'I don't trust the heart of that young man,' Sidir relented at last. 'He has never been sure of himself, even at home with his herding family. He does not know, at his core, who he is. Which drives him to count coup, and hold grudges. To look outside, seeking for positive proof that his loyalties are not misguided.' Now came the tortured admission: 'If I answer his questions, Fionn Areth will use what he knows. Not to stand firm on his chosen ground but to hurt and tear down for advantage.'
Elaira faced away, watching the eastern sun scatter chipped-diamond reflections across the water below: a view, in these days, unendingly smudged by the smoke from Sevrand's troops, manning the signal turrets. Into the punishing pause, she said carefully, 'Fionn's potential betrayal of Arithon feels altogether too much like disloyalty to all that I stand for!' Sidir had not stopped listening after all. Though her calm tone stayed flawless, he unfolded his tall frame. Hands set on her shoulders, quite firmly, he spun her around.
Her vivid tears streamed. His callused touch a contrite apology, he brushed her wet cheeks with a finger. 'You feel responsible.'
Which was too accurate. 'I helped change that boy's features,' Elaira said, bleak. 'By my Prime's directive, I laid that fate on to a child just barely six years of age.' And burning, unspoken: should anyone wonder why this Araethurian does not understand who he is?
She permitted Sidir's stringent grip. Let him bundle her into a chaste embrace that did little but break the harsh wind.
'I will meet with your goatherd,' the clansman allowed. 'Not so much for my liege's royal command, but as your service, done without asking.'
* * *
Sidir's glue-pot, perforce, became relocated to a cramped, barracks fire-place inside the chamber most often used to hear officers' complaints. The day-today grinding of dray wheels, and the tramp of patrols at the watch change did not penetrate the thick walls of the Mathiell Gate keep. The sealed silence kept by old, wakened stone at times seemed to whisper, alive by Paravian magic. Notes or words past hearing, the quickened strain weaved through the echoes of rough conversation that bounced up the steep stair from the ward-room.
Not every man who lived by the sword could abide that deep presence in comfort.
A forest-bred clansman would be the exception. Present as well, just come off active duty, Talvish sprawled in a battered, slat seat, one idle knee hooked on the chair arm. Shown the deft expertise of a Halwythwood bowyer, he watched, green eyes never fooled by the quiet skill that affixed the shaved horn to the wood frame. The blond war-captain opened, 'This place poses no refuge, except from the troops. If they haven't themselves been dressed down at this trestle, they'll shun the place where their fellows are cited for punishment.'
Sidir's lips flexed. 'I should be concerned that we might not stay private?'
'Fionn Areth's likely as not to show up here.' Talvish tested the murkier waters. 'If you meet, I presume that can't be by mistake?'
Sidir hooked a soaked thong from the nearby bucket and began winding the glued strip for bonding. 'No need to circle.' He did not look up. 'I am prepared to hear out the whelp's brazen questions.'
Talvish's lazy silence extended: a lynx might display such bone stillness. For the duke's ranking officers, days began before dawn. The wear showed in his pale hair, crimped from his steel helm, and in knuckles grazed red from some bare-fisted labour, performed in salt water below the Sea Gate. Tired or not, the field veteran perceived clearly.
For his own reason, this well-guarded clansman wanted the coming scene public.
Sidir knotted off the wet thong with his teeth, just past the splice that stiffened the end that would notch the finished silk bow-string. He stretched his shoulders, then extended the strapped limb of the bow frame into the fireplace. As the thongs shrank themselves dry in the smoke, he broached in soft-spoken reluctance, 'I am the last left alive, who endured both the reiving at the River Tal Quorin, and the campaign against Lysaer at Vastmark. Twice, I've wrestled to subdue the hard aftermath when my liege was forced to fight under Desh-thiere's directive.'
Across the dimmed closet, Sidir confronted the most subtle of the duke's war-captains. 'I have sensed that your loyalty serves my liege from the heart.'
Talvish paused. Against a muffled contention in the ward-room below-stairs, he chose not to gainsay, though Sidir's piercing statement effectively split his allegiances.
'Without pride,' the clansman laboured on with distaste, 'some things may be needful to know from inside my store of experience.'
Talvish resisted his impulse to straighten from informal posture. Against knifing grief, that Vhandon was not the accustomed rock at his side, he scoffed gently, 'Here I thought you wanted a yapping dog leashed, and no suicide leaps by the idiot hare, thinking to rip the wolf's jugular.'
