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It was perhaps a polite fiction, but she accepted it and in any case they both swayed as she leaned upon him, almost staggering. There seemed little call for silence now, and even the Elder had some small difficulty moving over the shifting, clacking tide of smooth pebbles.
On the far side was a sandy strip, a shore when water still flowed but now merely a dry scallop-lapping against sheer stone wall. We could move a little more swiftly having gained that fringe, and Kaecil the spearman unlimbered a blue-glowing Elder lantern from its hiding place amid what little gear they carried. Its light glittered in his fair hair; he walked just behind Aeredh while the glow painted shadows upon worn cavern walls.
The steady motion and cessation of the killing cold felt glorious. I stirred, but Aeredh’s hold did not loosen. “Stay with me,” he repeated in the Old Tongue, or sometimes in southron. “Just a little longer, my lady. Stay with me.”
In truth I could not have fled, and I could make no answer either. My throat was dry as the stones to our left, polished by a foaming long-gone river. I was so thirsty I could almost hear echoes of its chuckling as it carved, the stone walls remembering a merry once-companion.
I do not know how long we walked. Eventually Aeredh must have decided there was no danger, for—softly at first—he began to sing.
Other Elder joined in, tentative music swelling the longer they moved. The Old Tongue had a different shape in their mouths, and the first quiver ofseidhrrenewing itself pervaded my limbs. Even the thought of numbness from the black kisses of frostbite failed to rouse or alarm me.
The Elder sang of the stars named before the sun rose, of their making by the lady of the Blessed they love the most. Wrought with care and hung upon the face of night, Vardhra’s lamps were the first light the Elder saw from the shore of a mere long since forgotten,but they have ever remembered the one who did not wish for them to wake in darkness. Hope she sought to grant them, and a promise that she, at least, would never abandon the first-awakened children of the Allmother.
Sorrow there was in the song as well, for the West was closed to the Children of the Star since they had left at Faevril’s urging. Still, a soft hope threaded through the names; the sky-fires still burned, did they not? And the promise, once given, might be delayed but never left wholly unfulfilled.
So the Elder say. Or, at least, those who trust in the Blessed of the uttermost West.
I drifted upon that music, though the warmth stealing through my limbs was not of its making. Rather, it was the languor of shock. I came close to snowsleep even while clasped to an Elder in the Hidden Passage, and the vision of blackened, blasted Dun Rithell was no longer a torment. Instead, I simply longed to stop breathing so I could join those who had died in the flames.
The passage narrowed, its roof rising to an indeterminate point high above. The blue lantern’s glow touched the edge of another light, for there was illumination in the distance, growing steadily closer.
A great booming word sliced across the Elder-song, bounced from the walls, and caromed down the cave-throat. “Hold!”
Arneior swore softly in the sudden silence, and I twitched. My shieldmaid was near; I could not slide into snow-death while she was still alive and possibly needed me. My cracked lips parted; I meant to ask to be placed upon my feet if we were called upon to fight.
I did not have the chance. The Guards of the Passage had found us.
“By rights we should slay them all,” an Elder in a tall helm with a white feather adorning its single spike said resentfully, casting a sharp gaze over our bedraggled group. “Such is the Law, Floringaeld.”
“Our task is to guard the Passage, not murder refugees.” The leader of our rescuers had freed his golden head from another single-spiked helm, and regarded Aeredh with bright blue-eyed interest ashe tucked the head-armor under his arm. A gauntlet gleamed upon his left hand, dull silvery metal with a single cloudy green gem upon its back. “Aeredh? Is that you?”
Rescuemight be too strong a term for the way they ringed us, swords and spears to the ready. Hidden galleries had been carved in the stone sides of the Passage; now they were full of bowmen, arrows nocked and unerringly trained upon intruders.
“I am Aeredh son of Aerith,” our leader answered in the southron tongue. “If Taeron Goldspear wishes to slay me for returning to his doorstep, ’tis his right as king in his own land. But you should first tell him I have arrived, bearing a hope of the Blessed.”
“And wolves.” Blond Floringaeld—for that was the name of the Elder captain—cast a dark glance at the black-clad men of Naras as he spoke, and his handling of my language was heavily accented. “You I will take to visit the king and hear his judgment, son of Aerith. And you, Loremaster, I know your voice as well. The rest may wait at my lord Taeron’s pleasure in our dungeons.”
“The Secondborn require some care.” Daerith moved forward cautiously, his hands loose and relaxed but not raised. There was no need to cry pax, apparently. “Especially the women. Has hospitality grown so cold here as to turn away half-dead kinsmen?”
“The Secondborn are no kin of ours,” the spike-helmed lieutenant answered, somewhat coldly. “But we will offer no unkindness. And if we are forced to slay them for our lord, it shall be quick and painless.”
“You may find us unwilling to be slaughtered,” Efain muttered, but subsided when Aeredh glanced at him. Eol was not even semiconscious now, though he still breathed as he hung between Gelad and Karas.
And I? I listened without any great interest, my skull full of emptiness. All I cared about was Arn, who had regained some use of her legs and was at Aeredh’s shoulder.
“I would see the women given some care,” the Crownless said. “Then I will go to Taeron, and glad I am of your restraint, Floringaeld. This one needs summat stronger thansitheviel; she is barely alive. And Eol of Naras was grievously wounded facing one of the Seven. Much bravery has been shown by these Secondborn.”
“Be that as it may, they have entered the Passage and may notleave save by my lord Taeron’s permission.” Floringaeld examined our disrepair with no little interest. “Still, we may make some shift for their comfort before stowing them safely.”
“They are not robes to be folded in a closet, my lord Heavy-hand.” Daerith cocked his dark head. “And my lord Aeredh is right; these latecomers have shown so much bravery those who hide in corners might well be ashamed to hear of it.”
“No doubt.” Floringaeld now sounded a little less welcoming. “I never thought to hearyoudefend Secondborn, my lord Loremaster. Perhaps you should stay with them.”
“Taeron will want to see the son of Tharos.” Aeredh sounded more as if he were in command than this Floringaeld, but I did not care. It seemed he would set me down soon, and I was occupied with the question of whether or not I could stand.
It did not seem likely.
In the end, we were carried or hurried into a long low room behind a hidden door, for there were such chambers tunneled alongside the Passage for the guards standing in unceasing vigilance.Aelflamegleamed blue in a great hearth; the sudden cheerful warmth was like a blow. I tried to swallow small pained sounds as my gloves and mantle were stripped by Elder hands and the blood returned to my extremities, Aeredh’s grasp upon me shifting but not loosening. A tiny, marvelously carved flask of smooth white stone was produced and held to my unresisting lips. The cordial it contained burned all the way down. It was red as summer sunlight through tight-closed eyelids, and tasted of small bitter herbs growing upon sunny slopes when the heat is as deep-cloying as oil, winter only a distant dream.
