"The bard can't have gone far!" Urmi cried. "She's on foot. We have to get Gerek back. We have to go after her!"
"And face the kigh at night?"
Urmi turned on the man who'd spoken, her lip curled. "I'm not afraid of the kigh!"
"You should be." Lukas stepped forward, but stayed in Olina's shadow. "You saw what the kigh did to my house and my daughter."
The muttering grew more apprehensive and less militant. Even those who personally despised Lukas couldn't deny that his house had burned and his daughter was dead.
"Remember that this is the bard who took Pjerin to his execution." Olina's voice cut through the babble, leaving a sharply defined line of silence behind it as assumptions were hastily shuffled.
"Shkoder is destroying the Dues of Ohrid!"
The babble became a roar.
"But why?" someone called.
"Because Shkoder is afraid!" came the answer from the back of the crowd. "We're all that stands between them and Cemandia, and suppose we don't want to be a living barrier anymore?"
"His Grace—that is, His Grace's father—saw it coming. He tried to make a deal with Cemandia and they killed him."
Olina hid a smile. It was such a small step from oath-breaker to martyr.
"What has Shkoder ever done for us?"
"Cemandia sends us trade!" bellowed one of the villagers who'd made a handsome profit at that first fair. "Once a year, Shkoder sends us a bard to let us know what we don't have."
"Sends a spy!"
"King Theron's probably coming with an army!"
"Do the bards work for Theron or does Theron work for the bards?"
"He's ruled by the kigh!"
"Kigh are not enclosed in the Circle!"
Again the sign against the kigh flicked out, but this time, hands that had never made it before traced the gesture, caught up in the mass hysteria of the mob.
"Send a message to Cemandia! Let them know what's going on! Cemandia has no dealings with the kigh!"
Well pleased with the result of her suggestion, Olina raised both hands to silence the cries of agreement. "There's nothing more that can be done tonight. Go home. See to your children. And think on how we will greet King Theron when he arrives." With any luck, they'd jump him when he entered the valley and deliver his whole party to her in pieces.
"But what of Gerek?" Urmi protested as people began to turn away.
"What good will you do him if the kigh strike you down?" Olina asked her.
"Well, none, but…"
"No. We can only pray that he remains unharmed and plan our vengeance if he is hurt."
"I could ride…"
"Can you track the wind?"
The stablemaster's face fell. "No, Lady."
Olina watched her walk away, watched them all walk away, until there was only Lukas standing beside her on the steps to the Great Hall, the torch he held isolating them in a circle of flickering light.
"What about the boy?" he asked, eyes shifting nervously from side to side. "He isn't with the bard." His tongue darted out to swipe at his lips. "Is he?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Olina snapped.
"Then why?"
Olina turned to stare full at him. "Are you questioning my judgment?"
"No, lady. Only… That is…" Lukas took a deep breath and found enough courage in it to carry on. "Do you know where the due is?"
"As he wasn't found in the valley, I can only assume he reached the forest. He probably took his father's sword and went off to challenge King Theron with it."
"But why?"
"I imagine he saw you deal with the bard."
Lukas paled, his face between beard and hair bone white even by torchlight. "Lady!"
"You've nothing to worry about. Haven't I arranged it so that no one will go after him? So no one will wonder about the absence of the bard?"
"Yes, Lady. Thank you, Lady." When she started to walk away, he scuttled after her. "But suppose he reaches the king and…"
"And nothing. The king is still approximately ten days away. Gerek is barely five years old. I'll be very surprised if he even survives the night." She pushed at the weight of her hair and muttered, "The stupid little fool. Had to be a hero. He's dead—" She turned on Lukas so suddenly he stumbled and almost dropped the torch. "—because you couldn't think past the moment."
"I'm sorry, Lady." He scrubbed his free hand against his tunic, leaving damp smudges of sweat on the fabric. "I couldn't be more sorry."
She stared down at him for a long moment. "Yes, you could," she said at last. She'd been going to mold Gerek, turn him into the kind of due neither Pjerin nor her brother had had the courage to be. And this sweating, stumbling idiot had lost her that immortality.
He was alive because, at the moment, she didn't need any more unanswered questions. When the moment ended, so did he.
Her back against the wall, every piece of clothing from her pack either on her or under her to fight the damp and cold, Stasya considered her companion. The chill air had helped preserve enough integrity that it had been a body, not just dry and dusty bones that she'd found folded in on itself against the far wall. The remains of a tangled beard had given him gender and the intricate carving she could trace on a buckle and a pair of wrist bands suggested he'd been a man of some means.
How long ago, she wondered, knees tucked up against her chest and arms wrapped tight around them. How long has he been down here? Does anyone remember him? How long did he live before he died?
She rested her head on her knees, eyes closed to give an illusion of choice in the darkness. Were the ends of his fingers broken and split from trying to claw his way out through the heart of the mountain? Had he screamed and fought? What had he done when he'd realized that no one would come?
Ten days. The king would arrive in ten days.
With luck, Annice and the due would contact Bohdan sooner.
But she had to count on surviving for ten days.
There'd been trail food for a couple of days still in her pack that could be stretched to provide meager rations, but her water skin had been empty. She'd have to lick the moisture off the walls and hope the bit of water she'd crawled through earlier would continue to collect at the lowest point of the floor.
Ten days.
Her head throbbed and standing left her so dizzy that the mountain had to act as her support as well as her prison.
Ten days.
I could made a song out of this that would pull night terrors from the most flint-hearted listener. Let's hope I last long enough to sing it.
Long past rot, the faint smell of continuing decay was an omnipresent reminder of the alternative.
Tired and hungry, Gerek plodded between the towering trunks of ancient pines, dragging his father's sword behind him. Above him, each needle stood out in sharp relief against an ominous gray-green sky.
The sword caught on a half-buried stick and the sudden jerk threw the small body to the ground. "That didn't hurt," he gasped, getting slowly to his feet and trying desperately hard not to cry.
Exhaustion had brought him a few hours of fitful sleep tucked in the hollow between two giant roots. A dense layer of fallen needles had made a comfortable enough bed, but with the moon hidden behind cloud and the forest noises so loud and so close, he'd spent most of the night staring wide-eyed and terror-stricken out of his refuge. The scream of an owl heard from the safety of his nursery was not the same sound heard alone in the dark; Gerek had screamed in turn and thrown the protection of his cloak over his head. Fortunately, the larger predators had been hunting elsewhere.
Yanking the sword free, he wiped his nose on his sleeve and started walking again, too young to notice it had grown ominously quiet.