Sidir laughed. "That too! The Araethurian pays your soldier's discipline lip service, at least. Some pitfalls of personal embarrassment might be disarmed by your presence.'
'As Arithon's won't be,' Talvish closed without flinching.
Humour died. 'A man's strengths can break,' Sidir allowed. 'During the bad times, three of us at full strength could scarcely contain the set-backs brought on by his nightmares of self-condemnation.' And those bulwarks were gone. The irascible clan war-captain, Caolle, and the Companion, Eafinn, both years dead; Sidir kept the clenched pain of their memories locked fast.
'We've got Dakar and Elaira,' Talvish pointed out. Their advantage might balance the powerful changes wrought by the maze under Kewar; or might not, which spurred the ongoing concern. He risked the hard question against the creak of thongs, drying in flame. 'What do you fear, liegeman?'
This time, Sidir replied at sharp speed. 'A knife in his Grace's back.'
'The one he'll invite out of sheer provocation? Then rest content. We see eye to eye.' Talvish shoved straight. 'For now, your royal debt has come due.'
But forest-bred senses had already flagged the steps from the passage. 'I'taer chya strieka'an am'jiere' Sidir snapped in Paravian under his breath.
Then 'the calm that bred chaos' banged open the door. Fionn Areth bounced in, bringing the reek of hot horse and oiled steel along with the sweat-ragged fleece of his gambeson. 'You should see the uproar over today's wager!' he blurted. 'Jeynsa's thrashed Sevrand at lances, thrown from ambush at moving targets.' His belated notice encompassed Sidir, which first widened his eyes, then silenced him.
Today, my knives are for carving dead wood,' the clansman declared, accent cracking. Take care with your manners, young sprig.'
'Which implies that he's ready to answer your questions,' Talvish suggested with sly provocation.
'I would sooner converse with a snake!' Fionn Areth side-stepped the clutter. Arrived at the trestle, he camped on the bench beside Talvish's chair and eyed the unfinished staff being cured in the hearth. That's a bow?'
'Half of one.' Satisfied with the tension set up by damp leather, Sidir laid the baked frame across his thigh and began daubing glue on the opposite limb. 'Speak and have done. Even snakes prefer their choice of company.'
Fionn Areth regarded the clansman's bent head, dark hair threaded white at the temples; the hunter's hands confident, as the shaped strip of horn was warped into place with another soaked thong from the bucket. Whether or not such calm should be disturbed, the Araethurian dared the first hurdle. 'You saw the horrors at Tal Quorin and Vastmark. Endured the brunt of the losses. I wanted to ask of your prince's intent. Why don't you believe he's a criminal sorcerer, shedding the blood of the innocent?'
'Because there's no truth to the claim,' Sidir said, twining thong with near-mystical patience. 'Otherwise, I would be dead, and all of my people along with me. Arithon's acts spared our clans at Tal Quorin. Etarra's attackers fell in harsh numbers, but the same terms that killed them granted survival for two hundred lives on our side. Town-born will overlook that accomplishment. Yet a fact ignored by the cause of the victor cannot be refuted for convenience.'
'Why not?' challenged Fionn. '
A death is a death. A thousand cut down to save one is too steep a price, no matter whose sons filled the grave-sites.'
Sidir yanked his knots tight, in no hurry. But his eyes were steel as he glanced up. 'Should such townsmen have invaded the free wilds to start with? Whose warmongering choice brought them on us, but Lysaer's? Why raise Etarra to arms against the pledged terms of the compact? There are boundaries set to curb merchant trade, and town factions who desire them broken.'
'Your old ways, maintained at what cost to humanity?' pressed Fionn Areth, unsatisfied. 'Should anyone die for a law that's defunct? Your people prey on the roadways as thieves, and no more Paravians inhabit Athera!'
'I can guarantee that they do,' Sidir said. 'Or I would not be here, engaged in a theoretical debate over a justice our royal lineages have pledged to protect.'
Fionn Areth hooted, and pounced. 'You can't know for certain!'
'I haven't the vision,' Sidir agreed. 'Not to gainsay the Fellowship Sorcerers, whose binding purpose preserves the old races' line of survival. The crown our Teir's'Ffalenn must uphold is the fulcrum that maintains the care-taking balance between human need and the mystery that nurtures a living Paravian awareness. The trade-guilds have long overstepped charter rights! Clan heritage serves the free wilds, and the high kingship is the marriage of human flesh with the creative matrix of Athera's existence. For this, Prince Arithon was acknowledged by Fellowship hands to carry the terms of our fealty.'
