Chapter 5
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“OH, MORIAN," ALESSAN WHISPERED, WISTFUL REGRET INfusing his voice. "I could have sent him to your judgment even now. A child could have put an arrow in his eye from here.”Not this child, Devin thought ruefully, gauging the distand the light from where they were hidden among the trees north of the ribbon of road the Barbadians had just ridden along. He looked with even more respect than before at Alessan and the crossbow hed picked up from a cache theyd looped past on the way here.
"She will claim him when she is ready," Baerd said prosaically. "And you are the one who has spent his life saying that it will be to no good if either one of them dies too soon.”
Alessan grunted. "Did I shoot?" he asked pointedly.
Baerds teeth flashed briefly in the moonlight. "I would have stopped you in any case.”
Alessan swore suctly. Then, a moment later, relaxed into quiet amusement. The two men had a manner with each other that spoke to long familiarity. Catriana, Devin saw, had not smiled. Certainly not at him. Oher hand, he reminded himself, he was supposed to be the one who was angry. The present circumstances made it a little hard though. He felt anxious and proud aed, all at once.
He was also the only one of the four of them who hadnt noticed Tomasso, bound at wrist and ao his horse.
"Wed better check the lodge," Baerd said as the tra mood slipped away. "Then I think we will have to travel very fast. Sandres son will name you and the boy.”
"We had better have a talk about the boy first," Catriana said in a tohat made it suddenly very easy for Devin to reclaim his anger.
"The boy?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. "I think you have evideo the trary." He let his gaze rest coldly on hers, and was rewarded to see her flush and turn away. Briefly rewarded.
"Unworthy, Devin," Alessan said. "I hope not to hear that note from you again. Catriana violated all I know of her nature in doing what she did this m. If you are intelligent enough to have e here you will be more than intelligent enough to now uand why she did it. You might suspend your own pride long enough to think about how she is feeling.”
It was mildly said, but Devi as if he had just been punched iomach. Swallowing awkwardly, he looked from Alessan back to Catriana, but her gaze was fixed oars, away from and above them all. Finally, shamed, he looked down at the darkened forest floor. He felt fourteen years old again.
"I dont particularly appreciate that, Alessan," he heard Catriana saying coldly. "I fight my own wars.
You know it.”
"Not to mention," Baerd added casually, "the dazzling inappro-priateness of your chastising anyone alive for having too much pride.”
Alessan chose to ighat. To Catriana he said, &quht star of Eanna, do you think I dont know how you fight? This is different though. What happehis m ot be allowed to matter. I t have this being a battle between you if Devin is to be one of us.”
"If he what?" Catriana wheeled on him. "Are you mad? Is it the music? Because he sing? Why should someone from Asoli possibly be—”
"Hold peace!" Alessan said sharply. Catriana fell abruptly silent. Not having any good idea where to look or what to feel, Devin tio simulate an inteerest in the loamy forest soil beh his feet. His mind a were whirling with fusion.
Alessans voice was gentler when he resumed. "Catriana, what happehis m was not his fault either. You are not to blame him. You did what you felt you had to do and it did not succeed. He
ot be blamed or cursed for following you as ily as he did. If you must, curse me for not stopping him as he went through the door. I could have.”
"Why didnt you then?" Baerd asked.
Devin remembered Alessan looking at him as hed paused in the archway of that inner door that had seemed a gateway to a land of dreaming.
"Yes, why?" he asked awkwardly, looking up. "Why did you let me follow?”
The moonlight urely blue now. Vidomni was over west behind the tops of the trees. Only Ilarion was overhead among the stars, making the night strah her shining. Ghostlight, the try folk called it when the blue moon rode alone.
Alessan had the light behind him so his eyes were hidden. For a moment the only sounds were the night noises of the forest: rustle of leaf in breeze, of grass, the dry crackle of the woodland floor, quick flap of wings to a branear by. Somewhere north of them a small animal cried out and another answered it.
Alessan said: "Because I khe tune his father taught him as a child and I know who his father is and he isnt from Asoli. Catriana, my dear, it isnt just the music, whatever you may think of my own weaknesses. He is one of us, my darling. Baerd, will you test him?”
On the most scious, rational level, Devin uood almost none of this. heless he felt himself beginning to grow cold even as Alessan spoke. He had a swooping sense, like the dest of a hunting bird, that he had e to where Morians portal had led him, here in the shadows of this wood uhe waxing blue moon.
Nor was he made easier wheuro Baerd and saw the stri look on the face of the other man. Even by the dist moonlight he could see how pale Baerd had bee.
"Alessan . . ." Baerd began, his voice roughened.
"You are dearer to me than anyone alive," Alessan said, calm and grave. "You have been more than a brother to me. I would not hurt you for the world, and especially not in this. Never in this. I would not ask unless I was sure. Test him, Baerd.”
Still Baerd hesitated, which made Devins own ay grow; he uood less and less of what was happening. Only that it seemed to matter to the others, a great deal.
For a long moment no one moved. Finally Baerd, walking carefully, as if holding tightly to trol of himself, took Devin by the arm and led him a dozen steps further into the wood to a small clearing among a circle of trees.
ly he low<df</dfn>ered himself to sit cross-legged on the ground. After a moments hesitation Devin did the same. There was nothing he could do but follow the leads he was being given; he had no idea where they were going. Not on the road Im on, he remembered Catriana saying in the palace that m. He linked his hands together to keep them steady; he felt cold, and it had little to do with the chill of night.
He heard Alessan and Catriana following them but he didnt look back. For the moment what was important was the enormous thing— whatever it was—that he could see building in Baerds eyes. The blond-haired man had appeared so effortlessly petent until this moment and now, absurdly, he seemed to have bee terribly fragile. Someone who could be shattered with uling ease. Abruptly, and for the sed time in that long day, Devi as if he were crossing over into a try of dream, leaving behind the simple, denned boundaries of the daylight world.
