Beyond the High Road, page 26
“Alusair can command you to leave, but she cannot command me to stay,” said Tanalasta. “She is not my master.”
“Please, Tanalasta—I can’t. Doing as you ask would make me the same as Gaspar and Xanthon.”
“You could never be the same as those two.”
“I would be, if I put my own desire above my oath as a Purple Dragon.” Rowen guided Tanalasta away from a red catclaw bush, pulling her safely beyond the striking range of a half-hidden pixie-viper. “We all have our duties. I am a scout, and my duty is to move swiftly and find Vangerdahast. You are the learned one, and your duty is to return to Arabel and inform the king of what you have discovered.”
“And I will,” said Tanalasta. “In your company.”
Rowen shook his head. “You will be safer with Alusair.”
“Really?” Tanalasta cast a doubtful glance at her sister’s sickly men. “I should think it would be easier for the ghazneths to find a large company of sick men than two people moving swiftly and stealthily.”
“Perhaps.” Rowen paused to think, then said, “That would be so if you were healthy, but with the fever, you are too weak.”
“The fever will improve. Seaburt said …”
Tanalasta let the sentence trail off as the significance of Rowen’s pause struck her. He had been there when Seaburt cured her, and he certainly should have heard what the priest had told her. She stumbled along two more steps, then stopped and whirled on the scout.
“You don’t want me to go with you.”
Rowen’s expression fell, and Tanalasta saw she had guessed correctly. She pulled her arm free and stumbled back.
Rowen stepped after her. “Please, Tanalasta, it’s not what you think. I have every confidence in your ability—”
Tanalasta stopped him with a raised hand, then lifted her chin and began to back away. “That is quite enough, Rowen. And you may address me as Princess Tanalasta, if that will make you feel more comfortable.”
* * * * *
A muffled patter drummed down out of the pines, reverberating down through the valley, bouncing from one slope to the other until Vangerdahast could not tell whether the sound came from ahead or behind. He reined Cadimus to a stop and raised his arm, and the Royal Excursionary Company clattered to a halt behind him. The air filled instantly with the swish and clank of wizards and dragoneers readying for battle. Over the past day and a half, the company had lost dozens of men and horses to orc ambushes and lightning-swift ghazneth strikes, and now even the dee-dee-dee of a chickadee could send them diving for cover.
Vangerdahast twisted around. “Will you be quiet back there?”
He glared until the company fell silent, then looked forward again. The valley was one of those serpentine canyons with a meandering ribbon of marshy floor and steep walls timbered in pines. He could see no more than fifty paces ahead, and to the sides not even that far. As the patter grew louder, the trees scattered it in every direction, and soon the drumming seemed to be coming from all around. Sometimes it sounded like hooves pounding grassy ground and sometimes like wings beating air.
Cadimus nickered and raised his nose to test the air, then a ginger mare galloped around the bend, chest lathered and eyes bulging, reins hanging loose, stirrups flapping empty. She came straight down the valley at a full run, barely seeming to notice Cadimus and Vangerdahast, or the entire Royal Excursionary Company behind them. Close on the mare’s tail came a streaking ghazneth, its wings a black crescent as it banked around the corner, its arms stretching for the flanks of the ginger mare.
Vangerdahast leveled a finger at the phantom and uttered a single word, sending a dozen bolts of golden magic to blast the dark thing from the sky. The impact hurled the ghazneth into the pines, snapping branches and ripping boughs. In the next instant, the valley erupted into a cacophony of thundering hooves and screaming voices as dragoneers and war wizards urged their mounts to the charge. If the Royal Excursionary Company had learned anything over the past two days, it was never to hesitate around a ghazneth. Vangerdahast wheeled Cadimus around just as quickly and started after the riderless mount.
Tanalasta’s horse had been a ginger mare.
