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CHAPTER THREE

"I wish to be your third Subartan. I will learn," Lan said, standing stoutly before Frost and holding a very old and battered sword.

"What have you told him?" Frost asked Rosivok, finding the Subartan with a steady eye.

"It was me," Sharryl confessed, before Rosivok could say. "The boy was curious, we talked a few times. But we did not talk for long."

"Enough to get his mind filled with foolish ideas," Frost said. He turned to find Taya coming out of the inn to join him and the others in the morning sun. She wore a light tan dress decorated with brown and green embroidery along the sleeves and collar. Quite a handsome woman, Frost thought, reaffirming his earlier assessment. "You will have your hands full, now," he told her.

"I already do."

"Now he will be worse."

"Why are you so sure?" Taya asked, smiling.

Frost gave her his most sober look. She needed to take this seriously. "He has been asking about Subartans, and mine have been telling him stories. He has asked to be my third."

"What third?" Taya asked, growing more anxious.

"I am one Subartan short, but for now I will remain so." Frost turned to Lan. "You are much needed here, boy. Understand that you will do your mother and your village more good than you could do for me or these two. I have lost two Subartans already, and while your heart and mind may be ready and willing to meet the task, I fear your skills would make you my third loss. You serve no one dead."

Lan seemed to wilt with every word, and hung his head with this last. His mother moved to comfort him, but the boy tried to shrug her off. "I have never even been to Worlish," he said. "Never been anywhere, but I am ready. I practice almost daily with this," he added, brandishing the sword.

"You already are somewhere," Frost said. "As good a place as any, I promise you, and with better folk than many. Do not give it all up so easily. As for your fighting skills, they may be needed here one day, by your mother perhaps, or your own family. A war might start and conscription follow, then your fighting skills would help keep you alive. Almost nothing in life is wasted, but if you go with us, your life might be. Do you understand?"

Lan just stood there for a time, thinking, looking the visitors over. Frost tried to imagine the sight through the boy's eyes. Here was a mysterious, eccentric sorcerer in a colorful floppy hat and tunics and leaning on a dark, polished wooden walking staff carved with strange runes, and there were two Subartan warriors, tall and powerful, well armed, wearing their own, only slightly less ornate tunics and linked, leather armor dyed in red and brown. All images well fitted to the ambitions and imagination of a young boy such as Lan. He wanted adventure, stature and proof of the man he had nearly become. Frost could not blame him, he knew what that was like. But at what cost? And to whom? That was the kind of mistake that could ruin one's life, and the lives of others, which was something Frost was even more familiar with.

"Yes," Lan said finally, barely speaking. He looked away, toward the old wall at the edge of the village and the wide-open gates. "I am glad Sharryl told me a few stories at least. I will still have them when you are gone."

Sharryl gave him a nod.

"It would be an honor to fight at your side," Rosivok told the boy. "One day, perhaps, but not this day."

"Frost," Taya said.

He turned to her and found her look had changed again, a dark expression Frost hadn't yet noticed on her face.

"You are leaving?" she asked.

"Today," Frost said. "I must go to Worlish."

"Can your need be so important?" Taya asked. "You are still weak from your journeys, you need more rest, a few more days. And I—"

"Indeed, my needs are more important than you can imagine," Frost said, stepping nearer. They had spent the night together and now he was going. She had known he would; he had made no promises to her and she'd asked for none. Still, a word . . . "I left something of myself there, a part I could not face, and I must return for that part now."

"If you need someone to listen, I would like to hear that story," Taya said.

"I know." Frost felt a peculiar tug somewhere deep inside, a feeling he could barely remember how to experience, from a circumstance he tried to forgo at every turn since—since leaving Worlish, no doubt. What has gotten into me? 

"We will need supplies," he said, changing the subject. "I trust a good meal can be found at your inn a bit later this day, to start us on our way."

