Neither did Devin’s. Squinting into the setting sun it seemed to him as if Alessan and the troubadour had become figures in some timeless landscape. Their voices carried with an unnatural clarity in the quiet of the gathering twilight.
‘When was this last done for you?’ he heard Alessan ask casually, his scissors busy in the long grey tangles of Erlein’s hair.
‘I don’t even remember,’ the troubadour confessed.
‘Well,’ Alessan laughed, bending to wet his comb in the stream, ‘on the road we don’t exactly have to keep up with court fashions. Tilt a little this way. Yes, good. Do you brush it across in front or straight back?’
‘Back, by preference.’
‘Fine.’ Alessan’s hands moved up to the crown of Erlein’s head, the scissors flashing as they caught the last of the sun. ‘That’s an old-fashioned look, but troubadours are supposed to look old-fashioned, aren’t they? Part of the charm. You are bound by Adaon’s name and my own. I am Alessan, Prince of Tigana, and wizard you are mine!’
Devin took an involuntary step forward. He saw Erlein try, reflexively, to jerk away. But the hand of binding held his head, and the scissors, so busy a moment before, were now sharp against his throat. They froze him for an instant and an instant was enough.
‘Rot your flesh!’ Erlein screamed as Alessan released him and stepped back. The wizard sprang from the stone as if scalded, and wheeled to face the Prince. His face was contorted with rage.
Fearing for Alessan, Devin began moving towards the river, reaching for his blade. Then he saw that Baerd had an arrow already notched to his bow, and trained on Erlein’s heart. Devin slowed his rush and then stopped. Sandre was right beside him, the curved sword drawn. He caught a glimpse of the Duke’s dark face and in it—though he couldn’t be absolutely sure in the uncertain light—he thought he read fear.
He turned back to the two men by the river. Alessan had laid down the scissors and comb neatly on the rock. He stood still, hands at his sides, but his breath was coming quickly.
Erlein was literally shaking with fury. Devin looked at him and it was as if a curtain had been drawn back. In the wizard’s eyes hatred and terror vied for domination. His mouth worked spasmodically. He raised his left hand and pointed it at Alessan in a gesture of violent negation.
And Devin saw, quite clearly now, that his third and fourth fingers had indeed been chopped off. The ancient mark of a wizard’s binding to his magic and the Palm.
‘Alessan?’ Baerd said.
‘It is all right. He cannot do anything with his power now against my will.’ Alessan’s voice was quiet, almost detached, as if this was all happening to someone else entirely. Only then did Devin realize that the wizard’s gesture had been an attempt to cast a spell. Magic. He had never thought to be so near it in his life. The skin prickled at the back of his neck, and not because of the twilight breeze.
Slowly Erlein lowered his hand and slowly his trembling stopped. ‘Triad curse you,’ he said, low and cold. ‘And curse the bones of your ancestors and blight the lives of your children and your children’s children for what you have done to me.’ It was the voice of someone wronged, brutally, grievously.
Alessan did not flinch or turn away. ‘I was cursed almost nineteen years ago, and my ancestors were, and whatever children I or any of my people might have. It is a curse I have set my life to undo while time yet allows. For no other reason have I bound you to me.’
There was something terrible in Erlein’s face. ‘Every true Prince of Tigana,’ the wizard said with bitter intensity, ‘has known since the beginning how awful a gift the god gave them. How savage a power over a free, a living soul. Do you even know—’ He was forced to stop, white-faced, his hands clenched, to regain control of himself. ‘Do you even know how seldom this gift has been used.’
‘Twice,’ Alessan said calmly. ‘Twice, to my knowledge. The old books recorded it so, though I fear all the books have been burned now.’
‘Twice!’ Erlein echoed, his voice skirling upwards. ‘Twice in how many generations stretching back to the dawn of records in this peninsula? And you, a puling princeling without even a land to rule, have just casually—viciously—set your hands upon my life!’
‘Not casually. And only because I have no home. Because Tigana is dying and will be lost if I do not do something.’
‘And what part of that little speech gives you rights over my life and death?’
‘I have a duty,’ Alessan replied gravely. ‘I must use what tools come to hand.’
