I will not wash these hands, he told himself. I will not wash my face, until I stand before my prince and my king again, so they can see what they have done.
Thus Borenson took horse and began racing through the darkness. Four miles down the road east of town, he found a dead knight of Orden, took the man's lance.
His mount could not equal Gaborn's fine hunter. But the road was clear, if somewhat muddy, and on a night like this, with rain to cool them, Borenson's horse could run forever.
So Borenson raced over the hills until the rain stopped and the clouds dispelled and stars shone bright and clean.
He'd planned to head to Longmont. But when the road branched both east and south, the fey mood was still on him, and he suddenly turned east, toward Bannisferre.
Dawn found him riding over green fields that held no sign of war, through vineyards twenty miles north of Bannisferre where young women stooped to fill baskets of ripe grapes.
He stopped in such a field and ate, found the grapes dripping with water from the night's rain; they tasted as succulent as the first grape must have tasted to the first man who ate it.
The river here was wide, a broad silver ribbon gleaming beneath the green fields. Borenson had thought last night to leave himself bloody, but now he did not want Myrrima to see him this way, to ever guess what he'd done.
He went down to the river and swam, naked, unmindful of the pig farmers who herded animals past on the road.
When the sun dried him, Borenson put on his armor, but threw his bloodied surcoat into the water, letting the river carry away the image of the green knight on the blue field.
Surely, he thought, Raj Ahten's troops have reached Longmont. I'm so far behind them, I'm too late to join the battle. In truth, he no longer cared. No matter what the outcome at Longmont, he planned to renounce his lord.
In assassinating innocent Dedicates, men and women who had committed no crime but that of loving a good and decent king, Borenson had done more than any master had a right to ask. So now he'd renounce his vows to Orden, become a Knight Equitable. Of his own free will he'd fight as he deemed best.
Borenson went on to a pear tree beside an abandoned farm, and climbed, taking the fattest pears from the top—same for himself, some for Myrrima and her family.
From the treetop he saw something interesting: over a rise lay deep pools with steep sides beneath a grove of willow trees, pools as blue as the sky. Yellow willow leaves had fallen into water in great drifts, floating over the surface. But also on the pools were roses bobbing, red and white.
A wizard lives there, Borenson realized, dully. A water wizard, and people have thrown roses into the water, seeking its blessings.
He climbed quickly down from the tree, ran over the rise to the still waters, and approached solemnly, hopefully. He had no roses or flowers to sweeten the wizard's water, but he had pears that it might eat.
So he went to the edge of the pool, where the willow roots twisted down a gravel bank, and there he sat on a broad black root. The crisp leaves of the trees above him blew in a small breeze, rustling, and Borenson called for long minutes, “O wizard of the water, lover of the sea, O wizard of the water, hear my plea.”
But the surface of the pool remained unperturbed, and he saw nothing in the shining pool but water striders that skated over its flat surface and a few brown newts that floated beneath, watching him from golden eyes.
In despair, he began to wonder if the wizard had died long ago, and people still sweetened the pools in hopes that someday another might come. Or if this was a haunted place, and the local girls threw roses in the water to placate someone who had drowned.
After long minutes of sitting on the willow root, and calling with no results, Borenson closed his eyes, just smelling the sweet water, thinking of home, of Mystarria, of the peaceful healing waters in the pools of Derra where madmen might go to bathe, and have their troubling thoughts and memories washed from them.
As he lay thinking of that place, he realized that a cold root was brushing his ankle, and thought to move his foot, when suddenly the root wrapped round his foot, squeezed tenderly.
He looked down. At the water's edge, just beneath the waves, was a girl of ten, skin as pale blue and flawless as ceramics, hair of silver. She stared up at him from beneath the water with eyes as wide and green as all the seas, and her eyes were unblinking, completely motionless. Only the crimson gill slits at her throat pulsed slightly as she breathed.
She withdrew her hand from his foot, instead reached underwater and grasped at the willow roots.
An undine. Too young to be of great power.
“I brought you a pear, sweet one, if you will have it,” Borenson said.
The undine did not answer, only stared up at him and through him with soulless eyes.
I killed girls your age last night, Borenson wanted to tell her, wanted to cry.
I know, her eyes said.
I will never have peace, Borenson whispered wordlessly.
I could give you peace, the undine's eyes said.
But Borenson knew she lied, that she'd pull him down into the waves, give him love, and that while she loved him, he could survive beneath the pools. But in time she'd forget about him, and he would drown. She could give him only a brief few days of pleasure before death.
I wish that, like you, I could be one with the water, and know peace, Borenson thought. He remembered the great seas of home, the white breakers rolling over a green as deep as aged copper.
The undine's eyes went wide at his memories of the sea, and a smile formed on her lips, as if grateful for the vision.
Then he took one of his golden pears, reached down to the water, gave it to the undine.
She reached for it with a wet, slender blue hand, with long nails of silver, but then grasped his wrist and pulled herself up enough so that she could kiss his lips.
The move was unexpected, quick as a fish jumping for a fly, and Borenson felt her lips brush his for only a moment.
He placed the pear in her hand and left, and for a long hour afterward he could not quite remember what pain had brought him to that pool, with roses of red and white bobbing among the golden leaves.
He managed to find his mount, then rode at leisure, letting the horse graze as it walked; soon enough he reached the little meadow outside Bannisferre where Myrrima's cottage lay among the wild daisies.
Blue smoke curled up from a cooking fire, and one of Myrrima's ugly sisters—Inette, he recalled her name—stood feeding grain to the scrawny black chickens at the front door.
As he rode up, Inette looked up at him, a smile on her ruined face. The smile quickly faded. “You all right?”
“No,” Borenson said. “Where's Myrrima?”
“A messenger came through town,” Inette said. “Troops are gathering. Lord Orden is at Longmont. She—Myrrima left last night. Many of the boys from town have gone to fight.”
All the ease of heart he'd felt for the past hour now drained from him. “To Longmont!” Borenson shouted. “Why?”
“She wants to be with you!” Inette answered.
“This—this won't be a picnic or a day at the fair!” Borenson shouted.
“She knows,” Inette whispered. “But—you're betrothed. If you live through it, she wants to live with you. And if you don't...”
Borenson hung his head, thinking furiously. Sixty miles. Nearly sixty miles to Longmont. She could not have walked there in a night, even in a pair of nights.
“Did she travel afoot?”
Inette shook her head numbly. “Some boys from town went. In a wagon...”
Too late. Too late. Borenson spun his horse, raced to catch her.
35
Between Strong Arms
Gaborn heard Iome cry out as he rode toward Longmont. Her cry was so startling that at first he feared that she'd been shot with an arrow. For hours now they had been traveling, stopping every few minutes to switch horses, and Iome had not made a single complaint. He slowed and turned in his saddle to look back.