"We need to do something about this."
"Us? Why not a Marshal?"
"Didn't you recognize that boy? He's one of ours." She urged her horse on; around it, people backed away, scowling and muttering Luap followed, getting the same scowls and mutters, and handsigns that he knew all too well. These were the peasants who never forgot or forgave anything the mageborn had done; his skin prickled all over: Slowly, pace by pace, the horses forced their way into the crowd. One man, enormous of girth and shoulder, refused to give way.
"We don't want
you
here," the big man said. Luap thought he remembered the man as a troublemaker in the last assembly. At least he had the same build and resolute scowl as the one who had stood up in the back and told Gird he was an old fool to trust the surviving mageborn.
"Perhaps not, but I am here, and I'm staying. What is this?"
"None o' yer business, magelover! Think we don't know how ye put it in Gird's ear, and you with that fancy magelady at yer side?" That was someone much shorter, who ducked quickly into the crowd; even from horseback, Luap could not see the man's face.
"That's right, Luap," the big man said. "You always claimed to be no threat, a true luap, even a steer, but day after day we see you with that sorceress and that old mageborn priest. Think we don't know you lust for magery like a boar for a sow? Think we don't know you hoard every scrap of power Gird gives you, may his eyes clear? Seems every time he sits in a court, he's come more to favor your people: we know who to blame for that. And every year he ages; he's not half the man he was the day of Greenfields, but you haven't a handful of gray hairs yet. What're ye doin', stealing his life from him bit by bit?"
An ugly sound, not quite a roar, from the crowd, showed their agreement. Luap's horse flattened its ears and tail, and shifted nervously under him. He could not have spoken, for the rage and contempt that filled him—these
dolts
, these
fools
, to think this of him, to blame Gird for partiality to the mageborn, when anyone with sense could see that Gird trod a knife-edge between the resentments of his people.
Anger roared through him, a cleansing wind that swept away the memory of his own half-loyalties, his own errors.
"I would give him my years, if it would help," he said, in such a tone that the crowd stilled. He meant it at that moment. "I am but a child, and he my wise elder. What is this, that you will not let Gird's luap know?"
"A mageborn brat causing trouble, then," said the man, in the tone of one who means
And what will you do about it?
The crowd opened just a little, showing a scrawny lad, much-bruised, in the grip of a husky man with his other fist cocked. Parik, that was, a member of one of the three granges in the lower city. His scribe's mind read the details off the last grange report: Marshal Donag, veteran of the war in its last year, and known for his dislike of the mageborn. Gird had commented on that when choosing another grange for Aris's training; Donag had later complained that he spoiled the boy. Parik he did not know, though he remembered the man's name on the grange rolls; he could not remember his craft or trade. He could not recognize the boy with all those bruises.
"Let him go." The Rosemage, in her gleaming armor, shone in the sun almost as if she had called her light. The crowd shifted slightly away from her, enlarging the central space. Even the man barring her way moved aside. "Is it Gird's way to batter children?"
"He's no child. He's a mageborn demon; he put fire on me." The man shook the boy, who wobbled and nearly fell.
"Let him go," Luap said, this time releasing enough of his own magery so that the man obeyed, as if his hands were not his own. The boy staggered across the open space to the Rosemage, bleeding from a broken nose and split lip, one eye rapidly swelling shut. She steadied him; Luap could feel her anger's warmth, like a banked fire, and hoped the boy would realize she was not angry at him. He was wondering how to get the boy to safety, how to send word to Gird, when he saw a disturbance in the crowd across the way. He saw sidelong glances, heard the murmurs that ran faster than an old man could walk,
Gird.
He hoped fervently that it was.
The crowd parted for him, reluctantly it seemed, and Luap watched that heavy-shouldered figure stalk into the sunlit opening. He could think of nothing to say; he watched Gird eyeing Parik and his bruised knuckles, the Rosemage and bruised boy. It had gone far beyond I-told-you-so, and Luap felt no satisfaction in that. Gird's glance had lost none of its edge; raked the crowd, and Luap saw many of them flinch from it.
"Well?" His voice cracked; Luap suddenly felt his own throat close in pity. Gird had not been well—really well—since Midwinter Feast, when he'd insisted on showing everyone how to do the Weaving dance in the snow, in and out of all the doors of the palace. It was monstrous that they would not let him rest and heal, that they kept pecking at him with one little problem after another.
