Ravenheart (7 page)

“You are hurt,” whispered the youngster.

Jaim did not answer. He knelt by the guard, his fingers pressed against the man’s throat. “Is he dead?” asked Kaelin, worried now. Jaim relaxed.

“No, thank goodness. I’d not want a man to die for the sake of a bull.” Reaching out, he took the club from Kaelin’s hand. “The wood has split through. When I heard the crack, I thought you had broken his neck. But his pulse is strong, and I think he’ll be fine. Damn, boy, there was a time I could have taken four men without help.”

They dragged the unconscious men back behind the log stack. Jaim took a ball of tough twine from a pocket sewn into his cloak. Rolling the first man to his belly, he looped twine around the man’s ankles and up to the hands, which he tied behind the guard’s back. As Jaim was working with the twine, Kaelin gagged the man. Only when all four guards were securely bound and gagged did Jaim set about bandaging his own wound, a shallow cut to the forearm.

“You can’t go into that paddock smelling of blood,” said Kaelin. “Let us just leave!”

“No, Kaelin. I’ve set my mind on a stroll with the beast,” Jaim said with a smile.

Then he walked out toward the paddock. The gate was held closed by a hinged iron hoop. Jaim lifted it clear and stepped into the enclosure. Kaelin watched him from the log stack, fear causing his heart to pound.

Kaelin saw the bull’s tail twitch. He pawed at the ground. Then Jaim spoke, his voice soft, his tone mesmeric.

Jaim continued to move across the paddock. Kaelin was scarcely breathing now as the big man approached the deadly horns.

The black bull was no longer pawing at the ground, and he did not turn his mighty head as the man walked by his horns. Kaelin watched as Jaim stroked the bull’s dark flanks. It seemed as if even the wind died as Jaim spoke, and Kaelin believed he could hear a soft, distant music echoing from the stars. He blinked and watched the bull. Moonlight was gleaming on its horns, and Kaelin’s mouth was dry as the one-eyed warrior stood beside the beast.

Still stroking the bull, Jaim moved completely around it and then strolled back toward the gate. He stopped at the entrance and held out his hand.

For a moment the bull remained statue-still, then it seemed to shiver as if waking from a trance. It walked forward slowly, toward the outstretched hand. Jaim’s fingers curled around the ring in the bull’s nose, and together man and beast walked from the enclosure and away into the night.

Gaise Macon awoke with a start, his heart pounding. He sat up and looked around. Moonlight was shining through the open window, illuminating the leather-topped desk and the assortment of quills, ink pots, and papers scattered there. The breeze had lifted some of the papers, causing them to flutter to the floor. Gaise pushed back the covers and swung his legs from the bed. As always when he awoke, the star-shaped scar on his right cheekbone was itching, the white, puckered burn feeling tight and uncomfortable. He rubbed the spot gently, then gathered up his papers.

Mr. Shaddler had set him to write an essay on the warrior king Connovar, and Gaise had scoured the library for information. Much of it was either contradictory or cloaked in ridiculous fable. Mr. Shaddler had urged him to prepare his piece “only on what is truly known. Try to avoid conjecture, Lord Gaise.” It was an odd assignment. Mr. Shaddler would normally direct him to specific historical tomes.

In the end Gaise had employed a different method of analysis. He had removed all references to gods, demons, and sprites, treating them as exaggerated representations of more human virtues and frailties. Connovar was, for example, said to have been enchanted by Arian, a Seidh goddess of mischief and torment. By her he had a son, Bane, half man, half god. It seemed to Gaise that Arian was more likely to have been a Rigante woman who bore Connovar a bastard son.

He had worked for some hours, his thoughts focused entirely on this man from the far past.

Perhaps it was this that had caused the dream.

It had been so intense, so real. He had become aware of walking in a wood, the smell of decaying leaves and moss filling his nostrils. He had felt the breeze cool upon his skin, the earth wet and cold beneath his bare feet. There was no fear. In fact, quite the opposite. He felt at one with the forest, in harmony with the beating hearts of the unseen animals all around him: the fox by the riverbank, the white owl perched on the high branch, the tiny mouse in the mound of leaves; the badgers wakening below the ground.

The smell of woodsmoke drifted to him, and he walked toward a small campfire set within a group of stones. A white-haired woman was sitting there. There were tools at her feet: a small ax, a long knife with a curved serrated blade, a shorter knife with a hilt of bone. In her hands was a length of curved wood. She was carefully stripping away the bark.

“What are you making?” he asked her.

She glanced up at him, and he saw that her eyes were green, her face unlined. It was a face of great beauty, ageless and serene.

“I am crafting a boughstave longbow.”

“Is that elm?”

“No, it is yew.”

Gaise sat down and watched her. “It does not look like a bow,” he said, seeing the knots and dimples on the rough wood.

“The bow is hidden within the stave. It is beautiful and complete. It merely needs to be found. One must seek it with love and care, gently and with great patience.”

Gaise shivered at the memory.

The room was cold. His father allowed him only one bucket of coal per week, and with only four lumps left and three more days to go, Gaise had decided not to light the fire that night. Instead he had put on warm woolen leggings and a nightshirt before climbing into bed. The sheet and the two thin blankets did little to keep him warm, and he had draped an old cloak over the blankets to add a little weight and warmth.

The young noble swung the old cloak around his shoulders
and padded across to the fireplace. There was kindling there and several chunks of wood beside the coal bucket. Anger flared in the young man. The Moidart desired him to be tough, so he said. That was why he kept his son cold in the winter, why he mocked his every effort, why he had killed Soldier. This last thought leapt unbidden from an unhealed wound in the young man’s mind. He had loved that dog, and even though three years had passed, the hurt he had felt at its slaying still clung to him with talons of grief. It had been an accident, the Moidart had said. The hunting musket had had a faulty hammer spring. It had struck flint before the Moidart had placed his finger on the trigger. The red-haired retriever had been sitting alongside the Moidart, and the lead ball had smashed his skull. Not for a moment had Gaise believed the tale. As a child he had loved a white pony, which the Moidart then had sold. After that it had been Soldier, which the Moidart slew. When Gaise had first attended school and made friends, he had arrived home full of joy. The Moidart had removed him from the school, hiring Alterith Shaddler and others to tutor him privately. Then there were the beatings, administered when Gaise failed to achieve the high grades the Moidart demanded for his schoolwork. The beatings had stopped since Gaise had reached fifteen, though it was not, he believed, his coming of age that had ended them. It had more to do with the rheumatics that had afflicted the Moidart’s shoulders and back. He could no longer lay on the lash as once he had.

Gaise wondered if life would have been different if his mother had survived the assassination attempt. Perhaps then his father would not have hated him so. He shivered again as a cold wind blew through the curtainless window behind him.

Gathering the cloak more tightly about his shoulders, Gaise leaned forward and, upon an impulse, picked up the pewter tinderbox, struck a flame, and applied it to the crumpled paper and wood shavings beneath the kindling in the fireplace. The paper caught first, orange flames licking out over the kindling. Gaise felt the first of the warmth touch
him, and he shivered again, this time with pleasure. As the larger kindling accepted the fire, Gaise added several chunks of wood and two of his precious coals.

Fire shadows danced on the walls around him, and a golden glow filled the room. Gaise felt the muscles of his shoulders losing their tension, and he relaxed before the flames. It must have been thus for the caveman, he thought, safe and warm, free for a time from the many perils of the day. He thought again of Connovar and pictured him sitting before an open fire, planning battles against the armies of Stone.

The dream came back to him then, the walk in the woods and the damp musty earth, the woman crafting the bow. She was quite small, with long white hair pulled back from her face and tied in a single braid hanging between her shoulders.

“How do you know that a beautiful bow is within the stave?”

“The yew whispered it to me. That is why I picked it up.”

“Wood cannot speak,” he said.

“It cannot speak to those without a name, young man,” she told him, her voice low and musical.

“I have a name,” he had told her. “I am Gaise Macon.”

“Not a name recognized by the trees that surround you. Not a name whispered in the valleys or borne on the wind toward Caer Druagh. Not a
soul
-name.”

