The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(91)

Gonturan was hung on the wall of the Great Hall, where Harry, like all Riders before her, had cut her hand on the king's sword and been made another of the company. The king's sword hung opposite, for only the king's and queen's own swords could hang on display in the Great Hall. Gonturan had spent many years wrapped in cloths in an old wooden chest, black with age, since the last time she hung in the Great Hall. And after the wedding feasts everyone went home, because there would be no traveling in the winter rains.

The filanon stayed in the City till the rains were gone, partly to pay the respect due to the City and the king they had turned away from many years before; and partly for reasons that became obvious - although everyone already knew what was happening - when in the spring Richard Crewe married Kentarre, and returned with her and the filanon to the western end of Damar, although he carefully avoided the Outlander station. Thus the filanon became once again well known to the king and his City, for the Damarian queen often visited her brother, and he her. Richard was never entirely happy riding as the Hillfolk rode, but he had a talent for woodcraft and archery that might almost have been a Gift.

He taught his sister to hold a bow properly and to put an arrow more or less where she wanted it to go, but Harry failed to rise above the merely competent.

"Do you talk to your arrows, and tell them to find the stag that has to be in that brush up ahead somewhere and stick him?"

"Did you tell Gonturan to knock down the mountains on Thurra's ugly head?"

This conversation took place almost a year after Gonturan had been hung on the wall of the palace, and Harry could laugh.

Kentarre's first child was a daughter with blond hair and grey eyes, and she was born before the rains came again. Harry's first child was born a fortnight later - "Ah, bah," Harry said, with her hand on her belly, when the messenger came from the west with the word, and the winter's first rains fell over them, and dulled the stone of the City; "I did want to be first." The child was a son, with black hair and brown eyes.

Jack grew as skilled on horseback as any Hillman, for all that he had come to it so late; and Mathin took him to his home village, where he learned how the Hills trained their young horses. He was good at this too, and Mathin's family liked him, but always he found himself returning to the stone City, where Corlath seemed more content to stay since Harry now stayed with him. And the year that young Tor Mathin was two years old, Jack was called to a banquet in the Great Hall, where he had attended many banquets before, and to his own amazement he was made a queen's Rider, to sit with the fifteen king's Riders, for Corlath had made no more since the war with the North. Gonturan, which Jack had held once before on a mountaintop, lightly and kindly drank three drops of his blood, while he stared at the cut and for once had nothing to say.

"We Outlanders must stick together," said Harry, smiling.

Jack looked up at once and shook his head. "No - we who love the Hills must stick together."

The year after Jack was made a Rider, Harry bore another child, and this one was a daughter, and she had red hair and blue eyes, and a wry whimsical smile even in her cradle. "You're calling her Aerin, of course," said Jack, tickling her with the end of his sash while she giggled and clutched at it.

"I'm calling her Aerin Amelia, and Forloy and Innath and Mathin and I are riding west as soon as she's six months old, to invite Sir Charles and Lady Amelia to the Naming, here in the City. Will you come with us?" Harry was holding her baby, and as Jack, startled, stopped looking at her and instead looked up at her mother, Aerin grabbed the sash and stuffed as much of it as would fit into her mouth.

"Yes, of course I'll come. Don't I have to, anyway? As the only queen's Rider, I have a reputation to maintain." Harry's anxious look relaxed into a smile.

And so six months later five Riders set their faces west from the City; and as they were about to leave the City gates, Harry, who was lagging behind as if unhappy about something, heard hoof-beats behind her and turned around to see Fireheart bearing down on her. There were traveling-bundles hanging from his saddle, and Harry's face lit up and she said: "Oh, you are coming with us after all."

And Corlath sighed, and reached over Sungold's withers to take her hand and said, "Yes, I'm coming. I don't want to, you understand. Perhaps you should just think that I cannot bear to be parted from you for so many days; which is true enough."

"I don't care," said Harry.

Corlath looked at her and smiled in spite of himself. "Perhaps you are right, my heart. I am inclined to forget that there is still some Outlander blood in your veins; and perhaps this mad scheme of yours will work."

The six of them stopped and set up camp where a much bigger traveling camp had stopped several years before, to wait upon another visit to the Outlander town. Forloy and Innath rode in alone, early in the morning, with a written message for the District Commissioner and his wife; none of them knew what to expect, but least of all did the four who remained behind expect to see a cloud of dust hurrying back toward them a bare few hours later. "Hill horses never kick up so much dust," Jack said thoughtfully. Harry stood up and took a few steps in the dustcloud's direction; she could see two figures on horseback within it, and behind them the grey and brown that were Innath's and Forloy's horses.

Lady Amelia reached Harry first; Harry's hood was back, her hair shining in the sunlight, but in her Hill dress and with her skin burned to the color of malak, she was astonished when little Lady Amelia climbed or fell off her horse just in front of her, said, "Harry, my dear, why did you never send us any word?" burst into tears, and threw her arms around her former houseguest and foster child.