Kerowyn's Ride v(bts-1 Read online

  He bristled a little, which she took as a good sign. At least he wasn’t going to fall over helplessly and let her take charge of his life.

  “Really, if you don’t at least go put a cold cloth on your eyes, you aren’t going to be able to see out of them,” she insisted. Finally, he nodded, and stood up.

  “You’ll come get me if you hear anything, won’t you?” He seemed to be taking it for granted that she would be with her grandmother and Tarma.

  That was as good an idea as any. “I will,” she promised, and got up to lead him out the door.

  They parted company at his door, and she raced down the hall to the stairs, then took the stairway down as fast as she could without killing herself.

  The common room was empty, but there was light coming from under the door leading to Kethry’s “working rooms.” Kero hesitated a moment, torn by the need to find out more information, and her reluctance to pass that doorway. Finally curiosity won out, and she tried the latch.

  The door swung open at a touch, and Kero pushed it aside. At the far end of the room, Kethry was seated at a small, marble-topped table, bent over a large black bowl, and Tarma sat beside her, face utterly impassive. There was a light source inside the bowl itself; Kethry’s face was illuminated softly from below, her unbound silver hair forming a soft cloud about her head. Kero coughed delicately; Kethry ignored her, but Tarma looked up and motioned to her to join them.

  She picked her way gingerly across the cluttered room. She was never entirely sure how much of the clutter was of magical use, and how much was simply junk, relegated here to be stored. That huge, draped mirror, for instance—or the suit of armor that couldn’t possibly have fit anything human, or even alive, since the helm was welded to the shoulders and the face-plate welded shut besides.

  Mostly she tried not to look at much of anything. There were some stuffed animals—she thought they were animals—on shelves along the walls; shapes that didn’t bear too close an inspection if one wanted pleasant dreams.

  As she neared the two women, she saw that there was movement down in the bottom of that bowl; the light eddied and changed, casting odd little shadows across Kethry’s face. When she finally reached them, she saw with a start of astonishment that there was a tiny man looking up at Kethry from the bowl, gesturing from time to time, and making the light change. Behind the man was a kind of glowing rose-colored mist, and the light appeared to be coming from that soft and lambent haze.

  “It’s only an image,” Tarma said softly, as Kero found a stool and placed it beside her. “It’s Keth’s son, your uncle Jendar.”

  “—so, according to the Herald, the prince had been part of this conspiracy for some time. One of the other Heralds, their Weaponsmaster, somehow got wind of the assassination attempt, and when Selenay rode out for her exercise, he took a group of young warriors with him and followed her at a discreet distance. So when the conspirators ambushed her, they got something of a surprise—first of all, none of them expected Selenay to be much of a fighter, second, they didn’t expect the rescue party. Thanel was fatally injured during the fight. He died a couple of candlemarks later.”

  “That’s just as well,” Kethry replied, her posture relaxing just a bit. “Is there any sign that Thanel might have gotten any help from Rethwellan?”

  “None that anyone there has come up with, and no one at Court seems very inclined to look for it here.” The bearded figure cocked his head to one side, a gesture that made him look very like his mother. “Mother, do you want me to look into it?”

  “No, not really,” she replied. “I’d just as soon leave that to Valdemar. At this point it isn’t a threat to Rethwellan or the royal family, and I hope you’ll forgive me for being insular, but that’s really all I care about.”

  Jendar shook his head. “If you insist. I will have to admit that I’d just as soon not deal too closely with the Heralds. They’re well-intentioned, and really good people on the whole, but they’re too intense for my taste. Too much like you when that sword wanted you to do something.”

  “And the one time I was in Valdemar was enough for me,” she replied. “I’m glad I was just barely across the border. Have you ever been there?”

  He shivered. “Once, like you, just barely across the border. I kept feeling eyes on the back of my neck, but when I’d try to find out what was watching me, I could never find anything. I got the feeling that whatever it was, it was very unfriendly, and I had no intention of staying around to find out what it was and why it felt that way.”

  “It gets worse if you work any magic,” she replied soberly. “Quite a bit worse. By the way, this is your niece, Kero.”

  The tiny man peered up at Kero out of the depths of the bowl. “Looks like she takes after the Shin’a’in side,” he said, with what Kero assumed was a smile of approval. “Kero, if you are ever in Great Harsey, look us up. The school is just above the town, on the only hill within miles. We’re not hard to find, there’re only about forty of us here, but the town itself doesn’t number above two hundred.”

  She swallowed, with some difficulty. “Uh—thank you. I—uh—I’ll be sure to do that.”

  The man laughed merrily, and Kero saw then that he had his mother’s emerald-green eyes. “Just like every other fighter I’ve ever met—show her magic, and she curls up and wilts.”

  “Yes, and what do you do when someone has a sword point at your throat?” Kethry retorted with a hint of tired good humor.

