ROMANCING THE SWORD
Book One – Kingdom of the Void
by
Samuel Z Jones
Copyright Samuel Z Jones 2011
Smashwords Edition
Also available in e-book formats by Samuel Z Jones:
Romancing The Sword:
Book Three: Sins of The Father
Book Five: Weapons of the Gods (coming soon)
CHAPTER ONE
THE QUEEN OF MANY COLOURS
"I don't understand your problem." Eliana's sword flicked out to steal the hilt from DeSilva's hand. "Arranged marriage is a fading tradition, you're lucky to have the opportunity."
Diving for his lost sword, DeSilva evaded the downward thrust of his teacher's blade.
"I should be grateful?" He rolled, sword in hand now, defending himself from a succession of chops and thrusts. Eliana pursued him to the ground and back up to his feet, unrelenting in her assault. A silver mask concealed her face, reflecting DeSilva's expression back at him and revealing only her eyes.
"Gratitude would be nice." Eliana swept her sword down from on high and DeSilva moved to parry; Eliana took a half-step back and twitched her blade into an upward cut that came a hair shy of castrating him. DeSilva aborted his own thrust and Eliana's sword-point shaved his chin, drawing a drop of blood on the upswing of her stroke.
"It's not for duty that I raised you," she said, "not for honour or because I had to, and I demand nothing of you in return. But if I ask you this," Eliana thrust, suddenly, "why must you refuse?"
DeSilva parried and only just succeeded in voiding Eliana's blade. They came together in a clinch, inches apart, woman and youth straining against each other.
"Find me a woman I can't beat," DeSilva said, "then I'll marry her."
DeSilva had the strength Eliana lacked and she gave way, darting beneath his head-cut as they disengaged. Her sword kissed his throat and they froze.
"I just beat you. Now marry who I tell you to."
"I'd yield to you." DeSilva stepped back from Eliana warily, his guard still raised though the bout was over. "But that's not what you want."
"I am Warmistress," Eliana said, turning her back on him and starting towards the weapon rack to put up her sword. "I cannot and you know it." She smiled, her face hidden behind her mask and only her grey eyes revealing the expression. "Even if I could, you are too young."
"You're immortal. Age doesn't matter to you."
"I am Warmistress," Eliana said again. "The law of Silveneir prevails."
"If it did not?"
Eliana laughed and re-set her borrowed sword in the weapons rack. As Warmistress, queen of a warrior people, she carried no blade of her own. She maintained fencing only as a habit of long observance.
"It does, I am, you are, and there it is. The Clan Kavnor have expressed an interest in you. They are very powerful, their daughters are very beautiful..."
"I've only got your word for that."
The mirrored shield of Eliana's mask hid her face, but she rolled her eyes theatrically.
"You think I'd sell you a horse? Clan Kavnor want you, Monte. They'll pick their best for the Warmistress' nephew; I too am very powerful."
"Do I have an alternative?" DeSilva put up his sword at last, joining Eliana by the weapons
rack. In Silveneir, men were forbidden to publicly bear arms. They walked unarmed from the training hall and into the corridors and quadrants of the Karnead Academy. Lessons were in session; they met no one.
"In Silveneir, you have no alternative," Eliana said. "What would you have me do?"
"Can't I marry a foreigner?"
Eliana laughed and ran her hands through her hair. DeSilva stopped walking, waiting while the Warmistress tucked her fiery locks back into place.
"The men of Kellia prize Silvan women above all others, and you want a Kellion princess for your wife? Contrary boy; were there virgin princesses in Daricia, we might find you a match."
"Are there?"
"No more." Eliana's eyes shifted from ocean grey to emerald green in her anger. "As your guardian I cannot help you. As your Warmistress, I will command you. You will accept the match with the daughter of Clan Kavnor."
"I won't."
"You're not your father," Eliana hissed and strode away, leaving DeSilva to walk the Academy halls alone.
The Warmistress' parting shot stung. Raised as Eliana's ward in Silveneir, DeSilva had never known his parents. His father, Montesinos DeKellia, had been famed as a duellist and adventurer, reviled as traitor and desperado. DeSilva's mother had been Eliana's first protege, Tamaris Savistri. When DeSilva was still in nappies, his parents had ridden away together to war, leaving their son to Eliana's fosterage. Neither had returned, and DeSilva had lived first as a boy and then a young man of Silveneir, a city-state ruled by women. With blood-lines and lineages preserved through the matriarchy, DeSilva's years of leisure were fast coming to an end. His coming-of-age had been marred by the announcement of Clan Kavnor's intention to press a suite.
DeSilva wandered into the Academy gardens and studied the sundial. It was a huge instrument, a ring of monolithic statues that had once been intricately carved. Time and the incessant rain in Silveneir had worn away all features of the titans. The sundial had been brought to the city in pieces from its original site and rebuilt here in the Academy centuries past, but whatever astronomy the original designer had employed in arranging the stone figures and the central spire had been utterly thrown away by its second architect. The sun was still climbing towards noon, but the misaligned stones of the sundial showed the time as three PM.
There was a collection of similar follies around Silveneir, ancient statues and monuments lifted from their original sites and brought to the city. With little to do and no duties to attend, DeSilva had come to know Silveneir well and studied the history of its bizarre structures. Towering above the skyline and framing the harbour to north and south, the twin pyramids of Silveneir cast half the city in twilight. The northern pyramid, Karkossan Tower, was the seat of Eliana's throne, surmounted by her palace and defended by the elite Sinistral Guard. Atop the southern pyramid was the Temple of Iaran. The sanctum of the Goddess-Queen had been burned and ruined in the wars almost two decades past, but accounts of the temple's razing were sketchy.