And in this mood, uhe blue light of Ilarion, he heard Baerd begiale, so that it came to him that first time like a spell, something woven in words out of the lost spaces of his childhood. Which is what, in the end, it was.
"In the year Alberico took Astibar," said Baerd, "while the provinces ea aando were each preparing to fight him alone, and before Ferraut had fallen, Brandin, King of Ygrath came to this
peninsula from the west. He sailed his fleet into the Great Harbor of Chiara aook the Island. He took it easily, for the Grand Duke killed himself, seeing how many ships had e from Ygrath. This much I suspect that you know.”
His voice was low. Devin found himself leaning forward, straining to hear. A trialla was singing sweetly, sadly, from a branch behind him. Alessan and Catriana made no sound at all. Baerd went on.
"In that year the Peninsula of the Palm became a battleground in an enormous balang game between Ygrath and the Empire of Barbadior. her thought it could afford to give the other free rein here, halfway betweewo of them. Which is one of the reasons Brandin came. The other reason, as we learned afterward, had to do with his younger, most-beloved son, Stevan. Brandin of Ygrath sought to carve out a sed realm for his child to rule. What he found was something else.”
The trialla was still singing. Baerd paused to listen, as if finding in its liquest voice, gentler even than the nightingales, an echo to something in his own.
"The Chiarans, attempting to rally a resistan the mountains, were massacred on the slopes of Sangarios. Brandin took Asoli province soon after, and word of his power ran before him. He was very strong in his sorcery, even strohan Alberico, and though he had fewer soldiers than the Barbadians in the east, his were more pletely loyal aer trained. For where Alberico was only a wealthy, ambitious minor lord of the Empire using hired meraries, Brandin ruled Ygrath and his were the picked soldiers of that realm. They moved south through Corte almost effortlessly, defeating each provinces army one by one, for none of us acted together in that year. Or after, naturally." Baerds voice wasnt quite detached enough for the irony he was trying for.
"From Corte, Brandin himself tur with the smaller part of his army to meet Alberi Ferraut and pin him down there. He sent Stevan south to take the last free provin the west and then cross over to join him in Ferraut to meet the Barbadians itle that I think they all expected would shape the fate of the Palm.
"It was a mistake, though he could not really have known it theeen years ago. Newly landed here, ignorant of the natures of the different provinces in this peninsula. I suppose he waevan to have a taste of leadership on his own. He gave him most of the army and his best anders, rely藏书网ing on his own sorcery to hold Alberitil the others joined him.”
Baerd paused for a moment, his blue eyes focused inward. When he resumed, there was a imbre to his voice; it seemed to Devin to be carrying many different things, all of them old, and all of them sorrowful.
"At the line of the River Deisa," Baerd said, "a little more than halfway betweeando and the sea at Corte, Stevan was met by the bitterest resistaher of the invading armies was to find in the Palm.
Led by their Prince—for in their pride they had always heir ruler so—the people of that last provin the west met the Ygrathens ahem, ahem back from the river with heavy losses on both sides.
"And Prince Valentin of that province . . . the province you know as Lower Corte, slew Stevan of Ygrath, Brandins beloved son, on the bank of the river at su after a bitter day of death.”
Devin could almost taste the keenness of old grief in the words. He saw Baerd glance over for the first time to where Alessan was standing. her man spoke. Devin ook his own eyes away from Baerd. He trated as if his life depended on his doing so, treating each word spoken as if it were a jeweled mosaic piece to be set into the memory that was his own pride.
And right about then it seemed to Devin that a distant bell began to toll in some recess of his mind.
Ranging a warning. As might a village bell in a temple of Adaon, summoning farmers urgently back from the fields. A far bell heard, faint but clear, from over m fields of waving yellow grain.
"Brandin knew what had happened immediately through his sorcery," Baerd said, his voice like the rasp of a file. "He swept back south a, leaving Alberico a free hand in Ferraut aando. He
came down with the full weight of his sorcery and his army and with the rage of a father whose son has been slain, a the remnant of his last foes where they had waited for him by the Deisa.”
Once more Baerd looked over at Alessan. His face was bleak, ghostly in the moonlight. He said: "Brandin annihilated them. He smashed them to pieces without mercy or respite. Drove them helplessly before him bato their own try south of the Deisa and he burned every field and village through which he passed. He took no prisoners. He had women slain in that first march, and children, which was not a thing hed done anywhere else. But nowhere else had his own child died. So many souls crossed over to Morian for the sake of the soul of Stevan of Ygrath. His father overran that provin blood and fire. Before the summer was out he had leveled all the glorious towers of the city in the foothills of the mountains—the one now called Stevanien. On the coast he smashed to rubble and sand the walls and the harbor barriers of the royal city by the sea. And itle by the river he took the Prince who had slain his son and later that year had him tortured and mutilated and killed in Chiara.”
Baerds voice was a dry whisper now uhe starlight and the light of the single moon. And with it there was still that bell warning of sorrows yet to e, tolling in Devins mind, louder now. Baerd said: "Brandin of Ygrath did something more than all of this. He gathered his magic, the sorcerous power that he had, and he laid doell upon that land such as had never even been ceived before. And with that spell he ... tore its name away. He stripped that erly from the minds of every man and woman who had not been born in that provi was his deepest curse, his ultimate revenge. He made it as if we had never been. Our deeds, our history, our very name. And then he called us Lower Corte, after the bitterest of our a enemies among the provinces.”