‘I am not a tool!’ Erlein cried from the heart. ‘I am a free and living soul with my own destiny!’
Watching Alessan’s face Devin saw how that cry shafted into him. For a long moment there was silence by the river. Devin saw the Prince draw air into his lungs carefully, as if steadying himself under yet another burden, a new weight joined to those he already carried. Another part added to the price of his blood.
‘I will not lie and say that I am sorry,’ Alessan said finally, choosing his words with care. ‘I have dreamt of finding a wizard for too many years. I will say—and this is true—that I understand what you have said and why you will hate me, and I can tell you that I grieve for what necessity demands.’
‘It demands nothing!’ Erlein replied, shrill and unrelenting in his righteousness. ‘We are free men. There is always a choice.’
‘Some choices are closed to some of us.’ It was, surprisingly, Sandre.
He moved forward to stand a little in front of Devin. ‘And some men must make choices for those who cannot, whether through lack of will or lack of power.’ He walked nearer to the other two, by the dark, quiet rushing of the stream. ‘Just as we may choose not to slay the man who is trying to kill our child, so Alessan may have chosen not to bind a wizard who might be needed by his people. His children. Neither refusal, Erlein di Senzio, is a true alternative for anyone with honour.’
‘Honour!’ Erlein spat the word. ‘And how does honour bind a man of Senzio to Tigana’s fate? What Prince compels a free man to a sure death at his side and then speaks of honour?’ He shook his head. ‘Call it naked power and have done.’
‘I will not,’ the Duke replied in his deep voice. It was quite dark now; Devin could no longer see his hooded eyes. From behind them all he heard the sounds of Baerd beginning to light the fire. Overhead the first stars were emerging in the blue-black cloak of the sky. Away west, across the stream, there was a last hint of crimson along the line of the horizon.
‘I will not,’ Sandre said again. ‘The honour of a ruler, and his duty, lies in his care for his land and his people. That is the only true measure. And the price, part of the price of that, comes when he must go against his own soul’s needs and do such things that will grieve him to the very bones of his hands. Such things,’ he added softly, ‘as the Prince of Tigana has just done to you.’
But Erlein’s voice shot back, unpersuaded, contemptuous. ‘And how,’ he snarled, ‘does a bought sword from Khardhun presume to use the word honour or to speak about the burdens of a prince?’ He wanted the words to hurt, Devin could see, but what came through in the inflections of his voice was the sound of someone lost and afraid.
There was a silence. Behind them the fire caught with a rush, and the orange glow spun outward, illuminating Erlein’s taut rage and Sandre’s gaunt, dark face, the bones showing in high relief. Beyond them both, Devin saw, Alessan had not moved at all.
Sandre said, ‘The Khardhu warriors I have known were deeply versed in honour. But I will claim no credit for that. Be not deceived: I am no Khardhu. My name is Sandre d’Astibar, once Duke of that province. I know a little about power.’
Erlein’s mouth fell open.
‘I am also a wizard,’ Sandre added matter-of-factly. ‘Which is how you were known: by the thin spell you use to mask your hand.’
Erlein closed his mouth. He stared fixedly at the Duke as if seeking to penetrate his disguise or find confirmation in the deep-hooded eyes. T
hen he glanced downwards, almost against his will.
Sandre already had the fingers of his left hand spread wide. All five fingers.
‘I never made the final binding,’ he said. ‘I was twelve years old when my magic found me. I was also the son and heir of Tellani, Duke of Astibar. I made my choice: I turned my back on magic and embraced the rule of men. I used my very small power perhaps five times in my life. Or six,’ he amended. ‘Once, very recently.’
‘Then there was a conspiracy against the Barbadian,’ Erlein murmured, his rage temporarily set aside as he wrestled with this. ‘And then … yes, of course. What did you do? Kill your son in the dungeon?’
‘I did.’ The voice was level, giving nothing away at all.
‘You could have cut two fingers and brought him out.’
‘Perhaps.’
Devin looked over sharply at that, startled. ‘I don’t know. I made my choice long ago, Erlein di Senzio.’ And with those quiet words another shape of pain seemed to enter the clearing, almost visible at the edges of the firelight.
