“We’ll send out our knights in small groups to drive the Idris soldiers to the road,” Seagus said. “Then we take them.”
“We are agreed,” the Duke Osyr said, and it was the royal we he used, a voice of authority.
“Ay,” his advisors said, for once in unison. The formal response boomed out and the shadows in the low tent seemed suddenly ghosted with battles and glories past. Tegan felt the stirrings of battle lust in herself, a foolish thing for any woman to feel.
“I still say we should take the castle,” Seagus said.
“Ah, but with the mine in our hands, then the money, the lifeblood of Idris dries up. We have no need of that drafty castle, that heap of stone. It will empty itself in a year. Is that not so, my wisdom?” Osyr’s fingers sought for Tegan’s wrist. He stroked it in a way that he thought was sensual, his cold, sweaty fingertips tracing damp lines across her skin.
“Just so, my Lord,” Tegan murmured. Osyr would be aroused tonight. He would want to escape his fears and his greedy anticipation of the treasures he might gain, and hide from them in the deep heedlessness of coupling. She would tire him if she could, accept his embraces with grace. She cautioned herself, as always, not to let her distaste show to him, ever. Never, never in these seven years, had she ever let him think he gave her less than joy.
“The castle holds the high pass that leads to the mine. From the castle, the duke’s men can come at the mine again and again. I still think at least a sortie against it-”
“No.” Osyr stopped Seagus with a sharp word. “We kill Idris. He has no heir, no one to step into his place, and his men will have some confusion about that. We announce that the lands are now held by Osyr, and we offer better pay than Idris gave. The soldiers will come to us. I have said all I have to say on this, Seagus.”
Osyr stood, and perforce the others did, from courtesy.
“Ready the troops, gentlemen. We ride at dawn. Come, Tegan.”
Duke Osyr led his courtesan out into the night.
The camp was restless with the energy of men thinking of battle and trying to rest. The riding-beasts stamped in their corral. Tegan pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair and shivered. It seemed to her that the noise and the energy of the camp would send an alarm that would carry all the way to Idris.
And if it did? No matter. Osyr was committed now, win or lose.
Osyr fiddled with the ties on the flap of his tent.
“Seagus is right about the castle.”
A woman spoke in a low voice, nearby and unexpected. Osyr jumped and his hand fumbled for the dagger at his belt.
She stepped out of the shadows, a shadowed figure, brown skinned and clad in gray leather, and with a bow slung across her back. “But you don’t have enough men to breach its gates. Put your knife away, Osyr. You sent for me.”
Tegan pulled the folds of her hood across her face. She knew this woman. Noya’s voice, her easy walk, had not changed, but she spoke with authority now, with presence. Oh, Noya! Envy fought with anger and Tegan pushed them both aside. If Noya would send the Gray Archers to help Osyr, then all would be well.
“You come late,” Osyr said. He turned back to the tent and got the door unfastened. He motioned Noya inside, but she shook her head.
“You asked for our help. A change in the rule of Idris means nothing to us, as long as the mine is not closed. You don’t plan to seal it, I think.”
“No,” Osyr said.
“We won’t join you,” Noya said. Her narrowed eyes swept over Tegan.
Then she was gone.
Tegan followed Osyr into his tent.
“You’re pale,” Osyr said.
“It must be the salt meat we had for dinner. I didn’t know you had sent for the Gray Archers,” Tegan said.
“I hoped to hire them as allies,” Osyr said. “She didn’t even stay long enough to see what I would have offered in pay.”
Coins could not buy the services of these women. Osyr would never understand. Tegan turned away from Osyr lest he see the grief in her face. Almost she would have put aside her pride and sought out Noya, but no one would find the archer unless she chose to be found.
“Come to bed, my Lord,” Tegan said.
She accepted Osyr’s nervous caresses. After their coupling, she lay next to him and stroked his thinning, colorless hair. His evil was only the weakness of greed. Almost, she pitied him.
He might die tomorrow. She might die. She wondered if Noya would watch the battle, if her archers would scout it to see who fell, who triumphed. Did Idane still live? Was Noya now in command?
Stop it, Tegan told herself. Don’t think about her, or wonder about the health of the Lady Idane.
The demonsoul lay safe in the bodice of the gown that she had tossed, as if carelessly, beside the cot. It held the power to call Ninidh from her exile. If Ninidh could be bound to the mine, then the cursed stones would stay in their poisoned earth, for no miner, however crazed, would dare a demon’s wrath.
The stone would call Ninidh, but would she stay confined?
Greenapple had hedged when she asked him. Ninidh was a particularly virulent demon, he’d said. Any one of the Twelve Swords could command a demon. A child of the Emperor had power over demons. A mortal? Well, given enough protective magic-
Tegan was no Emperor’s child, and she had no Sword. But she would risk her life on the hope that Ninidh loved gems beyond all else, and would stay near them.
Hopes, Tegan had those, even though the risks were great. She hoped that the Idris guard she had bribed had told the right stories to the children in the mine. If he had, then Ardneh willing, they would flee when the time came. The crofters had made shelters for them, places in stables and haystacks.
“When you see the lady in red, run! Run away, scatter, run for your very lives!”
If the guard had not betrayed her, then the children had been taught she was a witch. That fear might break through the fear they had of their guards.
Terror sometimes worked where love could not. The wizard’s messenger boy had been so terrified. I have never seen a more frightened face, Tegan thought. Well, once. But that was so long ago.
There had been a time, not long ago as this tired and tattered world knows time, when dawn’s cool air sighed clean mysteries across a young girl’s shoulders, when every spiderweb was jeweled with dew.
Just so, the oak tree, the little clearing. It was walled with wildrose and crowded with summer’s blackberries, ripe as garnets. The mist fleeing the sun hid a dancing faun, a faun in spotted goatskin breeches grown of his own hide. The distant sound was his syrinx, the song of an innocent goatboy piping out his lewd joy at the first morning he had ever known, for a faun wakes with no memory, and has no guilt.
Or so Meraud said, who was as wise a woman as lived in Small Aldwyn. Meraud told stories of princesses in high towers all dressed in silk and jewels, of kingdoms lost with the loss of a bauble, or duchies gained with a kiss. Perhaps, behind the screen of leaves, a prince waited, or a young god as beautiful as polished marble who had searched all over this ancient land for an innocent girl to help renew the world.
But a bird stopped singing. It flew from the branch and out of the mist, a plain brown bird, and the blackberry Tegan reached for was guarded by a thorn that poked her in the fat of her thumb. The blackberry was not ripe, the mist and the light had lied to her.
She remembered, years later, the prick of the thorn, the taste of the sour berry she threw away. She remembered that on that morning of mornings she had been cold, her feet were wet, and the light had lied. How else to explain what she had seen that morning?