The Prioress slept in the highest sunroom in the Priory, close to the crest of the waterfall, where she could see the dawn break over the Vale of Blood. Ead stopped at the arched entrance to the passageway. Two Red Damsels guarded the door.
What she did next was a delicate thing. An ancient skill, no longer taught in the Priory. Candling, Jondu had called it. Lighting the smallest flame imaginable within a living body, just enough to cause the loss of breathing. It required a nimbleness of touch.
With the slightest twist of her fingers, she struck one candle in each of the women.
It had been a long time since a sister had turned against her kith. The twins were unprepared to feel the dry heat in their throats. Smoke curled from their mouths and noses and shot black tendrils through their minds, smothering their senses. As they sank, Ead moved past on silent foot and listened at the door. All was quiet.
Inside, moonlight made needles through the windows. She stood in the deep shadows.
The Prioress was in bed, surrounded by veils. The cup was on the nightstand. Ead approached, heart thumping, and looked inside it.
Empty.
Her gaze slid toward the Prioress. Sweat trembled at the very end of a coil of hair above her eyes.
It took moments to find the jewel. The Prioress had pressed it into soft clay and hung it from a cord around her neck.
“You must think me a fool.”
A chill took Ead through her gut, like a thrown spear. The Prioress turned onto her back.
“I sensed, somehow, that I should not drink the wine tonight. A premonition from the Mother.” Her hand closed around the jewel. “I suppose this … rebellion in you is not all your fault. It was inevitable that Inys would poison you.”
Ead dared not move.
“You mean to return there. To protect the pretender,” the Prioress said. “Your birthmother moves in you. Zāla also believed that we should stretch our limited resources to protect all humankind. She was always whispering in the ear of the old Prioress, telling her that we ought to protect every sovereign in every court—even in the East, where they worship the wyrms of the sea. Where they idolize them as gods. Just as the Nameless One would have had us do to him. Oh, yes … Zāla would have had us protect them, too.”
Something about her tone sat wrong with Ead. The hatred in it.
“The Mother loved the South. It is the South she sought to shield from the Nameless One,” she continued, “and it is the South I am sworn to protect in her name. Zāla would have had us open our arms to the world and, in doing so, expose our bellies to the sword.”
All because Mita Yedanya told her I had poisoned your birthmother. Kalyba had worn a mocking smile. As if I would ever stoop to poison.
Mita had banished the witch and never allowed her to return. An outsider, after all, was an easy scapegoat.
“It was not the witch who killed Zāla.” Ead closed a hand around her blade, and it nerved her. “It was you.”
She was cold to her bones. The Prioress raised her eyebrows. “Whatever can you mean, Eadaz?”
“You hated that Zāla looked to defend the world beyond the South. Hated her influence. You knew it would only intensify when she was named Prioress.” Gooseflesh tightened her skin. “To control the Priory … you had to be rid of her.”
“I did it for the Mother.”
The confession was as blunt as the rest of her.
“Murderer,” Ead whispered. “You murdered a sister.”
Honey pastries. Warm embraces. All her vague memories of Zāla flooded back, and heat swelled to her eyelids.
“To protect my sisters, and to ensure the South always had the protection it needed, I was willing to do anything.” With a sigh that was almost exasperated, the Prioress sat up. “I gave her a quiet death. Most had condemned Kalyba before I had even opened my mouth. It was an insult to the Mother that she came here—she who loved the Deceiver well enough to forge the sword for him. She is our enemy.”
Ead could scarcely hear her. For the first time in her life, she felt the Draconic fire in her blood. Rage was a furnace in her belly, and its roar overwhelmed all other sounds.
“The jewel. Give it to me, and I will leave in peace.” Her voice was distant to her own ears. “I can use it to find Ascalon. Let me finish what Jondu began, and protect the integrity of Virtudom, and I will not speak a word of your offense.”
“Someone will wield the jewel,” was the reply, “but it will not be you.”
The movement was as quick as a viper bite, too fast to avoid. White heat lashed across her skin. Ead reeled back, one hand beneath her throat, where blood was welling thick and fast.
