Shadowborn - Captivity Part 20

"It's hard to believe that Fearin is using two little girls to get us safe pa.s.sage," Ranander said softly with an accompanying sigh. "You know what I think of those girls, but to just give them away like porcelain dolls... "

"Fearin isn't any happier about doing it than we are to see it done," Ijarin surprised me by commenting. "That's why he kept to himself once we got here, I think, the way he hasn't done until now. The necessity shames him, something we can all understand."

"Don't include me in on that understanding," I said, this time doing the surprising. "Those girls really do have no place in the outside world, and I have the suspicion that if they were returned to their father their lives would soon be over. He'd never be able to marry them off to anyone he wanted to stay on friendly terms with, but here they will be married. And to real princes, who probably know they'll never again have a chance at women from the outside world."

"I hadn't thought of that," Ijarin said, suddenly brightening. "And if the servants around here don't understand them, the girls will have to have their new husbands translate for them. That should be a good enough reason for them to be moderately polite to the men. It looks like Fearin was feeling ashamed for no reason."

Ranander made a sound that could have indicated agreement, but for a change there were no words bubbling out to join the sound. In point of fact Ranander didn't look very happy, and the following silence let me do a little more thinking.

After a little while Sallain came over to talk to us, explaining that his sons had put the girls back into their coach in order to take them to his palace. Half of Sallain's escort had gone along with the coach and his sons, and I silently wished them all good luck. If the girls didn't wear out their welcome before the last of the army left the valley it would probably be nothing but luck...

"I wonder if it would be possible to convince you to visit with us for a time," Sallain said, and I turned my head to find him staring at me. "There isn't much in the way of beauty in this valley, so your presence would be very welcome."

"If it's beauty you want, you're looking in the wrong place," I told him, having half expected the invitation. "All you can see is the outside of me; inside is something you really don't want to ever meet. Don't you know why I was able to speak to and understand your people?"

He stared at me in puzzlement for a moment, probably having forgotten about the language thing because he spoke our language, and then the truth dawned on him. He paled the least little bit, and I could almost see his lips forming the word Shadowborn...

"Yes, of course, you're perfectly right," Sallain said after a handful of heartbeats. "Please excuse me now, I need to speak to my men."

He turned and rode away, obviously trying not to look as if he were hurrying, and Ijarin made a sound of scorn.

"I like the way he thanked you for helping him," the barbarian murmured, clearly annoyed on my behalf. "The least he could have done was behave civilly."

"If you think that was bad, be glad we won't be here when the full truth hits him," I murmured back. "It occurred to me to wonder why I was allowed to help him if he's being punished for something, and a little thought brought me to the conclusion that my helping him must have made his punishment worse. Anyone want to guess how looking normal would be worse for him than looking the way he did earlier?"

"All right, I see it now," Ijarin grudged, all annoyance gone. "Until now Sallain was satisfied to stay in this valley because it was his hiding place. Now that he no longer has to hide, he'll want to go back out into the ordinary world. What will happen when he probably isn't allowed to leave?"

"I don't even want to think about it," I answered, and that was the complete truth. I'd been used by whichever G.o.d had placed Sallain here to begin with, and wasn't that a novel experience...

The first of the army wasn't long in reaching our position, the men moving more than just briskly. They trotted past our position in a gait they'd be able to keep up for quite a while, and their glance at us was filled with a good deal of relief. Fearin and Garam must have a.s.sured everyone that the rest of us were still in good health, but seeing the truth for themselves clearly made the men feel a good deal better.

Garam led the way on his horse, and Fearin came by in a little while to ride up and down the column. The various wagons were being pulled by more than the usual number of horses, which would hopefully make it unnecessary to stop and change the horses. Ijarin's people came by after a while and looked like they were going to join us, but he gestured to them and they reluctantly kept going. The faster we got everyone out of the valley the better off we would be.

But fast isn't a word that can be used for moving an army through a distance that would take almost a full day to complete. The men and wagons moved as quickly as possible for the length of time they had to keep moving, but the actual time dragged by like a dying man in a desert trying to reach the water that would save his life. He might want to get up and run, but pulling himself along by his fingers was the best he could accomplish. And, as usual, waiting was more deadly and tiring than almost any kind of effort one might be forced to. Not to mention hunger- and thirst-making...

