The Lord of Trebond
(Sorry this story is rather long, but as some of you might have noticed, I generally loose track of all of the stories I do with more than one chapter. So here goes, lets see if I can write this is once shot. I do not own the Song of the Lioness, those rights belong to Tamora Pierce.
As a side note, does anyone notice how long Alannas title is these days? It's almost as long as Ozornes…. And I didn't even get it all… there's baroness of pirates swoop in there too…)
Sir Alanna the Lioness, Lady knight, and Champion of the kingdom of Tortall looked out across the city of Corus, her purple eyes searching the skyline. She had come home from the desert to find that the city had more or less calmed down since Rogers second attempted takeover of the kingdom.
The lady knight shuddered as she thought about Roger of Conte, the man she hated more than any other being in the world. His body was rotting far below her, in the catacombs of the palace, and with a little luck, his soul was burning in a place worse than hell.
Alanna exhaled deeply, blowing a stream of air through her teeth. It was over and done with, even though some of the people she had cared for deeply in this world had been dragged along to realms of the dead by the duke.
Alex, for one, had been one of her best friends, graceful and skilled with a blade like only their instructor, Gareth of Naxen, could be. Alanna had been forced to kill him or die by his sword, and she had walked away from that duel only with a heavy heart. She hated Roger for making her kill her friend.
Then there was Liam, cheerful, redheaded Liam, who had died saving the prince's life. She no longer loved the Shang Dragon, but he was still her friend, above all, and they had managed to keep that, even through their turbulent relationship.
The hardest, loss, however, was not that of her friends, but her twin brother Thom. She could hear her brother's voice in her mind, speaking to her as he had when she had first come back to Corus, before the coronation.
"Tell me sister, when is your dragon going to make an honorable woman of you?" He asked. Alanna made a face at him.
"He isn't. We were done before I came home. He doesn't like magic."
"Silly man. What about Jonathan then? Everyone knows you used to be lovers, even if he's a prig about other things. Maybe I should talk to him. Having sullied your reputation, he can't be allowed to abandon you. You have a good name-"
"That's not even funny."
"I think you should take the thief, if you must take someone. If you marry George, I'll give you my blessing."
A tear ran down Alanna's face, reflecting the light of the rising sun. She would never see her twin again, because Roger had killed him.
How did one man do so much damage? Alanna asked wonderingly. Even Faithful, her cat, had been killed in Rogers onslaught. She missed his familiar weight on her shoulder.
She was so deep in thought that she didn't hear Coram until her was right next to her, leaning on the railing of Balors Needle.
"Yer not still beating yourself up about the duke, are ye less?" The ex-soldier asked. "Ye fought twice, both times when he had the upper hand, and ye still beat him. There was nothing dishonorable about the way you killed him."
Coram had not gone with his former ward to the desert when she had escaped the chaos that ensued after Jon's crowing, but had stayed behind, and taken up a job in the palace guard. He was wearing his uniform now, with his giant sword strapped to his side. Seeing it reminded Alanna of her days as a page, fighting to prove to herself that she was as good as any man.
"Its not Roger." Alanna said quietly. Her purple eyes met Coram's, and he understood at once. She wasn't ready, or able, to let her twin go.
The two stood there until the sun had completely cleared the horizon, and the day had fully begun. It was a clear, sunny day, and the city was starting to come to life far below them.
"Lass, ye were closer to him than I think anyone else. He loved you when he loved nobody else but himself. But the lad was reckless, like ye, only he wasn't prepared for what he got." Coram told her.
"Neither was I!" Alanna growled.
"Not at first. Remember, ye had a tantrum two days in and said that ye wanted to leave right then, because ye weren't learning to fight right away? I told ye t'was discipline, and ye worked to learn it. Thom never had to."
For a while, Alanna thought that over. She nodded.
"Thanks Coram." She said. She would miss traveling with the old soldier. He was like a father to her, much more so than the Lord of Trebond had ever been when she was a child, and in some ways, even more than Myles.
Change, however, was unavoidable. She herself would spend much less time wandering than she had wanted. In the last year, she had decided that she wanted more from life than just drifting about. She had found the man she loved, and even though the fear of being tied like that was almost palpable for her, she felt that it was right. Alanna loved George, and she knew that everything she had feared growing up-taking care of a fief, having children, being married-would be less scary with him to share it with her.
But even as she walked through the hallway of the palace on her way to the practice courts, Alanna felt the sheer emptiness like a weight on her heart.
Even the company of her friends did little to soothe her. She, Gary, Jon, Raoul, Buri, and Thayet had been meeting together in the mornings to practice sword fighting since Alanna had returned. Alanna and Gary were paired together, with Raoul fighting Buri, and Jon and Thayet dueling each other.
