The Sacred Band (69 page)

A woman’s voice reached them. “Queen Corinn? Is—is that you?”

They both spun around, searching for the speaker. She was so still that Corinn’s eyes passed over her, only to snap back a moment later. A woman stood with something gripped to her chest, half hidden behind the rubble of a collapsed wall. She stepped out from behind it. “It is you, isn’t it?”

Corinn touched a hand to her cowl, which still hid the lower portion of her face. Realizing that was not a gesture that would serve as an answer here, she nodded.

The woman said something over her shoulder. A second woman emerged. Like the first, she bore a bundle in her arms. Just after, a third head peeked out. She came more reluctantly. As they picked their way forward through the debris, Corinn recognized them both. The first woman: Wren, Dariel’s lover. The second, Gurta, Rialus Neptos’s recent bride. The third was a girl who worked in the lodge, Peter’s daughter. She could not remember her name.

“Steady, Corinn,” Hanish said. He stepped up close, one hand at her elbow, one at the small of her back. “They are not ghosts. They live, and so, I think, do the babes they carry.”

He was right. The bundles in the women’s arms were unmistakable, as was the care with which they cradled them. Corinn felt her breath escape her. She leaned more heavily into Hanish.

“You see?” he asked. “There is still life here.”

When Wren reached them, she bowed her head and said, “Your Majesty.”

Gurta tried to do the same, but her eyes were round circles that would not leave the queen’s face. “What’s happening?” she asked. “They came here and destroyed everything. They killed everyone but us. We would not have survived if Bralyn hadn’t hidden us. She knew of a cave.” She paused, looking from the queen to Wren, a desperate intensity in her eyes. “It was horrible. They … I don’t know what to call it. They tore the world apart. They stayed for days, raging. They were demons. I know it sounds mad, but look around. Only great evil could do this. Queen Corinn, you should not be here. They may come back. The place may be cursed. It is cursed. I can feel it. Isn’t it cursed, Wren?”

The slim woman kept her smoothly lidded eyes on Corinn. She did not seem to be listening to Gurta at all, except that when prompted she did speak. “Queen, how do you come to be here? Alone?”

Corinn shook her head.

Wren misunderstood her. “I saw you ride in. I know that … thing out there is yours. But are others coming?”

Hanish said, “Show them.”

Corinn did. She pulled down the cowl and tucked it under her chin. All three women drew back, staring, aghast.
Yes, that’s the horror of me
. They could not hear her, of course, or see or hear Hanish. Unsure how to proceed, Corinn just stood, looking into the women’s faces as if into three mirrors, each of which showed a different reflection.

Wren began the conversation again. “Those ones did this to you, didn’t they? The same ones that came here.”

Corinn nodded.

“Oh, Queen, I’m sorry. They are so awful. You … you’re chasing them, aren’t you?”

Again, the queen nodded.

“Tell me you are going to destroy them.”

Blinking her eyes closed for a moment, Corinn answered with a third nod.

“Good,” Wren said. “I don’t know how you could possibly do that, but if anybody can, I guess you can. That’s what Dariel would say.”

At the mention of her brother, Corinn’s eyes went to the bundle in the woman’s arms. She stepped closer and pulled back the blanket to reveal a tiny child’s sleeping face. So small, with thin tendrils of black hair and a fist, a little ball of a fist, clenched just beside its face. “This is my baby,” Wren said. “Your niece, if you ever wish to call her so. She was born early. I got ill, bad ill. She wanted out of me. She’s all right, though. Small but strong. Like me.” The woman smiled.

Corinn almost collapsed.
I got ill, bad ill
. That sentence, next to that smile and beside that child was almost too much for her to stand. She sensed that Po felt her distress and wanted to return to her. She ordered him not to.
Do you see the things I’ve done, Hanish? I tried to kill this child. I tried to kill this woman, and yet she smiles at me
.

“She has every reason to,” he said. “She lives. Her daughter does, too.”

“She doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve not had time to think about it. But … she’s my little girl.”

Gurta found her voice again. “I got mine out, too,” she said. “I was cursing him for coming, but I’m glad he was out and at the breast before them ones came and did all this. He’s got more sense than his father; I can tell that already.”

