In the Caves of Exile Page 2

  Fortunately, Nisana preferred to avoid council meetings, saying she had more important matters to deal with and that she had no desire to sit with arguing humans unless urgently necessary. Also fortunately, Nisana was more than used to such treatment and had been merely amused, though not so amused as to have her idea of fun with any of them.

  “You"—Ylia gazed down the table—"were going to tell me what chanced when you arrived;” Erken frowned, jolted out of some dark thought. “Vess,” she prompted.

  “Vess. Mmm.” Erken dropped the hat on the table, shoved it over the edge and out of his sight. “If you want to take the time for that now, though.”

  “After all, he's gone—,” Ifney began. Ylia shook her head.

  “Gone, yes. But I need to know.”

  “Well—,” Erken began slowly. “With so much else to discuss, are you certain there's point to it?”

  “Yes.” Ylia nodded. “And we keep pressing it to the end, and then we're one and all too tired to talk about it. Now, Erken. Please.”

  “Well—,” Erken repeated. “These men came before I did.”

  “Aye.” Ifney turned his sharp glance from one to the other of them. “And if you'll not say it, Erken, I will, I never held with Vess nor his ways, ever, and I never swore to him, as you all know!” He recollected himself, swallowed. “Um. I know he's kin of yours, Lady.”

  “One cannot choose kin,” Ylia replied dryly. “You do not upset me by straight speech concerning Vess. And how often must I tell you, I need you to speak freely. What good is a council such as this if you do not council?”

  The Northerner considered this. Smiled briefly. “Just so, Lady. Well, then. I got here the middle of the twenty-fifth of First Flowers. There was a fair pack of us. I'd taken my folk, sent my women ahead and gone for Marckl's holdings. He and I roused three villages between Sern and Teshmor. We met up with Bnorn just within the Pass. So we were—what, Marckl?”

  “Mmm. Perhaps four hundred, all told.”

  “Well.” Ifney cleared his throat. “We got to Aresada a full day later. The herds held us back and we didn't dare leave the herders and their beasts behind us, even if we'd wanted or if they would have let us. So by the time we reached the bridge, we found Vess in power. There were over a thousand folk here by then, they'd all sworn to him, worse luck!”

  “Well?” Marckl demanded. “What did you want of ’em? So far as any knew, the whole South was gone! Vess had been there, he was the only one who knew anything about Koderra. Remember? Remember too what he told us? He was the last of the House of Ettel! If there was anyone alive—yourself, Lady, or the King—we couldn't know. And you weren't here.”

  “No.”

  “Between us, we had more armed than Vess,” Ifney said. “But we talked it over, and we couldn't see any other choice. No one liked Vess. But he was what we had.” A gloomy silence settled over the three men.

  “And—?” Ylia prompted.

  Ifney shrugged. “Well, it wasn't good when we got here. It got worse. Vess wasn't much interested in food, save what went in his mouth. Bnorn's men, mine, and Erken's boys did what hunting there was. The fishers have kept busy. We weren't good at it, though we got better because we hadn't choice.”

  Erken finally spoke, but his reluctance was evident in his face and the slowness of his speech. “Vess was not content with remaining here, with ruling the pittance of folk at Aresada. Between us, as you've seen, Lady, we have perhaps five hundred armed. Not, mind, skilled armed!”

  “I have seen that.” She had. Green boys, still years from their first moustaches, white-haired old men who in better days would have been sitting in the sun spinning tales for any who'd listen. Anything and everything between.

  “Not soldiers.” Marckl growled. “Nor likely to be, most of them, to my way of seeing it. But Vess harped ever that we must retake the Plain, particularly we must regain the South, must hold Koderra once again.”

  “By means of a bargain,” Ylia said flatly, “with the Sea-Raiders.” Dead astonished silence greeted this remark. “He said as much to—to my father, the night before Koderra was attacked. Had he sent for their aid, or did he just talk of it?”

