Chapter 15
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THREE DAYS LATER AT SUHEY CROSSED THE BORDER south of the two forts and Deviered Tigana for the first time since his father had carried him away as a child.Only the most struggling musis came into Lower Corte, the panies down on their lud desperate fagements of any kind, however slight the pay, however grim the ambience. Even so long after the Tyrants had quered, the iti performers of the Palm khat Lower Corte meant bad lud worse wages, and a serious risk of falling afoul of the Ygratheher ihe province or at the boing in or out.
It wasnt as if the story wasnt known: the Lower Corteans had killed Brandins son, and they were paying a pri blood and money and brutally heavy oppression for that. It did not make for a genial setting, the artists of the roads agreed, talking it over in taverns or hospices in Ferraut or Corte. Only the hungry or the newly beguured to take the ill-paying, risk-laden jobs in that sad provin the southwest. By the time Devin had joined him Menico di Ferraut had been traveling for a very long time and had more than enough of a reputation to be able to eschearticular one of the nine provinces.
There was sorcery involved there too; no one really uood it, but the travelers of the road were a superstitious lot and, given an alternative, few would willingly veo a place where magic was known to be at work. Everyone khe problems you could find in Lower Corte. Everyone khe stories.
So this was the first time for Devin. Through the last hours of riding in darkness he had been waiting for the moment of passage, knowing that sihey had glimpsed Fort Sinave north of them some time ago, the border had to be near, knowing what lay oher side.
And now, with the first pale light of dawn rising behind them, they had e to the line of boundary s that stretched north and south betweewo forts, and he had looked up at the of the old, worn, smooth monoliths, and had ridden past it, had crossed the border into Tigana.
And he found to his dismay that he had no idea what to think, how to respond. He felt scattered and fused. He had shivered untrollably a few ho when they saw the distant lights of Sinave in darkness, his imaginatiolessly at work. I’ll be home soon, he had told himself. In the land where I was born.
Now, ridi past the , Devin looked around pulsively, searg, as the slow spread of light claimed the sky and theops of hills and trees and finally bathed the springtime world as far as he could see.
It was a landscape much like what they had been riding through for the past two days. Hilly, with dense forests ranging in the south on the rising slopes, and the mountains visible beyond. He saw a deer lift its head from drinking at a stream. It froze for a minute, watg them, and then remembered to flee.
They had seen deer iando, too.
This is home! Devin told himself again, reag for the respohat should be flowing. In this land his father had met and wooed his mother, he and his brothers had been born, and from here Garin di Tigana had fled northward, a ith infant sons, esg the killing anger of Ygrath. Devin tried to picture it: his father on a cart, one of the twins on the seat beside him, the other—they must have taken turns—in the back with what goods they had, cradling Devin in his arms as they rode through a red su darkened by smoke and fires on the horizon.
It seemed a false picture in some way Devin could not have explained. Or, if ly false, it was unreal somehow. Too easy an image. The thing was, it might everue, it might be exactly true, but Devin didnt know. He couldnt know. He had no memories: of that ride, of this plao roots, no history. This was home, but it wasnt. It wasnt really even Tigana through which they rode. He had never
even heard that il half a year ago, let alone any stories, legends, icles of its past.
This was the province of Lower Corte; so he had known it all his life.
He shook his head, edgy, profoundly uled. Beside him Erlein glanced over, an ironic smile playing about his lips. Which made Devin even more irritable. Ahead of them Alessan was riding alone.
He hadnt said a word sihe border.
He had memories, Devin knew, and in a way that he was aware was odd or even twisted he ehe Prihose images, however painful they might be. They would be rooted and absolute and shaped of this place which was truly his home.
Whatever Alessan was feeling or remembering now would have nothing of the unreal about it. It would all be raw, brutally actual, the trampled fabric of his own life. Devin tried, riding through the cheerful birdsong of a glorious spring m, to imagine how the Prince might be feeling. He thought that he could, but only just: a guess more than anything else. Among other things, perhaps first of all things, Alessan was going to a place where his mother was dying. No wonder he had urged his horse ahead; no wonder he wasnt speaking now.
He is entitled, Devin thought, watg the Prince ride, straight-backed and self-tained in front of them. Hes entitled to whatever solitude, whatever release he needs. What he carries is the dream of a people, and most of them dont even know it.
And thinking so, he found himself drawn out of his own fusion, his struggling adjustment to where they were. Fog on Alessan he found his aveo passion again to the burning inward respoo what had happened here—and was still happening. Every hour of every day in the ransacked, broken-down provinamed Lower Corte.
And somewhere in his mind a—fruits of a long winter of thought, and of listening in silence as older and wiser men spoke— Devihat he was not the first and would not be the last person to find in a single man the defining shape and lis for the so much harder love of an abstra or a dream.
It was then, looking all around at the sweep of land uhe wide arch of a high blue sky, that Devi something pluck at the strings of his heart as if it were a harp. As if he were. He felt the drumming of his horses hooves on the hard earth, following fast behind the Prince, and it seemed to Devin that that drumming was with the harp-strings as they galloped.
Their destiny was waiting for them, brilliant in his mind like the colored pavilions on the plain of the Triad Games that took place every three years. What they were doing now mattered, it could make a differehey were riding at the very ter of events iime. Devi something pull him forward, lifting and bearing him into the riptide, the maelstrom of the future. Into what his life would have been about when it was over.
He saw Erlein glance ain, and this time Devin smiled back at him. A grim, fierce smile. He saw the habitual, reflexive irony leave the wizards lean face, replaced by a flicker of doubt. Devin almost felt sorry for the man again.
Impulsively he guided his horse o Erleins brown and leaned over to squeeze the other mans shoulder.
"Were going to do it!" he said brightly, almost gaily.
Erleins face seemed to pinch itself together. "You are a fool," he said tersely. "A young, ignorant fool." He said it without vi though, an instinctive response.
Devin laughed aloud.
Later he would remember this moment too. His words, Erleins, his laughter uhe bright, blue cloudless sky. Forests and the mountains on their left and in the distance before them now the first glimpse of the Sperion, a glinting ribbon flowing swiftly north before beginning its curve west to find the
sea.
The Sanctuary of Eanna lay in a high valley set within a sheltering and isolating circle of hills south a of the River Sperion and of what had been Avalle. It was not far from the road that had once borne such a volume of trade bad forth from Tigana and Quileia through the high saddleback of the Sfaroni Pass.
In all nine provinces Eannas priests and Morians, and the priestesses of Adaon had such retreats.
Founded in out-of-the arts of the peninsula—sometimes dramatically so—they served as ters of learning and teag for the newly initiated clergy, repositories of wisdom and of the s of the Triad, and as places of withdrawal, where priests and priestesses who ight lay down the pad burdens of the world outside for a time or for a lifetime.
And not just the clergy. Members of the laity would sometimes do the same, if they could afford "tributions" that were judged as appropriate s for the privilege of sheltering for a space of days or years within the ambit of these retreats.
Mahe reasons that led people to the Sanctuaries. It had long been a jest that the priestesses of Adaohe best birth doctors in the Palm, so numerous were the daughters of distinguished or merely wealthy houses that elected to sojourn at one of the gods retreats at times that might otherwise have been inve for their families. And, of course, it was well known that an ierminately high pertage of the clergy were culled from the living s these same daughters left behind when they returo their homes. Girl children stayed with Adaon, the boys went to Morian. The white-robed priests of Eanna had always claimed that they would have nothing to do with such goings-on, but there were stories belying that, as well.
Little of this had ged wheyrants came. her Brandin nor Alberico was so reckless or ill-advised as to stir up the clergy of the Triad against their rule. The priests and the priestesses were allowed to do as they had always dohe people of the Palm were graheir worship, odd and even primitive as it might seem to the new rulers from overseas.
What both Tyrants did do, with greater or lesser success, lay the rival temples against each other, seeing—for it was impossible not to see—the tensions and hostilities that rippled and flared among the three orders of the Triad. There was nothing new in this: every Duke, Grand Duke, or Prin the peninsula had sought, in each geion, to turn this shifting three-way fri to his own at. Many patterns might have ged with the cirg of years, some things might ge past all reition, and some might be lost or fotteirely, but not this one. Not this delicate, reciprocal dance of state and clergy.