"Of course, a wonderful meal," Taya said. "And—"

"Thank you"—Frost took her hand and held the softness for a moment, then he took up Lan's hand as well—"both." After a moment he let go and started down the way, the Subartans in tow, toward the smokehouse. They had already moved their few possessions from the inn to the stable where they waited with the mule. They would still need to purchase provisions enough to keep themselves fed on the rest of their journey. He needed more bulk, and plenty of it.

"I meant no harm," Sharryl said as they walked.

"I know," Frost said, "but you must keep in mind the many reasons why a young man might want to follow you to new lands and be part of your tales of battle and feats of magic."

"I have," Sharryl huffed. "I thought it was better he talk with me than letting him talk to the soldiers."

Frost paused in the street only two doors from the smokehouse. "He speaks with the soldiers?"

"They have been near the inn, but they do not enter. The boy is so far intimidated by them. I do not think he has approached them yet. Though he might at any time since his mother speaks with them without hesitation."

"Taya?"

Sharryl nodded.

"When did she speak to them?"

"I have watched the innkeeper closely these past few days, and she has spoken with them twice."

"There," Rosivok said, nodding toward the inn. Four men in light armor and short, shiny helmets, each wearing a dark gambeson with a single white stripe, front and back, strode out from behind the inn's far corner and continued up the street as if they'd been walking all along. At least one of them glanced over his shoulder at Frost and the others.

"They have not come past us," Rosivok said.

Taya emerged around the same corner a moment later, then went straight to the inn's front door and disappeared inside. Frost felt the breath catch in his throat. His mind suddenly began racing back over the last two weeks, retrieving every memory of what had been said or seen.

"I will learn what she has told them," Sharryl said coldly, each word stated clearly.

"No," Frost said. Then he puzzled at that. He would have let Sharryl do exactly as she said in the past, at almost any time in the past, yet he had said no. There was rational justification, after all, not just personal; Taya couldn't know much, only his name and that he carried a hidden sword, all of which could be learned by anyone persistent enough. The loss was not tactical. Yet in another way it was more severe. Madia had earned his trust, but it had taken many months and a war that had nearly destroyed them both to come to that. Yet I have given mytrust to this woman so easily . . . 

A mistake good only to learn from, Frost thought, growing cold inside, placing his resolve between his heart and his mind. "It would appear I was wrong about her," Frost finally said. "It will not happen again."

"We will go and learn from the soldiers, then, and stop them from taking their news to anyone," Rosivok said.

"A plan that has always yielded far too much attention and far too many efforts thereafter," Frost said. "Dead soldiers make for quite a story, one that will travel on the very winds. If we let them go about their business, weeks may pass before the troubles they bring return, and those troubles will come from fewer directions."

"As you say," Rosivok grumbled, clearly displeased, though he said nothing else.

Frost watched a silent exchange between the two Subartans. He wanted the soldiers dealt with as much as they did, and Taya as well, but . . .

He tried to set that thought aside. "Finish gathering our provisions and collect our goods and the mule. If the soldiers return to Worlish they will tell Lord Andair only what he will know soon enough in any case—that Frost has returned."

"Then what?" Sharryl asked, for both warriors, from the looks on their faces.

"A question that does not yet have an answer—though it shall."

"Should we meet you at the inn?" Rosivok asked.

"No," Frost said. "I will not return there again."

By late afternoon the trio had taken to the road again, unnoticed by most, though not by all. The soldiers followed. They were being careful, staying out of sight, but they were there. Which was something Frost had expected. The only question was what the soldiers would do along the way, if anything. There was no sorcerer among them and the odds were plainly poor, even to the most dense of mercenaries.

"We should eliminate them," Rosivok said, as night approached. "It aids the sleep."

"Not yet," Frost answered. "We are all headed in the same direction. Until that changes I do not expect them to risk direct contact."

"Unless they are fools," Rosivok said.

Sharryl scowled at him. "Of course they are fools."

"Then we will sleep lightly," Frost said.

"Can we at least go and throw rocks at them while they sleep?" Sharryl asked, grinning coldly. It was a game she wanted, verbal sparring in place of the other kind. Good, Frost thought. It would help keep their spirits up, and their edge, and his as well. Something their stay in Worlish would surely require.

