“There’s no shame in it, being afraid.” Hethya’s big fingers toyed gently with his hair, separating it into locks on his forehead, as his mother sometimes still did. “Even great kings and heroes get afraid. And sometimes that happens, after you’ve been real afraid.”
Tir was silent, trying to sort out what he had felt clinging to the limb of the tree. He was still sweating, though under his furry jacket he felt icy cold, and his stillness alternated with waves of shivering that he could not control.
“You did well,” she said.
In fact, when Bektis had spun around and cried out “Raiders!” and the three Akulae whipped their curved southern swords from their sheaths, from those dark hollows in his mind Tir heard someone else’s voice, one of those other people, say as if thinking it to himself, Get out of everybody’s way.
Lying on the branch of the tree, he had felt curiously little fear. Too many memories of killing men himself – of those other boys killing men – lay too near the surface. Memories of terror in battle, memories of grief and remorse, memories of the grim rush of heat that drove in the knife, the spear, the sword. Watching Hethya, watching the Akulae, cutting and hacking at the men and women who ran stumbling from Bektis’ unseen illusions filled him with emotion that he could not name, closer to sadness and horror than fear. But strong. Horrifyingly strong.
The emotion, whatever it was, left him wrung out, shaken, sickened, so that as soon as the fighting was over he slid down the cotton-wood’s trunk and vomited, not even knowing what it was that he felt. He could see the faces of the dying men still. Their faces, and the faces of all those others who had died in ages past by the hands of those whose memories he touched.
One day he might have to kill somebody himself.
His face still buried in Hethya’s shoulder, he heard Bektis’ sonorous voice repeating summoning-spells, then the soft scrunch of hooves on leaves and the whuffle of horses’ breath. Looking up, he saw Akula leading two beautiful bay stallions by the bridles, so beautiful they took his breath away. The Keep boasted few horses. Four more stood, eyes rolling, among the trees. Another Akula was tethering them.
This Akula had a bleeding wound on one arm. Hethya made a little exclamation under her breath and, with a final quick hug, released Tir and stood. “Here,” she said, going to the man. “Let me get that covered.”
“My dear young lady.” Bektis strolled over to her through the trees, stroking his long white beard and considering the six horses with a self-satisfied smirk. The jeweled device still covered his right hand. He was seldom without it, even if he had no magic to work, and he seemed to enjoy just looking at it, turning it reverently to catch the sunlight, like a vain adolescent admiring a mirror.
During the fight Tir had seen how lightning and fire had flowed out of it, how strange smokes and rainbow lights seemed to leap from it around the heads of the White Raiders, making them cry out and slash at things only they could see, making their dogs attack one another or bite the legs of the Raiders’ horses. Tir had been badly scared by the Raiders’ dogs.
“It’s scarcely worth your time. The man will be dead before the wound heals.”
Hethya opened her mouth to retort, then glanced down at Tir and shut it again. The Akula looked from Bektis’ face to Hethya’s without much comprehension, a thick-muscled man with grim pale eyes. Tir wondered if Akula – any of them – knew enough regular speech to understand what had just been said.
He’d just begun to learn the ha’al language of the Empire of Alketch and could say Please and Thank you and a number of prayers, though since God presumably spoke all languages he couldn’t imagine why he had to learn, with great difficulty, what God could just as easily understand in the Wathe. But his mother, and Rudy, and Lord Ankres said that the language was a useful thing for a King to know.
“And now that we have horses in the camp,” said Bektis, drawing close around his face the fur collar of his quilted brown coat and tucking his beard behind a number of scarves, “I think it best we keep the boy tied up until his Lordship arrives. See to it.”
“Please, Lord Bektis.” Tir stepped forward, his heart pounding. “Please don’t tie me up. If something else happens, if the Raiders come again, I don’t want to be tied up.”
“So you can run away in the confusion?” Bektis had already started to turn away. There was contempt in his voice, and Tir felt his face flush.
“I know I wouldn’t get far,” he said with dignity. “Even if I stole a horse, you could just make it turn around and come back to you, couldn’t you? Or scare it, like you scared those people with stuff that wasn’t real, so they couldn’t protect themselves.”
The wizard’s dark eyes flashed with anger at this implication of cowardice and cheat. “And a fine predicament you’d be in if I hadn’t, boy. We’re not playing children’s games. Do you think the White Raiders would spare a child of your years? I’ve seen children younger than you with their guts staked over five yards of ground. Tie him up,” he added to Hethya. “And give him a lick or two, to mend his manners.”
He walked away to the edge of the grove, where he settled himself under a tree. Tir saw him take something from a velvet purse under his coat, polish it on his chamois cloth, and set it on a little collapsible silver tripod where the dim sunlight lanced through the thin leaves. Scrying, as old Ingold scried for things in his fragment of yellow crystal. As he’d seen Rudy scry, hundreds of times.
At the thought of Rudy his throat closed and his eyes grew hot, seeing him fall again through the whirl of snow and darkness. Don’t make him be dead, he prayed. Please don’t make him be dead.
Hethya’s hand dropped gently onto his shoulder. “Come on, honey,” she said. “We’d better do as he says. I’ll make it as easy on you as I can, and if we’re attacked again I’ll see to it you can get to safety.”
Tir nodded. He wondered sometimes, lying beside her in the warmth of her blankets, feeling safe while Bektis’ wolves and saber-teeth snuffled around the verges of the camp, if she had a little boy of her own.
“Who’s his Lordship who’s coming?” he asked softly, as she led him toward a thin sycamore tree where there was shade and grass. “And what’s he going to do? Why does he want me?”
“Never you mind that, honey,” said Hethya. “I’ll make sure you’re all right.”
But her eyes avoided his as she said it. She wasn’t lying, he realized. She just knew that she had no power to do that, if Bektis – and his Lordship, whoever he was, and whyever he wanted him – decided to kill him.
Shadow passed over the grass.
The Icefalcon turned, scalp prickling, then scanned the sky. There was no sign of a bird.
The chill wind of morning rippled miles of grass and brought the smoke of the camp on Bison Hill. They were waiting for someone, the Icefalcon thought. Or for some event, as Wise Ones waited for conjunctions of stars and planets that would increase and focus their power. Above the coulee, black birds now gathered in clouds, but none circled anywhere near the hill.
A smoke-colored flicker in the corner of his eye, and this time he was sure of it. Ears tilted inquiringly, Yellow-Eyed Dog raised his nose from his paws and sniffed the air. The sky was empty overhead.
“What is it?” whispered Loses His Way.
The Icefalcon drew breath and relaxed a little, as much as he ever relaxed or could relax.
“Cold Death,” he said.
It was after noon, the day following Tir’s abduction from the Keep, that a mixed company