And so the temples still stood, and the most important oill flourished their gold and machial, their statuary, and their cloth-of-gold vestments for services. Save in one plaly: in Lower Corte, where the statues and the gold were gone and the libraries looted and burhat art of something else though, and few spoke of it after the earliest years of the Tyrants. Even in this benighted provihe clergy were otherwise allowed to tihe precisely measured round of their days in city and town, and in their Sanctuaries.
And to these retreats came a great variety of men and women from time to time. It was not only the awkwardly fed who found reason to ride or be carried away from the turbulence of their lives. In times of strife, whether of the soul or the wider world, the denizens of the Palm always khat the Sanctuaries were there, perched in snowbound precipitous eyries or half-lost in their misty valleys.
And the people knew as well that—for a price—such a withdrawal into the regimen, the carefully modulated hours of retreats such as this one of Eanna in its valley, could be theirs. For a time. For a lifetime. Whoever they might have been iies beyond the hills.
Whoever they might have been.
For a time, for a lifetime, the old woman thought, looking out the window of her room at the valley in
sunlight at springs return. She had never been able to keep her thoughts from going back. There was so much waiting for her in the past and so little here, now, living through the agonizingly slow dest of the years. Season after season falling to the earth like shot birds, arrows in their breasts, through this lifetime that was her own, and her only one.
A lifetime of remembering, by curlews cry at dawn or call to prayer, by dlelight at dusk, by sight of ey smoke rising straight and dark into winters wan gray light, by the driving sound of rain on roof and window at winters end, by the creak of her bed at night, by call to prayer again, by drone of priests at prayer, by a star falli in the summer sky, by the stern cold dark of the Ember Days ... a memory within ead every motion of the self or of the world, every sound, each share of color, each st borne by the valley wind. A remembrance of what had been lost t oo this place among the white-robed priests with their unending rites and their unendiiness, and their acceptance of what had happeo them all.
Which last is what had nearly killed her in the early years. Which, indeed, she would say—had said last week to Danoleon—was killing her now, whatever the priest-physi might say about growths in her breast.
They had found a Healer in the fall. He had e, anxious, febrile, a lank, sloppy man with nervous motions and a flushed brow. But he had sat down beside her bed and looked at her, and she had realized that he did have the gift, for his agitation had settled and his brow had cleared. And wheouched her—here, and here—his hand had been steady and there had been no pain, only a not unpleasant weariness.
He had shaken his head though in the end, and she had read an ued grief in his pale eyes, though he could not have known who she was. His sorrow would be for simple loss, for defeat, not g who it was who might be dying.
"It would kill me," he said quietly. "It has e too far. I would die and I would not save you. There is nothing I do.”
"How long?" she had asked. Her only words.
He told her half a year, perhaps less, depending on how strong she was.
How strong? She was very strong. More so than any of them guessed save perhaps Danoleon, who had known her lo by far. She sent the Healer from the room, and asked Dao leave, and then the one slow servant the priests had allowed to the woman they knew only as a widow from ae north of Stevanien.
As it happened she had actually known the woman whose identity she had assumed; had had her as one of the ladies of her court for a time. A fair-haired girl, green eyes and an easy manner, quick to laugh.
Melina bren Tonaro. A widow for a week; less than that. She had killed herself in the Palace by the Sea when word came of Sed Deisa.
The deception was a necessary shielding of identity: Danoleons suggestion. Almost een years ago. They would be looking for her and for the boy, the High Priest had said. The boy he was taking away, he would soon be safely goheir dreams carried in his person, a hope living so long as he lived.
She had been fair-haired herself, in those days. It had all happened such a long time ago. She had beelina bren Tonaro and had e to the Sanctuary of Eanna in its high valley above Avalle.
Above Stevanien.
Had e, and had waited. Through the ging seasons and the unging years. Waited for that boy to grow into a man such as his father had been, or his brothers, and then do what a desdant in direct line of Micaela and the god should know he had to do.
Had waited. Season after season; shot birds falling from the sky.
Until last autumn, when the Healer had told her the cold large thing she had already guessed for herself. Half a year, he had said. If she was strong.
She had sent them from her room and lain in her iron bed and looked out at the leaves on the valley trees. The ge of colors had e. She had loved that once; her favorite season for riding. As a girl, as a woman. It had occurred to her that these would be the last fall leaves she would ever see.
She had turned her mind from such thoughts and had begun to calculate. Days and months, and the numbering of the years. She had dohe arithmetic twice, and a third time to be sure of it. She said nothing to Danoleon, not then. It was too soon.
Not until the end of winter, with all the leaves gone and ice just beginning to melt from the eaves, did she summon the High Priest and instruct him as to the letter she wanted sent to the place where she knew—as he knew, alone of all the priests—her son would be on the Ember Days that began this spring.
She had dohe calculations. Many times.
She had also timed it very well, and not by ce. She could see Danoleon wanting to protest, to dissuade, to speak of dangers and circumspe. But the ground was out from under his feet, she could see it in the way his large hands grew restless and the way his blue eyes moved about the room as if seeking an argument on the bare walls. She waited patiently for him to meet her gaze at last, as she knew he would, and then she saw him slowly bow his head in acceptance.
How did one deny a mother, dying, a message to her only living child? Areaty to that child to e bid her farewell before she crossed over to Morian. Especially when that child, the boy he himself had guided south over the mountains so many years ago, was her last link to what she had been, to her own broken dreams and the lost dreams of her people?
Danoleon promised to write the letter and have it sent. She thanked him and lay ba her bed after he went out. She was genuinely weary, genuinely in pain. Hanging on. It would be half a year just past the Ember Days of spring. She had dohe numbers. She would be alive to see him if he came. And he would e; she knew he would e to her.
The window had been open a little though it was still cold that day. Outside, the snow had lain ile drifting folds in the valley and up the slopes of the hills. She had looked out upon it but her thoughts, uedly, had been of the sea. Dry-eyed, for she had not wept since everything fell, not onot ever, she walked her memory-palaces of long ago and saw the waves e in to break and fall on the white sands of the shore, leaving shells and pearls and ifts along the curving beach.
So Pasithea di Tigana bren Serazi. Once a princess in a palace by the sea; mother of two dead sons, and of one who yet lived. Waiting, as winter he mountains tur in that year.
"Two things. First, we are musis," said Alessan. "A newly formed pany. Sedly: do not use my name. Not here." His voice had taken on the clipped, hard ces Devin remembered from the first night in the Sandreni lodge when this had all begun for him.
They were looking down on a valley runni in the clear light of afternoon. The Sperion lay behind them. The uneven, narrow road had wound its way for hours up around the shoulders of an asding sequence of hills until this highest point. And now the valley unrolled before them, trees and grass touched by the earliest green-gold of spring. A tributary stream, swift-running with the melting snows, slanted northwest out of the foothills, flashing with light. The temple dome in the midst of the Sanctuary gleamed silver in the middle distance.
"What hen?" Erlein asked quietly. He seemed subdued, whether because of Alessans tone or the awareness of danger, Devin did not know.
"Adreano," the Prince said, after a moment. "I am Adreano dAstibar today. I will be a poet for this reunion. For this triumphant, joyous homeing.”
Devin remembered the he young poet death-wheeled by Alberico last winter, after the sdal of the "Sandreni Elegies." He looked closely at the Prince for a moment and then away: this was not a day to probe. If he was here for any reason it was to try, somehow, to make things easier for Alessan. He didnt know how he was going to go about doing that though. He felt badly out of his depth again, his
earlier rush of excitement fading before the grimness of the Princes manner.
South of them, t above the valley, the peaks of the Sfare loomed, higher even than the mountains above Castle Borso. There was snow on the peaks and even on the middle slopes; winter did not retreat so swiftly this high up, this far south. Below them though, north of the toured foothills, in the sheltered eastwest running of the valley Devin could see green buds swelling orees. A grey hawk hung in an updraft for a moment, almost motionless, before wheeling south and down to be lost against the backdrop of the hills. Down on the valley floor the Sanctuary seemed to lie within its walls like a promise of pead serenity, ed away from all the evils of the world.
