Chapter Fourteen
“How?” I demand, one hand on the locket holding the amulet.
“We saw what the amulet did. How could you survive that?” “Her people.” He points to Chitai.
“Her ancestors, I should say, since they’re no more.
The Dawn. They took me in and cared for me.
Their healers kept me alive, even when I wished for death. ”
Chitai folds her arms across her chest but says nothing.
I shudder. “Burns are the worst. They hurt more than cuts or even beatings with a whip. A lot more.”
Kaelen makes a strange growling sound. When I look at him in surprise, I see his fists are clenched. “It’s so fucking wrong that you know that.”
Oh.
“Wrong, I agree. But not the point right now,” Elianna points out. “Andras, please continue.”
He strides to the fire and crouches next to it, busying himself by adding a couple of branches to the flames before speaking. It’s like he’s buying time. Considering how much to tell us, or whether to tell us the truth at all.
This adventure might be making me cynical.
“I was close to death. The amulet didn’t cause as intense a conflagration as it did in the throne room, but it was close.
Without my natural healing powers as a Sylvan, blessed of the goddess, and the considerable skill and knowledge of the desert healers, I would have died in that tent in the desert.
As it was, it took me nearly half a year to walk again. ”
“So, you’re more than a hundred years old?
More important: If you caught fire and nearly died, what happened to the amulet?
” I need to move. I’m so antsy I’m almost shaking.
Even though it happened a century ago, I can see Andras burning as if I witnessed it myself.
Feel how it must have hurt. The amulet is suddenly heavier around my neck.
I decide to make tea to have something to occupy my hands and thoughts other than visions of Andras burning. Or Lil.
I carefully retrieve the kettle from where it hangs over the fire, pour hot water into a mug, and add a heaping scoop of tea leaves. When I look up, everyone is watching me. “Well, keep going! The amulet?”
Andras’s lips quirk into an almost smile. “If my people could see how you boss me around, I would be laughed out of the Whispering Glade. Also, yes, I am nearly one hundred and sixty years old—not so old among our kind.”
The Whispering Glade. I had daydreams about the Sylvan court lands for a long time after reading about the Glade. I’d love to see it someday. And it’s true he’s not that old, if he’s immortal like the books say, but it’s not something I plan to ask him about.
Every time I learn something new about the world, I realize just how small my existence in the library had become.
Never again, I promise myself.
“One of the warriors possessed a silver box he claimed was enchanted. When the amulet fell out of my burned hand, they used a blacksmith’s tongs to lift it into the box, and the elders took it into their safekeeping.
” Andras’s face is stone as he excavates memories that must be nearly as painful as the wounds he endured.
“Why would they take such precautions?” Elianna looks puzzled. “How would they know it was dangerous? It looks like an ordinary emerald.”
I force myself not to roll my eyes. I guess emeralds are ordinary in her world. Must be nice.
“Probably because it was still shooting flames,” Andras says dryly. “Not so ordinary.”
I suddenly remember one of the forbidden scrolls of King Prasan I read when I was meant to be washing the walls in the third basement.
“You! You were the one who went into the throne room with King Prasan and his guard and then disappeared?” I’m on my feet again, the teakettle forgotten. “But your name isn’t in any of the scrolls.”
The Sylvan shrugs, a graceful but impatient movement.
“Which means nothing. History is told by the winners. My name wasn’t important to that king or any since.
After Prasan took the amulet, I spent the rest of this last century trying to find a way to free the goddess.
When I came back to Pallanhold last week, the king decided I could be useful. ”
“That’s so wrong.” I’m appalled. But then I think about the rest of what he said and shake my head. “No. No, no, no. History is fact. If it isn’t fact, it’s fiction. Or lies. History can’t be lies! People should only record the truth.”
“That is dangerously naive,” he shoots back at me.
“All records are, by their nature, incomplete. Not to mention how much those doing the recording can lie and falsify the histories. I bet your books don’t tell you that I and my people spent years fighting to save our lands from the Zhagarn.
Or that I only took the amulet to Pyrrh after we were defeated. ”
Kaelen nods grimly. “He’s right. Nothing I read in Valourian said anything about this.
