Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

Hope blazed up in her—if hope it could be called, for it was a strange new creature, with teeth and a lashing tail, a creature that had last seen battle-fire in the Meredale. Boldly she struck out at him, aiming for the shoulder of his sword arm as a good place for a fat bruise to—

From his pose like melting ice, a sudden movement glittered. Her arm smarted from palm to shoulder and her stick clattered across the floor.

Shocked by the betrayal of the barrow-sword magic, she stared bereft from her fallen weapon to her tingling palm, to her enemy.

He looked—angry. Eyes narrowed, he shook his head ominously. “No,” he growled, “you did not dismiss our good landlord’s barbarians like that.” At his glance and nod, the splendid farmer retrieved her stick and returned it to her with a merry flourish: he, at any rate, seemed highly entertained, he and his friend with the hat.

Rothesay strangled back a horror of tears, an embarrassment she would die rather than loose now. But what was left, since the fighting power had capriciously abandoned her? None of the little magics she had learned of Padriag would be of any use against a trio of lordly rogues—would they? She glanced at them, gauging whether she or they could make the better speed if she ran.

Abruptly her opponent lowered his weapon and leaned one-handed on it, a quizzical look once more on his face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured, then nodded to the window-table. “Sit down, girl.”

She measured the distance to her belongings in the corner. “Oh, no, lords, indeed, I really have to go . . . . “

“So you said,” he purred, noting the object of her glance and with a wave ushering the little party that way. To her thorough surprise, the beggar joined them, as comfortably as if he were clad in the gayest silks, or the rest were as ragged as he. “Ah, where to, if I may ask, my dainty?”

It was her last cast. If there were a tender Goddess-mother; if Teodhan, Lord of Water and of Love, in this river-town could hear a silent prayer; if even the nameless new God of Mercy had mercy to spare for one who knew Him not, then the very name of the demons to whom she ran would spill the arrogance of these peacocks—and friend—like so much blood. Drawing herself up, cold and queenly she replied, “Colderwild.”

They stared.

Presently the graceful one smoothed his long moustaches with a heavy hand and forced himself to reply, “How—convenient. . . . Yet have a care, chit: there are those who would more gladly kill you than spit on you, for no greater cause!” He gestured to the bench and, defeated, she sat.

“Do you have a name, little one?” the man in the blue hat inquired, almost gently, oiling onto the opposite bench.

I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me. Ah. Ha. Ha. “Rothesay, sir,” she replied dejectedly. She eyed her forgotten horn in its bracket: the simpering wench had at some time refilled it—again. She wanted to dump it over the girl’s silly head.

The graceful one, their seeming leader, checked in the act of taking seat by her. She wilted under his fierce glare. “Um—your lordship?” she amended haplessly, wondering what ailed the beastly fellow now.

He made no reply, but stared down at her as if all her life and history were written plain upon her face for him to read. She saw his lips slowly shape her name, that she tended to forget was conspicuously foreign.

“Dere’s Blood!” he thundered, before she could explain. “Cherusay lived?”

For answer nine stone of hurtling young woman took him in the ribs and they crashed to the floor. He writhed in her grasp like a snake and she loosed the futile hold, instead seizing his ears in two slender, powerful hands with all the weight of their owner pinning his head.

“What do you know of my mother?” she roared into his moustache.

“That answers that,” he remarked dryly.

A hand took her shoulder in a grip both gentle and curiously compelling and pulled her back. “Peace, child! The disappearance of the Daughter of Daria has been common gossip all the length of the Dragon Sea for years.”

Freed, her captive snapped to his feet in one swift move like a snake’s strike. Rothesay sat on the floor, shivering, glancing up at the lord of the green cloak whose hand still lay on her shoulder, and at the leader, whose bright eyes burned down at her out of a starry vault of thought. One phrase rolled about her own brain like a marble in a large and empty pan: Daughter of Daria.

“Where is the Lady Cherusay?” he asked at length.

“Oh—dead. Your lordship.” Whatever else, she could not bring herself to own him with ‘my lord.’ “Thirteen years ago.”

One black eyebrow lifted, but he replied, not precisely in sympathy, but perhaps with forgiveness for her tackle, “Ah. I honor your grief.”

“I thank you,” she murmured, equally correctly. “But it’s an old grief, and I have learned peace.”

“It is well for you,” he replied enigmatically. “What did an-Velaker want of you?”

“Who?”

