Everran's Bane

by Kelso, Sylvia

  “As well he brought thee,” she said without looking round. “If I’d that to hold without a rope, he’d not have needed swords.”

  She watched a little longer, a breaker waiting for the colt to tire himself out. When Beryx was standing, winded and tottery, she said,

  He gave her a look of pure demonic hate. She sighed. “Make up the fire, harper. And take tha bed outside. T’will be a long old night.”

  When I woke in the morning watches it was quiet inside. I peeped round the jamb. The ember glow showed me Fengthira hunched chin on fist like a roosting owl, the gleam of a half-lidded eye. And Beryx, sitting on his heels against the kingpost, glaring implacably back. Before I could withdraw, Fengthira said without look or movement, “Make up the fire before tha goes.”

  When I woke again pale golden light was creeping down the tower sides, turning them to sheets of maerian fire. Neither of them had moved. Fengthira said, “Tha’lt be cook today as well as garden-boy.” She went on, to my unborn question, “Make me some tea, and take something thaself. But not to him.”

  Beryx was red-eyed and mad-looking as a half-manned hawk. He had begun to pace to and fro. As he turned I saw the blood on the rope, the raw welts on his wrists.

  “Ah,” said Fengthira with irony, watching me. “If tha’dst write Aedr, must spill more than ink.” She turned her attention back to Beryx and kept it there while she drank her tea. Even as she said, “Now see tha to my plants.”

  Nothing had altered at noon. At sunset Fengthira was red-eyed too, and her face had aged ten years. Beryx was past movement. He was hunched against the kingpost, head on his chest, eyes shut, every muscle of his body shouting unbroken, unyielding rebelliousness. I thought a little desperately that he would kill himself before he consented to try what she demanded, let be master it.

  “Ah,” Fengthira agreed wryly. “If he fought himself like he’s fighting me, t’would have been over last night.” She rubbed the small of her back and shook her head at me. “Naught tha canst do. My work. And my own fault.”

  Lying in my blankets, I heard her say, with tongue or mind-speech,

  Beryx answered with a baited snarl. Fengthira spoke with relentless patience. There was no reply.

  When the stars counted midnight I thought of the fire. Fengthira did not raise an eyelid, but Beryx, still jammed against the kingpost, lifted his head to watch me with the dregs of exhausted belligerence. Fengthira repeated, quietly as ever,

  He glared round at her. Then he said in a clear furious voice indistinguishable from his spoken one except it gave no hint of his condition.

  I spun round, open-mouthed. Fengthira’s face broke into a slow, tired smile.

  “Everran,” she said, her mouth corners curling, “tha’rt enough to make me take up hawks. What wilt answer then?”

  Beryx looked as stunned as I. He swallowed. There was a pause. Then, in that rather uninflected but uncannily normal voice, he said,

  Fengthira rose, stretching with the effort of age. Her eyes twinkled.

  As Beryx looked up at her I saw his eyes lose their frost of hostility, waking to a shame-faced acknowledgement, a tentative, rueful response. His mouth corners puckered, caked with dry saliva from foam and thirst.

  he answered.

  “Use the knife,” Fengthira bade me resignedly. “T’will be the end of my rope.” Taking the bucket she went out with that old woman’s gait.

  Beryx drank water, we all drank mint-tea, then I bathed his wrists in the hot water before Fengthira dressed them with a honey poultice and bandages thick enough for a horse. Beryx grinned, a little stiffly, and opened his mouth.

  “No,” she said calmly into that rekindled green glare. “Not till tha canst use Lathare sooner than tha talks.” She stood up. “And not,” she added, “till the falconer has had some sleep.”

  They both slept the length of the next day, and the night as well. Beryx seemed better the following morning, his eyes rid of that haunted, wounded look I had seen on the hill. At breakfast he said abruptly,

  Fengthira’s eyes crinkled as they lifted from yet another splice. “Th’art manned now,” she answered gravely. “All tha needst is work.”

