Casting In Stone Book One of the Averraine Cycle Read online

  When I opened them up now, though, my shirts and tunics were carefully and meticulously folded in the bags, and separated, too, with the two shirts and my padded arming tunic in one and my spare tunic in the other, on top of my mail shirt. And when I put my hand on the topmost linen shirt, I felt something hard and a little heavy, and not shirt-like at all.

  There was that faintly queasy feeling at the pit of my stomach again. I let the shirt slide out halfway from the saddlebag, and the cloth fell partly open at the folds.

  It was small, and square, that thing wrapped inside. It had a leather cover, blackened with age. I’d seen it occasionally before, a little book that Eardith sometimes read or wrote in. I had assumed it was an herbal or some such, a record of her healing cures or notes to calculate which village rituals needed to be done and when.

  But even before I laid a finger on it now, I knew that it couldn’t be something so innocuous or innocent. It was important, and in view of the scene in the cottage, possibly dangerous, too.

  There was, just then, a commotion outside. We could hear it from the open window which looked down onto the courtyard, the muffled sounds of the jingle of horses’ bridles and the shouting for the stablehands to come for the horses, drifting up as if it were just an ordinary day.

  “The Lady’s back,” said Arlais, softly. “It’s done, then.”

  I slid the shirt back into the bag, stuffing it down past the other one, and pushed the whole mess into the corner near my shield. I couldn’t seem to order my thoughts, they were streaming past me like a river in flood, and all I could think was that I needed time and quiet to make some kind of sense of this.

  Time and quiet that I didn’t seem destined to have. Moments later, there was someone scratching at the door, to tell us the king hoped the Lady Arlais was recovered, and that please would we join them all in the hall.

  A king’s politely-worded request is not easily dismissed, but Arlais, although she looked somewhat better than she had a half-glass before, was still pale and weary.

  “I can easily stay,” I said. “You go, Guerin. I can manage.”

  Guerin disagreed. It seemed unlike him to prefer nurse-maiding Arlais to eating a decent dinner, and we began to argue, under the cover of what was best for Arlais, as if this was the single most important decision we might ever be making.

  “Stop it!”

  We’d forgotten all about her, actually.

  She swung herself off the bed. “We’ll all go down.”

  I looked her over. There was some colour in her cheeks, now, and she seemed considerably improved. Was it my imagination, then, that saw in her recovery something more? A thread of excitement, of anticipation, a renewed resolve?

  “If you’re sure, Arlais?” Guerin sounded genuinely concerned. I wondered if maybe my suspicions were in all the wrong direction. Maybe he was sleeping with her? And then I wondered why it was I should care.

  “I’m fine. At least, I will be, if you don’t give me the pip with your quarrels.”

  Halfway down the hallway, I stopped.

  “Damn. I need my eating knife, it’s still on my sword-belt. Don’t wait up. I’ll only be a grain or two.”

  It wasn’t the most convincing of excuses. I could tell that Guerin had half a mind to follow me back, but Arlais was nodding and already heading down the corridor to the stairs, and after a moment, he shrugged and followed her.

  I slipped back into the room. Whatever had happened, only Eardith could have put that book in with my things. I couldn’t imagine why she would, and until I knew that, it seemed obvious that its existence needed to remain hidden. Wrapped in my spare shirt in my saddlebags was not a good description of “hidden”.

  ***

  The mood in the hall was somber when I arrived, to say the least.

  It wasn’t just the death. If she’d died of some sickness or accident, Eardith would have been missed and mourned, certainly. For all her brusque ways and lack of gentle speech, people here had been used to her, had counted on her and loved her, even, I suppose, in their own way.

  Burning the cottage down, well, that alone would have set off the rumors, of course. Country people, poor people, they don’t waste a perfectly good building without dire need.