The Prioress slashed away the remnants of the veil. The blade in her hand was laced with red.
“Only death can change the wielder.” Ead looked at the blood on her fingers. “Do you mean to kill birthmother and child both?”
“I will not see a gift from the Mother in the hands of one who would desert her so willingly,” Mita said calmly. “The jewel will remain beneath her bones until the Nameless One threatens the people of the South. It will not be used to protect a Western pretender.”
She lifted the knife in a fluid movement, like a rising note of music.
“No, Eadaz,” she said. “It will not do.”
Ead looked into those resolute eyes. Her fingers curled around the handle of her blade.
“We both serve the Mother, Mita,” she said. “Let us see which of us she favors.”
Little moonlight reached the ground in the Lasian Basin, so dense was the canopy of trees. Loth paced the gloaming, wiping the sweat from his hands on his shirt, shivering as if with fever.
The ichneumon had led him through a labyrinth of passageways before emerging here. Loth had only understood that he was being rescued when they were breathing the warm air of the forest. The drink they had been giving him was at last wearing off.
Now the ichneumon was curled on a nearby rock, eyes fixed on the mouth of the cave. Loth had buckled on the saddle they had brought outside. Woven bags and saddle flasks were attached to it.
“Where is she?”
He was ignored. Loth wiped his upper lip with one hand and muttered a prayer to the Knight of Courage.
He had not forgotten. They had tried to smoke it out of him, but the Saint had always been there, in his heart. Tulgus had warned him against fighting, so he had prayed and waited for salvation. It had come in the form of the woman he had once known as Ead Duryan.
She was going to get them back to Inys. He believed it as much as he believed in the Knight of Fellowship.
When the ichneumon finally rose, it was with a growl. It bounded off to burrow between the roots of the tree and returned with an exhausted-looking Ead. Her arm was draped around its neck, and she carried another woven bag on her shoulder. Loth ran to her.
“Ead.”
She was glossed with blood and sweat, her hair curling thickly around her shoulders. “Loth,” she said, “we must leave now.”
“Lift her onto me, man of Inys.”
The deep voice scared Loth half to death. When he saw where it had come from, he gaped.
“You can speak,” he spluttered.
“Yes,” the ichneumon said. The wolfish eyes went straight back to Ead. “You are bleeding.”
“It will stop. We must go.”
“The sisters of the Priory will come for you ere long. Horses are slow. And stupid. You cannot outstrip an ichneumon without riding one.”
She pressed her face into its fur. “They will butcher you if we are caught. Stay here, Aralaq. Please.”
“No.” Its ears flinched. “I go where you go.”
The ichneumon bent its front legs. Ead looked up at Loth.
“Loth,” she rasped, “do you trust me still?”
He swallowed.
“I don’t know if I trust the woman you are,” he admitted, “but I trust the woman I knew.”
“Then ride with me,” she said, cupping his cheek, “and if I lose consciousness, keep riding northwest for Córvugar.” Her fingers left blood on his face. “Whatever you do, Loth, do not let them take this. Even if you have to leave me behind.”
Her hand was clenched around something at the end of a cord. A round, white gemstone, pressed into clay.
“What is it?” he murmured.
She shook her head.
Mustering his strength, Loth hoisted her into the saddle. He swung himself on, curled an arm about her, and pressed her back against his chest, grasping the ichneumon with the other hand.
“Hold on to me,” he said against her ear. “I will see us to Córvugar. As you have seen me here.”
47
South
Aralaq ran hard through the forest. Loth thought he had known his swiftness in the Spindles, but it was all he could do to hold on as the ichneumon leaped over twisted roots and creeks and between trees, lithe as a stone glancing off water.
He dozed as Aralaq took them farther north, away from the thickness of the forest. His dreams took him first to that accursed tunnel in Yscalin, where Kit must still lie—then farther, back to the map room at the estate, where his tutor was telling him about the history of the Domain of Lasia, and Margret was sitting beside him. She had always been a diligent student, keen to learn about their ancient roots in the South.