The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 19



Lenane and Syresh joined hands and laughed out loud like children, to see the wide blue sky, the horizon again. The others were quieter. “Remember,” Kallan said, “the forest shielded us from the full weight of the summer heat. We must rest by day now, and travel by night.”

The next days proved him right, as the heat grew like flames leaping up through dry kindling. They marched by night, and tried to rest and sleep by day, but there was no rest to be found, nor even any shade. The wind choked them with dust, and the smoke of a far-off burning clouded the horizon.

They lay in the grass and covered their heads with their cloaks. They wet their hair down with their precious water. The stream that they followed grew more shallow and scummy every day, and though the nights were a joyous relief from the day, yet they grew hotter. The little group of travelers walked stumbling along the path, their way lighted by the remnants of the stars.

Kallan carried the child and brought up the rear, where he could watch how his companions were faring. Andiene and Ilbran leaned on each other for support, and spoke little. Syresh and Lenane, walking together, leading the group, still had energy to provoke each other. Their long-running squabble over who should glean blaggorn for their morning meal had gone on long and endlessly by the time that Syresh said, “A job fit for you. Cannot thieves see in the dark?”

Kallan held his breath, but Lenane showed no sign of resorting to her claws to avenge the insult. He laughed to himself then. A pity that their strength could not be given to some who needed it more!

They traveled like that for three nights. The stars had become mere broken wisps of light, making their traveling hard and slow. They stumbled frequently. Weary feet can trip over a smooth road.

At the end of the third day, Andiene turned to Ilbran. “You have traveled this road. How far are we from the city?”

“Not far. This night’s travel, or two nights, might bring us to the gates.”

“What kind of a man is the king of this land?”

Ilbran hesitated, glanced at Kallan, who said, “You can answer as well as I.”

“I saw him only at a distance. We gave him little thought, but he seemed thin and cunning and greedy. We did not stay long in the land.”

“Why?”

“I had grown to have pleasure in traveling, and no place seemed good enough to stay. And Kallan seemed in no hurry to choose his hearth and home, either.”

“Except in the forest village,” the other man said.

Ilbran laughed. “You will have to go back and see what came of that, in six or sixteen years.” He glanced at Andiene, and color rose in his face. “The forest people are … generous and gentle with travelers. We spent part of the spring in a village, and I unlearned my fear of them, but it is no place to live one’s life. Then we came south, and saw Oreja city, and took the forest roads to where we met you.”

She nodded. They prepared their evening meal, tediously gleaned and even more tediously ground blaggorn stirred into cold water. Not even to cook a traveler’s supper may fire be raised in summer, for fear that it would draw down answering fire from the air.

“What is your plan and purpose?” Kallan asked Andiene, after the meal was over.

She pulled her golden ring out from under her shirt and toyed with it, putting it on, taking it off, turning it around and about on her little finger. “To go to the city of Oreja, and spend the summer there. What else? What reception will I find there?”

“If you declare yourself? Wary courtesy, at first. He would not dare to turn you away, but he would fear to be too cordial, for fear of making an enemy to the north. Spies would send back word to Nahil of you, and of how you were received.”

Andiene smiled. “So he would welcome me, and greet me with all honor, and then a messenger dove would fly north to its cote, with a little scroll sealed by a king’s ring, saying that I was here with much pride but little strength of arms.”

“Remember,” Kallan said, “Nahil would fear you if he were told that you had come barefooted in your shift, with no weapons in your hands, alone. That was how we—that was how he saw you.”

“I know,” she said. “Fear will be my weapon, one weapon at least, and a better one than the sword that you carry. Come, we must travel.”

They walked on, stumbling through the dark. On either side of them lay the wide blaggorn fields, clean-gathered to feed the city so close—only narrow margins left for travelers to glean.

“What would you do if you found a village?” Kallan asked Andiene.

“I think I would lose my companions! Only one of you is bound to me by any vows. I would see then who would follow me and who would not! Traveling in summertime is hard and weary work, more than I had thought.”

