He had gone some distance when he heard running behind him on the trail. Gird slipped aside, crouching in the undergrowth to crawl back down parallel to the trail, and saw four men and the woman in the striped skirt jogging along. All were armed; the first watched the trail keenly, and stopped them about where Gird had left the trail.
"He can't be that far ahead of us," said one.
"Wait—I don't see—"
Gird stood up; they heard the rustling leaves and turned, clearly startled and alarmed.
"Why did you follow me?"
"We—I—wanted to join you," said the first man.
"I heard you let women join," said the woman.
Gird stepped out onto the trail, warily enough. "I do, if they're willing to take orders like anyone else. But we have rules you might not like."
"There's better than
him
," said the first man, jerking his chin in the direction of the brigands' camp. "I'd rather fight than steal."
Spring rains that year delayed everyone's movements. Gird drew and redrew his battle maps, revising his plans over and over again. His cohorts were most effective as he'd used them before, striking swiftly against small concentrations of the enemy, where they could outnumber them and control the surrounding country. But if the supply situation stayed as bad as it was, he could not do that another year; he would have to confront the lords' armies directly, win and control larger areas, to ensure the safety of food-producing lands and those who farmed them. Should he do that early, or late, after wearing down the lords' armies with raids? What would it cost him, in unsown grain, in next year's harvest?
In some areas, the lords were not allowing their peasants to plow and plant; in others, the farmers were guarded by soldiers. Gird shook his head at that. Why would they think he'd raid during planting time? His own forces protected an area in the Brightwater valley; over the winter he had urged all the farmers to form bartons and learn drill. Most of them had. Now his army protected them during planting, and he hoped they could protect themselves during the fighting season.
He began moving his army eastward, one cohort at a time, cloaked in the rains and leaving less trail than if he moved everyone at once. Ivis had found a good shelter two days' journey away, overhanging ledges that opened into a sonorous cavern. Gird himself went back and forth with the first two, then spent several days in Brightwater, settling accounts with Marrakai gold and hoping the town would be there when he got back. If he got back. Then he headed out with the last cohort, noticing that despite all his care, the tracks left by the others were as clear as any map ever drawn, one brown scrawl of mud after another across the new spring grass.
Roads,
he thought to himself.
We'll need good roads, when it's over.
What they needed now was good luck, the gods' gift of miracles; remembering the other times he'd wanted miracles, and what he'd actually received, he was not willing to ask. He felt unusually grumpy; he had banged his knee hard on the doorpost going out of the barracks, and it still throbbed. The damp raw air seemed to bite into the bruise, rather than soothe it. He hawked and spat, catching an early fly; that cheered him.
By nightfall, he felt he'd been marching for half a year. His feet were damp and cold; he pulled off his worn boots and pushed his feet near the fire, rubbing them. A fine drizzle hissed in the flames; smoke crawled along the ground, making them all choke and cough. Gird thought longingly of the barracks in Brightwater—even that merchant's house, with the brazier in the center of the table, where several men could sit around it and talk. He would never think like a merchant, but he had gotten over some of his first astounded contempt. He told himself to be glad he had a good leather cloak; time was when the drips off the trees would have wet his bare head. But it didn't work. He was cold, stiff, damp, and without reason homesick for his own small cottage, with his own fire on the hearth, and his own family around him. He said nothing; the others were quiet as well, on such a dismal evening.
The next day's march brought them to the rock shelter and cavern, where most of his army was gathered. He plunged again into the familiar problems: how large to make the jacks, how many sacks of grain and dried fruit did they have and how long it would last, where the nearest sources of supply were. He was more than ready to pull off his boots and stretch out near one of the fires for a rest when Selamis insisted that he had to speak to Gird privately.
Gird followed his assistant deeper into the cave, annoyed once more at Selamis's fidgits. They didn't have time for such nonsense.
"Here." The younger man's voice, hardly above a whisper, halted him.
"I'm here," growled Gird, trying for patience. "What is it now?"