Behind him now Devin heard a sound and realized that Catriana was weeping. Baerd said, "Brandin made it e to pass that no one living could hear and then remember the name of that land, or of its royal city by the sea or even of that high, golden place of towers on the old road from the mountains. He broke us and he ravaged us. He killed a geion, and theripped away our name.”
And those last words were not whispered or rasped into the autumn dark of Astibar. They were hurled forth as a denunciation, an indit, to the trees and the night and stars—the stars that had watched this thing e to pass.
The grief in that accusation ched itself like a fist within Devin, more tightly than Baerd could ever have known. Than anyone could have known. For no one since Marra had died really knew what memory meant to Devin dAsoli: the way in which it had e to be the touchstone of his soul.
Memory was talisman and ward for him, gateway ah. It ride and love, shelter from loss: for if something could be remembered it was not wholly lost. Not dead and gone forever. Marra could live; his dour, stern father hum a cradle song to him. And because of this, because this w<cite>藏书网</cite>as at the heart of what Devin was, the old vengeance of Brandin of Ygrath smashed into him that night as if it had been newly wrought, pounding through to the vulnerable ter of how Devin saw a with the world, and it cut him like a fresh and killing wound.
With an effort he forced himself to steadiness, willing the tration that would allow him to remember this. All of this. Which seemed to matter more than ever now. Especially now, with the echo of Baerds last terrible words fading in the night. Devin looked at the blond-haired man with the leather bands across his brow and about his neck, and he waited. He had been quick as a boy; he was a clever man. He uood what was ing; it had fallen into place.
Older by far than he had been only an ho, Devin heard Alessan murmur from behind him, "The cradle song I heard you playing was from that last province, Devin. A song of the city of towers. No o of that place could have learhat tune in the way you told me you did. It is how I knew you as one of us. It is why I did not stop you when you followed Catriana. I left it to Morian to see what might lie beyond that doorway.”
Devin nodded, abs this. A moment later he said, as carefully as he could, "If this is so, if I have
properly uood you, then I should be one of the people who still hear and remember the hat has been . . . otherwise taken away.”
Alessan said, "It is so.”
Devin discovered that his hands were shaking. He looked down at them, trating, but he could not make them stop.
He said, "Then this is something that has been stolen from me all my life. Will you . . . give it bae? Will you tell me the name of the land where I was born?”
He was looking at Baerd by starlight, for Ilarion too was gone now, over west beyond the trees.
Alessan had said it was Baerds to tell. Devin didnt know why. In the darkhey heard the trialla one more time, a long, desding note, and then Baerd spoke, and for the first time in his days Devin heard someone say: "Tigana.”
Within him the bell he had been hearing, as if in a dream of unknown summer fields, fell silent. And within that abrupt, absolute iillness a surge of loss broke over him like an o wave. And after that wave came another, and then a third—the one bearing love and the other a heart-deep pride. He felt a strange light-headed dizzyiion as of a summons rushing along the corridors of his blood.
Then he saw how Baerd was staring at him. Saw his face rigid and white, the fear transparent even by starlight, and something else as well: bitterest thirst—an ag, deprived hunger of the soul. And then Devin uood, and gave to the other man the release he needed.
"Thank you," Devin said. He dido be trembling anymore. Around a difficult thiess in his throat he went on, for it was his turn now, his test: "Tigana. Tigana. I was born in the province of Tigana. My name . . . my true name is Devin di Tigana bar Garin.”
Even as he spoke, something akin to glory blazed in Baerds face. The fair-haired man squeezed his eyes tightly shut as if to hold that glory in, to keep it from esg into the dispersing dark, to clutch it fiercely to his need. Devin heard Alessan draw an unsteady breath, and then, surprised, he felt Catriana touch his shoulder and then withdraw her hand.
Baerd was lost in a place beyond speech. It was Alessan who said, "That is one of the two aken away, and the deepest. Tigana was our provind the name of the royal city by the sea. The fairest city under Eannas lights you would have heard it named. Or perhaps, perhaps only the seost fair.”
A thread of something that seemed to genuinely long to bee laughter was in his voice. Laughter and love together. For the first time Devin turo look up at him.
Alessan said, "If you were to have spoken with those from inland and south, iy where the River Sperion, desding from the mountain, begins its ruward to find the sea, you would have heard it said that sed way. For we were alroud, and there was always rivalry betweewo cities.”
In the end, hard as he tried, his voice could only carry loss.
"You were born in that inland city, Devin, and so was I. We are children of that high valley and of the silver running of that mountain river. We were born in Avalle. In Avalle of the Towers.”
There was musi Devins mind again, with that name, but this time it was different from the bells hed heard before. This time it was a music that took him back a long way, all the way to his father and his childhood.
He said, "You do know the words then, dont you?”
"Of course I do," said Alessaly.
"Please?" Devin asked.
But it was Catriana who answered him, in the voice a young mht have used, rog her child to sleep on an evening long ago: Springtime m in Avalle And I dont care what the priests say: Im going down to the river today On a springtime m in Avalle.
When Im all grown up, e what may, Ill build a boat to carry me away And the river will take it to Tigana Bay And the sea even further from Avalle.
But wherever I wander, by night or by day, Where water runs swiftly h trees sway, My heart will carry me bad away To a dream of the towers of Avalle.
A dream of my home in Avalle.
The sweet sad words to the tune hed always known drifted down to Devin, and with them came something else. A sense of loss so deep it almost drowhe light grace of Catrianas song. No breaking waves now, or trumpets along the blood: only the waters of longing. A longing for something taken away from him before hed even known it was his—taken so pletely, so prehensively he might have lived his whole life through without ever knowing it was gone.
And so Devi as Catriana sang. Small boys, young-looking for their age, learned very early in northern Asoli how risky it was to cry where someone might see. But something toe for Devin to deal with had overtaken him in the forest tonight.
