TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (29 page)

* * *

At midday, the company paused to rest the horses in the yard of a charcoal burner's steading. Fennick and Ranne were allotted the privilege of commandeering hot food for the officers. The royal squires, also, enjoyed the goodwife's hospitality. The pair of them sat at her kitchen hob, wolfing down dumplings and sausage.

Kevor, as crown heir, would share the captain's table. But as often happened, something outside had snagged the young prince's attention. The place setting laid for him went unclaimed.

In the yard by the cottage, the rank-and-file lancers drew lots over who should attend to the horses. The fortunate ones who escaped duty as grooms lined up and placed wagers on an impromptu match of prowess between the troop's most skillful archers. Soon, arrows hissed and thwacked into the boles of tree targets, through a chorus of whoops and ripe curses.

Not far from the lines, Kevor perched on a stump amid the cleared glen, watching the charcoalman's young daughters sculpt a family of snow sprites. At the prince's suggestion, they had gathered small fir cones for eyes. Now, in giggling contention, they importuned him for his gold buttons to adorn the queen's balsam tiara.

'I can't carry an old bucket on the back of my horse,' Kevor demurred in his most grave and amiable courtesy. 'You'll have to trade something better than that. These buttons each have a s
un
wheel emblem blessed by the Divine Light himself.'

A distant shadow flicked over the sun. The posted sentry did not look up, engrossed as he was with the archers who vied for the winning point.

In the wide, sunlit dell, the smaller girl pouted with cherry red lips, and adjusted the lopsided fungus that served as left ear for the king. 'I have naught else to offer but a holly-berry necklace.' A sly glance from brown eyes to see if the prince was fool enough to accept; the berries in question decked the white bosom of the princess sprite. Gaps of raw string showed where hungry birds had pecked and stolen the pips.

Thirty leagues from the mountains, no man saw the need to set a watch against assault by Khadrim. The thundering crack of taut wing leather whistling over the trees caught Avenor's field troop in shamelessly rooted surprise.

Except for Kevor, whose untrammeled view of the sky afforded him the only clear second of warning.

'Run!'
he screamed to the woodcutter's girls. Gold buttons scribed bright arcs in the sunlight, as he yanked off his cloak left-handed. His right gripped his sword, drawn on snapped reflex. Born to the mettle of his royal heritage, Kevor pelted into the open.

Behind him, men shouted, aghast. Their alarm was eclipsed. The Khadrim shot overhead. Black as jet with metal gray highlights struck off its sinuous, scaled body, it folded wings like webbed sails and dropped into a screeling dive. The air of its passage whistled like storm. Its talons were raked scimitars, descending.

Kevor sprinted. His vision closed down until he tracked nothing else but the narrowed red eye in the serpentine head. Drawn by unerring, predator's instinct, it fixed on the helpless smaller child, frozen in fear amidst the circle of sprites made from sticks and clumped snow.

Single-mindedly brave, brash with heedless youth, the prince called again to the girl. His cry failed to break her stunned panic. He snapped his blue cloak. The bullion thread sunwheel caught the noon light, sheeting a burst of gold fire.

The Khadrim's eye flickered and fixed on the movement. Spiked head on scaled neck snaked sidewards, refocused on the distraction.

'Run!' Kevor shouted. Sword upraised, he streamed the cloak like a flag to hold the Khadrim's killing focus. On the sidelines, the patrol recovered shocked wits. An equerry bolted into the cottage to summon the captain. Horsemen raced to snatch up idle lances. The contesting archers scrambled to retrieve their shot arrows, while their colleagues frantically strung bows.

'Fire at will!' yelled their squad sergeant, his shrill cry beaten back into his teeth by the whipping turbulence thrown off by the Khadrim's stooping strike.

The first arrows whined aloft. Disturbed air plucked and scattered them. Crossbow bolts flew faster, and more true. Their ragged volley struck armored scales and sprang off in rattling rebound. The back-fallen shafts rained earthward, each one now a threat to the young prince, who still raced straight into the jaws of peril.

'Kevor, take cover!' Fennick charged from the house, sword in hand. Ranne pounded hard at his heels. But their entreaties went unheard. One glance showed the moment's abject futility: intervention would reach Kevor too late.

No mortal man, no matter how dedicated, could possibly close the requisite distance in time. Nor could Avenor's proud field troop stave off the impending tragedy.

In that moment, also, the grisly revelation punched through. Fully and finally, Kevor acknowledged the death that descended on fang and scythed claw to take him. He was alone. Pitifully exposed in the sunlit clearing, he had no one at hand to share the dawning horror of his predicament. No coward, even now, he skidded and dodged left. He did not cry out, though heart and sinew begged for a miracle only an act of true sorcery could provide.

The men, watching horrorstruck, never knew of his nightmare fears of the fires, recurrent since the condemned witch had burned back in Karfael.

