by Helen Lowe
There were so many possible candidates. Gerenth was dead, but he had served the Old Earl faithfully all his life; it seemed unlikely that he would have turned traitor. Asantir? The Earl hesitated, but only briefly. She had been so close to him for so long, and he would sooner mistrust his own right arm. It was much the same with Nhairin, for if Asantir was his right arm then the High Steward of the keep was certainly his left. And Teron came from the family that had always commanded Cloud Hold for the House of Night; a family as famous for their unswerving loyalty and courage as they were for their dogmatism and lack of imagination.
It was unthinkable, the Earl reflected wryly, that one of that family would have the initiative to be a traitor, let alone the inclination.
The other unpleasant possibility was that the message itself was a ploy, a poisoned barb planted by his enemies to sow suspicion and distrust. It need not even mean that Vhirinal, once his friend, had become his enemy, or the friend of his enemies. Those same adversaries need only have ensured that the rumor of a traitor came creeping to the Ephor’s ears. Still, the Earl told himself, the Vhirinal he remembered would know to be wary of such ploys. He must have given the tale considerable credence to go to the expense of employing heralds and sending them on the long journey to the Wall of Night.
“A very great friend then,” the Earl mused, “or a great enemy.” But he had no way of judging which was true, any more than he could determine the identity of the traitor—if he or she truly existed. He had to suspect everyone while continuing to act as though he trusted all, and hope that sooner or later the traitor’s mask would slip.
The door opened softly onto the darkness of his thoughts and a tall, white-clad figure was outlined briefly against the corridor before stepping inside and closing the door. The firelight fell short of her face, leaving it in shadow as she crossed to his chair. “You are awake late, Earl of Night,” Rowan Birchmoon said gently. “It would be better if you took off that armor and got some rest.”
He gazed back at her. “I am well enough, my Lady of Winter. The armor helps remind me of my responsibilities.”
She stroked his dark, gray-flecked hair with one white, slender hand. “It does no good to spend the night gnawing over your troubles like an old hound. You need sleep.”
“Sorcery, attacks in the night, and attempts on the life of my Heir,” he said, matching her tone. “These are troubles enough for any Derai hound to gnaw on, don’t you think?”
Her gray eyes, cool as silver, looked down into his. “Perhaps,” she said, “but I do not think it is those bones that keep you awake now. There are other things, are there not, that trouble you more?” She studied his closed expression and nodded, as though her question was answered. “But if these are deep Derai matters, then maybe it is best that you keep silence.” She spoke without rancor and settled onto the floor before the fire, gazing into it in her turn.
The Earl’s expression softened. “You know it is not that, my heart. Some matters are too heavy for words, that is all.”
She looked gravely back at him. “Is your daughter part of this heaviness, Earl of Night?”
He nodded, his mouth tightening, but said nothing. She shook her head. “I have never understood this schism between warrior and priest. It seems to cause nothing but pain and grief and does your Alliance great harm. I can see no good in it.”
The Earl gave a short laugh. “Haimyr would say that the pain and grief of it, without the good, is all Derai—the very heart of our songs and stories.”
Rowan Birchmoon smiled. “That is exactly what he says,” she agreed, “but I am sure I could recall a saga with a happy ending, if I thought for long enough.” The smile faded. “It seems to me that it is one history alone, this Great Betrayal, that has been twisting your lives for half a millennium. Yet no one ever tells the full tale, or at least, not within my hearing.”
“Because we suck it in with our mother’s milk,” he agreed somberly, “and breathe it through the very air, an intrinsic part of who and what we are. I think that this is the first time I have ever questioned whether the bitter division to which we cling has not been our greatest folly.”
“And you,” she said, “are a thinking man.” She hesitated, and then continued: “Yet I, who am not Derai, did not think that the priestess Korriya was so very much your enemy.”
