Kevin Laine had never been able to hide his emotions well, and that summary execution, so casually effected, had disturbed him very deeply. He had not spoken a word through a day’s hard riding, and the twilight found him still pale with undischarged anger. In the gathering dark the company passed through more heavily wooded country, slanting gradually downhill towards the south. The road went past a thick copse of trees and revealed, half a mile beyond, the towers of a small fortress.
Diarmuid pulled to a halt. He seemed fresh still, unaffected by the day on horseback, and Kevin, whose bones and muscles ached ferociously, fixed the Prince with a cold stare.
He was, however, ignored. “Rothe,” said Diarmuid to a compact, brown-bearded rider, “you go in. Speak to Averren and no one else. I am not here. Coll is leading a number of you on a reconnaissance. No details. He won’t ask anyway. Find out, discreetly, if a stranger has been seen in the area, then join us by the Dael Slope.” Rothe spun his horse and galloped towards the tower.
“That’s South Keep,” Carde murmured to Kevin and Paul. “Our watchtower down here. Not too big—but there’s little danger of anything crossing the river, so we don’t need much. The big garrison’s downriver, west by the sea. Cathal’s invaded twice that way, so there’s a castle at Seresh to keep watch.”
“Why can’t they cross the river?” Paul asked. Kevin maintained his self-imposed silence.
Garde’s smile in the gathering dark was mirthless. “That you’ll see, soon enough, when we go down to try.”
Diarmuid, throwing a cloak over his shoulders, waited until the keep gates had swung open for Rothe; then he led them west off the road along a narrow path that began to curve south through the woods.
They rode for perhaps an hour, quietly now, though no order had been given. These, Kevin realized, were highly trained men, for all the roughness of their garb and speech when compared to the dandies they’d met in the palace.
The moon, a thinning crescent, swung into sight behind them as they wound out of the trees. Diarmuid halted at the edge of the sloping plain, a hand up for silence. And after a moment Kevin heard it, too: the deep sound of water, swift-flowing.
Under the waning moon and the emerging stars he dismounted with the others. Gazing south he could see the land fall sheer away in a cliff only a few hundred yards from where they stood. But he could not see anything at all on the far side; it was as if the world ended just in front of them.
“There’s a land fault here,” a light voice said close to his ear. Kevin stiffened, but Diarmuid went on casually. “Cathal lies about a hundred feet lower than us; you’ll see when we go forward. And,” said the Prince, his voice still light, “it is a mistake to mate judgements too soon. That man had to die—had he not, word would be in the palace by now that I was encouraging treasonous talk. And there are those who would like to spread that word. His life was forfeit from the time he spoke, and the arrow was a kinder death than Gorlaes would have granted him. We’ll wait for Rothe here. I’ve told Carde to rub you both down; you’ll not make it across with muscles that won’t move.” He walked away and sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree. After a moment, Kevin Laine, who was neither a petty man nor a stupid one, smiled to himself.
Garde’s hands were strong, and the liniment he used was extraordinary. By the time Rothe rejoined them, Kevin felt functional again. It was quite dark now, and Diarmuid threw back his cloak as he suddenly rose. They gathered around him at the edge of the wood and a ripple of soundless tension went through the company. Kevin, feeling it, looked for Paul, and saw that Schafer was already gazing at him. They exchanged a tight smile, then listened intently as Diarmuid began to speak, softly and concisely. The words spun into the almost windless night, were received and registered, and then there was silence; and they were moving, nine of them, with one man left to the horses, over the slope that led to the river they had to cross into a country where they would be killed if seen.
Running lightly beside Coll, Kevin felt his heart suddenly expand with a fierce exhilaration. Which lasted, growing brighter, until they dropped to a crouch, then a crawl, and, reaching the edge of the cliff, looked down.
Saeren was the mightiest river west of the mountains. Tumbling spectacularly out of the high peaks of Eridu, it roared down into the lowlands of the west. There it would have slowed and begun to meander, had not a cataclysm torn the land millennia ago in the youngness of the world, an earthquake that had ripped a gash like a wound in the firmament: the Saeren Gorge. Through that deep ravine the river thundered, dividing Brennin, which had been raised up in the earth’s fury, from Cathal, lying low and fertile to the south. And great Saeren did not slow or wander in its course, nor could a dry summer in the north slake its force. The river foamed and boiled two hundred feet below them, glinting in the moonlight, awesome and appalling. And between them and the water lay a descent in darkness down a cliff too sheer for belief.
“If you fall,” Diarmuid had said, unsmiling, “try not to scream. You may give the others away.”
And now Kevin could see the far side of the gorge, and along the southern cliff, well below their elevation, were the bonfires and garrisons of Cathal, the outposts guarding their royalty and their gardens from the north.
Kevin swore shakily. “I do not believe this. What are they afraid of? No one can cross this thing.”
“It’s a long dive,” Coll agreed from his right side. “But he says it was crossed hundreds of years ago, just once, and that’s why we’re trying now.”
“Just for the hell of it, eh?” Kevin breathed, still incredulous. “What’s the matter? Are you bored with backgammon?”
“With what?”
“Nevermind.”
And indeed, there was little chance to talk after that, for Diarmuid, farther along to their right, spoke softly, and Erron, lean and supple, moved quickly over to a large twisted tree Kevin hadn’t noticed and knotted a rope carefully about the trunk. That done, he dropped the line over the edge, paying it out between his hands. When the last coil spun down into darkness, he wet each of his palms deliberately and cocked an eye at Diarmuid. The Prince nodded once. Erron gripped the rope tightly, stepped forward, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
Hypnotically, they all watched the taut line of the rope. Coll went over to the tree to check the knot. Kevin became aware, as the long moments passed, that his hands were wet with perspiration. He wiped them surreptitiously on his breeches. Then, on the far side of the rope, he saw Paul Schafer looking at him. It was dark, and he couldn’t see Paul’s face clearly, but something in the expression, a remoteness, a strangeness, triggered a sudden cold apprehension in Kevin’s chest, and brought flooding remorselessly back the memory he could never quite escape of the night Rachel Kincaid had died.
He remembered Rachel himself, remembered her with a kind of love of his own, for it had been hard not to love the dark-haired girl with the shy, Pre-Raphaelite grace, for whom two things in the world meant fire: the sounds of a cello under her bow, and the presence of Paul Schafer. Kevin had seen, and caught his breath to see, the look in her dark eyes when Paul would enter a room, and he had watched, too, the hesitant unfolding of trust and need in his proud friend. Until it all went smash, and he had stood, helpless tears in his own eyes, in the emergency ward of St. Michael’s Hospital with Paul when the death word came. When Paul Schafer, his face a dry mask, had spoken the only words he would ever speak on Rachel’s death: “It should have been me,” he had said, and walked alone out of a too-bright room.