Devi was not so.
They rode down, not hurrying now, for that would have been unusual in three musis e here at midday. Devin was keenly, anxiously aware of dahe man he was riding behind was the last heir to Tigana. He wondered what Brandin of Ygrath would do to Alessan if the Prince was betrayed and taken after so many years. He remembered Marius of Quileia in the mountain pass: Do you trust this message?
Devin had rusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, geions away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone khat all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple uanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective sileheir tacit plicity, bought in exge for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.
Even before meeting Alessan, Devin had had his own thoughts about that. On the subject of the clergy his father had never been shy about speaking his mind. And now Devin remembered again Garins single dle of defiawice a year on the Ember Nights of his childhood in Asoli. Now that he had begun to think about it, there seemed to be a great many nuao the flickering lights of those dles in the dark. And more shadings to his own stolid father than he had ever guessed. Devin shook his head; this was not the time to wander down that path.
When the hill track finally wound its way down to the valley floor, a wider, smoother road began, slanting towards the Sanctuary in the middle of the valley. About half a mile away from the stoer walls, a double row of trees began oher side of the approach. Elms, ing into early leaf. Beyond them oher side Devin saw men w in the fields, some lay servants and some of them priests, clad not in the white of ceremony, but in nondescript robes of beige, beginning the labors that the soil dema winters end. One man was singing, a sweet, clear tenor voice.
The eastern gates of the Sanctuary plex were open before them, simple and unadorned save for the star-symbol of Eanna. The gates were high though, Devin noted, and of heavy wrought iron. The walls that enclosed the Sanctuary were high as well, and the stone was thick. There were also towers—eight of them—curving forward at intervals around the wide embrace of the walls. This was clearly a place built, however many hundreds of years ago, to withstand adversity. Set within the plex, rising serenely above everything else, the dome of Eannas temple shone in the sunlight as they rode up to the open gates and passed within.
Just inside Alessan pulled his horse to a halt. From ahead of them and some distance over to the left they heard the ued sound of childrens laughter. In an open, grassy field set beyond a stable and a large residence hall a dozen young boys in blue tunics were playing maracco with sticks and a ball, supervised by a young priest in the beige work-robes.
Devin watched them with a sudden sharp sadness and nostalgia. He could remember, vividly, going into the woods heir farm with Povar and Nico when he was five years old, to cut and carry home his first maracco stick. And then the hours—min<q></q>utes more often —snatched from chores whehree of them would seize their sticks and one of the battered succession of balls Nico had patiently wound together out of layers and layers of cloth, to whoop and slash their way about in the mud at the end of the
barnyard, pretending they were the Asolini team at the uping Triad Games.
"I scored four times one game in my last year of temple schooling," Erlein di Senzio said in a musing voice. "Ive never fotten it. I doubt I ever will.”
Surprised and amused, Devin glanced over at the wizard. Alessan turned in his saddle to look back as well. After a moment the three men exged a smile. In the distahe childrens shouts and laughter gradually subsided. The three of them had been seen. It was uhat the appearance of strangers was a o here, especially so soon after the melting of the snow.
The young priest had left the playing field and was making his way over, as was an older man with a full black leather apron over his robes of beige, ing from where the sheep and goats and cows were kept in pens oher side of the tral avenue. Some distan front of them lay the arched entrao the temple and beside it on the right and a little behind, the smaller dome of the observatory— for in all her Sanctuaries the priests of Eanna tracked and observed the stars she had named.
The plex was enormous, even more so than it had seemed from above on the hill slopes. There were a great many priests and servants moving about the grounds, entering and leaving the temple itself, w among the animals, or in the vegetable gardens Devin could see beyond the observatory. From that dire as well came the unmistakable ging of a blacksmiths fe. Smoke rose up there, to be caught and carried by the mild breeze. Overhead he saw the hawk again, or a different one, cirg lazily against the blue.
Alessan dismounted and Devin and Erlein did the same just as the two priests came up to them, at almost exactly the same moment. The younger one, sandy-haired and small like Devin, laughed aured at himself and his colleague.
"Not much of a greeting party, Im afraid. We werent expeg visitors this early in the year, I must admit. No one even noticed you riding down. Be wele though, be most wele to Eannas Sanctuary, whatever the reason you have e to us. May the goddess know you and name you hers." He had a cheerful manner and an easy smile.
Alessaurhe smile. "May she know and surely name all who dwell within these walls. To be ho, we wouldnt have beeain how to deal with a more official greeting. We havent actually worked out our entrance routines yet. And as for early in the year— well, everyone knows new-formed panies have to get moving soohaablished ones or they are likely to starve.”
"You are musical performers?" the older priest asked heavily, wiping his hands on the leather apron he wore. He was balding and brown and grizzled, and there where two of his froh ought to have been.
"We are," said Alessan with some attempt at a grand manner. "My name is Adreano dAstibar. I play the Tregean pipes, and with me is Erlein di Senzio, the fi harp player in all of the peninsula. And I must tell you truly, you havent heard singing until youve listeo our young panion Devin dAsoli.”
The younger priest laughed again. "Oh, well done! I should bring you along to the outer school to give a lesson to my charges ioric.”
"Id do better to teach the pipes," Alessan smiled. "If music is part of your program here.”
The priests mouth twitched. "Formal music," he said. "This is Eanna, not Morian, after all.”
"Of course," said Alessan hastily. "Very formal music for the young ones b here. But for the servants of the goddess themselves . . . ?" He arched one of his dark eyebrows.
"I will admit," said the sandy-haired young priest, smiling again, "to a preference for Rauders early music myself.”
"And no one plays it better than we," Alessan said smoothly. "I see we have e to the right place. Should we make our obeisao the High Priest?”
"You should," said the older man, not smiling. He began untying the apron-strings at his back. "Ill take you to him. Savandi, your charges are about to it assault upon each other or worse. Have you no trol at all over them?”
Savandi spun to look, swore feelingly in a quite uly fashion, and began running towards the games field shouting imprecations. From this dista did indeed seem to Devin that the maracco sticks were being used by Savandis young charges in a fashion distinctly at variah the accepted rules of the game.
Devin saw Erlein grinning as he watched the boys. The wizards lean face ged when he smiled.
When the smile was a true one, not the ironic, slipping-sideways expression he so ofteo indicate a sour, superior disdain.
The older priest, grim-faced, pulled his leather apron over his head, folded it ly, and draped it over one of the bars of the adjat sheepfold. He barked a name Devin could not make out and another young man—a servant this time—hastily emerged from the stables on their left.
"Take their horses," the priest ordered bluntly. "See that their goods are brought to the guest house.”
"Ill keep my pipes," Alessan said quickly.
"And I my harp," Erlein added. "No lack of trust, you uand, but a musi and his instrument...”
This priest was somewhat lag in Savandis fortable manner. "As you will," was all he said.
"e. My name is Torre, I am the porter of this Holy Sanctuary. You must be brought to the High Priest." He turned a off without waiting for them, on a path going around to the left of the temple.
Devin and Erlein looked at each other and exged a shrug. They followed Torre and Alessan, passing a number of other priests and lay servants, most whom smiled at them, somewhat making up for their dour, self-appointed guide.
They caught up to the other two as they rouhe southern side of the temple. Torre had stopped, Alessan beside him. The balding porter looked around, quite casually, then said, almost as casually:
420 TIGANA "Trust no one. Speak truth to Danoleon or myself. These are his words. You have been expected. We thought it would be anht, perhaps two before you came, but she said it would be today.”
"Then I have proved her right. How gratifying," said Alessan in an odd voice.
Devi suddenly cold. Off to their left, in the games field, Savandis boys were laughing again, lithe shapes clad in blue, running after a white ball. From within the dome he could hear, faintly, the sound of ting. The end of the afternoon invocations. Two priests in formal white came along the path from the opposite dire, arm in arm, disputing animatedly.