Instead of answer, soundless light answered him. Between Selamis's clutched fingers shone a rosy glow, steady as daylight. His eyes glittered in it, squinted almost shut. Gird, through his own shock, saw the taut lines of his face, the tears that trickled down those quivering cheeks. He looked down, terrified, at his own hands, but they were outlined only from without, by Selamis's light.
"What—" His voice broke, and he swallowed, tried again. "What
is
that—what did you find? Where?"
"In me." The man's hands spread a little; the light glowed steadily between them, sourceless, rose-gold: the light of spring evenings hazed with pollen, of autumn dawns among the turning leaves. Or of friendly firelight, welcoming. Gird shuddered, and fought back a rising terror.
"You're a—a
mage?
" And almost simultaneously, rage shook him.
You lied to me,
he thought. But Selamis's face showed more fear than even he felt, fear not of him, but of the light.
"I don't know." The man spread his hands farther apart, sighed, and the light vanished. Far back up the passage, Gird could hear Raheli arguing still about how many onions should go in tonight's kettle—so it was still the same world, the same time. "I told you," the voice went on in the darkness, "that I am a lord's bastard. But I didn't tell you—"
What this time,
Gird wondered, remembering the many things his so-called luap had not told him until circumstances forced it. Would the man never find truth, and cease his lying?
"I was bred for magic." It came out in one gulping rush. Gird said nothing, listened to Selamis's breathing as it slowed again. "They do that now—"
"I asked you about that," said Gird softly. It made sense, now. "Go on," he said, more gently than he might have a moment before.
"I—I had none they could find," his luap said. "That's why they sent me away—the real reason."
"You know," Gird began as delicately as his nature allowed, "if you'd just tell me the whole damn truth to start with, we wouldn't have these little problems."
"I know. But if you'd known—"
"
Damn
it, I'm not a monster!" His voice echoed off the walls, most monster-like, and then he had to laugh, muffling it as best he could. "Oh lad, lad, you are too old for these tricks. I can believe your heritage of blood, true enough, the way you never trust outright—"
"Trust is dangerous," muttered Selamis.
"And you trusted me with this." As always, the rage and mirth had passed quickly; he felt a pressure to reassure this frightened man, a certainty that he must be saved for them.
"It has to be the magic," Selamis said, his voice now steady but very soft. "But I don't know—"
"When?" asked Gird, rather than let him entangle himself in his uncertainties.
"Two days ago, when we came. Raheli asked me to come back here and see if anything threatened. I fell over a ledge, just beyond here, and suddenly felt I'd fallen a long way. It was dark—darker than this—utterly dark inside and out, despair and grief. What I fear in death, only worse."
Gird grunted. Darker than this end of the cave, after that uncanny light had left it, he could not imagine. Fear? They all feared, but Selamis was braver than he knew. He had a storyteller's gift of tongue, that was all, that let him talk himself frightened.
"Then I called on Esea," the luap went on. Darkness pressed on Gird's shoulders, so hard he nearly gasped. Esea! Was he so much a lord's son he still reached for their god in his trouble? "And the Lady—both of them. Light came to my mind—not as memory of light, but light itself, within." Gird felt the hairs prickling on his arms and neck as the luap talked. "Silver as starlight, cool. Then under the silver light flowers grew in a wreath, but colored as in sunlight, sweet-smelling: the midsummer's wreath, fresh-woven. But the light was silver yet." Gird's eyes filled with tears, and he felt them hot on his cheeks. Not magic, then, but the gods' gift? It had to be. "Then the light came, in my clenched hands, just as I showed you, and in the light I could see the symbols on the rock."
"The
what?
" Gird muted that roar even as it came out. Again the light bloomed in front of him, the same serene rosy glow, but this time the luap's face was calm.
"Come on. I'm supposed to show you. They said tell Gird."
"They?" He didn't expect an answer, and got none, following the luap over that ledge of rock to a bell-shaped chamber in the cave. In its center was a smooth polished floor, inlaid with brilliant patterns. Something glittered there, as if faceted, but the light was too dim to make it clear. Selamis stepped around it, and Gird followed, eyeing it doubtfully. Selamis stopped before a recess in one side of the chamber.
"There," he said.
The light in his hands brightened. Gird looked uncertainly at the wall, as the designs became slowly visible, then glowed of their own light.