  * * * * *

  Work him she did, first with her in the house, then outside, then making him help me in the garden as they talked, driving him with quiet relentlessness. He neither complained nor rebelled, but by the time we sat down under the finlythes his shirt was drenched and his muscles trembled when he relaxed.

  After we woke, she sent him to the lower valley.

  I forget what I brought. I was straining honeycomb for a new poultice while she scolded the lydel for trying to rob the safe, when we both heard Beryx call, shout, with urgency, with near panic in his voice.

 

  Fengthira’s eyes went blank for one short flash. Her answer’s force and vehemence nearly drove me on my face.

 

  On the words she was out of the house. I ran with emergency’s instinctive response. She crossed the garden like an adolescent hurdler, beds and channels taken in her stride. Tumbling from the cleft, I reached the lower valley in time to see her racing, swift as one of her own horses, toward the mob.

  They were jammed in a clump, ears back, on the point of flight. When she called something they broke, thundering away as horses do in panic, flat out, scattering like quail. She tore past. I ran up behind.

  Beryx was doubled on his face in the grass, arms over his head, flattened in more than obedience. Something was circling him, at a slow walking speed, waving and bending like a sheet of paper in the wind.

  It was flat: tall as a man, and shaped like a man, but when it turned sidelong it was flat as a portrait out of its frame. It did not walk as a man does, but slid along all of a piece over the grass. As it revolved I saw a long black robe stained with ash and blood, its folds immobile, a pair of hands folded on the breast. In the throat was a huge wound, wet and open. Its long black hair was dabbled with blood and its face was whiter than marble and as expressionless, but the eyes were awake. Milky white, shot with flecks of golden fire, like a pair of conscious, blind yet living maerians.

  As it came swaying and dipping toward us my blood curdled, my limbs froze, my tongue dried in my mouth. Still breathing hard, Fengthira stepped over Beryx and spoke in a clear, adamant voice.

  “Helve!” she said. “Arskan vist, Maerdrigg. Imsar math!”

  It halted, swaying, as if uncertain. She stared at it, her eyes cold and hard.

  It faded. Slowly, it disintegrated. It was gone. The sun was shining through open, empty air.

  I found my legs had let me down with a thump. Fengthira stared a moment longer, before she stepped back, exhaling a long sigh, and bent to touch Beryx. He flinched. She said, “No, me. Canst get up.”

  He unwound himself, and sat up. He was shaking. He looked mutely up at Fengthira, who nodded, but without a smile.

  “Ah,” she said. “Hast ta’en his stone. He wants it back.”

  We had climbed halfway up the cleft before Beryx broke out,

  Fengthira’s reply carried back to me, the reluctant last.

  “Has probably followed all tha line. Probably followed the one who has it now. But tha hast power. So canst see him. And power draws them. They have none of their own. They come to it.”

  “Ah, t’will make work troublesome,” she apparently answered his thou
ght. “If I had not come? He would have sucked thee dry. Then he would have gone to take his maerian.”

  As I shuddered, she answered my own question. “Aye. He’ll come back.”

  Instead of letting us sleep in the veranda, she herded us into her own rock chamber and lit a lamp, which she had never done before. “Hethel’s too scarce to waste.” She arranged us on the floor, Beryx in the middle, and as we lay down gave me a quick, dry smile. “Quiet thaself, harper. The Dead are with thee always. Even if hast never seen them before.”

  I neither expected nor intended to sleep, but I must have dozed, for I woke with a start. The lamplight showed me Beryx, eyes tight shut, flat and rigid on his back, and Fengthira, up on an elbow. And in the doorway the white glow of those phantom maerians.

  As if to a living man, Fengthira jerked her chin up and gave her tongue a sharp clear click. Then she spoke, more in sadness than anything, saying, “Helve, Maerdrigg. T’is not the time.”

  The maerians faded. Fengthira lay down. I heard her say, I was adrift myself when the lydel on the roof broke into a wild yatter and we heard it tear up a tree in a rain of leaves and bark.

  This time Fengthira spoke with outright exasperation. “Tha wast vexatious alive, and art more vexatious dead. Dost expect him to find it now, green as grass, and with thee addling my work? Hast need to drink Velandryxe thaself. Helve, tha stupid creature! Go away!” And after that nothing troubled us again.

