The Broken Realm Page 28

  “Argentyn.” Asherley let the name sink in, musing over it. She knew next to nothing about him. It was his wife who mattered in their monastic world. “And why should you care whether I live or die?”

  Argentyn wound his hands behind him and regarded her with an unreadable look. “Do you have what you need? Are you comfortable? Does the food agree with your constitution?”

  “Why won’t you answer me?”

  “You’ll be safer here, as things go,” Argentyn replied, looking around. “Now that events are in motion.”

  “What in all the Guardians are you talking about?” She gestured around her. “Safer here? Where I’m a prisoner?”

  Argentyn balked. He looked offended. “You’re not a prisoner.”

  She laughed. “Then release me.”

  “You’ll be safer here,” he repeated. “How is your magic?”

  Asherley was aghast at his deliberate effort to be obtuse. “I’m sorry? My magic?”

  “Is it stronger, now that you are more near the source?”

  “I’ll give it a try if you let me out of this prison cell.”

  Argentyn’s eyes swept the room. “I see no prison cell, Lady Blackwood. Only ardent attempts at hospitality.”

  “Let me go.”

  “I can release you in another way.”

  Asherley launched forward but in an instant his hand was raised, and she was halted, midair.

  “Try it with magic next time, and I may allow it,” Argentyn said, stifling a yawn. “There is more freedom in knowledge than in movement. Your allies in Wulfsgate have been denying you a powerful truth, one that is not theirs to withhold.”

  “I already know my daughter is dead,” Asherley said, through a clenched jaw. “You cannot hurt me further by repeating it.”

  “My condolences,” Argentyn said. “For your Hollyn. But also for Byrne.”

  Asherley’s blood cooled so fast her knees buckled. “Byrne?”

  “Murdered, by Lord Quinlanden, in an ambush. As he was preparing to turn in for the evening, I hear,” Argentyn said flatly. “Lord Quinlanden is now the Lord of the Westerlands as well, they say, though he has not been seen since he procured your husband’s head in a box and presented it to the king. The Westerlands, as I understand it, has been thrust into utter chaos.”

  A thousand tiny lights died behind Asherley’s eyes until there was only darkness, and the cool welcome of the floor.

  * * *

  He fell through the air. The air took him.

  Ransom Warwick had arrived at Wulfsgate the night before, and before he collapsed, he’d managed nine words. He fell through the air. The air took him. As they’d laid him in bed, Gretchen succeeded in also getting a nod out of him when she asked if he meant Pieter, before he fell into a long rest. Once he was out, no one could wake him again. Whatever he’d been through demanded sleep.

  They’d speculated themselves into a flurry while he rested. What could he mean about Pieter? Had he fallen? Fallen off the mountain? No, Gretchen decided, it couldn’t be that, for she’d know if her little cub was dead, wouldn’t she? But where were the others? Asherley and Anabella? The princess? Little Stefan and the scholar?

  Holden insisted they stop talking about it until Ransom could answer their questions. The guessing, he said, only ushered them to terrible conclusions, and there must be a rational explanation. Gretchen countered that nothing good could have brought Ransom Warwick, alone and frost-eaten, by foot to their doorstep other than catastrophe. Christian and Aylen blamed themselves for not pushing harder to travel to the pass more frequently. Alric insisted, in that strange desperation he radiated with when he had a strong feeling about something, that he knew exactly what Ransom meant. That Pieter had fallen through the veil, just as he once had.

  In a huff, they’d all gone their separate ways at the keep.

  Gretchen was there at Ransom’s bedside when he woke. With the same maternal ministrations she’d applied to her own children when they were unwell, she pulled Ransom’s truth from him, slowly, and then eased him back to sleep with a light draught. Ransom was old enough to be the lord of the Southerlands, but his experiences had reduced him again to a young boy, in need of a fiction to replace a terrible reality. Gretchen couldn’t do that, but she could give him some peace. She could do it for Gwyn.

  Gretchen called the others together to share what they learned. She knew immediately how they would respond, for it was how she had, though she’d now had more time to let it settle over her.

  “Ransom has been through a great ordeal, and I would ask that none of you go to his bedside demanding answers he does not have. He has told me what he knows, and there’ll be no more.” Gretchen turned to Aylen. “You asked me earlier about healing him. When we’re done here, you can go to him, though most of his physical wounds are superficial. He’s had a long journey by foot. None of his hurts will surprise you.”