Parik, insolent to the bone, tried to pass it off as the boy's fault, a misuse of magery, and then insulted Gird into the bargain, mocking the old man's sayings. Luap saw Gird turn pale, and hoped it was anger—it would have been anger, in the old days, but now it might be illness. Gird's next words did not reassure him; Gird's voice shook. The crowd stiffened; they did not quite growl. Parik pushed his luck, as such men always did, Luap thought, with a viciousness intended to break Gird's authority completely. He felt so angry he could hardly keep from attacking Parik—but Gird would not want that. He must fulfill Gird's trust, at least until Gird died. He was promising himself that he would kill Parik without pity the moment Gird died when Gird surprised him again.
Across that space, in the face of those who despised both of them, Gird met his eyes, nodded, and said, as casually as if they were relaxing after dinner; "You were right, and I was wrong. Are you still of the same mind?"
It could only be the plan he had forbidden so angrily. Luap felt the heat mount to his face; he stammered his answer. Of course he was of the same mind—but to say it
now
—!
"They are not all Parik." Luap winced; Gird, of all men, should not have to plead that way to him. He nodded. He saw that Gird understood that, trusted him now as he had never trusted him before. What Gird might have said next, he never found out, for Parik interrupted, furious that Gird would dare speak to a mageborn. Rude, loud, insolent—and this at last roused the old Gird, the Gird who had settled more than one dispute with his fist. He rounded on Parik with the same intensity, the same deep roar, stalked up to him as if he would as soon clout the lout on the ear as take another breath. Parik backed away, as so many bullies had backed away, making excuses. . . . Luap smiled inwardly. That would do him no good with Gird: excuses never did. Gird went on, inexorably as always, digging at the root of the matter: what really happened? Who did what first?
Luap had not noticed the girl before she spoke; he doubted anyone had. But the boy the Rosemage held shivered as she came forward.
He
knew her. The girl's evidence made it clear that Parik's sons had started the trouble, and then their father had intervened, to help his sons beat the boy bloody, for no more reason than being mageborn and deft-handed. Parik claimed the boy had "put fire" on him then; the girl claimed that if he did, it was to save his life.
Again an interruption, this time Marshal Donag, who tried blustering and sarcasm. To hear him talk, Luap thought, you'd think he'd fought the whole war at Gird's side—or by himself, with Gird coming in at the end. He didn't really hear what they said, concentrating instead on being ready for the trouble he knew was coming. This crowd was as ripe for riot as the summer air for a thunderstorm. Thus it was only the Rosemage's gasp of surprise that brought his attention back to the actual words, and he was as astonished as any in the crowd when Gird suggested exiling the mageborn. ". . . Send them all away," he heard. "Will that satisfy you? Let the boy go, and any like him."
His own plans in Gird's voice; his own dream exposed, taken over.
But the crowd wanted none of it. Like the brooding menace of a dark cloud on a sultry day, the crowd's mood darkened, threatened; he could almost see the murderous anger. Luap struggled to meet it with calmness, to convey that he was not part of this—that he would not meet that anger with his own, that he would honor the oath he had sworn. As if he could reach Gird's mind with his own, he held his thought before him in clarity:
We will not fight. We will not break your peace.
He was sure they would die here, he and the Rosemage and the boy, and probably Gird as well, when the crowd finally stirred, but at least he would have kept his oath.
The change in Gird's expression, the shift from grief through resignation to wild astonishment, brought him back to full attention. All those who could see Gird were locked in the same pose: rigid, staring. All at once, the old man seemed to come alight, not the magelight he knew, but something else, something that made magelight look homely and comfortable.
Then Gird spoke. The words . . . the words had meaning, but no form; sound but no meaning. He could not follow them; he could not do anything else. They battered at him, shattering walls of reticence, caution, prudence, opening up spaces in his heart which he had hardly known existed. As a house unroofed by storm seems suddenly small and full of light, its furnishings dim and shabby in the open air, his mind looked strange to him. Yet as Gird continued to speak those words he could not quite hear, he felt cleansed. He had not wanted to furnish his mind's walls with such shoddy ideas, or its rooms with such ill-made decisions. He could let go, now, of his fears, his spite, his wish that things might have been different . . . he could trust others, as Gird was trusting him. He was scarcely aware of the tears that streaked his face, and only slightly more aware of the Rosemage's voice, murmuring a counterpoint to Gird's.
