The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [106]
How Teravian had known she would be leaving Artolor was a question Lirith had pondered with every passing league. Perhaps he had overheard Ivalaine and Tressa talking about the plan to send Aryn and Lirith south with Melia. After all, Teravian had a way of watching without being seen.
But of course that didn’t make sense. Lirith had spoken to Teravian the final night of the High Coven, hours before Melia learned of the murdered god. Difficult as it was to believe, there could be only one answer.
Teravian has the Sight.
True, the talent was not unheard of in men; Lirith knew the boy Daynen had possessed some fragment of it, for he had seen in the blinding light of the sun the moment of his death, and the vision had proved true. However, the talent was rare in males, and any vestiges of the Sight were lost upon entering manhood. But Teravian was over sixteen winters, a man in body if not in mind, and if his words were to be believed, this was not the first time he had seen things.
But what did it mean? Lirith was not certain, but she had a feeling there was more to Queen Ivalaine’s willingness to foster Teravian than simple courtesy to her ally King Boreas of Calavan.
Although they were journeying from the mystery of one murder to that of another, somehow Lirith felt her spirits lift as they left Ar-tolor and set off on the road to Tarras. The gold afternoon of summer had given way to the copper evening of autumn, and while the days were warm they never quite lost the crispness of dawn before purple dusk settled over the land.
They talked little as they rode south through Toloria, and although the silence was tinged with the sorrow of Melia’s loss, it was also peaceful in its way. It was through well-populated lands that they rode. All the same, by unspoken agreement, they eschewed manors and inns in favor of camping each evening in some well-tended copse of trees, or a few times in a talathrin, one of the old Tarrasian Way Circles. The weather was too mild, too glorious, to be wasted on the indoors.
Curled next to Aryn in warm blankets on the ground, Lirith would wake before the sun to hear Melia’s soft prayers and the gentle clatter of Falken making breakfast. Soon after would come a faint chiming, then Durge was there in his mail shirt, kneeling beside them, telling them it was time to rise. The rich fragrance of maddok would draw Lirith from the makeshift bed, and she would sit by the fire and curl her fingers around a hot clay cup while Falken served them pan-fried bread. Then they would break camp, mount the horses, and ride once more across the burnished landscape.
It was strange, but Lirith could not remember a time in her life when she had been happier.
After eight uneventful days they reached the Free City of Gendarra. This was a large, dirty, noisy, and exhilarating port city situated on an estuary of the Summer Sea, at the mouths of the Rivers Kelduorn and Dimduorn.
Lirith was grateful fate had not taken them to the Free City of Corantha. She had not stood within that city’s walls since the day she fled north to Toloria to begin her life anew. For all her changes since then, she was not certain she would ever have the power to set foot within those walls again. Fortunately, the sea at Corantha was rough this time of year, and so they had made for Gendarra instead.
The Free Cities were a league of loosely allied city-states that, two centuries earlier, had overthrown their ruling lords in favor of a government controlled largely by merchants. Rather than a count or duke, each city was governed by a mayor who was elected by representatives of the various merchant guilds. As a result, the Free Cities were prosperous and busy—but not always so orderly and stable as the castle keeps of the Dominions. Although she had spent nine years of her life in one, Lirith had