Chapter Seventeen The Lands of the Kindred #3
“He doesn’t seem too talkative now,” Davydd said. “He can’t have forgotten them all. But then again, stories are as easy to forget as identities.”
And then the young man’s red eyes fixed on the Prince’s black ones. The Raven Talisman grew hot, and somehow the Prince knew, though how he could not say, that Davydd was playing them all for fools.
He knew exactly who “Raven” was.
The Prince’s hand twitched instinctively, about to move under his drape-over to grasp the hilt of his dagger, but he stopped. The red eyes were watching him closely—and watching him with unmistakable intelligence. How much did he know? How much did he guess?
And would he tell the Elders in Vale and have him taken by force?
Leah and Tomaz were both making up more excuses, but the Prince knew it was useless.
Somehow something he had done had revealed his true identity, or maybe Davydd had simply heard rumors of the Prince of Ravens moving south and put the pieces together.
He was one of the Exiles who operated in the Empire after all; who knew what sources of information he had access to?
But Davydd didn’t speak. He simply nodded and gave the impression that he believed what Leah and Tomaz were telling him, all while watching the Prince with his fiery red gaze.
“Well,” Tomaz rumbled, “let’s get going. Shouldn’t keep the Elders waiting.”
“Certainly not!” Davydd said, resuming his foolish ne’re-do-well older brother routine. The Prince was amazed at how easy the transition was, and how oblivious the others were to it. “Though I’ll bet five golden stags none of them but Crane remembers you even left.”
Tomaz and Leah laughed, though it was somewhat forced, and they all went about packing their temporary camp.
As they did, Davydd went over and spoke in a low voice to Lorna.
She made no sign that anything he said had any import, but the Prince found himself wondering if Davydd had already shared his suspicions with her.
Why wasn’t he making a bigger deal of it? No Exiled in their right mind would let the Prince of Ravens into the lands of the Kindred.
He means to turn me in. That must be it.
But what could the Prince do? He couldn’t go back, not now.
Assuming he found his way through the illusions—a huge assumption, but for argument’s sake say he could—the bridge they’d come over was out.
His only other option was equally impassible: even if he could make it through any Exiled patrols between here and the Pass of Roarke, upon arrival he would have to contend with his brother Ramael, and that was not a confrontation he felt confident he would survive.
No, he realized as he mounted his horse and followed along behind the Exiles, the landscape flickering but he too lost in his thoughts to notice, there was nothing he could do but go to Vale and hope the Exiles all held their tongues.
Another thought came to him, one that whispered sweetly and deadly in the deepest corners of his mind: Davydd wouldn’t need to hold his tongue if the Prince silenced it for him. It was what Geofred would do. What any of the Children would do.
No, the Prince thought harshly. I do not kill unless I have to.
And as he sat his horse and did his best to ignore the changing world around him, he also did his best to turn a deaf ear to the voice that repeated, over and over, a single line full of haunting possibility:
And what if you have to?
But slowly, as they walked along, all of them in the early morning silence that comes from hastily banished sleep, he felt a sense of resignation settle on him, and he knew he would never be able to do it.
He wasn’t his brothers or sisters. He’d never be able to strike down Davydd in cold blood.
He couldn’t say why… in fact, he didn’t know.
Even a week earlier he might have, knowing that his safety depended on it.
But that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Nothing, really, seemed to matter anymore.
And with that thought, his mind fell silent.
They reached Vale some three or four hours later.
The Prince knew that they were close because the world—which was currently a long corridor from the Fortress, the corridor that led to his Mother’s audience chambers—morphed into a forest that didn‘t shift or change.
A forest full of tall trees that had… gold and red leaves?
“How are the leaves this color?” the Prince asked. The sight was… oddly beautiful.
“You can see them?” Tomaz asked, immediately interested.
“Yes. I think the illusions have stopped. Everything seems steady.”
“What’s over there?” Tomaz asked, flinging a hand out toward a shrub of some kind. The Prince said as much and was rewarded with a cry of praise.
“By all the gods,” Davydd said, sticking a finger in his ear as he looked back at Tomaz, “no wonder your throat is so thick. You’ve managed to stuff a full-grown bull down there.”
