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Flying South Chapter 16
Flying South
Chapter 16
“Sit down,” Matthew said, his voice as colourless as I’d ever heard, neither angry or sorrowful or vengeful. “Sit and do not move or speak.”
Cavris dropped to the earth as though punched.
Matthew ignored him and sat down where he was, holding his daughter in his arms to keep her warm. He turned slightly from us and Kulal called my name to bring me closer yet. Skyfire diplomatically turned her attention to Matthew and Erlina.
“Hello,” Kulal said to me.
“Hello.”
“Yukungadak followed you in dreaming,” the young prince of Boorlo said. “He said you were a bird, that you had forgotten, but that you would remember when the time was right. At that time, we would come and help you, for without this child and her brother, your people would be a danger to us.”
“Ku, we still are. They’ve made me promise to take them looking for Boorlo in a ship. Even if I dodge the promise, they’ll make me somehow. They’ve got Nicholas – a friend who helped me – and other people I care about.”
“You could come back with us,” Kulal said. “You would be welcomed for your power, and you could help hide us from your people. That’s what the sky serpent wanted in the beginning, he told me so. We have protected ourselves and the serpents have aided us.”
“I can’t, Ku.” A despairing tightness seemed to clench my throat like a physical hand. “Like you said, my people. I have to look after them.”
He nodded as though he’d expected it, seeming older than me now, not younger. Had he come for his father or for me? “He has given you a gift,” Kulal added. “I don’t understand his images very well but they show you powerful before the grey robed ones. Your gods will help you when the time comes.”
“Ah,” I said slowly. “I think I know what you mean. Kulal, will you tell me something that may be a secret in your land? Why do the dragons fly north, why do they ever leave their land?”
Kulal laughed. “Only the children go, the young dragons testing their wings and their strength. You remember how I and the others swam the Little Water? It is the same with the dragons, though they are not supposed to fly over the lands where people live.”
“A test of adulthood? That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“So how old is this dragon?”
“If he was a human, he would be about our age.”
The children ride the dragons; the dragons are the children. I would have laughed, had there been time. I looked for the lizard-bird, wondering if it really was Yukungadak, but there was no sign of it. Then Skyfire said, “Amber, we must go. Tell the man to move the child back to the cliff. We need space to jump into the air.”
I did, then blurted, “Skyfire, Ku, tell your people to beware. Warn Yukungadak about the ships.”
“He knows,” Skyfire said.
Kulal said, very fast, “Come back, when you can. I will be waiting.”
Cavris scuttled back against the cliff without being told. We paid him about as much attention as we would have a cockroach. I moved back with Matthew and Erlina, staring at the dragon hard, to remember every tiny detail of him crouching, wings outspread to catch the updraft, silver in the moonlight. With a great flapping surge he was aloft, gliding first downwards from the summit, then sweeping up into the sky until he was no more than a bird-sized black shape in the distance. His two human passengers were invisible. Would I see them again? A bitter wish, to hope I would not, but at this moment it was all I could wish.
I turned at last from straining my sight after the dragon to find Lord Matthew standing next to me. Erlina was awake, sitting sleepily against the cliff. Cavris was lying down, either asleep or faking it, and after that one glance I didn’t care. Erlina was warmly covered, her father’s tunic wrapped about her, which was a relief. I couldn’t exactly donate any clothes, since Matthew’s cloak was my sole garment, and Matthew himself was down to shirtsleeves. Perhaps it was a bit late to be shy, but I started to feel nervous, with the Royal Consort’s gaze upon me. We had met only yesterday but we’d shared more than many people do in months. He’d got Nick and me into the palace to tell our story and then his wife, the Queen, had tried to kill me. Asherley had attempted to finish the job and Matthew had bailed me out. I wasn’t sure that he had consciously intended any of this.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For my daughter.”
He wasn’t all that old, I thought. Younger than the Queen by quite a bit, perhaps only thirty, not much older than my own brother.
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“To come here? When Vidar and I went to the tower room we found young Harnage collapsed on the floor, but he was able to tell us what you were about. We rode by the Scarp Trade Road, which is a swift ride, and then by track to Lilinge. We had almost reached the village when we beheld the serpent flying above.” He smiled, the barest twitch of his lips. “At that point, our horses fled, though I have a feeling we were herded as sheep are herded by a dog.”
“Well, yes, my lord, I did want to know that, but I meant earlier. In Netone, when Nick and I had left his brother’s house. Hugh refused to send a message to you, but you were there anyway.”
Matthew hesitated for a long time, then shrugged. I could see him thinking that we were alone here in the countryside and who was going to listen to a sorceress anyway? “Sometimes I am guided, Amber of Dampenrook. Maybe it is the Star-Brother, I do not really know, but when I hear that voice I obey it, even . . . even when it tells me to go riding after dark in the city alone.” He smiled a little. “I do what I can. I know how difficult Varimonde has made your life and the lives of all those who know magic, but you must understand that evil things have happened to cause her to be as she is. Her mother was the victim of evil magics and Varimonde was – harmed by them, in her mind. The wizard lords kidnapped her as a child, as a lever upon the Queen. She was rescued, I believe by both a Star-Priest and a sorceress, though I have never been told who they were and the involvement of the Aradians, though suspected, was never confirmed. The story itself has been well buried. When she grew up, Varimonde was damaged, never able to trust. Forgive her, Amber, as much as you can. She did not choose any of what happened to her.”
“What about Cavris here? What’s his excuse?”
Matthew shrugged heavily. “I do not know. He was only a baby and not harmed, so it was believed, but perhaps they were wrong. It seemed that he was only indolent and weak-willed, caring only for his own pleasures. Yet he was one of the few whom Varimonde trusted and he seemed able at times to soothe her other fears.” Matthew’s voice dropped in weariness and defeat. “Now I know he also used them.”
“Can’t you do something? Get Audryn out of prison? Make the Queen understand we aren’t her enemies.”
“You must do that,” Matthew told me. “I am the father of the Queen’s children, no more. You know that gives me no other power."
“Even after what Cavris and Asherley did?”
“Even so,” he said. Matthew’s lips were in a thin, grim line as he considered his wife’s sibling now playing dead on the ground. I stared out at the grassland below, trying to organise my thoughts. Dark. It was dark. How had it got that way in so short a time . . . or had I been lost for all those hours and not known it?
“I think that the gods were with us this day,” Matthew added softly, after some time in silence. “Do you know whose seeming you took on, when you came out of the forest driving Asherley before you?”
That wasn’t quite how I remembered it but I let it go. “I think so.”
“The Goddess looks different to everyone,” Matthew said quietly, “but when you see Her, you do not doubt. There was starlight in Her hair, which flowed about Her like a cloak. She gave that to you, you could not have chosen to appear in Her form. But it is Her Brother who rules the hunt, the game of life and death, and I think the Star-Brother guided you also.”
He went back to Erlina, knelt beside her and talked quietly, comfortingly. Erlina nodded, glancing up at me once or twice, but I didn’t think she was taking too much of this in. Would she remember seeing the dragon? For her sake, I hoped so. It was the single bright and amazing thing which had happened to her in quite a while.
“Skyfire said there were other riders. Did they leave with you?” I was forgetting the “my lord” again but Matthew didn’t seem to mind.
“No, it was only Vidar and myself, but of course others may have followed. The young woman and boy on the dragon could have seen them easily.” Matthew paused then looked at me as though he had just realised something. “The dragon is the beast you rode to his homeland, this I surmise, but you seemed to know the riders as well. How is this?”
Warily I said, “I met them in the Land of the Dragons.”
I expected Matthew to ask more questions but he didn’t. Good thing. I was going to get an earful from Vidar as soon as I was within hearing range of the Master Inquisitor once more.
Vidar was with six riders of the Royal Guard when they dismounted at the bottom of the hill and scrambled over the chalk to us. He looked swiftly from Matthew and Erlina to me. I was still clutching Matthew’s cloak and probably looked a most pathetic sight. The night-time dew was soaking into the cloak where I’d sat on the ground with the other two to wait for our rescue.
“My lord Vidar,” Matthew said, “please have your men arrest Cavris, Royal Brother, lying on the ground there, and take him into custody. He is guilty of attempting to kill the Queen’s heir by sorcery and by steel, along with his ally the Wizard Lord Warwick of Asherley.”