From the defunct Academy sundial, DeSilva wandered onto the street and headed for Southside, his favourite haunt from noon until evening. Thunderheads menaced the city with rain; DeSilva stuck to the ground-level streets of the city, avoiding the unsheltered upper terraces between the lesser pyramids.
Southside was a narrow trio of city blocks sandwiched between the suburbs and the walls of the Necropolis, Silveneir's single vast cemetery. Narrow streets and alleys linked Southside's winding main roads. The first landmark on DeSilva's habitual route led him past a statue of his mother, Tamaris. It was not a particularly complementary monument, depicting Silveneir's champion in torn clothes and broken chains, her sword upraised and pointing the way back to the Karnead Academy. From recorded history, DeSilva knew that his mother had been captured in the fighting by Kraag mercenaries, one of whom had issued a ransom demand that led to a duel in the Academy gardens. Symbolically, Tamaris' stone sword pointed the way to freedom.
DeSilva paused, noting that the monument had been recently defaced; someone had cut six deep scratches in the statue's right buttock. DeSilva had seen similar damage on other images of his mother.
Further on, the street became host to bizarre little shops and dealerships trading in antiques and obscure crafts. DeSilva went down a side street and came onto Flower Lane, where herbalists and incense traders predominated; the rank stench of Southside's inadequate sewers were here eclipsed by sweet aromas. DeSilva turned westwards and came upon the first signs of damage from the war. Abutments and decorative ramparts lining the terraced ziggurats had gone unrepaired. A crooked clocktower marked a y-shaped junction at the end of Flower Lane. The clock was broken and the tower leant dangerously, hit midway up by a cannonball, one of few directed upon Southside; the shot itself was now on display in the Southside Museum.
DeSilva turned left onto Farhaven Walk, a new street built over cleared ruins and one of the few ways from Southside into the Necropolis. There were no shops in the cemetery and no other pedestrians. Paved avenues and bleak tombs predominated, but where DeSilva entered, gardeners from Flower Lane maintained trees and shrubberies. At the first major junction, DeSilva came upon a statue of his father, Montesinos DeKellia. The bronze image was twelve feet tall and bestrode a six-foot rockery of carved stone corpses. DeKellia's sword hung in his right hand while in his upraised left, the titan brandished a rifle. Rather than forge an outsized replica in bronze, the artist had armed her statue with a small cannon, seized from the enemy in the final sally to drive them out. Smaller statues loomed in the trees and bushes around the grove, Kellion knights and Kraag Mercenaries, a host of enemies surrounding DeKellia.
DeSilva walked on quickly, avoiding the titan's shadow and heading south, the direction indicated by the barrel of his bronze father's gun. The trees gave way to a wide, stone terrace, descending in broad steps to a war memorial that marked the limit of Kraag incursion into Silveneir. A wall there listed the names of Silvan women held as Prisoners of War by the enemy within their own city. DeSilva stood in the shadow of the monument and looked westwards, towards the outer defences of Silveneir. Among the stepped pyramids and ziggurats, fragments of the old city wall remained, little towers and ramparts subsumed into newer terraces.
It was a long walk to the main gate, the site of Silveneir's only grave outside the Necropolis; if every champion to fall beneath those gates had been buried there, the place would have been thick with grave-stones. The Grave of the Kellion Knight stood alone at the northern corner of the gate's inner post, set cater-corner and partly intruding on the highway, a monolith carved in strict lines of black granite. DeSilva knelt down to read the inscription, tracing it first in Silvan, Kellion and finally Darician. The Silvan words were the merest nod to the enemy and a veiled threat;
'Here lies a Kellion Knight, first to cross the threshold.'
The Kellion lines were more complementary, a snatch of poetry dictated by the knight's killer;
'...Alone for love of knightly play, yield these souls their swords' demanding; let the hosts their marching stay...'
The Darian message was brief and cryptic, written in their bizarre pictograms;
'Here the Sorcerer defeated himself.'
There was a back-alley close by the gravestone, a narrow walk between the side of a house and the inner face of the city walls. At the alley's end, built partway up the earthen inner ramparts and reached by a short flight of steps, an old guardhouse was now a shop. It was a small and dusty place, largely unknown and reliant on a limited clientele, one of the few shops outside the Foreign Quarter run by a Kellion proprietor.
Timoth Kale had worked for the Narillion mob in his time, a wiry man with a face like a rodent. He had none of the rakishness that characterised and often saved Kellion features. He was also unable to grow a beard, leaving his face adorned in black straggles like burnt briars. He had lost an eye in the war, exchanging it for a game leg and a dozen ugly scars. In his prime, Kale had been a fair swordsman, with five duels to his credit in Kellia and three in Silveneir. He was an unrepentant misogynist, but still occasionally attracted Silvan women intent on marrying into his oddly successful little business. At least one of his duels had been against a former paramour.
Kale was nowhere to be seen when DeSilva entered the shop, but that was not unusual. Celi, an unfortunate Silvan girl caught thieving from Kale's shop and sentenced in court to a period of slavery, was on duty at the counter. On the streets of Silveneir, it was forbidden for a woman to reveal her face; all women went masked or veiled. In private, masks remained the norm, but Kale had taken Celi's mask from her, delighting in her unease at facing customers without its protection. Kale also supplemented his income by renting Celi's company to his more select acquaintances. DeSilva had not known her before she appeared on Kale's list of acquisitions, but he had marked the bitterness slowly building in the girl's eyes as her sentence rolled by.
"Is he in?" DeSilva asked and Celi tilted her head towards the stairs and yelled, "Shop!"