  “I do my best to make sure I’m never in that particular situation, Mother dear,” he replied. “So far that strategy has worked quite well. Kero, child, if magic bothers you, I suggest you try Valdemar. They seem to have some kind of prohibition against it up there. In fact,” he continued thoughtfully, “I seem to have one demon of a time even mentioning magic to them. Don’t know why. It might be interesting to see what happens to Mother’s nag of a sword north of the border.”

  “That’s an experiment I’d rather not see tried,” Kethry told him. “Is that all you have for us?”

  “That’s all for now,” Jendar said, dropping back into a serious mode. “I’ll contact you the usual way if anything more comes up. I know they’ll want the young man here as soon as possible; get him on the road tomorrow, if you can. You might tell him, if he seems interested, that his brother is definitely assigning him to the retinue of the Lord Martial with a view to making him Lord Martial in a few years. I’d guess three years at the most; the poor old warhorse is on his last legs, and losing Jad has done something to him. He was looking particularly tottery this morning. Tarma, I hope the young man is up to the challenge.”

  “He’s up to it,” she said firmly. “I wouldn’t turn him loose if he wasn’t. Remember, I held him back when Thanel went north because he wasn’t ready.”

  “Good enough, I’ll let the word leak into the Council. Take care, Mother.” The man bowed once, and the light in the bowl winked out.

  Kethry raised her head, slowly, as if it felt very heavy. “Thank the Windlady I’m an Adept,” she said feelingly. “The Pool of Imaging took it out of me when I was young. I hate to think what I’d be feeling like these days.”

  What—oh, right. Adepts can pull on energy outside themselves to work magic, Kero remembered. Learning the capabilities of the various levels of mages was something both Kethry and Tarma had insisted she and Daren learn. “Knowing what your enemy’s mages can and can’t do may help you win a fight with a minimum of shed blood, “ Tarma had stressed. “Daren, that blood should be as precious to you as your own, if only because each fighter lost is a subject lost—Kero, you’re talking about the fighters to whom you are obligated in every way, and they in turn are your livelihood, so a fighter lost may well represent next year’s income lost. Sounds cold, I know, but you have to keep all of that in mind.”

  “What was that?” Kero asked carefully.

  “It’s a spell only Masters and Adepts can use,” Kethry said, pulling her hair off her forehead and confining
it with a comb. She looked terribly tired, and her eyes were as red as Daren’s had been. “It’s basically a peacetime communication spell—it’s draining, it’s as obvious as setting off fireworks, and it leaves both parties open to attack. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages to my way of thinking.”

  “You can talk to the other person as easily as if you were face-to-face,” Kero said wonderingly. “I had no idea that was possible.”

  “Like a great many spells, it’s one we tend to keep quiet about,” Kethry told her with a wry twist to her lips. “There are a fair number of war-leaders out there who wouldn’t care how dangerous the spell was to the caster, if that was the kind of communication they could get.”

  “I can see that—was that really my uncle?”

  “In the flesh—so to speak—and kicking,” Tarma said. “He’s the one that took over your mother’s White Winds school and moved it up near the capital. He’s got a fair number of friends on the Rethwellan Grand Council, so as soon as anything happens, he knows about it. Useful sort of relative.”

  “I just wish he was a little less interested in politics, and more in the school,” Kethry said a bit sharply. “One of these days he’s going to back the wrong man.”

  “Maybe,” Tarma replied evenly. “Maybe not. He has unholy luck, your son. And he’s twice as clever as you and me put together. Besides, you know as well as I do that to keep the school neutral the head has to play politics with the best of them. The only reason you survived down there was because you were protected by the crown, and if that wasn’t playing politics, what is?”

  “I yield,” Kethry sighed. “You’re right, as usual. It’s just that I hate politics.”

  “Hate them all you want, so long as you play them right,” Tarma replied. “All right, little hawk,” she continued, turning to Kero, “Now you know as much as we do. Need anything else?”

  Tarma hadn’t said anything, nor had Kethry, but Kero sensed that they wanted to be alone. She had no idea how well they had known the King, but he had been Tarma’s pupil, and they had known his father very well. All things considered, it was probably time for a delicate withdrawal.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “How’s the lad?” Tarma asked as she turned to leave.

  “He’s probably fallen asleep by now,” she said, recalling that she’d left him sprawled over his bed in a state of exhausted numbness. “I think he’ll do a little better knowing Faram wants him. From what he’s said, he’s a lot closer to his brother than he was to his father.”

  “Not surprising,” Tarma said cryptically. “Well, I’ll let him know the news when he wakes up.”

  That was a definite dismissal, and Kero left as quickly as she could without actually hurrying. It was with a certain relief that she closed the door on Kethry’s workroom. She walked slowly toward the fireplace, feeling at something of a loss for what to do next. She was the only person in the Tower—except, perhaps, for the seldom-seen servants—who was left entirely untouched by the King’s death. Untouched, though not unaffected, for this affected Daren—

  She went up to her room, pulled a chair up to her window, and sat gazing out her window at the snow-covered meadow below the Tower, not really thinking, just letting her mind roam. She sat there the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon, before thoughts crystallized out of her musings. Uncomfortable thoughts.

