Briony’s strength was failing. She badly needed to he down and sleep— she had not had more than a few unbroken hours of it for several nights. She wanted to see her twin well, and her other brother alive again. Most of all, she wanted her father back, someone who would hold her and protect her. She took a slow, deep breath. It did not matter what she wanted, of course: there would be no rest any time soon.
“No, Lord Brone, we all are chastised,” she said. “The gods humble us all.”
The face was twisted into something almost unrecognizable, but there was no question who it was. Barrick turned and ran. Smoke and flames swirled around him as though he had tumbled down one of the rooftop chimneys, or down a gash in the earth toward the regions of fire. His father came after, boots echoing on the flags, a fuming Kernios with beard ablaze and voice booming.
“Come here, child! You are making me very angry!”
The downward course of the stairs twisted in a great arc like the limbs of a wind-tortured tree, as blurry in the smoke as something seen beneath deep water, but it was his only escape and he did not hesitate. For a moment his feet were solid beneath him, but then a hand clawed at his back, snagged in his garments, tried to grapple him.
“Stop… !”
And then his feet were out from under him and he was tumbling down the steps beside the abyss, sliding, flung like a pebble, thumped and rattled down against hard stone until his breath was out of his body and his brains were out of his head. As he fell the voices of the whispering shadow-men became a shout, a roar, and all he could think was, Not again ’.
Oh, gods, not again…
He woke, shivering and weeping. He did not know where he was or even who he was.
A round man with a somber, kindly face bent over him, but for an instant it was that other face that he saw again, that familiar face twisted into a hateful mask and bearded in flame, and he shrieked and struck out. In his weakness his hand barely twitched, the shriek was a stifled moan.
“Rest,” the man said Chaven. His name was Chaven. “You have a fever, but there are people caring for you.”
Fever? he thought. It is no fever. The castle was on fire and they were under attack. Evil flowed inside the walls like poisoned blood in a dying man. Briony! He remembered her suddenly, and as if in imitation of their collateral birth, with her name his own came back as well. She has to know —she must be told. He strained again to make a noise, this time to speak “… Briony…”
“She is well, Highness. Drink this. “A beautiful coolness was poured into his throat, but he could not immediately remember how to swallow. When he had finished sputtering and coughing, and had taken a little more, Chaven’s cool hand touched his forehead. “Now sleep, Highnness.”
Barrick tried to shake his head. How could they not understand? He felt the darkness reach out to drag him down. He had to tell them about the shadow-men who swarmed the castle, about the fires. They had been hiding here for years, but now they had come out in full force. Perhaps the family’s enemies were only a few chambers away by now! And he also had to tell Briony about Father—what if he came to her? What if she did not know, did not understand, and let him in?
The darkness was pulling, sucking at him, making him liquid. “Tell Briony…” he managed, then slid beneath the surface of light once more, down into the burning depths.
Young Raemon Beck was finding it hard to think of anything but Helmingsea. They were still two days west of Southmarch and his home lay another two days ride beyond that, but he had been away for a month and a half and it was hard not to think of his wife and his two small boys, hard to keep his eagnerness under control.
Easier when we were in Settland and still weeks away from home, he thought. Easier when we had things to occupy us, bargaining, buying, selling. Now there is nothing left to do but ride and think.
He looked ahead along the line of their small caravan, almost a score of high-laden mules and half that many horses pulling wagons, all under the hand of his cousin Dannet Beck, who in turn ruled this mercantile venture on behalf of his father, Raemon’s uncle Dannet had made a few mistakes over the past weeks, Raemon thought—like many untried men, he was quick to take resistance to his authority as a personal slight—but overall he had not done badly, and the mules and wagons were loaded down with miles of the finest dyed wool thread from Settland ready for the factories of the March Kingdoms. And Raemon himself would benefit from this venture, not merely by his own share, which, though tiny, would still bring him more money than he had ever had in his twenty-five years—enough to leave his parents’ house, perhaps and build his own—but through greater responsibilities in the future, and someday perhaps a good-sized share in the family venture.
His improving fortunes aside, though, he mostly felt a breathless impatience to see Derla again and hold her close, to see his children and his own father and mother and to eat bread at his own table. Only a few days, but the wait seemed longer now than it did when the journey had only just begun.
We would go faster if we had not combined with that Settish prince’s daughter and her party. The girl, scarcely fourteen, with eyes like a frightened fawn, was being sent to marry Rorick Longarren, Earl of Daler’s Troth and a cousin of the Eddon family. From what Beck knew of Rorick, it seemed surprising that he would marry at all, let alone a girl of the remote and mountainous eastern lands, but royalty was royalty, it seemed, and any prince s daughter no mean prize.
Beck had nothing against the girl, and it was a reassurance even in these fairly peaceful times to have her dozen armored guards riding with the caravan, but she had been frequently ill; at least three times the groups had been forced to stop early for the day because of it, something that had driven homesick Raemon Beck almost to despair.
He looked back at the Settlanders, then ahead at the uneven procession of pack mules. One of the drovers saw him looking and waved, then pointed at the chinks between the trees and the cloudless autumn sky as if to say, “Look how lucky we are!” The first days of their return journey had been bitter with cold rain off the eastern mountains, so this was indeed a kindly change.
He waved back, but in truth he did not much like these forested hills. He remembered them from the outbound trip, how they seemed to loom and lower in the rain, and how they still did even under sunlit skies. Even on a fairly warm day such as this they bore their own thick mists along the summit and in the valleys between the slopes. In fact, a tongue of fog seemed to be stretching its way down along the hillside ahead of them even now, crawling through the trees and across the dark green grass toward the road.
Still, it is faster than going by sea, he thought. All that way south, down through the straits and up the eastern coast just to get there —I would have been parted from Derla and the boys for half a year… !
Someone shouted up ahead. Raemon Beck was startled to see that the tongue of fog had already covered the road at the front of the caravan. Beyond a score of paces he now could see little except dark tree shadows and the vague outline of men and of beasts of burden. He looked up. The sky had swiftly gone dark, as though the mist crept above the trees as well as below.
A storm… ?
The shouting was quite loud now, with a strange edge to it—he heard not just confusion or irritation in the men’s voices, but real fear. The hairs rose on his neck and arms.