Erlein forced a corrosive laugh. ‘And a fine choice it was!’ he mocked. ‘Now your Dukedom is gone and your family as well, and you’ve been bound as a slave wizard to an arrogant Tiganese. How happy you must be!’
‘Not so,’ said Alessan quickly from by the river.
‘I am here by my own choice,’ Sandre said softly. ‘Because Tigana’s cause is Astibar’s and Senzio’s and Chiara’s—it is the same choice for all of us. Do we die as willing victims or while trying to be free? Do we skulk as you have done all these years, hiding from the sorcerers? Or can we not join palm to palm—for once in this folly-ridden peninsula of warring provinces locked into their pride—and drive the two of them away?’
Devin was deeply stirred. The Duke’s words rang in the firelit dark like a challenge to the night. But when he ended, the sound they heard was Erlein di Senzio clapping sardonically.
‘Wonderful,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You really must remember that for when you find an army of simpletons to rally. You will forgive me if I remain unmoved by speeches about freedom tonight. Before the sun went down I was a free man on an open road. I am now a slave.’
‘You were not free,’ Devin burst out.
‘And I say I was!’ Erlein snapped, rounding fiercely on him. ‘There may have been laws that constrained me, and one government ruling where I might have wished for another. But the roads are safer now than they ever were when this man ruled in Astibar or that one’s father in Tigana—and I carried my life where I wanted to go. You will all have to forgive my insensitivity if I say that Brandin of Ygrath’s spell on the name of Tigana was not the first and last thought of my days!’
‘We will,’ Alessan said then in an unnaturally flat voice. ‘We will all forgive you for that. Nor will we seek to persuade you to change your views now. I will tell you this, though: the freedom you speak of will be yours again when Tigana’s name is heard in the world once more. It is my hope—vain, perhaps—that you will work with us willingly in time, but until then I can say that the compulsion of Adaon’s gift will suffice me. My father died, and my brothers died by the Deisa, and the flower of a generation with them, fighting for freedom. I have not lived so bitterly or striven so long to hear a coward belittle the shattering of a people and their heritage.’
‘Coward!’ Erlein exclaimed. ‘Rot you, you arrogant princeling! What would you know about it?’
‘Only what you have told us yourself,’ Alessan replied, grimly now. ‘Safer roads, you said. One government where you might have wished for another.’ He took a step towards Erlein as if he would strike the man, his composure finally beginning to break. ‘You have been the worst thing I know: a willing subject of two tyrants. Your idea of freedom is exactly what has let them conquer us, and then hold us. You called yourself free? You were only free to hide … and to soil your breeches if a sorcerer or one of their Trackers came within ten miles of your little screening spell. You were free to walk past death-wheels with your fellow wizards rotting on them, and free to turn your back and continue on your way. Not any more, Erlein di Senzio. By the Triad, you are in it now! You are in it as deep as any man in the Palm! Hear my first command: you are to use your magic to conceal your fingers exactly as before.’
‘No,’ said Erlein flatly.
Alessan said nothing more. He waited. Devin saw the Duke take a half-step towards the two of them and then stop himself. He remembered that Sandre had not believed that this was possible.
Now he saw. They all saw, by the light of the stars and the fire Baerd had made.
Erlein fought. Understanding next to nothing, unnerved by almost all that was happening, Devin gradually became aware that a horrible struggle was taking place within the wizard. It could be read in his rigid, straining stance and his gritted teeth, heard in the rasp and wheeze of his shortening breath, seen in tightly closed eyes and the suddenly clenched fingers at his sides.
‘No,’ Erlein gasped, once and then again and again, with more effort each time. ‘No, no, no!’ He dropped to his knees as if felled like a tree. His head bent slowly downward. His shoulders hunched as if resisting some overmastering assault. They began to shake with erratic spasms. His whole body was trembling.
‘No,’ he said again in a high, cracked whisper. His hands spread open, pressing flat against the ground. In the red firelight his face was a mask of staring agony. Sweat poured down it in the chill of night. His mouth suddenly gaped open.
Devin looked away in pity and terror just before the wizard’s scream ripped the night apart. In the same moment Catriana took two quick running steps and buried her head against Devin’s shoulder.