'His defence claimed your family,' Fionn Areth bore in. 'For the sake of an abstract you've never experienced, I want to know why don't you hate him.'
'But I do,' Sidir contradicted. Raw flame licked the bowstaff. The heat-dried sinew popped and crackled, cranked under the stresses of tightening.
Through the shocked pause, Fionn Areth should have crowed. Instead, he gaped beyond speech.
Sidir turned the bow. The fresh weals on his wrists shining with scar tissue, he stated, 'I hate his Grace for each of my beloved kinsfolk, gone from this life for his defence. For all of the times he deserted our clans. Left us on the run from the knives of the scalpers, who feed on trade greed and Alliance corruption. Who despoil our clan women and innocent girls under the dog-pack brutality that infests the head-hunters' leagues.'
'But -'
'Such events are not myth!' Sidir interrupted. Into Fionn Areth's disbelieving, set teeth, he said more. 'My sister was gutted and raped, at Tal Quorin. My aunt in Fallowmere, staked out on cold ground, while eight men with league badges took turns forcing her till she died, bleeding. My mother, I won't further defile.' He added, 'I don't weep in your presence! Those I loved dearest are quite beyond pain. Now, their justice relies on the merciful rule of my prince, who ought to be crowned at Ithamon.'
Fionn Areth fired back, his frustration ringing within the closed chamber. 'And was his Grace's mercy what brought down the mountain upon twenty-five thousand, at Dier Kenton Vale?'
'His sore desperation, entrapped by the geas of Desh-thiere,' Sidir responded, unmoved. 'I lived that horror. It still threads my dreams, for the dread power contained by that one, fragile vessel. How fragile, I realized. My hand was one that helped shore up the cracks.'
'Then you acknowledge a crime was committed against nature, and for naught but cold-blooded mass murder,' accused Fionn Areth, while Talvish, cat still, attended the scene in braced stillness. 'What cause can justify cruelty on that scale?'
'No cause. Ever. And for Vastmark, no false cloth of reason at all! Both parties were cursed. They engaged by consent. Arithon, to defang a war host that had nowhere to turn, except to target his friends. Lysaer, to destroy one man that a geas-borne belief posed as his arch-enemy. In defeat, the s'Ilessid salved his losses through conceit. He claimed to speak for Ath Creator. In victory, my Teir's'Ffalenn wept for the wounding, arisen from the flawed nature of his convictions.' Sidir lifted the bow frame away from the fire and tested the wrap with quick fingers. 'Our hatred is easy, for each time his Grace's strength lets us down, and for the clay that reminds us he shares our humanity'
Fionn Areth stared, speechless, though always with him, such deflated pauses were brief. 'If you knew Arithon might commit such atrocities again, why didn't you kill him?'
'Best ask why I love him,' Sidir answered back, and looked up with his features stripped naked.
The sheer, caring depth of adult vulnerability caught Talvish's breath in his throat. He resisted the raw urge, to grab the glib grasslander's shoulder and shake him. Though his swordsman's instincts cried out to act, before lancing such pain caused explosion, he understood why Arithon had picked this steadfast clansman as his personal spokesman. Fionn Areth must decide for himself: whether to sort out his conflicted loyalties, standing upon his own merits. Or whether to cashier respect and ask Sidir to lay bare his soul in a way that must open him down to the viscera.
'I see that I can't lean on another man's values,' the Araethurian declared, sounding shaken. The Companion's raw courage, exposed at close quarters, had seared off his protective bluster. 'Direct principles count,' he finished, subdued. 'Since the features I wear weren't ever my own, I'm caught in the turbulence sown by your crown prince.'
'That's why Arithon insists that you matter,' Sidir agreed. 'And why he fears most for your safety. Do you find his wish to safeguard you so hard?'
'Yes, since the price is my freedom!' The Araethurian slammed to his feet. 'I don't have the option of choosing my way! Even if, s'Brydion tempers forbid, my sympathies lie with your enemies.'
'And do they, in fact?' Sidir asked, tautly poised. 'Is self-honesty what you're afraid of? Are we thrashing out Arithon's short-falls, or yours?'
