“We Zida’ya know little of the doings of mortals, and there are some of our own blood who have fallen away from us, and whose works are hidden from us as well. I do not think your Usires Aedon was one of the Dawn Children, but more than that I cannot tell you, mortal man, nor could any of my folk.” He lifted his hands again, weaving the fingers in an intricate, incomprehensible gesture. “I am sorry.”
A great shudder ran through the creature called Hakatri then—perhaps the pain of his burns returning, a pain that he had somehow held at bay while he listened to my stepfather speak. Sulis did not wait to hear more, but stepped forward and kicked the witchwood fire into a cloud of whirling sparks, then dropped to his knees with his hands over his face.
The burning man was gone.
After a march of silence that seemed endless, the witch called out, “Will you honor your bargain with me now, Lord Sulis? You said that if I brought you to one of the immortals, you would free me.” Her voice was flat, but there was still a gentleness to it that surprised me.
My stepfather’s reply, when it came, was choked and hard to understand. He waved his hand. “Take off her chains, Avalles. I want nothing more from her.”
In the midst of this great bleak wilderness of sorrow, I felt a moment of sharp happiness as I realized that despite my foreboding, the witch, my beloved, even my tortured stepfather, all would survive this terrible night. As Avalles began to unlock the witch’s shackles, shivering so that he could hardly hold the key, I had a moment to dream that my uncle would return to health, that he would reward my Tellarin for his bravery and loyalty, and that my beloved and I would make a home for ourselves somewhere far away from this ghost-riddled, windswept headland.
My stepfather let out a sudden, startling cry. I turned to see him fall forward onto his belly, his body ashake with weeping. This seizure of grief in stern, quiet Sulis was in some ways the most frightening thing I had yet seen in that long, terrifying night.
Then, even as his cry rebounded in the invisible upper reaches of the chamber and provoked a dim rustle in the leaves of the shadowy tree, something else seized my attention. Two figures were struggling where the witch had stood. At first I thought Avalles and the woman Valada were fighting, but then I saw that the witch had stepped back and was watching the battle, her bright eyes wide with surprise. Instead, it was Avalles and Tellarin who were tangled together, their torches fallen from their hands. Shocked, helpless with surprise, I watched them tumble to the ground. A moment later a dagger rose and fell, then the brief struggle was ended.
I screamed “Tellarin!” and rushed forward.
He stood, brushing the dust from his breeks, and stared at me as I came out of the shadows. The end of his knife was blackened with blood. He had a stillness about him that might have been fear, or simply surprise.
“Breda? What are you doing here?”
“Why did he attack you?” I cried. Avalles lay twisted on the ground in a spreading puddle of black. “He was your friend!”
He said nothing, but leaned to kiss me, then turned and walked to where my stepfather still crouched on the ground in a fit of grief. My beloved put his knee in my stepfather’s back, then wrapped his hand in the hair at the back of the older man’s head and pulled until his tearstained face was tilted up into the torchlight.
“I did not want to kill Avalles,” my soldier explained, in part to me, in part to Sulis. “But he insisted on coming, fearing that I would become closer in his uncle’s favor if he were not there too.” He shook his head. “Sad. But it is only your death that was my task, Sulis, and I have been waiting long for such a perfect opportunity.”
Despite the merciless strain of his position, my stepfather smiled, a ghastly, tight-stretched grin. “Which Sancellan sent you?”
“Does it matter? You have more enemies in Nabban than you can count, Sulis Apostate. You are a heretic and a schismatic, and you are dangerous. You should have known you would not be left here, to build your power in the wilderness.”
“I did not come here to build power,” my stepfather grunted. “I came here to have my questions answered.”
“Tellarin!” I struggled to make sense where there could be none. “What are you doing?”
His voice took on a little of its former gentle tone. “This is nothing to do with you and me, Breda.”
“Did you … ?” I could scarcely say it. My tears were making the chamber as blurry as the Black Fire ever did. “Did you … only pretend love for me? Was it all to help you kill him?”
“No! I had no need of you, girl—I was already one of his most trusted men.” He tightened his grip on Sulis then, until I feared my stepfather’s neck would break. “What you and I have, little Breda, that is good and real. I will take you back to Nabban with me—I will be rich now, and you will be my wife. You will learn what a true city is, instead of this devilish, backward pile of stone.”
“You love me? Truly, you love me?” I wanted very much to believe him. “Then let my stepfather go, Tellarin!”
He frowned. “I cannot. His death is the task I was given to do before I ever met you, and it is a task that needs doing. He is a madman, Breda! Surely after tonight’s horrors, after seeing the demon he called up with forbidden magic, you can see why he cannot be allowed to live.”
“Do not kill him, please! I beg you!”
He lifted his hand to still me. “I am sworn to my master in Nabban. This one thing I must do, and then we are both free.”
Even an appeal in the name of love could not stop him. Confused and overwhelmed, unable to argue any longer with the man who had brought me so much joy, I turned to the witch, praying that she would do something—but Valada was gone. She had taken her freedom, leaving the rest of us to murder each other if we wished. I thought I saw a movement in the shadows, but it was only some other phantom, some flying thing that drifted above the stairwell on silent wings.