  The additional rituals Ilona had insisted on, although she’d managed them alone and left the others outside, they hadn’t gone unremarked, either. The preparation for those had been uncommon enough that all the solemn oaths and dire threats in the world could not have kept the little crew that accompanied her down there silent. Not wholly so and not for long. By morning, I reckoned, the whole of the valley would know.

  And now, the whispers, the furtive looks, the warding signs, all this reminded me uncomfortably of my long-ago childhood. It wasn’t enough that this time, none of it was aimed at me. It wasn’t really aimed at anyone, or anywhere, just out at the nebulous, the unknowable, the frightening realm of otherness that had invaded Rhwyn Vale. But they were still a chilling reminder of what catastrophes my presence seemed to bring, everywhere I went.

  Ilona still looked the picture of grief, but she stopped briefly to speak to Arlais. Even from a distance, it was obviously a friendly chat, the older, wiser holy one taking the time to reassure a less-experienced colleague. Arlais seemed quite recovered now, even smiling a little and blushing, because it looked as if Ilona was all praise for her regarding the things she had done in the cottage.

  And then the Lady came and sat by me.

  It was, to me, no more than her usual kindness. She said that she was sure, having shared Eardith’s cottage so long, I must be sorrowing deeply, and it seemed prudent to agree with this. In fact, I was sorry that Eardith was gone, quite apart from the horror of it. I would miss her, and that surprised me into sincerity.

  She smiled sadly and patted my hand. Time, she said, and she was sure I had learned this for myself, these last years, time, it healed all things.

  Then she began reminiscing, about how the two of them had been girls together on the holy isle, had Eardith ever told me about those days? And your mother, too, she said. She was younger than they, but she’d been there.

  It was at that point that I became acutely aware that underneath the very real grief, underneath the mourning and the reminiscence, the Lady was watching me, watching and studying me so closely and in a manner that was so alert and narrow that the hairs on the back of my neck literally rose, like a cat’s.

  And so I was ready for it, in a way, when she at last turned her talk to the way the cottage had been, when we first entered. What had I seen? Had any of us, had Arlais especially, touched anything, disturbed anything, taken anything away?

  I gave her simple answers, and she did not seem to find that strange.

  My descriptions of the state of the room were a warrior’s descriptions, accurate, factual and without any underlying conjecture, because I had long been a warrior, and that is how the training goes.

  The ritual had looked to me like many another, save for the coldfire and the way the oak branch had burst into flame, and when she asked about it, I said as much.

  I had always striven hard to present myself as an ordinary person exactly like a thousand others, and my observations were bound to be simple ones. That was what she expected, after all.

  She asked casually, almost as an afterthought, whether I’d left anything of my own behind, saying kindly that she would make good any losses. And when I said only that I wasn’t missing either of my shirts or my second-best tunic and thanked her for her kindness, she seemed satisfied, and moved away to retrieve her wine cup, to sit beside the king and Owain, and to discuss more important matters than the unlikely grief of a practiced killer.

  I thought long and hard about the things she had said and the questions she had asked. Slipping them in between commiserations and queries about my own emotional state, there had still been a kind of pattern to them, and a probing intensity buried deep beneath that tone of affectionate concern.

  I ro
se and went to the fire. The evening was a fine one, and doors of the hall stood open to the warmth of spring, and I was cold, so cold, I didn’t think I would ever be warm again.

  Chapter Twenty

  The hall still seemed unnaturally quiet, considering the number of people inhabiting it, and the roast venison notwithstanding, it was not a merry meal. People kept their voices hushed, partly out of respect for a death, but also, I thought, because they were being careful not to touch on anything uncanny, at least not where their betters could hear them, and this rather put a damper on discussion.

  Derryth, who had a fine voice, sang, at Owain’s request, a haunting little refrain about returning spring. It had been one of Eardith’s favourites. Her other favourite had been a rollicking, bawdy old song about a farmer who had an amorous yearling sheep, but I could quite see why Owain hadn’t requested that one.

