Queen of Fire

“Alltor cost you much,” he said. “Flying free again so soon was unwise.”

“I am a soldier in this army,” the lady replied with a shrug. “Like any other, and my gift is my weapon.”

Lyrna forced herself to stillness as the air seemed to thicken between them, knowing much was being left unsaid, but still they knew each other’s mind as if the words had been shouted. Whilst I know so little of what lies behind his eyes.

“Burnt to ash from end to end,” Dahrena confirmed. “The Urlish is dead, Highness.”

Lyrna remembered the day Lord Al Telnar had come begging her father to lift the strictures on harvesting timber from the Urlish, how he had been sent scurrying from the council chamber, face red with humiliation. “The Urlish is the birthplace of this Realm,” Janus had told a cringing Al Telnar as he signed another decree reallocating yet more land formerly owned by the Minister of Royal Works. “The cradle of my rule, not to be grubbed over by the likes of you.”

Al Telnar and the Urlish, she reflected. Now both nothing but ash. Strange he should sacrifice himself for me after so many years of Father’s torments. “And this army moving across the Renfaelin border towards Varinshold?” she asked Dahrena. “Could you gauge their number?”

“Somewhere over five thousand, Highness. Mostly on horseback.”

“Darnel calls his knights,” Lyrna mused. “He’ll certainly need them before long.”

“I don’t think so, Highness,” Dahrena said. “There’s a soul among them, burning bright but red. I’ve seen it before, when I flew over the Urlish. I’m certain it was fighting the Volarians there.”

Lyrna nodded, recalling a night spent in a Renfaelin holdfast, only months ago but it seemed like years now. There are many, Banders had said, who find the prospect of being ruled by that man a stain on their honour.

“And the filth who slaughtered the people in the harbour?” she asked. “Any trace of them in your flight, my lady?”

She sensed a certain resignation in Dahrena’s response, a grim acceptance of the consequences of the intelligence she provided. “Four thousand or so, Highness. Twenty miles north-west. Most on foot.”

Lyrna turned to Vaelin. “My lord, please ask Sanesh Poltar for the fastest horse the Eorhil can provide and an escort for a royal messenger. They will seek out this Renfaelin army and divine their identity and intentions.”

He gave a shallow bow. “Yes, Highness.”

“I will see to the recovery of the bodies from the harbour and ensure they are given to the fire with all due ceremony, whilst you will take every rider we have and hunt down their murderers. And I expect to hear no more word of prisoners.”

CHAPTER SIX

Vaelin

We will make an ending, you and I.

“My lord?”

Vaelin snapped back to the present at Adal’s words, finding the North Guard commander mounted alongside, his eyes narrowed in shrewd appraisal. “My men found some stragglers two miles north,” Adal said. “Close to exhaustion and not having eaten for days. Seems likely the rest won’t be in much better shape.”

Vaelin nodded, turning away from the man’s scrutiny, looking to the west where the Eorhil were galloping off to perform the encircling manoeuvre he had ordered that morning. He experienced a moment’s disorientation as the plainsmen crested a rise and disappeared from view, an increasingly familiar sensation mingling frustration with disappointment. There was no song to accompany the ride of the Eorhil, as there had been no song to guide him when Lyrna was found healed in body if not, apparently, in spirit. Nor had there been any song to accompany Orven’s hanging of the Volarian prisoners at her command, nor any music now as he turned back to Adal and ordered him to take his men to cover the east.

He saw no reluctance in Adal’s demeanour before he turned his mount about and rode off, but there was uncertainty there, even a faint concern. He wondered if the North Guard’s animosity had worn thinner since Alltor, that if there wasn’t some actual regard for his Tower Lord these days. But, where once such things were so easily divined, now there was only continual uncertainty. Is this what it is to live without a gift?

He recalled those brief years when his song had fallen silent, his refusal to heed it leaving him bereft, without guidance. It had been hard to be so rudderless in a sea of chaos and war. This, however, was much worse, because now there was the chill, the bone-deep cold that had seeped into him in the Ally’s domain and lingered on here in this world of myriad paths, all seemingly so dark. And the words, of course, those words that hounded him from the Beyond.

We will make an ending, you and I.