  Aylen nodded.

  Gretchen settled back against the old wood of the dining table. She didn’t dare sit. The flames from the hearth warmed her, but they did not soothe her. Her feet twitched with nervous energy, as she searched for the right words. The ones she needed to hear as much as they did.

  “I have some troubling news. Anabella, Wyat, and Stefan slipped off into the night before anyone could stop them. Lady Asherley and Princess Assyria are dead after some kind of fight between them, a fight that seemed, to Ransom, was about the others leaving. Assyria fell from the mountain, and Asherley was assailed, by a man.”

  Earwyn gasped. Both hands clapped over her mouth. Gretchen couldn’t find the words for her. Not yet.

  “A man?” Holden asked. “He’s certain he saw a man? Who?”

  “He’s in an awful state, but he said he and Pieter both saw this man and Asherley exchange words, and then they saw him… this is where Ransom is unclear, but she fell to the snow. This is when the boys ran. They ran for their lives, back up the snowy pass. They searched for a trail, and eventually found one. When they were certain that whoever had harmed Asherley was not behind them, they stopped, and—”

  Ember appeared in the doorway. “My mother is not dead.”

  “Ember,” Gretchen said gently. “Darling. I was coming to see you next. Please, let us find the answers, which we are all desperate for. We, too, want to believe she’s still out there.”

  “No, I don’t want to believe. I know. My mother is alive,” Ember said, lacking any of the emotion Gretchen expected from her.

  Earwyn stood, but did not rush to her niece’s side. She wore a helpless look as she watched her.

  “Emberley. Go on, now,” Holden said. “Let us finish and then we will decide what to do about Lady Asherley.”

  Ember rolled her tongue around the inside edge of her bottom lip. “Do that. I’ll already have a plan by the time you’re done.” She turned and left.

  “She’s a curious child,” Holden muttered.

  “She’s a bold and brave young woman,” Earwyn countered, voice quaking. “One whose mother trusted her with the fate of the entire Westerlands. She is my sister’s daughter, through and through. She has a right to be here.”

  Gretchen nodded. “Ember is no child. Not anymore. But if Asherley is alive, she would’ve taken the pass and returned to us, as Ransom did.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Earwyn. I hope I’m wrong.”

  Earwyn bowed her head. “Unless she’s injured and cannot.”

  “I can have a search party organized within two ticks, once you release me,” Christian said.

  “We’ll need one. For Asherley. And for Pieter.” Gretchen finished telling Ransom’s tale, though she’d come to the hardest part. He fell through the air. The air took him. “What happened to Pieter is even less clear. Ransom claims they came upon a fruit tree. Christian, he says Pieter recognized it as the one you and Aylen stop at, to remove the horses from the harnesses and carry the goods by foot.”

  Christian exhaled. “Yes, it’s… it’s a rather large tree, and it makes for
a fair landmark, for it’s out of place amongst dense pine and fir. There’s none others around it. It stands in a light clearing, and the leaves are so dense that there’s hardly any snow beneath it. Pearapples, I think, like the ones that grow in the Wintergarden.”

  “Christian and I have discussed its strangeness more than once,” Aylen said. “If I’m being truthful, it’s always made me a bit nervous. It doesn’t belong there.”

  “It’s there for the veil,” Alric said from the corner, sounding suddenly weary of the topic. He sighed. “A protection of sorts. I could never make sense of it. I always wished I’d met someone who could explain it to me better.”

  “Alric, darling. They’ve lost their son. This isn’t helpful,” Earwyn said. Gretchen felt sad for her, and not only for the news of her sister. The great beauty and cunning of Earwyn Blackwood was wasted on a half-wit like Alric. One of the many tragedies born at the Rhiagains’ hands two decades before.

  “Or why I’ve never been able to return,” Alric continued, oblivious to his wife’s humiliation. “Dozens of times I’ve been back to that spot, and not once have I been allowed to pass back through.”

  “This isn’t the time for this nonsense,” Holden said. His frustration with his brother had been brewing most of their lives, but had hit a crescendo when Holden became lord, for now Alric was not only his brother but also his burden. “Pieter is lost in the pass. He is a clever boy and will know to find any cover available to him. He knows how to find and prepare his own food. If we make good time, we can be there before he needs us.”

