Still, it was good to be on horse back again, to feel the cold wind on her face and the solidness of the horse beneath her. The sounds and smells of an army on the march had filled her ears and nose the last several days after rallying in the foothills that ringed the Ninefold Forest. And the nights spent huddled for warmth in the wagon with Jakob and Lynnae awakened something within her that had slept for what seemed so long now.
How long had it been? She thought perhaps it was the time she and Rudolfo had toured the other eight houses, introducing her to the stewards and people in each of those major towns that had sprung to life where Rudolfo’s family had built their manors. Before that, it had surely been the war.
She heard a fluttering and a thud to her right. She looked over to see a small brown bird caught in the Second Captain’s catch net. Philemus reached down with gloved fingers to pick the bird out and pull a knotted string from its tiny foot. Pulling off the glove, he felt the raised bumps along the string and passed it to Jin. She read it quickly with her fingers.
It’s started ahead. She looked up, eyes squinting into the gray, over-cast day. Somewhere, ahead of them, the fighting had begun. They’d been monitoring the progress of Pylos and Turam’s armies with their forward scouts as those southern forces approached the Marshlands, and yesterday, the rangers of Pylos had crossed into Marsher territory or the band of wilderness that commonly passed as the unmanned border, just ahead of their army.
But who do they fight? The Marsh army patrolled the far north, looking for answers to the destruction of the Summer Papal Palace and the brutal murder of the Androfrancines hidden there.
Before Philemus could release the bird, another, this one white, also dropped into the net. She knew that this one meant stop and the Second Captain read the knot codes even as she raised her hand to order a halt.
“Someone approaches,” he said. “A lone Marsher on horse back. He wishes to parley with you.” The officer looked to her, his eyes worried. “Alone,” he added.
She continued scanning the landscape around them. They’d forded the Second River two days behind them, far north of Windwir’s ruins. In another three or four days, if she pushed them, they would ford the Third River and be within reach of their objective. She’d hoped to plant herself and her army along that southern Marsher boundary. But she’d also hoped-irrationally to be sure-that she could prevent the fighting from breaking out. That somehow, she could appeal to reason if she and the Wandering Army blocked Pylos and Turam’s forces from moving further north.
Still, when she thought of Meirov’s lost child and of Turam’s lost crown prince, she wasn’t certain there was any reason for her to appeal to. The rage brewed by those cowardly acts would surely be stronger than her ability to encourage higher thinking.
The army slowed to a halt behind her and she waited, her horse prancing to and fro along the frozen ground. Finally, a form took place in the gathering fog ahead. She squinted at it until it became a man on horseback-an old man upon an old horse.
“Set up a perimeter of scouts,” she said in a voice sharper than she meant to.
“Shall I accompany you to-”
“No,” she said as she spurred her horse forward.
She trotted the horse forward until the old man came into focus before her. He wore tattered robes made of fur-wolf, she thought, from first glance. He had bits of bone and wood woven into his carefully braided beard and hair, and his face, though painted in the custom of a Marsher, held more intricate designs than what she’d seen of others. The earth tones were painted on in an interlocking pattern of black, gray, green and brown.
He sat high in the saddle, his head moving to the left and right as if he listened and smelled for something. As she approached, he turned to face her and she saw that his eyes were the color of milk.
A blind man sent to parley.
He bent his head to the side. “Great Mother,” he said, “you should not be here.”
She remembered the cryptic note that bore the same title. She’d pondered it for hours, even had it with her in her pouch. Was it possible that this man knew something about her father, somehow? Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you call me that? And who are you?”
The old man smiled. “I am Ezra. I am herald to the soon-coming Macht Queen and prophet of the Crimson Empress.”
More riddles. And she’d heard of the Crimson Empress before. But where? “Winters has not spoken to me of you.”
He chuckled. “She did not know of me herself until recently.” He looked up, then cocked his head again. “You come with your army, but what do you hope to accomplish? You are ill from caring for your son. You are weakened still from his birth. You should be resting, not mounting a war against a foe you cannot see.” His face softened, and a smile broke out upon it. “Still,” he said, “I had not hoped to live long enough to see this day. I would ask a great favor of you, Lady.”