Kallan shook his head. “This is not true summertime, yet. Why must you be in the city? I have spent summer in a king’s palace, and in a mud cellar in the forest, in equal misery. They are alike. ‘No history is made in summertime.’”

She turned to face him. Though he could not see her face clearly in the dying starlight, anger filled her voice. “We spoke of messenger doves. I want to send Nahil word that I am coming. I want him to spend the summer thinking of me. You said that he lived in fear? I want him to live in greater fear. Is that clear?”

It was clear enough to silence him. He lagged behind, and Ilbran joined her. To judge by their soft voices, they talked of pleasant things.

Kallan looked at the people ahead of him. A strange group of the homeless and the outcast. Ilbran was a wanderer driven by evil memories. Kallan had traveled with him for most of a winter’s year. Though they had stayed in many places that would have welcomed a strong man and his child, none had tempted him.

Kare seemed content enough to follow her father, though the road was no life for a child. Stronger tonight, maybe grown accustomed to the heat, she held her father’s hand, walking easily by his side.

Syresh was simpler to understand. He was one of the minor nobility, high enough to be proud but not high enough to be ambitious, a poorer swordsman than he thought, but brave enough to be eager for battle. I was one such as that when I was young. Before I lost all reason to be proud.

Lenane walked close beside Syresh. For all their quarreling, they had had the look, in the last few days, of ones who had found kinship, a home and family in each other, perhaps without even recognizing it yet.

She was a minstrel without a lute, too free with her claws and her tongue, secure in a minstrel’s privilege to say what she pleased. In the days since Kallan had confronted her, she had grown less wary of him. Andiene tolerated her as a king will tolerate his jester.

And Andiene herself was the greatest mystery of all. Revenge-lust ran deep and fierce in her. She had never spoken of her years of exile; she held some secret close to her. Syresh had spoken of Dragonsland. “Dragonsland is guarded well,” said the song, but all things were possible with such as she.

Then Kallan thought of himself, to finish the tally. “The king’s butcher” they had called him in the city. Strange company that he kept—the ones that he had wronged.

Though Ilbran was his friend, chance words or thoughts would rouse the bitter memories; there would be silence and grim looks. One misspoken word to Andiene and her anger would rise again. The truce had not yet been broken, but from time to time she had come perilously close to throwing his past deeds in his face.

Strange company indeed.



They traveled on, the little band of homeless ones. When daylight came, they were still alone in the wide plains that feed the people. They sheltered in the shade of tall thornfruit bushes, crouching on the westward side till noon, and then following the shadows east. Though they drank all their water, still they were thirsty, and too weak and weary to think or speak.

After sunset, Andiene was the first one on her feet, urging them on. “Come,” she said. “We will find water and drink deep. This will be our last night of traveling, and tomorrow we will rejoice in the halls of Oreja!”

Her face gleaming with eagerness, she was not like her dull dazed companions. It seemed to Kallan as though she had drawn strength from the fierceness of the sun. At last, she urged them all to their feet, to stumble their way along the path to where the stream bent close, where they could kneel and brush the thirsty night-flying bees aside, and drink the green scummy water.

Though the stream flowed lukewarm and sluggishly, spicy mordeherb fringed its edges, promising safety to all who drank. None of that group gave one thought to safety. Kallan thought that in their thirst, they might have drunk though the water’s edge were rimmed with skulls.

In the black sky, the stars were dimmer still, scattered and dissolved. Yet Andiene and her companions traveled more quickly, growing accustomed to feeling their way along the path. And before them, the city lights shone like a dappling of stars across a quadrant of their way, the torches hanging smokily along the walls. The great gate was closed. On either side of it stretched long slopes of stone, the surfaces roughly carved in scales, and ending in long-clawed feet.

Andiene stared at it. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Some builder’s little joke,” Kallan said. “They had a rare sense of humor, the ones who built our cities and shelters, and they thought it right that those who entered should walk in between the dragon’s paws.”