  “He didn't say anything to me,” Erken replied. “I was not particularly in his confidence,” he added with a brief grin that erased fully twenty years from his lean face. “But I think he had persuaded—I think that is the word—certain folk of village Keldan to build rafts. The work wasn't yet begun when you arrived.”

  “Rafts.” Ylia considered this in silence for some moments. She laughed then. “Thanks, sweet cousin! I had not considered rafts as a means of reaching Yls. But the river itself—do any of you know it?”

  “It turns west,” Erken said doubtfully.

  “That much I've seen," Ylia replied, a faint emphasis on her words. Erken considered this.

  “Seen. Yes.” Magic. His dislike wasn't as strong as old Marhan's, but he clearly hadn't much more use for it than the Swordmaster did. “Well; They say it widen perhaps 30 leagues from here and empties out into the Bay of Nessea. Now I have seen that Bay and two rivers do indeed empty into it. If one of them is ours, then we could very likely reach Nar. And take passage to Yls aboard one of their ships.”

  “We haven't true shipwrights, Lady,” Marckl said. He leaned across the table, suddenly eager with thought of something useful he could do. “But I think we could locate those who've built the sort of light, narrow-hulled boats that were used on the Planthe—market-boats. They'd be safer than rafts.”

  “Yes.” She thought. “We'd need only one or two—”

  “Three,” Erken broke in gravely, “for safety.”

  “All right. If you will then, Marckl, see to the building of three boats. We don't need much room, only for men to carry messages to Nar and Yls. I want to bring the folk there north as soon as possible. If they'll come,” she added doubtfully.

  “They'll come,” Marckl said decidedly.

  “Then—the boats needn't be large, just good enough for two men each to go down river and return.” Gods and Mothers, messages. That will take thought. “One last thing,” she said finally. “Lord Corlin provisioned Aresada for a safety in the event of such a thing as befell us. What do any of you know of this?”

  Erken shrugged. “What most men know. Rumor, largely. Corlin intended to send his clerks before him. If he did, they never arrived here. In any event, the lists are gone that tallied where things were hidden, and how much of what things. Grain was sent, I know that much.”

  “So do I,” Bnorn put in his first comment of the evening. “A lot of it came from my fields, along with seed and tools.”

  “It would not have been left in any of the outer chambers,” Marckl said flatly. “Because of beasts and—well, Nedao can trust her mountain-hunters, I hope, they wouldn't simply steal things left here, but in need men might use up food left in plain sight.”

  “Mmmm.” Ylia considered briefly. “This is a task for the women who are not as useful at gathering. Lisabetha may well know something of Corlin's plans. I'll ask when she returns; perhaps she can organize the search.” And remain safer here. It suddenly shook her: Inniva guard me, speaking as I am, making decisions, appointing tasks—as though I knew what I did!

  They went on to other things, and still others: It was dark by the time the meeting broke. Ylia staggered to her feet as Erken, the last of them, bowed and left her. She stretched. “Father, if you'd known how I'd take the ruling—,” she whispered. She pulled the thin gold band from her brow—it had been Vess's, the smith had refused to simply cut it down for her and had reworked the metal. She stared at it gloomily.

  It would have been hard enough simply to follow the footsteps of one so beloved as Brandt, and she'd always thought to do it with more years and experience. And now—the work before them terrified her as much as anything they'd faced on the journey north from Koderra: Food they needed, a source of food that did not depend upon what the hunters could catch, what the women could f
orage. Clothing, shoes and boots. And desperately, a place to live. She must search, must bring Nisana back and set her to that task. Because if they didn't get seed in the ground soon, they'd be as good as dead.

  None of the folk wanted to leave, which had mildly surprised her. Considering what hardship they lived under, she'd expected some at least would want to seek out sanctuary in Yls or Nar. No. They were Nedao and they were hers to care for. Mothers grant me the strength, that I not fail them.

  She stretched hard, doused the candles. It was near time for evening meal. More thin soup no doubt. And then, after that, a search, and a serious one.

