Farrol hovered a few steps away, as if there were an invisible circle drawn about Blaise and me, one he was forbidden to cross. His round face was red, and he twitched and paced, starting forward toward Blaise, then stepping back, flicking sideways glances to the huddled mourners.
I stood up and tested my leg. “It will be fine in a couple of days,” I said. “Can we find some water? I’d like to clean it.”
Blaise nodded and waved to the others to mount up.
The barrier broken, Farrol descended on Blaise. “I don’t know how they got wind of us. It couldn’t have been Jakkor. He despises the Derzhi bastards.” He shot dark glances my way. “Someone else betrayed us. They couldn’t—”
“You damned, stupid fool!” I said. “I killed for you. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“We’ll speak of it later,” said Blaise. “For now we’re going home.”
I tried to settle my anger by peeling away the layers of enchantment as Blaise led us through his mysterious paths back to the green valleys of Kuvai. If I hadn’t known he was working sorcery, I never could have detected it, and even knowing, I found it impossible to dissect his weaving. Never had I touched spells buried so deep in a man. It was something like trying to unravel the mysteries of a beating heart without cutting open the flesh. No skill at observation or listening was going to reveal the component parts of the event.
We arrived at nightfall. The bonfire remained unlit this time, a skeletal pile in the center of the valley clearing. The deer was butchered, but shared out among the men and women to cook over smaller fires. Songs were raised for the dead Jalleen. She had a sister in the valley, who donned red veils and sang the Suzaini dirges until the mournful music wound through the trees like a spider’s web, binding us all in a net of beauteous sorrow.
As the music filled the night, I lit my own small fire back under the trees where I could be alone, heating barley soup to fill my stomach and boiling oak bark to clean the gash on my leg. About the time I untied the blood-stiffened bandage around my thigh, I sensed someone standing quietly in the dark trees behind me. “Come share the fire if you want,” I said. “No need to stay in the shadows.” It was the Ezzarian boy.
He was, perhaps, fifteen. In all my weeks with the outlaws, he had said no more than four words to me. He and his brother had trained with me, watching and listening, but had very pointedly refrained from any personal contact.
I gestured to the soup, but he shook his head and settled himself awkwardly to the ground on the opposite side of the fire. “I just wanted to ask . . . is there an Ezzarian death song?”
“Yes.” I dipped a rag in the steaming oak water, gritted my teeth, and dabbed at the sticky sword cut. “It’s much simpler than the Suzaini dirge.” The Suzaini believed that death was only the first of a hundred trials before the spirit found its way to the land of the dead, which was not at all a nice place for all the work it took to get there. “But I like it better. A little less grim. Our gods—Verdonne and her son Valdis—are something more forgiving than Gossopar. Our chant is sung to honor the dead and to fix them in our memory.” And to ease those left behind.
“I’d like . . . I don’t have anything . . .”
“I’ll teach you, if you want.”
He nodded, the firelight reflecting in his dark eyes. And so we worked at it awhile, the more comfort coming in the action itself, I thought, rather than the words. I would say the verse in Ezzarian, which the boy did not seem to know, and then in Aseol—the common tongue of the Empire—and then I would sing the verse, showing the boy how to sit back on his heels and open his hands to set himself in the proper attitude of humility and respect. When I came to the phrase where one would include the name of the dead, the boy was ready to tell me his brother’s name. But I held up my hand in warning. “Do you believe his soul yet lives?” I said.
“I want to think it.” Hope. Sorrow. Uncertainty. Fear that he was wrong. The same as all of us.
“Then, don’t speak his name to me, a stranger.” Certainly not to one that was demon-touched. “Names are the entry to the soul. Never give them lightly.”
“Is that why you don’t ask our names? Da—my brother—thought you despised us. We’d always been told that no Ezzarian—”
“Your pardon, lad.” Blaise stepped into the circle of firelight and extended his hand to the boy, who jumped to his feet, all his attention reverted to his commander. “I don’t like to interrupt, but I need to speak with our new friend a moment. Here . . .” Blaise pulled the boy close to him and locked his gaze on the grief-ravaged young face. “I’ve not had a chance to mourn with you. At sunset tomorrow we’ll raise him a cairn, and you can sing this chant you’ve learned.” He gripped the youth’s shoulders firmly. “His death will not be wasted. I promise. Now, go to Farrol. Tell him I’ll be at Wellyt Vale until late, and he needs to see to the watch. Everyone’s tired.”