He yawned, stretching. “I didn’t think so either; that is partly what bothers me. Although Korriya is my kinswoman and we knew each other as children. But I cannot forget the faces of the initiates who went into the Old Keep with Asantir. None of them would look at me directly when I fare-welled the search party. But I could see every single one watching me out of the sides of their eyes, exactly like the raw recruits we get in the barracks, desperate to prove their worth and serve Night. And now,” he finished softly, “I see the faces of the dead, those who did not return.”
Rowan Birchmoon stretched out a hand to his. “So many died in the attack, especially in the Temple quarter where the demon hunted. At least Serin and Ilor knew what they were dying for.”
The Earl’s brows rose. “Serin and Ilor,” he repeated. “Yes, that was what Asantir called them. But their death is my point. They died for House and keep, just as much as the warriors did; I would be blind not to see it. Yet at the same time I hear the echo of my father’s voice, cursing the priest kind as our enemy within, a foe as bitter as the Swarm.”
“Although even before today, you did not believe that.” It was a statement, not a question, and he nodded.
“No,” he said, and stared straight ahead with a harsh set to his mouth, remembering the Hall of the Dead and the bodies of the fallen laid out in their rows. He had walked every row and looked into every face. There had been so many of them, line on line of warriors with their death wounds, and priests who had died screaming, their souls sucked out of them by the Raptor of Darkness. He had paused longest by the bodies of the Heir’s household, who had all died in the first onslaught, betrayed by the New Keep alarms that had remained blind and deaf to the attack.
Swarm magic used against us, the Earl thought now. But his bitterness could not bring back Nesta and Doria, or the pages, their bodies pathetic in death, or any of the other servants who had fallen in the Heir’s quarter.
Faithful, he had thought then, as he thought it now, for they had tried to keep the attackers out although they had no weapons, possessed no old powers to defend themselves. Honorable, too—like Serin and Ilor, dying for him and for Night, far down in the darkness of the Old Keep.
He heard the echo of his father’s voice again, ranting at him for being a weakling and a fool. But he could not find it in himself to deny any one of the dead their share of honor, even if they had worn a servant’s clothes or priest’s robes, rather than a mail shirt.
“You need to put these troubles aside and let yourself sleep.” Rowan Birchmoon rose and bent over him, framing his face between her hands and kissing him gently on the mouth. “Your difficulties will not change their fate, even if you worry them to death.”
He touched the pale brown silk of her hair, wondering how he could even think of not trusting her, when she had never given him anything but kindness and truth. Yet he knew that he must retain that small inner question, a hint of doubt.
Rowan Birchmoon took his hand and kissed the palm.
“You may be right to be troubled, my Tasarion,” she whispered, “but we have a saying in the Winter Country: Do not be afraid to wear your sorrows, but beware if they wear you.”
He turned his hand around to clasp hers. “You need not be afraid of that,” he replied, a little grimly. “I have given tonight to my grief, but tomorrow I will do what I must to secure the House of Night.”
“I believe you will,” she said, a hint of sadness in her expression. As quickly as it had come, however, the sadness vanished and she murmured with her faint, delicate smile: “For are you not Derai, stern and dark and duty bound?”
The Earl, too, smiled and drew
her down into his mail-clad arms. “How dear you are to me,” he murmured, “my woman of the Winter Country.” The dearer perhaps, he added to himself, because you are neither stern, nor dark, nor any part of my duty.
He remembered when he had first seen her, tall and fair as one of the white-stemmed birches of her own Winter land, with eyes as gray as its skies. It had never been his intention to marry again. He had turned a deaf ear to all the persuasions brought to bear, particularly from those who argued that it was his duty, first as Heir and then as Earl. He had not expected to journey to the Winter Country either, not after he had been called back to the Wall to take up the heirdom, and certainly not after he became Earl in his turn. The Earl of Night’s place was in the Keep of Winds, foremost of all the Derai strongholds on the Wall of Night.
“First and oldest.” He repeated the saying to himself, thinking how little, beyond duty, he had expected—least of all love.