"This is the kit, and this the bakehouse," Torre said clearly, pointing as he spoke. "Over there is the brewhouse. You will have heard of the ale we make here, I have no doubt.”
"Of course we have," murmured Erlein politely, as Alessan said nothing.
The two priests slowed, registered the presence of the strangers and their musical instruments, a on. "Just over there is the High Priests house," Torre tinued, "beyond the kit and the outer school.”
The other two priests, resuming their argument, swept briskly around the curve of the path that led to the front of the temple.
Torre fell silent. Then, very softly, he said: "Eanna be praised for her most gracious love. May all tongues give her praise. Wele home my Prince. Oh, in the name of love, be wele home at last.”
Devin swallowed awkwardly, looking from Torre to Alessan. An untrollable shiver ran along his spihere were tears, bright-sparkling in the brilliant sunlight, in the porters eyes.
Alessan made no reply. He lowered his head, and Devin could not see his eyes. They heard childrens laughter, the final notes of a sung prayer.
"She is still alive then?" Alessan asked, looking up at last.
"She is," said Torre emotionally. "She is still alive. She is very—" He could not finish the sentence.
"There is no point ihree of us being careful if yoing to spill tears like a child," Alessan said sharply. "Enough of that, unless you want me dead.”
Tulped. "Five me," he whispered. "Five me, my lord.”
"No! Not my lord. Not even when we are alone. I am Adreano dAstibar, musi." Alessans voice was hard. "Now take me to Danoleon.”
The porter wiped quickly at his eyes. He straightened his shoulders. "Where do you think we are going?" he snapped, almost managing his earlier tone again. He spun on his heel and strode up the path.
"Good," Alessan murmured to the priest, from behind. "Very good, my friend." Trailing them both, Devin saw Torres head lift at the words. He gla Erlein but this time the wizard, his expression thoughtful, did not return the look.
They passed the kits and theer school where Sa-vandis charges—children of noblemen or wealthy merts, seo be educated—would study and sleep. All across the Palm such teag art of the role of the clergy, and a source of a goodly portion of their wealth. The Sanctuaries vied with each other to draw student boarders—and their fathers money.
It was silent within the large building now. If the dozen or so boys on the games-field with Savandi were all the students in the plex, then Eannas Sanctuary in Lower Corte was not doing very well.
Oher hand, Devin thought, who of those left in Lower Corte could afford Sanctuary schooling for their children now? And what shrewd businessman from Corte or Chiara, having bought up cheap land here in the south, would not send his son home to be educated? Lower Corte lace where a clever man from elsewhere could make money out of the ruin of the inhabitants, but it was not a place to put
down roots. Who wao be rooted in the soil of Brandins hate?
Torre led them up the steps of a covered portid then through the open doorway of the High Priests house. All doors seemed to be open to the spring sunshine, after the shuttered holiness of the Ember Days just past.
They stood in a large, handsome, high-ceilinged sitting-room. A huge fireplaihe southwestern end and a number of fortable chairs and small tables were arranged on a deep-piled carpet. Crystal deters on a sideboard held a variety of wines. Devin saw two bookcases on the southern wall but no books. The cases had beeo stand, discertingly empty. The books of Tigana had been burned. He had been told about that.
Arched doorways in both the eastern aern walls led out to porches where the sunlight could be caught in the m and at eve.
On the far side of the room there was a closed door, almost certainly leading to the bedchamber.
There were four cleverly designed, square recesses in the walls and another smaller one above the fire where statues would once have stood. These toone. Only the ubiquitous silver stars of Eanna served for painted decoration on the walls.
The door to the bedroom opened and two priests came out.
They seemed surprised, but not unduly so, to see the porter waiting with three visitors. One man was of medium height and middle years, with a sharp fad close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He carried a physis tray of herbs and powders in front of him, supported on a thong about his neck.
It was at the other man that Devin stared, though. It was the other man who carried the High Priests staff of office. He would have atention even without it, Devin thought, gazing at the figure of what had to be Danoleon.
The High Priest was an enormous man, broad-shouldered with a chest like a barrel, straight-backed despite his years. His long hair and the beard that covered half his chest were both white as new snow, even against the whiteness of his robe. Thick straight eyebrows met in the middle of a serene brow and above eyes as clear and blue as a childs. The hand he ed about the massive staff of office held it as if it were no more than a cowherds hazel switch.
If they were like this, Devin thought, awed, looking up at the man who had been High Priest of Eanna in Tigana when the Ygrathens came, if the leaders were all like this then there were truly great men here before the fall.
They couldnt have been so different from today; he khat rationally. It was only twenty years ago, however much might have ged and fallen away. But even so, it was hard not to feel daunted in the anding presence of this maurned from Dao Alessan: slight, unprepossessing, with his disorderly, prematurely silvered hair and cool, watchful eyes, and the nondescript, dusty, road-stained riding clothes he wore.
But wheurned back to the High Priest he saw that Danoleon was squeezing his owightly shut as he drew a ragged breath. And in that moment Devin realized, with a thrill that was oddly akin to pain, where, despite all appearahe truth of power lay between these men. It was Danoleon, he remembered, who had taken the boy Alessan, the last prince of Tigana, south and away in hiding across the mountains all those years ago.
And would not have seen him again sihat time. There was grey in the hair of the tired man who stood before the High Priest now. Danoleon would be seeing that, trying to deal with it. Devin found himself hurting for the two of them. He thought about the years, all the lost years that had tumbled and spun and drifted like leaves or snow betweewo, then and now.
He wished he were older, a wiser man with a deeper uand-big. There seemed to be so many truths or real<samp></samp>izations of late, h at the edge of his awareness, waiting to be grasped and claimed, just out of reach.
"We have guests," Torre said in his brusque manner. "Three musis, a newly formed pany.”
"Hah!" the priest with the medie-tray grunted with a sour expression. "Newly formed? Theyd have to be to venture here and this early in the year. I t remember the last time someone of any talent showed up in this Sanctuary. you three play anything that wont clear a room of people, eh?”
"It depends on the people," said Alessan mildly.
Danoleon smiled, though he seemed to be trying not to. He turo the other priest. "Idrisi, it is just barely possible that if we offered a warmer wele we might be graced with visitors happier to display their art." The other man grunted what might ht not have been an apology uhe scrutiny of that placid blue gaze.
Daurned back to the three of them. "You will five us," he murmured. His voice was deep and soothing. "We have had some discerting news retly, and right now we have a patient in some pain. Idrisi di Corte, here, our physi, tends to be distressed when such is the case.”
Privately, Devin doubted if distress had much to do with the Cortean priests rudeness, but he kept his peace. Alessan accepted Danoleons apology with a short bow.
"I am sorry to hear that," he said to Idrisi. "Is it possible we might be of aid? Music has long been known as a sn ease for pain. We should be happy to play for any of your patients." He was ign for the moment, Devin he news Danoleon had mentioned. It was uo be an act that Danoleon had given them Idrisis formal name—making clear that he was from Corte.
The physi shrugged. "As you please. She is certainly not sleeping, and it do no harm. She is almost out of my hands now, in any case. The High Priest has had her brought here against my will.
Not that I do very muymore. In truth she belongs to Morian now." He turo Danoleon.
"If they tire her out, fine. If she sleeps it is a blessing. I will be in the infirmary or in my garden. Ill che here tonight, unless I have word from you before.”
"Will you not stay to hear us play, then?" Alessan asked. "We might surprise you.”
Idrisi grimaced. "I have no leisure for such things. Tonight in the dining hall, perhaps. Surprise me.”
He flashed a small, ued smile, gone as quickly as it appeared, a past them with brisk, irritated strides out the door.
There was a short silence.
"He is a good man," Danoleon said softly, almost apologetically.
"He is a Cortean," Torre muttered darkly.
The High Priest shook his handsome head. "He is a good man," he repeated. "It angers him when people die in his care." His gaze went back to Alessan. His hand shifted a little on his staff. He opened his mouth to speak.
"My lord, my name is Adreano dAstibar," Alessan said firmly. "This is Devin . . . dAsoli, whose father Garin you may perhaps remember from Stevanien." He waited. Danoleons blue eyes widened, looking at Devin. "And this," Alessan finished, "is our friend Erlein di Senzio, who plays harp among ifts of his hands.”
