19
The ride from Tarne Crossing to Thistlestone was a blur.
Bitharn remembered circling around the clearing where Kelland and the Thornlady fought, and where the corpse of the man who had betrayed her was slowly shrouded by snow. She remembered trying to make sense of the fight through its tracks, and halfway managing it before all the trails ended in corpses or vanished into empty air. She remembered plunging into Albric’s tent and finding Mirri there, already cold as death, with a confession tucked into her shirt.
The confession explained everything and nothing. Bitharn took it because she had no other clues. She took Kelland’s sword, too; she couldn’t bear to leave that among the dead. Then she left, riding for Thistlestone like there was a company of Baozite reavers on her tail.
That part, she hardly remembered at all.
The healers at the Dome of the Sun once told her that great shocks could sear themselves into one’s mind, blazing memories as sudden and indelible as the scars that lightning left on blasted trees. That was why old men remembered their first loves’ perfume, why the survivors of burnt-out villages could recognize their attackers’ faces after ten years of peace.
But the opposite, Bitharn learned, was true as well: sometimes instead of vivid recollection there was only a hazy fog. Sometimes the mind recoiled from holding onto such pain, or simply could not take it and thus could not call that memory back. It lay black and buried at the bottom of one’s soul, too heavy to be dredged up.
Fleeting images were all she kept of that hellish ride: days of snow and thudding desperation, Mirri’s body like a block of ice before her, meals snatched hastily in the saddle. Bitharn had always been careful with her horse, but on that ride she nearly killed the poor beast, and only spared it because she couldn’t afford to walk if it foundered.
Finally, when horse and rider were both on the brink of collapse, she came to the low towers of Thistlestone.
The castle town was even more crowded than it had been at Swordsday. Half a hundred banners flapped from the tents and pavilions that ringed the castle’s hill like so many colorful blossoms in a wreath. Every inn in town wore a banner, and most of the larger houses too; flags of silk and heavy cotton flapped in the breeze, showing everything from hedge knights’ clumsily painted arms to the crown-and-sun of Craghail. They made a sound like a flock of pigeons all taking wing at once, and yet that noise was dwarfed by the clamor that rose up from the streets.
All through Thistlestone, soldiers strutted, archers boasted, whores laughed and teased. Pigs and sheep bawled as they were brought in from the countryside and slaughtered to feed the armies. Fletchers worked in the streets with baskets of goose feathers at their ankles, carefully separated into left- and right-wing bins so that no arrow would have feathers from both sides. Smithies belched noise and smoke into the sky as armorers and weaponsmiths slaved to repair old pieces and craft new ones.
Langmyr was readying for war.
Only a fraction of its forces had answered the call thus far, and most of those were wandering mercenaries or local lords … but the crown-and-sun flew over Thistlestone, and that meant this was only the beginning, for High King Theodemar had summoned his swords in response to King Raharic’s massing on his borders.
Bitharn wondered if she had already failed. It wasn’t too late to call them back, yet, but wherever young knights and glory-hungry lords gathered, bloodshed was quick to follow. On the other side of the Seivern, in Verehart and Blackbough and all the other Oakharne border castles, more swords were gathering to meet them. War made men rich and turned their legacies to legend; it was hard for them to give up those dreams before they were crushed on the battlefield.
Assuming, of course, that their kings and generals cared enough to make them try. Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps a ruinous battle on the eve of winter suited their purposes perfectly. What did it matter to her? There was no room in her heart for anyone else’s grief; she could hardly bear her own. She just wanted to make her report and leave.
Lady Isavela Inguilar met her at the castle gates. Concern flickered across the older woman’s face at the sight of her, but she welcomed her guest graciously and with brisk efficiency. Servants led Bitharn’s hard-used horse to the stables and bore Mirri off to the sickrooms. A visiting general, someone said, had a Blessed in his company who could tend to the child’s ghaole-given wounds. Lady Inguilar ordered one of her personal maids to fetch the Blessed at once, then escorted Bitharn to her guest rooms.
She led the Celestian to a small but comfortable suite below Thistlestone’s south tower. It was no trivial gesture, Bitharn knew; the castle was so crowded that she saw servants rolling up pallets where they’d slept in the kitchens and among the dogs in the great hall. Knights and ladies walked through the halls, no doubt occupying those ousted servants’ quarters. Yet Bitharn had an entire set of rooms to herself, and the south-facing rooms received the most sunlight and were thus the most comfortable in winter.