* * * * *
The horse did not snort, nor whinny, nor even groan. It merely dropped to its knees and closed its eyes, then toppled over onto a thicket of smoke brush. Tanalasta watched as Alusair, dazed with exhaustion and a relapse of fever, idly yanked the beast’s reins and tried to continue walking. When the horse did not move, Alusair cursed its laziness and, without turning around, hauled harder on the reins.
Tanalasta said nothing, content to see someone else make a fool of herself for a change. The princess could not believe how she had misread Rowen’s emotions. Their kiss had certainly felt sincere enough, but she had read that men experienced such things more with their bodies than their hearts. Was that the root of her mistake? Perhaps she had mistaken simple lust for something more … permanent. The affection she sensed had been no more than a man’s normal carnal attraction, kept in check by Rowen’s honorable nature. The princess almost wished he had not been so virtuous. Had he used her, at least she would have been justified in her anger. As it was, all she could do was feel embarrassed and try to avoid him until he went off to find Vangerdahast.
Alusair finally stopped tugging on the reins and stumbled around to scowl at the motionless horse—the second that had died in only ten hours of walking. She muttered an inaudible curse, then looked to Tanalasta.
“You could have said something.”
Tanalasta spread her hands helplessly. “I thought it might get up.”
Alusair eyed her sourly, then called the rest of the company with a short whistle. As the troops gathered around, she pointed to the dead horse. “Let’s take off our helmets.”
The weary men groaned and reluctantly started removing the leather padding from inside their helmets. After the first horse died, they had spent nearly an hour burying it so the body would not attract vultures and betray their route, and no one was looking forward to repeating the experience—especially not with night fast approaching and another thirteen horses ready to follow the first two at any moment.
As Rowen kneeled to help the others, Tanalasta at first tried to avoid his eye—then realized she could not be so coy. With Alusair’s mind addled by fever and the rest of the company near collapse, a certain amount of responsibility for their safety fell to her.
Tanalasta caught Rowen by the arm. “Not you.” She pointed toward a hazy line of crooked shadow just below the western horizon. “That looks like a gulch to me. See if there’s a stream in it—and a safe campsite.”
“Wait a minute.” Alusair was so weak she barely had the strength to signal Rowen to stay put. “Tanalasta, you don’t give orders to my company.”
“I do when you are in no condition to see to its welfare.” Tanalasta met her sister’s gaze, which was more drained than angry, and waved at the surviving horses. “If we don’t water these creatures soon, we’ll have to bury them all by morning—and then we can start on your men.” She glanced meaningfully toward one warrior still struggling with his helmet’s chin strap.
“Princess Tanalasta is right.” Rowen’s comment drew a glassy-eyed scowl from Alusair, but he was not intimidated. “Had your wits been clear, you would have had me looking for water two hours ago—and not only for the horses.”
Alusair frowned, though her expression looked more pained than angry. “That may be, but I am still commander of this company.”
“Then you would do well to remember that and let Seaburt take care of your fever,” said Tanalasta.
Because Seaburt and his fellow priest could cast only enough curing spells each day to restore a third of the company to health, any one person could be healed only once every three days. Unfortunately—as Alusair had discovered while trapped in the goblin keep—the illness tended to recur on the second day, and Alusair had steadfastly refused to deprive anyone else by having a spell cast on her out of turn.
“I may not know the military,” said Tanalasta, still addressing Alusair, “but I do know leadership. As the great strategist Aosinin Truesilver wrote, ‘If a man must send troops into battle, then he owes it to them to be sober at the time.’ ”
Alusair scowled and started to argue, but Rowen cut her off. “Princess, you must let Seaburt see to your fever. Everyone will stand a better chance of returning alive if you do.”
Alusair looked from the ranger to the others. When they nodded their consensus, she sighed. “Very well. Rowen, go and see about that water. Everyone else—why isn’t that horse buried?”
The company began to scrape at the hard ground with their helmets. Seaburt took Alusair aside and began to prepare her for the spell—the last he would be able to cast until morning. Rowen started toward the western horizon, but stopped a dozen steps away and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the setting sun.
“Princess Tanalasta, I don’t see that gulch you were talking about. Would you be kind enough to show it to me?”
