Chapter 27

 

 

i

 

The Enos crouched around the blood, watched it surge against the rock. Finally it quit and burrowed into the ground, going underneath.

Saplings and sunlight, it whispered. Move us. The voice in her head made Ikaner shiver.

Zcava touched the stain on the rock. It is the Old Ones. They go for their new home.

Behind her the young tree screamed.

They kill the tree! An Enos reached for the tree, as if to save it. Zcava grabbed her hand.

It is the way.

Enos do not kill trees. Ikaner dug for the blood again. She could feel the pollutant in the land, the thirst rising from the grove beyond the Cache. Enos help the land survive. The Old Ones will kill this grove.

To save themselves. Zcava pushed Ikaner away. We cannot survive without the Old Ones.

Enos die for their trees. How can the Old Ones ask the trees to die for them?

We need the Old Ones. They are our wisdom.

Ikaner leaned back. That was why she was not allowed to stop the white mists. He was supposed to kill. The humans were supposed to die so that the Old Ones could live. They would travel on a river of blood to the young trees, replace the sap, remove the young tree souls, and live. So many lives, Ikaner thought.

We need the Old Ones, Zcava repeated.

Even if the white mists did not kill, we would need human blood? The land beneath Ikaner grew more and more thirsty. The trickle of blood did not flow, but she could feel land tendrils spreading, searching for more blood.

The white mists will kill. The humans will die. So the Old Ones have prophesied.

The trickle had disappeared under the ground. The young tree had stopped screaming. Ikaner felt it, felt its life force weak against the blood. She grabbed the tree, added her strength to its sap. The bark burned her fingers, the whistle-wood screeched, blood spurted from the hole beneath the rock. The little tree shuddered and clung to her in fear.

Enos died for their trees. She sat before the small grove. No one defended it, no one guarded it. The young tree’s branches held her close. She had become their Enos, and she would protect them.

 

 

ii

 

Byron sat at the top of the stairs, his back against the wall. One foot rested on the step below, the other leg extended before him. His eyes were closed, his breathing ragged. He still clutched the dagger.

“No. We turned the ambush around. We lost a handful, but Kensington lost almost everybody.” Seymour smiled. “We are going to succeed.”

“Yes.” Byron dropped his head onto his arms. Alma hadn’t known about that maneuver. She hadn’t known at all. He sighed. “I’ve made a decision.” His voice sounded hollow inside his arms. “Let Lord Kensington know I want to negotiate peace terms.”

“Negotiate? But we’re winning!”

“We’re all losing, all of us.” Byron made himself stand. He was dizzy. He put a hand out to steady himself. The wall felt damp. “Come with me. We can talk about it.”

Their footsteps echoed in the corridor. The guards standing outside Byron’s door nodded when they saw him. He handed one of them the dagger. “Keep this,” he said. “I don’t want to see it again.” Then he let himself in the door and froze. Alma sat on a cushion, her fingers toying with his lute. The notes she plucked were jagged and toneless.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “You haven’t been here for two nights.”

He couldn’t look at her. All he could see was her face as it had been on the pillow, bathed in moonlight. Fear surged through him again. He had snapped and nearly killed her.

“Byron? Are you all right?” Seymour put a supporting arm behind his back and led him to a cushion.

Byron nodded. The weakness had passed. “I haven’t slept.” He waved away Seymour’s concern and forced himself to look at Alma. “Why do you want to see me?”

“Well, no one else seemed to know what they were doing.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry about the first attack, but I didn’t know about the ambush. The spy didn’t warn me. But this time I sent word to your archers and they were ready.”

Seymour? Seymour a spy? Byron shook his head. How could he believe that Alma betrayed him and not believe that Seymour would? “Is that true, Seymour?”

“No!” He knelt beside Byron.

Alma watched them. She set down the lute, and ghost chords echoed in its belly. “Then tell me how Vonda knew of the battle this morning. A battle I didn’t even know about.”

Byron put his arm around Seymour and hugged him close. He remembered Seymour’s burned hands, the stench of burned skin, his gratitude that he would no longer have to perform. This fight was Byron’s. His friends had suffered enough. “There’s been enough death.”