It was a generous gift. It did nothing to console her.
Bitharn sat on the bed, hollow-eyed and dirt-smudged, after Lady Inguilar left. There was a mirror near the washstand by the window, but she didn’t glance at it; she had no desire to see what a wretch she’d become. She hadn’t bathed or rebraided her hair since the day Kelland fell. Her clothes were filthy from travel, and after days of barely eating, she could feel them hanging loose.
None of it mattered. Bitharn felt like one of the lost souls in Narsenghal, bereft of anything that might once have held meaning. All men died, and all shades crossed the Last Bridge when their day came. Those who had been anointed to the sun went to Celestia’s ever-golden lands; those who served other gods went to their own deities’ lands, Bitharn believed, although the solari at the Dome hotly debated that. But those who were great sinners fell from the Bridge into the sunless lands of Narsenghal, where they wandered endlessly, aimlessly, through a shadowscape filled by half-real figments of memory. No light existed there, no joy, nothing but loss and the fading relics of memory, slowly eroding until the shades lost their faces and dwindled away into the shadow, having forgotten themselves.
She had wondered, when she first heard that story as a child, how that could be. How could a person forget her own face? Why would someone let his very essence slip away, collapsing into the nothingness of the shadowlands?
Because, she realized now, a soul stripped of its moorings had no reason to exist. Identity was meaningless, impossible, when all the principles and places and people that shaped it were gone. Without those things, the soul was rudderless, lost as a sailor without stars.
Bitharn wasn’t that deeply sunk in despair. She still had faith, friends, duties to see through. But her lodestar was gone. Kelland had fought the Thorn without her, and he’d lost. He might be dead. She flinched from that thought, but she couldn’t deny it. There’d been so much blood. Too much for any man to lose and live.
Why had he gone without her? He’d promised not to fight alone—and he’d followed the letter of that promise, as he had to, but not its spirit. It should have been her standing beside him, not Albric. It should have been her.
If she’d been there, her arrows could have turned the battle. There weren’t so many ghaole. She’d read the tracks; she knew that several of them came late to the fight, hanging back until Kelland was tired. She could have forced the ghaole out into his sunfire, could have filled the Thorn’s mouth with feathered steel to keep her from spitting out her spells, could have …
It didn’t matter what she could have done. She wasn’t there to do it. He’d slipped out of the inn without her, leaving in the last dark of night so she wouldn’t know to follow. Hot tears welled up and Bitharn let them fall, her heart too blasted to care. All those things he’d said about needing her, about being weaker without her—they were true, he knew they were true. Why had he ignored them? How could he have been so stupid?
Not stupid, she thought. Afraid. Afraid of what he might lose.
But he’d lost it all anyway, and so had she. So it was stupidity after all.
Bitharn cried, helpless and hating herself for it, until the door creaked gently open.
It was Lady Inguilar. Alone, thankfully. She dried her tears hastily on a dirty sleeve. The lady entered and sat beside her on the bed, offering comfort without forcing it.
“I don’t usually cry,” Bitharn muttered.
“Everyone cries when there is a need for it.” Lady Isavela held out a lacy handkerchief, faintly perfumed with lemon, and Bitharn took it gratefully. Her fingers left grubby smudges on the white cloth, but the lady pretended not to notice. “Will you tell me what happened?”
She did. She let the words spill out as they would, all in a chaotic tumble, and Lady Isavela listened gravely. When she finished the lady held her as a mother might hold a weeping daughter. Bitharn wanted to resist, but before she knew it she was crying again, sobbing into the older woman’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Lady Isavela said. “I know those words are so small, so … inadequate against what you’ve lost, but it must be said. Thank you. The child will live because of your haste in bringing her here. Blessed Eliset says that she will make a full recovery. Another day, and the ice-fever would likely have killed her.”
The news was a balm to her wounds. Bitharn dried her tears a second time on the scented handkerchief. “I’m glad.”
“Your news may save many more lives than hers alone,” the lady said. She stood and crossed to the corner where Bitharn had tossed her muddy saddlebags. “May I look?”