"Just be sure to hit them in their heads," Frost required.

"But that is the only part they do not use," Sharryl said.

"Aye," Frost said, feeling better already.

* * *

After three days' walking and without any sign of trouble from the soldiers tracking them, Frost and his two Subartans crossed the border into Worlish, and made their camp for the night. The skies had blown crystal clear on a late day wind that had faded with the sunset. The season had not yet arrived for the hypnotic chirping chorus of crickets, but the silence had its own soothing effect.

These nights did not grow so cold as those of only a few weeks ago. The air was moist and full of the smell of bark and earth, of spring flowers and the rich dampness of the Lengree River, which flowed down from the Spartooths and arced its way through Calienn. Just beyond the Worlish border the river divided, the forks continuing through East and West Worlish, then into the vast northern lands beyond, known as Grenarii. The best road into Worlish followed the river and was heavily populated, and heavily traveled. As before, Frost thought it wise to stay away from the villages and the notice of their barons; no need to invite extra trouble, but here in Worlish that would be difficult.

So be it, he thought with tight resolve. He had not journeyed so far to hide in the bushes, and he could not do what he had come here to do without drawing attention. Lord Andair notwithstanding. So be it . . . 

Camp this night was just off the road, a hollow in the woods where a great old oak had fallen. Frost sat with his back leaned up against the old tree's dead trunk, having slid the Demon Blade around to his side and positioned the sword just so. He let the stars and the crescent moon fill his eyes, as he tried to imagine what the days ahead might bring. He found the effort a difficult task. He shook himself loose of those thoughts and focussed on Sharryl and Rosivok, who were apparently quite focussed on him. They did not avert their eyes. Which meant there was an issue of some kind begging resolution, or clarification, though neither of them thought it proper to bring up the subject.

"Very well, what is your question?" Frost asked.

"There is more we should know," Rosivok said plainly.

"More?"

"You come here seeking the rightful Keeper of the Demon Blade, but it is clear there is more, another reason why you must travel to your homeland."

"You need not say, as is your right," Sharryl said, "and we will serve you no matter, but if the reason is important then perhaps we should hear of it. Knowledge always brings an advantage."

This was true enough, and he hadn't told them much; perhaps now was the time. He had been putting it off because some of the reasons he was here were not that certain even to him, and because others were still to painful to touch. That was part of what had brought him here, the need finally to face that pain, but that task had grown more complicated than he could have imagined. He hadn't expected that the focus of his most painful memories would wear the crown of King of all Worlish.

"You are right, of course," he said. "You should know as much as I can tell you. In order to prepare."

The question was where to begin. "I have no friends and little family left," he said, getting that out of the way. "My father was a powerful sorcerer in his own right, though I barely knew him. He was killed in a battle, far from home. I received word of my mother's passing some years ago, even before my travels to the Kaya Desert. Perhaps I will learn what her dying was like, now that I am home, and whether she suffered, whether she was alone. These are things I have wondered many times."

He tried not to think such thoughts even now; that was a trap sometimes, one it had taken him years to escape, if he ever truly had.

"She was well when you left home?" Rosivok asked.

Frost nodded. "She was, but much else was wrong. I tell you this because it has everything to do with Lord Andair, whose path it seems we are bound to cross. He was not a king then, but nephew to the king, as was his cousin, Lord Wilmar. I knew them both. Their uncle, Weldhem, was Lord and King of all Worlish. We lived in Briarlea, a collection of closely tied fiefs that includes most of eastern Worlish. The Weldhem I knew was the third king of that name to sit on the throne. The walled city that holds the castle he ruled from is named for them.

"But the king had no sons, leaving Andair and Wilmar as equal heirs to his throne. Weldhem had sought my father's services and advice on occasion, our families shared many times together, but after my father's death my mother moved out of the house he had built and went to live at the city's eastern edge with my aunt, Shassel."

"You have spoken of her before," Sharryl said.