  “You would know it is not nonsense if you’d been there,” Alric said, and Earwyn looked as if she might turn to a puddle in her chair. Gretchen couldn’t blame her for sending her only son to Oldcastle for an education. “And if you want to save Pieter, you’ll stop treating me as if I’ve been kicked in the head by a horse too many times.”

  Holden shot Gretchen a knowing look, and she had to stifle an inappropriate laugh. This had once, a lifetime ago, been her prime guess as to the cause of Alric’s state of mind. Holden evidently hadn’t forgotten her words. And she, in this strange fleeting moment of a shared joke with her husband, remembered how she’d once loved him. How much fun they’d had in the early days.

  “Lord Alric, if what you say has happened to Pieter is true, our search party will discover this,” Aylen said with a sweet smile. “Now that you’ve made us aware of this possibility.”

  “It’s no mere possibility, Lady Aylen. There is no cliff to fall from anywhere near that tree. No hole to sink into. There is only one place a man can disappear if he is standing at the pearapple tree at the final bend in Torrin’s Pass.”

  Christian stood. “If you feel there’s more to discuss, by all means continue, but I’m going to assemble the party so we can leave while there’s still light. Mother?”

  Gretchen nodded just as her husband said, “Good, Son. Count me amongst the men.”

  “I will, Father.”

  “Uncle Alric, I could use your aid,” Christian said. The older man puffed in a swell of pride and followed, hobbling behind him.

  “Forgive my husband, Gretchen. He’s been even worse since Ransom arrived talking about falling through the air. He’s not himself.”

  “Earwyn, think nothing of it,” Gretchen said. “He should be more sensitive to the news you just received. And besides, we spend far too much of our lives making excuses for the men.”

  “I’m still sitting right here,” Holden said.

  “Yes, and?” Gretchen replied, but she was smiling. She couldn’t explain it, for it was both ill-timed and counter to her more recent feelings about her husband. All she could do was add it to the list of all the inexplicable things that had happened to her in the past few months. “Aylen, you, Earwyn and I will stay behind with the children. That all right?”

  “I’ll tend to Ransom, in case his needs are greater than we realize.”

  Earwyn nodded with bleary eyes, unable to speak for the sob rising in her throat. She left the room.

  Gretchen turned to Holden. “There will be no joy in this world if you and the men do not return with both the missing.”

  “If what Ransom said about Asherley is true…”

  Gretchen nodded. “Then you must return with enough evidence of the deed to put the matter to bed, for everyone. For if she is dead, then we have the next Lady of the Westerlands residing under our roof, and we will bear even more responsibility in seeing that Emberley’s land is restored to her.”

  “Emberley? What of the son? Brandyn?”

  “He may be her stated heir, but it was Emberley who Asherley chose to lead the children away from danger, and to know what to do once they were clear of it.” Gretchen reached forward and grabbed his hand, surprising herself. “Have you not often learned the hard way to discern between what a lady says and what a lady means?”

  * * *

  Ember ran to the clearing at the center of the Wintergarden. It was here that he often came to her, perched upon the branch of a nearby tree, watching. Always watching. Judging. Whether she wanted him to or not; no matter what she said to get him to leave. Well, now she had need of him.

  “Alasyr!” she cried. “I know you’re out there!”

  She spun around in circles, scanning every branch as she searched for him. Fresh snow dotted her face. It landed in her eyes, blurring her vision. She ignored it. He was there. He had to be. He was always there.

  “ALASYR RAVENWOOD!” she screamed so loud her voice cracked. The howl that followed got lost in a fierce wind.

  “Ember.” Marsh’s breath warmed her neck. His arms slid around her from behind. “What are you doing?”

  “He can find her! He can cover so much more in flight than the men will on foot, and faster.”

  “All right. But what aren’t you saying?”

  She tore herself away, stumbling back into the patches of snow. “I shouldn’t need him to do this for me. I’m a Ravenwood! And I don’t believe that my blood is tainted, or less than, simply because I am also a Warwick. I need a teacher, Marsh. Someone who knows who I am.” Again, her eyes performed the search of the branches, darting with quickness to each one. “Someone who knows what’s happening to me, and how I can use it to save my mother.”