Timoth Kale appeared, limping badly and adjusting his eye patch, rank with the smell of tobacco and his hair uncombed. Half-Kellion born, DeSilva visited the shop often enough for Kale to greet him as an old friend.
"Celi, drinks, chop-chop," Kale commanded and Celi disappeared into the back room.
"I have something for you," Kale said. "Nothing you'll want to buy, I'm sure, but I'll enjoy showing you nonetheless." Kale shuffled deeper into the shop, towards the recesses where he stocked weapons and antique armour from the war. "Somewhere here I've got the bullet that killed Mordain Kesh, but that's not for you. Have a look at this."
From a shadowed display, Kale produced a sword and scabbard thick with dust.
"Wow," DeSilva said, singularly unimpressed. "A magic sword. You'll tell me next it was my father's."
"Your grandfather's maybe," Kale conceded, "for it's a Kellion knight's sword and I can prove it. Look here."
Kale turned the sword over and unscrewed the pommel. The hilt was hollow, containing a roll of yellowed parchment. Kale pulled the scroll out and unrolled it with care. The writing was all but illegible and Kale confessed he was unable to make it out. DeSilva squinted and discerned the name 'Taban' repeated often amid a long genealogy. Sword and scabbard seemed mismatched at first glance, but on inspection DeSilva saw it was a split-sheath that had once housed a second, twin blade.
"How much for the scroll, Kale?"
"Sword, scabbard and scroll, ten ducats. I won't split 'em up, no matter what you say."
The price was steep, but DeSilva paid and went on to irritate Kale by insisting the blade be packaged for transport.
"A man should wear a sword," the Kellion veteran grumbled. "Women with swords walk like men; it's not right."
Leaving the shop, DeSilva hailed a carriage to escape the rain and spent the last of his money on the ride back to Karkossan Tower. The guards waved his carriage through and the horses slowed, navigating the narrower, slightly canted streets inside the great pyramid. From the ground floor to the palace gates, traffic was dense. It took over an hour to reach the palace and DeSilva found a messenger waiting for him at the guard post. A Sinistral guardswoman was lounging there, chatting lazily with the Karkossan sentry, but both straightened up when they saw DeSilva.
"The Warmistress wants to see you," the Sinistral said. "Where have you been?"
"What am I wanted for?"
"Clan Kavnor are here. They want to have a look at you."
"I'm getting changed first, it’s wet out there."
"The Warmistress was quite insistent."
"And you can tell her I'm coming," DeSilva said and walked on with the Sinistral dogging his heels. She continued to pester him all the way back to his quarters, almost whining when they came to DeSilva's door; "Hurry, please; Clan Kavnor look angry and the Warmistress sent me out hours ago."
"So where did you look for me?" DeSilva asked. "I'm soaked, it's raining; if you'd been in the streets you'd be the same. You just hid out in the guardhouse, didn't you?"
The Sinistral adjusted her uniform and straightened up indignantly. "I'm not getting wet on your account; I didn't ask for this detail."
DeSilva shut his door in the woman's masked face and changed out of his damp clothes. Washed and dried, he took a few moments to examine his new Kellion sword. It was long and forward curving, similar to some Silvan swords and owing little to the traditional Kellion rapier. Age discoloured the blade, but she was light and perfectly balanced. The sword whispered as it cut the air, responding to DeSilva's testing swing. He put the sword back in its sheath and was about to hang it up in his wardrobe when Eliana's remark returned to his mind; "You're not your father."
DeSilva strapped the swordbelt on and settled it at his hip. The split-sheath hung half empty, but the single blade sat in its own inner scabbard, safe and secure. DeSilva made a mental note to look out for a matching blade and quit his room to meet his unwanted destiny.
#
Clan Kavnor wore grey livery and plaid; there were about a dozen of them in the Warmistress' audience hall, hosted by Karkossan officers and politely guarded by a score of lurking Sinistrals. While the Karkossans favoured hooded lilac mantles and ornamental shortswords, the Sinistrals wore customised uniforms in pastel shades and carried their swords reversed on the left hip. The warriors of Clan Kavnor dressed in travelling cloaks, short-skirted tunics, jodhpurs and tall riding boots. Every woman in the room was masked, their faces hidden behind anonymous contoured mirrors.
DeSilva's Sinistral escort hurried ahead of him into the audience hall and all eyes were already on the doors when he entered. Eliana stood in the middle of the tense assembly, pausing in heated debate with the leader of the Clan Kavnor.
"This is him?" The Clanswoman said.
Eliana nodded. Her copper hair distinguished her from the predominantly dark and brunette women around her, but she wore silver mail too, partly hidden beneath a pale lilac gown.
"As you see, he takes after his father."
"You mean he aspires to his infamy," one of Loth Kavnor's warriors said, an older woman with grey in her hair. The group leader, evident from her pose and confident tone, hushed the elder's remark then said to DeSilva; "Come here, let me look at you."
"You come here." DeSilva stood back on his heels and tried to emulate the insouciant stare that flashed from the portraits and carven images of his father.
The Clan leader matched his pose, folding her arms across her chest. Then she strode up to DeSilva and bathed him in a critical stare from head to foot.
"He's skinny, doesn't work out much. Does he use the sword?"
A ripple of laughter echoed from the Sinistrals as the question was asked, but Eliana said, "Yes, when I push him to it. Perhaps his interest is growing."
"We prefer archery," DeSilva's questioner said, and returned her gaze to his face. Her eyes were pale green, framed by her mask and the red of her hair. "Can you shoot?"
"With a pistol."