As he spoke those last words, Alessan held up his left palm with two fingers curled down. Danoleon looked quickly at Erlein, and then back to the Prince. He had grown pale, and Devin was suddenly made aware that the High Priest was a very old man.
"Eanna guard us all," Torre whispered from behind them.
Alessan looked pointedly around at the open archways to the porches. "This particular patient is near death then, I take it?”
Danoleons gaze, Devin thought, seemed to be dev Alessan. There was an almost palpable hunger in it, the need of a starving man. "Im afraid she is," he said keeping his toeady only with an
obvious effort. "I have given her my own chamber that she might be able to hear the prayers iemple. The infirmary and her own rooms are both too far away.”
Alessan nodded his head. He seemed to have himself on a tightly held leash, his movements and his words rigidly trolled. He lifted the Tregean pipes in their browher sheath and looked down at them.
"Then perhaps we should go in and make music for her. It sounds as if the afternoon prayers are done.”
They were. The ting had stopped. In the fields behind the house the boys of the outer school were still running and laughing 藏书网in the sunlight. Devin could hear them through the open doorways. He hesitated, unsure of himself, then coughed awkwardly and said: "Perhaps you might like to play alone for her? The pipes are soothing, they may help her fall asleep.”
Danoleon was nodding his head in anxious agreement, but Ales-san turned back to look at Devin, and then at Erlein. His expression was veiled, unreadable.
"What?" he said at length. "Would you abandon me so soon after our pany is formed?" And then, more softly: "There will be nothing said that you ot know, and some things, perhaps, that you should hear.”
"But she is dying," Devin protested, feeling something wrong here, something out of balance. "She is dying and she is—" He stopped himself.
Alessans eyes were se.
"She is dying and she is my mother," he whispered. "I know. That is why I want you there. There seems to be some news, as well. We had better hear it.”
He turned and walked towards the bedroom door. Danoleon was standing just before it. Alessan stopped before the High Priest and they looked at each other. The Prince whispered something Devin could not hear; he leaned forward and kissed the old man on the cheek.
Then he went past him. At the door he paused for a moment and drew a long steadying breath. He lifted a hand as if to run it through his hair but stopped himself. A queer smile crossed his face as if chasing a memory.
"A bad habit, that," he murmured, to no one in particular. Then he opehe door a in and they followed him.
The High Priests bedchamber was almost as large as the sitting room in the front, but its furnishings were starkly simple. Two armchairs, a pair of rustic, worn carpets, a wash-stand, a writing desk, a trunk for ste, a small privy set apart in the southeastern er. There was a firepla the northern wall, twin to the one in the front room, sharing the same ey. This side was lit, despite the mildness of the day, and so the room was wahough both windows were open, curtains drawn bait some slanting light from uhe eaves of the porticoes to the west.
The bed on the back wall uhe silver star of Eanna was large, for Danoleon was a big man, but it too was simple and unadorned. No opy, plain pinewood posts in the four ers, and a pine headboard.
It was also empty.
Devin, nervously following Alessan and the High Priest through the door, had expected to see a dying woman there. He looked, more than a little embarrassed, towards the door of the privy. And almost jumped with shock when a voice spoke from the shadows by the fire, where the light from the windows did not fall.
"Who are these strangers?”
Alessan himself had turned unerringly toward the fire the momeered the room—guided by what sense, Devin never knew —and so he appeared trolled and unsurprised when that cold voice
spoke. Or when a woman moved forward from the shadows to stand by one of the armchairs, and then sit down upon it, her back very straight, her head held high looking at him. At all of them.
Pasithea di Tigana bren Serazi, wife to Valentin the Prince. She must have been a woman of unsurpassed beauty in her youth, for that beauty still showed, even here, even now, at the threshold of the last portal of Morian. She was tall ahin, though part of that, clearly, was due to the illness wasting her from within. It showed in her face, which ale almost to transluce, the cheekbohrust into too sharp relief. Her robe had a high, stiff collar which covered her throat; the robe itself was crimson, atuating her unnatural, other-worldly pallor—it was as if, Devin thought, she had already crossed to Morian and was looking back at them from a farther shore.
But there were golden rings, very much of this world, on her long fingers, and one dazzling blue gem gleamed from a necklace that hung down over her robe. Her hair was gathered and bound up in a blaet, a style long out of fashion in the Palm. Devin knew with absolute certainty that current fashion would mean nothing, less than nothing, to this woman. Her eyes looked at him just then with swift, uling appraisal, before moving on to Erlein, and theing, finally, upon her son.
The son she had not seen since he was fourteen years old.
Her eyes were grey like Alessans, but they were harder than his, glittering and cold, hiding their depths, as if some semi-precious stone had been caught a just below the surface. They glinted, fierd challenging, in the light of the room, and just before she spoke again—not even waiting for an ao her first question—Devin realized that what they were seeing in those eyes was rage.
It was in the arrogant face, in the high carriage and the fihat held hard to the arms of her chair.
An inner fire of ahat had passed, long ago, beyond the realm of words or any other form of expression. She was dying, and in hiding, while the man who had killed her husband ruled her land. It was there, it was all there, for anyone who knew but half the tale.
Devin swallowed and fought an urge to draw back toward the door, out e. A moment later he realized that he bother; as far as the woman in the chair was ed he her, a nothing.
He wasnt even there. Her question had not bee to be answered; she didnt really care who they were. She had someone else to deal with.
For a long time, a sequenoments that seemed to hang forever in the silence, she looked Alessan up and down without speaking, her white, imperious features quite unreadable. At last, slowly shaking her head, she said: "Your father was such a handsome man.”
Devin fli the words and the tone, but Alessan seemed scarcely to react at all. He nodded in calm agreement. "I know he was. I remember. And so were my brothers." He smiled, a small, ironic smile. "The strain must have run out just before it got to me.”
His voice was mild, but when he finished he glanced sharply at Danoleon, and the High Priest read a message there. He, in turn, murmured something to Torre who quickly left the room.
To stand guard in front, Devin realized, feeling a chill despite the fire. Words had just been spokehat could kill them all. He looked over at Erlein and saw that the wizard had slipped his harp out of its case. His expression grim, the Senzian took a positiohe eastern window and quietly began tuning his instrument.
Of course, Devin thought: Erlein knew what he was doing. They had e in here ostensibly to play for a dying woman. It would be odd if no music emerged from this room. Oher hand, he didnt much feel like singing just now.
"Musis," the woman in the chair said with pt to her son. "How splendid. Have you e to play a jingle for me now? To show me how skillful you are in su important thing? To ease a mothers soul before I die?" There was something almost unbearable ione.
Alessan did not move, though he too had gone pale now. In no other way did he betray his tension though, save perhaps in the almost too casual stahe exaggerated simulation of ease.
"If it would please you, my lady mother, I will play for you," he said quietly. "There was a time I remember when the prospeusic would indeed have brought you pleasure.”
The eyes of the woman in the chair glittered coldly. "There was a time for music. When we ruled here. When the men of our family were men in more than name.”
"Oh, I know," said Alessan, a little sharply. "True men and wondrous proud, all of them. Men who would have stormed the ramparts of Chiara alone and killed Brandin long ago, if only through his abject terror at their ferocious determination. Mother, you not let it rest, even now? We are the last of our family and we have not spoken in een years." His voice ged, softened, grew uedly awkward. "Must we wra, our speech be no more thaters were? Did you ask me here simply to say again what you have written so many times?”
The old woman shook her head. Arrogant and grim, implacable as the death that had e for her.
"No, not that," she said. "I have not so much breath io waste. I summoned you here to receive a mothers dying curse upon your blood.”
"No!" Devin exclaimed before he could stop himself.
In the same sed Daook a long stride forward. "My lady, no indeed," he said, anguish in his deep voice. "This is not—”
"I am dying," Pasithea bren Serazi interrupted harshly. There were spots ht unnatural color in her cheeks. "I do not have to listen to you anymore, Danoleon. To anyone. Wait, you told me, all these years. Be patient, you said. Well, I have no more time for patience. I will be dead in a day. Morian waits for me. I have no more time to linger while my craven child gambols about the Palm playing ditties at rustic weddings.”
