Queen Herin soon entered the antechamber. The Queen had red hair and pale skin, eyes as dark blue as bachelor's b.u.t.tons. She was tall, strong. She smiled; but her smile did not hold any joy at this meeting, She knows that I must beg for troops, Gaborn thought, and she knows that she can spare me none.

Queen Herin wore scale mail, with a silver buckler at her waist that displayed the symbol of Fleeds in red enamel. In her hand she bore the royal scepter of Fleeds, a rod of gold made like a horseman's crop, with a red horsetail at one end.

"Your Highness," Queen Herin greeted Gaborn, and did the unthinkable. She dropped to both knees before him and bowed her head.

Then she offered her scepter.

Among the horsesisters of Fleeds, no high queen had ever bowed to a man.

Gaborn had hoped to beg Queen Herin for the use of a few knights and some food for his men and horses.

Instead she offered Gaborn her realm.

CHAPTER 41.

THE SMELL OF A RISING STORM.

In the late morning, Iome spurred her charger onward toward Fleeds, riding hard, with Myrrima and Sir Hoswell at her back. Having no charger that could match her pace, Iome's Days was left behind.

Iome had taken endowments at Castle Groverman--more than she'd expected, but in the end not so many as Myrrima did. She had two endowments of brawn to her credit now, one of grace, one of wit, one of sight, and four of metabolism. With that, she also bore endowments from dogs: one of hearing, two of stamina, two of smell. She felt like a wolf lord indeed, powerful, tireless, and deadly. It was a heady pleasure, one that filled her with a renewed sense of responsibility.

Yet Myrrima had bested her. The villagers had heard how Myrrima had slain the Darkling Glory, and they heaped endowments upon her. So many that Iome had felt obligated to give Myrrima more forcibles from her private horde. Sixteen men and women went under the forcibles for Myrrima, so that between those endowments and the ones from her dogs, she now had nearly as many endowments as did any captain in Heredon's guard.

Myrrima had always been large, beautiful. Now her endowments lent her an air of fierceness. So the three Runelords now rode without any other guard but their own strong arms. Yet as they rode, Iome noted that Sir Hoswell remained a respectful distance behind the women, and Myrrima avoided his presence. She did not welcome his company.

Wind rippled over the gra.s.s in steady waves, gusted at Iome's back, pushing her south. Though the sky was blue, the wind smelled of a rising storm. The heather had sprouted tiny purple flowers after last week's rain, leaving the distant fields awash in their odd gray-blue hue. Iome ran her mare, for the morning felt cool and her mount seemed eager to outrace the wind. Though it raced at forty miles per hour, Iome felt as if it were hardly testing its pace.

In the past when riding a force horse, Iome had never been able to follow the movement of its hooves with her eyes. Now, with so much metabolism to her credit, she could follow her horse's movements easily.

The rest of the world seemed to have slowed dramatically. A crow beating its wings against the wind seemed to hang painfully in the air. The sounds of thudding steel-shod hooves on the road were too deep, more like a frowth giant pounding on a huge drum.

Even more disturbing, Iome's thoughts seemed to race. Before, without her endowments of metabolism, riding all day would have seemed a short journey. But now her journey of one day would seem like five.

She'd seldom had so much time to merely sit and think. And after the long day's ride, she would have to live through the night. With all of her metabolism, thirteen hours of darkness would seem like sixty-five. In the dead of winter, force soldiers with high metabolism often became irascible and despondent, for the nights could seem interminable to them. Iome steeled herself to face the coming winter.

She raced past a few solitary oaks whose leaves had mostly blown away, the bones of trees, clothed only in ivy twined high in their branches.

Ahead lay a shallow, muddy creek winding across the prairie, and there where the road dipped, a fellow sat on a narrow log bridge watering his horse in the spare shade of an oak.

Even half a mile away, Iome recognized his tunic. He wore a courier's colors, the blue of Mystarria with the green man emblem embroidered on the right side of his chest. In addition he bore a saber on his hip and wore a steel helm with a long visor. A common courier. The fellow was small, with long silver hair, as if it had gone gray prematurely.

Iome raised her hand in signal for Myrrima and Sir Hoswell to slow. There was something odd about this one. Myrrima had met several of Gaborn's messengers before, and she could not quite name her concern.

The messenger saw them, climbed up from his spot on the bridge, dusted off his tunic. The fellow mounted his horse, rode out of the shadow of the oak, letting his horse plod along. He studied them intently, as if he feared they might be outlaws.

Iome reined in her mount as the fellow approached.

He was a strange one, Iome decided. He was grinning, but not shyly or fearfully. Instead she decided that he had an impish grin, mischief in his eyes.

She urged her own mount forward, until she felt close enough to hail him. "Where are you going, sirrah?"

The courier stopped his mount. "I bear a message for the King," the fellow answered.

"From whom?" Iome asked.

"Funny," the messenger smirked. "The King did not have t.i.ts, last that I saw." It was his crude way of rebuking her for asking too much about the King's business, yet Myrrima had never heard such comments from even the roughest Mystarrian.

"But the Queen did--last I saw," Iome said, trying to keep the rage from her voice.

The messenger's smirk disappeared, yet his deep brown eyes glittered as if he laughed at some private joke. "You're the Queen?"

Iome nodded. His tone suggested that she somehow disappointed him, did not live up to his expectations. Iome had taken several endowments, but none of glamour or of Voice. She did not look like a queen. She was trying to decide whether to have the man beaten, or merely dismissed from service.

"A thousand apologies, Your Highness," the messenger said. "I did not recognize you. We have not met before."

Though he mouthed an apology, there was none in his tone--only mockery.

"Let me see the message," Iome demanded.

"My apologies," the fellow said. "It is only for the King's eyes:'

Iome found her pulse racing. She was angry, yet suspicious.

This man spoke quickly. She knew that he too had more than one endowment of metabolism. That was not common for a courier. She smelled him, but could not detect anything amiss. He smelled of horse and the road, of linen and cotton and perhaps some liniment that he'd used to service a wound on his horse's leg.

"I will carry the message," Iome said. "You're going the wrong way, and doubtless your mount is fatigued. You'll never catch the King."

In consternation, the messenger glanced behind along the road he'd been traveling.

Surely if he'd come from Tor Doohan, he'd have spotted Gaborn on the road. Which meant that he'd not ridden the most direct route last night, but had traveled along some side road.

"Where can I find him?" the courier asked, looking back.

"Give me the message," Iome demanded.

The fellow caught her tone, turned and studied her with one eyebrow c.o.c.ked. Sir Hoswell caught her tone, too. She heard him slide his horseman's hammer from the sheath at his saddle.

Still the courier did not hand her the message pouch. "I demand it," Iome said.

"I...I only meant to spare you the trouble, Your Highness," the messenger said. He reached to his pouch, pulled out a blue lacquered leather scroll case, and handed it to Iome. "For the King's eyes only," he warned.

Iome, reached for the thing, and the Earth King's warning rang clear in her mind, "Beware!"

She hesitated for a moment, studied the messenger. He did not lunge at her or draw steel.

Yet she knew for certain that he presented some danger. From a distance she examined the pouch's exterior. She'd heard of southern a.s.sa.s.sins who placed poison needles on implements. Perhaps something like that might be at work.

But she could see nothing ominous on the exterior of the case. The pouch was sealed with wax, but no signet ring marked who might have sealed it.

The messenger leaned forward, stared hard into her eyes. A taut smile turned hs lips upward as he offered the case.

He's daring me to take it, Iome thought.

She reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed--not for the case, but for the fellow's wrist. His eyes went wide.

He shouted and spurred his mount so hard that flecks of blood flew from the horse's flanks.

He was a small man, hardly taller than Iome, and without quite as many endowments as she had. He struggled to urge his horse past her, and Iome clamped down hard on his wrist.

As she did, her own forearm brushed the surface of the message pouch. The sensation she felt on doing so was almost impossible to describe--she felt movement over the surface of the pouch, as if thousands of invisible spiders skittered across its surface, b.u.mping into her arm.

In horror she squeezed the courier's wrist and twisted, hoping to force him to drop the case.

To her surprise, the fellow's bones snapped. She had taken endowments of brawn hardly more than an hour ago, and so had not learned her own strength.

The message case went flying to the ground.

The fellow's mount surged forward, but Myrrima had already reacted. She charged to Iome's defense. Sir Borenson's ma.s.sive warhorse slammed into the messenger's smaller mount.

The courier's horse floundered backward and stumbled.

Torn from his horse, the courier rolled to the ground.

Myrrima fought to remain in her saddle, ended up clinging to her horse's neck.

Iome wheeled her charger, fearing that the courier would leap on Myrrima. Though Gaborn had warned her to beware, she saw that they were three against one, and she felt confident.

"Hoof!" Iome commanded her mount. The warhorse reared and pranced forward, pawing and kicking.

The courier leapt up, wild-eyed. He laughed maniacally. Sir Hoswell shouted and spurred his horse forward, wielding his horseman's hammer.

Seeing that he was outnumbered, the courier suddenly leapt into the air--and flew!

He did not flap his arms as if they were wings. Nor did he make any other odd motion. He merely cackled and spread his arms wide, as if he were a flying squirrel, and let the wind take him.

A sudden burst of air whirled around him, battering his blue cloak, lifting him unexpectedly. He soared over Iome's head. His leap carried him a hundred feet in the air and two hundred yards downwind.

He came to rest like a crow in the huge oak tree above the stream where Iome had first seen him. The upper branches bobbed and swayed under his weight.