If he uood properly what Alessan had just said, this song was one his mother would have sung to him.
His mother whose life had been ripped away by Brandin of Ygrath. He bowed his head, though not to<q></q> shield the tears, and listened as Catriana fihat bitter-sweet cradle song: a song of a child defying orders and authority, even when young, who was self-reliant enough to want to build a ship alone and brave enough to want to sail it into the wideness of the world, urning baor ever losing or fetting the place where it all began.
A child very much as Devin saw himself.
Which was one of the reasons he wept. For he had been made to lose and fet those towers, hed been robbed of any dream he himself might ever have had of Avalle. ana on its bay.
So his tears followed one another downward in darkness as he mourned his mother and his home.
And in the shadows of that wood not far from Astibar those two griefs fused to each other in Devin and became welded in the fe of his heart with what memory meant to him and the loss of memory: and out of that blazing something took shape in Devin that was to ge the running of his life line from that night.
He dried his eyes on his sleeve and looked up. No one spoke. He saw that Baerd was looking at him.
Very deliberately Devin held up his left hand, the hand of the heart. Very carefully he folded his third and fourth fingers down so that what showed was a simulacrum of the shape of the Peninsula of the Palm.
The position for taking an oath.
Baerd lifted his right hand and made the same gesture. They touched fiips together, Devins small palm against the other mans larger, callused one.
Devin said, "If you will have me I am with you. In the name of my mother who died in that war I swear I will not break faith with you.”
"Nor I with you," said Baerd. "In the name of Tigana gone." There was a rustling as Alessan sank to his knees beside them. "Devin, I should be cautioning you," he said soberly. "This is not a thing in whiove too fast. You be oh our cause without having to break your life apart to e with us.”
"He has no choice," Catriana murmured, moving nearer oher side. "Tomasso bar Sandre will name you both to the torturers tonight or tomorrow. Im afraid the singing career of Devin dAsoli may be
over just as it truly begins." She looked down ohree men, her eyes unreadable in the darkness.
"It is over," Devin said quietly. "It ended when I learned my name." Catrianas expression did not ge; he had no idea what she was thinking.
"Very well," said Alessan. He held up his ow hand, two fingers down. Devi with his right. Alessaated. "An oath in your mothers name is stronger for me than you could have guessed,”
he said.
"You knew her?”
"We both did," Baerd said quietly. "She was ten years older than us, but every adolest boy in Tigana was a little in love with Mi-caela. And most of the growoo, I think.”
Another new name, and all the hurt that came with it. Devins father had never spoken it. His sons had never even known their mothers here were more aveo sorrow in this night than Devin could have imagined.
"We all envied and admired your father more than I tell you," Alessan added. "Though I leased that an Avalle man won her in the end. I remember when you were born, Devin. My father sent a gift to your naming day. I dont remember what it was.”
"You admired my father?" Devin said, stunned.
Alessan heard that and his voice ged. "Do not judge him by what he became. You only knew him after Brandin smashed a whole geion and their world. Ending their lives or blighting their souls.
Your mother was dead, Avalle fallen, Tigana gone. He had fought and survived both battles by the Deisa." Above them Catriana made a small sound.
"I never knew," Devin protested. "He old us any of that." There was a new ache inside him. So many avenues.
"Few of the survivors spoke of those days," Baerd said.
"her of my parents did," said Catriana awkwardly. "They took us as far away as they could, to a fishing village here in Astibar down the coast from Ardin, and never spoke a word of any of this.”
"To shield you," Alessan said gently. His palm was still toug Devins. It was smaller than Baerds. "A great many of the parents who mao survive fled so that their children might have a ce at a life unmarred by the oppression and the stigma that bore down—that still bear down—upon Tigana. Or Lower Corte as we must now.”
"They ran away," said Devin stubbornly. He felt cheated, deprived, betrayed.
Alessan shook his head. "Devin, think. Dont judge yet: think. Do you really imagine you learhat tune by ce? Your father chose not to burden you or your brothers with the danger of your heritage, but he set a stamp upon you—a tune, wordless for safety— and he sent you out into the world with something that would reveal you, unmistakably, to anyone from Tigana, but to no one else. I do not think it was o more than Catrianas miving her daughter a ring that marked her to anyone born where she was born.”
Devin glanced back. Catriana held out her hand for him to see. It was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to that, and he could make out a strawining shape upon the ring: a man, half human, half creature of the sea. He swallowed.
"Will you tell me of him?" he asked, turning back to Alessan. "Of my father?”
Of stolid, darin, grim farmer in a wet grey land. Who had, it noeared, e frht Avalle of the towers in the southern highlands of Tigana and who had, in his youth, wooed and won a woman beloved of all who saw her. Who had fought and lived through two terrible battles by a river and who had—if Alessan was right in his last jecture—very deliberately sent out into the world his one quick, imaginative child capable of finding what he seemed to have found tonight.
Who had also, Devin abruptly realized, almost certainly lied when he said hed fotten the words to
the cradle song. It was all suddenly very hard.
"I will tell you what I know of him, and gladly," Alessan said.
"But not tonight, for Catriana is right and we must get ourselves away before dawn. Right now I will swear faith with you as Baerd has done. I accept your oath. You have mine. You are as kin to me from now until the ending of my days.”
Devin turo look up at Catriana. "Will you accept me?”
She tossed her hair. "I dont have much choice, do I?" she said carelessly. "You seem to have entangled yourself rather thhly here." She lowered her left hand though as she spoke, two fingers curled. Her fingers met his own with a light, cool touch.
"Be wele," she said. "I swear I will keep faith with you, Devin di Tigana.”
"And I with you. Im sorry about this m," Devin offered.