  Afterwards, Arlais and I had watched Guerin win a fair sum at dice from one of the king’s captains, and then wandering, by some strange, mutual consent, drifting together aimlessly towards the stairs without speaking a word.

  I stopped a moment on the threshold of her chamber and saw that everything was in its own place, exactly as we’d left it.

  Almost.

  The tilt of my saddlebags against the wall was less acute, the folded blanket hung over the edge of the bed by an inch or so more than it had before, and the straw pallet the servants had brought was further away from the wall than when we’d left to walk down to the hall.

  I moved over to the window, glancing out as if I was checking the weather. There was nothing to see there, not if you didn’t know precisely where and what to look for. Rhwyn was old, and at irregular intervals all along the inner sill and the outer stone coping of most of the windows, there were slim spaces, cracks where time and weight and weather had moved the masonry ever so slightly apart. Delwen often complained of the drafts that the aging walls allowed in on winter nights.

  A few minutes later, Guerin arrived, noisy and boisterous.

  “I remembered you ladies would still have some wine,” he said, grinning. He came through the door and shut it loudly behind him.

  “I need to use the latrines,” I said. Even to my own ears, this sounded overloud and a bit false, although it was true, I did need the privies. I’d made sure of it by gulping down a mug of ale I’d had not a thirst for, before the meal had ended.

  I could still hear him, when I was out the door and halfway to the stairs, asking in a drunken voice if Arlais had ever been to Kerris, because he didn’t believe one word in five what that captain had said about its magnificence.

  I was trying to be both casual and careful. It wasn’t that easy.

  The hall was all but empty now, save for a few servants still clearing away, and the humped shapes of those people not lucky enough to have a proper bed for the night. I walked the length of the open space hearing no more than a snore or two.

  In the yard, it was even quieter: you could hear the crickets and the occasional owl. I stepped into the latrines and made the usual noises one makes in a latrine. I did the usual things one does in a latrine.

  Still, there was just silence.

  I walked back out towards the hall and only then, because I was watching for it and straining my ears for the slightest sound, I caught the merest shadow of a figure moving beyond me back towards the latrines, heard the faintest of footfalls, and sighed inwardly. I had not been imagining things.

  No one followed me back to the hall. There was no one behind me on the stairs, and I fumbled unnecessarily at the chamber door trying to make certain there was no one lurking about in the corridor. Guerin and Arlais were quieter, now, but they were still making cheerful conversation as if it were the most ordinary of evenings.

  I shut the door behind me. They both looked up, and Guerin, still acting the slightly inebriated flirt, said, “Ah, you’re back. Care for a game?” and rattled the dice in his hand and threw them.

  They came up snake’s eyes. Never a good thing.

  “Sure.” I said.

  He picked up the dice again. An ordinary evening, I thought. Just two old friends, gambling and drinking the night away.

  Except, of course, we weren’t old friends, not really, not ever truly friends, and even discounting what the Lady might be thinking of us, closeted up here together as if the age-old feud didn’t even come into it, I was sure this was one of the least safe things I could be doing right now.

  “Stakes?” he said, smiling. That old, familiar smile.

  “I don’t have a bean. But I’ll bet you a cup of wine you can’t throw snake’s eyes again.”

  Guerin threw. It wasn’t snake’s eyes.

  “Double your bet for twos?” He handed me the dice.

  I tossed them out. They were twos.

  “The demon’s own luck, damn you.”

  We poured out more wine.

  “I can spot you a beggar’s bit or three,” he offered. “Make it more interesting.”

  “All right. Bet you can’t roll a dragonback in any combination.”

  But he did: a four and a two, and he laughed.

  “Beat that, then. All or nothing?”

  “Don’t be daft,” I muttered. “No one’s got that much luck.”

  I threw.

  Double dragons.

  “You see?” He was looking at me with an intensity I had seen in him so seldom before, and once it had been when we’d stood together on a stairway, ready to risk everything on my ability to kill a seasoned warrior who stood in Einon’s way.