Frowning, Tanalasta went to his side and pointed at the hazy line. “It’s there. You can see the shadow.”
“Of course. I see it now.”
Tanalasta sensed Rowen watching her and turned to find him looking not toward the gulch, but into her eyes.
“Forgive the ruse,” he said. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize?” Tanalasta kept her voice cold. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I fear I have given you reason to think poorly of me.”
“Nonsense. You’ve been most valorous. The king shall hear of your service.” Tanalasta paused, then decided a demonstration of her magnanimity was in order. “In truth, I shouldn’t be surprised if you were granted that holding you desire.”
Rowen’s face fell. “Do you think that’s why I’m here? Because I am chasing after a piece of land?”
Tanalasta recoiled from the bitterness in his voice, then lowered her chin to a less regal height. “I know better than that. I only wanted you to know I wouldn’t hold my own foolishness against you.”
“Your foolishness, Princess?”
“Mine.” Tanalasta looked away. “I have been throwing myself at you like a festhall trollop, and you have been honorable enough not to accept my affections under false pretenses.” She gave Rowen a sideways glance, then added, “Though it would have been kinder to tell me at the start I was behaving like a fool.”
“How could I do that? It would have been a lie.” Rowen dared to grasp her hand—and when she pulled it away, dared to take it again. “If my feelings are different from yours, it is only because they are stronger. I have been stricken from the moment I saw you.”
Tanalasta was too stunned to pull her hand away. Once again, he was telling her what she longed to hear, but how could she believe him when his actions spoke otherwise? She shook her head.
“That can’t be true, or you would never leave me with Alusair—not when Vangerdahast has the resources of an entire kingdom to make certain we never see each other again.”
Rowen closed his eyes for a moment, then looked toward the horizon. “Perhaps that would be for the best.”
“What?” Tanalasta grabbed Rowen’s arm. “I will not be taken for an idiot. If you do not wish to court me, then have the courage to say so plainly. I’ve heard doubletalk all my life, and you really aren’t very good at it.”
Rowen’s eyes flashed at the slight. “I am speaking as plainly as I know how, Princess Tanalasta. My feelings are as sincere as they are powerful, but I am the son of a disgraced house. Any courtship of mine would only weaken the crown.”
Tanalasta experienced a sudden lifting of the heart as her irritation gave way to comprehension. She stood motionless for many moments, then finally began to see how deeply her harsh words had to have cut the ranger. She stepped closer and said, “Rowen, I’m sorry for the things I said to you. Now that you’ve explained your reservations, I see you have been honest—brutally honest, at least with yourself.”
“I’m sorry, Princess. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Tanalasta cocked her brow. “Really? Then you are prepared to assert your judgment over that of the Goddess?”
“Of course not, but if you are speaking of your vision, how are we to know I am the one?”
“I know,” Tanalasta replied. “And so do you.”
Rowen looked torn and said nothing.
“Certainly, there will be those who resent my choice,” Tanalasta said, sensing an opportunity to win him over, “but that would be true no matter who I chose. If I picked a Silversword, the Emmarasks would be angry. If I picked an Emmarask, the Truesilvers would disapprove. If I picked a Truesilver, the Hawklins would gossip, and anyone I choose will be a slight to the Marliirs. In the end, I can only follow my heart and take the man I desire, one I know to be honest, loyal, and trustworthy—and that man, Rowen, is you.”
“Even if it costs you the crown?” he asked. “And though it does not, even if it costs you the loyalty of the great nobles?”
Tanalasta shrugged. “You are only one of the choices I have made that may cost me the throne—but they are my choices to make, and I am happy to live with the consequences.” She gave him a steady gaze. “If the crown is to rest on my head, having the strength of your character at my side will far outweigh the loss of a noble family’s shifting loyalties.”
