Casting In Stone Book One of the Averraine Cycle Read online

  I shook my head. It occurred to me that any explanation they gave me would be incomplete or false, whether they had had the leisure to think it over and match their stories, or had to blurt things out all unprepared. And while many people think that having time to concoct a tale means they will give less away, they are almost always wrong. Well-constructed stories and justifications are mostly the product of people being over-clever and outthinking themselves. Given enough time, they will try to fill every possible gap, explain away the troublesome details, and focus your attention on the things they consider safe.

  It’s truly revealing, what someone else thinks is important enough to deflect you away from.

  Chapter Twelve

  I should have known that any promises made would not be kept.

  Oh, I don’t say Eardith hadn’t intended to tell me some things, and I expect that some of those things might even have been true. But if life had taught me anything these last twenty-two years, it was that chance interposes itself between the promise and the fulfillment, and that things almost never turn out the way one expects.

  And so, while a pitched battle on Rhwyn’s village green was not something I would ever have predicted, when I look back, I think I did assume that some kind of reality would throw us off course.

  We’d heard the sounds of it as we rounded the long sweep down from the crossroads, and Guerin and I had exchanged one look and dug our heels into our horses’ flanks. As we came over the hill, what we saw was utter pandemonium.

  When I say a pitched battle, I mean it. There were well over a hundred armed fighters, they were at it hammer and tongs, and it was as inexplicable as the sun in a rainstorm. In the first moment, I could not have said who was fighting who, but then I saw the dark blue ribands trailing from some of the helms, and I knew, at least a little bit, who I needed to kill.

  We came down at a gallop, swords out and to be honest, there was no one I’d have rather had at my side just then than Guerin of Orleigh. The years of fighting the same battles, often side by side, meant that we both knew, instinctively, what we needed to do. There was no fear that either of us would do the wrong things and there was the utter trust that the shared experience of countless war-fields brings. We needed no words, we needed no thought. We simply reacted, as long experience and training kicked in.

  I had feelings, though, of a sort. One was that I was absolutely the last Goddess-be-damned thing those Camrhyssi needed right now, because I was already in a bloody bad mood. Killing was going to feel quite good.

  Balefire shared this sentiment, apparently. He was tense and trembling as we hit that first hard shock of battle engaged, snorting and snapping and kicking out at the first fighter who turned towards me. I hardly had time to swing my sword before the man went down, screaming in pain.

  The next in line had his shield up high. I leaned low and sideways over Balefire’s neck and smashed him in the side of his face with my sword pommel and then my horse’s hooves did the rest. But this was not the best move, from my standpoint. I was out of practice and Balefire had reared back before I’d had time to rebalance. I rolled off his back, hitting the ground with a force that winded me. Not a good place to be.

  Something threw a bulky shadow over the fighter bearing down on me, and suddenly, the soldier advancing fell, bleeding, and there was someone reaching down from his perch on the saddle, hauling me to my feet.

  “Idiot,” said Guerin, cheerfully. “You owe me a pint of ale.”

  All around, the sounds of battle were fading. The furious shouting and the loud clash of sword on sword was slowly replaced by the groans of the wounded and dying, and the barked commands to form up, to go for healers, to guard those prisoners.

  I looked around. Rhwyn was victorious, but they owed nothing to our late arrival. We’d been some salt poured onto the wounds, that was all. The outcome had apparently not been in any serious doubt.

  There had been the dozen or so of Owain’s household guards, ill-trained part-timers all, struggling against fifty or so well-armed Camrhyssi. I had no idea what they were doing there, any of them. Camrhyssi raiders had never bothered a little place like Rhwyn before.

  But beside those guards who made up Rhwyn’s fighting forces, there was also a strong contingent of troops flying the colours of the royal House of Machyll, and that made no sense at all.