But this would kill him. Surely this would kill him. Luap blinked away his tears; it was not fair that Gird, who had earned a peaceful old age, should be the one to die of this. He wanted to help, wanted to do something to save Gird, but he could not speak. A voice spoke; he knew what it was, as Gird had always suggested he would if it happened. He had his command. This was not his task. Something else was.
Gird fell silent. Luap could tell that others had been affected as he was; faces had softened from angry hostility to the surprised bewilderment of children who do not understand. He looked up, and saw what might be the cloud such summer days breed, but one that boiled with malice . . . he knew what it was, the dark malice of them all, in a form visible to some . . . and now cleansed, but for how long?
Gird's face changed again, this time through disbelief to calm acceptance. The cloud contracted, condensing around Gird to a black fog that seemed to weigh on him, pressing in on him until he collapsed slowly. Even as he watched, even as he stood paralyzed by awe that such a thing could happen, Luap was aware of part of his mind trying to fit what he saw into words. He would have to write it; he knew that as surely as he knew this would kill Gird. He would have to write it, and how could he possibly convey, in mortal language, what he was seeing? No one could possibly believe it. The cloud thickened as it grew smaller, as Gird struggled to stay upright, and sank to one knee, then to both, then fell on his face. The cloud vanished, and Gird lay motionless. Luap knew he was dead, even as he found he could move again, and came to Gird's side to touch him.
In his own mind, in the faces of others, Luap saw changes he could not yet analyze. Fears vanished; all the nagging barbs of envy and irritation ceased . . . sorrow pierced him, but he knew, even then, that sorrow would heal.
Free
, a corner of his mind whispered to him.
You're free, now.
But in the silent space where he knelt, holding Gird's cooling hand in his, he felt not free but rebound to Gird's service. All the rancor, the quarrels of the past days . . . none of that mattered. He had never realized how he loved Gird, how he respected him; he had fooled himself with his ambitions.
I'm sorry
, he said silently.
I will do better.
In that peace of mind which perfect sorrow brings, he and the others carried Gird's body back up the hill, to lie in the High Lord's Hall a brief space before burial. Silence followed them, spread through the streets, and despite crowds packed breathless close, no noise intruded. In one brief, almost cordial meeting, the Marshals then in residence in Fin Panir, Arranha, and Luap agreed that Gird should be buried in what had been the palace meadows, and his name carved in a stone of the Hall's nave. No argument, not even a hint of discord, marred that meeting, or the solemn ceremonies that followed. Messengers rode out at once to distant granges; Luap felt only sorrow that Raheli, at the eastern border of the land, could not possibly arrive in time for the funeral.
Despite the crowds that poured into Fin Panir from every town and vill and farmstead within two days' travel, the crowded streets never erupted into argument or brawl. People hugged each other, crying, then walked arm in arm, smiling through their tears. Peasant-born greeted mageborn, and mageborn greeted peasant-born, all at peace and willing to meet as equals. With hardly any formal organization—for the peasant folk had no tradition of elaborate funerals, and no one consulted the remaining mageborn—the city orchestrated a spontaneous ceremony unlike anything its citizens had ever seen. "It seems right," someone would say, and others would agree, as if they had had the same idea but had been slower to speak. They would have a procession from the city wall to the High Hall, and then follow as Gird's body was taken out to the meadow for burial. The family-centered verses of a village funeral would be spoken by volunteers, who had come forward to tell Luap "I want to say the younger sister's part" or "We want to sing the brothers' song."
Two elves brought a length of white cloth bordered in intricate blue embroidery, finer than any Luap had seen, to wind the body in, and herbs to preserve it until the burial. The Gnarrinfulk gnomes sent a squad of gnomish pikes to stand guard over the body. A squat, red-haired, bandy-legged horse nomad appeared the second day with a sack of horsehair he claimed was the forelock and tail of his clan's lead mare and stallion. The horse hair was to be plaited, it seemed, into rings for Gird's great toes and thumbs, the remainder to stuff a pillow for his head. When the nomad found no one skilled at such work, he muttered but sat down in the main court to do it himself. Then, before the funeral, he rode away. Luap hoped he was satisfied; the horsefolk made difficult enemies, and might easily consider that Gird's death dissolved any agreements with his successors.