They did not hear his snatched prayer, that he might not scream as she had. The Khadrim's stooping descent blackened the sky. Under its shadow, he had time to brace his sword upright. He held firm, perhaps paralyzed before jaws rowed with needle.
t
eeth, that were going to snap shut and mangle him. The futility of his stance made seasoned men weep. The jet claws and the lean, snake-thin neck must outmatch the courage of any green boy's panicked strength.

The Khadrim closed, more swift than the wind that foreran killing squalls, its wings folded midnight against the living, steel bolt of its body.

Kevor tipped up his blanched face. At the last moment, he cast his azure mantle overhead, as though, against hope, the gold star and crown blazon of his
s'Ilessid
forebears might offer him binding protection.

The same instant, the Khadrim gaped its scarlet mouth and spewed an engulfing torrent of fire.

The cloak became immolated to white flame and ash, then the boy, wrapped into blinding conflagration. The Khadrim were drake spawn, and like their creators, their fire burned hotter than any wood-fueled flame. The young prince shrieked as the pain bit bone deep. His cry made no final appeal to the Light.

Instead, in extremis, Ellaine's son called on the gentle faith of his mother, whose love had guided his earliest childhood. 'For Ath's mercy save me!'

The words, tortured ragged, choked off all at once.

Then further view of the carnage was eclipsed, as the murdering drake spawn snapped out sail wings. The Khadrim braked in a flurry of sparks and fanned smoke, and touched down, its leviathan size imbued with a stunning, cat grace. Its forelimbs alighted amid the hissing steam of puddled snow, then the hind limbs, in bounding, sleek balance. Wings upraised, neck arched over the site of its kill, the creature shrilled its intent to gorge on live prey, then wreak savage havoc on the timber and lathe of the charcoalman's isolated steading.

'Shoot! Use crossbolts!' Over the shrieking hysteria of the child, through the disorganized milling of stupefied men still scrambling to order their weapons, the field troop's captain burst from the house, exhorting his archers to rally. 'As you love life, aim for the eye!'

Yet it was Fennick, weeping obscenities, who grabbed up a contestant's dropped longbow. Racing full tilt for the monster in the clearing, he snatched a steel broadhead from another man's hand. At forty yards, he threw himself sliding to his knees and snapped off a vengeful shot.

Snake fast, the Khadrim whipped around. Its neck lunged to snap, or more likely, spit fire. By stunning luck, the launched shaft hissed through its gaping jaws, and punched through the mouth to the brain. The beast threshed and fell. Massive, clawed wings scraped up arcs of thrown snow. Talons raked frozen earth. Lashed by a paroxysm of death throes, the spiked tail clubbed like a flail through the trees, snapping off limbs and pelting the glen under a rain of sheared sticks. Most men watched, dumbfounded. Ranne sprinted on. Unable to spare Kevor, he ran the battering gauntlet of slapped wings and threshing limbs, no less likely to disembowel a man in the shudders as life ebbed and ended. In rage, in blind heartbreak, that his young charge had died before his eyes, Ranne finished the task Kevor's bravery had started. He dodged clashing jaws and snatched the charcoalman's wailing little girl from the tumbledown ruin of her playground.

No man had words, as the aftermath bludgeoned them. The great hulk of the Khadrim's carcass gasped its last steaming breath and finally quivered and stilled. The shock-stricken field troop converged, too overwhelmed to react fully to the devastating impact of sorrow. Of the young prince's body, nothing remained, though men searched. Decency demanded some small token to send to the princess in Avenor, soon to weep for a son lost to the dedicated bravery bred into his ancestral lineage.

However they dug through the slurry of thawed earth, they found not one melted gold button nor any charred scrap of bone. Naught remained. Only a trampled circle of seared carbon where the dread holocaust of Khadrim fire had sheared down.

The day seemed too peaceful, and the sunlight, a bland outrage, to have borne witness to the murder of the
s'Ilessid
royal heir, once destined for crown rule in Tysan.

'By my life, that should have been me!' Fennick wept. Still crumpled on his knees in cold snow, oblivious to the companions who urged him to relinquish his deadlocked grip on the bow, he cast his despairing eyes skyward. 'What in the name of the Light will we say to console his lady mother?'

Mourning

Sunlight spilled like liquefied gold through the high, lancet windows at Avenor. The deep, piled carpets with their crown and star motifs spread luxuriant azure over maple parquet, waxed to the warm hue of honey. With Prince Lysaer's extended absence on campaign in Daon Ramon, no fawning advisors crowded the anteroom. The chinking spurs of impatient royal couriers did not echo off the vaulted ceilings, and hopeful petitioners did not line the benches with straight backs, against the carved backdrop of wainscoting. Winter mornings, while the frost traced gauze-lace patterns on the panes, the splendor of the royal chambers became the domain of the princess's women. They perched on the hassocks and window seats, or convened in the claw-footed state chairs, bright as plumed birds in saffron silk as they chattered over their needlework.