  Dungarrow is part of Keraine, it’s true. But not in any way that truly matters: the kings and queens who occupied the ornate thrones in the city of Kerris seldom asked anything of us, and certainly not anything that might disturb the traders sneaking over the border to sell cloth or buy grain. It was a given that Dungarrow had no interest in antagonizing Camrhys to any point that might send sizable forces over the few passes still open in the north. We had enough work with Istaran raiders, feuding clans and homegrown bandits - we didn’t need an overtly hostile army on our doorstep as well.

  And so the rulers of Keraine accepted a limited, qualified form of fealty from the dukes of Dungarrow and asked only that we not allow Camrhyssi raiders to claw permanent footholds on this side of the mountains. That was easy enough, since the Camrhyssi were as dependent on the clandestine trading and a reasonable image of peace as we were. Both sides behaved, in essence, as if Dungarrow did not exist.

  So why a king of Keraine had troops this far north, and why the Camrhyssi had elected for open battle just here, just now, was unfathomable, and more than a little worrisome.

  I was still absorbing their unlikely presence when I turned to see a man of Gorsedd, a man I knew, bending over to put a whimpering horse out of its misery.

  What, in the name of Aheris, was Cowell doing here?

  ***

  In the end, I rode back down to the cottage alone, filled with unanswered questions and serious misgivings. Owain had offered me a bed, but I could see that Rhwyn Keep was descending fast into chaos and that his wife would not thank me for becoming yet another headache in her already fraught and unfinished day.

  In addition to these many soldiers out of the south, she had been further burdened, all unprepared, with the presence of Birais, King of Keraine and inexplicably, the Lady of Gorsedd. It was an open question as to which of those two guests terrified her more.

  The Camrhyssi were easily explained by Birais’ presence, in fact: he’d been chasing them all the way from a pass north of Glaice, because instead of surrendering and waiting to be exchanged for a few minor trade concessions or some decent ransom, which was the usual drill, they’d decided to run for it.

  The Lady’s presence was harder to fathom, though. Oh, her words made sense, after a fashion, and in the press of the crowd in the courtyard, I hadn’t thought overmuch on it.

  Now, watching the embers of a dying fire in the cottage’s hearth, and listening only to the evening breeze and some energetic crickets, it made a lot less sense.

  ***

  My marriage had followed closely on the heels of another: Lady Ilona had brokered a hugely advantageous match for her son to a southern lord’s only daughter, and that wedding party had come north with great fanfare, just as soon as the harvest was brought in.

  The festivities quite eclipsed my own, which was a relief. I couldn’t have borne that kind of scrutiny or the public comment that attended their nuptials. People remarked openly on the bride’s beauty, which was considerable, but also, more quietly, on her stiffly haughty manners. The charitable might put it down to shyness, but glimpsing her occasional secret, sardonic smiles, her coldness towards those of us closest to Iain and her behavior towards her new husband’s servants, I could see that she considered us all very much beneath her. Even her father, Lord Uln, seemed to find Dungarrow and Gorsedd lacking in sophistication and refinement, and could not resist some smilingly sarcastic comments. Iain, I surmised, wasn’t destined for a pleasant married life.

  He went south with her the following spring, and when he returned that fall, he came alone. She was already pregnant, and the local healer had advised against
travel. It might have only been me and my eternally cynical mind, but Iain seemed rather relieved to be home, and threw himself back into life at Dungarrow with enthusiasm.

  ***

  That Lady Ilona had chosen to accompany Iain back south, this time for good, apparently, and to visit her daughter-by-marriage and her grandson this spring was a thoroughly reasonable explanation of why she had been in the south. Attaching herself to a royal war party on the hunt for a large force of Camrhyssi invaders, though, was more of a puzzle. She’d have been sooner home sticking to the main roads, and far safer as well. And there had been something odd, something both eager and repressed, in her bearing.

