Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

“Nothing remains, Highness,” Lord Adal had reported that morning, having returned from reconnaissance. “Not a house, and not a soul.”

Her faint hope the North Guard had exaggerated dwindled with every tread of Arrowʼs hooves, the ash and rubble visible through the breaches told of utter destruction. She found Vaelin waiting at the ruined gate, expression grim. “The harbour, Highness,” he said.

The harbour waters were cloudy with silt and scummed by oil leaking from the scuttled boats of the townʼs fishing fleet, but she could see them clearly enough, a great cluster of pale ovals, tinged green by the algae in the water so they resembled a mound of grapes after the harvest.

Lyrna swept her gaze around the remnants of what she recalled as a lively if somewhat smelly town, grimy in fact, the people speaking in a coarse accent, more ready to meet her gaze than in Varinshold, and less ready to bow. But they had been happy to see her, she remembered, cheering as she rode through, offering babies to kiss and tossing flower petals in her path. She had come to open an alms-house, paid for by the Crown and staffed by the Fifth Order. She had found no trace of it in the journey to the harbour, just street after street of piled brick and scorched timber.

“They chained them together,” Vaelin said. “Pushed the first in and the rest followed. Perhaps four hundred, the only survivors from when they took the town, I assume.”

“Didnʼt want to be burdened with slaves on the march north,” Lord Adal commented. His voice had the clipped tones of well-controlled emotion, but Lyrna saw how the muscles of his jaw bunched as he stared down at the water.

“March north, my lord?” she asked him.

Lady Dahrena stepped forward with a bow, her face showing the kind of paleness that only came from the deepest chill. “I believe I may have useful intelligence, Highness.”

“Itʼs gone?” Lyrna asked her a short while later. She had ordered Murel to fetch the lady a hot beverage and she sat in her tent now, small hands clutching a bowl of warm milk. Vaelin stood by regarding Dahrena with evident concern, already having voiced his disquiet at her using her gift.

“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 otherʼs 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 Fatherʼs 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. “Heʼll certainly need them before long.”

“I donʼt think so, Highness,” Dahrena said. “Thereʼs a soul among them, burning bright but red. Iʼve seen it before, when I flew over the Urlish. Iʼm 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 Dahrenaʼs 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.”

We will make an ending, you and I.

“My lord?”

Vaelin snapped back to the present at Adalʼs 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 wonʼt be in much better shape.”

Vaelin nodded, turning away from the manʼs scrutiny, looking to the west where the Eorhil were galloping off to perform the encircling manoeuvre he had ordered that morning. He experienced a momentʼs 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 Orvenʼs 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 Adalʼs demeanour before he turned his mount about and rode off, but there was uncertainty there, even a faint concern. He wondered if the North Guardʼs animosity had worn thinner since Alltor, that if there wasnʼt 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 Allyʼs 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.

Nortah trotted up beside him, Snowdance bounding on ahead, as ever enlivened by the prospect of blood.

“You belong with your regiment,” Vaelin told him.

“Davern has them well in hand,” his brother replied. “Truth be told, Iʼd be grateful if youʼd ask the queen to promote him in my stead. Boundless hatred and bloodlust are not easily tolerated for long.”

“Theyʼll need firm leadership, and a restraining hand.”

Nortah raised an eyebrow. “Is that sentiment shared by the queen, brother? If so, Iʼd be greatly surprised.”

Vaelin didnʼt respond, recalling his joy on seeing her that day at Alltor as the boat carried her across the river, the blossoming relief as she stepped ashore. The songʼs absence was a physical pain and she seemed to offer an antidote, a single point of certainty, burned but glorious. How could I ever have imagined she might have fallen? he had thought, sinking to his knees before her.