Her hand withdrew and her eyes flashed; even by starlight he could see it. "Oh yes," she said sardonically, "Im sure you are. It was very clear, all along, hrettable you found the experience!”
Alessan snorted with amusement. "Catriana, my darling," he said, "I just forbade him to mention aails of what happened. How do I enforce that if y them up yourself?”
Without the fairace of a smile Catriana said, "I am the aggrieved party here, Alessan. You dont enforything ohe rules are not the same.”
Baerd chuckled suddenly. "The rules," he said, "have not been the same since you joined us. Why indeed should this be any differ-ent?”
Catriana tossed her head again but did not deign to reply.
The three men stood up. Devin flexed his ko relieve the stiffness of sitting so long in one position.
"Ferraut ea?" Baerd asked. "Which border?”
"Ferraut," Alessan said. "Theyll have me placed as Tregean as soon as Tomasso talks—poor man. If Id been thinking clearly I would have shot him as they rode by.”
"Oh, very clear thinking, that," Baerd retorted. "With twenty soldiers surrounding him. You would have had us all in s in Astibar by now.”
"You would have deflected my arrow," Alessan said wryly.
"Is there a ce he wont speak?" Devin interjected awkwardly. "Im thinking about Menico, you see. If Im named . . .”
Alessan shook his head. "Everyoalks uorture," he said soberly. "Especially if sorcery is involved. Im thinking about Menico too, but there isnt anything we do about it, Devin. It is one of the realities of the life we live. There are people put at risk by almost everything we do. I wish," he added, "that I knew what had happened in that lodge.”
"You wao check it," Catriana reminded him. " we afford the time?”
"I did, and yes, I think we ," said Alessan crisply. "There remains a piece missing in all of this. I still dont know how Sandre dAstibar could have expected me to be the—”
He stopped there. Except for the drone of the cicadas and the rustling leaves it was very quiet in the woods. The trialla had gone. Alessan abruptly raised one hand and pushed it roughly through his hair. He shook his head.
"Do you know," he said to Baerd, in what was almost a versational tone, "how much of a fool I be at times? It was in the palm of my hand all along!" His voice ged. "e on—and pray we are not too late!”
The fires had both died down in the Sandreni lodge. Only the stars shone above the clearing in the woods. The cluster of Eannas Diadem was well over west, following the moons. A nightingale was
singing, as if in ao the trialla of before, as the four of them approached. In the doorway Alessaated for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture Devin already reized. Then he pushed open the door and walked through.
By the red glow of the embers they looked—with eyes aced by now to darkness—on the age within.
The coffin still rested on its trestles, although splintered and knocked awry. Around it though, lay dead men who had been alive when they left this room. The two younger Sandreni. Nievole, a quiver of arrows in his throat and chest. The body of Scalvaia dAstibar.
Then Devin made out Scalvaias severed head in a black puddle of blood a terrible distance away and he fought to trol the lurch of siess in his ge.
"Oh, Morian," Alessan whispered. "Oh, Lady of the Dead, be geo them in your Halls. They died dreaming of freedom and before their time.”
"Three of them did," came a harsh, desiccated voice from deep in one of the armchairs. "The fourth should have been stra birth.”
Devin jumped half a foot, his heart hammering with shock.
The speaker rose and stood beside the chair, fag them. He was entirely hidden in shadow. "I thought you would e back," he said.
The sixth man, Devin realized, struggling to uand, straining to make out the tall, gaunt form by the faint glow of the embers.
Alessan seemed quite unruffled. "Im sorry I kept you waiting then," he said. "It took me too long to riddle this through. Will you allow me to express my sorrow for what has happened?" He paused. "And my respect for you, my lord Sandre.”
Devins jaw dropped open as if unhinged. He s shut so hard he hurt his teeth; he hoped no one had sees were moving far too fast for him.
"I will accep<cite></cite>t the first," said the gaunt figure in front of them. "I do not deserve your respect though, nor that of anyone else. Once perhaps; not anymore. You are speaking to an old vain fool—exactly as the Barbadian named me. A man who spent too many years aloangled in his own spun webs. You were right ihing you said before about carelessness. It has e three sons tonight. Within a month, less probably, the Sandreni will be no more.”
The voice was dry and dispassionate, objectively damning, devoid of self-pity. The tone of a judge in some dark hall of final adjudication.
"What happened?" Alessan asked quietly.
"The boy was a traitor." Flat, unied, final.
"Oh, my lord," Baerd exclaimed. "Family?”
"My grandson. Giannos boy.”
"The his soul is cursed," Baerd said, quiet and fierce. "He is in Morians custody now, and she will know how to deal with him. May he be trammeled in darkness until the end of time.”
The old man seemed not to have even heard. "Taeri killed him," he murmured, wly. "I had not thought he was brave enough, or so quick. Theabbed himself, to deny them the pleasure of whatever they might have learned of him. I had not thought he was so brave," he repeated absently.
Through the thick shadows Devin looked at the two bodies by the smaller fire. Uncle and nephew lay so close to each other they seemed almost iwined on the far side of the coffin. The empty coffin.
"You said you waited for us," Alessan murmured. "Will you tell me why?”
"For the same reason you came back." Sandre moved for the first time, stiffly making his way to the larger fire. He seized a small log and threw it otering flame. A shower of sparks flew up. He
, poking with the iron until a tongue of flame licked free of the ash bed.
The Duke turned and now Devin could see his white hair and beard, and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were set deep in their sockets, but they gleamed with a cold defiance.
"I am here," Sandre said, "and you are here because it goes on. It goes on whatever happens, whoever dies. While there is breath to be drawn and a heart with which to hate. My quest and your own. Until we die they go on.”