 

 

iii

 

The blood flowed and she squeezed it out of the trees. Other Enos joined her, and soon the cavern was splattered with whispering, flowing blood. Soon there’ll be too much to fight, Zcava had told them. She was going to wait until Ikaner and her Enos were too tired, and then she would help the Old Ones find their way into the trees, into the future.

Ikaner thought of her bluff, the warm river breeze, trees unthreatened by death. She wanted to see it once more. Zcava was right: there had been more blood in the morning. She knew that once the Enos joined the fight that the blood would flow like her river and it would drown the young whistle-woods.

The young whistle-wood voices were soft, and they dreamed of music, of combining tones, of nurturing seedlings, and creating Enos. Every creature had dreams, even the Old Ones. But the Old Ones dreamed of survival and youth, something they had had. The whistle-woods dreamed of new things: of their future.

 

 

iv

 

Byron’s chambers felt cold. He had been cold since the night he had spent in the garden. He leaned against one of the chairs, Alma beside him, and watched Seymour. The guards behind them were silent.

“And finally, he wants to know if you’re afraid to put your terms on paper.” Seymour looked up from the dispatch. “Well?”

Byron smiled. “Of course not. Get a scribe to take a message.”

One of the guards left the room. Alma’s hand caressed his arm. She was worried about him. So was Seymour. They hadn’t left him since the night he snapped. He wasn’t going to break now. He wouldn’t let himself. His violence would be directed against the one it should have been directed against in the first place: Kensington.

A scribe came into the room, bowed, and took his place beside Byron. The man was old, his skin puckered against his bones. “Sire?”

“I want you to pen a dispatch.”

The scribe set out his pen, inkwell, paper, and wax. Byron set the seal on the table. As soon as the scribe was ready, he began:

“Kensington: My terms are simple. I proposed a one-on-one fight between the two of us. The victor becomes king. Meet me tonight in the field near Anda–the field where you slaughtered my men. Bring witnesses and the weapon of your choice. Before I fight, however, I will need your oath that the fighting between our houses will end.”

“You’re insane,” Seymour said. “Byron, if you lose, everything will be wasted. Everything.”

Byron signed the parchment and watched as the scribe sealed it. Then he placed the seal back into his pouch. “No, Seymour. If I win at the cost of hundreds of lives, what have I gained? A kingdom where the people and the gentry hate me. If I win on my own merits, I’m free to rule as I please.”

“And if Kensington wins?”

“I’ll be put to death, of course. Alma will survive, she always does. Your friend Vonda will save you, and the kingdom will go on as before.”

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Alma asked. Her voice purred against her throat and her hand had left his arm. “Afraid you aren’t worthy of other people’s lives.”

Byron didn’t move. He wasn’t worth other people’s lives. “This is my fight,” he said. “It’s yours because you chose to enter and Seymour’s because I involved him in it. But the two hundred peasants who died this week had no argument with Kensington. Neither had their families. Now what do all those people do? I’m not in the business of making paupers. I will secure my throne or die trying. It’s cowardly to let others do my fighting for me.”

“I am not going to discuss this anymore,” Byron said. He got up and left the room. The hallway seemed even cooler, but he felt more relaxed. He had made his choice. He would have no more blood on his hands.

 

 

v

 

Ikaner’s hands throbbed. The blisters had popped, letting pus run down her arms. She held the burning torch away from the trees and touched the bark of the old, bowed whistle-woods. No tree spoke back to her, no life flowed through it. These whistle-woods had been dead longer than she had been alive.

We are your wisdom.

The blood will save us.

If you kill us, the Enos will die.

Ikaner felt the strength of the voices in her head, the whispering hush-hush of their logic. Enos die for their trees, she thought.

Enos cannot live without us. We grow you, nurture you.

But we fertilize our own seedlings. The heat from the torch seared her hand. Nothing lived in these trees, but the act she was about to commit seemed unspeakable. She thought of the seedlings, the young trees, and the land, licking blood and absorbing bloodlust. She thought of her bluff, and then she swung the torch around and shoved it inside the whistle hole of the nearest tree. The bark caught, but the tree did not scream. She lit the next tree and the next, and then something grabbed her mind, tried to force her out of it. She put up shields and winced as they broke, shattered, taking portions of her mind with them. The Old Ones were flowing to her, trying to become part of her.