Lady Ellaine sat with them, set apart by her beaded aquamarine bodice, and her cincture trimmed in white lynx. Her hair had been expertly dressed. The premature gray fanned from her temples had been gently softened with cinnabar pins of carved amber. Withdrawn as she seemed from light conversation, she kept her hands busy. More than the strict deportment of her station fretted her upright posture, a manner the unobservant stranger might mistake for spiritless meekness. The short, fierce stitches laid in with her needle bespoke no such retiring tranquillity as she sewed seed pearls on a linen cap for her infant cousin in Erdane.

The confines set on her by Prince Lysaer's absence chafed her nerves, the precaution of state edict now enforced by High Priest

Cerebeld's veiled threats. Yet her sweet nature prevailed. She did not impose her dull spirits on the women who served as her ladies-in-waiting. They indulged in their gossip. Planning for the festival masques that enlivened the winter court occurred with the princess's benevolent cooperation, and her surprising, mild wit, if not her heartfelt enthusiasm. Her Grace was seen to dance at the balls, but none in her close company were fooled. Her contentment was a carefully manicured lie, and her spirit, a stifled, caged songbird's.

Since the hour of her wedding to Lysaer
s'Ilessid
, Lady Ellaine had been little more than a puppet played by the strings of her powerful royal marriage.

The court viewed her reliable manner with complacency, a mistake that resounded to widespread repercussions when a man's booted step approached through the marble anteroom.

Ellaine's careful needlework dropped to the carpet, limp as a wing-shot bird. Seed pearls spilled and scattered in a dancing rain. Erect in her chair, her dark eyes like bored walnut, she addressed the tall man who paused on the threshold before her ladies quite realized he was there. 'You are here for my son?'

The chatter of the women cut off as the man stepped inside.

He was dressed for the road, his boots and his spurs still mud
-
crusted. The mantle he wore was a swordsman's slit cape, bearing the hammer and wheel blazon of Karfael. He glanced once at the door still ajar behind him, fair and young and uneasy, his riding gloves wrung between tortured hands. Then he gathered himself. Bowed to one knee in the chill winter light that flooded the diamond-paned casements, he addressed her sovereign query. 'My Lady Princess, your son and heir died among the best of our troops, under assault by a winged Khadrim.'

A rustle of thick silk, shot through by the ping and tap as the last, forlorn pearls strayed across flooring and carpet.

The courier dared a glimpse upward. Lady Ellaine had risen, hands tucked in her skirts, while her bevy of women turned aghast faces to measure her public reaction.

'Please stand,' her Grace said, her voice level, not beaten; as though somehow she had braced in advance for an unspeakable tragedy. Only the gilt cloth edging on her collar flared to the jerk of her indrawn breath. 'Say how my son died.'

Before such straight courage, a man could but answer. 'Quickly, my lady. His suffering was brief. He charged on foot with drawn sword as the monster descended, and drew it away from a forester's strayed child. The attack caught everyone by surprise.

No scout had seen signs of the predators. By sheer misfortune, his honor guard were unable to act. The girl child survived, but at sorrowful cost. Your son Kevor died as a man, a true prince of his people. There are no remains. The Khadrim fire burned and left nothing. My Lord Mayor will bear the cost of a memorial with all honors once the thaws permit a state retinue to travel.'

Ellaine remained erect, unblinking. 'You have told High Priest Cerebeld this?'

'I have not.' The courier swallowed, the wadded lumps of his gloves fallen slack in his tormented grasp. 'His acolytes would not admit me. No one, they said, sees his eminence before he has opened his door to receive. I'm sorry. You should have had someone familiar to bring the sad tidings to you, but Ranne and Fennick travel back with the young prince's squires and all that remains of his gear. I was sent ahead with all speed, lest careless word should spread damaging, premature rumors.'

Every inch the poised princess she had never been granted the public standing to express, Ellaine held to her desperate composure. 'Your judgment is to be applauded.' She did not dismiss the courier, but added, 'Since Cerebeld is otherwise engaged, and Prince Lysaer absent, I deem it fitting that you, as Karfael's representative, and I, as the realm's princess, take immediate steps to inform Avenor's people of their loss.'

'My lady.' The courier bent his head in acquiescence.

Ellaine did not see him, but looked down in dismay at the glittering aquamarine beaded silk and white fur that jarred the air like watered light for their vibrancy. 'Meiris,' she bade, her whisper distressed. 'Fetch me a sable overrobe, and a sash and black mantle for mourning.
Quickly!'

Through a rustle of shocked movement as the woman did her bidding, Ellaine clasped hands that broke into shaking unsteadiness. Her grief set in eclipse by pure fear, she schooled her face to white-fired enamel and sealed her hard impulse to act. 'Inwie, hurry. Tell my honor guard to arm for a public appearance. Then find a fleet page who won't pause to question. Send summons with him to the duty captain of the guard. Get him here for immediate audience.'

'My lady?' the appointed woman gasped, stunned. 'What if today's assigned officer is—'

'He will hear royal orders!' the Princess of Avenor interrupted, jeweled silk gleamed on her form like new ice as, bare-handed, she dared seize the reins of the power implied by her title and station.
'We have crisis in Westwood!
Whichever captain of the watch is on duty, he must serve by right of my sovereignty as the mother of this realm's deceased heir.'