The boy bowed awkwardly before he left. “Thank you.” He walked into the woods, but returned very quickly. “His name was Davet. I’m Kyor.”
I nodded and pressed a clenched fist to my breast in the way of Ezzarians.
“Lys na Seyonne,”
I said, telling him my name as one does to a guest-friend. “Good night, Kyor.”
As the boy ran lightly toward the other fires glimmering through the trees, Blaise kicked my boots to me. “We need to go for a walk. You said your leg was not too bad . . . ?”
“It’s fine,” I said, pulling on some dingy breeches that at least had both legs intact, and sticking my feet in the boots. “A walk would be good. Keep it from stiffening up.” I was happy for any distraction from the day’s disaster.
We strolled up a gently sloping path toward the southern end of the valley. As the faint track wound through the thickening pines and birches, the sounds and lights of the outlaw camp faded quickly, leaving only the last birdsong of evening and the gurgle of a stream from under the thick leaves of houndberries and foxgloves to break the silence. I waited for Blaise to begin. Clearly he had some purpose in mind. But he said nothing, and I had to be satisfied with the cool, clear night air, tinged with the first edgy promise of winter. We topped a rise, and Blaise led me through a thick birch grove before the path fell away into another valley that stretched eastward toward the rising moon. A trailer of wood smoke teased at my nose, as well as the smell of goats, and before long I heard the murmuring of another stream and caught a glimpse of lantern light ahead of us.
The sod-roofed cottage stood at the edge of the trees, overlooking a broad meadow, watered by a stream that sparkled in the growing moonlight like a jeweled band. A garden plot, full to bursting, ready for harvest, lay to one side of the house, and a large man was shutting the gate to a goat pen that lay on the other side. He held still when he caught sight of us walking out of the wood.
“I’ve brought a visitor,” called Blaise. “I hope it’s not too late.”
“Just done milking,” the man called back. “It’s still early for us as work for a living.” The big man’s hearty rumble was welcoming. He didn’t wait to greet us, but limped slowly for the cottage, a pail in one hand, a sturdy crutch in the other. I hadn’t noticed when he was standing beside the fence, but the man had only one leg. “Linnie! Blaise has come with company!”
By the time the man reached the house, the door was open and yellow lantern light fell onto the path. The one-legged man, a Manganar whose brown curly hair and massive shoulders put me immediately in mind of a bear, paused in the light to greet us. A woman stood in the doorway with a blanketed bundle cradled on her shoulder. Her long dark hair was tied with a faded green ribbon, and her skin shone red-gold in the lantern light. Ezzarian.
“Welcome!” The man set down his pail and gripped Blaise’s hand. “About time you came for a visit. It seems a year since we’ve had news.”
“A busy time even for those who don’t work for a living,” said Blaise, smiling at him.
“Hush, the both of you,” said the woman, the loving brilliance of her gaze belying her severity. “I’ve just got this mite to sleep, and whoever wakes him will have to deal with me.” She allowed Blaise to kiss her on the cheek, and when their faces were so close together, it was not difficult to guess their kinship.
“My sister Elinor,” said Blaise, smiling fondly at the woman who was almost his same height. “And her husband Gordain. This”—he nodded at me—“is a new man joined us a month ago. I’ll let him introduce himself.”
“Seyonne,” I said.
The one-legged man motioned with his head that I follow his wife into the house. The place was clean and neat, though cramped for three grown men and the tall woman. A small table of smoothed pine was laid with two wooden bowls and two mugs that Elinor quickly made four. Three well-made stools sat along the wall beside a cupboard with shelves containing bags of flour and salt, packets of meal and herbs, a plate mounded with butter, and the other usual furnishings of a modest kitchen. The floor was wood, scattered with clean straw. The bed in the corner was neatly covered with woven blankets of blue-dyed wool, and a black iron pot hung over the fire, with a supper porridge bubbling in it.