Frost did not recall doing so, but he was not surprised.

"Yes, a sorceress," Rosivok stated, "and your mentor."

Frost nodded. "All those things. She is the one I seek, the only one I can think of who might know the true keeper of the Blade, or might know who would know. Though I am not certain she still lives, I believe as much. Had she died I would have sensed it, I am certain of that."

Frost paused again, collecting his thoughts, and rearranged his haunches on the moss-covered earth so as to improve the circulation in his thigh. There had not been a day since the first one spent in Shassel's house when he did not think of her in some way, sometimes many ways. She was in every measure her brother's equal, save in size. She had never acquired the weight needed to make her truly powerful, but no one mindful of magic or heedful of a woman's proper wrath dared any less than respect for her.

Shassel had instructed a very young Frost in the ways of sorcery in her brother's stead, had taught him all the things his father would have. Perhaps more. Frost had gleaned from her other things, confidence and forbearance among them, and an abiding dislike for men of moral compromise for another, and all of this with the blessings of his mother.

His mother and Shassel had been very close, and neither woman had ever suffered fools gladly, which was where Frost imagined he had gotten the trait from. In the end that had been part of the problem, part of the reason he had gone away, and left behind his family and his home.

The memories grew difficult once more, as they had for years, but he needed to tell his Subartans, his protectors, what concerned them most. Frost took a breath.

"When I was still a very young man," he said, pressing on, "quite convinced that I knew precisely how the world should be, and sure that my own place in it would know no limits, I had already learned more than someone of that age should have. This was not all Shassel's fault. I was a very fast learner. I had even managed to decipher Shassel's own binding phrase, which she used with every spell to make them hers and make them true. I spent many years developing my own phrase, as I knew I must, but for some time I borrowed hers. She never knew."

Frost used both hands to rub his face as the plundered phrase stuck in his mind, Tesha teshrea, tesha teshrea. A memory much like a nursery rhyme, unshakable once recalled, yet far more penetrating. Using the binding phrase had been like wearing someone else's clothes, someone older, someone bigger, though even then Frost had been a bit larger physically than Shassel. He'd been wrong to use the phrase at all, but for a time the knowledge had given him means far beyond even his own lofty expectations.

"I commanded great powers and an ardent desire to use them. A desire fueled by the hot blood of youth. Andair gave me just such an opportunity. I was his friend at the time. Wilmar was the quieter of the two and kept to himself, leaving many to wonder and make gossip about him, though I took none of the nonsense seriously; not until Andair came to me one night, and explained that I should.

"He had been quarreling with his cousin, Wilmar, for years, but I was unaware of the depths of their differences, their rivalries, and was surprised to hear of the conflict. Truly, I was unaware of the depths of the darkness in Andair's heart as well. He convinced me that Wilmar was a ruthless scoundrel."

Frost took another deep breath, let it out with a sigh, and went on. The details were many, and Frost recalled them all for his Subartans: the attempts made on Andair's life—each only two weeks apart—the dagger found on the walk just outside Andair's manor house bearing Wilmar's family crest, the clearly forged deed that documented the transfer of considerable land and holdings from Andair to Wilmar, and finally the curse, set by some unknown adept at the hire of Wilmar, and the cause of Andair's persistent, worsening illness. Taken all together they had been very convincing.

"I will spare us all the torture of the entire epic," Frost said, "but Andair managed to enlist me in what I believed was his fight for survival against his increasingly ambitious, treacherous cousin. Together, with the help of my magic, Andair and a troop of his allies confronted Wilmar. A battle took place, one that Wilmar lost. He was not killed; in the end I would not consent to that. Indeed, it is the one thing that has given me solace in the years since. He managed to flee the province with his wife and little else, leaving his lands and holdings, his serfs and his remaining family in the accepting hands of Lord Andair.

"I was well rewarded, and with the departure of Wilmar the trouble stopped. Even the curse was lifted. But . . ."

Frost felt the weight of his guilt try to grip his chest, a feeling that was familiar enough. This was the most difficult admission of all, even after three decades and all he had been through and done. The reality of the past could not be reasoned away or taken back.

