The Dark Throne (68 page)

“In that light, sending the vanguards out to rescue Liam wasn’t a good idea.”

“You forget that Malravenar would make dark use of a Seer,” Vell reminded me. “As he has made dark use of Mab’s sister.”

I sighed. “True. But you don’t think it’s going to distract Finnead?”

“It has already distracted him,” Vell said a bit ruefully. “He was very…distressed when he returned to me.”

“I’m not sure what to do now.” I shifted in my chair. “I wish being the Bearer made me immune to all these ridiculous emotions.”

“Well, my crown doesn’t make me immune either,” returned Vell. “But you can choose your own actions even with all the feelings. We might not like it, but emotions remind us that we’re fighting for something.”

“Why do you have to be so sensible,” I grumbled.

“I’m not any more sensible than you. I just remind you of it when you need it.” Vell smiled a little. “And you do the same for me, believe it or not.” She set the figurines down on the map again and leaned back on her hands. “Now, the question is, what do you expect to accomplish by talking to Finnead?”

I considered the question for a long moment. “I don’t know that I could accomplish anything.” The sense of vertigo returned. I closed my eyes against it and then pushed it away, nursing that little spark of anger in my chest. Better anger than sadness. Better anger than anything else right now.

“You want him to answer the question for you,” said Vell.

“But I think I already know the answer.” I looked at her miserably. “I guess it would just be good to have closure.”

“Then ask him for closure.” Vell tilted her head to one side. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier at all, Tess. This must hurt. I know you love him, and he does love you, in his own way.”

I winced at the added phrase. “In his own way.”

“If you want the honest truth as I can see it, he never stopped loving the princess,” Vell said in that strange half-gentle voice again. “But when she was dead…or when he believed her to be dead, he loved her as one loves the memory of someone passed beyond this world.”

“And now that he knows that she’s not dead…it’s not a dormant kind of love anymore.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been wondering for a while if he would be able to overcome the past enough to truly live in the present. I thought maybe it wasn’t fair to question his love for me by measuring it against his prior experiences. But now it’s not in the past.”

“No, it isn’t.
She
isn’t.” A considering look entered Vell’s golden eyes. She shifted her weight and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees again. Inspecting a callous on one palm, she said reflectively, “If I must force him to remember his duty to me first, I will. Because it isn’t just duty to me, it’s…well, it’s the fate of our world.” She shrugged and smiled a little at the grandiose words.

I sighed. “We can talk in circles around it all night. It doesn’t change the fact that Mab’s sister is alive, and Finnead still loves her.” I swallowed. “Maybe it would be easiest if he and I didn’t talk about it.”

“Easier, perhaps, but you’ve never been one to take the easiest path,” Vell pointed out. We fell silent for a moment. I tilted my head up and watched the glowing orbs arranged overhead like a chandelier. They hovered above the map-table obediently, forming several overlapping circles, like glowing pearls strung on an invisible wire.

“Does Arcana know?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Has she offered any opinion on it?”

“Arcana believes that the Enemy wishes to twist the knife. Neither Mab nor Titania had daughters. So the crown princess was the closest equivalent.”

“He wants the queens to lose what he lost,” I said softly.

“He has been taking those we love for a long time, and now he plans to destroy us,” Vell replied in a quiet voice.

I looked at her consideringly. “You think that what happened to your people….you think that he
knew
that you were going to become the High Queen?” I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. He could have just killed you.”

A small, cold smile lingered on Vell’s lips. “Maybe he couldn’t kill me for some reason. It’s hard to kill what you can’t find. Or maybe he didn’t kill me because he wanted to see me suffer. As he’s making Mab suffer.”

“Are we just dong what he wants, then?” A chill crawled down my spine. “Are we springing the trap just as we did at the Darinwel?”

“Perhaps.” Vell stared into the distance. “But there’s no other path left to us.” And then she grinned her predatory grin. “I don’t think he knows about Arcana. And he’s underestimated us all.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to me,” I replied with a smile. “So we have a few weeks of travel time.”

“Yes. I spoke to Liam about ensuring that he and his men are making good use of the time to train.”

“I don’t think you would’ve needed to tell him that,” I said. “They’re sharp.”