"A fairground trick," the woman said. "It's not a real weapon. Do you play chess?"
"Of course. We should have a game."
"Should we now?" The clanswoman stepped back and looked again at Eliana. "He's impertinent. He might do after all. We'll arrange a private meeting, Warmistress, with your permission."
The women of Clan Kavnor bowed to Eliana and withdrew. The Warmistress beckoned DeSilva with her eyes and led him by a side door from the audience chamber, through the pillared halls and onto an open balcony overlooking the outer face of the Karkossan pyramid.
"Was she the one?" DeSilva asked, joining Eliana at the stone rail.
"Why, did you like Sorcha?"
"Not particularly."
"She's not the one." Eliana glanced coyly at DeSilva, an odd look for so powerful a woman.
"You're marrying me off to some hick baroness from the boonies," DeSilva lamented. "Why do you hate me, aunt Eliana?"
The window looked southeast onto the city harbour and the ships at the quaysides, hulking Darian labourers and Silvanni seawomen shrunk to the size of ants by distance.
"Everyone has to get married," Eliana said, patiently. "Just lie back and let my matronage carry you, from here to Loth Kavnor and eventually to greater things. I want to see how you do away from court. The life of a courtier is spoiling you; you need to be locked up alone with one woman for a long, cold winter. When its time for you to come back..." Eliana paused, noticing that DeSilva had assumed an alarming pallor of dread. "Good heavens, boy, breathe; you look as if you're about to die."
DeSilva leant upon the balustrade and contemplated his fate. It was peaceful in Silveneir. Despite the rain, the city was warm and well supplied with scenic views and quaint back-streets, and the pleasantly dull life of a young Silvan nobleman afforded ample opportunities to explore them. DeSilva pictured the craggy terrain around Loth Kavnor in Silveneir's north-western province, and shuddered.
"Can't you send me to Naril Na Silva?" he asked, "or on envoy somewhere; Daricia, or Pen Kellion?"
"How about the Winter Palace on the Kessel?" Eliana asked, with an evil glint in her eye.
"Sounds cold and far away." DeSilva shivered even thinking about it.
"It's closer than Pen Kellion," Eliana told him, "But now I think of it, the lady of that estate might well be your aunt."
"Well I can't marry her, then, can I?"
"Lady Vari Orcini is one of the few Kellion women to run her own estate," Eliana said, "Her family survived the war almost unscathed; the old Lord of Orcini withdrew his forces from the field when Noth Dansac fell."
"Who was Noth Dansac?" DeSilva asked, almost kicking himself when Eliana replied; "The knight buried at the outer gates. You were there today, my ravens saw you."
"Do the Orcini have any other eligible daughters?" DeSilva asked, and Eliana laughed.
"Stop," she said, "it would insult Clan Kavnor, and they control the reservoir and the water supply to all our farmlands. I can't possibly affront them."
"But it would be possible to arrange?" DeSilva pressed. "I mean, you could delay the engagement, send me off abroad on some pretext, talk them around to another match while I'm away... In the meantime, I might find someone I actually want to marry."
He trailed off, silenced by Eliana's expressionless mask.
"It doesn't work like that," she said. "You'll be playing chess with Sabra Kavnor tonight, after dinner. Make sure you're decently presented and on your life don't wear that sword at her. Be nice. Tell her she's beautiful. Let her win but don't be obvious. Understand?"
"Yes, Warmistress," DeSilva said, and departed at once to begin plotting his escape.
CHAPTER TWO
STATION OF THE RED KNIGHT
DeSilva's first thought was to fly Silveneir by ship, either south towards Daricia or west, upriver to Narillion and Naril Na Silva. The problem with either notion was that, by ship, he would meet Silvanni sailors and Darian galley slaves, the former disinclined to help him and the latter only approachable as a member of their company. DeSilva was not quite desperate enough to enrol as a rower to get out of the city; there was no escape by river. On his own resources, the farthest he might travel as an idle passenger was the dam and reservoir of Loth Kavnor, the very place he was trying to avoid.
With no clear plan, DeSilva packed a bag and snuck out from the Warmistress' Palace an hour before he was due at dinner. Leaving the palace by a servant's exit, he threaded a circuitous route down to the postern gate and went northwest towards the Foreign Quarter. He still had some thought of leaving the city by barge, jumping ship early to confuse any pursuit. The idea that Eliana might send riders after him occurred only when DeSilva was an hour from the palace. He panicked a little and found his feet leading away from the Foreign Quarter towards Timoth Kale's shop close by the main gate.
The lights were out in Kale's window and silence answered DeSilva when he knocked, but the door was unbarred; he went inside and called the old Kellion's name.
The only answer was a soft tread on the stair a moment before candlelight appeared. DeSilva blinked and saw Celi behind the little light, squinting back at him through the gloom.
"Kale's drunk, passed out upstairs. What do you want?"
"Some advice, I suppose," DeSilva said, and Celi lowered the light and came down the stairs to lean against the counter.
"Why, what's your problem?"
DeSilva laughed and told her. Celi stared at him for about a minute after he was done, started to say something, then shook her head and changed her mind. "I think you want to talk to Kale about this one."
"Why not you? Surely you've thought about running away; where would you go?"
"Southside," Celi said, "where I grew up, but that's where people would look for me and I'd get a longer sentence once I was caught. Two more months and I'm free anyway, so I gave up thinking about it."
"Did you have any ideas for getting out of the city?"
"Where would I go?" Celi hopped up on the counter and took a slim Kellion pipe from her nightgown and began to smoke, a habit she had picked up in Kale's service. "The gates are closed at sunset, the ports shut down and the walls are patrolled. You're too late to make a run tonight and there's no chance at all by day. In case you hadn't noticed, the city is a fortress... or a prison."