Trust a noble to know exactly what to say. The men with Vidar obeyed at his gesture, dragging Cavris up – he didn’t seem conscious even now, had to be faking – and away down the rocky slope to the horses. Matthew wouldn’t let anyone take Erlina, except for the few moments he needed to climb astride a horse and settle her against him. There were a few murmured words and another rider ranged alongside to lead Matthew’s horse.
Vidar came up to me, leading a horse. “No, I don’t know where the dragon went,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He gestured towards the horse whose reins he held. “We are somewhat short of mounts; you needs must ride with me.”
Vidar helped me up with a curious ceremony in his movements, as though he was a groom assisting a lady, even though a sorceress was never, no matter what her birth, regarded as a lady. He climbed up behind me, making no fuss about it whatsoever, and that unexpected courtesy was what enabled me to ride with an Inquisitor, at a walk through the chill night, until we reached the high road where the royal carriages had finally arrived and were waiting for us.
I did have one exchange with Vidar as we rode which echoed in my mind for a long time. Perhaps I was only tired, perhaps I needed to tell someone who would understand, but I told him of the hunt, of the changes, and then of the grace that had been granted me. He listened with a curious intensity as I meandered through my story. “Why did it take so long? Why was it darkness when I emerged? It was as though time itself had been stilled, for Asherley was still there when I became myself again.”
“You were not in the world.”
“Where was I?”
“In Hers.”
“But Asherley . . . “
“You said it; time stilled for him. That is not a power of men, but why should it be beyond the gods? Perhaps they needed to deliberate in counsel whether or not your plight should be aided.”
Perhaps they did. I could only guess and so could he, never mind his extra years of life and experience. I didn’t ask him about Cavris. It was as though Cavris no longer mattered to anyone. He’d never had the power and so he had wanted it and wanting, had given Asherley precisely what he sought. Wealth, a hiding place, all the protection someone high in the Queen’s favour could provide. Access to children to kill. And silence. Vidar and Matthew would stop all that and perhaps knowing that Asherley was gone would be enough for me. There was only one penalty for what Asherley and Cavris had done in abducting and trying to kill Erlina, no matter what other crimes they had committed. So I had managed to obey the Goddess after all. See that he dies, She had said, rather than: Kill him.
I was helped down and into the carriage where royal servants wrapped me in furs and gave me hot drink as we rattled back towards Netone, over the ground I had covered so swiftly on raven’s wings that morning. I didn’t remember much more of the journey or even much of the arrival at the royal castle; being helped out into the damp gray morning and muzzily realising that we had travelled all night. I grabbed Vidar’s arm and belatedly demanded, “How’s Nicholas?”
The Master Inquisitor didn’t object or shake me off, which was good, because I would probably have slithered to the ground. “He’s weak but otherwise all right, though when we found him, it was as though he had been bled to within a few heartbeats of death.”
Black magic, the chilly morning breeze seemed to whisper about me, black magic, like what Asherley had done to Erlina. I could see it in Vidar’s eyes but not, thank the Lady, aimed at me. For all his scholarship, he did not know what I had done.
“I want to see him, please.”
I can’t remember what Vidar said to that because I passed out, so I’m told, but Vidar kindly acceded to my request and I was settled into an infirmary bed beside the one Nicholas was in. I slept right through until the afternoon light on my face woke me and the Queen’s own doctors came to take care of us. Maybe half an hour of poking and prodding later, they abruptly scattered like startled birds and Matthew appeared.
Nicholas was still sleeping in the next bed beside me. He had not, so far as I knew, woken since I’d arrived. I couldn’t see his face, he was curled up mostly under the blankets. I managed to sit up, the closest to doing Matthew a courtesy that I could manage. “How are you?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t think I could do that again very soon. How is Erlina?”
“None the worse for her ordeal,” Matthew said quietly. “She will be quite well soon.”
“What about Kieran and Geofrey?”
“I have sent criers out to tell the people what happened,” Matthew told me, “and to assure Lord Geofrey of Skarrel that he has nothing to fear when he returns Kieran to us. This is the promise of my Consort the Queen.”
Something occurred to me then. Matthew had said nothing at all about Erlina’s blossoming power. “Your daughter has magic,” I said wearily, wondering what I could say to make him understand. “She has to be trained, it’s not safe otherwise, but she’s afraid you’ll burn her.”
“I have spoken to Varimonde. She understands.”
Did she? “What about Mariel, Lord Matthew? She’s an Aradian, she’s one of those who trained me and she’s been protecting your children as best she can. What’s going to happen to her? And Mother Audryn and Catri.”
“Vidar says they will be freed, as he promised, when you have fulfilled your side of the bargain.”
“And delivered the Land of the Dragons.”
His silence gave me my answer and I didn’t push it any further. Matthew looked around the clean little infirmary, surely the best of its kind in the land, since the doctors here had to care for the royal family.
“You will be well taken care of here, Amber,” he promised me. “There will be no hasty voyage. You and young Harnage will be well recovered before you sail.”
“I want Mother Audryn and the others released,” I said, aware of the disapproval from the doctors gathered around us. I was arguing with the Queen’s consort and me a sorceress. “Tell Vidar to come talk to me . . . please.”
Matthew grinned suddenly, like a fellow
conspirator. “I’ll do that, my lady,” he said.
It would have been impolite to correct him, now, wouldn’t it?
Nicholas woke up a couple of hours later and I managed to reach close enough to take his hand and measure his life strength. He was so weak it frightened me and I thought of what Vidar had said about a few heartbeats from death. “When did you get back?” he asked, as our hands fell apart again and I pulled myself back into the bed before one of the doctors came over.
“Last night. I’m sorry, Nick, I . . . “ I nearly killed you. I didn’t even think about you. I nearly killed you . . .
I wanted him to comfort me and say it was all right, but Nicholas looked at me as though I was a stranger. He pulled his hand away from me and turned over in the bed, away from me.
The Master Inquisitor came to see me a short time after moonrise. I think Nicholas had fallen asleep again; he had said nothing more to me. Vidar glanced at him as he walked up to my bed and then nodded to me. “Good even to you, Amber. I think you owe me an oath.”
That comment saved me from having to wish him a good evening in return, but it floored me. Then I thought back the ages of time since the night I had stood in the audience chamber, the night before last. He’d been talking about the oath . . . and then Queen Varimonde had come rushing in with the news of Erlina’s kidnap, wanting to personally decapitate me for the disappearance of both her children. I never had sworn to the bargain I had made.
“Oh,” I said. Vidar stood waiting, the very image of darkness in his gray robe. He looked far more like evil than Warwick Asherley had in his rich garments and his handsome face and I couldn’t be sure now, that Vidar wasn’t.
“I swear it,” I said, feeling all the moisture leave my mouth. “In the Lady’s name, I swear I will show you where the Land of the Dragons lies.”
He did not try to make me believe this was all for my own good, nor did he gloat. “Then the sorceresses will be freed now.”
“What does Queen Varimonde have to say about that?”
“She has seen Asherley. He confessed to all. So has her Royal Brother.”
And what does “all” mean? I looked at Vidar and wondered whether I could ever believe him. Vidar seemed to decide he’d waited long enough for me to say something. “We will sail in two weeks time when the ship can be readied and the doctors say you will be well. In the meantime you will stay here in the castle.”
He didn’t say the Aradians’ freedom might be recalled if I failed to live up to the rest of my bargain, or mention that my magic would be taken from me at the end of this voyage, but he didn’t need to.
“I want to see them before they go – Mother Audryn and Catri and whoever else is here. I want to know they’re all right.”
“Do you not trust my word?”
“You didn’t trust mine. You made me swear.”
Vidar considered that and shrugged. “Very well. I swear in the Star-Brother’s name that the Aradians will be freed and allowed to return to their Order Houses without duress.”
“And I can see them?”
“I wonder if I could stop you.”
His voice was so quiet and thoughtful that it sent a horrible shivery feeling through me while I wondered whether he had guessed about the dragon’s gift, that he no longer had power to deaden my magic. I wasn’t certain about that myself, but I did believe that it was what Kulal had meant. “Don’t you trust my word?” I parried after that moment of panic and to my surprised relief, Vidar smiled.
“In fact, I do. One of your friends will come here to see you in the morning and then you may go to the window over there to watch them depart. Will this suffice?”