Her eyes narrowed. She could not see them, but there were scouts surrounding them now. One whistle and a dozen arrows or two dozen blades would bring him down. “What favor do you ask, old man?”
She saw tears coursing down his face from his milky eyes. “That I might hold the Child of Promise within my arms and speak my blessing over him.”
Jin Li Tam’s response surprised her. She felt the hair rising on her arms and neck and felt something cold grip her stomach. “You are already privy to the matters of my household, it appears,” she said. “You know that my son is ill.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “the blessing would do him good.”
Jin Li Tam shook her head slowly. “I do not know you, Ezra. You shall not go near my son.” She felt heat rising in her now-a righteous anger.
He sighed. “I could whistle now and have him brought to me,” he said. “But I will instead hope for another time.”
I could whistle now. She filed the veiled threat away for consideration later. “You are not alone then?”
His laughter was sharp. “I am an old, blind man. It would be foolishness for me to ride alone.”
She scrutinized the ground around his feet. He’d trampled the snow well enough that she could not see the footprints of whatever magicked escort accompanied him. But she did not need to see it to know these Marshers were blood-magicked. She thought of the scouts surrounding them, and the others that minded the carriage with Jakob and Lynnae inside somewhere closer to the middle of the army that stretched behind her. “Apart from my son and your concern for my physical health,” she said in a low, intentional voice, “what matter do you bring by way of parley?”
“Only this,” he said. “We intend to honor our kin-clave with the Gypsy King. Our houses have much work to do, together, in shaping the Named Lands for the new Age that dawns upon us.”
She tried to sort and categorize the data she pulled from his words, but it became lost in a sea of questions she knew she did not have the time to ask. “Our kin-clave,” she said slowly, “is with Queen Winteria. not with you.”
“Kin-clave,” he said, “runs deeper and wider than you can know from this place, Great Mother.”
“And because of it, you wish me to turn my army back homeward?”
He nodded. “I do; though I doubt you shall.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You are correct. I intend to honor my kin-clave with your queen and with her neighbors to the south. I go to bid peace among them.”
Ezra smiled. “And you may attain something akin to it,” he said, “but it cannot last. These are the pains of childbirth, the pains of something made.” He paused to regard her, and in that moment she could have sworn he could see her. His stare penetrated. “You are a part of this great making. As is your husband. And Jakob-he is most highly favored among men.”
She scowled at his words. There was a rhythm to his language that struck a familiar chord deep within, and she suddenly realized what it was.
The dreams. The voice was different, but the cadence remained the same, and she looked up and around her quickly to confirm her sudden suspicion.
Perched high in an evergreen, an enormous black bird-a kin-raven, she suddenly knew-watched them with a solitary black eye.
“Go cautiously, Great Mother,” Ezra was now saying as he turned his horse around. “The kin-clave of House Y’Zir and his servants is no small thing to trifle with.” Here his eyes narrowed, and blind or no, she was convinced he saw her. “Neither is that blessing a thing to spurn so recklessly, for someday it will save your son, and he will, in turn, save us all.”
She sat stunned and blinking. She’d certainly had her suspicions. She’d seen the intelligence reports on the dead scouts; she’d read her history and knew well that the resurgences stubbornly resurrected themselves, particularly during times of great distress and trauma in the Named Lands. Certainly, now was one of those times.
But to hear the words and to know that her family was so centrally woven into whatever belief this old man carried mixed a different kind of fear into the brew that bubbled deep in her stomach. She wanted to shout after him, to demand answers and if need be, to whistle down the Gypsy Scouts upon him and take him back to the interrogator’s wagon and the single Physician of Penitent Torture she’d brought out of forced retirement to assist them if needed.
And at the same time, she wanted to turn her horse, gallop for her son, and hide him within her embrace. Somehow keep him from the madness that seemed to unravel the world he would inherit.
But Jin Li Tam did neither. Instead, she sat upon her horse and watched Ezra the Marsh Prophet disappear into the gathering mist.
When she looked back to the kin-raven, she saw now that it had vanished, too.
If, she realized, it had ever been there at all.
Summoning up courage for her voice, Jin Li Tam called for the Wandering Army to resume its march. And for the rest of that day, she rode in silence and wondered what she would find awaiting her in the Marshlands.
Rae Li Tam