  * * * * *

  Eskan Helken next morning had grown less idyllic, but daylight nerved me to ask what it had been. Fengthira, feeding breakfast crumbs to the lydel on her shoulder, looked up as I opened my mouth.

  “Maerdrigg,” she said. “The last Maerheage. The stone came to them with his father Thilliansar, for the marriage of Maersoth, Darrhan’s daughter: his only trueborn child. Maerdrigg killed five uncles to keep the maerian when his grandfather died, and he had six sons out of wedlock himself. The last was Vorn: the Tooth. They changed it to Vyrne: the Last. He slew his brothers to get the succession, and Maerdrigg saw nothing. He still had his maerian. Then Vorn slew Maerdrigg as well. Hast seen him as he died: the Dead that walk must do it in their dying shape. And he walks because, dead or alive, he is bound to his maerian.”

  She glanced at Beryx. “After the Vyrnes fell, Berrian found the stone. When tha hast the skill, had best give it back. Yes, tha’lt have the art. And we had best begin on it. More than Everran is waiting on thee now.”

  She came round the table to stand behind him. The lydel tweaked her hair. She said, “Quiet, brat,” and put her right hand lightly on the nape of Beryx’s neck. “Look at that wall,” she said.

  He had stiffened at her touch. Now he turned his eyes obediently to the latticed frame.

  They widened. He caught his breath and held it until Fengthira lifted her hand. Then he let it out without noticing and turned to stare at her with a bright wonder, close to joy.

  “Pharaone,” she nodded, smiling a small, stern smile. “Farsight. Pretty, ah? And simple—for thee.” Something that might have been envy tinged her voice. “Do it again, then. By thaself.”

  Beryx turned without hesitation, his eyes widening. They did not turn black this time. The irises brightened, no longer cool, but vivid as a finghend held against the sun, sparked with stars of living light.

  Fengthira watched, alert and still. The glow intensified, beginning to weave as sunlight does in water, to twist in ever more swiftly dancing strands—she put a hand on his neck and said, “Whoa. Come back.”

  He came up blinking as if he had been submerged: shook his head. Turned to me with a quick eager glance as if to share whatever he had seen: checked, and gave Fengthira an enquiring look.

  “Hearing, yes” she said. “Lathare, if he were taught. But not the Sights. Must go through Phare for those.” His look sharpened. “Si’sta. Hast his ear for music, but canst tha build his songs? Ah. That’s in the blood. As Ruanbr’arx is in thine.”

  Gathering up mugs, I felt a moment’s envy. Then I recalled the apprenticeship for such a gift, and gave thanks mine was for the harp.

  As I washed up I heard the quick, absorbed, technical exchanges of craftsmen at their work. Then a break. Then Fengthira said sharply, “Whoa!” and Beryx’s chair went over with a crash.

  The explosion was not rage but anguish.

  “And do what?” she cut in icily.

  he cried.

  She snapped back, “And I let thee see for learning, not so tha shouldst rush back to run tha people about the country one jump ahead of its teeth. What more canst tha do? Hast learnt nothing else.”

  I heard him charge to and fro, a rush of rebellious, anguished, despairing steps. Fengthira said coldly, “Canst do as much for them as Maerdrigg for his maerian.”

  His feet stopped. Then they returned to the chair. His mind’s speech held torment twisted to a rage of purpose.

  “Work,” she replied. “All of us. W’ave burnt more wood these three days than I do in a week.”

  * * * * *

  We went to the lower valley, where she called the horses. We saddled ours. She said, “We’ll take tha packhorse,” and tossed the much-abused hide rope over its back. Then she fixed her eye on a dry gray mare, and after a moment the mare came up, bending her head as if for a bridle, standing while Fengthira hopped from a rock to her back, moving off as if given the office with rein and heel.

  Even Beryx’s distraction broke at that. “Wryve-lan’x,” Fengthira told him. “Shalt do it in time. Like all the rest.”