"It's something about elves," Selamis said, when Gird said nothing. "And something about the rockfolk, and something about the gods—"
"And men," said Gird, tracing one line with a blunt thumb, for he did not put the pointing finger, the shame finger, on anything that might be sacred. Something rang in his head, a sound he later thought of as the ringing of a great bone bell, his skull rapped by the god's tongue—but at that moment he was conscious only of the pressure, the vibration shaking wit and body alike.
When it ended, he was flat on his belly on the cold stone, eyes pressed shut, and he heard Selamis's equally shaken breathing nearby. He opened his eyes deliberately, rubbed his palms on the stone, and then over his head.
"You might have told me you were the
king's
bastard," he said, mildly enough he thought. Selamis had already come to a stiff crouch, the light still glowing between his hands.
"I should have." It was the first time he hadn't made an excuse. Whatever had happened had affected him, too. "I—I should have."
"You could be the heir. Bastardy's no bar, not with magic."
"I—don't have that much—"
"They should never have let you live." Gird heaved himself up, shook his head, and glanced cautiously at the graven designs. Now he could barely tell what they were, interlacing curves and patterns that meant more than any ordinary man could understand. Or should. He looked over at that mysterious pattern on the floor. "What's that?"
"I don't know."
"Huh. Bring your light, can you?" The light came, and Selamis with it, almost affronted to have Gird interested in something else. He could make nothing of it, even with more light and finally shrugged. "Well. Whatever that is, now we know what you are—do we?"
"King's bastard. Outcast. Light-maker." Selamis's voice was bitter.
"Do you want that throne, king's bastard?" The growl in Gird's voice made the chamber resonate. "Is that what it is, you'd like a peasant army to put you on your father's throne, let you rule instead?"
"No!" That howl, too, resonated, a reverberating shriek that seemed to pierce the stone itself. "No. I want—I just want—"
"Safety." Now it was contempt that shook the air.
"There is none." A mere whisper, but Gird heard it. He looked across the comfortable, cozy light into a face that had grown into its years. Almost.
"Right you are, lad. No safety, no certainty, and hell to pay if the others find out who you are. Is that what you see? Or do you also have the foreseeing magic?"
"Some, yes. Since the light came."
He would not ask. Pray to the gods for favor, yes, and make the sacrifices his people had always made, but he would not ask the future. That was for the wild folk, the crazy horse-riders, and the cool arrogant lords who had no need to ask, because they knew.
"I will not be what he is," Selamis said. "I renounce my own name, and name myself luap—I swear I will not inherit that throne, that way, that habit of being—" It sounded like a vow to more than Gird, and Gird did not interrupt. "I am no true heir; I renounce it." But the light glowed on, even when he spread his hands wide.
Gird waited, then into the silence said, "Lad, you can no more renounce what the gods give—that magic—than I can the strength of my arm or the knowledge of drill that forced me into this in the first place. I've been that road; it turns back on you."
"I will not be the king!" shouted the luap, eyes wide.
"No. You will not be the king. But you cannot divide the king's blood from your blood, or the king's magic from your mind. You have only the choice of use, not the choice of substance."
"What can I do?"
Gird's belly rumbled, and he had a strong desire to hawk and spit. Clearly that would not do in this place; he didn't want to find out what would happen if he did.
Grow up,
he thought to himself, but to the luap said, "For one thing, you can guide us back out. I'm hungry." Then, at the indignant expression, he said "By the gods, you're half-peasant: use sense. You can be who you are, and do what is right. What's so hard about that?" Then he strode away, past the patterns on the floor that seemed to have tendrils reaching for his feet, and stumbled into the ledge. "
Damn
it," he roared. "Come on." His shin would hurt for days, he knew it, and there was too much to do and not enough time.
No one said anything when he came out of the shadows to the cookfire, the luap at his heels. The onions in the stew had everyone belching.
They can smell us in the king's hall, right across the land,
Gird thought, going out to the jacks, but he wasn't worried. He would have to think about the luap, but not now. Now he had to think about the army, and the king's army, and where would be best to meet them.