“You are speaking nonsense. Who are you?”

“I am the Flame in the Crystal, Gaise Macon. My mother was the Shadow on the Oak. Her mother was the Sheltering Cloud. You wish to hear the names of all my line?”

“I note you do not mention the men involved in your ancestry,” said Gaise. “Did they have no soul-names?”

“Sadly they did not,” she said. “My grandfather was a Varlish captain, my father a merchant from Goriasa, across the water, where they have robed the magic in stone and thus imprisoned it. When this happens, men forget the magic of soul-names.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I brought you nowhere, Gaise Macon. You walked to my fire. You will walk away from my fire. Or run or fly. Whatever pleases you.”

“I am dreaming,” said the young man. “You are not real.”

“Aye, you are dreaming. But it is a
real
dream, Gaise. A dream of
meaning
. A moment of magic, if you will. Would you like to see a story?”

“You mean hear a story?”

“I know what I mean, Gaise Macon.”

“Then, yes, I would like to see a story.”

The woman raised her hand and pointed toward a small stream a little way to her right. Water rose up from it in a shimmering sphere as large as a man’s head. It floated some three feet above the grass and hovered before the astonished young noble. Then it swelled and flattened, becoming a circular mirror in which Gaise could see his own reflection. He saw that he was wearing a patchwork cloak of many colors fastened with a silver brooch. The brooch was the crest of his house, a fawn trapped in brambles. He was about to ask the woman about the cloak, but the mirror shimmered, and he found himself gazing on a distant moonlit mountainside. Two men were there. The images came closer, and he saw that one of the men was wounded. The scene changed. Now a stag was at bay, a great and majestic beast surrounded by wolves. His heart went out to the stag. A black hound, blood upon its flanks, charged at the wolves. They scattered, though not before three were dead.

The images faded away. Water began dripping from the circle, first as a few drops and then as a rush, falling to the earth and soaking through the soil.

Gaise sat very still, trying to make sense of what he had seen. A dying man and a wounded hound. A brief battle with a wolf pack.

“Do you know what a
geasa
is?” asked the woman.

“No.”

“It is a prophecy of a kind. King Connavar’s
geasa
was that he would be killed on the day he slew the dog that bit him.
And he was. What you have seen today is part of your
geasa
. You are the stag, Gaise Macon. You will stand against the wolves.”

“And who is the hound who will rescue me?”

“He will be a kinsman.”

“I have no kinsmen. Only my father. I doubt he would risk himself for me.”

“All will be revealed in its own time. Would you like a name that the mountains can hear, that the leaves can whisper and the rivers sing?”

“I am Varlish. Why would I want a Keltoi soul-name?”

“Come to me again when you do,” she told him.

That was when he had felt the cold sweep over him and had awoken in his bed. Now he was troubled and did not know why. Gaise sat by the fire until it began to die down. He reached for the coal bucket only to see that he had used all four lumps. Anger swelled again, and with it the first seeds of rebellion stirred in his heart. He was the heir to the earldom. One day he would be the Moidart. Yet he sat here in this cold room with no fuel for his fire despite the huge store of coal stacked alongside the rear kitchen wall.

Gaise rose smoothly to his feet, pulled on his boots, took up the brass coal bucket, and opened his bedroom door. Beyond it was the gallery overlooking the entrance hall. No lanterns were burning, and Gaise stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. The faintest sign of light could be seen at the foot of the stairs, where a heavy velvet curtain had not been fully closed. Gaise moved across the gallery landing until he reached the safety rail. Keeping his hand to the rail, he edged to his left and onto the stairs. His heart was beating fast now. If the Moidart discovered him stealing coal, he would no doubt punish him severely. In that moment Gaise did not care. Slowly he descended into the hallway, then through to the kitchen. There it was lighter, for there were no curtains on the paneled glass of the window. The rear door leading to the yard beyond was not locked. This surprised Gaise, for the Moidart was strict about
security within the Winter House. Gaise smiled. When he returned with his coal, he would lock the door, thus saving some poor servant from a flogging.