“Yes, my lord Inquisitor.”
Chapter 16
“Sit down,” Matthew said, his voice as colourless as I’d ever heard, neither angry or sorrowful or vengeful. “Sit and do not move or speak.”
Cavris dropped to the earth as though punched.
Matthew ignored him and sat down where he was, holding his daughter in his arms to keep her warm. He turned slightly from us and Kulal called my name to bring me closer yet. Skyfire diplomatically turned her attention to Matthew and Erlina.
“Hello,” Kulal said to me.
“Hello.”
“Yukungadak followed you in dreaming,” the young prince of Boorlo said. “He said you were a bird, that you had forgotten, but that you would remember when the time was right. At that time, we would come and help you, for without this child and her brother, your people would be a danger to us.”
“Ku, we still are. They’ve made me promise to take them looking for Boorlo in a ship. Even if I dodge the promise, they’ll make me somehow. They’ve got Nicholas – a friend who helped me – and other people I care about.”
“You could come back with us,” Kulal said. “You would be welcomed for your power, and you could help hide us from your people. That’s what the sky serpent wanted in the beginning, he told me so. We have protected ourselves and the serpents have aided us.”
“I can’t, Ku.” A despairing tightness seemed to clench my throat like a physical hand. “Like you said, my people. I have to look after them.”
He nodded as though he’d expected it, seeming older than me now, not younger. Had he come for his father or for me? “He has given you a gift,” Kulal added. “I don’t understand his images very well but they show you powerful before the grey robed ones. Your gods will help you when the time comes.”
“Ah,” I said slowly. “I think I know what you mean. Kulal, will you tell me something that may be a secret in your land? Why do the dragons fly north, why do they ever leave their land?”
Kulal laughed. “Only the children go, the young dragons testing their wings and their strength. You remember how I and the others swam the Little Water? It is the same with the dragons, though they are not supposed to fly over the lands where people live.”
“A test of adulthood? That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“So how old is this dragon?”
“If he was a human, he would be about our age.”
The children ride the dragons; the dragons are the children. I would have laughed, had there been time. I looked for the lizard-bird, wondering if it really was Yukungadak, but there was no sign of it. Then Skyfire said, “Amber, we must go. Tell the man to move the child back to the cliff. We need space to jump into the air.”
I did, then blurted, “Skyfire, Ku, tell your people to beware. Warn Yukungadak about the ships.”
“He knows,” Skyfire said.
Kulal said, very fast, “Come back, when you can. I will be waiting.”
Cavris scuttled back against the cliff without being told. We paid him about as much attention as we would have a cockroach. I moved back with Matthew and Erlina, staring at the dragon hard, to remember every tiny detail of him crouching, wings outspread to catch the updraft, silver in the moonlight. With a great flapping surge he was aloft, gliding first downwards from the summit, then sweeping up into the sky until he was no more than a bird-sized black shape in the distance. His two human passengers were invisible. Would I see them again? A bitter wish, to hope I would not, but at this moment it was all I could wish.
I turned at last from straining my sight after the dragon to find Lord Matthew standing next to me. Erlina was awake, sitting sleepily against the cliff. Cavris was lying down, either asleep or faking it, and after that one glance I didn’t care. Erlina was warmly covered, her father’s tunic wrapped about her, which was a relief. I couldn’t exactly donate any clothes, since Matthew’s cloak was my sole garment, and Matthew himself was down to shirtsleeves. Perhaps it was a bit late to be shy, but I started to feel nervous, with the Royal Consort’s gaze upon me. We had met only yesterday but we’d shared more than many people do in months. He’d got Nick and me into the palace to tell our story and then his wife, the Queen, had tried to kill me. Asherley had attempted to finish the job and Matthew had bailed me out. I wasn’t sure that he had consciously intended any of this.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For my daughter.”
He wasn’t all that old, I thought. Younger than the Queen by quite a bit, perhaps only thirty, not much older than my own brother.
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“To come here? When Vidar and I went to the tower room we found young Harnage collapsed on the floor, but he was able to tell us what you were about. We rode by the Scarp Trade Road, which is a swift ride, and then by track to Lilinge. We had almost reached the village when we beheld the serpent flying above.” He smiled, the barest twitch of his lips. “At that point, our horses fled, though I have a feeling we were herded as sheep are herded by a dog.”