Lord Sulis was silent. He did not struggle against Tellarin’s grip, but waited for slaughter like an old bull. When he swallowed, the skin on his neck pulled so tight that watching it made tears spill onto my cheeks once more. My beloved pressed his knife against my stepfather’s throat as I stumbled toward them. Sulis looked at me, but still said nothing. Whatever thought was in his eyes, it had gone so deep that I could not even guess what it might be.
“Tell me again that you love me,” I asked as I reached his side. As I looked at my soldier’s frightened but exultant face, I could not help thinking of the High Keep, a haunted place built on murder, in whose corrupted, restless depths we stood. For a moment I thought the ghost-voices had returned, for my head was full of roaring, rushing noise. “Tell me again, Tellarin,” I begged him. “Please.”
My beloved did not move the blade from Sulis’ throat, but said, “Of course I love you, Breda. We will be married, and all of Nabban will lie at your feet. You will never be cold or lonely again.” He leaned forward, and I could feel the beautiful long muscles of his back tense beneath my hand. He hesitated when he heard the click of the glass ball as it fell to the tiles and rattled away.
“What … ?” he asked, then straightened suddenly, grabbing at the spot at his waist where the claw had pricked him. I took a few staggering steps and fell, weeping. Behind me, Tellarin began to wheeze, then to choke. I heard his knife clatter to the stone.
I could not look, but the sound of his last rattling breaths will never leave me.
Now that I am old, I know that this secretive keep will be the place I die. When I have breathed my last, I suppose they will bury me on the headland beside my mother and Lord Sulis.
After that long night beneath the castle had ended, the Heron King, as the Lake People called my stepfather, came to resemble once more the man he had been. He reigned over the High Keep for many more years, and gradually even my own brawling, jealous folk acknowledged him as their ruler, although the kingship did not outlive Sulis himself.
My own mark on the world will be even smaller.
I never married, and my brother Aelfric died of a fall from his horse without fathering any children, so although the Lake People still squabble over who should carry the standard and spear of the Great Thane, none of my blood will ever lead them again. Nor, I expect, will anyone stay on in the great castle that Lord Sulis rebuilt after I am dead—there are few enough left of our household now, and those who stay only do so for love of me. When I am gone, I doubt any will remain even to tend our graves.
I cannot say why I chose to keep this bleak place as my home, any more than I could say why I chose my stepfather’s life over that of my beautiful, deceitful Tellarin. Because I feared to build something on blood that should have been founded on something better, I suppose. Because love does not do sums, but instead makes choices, and then gives its all.
Whatever the reasons, I have made those choices.
After he carried me out of the depths and back to daylight, my stepfather scarcely ever mentioned that dreadful night again. He was still distant to the end of his days, still full of shadows, but at times I thought I sensed a peace in him that he had not had before. Why that might be, I could not say.
As he lay at last on his deathbed, breath growing fainter and fainter, I sat by his side for hours of every day and spoke to him of all that happened in the High Keep, talking of the rebuilding, which still continued, and of the tenants, and the herds, as if at any moment he might rise to resume his stewardship. But we both knew he would not.
When the last moment came, there was a kind of quiet expectancy on his face—no fear, but something more difficult to describe. As he strained for his final breath of air, I suddenly remembered something I had read in his book, and realized that I had made a mistake on that night so long ago.
“ … She will show me the Way of Black Fire or there is no other Hope, he had written. ”Either she will answer, or Death.”
He had not meant that he would kill her if she did not give him what he needed. He had meant that if she could not help him find an answer, then he would have to wait until death came for him before he could learn the truth.
And now he would finally receive an answer to the question that had tormented him for so long.
Whatever that answer might be, Sulis did not return to share it with me. Now I am an old, old woman, and I will find it soon enough myself. It is strange, perhaps, but I find I do not much care. In one year with Tellarin, in those months of fierce love, I lived an entire lifetime. Since then I have lived another one, a long, slow life whose small pleasures have largely balanced the moments of suffering. Surely two lives are enough for anyone—who needs the endless span of the immortals? After all, as the burning man made clear, an eternity of pain would be no gift.
And now that I have told my tale, even the ghosts that sometimes still startle me awake at midnight seem more like ancient friends than things to be feared.
I have made my choices.
I think I am content.
A Song of Ice and Fire
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A GAME OF THRONES (1996)
A CLASH OF KINGS (1998)
A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (FORTHCOMING)
THE WINDS OF WINTER (FORTHCOMING)
One of the most recent of the great multivolume fantasy epics is George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, which when complete will span four volumes. This immense saga is set in the world of the Seven Kingdoms, a land where seasons have been thrown out of balance, with summer and winter both lasting for years.
As the first book opens, the reader learns that three noble families had conspired to depose their insane king and take control of the kingdom. The Lannisters, the Baratheons, and the Starks all exist in an uneasy truce that is soon broken when the current king, Robert Baratheon, asks Ned Stark to come down from the northern city of Winterfell and help him to rule, giving him the coveted title of Hand of the King, which makes him the second most powerful man of the Seven Kingdoms. Ned’s efforts to solve the murder of his predecessor in that post soon embroil him in conflict with the queen and her brothers. The balance of power among the great families is thus unsettled. As the game of thrones grows deadly, even more sinister forces are stirring in the north, behind the great ice wall that protects the Seven Kingdoms and all the realms of men.
