Kerian rose and sat near the opening of their shelter, the little doorway. Wind slid around the stones, small creatures with night habits rustled through the bracken. Kerian sat very still, listening to the tiny sounds of a fox lapping moisture. To test her ability for silence, she slipped her knife from the sheath. The prick-eared fox bolted, slashing away into the dark.
Kerian reached for the golden chain hanging from her neck. She pulled it out, moonlight gleamed on gold, on the topaz of Gil’s ring. Without warning, tears spilled down Kerian’s cheeks, warm when all else was cold. She closed her eyes and saw tossing seas, whitecaps like bent-winged gulls, gulls like the peaks of whitecaps, each reflecting the other. In her ears, the forest breeze changed and became the sound of the sea. The piney scents changed into the achingly beautiful fragrance of home.
A long time ago, his arm around her, holding his little sister close as the sea grew dark and slaty, immense between the fleeing ship and the thinning line of Ergoth’s shore, Iydahar had said, “Turtle, we’ll never be able to go home again, but there will always be you and me. Always.”
Yet Iydahar had gone to the mountains and forests to fight for a prince who had lost his crown, she to live in the city. To be a servant, Dar sneered, to lords who handed over their kingdom piece by piece to a dragon’s Knights. Dar did not know her lover was the king, and grimly, almost with satisfaction, she thought, “Dar! What would you think of me if you knew that?”
She wished she could ask him now, to his face, but Bueren Rose said no one had seen him in a long while. Where was her brother? She wondered, was he well?
Late, an hour past moonset, Ayensha woke and pushed herself to sit. Breathing hard, she asked for water. As she drank it slowly, she asked Kerian about herself. Kerian gave some detail about the life she had left behind, though by no means all. Finally Ayensha, her back resting against a stone, said, “Well, and here we are. I thank you for that. What are you going to do now, Kerian?”
Kerian sat a long time silent, listening to the night. “I’ve come out of Qualinost to find my brother. He is Iydahar of the White Osprey Kagonesti, or so we were called when we lived on Ergoth. Perhaps we—they—perhaps we are still called that.”
Ayensha said she had not heard of the White Osprey tribe. “Nobody knows all the Kagonesti there are. Is he a servant, like you, your brother?”
“No. He never was. He and my parents have always lived wild. Our father is Dallatar. He and my brother fought for Prince Porthios.”
Ayensha moved to find more comfort against cold stone. “You should go back to the city, Kerian. It’s harder out here.”
Kerian looked at her long through narrowed eyes. “It is fair hard in the city these days.” Owls hunted the opportune night. Kerian closed her eyes. In private darkness, she said, “In Qualinost there are four bridges round the city. We have always loved them, for Forest Keepers used to walk watch on the silver spans and cry the hours from the watchtowers: All is well in the East! All is safe in the South! We are watchful in the West! We see all that moves in the North!” She breathed deeply, then opened her eyes. Ayensha’s face was a pale oval an arm’s length away. “All is not well in the east now. Upon the eastern bridge Lord Eamutt Thagol has piked the heads of elves killed by his Knights—”
Again, Ayensha shifted, still trying to find ease, still failing.
“One of the heads piked up on the bridge was that of our cousin. She was Ylania of the White Osprey.”
Ayensha’s breath caught, a hissing of pain as she moved. “Well, I don’t know your brother, and I didn’t know this woman Ylania.”
An owl sailed past the opening of the shelter.
“Perhaps someone of your own tribe does.” Kerian lifted her head, met the woman’s eyes coolly. “For the sake of what I did for you, I ask that you take me to your people so I can ask.”
Ayensha laughed, a low, bitter sound. “All right. I’ll take you into the forest and you can ask your questions, but don’t blame me if you get an answer you don’t like.”
Ayensha lay down again. Kerian sat the night out, watching owls.
Gilthas dripped honey onto both halves of the steaming apricot muffin on his breakfast plate. He took a long slow breath of the scent of the honey, of the apricots and minted tea in his cup. A wealth of strawberries filled the bowl at his elbow, waiting to be dressed in thick cream. From beyond the open doors, twinned and paned in dimpled glass, the scent of his mother’s garden drifted into the small breakfast room. Rich green scents of her herb garden, and the ancient perfume of autumn as leaves changed from green to gold.
It was the autumn he thought of: leaving, going, changing. Kerian shaped his mood and all his thoughts.
Stubborn woman! He shouldn’t have let her go. He should have held her, kept her. He was not only her lover, he was her king!
His mother filled a crystal goblet with icy water poured from a crystal carafe. The two chimed, one against the other, a perfect note.
Stubborn woman… he should have forbidden Kerian to leave, ordered her to abandon her fool’s errand. Iydahar was nothing if not capable of taking care of himself.
“If you had ordered Kerian to stay,” said Laurana, picking a peach muffin from the covered basket, “if you had, my son, you would have lost her as surely as though you’d commanded her into exile.”
His mother’s words, dropping right into his thoughts, no longer startled Gilthas. They did, as at times like this, often annoy him, but they didn’t startle. Laurana had had the skill of reading her son’s thoughts from the first moment he had thoughts, or so it seemed to him. She smiled her golden smile, and went on buttering her muffin.
Her tone had, he thought, contained just a note of the acerbic. The Queen Mother had a true liking for Kerian but also the kind of respect that could sometimes appear cautious.
“Mother,” Gilthas said, seeking to turn Laurana’s thoughts from his. “I’ve had all the news Rashas is willing to give this morning, which is news hardly worth having. The watch was kept calmly through the night. There was only a minor altercation at a tavern near the western bridge where the Knights go to drink. The festival will move out into the countryside today, people will light bonfires in the fields. Rashas isn’t as happy about that as the people themselves.”
Laurana looked up, only a small glance. Morning breeze ruffled her golden hair, nothing seemed to ruffle her composure. It was always that way with her, Gilthas thought.
“Mother—”
“Listen,” said Laurana, she who in lands beyond Qualinesti was yet known as the Golden General. She held up a hand to still her son. She placed a finger to her lips.
In the garden beyond the open doors, birds sang. The whisper of voices washing in from the city lay under those songs, and the sound of the gardener speaking with her apprentice, ordering the final clipping of the roses for the season.
Gilthas frowned, his mother mouthed the word again.
Listen.
He did, and in the next breath he heard the click of nails on the marble floor of the patio beyond the doors. He saw the hounds before he saw the elf woman, two long-legged beasts trotting across the patio with perfect confidence. They cast shadows behind them, and it seemed the woman appeared from those very shadows, the substance of her rising from the darkness. Gil caught his breath, startled. Here was Nayla Firethorn, a woman of his mother’s household. Times were when the woman would be gone from the city for days, even months. Sometimes she would come and go alone, sometimes with Haugh Daggerhart, a man said to be her lover. These two, and others like them, were the voice and will of the Queen Mother beyond Qualinesti’s borders, her trusted warrior-heralds.
“Nayla,” said the Queen Mother.
Laurana lifted her hand and Nayla dismissed her hounds, sending them in to the garden before she came forward to the open door. A beautiful woman, Nayla wore her golden hair in a thick braid hanging as far down as the small of her back. Gilthas imagined that, unbound, the woman’s hair would cover her like a shimmering cloak.