“Yes, they are fascinating,” murmured Vell, her eyes half-lidded and faraway.

I tilted my head. “Can I ask you something?”

Vell gave me a sly look. “You
can
, though if you’re going to ask me whether I find your brother intriguing, I would honestly tell you that I do.” She leaned back and linked her hands behind her head. “And then I can bet that your
next
question would be concerning the
herravaldyr
and Chael. Some people would assume that since we’re the only surviving
herravaldyr,
and our wolves are male and female, that we’d create the next generation of
herravaldyr
together.” She paused, her golden eyes glimmering as she watched me to ensure that I understood her meaning. “I’d tell you that wolves will choose their mates, but that does not always mean the warriors bonded to them will choose the same.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again and settled for a small smile. “So traveling and training are the words of the day.”

“Yes. And destroying whatever forces Malravenar sets against us.”

“I think that goes without saying. Today went well on that front.” I thought of the quick and decisive battles, really not much more than skirmishes: the inexorable force of the Sidhe army closing around the misshapen Dark creatures, like the ocean swallowing a tossed handful of pebbles.

Vell snorted. “Today was nothing.”

I thought of the vast Dark host we’d glimpsed briefly in Merrick’s scrying-glass. “Any creatures we kill now are one less to kill in the future.”

“As the absence of a handful of snow lessens an avalanche,” the
vyldretning
said. Then she took a deep breath and straightened. “I think that’s enough somber talk for this hour. Gray will bring me her assessment of the armory soon, and Merrick owes me his daily report.”

I nodded and stood, settling the sheath of the Sword more comfortably along my spine.

“Finnead should be back within a few hours,” Vell added.

“If he’ll even look me in the eyes, we’ll talk,” I said, my stomach twisting.

Vell nodded. “It’s your business, Tess, but remember that we go to war. There isn’t much time left for these matters.” Beryk flowed liquidly from the shadows at the back of the tent; I wondered if he’d been there all along. “There will be a Queen’s Council in four days, and every sennight until we reach the White City.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Of course. The Bearer will always be welcome at my councils.” Vell underlined her serious words with a cheeky grin.

“Traveling, training and councils. Got it,” I said. Beryk flowed around my legs as I turned toward the tent’s entrance. I roughed his ears and his long pink tongue brushed against the back of my hand; then the wolf trotted back toward Vell, and I left them standing together under the softly pulsing light of the suspended chandelier.

Chapter 34

I
slept that night in the little sleeping quarters behind the emerald green curtain, Calliea curled on one side and I on the other. Over the many days of the journey, we developed a pattern in the nights that we chose to sleep in the tent. Wisp kept us company until it was time to sleep, and then he’d bow and take his leave in his courteous way. Sometimes Farin built a little nest against Calliea’s bright blue breastplate, pressing her small hand against the furrows from the battle with the dragon as though touching a talisman or a holy relic. The days settled into a rhythm, much as they had on our journey into the northern wilds: we rose before dawn, stretching stiff bodies as we folded our cloaks and rearranged our packs. Sometimes the morning greeted us with thick, clinging fog that rolled wetly over the ground, transforming dust into a strange wet dirt, not quite mud but sticky and clinging. Riders moved like shadows through these misty mornings until the sun rose high enough to burn the fog away.

Every morning, I met Liam and his teammates, Calliea and Merrick, and Luca. We practiced our bladework in whatever time we had left before the clarion note of the white horn brayed out over the vast army. Others came and went in our little group: Robin joined us sometimes, and Niamh and Maire impishly dove into practice sessions, laughingly making fools of the men, who couldn’t be angry at their flashing eyes and puckish smiles.

“Keeps me from making the mistake of thinking that I’m actually any good,” Quinn said with a rueful smile one morning as he rubbed a bruise blooming where Niamh had caught him with the flat of her blade.

“Oh, you are very good at
other
things,” replied Niamh with a bright grin, “but you are only very average at swordplay as of yet.”

“You should probably switch sparring partners before the heat in your gazes catches anything on fire,” Robin commented with a raised eyebrow, looking between Quinn and Niamh.

“As if there’s anything to actually catch on fire out here,” Niamh retorted, wrinkling her nose and surveying the barren lands around us.