"What about the Necropolis?" DeSilva suggested, but Celi shivered superstitiously.
"There are Darians buried there," she said, "I heard that their dead walk at night."
"Yes, and Noth Kalidor's ghost haunts Loth Kavnor on full moons," DeSilva said, "Don't tell me you believe that rubbish, please."
"I've seen them," Celi said, as if sharing a deep secret. "Dalaran Chen and men like that, walking in the graveyard late at night."
"Chen died at sea," DeSilva said, "Everyone knows that."
Celi relit her pipe and smoked, saying nothing for a few minutes. "You could get out through the Necropolis," she said at last, "but then where?"
"Tempted to come along?"
"No, my sentence is almost up; I'd be stupid to run now. Six months ago maybe, but not now."
"I don't think I should tell you where I'd run next," DeSilva said, thoughtfully, "I think you've helped enough; tell Kale I stopped by and give me tonight at least, eh?"
Celi narrowed her eyes at him like a cat. "I'm not giving up a night's sleep on your account; I'll wait until they post a reward. Good luck in the meantime."
#
From the gatehouse, DeSilva slunk along the inner face of the city wall and came up on the Necropolis from the west. Fortress defences entrenched Silveneir on three sides, but on the southern face there was a gap of some five miles between the last bastion and the cliffs facing out to sea. The Necropolis wall defended this portion of the city, inset from the ramparts and earthworks encircling Silveneir. Superstition and religious awe kept goddess-fearing Silvans from daring the Necropolis, leaving the walls ill-guarded. The suburban streets were heavily policed most hours of the day and night, but DeSilva knew the backstreets well and kept to the shadows, avoiding the patrols. At one point, he saw a dozen police go past in haste, bearing lighted torches towards the main gate. A Karkossan officer harangued the Silvanni police, riding impatient circles round them in her hurry.
DeSilva increased his pace as soon as the officer was out of sight, reached the Memorial safely and relaxed only when he was deep within the wooded avenues of the cemetery.
He had been raised on the dogmatic religion of Silveneir, but true faith in the divinity of the old Warmistress Iaran Karkossa had declined dramatically with the witch-queen's death in battle off the Darician coast. While some die-hards among the Silvanni maintained that Iaran would return, most paid only lip-service to the religion of their nation. DeSilva knew that his father had openly mocked Iaran's claim to godhood; DeKellia was reputed to have twice done what men said was impossible, killing first the Kellion Warmaster Mordain Kesh and then the Darian Warmaster Tor Enlad with his own hand. The latter deed had marked the pinnacle and the end of DeKellia's career; he had been swept away in the flood that ended the battle and the war. Tamaris had vanished soon after, leaving DeSilva to be raised in Silveneir by Eliana. Now he was leaving, and he hesitated before attempting the climb up the Necropolis' wall. The clouds overhead blotted out the stars; the rain was due to return.
The ascent was hard and DeSilva made three false starts before he found a spot where a crab-apple tree had grown up near the wall. Dropping to the ground on the far side was easy once he had mastered his initial glimpse of the drop.
DeSilva lay in the ditch at the foot of the wall for the space of a minute and more, waiting for his heart to slow and wishing he smoked, if only for something to ease his nerves. The countryside south of Silveneir was bleak, a rising moor that ended in a dark line of trees at the horizon. East, the coast was only a few miles distant. Westwards, the moors rose into foothills and became the slopes of Mt. Karonan, invisible by night. Beneath the mountain's shadow was the Naril Vale and at the head of that valley, midway between Naril Na Silva and Silveneir, the great dam Loth Kavnor, destroyed in the war and still under reconstruction. The reservoir had grown year by year as the wall rose again, but now the cost of Clan Kavnor's hereditary duty was beginning to tell on the province.
DeSilva knew his flight would cause deep political ructions; without a state wedding, Eliana would have no cause to pay the dowry needed by Clan Kavnor to finish the dam. The rain even now threatening to drench the countryside precluded any water shortage and DeSilva could see no reason for the dam's existence; he thought only long enough to determine not to go west and to avoid Loth Kavnor's grim vistas at any cost.
He set out due south, parallel to the coastal road but trekking cross-country. City-dwellers feared the forest, which was kept at bay by a small army of woodsmen who, like most of the nation's male populace, lived outside the city walls where the matriarchy was less strict. Once off the moors, DeSilva need fear only a dedicated pursuit; he would be of little interest to yokels, except for his fresh knowledge of events in Eliana's court and the capitol. An hour shy of midnight with the rain still threatening to burst from on high, he reached the forest border and forced a passage through the outer hedge of brambles. Ten feet in, the bushes gave way to lightless forest eaves beneath dark canopy. Behind DeSilva, the skies moaned as if in anger at his escape and vented their fury in an intense, sustained deluge.
#
DeSilva's first night under the stars ended with the dawn. It had rained all night; he was cold and damp. An ugly cawing sound and the flapping of wings nearby brought him fully awake. Bedded down in a bracken patch, his cloak wrapped around him, DeSilva stirred. The bird cawed again and hopped to another branch, accompanied by a brief flutter of pinions. It was a raven, a huge specimen as big as an eagle. DeSilva saw the bird and froze. It was watching him, turning its head left and right to look at him with each eye in turn.
"DeSilva." The raven's voice was a strangled croak. "Come here."
"Eliana?" No other explanation presented itself to DeSilva's mind. The raven laughed, shaking its beak about to either side.
"The Warmistress sent us searching."
"Us?" DeSilva was still dazed from sleep. He gradually recognised the raven as one of twelve monstrous birds that served as his aunt's eyes and ears around the city. Eliana had been Iaran's spymistress; with her ascension, she had not trusted her old duties to solely mortal servants.
"Go east," the raven said, and DeSilva rolled on his side, stood up and shook the dew from his cloak. Without another word to the raven, he went south.
"Go east," the raven said again, flapping from its perch to a branch above DeSilva's head. He ignored it and ducked through the dense foliage at the clearing's edge, deeper into the wood where the canopy was dense and the raven's wingspan too broad to easily fly. It landed a yard from DeSilva and hopped along in his tracks, croaking at him to turn east. He made a dart at it in annoyance and the bird took flight again, landing high up on a branch, well out of reach.
"Go east."
"Shut up, I'm not doing it."
"Go east. Clan Kavnor are waiting on the road."
"Then I'm definitely not going. Leave me alone."
DeSilva headed deeper into the forest, pursuing the densest foliage where the raven could not follow on the wing. If it was blessed with speech, it might have the intellect to get bored or irritated and leave him alone. Instead, it landed on DeSilva's shoulder. He swatted the bird off, but it was persistent and flapped at the air around his head until it was able to alight once more on his arm.
"Go east."
"Who's an ugly birdie?" DeSilva said. "Bugger off."
The raven pecked him in the ear. "Go east!" it said, hopping up onto his head this time and turning in a circle, making a nest out of his hair.
"Get off!" DeSilva made a grab and caught the raven by the ankles. It flapped and struggled frantically, pecking at him and tearing his knuckles until he let go.
It landed on a branch ten feet away and began preening itself, pecking rumpled feathers back into place. DeSilva clawed his hair back into some semblance of order and glared at the raven.
"If you annoy me too much," he told it, "I'll kill you. I haven't had any breakfast yet."
"Stringy," the raven said. "Gristle and feathers. Waste of time."
DeSilva laughed, despite himself. "You weren't born a raven, were you?"
The bird declined to answer, taking a sudden interest in the forest canopy. DeSilva stopped walking and rummaged in his pack for some of the provisions he had brought. There was cheese and bread, but the raven looked up in interest when he produced several sticks of dried jerky.
"Hungry?" DeSilva asked. The raven shuffled on its branch, eyeing the meat but still too human to be so easily fooled. It was that human trait DeSilva chose to play on; he knew a story from the war, in which a number of Iaran's Sinistral Guard had been turned to crows by the sorcerer Morden, but he had glossed over reading the more fanciful details of the legend. He had only vaguely wondered if there was a link with the nursery story and the dozen massive birds kept by Eliana. If the raven was a mortal bird trained to speak, it should have an instinctive trust of humans. If something outre, the seeming 'raven' had betrayed enough intelligence so far to be vulnerable to deceit.
DeSilva threw a piece of meat to the raven, pitching his throw between them. The bird hesitated, then took flight briefly and alighted on the grass. It began to peck at the beef jerky, stepping on it like a worm. In a few pecks, the meat was gone. The raven stayed where it was, looking at DeSilva expectantly. He extended his hand, the last of the jerky between his fingers, and the raven spread its wings at once and alighted on his arm.
When it reached for the meat, DeSilva grabbed the bird's beak in finger and thumb. It went berserk, thrashing and struggling until he bundled it up in his cloak and sat on it. When the feathery bundle ceased to writhe, DeSilva relented a little and lifted up his weight. His cloak flapped weakly, but was otherwise still. DeSilva lifted the cloak's corner to check on the bird and it at once exploded into life in a desperate standing take-off. DeSilva made a flying tackle and wrestled the bird down. Pinned beneath him, the raven went for his eyes. One peck would be enough to blind him, but DeSilva had his knife in hand without conscious thought. The bird squawked horribly and broke his grip at last, flew six feet on one wing and dropped into the bracken.
Picking himself up, DeSilva dusted black feathers off his tunic and found his hands covered in blood. There was a rustling from the bracken-patch, a weak flapping sound and then a most un-birdlike groan.
"Hello?" DeSilva called, stupidly, and received a loud oath in reply. A woman stepped from the bracken, her hair full of black feathers but otherwise naked. One arm was held rigid at her side, her free hand clapped as if to a wound. Blood ran down her stiffened arm and between her clasping fingers.
"Haroum," DeSilva swore, "are you alright?"
"No, I'm not alright, you bloody stabbed me!" The woman's voice was hoarse, painfully dry. Before she had finished speaking, she collapsed to the turf, her dark hair spilling about her shoulders and hiding her face. DeSilva knelt down at her side and determined that she was breathing; a brief examination revealed that the wound was not immediately fatal. DeSilva was in something of a daze as he rose from her side and looked about in the undergrowth for any sign of the raven. There was a patch of feathers where the bird had fallen and a scatter of stray plumage where the woman had emerged. Otherwise, there was only the woman herself, naked and unconscious on the forest floor.
DeSilva built a small fire and made camp, though it was still early morning. The rain of the previous night had abated, but the clouds still glowered in otherwise blue sky.
The woman did not stir and eventually DeSilva decided he ought to do something. He felt only the slightest trepidation when he first touched her, but running his eyes over her body seemed entirely natural.
The woman was quite thin, her ribs visible beneath small breasts. Only when he came to her face did DeSilva look away, unused to looking on a Silvan woman's features. Rolling her on one side, DeSilva caught a whiff of feathers and carrion that made him retch.