Even in our court, I discovered many, many versions of the same past events, different in small to large ways.
My tutors said we don’t even know how much is missing from the historical record. If Prasan never told the truth …”
“What is truth?” Chitai asks dismissively, bitterness drenching her words.
“Truth is a mirage in the shifting sands. The closer we get to it, the farther away it seems. Sometimes we can only find our way to the truth—a truth—by wandering through twisting paths of pain and doubt and devastation. And our truth is not necessarily the truth of others, no matter the oaths we’ve sworn. ”
“People lie,” Kaelen says flatly.
“Not always lies,” Elianna protests. “Sometimes things are said to … to put a prettier picture on a harsh reality.”
“Fine. History gilds the past with the polished lenses of reminiscence,” Kaelen drawls, the studied courtier in his mocking voice. “And the conquerors grind those lenses themselves, skewing perspective beyond all reason, as they wish.”
I’m still shaken by having my apparently naive worldview upended, so I busy myself handing tea to all who want it.
Andras shakes his head, then reconsiders and takes a mug. “This is all irrelevant to the point. My goddess begged me to take the key and run. To put as much distance as possible between the key and her prison in Corvynne’s domain.”
“The key?” Trick says from behind me. I didn’t hear him walk up. He and Neville must have finished their patrol.
“The amulet,” I tell him. “Remember, the goddess told us that the amulet is the final key to unlock her prison.”
“After we find two others while somehow defeating both impossible evil and odds,” he mutters.
I can’t think about the hopelessness of the quest, or I’ll fall back down into the Gray. I collect dishes to wash, but Kaelen takes them from me, bending his head to mine.
“You’re the center of this mission, not the servant. We’ll do this together.”
A delicious shiver races down my spine at both his words and the warm caress of his breath. I swallow, unable to respond, and pull my shaking hand out from beneath his.
The prince turns to Andras. “I already know you well enough to be sure you would never have left Artemisen’s side unless the situation was both dire and hopeless.”
Andras nods solemnly. “Thank you. My company was all dead. We fought to the last man and woman, trying to keep the Zhagarn and Fell at bay while the goddesses waged their battle in the sky. But when Artemisen fell …” He bows his head, touches his closed hand to his lips, and murmurs something I can’t catch.
“When Corvynne locked her in that tomb, using Artemisen’s own amulet to seal it, it was over.
They thought we were all dead, and I, the last one still alive, was badly injured.
But my goddess sent her healing powers to me, even locked inside that crystal tomb.
She bade me steal the amulet from the lock and run—fight my way free if I had to and spirit the amulet away to someplace safe, where it could be protected until we could rescue her, if need be. ”
“If need be?” Elianna says. “What does that mean?”
“Artemisen still had hope that her sister would repent and free her.”
“Families. Whatcha gonna do, right?” Trick says lightly.
“But the High Inquisitor’s scrolls,” I say quickly, before Andras stabs my friend for his insolence. “They say he—you—disappeared.”
“Secret passage from the throne room. We went to the king’s chambers, where I explained everything. The king wanted to hold the amulet. When I tried to stop him, his guard volunteered to do so, even after I explained the danger.” Andras sighs heavily. “You can imagine the rest.”
“He burned,” I whisper, thinking of the king’s deathbed confession.
“He burned. The king took me to his private treasure room, where we stored the box in a pile of trinket boxes.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Trick says. “One of the best defenses against thieves who aren’t very skilled.”
Andras nods. “The High Inquisitor forced the king to throw me in prison, because a prisoner couldn’t spread word that Pyrrh had the amulet.
Soon after that, King Prasan decided he was done with the man and his blatant power grabs.
He set me free and banished the High Inquisitor from Pallanhold forever. ”
“That same man went to the Freeholders’ Territory and promptly founded a cult,” Elianna mutters. “Took root there like a fungus. There were and are no rulers and little belief in either magic or religion there.”
“Unsurprising, since so many are former indentured servants who were cheated into extended or indefinite terms of servitude,” I say sharply.
“The territory was ripe for someone like him. People do so like being told what to do,” Elianna finishes, nodding at my remark. “At least the Pyrrhan Inquisitors since then have wielded much less power.”