“Courtesy, courtesy, brother!” Green-cloak chided his friend. “Shall we sit down as strangers? I,” he said, offering a thick, ring-encrusted hand to Rothesay to help her to her feet, and bowed low, “am Tarrant, out of Kingscroft in Andrastir; this rogue here is my brother in spirit, Peridar, of Kingscroft as well.” He waved broadly at the table, and the blue-hatted fellow lifted it with a grin and a half-bow. “And here, this is Master Lauren of Raven’s Trace, whom you knocked like a bowling-pin—you know, Lauren, you will be a long time living that one down!”

“Aye, and properly so,” the beggar agreed, grinning at Rothesay’s astonishment. “But what, exactly, would y’ say was my error?” His tone reminded her of Padriag at his most tutorial, and Tarrant’s wide face wrinkled up thoughtfully, like a good pupil though he was forty-five if he was a day.

“Master of incorrigible instructors,” grumbled her erstwhile prisoner. “Not now, Lauren!”

The others laughed, and Tarrant concluded, “Master Dav, of Colderwild.”

The Demon-lord himself—and he looked the part, too! He was a blaze of blue silk, lined and outlined in black leather, with fiery blue sparks of sapphires scattered upon his boots and hands, at his throat and glittering from under his grizzled hair, bright sapphires set in his ears and bright eyes in his weathered face. His great, gleaming cloak, sweeping down around him like an aura, was blue also, with some fire-bright design she could not see.

Rothesay discovered that a whole body could stammer. Curtsy? No skirts—it would look idiotic. Bow? That was for men. Punch his face? Tempting; but he might hit back, and she doubted that he fought like the girls of Harrowater, who were the only foes she had ever triumphed over by knowing what she was doing.

She managed an awkward, bow-like twitch, and dropped herself on the bench, none too soon. She had anticipated another fortnight’s travel yet to reach the end of her world at Colderwild; now the end of the world stared her in the face out of blue-fire eyes, and she was empty-handed.

No, not quite: there was a letter. She was supposed to give this creature Padriag’s letter. She fumbled through the lacings of her tunic, slipped the precious packet from among the windings of her breastbands, and passed it wordlessly to—Dav, Master of Runedaur, quite probably the single most dangerous man in all the Dragon-sea lands.

The softest crackle attended deft fingers unfolding her paper protection. The Demon-lord’s hard eyes scanned the contents swiftly; but their movement followed no line of text. Just as it occurred to her to question the Master’s literacy, he asked suddenly, “Did you make this?”

“I did not!” she snapped, smacking her hands on the table in indignation. Her right one landed in an unexpected platter of stew: intent on her worries, she had not marked the arrival of food, nor of the wine for her companions. Gravy cooled on her fingers, and she could find no cloth to clean them.

Pointedly affecting not to notice, the Master of Runedaur frowned on her paper again. “Then, I am at a loss, chit: is this some metaphorical suggestion that I am a lost soul? or merely misguided?” And he let Padriag’s map drift to the table.

Mortified, she started after the proper packet, mentally juggled hands, and finally fished in her shirt with her less competent but clean left hand, and prayed for no lewd offer of assistance. She checked for the yellow seal lest she mysteriously should be carrying any other embarrassments; and the door burst open.

Only the head of a lank-haired young man poked around the jamb. Grinning apologetically, he announced without preamble: “Night-watch, day-watch, Aelmard’s hearthwards, and some of Thyrgan’s, too. About sixty, thirty either way.”

The men around her sighed in exasperation.

“Bother,” said Peridar, and drained his mug.

“I feel unloved,” Tarrant complained cheerfully, loosening his sword. “We should teach Deorgard respect.”

“Damn Deorgard,” Dav snapped, seizing up Rothesay’s pack and extracting her swathed swords. “Which one do you favor?”

Wide-eyed, wondering how he knew what they were, she selected the one she knew to be the barrow-sword, and gratefully cleaned her hand upon its ragged wrapping. Dav tossed the other one to Peridar.

“Come with me, chit,” he ordered, heading for the inn’s kitchen, and slinging her pack on his own back. “West water-gate, one hour!”

“Aye, then,” said Master Lauren as he vanished out the window.

She was unexpectedly pleased to follow and watch Master Dav, moving as he did like living silk. Then the outer door of the dark little servers’ pantry swung shut on her heels, for he had stopped silently, listening at the inner door. Her racing heart pounded too loudly in her ears, and she pushed suffocation, trying to breathe less noisily. The Master himself might have been a pantry shadow for all the sound he made.