Andiene looked at those gray rough-carved talons again, and laughed. “I am so ignorant. When I went out from the city, I did not go by the gates.” She sat down on the ground beside them, leaning back so her pale hair shone against the gray stone. “They will not open to us till dawn?”

“No, my lady, but we can have the joy of waiting, and knowing our traveling is over.”

“Not over yet for me!” she flashed back at him. “I have some leagues to go to the north, before I rest.”

She turned to look at the little group that had followed her out of the forest. “All of you know who I am. I mean to rest in this city for the summer, then go and claim my own, the land of Mareja, which is my rightful kingdom. I want you to say, choosing sides openly, if you will go with me and follow me in my endeavor.”

Finally she had spoken boldly, on this last night before they rejoined the world. Syresh was the first to speak. “I am sworn to your service,” he said. “And. if I were not, then I would swear now, to make my honor more certain.”

Lenane looked long at him, then turned to Andiene. “I am no warrior, but minstrels travel with warriors to sing of their greatness.” She gave a little laugh, then echoed Kallan’s thought. “Besides, all royal ones need a jester.”

“And a cook,” Andiene said, and smiled approvingly. Then she turned to Ilbran, more appeal and urgency in her gaze, now. “And what of you? I cannot force you—indeed I am in your debt, twice over.”

Ilbran stroked his daughter’s dark hair and looked away, along the long line of torchlit city wall. Finally he spoke. “What do you mean to do, my lady?”

“I mean to win my way to the city and kingdom with the weapons I bear in my hands.” She spread out her empty hands to show him, and met his eyes calmly. “Your daughter could aid me.”

“No!”

“She has helped me already. She is stronger than I was. She is brave and gallant, and old enough to choose her own path. I could teach her much that she would want to know.”

Andiene heard the echo of the dragon’s words in her own voice. He taught me much, but I will cheat him of his prey, she said to herself. She did not realize how fierce her look was, how closely Ilbran watched her.

He saw her pale hair shine in the dim light, cropped short like any gatherer’s, not like Malesa’s long dark lusterless braids. Her skin was dusky in the dim light, not pale; her voice was clear as ice, not soft like clouds of campfire smoke. There was a bright beauty about her, like flames or clear water, and yet he heard Malesa in every word she spoke.

He had known three sorcerers in his lifetime. The grizane had befriended him but died soon. Six years had gone by before Malesa showed herself in all her darkness. And here was the third one, powerful and arrogant. He looked down at his drowsing child, Malesa’s daughter too, drawn by the scent of magic, drawn by Andiene with her plans for power, born of a long line of killers.

He glanced from her to Kallan. Seen in this starlight, the two could be brother and sister—the light bones, the pale eyes, and hair more pale, a breed of killers. Ilbran thought of what he had said once, what he had believed. What do I care if lord kills king till the end of time?

And yet, she had endangered her cause by waiting many days till his wounds had healed and he was strong enough to travel. He had traveled at her side joyfully. She had forgiven her foe, Kallan, and won him to follow her trustfully. She could not help her birth.

Ilbran looked down at Kare again. “What she did, I could not control, but this I can. She is too young to choose; she is barely past her first naming. She will not aid you in your endeavor.”

For all that he said, his relenting was written on his face for anyone to see, even before he spoke. “But if you still wish it, I will go with you to Mareja.”

At that moment, her smile was all the reward he needed, before she turned to Kallan. “And what of you?”

The last to be questioned, he had had much time to think and prepare his answer—if she asked him. He knew what he wished to say: Lady, I would follow you over the whole wide world. But she had spoken to him last; he had seen the betraying joy in her eyes, a moment before. Instead, he said, “It seems that I am fated to serve one of your family.”

“Do not say that!”

“Judge your actions,” he said. “Judge your actions and remember that you are blood kin to the one you hate.” He looked up at the high unclimbable walls of the city. He had been in many of the ruling cities up and down the land, all alike, all alien to mankind.

Then he turned to face her again, and spoke bitterly. “I will go with you because you need me. No one has gotten the throne without leaving a trail of blood behind. Your father did not, nor will you, no matter how great your power may be.”