Since her return, Alanna's friends had sensed her uneasiness, and had rightly guessed that it had very little to do with the engagement ring on her finger. Today was especially somber, and the five others did everything they could to cheer her up.
Gary was Gary, irrepressible at best, and he greeted her with a hearty welcome. Buri and Raoul were trying to get her to help them tease Jon, who would be married within two months, and could barely hold his sword steady without dropping it. Thayet was trying to get them to stop, though she was laughing just as hard as both of them.
They were halfway through their practice when Jon and Thayet were dragged away by their wedding planner, and Thayet took Buri with her. Only a few minutes later, Gareth the elder came by to introduce his son to some nobles, and he left with them.
Left on their own, Alanna and Raoul decided to give up and call and early halt to their workout to go in search of some breakfast.
Over breakfast, Raoul watched Alanna carefully. She had spoken little during the day, and ate almost nothing. The latter was hardly unusual-the Lady Knight was not known for her congeniality in the morning, but the former was downright scary to the commander of the Kings Own.
Raoul of Goldenlake was not a stupid man by anyone's count, and he knew what was eating his friend from the inside out. He had felt the loss of Alex almost as strongly as she, and he understood her feelings for her twin brother, even if he could not relate to them.
What scared him though, wasn't the silence. It wasn't the deep shadows under the cloudy purple eyes, or the way she seemed to slump as though all of the fight had been taken out of her. It wasn't even the fact that she never made physical contact with anyone anymore, or her pale, unhealthy skin.
It was the way her eyes focused on a point so far way, he doubted he would even understand the distance to the place she was looking. It was as if she lived in another world, one governed by her own misery, and only appeared to be in this one. Alanna was slowly becoming a shadow, a transparent mockery of her former self. It was like the Alanna he knew was merely an illusion, one that could disappear at any moment.
Watching the way her fork went from one side of her plate to the other without picking anything up, Raoul made a decision. Leaving Alanna at the table, he finished his food, and went in search of George.
"For the thousandth time, yes, something must be done. WHAT are you suggesting we do?" The voice was tired and cross, coming from Jon, who looked like a nervous wreck. He, George, Gary, Coram, and Raoul were speaking in Jon's study. It was late, with the sky already dark. Jon had finally managed to take a free minute to talk to his friends about the Champions predicament.
"I say we just keep hitting her over the head until she gets mad at us and tries to kill us." Gary said. Jon glared at him, very clearly pointing out the distaste of jokes about this matter.
"The lass was torn apart by the loss of so many people who were close to her at once. She's lost her father, but she was never close to him, so it wasn't something she needed to deal with on this level. She loved her brother, and the Dragon was her lover." Coram pointed out. "Time is the only thing that can turn her wounds to scars."
"If we make her loss a wound in this analogy, we should point out that for a wound this deep, you either get a healer, or you bleed to death." Raoul countered.
There was a knock on the door. Jon swore and crossed over to open it. A stable boy was standing there, shaking.
"Stephan sent me t'tell you that the lioness just saddled Moonlight and rode north." He said.
Behind Jon, George and Coram cursed impressively. Jon exhaled deeply, and flipped a gold coin to the boy.
"Many thanks for the warning." He told him, closing the door. The king turned to face his friends.
"Why is she going north?" He asked.
"Pirate's Swoop's north." Coram suggested.
"So is about a thousand other things." George pointed out.
"Can we catch her?" Raoul asked.
"Not on Moonlight. That horse is fast. Trust me, I've tried racing her." George replied.
"Fine. I'll ask Myles for permission to have the Olau mages keep an eye out for her." Jon said. He looked out at the darkened sky, stretching out over the city.
"We'll bring her home, even if we have to tie her up and sling her over her saddle." He finished.
Alanna watched the countryside pass by quickly. She had traveled to Olau many times along this road, but the journey farther north, into the region of Tortall where she had been born, was not as familiar to her. It was almost comforting to see the city fall away behind her. She felt guilty about pushing her horse to such speeds, but she didn't want to be followed.
Trebond was not the Lioness' final destination, but she planned to stop there to pay her respects to her family, the last people to ever carry the name Trebond.
So my family, as old as the book of Gold, dies with me. Alanna thought miserably. The world past Olau, the forest she had wandered through so often, where she had first learned the fighting arts from Coram, would never be her home again, but the place was comforting to her, and it was a place where she could still feel her brothers spirit.
More importantly, she wanted to be in a place that reminded her of a time when she was so sure of herself, so hopeful, and so happy. At Trebond, she had been all of those things, and more, and she had never been able to associate the place with loss. For her, it was a place untouched by sadness.
As she got further and further from the palace, Alanna felt her heart lift, and slowed her horse to a walk. She was still at least a full day and a half away from Trebond, and she was hours from Corus so there was no point rushing anymore.