When the horn sounded each morning, we all packed away our blades and mounted our
faehal
. I noted with concern that although the army seemed to have a good supply of feed for our fleet steeds, Nehalim seemed a bit thinner as time went on, and his coat wasn’t as gleaming white. But he still regarded me with that same alert intelligence, and a few times he tossed his head and flicked his tail as if to challenge me to remark on it.

We rode through the long hours of each day, the Valkyrie flying overhead in great looping circles. I wondered aloud what the Seelie and Unseelie riders made of the winged
faehal,
and Robin informed me that he’d heard tales of envy from the other camps. I told him that his eyes danced a bit too gleefully at the discomfort of his former comrades, and he merely shrugged and grinned.

Those warriors who had been wounded on the vanguards’ journey or in the skirmishes upon the vanguards’ return healed as the days passed, except for two wounded warriors from Finnead’s vanguard. They died from the poisoned arrows of the Archer. I said their names in a low voice to my blade as Thea lit their pyres with one of her forge-runes, and we watched their shrouded bodies burn.

Finnead kept his distance, and I didn’t seek him out. Even sharp-tongued Robin and the mischievous twins held their silence on that subject, to both my surprise and relief. During the long hours of riding, we talked of many things, and the Sidhe became comfortable enough with Liam, Quinn, Jess and Duke that they asked questions about the mortal world. They never addressed their curiosity to me, as though they’d forgotten that I was a mortal, too.
Not quite mortal anymore,
whispered the Sword in my head affectionately one afternoon. The Caedbranr seemed to improve in its moods as we journeyed through the Deadlands, as it had when we’d grown closer to Brightvale.

While the Sword became more eager as the days passed, I couldn’t put a single name to the emotions running through me. I felt a strange combination of excitement and dread most of the time, and sometimes my whole body tensed at a single noise or shadow. Sometimes a nebulous fear rose up so strongly that it choked me—fear for my brother, fear for Vell and the immense responsibility weighing on her shoulders, fear for Luca. Though I tried not to admit it even to myself, I still felt fear for Finnead, too. I did my best to swallow it and carry on with each day’s work of training and traveling. A few times I almost asked Liam if it always felt this way before a fight, but I reasoned that he had never ridden with a great host toward a known battle. His fights had been sudden, sharp and loud with gunshots and quick movements—or so I imagined. This long wait almost seemed worse to me than the grim knowledge of what we faced ahead.

Skirmishes with small groups of Dark creatures occurred at least once a day at some point down the great infinite line of warriors that stretched beyond each horizon. The Glasidhe and the Valkyrie flew messages between the queens, and I rode close enough to Vell that I could keep track of the happenings within the army. Either Wisp or Farin often rode with me, sitting crosslegged on my shoulder or atop my knee. Forin was one of the fastest messengers, and he could be relied upon to deliver his missive even when there were gaunt-crows in the sky. Farin accompanied her twin sometimes, and in one memorable afternoon the two of them felled a large flying lizard that looked like a poor attempt to replicate the fearsome dragon—but it was about the same size to the Glasidhe as the dragon had been to us, remarked Luca as Kianryk lifted his teeth in a snarl at the ugly, broken corpse.

Each day when dusk spread shadows like a cloak over the great army, the white horn sounded again, and our
faehal
drifted to a halt without any command from their riders. And each day when we had set up our camp, Vell strode to the center of it with her ivory staff in one hand and her silver dagger in the other, sprinkled her blood in an arc onto the dirt and drove her staff into the ground. The dust became damp around her staff, and then it bubbled, and soon there was a spring burbling up from the barren ground. We left a trail of fresh little springs in our wake, each used by those in the army riding after us and then left to chatter to the sky. After a few hours, hints of green showed through the dust around the spring, and by the time the sun rose the next morning there was invariably a few vines winding their way over the ground, a sprinkling of flowers sometimes nodding their tightly pursed buds in the new long grass. I wondered at the energy this must have taken, but other than the pink line of her always-fresh scar on the pale white of her forearm, Vell showed no strain. From the messengers I heard that Mab and Titania performed the same rite for their own camps; I thought to myself that perhaps a single spring would not have been a terrible thing. The Courts still kept to themselves, except for the gatherings at the evening practice grounds.