She did not touch the next tree she set aflame. The smoke smelled of dead things and the air grew hotter. She lit another tree and another, until the entire grove burned. Voices clamored in her mind. She sank to the ground, clutching her head. She could feel them holding her, their souls older than hers, stronger, and she was so tired from saving the trees. Her mind faded, and she crawled through the fire, the smoke, to the outside.

And stopped. The bloodlust hushed through her veins: the lies of the Old Ones, dead at the time of the last lust, caused by a white mist the humans called Gerusha. The Old Ones had killed trees then, had tainted the land, and waited until they grew stronger. More Old Ones now, and they hated Enos, hated trees, wanted only their own power.

She grabbed a dead whistle-wood and held it, the shards of her mind gathering into one final picture. The fire seared her clothing, dug into her skin, and she saw her bluff as she had first seen it, leaning over the river, the grasses bending with a light breeze, young trees–her children–calling to her. The water had been cool and fresh, the trees gentle. She had rested among the grasses. She had rested among the grasses–and decided that she wanted to die there.

She reached through the ground for her bluff. It felt her, she knew, across the distance, wrapped itself around her, and as her consciousness flickered against the power of the Old Ones, it promised her it would hold her as she had held it, helping her die so that they could all live.

 

 

vi

 

The field stood under the gray skies. Hundreds of feet had churned the dry earth. Here and there Byron could still see the imprint of a body, but the blood had soaked into the dirt long before. He paced the length of the field, feeling no fear. The calmness that had come with his decision stayed with him. If he didn’t win, it didn’t matter. No one else would die.

Kensington had not yet arrived. He had chosen swords for the fight, and Byron had then specified no shields or armor. He wanted it to end quickly.

Seymour stood beside Alma at the edge of the field. Alma’s eyes were bright with fear and excitement, a small dagger hidden in her hair. Byron had smiled as he watched her insert it that morning. She would survive. She was the strongest of all of them.

Colin waited apart from the others. Byron had refused to let him bring a lute, although composing was Colin’s last test before he could become a bard. Byron did not want this battle to be glorified in song.

A handful of guards stood behind the boy, prepared to whisk Byron’s friends to safety should anything go wrong. Afeno stood with his arms behind his back, watching, waiting. If the guards did not come through, Afeno would.

A page ran across the field to him. “Horses! From the north.”

Byron glanced across the barren land, catching Kensington’s flag in a cloud of dust. He walked slowly back to his people and waited.

Kensington dismounted across the field. His supporters did the same. Seymour walked over to them, his face set. He was to get Kensington’s oath in writing. When he reached the lord’s entourage, he stopped. Byron frowned. Vonda stood beside Kensington. Seymour glanced quickly at her, then turned his back on her. Kensington handed Seymour a piece of parchment which Seymour read. Then, nodding, Seymour returned.

Byron walked to the center of the field, his feet sinking in the dry earth. As Kensington approached, Byron extended his hand. “Good luck, milord,” he said.

Kensington stared at the hand in surprise. Finally, he took it in his own and shook. “And to you.”

The observers gathered around them, leaving just enough room for the battle. The two men separated, pulled their swords, and circled each other for a moment. Byron’s eyes were on Kensington’s, his concentration high. He could feel his muscles tense with anticipation.

Kensington lunged. Byron parried, and steel crashed against steel. Kensington backed away and Byron followed, the swords meeting at each thrust. Kensington’s sword broke free. Byron attempted to flip it loose but failed, losing his balance. Kensington lunged for Byron’s open side. Byron whirled as Kensington’s blade swished past him.

“Very good, milord,” he murmured, recovering himself. Kensington smiled, his blade cutting through the air. Byron’s blade met it and again they were at a stalemate.

Then Byron broke away. Kensington thrust, his right hand tight around his sword, his left open. Byron suddenly realized that Kensington had never fought without a shield or a dagger in his left hand. Parrying, Byron worked his way toward Kensington’s left. Kensington continued to circle and thrust, like a cat toying with a mouse. Byron’s right arm was getting tired, the muscles heavy, but he felt a curious exhilaration. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Alma, her brow creased with concentration. Her concern pleased him and he again turned his full attention on Kensington.