'Mine, of course,' snapped Fionn Areth with venom. 'The duke runs a clan stronghold. Should I invite another six months, shut in with the rats in Alestron's dungeon?' The goatherd stomped out. Shed fleece from his gambeson whirled on the disturbed air, sucked in by the draw of the hearth and lit to sparks in the updraft.
'Volatile,' said Talvish. 'But too right.' He stretched, unkinking the knots in his shoulders. 'If Arithon's the criminal posed by the Alliance, that young man can't leave without losing his neck over principle.'
'Well, he has got a spine underneath all the muddle.' Sidir covered the pannikin of hot glue. Thoughtfully fatalist, he hefted his afternoon's handiwork under his critical eye. 'Like this bow, and choice wood, we won't know if yon goatherd shoots straight or contrary until the moment he's strung and tested against the mark.'
Talvish himself did not relish patience. 'Then let us all hope that the moment occurs when no one around him is caught under pressure.'
The clansman gathered his lean frame and stood. Across the reddish glow of the flames, grey eyes met green in a moment of locked understanding. 'You'll keep the watch with me?'
'Always,' said Talvish, quite aware that the subject was no longer the double, but the unbroached burden of confidence this liegeman had carried since Vastmark. 'You know Arithon's coming?'
Sidir nodded. 'In that way, Elaira's infallible.' He offered his arm for the wrist clasp that sealed amity. 'Heed my fair warning, once my liege arrives. If he loses the nasty edge on his tongue, by that sign you'll know he's endangered.'
* * *
The new moon came and went, which heralded the month of late autumn. And as Selkwood's wizened seeress had foretold, the hour arrived for departure. Informed by the uncanny tingle that raked through his bones and warm flesh, Kyrialt s'Taleyn tossed off his sleeping furs. He sat up, aware that Glendien had arisen ahead of him. No secret escaped her. The innate talent of her clan lineage sensed pending change like a weathercock.
'I've packed already,' she declared from the dark, her voice charged to vibrant excitement.
'Packed?' Kyrialt stood, the bite of cold air heightening his jangled nerve ends. 'Woman, what on Ath's earth does a man take to war, beyond his trained skill and his weapons?'
'Medicinal herbs, salts for physics, willow bark, and wild rose hips' Glendien retorted. 'My bun
dles will ease hurt and spare lives, while you clean your sheathed weapons more often for rust in a siege.' She sounded too smug, that sickness from crowding was more likely than steel to bring the duke's troops to their knees.
'That's presuming without Bransian's hot-headed temper, to sit when he'd rather be fighting.' Kyrialt padded across the chill lodge tent and began dressing at speed, as a scout would do, by rote touch.
'That's presuming,' Glendien retorted, dead crisp, 'that your Teir's'Ffalenn's not a fit match for bullish entitlement.'
Kyrialt laughed. 'The pair are hell-bound to lock horns. Shall we wager how soon?'
'Rough sport' said his wife. 'You're actually guessing how long it takes for s'Brydion wit to learn how to corner the gad-fly.'
'Or us, for that matter.' For eveiything had changed, since the night in the King's Grove. Kyrialt belted on the boiled-hide tunic he kept for hunting amid winter briar. As he reached for his arms, he found Glendien's hands there, ahead of him.
'Mine, the wife's honour, husband.' She did not have to ask which blade to gird on him. The sword with the ancestral inset of Shand would not be carried afield to Alestron. The plain steel would go, and the baldric with the carved bosses. As Shand's gift of honour, the High Earl's son went, pledged under the Crown of Rathain. The farewells to friends and kinsfolk had been said, in private tears and bitter-sweet celebration. Kyrialt sat on a stool made of stag's horns, while the agile fingers of the woman he loved bound his dark hair into the pattern of the sTaleyn clan braid. After, he arose and threw on his cloak, then snatched the moment, while she handled the fastenings of hers, to steal the kiss he preferred to welcome the morning.
They left his lodge tent together and stepped into the windless dark. Fuzzed stars shone through the scudding clouds that would bring drizzling rain before dawn-light. Kyrialt followed Glendien, past the banked ash of the camp's central fire and the skeletal frames of the drying racks. They slipped through the bounds observed by the sentries, and exchanged wrist clasps with the outlying scouts. No one asked awkward questions. Everyone accepted that Kyrialt's destiny took him from Shand. The chosen path led away from the picket lines, since he and Glendien would not be travelling mounted. A departure from Selkwood, with the marker stones roused, bespoke the power of a Fellowship Sorcerer.