“Yes, my lord. Sorry, my lord. I thought…”
“Even if you’d thought correctly, Farin, I won’t be rushed out of my own kitchen.”
Efla came out of the pantry with the pastries. Dorrin took two. “I’m going to miss these,” she said as she nodded to the kitchen as a whole and walked out.
Natzlin and Farin—an attachment would, she realized, solve a persistent problem with her old veteran. The wounds suffered in Kieri’s defense more than a year ago still affected her. Dorrin had promoted her to sergeant—the only clear choice after Vossik’s death—but Natzlin struggled in that position—mounting was increasingly difficult, for one thing. Partnering with Farin might be a reason she’d accept for moving from patrol duties to something less strenuous. And Farin would keep watch on her physical well-being.
Dorrin ate the pastries, looking out over the fields below where cattle grazed and wondered how long it would take Kieri to get Arian pregnant.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In a Pargunese forest
It is done,” the dragon said. “You have completed your tasks.”
“All of them?” Stammel asked. He took a breath of the fresh spring air, still chill this morning but alive now with growing things.
“All in that phase.” The dragon had explained that its solid eggs were filled with crystalline shards each capable of hatching into the first immature form of a dragon. “I must now convey the eggs and unhatched shards to a safe place far away. You have done me great service, Stammel, and now I can return you to your home.”
“I could still help,” Stammel said.
“No.” The dragon’s voice was gentle but implacable. “What I must do now, you cannot do.”
“I have trained raw boys and girls,” Stammel said. “And I can see the dragonlets—surely I could help train them—”
“No,” the dragon said again, a tone final as the ring of hammer on iron. Then in a gentler tone, “What is it, Stammel? I would have thought you’d be glad to return to those you know.”
Stammel thought of the past quarter-year and wondered how to explain. It seemed at first no words would come for the longing to be useful, needed. But the dragon waited, that great shape of fire, and finally he could say it. “When you took me away,” he said, “it was from the only home, the only friends, I had had in my adult life. I thought I would be lonely; I thought I would yearn for them.”
“And you do not?” the dragon asked.
“What I yearned for then was no longer possible,” Stammel said. “I will never be what I was. Who I was. I had come to realize that, and yet I saw no other future. You showed me another future. New places, new people, new challenges. A reason to live, with something to do … something worthwhile.”
“You have changed,” the dragon said.
“I had changed before, not by my will,” Stammel said. “And now I have changed again, with your help. I can change again … but not back into what I was. If I return, I will be poor blind Stammel, someone with a past and no future.”
“You are still oathbound to your commander,” the dragon said. “And I think you are not an oathbreaker.”
“No … but death breaks all oaths,” Stammel said. “If you told them I was dead…”
“I do not lie,” the dragon said. “And nor should you. Your commander will release you if you ask and he trusts you have a place to go.”
“Then carry my request to him,” Stammel said. He hated the roughness in his voice, but grief trapped him once again. “Please … take me somewhere I have never been, somewhere I might be of use, and take my word to him.”
“That I can do,” the dragon said. “Though your commander would rather see you again, I know, and judge of himself whether your new home was safe.”
“It is just his care I do not want,” Stammel said. “They will visit if they know. Someplace far—”
“Aarenis?” the dragon asked.
Stammel shook his head. “I have marched all over Aarenis, one war and another. Someone might know me.”
“I know a place,” the dragon said after a moment. “An island in the sea, summerwards of Aarenis but not as far as Old Aare, where I am known a little and you will be welcome. Can you write your letter?”
“It would be better to use a scribe,” Stammel said. “My hand was always crabbed after I broke two fingers years ago. Are we near a town?”
“Yes. I will go with you.”
Stammel dictated his letter to a scribe, speaking of “good friends” who had found him a home and asking release from his oath. Then he gave the dragon his uniform, folded into a neat bundle, and the dragon walked away from the town to change and fly away.
Stammel strolled about the market with his stick and bought himself a sweet pastry at one stall and then a tankard of ale. He felt emptied of his old life, the shape of himself waiting for something else to fill it. He sat on a bench listening to ordinary people talking about weather and crops and the market for wool and answered a few questions about himself with pure invention, feeling no guilt for the tale he spun. He would never be back here. Someone offered him another mug of ale; he accepted it and then followed his nose to a stall where he bought two rolls stuffed with fried mushrooms, onion, and ham.
It was evening before the dragon returned, walking up to him in man’s shape there in the market square.
“You are sure?”
“Yes.” That empty feeling still made him ache, but he also felt certain as stone that his decision was right.
“Do you want to know what he said?”
He did and did not, but only one answer would serve, in courtesy to both the man and the dragon. “Yes.”
“He released you,” the dragon said, “and said you had a home there if ever you chose to return. He gave me a ring for you to show, should you have need.”
“He is a good man,” Stammel said. Into the empty feeling came another, a lift of joy. “I hope he does not worry.” He knew Arcolin would; he knew he had to bear that.
“Are you ready, then?” the dragon said without answering the implied question.