  She had almost immediately been in close conversation with both Eardith and Arlais, and I was surprised to realize that she knew them both well. Eardith the more so, obviously: they had, the pair of them, been students at Braide together, long ago. They all three retired to Ilona’s room, and I was left, standing uselessly about in that sea of soldiers, horses and baggage, until Cowell had come over with a message from Eardith saying that she’d be remaining here for the night.

  That was the point where I looked around, saw Owain’s wife struggling to organize this unexpected domestic disaster into something that might allow for reasonable mealtimes and beds for everyone, and politely went over and explained that Balefire wasn’t at all happy about the crowds and I would take him home and out of her hair, if she didn’t mind.

  Now, in the darkness, I turned the day’s events over in my mind, and wondered just what in all the Nine Hells was going on.

  Arlais, well, she knew something was up, and she had some understanding of it, but I had sensed she was only just beginning to grasp at what it might be. Her obvious relief at seeing the Lady of Gorsedd, another someone older and infinitely wiser to whom she could dump the more urgent part of this mess onto, well, I completely understood that. But she at least could probably put some words to this, and I most certainly could not.

  That Eardith held the key seemed certain. She had known, I realized, before ever we left that morning, what it was that was there. Indeed, not even the disasters with the wolves had seemed to surprise her. Distressed and dismayed - certainly she had been all of that. Worried, too, and as eager as anyone to find a solution. But surprised - no, she hadn’t been anything near that.

  In point of fact, now that I considered it, she had been expecting it. Perhaps not the wolves, not specifically, but she’d been bracing for something, and for a long time now, too.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the morning, Balefire being still restive and a little fractious after the previous day’s exertions, I let him out into the open meadow beyond the garden and walked up to the manor on my own.

  I’d dreamt of Meryn in the night. I sometimes had before, although I rarely remembered the substance of it, just waking with the feeling of having seen her, or the sound of her laughter echoing in my mind.

  This time, though, it had been quite vivid and more of it stayed with me. I could almost feel her hand on my arm even now, insistent, urgent. She’d been trying to tell me something, but there was a roaring in my ears, like a winter storm screaming through the trees, and all I’d caught was her crying out my name.

  It had woken me before dawn. I’d lain there, full waking and dry-eyed, and with a chill no fire or blanket could ease, until there was light enough to see by and I could reasonably tell myself that it was only a dream, after all.

  Lady Delwen had done as well as she could, given Rhwyn’s limitations. Every possible space had been pressed into service, and while some of the king’s soldiers had had to be housed in an unused cow-byre, the courtyard was clear of horse-droppings and excess gear, and she’d had an awning set up near the gatehouse, where several troopers now lounged, drinking, dicing or repairing their kit.

  The hall was still more crowded than I’d ever seen it, though, even during festival times. They had set up a table at the farther end of the room, and there the king sat, with a few of his closer retainers. Lord Owain was there, too, looking nervous, and, unsurprisingly, Guerin was there as well, leaning idly back on his bench, paring an apple with his eating knife and looking wholly at ease. He saw me as I was weaving my way through the knots of strangers infesting the space, and he waved, not in welcome, but in warning.

  I slowed my pace, wondering what it was that might put me in peril, but before I could even begin to consider this, there was a tug at my sleeve.

  “Arlais?” I said, surprised. “I’d have thought you’d be with Eardith and the Lady.”

  “Those two…” her voice was tense and I could see she was upset, upset and angry, and not hiding it well.

  “I need some air,” she said, after a moment. “Walk with me. Please.”

  We started back down the hall towards the door. Arlais was setting a frantic pace, shoving at anyone who blocked her path. Being as pretty as she was, and wearing the marks of a priestess, no one hindered her, although they were certainly annoyed by it. If I had tried that, there would certainly have been a bit of a barney, but no ordinary soldier or household servant willingly takes a priestess of the Mother to task for poor manners.

  She left me in her dust, therefore, as I eased my way around the people she had simply pushed past, quirking my eyebrows up or shrugging my shoulders in sympathy, as the case warranted, and tried to keep up.