  “You should trust your luck more often.”

  Did I only imagine it? That the room had come alive with unspoken words, with that odd, prickly feel of the air before a springtime storm?

  It came to me then, that I did trust Guerin, in a way. He was Einon’s, as surely as I was, and maybe more. Whatever he did would have Dungarrow’s interests at its core, and Orleigh is famous for nothing if not their steadfast, almost maniacal devotion to their sworn word.

  But then there was Arlais. I looked over at her, curled up back on the bed, watching us. She seemed no more than mildly interested. What side was she on? She had been annoyed by Ilona, but then, she’d been just as angry at Eardith, earlier on. And this evening, she’d seemed to have made her peace again with the Lady of Gorsedd.

  She knew things. Too many things. Things, it occurred to me, that she was really too young to have been trusted with. Things that normally take a lifetime to learn, things that even Eardith had seemed to have been unaware of.

  I wished that I could have had Eardith back, if only for a half of a glass, to ask her what was going on. Or even who I could trust, since I didn’t, apparently, trust myself. There was a game here that I knew nothing of. The only thing I was sure of was that Eardith had died for it, and I needed to know why.

  Finally, I just shrugged, drained off my wine at a gulp and said, “I’m for bed. They’ll all be waking early, if the king wants to be on the road home at a decent hour.”

  “He’s not going anytime soon,” Guerin informed me. “All this, and we had to tell him about the wolves, too, it’s got him spooked. He means to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Damn his eyes,” I said. “What’s it got to do with him?”

  “He thinks it’s some Camrhyssi plot. You know how they are. Always messing about with dark rites, and trying to imitate the ancients. Birais thinks it is some of their priests, looking for a way to take the House of Machyll down and overrun the kingdom.”

  “That seems a bit farfetched,” I said. “Rhwyn’s an unlikely place for an invasion.”

  “Is it?” This was from Arlais. “The Lady agrees with you, of course. “

  I wasn’t imagining the tension, now. It was as real and as palpable as the wine-jar beside me. The three of us, squaring off like barnyard cats. I found myself torn between hysterical giggles and a burning desire to tell them both everything, to hand that damned book over to Arlais and wash my hands of it a
ll.

  One of the candles caught a slight breeze from the open window. It flickered and went out and that prickling tension between us spluttered out with it.

  Guerin shrugged. He picked up the dice and said, “Well, and you’re right, of course. It’s late enough, and we’ll all do better for some sleep.”

  In the darkness, I could feel the questions, swirling around me. I had no idea what to do, and it seemed to me that my safest bet was to do nothing at all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Feargal lay at my feet, bleeding out.

  He’d known, and I’d known, that he would die. He was a good fighter, but I was better. Much, much better. Once upon a time, he’d been proud of that, boasting that his wife could take on any ten men and leave them dead in the dust, and that was just on her off days. Once upon a time, it had been a thing to brag of and to joke over, my killing skills.

  And in that moment, as his last rattling breaths gave out, he looked up at me, his eyes so suddenly clear and at peace, and he whispered, “Thank you.”

  We’d come down from Dungarrow to spend a few days at Gorsedd, celebrating the Lady’s naming day and relieved, I think, to be away from the court for a little while. While the number of challenges I had had to fight had diminished, the rest of courtly life was, when it wasn’t dull, enervating and exhausting, and I needed a break from it all.

  I was just looking forward to seeing Meryn and spending time with her before her long-anticipated and now imminent departure for the holy island of Braide.

  I’d expected her to be excited at the prospect of change, since Gorsedd was pretty nearly the only home she’d known, and she was, but she was pensive and a little withdrawn, too. I thought only that she was nervous about this next phase of her training, and I tried to be patient and understanding about the way she seemed to avoid being alone with me, or anyone else. She might be wise beyond her years, but she was only a child when all was said and done, and it would have been odder still had she not worried a little over such a huge change in her life.