The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (107 page)

So it was settled. Lord Intavio agreed to the posting because he had no choice, surrounded by the far greater jaran army in the hinterlands that straddled the border between Mircassia and Filis.

In the morning, leaving Sakhalin to mop up the remains of Prince Basil’s army, which had by now scattered into the hills, Vasha took a contingent of one thousand men, half jaran riders and half Mircassian cavalry, and rode southwest, toward Jeds. Toward his father.

They came after twenty-six days of hard riding to Jeds. Vasha left his guard in the camp that had sprung up to the east of the city and rode the rest of the way with a smaller escort of one hundred picked men and twenty archers. They circled the city and went directly to the palace.

Tess came herself to greet him, where he dismounted in the great courtyard that fronted the palace. She grinned and hugged him, there in front of everyone, and a moment later Natalia and Yuri ran shrieking from the eastern loggia and threw themselves on him, jumping on him and tugging at his armor and dancing around.

“Gods, you’ve grown. Stand back. Let me look at you.”

Natalia stuck her hands on her hips. “Papa gave me a horse,” she said. “It’s a very fine horse, too, I’ll have you know. And Lara didn’t get one because she took Kriye out bareback and got thrown, too.”

“Lara is here, too?”

“Yes, and Sofia. We all sailed south together, and none of us got sick, only Yuri did.”

Yuri had already strayed off to examine the strange khaja armor worn by the Mircassian soldiers, so he could not defend himself against this slur.

“How many of the children came south from Jeds?” Vasha asked Tess.

She only smiled. “Enough. They’re very loud.”

“Did Stefan bring them down?”

“No, Sonia did. Didn’t you hear? Stefan just got married.”

“So Jaelle did get pregnant!” Vasha laughed. “That’s the last I heard, that Stefan hoped it was true, but they weren’t sure yet. He’ll come to Mircassia then, when the child is safely born.”

“And you must come in and get that armor off. I’ll get you something to drink.”

“Where is…my father?”

She hesitated, then lifted a hand in the direction of the sea. “Out riding.”

“Perhaps I should go out directly.”

“If you wish. What news have you brought, Vasha? You look well.”

He gave a brief account of the battle and its outcome, the disposition of armies, the current mood of the Mircassian populace, which favored Rusudani and her consort, and the council, which remained suspicious.

He took in a deep breath. “Rusudani is pregnant.” Unable to help himself, he grinned.

Tess raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t wait long. She can’t have had the other child that long ago.”

“Aren’t you happy for me?” he demanded.

“Now, Vasha,” she said, maddeningly calm, “let’s wait until the child is born to celebrate. What happened to the other baby?”

“When it was eight weeks old, Rusudani sent it north to Lady Jadranka with a wet nurse and an honor guard. It was a little boy. I left before we heard whether the child arrived safely. It was a pretty child.” He said it wistfully. He had been sorry to part with the infant, but Rusudani had refused to have anything to do with it. As far as he knew, she had never come to see the baby after it had been born.

Tess put a hand on his hair, ruffling it as if he were a child, and smiled affectionately at him. “I’m glad you came, Vasha. Go see your father.”

Like a good son, he obeyed, stripping out of his armor and just wearing his padded surcoat over his clothes. One of the palace grooms brought him a fresh horse, and he rode out with two escorts.

Most of the palace fronted a cliff, but to the north the ridge dropped down and melded with the shoreline, forming a broad strand at the mouth of the River Edesse. Vladimir and a handful of guards sat, some on their horses, some dismounted, at the farthest limit of solid land, keeping watch, but Vasha could see a distant figure that must be his father much farther out on the beach.

Vasha handed his reins over to his guard and headed out onto the strand. Once out of the slight windbreak provided by the last low promontory, he had to duck his head repeatedly to keep the stinging sand from his eyes.

Here, on the shoreline, the wind blew continually, just as it did on the plains. The waves came in in layers, levels building one on top of the next, sliding in over the damp course of sand and soughing away again. The wind coursed over the water, changing its color, darkening it. The constant breaking of one wave atop the next layered an endless steady crashing noise over the world, that shrank into this one stretch of sand and the gray-blue sea, stretching out to the islands that dotted the horizon, pale grey with clouds.

Ilya turned, shading his face against the wind, and, recognizing him, nodded. Then he turned back to stare out to sea. He stood at the very limit of the land, at that point where land and sea blend and become one.

“What are you doing out here?” Vasha asked, having to pitch his voice loud to be heard above the wind.

“Where did you come from?” Ilya demanded.

Vasha launched into his description of the battle, the disposition of forces, the end of Filistian resistance.