The night was quiet, and the air was fresh. There were no travelers on the road at this time of night, and the silence was beautiful. Alanna's hand habitually went out to stroke the fur of a cat that no longer rode in her saddle with her, and Alanna felt all vestiges of calm leave her. Trusting Moonlight not to drop her, she put her head in her hands, and for the first time since she had killed Roger the second time, she cried.
She cried for Faithful, who had returned to the side of the goddess, and was probably watching her without sympathy.
She cried for Alex, who had been drawn into Rogers games just because he had been the mans' squire, and who she had been forced to kill.
She cried for Thom, her brother who had not deserved to die the death he had, and had fallen to his own pride.
She cried for Liam, who, even though he wasn't her lover, was her friend.
She cried because she had seen how much death Roger had caused, and she could not stand the sight of a pile of nameless and faceless bodies that had once been people who would now never return to their families.
She cried because she knew she would never be able to reclaim the time she had spent with Coram on the road.
But most of all, she cried because she felt so lost, caught up in the flow of events, and she knew she could do nothing to stop what was happening or had happened, and she felt so helpless against it. She felt alone, and she wanted so desperately to understand why.
It was dawn when she finally cried her eyes raw, and was unable to cry anymore. Alanna felt cleansed, and reigned in Moonlight to stop by the side of the road. She resisted the temptation to keep the mare going through the rest of the day-it would take her only the rest of the day to reach Trebond at a steady canter. Even though she knew that it would only be an extra half day at most that she would save, she didn't want to drive her horse like that. Moonlight had saved her life enough times that to do something like that would be cruel.
So instead, she slept on the side of the road, hidden from the view of anyone passing by. Her sleep was restless and filled with nightmares, but there was hardly anything unusual about that anymore.
"The mages at Olau say that they haven't seen Alanna pass by the area." Gary told George. They were sitting together in the Dancing Dove, drinking. George nodded.
"They wouldn't have. We're talking about Alanna. Unless she wants to be found, she won't be." He said. Gary nodded.
"So what do we do? You know how bad she is as well as I do. She never laughs, never smiles. She doesn't eat, and with how awful she looks lately, she never sleeps either. She shrinks away from the sun-she looks like death." He said.
"Maybe she just needs time to herself. She can't heal here, where every day she sees something else to remind her of what happened. She needs distance from everything that's gone on." George said thoughtfully.
"So we wait?" Gary asked uncertainly.
"We wait." George replied grimly.
"Jon won't be happy. He was hoping he could get her into a dress for his wedding." Gary replied. George smiled tiredly.
The two of them took long drinks from their tankards, hoping the same thing- that Alanna would be okay.
Trebond looked almost the same as Alanna remembered it. She looked up at her home, and felt the overwhelming sense of loss again, a fresh wave of pain that made her double over in her saddle. It wasn't the haven she had hoped it would be-it was a dark, ominous reminder of her brothers death. She could feel him next to her, hiding beneath their cloaks as they rode away from their home for the last time together-him to become a great master of magic, and her to become a knight.
She could feel him there, next to her. She looked next to her, and saw him, standing next to Moonlight. A faint purple glow surrounded him. He smiled, and Alanna reached out to touch him, to make sure he was real. Her hand touched only air- Thom shimmered, and then vanished, like smoke.
Alanna fell again, limp over the saddle as she tried to pull herself together. It was as if she could fall apart at the slightest touch.
When it had passed, she turned Moonlight eastward, towards the City of the Gods. She didn't cast a single look back at her home.
Jon looked out over the city, watching the pinpricks of light dance before his eyes. It was late, and the capitol was still alive with light and happiness.
Raoul leaned on the banister next to them, watching the city.
"So I had fourteen new applicants today for the Kings Own, five of them women." He said to Jon.
"Blame Alanna. She proved that girls are able fight just as well as any boy. Remember what happened to Ralon?" Jon asked. Raoul smiled.
"I do. Bless her for that, she gave him an even worse beating than I did. She shamed him into leaving, and that was before we all knew she was a girl." He said.
"I hope that she's okay." Jon said quietly.
"She will be. She's stronger than her own grief. She'll make it, if she decides to fight back. And when have we ever known her to just give up?" Raoul said.
Jon nodded, but he said nothing, searching the landscape for some comfort that he couldn't find. Finally, he seemed to find it, or give up, because he turned around and began the descent from the Needle.
Not long after, Raoul followed.
The library of the city of the gods was huge. Alanna had never seen so many books in one place.
She had come here to find something that could tell her more about who her brother had become, and why. She didn't blame him for what he had done, but rather, she wanted to understand why it had happened.