"You were listening, then," said Alessan. "From in the coffin. You heard what I said?”
"The drug had worn off by sundown. I was awake before we reached the lodge. I heard everything you said and a great deal of what you chose not to say," the Duke replied, straightening, a chilly hauteur in his voice. "I heard what you named yourself, and what you chose not to tell them. But I know who you are.”
He took a step towards Alessan. He raised a gnarled hand and poi straight at him.
"I kly who you are, Alessan bar Valentin, Prince of Tigana!”
It was too much. Devins brain simply gave up trying to uand. Too many pieces of information were ing at him from too many different dires, tradig each other ferociously. He felt dizzy, overwhelmed. He was in a room where only a little while ago he had stood among a number of men. Now four of them were dead, with a more brutal violehan he had ever thought to e upon. At the same time, the one man hed known to be dead—the man whose m rites he had sung that very m—was the only man of Astibar left alive in this lodge.
If he was of Astibar!
For if he was, how could he have just spoken the name of Tigana, given what Devin had just learned in the wood? How could he have known that Alessan was—and this, too, Devin fought to assimilate—a Prihe son of that Valentin who had slain Stevan of Ygrath and sht Brandins vengeance down upon them all.
Devin simply stopped trying to put it all together. He set himself to listen and look—to absorb as much as he could into the memory that had never failed him yet—and to let uanding e after, when he had time to think.
So resolved, he heard Alessan say, after a blank silence more than long enough to reveal the degree of his own surprise and wonder: "Now I uand. Finally I uand. My lord, I thought you always a giant among men. From the first time I saw you at my first Triad Games twenty-three years ago. You are even more than I took you for. How did you stay alive? How have you hidden it from the two of them all these years?”
"Hidden what?" It was Catriana, her voice so angry and bewildered it immediately made Devin feel better: he wasnt the only one desperately treading water here.
"He is a wizard," Baerd said flatly.
There was another silehen, "The wizards of the Palm are immuo spells not directed specifically at them," Alessan added. "This is true of all magic-users, wherever they e from, however they find access to their power. For this reason, among others, Brandin and Alberico have been hunting down and killing wizards sihey came to this peninsula.”
"And they have been succeeding because being a wizard has— alas!—nothing to do with wisdom or even simple on sense," Sandre dAstibar said in a corrosive voice. He turned and jabbed viciously at the fire with the iron poker. The blaze caught fully this time and roared into red light.
"I survived," said the Duke, "simply because no one knew. It involved nothing more plex than that. I used my power perhaps five times in all the years of my reign—and always cloaked under someone elses magid I have dohing with magiot a flicker, sihe sorcerers arrived. I didnt eve to feign my death. Their power is strohan ours. Far stronger. It was clear from the time each of
them came. Magic was never as much a part of the Palm as it was elsewhere. We khis. All the wizards khis. You would have thought they would apply their brains to that knowledge, would you not? What good is a finding spell, or a fledglial arrow if it leads oraight to a Barbadiah- wheel in the sun?" There was an acid, mog bitterness in the old Dukes voice.
"Or one of Brandins," Alessan murmured.
"Or Brandins," Sandre echoed. "It is the ohing those two carrion birds have agreed upon—other than the dividing line running down the Palm—that theirs shall be the only magi this land.”
"And it is," said Alessan, "or so nearly so as to be the same thing. I have been searg for a wizard for a dozen years or more.”
"Alessan!" Baerd said quickly.
"Why?" the Duke asked in the same moment.
"Alessan!" Baerd repeated, more urgently.
The man Devin had just learo be the Prince of Tigana looked over at his friend and shook his head. "Not this one, Baerd," he said cryptically. "Not Sandre dAstibar.”
He turned back to the Duke aated, choosing his words. Then, with an unmistakable pride, he said, "You will have heard the legend. It happens to be true. The line of the Princes of Tigana, all those in direct dest, bind a wizard to them unto death.”
For the first time a gleam of curiosity, of an actual i in something appeared in Sandres hooded eyes. "I do know that story. The only wizard who ever guessed what I was after I came into my own magic warned me oo be wary of the Princes of Tigana. He was an old man, and d by then. I remember laughing. You actually claim that what he said was true?”
"It was. I am certain it still is. I have had no ce to test it though. It is our primal story: Tigana is the chosen province of Adaon of the Waves. The first of our Princes, Rahal, being born of the god by that Micaela whom we name as mortal mother of us all. And the line of the Princes has never been broken.”
Devi a plex stir of emotions w within himself. He didnt even try to ee how many things were tangling themselves in his heart. Micaela. He listened and watched, a himself to remember.
And he heard Sandre dAstibar laugh.
"I know that story too," the Duke said derisively. "That hoary, enfeebled excuse fanese arrogance. Princes of Tigana! Not Dukes, oh no. Princes/ Desded of the god!" He thrust the poker toward Alessan. "You will staonight, now, among the stinkiy of the Tyrants and of these dead men and the world of the Palm today and spew that old lie at me? You will do that?”
"It is truth," said Alessan quietly, not moving. "It is why we are what we are. It would have been a slight to the god for his desdants to claim a lesser title. The gift of Adaon to his mortal son could not be immortality—that, Eanna and Morian forbade. But the god granted a binding power over the Palms own magic to his son, and to the sons and daughters of his son while a Prince or a Princess of Tigana lived in that direct line. If you doubt me and would put it to the test I will do as Baerd would have had me do and bind you with my hand upon your brow, my lord Duke. The old tale is not to be lightly dismissed, Sandre dAstibar. If roud it is because we have reason to be.”
"Not any more," the Duke said mogly. "Not since Brandin came!”
Alessans face twisted. He opened his mouth and closed it.
"How dare you!" Catriana snapped. Bravely, Devin thought.