At least the trouble held off until the very last of the army was almost out of the valley. Fearin joined Ranander, Ijarin, and me as we brought up the tail end of the march, and we could see the rise in ground a small distance ahead that ought to signal the way out. Half way between that rise in ground and our own position there was a sudden flurry of activity, and Fearin headed for the flurry at once. I felt tempted to follow, but suddenly had the conviction that that was what I was expected to do.I had no idea where the conviction came from, but it didn't seem wise to argue the point. For that reason I stayed where I was, and in a short while I was able to urge the last of the guardsmen to keep going. Fearin stood a few strides to the left of the column with four guardsmen, the four currently surrounded by beings who looked very much like the one I'd spoken to in that house. The beings looked much too innocent, Fearin looked frustrated, the guardsmen looked frightened, and some of Sallain's people, in armor and still mounted, looked smug. I murmured to Ranander and Ijarin to get the last of the men out of the valley and then rode over to see what the fuss was all about.

"... two stories that don't quite match," Fearin was saying with tightly-held anger as I rode up.

"Your ... citizens insist that these men made lewd gestures in their direction, and therefore need to be punished. My men say they're the ones who were gestured toward, and they simply returned the effort. If your people started the trouble, you can't expect to punish my people for getting involved."

"Your people weren't supposed to get involved in anything at all," one of the armored men retorted, an ugly amus.e.m.e.nt behind his words. "Now that they did, you have to turn them over to us. After all, you can't say you weren't warned."

"That's not what we were warned against," I put in as Fearin seethed silently. "Our people weren't supposed to interfere with yours, and they haven't. If your people considered some gestures as interference they wouldn't have started the exchange, so you have nothing to complain about. Back off and let us take these men out of here."

"We don't take orders in our own valley, and certainly not from a female," the spokesman came back, his expression still ugly even without the amus.e.m.e.nt. "Those fools are ours to see to, and there's nothing you can do to change that."

"That's not quite true, but I don't have to bother with any of you," I said, showing my own version of an ugly smile. "If it's a trade you want, your lives for theirs, the man of Power next to me can take care of it. If our people are bound not to make trouble, so are you and yours.

You're in the midst of breaking that agreement, so your lives are forfeit. Who wants to die first?"

"Don't be ridiculous," the spokesman said with a nervous laugh after glancing at Fearin, while the beings who had been gathered around began to slide toward the dimness among the trees.

"He won't use his Power here, not when he can't kill everyone in the valley. It would start a war, and that's the last thing you people want."

"But we've already been through one war, and now we're headed for a second," Fearin said at once, his dark-blue gaze locked to the spokesman. "Besides, how bad a war can it be if your people die if they try to follow me? You may be under the impression that I can't use Power here in the valley, but that's a mistaken impression. Would you like me to prove it?"

When Fearin raised his right hand the men mounted behind the spokesman began to back their horses, which produced a snarl in the spokesman even while his expression said he wanted to do the same.

"All right, all right, you win," the spokesman snarled, clearly hating to say the words. "We were told that you couldn't use your Power, but - Just get those fools out of here and don't come back."

Fearin nodded at the four guardsmen, who turned instantly and began to run after the last of the men we could see climbing the rise. When Fearin mounted again we followed along behind the four, eventually taking our turn at reaching and climbing the rise. The silence was lovely until we left the twilight behind, coming out into early afternoon that had actual sunlight. We were the last to leave the valley, and once we were a dozen strides away Fearin finally turned in my direction.

"Do you have any idea how lucky you were?" he demanded in a voice that actually shook. "Or maybe I should say how lucky we were. In the future do you think you might check with me before you threaten people with my Power?""If you're saying you couldn't use your Power in the valley after all it doesn't matter," I responded without looking at him. "If they hadn't believed me I would have had to let the beast loose, so the bluff was worth trying. Letting them get away with cheating wasn't something I would have been able to do."

I heard him muttering under his breath rather than speaking out loud, but I could guess what he was muttering about. He also hadn't been able to let innocents be taken because those valley people made cheating a way of life, which is why he'd been arguing with Sallain's guardsmen.

He may have been overly concerned with diplomacy, but even someone like that would find it hard to hand over four innocent men without doing what he could to stop the farce. I'd realized that if he hadn't already used magic it was probably because he couldn't, but happily the valley people hadn't thought the thing through quite that thoroughly.