“You’ll sit down with us?” said Elinor, setting the table one-handed, while Gordain filled a copper pitcher with milk from his pail, then took the rest back outside. “You both look tired to death. My brother is a hard taskmaster, is he not?”
“I’ve never known anyone quite like,” I said, taking the butter plate from her hand and putting it on the table.
Blaise drew up the stools and a barrel for the fourth, then took a knife from the shelf and cut bread, putting a chunk in each bowl. His sister took down a blue pottery cup that had perhaps two spoons of sugar in it and set it in the place of honor in the center of the table. “As soon as Gordain has put the milk to cool, we’ll eat. I’ll see if I can lay this one down for a bit. He does dearly love to be carried about.” She pulled the soft woven blanket from the bundle on her shoulder, and turned to the side so I could see. “Seyonne, meet Evan-diargh.”
It was a vision come to life—a vision I had created from madness and despair in the rocky desolation of Col’Dyath, now born in soft warm flesh of rosy gold, a dusting of black straight hair, and long, dark lashes that would shade eyes of Ezzarian black. With a hesitant finger I touched the rounded cheek, and the babe stirred, sighing and nestling his small straight nose closer to Elinor’s long neck, though his eyes did not open. I knew him as I knew my own hand, as I recognized the sun that came up in the morning, as I knew the stars of Ezzaria. He was my son.
CHAPTER 15
I glanced quickly at Blaise, but he was concentrating on the bread. Surely he knew I would guess. Who was so blind as not to recognize his own flesh? So the young outlaw had brought me here for a purpose and was not afraid of what might come of it. What kind of fool was he?
Elinor laid the child in a basket near the hearth. Gently. Lovingly. I squatted on the floor beside her and watched as she tucked the blanket around his sturdy limbs and brushed her hand softly across his silken hair. “His name means ‘son of fire,’ ” she said. “He is a beauty, is he not?”
I nodded, unable to answer. At the edge of my hearing whispered demon music. If his eyes were to open, I would see blue fire lacing the black centers.
“One of Blaise’s foundlings, brought from Ezzaria itself. He’s told you of them?”
“I’ve heard,” I said, stammering like a student Warden at his first testing. “Tell me . . . what does he do? I’ve no experience with infants.”
Elinor laughed softly and stood up, her hands on her hips. “Drinks milk and puts it out again. Sleeps and cries and laughs, and demands quite noisily to be held and carried every minute of every day. But he takes to the holding and carrying so sweetly, that I don’t know he’ll learn to creep or walk on his own until he’s too heavy for us to heft. We don’t grudge it.”
“You’ve no others of your—”
“No others. I’m barren, as it happens.” She smiled radiantly at the bearlike man who was just coming back in the door. “Gordain never complained, never spoke of putting me away, so this little one was a gift beyond compare. Once we learned how to get enough of Tethys’ milk down him so we could get some sleep, we’ve never rued his coming.”
Gordain had maneuvered himself onto a stool, setting his crutch aside, and begun questioning Blaise about the latest raids. Blaise told the somber story of the day’s doings, and then went on to other news of the Empire and the outcome of recent raids. Elinor invited me to sit beside her husband while she ladled porridge in our bowls, then she sat down and joined in the lively discussion. From the sound of it, she had been a raider herself in the days before Evan had come to live with them. I ate what was put before me, wrestling with what I was to do. But as I watched and listened to the three of them in the golden firelight of that little house, talking, planning, alight with their ambition to remake the dreary world, the answer was very clear, as Blaise had known it would be.
What sort of Manganar would stay with a barren wife when his priests told him that the number of his sons would fix his place in the afterlife and the number of his daughters give him wealth and riches there? What kind of woman would take in a child discarded by an entire race for fear of it? With cold precision, I examined the hollow where my heart had once lived, and I excised the nubbin of life that had sprouted there. What more could I give my child than these two?
We stayed late, Blaise and Gordain drinking summer ale and talking of Derzhi nobles and Suzaini merchants, and what supplies the outlaw band might need for the coming winter. Gordain had evidently lost his leg on one of Blaise’s early ventures, and though he did not complain or express any bitterness, he clearly chafed at being unable to join his fellows in their exploits. I helped Elinor clear away the supper, and I watched the babe, wondering if he would wake before time to go. He didn’t.