Free Waterborne Exile by Susan Murray Page B

alone, disturbed only by the clammy trickle of poppy syrup creeping down his neck.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    At the lower end of the desert valley stood a gnarled old tree. Twisted by countless years spent in the arid environment, its growth stunted by lack of rainfall, it nevertheless spread a generous canopy beneath which the freemerchants were wont to sit. All business of the community took place there. Children would play there, laughing and singing, or as often squabbling, in the shade of the canopy. But today the children had been chivvied away and they were playing among the boulders that had long ago slid down from a loose section of the escarpment from which their homes had been carved. Laughs and shrieks punctuated the still air from further up the valley as they played some elaborate game of tag.
    The elders were assembled under the shade of the tree, waiting as Alwenna and Marten walked down the slope. As they approached the group Alwenna had an overwhelming premonition of hostility. She had enemies here today, no question about it. Grit crunched beneath her feet – everything at Scarrow’s Deep was coated in a fine layer of sand or dust. Everything. How desperate did one have to be to call this arid place home? She wasn’t that desperate, not yet, despite the trail of death that she’d left in her wake. She’d sooner climb those mountains that lay beyond the escarpment and live out her days there, lost in the mists, where the air turned not just chill, but cold. Every night. Where streams gushed in spate down steep, narrow channels, water tumbling over the rocks and plunging into deep pools at every twist and turn…
    “My lady, are you unwell?” At her side Marten frowned.
    “I beg your pardon. I seem to be always tired these days. Always distracted.”
    “Are you suffering visions again?”
    “No. Not like before.”
    “I see.”
    If he noticed her evasion he didn’t comment upon on it. Of course he didn’t – this was Marten. He played so many games of his own, adding one of hers to his list was the merest– No, perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps he simply knew this was not the time to push the issue. She turned her full attention to the elders, trying to divine the source of hostility. There were several men and a few women, some appearing no more than middle-aged while others were clearly very old indeed. Alwenna would have guessed them to be elders, simply because of the preponderance of grey hair and wrinkled faces. Not to mention a certain air of weighty self-importance that hung about them. But she ought not pre-judge them, even if they did remind her of every group of royal advisors she’d been obliged to mouth polite acquiescence to in the past.
    The canopy of the stunted tree grew mainly off to one side of the trunk, shaped by unrelenting winds at some time in the past. Beneath this side were boulders on which the elders now sat, arranged in two arcs facing the tree itself. At the foot of the tree was a bench, fashioned of stone, and it was there that Marten indicated Alwenna should sit. It reminded her very much of the courtroom at Highkell. Did this assembly presume to put her on trial?
    Marten cleared his throat, glancing uneasily at Alwenna. “I am sure you are all by now aware this is the Lady Alwenna, rightful ruler of the Peninsular Kingdoms and beloved of the Goddess.”
    Quite what he hoped to achieve by that, Alwenna wasn’t sure. Perhaps half the assembled elders regarded her with thinly-veiled suspicion. One woman, with a deeply wrinkled and tanned face watched her with alert curiosity. Alwenna was reminded of a small bird that had once frequented the palace gardens, always following her about when she and Wynne had worked there, gathering herbs or thinning and re-planting plants. It felt like a lifetime ago. A faint movement in her abdomen reminded her that in some cases it was literally a lifetime ago. Beloved of the Goddess…
    Marten had continued speaking and she had no