"Go east," the woman said. Her voice was so dry that DeSilva reached automatically for his waterskin. She drank greedily, coughed and then asked if he had anything stronger. There was a hipflask among DeSilva's kit; he passed it over and winced as his strange guest downed half the contents. When she spoke again, the worst hoarseness was gone and her voice not unpleasantly husky.
"Thank you," she said, then moved and awoke the memory of her wound. "Ow, no, not thank you. Damn you, you lunatic, why did you stab me?"
"You were pecking my eyes out!"
"You grabbed me by the ankles!"
"You were a bloody crow, now you're a naked, hysterical woman!"
The woman paused mid-breath with her finger raised beneath DeSilva's chin.
"Yes," she said, appearing to think about it. "Do you mind if I panic as well, or should we both stop and do something constructive?"
"I'm not panicking." DeSilva eyed his guest warily, marking the peculiar gleam in her eyes and the direction of her stare past his left ear. "You can look at me with both eyes at once, y'know," he said.
The women did a slight double-take and blinked at him, meeting his gaze fully for the first time. "Wow," she said. "Yes, now you mention it. Everything just... went back into focus suddenly. Now I can see you properly. Hello. Una Iluatha, you?"
"Montesinos DeSilva, but didn't you know that already?"
"Contrary to what you may have heard, ravens have terrible memories," Una said. "We just repeat things."
"Say 'Pretty Polly'."
"How about I blind you?" Una said. "Parrots listen, ravens read, everybody knows that. Now who are you and what was my message?"
"I'm Montesinos DeSilva and you told me to go east."
"Right..." Una stared at him blankly. "Does that mean anything to you?"
DeSilva was about to give her the full tale, but meeting her trusting eyes he reconsidered. She was telling him the truth, utterly baffled by her own translation back to human form and gradually slipping into shock. Blood still flowed from the untreated cut on her arm.
"Doesn't mean a thing," DeSilva said. "Maybe the message was for someone else."
"Not unless 'tall, dark and handsome' applies to trees," Una said, looking around at the clearing. "Where are we? Everything's a bit of a blur."
DeSilva reached for his hipflask and took a moment to concoct the beginnings of a new story, one that might reasonably explain their meeting, alone on the borders of Silveneir.
#
DeSilva at last contrived to bind Una's wound with a handkerchief, having forgotten to pack any bandages.
"What sort of man brings a hankie but no first-aid kit?" Una demanded as DeSilva cinched her dressing tight.
"If I'd brought high-heels and a dress, would you be complaining?"
"No, but I'd think you were very strange." Una looked around to peer at DeSilva again with her misfocussed gaze.
"You're doing it again," DeSilva said, and Una blinked and shook herself.
"Does your cloak normally smell like this?" she enquired.
"No, that would be you. When you were flying here, did you see a river at all? The only water I could point us to is the reservoir at Loth Kavnor, and I'm not going there."
"Don't know much geography, do you?" Una sniffed. "There's no waterways between here and the Dagon, except the sea, which is east.”
"So you digested an atlas. Do you actually know this country at all?"
"To reach Daricia we go south," Una said, "either by the coastal path or cross-country, but it’s fearsome terrain up ahead. The land climbs, there are gorges and ravines... we're far better by the coast path. This way, you'll have to cross the Baltu Road, which is almost a mountain range. The coastal path goes along the cliffs, it’s much easier; you really would get to Daricia more quickly by heading east."
"Here, take my cloak, go which way you like."
DeSilva put his cloak back around Una's shoulders and started walking away. She hurried after him, the cloak drawn about her protectively.
"You can't just leave me in the woods, naked and helpless!"
"I never said you couldn't come with me," DeSilva called back, without slowing his pace, "I just said I'm not going east."
Two paces on, he pulled up sharply at the lip of a steep gully across the nominal path they were following. The ditch was eight feet wide, barring any immediate southwards travel.
"West," DeSilva said, to Una's innocently silent question. "I'm not going east, no matter what, not until we're well south of Silveneir, past the Baltu Road and whatnot."
They trudged west, away from the coast, until DeSilva found a spot where the gorge was narrow enough to jump and sufficiently shallow for a fall to be merely embarrassing. Una accepted his help across and they pressed on south again all day, heading uphill until the slope was almost sheer, extending in rugged, forested shoulders east and west. Silveneir now lay twenty miles and more to the north.
Night was setting in and beneath the trees it grew rapidly too dark to find any path ahead. Una shivered and pulled her borrowed cloak tighter. It was the furthest DeSilva had ever been from the city walls. Una told him to build a fire and they sat together in the little circle of warmth, sharing cold rations and not talking much, except when the creaking of the trees and the quiet darkness grew too much.
"What do ravens think about?" DeSilva asked around midnight, with a light rain falling. They had neither of them moved, even to settle towards sleep; Una sat alert in the darkness.
"Riddles," she said, without hesitation. "Words, all the things they've read. It all goes around, and around and around..." she cocked her head at DeSilva suddenly, watching him askance. "If I shut my eyes, I can see maps. Maps, poems, spells... things like that."
"You read Eliana's grimoire?" DeSilva asked, and then added when Una frowned; "The Warmistress' spellbook, on the lectern in her study."
Una looked thoughtful, but shook her head. "I can see pages," she said, "yellow parchment with all strange writing on it. I was Iaran's apprentice anyway, we all were... sorry, it's not useful information, I don't know why you asked."
"Trying to break the silence," DeSilva said, instantly regretting it when a wolf howled from the craggy ridge above them. Una jumped into DeSilva's arms in pure fright.
"Wolf!" she squeaked, sounding more like a budgie than a raven. DeSilva struggled free of her embrace and then wondered why. Una sat back from him, looking small and pale, wrapped in the voluminous cloak.