Ilya heard him out in silence. “You are well?”

“Rusudani is pregnant,” said Vasha, but cautiously, not knowing what to expect.

For the first time, Ilya smiled. The wind tore through his hair, rippling his shirt sleeves all the way down his arms. “That’s my boy.”

Vasha could not help but laugh. “Why is it that women take the news one way and men another?”

“Women are more interested in the birthing of a child, men in the getting of it.”

Emboldened by this levity, Vasha repeated his initial question. “But what
are
you doing out here?”

“I’m just wondering,” said Ilya so softly that Vasha could barely hear him above the wind, “what lies beyond the sea.”

“What lies beyond the sea? Don’t you have enough to think about on the lands that lie between here and the plains? Half of the Yossian principalities could break away at any time, if they think we’ve weakened at all, and the Dushan king is still furious about losing the man who was the jaran governor there. Another of his sons is threatening open revolt against his father. And Mitya is still having trouble on his eastern border with Vidiya. Now that Filis is defeated, King Barsauma will begin negotiating over those two border provinces, and Yaroslav Sakhalin is sending scouts to the south. According to the reports we got from Kirill Zvertkov after he joined up with his army again, there has still been no recent word from the second expedition sent out along the Golden Road.

Ilya grunted. “I would take a ship to Erthe,” he said absently. “Katya went, and returned, and went north to Sarai.”

“When was this? Does she mean to stay? Perhaps she will come to Mircassia now.”

“No. She means to return to Erthe. She’ll sail from the north, she says. She may already be gone. I don’t know. We haven’t had word yet. That was months ago.”

Vasha struggled with his disappointment and finally got it under control in time to hear his father going on.

“There is something strange about Erthe, Vasha,” he said, describing his words with his hands. “I don’t think it’s a land like these lands. I think it is bounded on one side by the ocean and on the other by the heavens themselves, so that if a man stood on the shore he would look out into the vault of the sky, only it would lie at his feet instead of above his head.”

Vasha laughed. “How could that be?” Sobering, he saw that his father was serious. Ilya was not truly looking at the ocean or listening to the roar of the waves. He was oblivious to the bite of the wind and the fine blowing sand on his skin. He had gone on a Singer’s journey, traveling to lands that could only exist in his own mind or beyond human ken, in the worlds that belong to the gods.

“Father!” Exasperated, Vasha raised his voice. “Haven’t you spent enough time staring out at the water? There are lands to administer
here
, right here. I have a much more detailed report to give you, and three other messengers with me, who have reports to give as well. But you only care about what lies beyond, not what you have in your hands already.”

He turned, looking toward the guards who waited on the ridge. They stood there, small figures like statues unmoved in the wind. Another rider came, picking her way down the ridge. It was Tess. He recognized her at once, even at this distance.

Ilya did not reply. He did not appear to be listening. A wave ran in and crept up to his boots, then slid back, absorbed into the next wave.

Vasha shrugged finally. It was not his right to disturb the meditation of a Singer. He turned full around and began to walk back across the sand, to meet Tess. Out here the strand was flat and dry, untouched by water, and the wind hit with redoubled force, sculpting the sand into endless tiny ranges of irregular hills, running out along the strand until they were lost to distance.

“Does he come out here often?” he asked as Tess came up to him and they stopped together and looked toward the shoreline and the silhouette of Ilya.

“Yes. I’ve never quite figured out what he does, though, except just to look. Perhaps the constant wind out here reminds him of the plains.”

“He’s searching for the shores of heaven,” said Vasha flippantly, still irritated by his father’s infuriatingly pointless musing.

But Tess smiled sadly. “Has he found them yet?”

“Can anyone find them? I have work to do, reports to hear, Talia and Yuri to play with. I need to write a letter to my wife. I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”

She shook her head, and he threw up his hands in disgust and went back by himself. He stopped once, when he was almost at the ridge to look back.

The sun had come out from behind the clouds and it spilled its light along the waters, turning them to a rich gold. It was beautiful, in its way, rimming the edges of the clouds with white-gold where a patch of deep blue sky showed and reached until it flowed forward in the waves that spilled themselves into nothing at Ilya’s feet.

As if, thought Vasha, the shores of heaven had overflowed, lapping over into his world like a promise, sworn by the sun and the moon and the wind. If only Ilya would look at what lay right before him instead of always staring at the sky, he could see it for himself.

The wind picked up, blowing sand hard into Vasha’s face, and he shaded his eyes and watched as Tess reached Ilya at last and reached out to touch her husband’s arm. After a long pause, Ilya turned. Coming to himself, he said something to her and together they started back across the sands.

Vasha waited for them.