There came a discordant jangling of harpstrings.
"That," said Erlein di Senzio from the eastern window, "is ignorant and unfair!" He stopped, as if startled by his own outburst. "Triad knows, I have no cause to love your son. And it is now more thao me whence his arroganes and his lack of care for other lives, for anything but his own goals. But if you name him a coward simply for n to kill Brandin of Ygrath then you are dying a vain, foolish woman. Which, to be perfectly frank, does not surprise me at all in this province!”
He leaned back against the ledge, breathing hard, looking at no one. In the silehat followed Alessan finally moved. His stillness had seemed inhuman, unnatural, now he sank to his knees beside his mothers chair.
"You have cursed me before," he said gravely. "Remember? I have lived muy life in the shadow of that. In many ways it would have been easier to die years ago: Baerd and I slain trying to kill the Tyrant in Chiara . . . perhaps even killing him, through some miracle of intervention. Do you know, we used to speak of it at night, every single night, when we were in Quileia, still boys. Shaping half a hundred different plans for an assassination on the Island. Dreaming of hoould be loved and honored after death in a provih its name restored because of us.”
His voice was low, almost hypnoti its ces. Devin saw Danoleon, his face w with emotion, sink bato the other armchair. Pasithea was still as marble, as expressionless and cold. Devin moved quietly toward the fire, in a vain attempt to quell the shivering that had e over him. Erlein was still by the window. He laying his harp again, softly, sies and random chords, not quite a tune.
"But we grew older," Alessa on, and an urgency, a terrible o be uood had e into his voice. "And one Midsummers Eve Marius became Year King in Quileia, with our aid. After that whehree spoke the talk was different. Baerd and I began to learn some true things about power and the world. And that was when it ged for me. Something new came to me in that time, building and building, a thought, a dream, larger and deeper than trying to kill a Tyrant. We came back to the Palm and began to travel. As musis, yes. And as artisans, merts, athletes oime in a Triad Game year, as
masons and builders, guards to a Senzian banker, sailors on a dozen different mert-ships. But even before those journeys had begun, mother, even before we came baorth over the mountains, it had all ged for me. I was finally clear about what my task in life was to be. About what had to be done, or tried. You know it, Danoleon knows; I wrote you years ago what my new uanding was, and I begged your blessing for it. It was such a simple truth: we had to take both Tyrants together, that this whole peninsula might again be free.”
His mothers voice overrode his steady passion then, harsh, implacable, unfiving: "I remember. I remember the day that letter came. And I will tell you again what I wrote you then to that harlots castle iando: you would buy Cortes freedom, and Astibars and Tregeas at the price of Tiganas name. Of our very existen the world. At the cost of everything we ever had or were before Brandin came. At the price of vengeand our pride.”
"Our pride," Alessan echoed, so softly now they could barely hear. "Oh, our pride. I grew up knowing all about our pride, mother. You taught me, even more than father did. But I learned something else, later, as a man. In my exile. I learned about Astibars pride. About Senzios and Asolis aandos. I learned how pride had ruihe Palm in the year the Tyrants came.”
"The Palm?" Pasithea demanded, her voice shrill. "What is the Palm? A spur of land. Rod earth and water. What is a peninsula that we should care for it?”
"What is Tigana?" Erlein di Senzio asked bluntly, his harp silent in his hands.
Pasitheas glance was withering. "I would have thought a bound wizard should know that!" she said corrosively, meaning to wound. Devin bli the speed of her perception; no one had told her about Erlein, she had deduced it in minutes from a scattering of clues.
She said: "Tigana is the land where Adaon lay with Micaela when the world was young and gave her his love and a child and a gods gift of power to that child and those who came after. And now the world has spun a long way from that night and the last desdant of that union is in this room with the entire past of his people falling through his hands." She leaned forward, her grey eyes blazing, her voice rising in indit. "Falling through his hands. He is a fool and a coward, both. There is so much more than freedom in a peninsula in any single geion at stake in this!”
She fell back, coughing, pulling a square of blue silk from a pocket in her robe. Devin saw Alessan begin a movement up from his knees, and then check himself. His mother coughed, ragly, and Devin saw, before he could turn his eyes away that the silk came away red when she was done. On the carpet beside her Alessan bowed his head.
Erlein di Senzio, from the far side of the room, perhaps too far to see the blood, said, "And shall I now tell you the legends of Senzios pre-eminence? Of Astibars? Will you hear me sing the story of Eanna on the Island shaping the stars from the glory of her love-making with the god? Do you know Certandos claim to be the heart and soul of the Palm? Do you remember the Carlozzini? The Night Walkers in their highlands two hundred years ago?”
The woman in the armchair pushed herself straight again glaring at him. Fearing her, hating her words and manner and the terrible thing she was doing to her son, Devin heless felt humbled in the face of so much ce and such a force of will.
"But that is the point," she said more softly, sparirength. "That is the heart of this. you not see it? I do remember those stories. Ah an education or a library, any fool who has ever heard a troubadours seal wailing remember them. hear twenty different songs of Eanna and Adaon on Sangarios. Not us, though. Dont you see? Not Tigana anymore. Who will sing of Mi-caela uhe stars by the sea when we are gone? Who will be here to sing, when one meion has lived and died away in the world?”
"I will," said Devin, his hands at his sides.
He saw Alessans head e up as Pasithea turo fix him with her cold eyes. "We all will," he
said, as firmly as he could. He looked at the Prind then, f himself, back to the dying old woman raging in her pride. "The whole Palm will hear that song again, my lady. Because your son is not a coward. Nor some vain fool seeking a youh and shallow fame. He is trying for the larger thing and he is going to do it. Something has happehis spring and because of it he is going to do what he has said he will do: free this peninsula and bring back Tiganas o the world.”
He finished, breathing in hard gasps as if he had been running a race. A moment later, he felt himself go crimson with mortification. Pasithea bren Serazi was laughing. Mog him, her frail thin body rog in the chair. Her high laughter turned into another desperate fit of coughing; the blue silk came up, and when it was withdrawn there was a great deal of blood stain. She clutched at the arms of her chair to steady herself.
"You are a child," she pronounced finally. "And my son is a child for all the grey in his hair. And I have no doubt that Baerd bar Saevar is exactly the same, with half the grad the gifts his father had.
Something has happehis spring, " she mimicked with cruel precision. Her voice grew hard and cold as midwinter ice: "Do you infants have any idea what has really just happened in the Palm?”
Slowly her son rose from his ko stand before her. "We have been riding for a number of days and nights. We have heard no tidings. What is it?”
"I told you there was news," Danoleon said quickly. "But I had no ce to give you the—”
"I am pleased," Pasithea interrupted. "So very pleased. It seems I still have something to tell my son before I leave him forever. Something he hasnt learned or thought out all by himself already." She pushed herself erect again in the chair, her eyes cold and bright like frost under blue moonlight. There was something wild and lost in her voice though, trying to break through. Some terrible fear, and of more thah. She said: "A messenger came yesterday at su, at the end of the Ember Days. An Ygrathen, riding from Stevanien with news from Chiara. News sent Brandin had sent it by his sorcerous link to all his Governors with instrus to spread the tidings.”
"And the tidings are?" Alessan had braced himself, as if preparing to receive a blow.
"The tidings? The tidings, my feckless child, are that Brandin has just abdicated as King of Ygrath.
He is sending his army home. And his Governors. All those who choose to stay with him must bee citizens of this peninsula. Of a new dominion: the Kingdom of the Western Palm. Chiara, Co..e, Asoli, Lower Corte. Four provinces under Brandin on the Island. He has annouhat we are free of Ygrath, no longer a y. Taxes are to be shared equally among us now, and they have been cut in half.
Beginnierday. Cut by siderably more than half here in Lower Corte. Our burden will now be equal with the others. The messenger said that the people of this provihe people your father ruled— were singing Brandins name ireets of Stevanien.”
