Ulice stifled a gasp of relief and stepped back, extending a hand to Arendil who stood scowling next to his grandfather. “Come, bid your mother farewell.”
His mother may have been overflowing with gratitude, but Arendil was a picture of sullen, adolescent resentment. “Does it have to be now?” he said in a dull voice. “Why not in the winter, or next year?”
“Arendil!” his mother snapped, extending her hand again.
The boy’s scowl deepened and he seemed about to speak again when his grandfather’s knee prodded him forward. “Don’t insult Her Highness with tardiness, boy.”
Davoka trotted her pony closer, leading a horse by the reins, the fine grey mare the regiment’s Lord Marshal had offered Lyrna at the pass. “Here,” she said, tossing the reins to Arendil. The boy looked down at them, his lips curling. “Got my own horse,” he said.
“Perhaps it is a little too big for him,” Lyrna said to Davoka. “Do we have something more suited to a child?”
“I can ride it!” Arendil retorted, putting a foot into the stirrup and hauling himself into the saddle with practised ease. “Just not mine, is all.”
Ulice went to his side, clasping his hand and pressing a kiss to it. After a moment Banders came forward and gently pulled her away. Lyrna saw the flush of Arendil’s cheeks and turned away. “Baron! My lady!” she said, raising her voice to ensure the surrounding cavalry could hear. “My thanks for your hospitality. Rest assured your orphaned ward will receive the finest education at the King’s court.”
Banders put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and pulled her close as Lyrna turned Surefoot and led the regiment from the estate.
They made good time and were encamped on the northern fringes of the Urlish three days later, Lyrna and Davoka engaging in the now-nightly ritual of knife throwing. The Lonak woman had obtained an additional brace of knives, presumably from some unsuspecting brother at the pass, which enabled Arendil to join in, though his lack of skill was obvious.
“Boy hasn’t been taught to fight,” Davoka observed as Arendil’s latest throw went wide of the cleaved log they were using as a target.
“I have!” Arendil replied. “I can ride and use a lance and a sword. Grandfather taught me. Every day since I was eight. I even have my own armour, though I wasn’t allowed to take it.”
“Armour,” Davoka scoffed, sending a knife close to the centre of the log. “The steel-bellies were always easy to kill, just had to wait for them to camp. Only dangerous when they had something to charge at.”
“You can choose some armour when we get to the palace,” Lyrna assured Arendil, her own throw smacking into the upper edge of the log. “We have endless corridors full of it, rack upon rack of swords too. It always struck me as odd that the Realm Guard cost so much to arm when we had so many swords going to waste as ornaments.”
“Grandfather has lots of swords too, spears as well. He brought them back from the desert war.”
“Does he talk of it?” Lyrna asked him. “His time in the war.”
“Oh yes, though it makes him sad sometimes. The betrayal of Lord Al Sorna weighs on him. He says if the army had known of it, every man would have stayed and died to stop the Alpirans taking him, even the Cumbraelins.”
Lyrna decided she liked him then, the openness and disregard for titles were a quiet delight, though they would make him easy meat at court. And as for Davoka . . .
“It is not a good place,” she told the Lonak woman that night.
They sat by the campfire, Arendil sleeping soundly in his tent. Davoka sat on her wolf fur, long legs stretched out, cutting strips of dried beef into her mouth with a hunting knife. “Dangerous?” she asked in Realm Tongue. Lyrna had noted it was almost all she spoke now.
“In many ways, most unknown to you. The people there lie as if it were a virtue. Your closeness to me will arouse suspicion and envy in some. Others will seek to turn it to advantage. You must keep a guard on your tongue, and do not look for trust.”
Davoka grinned as she chewed. “If I have your trust, I need no other.”
“You may call me queen, sister. But I do not rule here; at the palace my counsel is tolerated, discarded or accepted as my brother sees fit. I fear my trust will not be enough to spare you the cruelties that await us there.”
“It’s your home, yet you speak as if you hate it.”
Hate it? Was it possible to hate a place she knew so completely? A place drained of mystery in childhood. But there had been so many faces over the years, so many lost to the noose or the wars. Lord Artis, power-greedy fool though he had been, she had always appreciated his pragmatism. Fat Lord Al Unsa and his clumsy dancing, as corrupt as a man could be yet he always made her laugh. And Linden, poor loving, idiot Linden . . . And Vaelin.
