Queen's Hunt (River of Souls 2)

“Valara?”

Ilse’s voice, hardly more than a whisper. Gradually, Valara became aware of two arms holding her upright. She was kneeling, her hands still submerged in Agnau’s lake. Ilse crouched next to her. Karasek knelt on her other side, holding her by the shoulders. The Agnau had smoothed to a glassy calm. Shaking, she withdrew her hands from the silvery lava, and gave a cry of shock. In spite of the agony she had suffered, her hands were unscathed, her skin seemingly untouched by the lava. Still uncertain what had happened, she unfolded her hands.

A single jewel lay in her palm. Glistening droplets of creation beaded on its polished surface; hints of ruby, sapphire, and emerald flickered in turn, only to disappear into flashes of opalescent white.

Ishya, said the jewel. Daya unde Asha unde Rana. Waere unde werden.

A dazzling light, like a miniature sun, filled Valara’

s hands. The jewel swelled, its shape lengthening into the figure of a man, a woman, an alien creature such as Daya had appeared in the void between worlds.

Ishya stepped onto the Agnau’s smooth surface. It spoke, incomprehensible words like the silvery notes of a flute. Then it walked toward the center of the lake. With every step it grew in size and transparency, until at last it blended with the rising steam.

Valara massaged her palm, which felt warmer than the rest of her. “And so they are free,” she murmured.

She tried to stand, but her legs buckled. Karasek caught her and lifted her into his arms. He was speaking to Ilse, something about his packs, but Valara was too exhausted to make sense of what he said. Words like rain and thunder and wind, she thought, recalling Lir’s speech, though she knew Karasek was just a human male.

She tried to tell him so, but her tongue got tangled. Karasek carried her away from the Agnau to a shaded nook beneath the cliffs. Ilse tucked blankets around her. One of them brushed a hand over her forehead. They murmured the invocation to magic, and she dropped into sleep.

* * *

ILSE WITHDREW HER hand from Valara’s forehead. The woman slept—she could read that swift descent into slumber, the sudden stillness, which reminded her of the moment when a soul left the body for Anderswar. Not death, but something like it. She wondered if sleep were a reminder, sent by the gods, of that void between lives.

“And what next?” she murmured. “What next, indeed?”

“Water,” Karasek said. “Firewood. A hot meal.”

At her startled look, he smiled. “It’s an old campaign strategy. Solve the practical matters first, and the hard decisions become … not easy, but easier to address.”

He spoke for himself, too, she realized. Dark bruises under his eyes, the creases etched around his mouth and eyes, deeper ones between his brows—all those spoke of grief and weariness. And underneath it all a palpable air of tension.

I have seen that look before. I have seen you before, in lives past.

Karasek held out a hand, to help her stand. She regarded the hand first—he had removed his gloves to handle the jewel, she noticed—then lifted her gaze back to his face. “How many did you kill?” she asked. “Back there, on Hallau Island?”

He flinched. “I … do not know.”

So. No assurance that Raul lived. Others had died, however. She had a vivid recollection of Katje, run through with a sword and falling limp to the ground, the strings of life suddenly cut. Another image followed, of Raul stabbing a Károvín soldier. Her own hands felt sticky with blood, though she had cleaned them long ago. She rubbed them absentmindedly.

Karasek was observing her closely. “You are—you were Milada.”

Again he had surprised her. “I was,” she said with some difficulty. “And you?”

He made a quick gesture of denial. “Nobody. No, that is a lie. I was a captain in the army. Leos Dzavek sent me to arrest you that night, when you met with the emissary from Veraene.”

Something in his voice, the way his hand swept up and outward, recalled another moment in a different life. A laughing voice, an exaggerated politesse. It was a memory far removed from this moment and this life, but now Ilse knew when she and the jewels had met this man for the first time. “You were a commander for the emperor before. You sailed—”

To Morennioù. Five hundred years ago. I was there, as was Raul Kosenmark.

Raul. Her last glimpse of him had been a blur of shadow, the golden gleam of his eyes in fire and moonlight as he fought against the Károvín.

All the tears she had refused these past weeks broke through. She wept, a silent flood of grief that she could not restrain. For Raul. For Galena, lost to her family. For Katje and the others who died on Hallau. For herself, bound to an exile that no longer served any purpose.

I want him. I want Raul. Not Lord Kosenmark and heir to Valentain. I want the man I came to love. I want … to be Anike, and he Stefan, so we might live our lives in quiet, far away from the affairs of kings.

But however passionately she wished it, her dreams could never come true in this life. Raul had died on that miserable island. She almost wished that Károví’s soldiers might overtake her, so that she would not have to struggle on alone.

Later I will think what I must do. Not yet. Not yet.