“—in their drink?” snarled a voice beyond the door.

“N-no, my lord,” stammered their innkeeper. “I carry nothing of the sort in this house, as well I told—”

“Then drop this in their next round, thrallspine! No demon can endure it, and it’s blessed, besides.”

In the scrap of light from a knothole, Rothesay saw the Master’s blade glint. “Stay out of my way,” he murmured, and kicked open the door.

Four armed men startled violently as blue-satin lightning struck the center of the floor, without the faintest clap. Steel flashed, another bolt of silence.

“Gor take you! You said they were unaware!” yelled one, shoving the innkeeper aside and fumbling for his own weapon.

“Never that,” Dav drawled, unmoving.

The closest man lunged savagely, mail clinking. The Runedaur wavered like smoke, the stroke slipped past his shoulder and his own sword swept up, parrying, not against the man’s blade, but the inside of his arm above the elbow. A desperate gasp broke from the man, blood spurted to the floor; as his knees buckled in shock, the Runedaur flicked his sword-tip across his assailant’s throat, and the fellow was dead before he hit the floor. Dav had not yet moved one booted foot.

The other three hesitated for a moment’s surprise. Then as one roaring mass they charged together. Three swords thrust for the unarmored chest of their lone opponent, and clashed in empty air, and the Runedaur sprang back up from his crouch through the belly of the midmost man. The other two struck hard at his unguarded back, but he was already turning, pirouetting with their comrade: one blow went wild, and the other bit deep into the wrong flesh, wringing one last cry of pain from the parting soul.

The offending warrior leaped back aghast, but Dav’s blade, freed again from its bloody sheath, kissed his neck just below his ear and he expired with a sigh. The fourth man bolted out the back door, and Dav swept on to strike down the innkeeper.

White with terror, the wretched man flung himself to his knees. “Ai! Have mercy, great lord! Spare me!”

To Rothesay’s surprise, and the miserable innkeeper’s, the deadly blade paused. The Runedaur master cocked his head.

“Why?”

The innkeeper’s jaw flapped. ‘Why?’ A fool’s question! But there it was; and suddenly the very asking of it made the bedrock truth, ‘because I want to live,’ sound uncomfortably hollow and inadequate. There must be something more; what would satisfy this vengeful blade, what could possibly excuse his part in the Dragon-lord’s betrayal? He made a desperate cast into unfamiliar waters. “F-for the love of humanity, lord,” he pleaded tenderly, blinking the mists from his pale eyes.

The Runedaur slumped in disappointment and slew him.

Rothesay, in hard pursuit as the Master beckoned and flew nimbly from the room, managed to reflect that the innkeeper had won mercy, after a fashion: his face, frozen in death, still looked hopeful.

Dav plunged out into the night, paused, and shoved her down the alleyway ahead of him. “I am,” he remarked, as they dodged through an archway, “in grave danger—” as they leaped up a stone stairway and Rothesay’s heart leaped to her throat, “—of succumbing to the belief,” as they emerged onto a flat roof and she breathed relief: that kind of danger, “—that no one, outside my Order, thinks.” He scouted the rim of the roof for their next step, and came back to look in her eyes. “I go on quest. Once we’re home,” he added, and leaped off the roof onto a pursuing clansman.

There were six more behind that one. Rothesay waited while they looked up, failed to see her and turned to mob Dav, before gulping a terrified breath and jumping down on them herself.

As she scrambled painfully to her feet among her scattered but recovering enemies, she heard the Runedaur’s disgusted snarl: “Next time, aim yourself, fool!”

Swiftly baring the sword of Arngas, she attacked the clans’ warriors with the ferocity, and success, of a hayward shooing crows. They parted before her, regathered behind her, hesitant in their own attacks, buffeted between the dread rumor of Runedaur madness and the plain silliness of this one. Seeing real threat in the fancy-looking one, as two of their number died in as many strokes, most turned their wrath on him, and Rothesay scored blood on their divided attention, then goat-hopped away from their renewed interest. Desperately she tried to ‘locate’ the sword’s magic, tried to remember how she had twice disarmed trained fighters, how she had embarrassed that Master Lauren—who still had her bit of copper, she recollected distractedly; and neatly severed her opponent’s sword hand.