The lord attempted an inward thrust, but Byron moved out of the way. He plunged his sword into the opening left by Kensington’s maneuver and felt a shudder run through him as the blade pierced Kensington’s side. Kensington clutched the wound while he backed away. Byron followed, enjoying the sight of blood on Kensington’s hand. Kensington thrust twice, Byron parrying. Then Byron lunged again. This time Kensington anticipated the action and the swords clashed. They moved close to each other, like two dancers.

Kensington whirled, catching Byron off guard. The lord’s sword hit the bard’s arm with an amazing force. Byron winced as the blade slit through the skin, suddenly angry that he had allowed himself to be hit. He attacked, slashing viciously. Kensington, unable to parry the rapid blows, dodged and then again attempted an inward thrust.

Byron’s sword hit Kensington’s. His weapon flew across the field. The force of the blow snapped Byron’s blade and he tossed away the hilt. Kensington threw himself at Byron. The wind left Byron’s body as his back hit the dirt. Kensington’s hands were about his neck, squeezing tightly. Byron gripped the lord’s wrists, attempting to pry the man away. His lungs burned with lack of oxygen. Near panic, he brought up his knees and used the strength of his legs to roll over.

As Kensington hit the ground, he grunted but did not loosen his grip. Byron brought a knee against Kensington’s groin and for a brief instant felt the hands about his neck go slack. He took a gulp of air and pushed Kensington away. Byron got up, breathing heavily, unwilling to grapple in the dirt like a child.

A second later, Kensington was on his feet, a dagger in his hand. Byron heard the spectators gasp. Swords were the agreed-upon weapons. He couldn’t see past that knife, wanting to kill the man. Byron swung a fist at Kensington, but Kensington ducked and slashed. The knife slid across Byron’s stomach. He staggered from the blow. Kensington lunged again and fear made Byron dodge.

He grabbed Kensington’s wrist and pulled him to the ground, trying to knock the dagger free. Kensington struggled, but Byron held on for a moment. Then he let go and stood up. A look of confusion crossed Kensington’s face. As he pulled himself to his feet, Byron kicked the knife, knocking it from Kensington’s hand. It soared straight above them, and they forgot each other in their scramble to catch the dagger. Kensington’s hand closed around the blade, but the pain made him release it. Byron caught the hilt, then grabbed Kensington’s shirt, and tossed him back into the dirt. Byron put the blade to Kensington’s throat, digging the sharp edge in ever so slightly.

“Do you concede? Or do I have to kill you?” Byron asked. Kensington pushed Byron, but the bard retained his position. He pressed harder against Kensington’s throat. The spectators leaned closer.

Kensington’s eyes glittered. “Concede,” he said, his voice harsh from the blade’s pressure. “I concede.”

Byron tossed the knife point down into the ground and helped Kensington to his feet. Kensington rubbed his neck. Byron walked toward Seymour, feeling dizzy with the loss of blood, knowing he was near collapse. Then he heard the thunk of a blade piercing skin. He turned to see Kensington fall face forward in the dry earth, Alma’s dagger in his back.

Byron’s anger returned, banishing his weakness. “Almathea!”

Alma caught the anger in his tone. Her dark eyes flashed with a light of their own. She took a few steps forward and flipped Kensington over, not noticing as his blood stained her white gown. In his hand, the lord held his dagger.

“He was going to stab you in the back,” she said. “Should I have waited to see if you noticed?”

Byron ignored the sarcasm. He dropped to his knees beside Kensington. The lord smiled and let go of the dagger. Byron took his free hand.

“Seymour.”

Seymour and Vonda both came over and propped Kensington on his side. Kensington’s breath came in gasps. They began to work on his back when the lord’s grip on Byron’s hand tightened. Fear shot through Kensington’s face and his breath rattled in his throat. After a moment Byron reached up and closed Kensington’s eyes.

Byron stood, feeling another wave of dizziness flow through him. He steadied himself and then turned to Almathea. She was staring at him, her chin jutting out slightly. He had never seen her looking so beautiful.

“Almathea,” he said, extending his hand. “Come here.”

She took his hand and he pulled her into his arms. Her touch was light, careful of his wounds. He didn’t know how long they stood there, his face buried in her hair, his arms encircling her small frame, but he needed her support to prevent his collapse. She had supported him from the moment she saw him. Perhaps that meant she loved him. Perhaps she only saw that her future was best with him.

But it didn’t matter. He had what he wanted now. He wasn’t going to lose it.