"Wolves don't attack people, it's just a myth," DeSilva said loudly, trying to convince the wolves as much as himself. "And all wolves look big when you're a raven."
From somewhere inside her cloak, Una drew a slim sword. DeSilva blinked politely at her until she scowled and said, "What, you think the Warmistress leaves her servants defenceless? Come on; do we move or stick here?"
"Stick," DeSilva said, "I stand by what I said; wolves are timid and very small. Stay close by the fire and keep an eye out."
"Just in case," Una said, sarcastically, and they settled down by the fire again, back to back now, swords drawn and resting close at hand. The wolves went on howling every few minutes, sometimes alone, sometimes in chorus or duet. The howls echoed about the trees and seemed to come from all around. The soft rain had lulled DeSilva into a waking doze when he heard Una hiss by his ear. He looked around and saw a wolf at the edge of the circle of firelight. DeSilva felt the blood drain from his face. The wolf stood taller than a man, with teeth like bayonets and a black pelt as thick as armour. Now there was a second, slightly larger wolf pacing in the shadows on DeSilva's left.
"We're haunched," Una said. "This is all your fault. You pulled a knife on me, I was only pecking you, but you upped the ante and this is what happened."
"Shut up," DeSilva said, "or else use your amazing memory and tell me a joke. I will not have it that wolves are dangerous. They're just curious. Now you try and make 'em laugh."
Una rolled her eyes from DeSilva to the nearest wolf, then cleared her throat and began, hesitantly at first, to recite vaudeville jokes. She went on without once repeating herself for the remainder of the night, pausing mid-sentence just as dawn began to light the eastern sky.
"Go on," DeSilva prompted, "How does a policewoman part her hair?"
"Doesn't matter, it's not funny," Una said. "The wolves are gone."
DeSilva looked and realised it was true. He shifted, moving for the first time in hours, and found that his legs had gone to sleep. Tingling fire swept up from his toes as circulation returned.
They stood up and stretched, and DeSilva caught himself stealing a glance past Una's cloak. He looked away when she noticed.
"Don't be an idiot," she said, "The cloak is appreciated, but there's no sense being coy out here."
DeSilva suggested she take the cloak off entirely, but Una demurred.
By daylight, the slope was less intimidating and just within reasonable assault, despite the rain. The slope grew steeper towards the top, and the only way to the summit required DeSilva to lift Una on his shoulders. Once she had climbed up, she leant down to offer him a hand. Afterwards, they lay side by side on the turf. DeSilva was too tired to enjoy the chance to ogle his companion, while clambering over each other had ceased to be a novelty halfway up the cliff. When he had sufficiently recovered, DeSilva sat up and took in the summit of the slope for the first time. The rain petered away before the lip of the cliff; they were on the very borders of Silveneir, looking out from a high, narrow ridge that cut east west through the forest. The sea was a dozen miles off to the east and the horizon about thirty beyond. DeSilva shaded his eyes to stare out across the grassy southern wilderness. The plain stretched to the horizon, where a city of white spires sparkled against the silver thread of the Dagon River. South-west, DeSilva could just make out Dor Edlis, the new Darian city rebuilt close to the site of an older, ruined fortress. Beyond New Edlis and lost to sight was Uria, the wasteland where no men dwelt.
"This is it," Una said, breaking DeSilva's reverie. "This is the Baltu Road, this baby mountain range or whatever. It's the longest of Mt. Karonan's arms, runs almost to the sea."
Between Pen Korcha and the Psarrions, no mountain peak approached the grandeur of Mount Karonan, the lonely mountain south of Naril Na Silva. It was west of where DeSilva now stood, a lonely tooth of rock shrunk by distance. Great battles had been fought there; the first war had ended at the mountain and the second there began, although centuries had elapsed in between.
"I might be convinced to track east a ways from here," DeSilva said. "We're on Daricia's border now, so I'm safe, right?"
"Depends who you're running from," Una replied, sitting on a rock and combing her hair with her hands. "If it's Silvan police or the army, you're fine. In my day, the Sinistral Guard wouldn't chase a man past Silveneir's gates, let alone into Daricia. Who are you running from?"
"You honestly don't know? Didn't you read a mission report or something?"
"Eliana has twelve ravens," Una replied, primly. "She doesn't give one of us an entire mission, she parcels it out, for the same reason she gave us these."
The sabre gleamed again in her hand, unsheathed from thin air.
"You mean she knew there was a way to break the spell," DeSilva said, "and she didn't release you? She just kept you and eleven others as ravens for... how did you become a raven anyway?"
"The sorcerer Morden transformed me," Una said. "And now you mention it, it was a good while ago. I don't suppose you've got a mirror?"
"Why?"
"To see how old I am. I don't feel any older, but it's hard to tell."
DeSilva had not considered how a woman turned into a raven might measure her age; it was a mathematical nightmare he preferred to avoid.
"You look old enough to risk jail for," he said, "which is as old as you'll ever need to be."
"Well I was twenty-one when I became a raven and it's been about seventeen years, so I'm thirty-eight," Una said. "Hah! Best stop drooling over me; I might be your mother."
DeSilva considered this seriously for a few seconds, and then said, "No, my mother vanished after the war ended, you were... changed before then."
"Sorry, I didn't know you were an orphan."
"I'm not," DeSilva said, "My parents are alive, they just buggered off and left me. They're DeKellia and Tamaris. You must know that, at least."
"Oh, I know them," Una said, "Tamaris was the talk of the barracks, carrying on with a foreigner, captured by Kraag in the war... there's endless stories about her. It must be tough, being an orphan. I understand why you might say they were your real parents."