Bitharn winced inwardly. Why hadn’t she brushed off her bags? Or at least put them downstairs with the servants? She was making a dismal show of the Dome’s courtesies. “Please.”
“This is the letter? His confession?” Lady Isavela held up the torn page. The sacred constellation of the Celestial Chorus showed on the outside, stamped in blue and gold.
Bitharn nodded.
The lady unfolded the page and read in silence. “So much pain,” she murmured when she finished, creasing the letter and sliding it back into the dead man’s prayerbook.
“The Thorns are good at that.”
“And at fomenting war, it would seem.” Lady Isavela glanced up, brushing a dark curl away from her eyes. “Do you believe Sir Albric’s confession?”
“I can’t tell you what was in a dead man’s heart.” She’d spent much of the ride worrying at that question herself, when she could gather her wits enough to think about anything, and had reached no firm answer. “Much of what we observed corroborates what he wrote. We found bodies in Willowfield that match his account of the slaughter, and we found the unfinished ghaole that he tried to burn. Albric came to us the day before he died, offering to betray the Thorn. When I found him dying, he’d been fighting her and the ghaole—and he was doing it without armor or shield.”
“Because he wanted to die.”
“If he did, he got his wish.”
“Will you tell this to Lord Aegelmar? The High King sent him to take charge of the armies gathering here. He is Lord General of the South, so we are all at his command.” Lady Inguilar smiled wryly. “Fortunately Aegelmar is a sensible man and a good general. He had his fill of ‘glory’ long before Thelyand Ford, but he was there, and he developed an abiding hatred of Ang’arta in that battle. He won’t be quick to send his men against Oakharn if he knows the Thorns tried to manipulate him into doing just that. If you tell him what you learned, he will pull the armies back from this folly.”
Bitharn shrugged, abrupt and almost angry. “It was why you sent us, wasn’t it? So we could find the killers and tell the world and stop this war from happening. Kelland thought it was important to risk himself for that, and I’d sooner … I won’t dishonor him. Yes, I’ll tell your general. But in return I want something from you. And him.”
“I cannot speak for Lord Aegelmar,” Lady Isavela said, “but for myself, if it lies within my power, my answer is yes. Anything. What would you have?”
“The Thorns took Kelland. They took him because you gave him this task.” That wasn’t the whole truth, perhaps not even the greater part of it, but it was what Bitharn wanted to believe. There was an ember of anger burning in her chest under the ashes of grief, and each word fanned it up hotter. She embraced the anger, letting it give her strength and purpose. “I don’t intend to let them keep him. I don’t know how, yet, but I will have him back. When the time comes I may call on you for aid. Will you give it?”
Lady Isavela hesitated, fidgeting with the amethyst drops that dangled from her ears. “He may well be dead, child,” she said, gently. “The Thorns take corpses too.”
“I know.” She hadn’t admitted it aloud until then; she wanted to swallow the words as soon as they were spoken. But she couldn’t close her eyes to the possibility. “If that’s the end, then that’s the end. I’ll go back to Cailan. Back to the Dome. I won’t trouble you any further. I promise you that. But if he’s alive, if there’s any hope, I will have him back. And I may need your help.”
“We can’t give you armies,” the lady cautioned. “We don’t have the men to spare, and my lord would never send them to die at Ang’arta’s gates if we did.”
“No. This is mine to do. I’m not asking anyone else to do my killing for me, or my dying. All I want is … is help. Once I know where to begin.”
“You will have it,” Lady Isavela promised.
“Thank you.” Bitharn closed her eyes, steeling herself. “I’d like to see Lord Aegelmar, if he’ll receive me. The sooner I talk to him, the sooner I can be on the road.”
THE AUDIENCE WAS IN THISTLESTONE’S GREAT hall. The banners that hung over the throne had been replaced; the new ones showed the royal crown-and-sun, the ancient emblem of Rhaelyand that the High Kings of Craghail took as their own when the empire crumbled. The golden sigil stood on an azure field, not the High King’s own snow-white, because it was not King Theodemar himself who sat in this hall but his servant, the Lord General of the South.
Courtiers and noblewomen lined the sides of the hall in fur and velvet. With them stood a handful of knights in polished steel, as well as scarred men whose well-worn armor and lack of heraldry proclaimed them mercenaries—leaders and lieutenants of the bigger companies, Bitharn guessed. Lord Aegelmar, or perhaps Lord Inguilar, wanted all Langmyr’s fighting men to see this audience. Perhaps they thought it would be easier to rein the soldiers in if they heard the reasons for it firsthand.
