The Thirteenth Scroll (21 page)

Giraldus was glad to see the brooding that had marred her last few days was gone—though knowing Aurya as he did, he knew it
was only a matter of time before her mood changed again.
She is like a whirlwind
, he thought,
always making me feel tilted, struggling to keep my balance. Will I ever understand her?

Perhaps not—and perhaps he did not truly want to, either, his heart admitted as Aurya came back to their table.
She placed a steaming mug of spiced wine before Giraldus and, sitting across from him, took a long sip of her own. The deep
red of the wine darkened the color of her lips, making Giraldus want to cover them with his own and taste the spices on her
breath.

“Let’s take our wine and go back to our room,” he said softly. “We can have a meal sent up and have it there in comfort.”

Aurya, however, misunderstood his intent—or so it seemed to Giraldus. He did not want to think otherwise, or that she was
so eager to deny him as she shook her head.

“No,” she said, “not yet. I think we should stay here—listen to what the people are saying. When you are High King, you’ll
need to know the minds of your people and you’ll not be able to go out so easily among them. This is an opportunity, Giraldus.
Learn to seize them when they come along.”

At this moment, Giraldus did not care about the people or the throne. He only wanted
her
. And he knew she saw the hunger in his eyes, for again she laughed.

“Later,” she said, her voice full of promise. “It will be worth the wait.”

Reluctantly, Giraldus accepted that he would have to be satisfied with that. He drained his mug of wine and stood. “If we’re
going to join the festivities,” he said, “then let’s add to them.”

He cast a quick glance around the room, estimating the number of people, then reached for the pouch of coins he kept securely
tied to his belt beneath his leather vest. He drew out two silver sovereigns and headed toward the bar.

“Innkeep,” he said with a loud voice, “a round of your fine wine here for everyone. Let us celebrate our good fortune in finding
this place of warm beds, hot food and
drink, and good company. ‘Tis a fine place to pass the cold hours of the night.”

Around the room, a cheer went up. Giraldus smiled broadly, feeding upon the approval of the crowd. As fast as the innkeeper
poured mugs of his steaming spiced wine, Giraldus grabbed them and started delivering them to tables—and soon he had other
willing hands to help him.

Across the room, someone started an old familiar drinking song. More voices picked up the tune, and still more. Giraldus was
in the middle of it all—swinging his mug in time to the music and happily adding his rich, deep voice to the tune.

The first song died and a second was taken up. Giraldus was glad to see the fey light remain on Aurya’s face as she, too,
joined in the song. He relaxed a little and sang with gusto, roaming through the room. People made places for him to sit,
but he shook his head good-naturedly and continued his circuit.

In time, he noticed that not everyone was singing or drinking. At a corner table, far from the center of the festivities,
four men sat hunched over their barely touched mugs. Their posture made it clear that they wished no intrusion upon their
privacy and most of the people, caught up with their own pleasures, were happy to oblige them.

Giraldus accepted a seat at the table nearest them. Now that the singing was holding the room’s attention, the men were not
bothering to whisper. Listening carefully, Giraldus could overhear them well enough.

“Hueil’s army is two thousand strong already and growing greater each day,” one voice said. Giraldus did not dare turn to
see who had spoken, but he recognized the name of the Baron of Rathreagh, and that was enough.

“But why should my master join him?” a new voice said, a voice with an arrhythmic rise and fall that told Giraldus
this speaker was not from Aghamore. “What is to be gained in this for
us
?”

The first speaker laughed. “You mean besides the gold that he has been paid already? How does the hand of Hueil’s daughter,
Margharite, sound to sweeten the bargain? As Hueil’s only child, she is also his only heir. When he is King, she—and her husband—will
have the province of Rathreagh to rule… and the throne of Aghamore to inherit. Tell your master this as well—when
my
master sits upon the High Throne in Ballinrigh with the crown firmly upon his head, he will not forget those who have helped
put him there. Once those who stand against him have been punished, then those who have been his friends shall gain their
rewards.”