  “Not him.” Marsh shook his head. He took a step, but something stopped him from coming closer. “He would kill you if he thought he’d get away with it. You know that, don’t you?”

  “No.” Ember’s head flew back and forth. Her eyes couldn’t stay focused on any one thing, one branch, one possible place he could be, watching. “He doesn’t want me dead. He’s afraid of me. Of what I mean.”

  “What you mean?” Marsh sighed. “You’re not making sense. Honestly, Ember, you haven’t been making sense for a while.”

  “It’s not my job to make you understand.”

  “I love you, Emberley.”

  She stopped spinning. Her panting escalated as she caught up to the moment. “If you love me, then you love all of me. Even this.” She tapped her chest. “This need. Something has changed in me since I came here. I know you can see it. Maybe you can even feel it. It isn’t fair to expect me to bury it, for your comfort.”

  “For my comfort?” Marsh looked ready to cry and laugh at the same time. “I wake up every day wondering if I will ever see my home again. My mother and father. Jonah and Lyria. And then I roll over, and I look at you, and I know that home is wherever you are.” He took another step. “Emberley, I don’t want you to bury who you are. I just don’t want to lose you to it.”

  Ember looked again at the sky. “Then help me find him before that happens.”

  * * *

  Christian sent two men to assemble the search party with haste. He issued an order to the kitchens to prepare enough provisions for a fortnight. When he was done, he and Alric went to the stables to ready the horses for the ride.

  “Uncle Alric,” Christian said, as he stood before Sun. “Tell me more about
the veil.”

  Alric dropped his hands from his pony’s saddle. The beast was old and worse for wear, but looked at his master with pure adoration. “Your father has given me enough grief. Now you, too, Christian?”

  “I’m asking you because I want to know.”

  Alric scoffed. “No one wants to know. I made that error years before, when I returned. I thought the whole kingdom would want my story, but instead I was met with jests and derision.”

  “People diminish or fear what they don’t understand,” Christian said. “But I’ve spent most of my life at the Sepulchre. I’ve seen things no one here would believe, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t real.”

  “Perhaps I did imagine it. I never was able to find it again,” Alric said.

  Christian approached his uncle. “All these years, you’ve held fast to your version of things. That happens only when someone’s belief is strong.”

  Alric dropped his eyes. His uncle looked so old. Christian realized he’d always thought of him as old, despite that he was only halfway through his third decade. He wondered then what his uncle had been like before he’d been through this ordeal that had shaped the whole of his life and renamed it. Had he ever known joy? Pleasure?

  “For once, I fear speaking about it. For it is not enough to know, is it? If that knowledge cannot save Pieter?”

  Christian clapped his hands over Alric’s shoulders. “You returned. So he must be able to as well.”

  “But I don’t know how I returned. I don’t even know how I was able to step through. I only know… the bear, it had me by the foot, and when I pulled it back, oh what a foolish thing to do, it was as if a great fire had spread through me, but I had no choice but to ignore it and persevere, or die. And then I crawled forward, beyond the pearapple tree and… disappeared. The bear no longer had hold of me. Where there had been snow, there was now desert. And warmth! Warmth unlike any I’d ever known in the Northerlands. I couldn’t stand; my foot was mangled beyond recognition. From where I lay all I could see was white sand, as far as my vision could stretch. All except a tree. Like the pearapple, it seemed out of place, like it could not possibly have grown there under any natural circumstance. It had these low, bowing branches, and on them dangled fruits that looked like oranges, but they were bright green, and twice the size. I tore one of my shirts and used it to wrap what was left of my foot. It was then I passed out from the pain, and when I awoke, nothing had changed. I was still in this strange desert, still lying beneath the tree. I had this pull... this overwhelming sense that if I could stand, if I could make my way farther from this tree, there’d be a whole world for me to explore. A whole world awaiting me, if only I could again find myself able. The ache in my foot had subsided some, but I knew the damage was beyond what could be repaired, even without looking at it. I also knew that if I did not find my way home, I would lose that foot and with it, perhaps, my life. My son was only a baby, and Earwyn needed me. I kept saying that, aloud so I would mean it. My family, they need me.”