Maybe so. Bitharn couldn’t worry about them. Even if she hadn’t been sworn to neutrality as a dedicant of Celestia, this war was none of her affair. She wanted to give her report and be gone.
The heralds cried her name and Bitharn came forward, walking past the assembled knights and mercenaries. An astonished hush fell over the hall. It wasn’t only because she was a woman. For a formal audience with Lord Aegelmar, who stood just below the High King in military rank, the meanest freesword washed and shaved and polished his boots. But Bitharn came cloaked in road-dust, her hair a tangled mess half fallen out of its braid.
Lord Aegelmar sat on the Thistled Throne, with Lord and Lady Inguilar standing in the place of honor at his right hand and a tall woman clad in the sun-yellow robes of an Illuminer at his left. That would be Blessed Eliset, Bitharn surmised. The Blessed was a spare, unsmiling woman around fifty; her features were naturally inclined to hardness, but her manner carried a warmth that belied the sternness of her face.
No such gentleness showed in Lord Aegelmar. He was a scant handful of years younger than his Blessed, but hard as steel. His dark brown hair was liberally streaked with gray, as was his short-cropped beard; his eyes were the same color, nearly black but with strange pale flecks, almost silver, that one scarcely noticed until he stood close.
As was famously his custom, Lord Aegelmar sat with his crimson-bladed sword naked on his lap. Gold gleamed on its crossguard, and a garnet big and dark as a pigeon’s heart weighted the pommel, but the hilt was wrapped in plain but bloodstained black leather. That sword, Red Wail, was supposed to have drunk the lifeblood of a hundred heroes slain on the Field of Sorrows; the scarlet had never washed from the steel. It was said to be sharp enough to cut through lies and strong enough to break an army, and Lord Aegelmar always held it when dealing justice or hearing reports.
Bitharn wondered which one this audience was supposed to be. She inclined her head slightly as she came to the throne, occasioning a few more murmurs from the gathered watchers. Lords and ladies bowed to the High King and his representatives. The Blessed of Celestia did not, for they owed deference to no mortal ruler, but Bitharn was not Blessed and it was presumptuous of her to exercise their privileges.
She didn’t care. To her surprise, she saw that Lord Aegelmar didn’t, either. Far from being offended, he was watching her with a gleam of shrewd amusement in his silver-flecked eyes. Granting her the status of a Blessed suited his purposes, Bitharn realized: it lent her report greater authority than if she’d come as a humble dedicant.
“I’m told you went with the Burnt Knight to investigate
the slaughter at Willowfield,” Lord Aegelmar said. He had a commander’s voice, clear and strong. “I’m told you found the answers.”
A soft white glow surrounded the dais as he spoke. Bitharn recognized the Light of Truth with a sudden, clenching ache. If Kelland hadn’t used that prayer over the baker’s body—if he hadn’t rushed to meet the Thorn’s challenge by himself—it would be him giving this report, not her. As it should have been.
She shook the thought away and tried to concentrate. Lord Aegelmar and his hosts already knew what she planned to say; Blessed Eliset’s light was merely meant to show the assembled nobles and soldiers that her words hid no lies. It was all theater, but that made it more, not less, important that Bitharn played her role perfectly.
“An answer, my lord.” She bowed her head again, formally offering up the torn page on which Albric had written his confession. Some of the nearer knights craned their necks toward the letter, as if they could read it from ten paces away. “Albric Urdaring, who was once swordmaster of Bulls’ March, wrote this letter to his lord shortly before he died. I found it in his tent, along with the child that the ghaole injured, after … after Albric and Sir Kelland fought the Thornlady and her creatures.”
“The Oakharne died in that fight, did he not? Along with the Burnt Knight and the Thorn.”
“Albric died, yes, my lord. The others—I don’t know about the others. Not for a certainty. They didn’t leave bodies. Albric told me, as he was dying, that they vanished into shadow, but there was so much blood on the snow …”
“I won’t ask you to speculate. So: the swordmaster confessed and died. What do you make of that?”
