The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection

by D. W. Hawkins

  A clatter of hoof-beats sounded from behind him, and D’Jenn turned to see Shawna riding back around the bend, leading a small group of horses. He rubbed the blood from his wound between two of his fingers, and winced as he tried to move his shoulder back and forth. The wound had tacked into the meat of his arm, and it throbbed something awful. It was nothing fatal, or crippling, though.

  “I was wondering where that third one had gone,” Shawna said, leaning out from the saddle to take in the scene. “You’re bleeding. Will you be alright?”

  “Aye, I’m fine,” he sighed. “Just a bolt through the arm.”

  Shawna shook her head at him. “You Sevenlanders are all crazy. I thought I’d gather up their horses. Our friends won’t be needing them anytime soon, and they’ll just wander around out here, anyway.”

  “Not a bad idea,” he said, grimacing from the pain in his arm. Now that the excitement of battle had worn off, he was starting to feel all the little hurts he had acquired. “Let’s get back to camp before it gets dark.”

  “Don’t forget your friend,” Shawna said, indicating the Cultist with a grimace. “He’s bubbling something out of his nose.”

  “Right,” D’Jenn grunted.

  He ended the man with a quick blow from his morningstar. As Shawna turned and began to walk the horses back toward camp, D’Jenn crouched and examined the Cultist’s armor. D’Jenn was no Infuser, but he was fascinated with the art of writing spells onto objects. The brass inlays were definitely a magical equation of some sort, but not one that D’Jenn had ever seen. He already had one piece of the armor, but he ripped a greave from the man and carried it in his injured arm. Once they made it back to the Conclave, the Philosophers would want one piece to study for themselves.

  There was no reason to tell them about the piece he kept for himself.

  “Are you dying back there?” Shawna’s voice called from the dark. Looking up, D’Jenn realized that the moon had come out. Night had fallen, and the silent stars above twinkled in a clear sky. He would have to study the armor after they reached Ishamael.

  “I’m fine,” he called, breaking his reverie and heading for Mist. “I’m right behind you.”

  The Old Witch Herself

  The land began to change. As the party made their way north, dragging a train of newfound remounts and pack horses, they climbed into the wide plateaus of the Gamerit highlands. The Runemian Mountains loomed to the north, a jagged line of haze reaching toward the wide, clear sky. In the summer, the land was green in a way that spoke of ripeness, of life teeming from every tiny inch of the place. Now half the land was winter-browned and slumbering, but clumps of stubborn greenery clung to the hills, where evergreens refused to surrender to the season.

  “This is where you’re from?” Bethany asked, gazing out over the windswept highlands. She huddled deep into her cloak, and Dormael had drawn his own around her narrow shoulders to help shield her from the chill. Soirus-Gamerit was warmer than Cambrell had been, but winter still found a hold.

  “Aye,” he sighed. “I grew up a few days north of here. D’Jenn, a day or two further northeast. These are the lands of our clan. We’re still a few days from the lands of our family.”

  “Clan? What’s a clan?” she asked, looking at Dormael over her shoulder.

  “A clan is made up of a bunch of families that all live in a certain area,” Dormael said, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “Clans work together. They help each other, protect each other.”

  “Are you in a clan?” Bethany asked.

  Dormael nodded. “I am—or, I was. I’m Blessed, dear, like you. I come from a clan, was raised in a clan, but I can no longer be beholden to a clan.”

  “What’s beholdened?” she asked.

  Dormael laughed. “Beholden, girl, not beholdened. It means that I no longer have an obligation to my clan, because my responsibility is to the Conclave and the Council of Seven.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have Eindor’s Blessing, little one. Because I have magic.”

  “So…does that mean that my responsibility is to the Conclave and Council of Seven, too?” Bethany asked.

  “It will be, if you choose it so,” Dormael nodded.

  “I didn’t have a clan,” Bethany sighed.