Alessan, moving very carefully, as if he were carrying something large and heavy, that might shift and fall, turoward Danoleon. Who was nodding his head.
"It seems that there was an assassination attempt on the Island three days ago," the High Priest said.
&quinating in Ygrath: the Queen and Brandins son, the Regent. It apparently failed only because of one of his Tribute women. The one from Certando who almost started a war. You may remember that, twelve, fourteen years ago? It seems that in the wake of this Brandin has ged his mind about what he has been doing. Not about staying in the Palm, or about Tigana and his revenge, but about what must be done in Ygrath if he tinues here.”
"And he is going to tinue here," Pasithea said. "Tigana will die, still be lost forever to his vengeance, but our people will be singing the Tyrants name as it dies. The name of the man who killed your father.”
Alessan was nodding his head reflexively. He seemed, in fact, scarcely to be listening, as if he had suddenly withdrawirely inside himself. Pasithea fell silent in the face of that, looking at her son. It
grew deathly still in the room. Outside, far away, the untrolled shouts and laughter of the children in the field came to their ears again, the louder for the silehin. Devin listeo that distant mirth and tried to slow the chaos of his heart, to attempt to deal with what they had just heard.
He looked at Erlein, who had laid down his harp on the window-ledge and walked a few steps into the room, his expression troubled and wary. Devin tried desperately to think, to gather his scattered thoughts, but the news had caught him hopelessly unprepared. Free of Ygrath. Which was what they wanted, wasnt it? Except that it wasnt. Brandin was staying, they were not free of him, or the weight of his magid Tigana? What of Tigana now?
And then, quite uedly, there was something else b him. Something different. A distrag, niggling awareugging at the er of his mind. Telling him there was something he should know, should remember.
Then, equally without warning, the something slid forward and into place. In fact . . .
In fact, he kly what was wrong.
Devin closed his eyes for a moment, fighting a sudden paralyzing fear. Then, as quietly as he could, he began w his way along the western wall away from the fireplace where he had been standing all this time.
Alessan eaking now, almost to himself. He said: "This ges things of course. It ges a great deal. Im going to ime to think it through, but I believe it may actually help us. This may truly be a gift not a curse.”
"How? Are you genuinely simple?" his mother snapped. "They are singing the Tyrants name ireets of Avalle!”
Devin wi the old he desperate pain at the heart of that cry, but he forced himself to keep moving. A terrifyiainty was rising within him.
"I hear you, I uand. But dont you see?" Alessan dropped to his knees on the carpet again, close to his mothers chair. "The Ygrathen army is going home. If he has to fight a war it will have to be with an army of our people and what few Ygrathens stay with him. What ... oh, mother! . . . what do you think the Barbadian in As-tibar will do when he hears this?”
"He will do nothing," Pasithea said flatly. "Alberico is a timorous man spun neck-deep in his own webs, all of which lead back to the Emperors Tiara. At least a quarter of the Ygrathen army will stay with Brandin. And those people singing are the most oppressed people in the peninsula. If they are joyous, what do you think is happening elsewhere? Do you not imagine an army be raised in Chiara and Corte and Asoli to fight against Barbadior for a man who has renounced his own Kingdom for this peninsula?”
She began coughing again, her body rog even more harshly than before.
Devin didnt know the answer. He couldnt even begin to guess. He khat the balance had pletely shifted, the balance Alessan had spoken about and played with for so long. He also knew something else.
He reached the window. Its ledge was about the height of his chest. He was a small man; not for the first time he regretted it. Then he gave thanks for his pensations, offered a quick prayer to Eanna and, hands flat on the ledge for leverage, pushed upward hard and swung himself like a gymnast through to the portico. He heard Pasithea still coughing behind him, a hard, painful sound. Danoleon cried out.
He stumbled and fell, crashing into a pillar with his shoulder and hip. He pushed up and off, scrambling to his feet in time to see a figure in beige robes leap up from a crouch beside the window, swearing furiously, and sprint away. Devin grappled for the k his belt, a blind, thought-obliterating rage rising in him. It had been too uproarious in the games field. The same sound as before, when the priest had left them alone.
Only this time the priest had left them alone while he spied on this room.
Alessan was at the window, Erlein just behind him.
"Savandi!" Devin gasped. "He was listening!" He spat the words over his shoulder because he was already running after the other man. He spared a fleeting moment of thanks, and wonder, for whatever Rinaldo the Healer had doo his leg in that Certandan barn. Then anger swept over him again, and fear, and the absolute o catch the other man.
He vaulted the stone balustrade at the bad of the portico without breaking stride. Savandi, sprinting for all he was worth, had cut west toward the back of the Sanctuary grounds. In the distan their left Devin could see the children playing in the field. He gritted his teeth and ran. These cursed priests! he was thinking, fury almost choking him. Will they undo everything, even now?
If Alessans identity became known anywhere in this Sanctuary Devin had little doubt how swiftly that knowledge would reach Brandin of Ygrath. He had no doubts at all about what would happen then.
And then he was assailed by another whirling thought, ohat terrified him. He drove himself to eveer speed, legs pumping, his lungs sug for air. The mindlink. What if Savandi could link to the King? What if Brandins spy could directly tact him in Chiara now?
Devin cursed in the depths of his heart but not aloud, sparing his breath for speed. Savandi, lithe and quick himself, raced dowh past a small building on the left and cut sharply right, about twenty strides ahead of Devin, around the back part of the temple itself.
Devin sped around the er. Savandi was o be seen. He froze for a moment, seized by panic. There was no door into the temple here. And only a thick barrier of hedges, just ing into green on the left.
Then he saw where the hedges were quivering and he leaped for that spot. There forced low down. He dropped to his knees and scrambled through, scratg his arms and face.
He was in a cloistered area, large, beautifully serene, gracefully laid out, with a splashing fountain at the ter. He had no time to value such things though. At the northwest er the cloister gave onto another portid a long building with a small domed roof at the near end. Savandi was just now sprinting up the steps to the portid then through a doorway into the building. Devin looked up. At one sed-story window an old man could be seen, white haired and hollow-cheeked, gazing down without expression on the sunlit cloister.
Running flat out for the doorway, Devin realized where he was. This was the infirmary, and the small dome would be a temple for the sick who sought the fort of Eanna but could not venture dowh to her larger dome.
He took the three steps to the porti one flying leap and burst through the doorway, knife in hand.
He was aware that following so fast he was an easy target for an ambush if Savandi chose to lie in wait.
He didnt think that would happen though—whily increased his deeper fear.
The man seemed to be rag away from where his fellow priests might be found, iemple itself, the kits, the dormitory or the dining room. Which meant that he didnt expect help or aid, that he couldnt really be hoping to escape.
Which meant, in turn, that there robably only ohing he was going to try to do, if Devin gave him enough time.
The doorway gave onto a long corridor and a stairway leading upward. Savandi was out of sight but Devin, glang down, gave a quick prayer of thanks to Eanna: running across the damp ground of the cloister the priest had picked up mud on his shoes. The trail was unmistakable oone floor and it went down the corridor and not up the stairs.
Devin sped in pursuit, flying down the hallway, skidding into a left turn around a er at the far end. There were rooms at intervals all along and an arched entrao the infirmarys small temple at the opposite end. Most of the doors were open; most of the rooms were empty.
But then, in that short corridor he came to one closed door; Savandis trail led there and stopped.
Devin clutched the handle and threw his shoulder hard against the heavy wood. Locked. Immovable.
Sobbing for breath he dropped to his knees, grappling in his pocket for the twist of wire he was never without: not since Marra had been alive. Since she had taught him all he knew about locks. He untwisted and tried to shape the wire, but his hands were trembling. Sweat streamed into his eyes. He wiped it furiously away and fought for calm. He had to get this door open before the man inside sent the message that would destroy them all.
Aerior door opened behind him. Steps thudded quickly down the hallway.
Without looking up, Devin said: "The man who touches or hinders me dies. Savandi is a spy for the King of Ygrath. Find me a key for this door!”
"It is done!" came a voice he knew. "It is open. Go!”