“I only met him once, my lord. The night before Albric died, he came to us in a tavern and asked us to help him betray the Thornlady. He was …” She shook her head, searching for the words to capture the pain that gnawed the man. “He was a man utterly consumed by guilt. It ate at him like a cancer. I didn’t know why, then. But if a tenth of his confession is true, he earned that guilt and more.”
“Did he?”
“It is in his confession: he betrayed his lord and his oaths over an old insult. Because Lord Ossaric demoted him from swordmaster to a household knight, he plotted to destroy the greatest happiness in his lord’s life. Jealousy and pride drove him to conspire with a Thorn. A Thorn. He regretted it bitterly, after he realized how she’d trapped him, but the damage was done.”
“Do you believe it?” Aegelmar studied her intently. He still had not taken the page.
Bitharn hesitated. Then she nodded. “Yes. I believe he conspired with the Thorn to murder Sir Galefrid, his wife, and their child. I believe the Thorn killed the people of Willowfield to goad your kingdom into war with Oakharn. Albric … Albric regretted the deaths in Willowfield. But once he’d yoked himself to that monster, he had no way of escaping save by dying.”
Lord Aegelmar took the letter at last. He did not open it. “You and the Burnt Knight followed this Thorn for some time. You said she killed the people of Willowfield. Did you learn anything that might reveal her motives? I can’t imagine she had much interest in Sir Galefrid or his father for their own sake. Neither fought at Thelyand Ford.”
“War always serves Ang’arta’s interests, my lord. It fills their coffers when their soldiers are hired as mercenaries, and it honors their iron-crowned god. Slaughter on the field is Baoz’s highest sacrament.” That was a safe answer, she thought. Knights held mercenaries in contempt, and other hireswords hated Baozites. The ironlords fought for their god’s glory, not for profit, and seldom respected ransoms or surrenders or any of the other conventions by which mercenaries tried to impose some restraint on the field.
“The Thorns are not Baozites.”
“No. But they serve Ang’arta. And, perhaps, have plans for it. Ang’arta can’t hope to hold more territory now, not with its conquests in Thelyand so new … but in five years? Ten? It isn’t that long a march from Thelyand’s borders to Oakharn’s, or to yours. Every man they kill today is one fewer they’ll have to face then.”
“I’m afraid we might have to disappoint them.” Lord Aegelmar extended the folded letter to Blessed Eliset, who took it and tucked it neatly into her sleeve. “See that ten copies are made, along with a written account of what was told here today. Dispatch messengers on fast horses to each of the border castles with instructions to their lords that they are to hold their soldiers back, and take no action, until ordered otherwise by the High King or myself. Each messenger will carry a sealed copy of the record and confession and deliver it directly to each castle’s lord. Another copy must go to King Raharic and each of the Oakharne border castles; find brave men for that task, and ones without family. The original, and the last copy, go to Craghail and King Theodemar.”
The Lord General returned his unsettling gaze to Bitharn. “There is one other task I would ask of you, if your duties permit.”
She bit her lip. “What?”
“Go with the messenger to Raharic. Tell him what you told us. Take the girl, too, if she is strong enough to make the ride. The Oakharne can be a sentimental people; it might be helpful for them to know that we saved this child’s life from a danger that one of their own knights set upon her.”
Bitharn dipped her head, ashamed that she’d forgotten about Mirri. Of course the girl needed to go back to her parents; they had no idea what had happened to her. Bitharn hadn’t had time to stop and tell them before her headlong ride to Thistlestone. “Yes, my lord.”
“Thank you,” Lord Aegelmar said, and nodded slightly to signal that the audience was at an end. Bitharn made one last bow—a full obeisance this time, ceding her authority to the High King’s—and slipped out quickly, hoping to avoid the court gossips.
None of them caught her. Bitharn locked the door to her guest room with a wave of relief.
It was nearly past sunset. She was late for prayer.
Bitharn hadn’t prayed since she left Tarne Crossing. She hadn’t prayed alone in years. Since childhood, she’d always observed the rites with Kelland. It felt strange to stand by herself at sunset, like trying to dance without a partner, but she willed her grief aside and stood in the waning light. Drawing a controlled breath, she raised her arms above her head.
If the Bright Lady willed, she’d have Kelland back. If not, she’d carry the sword and prayers he’d left to her. There was still a need, still a purpose, whatever happened.
Bitharn exhaled, and began to pray.