Warautumn (30 page)

Tryffon shook his head. “Far upstream, maybe; closer in, the channel is so steep it would be all but impossible to reach it. And by the time we could manage anything useful, Zeff would already have his moat. Oh, it might drain off slowly, but would it be slowly enough? Still, I suppose it’s something we should consider.”

Vorinn chuckled grimly and slapped Tryffon on the back.

“What’s funny?” the old Chief inquired.

Vorinn gestured to the rising water. “That. If nothing else, it gives us a time frame for action.”

“How so?”

“If we wait long enough, we can ice-skate over!”

“We’d better not be waiting that long,” Tryffon rumbled. “There’s always a chance Priest will gain enough control of Tir-Eron they can afford to put an army at our back.”

“They can’t,” Vorinn countered with conviction. “They won’t. I won’t let them. Before that happens, I’ll go find Avall myself.”

“And how will you do that, boy?”

“I may not be able to track him,” Vorinn replied with a grin. “But I’ll bet I know some birkits that can.”

“I’ll believe anything now,” Tryffon sighed—and fell silent. And for the next two hands they watched the water rising … rising … rising …

Avall lay propped up on his elbow, staring down at Strynn, who had drifted into a heavy slumber after the evening meal.
Should he wake her?
he wondered. She obviously needed rest, else she wouldn’t be sleeping now—not with so much going on. But he, in turn, needed her—needed to see how she really was, if nothing else.

Besides pregnant.

—With
his
children, now, not those sired by another man. Which made him wonder about Averryn. He barely knew Eddyn’s son—and would not have known him well in any case, since children were traditionally raised by their one-parents. But Averryn had been in Tir-Eron during the massacre on Mask Night, and he had heard nothing about the boy since. Not about Averryn—and not about his own mother.

That last shocked him.
Had he grown as cold-hearted as all that?
To forget people so closely tied to his blood, simply because they were not part of his day-to-day routine? As he sometimes tended to forget Strynn when in the presence of those he had known longer and more comfortably, if not more intimately?
Would it be this way every time they were apart?
A
period of fumbling uncertainty as they became reacquainted with each other? He didn’t require that with Merryn, nor with Rann—or even Lykkon. Why should it be so with his wife?

Should he therefore wake her and ask her—gently—to spend some time with him. Or would that, too, be viewed as selfishness?

“You shouldn’t worry,” came Merryn’s voice behind him: soft and low, but strong for all that. “She’s had very little rest for two eights—never mind being sick and pregnant. This is the rest of relief you’re seeing: She’s accomplished what she needs to accomplish, and for the next little while, she doesn’t care. It’s nothing to do with you.”

Avall reached around to find his sister’s hand and draw her up beside him, even as she pulled him away; the better—he knew—not to awaken Strynn. “Eddyn told me a long time ago that I didn’t deserve her: that I would never be able to give her what she really needs. And I’m afraid—I’m so afraid, Merry, that he was right. And I’d hate for him to be right, I’d
hate
it.”

“What did you tell him, then?” Merryn murmured back, as they eased away from the twilight camp.

“I told him … I told him that nobody ever deserves anybody.”

“Do you still believe that?”

“I don’t know. It’s so easy to reduce everything to favors and revenge, and all that. Take Myx, for instance: he tended me when I suddenly jumped into his room in the tower, and his life promptly fell apart, but he gained power and prestige for it, and lost nothing except an ordinary life, in place of which he’s got an extraordinary one. But is he keeping score with me for that? Will he walk up to me one day and say, ‘we’re even,’ and disappear forever?”

Merryn regarded him keenly. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That we’re all going to disappear on you?”

He eyed her askance. “Most of you have, at one time or another.”

“Most of us have
had
to. But we’ve all come back, haven’t
we? Whether you believe it or not, even I was planning to come back after I’d hidden the regalia. I know Strynn would’ve come back. Rann would live in your skin if he could. Kylin risked his life to try to get you out of Gem-Hold; and, accomplished as he is, even Lykkon would like nothing more than to grow up to be you, as would Bingg.”

Avall shook his head. “And what’s so special about me? I’m only good at one thing, and that’s making fancy things out of gold. Beyond that—I’d say I was good at choosing my friends, but that assumes I actually do that. Most of them just seem to wander into my life unsought. Beyond that—I don’t—”

A finger at his lips hushed him. “Don’t say ‘deserve’ again, or you
will
deserve what I give you, and you won’t like it, either. Besides, you’re forgetting one thing you’re good at, Avall, and that’s the one thing Eddyn never had—nor a lot of people we know. You’re good at caring.”

“Aren’t people supposed to be?”

A shrug. “So our ethics teachers would say—not that I’ve witnessed it much in practice. Then again, my feeling is that we care
more
than our elders do because we’re the first generation to reach adulthood after the plague, and the adults we saw around us were still so sore with grief they didn’t dare to care, because everyone they had cared about had died. They closed themselves off, and it’s up to us to reopen them.”

Avall found a tree and leaned against it. “Where is everyone?” he demanded, choosing not to respond to his sister’s flirtation with philosophy.

Merryn squinted into the surrounding gloom. “Bingg’s sitting watch with Rann and Kylin. Everyone else has gone in search of geens. Not to hunt them,” she added quickly. “Just to see if any are about. This is the time of day they like to forage, don’t forget: because this is when big prey animals venture into open spaces.”

“And if they find any?”

“Rann’s a span away from the Lightning Sword; that should be sufficient.” She paused, looking at the ground, suddenly
shy as a girl. “Speaking of caring,” she murmured. “I actually came seeking you with a question that involves that very thing.”

A brow quirked up. “And what would that be?”

Merryn gnawed her lip. “Krynneth. I’ve been thinking about him ever since I heard how you healed Kylin on the island.”