  We had reached the open air, but Arlais kept moving, bent, it seemed, on putting some distance between herself and anyone else. At last, when we’d gotten past the gates and out onto the road, her steps slowed and I caught up to her.

  She’d begun to pace back and forth along the road’s edge, kicking at the occasional stone in her path. I waited. If she could walk off some of that anger, I might even get some sense out of her.

  “Those two,” she burst out, finally, stopping a few feet away. “You would think I was some green little mooncalf, instead of -“ but then she broke off, drew a long breath and said, more quietly, “I am not an ignorant child.”

  I could have had more sympathy, I suppose. I did have some - I knew how I’d felt, before that day with Mael, when older people dismissed my very existence as negligible and of little account. But the truth was, I thought, that to Ilona and Eardith, Arlais was a child, and surely, in terms of experience, she had little enough she could have put up against them. In any case, I had concerns of my own here.

  “Arlais,” I said, “Out there, in the mountains. What was it that happened?”

  She sighed. “That’s the point, isn’t it? There is something evil in that place. We all felt it, did we not?”

  “What do they say about it?”

  “It is what they do not say,” Arlais said, savagely. “Well, and what sort of fool do they take me for, telling me it is just an old aura, clinging to the rocks? I know a present danger when I touch it, whatever they might believe.”

  She might have said more. She was prepared, even eager to say more, I would have sworn it, but then her gaze slid past me and her lips tightened. I turned to see Eardith heading toward us from the gate.

  “Arlais,” Eardith said. “Arlais, we should talk.”

  She didn’t look well. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes, and she was leaning heavily on her walking stick.

  “Talk? Talk is all we’ve done these last twelve glasses. It might be more to the point if you were to actually say something.”

  I did have to admire Arlais. She had some courage, and a fine touch with sarcasm. It would have been funny, if yesterday had never happened.

  “It is not something to scream from the rooftops,” Eardith said, gently enough. “Look you, this is not the time or place. Mayhap if we -“

  We were, I realized, doomed to interruptions today. One of Owain’s servants had arrived, unnoticed and a little out of breath.

  “Please, my ladies. The lord is asking for you.” I could have punched him.

  The household servants were laying out a morning repast. It wasn’t anything
fit for a king, of course, just bread and cheese, with a platter of the scavenged bits of last night’s roasted chickens for the more exalted folk at the table, but they had rolled in a cask of ale, as well, and no one seemed discontented.

  I saw that Lady Ilona had joined the group at the table. She had a wine cup in front of her and she was listening intently to whatever it was that Birais was saying. They all were like that, hanging on his every statement like it was holy words. It might have been anything from trade policy to reminiscing about a boar hunt, I couldn’t tell. I was merely glad none of it would include me. Courtly conversation is almost always duller than ditchwater.

  Lady Delwen caught up to me as I filled a mug from the cask.

  I complimented her on the arrangements she’d managed. Ilona had schooled me well in the courtesies, and I had not forgotten her hints that people liked to have their accomplishments noted.

  She looked pleased, but harassed.

  “The king,” she said, nervously. “The king, and the Lady, too, I don’t know what they think. It’s always the same, when she comes. I wish people would send word.”

  I frowned. I couldn’t think why Ilona should ever have come here before, but then I remembered this valley had belonged to Feargal. There might be a reason there, although, given Rhwyn’s lack of importance and the carelessness with which he’d given it away, this seemed tenuous, at best. But before I could ask, Delwen remembered why she had sought me out.

  “You’ll stay tonight? The banquet…” here she paused and made a wry face, “such as it is. The king. and Lady Ilona, too, they were asking after you.”

  It confused her a little, I could see. For three years, I had been just a bit of rubbish tossed up from a springtime storm. Rubbish that was occasionally useful, when some trader’s guards laughed at her husband’s makeshift household troopers and Rhwyn could count on me to give the lord’s commands some actual teeth, or when a little extra brawn was needed in the fields.