  “You didn’t?” Dormael asked. He had wondered about the girl’s past. Several times he’d worked up the gall to ask her a question, to try and extract some small bit of information from those boundless, color-changing eyes. She never revealed much. All Dormael had deduced was that she had grown up on the street, and he couldn’t be sure of that, either. “If you didn’t have a clan, dear…then what did you have?”

  “I have you, silly,” she laughed.

  Dormael couldn’t stop the smile that appeared on his face.

  “Oh,” he said. “Of course you do.”

  “What was your clan?”

  “The Red Hills Clan,” D’Jenn said, having dropped back to listen. “Dormael and I left when we were young, though. Most of our childhood was spent at the Conclave, learning to use magic.”

  “Why is it called the Red Hills Clan?” Bethany asked.

  “Every summer a certain red flower blooms throughout this region,” Dormael said. “So the hills are called the Red Hills. The clan takes its name from them.”

  Bethany nodded, expression serious, and went back to gazing out at the blowing grasses.

  “Do you have any of that root that Seylia gave you?” D’Jenn asked. His arm was wrapped in a bandage, after Dormael had seen it washed and burned. It would be throbbing like mad.

  “The Old Man’s Root?”

  “Whatever it’s called,” D’Jenn grumbled.

  Dormael fished what was left of it out of his saddlebag, and tossed it to his cousin. His face was still sore, eyes dark, but it no longer hurt enough to need the root. An arrow through the arm was much worse than his wound had been, anyway.

  “Thanks,” D’Jenn grunted, biting off a strip of the root and chewing with a grimace. “Two more days, you think?”

  “Day and a half, if the weather holds,” Dormael said.

  “Until?” Shawna asked.

  “Until we make my family’s homestead,” Dormael smiled, turning around to regard her.

  “Will your family have food?” Shawna asked. “Real food?”

  D’Jenn laughed at the question, but Bethany turned an excited glance on Dormael at the mention of food.

  “Trust me,” Dormael said. “My mother will shove three meals down our throats at a time, and load us up for the trip like we’re putting on a feast at the end.”

  “Alcohol, too, don’t forget,” D’Jenn said.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Dormael smiled.

  “You did say that your mother makes firewine,” Shawna said. “I hope she has something a bit less…potent.”

  “I’m sure there will be plenty,” Dormael said.

  “Even for four guests, and all these horses?” Shawna asked. “Back home, only country estates could afford such hospitality.”

  “Sevenlander homesteads aren’t just cabins on the plains,” D’Jenn explained. “Entire families live on them.”

  “It’s a bit like your country estate, actually,” Dormael nodded. “At least, where size is concerned. My family’s homestead is very large, but more than just my immediate family lives there. We have a few cousins, a few aunts, uncles. Even non-relatives who just come to work the farm here and there.”

  “Dormael’s family has grown wealthy, so his homestead is more like a compound,” D’Jenn said.

  “It’s not all that big,” Dormael said.

  “Wait until you see it,” D’Jenn smiled, riding over Dormael’s objections. Dormael shot his cousin a flat look, but said no more about it.

  As the day wore on, the trail became a well-traveled cart path and joined with a road made of hard-packed dirt. The rain had held off for almost a full day, so the road was a bit soggy, instead the slogging pits which they
had experienced in the lowlands. They kept going until night began to fall, and set camp near the road. They were getting into lands that were settled and peaceful, and there had been no further signs of pursuit.

  Still, Dormael was tense with anxiety.

  He loved his family, but felt a detachment from them. Having left at such a young age—at eight springs—to learn the use of his power, most of his attachments had been made in Ishamael, with people who shared his gift. All wizards knew that they would outlive their relatives who didn’t have Eindor’s Blessing, and that made familial relationships difficult.

  Some managed it, especially Hedge Wizards who served the communities from which they had come. They reentered their families, and it was simply accepted that they lived longer. Still, most of the ones who lived long enough would retreat from society, and go into the wilderness. For Warlocks like Dormael, who were always traveling and never home long enough for much of anything, familial ties were tenuous at best.