  To those who have never lost all in disaster, it is incomprehensible, as it had been to me all my life. Of a sudden, there is little or nothing, even of those things that were taken for granted: food and water. Bedding. Warm clothing (though that and footgear had for obvious reasons not ever been among my needs). Among those who had followed the ways of their forbears for a 10 of generations—not only such basics as food and clothing and fire, but seed and ground to plant it in; grazing lands for their herds. I did all I could to aid the child Ylia in her efforts to succor her folk, and yet know the weight of it lay squarely across her slender shoulders.

  2

  Cloud cover was holding the smoke from the cook-fires low and spreading the smell of it through the Caverns again. She brought her head up wearily, watched as grey tendrils drifted across the lantern-light, swirled about the narrow openings in the rock across the chamber. Ugh. Too wet to work out of doors, unpleasant inside. There was a faint scent of cooking meat, teasing at her empty stomach. The last of the venison, and so yet another soup. It made one hungry for the stew of the first night, when Golsat and his boys had staggered in with four spring-thin deer, though a year ago scarce a Nedaoan now living at Aresada would have considered that watery and vegetable-poor mess to be food at all.

  Their situation still wasn't good, though it was a little better: the hunters were supplying what meat they could; the fishers had moved downstream and the catch was larger; two of the orphaned girls who were herding had located wild onion in veritable thickets on the hillsides.

  And the Caves had finally yielded the first of the caches: waterproofed bags containing two dragweight of wheat-meal. Enough to thicken soups and stews, enough for flat bread once a 5-day, at least for present. They didn't dare save it; there was already a thin layer of green across the top of the bag and in another season it would probably have been completely inedible. In the same chamber they had located a dragweight of wheat seed, and a clutch of smaller bags of seed from someone's kitchen gardens. Beans, cress, melon and several kinds of squashes—good eating, all of it, if there is a place to plant.

  She worried that, constantly. Without proper land, they might as well resign themselves all to begging, to a home in exile and poverty, in Yls or Nar.

  And within another generation—that pulled at her also, though only when she woke, middle night, and could not readily return to sleep: I am the last of the House, save only Vess. If I die without an heir there is no House. Never before had she been so aware of how fragile a thing life was, how light the grasp of any upon it. During the day, it seldom bothered her, save as a passing, impatient thought: Take reasonable care; you cannot wed and get children here and now. Take thought for who can be named successor, if you die. That, of course, was easy: who better than Erken?

  In the meantime, she turned back to the task at hand, sternly banishing extraneous thought, the nostril-tickling smoke, the growling of her stomach. Messages. The boats were well under way, they'd be done in a full 5-day. Ifney and Marckl wasted no time, and there were plenty of men from the Torth to do the actual building. She'd discussed the Narran messages with her council: the request for aid which Nedao would repay as soon as possible. Another message to the Nedaoans who had—must have!—reached Yls.

  She'd spoken only with her original companions regarding the third message, the one to be directed to the Sirdar himself, warning of Lyiadd. It would need tact, that the proud old man not take offense. A half-blood had found the Valley of the Night Serpent and its inhabitants, and he had not. She knew where his eldest child, Marrita, housed, and with whom—or what. It would need careful framing, indeed. And, of course, that message would need to be cast into High AEldran, for though the Sirdar spoke all the languages of the Peopled Lands, he would take great offense indeed if any message addressed to him were not in the ancient language.

  Ylia knew High AEldran: her mother and Nisana had both instructed her. And she'd used it recently enough, when she'd challenged Lyiadd to the fight that ended in his death. But this was a matter more complex than a duel-challenge.

  Nisana would have done the translation, if she'd asked. But the cat would not have let her forget for a moment it was her own desire to be anywhere but stuck inside with a text that caused her present difficulties.

  There—finally!—it was done. Her hand ached from clutching the pen, and, as usual, she'd somehow managed to get ink across the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. She eyed the result critically: Her lettering still sloped uphill but other than that the letters were well formed and no one could fault them. The text itself: “Twelth of Spring Floods. The thanks of Ylia, daughter to Scythia of the Second House of Yls, heir to King Brandt of Nedao, and now Queen to Nedao in its exiles to those that have cared for our folk in their hour of need. For such food and shelter as has been provided by our Mother's land, we shall pay, when the ability is again granted to us.

