With luck, I can get there in a few hours, she told herself.
She threw on her riding cloak, and silently slipped out the window. She crept along the back of the house and was crossing the dirt lane when the door opened. Aunt Constance and her old friend Nan Fields stood there.
“I didn’t know that you were up,” Constance called. “Where are you going?”
Chemoise turned and looked her in the eye. “To Castle Sylvarresta, to give my endowment.”
Immediately Constance limped across the street, her right foot swollen by rat bites. Her expression was grim. “You can’t do that. You’re already sick. Think of your child!”
Chemoise stopped, torn. Iome had always been her best friend, and Chemoise dearly wanted to give whatever aid she could.
“There are endowments I can give that wouldn’t endanger the babe,” she argued.
Dearborn Hawks must have heard them talking. Perhaps he had been waiting all day to see Chemoise. He came from the barn, his brow furrowed in concern.
“Dearborn, stop her!” Constance begged.
The Hawks boy looked at Constance, and then at Chemoise, and nodded thoughtfully. “There’s not much water in the river at this time of year,” he said at last. “You’ll need help rowing if you’re to make it by nightfall.”
With that, he led her downhill to the boat.
26
The Curtains of Heaven
Many a warrior is wise in the ways of war, but only fools ignore mastering the fine art of retreat.
Borenson and Myrrima fled Iselferion with the Inkarran Days, Sarka Kaul, as their guide. The guards handed them their weapons at the door, and Sarka led them to some underground stables where Borenson found his horses already delivered. Many an Inkarran lord was visiting the city, and Sarka had no difficulty stealing a suitable mount for himself.
Thus the three rode from Iselferion into the morning light with the city still asleep, the Inkarrans unaware that a Rune of Will gleamed darkly upon Borenson’s leg. He knew that the journey would not stay easy for long.
He suspected that once the Inkarrans learned what had happened, they’d send a legion of pale warriors to hunt them down. They’d kill him and anyone he spoke to.
Yet as Sarka guided them along lonely roads, there was no pursuit by daylight, no sign of Inkarrans at all. Empty fields lay all about the trails, cultivated and pruned, looking strangely bereft, for there were no workmen tilling them, no cottages or barns. The only sign of habitation came as the morning sun shone upon the stele that marked each city.
Borenson could not have hoped for a better escape. Sarka Kaul led them over desolate trails until they reached the shadowed forests, where winged lizards fluttered about, hunting for moths and gnats in the canopy.
Only once did anyone try to stop them. As they neared the foot of the Alcair Mountains, a dark figure raced up behind the trio. The clatter of a charger’s hooves announced that it was a force horse with great endowments, and Borenson looked back down a mountain trail, where he glimpsed the rider galloping through the trees.
“I’ll get him,” Myrrima said fiercely as they neared a meadow. She had kept her bow strung all morning, and she slowed her mount, leapt off, and slapped its rump. Her horse raced after Sarka and Sir Borenson, following them through a meadow full of white flowers so delicate that the sunlight shining through made them glow like ice.
Sarka Kaul led the way and reached a line of trees just as their pursuer exited the woods. Borenson glanced back. An Inkarran prince raced under the shadows, his blood red robes flapping behind him like wings. He rode a horse as black as night itself. The mount galloped into the meadow a few paces, and suddenly Myrrima stepped out from behind a gnarled sycamore and loosed an arrow.
The fellow cried and leaned forward, putting his heels to horseflesh. Borenson clearly saw the white plumes of goose feather from the arrow lodged in his back.
The black horse came to a halt in the meadow and spun about. Its rider was cursing, lamely struggling to get it to flee, while he struggled to keep from falling off.
Borenson raced to the wounded rider. The fellow’s long silver braids announced that it was Prince Verazeth. He lay slumped in the saddle, clinging to his horse’s neck, the arrow sticking up from his ribs. Myrrima had struck him near the heart. His horse danced around, frightened by the scent of hot blood.
Sarka Kaul rode up behind Borenson. “Cour as! Cour as!” Help me, the prince muttered.
“Gladly,” Sarka said, urging his mount forward.
He grabbed the prince by the hair and plunged his sword into the man’s back. He flung the body to the ground and took the horse’s reins in one smooth motion.
In a moment Myrrima came running up through the field.
“He’s dead?” she asked unnecessarily. She stood over the prince, bow in hand, arrow ready to fire.
“He’s dead,” Sarka said.
“But...you watched him grow up from a child,” she objected.
“And many a time I wished to put an end to his miserable life,” the Inkarran whispered. “Here, take his horse. It might come in handy. It has many endowments of sight to let it run in the darkness.”
“This is it?” Borenson asked. “This is the only man they sent to hunt for us?”
Sarka Kaul grunted. “Probably so. Inkarran politics are very complex. King Criomethes has secretly been in league with the Storm King’s enemies for decades, so Verazeth couldn’t dare risk revealing what his father has done. Their crime against you must remain a secret from the king. Nor could Verazeth tell his own cronies what has happened, for it will make him look foolish to be bested by Daylighters, people that he condemns as inferiors. He really only had one choice. He had to hunt you down himself. Only then could he pretend to avenge his family, and thus gain honor. So he came for you swiftly, foolish enough to hunt by daylight, and took his secret to the grave.”
Myrrima seemed unsure. “Let’s get out of here anyway.”
She dragged the prince’s body from the road, hid it under the trees two hundred yards into the woods. Then she leapt up on his black stallion and fought the beast for a moment, and led the way.
The trip over the Alcairs went quickly. The snow-laden arms of the mountains glowed as white as bone in the daylight, and the horses were eager to run in the cool air.
They raced up the jagged peaks, over roads that were almost never used, until at last they neared the Inkarran fortress. An icy gale was blowing spindrift from the peaks, so that by the time that they drew close, they did so in a dismal fog.
The road zigzagged down the steep mountain. Sarka Kaul bypassed the fortress by riding up the slopes until he met the road above. Even force horses had a tough job of it, lunging through the foggy ice.
When they neared the mountain peak, with its fearsome wall, Myrrima and Sarka both closed their eyes tightly, and Borenson led the horses. He only shivered once as he passed beneath the shadow of the gate, and noon found them all racing down snowy slopes.
In such fierce light, Sarka was almost blind. Borenson kept a keen eye out for Inkarrans. Sarka warned that the Storm King Zandaros and his men might be camped on the road, hidden in some dark fen. But the snow showed no sign that any large party had ridden past in the night, and Sarka decided at last that Zandaros must have kept on Inkarran roads, heading farther west, before taking their path northward. That way, the Storm King would avoid any well-traveled highways in Mystarria, taking most of his journey through the wilderness.