The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(55)

Corlath tapped his fingers, one-two-three, one-two-three, on the brim of the fountain. "Aerin is a part of your destiny, Harimad-sol. It is considered unlucky to ... meddle with destiny. Mathin would feel that he was doing you a disservice, speaking much of Aerin to you, and I - I find, now, that I feel the same." Tap-tap-tap. "If you had grown up ... here, you would have heard them. But you did not. And if you had, perhaps you would not now be what you are.

"I am sorry." He turned and looked at her. "If - after we have met the Northerners, and the gods have decided between us, if you and I are left alive, I will tell you all the stories I know of Aerin Dragon-Killer." He tried to smile. "I even can sing a few."

"Thank you."

Corlath's smile became more successful. "There are a very great many of them - you may not wish to hear them all."

"I do wish to hear them all," said Harry firmly.

Corlath took his hand away from the stone brim and began to shred a chunk of bread into fragments on his plate. "As for the first question," he said, "watch." He blinked a few times, closed his eyes, and a shudder ran through him; then he opened his eyes again and gave a hot yellow glare to the little heap of bread crumbs, which burst into flame, crackled wildly for a few minutes, and subsided into black ash.

"Oh," said Harry. Corlath looked up; his eyes were brown. They stared at one another. Harry found herself saying hastily, in a voice that was a little too high-pitched, "What is this place - here - ?" and she jerked her eyes away, and waved to the mosaic walls. "I have seen nothing else like it anywhere in the City."

Corlath shook his head. "Nor will you." He got slowly to his feet, and looked around, and cupped his scarred hand under the fountain, and drank from it. "My father built it for my mother just after he married her. She was fond of the color blue - and I think he wanted to tell her that he did not mind that she would never carry the Blue Sword, the greatest treasure of his family, the woman's sword." He looked down at her inscrutably, but his eyes did not focus on her. Then he turned and left her, going through the door into the castle.

Two days later the army rode away from the City. Corlath and his Riders rode together down the highway from the castle to the gates of the City, with men and women of the household and the hunt and horse, and pack horses behind them; and the people of the City lined the streets and silently watched them go, although many raised their hands to their foreheads and flicked the fingers as they rode by. Harry had not seen so many before; some were refugees from northern Damarian villages, and farmers from the green lands before the Bledfi Gap. And they rode down to the plain where the army Harry had not seen, for she had not left the City since she rode into it, lay before them; and behind her she heard a sound no Damarian had heard in generations: the City's stone gates closing, heavily, mournfully.

Tsornin was restless. Now, with the ranks upon ranks of the Hill army drawn up upon it, the plain looked like some other place than the plain where Harry and Tsornin had fought with blunt staves and sword points. Tsornin was too well bred to do more than fidget slightly in place; but his shoulder, when she ran her hand down it, was warmer than the morning air deserved. The muscles under the golden skin were hard; she felt that if she rapped her knuckles against his shoulder ridge it would ring like iron.

She stood, a little awkwardly, in the group of Riders, only a little way into the plain from the end of the City highway. They were on a little rise of land, so they looked out and down over the rest of the company, and Harry felt unnecessarily conspicuous. "Why couldn't you be liver chestnut or something?" she whispered to Tsornin, who bowed his golden head. A new helm fitted closely down over her bound-up hair, and there were new boots on her legs, with tops that rolled up and lashed into place for battle; and she felt Gonturan hanging expectantly at her knee. Ten days were not enough to accustom herself to being a Rider, however hard she had driven herself and Tsornin round the lonely practice fields with their stiff wooden silhouettes of enemy swordsmen; and while the Riders themselves - particularly one or two: Mathin, and the merry (for a Rider) young Innath - closed ranks around her and accepted her as one of them, she could not believe that they did not themselves wonder, a little, about her presence among them.

Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one front foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole. She looked around: the other horses were showing signs of stress as well. Mathin stood next to her; Windrider, although rock still, unlike the younger Tsornin, wore a dark sheen of sweat down her flank. Corlath's Fireheart was standing on his hind legs again; the king could bring him down as he chose, but Harry rather thought the horse was expressing the mood of both of them. Narknon, so far as Harry could see, was the only one of their company who remained undisturbed. She sat in front of Sungold, just beyond the reach of pawing forefeet, and washed her chest and combed her whiskers.

They marched west. They crossed the low but steep ridge of mountains between the City and the desert plain that stretched far away, up to the back door of the Outlander Residency in Istan. They retraced Harry and Mathin's route, going in single endless file through the narrow paths; and they came to the desert edge at the end of the second day. Beyond the ridge they turned north.