Startled at the return of skill, she slapped at the air vainly with her sword and threw herself aside as anxiety overrode the veneer of control on her excessive strength. Tumbling over fallen bodies, she gagged on horror, and rolled shuddering to her feet.

In the quiet alleyway, the Master alone moved, picking his way towards her with catlike fastidiousness. Rothesay drew a deep breath, wondering whether to be glad of his victory or not.

She was in full swing towards her rear by the time the noise registered with her; Arngas’ sword cut a tight spiral, steel sparked and rasped, a sword rang ownerless against the far wall, and the man who had wielded it fled for the safety of distance, as much as his feet could provide.

Rothesay blinked owlishly into the Runedaur’s face, dimly visible in the gloom.

“I was going to ask, rudely enough, if anyone was at home in there,” he said softly, tapping her forehead with a hard fingertip. “But maybe the better question is: how many?”

Horrified at the idea, Rothesay tried to take some kind of inner inventory, but he interrupted with a little snort. “Let’s go, chit. You’ll live at least as long as it takes me to get some answers.”

Padding after, she wondered if the remark was a joke of some kind; and though she noted that he had said ‘at least as long’ and not ‘only as long,’ she thought it might be well to tell this creature as little as was politely possible.

Floodholding writhed around in wrenching alleyways, a child’s Teginau; its streets were often so narrow that one need do little more than step from an overhanging storey to one across the way, as the Harrow at home only appeared. Dav so stepped, pursuing a straighter path than any lane afforded. He swarmed up gates like a cat, danced along rooftrees as easily as on a highway, slid from one slated acorn-sloped roof to another with the abandon of an otter in a stream, waited with such thin patience for Rothesay that she swiftly came to fear his veiled temper more than any fall, and long before they reached the city wall, she walked easily, and dared to run a little, on the airy Sferan gables. Indeed, the roofs of the town seemed homier than its hearthsides.

Some of their way led through air so; some, through fire. Descending to cross a wider boulevard, they found a dark lane going the Master’s way, and slipped quickly along. Few folk walked abroad after curfew; those who did, seemed less inclined to take notice than to avoid it. Then a few doors ahead, torches glimmered in a crossways, carried by more of the watch and guard out hunting demon-men. Dav thrust open the nearest door and swept in. Rothesay thoughtfully shut it behind her.

In its Sferan days, this hall opening straight off the street would have been a shop, its owner’s family cloistering in the privacy of the rooms upstairs. The Geillari, reluctant city-folk at best, preferred more immediacy to friends and cousins, however, and the two fugitives stepped at once into a cozy homeliness.

A sturdy-faced woman spinning wool at the hearth’s edge glanced up, squawked, and grabbed for the spear that was never far from a Geillisel’s hand. A litter of children sprouted from sleeping-furs under the far wall, and their burly father leaped up from the mending of a saddle. Then Rothesay saw a strange thing, a thing she did not believe even as she watched, not merely unprecedented but never even imagined before, though she would see it again, and stranger, in time to come. Dav, never slowing his stride, swept off his plumed hat and made them the deepest courtesy; and so strangely humble and gracious was his manner that the wife dropped her hand from her spear-shaft and retrieved her fallen spindle, and gave the intruders no worse than a curt nod of greeting, while the father shrugged and sat and took up his work again. To the children, the Runedaur lord made a grave salute, earning himself awed gapes and thrilled squeaks.

Thus unhindered, they passed swiftly on to the rear garden-door and a reek of pigs without. The door snicked shut behind them; and then they heard from the man a surprised shout: “Hey!” Dav cleared the garden in three bounds and leaped the low wall into the alley behind. Rothesay dropped after him. Peeking back through a chink by the gate, they saw the man open his door, take a long, uneasy look into his yard, count his pigs, make a sign against hauntings, and quietly retreat. Dav grinned hugely, looking more than ever like a wolf, and ran silently on.

Nearing the city wall at last, they came to the open doors of a stable. Bidding her stay, Dav walked in, took a large coil of rope, and walked out, without drawing a glance from the three carls at dice around a lonely lantern.

“You’re stealing it?” Rothesay whispered indignantly, then clapped a hand to her mouth as she recalled just whom she was reprimanding.

The Runedaur’s grin flashed yet again. “Misplacing it.”

He did not go to the gate, but found a stretch of wall dark between few torches. He snared a toothy crenellation in a bight of his rope, pulled the cord snug and passed it to Rothesay.