  Dormael had never been able to sever his family ties, and commit himself fully to the Conclave. Many wizards advocated just such an approach, and severed all personal ties upon becoming full wizards. Dormael, though, didn’t believe that doing so would make him stronger. He wanted to feel the loss when someone close to him died. He didn’t look forward to such a thing, but he felt that it would keep him grounded, and remind him of who he was. It would remind him of why he had chosen to take the invitation to become a Warlock in the first place.

  On the next afternoon, after having ridden a slow pace north along a major road, Dormael turned them onto a well-tended side trail. The day was chilly, but the sun was warming his back as Dormael took his friends east. Soon, a fence began to line the road to the northern side, sectioning out a large plot of land. They rode along the fence for a good hour before they saw anything else, but what appeared in the distance put a smile on Dormael’s face.

  A wooden arch stretched over the trail, carved in geometrical reliefs that made patterns down the side of the wood. In the middle of the arch, the world Harlun was spelled out, and then a sequence of runes in Old Vendon that told the history of their family. Beneath that, a plank was hung across the arch from a pair of small chains, the words Harlun Family Vintners painted across them in bright white letters.

  A man clung to one of the pillars of the arch, hammering at one of the chains that held the sign in place. He continued to work as they came upon him, but Dormael knew he’d seen them long before they got close enough to speak. As they approached, the man hopped to the ground.

  He was a hair’s breadth taller than Dormael, but muscled in a way that spoke of hard training over many years. He was fair haired, and wore his hair cropped short, with a short beard over his entire face. He smiled as Dormael got closer, and regarded them all with a bemused expression.

  “Of all the things I thought might happen today,” the man said. “My brother coming out of the hills was not amongst them. Maybe the gods would come down and kiss me, but my brother coming home? Never.”

  Dormael dismounted, and moved to embrace his brother.

  “Allen,” he laughed.

  “Bastard,” Allen said. “I mean, Dormael.” He smiled as Dormael let him go, then turned to D’Jenn. “I see you’re still as lively as mud.”

  “And I see that you’re still a mouthy little shit,” D’Jenn replied, before climbing down himself. Everyone else followed suit, and soon the introductions were being made.

  “This is Shawna,” Dormael said, indicating the noblewoman. Shawna made the traditional bow as if she’d been born to it, and Allen returned it.

  “It’s a pleasure,” she said, rising from the bow.

  “I know,” Allen replied. “You don’t have to thank me.” Shawna gave him a momentary look of confusion, then turned an unsurprised glance on Dormael. Dormael ignored it, pushing Bethany toward his brother.

  “And this,” he said, “is Bethany.”

  Allen crouched down to Bethany’s level, giving her a serious look in the eyes. She gazed back in confusion, but didn’t try to hide behind anyone else. Allen narrowed his eyes at her, then nodded.

  “I know that look,” he said. “You’re trouble, girl. Trouble in a little blue cloak.”

  “I’m not trouble,” Bethany said.

  “Look like trouble to me,” Allen muttered. “Have you ever been in a fight?”

  Bethany crossed her arms, and looked him right in the eyes. “Yes.”

  Allen peered at her. “I see. I could tell you were dangerous. Do you want to fight me, and just decide who the greater warrior is, right here and now?”

  Bethany shook her head, and turned her chin up. “I’m a wizard now. Wizards don’t get into fights.”

  “Oh, I see,” Allen said, looking from the girl to Dormael and back. “Well that certainly makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “How’s mother?” Dormael asked, interrupting his brother’s banter with the youngling.

  “The same as always,” Allen sighed, rising from his crouch. “Rushing around, trying to do ten things at once, and forgetting about nine of them along the way.”

  Dormael laughed. “Nothing ever changes.”

  “They’ve been worried about you, though,” Allen said, punching Dormael in the arm. “It’s been seasons since we’ve seen you, gods-dammit. You know how Ma gets, too. At least once a week we have a conversation in which she brings you up, and wonders aloud whether or not you’re dead.”

  “I’m not dead,” Dormael said.