Corinn reached in to see the infant’s face. She saw only an ear and a soft, lumpy curve of his head, but she peered in for a long time. She could smell the child, a scent that was sticky with his birthing but somehow lovely all the same. Mostly, though, she listened as Gurta continued her nervous rambling. She sounded more like a maid now than ever. The young woman had annoyed Corinn before. She could not imagine why anymore. Her voice was lovely, kind and warm. Without guile.

Rialus was lucky to have had you
.

Touching her back again, Hanish said, “Tell her that so she can hear it. Find a way to talk to them, Corinn. Tell them the things you need to. Time is short.”

Reluctantly, she drew back. She rummaged around in one of her saddlebags until she found writing utensils and sheaves of parchment. As the women stood awkwardly beside her, she wrote two notes. One she signed with her royal title and stamped with the Akaran seal, rolled, and tied tight with a strip of ribbon that any official of high rank would recognize. The other was a simpler missive.

When she was finished both, she pressed the rolled document to Wren’s breast, indicating that she should hide it somewhere upon her person. The other she offered to them both to read. She had written:

Take this document with you to Acacia. It’s an official pass of protection from me. If anyone troubles you, show it to them. Tell them they face my wrath if they harm you. Take it to Acacia, show it at the palace, and ask for my secretary, Rhrenna. Go there and be safe, under Akaran protection. From now and for as long as we can provide it
.

Gurta, forgive me for sending Rialus into such danger. I did not know what I was doing. I pray that he gets back to you, and that you live long and raise this child with love
.

Wren, I have committed crimes against you. I am too afraid to name them now, and I don’t ask you to forgive me. That’s too much to ask. But please go to Acacia with my blessing. Declare yourself the mother of Dariel’s daughter. If my brother makes it back to you, love him, wed him, be a part of my family
.

Go now. Hide yourselves again until I leave and the sorcerers follow me
.

When they had both clearly read the messages, they stood, nervous and unsure what to make of them. Gurta said, “You can’t fight them by yourself, Your Majesty. Don’t do that. Fly home and get others. Get everyone.”

In answer, Corinn picked up the quill again. On the back of the missive, she wrote,
I’m not alone. I was before, but I’m not anymore
.

“And need never be again,” Hanish said.

Later, once the two women had departed and had time to return to their deep hiding place, Corinn opened
The Song of Elenet
. As ever, she heard the song waft up from the pages, winged notes that danced on the breeze, instantly intoxicating.

Do you hear that?

“Of course I do,” Hanish said. “I can understand why you like it so much.”

Corinn bent forward, eyes closed, breathing the song in through her nose. The music caressed her face, searching the mottled flesh of her sealed mouth with gentle fingers. It wanted to heal her. She could feel it. The song itself—and whatever intelligence somehow lived in it—wished to rewrite the abomination that was the Santoth curse. It was wonderful to sense that sentient wish, but Corinn knew it could not be done. No matter how much of the song she could build within her head, it always had to be released through spoken breath, through open lips and with some resonance of the notes vibrating on her tongue. Even a whisper could do it, as when she whispered Barad’s eyes into stone.

But I cannot whisper
.

“If I could whisper for you I would,” Hanish said.

I know
. And she knew he could not. If she had years to be his tutor, perhaps she could have found some way to teach him. He could have been the ghost sorcerer that walked beside her, unseen by any eyes but Barad’s. She would have spoken to him with her mind and the song would have danced unheard from his lips. But again there was the trap. She did not have those years. The serpent of her dilemma ate its tail. Her life was a closed ring, tightening each moment.

What a couple we might have been together
.

“Corinn, what a couple
we are
together.”

Corinn opened her eyes and looked down at the living words. She let them rise up into her eyes with their own power, just as they had done the very first time she looked upon them. That was all she needed to do.

The response came quickly. A bellowing from the west. Followed by a roar from the north. And concussions of rage that passed, soundless, through the air from all around them. The Santoth sensed the touch of her eyes on
The Song
. Just having it alive within her head was enough. She knew they would hear it, just as she knew they were each of them turning toward her, drawn to it.

