Mercedes Lackey - Kerowyn's Ride

There was no anteroom; she found herself in some kind of public room that took up the entire bottom floor of the Tower. It was full of comfortable clutter, the kind of things Kero would have expected to find in any woman’s rooms. Ordinary things; an embroidery frame by the window, a basket of yarn and knitting beside the fire, cushions piled carelessly everywhere. What furniture there was tended to be worn, overstuffed, and looked as if it saw heavy use. Kero shivered despite the unexpected warmth of the room. The lighting was concentrated near the fire, leaving the rest of the room in shadow, and Kero wasn’t certain she wanted to look too deeply into any of those shadows.

Kethry closed the door with a dull thud, but did not shoot the bolt home. Kero looked back at her, hoping she hadn’t noticed her granddaughter’s wandering attention. She turned with a frown on her face, though Kero could not tell if it was because of her, or for some other reason. Kero clasped her hands behind her back, nervously, and waited for her grandmother to speak.

“I felt something—wrong—down in the valley,” Kethry said vaguely, her brow creased and her eyes looking somewhere past Kero’s shoulder. “Something magical. I’ve been expecting a messenger, since I pledged Rathgar when he wed Lenore that I would not enter his domain uninvited—but I didn’t expect that messenger to be you.”

She promised Father—dear Agnira ! Kero took a deep breath, and stored that bit of information away for later. If there was a later. She looks so odd—blessed Trine, I hope she hasn’t gone senile —“I’m the only one fit to ride, Lady Kethryveris,” she began.

“Grandmother,” Kethry interrupted tartly, her focus sharpening for a moment. “I am your grandmother. It won’t hurt to say so. Sit,” she continued, gesturing at a bench by the door as she took a seat opposite it. “What happened down there that they sent you to bring me word?”

Kero nodded, a shiver of real fear going up her back, and gulped. No, she’s not senile. If she still admits she’s my grandmother—wants to admit it—maybe she will help us —“Grandmother, nobody sent me. Nobody could send me. I came by myself. It’s—it’s horrible—” She told the story a second time, watching as Kethry grew more and more distant—and more and more collected—with every word. By the time she was halfway through, her grandmother looked like the powerful, remote creature the stories made her out to be. And Kerowyn continued, a sick, leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach, trying not to break down in front of this self-possessed, regal woman.

But she began to relive the tale as she told it. Her stomach churned, and her throat began to close with harshly suppressed sobs.

I have to get through this. I have to make her believe me. I can’t do that if I’m crying like a baby.

She managed to sound relatively calm, or at least she thought she did, until she got to the part where she’d first come up from the kitchen. She faltered; stammered a little—then clenched her teeth and plowed onward.

But she kept seeing the bodies—

And then she came to the part where she saw her own family fallen victim; first Lordan, then Rathgar.

That was too much; she lost every bit of her composure and fell completely apart.

There was a brief flurry of movement as her grandmother rose—and warm arms clasped and held her.

She found herself sobbing into a blue-velvet covered shoulder, found her grandmother holding her as no one had held her since her mother died. It was something she hadn’t known she needed until it happened—

She cried all the tears and fears she’d held in since this nightmare began; cried until her eyes were swollen and sore and her nose felt raw. Kethry didn’t say a word, simply held her, stroking her hair from time to time, and it was with a great deal of reluctance that she freed herself from that comforting embrace to finish the story.

She had to do so with her eyes shut tightly against the tears that threatened to come again, her throat thick, and her hands knotted into fists. “Are you going to be all right?” Kethry asked when she had finished.

Kero took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and shrugged. “I’ll have to be,” she replied. “I told you, I’m the only one left.”

Kethry nodded, pushed her down into a chair, and narrowed her eyes—and turned from comforter to something far different.

The sorceress’ face lost all animation. She cooled, she became somehow remote.

“The men,” she said dispassionately. “Describe them again.”

“They didn’t look like much,” Kero replied, falteringly. “Ratty looking. Like bandit-scum, the kind we’d never hire, except that their armor was awfully good. It wasn’t new, but it wasn’t dirty enough for them to have had it long.”

“No badges, no insignia?”

“Not that I saw,” she said, hardly knowing what to think.

“How did it fit them?” her grandmother persisted.

“What?” Now Kero really was perplexed. Her grandmother looked impatient.

“You’re no dunce, child, how did it fit them? Well, or badly? Too big, too small, places where it was just held together by jury-rig straps?”

“Uh—” Now that she thought back on it, the armor for the most part had fit badly, gaping places where it was too small on some men, too-large mail shirts spilling over knuckles on others. “Badly, mostly.”

“Ah. Are you sure you don’t want to go back and see if there’s someone that can go after Dierna besides you?” She gave Kero a measuring look. “You look to me as if you’ve done enough already. I wouldn’t say you’re up to this, personally.”

“No,“ Kero said as forcefully as she could.

Kethry nodded, and changed the subject. “Did it seem as if anyone was the leader?”

The questioning went on until Kero was ready to scream for the wasted time. And Kethry kept asking her if she was certain she didn’t want to go back. She answered everything as honestly as she could, but it almost seemed as if her grandmother was now looking for an excuse to dismiss her and her plea out of hand, before she’d even had a chance to voice it. She certainly was just as discouraging and disparaging as the old woman down on the trail had been.

She’s not going to listen; she thinks this was all Father’s fault and she doesn’t care what happens to the rest of us. Kero was shaking now; there was a light in Kethry’s eyes that she didn’t in the least like. Hard, and cold-uncaring? Perhaps. The sorceress’ face was unreadable.

Still, when Kethry seemed to have come to the end of her questions and stood up to pace back and forth with her arms crossed, deep in thought, Kero took a deep breath, and made her carefully rehearsed speech before her grandmother could tell her to take herself off.

I’ll never have another chance —

“Grandmother,” she said urgently, “I have to go after Dierna. If I don’t—there won’t be anything left of the family by the time her uncle gets done with blood-feud. He might leave me alive—but not Lordan.”

Kethry blinked, and seemed to shake herself out of an entrancement. “I actually know that, child,” she said dryly. “I’ve had dealings with Baron Reichert before. That man wouldn’t be satisfied if he devoured the world. In fact—never mind. I’ll tell you later. So what do you want out of me?”

“ Help !” Kero cried. “Lordan won’t live out the night without a Healer—and I need help, too. A magic weapon, something that will make it possible for me to get Dierna away from those bandits—”

A lightning-caller, a tame demon—something that can attack them from a distance so I don’t have to get too close.