“Done,” said the foreign man. “The great Wirral of Corbenica, my master, can be ready to sail within the month.”

“No,” again the first voice spoke. “The timing of this must be exact. Baron Hueil is not the only one in Aghamore who seeks
to occupy the throne. Your ships must reach the harbor of Owenasse on the night after the summer solstice.”

Giraldus sat a moment longer, finishing his wine and putting up a show of jolly conversation. But his mind was whirling with
what he had just heard. Hueil, Baron of Rathreagh, the northernmost province of Aghamore, was conspiring with the Corbenicans,
their ancient and mortal enemies.

This changed
everything
. Giraldus knew he now had a supportable reason to amass an army and march on Ballinrigh. He could draw upon every province
for men and resources… and who else would they crown as High King but the Baron who had just led them in saving the kingdom?

Giraldus had to force himself not to rush back to Aurya and tell her what he had just overheard. But he knew he must not;
if the men had any suspicion that their plan was no longer secret, it might force them to move before he had time to prepare,
or give up the venture altogether. Knowing their timetable gave him an advantage he intended to put to full use.

Under the loudly proclaimed pretense of refilling his mug, he left the table, blessing Aurya’s insistence that they join the
festivities with every step he took. He stopped at the bar, refilled his mug and another one for Aurya, and went to their
table. Someone pulled out a fiddle and struck up a lively tune. Feet began to pound and hands to clap in time; chairs and
tables were shoved back to make room for dancing.

Perfect
, Giraldus thought as he grabbed Aurya’s hands to pull her out onto the floor. He let his balance appear just a little impaired,
like a man on the verge of a touch too much wine but full of the frolic of good humor. His performance was perfect; for the
first moment they began to dance, even Aurya believed it.

But he was, in fact, quite sober. All effect of the wine had been banished by the hot surge of energy that had rushed through
him when he realized what he was overhearing.

“Look in the corner,” he whispered into Aurya’s ear as they danced, turning her so that her view would not be obvious. “Do
you see the four men sitting there?”

He felt her tiny nod.

“After this dance we must go to our room. I have news…
important
news.”

Again he felt the single small nod against his cheek. He said nothing more as he twirled and jigged them through the remainder
of the dance. When it was over, he
made a great show of wine-induced passion though, in fact, these desires had now taken second place to the new reason he had
to get Aurya alone.

She caught his lead, as he had known she would. A few minutes later, after they had once again downed the contents of their
cups, it was many a knowing laugh that followed them from the room.

They kept up their act as they went to the third floor. It was only with the door firmly closed behind them that Giraldus
dropped his inebriated farce. Then he caught Aurya up into his arms and twirled her around.

“All right, Giraldus,” she said with a laugh when he at last put her down, “tell me now. Just what has happened?”

“Do you remember the men I pointed out?” he began. “They’ve just given us the throne, and they don’t know it.”

The interest on Aurya’s face sharpened as Giraldus began to tell her what he had overheard.

“But now we don’t
need
this… this… Font of Wisdom—or whatever it is we’re after,” Giraldus said impatiently. The news he had brought her had turned
from triumph into anger.

“Don’t be a fool, Giraldus,” Aurya snapped in return. “Now the need is all the greater.”

“But going to this festival—and going north after this… wisdom-child… just wastes time when I need to be back in Kilgarriff,
strengthening my army and getting the word out to rally the others to our new cause.”

“Think, Giraldus.” Aurya’s tone had an infuriating edge now, as if she thought she was instructing a child—or at least a childish
mind. “If you can raise the kingdom, so can any one of the other Barons… and if they have the
Church’s backing, it would turn their efforts—theirs, not ours—into a
holy cause
. Elon hasn’t had time to win the Church’s support for us yet. We
must
give him the time he needs… and we must have control of the Font of Wisdom to guide us through the threat of war and to back
our claim when it is won. It’s all right there in the scroll. ‘The rise of the Third House—’ “

“Damn your scroll,” Giraldus shouted. “It’s just the ancient rantings of some half-mad monk. Even his own kind turned their
backs on him. I’ve no time for such nonsense now.”