Winter itself had intervened, coming early when he rode the boundaries three years before, and had caught his company in a severe storm. He still shivered, remembering how the wind had raged, hurling snow and ice across the land and driving his party before it, further and further from the Wall until they came to the boundaries of the Winter Country. Many perished before they got there and the Earl knew that all would have died if the Winter people had not taken them in. He recalled stumbling, gaunt and exhausted, into the dim, smoky warmth of a hide-and-felt tent and seeing Rowan’s face for the first time, pale and lovely between the weathered, deeply lined faces of hunt leader and shaman. The snows of winter lay deep but the light of her eyes was like spring, cracking and melting the ice that had encased his heart for the nine long years since Nerion had been sent away.
He remembered his followers’ dismay when they realized that Rowan Birchmoon would be riding back to the Keep of Winds at his side—and how Rowan had laughed when he explained that the laws of the Derai would not allow him to marry her. She had been standing straight and tall amidst the white and blue of a sparkling winter’s day, her breath clouding the freezing air. “Marriage,” she had said, and shrugged. “Among the Winter people it is love and the commitment to each other that binds two people together, not a ceremony. I love you, my darkvisaged lord of the Derai. Being with you is what matters to me, not the outward forms of your people or mine.”
He had loved her fiercely in that moment and he loved her still, even more—if that were possible—for enduring three long years in the Keep of Winds, amidst the scandalized and often hostile Derai, to be with him.
Yet now he could see his duty again, plain and cold before him. If he lost his Heir to the Temple quarter he would have to marry again, a formal and binding alliance with a woman of the Derai Blood, and get another heir for the House of Night. He could not insult a wife by having his lover in the same keep, or expect her to tolerate such a situation. Nor would he ask Rowan to dwell in one of the holds, a stranger amongst strangers, unwelcome and despised—but he could not bear to let her go, either.
The Earl’s arms tightened around his lover, breathing in the scent of her long hair as he looked into a future that was colder and more bleak than any winter. I have had three years, he thought wearily, perhaps I should count myself lucky. But she, the heart of my heart, how will she count the cost?
He looked into her eyes and the faint smile was still there, lingering in their depths. “Too tired even to take off his mail,” she said, “although he does not need it now, with the guard doubled throughout the keep and a small army camped outside his door.”
“Do you mock me, Winter woman?” he demanded.
“I?” she said. “Mock? Who could mock the Earl of Night, leader of the first and greatest House of the Derai Alliance, even if he seems determined to sleep in his armor? Nay, do not call your squires. They were all snoring soundly when I passed the antechamber. I will be squire for you instead.”
“You do not have armor in the Winter Country,” he observed, but he let her help him anyway. It was a relief when the weight of the cuirass was lifted off, and the mail shirt, the greaves, and the vambraces, were laid aside.
“Sleep now,” she said, pushing him toward the great bed with its black canopy and curtains, shot through with gold and silver thread. Yet for all his weariness, sleep eluded him, and finally Rowan Birchmoon said, “Well, if you cannot sleep, why not explain one of your Derai mysteries? Tell me this story of the Great Betrayal, your civil war.”
“It is a dark history,” he replied slowly, and listened to the wind gust along the eaves and pry at the tightly closed shutters, noting the rising tone that meant a storm was coming. Yet what better time to tell the old, bitter story, with a Wall storm brewing and darkness stalking all around? “But I will tell it as I first heard it, as a storyteller’s tale, rather than trying to give a true and accurate account.” He shifted in the bed, drawing Rowan Birchmoon’s head to rest on his shoulder.
“Be still,” he began, using the traditional opening. “Be silent, and let me speak to you of the Darkness of the Derai.
It arose, as such things often do, seemingly out of nowhere, with a quarrel between two close friends. And what friends they were, for one was Aikanor, the Heir of Night, the other Tasianaran—Tasian—the Heir of Stars. Both were young and valiant and fair, the flower of Derai chivalry and the most beloved.
