“Toward the Stonelands.”
“Yes. Thorbardin, beyond.”
“Thorbardin.” Laurana stood a moment quiet, and at last she gave voice to the question between them. “If Kerian is back, why hasn’t she come here to tell us how her mission to the dwarves fared?”
Gilthas pointed to the fires by which they tracked her. “I don’t think she’s had time to, Mother.”
Wind shifted, smoke stung their eyes, and in the stinging Gil’s sudden bravado shivered. With startling suddenness, he recalled the nightmares that lately haunted him. In those dark dreams he sent his lover to her death. He put a hand upon the parapet to steady himself. Had he doomed her in reality?
Soft, his mother’s hand touched his shoulder, an old gesture, a steadying one. She said nothing, not she who felt the deaths of those in the forest, she who had raised up a son whose nights were often savaged by dreams that looked sometimes like prescience.
Gilthas shook his head, swallowing to steady his voice.
“There is reason to hope, Mother. I don’t know why she hasn’t come here. There are ways to reach her, but I won’t try those now. Whatever Kerian is doing, she does for a reason. The wrong move from me, and I might cause it all to fall in ruin.”
Warm breezes, smoky and thick, tugged at Laurana’s hair as she leaned out over the marble wall framing the little garden. She leaned out to see. Gilthas knew her and knew she did not strain only her eyes to see. She looked with her heart, with all her mind. What was happening in the kingdom? How many more would have to die?
“Mother,” said the elf king. He took her hand and put it in the crook of his arm. “Come away now. We’ll trust her. Whatever Kerian is doing, she is doing her best. As for Thorbardin, we must trust about that, too. She spoke well there and was heard, or she spoke well and wasn’t. We must wait and see.”
For she will not forget. She will come to me, he thought, looking out to the smoky night.
For another fortnight, the king went up to the roof to watch the forest. On almost every night, he saw the signs of burning, smoke hanging. To his city came news that the winter to come would be a hard one. Sir Thagol did not know the meaning of mercy, and he seemed to hate the crops of farmers as much as he hated fanners themselves. In the halls of elven power, Senator Rashas looked around at his fellows nervously, hearing their unease, their fear, and he grew afraid they would recall that he had been the greatest champion of the idea of Beryl’s Dark Knights doing all they could to bring order to an uruly kingdom.
“An orderly kingdom,” he’d argued, “will produce all the tribute the dragon wants. She will thrive, and we will survive. It is the only way!”
Now as his fellows looked out into the forest and marked the smoke, they heard the cries of the people who feared that the winter would be a hungry one, and they began to look at Senator Rashas with narrowed eyes.
“This had better end soon,” said Lady Sunstrike, who held lands out by the eastern part of the kingdom, in sight of the Stonelands. She had received her governorship from the hand of the young king. She had spoken with him lately, the king who sat upon his throne with his usual air of disinterest. To see him, anyone would think he was half asleep. Lady Sunstrike believed otherwise. “If it doesn’t end, we will be wondering what to do with the hungry when the snow comes.”
Rashas looked right and left, trying to think how he could rein in the Skull Knight.
As he thought, Lady Sunstrike cast another glance at the king. He seemed to rouse, his lids lifted. He held the lady’s glance, only a moment She did not nod, and he did not look again her way, but in the morning a rider went out from the city, naught but a lad with a saddlebag full of missives from his mistress to her steward.
In two days time, Kerian of Qualinesti received from Jeratt the startling news that they had not fought alone in their last battle with Knights. Outnumbered, certain to be killed, Jeratt had looked up to find a dozen fresh, armed men and women at their backs. Rabble, ragged outlaws like themselves, or so they thought until, the last Knight dead, they learned that these were not men and women of the forest at all. They were farmers, two of them villagers, three from the estates of Lady Sunstrike who governed this stony eastern province, all dressed to appear the most disreputable of citizens.
They had little to say, but one, as the others drifted away into the forest, suggested to Jeratt that they would not again fight alone.
“Call on us,” he said. “I’m a stable boy on Lady Sunstrike’s estate. We hear she’s here, the lady who fights like a lioness. We know who she fights. If you call for help, we will come.”
Kerian had lost the faith of farmers who feared to lose their heads. She’d seen her network of trusty villagers fall to ruin. Here, unlooked for, she found a strand with which to reweave her rebellion of elves. Fighters at need, carriers of news, granters of shelter, these would support her and her warriors in her battle.
Kerian watched as Stanach came out of the passage through Lightning-Thunder, as he insisted on naming the falls-his hair and beard glistening with moisture, his clothing damp. The dwarf had been a patient prisoner- his word, not hers-and had done his duty at watch whenever required. He had never offered to go on raids, and no one asked. He was a king’s ambassador and Kerian made it clear from the start that Stanach had no part in this work.
Stanach stood watch, hunted with the others, in all ways did his duty in camp, but he was not a genial ambassador. He kept to himself, told no tales around the fire, and made no friends among the resistance. What he did was watch Kerian. He watched her plan, he watched her lure Thagol tins way and that, like a rough handler jerking a hound’s chain. He saw her make maps for her warriors when she planned, he saw her pacing all the while a band of them was gone, on her feet almost every moment till they returned.
When she mourned the dead, she did so feeling the eyes of the dwarf on her. They were not unkindly, but they were always on her.
Damn, she thought, he watches me eat!
For all she knew, he watched her sleep.
There he stood, wet from the falls, his eyes on her again.
“What?” she said.
Usually he shook his head and sometimes he muttered, “Nothing.” This time he nodded to her once, a jerk of his head, up and then down.
“Got company. Looks like a farmer to me.”
Curious, Kerian rose and hade Stanach show the farmer through. The dwarf was gone but a few moments before he returned with a wide-eyed, soaking lad. The boy’s name was Aran Leafglow, he said, and he was no farmer but a village lad. He jerked his head in a kind of bow, tugging at his forelock.
“Lady Lioness,” he said. “I come with news for you.”
Lady Lioness. Kerian caught Stanach’s grim smile out the corner of her eye. Her warriors liked the spreading name, so did the villagers and farmers. Thagol, from what she had learned, hated it, for the people rallied to it.
Thagol had made a mistake. He’d punished the elves widely for crimes they did not commit In rage he’d fallen on them with the fierceness of a dragon, unleashing his Knights and his draconians, trying to cow the countryside. He had pushed too hard.
“Give me your news,” Kerian said. “Sit and talk.”
The boy shook his head. “No’m. I can’t sit, for I have to get back and there’s all the gorge to travel. I come to tell you-there’s a pack of Knights near. You said you’d want to know. They’re not but beyond Kellian Ridge.”
Kerian drew a breath, long and slow and satisfied. “A pack. How many?”
“Five, no more. Armed to the teeth, though, and they have three draconians with them.”