Prind Duke ignored her, rigidly i on each other. San-dres sardonic amusement gradually receded into the deep liched in his face. The bitterness remained, in eyes and stand the pinched line of his mouth.
Alessan said, "I had not expected that from you. Under all the circumstances.”
"You are in no position to have any idea what to expect from me," the Duke replied, very low.
"Under all the circumstances.”
"Shall we part pany now then?”
For a long moment something lay balanced in the air between them, a process of weighing and resolution, plicated immeasurably by death and grief and rage and the stiff, reflexive pride of both men. Devin, responding with his nerve-endings to the tension, found that he was holding his breath.
"I would prefer not," said Sandre dAstibar finally. "Not like this," he added, as Devin drew breath again. "Will you accept an apology from one who is sunken as low as he has ever been?”
"I will," said Alessan simply. "And I would seek your sel before we must, indeed, part ways for a time. Your middle son was taken alive. He will name me and Devin both tomorrow m if not tonight.”
"Not tonight," the Duke said, almost absently. "Alberico apprehends no danger anymore. He will also be quite seriously debilitated by what happened here. He will leave Tomasso until a time when he enjoy what happens. When he is in a mood to ... play.”
"Tonight, tomorrow," said Baerd, his blunt voice jarring the mood. "It makes little difference. He will talk. We must be away before he does.”
"Perhaps, perhaps not," Sandre murmured in the same strangely detached voice. He looked at the four dead men on the floor. "I wish I kly what happened," he said. "Ihe coffin I could see nothing, but I tell you that Alberico used a magic here tonight s it is still pulsating. And he used it to save his own life. Scalvaia did something, I dont know what, but he came very near." He looked at Alessan. "o giving Brandin of Ygrath dominiohe whole peninsula.”
"You heard that?" Alessan said. "You agree with me?”
"I think I always k to be true, and I know I succeeded in denying it within myself. I was so focused on my own enemy here in Astibar. I o hear it said, but once will be enough. Yes, I agree with you. They must be taken down together.”
Alessan nodded, and some of his idly trolled tension seemed to ease away. He said, "There are those who still think otherwise. I value yreement.”
He glanced over at Baerd, smiling a little wryly, then back to the Duke. "You mentioned Albericos use of magic as if it should have a meaning now for us. What meaning then? We are ignorant in these matters.”
"No shame. If you arent a wizard you are meant to be ignorant." Sandre smiled thinly. "The meaning is straightforward though: there is su overflow of magic spilling out from this room tonight that any paltry power of my own that I invoke will be pletely sed. I think I ehat your names are not given to the torturers tomorrow.”
"I see," said Alessan, nodding slowly. Devin did not see anything; he felt as if he were ing along iurbulent wake of information. "You take yourself through space? You go in there and bring him out?" Alessans eyes were bright.
Sandre was shaking his head though. He held up his left hand, all five fingers spread wide. "I never chopped two fingers in the wizards final binding to the Palm. My magic is profoundly limited. I t say I regret it—I would never have been Duke of Astibar had I done so, given the prejudices and the laws g wizards here—but it strains what I am able to do. I go in there myself, yes, but I am not strong enough t someone else out. I take him something though.”
"I see," said Alessan again, but in a different voice. There was a silence. He pushed a hand through his disordered hair. "I am sorry," he said at length, softly.
The Dukes face was expressionless. Above the white beard and the gaunt cheeks his eyes gave
nothing away at all. Behind him the fire crackled, sparks snapping outward into the room.
"I have a dition," Sandre said.
"Which is?”
“That you allow me to e with you. I am now a dead man. Given to Morian. Here in Astibar I speak to no one, achieve nothing. If I am to preserve any purpose now to the botched deception of my dying I must go with you. Prince of Tigana, will you accept a feeble wizard in your ente? A wizard e freely, not bound by some legend?”
For a long time Alessan was silent, looking at the other man, his hands quiet at his sides. Then, uedly, he grinned. It was like a flash of light, a gleam of warmth crag the i the room.
"How attached are you," he asked, in a quite ued tone of voice, "to your beard and your white hair?”
A sed later Devin heard a strange sound. It took him a moment that what he was hearing was the high, wheezing, genuine amusement of the Duke of Astibar.
"Do with me what you will," Sandre said as his mirth subsided. "What will you do—tinge my locks red as the maids?”
Alessan shook his head. "I hope not. One of those manes is more than suffit for a single pany. I leave these matters to Baerd though. I leave a great many things to Baerd.”
"Then I shall place myself in his hands," Sandre said. He bowed gravely to the yellow-haired man.
Baerd, Devin saw, did not look entirely happy. Sandre saw it too.
"I will not swear an oath," the Duke said to him. "I swore one vow when Alberie, and it is the last vow I shall ever swear. I will say though that it shall be my endeavor for the rest of my days to ehat you do nret this. Will that tent you?”
Slowly Baerd nodded. "It will.”
Listening, Devin had an intuitive sehat this, too, was an exge that mattered, that her man had spoken lightly, or less tharuth of his heart. He glanced over just then at Catriana and discovered that she had been watg him. She turned quickly away though, and did not look back.
Sandre said, "I think I had best set about doing what I have said I would. Because of the sing of Alberiagic I must go aurn from this room, but I dare say you need not spend a night among the dead, however illustrious they are. Have you a camp in the woods? Shall I find you there?”
The idea of magic was uling to Devin still, but Sandres words had just given him an idea, his first really clear thought siheyd ehe lodge.
"Are you sure youll be able to stop your son from talking?" he asked diffidently.
"Quite sure," Sandre replied briefly.
Devins brow knit. "Well then, it seems to me none of us is in immediate danger. Except for you, my lord. You must not be seen.”
