Kerowyn's Ride

began.

“Grandmother,” Kethry interrupted tartly, her focus sharpening for a moment. “I am your grandmother. It won’t hurt to say so. Sit,” she continued, gesturing at a bench by the door as she took a seat opposite it. “What happened down there that they sent you to bring me word?”

Kero nodded, a shiver of real fear going up her back, and gulped. No, she’s not senile. If she still admits she’s my grandmother—wants to admit it—maybe she will help us—“Grandmother, nobody sent me. Nobody could send me. I came by myself. It’s—it’s horrible—” She told the story a second time, watching as Kethry grew more and more distant—and more and more collected—with every word. By the time she was halfway through, her grandmother looked like the powerful, remote creature the stories made her out to be. And Kerowyn continued, a sick, leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach, trying not to break down in front of this self-possessed, regal woman.

But she began to relive the tale as she told it. Her stomach churned, and her throat began to close with harshly suppressed sobs.

I have to get through this. I have to make her believe me. I can’t do that if I’m crying like a baby.

She managed to sound relatively calm, or at least she thought she did, until she got to the part where she’d first come up from the kitchen. She faltered; stammered a little—then clenched her teeth and plowed onward.

But she kept seeing the bodies—

And then she came to the part where she saw her own family fallen victim; first Lordan, then Rathgar.

That was too much; she lost every bit of her composure and fell completely apart.

There was a brief flurry of movement as her grandmother rose—and warm arms clasped and held her.

She found herself sobbing into a blue-velvet covered shoulder, found her grandmother holding her as no one had held her since her mother died. It was something she hadn’t known she needed until it happened—

She cried all the tears and fears she’d held in since this nightmare began; cried until her eyes were swollen and sore and her nose felt raw. Kethry didn’t say a word, simply held her, stroking her hair from time to time, and it was with a great deal of reluctance that she freed herself from that comforting embrace to finish the story.

She had to do so with her eyes shut tightly against the tears that threatened to come again, her throat thick, and her hands knotted into fists. “Are you going to be all right?” Kethry asked when she had finished.

Kero took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and shrugged. “I’ll have to be,” she replied. “I told you, I’m the only one left.”

Kethry nodded, pushed her down into a chair, and narrowed her eyes—and turned from comforter to something far different.

The sorceress’ face lost all animation. She cooled, she became somehow remote.

“The men,” she said dispassionately. “Describe them again.”

“They didn’t look like much,” Kero replied, falteringly. “Ratty looking. Like bandit-scum, the kind we’d never hire, except that their armor was awfully good. It wasn’t new, but it wasn’t dirty enough for them to have had it long.”

“No badges, no insignia?”

“Not that I saw,” she said, hardly knowing what to think.

“How did it fit them?” her grandmother persisted.

“What?” Now Kero really was perplexed. Her grandmother looked impatient.

“You’re no dunce, child, how did it fit them? Well, or badly? Too big, too small, places where it was just held together by jury-rig straps?”

“Uh—” Now that she thought back on it, the armor for the most part had fit badly, gaping places where it was too small on some men, too-large mail shirts spilling over knuckles on others. “Badly, mostly.”

“Ah. Are you sure you don’t want to go back and see if there’s someone that can go after Dierna besides you?” She gave Kero a measuring look. “You look to me as if you’ve done enough already. I wouldn’t say you’re up to this, personally.”