A civil war threatens to sweep the land when the Lannisters kill Robert and attempt to seize power, opposed only by the Starks and Baratheons. Meanwhile, the head of the Targaryen family, Viserys, sells his sister into marriage in return for armies that will help him reconquer the Seven Kingdoms.
The forthcoming volumes of the series will depict the gradual unfolding and resolution of the terrible many-sided conflict that will rack this troubled world.
The story offered here, “The Hedge Knight,” takes place about a hundred years prior to the events described in A Game of Thrones.
The Hedge Knight A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
The spring rains had softened the ground, so Dunk had no trouble digging the grave. He chose a spot on the western slope of a low hill, for the old man had always loved to watch the sunset. “Another day done,” he would sigh, “and who knows what the morrow will bring us, eh, Dunk?”
Well, one morrow had brought rains that soaked them to the bones, and the one after had brought wet gusty winds, and the next a chill. By the fourth day the old man was too weak to ride. And now he was gone. Only a few days past, he had been singing as they rode, the old song about going to Gulltown to see a fair maid, but instead of Gulltown he’d sung of Ashford. Off to Ashford to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, Dunk thought miserably as he dug.
When the hole was deep enough, he lifted the old man’s body in his arms and carried him there. He had been a small man, and slim; stripped of hauberk, helm, and sword belt, he seemed to weigh no more than a bag of leaves. Dunk was hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen years (no one was quite certain which) who stood closer to seven feet than to six, and had only just begun to fill out his frame. The old man had often praised his strength. He had always been generous in his praise. It was all he had to give.
He laid him out in the bottom of the grave and stood over him for a time. The smell of rain was in the air again, and he knew he ought to fill the hole before the rain broke, but it was hard to throw dirt down on that tired old face. There ought to be a septon here, to say some prayers over him, but he only has me. The old man had taught Dunk all he knew of swords and shields and lances, but had never been much good at teaching him words.
“I’d leave your sword, but it would rust in the ground,” he said at last, apologetic. “The gods will give you a new one, I guess. I wish you didn’t die, ser.” He paused, uncertain what else needed to be said. He didn’t know any prayers, not all the way through; the old man had never been much for praying. “You were a true knight, and you never beat me when I didn’t deserve it,” he finally managed, “except that one time in Maidenpool. It was the inn boy who ate the widow woman’s pie, not me, I told you. It don’t matter now. The gods keep you, ser.” He kicked dirt in the hole, then began to fill it methodically, never looking at the thing at the bottom. He had a long life, Dunk thought. He must have been closer to sixty than to fifty, and how many men can say that? At least he had lived to see another spring.
The sun was westering as he fed the horses. There were three; his swaybacked stot, the old man’s palfrey, and Thunder, his warhorse, who was ridden only in tourney and battle. The big brown stallion was not as swift or strong as he had once been, but he still had his bright eye and fierce spirit, and he was more valuable than everything else Dunk owned. If I sold Thunder and old Chestnut, and the saddles and bridles too, I’d come away with enough silver to … Dunk frowned. The only life he knew was the life of a hedge knight, riding from keep to keep, taking service with this lord and that lord, fighting in their battles and eating in their halls until the war was done, then moving on. There were tourneys
from time to time as well, though less often, and he knew that some hedge knights turned robber during lean winters, though the old man never had.
I could find another hedge knight in need of a squire to tend his animals and clean his mail, he thought, or might be I could go to some city, to Lannisport or King’s Landing, and join the City Watch. Or else …
He had piled the old man’s things under an oak. The cloth purse contained three silver stags, nineteen copper pennies, and a chipped garnet; as with most hedge knights, the greatest part of his worldly wealth had been tied up in his horses and weapons. Dunk now owned a chain-mail hauberk that he had scoured the rust off a thousand times. An iron halfhelm with a broad nasal and a dent on the left temple. A sword belt of cracked brown leather, and a longsword in a wood-and-leather scabbard. A dagger, a razor, a whetstone. Greaves and gorget, an eight-foot war lance of turned ash topped by a cruel iron point, and an oaken shield with a scarred metal rim, bearing the sigil of Ser Arlan of Pennytree: a winged chalice, silver on brown.
Dunk looked at the shield, scooped up the sword belt, and looked at the shield again. The belt was made for the old man’s skinny hips. It would never do for him, no more than the hauberk would. He tied the scabbard to a length of hempen rope, knotted it around his waist, and drew the longsword.
The blade was straight and heavy, good castle-forged steel, the grip soft leather wrapped over wood, the pommel a smooth polished black stone. Plain as it was, the sword felt good in his hand, and Dunk knew how sharp it was, having worked it with whetstone and oilcloth many a night before they went to sleep. It fits my grip as well as it ever fit his, he thought to himself, and there is a tourney at Ashford Meadow.