“That part of the riddle has not surfaced.” Toziel sinks onto the divan beside her, breathing slightly heavily.
“No,” she replies, “but it will. Bluoyal already believes that the merchanters will purchase the Palace of Light in years to come.”
“For a season, perhaps, in two generations. Sooner, if we fail, and blood will stain the sunstone so deeply it will not be removed, should that occur.” He studies her drawn face. “You give too much to me.”
“What else would I do, dearest? We know there is no one else.”
“Not yet.” Her fingers rest lightly on his cheek.
CVI
IN THE MID-AFTERNOON gloom, Lorn sits at the narrow desk in his study, reading over the last lines of his patrol report, before he begins the summary report that will go to Majer Maran. Outside, the heavy rain that began the day before on the final day of patrol continues to beat down on the tile roofs of the compound and to run in sheets across the slightly slanted stone pavement of the courtyard, pouring into the drainage canal leading westward.
The lancer captain massages his forehead with his left hand, closing his eyes for a moment, listening to the drumbeat of the rain, rain that usually seems to provide headaches.
Ryalth has returned to Cyad, and Lorn has completed one complete patrol, surprisingly without a tree-fall or another excursion from the Accursed Forest. Those will come. That he knows, but he hopes that he will have some time, for he has yet to decide how he will handle what must come from Maran, if not by spring, then later.
Thrap. The knock on the study door is gentle.
“Yes?”
Kusyl opens the door and peers inside. “Ah … ser … the engineers brought the replacement firelances.”
Lorn beckons for the squad leader to come in.
Kusyl does and closes the door behind him.
“They’re not fully charged, or there aren’t enough?” Lorn suggests.
“Just a score and a half, ser. If Frynyl hadn’t run for the north, well, ser …”
“I know. There wouldn’t even be one for me. I could have borrowed one from Juist, but only one. He generally has a few extras, and they don’t discharge theirs as rapidly as we do.” Lorn smiles. “I appreciate your telling me. It won’t change anything.” He glances toward the window. “I just hope the rain lets up soon.”
“Not quite so heavy as earlier, ser.” Kusyl bobs his head. “There be anything you want, ser?”
“No, thank you.”
Once Kusyl leaves, Lorn looks out at the still-falling rain. He shakes his head sadly. Maran has made Lorn’s decision for him, although Lorn doubts Maran will understand the reasons for that decision. The captain fingers his chin. In a way, Ciesrt has also helped to make Lorn’s decision, and his sister’s consort would not understand either.
Lorn takes out another sheet of report paper and begins drafting the summary report to Majer Maran. Since nothing occurred, it is short, and before long, Lorn has handed it to Kusyl for dispatch.
Then he crosses the courtyard to his quarters quickly, but Kusyl is right, for the rain has diminished to a fraction of its former intensity.
He bolts the door behind himself, pacing around the small room, thinking. After a time, he recovers and opens the silver-covered book, searching for a poem that may reflect his conflicting emotions, either his sense of loss at Ryalth’s absence … perhaps his growing understanding of how fortunate he has been to have found and held her or his anger at Maran’s smallness. He passes by page after page of verse, feeling the weight of melancholy, until he pauses, caught by an image, though it is not what he has sought.
He reads the words slowly, and aloud, for the combination of the subtle strangeness and the angular characters always suggests restraint.
An ornamented garden, filled with flowers,
statues surrounding lovers’ bowers,
these we will not find in granite walls,
nor in the heights of Palace halls,
vain images of a world long lost in space
that none can bear to view or to replace.
Love you I will these last days we hold,
loving till we are ash and order cold,
for ancient images are not for keeping,
nor Palace walls and second falls for weeping.
He frowns, wondering again who the writer might have been. Then he shakes his head, looking for something slightly less melancholy, but the best he can find is the first stanza of another verse.
Virtues of old hold fast.
Morning’s blaze cannot last;
and rose petals soon part.
Not so a steadfast heart.
“Not so a steadfast heart …” he murmurs to himself. Is his heart that steadfast? He shakes his head and turns to the lines about pears, recalling Ryalth’s voice as she had read the words on a chill morning that had been warmer than most he has known.
Then, only then, he slowly closes the book. Ryalth had asked him so long ago what he knew of the ancients. He still does not know, only that they had somehow seen an age end, a life end, and it had colored everything written in the small, seemingly eternal, silver-covered volume he holds.
CVII
TO LORN’S RIGHT the ward-wall glimmers white in the steam of the morning of Second Company’s second day of patrol-outbound from Jakaafra compound on the second full patrol since Lorn has returned from his furlough and seen Ryalth off on her way back to Cyad. While it is too early to have heard from her, he worries.
He also worries about the weather and the Accursed Forest. The cold rain has been followed with still air and a sun that seems as hot as early summer. The air is damp and warm, and steam rises from the road and even from the deadland,so much so that Lorn can barely make out the second squad’s lancers in the line abreast stretching in from the perimeter road.
Lorn blots his forehead with the back of his hand, even though his jacket is fastened behind the saddle. His eyes and chaos senses focus on the ward-wall ahead, for the chaos field set up by the wards is truly chaotic and seems almost to fade away at times. He turns his head left and calls to Shynt, “Tell them to watch things closely.”
“Aye, ser.” In turn, the junior squad leader calls out. “Watch close now! Could be aught all in this mist! Watch close.”
As the gelding carries him along the wall road, headed almost directly into the sun, Lorn struggles against the glare of sun and reflected light to make out the midpoint chaos tower that the company must be approaching-that and the fallen trunk he knows must lie ahead. Still, Second Company rides another three kays before Lorn sees the line of darkness crossing the ward-wall ahead-and behind it, the white granite of the midpoint chaos-tower building rising above the ground mist, less than half a kay behind the fallen tree. For a long moment, he studies the point nearly a kay away where the tree has struck the granite of the ward-wall, noting that white oblongs are strewn across the wall road-the first time he has seen such.
He turns in the saddle and calls to Shynt, “Form up into five abreast. We’ll head out to join the second squad.” His fingers touch the single chaos lance in his holder-fully charged and then some.
“There’s a fallen tree ahead. Form up five abreast, staggered! Pass it out!” orders the junior squad leader. “Five abreast!”
After guiding the gelding away from the ward-wall, Lorn urges his mount up alongside Shynt’s. The lancers fall into their five-abreast ranks as Lorn and Shynt pass, until they have gathered the understrength squad together. Shynt barely has the first squad formed up a quarter kay from the wall and riding outward toward Kusyl and his second squad-already formed up on the perimeter road-when a messenger rides toward Lorn, reining up and then turning his mount to ride beside the lancer captain.