“You aren’t supposed to know about that!”

Merryn lifted a brow in turn. “According to your story, he was mad when you jumped the lot of you here, but he’s clearly recovered now. I wondered how that happened, but wasn’t sure how Kylin would respond to direct queries, so I asked around. Took two tries, and then … well, I assume you know who knows and who doesn’t.”

“I didn’t heal him,” Avall growled. “I just … helped him.”

“Which is all I want you to do for Krynneth. It shouldn’t be that hard. As far as I can tell, they both simply shut down from shock. The only difference is that it happened to Kylin suddenly; with Krynneth, it happened over time.”

Avall grimaced sourly. “I guess there’s no good reason not to at least make the attempt, given that Krynneth is not only my friend, but has done untold service to Eron. And that’s not counting what he is to you.” He paused, looked Merryn in the eye. “What
is
he to you, anyway?”

Merryn shrugged again, though she—almost—smiled. “Mostly a possibility, I’d say. I don’t know if I’d ever love a man enough to wed him. But I might love one enough to try a year-bonding. And Krynneth is one of those men.”

“I see.”

“He also likes you—a lot. More than you know, in fact. I was thinking that maybe, between the two of us, we could bring him to himself again. I really think that all he wants is to feel safe and wanted.”

Avall snorted. “He didn’t feel that way at court after the war?”

“He did, but he had a burden of guilt on him then—a
burden I understood and may, frankly, still be carrying around. And something I suspect you understand a little better now. But that’s beside the point. It’ll be night soon, and I know you want to start back north tomorrow. Forgetting ethics, Krynneth’s the most unpredictable person in your entourage right now. Wouldn’t you rather be able to trust him?”

Avall patted Merryn’s hand. “You don’t have to convince me of the need, sister, only that it’s necessary now.”

“This may be the best time,” Merryn replied soberly.

“Well,” Avall sighed, “lead the way. Where is Kryn, anyway?”

Merryn grinned wickedly. “We were all so preoccupied after dinner that I was afraid he’d wander off, or do something rash or stupid and get himself hurt. So I made sure he drank a lot, on top of which I put some sleeping herb in his wine, then helped him to our tent and left him there.”

“ ‘
Our
’ tent?”

“We share one. Div and Strynn did, too—before you arrived; it was safer than putting Div in with him.”

Avall could think of no reasonable reply.

They could see the cluster of boulders that marked their surrogate home by then, and hastened their steps that way. A small tent rose on the far side of it, midway between the stones themselves and the rope perimeter: close enough for inclusion, far enough away for privacy.

“Will this be noisy?” Merryn inquired, as they paused beside the entrance. “I don’t want to wake Strynn.”

Avall couldn’t suppress a smirk. “Shouldn’t be. We’ll see.”

Merryn undid the ties, then motioned Avall in ahead, before joining him. There was room for three lying side by side on the ground, with maybe half a span extra in either direction. Krynneth lay in the middle, flat on his back, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded on his chest, breathing peacefully, all in the efficiently precise manner Eronese children were taught to adopt as soon as they were old enough for quarters of their own.

Avall blinked at the soft, subtle light where he had been
expecting near darkness, since the outside world was quickly slipping from twilight into true night. But then he saw the source: a glow-globe in the smallest size anyone could make, nested on a tripod of small stones in the farthest corner.

“Lykkon,” Merryn offered. “He had a few among his stores. He said he didn’t think they were needed on the island, so he was saving them.”

“Typical,” Avall growled good-naturedly. “That’s why we love the boy.”

“More a man now, in case you haven’t noticed,” Merryn corrected. “His birthday is coming up soon. He’ll be twenty, and eligible for Fateing.”

Avall shook his head. “I’d almost forgotten about that! I wonder if Priest-Clan is even bothering to implement it. Or if that institution, too, has fallen by the way.”

“That’s one I personally could do without.”

Avall’s only reply was to claim a place on the ground close by Krynneth’s torso. “It’s one of the few things that
does
work: the way we educate people.”

“Doesn’t matter now, anyway,” Merryn murmured. “Do what you came to do.”

Avall bristled a little at being dismissed so casually, but began to compose himself as best he could. Which was difficult in light of the day’s events.

But maybe this was good for him, he reflected. And maybe Merryn knew that and was finding a way for him to calm himself. In any case, there was little to lose by trying.

“Should we wake him?” Merryn asked seriously, as she scooted around to Krynneth’s other side.

Avall shook his head again. “Kylin was sleeping when I did what I did with him, so that’s probably what we should do here. But I’ll tell you what: You can do the cutting.”

“Cutting?”

“How soon you forget, sister. I’ll need access to his blood. Mine, too, but that should be no problem, given that I just used the regalia.”

He left her to it, seeing her only from the corner of his eyes as she reached for Krynneth’s hand, while he fumbled in the pouch for the least innocuous gem, which was also the one that had healed Kylin. He found it by feel as much as anything: a sliver of glittering red folded in a square of sylk. It was fragile: so fragile that he feared he would break it.

He withdrew it carefully and unwrapped it, then stretched himself along Krynneth’s right side, while Merryn did the same on the other. It took a moment to find a comfortable position, but then he had one: lying on his left side, with his left hand curled above his head and his right ready to clutch Krynneth’s now-bleeding hand, which Merryn had just laid on his chest.

“Anything I can do?” she asked softly.

“Watch and wait—and break the contact if anything untoward occurs.”

“Will it?”

“It hasn’t—not with this gem. But that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

Merryn nodded silently, then, to Avall’s surprise, reached up to stroke the curve of Krynneth’s jaw. “He doesn’t deserve so much pain,” she whispered. “And I know exactly what I mean when I say ‘deserve.’ ”