The brand on my wrist burns in remembered pain, and I clasp a hand over it. “Not so much less power. They still have far too much over people like me.”
Elianna looks away, but not before I see the shame and regret on her face. Her plan might yet kill me.
I hear a horse galloping toward us. Before I can move, Kaelen pushes me behind him and draws his sword. Chitai’s knives are in her hands, Andras’s sword is out, and Elianna’s palms glow with power.
Trick, though, yawns and bites into an apple. “I imagine that’s Sergeant Neville, chasing me down,” he drawls.
Sure enough, Neville rides into the clearing like an army of Fell is behind him and leaps off his horse. “Did you tell them?” He points at Trick and then bends over, panting, trying to catch his breath.
“Tell us what?” Kaelen demands.
Trick tosses his apple core in the fire and shrugs. “I didn’t want to interrupt story time for what is probably minor news. But we’re being followed.”
“How many?” Andras demands.
“How close?” Kaelen asks.
“A long way back,” Neville says. “Only one, maybe two at most.”
“How far?” Elianna asks, her gaze pinned on Trick. I think she’s just repeating Kaelen’s question until she continues, “You were quite a distance from me at one point. Challenging the bond?”
His eyes go flat. “Can’t blame a trapped bird for testing its jesses, can you?”
I wonder if that’s what happened when she winced earlier. Does it cause her physical pain when he gets too far away?
“There are two of them,” Neville says. “On palace-shod horses. The shoes are distinctive.”
Andras and Kaelen finally sheathe their swords, and Chitai’s knives disappear.
“They’re crisscrossing our trail,” Neville says, uncapping a waterskin and taking a long drink before nodding at Trick. “And good at hiding, too. I couldn’t find any trace of them past the tracks he found. Never expected a thief to be such an expert hunter.”
Trick says nothing but flashes an easy grin.
“If they’re after the amulet, they should have brought more people,” Kaelen says, his face hard.
“Maybe they’re not,” I venture. “Maybe because the amulet is our focus, we think everybody else is out to get it. But we’re mercenaries, right?
Maybe they’re just a pair of travelers who want to stay safe on dangerous roads, and they figure following us keeps them in proximity to armed and dangerous people who most brigands will try to avoid. ”
“Brigands?” Chitai grins at me. “I’ve never heard this word.”
“Outlaws,” Andras says.
“Bandits,” Elianna says.
“Thieves,” Kaelen says, giving Trick a hard stare.
“Anyway, maybe,” I say, flushing. My library vocabulary has its drawbacks; the other servants think I’m putting on airs when I use words they don’t know.
“Maybe,” Kaelen says. “It’s a smart thought, Soli. We need to be careful not to think everything is a nail just because we only have a hammer.”
“I know this one,” Chitai crows. “Your version of ‘just because we only have an axe, not all enemies have long necks.’”
“You’re a very strange woman,” Sergeant Neville says, and then he flushes. “Um, begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“I am no ma’am, but I’m surely strange to your riverlander eyes,” Chitai says, her smile suddenly filled with sharp teeth.
“Not strange at all,” I say slowly, suddenly realizing where I’ve seen her armband before. “The drawings in Legends of the Dawn by Octorran Gillam. Your golden armband is no mere piece of jewelry.”
Chitai backs away from the fire, blades again in her hands. She pins me with a fierce gaze. “Yes, it is. When I wear it on my right arm.”
I say nothing but pointedly stare at the stylized gold band reflecting the firelight.
On her left biceps.
“And on your left arm, uncovered?” I challenge her to say it.
And if she won’t? I will.
She studies me, then throws back her head and laughs. “Yes, Soli. On my left arm, uncovered, it means I’m going to war.”
Elianna gasps. “No. It’s not possible. They’ve been dead and gone for over eighty years.”
Trick is staring back and forth between us, like he’s watching children playing at stickball in the street. “What? What’s not possible? Who’s gone? How about filling in those of us who don’t read obscure texts all day long?”
“Tell them,” Chitai demands, her obsidian gaze on my face.
So, I do.
“Chitai is a warrior of the Dawn. And if that armband were a declaration of war against us, we’d all be dead.”