The army had kept going for a good distance before the first guardsmen stopped to make camp, and Garam probably hadn't had to urge them to go that distance. The meadow beyond the valley was wide and welcoming with a thick stand of trees beyond its expanse, and by the time we reached the middle of the camp our tents were already in evidence. The rest of the inner circle waited for us near those tents, along with a couple of guardsmen a.s.signed to see to our horses. Fearin and I dismounted and handed over our mounts, and once the guardsmen were gone Fearin turned to the others.

"We're all really drained after that trek through the valley, so even though there's a lot of day left we'll hold our next meeting tomorrow morning at breakfast in my tent." Fearin looked around as he spoke, probably seeing the relief in everyone's face just as I did. "The men are even more tired than we are, but I've set a spell to make sure that those men on sentry duty stay awake and alert. You all have food and drink in your tents, so have a good meal and a good sleep and I'll see you in the morning."

As soon as the group began to break up I started for my tent, but I managed no more than a single step before Fearin's hand was on my arm.

"Not you," he said, annoyance mixed with weariness in his tone. "You and I have a discussion waiting for us, and it's waited too long already."

"I think I've said more than once that we have nothing to discuss," I responded without turning my head to look at him. "And even beyond that, do you really want to start an argument with me when we're both so tired? There isn't a chance that you'll get what you think you want, High Master, so show everyone how wise you are and let go of my arm."

My mentioning "everyone" wasn't a turn of phrase; the rest of our circle had stopped leaving, and now they stood and stared at Fearin and me with disturbed expressions. It actually took half a dozen heartbeats before Fearin's hand left my arm, but when it happened I didn't comment any further. I simply went to my tent, waited for my own food and drink to appear, then had my meal while I thought some more. The conclusions I came to were very disturbing and left behind a single, burning question: what was I supposed to do about the situation?

Since that answer refused to come, I laced closed my tent flap, got out of my clothes, then let sleep take me. I'd have to see what happened tomorrow, and then maybe an answer to the most important question would come... How long was I likely to live if I tried to do anything...?

Chapter 20.

I was dressed and out of my tent before dawn the next morning, this time wearing the new clothes Fearin had provided. The new day started out overcast and heavy with the promise of coming rain, the sun G.o.d's splendor hidden behind a dark gray ceiling like the top of an angry tent. Not a breath of a breeze stirred the heat and moisture-laden air, and I couldn't help taking this weather as a bad sign. More than one storm was waiting to break, and when it did...

Getting back to the area of our tents showed me people on their way to Fearin's meeting, so I followedthem to the dark blue tent. I got a number of worried looks that I ignored, going instead to the food table and beginning to help myself. Ranander was, of course, the last to arrive, most likely having stopped on the way to see if I were still in my tent. He sent me a light and friendly smile where I sat with my food, and then went to the table to get his own plate. Fearin sat to one side, paying attention to no one, apparently distracted by his thoughts. No one saw fit to interrupt his thinking, so the meal pa.s.sed in relative peace and quiet. Once most of us were finished, though, Fearin brought his attention back to his guests.

"I think most of you know by now that we're less than two days away from our ultimate destination," he said, his words slower than usual and on the heavy side. "Prince Garam, you and your special squad will enter the city first, primarily to escort Kiri. She'll help you locate the cardinal points your men will need to be stationed at, and you'll help her to find the places she'll be exercising her ... talents."

"Which talents are you talking about?" Garam asked after nodding, nothing but curiosity in his voice. "If she's going to be talking to rats again - "

"What she's going to be doing is distracting people just before we attack," Fearin said, interrupting what would probably have been nonsense. "She has the ability to ... make things uglier or more beautiful as she sees fit, and she'll be doing both. Men will be clawing down walls with their bare hands to get at the object of their most intense desires, and other men will be screaming and fighting to get away from their greatest terrors. If all those men are city guardsmen, we may not even have much to do in the way of fighting once we're inside the city's walls."

There was a time of silence while everyone stared at me, Garam with his brows high, Talasin with a smile, Lokkel with a satisfied expression, Ijarin with nothing of his feelings showing, and Ranander with a grin.

Fearin still hadn't looked at me directly and I was fairly sure I knew why, but that wasn't the point needing to be made first.

