The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [197]
Understanding flowed back from Lirith. Someone must be helping him. Someone nearby.
Aryn gazed again at Teravian. The air behind the prince still shimmered, as though heat rose from the ground. However, despite the rising of the sun, the day was bitterly cold.
Again Teravian's voice boomed out over the field. “What is your answer, Father? Will you obey the will of the sacred bull and surrender yourself to me?”
“I will give him an answer,” Boreas roared, drawing his sword. “I placed my trust in him, and he has betrayed me. He is no son of mine. Prepare to charge, true men of Vathris. We will not let our minds be clouded by spells and deceit.”
Shouts of approval rose up around the king. Orders were given; the men fell into quick formation. Knights held their lances ready; foot soldiers gripped spears and shields. Their faces were stern, but they were far too few. It would be a bloodbath.
“We'd better get out of the way,” Sareth said, looking up at Aryn with wide eyes. “I don't think they're going to stop for anything once they charge.”
The cold seemed to crystallize Aryn's mind, and despite the pounding of her heart a resolve filled her. It couldn't be courage, not when she was so deathly afraid. Rather it was a kind of knowledge; she had seen this in a vision, had she not? This was the way it was to be.
A small round shield and scabbard were strapped to the horse's saddle. Aryn looped the shield's strap around her shoulder, so that it covered her withered arm. Then she unbuckled the scabbard and unsheathed the sword, holding it aloft.
Lirith's frightened voice came from below her. “Sister, what are you doing?”
“What it is my purpose to do,” Aryn said, and with a thought she urged the horse forward.
She heard Lirith and Sareth cry out behind her, followed by an angry shout she recognized as King Boreas's, but the horse was already cantering across the field. Aryn rode with ease, sitting tall and straight in the saddle, gripping her mount with only her knees. She knew if she could look back at herself, she would see a scene she had glimpsed before: a proud woman all in blue riding away from a castle with seven towers, a shield on her shoulder, a sword in her hand. A queen riding to war.
It was Ivalaine who had first revealed the image to her, in the waters of a ewer, what seemed an age ago. Then she had seen it again, in the card she drew from the T'hot deck of Sareth's al-Mama. Both times, Aryn had failed to understand. How could she be riding to war at all, let alone from a castle with seven towers when Calavere had nine? However, two of Calavere's towers were gone now, and so was Aryn's uncertainty. She knew she was not yet a queen; all the same, she would be obeyed.
Aryn brought the horse to a halt before Teravian. Petryen and Ajhir treated her to suspicious glares, hands on the hilts of their swords, but the prince's gray eyes were curious beneath his thick eyebrows.
“Go back to your father, Aryn,” he said. His voice was quiet, for her only.
She was aware of Petryen's and Ajhir's angry looks, and of the three thousand men gathered not far behind the prince. All the same, she thrust her shoulders back. “Boreas is my warden, not my father. My place is with you, Your Highness. Am I not your betrothed?”
He blinked, and it was clear her words had startled him. “We can talk about that later. Right now you have to get out of here. There's going to be a battle. I can't stop it.”
“Can't you?” Even as she spoke, Aryn probed along the Weirding, tracing the threads of the power.
His visage grew hard. “No, as a matter of fact I can't.”
Aryn was still searching. She needed more time. “Why?” she said. “Why are you doing this?”
“You'd never understand.”
“I might.”
The wind blew the prince's dark hair from his face. He looked older than before, stronger and more serious. His shoulders were no longer hunched. The awkward and uncertain boy she had always known was gone; in his place was a young man.
“I did it because I love him,” he said so only she could hear, gazing across the field at the banner