  “Know that our beloved and honored parents were slain in the fall of the King's City Koderra the Twenty-third of First Flowers.” Unnecessary as a matter of information, the Sirdar had no doubt known of Scythia's death long since: he'd have seen it, or dreamed it. “We do not ask for ourselves, or for our folk, that these deaths be avenged, or that aid be given us to drive the barbarians from the Plain. The attack was too great, and we are perhaps a tenth of our original numbers.

  “To us it seems best, therefore, that we remain within the Foessa, for the Mountains offer us sanctuary from the Tehlatt as nothing else might, and here we shall rebuild as best we may. Those of our kind who may have reached Yslar and who wish to rejoin their own are welcome and a place will be made in our midst for them. Those who wish to remain among the Ylsans are free to do so, and with our blessing, for the way before us here will not be an easy one.”

  So much—easy. Now for the difficult part: “A matter for the eyes of the Sirdar, and those in his trust only. On our journey northwards through the Foessa, we came upon a great, deep valley well within the mountains. A fuller description of this place should not be necessary, as it is doubtless in every ancient scroll dealing with the First War fought by the AEldra a thousand years ago. There are torn and burnt buildings in the depths of that place and a presence of Power that is ancient and evil.

  “Those walls are again inhabited, by one of the Fifth House called Lyiadd, his household armsmen, his servants and"—she'd hesitated long here—"his woman. One of our number was slain by his following, I in turn fought him, blade to blade, doing him such great injury that he may be dead.

  “But it is possible he is not. I was not able to ascertain whether he breathed before I was bridged to safety.

  “I perhaps speak of things already known to the Sirdar. They are of sufficient urgency, certainly, that I warn of them now, that those stronger in the Power than I may deal with them, lest the Night-Serpent Lammior find a successor to unleash war across the entirety of the Lands.

  “Nedao has no army remaining and little strength at present save to protect herself. Should there come a day, however, when Yls has need of us, send.”

  She sighed. It was the best she could do, she'd agonized most of a day over it already. If the Sirdar was offended by any of it—well then, anything else she could say would offend him also. The proper forms were all there, no one could say she hadn't been formally, exactingly polite. She lifted the pen again inked it and signed her na
me across the bottom: “Ylia hra'da Brandt, Coreas Nedao". “Ylia, Brandt's daughter, Queen of Nedao.” Now, if Erken had got that colored wax from Bnorn's clerk—there, at the bottom of the box of quills. Not much of it, but enough for now. Likely there'd be no need for more messages such as this one until year's end. She pulled at the thong around her neck, fished out the rough seal the smith had cast for her and folded the paper. A lanolined sheath for it, a pale green ribbon (one of Lisabetha's last) around that. A splash of wax at the joining, seal—quickly—on that. She leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes. Mothers, who'd have thought a few lines on paper to be such a task?

  It wouldn't always be, of course, providing her father's household chose to come north. Among them were Brandt's scribes and clerks. With their aid, she'd only need frame the idea of any such future messages, the rest, save the signature and seal, would be done for her. She smiled briefly. There was something, after all, to be said for household folk.

  If there was need for such messages again, she decided, the old Chosen Grewl would aid her. He'd already been an invaluable ally, when Vess had refused to fight her according to Nedaoan custom, and it had been Grewl who had found the loophole that allowed a champion to take her place; Grewl who had taken a firm stand when two of the more fanatic young Chosen had tried to start trouble among the people because of Ylia's AEldran blood. He was at something of a loose end at present, for he was an Oversea scholar who had been studying Nedaoan histories when the Tehlatt attacked. He had no official standing among the Nedaoan Chosen, and had reluctantly taken temporary leadership of them pending confirmation from Osnera. But there was little for him to do, save lead the few services and Ceremonies the Chosen had: all of the written histories and tales had been lost to the Tehlatt, and there wasn't enough ink or parchment to spare him. He was too elderly and frail to hunt or gather. But he wanted to be of use.