"You've never mentioned the name of the city that's supposed to be our ultimate aim," I commented, watching Fearin carefully. "Since we're almost there, no one should mind if you share that information now."

"The city we'll be taking for our Guardian is called Stophen-Zur," Fearin said after a very brief hesitation.

"It's the city that was stolen from him, and - "

"No," I interrupted, having antic.i.p.ated getting that particular answer. "That can't be the city he lost to an enemy. I visited that city before I went on to Faerza and fell slave, and there was a large, well-attended temple to him that was thriving. But the main point is that his wasn't the only temple doing well, so the whole city couldn't have been his."

Exclamations of surprise and shock sounded from the others, and Fearin finally looked at me with a frown.

"You have to be mistaken," Fearin said, disturbance in his dark blue eyes. "You heard our Guardian for yourself, so there's nothing to argue about. You and Garam and his men will leave here today at - "

"No, I won't," I said again, this time bringing anger and worry to the expression in his eyes. "There was an excuse to reduce Faerza because of the slaves they kept and the way they treated people, but Stophen-Zur has a law against slavery and they even help out people down on their luck. The city doesn't deserve to be destroyed because of a whim, so I flatly won't do it."

"Even if the reason for the attack is a whim, you seem to forget whose whim it has to be," Fearin pointed out at once, which silenced the others again. "Since you don't want to make the mistake of offending the one in whose cause we move, you'll just - "

"You don't seem to understand," I interrupted again, carefully making sure not to think about what I said.

"I've had enough of this farce so I won't waste any more time on it. If that city is attacked, I won't be part of the effort."

Lokkel was open-mouthed with shock, Talasin had covered his eyes with both hands, Garam was trying to order me to keep quiet and do as I was told, and Fearin seemed to be trying to find what to say.

Ijarin, who sat to my right, voiced a sigh, and then his hand was on my arm.

"Kiri, this isn't something you can afford to be stubborn about," he said, his voice filled with weariness.

"The first time you ignored the wishes of a G.o.d you paid for the act with your freedom. Do you reallywant to find out the hard way what you'll lose this time?"

"Listen to him, Kiri," Ranander urged from my left, his hand on my other arm. "I know you won't have any trouble doing what our Guardian expects of you, so I don't understand why you're hesitating. Maybe if we all told you how wonderful we think you are you'd feel better about - "

"Are all of you deaf?" I asked, ignoring the words of agreement coming from the others. "I'm not being stubborn and I'm not hesitating, I'm flatly and absolutely refusing. This trained bear has done her last dance no matter how many times the music is played again, and that decision is final. If you think that taking Stophen-Zur is so important, go ahead and do it without me."

"We should be able to do just that," Garam said to Fearin, speaking into the strained silence. "Once I get a look at the city I can devise a strategy that will do the job even without the girl's help. They don't know we're here, so there's no reason to hold back a quick, decisive thrust."

"You've absolutely right," Fearin said, clearly pulling himself out of the strange mood that had held him.

"Our army won't have trouble taking the city, and then - "

"No, we can't!" Ranander protested, cutting off Fearin's words without hesitation. "We have to have Kiri doing her part, otherwise our Guardian will be furious!"

"How sure are you about that, Ranander?" Talasin asked without the hope that Fearin had started to show in his expression. "Is that just your opinion, or do you know it?"

"I'll bet he knows it," I said before Ranander could respond. "Would anyone like to bet gold against the point?"

"Why are you acting so strangely this morning?" Fearin demanded before anyone could take my bet.

"What's gotten into you?"

"Why don't you tell us first what's gotten into you," I countered immediately. "You've been distracted since we first got here, not even pestering me the way you usually do. If you're not in the mood to share with us, maybe I can guess the answer."

I'd added that last because Fearin's jaw had tightened with an expression that usually meant he was about to snarl something about intrusion.

"If you think you can guess, why don't you just go ahead and try," Fearin returned, his tone eloquent with the knowledge that I'd be wasting my time. "If you can't guess, don't bother asking the same question again because you still won't be getting an answer."

"Then my guess had better be good," I responded, smiling into his anger. "What I think put you into so distracted a mood is the visit you had before we got here. You were told not to keep trying to speak to me, and probably also not to tell me about the visit. You were ordered to leave me completely alone, and you've been trying to figure out why the G.o.d would say something like that."