“Well, yes, my lord, I did want to know that, but I meant earlier. In Netone, when Nick and I had left his brother’s house. Hugh refused to send a message to you, but you were there anyway.”
Matthew hesitated for a long time, then shrugged. I could see him thinking that we were alone here in the countryside and who was going to listen to a sorceress anyway? “Sometimes I am guided, Amber of Dampenrook. Maybe it is the Star-Brother, I do not really know, but when I hear that voice I obey it, even . . . even when it tells me to go riding after dark in the city alone.” He smiled a little. “I do what I can. I know how difficult Varimonde has made your life and the lives of all those who know magic, but you must understand that evil things have happened to cause her to be as she is. Her mother was the victim of evil magics and Varimonde was – harmed by them, in her mind. The wizard lords kidnapped her as a child, as a lever upon the Queen. She was rescued, I believe by both a Star-Priest and a sorceress, though I have never been told who they were and the involvement of the Aradians, though suspected, was never confirmed. The story itself has been well buried. When she grew up, Varimonde was damaged, never able to trust. Forgive her, Amber, as much as you can. She did not choose any of what happened to her.”
“What about Cavris here? What’s his excuse?”
Matthew shrugged heavily. “I do not know. He was only a baby and not harmed, so it was believed, but perhaps they were wrong. It seemed that he was only indolent and weak-willed, caring only for his own pleasures. Yet he was one of the few whom Varimonde trusted and he seemed able at times to soothe her other fears.” Matthew’s voice dropped in weariness and defeat. “Now I know he also used them.”
“Can’t you do something? Get Audryn out of prison? Make the Queen understand we aren’t her enemies.”
“You must do that,” Matthew told me. “I am the father of the Queen’s children, no more. You know that gives me no other power."
“Even after what Cavris and Asherley did?”
“Even so,” he said. Matthew’s lips were in a thin, grim line as he considered his wife’s sibling now playing dead on the ground. I stared out at the grassland below, trying to organise my thoughts. Dark. It was dark. How had it got that way in so short a time . . . or had I been lost for all those hours and not known it?
“I think that the gods were with us this day,” Matthew added softly, after some time in silence. “Do you know whose seeming you took on, when you came out of the forest driving Asherley before you?”
That wasn’t quite how I remembered it but I let it go. “I think so.”
“The Goddess looks different to everyone,” Matthew said quietly, “but when you see Her, you do not doubt. There was starlight in Her hair, which flowed about Her like a cloak. She gave that to you, you could not have chosen to appear in Her form. But it is Her Brother who rules the hunt, the game of life and death, and I think the Star-Brother guided you also.”
He went back to Erlina, knelt beside her and talked quietly, comfortingly. Erlina nodded, glancing up at me once or twice, but I didn’t think she was taking too much of this in. Would she remember seeing the dragon? For her sake, I hoped so. It was the single bright and amazing thing which had happened to her in quite a while.
“Skyfire said there were other riders. Did they leave with you?” I was forgetting the “my lord” again but Matthew didn’t seem to mind.
“No, it was only Vidar and myself, but of course others may have followed. The young woman and boy on the dragon could have seen them easily.” Matthew paused then looked at me as though he had just realised something. “The dragon is the beast you rode to his homeland, this I surmise, but you seemed to know the riders as well. How is this?”
Warily I said, “I met them in the Land of the Dragons.”
I expected Matthew to ask more questions but he didn’t. Good thing. I was going to get an earful from Vidar as soon as I was within hearing range of the Master Inquisitor once more.
Vidar was with six riders of the Royal Guard when they dismounted at the bottom of the hill and scrambled over the chalk to us. He looked swiftly from Matthew and Erlina to me. I was still clutching Matthew’s cloak and probably looked a most pathetic sight. The night-time dew was soaking into the cloak where I’d sat on the ground with the other two to wait for our rescue.
“My lord Vidar,” Matthew said, “please have your men arrest Cavris, Royal Brother, lying on the ground there, and take him into custody. He is guilty of attempting to kill the Queen’s heir by sorcery and by steel, along with his ally the Wizard Lord Warwick of Asherley.”