"Until Baerds doh him," Alessan interposed. "But go on.”
Devin turo him. "Id like to say farewell to Menid try to think of a reason to give for leaving. I owe him a great deal. I dont want him to hate me.”
Alessan looked thoughtful. "He will hate you a little, Devin, even though he isnt that kind of man.
What happehis m is what a lifelong trouper like Menico dreams about. And no explanation you e up with is going to alter the fact that he needs you to make that dream a real thing now.”
Devin swallowed. He hated what he was hearing, but he couldhe truth of it. A season or two of the fees Menico had said he could now charge would have let the old campaigner buy the inn in Ferraut hed talked about for so many years. The place where hed always said hed like to settle when the road grew too stern for his bones. Where he could serve ale and wine and offer a bed and a meal to old friends
and new ones passing through on the long trails. Where he could hear aell the gossip of the day and s the old stories he loved. And where, on the cold winter nights, he could stake out a place by the fire and lead whoever happeo be there into and out of all the songs he knew.
Devin shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his breeches. He felt awkward and sad. "I just dont like disappearing on him. All three of us at once. Weve got certs tomorrow, too.”
Alessans mouth quirked. "I do seem to recall that," he said. "Two of them.”
"Three," said Catriana uedly.
"Three," Alessan agreed cheerfully. "And ohe day at the Woolguild Hall. I also have—it has just occurred to me—a substantial wager in The Paelion that I expect to win.”
Which drew an already predictable growl from Baerd. "Do you seriously think the Festival of Vines is going to blithely proceed after what has occurred tonight? You want to go make musi Astibar as if nothing has happened? Music? Ive been down this road with you before, Alessan. I dont like it.”
"Actually, Im quite certain the Festival will go on." It was San-dre. "Alberico is cautious almost before he is anything else. I think tonight will redouble that in him. He will allow the people their celebrations, let those from the distrada scatter and go home, then slam down hard immediately after. But only ohree families that were here, I suspect. It is, frankly, what I would do myself.”
"Taxes?" Alessan asked.
"Perhaps. He raised them after the ziano poisoning, but that was different. An actual assassination attempt in a public place. He didnt have much choice. I think hell narrow it this time—there will be enough bodies for his wheels among the three families here.”
Devin found it uling how casually the Duke spoke of such things. This was his kin they were discussing. His oldest son, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, cousins—all to be fodder for Barbadian killing-wheels. Devin wondered if he would ever grow as ical as this. If what had begun tonight would harden him to that degree. He tried to think of his brothers on a death-wheel in Asoli and found his mind fling away from the very image. Unobtrusively he made the warding sign against evil.
The truth was, he set just thinking about Menico, and that was merely a matter of costing the man money, nothing more. People moved from troupe to troupe all the time. Or left to start their own panies. Or retired from the road into a busihat offered them more security. There would be performers who would be expeg him to go on his own after his success this m. That should have been a helpful thought, but it wasnt. Somehow Devin hated to make it appear as if they were right.
Something else occurred to him. "Wont it look a bit odd, too, if we disappear right after the m rites? Right after Albericos unmasked a plot that was ected with them? Were sort of lio the Sandreni now in a way. Should we draw attention to ourselves like that? It isnt as if our disappearance woiced.”
He said it, for some reason, to Baerd. And was rewarded a moment later with a brief, sober nod of aowledgment.
"Now that cloth I will buy," Baerd said. "That does make sehough Im sorry to say it.”
"A good deal of sense," Sandre agreed. Devin fidgeted a little as he came uhe scrutiny of those dark, sunken eyes. "The two of you"—the Duke gestured at Devin and Catriana—"may yet redeem yeion for me.”
This time Devin refused to look at the girl. Instead his glance went over to the er where Sandres grandson lay by the sed, dying fire, his throat slashed by a family blade.
Alessan broke the sileh a deliberate cough. "There is also," he said in a curious tone, "anumeirely. Only those who have spent as many nights outdoors as I have properly appreciate the depth—as it were—of my preference for a soft bed at night. In short," he cluded with a grin, "your eloquence has quite overe, Devin. Lead me baenico at the inn. Even a bed shared with two
syrenya-players who snore in marginal harmony is a serious improvement over cold ground beside Baerds relative silence.”
Baerd favored him with a forbidding glare. Ohat Alessan appeared to weather quite easily. "I will refrain," Baerd said darkly, "from a recitation of your own noal habits. I will wait here alone for Duke Sao return. Well have to burn this lodge tonight, for obvious reasons. Theres a body that will otherwise be missing when the servants e ba the m. Well meet the three of you by the cache three ms from now, as early as you see fit to rise from your pillows. Assuming," he added with heavy sarcasm, "that soft city living doesnt prevent you from being able to find the cache.”
"Ill find it if he gets lost," Catriana said.
Alessan looked from oo the other of them, his expression wounded. "That isnt fair," he protested.
"It is just the music. You both know that.”
Devin hadnt. Alessan was still gazing at Baerd. "You know it is only the music Im going back for.”
"Of course I know that," Baerd said softly. His expression ged. "Im only afraid that the music will kill us both one of these days.”
Intercepting the look that passed betweehen, Devin learned something new and sudden and ued—on a night when hed already learned more things than he could easily handle—about the nature of bonding and about love.
"Go," said Baerd with a scowl, as Alessan still hesitated. Catriana was already by the door. "We will meet you after the Festival. By the cache. Dont," he added, "expect tnize us.”
Alessan grinned suddenly, and a moment later Baerd allowed himself to smile as well. It ged his face a great deal. He didnt, Devin realized, smile very often.
He was still thinking about that as he followed Alessan and Catri-ana out the door and into the darkness of the wood again.
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