"How in the name of chaos could you possibly know that?" Fearin demanded while almost everyone else made sounds of shocked surprise. "I know you weren't anywhere near my tent during the visit, so how did you find out?"

"I didn't find out, I figured it out," I answered sourly. "You were pressing too hard and in a way that might bring out the truth, so you had to be stopped. In a way I was almost expecting something like this."

"How could you be expecting something the rest of us didn't even know about?" Ijarin demanded, looking almost as disturbed as Fearin. "And what do you mean, the High Master was pressing too hard?

What truth was involved and what did he have to be stopped from doing?"

"Fearin had to stop trying to prove he was innocent of the accusation leveled against him," I explained, finding very little enjoyment in the close attention everyone was paying me. "He was supposed to turn away from me in disgust when I gave him such a hard time, not keep trying to deny his guilt. It was finally necessary to actually warn him off, but that warning off won't do the good it was supposed to. I'm still not going to be available."

"Look, I have no idea what you're talking about, and I doubt that you understand any better," Fearin said, more than a little weariness in his voice. "There's only one question to be answered right now, and here it is: Do you really want our Guardian to find out what you've been saying? Since the answer has to be no - "

"But Diin-tha already knows what I said," I interrupted to point out. "He's been in the middle of all thisright from the beginning - hasn't he, Ranander?"

I'd turned to look at the man on my left, almost everyone else adding silent stares of shock, but Ranander only looked confused.

"Are you asking me to know if our Guardian has been somewhere around, Kiri?" he tried, his air of innocence as real as ever. "I thought you understood that my ability doesn't work where strong Power or a G.o.d is concerned. And what you said doesn't make any sense anyway. A G.o.d has better things to do than hang around with a bunch of mortals and ... watch... Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I was just remembering what you said when we first met," I told him, still examining the man closely.

"You said you tried to be friends with everyone, but some people were less than kind to you. That was supposed to make me feel sorry for you, especially when Garam got personal and nasty almost every time he saw you. But you knew Garam would act like that because of his nature and you were even counting on it."

"Counting on it for what?" Ranander put, still projecting heavy confusion. "Kiri, I don't understand - "

"You were expecting my feelings about Garam to get you into my bed just to spite the man," I said, letting the impatience I felt color my tone. "I was supposed to believe that you were the only one Garam treated like that, and not realize that he behaved the same toward all people he considered non-fighters. You'd already told me how well the camp women liked you, so you expected everything to go according to your plan. After all, as ugly as I looked I would be rejected by all the rest of the men around me and that would leave you as the only one I could turn to. But I wasn't rejected by the other men around me, not even when they found out what I was."

"Does anyone understand what she's talking about?" he asked of the others in our circle, the plea almost pitiful. "All I did was offer friends.h.i.+p and acceptance - "

"Yes, all you did was offer two of the things you knew I'd come to believe I'd never get from anyone," I said, bringing his attention back to me when no one else answered his question. "You never noticed that Fearin was ready to offer those things right from the beginning, and then Garam reversed his position completely after the attack. To make matters even worse, your specially chosen leader of this army snuck around while I was supposed to be brooding about how alone I was and Earned his way into my bed first. That must have come as something of a shock after the way Fearin ignored women on a regular basis. You must have considered him even less compet.i.tion than anyone else."

"Kiri, are you feeling all right?" Ranander asked in a plaintive, worried way, his tone gentle. "You seem to be imagining all kinds of plots that I'm responsible for, but it isn't true. If you stop and think for a moment or two -"

"I've already done the necessary thinking, and I've even consulted my memory," I returned. "You made sure to mention that 'some people' were less than kind to you, but you never responded in any way to Garam's baiting. If you were what you claim to be you would have been bothered in some way by what was said; you wouldn't have simply dismissed it all as completely unimportant. And then there's that little tidbit you told me about Fearin."

"You don't mean that he's the one who caused all that ruckus!" Fearin put in with a growl. "What did you say to her, Ranander, and why would you do something like that? I've never been anything but courteous to you - "

"Really, Fearin, I'd never say anything bad about you," Ranander protested, just the right amount of nervousness and innocence added. "I don't know what's wrong with Kiri, but she seems to be confused about a lot of things."