“What is it?” Leah asked, arriving from a short scouting trip up ahead in a flurry of leaves.
“He can see again,” Tomaz said, with the too-solemn air of a parent announcing that his son, blind from birth, had been granted the gift of sight.
Davydd sniggered and Lorna cracked a smile as well. The Prince was glad to see that the woman, who hadn’t spoken a single word to him since their initial meeting, at least had a sense of humor.
“Yes, thank you,” the Prince said, “but the leaves—how are they gold and orange and red? I thought all leaves were green?”
“Not as green as you,” Davydd said, and spurred his horse forward with a wicked smile. “I’m going home—catch up when you can!”
Lorna followed him on her identical, if larger, gray horse, and Leah and Tomaz motioned to the Prince to follow as they too took off with cries of excitement.
The Prince, somewhat irked that his question had been disregarded, nevertheless heeled his horse in the ribs and rode quickly after them.
He lay low over the horse’s flowing mane, the long brown hair streaming back in the wind of their passing, leaves stirring around them, and a clean, crisp smell in the air that made the Prince feel awake and alert.
He caught up to the others easily enough: the forest road wasn’t made for speed, and as he wound around rocks and trees, heading upward on a slight incline, he was soon riding just behind Leah and Tomaz, with Davydd and Lorna a few yards beyond them.
When they burst out of the tree line, quite suddenly and dramatically, they found themselves looking out over a valley several miles long and wide.
A valley filled to the brim with a sprawling, white-stone city.
“Welcome to Vale,” Davydd said.
Row after row of tall buildings made of white stone spread out before them, those in the middle taller and grander.
Trees grew between the houses, and there were no barriers to separate the buildings one from another.
No cordoned off sections where lived the Rogues, or the Elders, no plot of land for the Commons to sleep on should they find no housing for the night. It all looked equally grand.
“Where do your Elders live? I see no area walled off for their use.”
“They live wherever they want,” Leah said, watching him with interest.
Slowly, what she was saying, and the meaning of it, sank into the Prince’s mind, and he didn’t know what to say.
He simply stared out over the city, watching the people go from building to building, all walking down the same streets, all breathing the same air.
How did they know who they were? How did they know their place?
“Well,” Davydd said loudly, interrupting the Prince’s thoughts. “Lorna and I are going to report to Captain Autmaran. He’s expecting us. Stay out of trouble while we’re gone.”
And with that, he kicked his horse into a gallop and rode down the side of the hill into the valley, soon lost to sight down one of the wide boulevards.
“So what’s the plan?” Tomaz asked, turning to Leah.
She looked at him, and then turned to contemplate the Prince, eyeing him critically.
“Well, I need to report to Jensen. He needs to know we’ve returned, and I don’t doubt he’ll have a thing or two to say to me about being so late. Why don’t you and… Raven… spend the night in your cabin, Tomaz? After Jensen, I’ll need to make an appearance with the General.”
“Very good,” Tomaz said. “That way you can tell Jensen we have sensitive information that needs to be heard by the Elders immediately. Likely they’ll see us within the next few days.”
“I think so too,” the girl said, “and then we can give them our report in person.”
“And what about me?” the Prince asked.
Both Leah and Tomaz looked away. He felt his heart sink.
“Am I prisoner of war?” he asked quietly. “Will your report call me Raven, a runaway son of the Most High, or the Prince of Ravens, a treasure trove of knowledge should you manage to pull it out of me?”
For a long time, Leah looked blankly at the ground, and the Prince realized that, just as he had been struggling with the realization that she, while an Exile, could be a good person, she was going through a similar battle, trying to reconcile him as the person who had saved her life and the Prince that she hated for oppressing her people.
“I see no reason to make the final choice today,” Tomaz rumbled softly, looking now at Leah with tender regard.
“Go home. Sleep on it—I think that’s what we all could use.
And tomorrow, the three of us together,” he looked at the Prince, including him, “will decide the best way to move forward. The Council will not see us for a few days at least, no matter how urgent we tell them our message is.”
For a long time, Leah remained silent, and then, slowly, she nodded. Tomaz looked at the Prince, and he nodded as well. Like it or not, he couldn’t force the issue.
“We’ll meet tomorrow at midday,” Leah said abruptly, “at the Bricks.”