So she had come to the library of the city of the gods, where the journals of all the students were kept. Jon had sent Thom's work from his rooms here, and she was going to find it.
The Masters had been sympathetic to her requests, and had shown her where she needed to look, but had left her on her own. None of them cared for the kind of work Thom had been doing in Corus.
She scanned the bookshelves, looking at the names written on the spines.
She found it at last, a thick purple volume with black lettering reading her brothers name. She ran a finger down its spine, and she felt it crackle with magical fire in response-it was magically bound, a spell holding strong even though the one who had wrought it was long dead.
Next to it was a bunch of papers tied together in a bundle with the same black lettering-it was what Jon had sent to the Masters here.
Alanna removed them both from the shelf, and placed them on a nearby table.
She examined the spell, feeling pain awaken inside her as she did. It was something of her brother's life that he had left behind, some of his power that was acting on the world even though he was in his grave.
She almost couldn't bring herself to unlock it. She did, and she felt the magic disappear.
The pages were scrawled over with her brother's writing, filled with spells and experiments. Whole pages had been crossed out, in different colors of ink.
Alanna closed the book. There was nothing there that could help her. She felt despair overwhelm her, and she put her head on the table, allowing a single tear to escape from under her eyelids.
The world around her seemed to twist, to become dreamlike and unreal. She felt herself moving in a world beyond her own, a wild, scary world where everything seemed to shift before her very eyes.
Footprints stretched out before her, into the darkness, and she saw them shining with purple fire. They seemed to beckon to her, to call her to follow them.
Alanna woke with a start, looking around her. She was still in the library of the city of the gods, and she had fallen asleep over her brother's journal. She sat up slowly. Her eyes were drawn to the pile of papers in front of her, the ones Jon had sent.
They contained his notes on bringing Rodger back from the dead. He had found a way to reach beyond the farthest gate and bring someone back.
Could she do the same? Bend the rules of the world, and disregard all natural laws?
Maybe her twin was calling her, telling her to follow in his footsteps, and bring him back, the way he had brought Rodger.
Slowly, she untied the knot keeping the pages together.
It was nighttime when Alanna had finished reading. She knew exactly what she needed to do in order to bring her brother back to life. She would need more power though, and she would need to do it in a place where delicate experiments were not taking place.
She needed more power, but she couldn't just sap other mages' power for her own use, like her brother had. She needed to find something with enough power to complete the spell.
The Dominion Jewel might help her, but it was only of use to a true leader, a king. She wouldn't be able to do anything with it. But there was more than one stone infused with magical power in the known world.
And what better place to follow the legends of history than here, where the most comprehensive collection of magical objects was?
Alanna slipped between the shelves, looking for what she needed to find. Somewhere here, there was a book that would tell her how to get the power she needed to set everything right again.
"Stories… Legends…" She muttered to herself as she walked through the libraries. As she did, she remembered a conversation she had had with Faithful.
"I had always thought that the story about the dominion jewel was just that, a story." Alanna said.
"Where do stories come from, pray? You mortals have no idea how many of your so-called legends are true. Not every word is accurate, but if you asked someone where he heard the story, and keep going back, you'd find its original teller. And nine times out of ten, that story came from something that really happened." Faithful commented.
Alanna gasped in pain, her hand reaching out to clutch a bookshelf before she collapsed. The pain was still there, real and unbearable. She wondered if she would ever be able to think about her friends again without feeling their loss like a knife in her heart.
The knight opened her eyes to see that her flailing hand had knocked a heavy tome out of its place. It was ancient, and covered with dust.
Alanna could almost heard Faithful's voice in her mind, telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself and get back to work.
Skimming the pages of the book, Alanna wondered if Faithful would approve of what she was doing now.
Why does it matter? He's dead. Part of her thought coldly.
The book was incomprehensible, but at the very back, a map was laid out for her to read. She could barely make out the words at the top. It was Bazhir.
Alanna slid the book into her pack, and walked out of the library. She was on Moonlight, and riding south within ten minutes.
The night settled around the city of the gods as the dust Moonlight kicked up disappeared into the darkness. The mages breathed sighs of relief, and returned to their work.
Alanna sped further onwards, driven by her desperation and despair. She glanced down grimly at Faithfuls riding cup.
Don't do this. The imaginary cat she carried around instead of a conscious told her.
Please. Alanna told it. She slowed Moonlight to a walk, and looked south, towards the Bloody Hawk.
Somehwere in the distance, a wolf howled. Alanna felt tears sting her eyes as she listened. More howls joined in, and a pack began to sing.
At least some people were not alone tonight, she thought to herself. The lady knight raised her eyes to the heavens and allowed tears to cascade down her face like glittering diamonds in the moonlight as she listened to the pack's song.