“Romy, how your eyes shine! It has been a pleasure to teach you; it is always a pleasure to teach anyone who is so apt and quick to learn,” Clea said, and hugged her with spontaneous warmth. “I am sorry to lose you. I hope you come back to our hostel some day, but if not, we will meet at another. Swordswomen are always travelling and we are sure to come across one another somewhere on the roads of the Hundred Kingdoms.”
Romilly kissed her with real warmth and went into the hostel to pack her few possessions.
By the time she was finished, she found Jandria in the hallway ready to ride, she too bearing a rolled pack with all her possessions.
“I had Sunstar brought out,” Jandria said, “The other horses are being brought along later in the day; but you have spent so much time, and so much love, on this one, that I thought you should have the privilege of handing him over yourself to King Carolin.”
So it has come quicker than I thought. But after this morning, Sunstar and I will always be one.
He did not take kindly to the leading rein; Romilly wished that she could ride him herself, but that was not suitable for a horse to be presented to the king. She soothed him in soft words with her voice, and even more, with the outreaching of contact, so that, guided by her soothing flood of tenderness and reassurance, he came along, docile, feeling her concern and her touch guiding him.
You are to be a king’s mount, did you know that, my beauty?
The contact between them needed no words; it meant nothing to Sunstar, who knew nothing of kings, and Romilly knew that while he might, and probably would, come to love and trust Carolin, no other would ever ride Sunstar with that same sense of close oneness with the horse. Suddenly she felt sorry for Carolin. The beautiful black stallion might be his. But she, Romilly, would always own him in both their hearts.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a subtly different feel to the army camp today. The great central tent where the Hastur banner had flown was being pulled down by what looked like a horde of workmen, there was confusion coming and going through the length and breadth of the camp. Leaving Sunstar with Jandria and the others who had come to help her with the stallion, Romilly hurried off to the bird-handlers quarters. She found Ruyven there, fussing with the perches installed for the sentry-birds atop pack-animals. The chervines, disliking the carrion smell that clung to the birds, were stamping restlessly and moving around with little, troubled snorts and pawings.
“I imagine,” Romilly said, “that this all means that the army is about to move southward and I am to go with you.”
He nodded. “I cannot handle or fly three birds alone,” he said, “and there is not another qualified handler for these sentry-birds within a hundred leagues, except, God help us, for the ones who may be among Rakhal’s scouts or advance guard. We have had intelligence from Hali that Rakhal is massing his own armies under Lyondri Hastur, and if he moves as we think – and that will depend to some degree upon how well you and I use the eyes of our birds – we will meet him near Neskaya in the Kilghard Hills. In fact, Lord Orain has asked if we can fly the birds out today and see what we can spy out.”
“And, of course, when Orain speaks, all the army jumps to attention,” said Romilly dryly. Ruyven stared at her.
“What is the matter with you, Romy? Lord Orain is a good and kindly man, and Carolin’s chief adviser and friend! Do you dislike him? And with what reason?”
That recalled Romilly to herself. It was only wounded vanity; while he thought her a boy, Orain had admired her and trusted her, and when he knew her a woman, all that went into discard and she was just another nonentity, another woman, perhaps a danger to him. But that was Orain’s problem and not hers; she had done nothing to deserve being ruthlessly cast out of his affections like that.