  “You should tell her that—you know, maybe in a letter here and there,” Allen smiled. “At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to it every time I’m here.”

  “And our father?”

  “The same,” Allen smiled. “He makes things here and there at the forge, but these days he spends most of his time playing guitar and pretending to hate the puppies that follow him around. Drinks a lot of firewine.”

  “Things really haven’t changed at all,” Dormael said.

  “Not much,” Allen nodded.

  “Are you home for the winter, then?”

  “Aye, at least for a bit. I’ve winnings to last me a few years, now. Who knows what a famous warrior can get up to, eh?” Allen said. “I’ve got options.”

  Dormael shared a look with D’Jenn.

  “What?” Allen asked.

  “Let’s get out of this cold,” D’Jenn said. “We’ve got something we want to talk with you about.”

  “I’ve got a few questions myself,” Allen said, turning his gaze on Dormael. “Like how in the Six Hells my brother here thinks he can drag home a woman and child, several years after the deed was done, and not expect our mother to set her own hair on fire? She’s going to go crazy.”

  What did he just say?

  “What did you just say?” Dormael asked.

  “Your woman and child,” Allen said, looking at him as if he were stupid. “Mother’s going to kill you. Maybe all of you. I won’t stop her, either.” He looked to Bethany. “Maybe I’ll save you. You might be worth it.” He favored Bethany with a wink, and she gave him a shy smile in response.

  Everyone just stood there, hanging in silence for a moment before the chaos began.

  “Him, with a child?” D’Jenn said.

  “I am most certainly not his woman,” Shawna growled. “If you think for one minute that I would give myself to him—”

  Dormael turned an injured look on Shawna.

  “I thought we were friends,” he said. “I’m not all that bad.”

  “You’re terrible,” she said.

  Allen blinked at them, then ruffled Bethany’s hair. “And this cute little thing? Surely someone is going to claim her.”

  Bethany turned her eyes up to Dormael, catching his gaze. He was on the verge of opening his mouth to explain, but the look in her eyes caught him up short. Who was she to him—who had she become to him?

  Just like that, he made his decision about the girl.

  “She’s my daug
hter.”

  A moment of stunned silence passed, and Dormael could feel everyone staring. He felt the color rising to his cheeks, but squared his shoulders and braced himself for the barrage of objections. Let them object—he had made up his mind. Bethany had no one in the world, and gods-dammit all, he wasn’t just going to abandon her.

  Meeting her gaze, he realized that he couldn’t have, anyway.

  “At least there’s that much,” Allen muttered. “Why is everyone staring at my brother? I guess he is much uglier than me. The black eyes are an improvement, though.”

  Bethany reached up and took his hand, and Dormael wrapped his fingers around the girl’s.

  “She’s my daughter,” he said, with more certainty. It felt odd, but right.

  Surprisingly, no objections came. D’Jenn gave him an approving nod, with a look that said he had expected this to happen all along. Shawna gave him an unreadable look, but couldn’t keep a smile from tickling the corners of her mouth. Allen narrowed his eyes at the two of them, then took in the astonished looks of the rest of the party. He looked down at Bethany, and shrugged.

  “Well then, Miss Trouble, do you want to ride back home with your uncle, so he can fill you with enough mischief to keep your father pulling his hair out for years?” Allen asked. Bethany looked to Dormael, and he nodded to the girl and motioned her forward. She turned her eyes on Allen, smiled, and held out a fist with her pinky finger extended.

  “Only if you can tell me what this means,” she said.

  ***

  Harlun homestead was a sprawling compound.

  Dormael often forgot how much land his mother and father owned, until he came home on his scattered visits and rode through it. He’d flown over it once out of pure curiosity, and had been stunned by the amount of land that the vineyard itself occupied, much less the farmland and pastures attached to it. The Red Hills was a expansive piece of land in the highlands, and Dormael’s extended family lived over much of it, if not the immediate members that lived on Harlun homestead.

  “She’s had to buy up four square of field from the Caerlins,” Allen said, reading Dormael’s mind as he looked out over the hills.