Rowen considered this for a moment, then asked, “But how many of those families can one man be worth?” He shook his head. “Surely, not even half of them. It is well and good for a royal to make her own choices, but she must not be blind to the trouble that follows. People will think of me as no better than Aunadar Bleth, taking advantage of your good nature to restore my family’s standing—and the crown will be the weaker for it.”
“Is your opinion of me that low?” Tanalasta demanded. “Do you assume people think me capable of attracting only frauds and sycophants?”
Rowen’s face went white. “That’s not what I mean to—”
“What else could you mean? Perhaps it’s just as well we haven’t pursued this further.” Tanalasta pointed toward the horizon. “There is the gulch, Rowen. Go and see if it has any water for us.”
* * * * *
The mare neighed three sharp times and scraped at the ground, nearly crushing Vangerdahast’s foot when one of her hooves caught him across the instep. He cursed and jerked on the reins, forcing her head down below the height of his chest.
Owden Foley raised a restraining hand. “Gently, my friend. She has been through a lot.”
“And she will go through a lot more, if she doesn’t start making sense,” Vangerdahast growled. “Tell her that.”
Owden scowled his disapproval. “I don’t think—”
“Tell her,” Vangerdahast ordered. “Perhaps it will clear her thoughts.”
Owden sighed, but turned back to the horse and began to neigh and nicker. The horse’s ears flattened, and she fixed a single round eye on Vangerdahast’s face. He narrowed his own eyes and raised his lip in a snarl. The mare looked away and began a quick succession of nickers, punctuated every now and then by a sharp whinny or a neighed question from Owden. When the conversation finally ended, Owden nodded and patted the beast’s neck reassuringly.
“Well?” Vangerdahast demanded.
“I coaxed a little more out of her, but horses don’t remember the same way we do.” Owden took the reins from Vangerdahast’s hands. “All she can tell us is that the ghazneths have been hunting her since ‘the dawn before the dawn.’ ”
“And?” Vangerdahast glared at the priest.
Owden slipped between him and the mare. “And that the princess is gone with ‘her stallion.’ ”
“Her stallion?” Vangerdahast fumed. “What, exactly, does she mean by that?”
* * * * *
The ‘gulch’ turned out to be a winding riverbed filled with more willows than water, but there was a tiny ribbon of creek meandering along beneath the bluffs on the far side, and Tanalasta could hear the horses sloshing through its silty currents, doing their best to slurp the rivulet dry. She was kneeling atop a slender tongue of high ground, churning a pile of rotting leaves into a small plot of dirt she was preparing for a faith planting. Though dead-tired from the day’s walk, the work kept her mind off Rowen, and it was well worth the effort to slow her whirling thoughts.
The princess was more disappointed in him than angry. She knew better than anyone what people thought of her. Many nobles—perhaps most—would accuse Rowen of taking advantage of her gullible nature. But they would think the same no matter who she chose. The only way to change their minds was to be patient and prove them wrong through good conduct, her own and that of her chosen. She was hurt not because Rowen had pointed out how people would perceive their relationship, but because he lacked faith in her to change their minds. If he did not trust her to succeed, how could she trust herself?
Tanalasta pulled a fist-sized stone from the ground and turned to set it aside at the edge of her plot, where she found a pair of soft-leathered ranger boots standing beside her. Biting back a cry of surprise, she placed the stone with the others, then spoke without looking up.
“Come to tell me I mustn’t think poorly of you?” Tanalasta crumpled a handful of decaying leaves between her hands, sprinkling them over the surface of her plot. “Or have you decided to chase that holding after all?”
“I suppose I deserve that.” Rowen kneeled beside her and began to work a handful of leaves into humus. “The truth is, I’ve come to apologize. I spoke like a narrow-minded popinjay.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to disagree.”
“No. When I said those things, I was being a coward. I was thinking only of myself—of how your favor would affect my reputation.”
“You said you were thinking of the crown,” Tanalasta reminded him.
Rowen shrugged. “Perhaps I was thinking of both—or perhaps I was not thinking at all. Either way, I was wrong. It is not my place to decide what is best for the crown. I pray you can forgive me.”