Hanish said, “I think you’ve got their attention.”

It all went horribly wrong, and it was her fault. Mena knew it was. She should not have slept. How stupid of her to think she could sleep through a night while others risked their lives. At Perrin’s urging, she had left the task of receiving the incoming slave deserters to him. “Greet them in the morning, personally, with all the sincerity of feeling you want,” he had said, “but get some rest first.” He reasoned that Rialus Neptos had crossed back and forth three times. Surely these slaves—who were cunning if Fingel was anything to judge by—could manage it as well.

Thinking this made it easier for Mena to acquiesce. Sleep she did, harder and longer than she intended. And dream she did as well: of being held tight by Perrin. He clung to her and sought to kiss her mouth. She would not let him. Instead, she placed her lips against his closed eyes. She felt the feather touches of his eyelashes, and there was something wonderful about the ripe curve of his eyeball. That, in her dream state, was permitted. Nothing else.

When she woke to the flute notes that announced the predawn hour, Mena felt in the pit of her stomach that something had gone wrong. She should not have slept so deeply. She should not have dreamed the things she had. Melio’s eyes were the only ones she had kissed that way—and that was how it ever should be. The fact that she had slept and dreamed prompted her to kick off her blankets and dress hurriedly.

Perrin collided with her as she came out of her tent. It was dark yet and windy. He was hooded and mittened. She knew him by his stature, though, and his shape.

“What happened?”

“We don’t know, Princess. I mean … nothing happened. They didn’t come. We even had lookouts posted out beyond the barricade. They saw nothing, until just now. Come and see.”

Standing atop a sled with her officers, just behind the barricade of wooden spikes, sleds, and other supplies that served as their makeshift protective wall, Mena peered toward the Auldek camp. A barren, rocky expanse separated the two armies, but through a spyglass she could see the enemy’s stations steaming in the distance. Something was happening over there. Torches lit the area in front of their camp. In the crimson light Mena could make out shapes moving, structures being shifted, construction work, it seemed, but even through her spyglass she could not figure out what they were building.

“Do you think the deserters were discovered?” Perrin asked.

Mena inhaled, the night air so cold it froze the hair in her nostrils. “Perhaps, but there’s something more going on.”

An hour later the light of dawn, as it finally began to creep in fits and starts across the frozen land’s contours, gave her a better idea of what. The structures they had built took on a familiar shape. Simple, solid, tall, and long necked, they reminded Mena of foulthings made of stout wooden beams. “Catapults.” She pulled the spyglass from her eye and offered it to Perrin. “They’ve erected catapults. Big ones.”

“About time,” Gandrel said. To spite the cold, as he liked to put it, he stood with his hood thrown back, sniffing defiantly to keep his scarred nose from dripping. “I’ve found these Auldek a bit slow on the uptake, is what I mean. If you’d been on their side, Mena, you’d’ve finished us by now.”

“Let’s hope they’re not thinking that way.” Mena took the spyglass back and lifted it.

“But catapults?” Edell asked. He took off his gloves and tried to rub warmth into his cheeks. “We’re not exactly a fortress here. What are they going to …”

Through the distorted, circular clarity of the spyglass’ view, Mena saw the arm of one of the catapults lever forward abruptly. It looked odd, the silent jerk of motion so far away. “They’ve shot,” she said. The object that surged up from it seemed to come apart as it rose. It broke into pieces that fanned out. She lost sight of them, pulled away the spyglass, and watched like the others, with her naked eyes.

“What are those?” Perrin asked.

Mena realized the answer just before they hit the hard earth. Something in the way each projectile somersaulted and contorted in the air, many limbed and limp as the dead … for they were the dead. Bodies. Naked bodies. They hit the ground about a hundred paces out, smacking down with sickening thuds. All that long arc of motion ended in an instant. Some of them split apart and sprayed red mist into the air. Most just landed. The sounds of the impacts followed one another in a quick, dull staccato.

“The deserters were found out,” Edell said.

“And this is their punishment?” Perrin asked. “Monsters. They’re monsters!” He whispered it first, and then he shouted it. As if in answer, a second rain of falling forms crashed down. Again the staccato of thuds.