“I am,” Stammel said. They walked out of the village, a distance away the dragon chose, then the dragon shifted into his own form, and Stammel walked into the dragon’s mouth until the tongue moved beneath him, drawing him in to the same comfortable place he had sheltered so many times since he’d left the Company.
He slept away the time—whatever time it was—until the dragon woke him, and in his mind the voice said, “We are here.” Beneath him the surface moved, lifting him, pushing him toward the open mouth. Scents rushed in—not the delicate scents of a northern spring but summer smells he remembered from here and there in Aarenis: oilberry trees, pungent herbs, roses, a whiff of goats and pigs, the tang of the sea … a strong breeze carrying all of that and more. Here it was warm, as warm as the dragon’s mouth, with sunlight he could see as a bright blur though he could see nothing else.
“You are facing the rising sun,” the dragon said. “I am changing and will walk with you down to the village. We are on the mountain above it.”
Stammel waited, turning his head … if that was sunrising, then this way was summerwards … it would be a view over water toward Old Aare, and that way would be north—he sensed something there, some dark looming mass.
“The mountain,” the dragon said. “The people here say sometimes the mountain blows fire. They believe a fire dragon lives deep within it. And they say I am a wizard. Take my arm.”
It took them some time to come to the village; the trail was rough, and the dragon took care that he did not fall. Stammel did not try to memorize the way; he let himself think only of the sounds and the scents … the clong-clong of some belled goat or sheep, the clatter of small hooves on rock, dung-smell and fox-smell, the cries of seabirds, and then the stronger scent of the sea as they descended and a sudden whiff of baking bread. Voices now: children shouting, a woman scolding in a southern dialect he had learned to understand back in
Siniava’s War, in Sibili or Cha or some other place south of Andressat.
“It’s the wizard! He’s come back!” someone said from a small distance. A youth, he thought. Footsteps, coming nearer, more than one pair, and a lighter step running away, and a child’s voice crying out “The wizard! The wizard!”
“Well, wizard, who is this you’ve brought?” A man’s voice, good-natured but firm.
“A friend,” the dragon said. “A good man who lost his sight and now needs a quiet place with useful work to do.”
“He has the look of a soldier,” the man said.
“I was,” Stammel said. “But no more.”
“We have no soldiers here,” the man said. “But if you are the wizard’s friend, we welcome you. I work with wood; my name is Cadlin.”
Soon others arrived, some introducing themselves at once to Stammel while others talked to the dragon … the wizard, he reminded himself. The wizard was still talking to them when a woman named Sulin offered him food and led him a little distance, putting his hand on a bench. He sat down, and she brought him bread smeared with oil and salt, then handed him a pottery cup of water.
“I see you’ll do well here,” the dragon said after Stammel had finished the bread and was listening to the woman explaining to a child how to wind yarn properly. “I may be back from time to time. Be well, Stammel.”
“Thank you,” Stammel said. He could see the man-shaped fire move away and did not try to follow; he turned his face once more to the sun.
“Can you see at all, then?” the woman asked.
“Only the light, nothing more,” Stammel said.
By the next day he had a home of sorts—a bed in a lean-to at the back of the woodworker’s shop and a line strung to help him find the jacks pit out back and the way to the front of the house. From there, someone’s child was always ready to guide him where he needed to go. He learned their names quickly, having mastered that art training recruits.
Soon he needed neither guide nor twine to find his way around. Many simple chores were still within his ability; as he learned the routes from home to home, to and from water, he found ways to make himself useful. He sharpened the woodworker’s tools, carried anything that needed carrying, put out his hands for one of the women to wind yarn, held up one end of a board while someone else lashed it in place, helped with whatever crop was being harvested. He ate what food was offered him—always enough and always cheerfully offered.
And for a time each day, in the freshness before the day’s heat, he practiced the exercises he had practiced his entire adult life. He was not a soldier any longer, but he could not give up that habit. He told himself it kept him fit for the work he did now. Soon he knew by the sound that he had a gaggle of children trying out the same exercises. Then the heavier footsteps of adults.
“Why?” he asked them.
“Sometimes there are pirates.”
“I am done with war,” Stammel said. But he knew as he said it that war might not be done with him. He hated the thought. For so many years, he had gone to war almost every campaign season; he had endured what that meant. Blindness had freed him from war, as it caged him in darkness, and he had finally come to treasure that freedom. And these people, hardworking all of them, and most of them kind … he had seen more than enough of war and what war did to lands and people. He did not want that here.
“There are rumors from the mainland,” Cadlin said one day, his plane hissing along the wood. “Trouble there. Maybe it’s why the wizard brought you here, because we need a soldier.”
“There are always rumors,” said Rort from the doorway. “And the wizard would have brought us a soldier, not a blind man.” He spat; Stammel heard the gobbet hit the stone beside the workshop door. “No offense to you, Matthis, but you’re not a soldier now.”
“True,” Stammel said. He was sharpening Cadlin’s tools, his thumb as good a guide to angle and sharpness as his eyes had been. For a moment he was tempted to throw the best-balanced knife so it would stick quivering in the door frame next to Rort’s head, but that was foolish. He knew Rort to be honest and kind, though rough in speech.