"Andair tricked you?" Sharryl asked, bringing Frost's eyes into focus on the two Subartans.

"Yes."

"Yet he lives?" Rosivok asked next.

Frost felt the pressing weight within him grow. He nodded. "So it would seem. My aunt, Shassel, had been an adept who lived deep in the Hubaran Forests. When she returned and learned what had happened, she began at once to cast doubt on the story. I did not want to believe; I would not have listened at all had it been anyone else. But Shassel . . ."

He let her name fall through the darkness, into the small fire that smoldered at his feet, and mouthed his own binding phrase, then hers once more, for the first time in years, "Tesha teshrea." The embers flared into small, yellow-orange flames then died back down an instant later. That was why he believed Shassel still lived. Her name, her magic, still held power.

"She used images drawn in a pool of water," he continued, "much like the vision I used to entertain the leshys in Golemesk swamp, though hers were from the past, not a possible future. They were all very real. I saw the Lord of Lies, Andair, send thieves to steal Wilmar's dagger for Andair's use, saw him pay the men who faked the attempts to kill him, saw him pretend to be cursed by sickness. I was not the only one fooled, he had convinced even the king, but that made little difference."

"And yet he lives?" Sharryl said, repeating Rosivok's invective.

They had not known him then, Frost thought—he had barely known himself, which had been a big part of the problem. He balked at the thought just as his Subartans did now, but hindsight always had that advantage, and at the time, he'd had almost none.

"Not by my grace," he said. "I swore revenge, swore to right the wrongs I had helped visit upon so many innocent people, but Andair learned that I knew the truth, that I was seeking justice and Shassel was sworn to help me. He persuaded the king entirely to his side, though his soldiers had orders only to detain me for questioning.

"They found Shassel, and took only her message back with them. When the king learned that Shassel was seeking answers and justice, he called his men off, for the time being, until more could be learned. Andair grew frustrated at this, and hired a handful of mercenaries to kill me. A final gambit. It failed, but they succeeded in buying Andair the time he needed. He told those close to him that I was mad to kill him, that everything I claimed about him was a lie. Some believed him. They may have hidden him or helped him in other ways. Soon after that he fled, but with a considerable fortune. I vowed to search for him, but my first concern was to find Lord and Lady Wilmar and make amends. I . . . did not succeed."

Frost remembered clearly the days that followed. He found it difficult to face all those who lived in the collection of fiefs that surrounded Weldhem, known as Briarlea. Harder still to face his mother, or Shassel. Alone he was left to face himself, which proved hardest of all.

"I decided I had much to learn, and that I would be no good to anyone until I did. I thought it might still be possible to learn all that, but not in Briarlea, and I still needed badly to learn what had happened to Wilmar, and to find Lord Andair. So I left. I took to the road."

"They let you leave without quarrel?" Sharryl asked.

"I never brought myself to say good-bye," Frost said.

"I left without word. I did not intend to be gone for long, a few months at most." He paused, holding half a breath in his chest. "I have never been back."

"Now Andair is king of Worlish," Rosivok muttered.

Frost met his eyes, and nodded. There was no need to say more.

"You are a different Frost now," Sharryl said.

"We shall see," he replied, then he scuffed at the dirt near the last glowing remains of the fire. The bugs would be at them when the fire died, but their bedrolls were light and large enough to allow them to wrap their entire bodies up, heads and all, so as to escape most of the attacks. They had each nearly accomplished that very task when a brief sparkle of greenish energy lit the trees some thirty paces away.

Frost had set up the warding spell as a matter of routine. Comprised of few resources it could do no damage to even the insects, but intrusion by anything larger than a sparrow caused its luminous collapse and sent a sharp quiver through Frost's body, enough to make him flinch. He sat up, and found both Subartans already rising with him. In that instant they were on their feet.

"Visitors," Frost whispered, while Sharryl and Rosivok melted to either side, then vanished into the darkness.

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