“You
are
a fool,” Aurya said back, her voice low and cold, steely hard. “You don’t deserve to be High King. But
I
deserve to be Queen. If not with you, then with someone else.”

She turned her back on him. Giraldus suddenly felt as if a spear had pierced him. He did not miss the real threat in her voice.
Grabbing her arm, he swung her around to face him, fingers digging into the softness of her flesh in a grip that made her
wince in pain. He did not care; it could not compare with the pain her words had just caused him.

“No one else,” he said through clenched teeth. “No one.”

He crushed his mouth onto hers, feeling the smoothness and the heat of her lips. He felt her body start to yield, and his
hands went from her arms to around her waist, pulling her body more tightly against his own.

In his renewed eagerness to possess her physically, he completely missed the look of triumph on her face.

Aurya’s single threat of finding another partner enflamed Giraldus; their passion lasted through the night. Aurya knew that
any thought he might have entertained
of abandoning their journey was gone—at least for now. If it arose again later on… well, she would deal with it then.

She
knew
Giraldus, strengths and weaknesses, as he would never know her, and that made him hers, body and soul, and the perfect tool
for her purpose.

They slept late into the morning and ate breakfast at a leisurely pace, preferring to leave the inn on their own rather than
in a group with their fellow travelers. The Festival at Yembo did not start until the following day; their only need to rush
now was to be certain of finding a room.

As she had tried to explain to Giraldus last night, the conversation he overheard strengthened her certainty that they were
on the right path. It also reinforced the necessity of finding the Font of Wisdom. In the cool light of morning, she found
that she still relished the idea of controlling the child once it was found, of molding it into what she wanted—and into what
Giraldus needed. But she also accepted that if the child could not be controlled, it must be killed.

Could she do it? she asked herself. She knew the task would fall to her; Giraldus would never have the stomach to kill a child,
not face-to-face. Certainly, children were inadvertently killed during war and Giraldus’s soldier’s mind accepted that as
a sorrowful but undeniable fact of battle.

This, however, would be different—in his mind if not in Aurya’s. To her, this
was
war… and the prize was supreme power. Those who were not her allies were her enemies, regardless of personal connections,
social status, gender—or age.

But can I do it?
she asked herself again, as she and Giraldus left the inn. Her mind, her will to succeed said
yes; of her heart, she was not so sure. She, however, had an advantage Giraldus lacked.

She could kill from a distance.

It was no easy thing to kill this way. It required every bit of the same courage a warrior takes, like his sword, into battle.
The dark power she would have to conjure was just as dangerous. One false step, one missaid word or second of faltered intent
and the spell could turn back to destroy the destroyer.

Yet, with sudden and complete clarity, Aurya knew she would do it if she must.

T
hey have come
.” The voice of the eldest Cryf seemed to echo through the great chamber. Then Lysandra realized this was not an echo; the
other Cryf, the hundreds upon hundreds of them filling the ledges that were the walls of the cavern, had picked up the words.

Lysandra was confused by the swift change in attitude. One moment, she and Renan were facing death for entering this place,
this
realm
, of creatures they did not know existed—and now, in a sudden turnabout, they were being treated like long-awaited heroes.

But before she could demand an explanation, from the
distance came a sound like rolling thunder. It came as sensations as well as sound; Lysandra could feel the sharp vibration
through the soles of her feet. All around, the Cryf gave a collective gasp of shock and fear.

Then there were running feet and a voice shouting in that strange chirping language Lysandra did not understand.

“What is it?” she demanded of the old one as he started to turn away again. “What has happened?”

“A wall hath fallen,” he said sharply. “Many be trapped. Yet, as the Divine is merciful, there may yet be some who live.”

“We will help,” Renan said quickly.

“Ye be Up-worlders,” the old one said with disdain. “What can ye do? Ye know not the ways of the Cryf.”