  Outside the valley the mare halted. “Find a dead tree,” Fengthira commanded. “Use Pharaone. As tha wouldst with eyes.”

  Beryx checked his horse, frowning, troubled more by the past vision than the present task. This time his eyes merely blanked as Fengthira’s had the day before, then he swung his horse to the right.

  The frail, spindly, desert tree, barely six feet high, was already rotting. They have a short life. I thought of an axe, but Fengthira shook her head, her eyes shot one gray flash, and the tree snapped at the butt as if at a lightning strike. “Axynbr’arve,” she told Beryx. “Another high art. Tha’lt learn that too. This time, canst pick up the bits.”

  By noon we were heaving and hauling the packhorse up the cleft to unload the wood, while Fengthira made mint-tea and took it down to the finlythes. I was more than happy to rest, but Beryx was still on the rack.

  When we finished, Fengthira sighed and said, “That guide of thine. Had aedric blood, ah? Speak to him, then. Send him back to Everran. Say th’art making a weapon. Canst give them hope, if hast nothing else.”

  Beryx’s face lit: then it grew dubious, which made her snort. “Couldst boil a kettle twice that size. But I’d best ward harper first. Look here.” My eyes rose involuntarily, and hers took them, drawing me into a silent gray moonlit world of unknown, unnamable shapes...

  I was back amid sunlit green and finlythe shade, with Fengthira watching me closely and Beryx breathing hard, sweat on his face, looking shakenly delighted and partially consoled.

  “Wilt be a song indeed,” she told me with one of her dour smiles, “if canst make a song of that.” I knew she meant what I had seen. “Letharthir,” she added to Beryx. “If I’d not shut his mind, tha’dst have deafened him.” She shifted the teapot. “Shouldst practice Pharaone, but... Th’art strong. And time’s short. Phathire, then. This prenticeship should be hasty enough even for thee.”

  By the time I finished the garden, Beryx’s fretful restlessness had become absorption, almost awe. He shot me a yearning look, and Fengthira chuckled.

  “Show him, then. Canst do it. No, harper, no call to pull back like a touchy colt. Just look in his eyes. Tha’lt see, if hast not the Sight.”

  Beryx’s eagerness steeled me. I met his eyes.

  They were green, scintillant, dancing with energy in place of mirth, but now the pupils widened to swallow
green in black, and then black cleared to light. And in it, as in a tiny crystal, figures moved.

  I was looking up at some half-built edifice where men swarmed like zealous ants, driving sledge-teams that hauled up dressed-stone slabs, winching, heaving, levering them into place, shoveling containers of rubble to pace the rising stone. Close by a tall man in a crimson cloak with a gold coronal on his dark hair exhorted a group, stabbing his finger on a piece of parchment, waving here and there, and all around us stretched the arid lands of Hethria, bisected to the north by the courses of a mighty wall.

  Beryx sounded literally inside my ear. His eyes sparkled at me through the finlythe shade. He laughed in open delight.

  “Hark’ee, Everran,” Fengthira broke in sternly. “No Sight is a toy, least of all Phathire. Mayst use Pharaone as tha likes—except on Everran. Except on Everran,” she repeated inflexibly. “But Phathire tha’ll not use without me by. Th’are more things in Pharaon Lethar than tha knowst. If tha fetches one like Vorn or Lossian or thy or my plaguey ancestors, t’may be more than I can persuade back.”

  said Beryx, crestfallen. Then his eyes narrowed. In some amusement, she answered his thought.

  “Ah. There’s a sight for the future. Yxphare. But tha’ll not play with that. It’s no art, it’s a gift, and a double-edged gift. And yes, I can do it. T’is bred in my line. But it comes to me, I don’t seek for it. And yes, it told me tha wast coming. And no, it did not say I should teach thee, which is why I tried thee first. All I saw was a picture in the well there: Eskan Helken, and the two of you riding up.” She climbed to her feet. “Now shalt stretch tha muscles. I need flour to feed you two great gowks.”

  * * * * *

  So we took turns grinding her small desert grain on a saddle quern until supper. When we finished, Beryx was still on the dance, so Fengthira made him wash up.