The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [52]
Alareik’s puzzlement was plain. “Do you wish to withdraw?” he asked.
“Withdraw? No, Sir Alareik. I’m going to kill you. This isn’t a formal list; I’ll stay to your left, where your shield won’t be of any use to you. If you try to bring it around, you’ll hit your horse in the head, won’t you? So we’ll come together point to point, and I’ll drive my spear through one of your eyes, and that will be that.”
“I’ll do the same.”
Neil smiled thinly. He leaned forward, keeping his gaze fixed on the man’s smoke-blue eyes.
“I don’t care,” he whispered.
Then he turned his horse and rode for his end of the list. He reached it, turned, and waited.
He patted his horse’s neck. “I don’t care,” he confided to his mount.
The horn blew, and he gave Ohfahs the heel. His left arm was starting to hurt. If he lifted or extended it, he knew it would cramp, but it worked just fine for couching a lance. As the stallion gathered speed, he let his shield fall away, concentrating only on putting the point where he wanted it.
PART II
MANIFESTATIONS OF SEVERAL SORTS
He found her there beneath the cliff
In the shallows of the sea
Her body like a white, white swan
All still and cold was she
He kissed her on her pale wet lips
And combed her bonny hair
He cut twelve golden strands of it
And strung his harp with care
The harp it sang of murder
The harp it sang of blood
It rang across the lands of fate
To the darkling western wood
—FROM “THOS TOE SOSTEREN,” A FOLKSONG OF NEWLAND, TRANSLATED INTO KING’S TONGUE BY STEPHEN DARIGE
A butterfly, as it turns out, is only a thing for making more worms.
—FROM THE AMVIONNOM OF PRESSON MANTEO
CHAPTER ONE
EMPRESS OF THE RED HALL
ANNE STOOD on the bow of the royal ferry and stared up at the walls and towers of Eslen, wondering at how alien they seemed. She had lived all but one of her seventeen winters on that hill, within that fortress. The island’s forests and greens had been her playground. Shouldn’t she feel like she was coming home?
But she didn’t. Not in the least.
When they reached the slip and the boat was secure, her horse, Faster, was brought around. She mounted it for the procession through the city but paused at the great Fastness gate, frowning at the massive stone of its construction.
“Majesty?” Cauth asked. “Is something the matter?”
Her pulse was thumping strangely in her neck, and she couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath.
“Wait,” she said. “Just wait a moment.”
She turned and looked back the way they had come, across the slow flood of the Dew River and the green fields of Newland beyond, to the malends on the distant dike turning against the blue sky. She knew that all she wanted to do was cross that water again and ride, keep riding until she was so far away that no one had ever heard of Eslen or Crotheny or Anne Dare.
Instead she turned, set her shoulders, and rode through the portal.
Crowds had collected along the Rixplaf Way, and each square was full of merriment, as if it were a holiday. They chanted her name and threw flowers before her horse, and she tried to seem pleased and smile for them, when it was the best she could do not to bolt Faster through the throngs at a dead run.
When she had returned from exile the previous spring, almost no one had recognized who she was. At the time she had been surprised and a little chagrined that so few people knew what their princess looked like. Now that anonymity was another precious thing forever lost to her.
By the time they reached the castle itself, Anne wanted nothing more than to hide in her rooms for a time, but she knew there wouldn’t be any peace there; that was where Austra would be, and she didn’t quite feel like facing her oldest friend. Better to confront her counselors and find out just what was being blamed on her absence this day.
“I’ll give an audience in the Hall of Doves,” she told Cauth. “I’d like to see Duke Fail