“Now Tasian, the Heir of Stars, also had a twin sister and powerful indeed was she, as well as fair, one of the greatest priestesses in the Alliance. Her name was Xeriatherien—Xeria—but all called her the Star of the Derai. Who knows when Aikanor, the Heir of Night, first looked on Xeria and loved her? Perhaps the love had been a long, slow time growing, or perhaps it dawned in the turning of her dark head, a glance from her starlit eyes—but love her he did. Yet Xeria did not return his love, for she was wedded to her training as a priestess, to the powers and arts sacred to the Nine Gods of the Derai. And gradually, when he saw that his love was not reciprocated, the light in Aikanor’s heart turned to darkness and a slow burning anger grew in its place.
“No one knows what truly happened or how the quarrel arose, only that Aikanor invited Tasian and Xeria to the Keep of Winds as his guests, at a time when the Earl of Night, his father, was away visiting the lesser holds. What is suspected is that Aikanor then tried to take Xeria by force. The details are lost but the inevitable happened. Weapons were drawn and the matter ended with Tasian and all his Honor Guard, who of course were greatly outnumbered, being slain. Only Xeria and one page escaped, fleeing to the Temple quarter and claiming sanctuary from the priests of Night.
“Cursed is the name of Aikanor now, in all the annals of the Derai, for he broke the sacred laws of hospitality and the bonds of friendship, betraying the honor of the House of Night. Mourn the murder of Tasian, the Heir of Stars, with his friends and retainers slain around him. Weep for Xeria, the Star of the Derai, trapped in the keep of her enemies.
Most of all, grieve for the Derai Alliance, which was nearly destroyed by this deed.
“Perhaps the situation could have been salvaged if the Earl of Night had returned and been able to control his Heir. But he was far away and Aikanor’s madness raged unchecked. He flung Tasian and the other House of Stars dead outside the Gate of Winds for the carrion eaters, then marched to the gates of the Temple quarter and demanded that Xeria be yielded to him. But the priests refused his demand and the Temple gates remained closed against the Heir of Night, for the first time ever recorded in all the long history of the Derai.
“Cursed be the High Priest and his followers for this deed, for they broke the sacred vows sworn by all Derai, to obey Earl and Heir first, before all other duties. Through their defiance they brought civil strife into the keep itself, siding with another House against their own so that Night was at war both within and without. And war it was, for the priests had their own temple warriors in those days and they were strong in powers and arts that allowed them to turn back the attacks of the Heir and his followers. The flam
es of their conflict leapt the walls of the Keep of Winds and ran the full length of the Wall, engulfing the entire Derai Alliance in the conflagration. The House of Stars marched in open war against the House of Night and all along the Derai Wall the other Houses took up arms, some declaring for one side, some for the other.
“In the end, most of the Houses fought against Night because of their horror at the slaying of Tasian and his retinue, and the wrong done to Xeria, whom many still held in their hearts as the Star of the Derai. For are not the children of Stars the most beloved of all the Houses, the getter of heroes and enchanters whose light has shone on the whole of the Derai Alliance, time after time? Only the House of Blood stood with Night at the last, and only the House of the Rose stood aside from the conflict, striving to heal the rift within the Alliance.
“The war was grim and bloody and the Keep of Winds endured a long and grievous siege but it did not fall, for who can take any keep that is filled with the Golden Fire of the Derai? Not even other Derai, it seemed—and at length both sides realized the futility of their strife and the House of the Rose was at last able to negotiate a peace. The final terms were signed in a great pavilion set amidst the killing grounds before the Gate of Winds, which remained closed until the signing was complete.
“Now in all that time there had been another gate that never opened, and that was the gate of the Temple quarter inside the Keep of Winds. Through all that long and bloody war the priestess Xeria and the priests of the House of Night had been besieged in their turn. Yet the treaty stipulated that there was to be peace between the Earl of Night and his priests, and that Xeria and her page were to go free at last. So the Temple gates swung open and they came out together, the High Priest with his people around him and the priestess Xeria, powerful still and fair, even in her sorrow. They all sat down together in the High Hall, the House of Night with the House of Stars, and priest beside warrior, to break the bread and drink the wine of peace, honoring the terms that had been sworn to and agreed.