them around, to abandon this path and even perhaps the goal of Tal’Shira altogether. Yet Trell couldn’t be certain that his instincts weren’t colored by his own uncertainties and fears, and he refused to succumb to cowardice. After too long with these thoughts turning a circle in his head, he finally answered, “We’re close to the trail I followed from the First Lord’s sa’reyth.”