Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

Lady Mearah made for Madoc standing alone at the waterside. A sharp cry rang out-

“Madoc Diviner!”

Madoc turned, sword in hand. Loren tried to push Usha deeper into the shadows. With a cry, she pulled away. Lady Mearah passed by, mud flying from her horse’s hooves. Light of the fires in the sky tipped her sword red. Lady Mearah gave her black mare the spur and it surged forward.

Usha broke away from Loren, shouting Madoc’s name. If he heard, he didn’t move. He stood alone at the waterside, his back to those who’d fled, his sword gripped in two hands to face the dark knight bearing down on him. In a spray of water and mud, she pulled her mount to a halt, and the beast went back on its haunches. She leaped to the ground, and Usha ran as fast as she could toward them.

The horse backed away, well trained and getting out of the way of battle. Usha caught dangling reins and before she could think what to do with them, Loren snatched them from her hand.

“Wait here!” he snapped.

She barely gave him a glance, and she certainly didn’t wait there.

“Madoc Diviner,” the lady knight said, her voice cold, “I charge you with the death of the dark elf Tavar Evenstar.”

Madoc shook his head. “Haven’s better without him, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Word out of the Grinning Goat sent him to his death. Not your word?”

One bright glance flashed between Madoc and Loren, Usha didn’t have time to decipher it before the mage lifted his sword to meet Lady Mearah’s challenge.

The belling of steel on steel rang in the night. Usha saw at once that though skilled, Madoc was out-matched-in weapon and reach. He held his own for several moments, and nimbleness saved him twice from having a hand cut off. His sword clashed against Mearah’s breastplate and did no damage. He ducked away from a killing thrust and in the same instant, Usha heard Loren curse.

Madoc slipped in the mud and went hard to his knee. Lady Mearah lifted her sword like an executioner’s axe.

Usha yanked the bridle reins from Loren’s hand and slapped the horse hard, yelling, “Hei! Hei!”

The horse plunged forward, tumbling Lady Mearah. Madoc rolled aside, into the muck at the water’s edge. Usha saw his eyes go wide, then his sword flashing up, turning end over end as he threw it.

He’s mad!

Loren caught the sword. He stepped past Usha with the kind of calm found at the eye of a terrible storm. Madoc nodded to her, and she stepped aside. The lady knight reached for her sword, and Loren’s boot came down hard on her wrist.

“My lady,” he said, his voice cold and hard. “You murdered my daughter.”

Lady Mearah’s face when white. On her knee, the sword grip still in her hand, she said, “Fight me then, Loren Halgard.”

Usha drew a quick breath to protest-saw Madoc’s face-and kept still.

“I will not fight you, lady. I will treat you as you have treated others.”

Dark eyes wide, Lady Mearah tried to rise.

Before she could, Loren took a pace backward. His daughter’s name on his lips, Loren Halgard wielded Madoc’s sword against Haven’s executioner as a headsman’s axe.

He wielded well.

Silence fell on the riverside, hard and heavy and disorienting. Madoc looked at Loren, got some signal Usha didn’t catch, and jogged off down the riverside where Aline and Dunbrae had gone.

Usha turned from the headless corpse of the lady knight. Streaks of blood made the foam at the water’s edge red. Her stomach rebelled. It was all she could do not to vomit.

Loren took her arm, and she turned, pulling away. “Loren, you must come with me.”

“No.” He put a finger on her lips.

“But-”

“No. I’m in no danger. Or I won’t be soon. I can’t come with you. Usha, you were right when you said I must take a stand. I didn’t do that when I could have… should have. I retreated. I bargained-” His voice broke. “I bargained my daughter for what I convinced myself was peace. I am the one who-”

“Hush!”

He looked at the body of the woman he’d just killed. “I am as responsible for Tamara’s death as she is. I gambled her life, and Tamara lost. She died because the dark elf who was Mearah’s lover died on a mission to thwart Qui’thonas .”

“I… I don’t understand. Why?”

“Madoc didn’t betray the dark elf. Sir Arvel did, and he’s one of Sir Radulf’s men. So…”

“Oh, dear gods,” Usha whispered. “And so Lady Mearah took revenge on Sir Radulf by killing Tamara.”

Loren nodded. “But it’s also true that my daughter died while she was trying to warn Qui’thonas that Sir Radulf knew about them. She died in a good cause-a better one than I served. She won’t have died in vain.”

It would take a bit of time, he said, for things to calm down. Sir Radulf’s revenge for this night’s work would be brutal. “He never loved Lady Mearah, but he won’t allow the death of a dark knight to go without punishment. He no doubt thinks I’ve learned my lesson already. If he doesn’t, I will show him I have. He won’t find me anything but cooperative, Usha. He will find me a cowed man, well chastened by my daughter’s death and…” He touched her cheek. “And my lover’s disappearance. But when things settle, Sir Radulf will find that he has not killed Qui’thonas . What Aline Wrackham funded, I can fund. What Madoc Diviner could do, Sir Arvel can do.”

“Sir Arvel is not trustworthy.”

Loren snorted. “That much I know. But I’ll have Dunbrae at my back.”

“It’s all planned out?”

“Sketched, anyway, on the run and in hot blood. But it will work.”

The leave-taking broke over them like a wave. Madoc was a dim figure downriver, waiting.

“Go,” Loren said. “This is how it is for us now, love.” He smiled, she thought there might have been a touch of bitterness in it. “This is what you shaped for us when you first challenged me, that day in Lorelia’s garden.”

Sharp in memory, Usha saw that day again. Lorelia and her guests, a knight and a lovely girl with white roses in her midnight hair. The memory clutched at her throat, tightening it with unshed tears.

“Loren, remember that Tamara made choices, too.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, like storm. “I took all her choices from her.”

Usha took his hands. They were cold. “Then who made the choice to try to warn Qui’thonas? Tamara did, and it was as bravely done as any deed a poet could sing of.”

He kissed her, the kiss thrilling on her lips, in her heart. He gathered her into his arms, and he held her until she was sure she would never forget the rhythm of his heartbeat.

His voice ragged, Loren whispered, “Go.”

Usha went, running down the riverbank to Madoc and Aline. She went, gasping farewell to the dwarf Dunbrae, ducking into a small cave, and stumbling in the dark and a rain of tears.

After a time, the little cave grew wider walls and a taller ceiling. Madoc reached behind a boulder and brought out brands and rags for torches.

“This is Qui’thonas ,” Aline said. “We keep our paths lit.”

In her voice Usha heard both pride for what she’d helped keep alive and sorrow for leaving it.

Madoc held his torch high. Aline lifted her brand to his. Their lights flared brightly, and Usha followed her friends through a maze of arched vaults where the ancient dead lay in deep burial niches-the forgotten of Haven.

“It’s the road home,” Dez said to her.

At last, it was. Usha looked over her shoulder. They had taken many turns and switchbacks, and she thought she should ask Dez how she knew the place, how she knew where to go and how to keep from being lost, but she didn’t ask. Dez would say-or Aline or Madoc-this is Qui’thonas .