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Icould not walk properly, swaying like a drunken warrior, my bag bumping my hip. Arneior was hardly better; though she managed without aid she could not brace me. She needed to use her spear as a walking-stave at intervals. Afterward she would not speak upon it, for the act galled her.
It fell to Aeredh, having given his sword to Floringaeld, to put his arm over my shoulders once more. “It is as it must be,” he said softly. “Their secrecy is necessary, for the Enemy would dearly love to destroy this place even as Nithraen. As much as he hated my father, he fears Taeron more.”
It meant little to me at the moment, for I was braced for a return to the killing cold and consequently loath to leave the fire. The guards did not take us through the door into the Passage but alongside itsflow, through a tunnel much airier than Redhill’s many passages and lit with blue-burning lamps nestled in holders of carven stone.
I said nothing, and we walked for some time parallel to our former course, Eol still hanging between two of his men but sometimes attempting to move his wet boots. Aeredh glanced at me often, but the red drink was doing its work, and I could at least raise my chin—though I frequently staggered. A sweet breath streamed past us, full of green scent.
“It is not like an ordinary dungeon,” Aeredh continued. Perhaps relief was working upon him like mead as well. “And in any case it will not be long.”
He seemed to expect some answer. I wet my cracked lips, coughed, and managed to clear my throat. “As long as there are no liches,” I husked.
“Not here, no.” He did not laugh, though, and grew grave. “I pray you will never see another, my lady.”
So do I.“It seems unlikely, if you wish me to wield thisseidhr-thing.” I could find no more breath for banter, wholly occupied with my faltering feet. A thin, forge-hot wire of strength ran through my bones, but it had to pull the rest of me along; I was a reluctant puppet at best.
Finally, there was a tall, broad iron door flanked by more hidden galleries, and a great iron key was produced. The lock did not grind, simply gave a soft sound of well-oiled parts. Golden mornlight burst through the widening aperture, bathing Arneior, Aeredh, and my own blinking, sodden self.
We had spent the night in the Hidden Passage, and a new day was come.
On the other side were easy stone steps descending from a platform cut into sheer mountainside—but even here, there were slits carved in the rock we had so recently been under, and behind them archers ready to pincushion any enemy so foolish as to attempt this narrow entry.
And it was not cold. Oh, it was not summer, nor was it spring, but it seemed a mild autumn day instead of the frozen wastes of the Wild. Arn gasped, I let out a harsh disbelieving breath, and Aeredh all but carried me over the threshold.
A vast green valley-bowl starred with shady copses and bright glitterthreads of running water lay amid high white peaks. The sun had not yet crowned the rim of the mountains, but enough winter dawnglow had risen to light Laeliquaende—such is Waterstone’s name in the language of its inhabitants, a dialect of the Old Tongue changed by degrees in their long solitude. Music there was from the vast valley’s streams, for it was carved by great cascades which retreated in the long peace after the Enemy was bound the first time, before he sued for pardon and used the Allmother’s forgiveness to wreak yet more havoc.
In the valley’s palm, the city lay. Shimmering amid the meadows, white spires rose—not just white, but every shade of paleness, from glistening pearls brought from the mouth of my own home’s river to the snow of high places, from bone fresh or old to the inside of sea-gathered shells, from bleached linen to the evanescent glitter of rainless clouds. The immensity of the vale made the city a distant dream, a toylike shimmer—yet Waterstone’s very size meant it was clearly visible instead of a mere glimmering speck.
A star—visible and steady both at morn and eve—burned through the rising dawn, peering just over the shoulder of a mighty mountain holding back a smear of deeper darkness.Maedroththey named the star, meaningthe Watchful, andAeredhe-ilthe mountain, meaningguardian.
“Behold Laeliquaende,” Floringaeld said, with soft reverence. “Here the Enemy does not trouble us. You are lucky to see this sight, Secondborn; not many of your kind have, and even fewer have left while living. You will be held in safety while our king Taeron judges your case.”
I could find no answer. To go from winter’s heart to this was a shock greater than the red cordial, anorukhar’s blow, or the snow-hag’s scream. There was movement upon the meadows—Elder, dancing or walking as the light strengthened—and from far away as the cool breeze shifted there was a sound as of many bells rung in melody as well as lifted voices.
Everything in Waterstone sings. The sun chose that moment to crown the mountains’ eastron rim, and the entire valley filled with gold, green, and white.
I did not stumble upon the stairs, but only because Aeredh was there. My weariness was too great for words, or even for much surprise when a stone bailey swallowed us, and the men now made prisoner—both Elder and Secondborn—were led away through one door of a vast white building. Soren and Karas both turned back in the dark archway, whether to take one last look at Arneior and me or to grant us some comfort I could not guess. Eol made no sound as the shadow swallowed him.
At least the Elder would not let a wounded prisoner die. Or so I hoped, in the thick mud-soup my head had become.
My shieldmaid and I were led through another doorway, this one carved with two graceful trees bearing interlocking bough-crowns. Aeredh steadied me down another flight of easy stairs carved from porous bleached stone, and there was a hallway with a procession of vertical bars upon either side. Strengthening light filtered through high windows, and one of the cells accepted us. It was larger than our closet at Dun Rithell, though not so spacious as the apartments in Nithraen, and its water-room was not so private as it could be.
I could not even blush. There was a flat stone shelf along one wall, and though Floringaeld said bedding would be brought I stepped away from Aeredh and tacked unevenly for its shelter. Bare rock or not, all I wished for in the world was to gain some harbor.
Aeredh’s arm dropped to his side. He watched as Arneior followed me, my shieldmaid turned sideways and moving with terrible slowness, an exhausted warrior covering her army’s retreat.
When I stretched out upon the cold white shelf, I sighed. My grey travel-dress dripped, and I would probably take the ague or lung-blight from resting thus upon bare rock.
I did not care. Barred doors slid upon grooves in the floor, and when the slight sound of movement finished, Aeredh, Efain, and Daerith were upon the other side.
Free, while Arn and I were caged.
“I will return,” Aeredh said quietly, blue gaze burning through the bars. The metal looked powdery, thinly carved and entirely too frail to hold even a sparrow, let alone avolvaand her shieldmaid. But the doors were of Elder make, and likely far stronger than they seemed. “As soon as possible.”
“And I,” Efain added darkly. He nodded to Arn, who returned a grudging movement of her own. She lowered herself onto the stone shelf near my knees, leaning upon her spear, and since her mantle had been taken wet ring-and-scale made a soft grating sound as her weight settled.
I turned away from the cell, from the white city and the green sward. I turned from the Glass, the Wild, the terror of the journey, the Mistwood’s choking silence. I turned from Redhill and the breaking of Nithraen, and everything in me longed for Dun Rithell. I did not feel my wet dress or the aching in every muscle; I curled around my useless bag and stared at the wall for a few moments, unable to believe we could at last cease moving.
I closed my eyes, and blackness took me. Arn leaned upon her spear as she slept sitting next to me, the picture of a weary shieldmaid.
Thus did we arrive in Waterstone, the hidden city of Taeron Goldspear, the High-helm. We did not leave for a long while, and though we did not know it our coming was as doom to the white towers and singing fountains.
That day, all we knew was imprisonment, and finally, my shieldmaid and I could rest.