“But maybe you know things we should know,” Cadlin said. “If trouble does come here, I mean.”
“Has there been trouble before? Pirates, someone said?”
“Only once in my life. Mostly the villages on the coast. Where our fish comes from.” The salted fish traded up the mountain for fruit and oil and leather.
“You should run away,” Stammel said, setting aside one tool for another. “Up the mountain. Pirates, renegades, they will not want to climb very high.”
“But last time they came, they broke everything—looms, pots, benches, beds—and then set afire what would burn.”
“Did they kill and rape?” Stammel asked. On the blur of his vision memory painted sharp images of one campaign after another, bodies strewn in fields, in cottages, in such workshops as this.
“No, we ran away,” Rort said. “But all had to be built again, and it was a hard winter. It would be better to fight, to have our homes, our tools.”
“It is true,” Stammel said, “that death makes winters easy. There is no hunger or thirst in death, no pain, no anger, and no sorrow. If that is what you want, then stay next time.” His words and the tone of his voice surprised him; he had not known he felt that way.
“I thought a soldier would want to fight,” Rort said. He sounded aggrieved, but then Rort often did.
“I did, when I was a soldier,” Stammel said. “It was my life, and I do not regret it. Now … I am no longer a soldier, and I exercise to keep myself fit for work, not … not killing.”
“The wizard left a gift for you,” Cadlin said. Stammel heard him get up from his stool and walk across the workshop. Something scraped—and as if he could see, he knew what it was that Cadlin had lifted down from a peg overhead. “He told me you were blind but not helpless, that you had used this to save others from harm. You might want it, he said.” Footsteps came nearer. “Here,” Cadlin said from close beside.
Stammel put out his hand and took the crossbow, running his heart-hand down the stock, checking the binding and the string automatically. He heard Rort draw in a sharp breath but did not know what expression of his face or movement of his hand had caused it. Slowly he stood up, careful not to bump the stool on which Cadlin’s tools lay waiting for sharpening, and walked to the back entrance. The men were silent.
“Did the wizard leave bolts?” he asked, even as he wondered why he was doing this. Why not put it down, refuse to hold it, refuse to use it ever again? He had no gods, like Paks, to tell him what to do. Tir had left him, when he could no longer see; Gird had never been his patron.
“Yes,” Cadlin said. “I’ll bring them.”
“Rort,” Stammel said, using the least tone of command he could while holding a weapon. “Find a rotten fruit and set it on that stone between the oilberry trees.” The stone he knew by touch, by walking to and from it, feeling around it. Shoulder-high on him, and behind it a rising slope with more oilberry trees. Rort went out the front and was back before Stammel had felt through the bag of bolts for one he wanted.
When Rort had placed the fruit, Stammel said, “You stand two paces to one side, and Cadlin, you stand two paces to the other.” He heard them moving into place. Then he took his own five paces to the center of the little yard behind the workshop, feeling with his toes for the dip in one of the stones there. He spanned the bow, set the bolt in the groove, and faced them. “Now,” he said, “both of you—count to three.”
From their voices, from the minute reflections of sound from the stone, from whatever instinct made him the Blind Archer at need, his inner sight built an image of the stone and the fruit. At the count of three he raised the crossbow and touched the trigger; he heard the hum of the string, the flight of the bolt, the soft explosion of the rotten fruit … then the bolt’s thwack into the trunk of the oilberry tree some paces behind it.
?
??You—that’s impossible,” Rort said. Stammel heard longing in his voice as well as disbelief.
“I am the Blind Archer, sometimes,” Stammel said. “But it is not enough for war. And you should run away up the mountain if trouble comes.” He stroked the bow, then walked back inside and laid it on one of the benches.
“But why did you show us that if you won’t—if you can’t—” Rort said.
“What I showed you,” Stammel said, “is what skill all my years of training gave me. Without those years, without the discipline of a soldier’s life, I could not do it. You cannot do it, not having had those years. I am one man; I could not stop them. Run away, I tell you. Store food and some necessities somewhere up there, hidden away: that would be sensible, if you think more trouble is coming. But you are not soldiers, and I cannot make you soldiers, though I have trained many young men and women.”
“Will your exercises help us run faster?” Rort asked.
“Yes,” Stammel said. “And carry more when you run. And plan what to take and ensure that you can survive until you rebuild. I can help you with that, if you will.”
“That is worth learning,” Cadlin said. “But we have work to do now. Shall I hang the bow back up, Matthis, and the sack of bolts?”
“Show me the peg,” Stammel said. Cadlin led him around, told him where to reach up for the peg. Stammel hung the bow there, then went out and found the bolt he had shot dangling from the bark of an oilberry tree, it had had so little force left. When he came back in with it, Rort was gone. He sat down at his own workspace and checked the point on the bolt before going back to sharpening Cadlin’s tools.
CHAPTER NINE
Chaya
We ask formal audience, sir king,” Amrothlin said. Behind him, a group of elves nodded. He looked tired but determined. “It is a matter of importance.”