“Climb quickly, chit: we are only between passes of the watch, for they’ll not leave Wall Street unguarded long, however hot the hunt.”

It was not an art she possessed, but sheer strength made a passable substitute. The top gave her an awkward moment, in making the transition; and sudden cries below told her she had not climbed quickly enough. She flung herself into the narrow walkway and looked down.

The Runedaur climbed, already above the heads of the hearthwards clustering beneath. Some of them grabbed the rope to shake him loose, and two more bent their bows. In fright, Rothesay snatched up her end of the rope and hauled mightily, hand over hand, as hard as she could. Dav bounded up the wall like some bizarre jackrabbit, and the first arrows clicked on stone as she pulled him over the parapet.

Safe, he glanced at her queerly, then shrugged off her pack and tossed it back to her. “Remind me not to cross you,” he quipped lightly, and dropped off the far side.

Rothesay followed much more circumspectly; they left the rope hanging and ran for the woods. Pursuit, outside after nightfall, was no man's folly; Floodholding was content to have exorcised the evil spirits back into the emptiness where they belonged.

The evil spirits ate apples as they walked; Dav had evidently picked up more than rope in the stable. Rothesay was famished: the smell of the stew she had never had a chance to taste still lingered on her fingers; and by the time they reached the riverbank, she had reduced her apples to polished, chitinous stars, and was tempted even by them.

Men and horses awaited them, mere shadows in the moonless gloom.

“Y’re late,” chided one in Master Lauren’s voice.

“Sightseeing,” said Dav, swinging to the saddle of a great stallion-shape. Rothesay edged closer and clutched at his horse’s tail, feeling comfort in the beast’s massive presence. Bolting from the horsed demon-men in the dark seemed an empty enterprise; anyway, she still had Dav’s letter. “What are you carrying?” he demanded then, noticing bulging saddlepacks here and there. She hoped it was food.

There was a pause.

“Presents,” a shadow said firmly. “From Aelmard and the Dunfarragealt. After all, with most of his household guard out chasing you around the city. . . . And they looked unappreciated, stashed away in a dark hole like that. . . . ”

Dav snorted. “A locked dark hole, perhaps?”

“Lock?” said a second, incredulous shadow. “That was supposed to be a lock? Thought it was a brass decoration!”

“We took that, too,” said the first one.

There was general laughter, and then Dav made a toss. “Lauren! Look what they were going to put in our wine!”

Something rustled in his fingers. Lauren sniffed warily, then grunted in disgust and passed the small bag on.

“What is that—falloweed?” Master Peridar was offended. “You can’t poison first-year novices with falloweed!”

“Aelmard hires cheap assassins,” someone suggested.

“Seemingly,” said Dav. “Are there any other matters?”

“Who’s the girl?” several voices demanded curiously.

“Bar Lady Cherusay’s daughter Rothesay, I don’t know. I’ll send word when I do.”

“You’d better!” More laughter.

“Can we keep her?” That was Tarrant.

To Tarrant’s surprise, Dav’s mirth rang out, clear, joyous, and alone, a strange sound in the wilderness at night: the forest seemed to hush around them, and to listen intently. “A rare challenge, that, my friend!” he replied, chuckling at a jest only Rothesay could share and did not. “Well, then: is there aught else? No? Ceisamaa.”

A deep silence fell at that ancient word. No one moved, or seemed even to breathe. No longer held back by the pressure of human chatter, the darkness flowed in among them deeper than ever. Rothesay held her breath, straining to see by any scrap of starlight, the moment when these infernal creatures would cast off their human forms to ride the night as demons. Seconds became minutes; minutes became eternity.

Leather creaked; cloth whispered; men began to murmur. Horses’ hooves thunked quietly in the loam as the group shifted. A shadowed rider loomed up beside Rothesay and lowered a hand. She took it mutely, unthinking, and the shadow said in Peridar’s warm, rough voice, “Well, little one, you gave me a rare amusement in the Meredale, and no mistake! Gyrthu’s still seething over our intrusion into his closed little country; but all to the good, that.” He slapped her shoulder gently, then bent low and lightly kissed her forehead. “Go in peace: you travel well, travelling with our boy Davio. I’ll see you in Colderwild at the Midnight.”

Then he was gone as the group dispersed, melting into the night like snow on the ocean, and Rothesay was left all alone with the Master of Runedaur, bound for his haunted home.