"By the Powers!" Sir Hoswell swore, racing to the base of the tree. He reached around behind his back; pulled his steel horsebow, and such was his uncommon strength that he actually strung it while in the saddle. He prepared to send a shaft up to hit the fellow.

The courier settled between three branches and chortled like a madman as Iome and Myrrima approached. Iome advanced toward him warily, wondering why this fellow had changed his demeanor so dramatically--from the grinning a.s.sa.s.sin to the chortling manic.

"He's a Sky Lord!" Myrrima cried in wonder.

"Nay," Sir Hoswell growled angrily, "a Sky Lord would have flown away from here. He's just a d.a.m.ned Inkarran wizard!"

Now that Hoswell, said it, the fellow did look somewhat Inkarran. He had the silver hair, which was a rare enough trait here in the north. But his skin wasn't quite pallid enough, and his eyes were a dark brown rather than silver or gray. Not Inkarran, Iome thought, only a half-breed.

Hoswell sent a shaft into the tree, blurring upward from his steel bow, but the a.s.sa.s.sin merely dodged aside, or perhaps a sudden gust of wind moved the arrow.

"Greetings," Iome called to the fellow, raising a hand to warn Hoswell not to shoot again. The courier continued to cackle.

Iome studied him. She could feel it, now that she tried. She had always been sensitive to the Powers, and now she could feel the Power that drove him. The fellow was not a cold, calculating a.s.sa.s.sin. He was pa.s.sionate, chaotic, and utterly fearless--one who had given himself to the wind. Iome had recognized this wrongness in him almost immediately, even when she'd first seen him from a distance.

The courier continued to snicker. Iome tried to smile in return, catching his mood, feeling the power that drove him. She knew little of Air magics. Air was an unpredictable raster, wild and variable. In order to harness it, one had to learn its moods, and mirror them.

Certainly the gibbering, cackling creature before her could not have acted the a.s.sa.s.sin like this. No, I see what he is doing, Iome thought. He adopts this mood to curry favor with the Air. But the wind is an unstable master, as likely to give a man ten times the power he needs as to let him down.

She thought of the Darkling Glory, of the elemental of Air that had escaped it. Could it have sent the a.s.sa.s.sin? she wondered. Could it have initiated this subtle attack?

Sir Hoswell glowered at the courier. "Who sent you?"

"Who? Who?" the fellow shouted. He gaily flapped his arms as if he were an owl. His broken wrist left one hand flopping. He looked at it and winced, gazed accusingly at Iome. "That hurt."

"Why don't you come down?" Iome said.

"Down?" the fellow shouted. "Down to the ground? Down to the ground?" he cried in alarm. "Nay! Goosedown. Eiderdown. Spiderdown!"

The fellow's eyes suddenly lit up as if he had an idea "Thistledown!" he screamed. "Thistledown. p.i.s.sle down. Why don't you turn to thistledown and fly up? You could, you know! You could if you would. You would if you could. In your dreams!"

Iome's heart pounded. She'd dreamt of thistledown last week, of turning to thistledown and flying over Castle Sylvarresta, drifting up, into the air away from her problems The courier opened his eyes wide, stretched out his good hand and beckoned to her. "Come to me, O c.u.mbrous Queen of the Sky, you need no feathery wing to fly!"

He's serious, Iome realized. He wants me to join him.

A powerful blast of wind slammed into Iome's back, halfway ripping her from her saddle. Iome grabbed the pommel and clung to it. She remembered Gaborn's warning, and wondered now at her own stupidity.

If she let go, the wind would tear her from the saddle, and she feared where it might carry her. She screamed for help Hoswell let a shaft fly. The arrow lodged in the tree near the a.s.sa.s.sin's head, breaking his concentration. The wind around Iome died.

The a.s.sa.s.sin spun and snarled like some vicious dog, angered at the unexpected attack.

"No?" he cried. "No? No! She won't go! She won't grow. Not like the son within her grows!" He snarled as the Darkling Glory had. "Give me the King's son. I smell a son in your womb. Give it or I'll take it!"

The a.s.sa.s.sin grasped the arrow, wrung it from deep in the oak where the bodkin was buried, and hurled the bolt back at Hoswell. The arrow flew with astonishing speed, blurring as it whipped toward Hoswell, soaring left and right as no arrow should.

It struck Hoswell on the shoulder, merely to bounce off his armor and go blurring. toward the gra.s.s.

"Beware!" "Beware!" Gaborn's Voice warned Iome.

Iome ducked just as the arrow soared upward and whipped around. It drove past her head, blurring as it picked up speed. Then it sailed off into the distance, lost to sight. Without her endowments of metabolism, she'd have been skewered.

"d.a.m.n him!" Hoswell shouted. "I'll go into the tree after him if I must."