Trust a noble to know exactly what to say. The men with Vidar obeyed at his gesture, dragging Cavris up – he didn’t seem conscious even now, had to be faking – and away down the rocky slope to the horses. Matthew wouldn’t let anyone take Erlina, except for the few moments he needed to climb astride a horse and settle her against him. There were a few murmured words and another rider ranged alongside to lead Matthew’s horse.
Vidar came up to me, leading a horse. “No, I don’t know where the dragon went,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He gestured towards the horse whose reins he held. “We are somewhat short of mounts; you needs must ride with me.”
Vidar helped me up with a curious ceremony in his movements, as though he was a groom assisting a lady, even though a sorceress was never, no matter what her birth, regarded as a lady. He climbed up behind me, making no fuss about it whatsoever, and that unexpected courtesy was what enabled me to ride with an Inquisitor, at a walk through the chill night, until we reached the high road where the royal carriages had finally arrived and were waiting for us.
I did have one exchange with Vidar as we rode which echoed in my mind for a long time. Perhaps I was only tired, perhaps I needed to tell someone who would understand, but I told him of the hunt, of the changes, and then of the grace that had been granted me. He listened with a curious intensity as I meandered through my story. “Why did it take so long? Why was it darkness when I emerged? It was as though time itself had been stilled, for Asherley was still there when I became myself again.”
“You were not in the world.”
“Where was I?”
“In Hers.”
“But Asherley . . . “
“You said it; time stilled for him. That is not a power of men, but why should it be beyond the gods? Perhaps they needed to deliberate in counsel whether or not your plight should be aided.”
Perhaps they did. I could only guess and so could he, never mind his extra years of life and experience. I didn’t ask him about Cavris. It was as though Cavris no longer mattered to anyone. He’d never had the power and so he had wanted it and wanting, had given Asherley precisely what he sought. Wealth, a hiding place, all the protection someone high in the Queen’s favour could provide. Access to children to kill. And silence. Vidar and Matthew would stop all that and perhaps knowing that Asherley was gone would be enough for me. There was only one penalty for what Asherley and Cavris had done in abducting and trying to kill Erlina, no matter what other crimes they had committed. So I had managed to obey the Goddess after all. See that he dies, She had said, rather than: Kill him.
I was helped down and into the carriage where royal servants wrapped me in furs and gave me hot drink as we rattled back towards Netone, over the ground I had covered so swiftly on raven’s wings that morning. I didn’t remember much more of the journey or even much of the arrival at the royal castle; being helped out into the damp gray morning and muzzily realising that we had travelled all night. I grabbed Vidar’s arm and belatedly demanded, “How’s Nicholas?”
The Master Inquisitor didn’t object or shake me off, which was good, because I would probably have slithered to the ground. “He’s weak but otherwise all right, though when we found him, it was as though he had been bled to within a few heartbeats of death.”
Black magic, the chilly morning breeze seemed to whisper about me, black magic, like what Asherley had done to Erlina. I could see it in Vidar’s eyes but not, thank the Lady, aimed at me. For all his scholarship, he did not know what I had done.
“I want to see him, please.”
I can’t remember what Vidar said to that because I passed out, so I’m told, but Vidar kindly acceded to my request and I was settled into an infirmary bed beside the one Nicholas was in. I slept right through until the afternoon light on my face woke me and the Queen’s own doctors came to take care of us. Maybe half an hour of poking and prodding later, they abruptly scattered like startled birds and Matthew appeared.
Nicholas was still sleeping in the next bed beside me. He had not, so far as I knew, woken since I’d arrived. I couldn’t see his face, he was curled up mostly under the blankets. I managed to sit up, the closest to doing Matthew a courtesy that I could manage. “How are you?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t think I could do that again very soon. How is Erlina?”
“None the worse for her ordeal,” Matthew said quietly. “She will be quite well soon.”
“What about Kieran and Geofrey?”
“I have sent criers out to tell the people what happened,” Matthew told me, “and to assure Lord Geofrey of Skarrel that he has nothing to fear when he returns Kieran to us. This is the promise of my Consort the Queen.”
Something occurred to me then. Matthew had said nothing at all about Erlina’s blossoming power. “Your daughter has magic,” I said wearily, wondering what I could say to make him understand. “She has to be trained, it’s not safe otherwise, but she’s afraid you’ll burn her.”