“Perhaps I do,” she admitted. “But there is nowhere else for me.”
“Cannot your brother rule without your counsel?”
“He certainly tries to, though I’m loath to abandon him even so. Perhaps one day, when the Realm is calmer, then I’ll find another home.”
Davoka grinned. “Plenty of space at the Mountain.”
Lyrna laughed. “I doubt the Mahlessa would welcome my presence.” But there is always the Northern Reaches . . .
“This forest is very old,” Davoka said, eyeing the dense woodland fringing the road with evident unease. Lyrna had noted her dislike of forest before, the constricting trees were a stark contrast to the tundra and mountains she knew so well. “I can smell the age of it.”
“The Urlish is the largest expanse of forest in the Realm,” Lyrna replied. “Preserved by the King’s Word and dwarfed only by the Great Northern Forest, at least on this continent.”
Davoka frowned at her. “Continent?”
“The landmass across which we travel.”
“There are others?”
Lyrna was about to laugh then saw the honest curiosity in Davoka’s eyes. She knows so much, and yet so little. “Four that are known to our maps,” she said. “All much larger than this one. Probably more besides, but no Realm subject has yet journeyed so far and returned.”
“Not so,” Arendil put in. “Kerlis the Faithless. It’s said he travelled around the world twice, and currently makes his third such journey.”
“Just a story,” Lyrna said. “A myth.”
“It can’t be,” the boy insisted. “Uncle Vanden swears he met him once, near thirty years ago.”
“And who is Uncle Vanden?”
“Grandfather’s cousin, a great and mighty knight in his time. I call him Uncle because he acts as such. He’s very old.”
“Old enough to meet the man who never dies, eh?”
Arendil’s scowl returned. “It’s true. Uncle wouldn’t lie. It happened when he was in service to the Warden of the North Shore. He was wounded in a battle with some smugglers and became separated from his men in the craggy rocks that cover the coast near the mountains. He says he stumbled about for hours, fearing he would bleed his life away, then he found Kerlis sheltering amidst the rocks with some strange people. Uncle was near death by then but there was a little boy amongst them with the Dark, a touch that could heal.”
Lyrna’s interest began to pique. “A healing touch?”
“I know it sounds fanciful, and Grandfather told me it was just the dreamy ramblings of an old man. But Uncle showed me the scar, a patch of mottled skin on his shoulder, all puckered and rough to the touch, but the centre of it smooth and unscarred in the shape of a hand, a child’s hand.”
Davoka gave a sullen grunt and spurred her pony to a canter, moving ahead until she was out of earshot. “Such talk upsets her,” Lyrna explained. “Finish the story.”
Arendil’s gaze was guarded, as if he feared she had some mockery in store, but he continued after a moment’s hesitation. “Although the boy had closed his wound, Uncle sickened with fever. Kerlis and the others saved him from the rising tide, taking him to shore and making a fire. Kerlis sat with him that night as he shivered and waited for death, and it was from his own lips that Uncle heard the tale. How he had been cursed by the Departed, though not, as the legend says, for simple Faithlessness, but for refusing a place in the Beyond, refusing to join with them. So they had closed him off from all doors to death, even the great emptiness that awaits the unfaithful. Twice he had circled the world, Uncle said. Twice he had returned to this land, come to help those he could, all the while searching.”
Lyrna was familiar with the story of Kerlis the Faithless but this was a new wrinkle to the tale. Kerlis was a cautionary figure, a lost soul endlessly wandering the earth, friendless and desperate for release. A passive victim, not a searcher. “Searching for what?” she asked.
“Uncle asked him the same thing. He said he thought Kerlis expected him to die, hence the freedom with which he spoke. He leaned close to my uncle and spoke in a whisper, ‘For what I was promised. One day there will be one amongst the gifted folk of this land who can kill me. I’ll know him when I see him. Until then I’ll strive to save as many as I can, for in years to come he may well be born to those I save. In a few years most birthed by this generation will be scattered or slaughtered, and I’ll take myself off again. My third circling of the world, my lord. I wonder what I’ll see.’ Uncle fell into a feverish slumber then, and when he awoke, somehow still living, Kerlis and the strange folk were gone.”