  The King was calling in his brother, and Daren would be leaving in the morning, which left her the only student at the Tower. There wasn’t much more that Tarma could teach her now that she wouldn’t learn just as quickly through experience. There were things she needed to learn now that only experience and making her own mistakes would teach her.

  In short, it was time for her to leave as well.

  Leaving. Going out on my own. The thought was frightening. Paralyzing.

  At that moment, someone tapped on her door, shaking her out of her trance. “Yes?” she said still partially caught in her web of thoughts, and the visitor opened the door slowly and cautiously.

  “Kero?” Daren said softly, shaking her the rest of the way out of her inertia.

  “Come in.” She turned away from the window, searching his face, though she really didn’t know what she was looking for. “Are you—”

  “I’m all right,” he said, walking toward her, slowly. As his face came into the light, she saw that he looked a great deal calmer. In fact, he looked as if he had come to terms with the news, and with his own feelings. “I really am. They told me that Faram wants me home.”

  As he said that, his face changed, and there was hope and a bit of excitement beneath the mourning.

  “That—I was kind of afraid Faram had forgotten me,” he said shyly. “It would be awfully easy to. And—and I thought, he’s had one brother turn on him, he might not trust me anymore either. I wouldn’t blame him, you know, and neither would anyone else. I’d be tempted, if I were in his place, and I knew he was safely tucked out of the way with two of my father’s old friends keeping an eye on him. I thought that might even be the reason Father sent me out here in the first place, to get me out of the way, with someone he trusted making sure I didn’t turn traitor on him. I thought maybe that was why he didn’t send for me when Thanel went off to Valdemar.”

  Kero nodded, slowly. That was sound reasoning; in fact, in his place, she’d probably have suspected the same thing.

  “But Faram wants me. More than that, he wants me to apprentice to the Lord Martial.” There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and a light in his eyes. “It’s just about everything I ever dreamed of, Kero—”

  “And you deserve it,” she interrupted him, with as much emphasis as she could muster. “You’ve worked for it: you’ve earned it. Tarma herself would be the first to tell you that.”

  “And now you can come with me,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There’s nothing stopping me from having you with me. Faram studied under Tarma, he knows Kethry, we won’t even have to go through that nonsense of getting you ennobled so we can be married—”

  Married? “Whoa!” she said sharply. “Who said anything about getting married?”

  That brought him to a sudden halt. His eyes widened in surprise at her vehemence. “I thought that was what you wanted!” he said, in innocent surprise. “I want you with me, Kero—there isn’t anyone else I’d rather be married to—”

  “Do you want me enough to have me apprenticed alongside you?” she asked pointedly.

  He stared at her in shock, as if he could not believe what she was saying. “You know that wouldn’t be possible!” he exclaimed. “You’re a girl! Women can’t do things like that!”

  “I’m your equal in blade and on horseback,” she replied with rising heat. “I’m your better with a bow and with tactics. Why shouldn’t I work at your side?”

  “Because you’re a girl!” he spluttered. “You can’t possibly—it just isn’t done—no one would permit it!”

  “Well, what would I be able to do?” she asked. “Sit on the Council? Act as military advisor?”

  “Of course not!” He was shocked—despite all their talking, all the things they had done together—by the very idea. Not so enlightened as we appeared to be, hmm?

  “Well, will I be able to keep in training?” She waited for him to answer, and didn’t much care for his long silence. “All right, what will I be able to do?”

  “Ride some, and hunt—genteel hunting, with hawk and a light bow,” he said, obviously without thinking. “Nothing like the kind of hunting we have been doing here. No boar, no deer, good gods, that would send half the Court into apoplexy! You can’t offend them.”

  “In other words, I wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing that I’ve been trained and working at for the past three years,” she pointed out bitterly. “I can’t offend them—by ‘them’ I assume you mean the men—by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I’ve worked for all this time
, and even my recreations.”

  “You could advise me in private,” he said hastily. “I need that, Kero, just like I need you! And we could practice together.”

  “In private, so no one would know your lady wife can beat the breeches off you two times out of three,” she said acidly, deliberately telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible.”

  “Of course, in private!” he replied angrily. “You can’t do things like that where people can find out about them! After all, you won’t be a common mercenary! Do you think I want anyone to know—”

  “That I’m your equal, and their superior. How good I am.” She stood up. “In short, you want a combination of toy soldier and expensive whore; your delicate lady in public and whatever else you want out of me in private, with no opinions or thoughts of my own—except in private. Thank you, no. I told you that night we first talked that I wasn’t prepared to sell anything other than my sword. That hasn’t changed, Daren. And it isn’t likely to.”