Devin flung a glance over his shoulder and saw Erlein di Senzio standing there with a sword in his hand.
Springing to his feet Devin twisted the handle again. The door swung open. He charged into the room. There were jars and vials lining shelves around the walls, and instruments on tables. Savandi was there, on a ben the middle of the room, hands at his temples, visibly straining to trate.
"Plague rot your soul!" Devin screamed at the top of his voice. Savandi seemed to snap awake. He rose with a feral snarl, grabbing for a surgical blade oable beside him.
He never reached it.
Still screaming, Devin on him, his left hand gouging at the priests eyes. He slashed forward and up with his right in a hard and deadly arc, plunging his blade iween Savandis ribs. Once, he stabbed, and then again, raking savagely upward, feeling the blade twist, grinding against boh a siiion. The young priests mouth gaped open, his eyes widened in astonishment. He screamed, high and short, his hands flying outward from his sides. And then he died.
Devin released him and collapsed on the bench, fighting for breath. Blood pounded in his head; he could feel a vein pulsing at his temple. His vision blurred for a moment and he closed his eyes. When he opehem he saw that his hands were still shaking.
Erlein had sheathed his sword. He moved to stand beside Devin.
"Did . . . did he send . . . ?" Devin found that he couldnt even speak properly.
"No." The wizard shook his head. "You came in time. He didnt link. No message went.”
Devin stared down at the blank, staring eyes and the body of the young priest who had sought to betray them. How long? he wondered. How long was he doing this?
"How did you get here?" he asked Erlein, his voice hoarse. His hands were still shaking. He dropped the bloodied kh a clatter oabletop.
"I followed from the bedchamber. Saw which way you went until I lost you around the back of the temple. Then I needed magic. I traced Savandis aura here.”
"We came through the hedges and across the cloister. He was trying to shake me.”
"I see that. Youre bleeding again.”
"Doesnt matter." Devin took a deep breath. There were footsteps in the corridor outside. "Why did you e? Why do this for us?”
Erlein looked defensive for an instant, but quickly regained his sardonic expression. "For you? Dont be a fool, Devin. I die if Alessan does. Im bound, remember? This was self-preservation. Nothing else.”
Devin looked up at him, wanting to say something more, something important, but just then the footsteps reached the doorway and Danoleoered quickly with Torre close behind. her of them said a word, taking in the se.
"He was trying to mind-link with Brandin," Devin said. "Erlein and I got to him in time.”
Erlein made a dismissive sound. "Devin did. But I had to use a spell to follow them and another on the door. I dont think they were strong enough to draw attention, but in case there is a Tracker anywhere around here we had better get moving before m.”
Danoleon seemed not to have even heard. He was looking down at Savandis body. There were tears on his face.
"Dont waste yrief on a carrion bird," Torre said harshly.
"I must," the High Priest said softly, leaning upon his staff. "I must. Dont you uand? He was born in Avalle. He was one of us.”
Devin abruptly turned his head away. He felt sick to his stomach, hit by a resurgence of the raging white fury that had sped him here, and had driven him to kill so violently. One of us. He remembered Sandre dAstibar in the in the woods, betrayed by his grandchild. He was seriously afraid he was going to be ill. One of us.
Erlein di Senzio laughed. Devin wheeled furiously around on him, his hands ched into fists. And there must have been something murderous in his eyes, for the wizard quickly sobered, mockery leaving his face as if wiped away with a cloth.
There was a short silence.
Danoleon drew himself up and straightened his massive shoulders. He said, "This will have to be dealt with carefully or the story will spread. We t have Savandis death traced tuests. Torre, when we leave lock this room with the body in it. After dark, whehers are asleep we will deal with him.”
"Hell be missed at dinner," Torre said.
"No he wont. You are the porter. You will see him ride through the gate late this afternoon. He will be going to see his family. It fits, just after the Ember Days, and in the wake of the news from Chiara. He has ridden out often enough, and not always with my permission. I think I have an idea why now. I wonder if he ever really rode to his fathers house. Unfortunately for Savandi, this time he is going to be killed by someone on the road just outside our valley.”
There was a hardo the High Priests voice that Devin had not heard before. One of us. He looked down at the dead man again. His third killing. But this one was different. The guard in the Nievolene barn, the soldier in the hill pass, they had been doing what they had e to the Palm to do. Loyal to the power they served, hiding nothing of their nature, true to their ma cause. He had grieved for their dying, for the lines of life that had brought him together with them.
Savandi was otherwise. This death was different. Devin searched his soul and found that he could not grieve for what he had do was all he could do, he realized with a sense of real uneasiness, to refrain from plunging his dagger again in the corpse. It was as if the young priests corrosive treachery to his people, his smili, had tapped some violence of passion Devin hadnt known lay within him.
Almost exactly, he thought suddenly, the way that Alienor of Castle Borso had done, in a very different sphere of life.
Or, perhaps, at the heart of things, not so very different after all. But that was too hard, too dangerous a knot to try to untie just now, iaring presence of death. Which reminded him of something, made him suddenly aware of an absence. He looked quickly up at Danoleon.
"Wheres Alessan?" he said sharply. "Why didnt he follow?”
But even before he was answered, he khere could only be one reason in the world why the Prince hadnt e.
The High Priest looked down at him. "He is still in my chamber. With his mother. Though I am afraid it may be over by now.”
"No," Devin said. "Oh, no." And rose, ao the door, and into the corridor, and then out through the eastern doorway of the infirmary into the slanting light of late afternoon, and began, again, to run.
Along the back curve of the temple dome, past the same small building as before and a little garden he hadnt noticed ing here, then back, flying, dowh to the High Priests house, and up onto the portico between the pillars, as if rewindis like a ball of wool, to the window through which he had leaped such a little while ago. As if he could race baot only past Savandi, past their ing here, but all the way back, with a sudden, i longing, to where the seeds of this grief had been planted wheyrants came.
But time was not rewound, her in the heart nor in the world as they k. It moved on, and things ged, for better or for worse; seasons ged, the hours of sunlit day went by, darkness fell and lingered and gave way to light at dawn, years spun after each other one by one, people were born, and lived by the Triads grace, and they died.
And they died.
Alessan was still in the room, still on his knees on the simple carpet, but beside the bed now, not by the heavy, dark oak chair as before. He had moved, time had moved, the sun was further west along the curving sky.
Devin had wao somehow run his way back through the moments that had passed. That Alessan might not have bee alone, not with this. On his first day in Tigana since he was a boy. He was no longer a boy; there was grey in his hair. Time had run. Twenty years worth of time had run and he was home again.
And his mother lay on the High Priests bed. Alessans two hands were laced around one of her own, cradling it gently as one might hold a small bird that would die ht if clutched too fast but would fly away forever if released.
Devin must have made some kind of sound at the window for the Prince looked up. Their eyes met.
Devin ached inside, wordless with sorrow. His heart felt bruised, besieged. He felt hopelessly ie to the needs of such a time as this now was. He wished that Baerd were here, or Sandre. Even Catriana would know what to do better than he.
He said, "He is dead. Savandi. We caught him in time." Alessan nodded, aowledging this. Then his gaze went down again to his mothers face, serene now as it had not been before. As it very likely had not been for the last long years of her life. Time, moving inexorably forward for her, taking memory, taking pride. Taking love.
"Im sorry," Devin said. "Alessan, Im so sorry.”
The Prince looked up again, the grey eyes clear but terribly far away. Chasing images backward along a skein of years. He looked as if he would speak but did not. Instead, after another moment, he gave his small shrug, the calm, reassuring motion of acceptance, of shouldering another burden, that they all knew so well.
Devin suddenly felt as if he could not bear it anymore. Alessans quiet acquiesce was as a final blow in his ow. He felt torn open, wounded by the hard truths of the world, by the passing of things. He lowered his head to the windowsill a like a child in the presence of something toe for his capacity.
In the room Alessa in silence by the bed, holding his mothers haween his own. And the westering sun of afternoo light in a golden slant through the window and across the chamber floor, to fall upon him, upon the bed, upon the woman lying there, upon the golden s that covered her grey eyes.
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