That cry of pain, the scream of a tormented animal, hung in the air between fire and stars for what seemed an appallingly long time. Afterwards Devin became aware of the intensity of the silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of the fire, the river’s soft murmur, and Erlein di Senzio’s choked, ragged breathing.
Without speaking Catriana straightened and released her grip on Devin’s arm. He glanced at her but she didn’t meet his eye. He turned back to the wizard.
Erlein was still on his knees before Alessan in the new spring grass by the riverbank. His body still shook, but with weeping now. When he lifted his head Devin could see the tracks of tears and sweat and the staining mud from his hands. Slowly Erlein raised his left hand and stared at it as if it was something alien that didn’t even belong to him. They all saw what had happened, or the illusion of what had happened.
Five fingers. He had cast the spell.
An owl suddenly called, short and clear from north along the river, nearer to the trees. Devin became aware of a change in the sky. He looked up. Blue Ilarion, waning back to a crescent, had risen in the east. Ghostlight, Devin thought, and wished he hadn’t.
‘Honour!’ Erlein di Senzio said, scarcely audible.
Alessan had not moved since giving his command. He looked down on the wizard he had bound and said, quietly, ‘I did not enjoy that, but I suppose we needed to go through it. Once will be enough, I hope. Shall we eat?’
He walked past Devin and the Duke and Catriana to where Baerd was waiting by the fire. The meat was already cooking. Caught in a vortex of emotion, Devin saw the searching look Baerd gave Alessan. He turned back in time to see Sandre reaching out a hand to help Erlein rise.
For a long moment Erlein ignored him, then, with a sigh, he grasped the Duke’s forearm and pulled himself erect.
Devin followed Catriana back towards the fire. He heard the two wizards coming after them.
Dinner passed in near silence. Erlein took his plate and glass and went to sit alone on the rock by the stream at the very farthest extent of the fire’s glow. Looking over at his dark outline, Sandre murmured that a younger man would very likely have refused to eat. ‘He’s a survivor that one,’ the Duke added. ‘Any wizard who’s lasted this long has to be.’
‘Will he be all right then,’ Catri
ana asked softly, ‘with us?’
‘I think so,’ Sandre answered, sipping his wine. He turned to Alessan. ‘He’ll try to run away tonight though.’
‘I know,’ the Prince said.
‘Do we stop him?’ It was Baerd.
Alessan shook his head. ‘Not you. I will. He cannot leave me unless I let him. If I call he must return. I have him … tethered to my mind. It is a queer feeling.’
Queer indeed, Devin thought. He looked from the Prince to the dark figure by the river. He couldn’t even imagine what this must feel like. Or rather, he could almost imagine it, and the sensation disturbed him.
He became aware that Catriana was looking at him and he turned to her. This time she didn’t look away. Her expression, too, was strange; Devin realized she must be feeling the same edginess and sense of unreality that he was. He suddenly remembered, vividly, the feel of her head against his shoulder an hour ago. At the time he’d hardly registered the fact, so intent had he been on Erlein. He tried to smile reassuringly, but he didn’t think he managed it.
‘Troubadour, you promised us harp music!’ Sandre called out abruptly. The wizard in the darkness didn’t respond. Devin had forgotten about that. He didn’t feel much like singing and he didn’t think Catriana did either.
So, in the event, what happened was that Alessan expressionlessly claimed his Tregean pipes and began to make music alone beside the fire.
He played beautifully, with a pared-down economy of sound—melodies so sweetly offered that Devin, in his current mood, could almost imagine Eanna’s stars and the blue crescent of the one moon pausing in their movements overhead so as not to have to wheel inexorably away from the grace of that music.
Then a short while later Devin realized what Alessan was doing and he felt, abruptly, as if he was going to cry. He held himself very still, to keep control, and he looked at the Prince across the red and orange of the flames.
Alessan’s eyes were closed as he played, his lean face seemed almost hollowed out, the cheekbones showing clearly. And into the sounds he made he seemed to pour, as from a votive temple bowl, both the yearning that drove him, and the decency and care that Devin knew lay at the root of him. But that wasn’t it, that wasn’t what was making Devin want to cry: