David Farland - Runelords 01 by Farland David

Author:Farland, David
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 21

FAREWELL

91

In the Dedicates" Keep, Chemoise grunted as she struggled to help her father from his bed of straw and dried lavender, dragged him out onto the green grass of the bailey so he could board the great wain for his trip back south. It was hard to move such a big man.

No, it was not his weight that made dragging him difficult. Instead it was the way he clutched her, grasping fiercely at her shoulders, his powerful fingers digging into her skin like claws, his legs unable to relax enough to walk.

She felt she had failed him years before, when she'd let him go south to fight Raj Ahten. She'd feared he would never return, that he'd be killed. She'd hoped her fear had been only a child's concerns. But now, after his years as a prisoner, Chemoise imagined she'd had a premonition, perhaps a cold certainty sent from her ancestors beyond the grave.

So now she carried not only her father, but also the weight of her failure all those years before, a weight that somehow tangled with her feelings of inadequacy at having found herself pregnant. Her, the Princess's Maid of Honor.

The western Great Hall in the Dedicates' Keep was huge, three stories tall, where fifteen hundred men slept on any given night. Smooth walnut planks covered the floors, and each wall held a huge hearth so the room could be kept comfortably warm all winter.

The eastern Great Hall, on the far side of the bailey, held a third as many women.

"Where...?" Chemoise's father asked as she dragged him past the rows of pallets where Dedicates lay.

"South, to Longmont, I think," Chemoise said. "Raj Ahten has ordered you to be brought."

"South," her father whispered a worried acknowledgment.

Chemoise struggled to drag her father past a man who'd soiled his bed. If she'd had time, she'd have cared for the fellow. But the wain would leave any moment, and she couldn't risk being separated from her father. "You...come?" her father asked.

"Of course," Chemoise said. She could not really promise such a thing. She could only throw herself on the mercy of Raj Ahten's men, hope they'd let her care for her father. They'd allow it, she told herself. Dedicates needed caretakers.

"No!" her father grumbled. He quit trying to walk, suddenly let his feet drag, making her stagger to one side. She bore the weight, tried to carry him against his will.

"Let die!" he whispered fiercely. "Feed...feed poison. Make sick. We die."

It worried her how he pleaded. Killing himself was the only way he could strike back at Raj Ahten. Yet Chemoise could not bear the thought of killing any of these men, even though she knew that life for them would be horrible, chained to some dirty floor. She had to hope that her father would return someday, whole, undefiled.

Chemoise hugged her father, bore him through the big oak door, into the light. The fresh wind carried the smell of rain.

Everywhere, Raj Ahten's troops rushed to and fro, seeking the King's treasury and armory above the kitchens.

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