“I have spoken to Varimonde. She understands.”
Did she? “What about Mariel, Lord Matthew? She’s an Aradian, she’s one of those who trained me and she’s been protecting your children as best she can. What’s going to happen to her? And Mother Audryn and Catri.”
“Vidar says they will be freed, as he promised, when you have fulfilled your side of the bargain.”
“And delivered the Land of the Dragons.”
His silence gave me my answer and I didn’t push it any further. Matthew looked around the clean little infirmary, surely the best of its kind in the land, since the doctors here had to care for the royal family.
“You will be well taken care of here, Amber,” he promised me. “There will be no hasty voyage. You and young Harnage will be well recovered before you sail.”
“I want Mother Audryn and the others released,” I said, aware of the disapproval from the doctors gathered around us. I was arguing with the Queen’s consort and me a sorceress. “Tell Vidar to come talk to me . . . please.”
Matthew grinned suddenly, like a fellow
conspirator. “I’ll do that, my lady,” he said.
It would have been impolite to correct him, now, wouldn’t it?
Nicholas woke up a couple of hours later and I managed to reach close enough to take his hand and measure his life strength. He was so weak it frightened me and I thought of what Vidar had said about a few heartbeats from death. “When did you get back?” he asked, as our hands fell apart again and I pulled myself back into the bed before one of the doctors came over.
“Last night. I’m sorry, Nick, I . . . “ I nearly killed you. I didn’t even think about you. I nearly killed you . . .
I wanted him to comfort me and say it was all right, but Nicholas looked at me as though I was a stranger. He pulled his hand away from me and turned over in the bed, away from me.
The Master Inquisitor came to see me a short time after moonrise. I think Nicholas had fallen asleep again; he had said nothing more to me. Vidar glanced at him as he walked up to my bed and then nodded to me. “Good even to you, Amber. I think you owe me an oath.”
That comment saved me from having to wish him a good evening in return, but it floored me. Then I thought back the ages of time since the night I had stood in the audience chamber, the night before last. He’d been talking about the oath . . . and then Queen Varimonde had come rushing in with the news of Erlina’s kidnap, wanting to personally decapitate me for the disappearance of both her children. I never had sworn to the bargain I had made.
“Oh,” I said. Vidar stood waiting, the very image of darkness in his gray robe. He looked far more like evil than Warwick Asherley had in his rich garments and his handsome face and I couldn’t be sure now, that Vidar wasn’t.
“I swear it,” I said, feeling all the moisture leave my mouth. “In the Lady’s name, I swear I will show you where the Land of the Dragons lies.”
He did not try to make me believe this was all for my own good, nor did he gloat. “Then the sorceresses will be freed now.”
“What does Queen Varimonde have to say about that?”
“She has seen Asherley. He confessed to all. So has her Royal Brother.”
And what does “all” mean? I looked at Vidar and wondered whether I could ever believe him. Vidar seemed to decide he’d waited long enough for me to say something. “We will sail in two weeks time when the ship can be readied and the doctors say you will be well. In the meantime you will stay here in the castle.”
He didn’t say the Aradians’ freedom might be recalled if I failed to live up to the rest of my bargain, or mention that my magic would be taken from me at the end of this voyage, but he didn’t need to.
“I want to see them before they go – Mother Audryn and Catri and whoever else is here. I want to know they’re all right.”
“Do you not trust my word?”
“You didn’t trust mine. You made me swear.”
Vidar considered that and shrugged. “Very well. I swear in the Star-Brother’s name that the Aradians will be freed and allowed to return to their Order Houses without duress.”
“And I can see them?”
“I wonder if I could stop you.”
His voice was so quiet and thoughtful that it sent a horrible shivery feeling through me while I wondered whether he had guessed about the dragon’s gift, that he no longer had power to deaden my magic. I wasn’t certain about that myself, but I did believe that it was what Kulal had meant. “Don’t you trust my word?” I parried after that moment of panic and to my surprised relief, Vidar smiled.
“In fact, I do. One of your friends will come here to see you in the morning and then you may go to the window over there to watch them depart. Will this suffice?”
“Yes, my lord Inquisitor.”