Here at his own Tillinghast, he hoped it would come to him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Waking Dreams and Forgiveness
Forgiveness is fitting, but forgetting is foolish.
—The last line in “The Old Saw of Penitents,” oft repeated following avowals
Tahn woke to the crush of dirt under Sutter’s boots. His friend was up before the sun, and walking away into the night alone. A moment later, Tahn followed.
Frigid winds swept down the face of the mountain, tamed by the heat that rose off the Soliel. On the face of the short, sheer bluff, Tahn hunkered down next to Sutter, who’d found a crag to sit in. Out of the wind, everything became suddenly quiet, and he stared with his friend into the predawn dark.
They shared a long companionable silence.
Tahn used to love this time of day back home. The smell of sweetroot and eggs would fill the air as they sizzled over a griddle on the hearth. Strong warm tea brewed in Balatin’s pot, and from the yard came the sound of wood being split to fuel the endfast fire, and feed being thrown down for the animals. Then a race through chores before he took to the trees and discovered a new way through the woods to Sutter’s house, where he’d hope to find his friend stooped over his furrows so he could peg him in the ass with a dirt clod.
As he peered deep into the darkness from the Saeculorum ridge, he imagined a sun that shone weakly over the crests of these far mountains. The promise he’d always felt when imagining the sun … was somehow gone.
Tahn shut his eyes and rested his head against the rock, grateful for only one thing: his friend, Sutter. Nails was the only person he could talk to about the horror of his last few hours. And Sutter, perhaps better than anyone, would understand.
His friend had himself been abandoned.
Finally, Tahn broke the silence.
“You’ve been a good friend,” he said. It came out sounding lame.
Sutter, still staring into the darkened plain, gave a wan smile. “You, too.”
“Then can I ask you something? Something about your parents … all of them?”
Sutter turned, and nodded.
“Last night Vendanj restored my memory.”
Sutter’s brows went up.
Tahn waited a long moment. “I’m not Balatin’s son. The dreams and loss of memory, everything that’s bothered me, it’s all because of my real father … Grant.”
In the dark, Sutter’s eyes widened. But he didn’t interrupt.
“I spent years with him in the Scar, but then he sent me to live with Balatin and Vocencia.” Tahn shook his head. “They knew, Sutter. They knew and never told me.” Tahn choked the words out. “Why didn’t he want me, Sutter? Why do parents not want their children?”
Sutter took Tahn’s hand in a firm Hollows grip. He spoke through the tears.
“Tahn, Grant isn’t your father. Your father is Balatin, your mother is Vocencia. I don’t know all the reasons why they made the mistake of not telling you the truth, but they loved you. Don’t doubt it. I was in your home, I knew your father. I saw it. Hold to that.”
“How do you do it? How do you put a parent’s abandonment aside?” Tahn waited, hoping for some truth that would help him. If anyone would have it now, it would be Sutter.
His friend looked back, his eyes distant. “Maybe you never do.” A calm touched his face. “I think you have to find a way to live past it. For me … I consider myself an orphan. Not because the parents who bore me were already dead. They weren’t.” Sutter looked out on the vista before them. “They just didn’t want me.” He paused a moment.
“I hated them. I thought for a long time that I wanted them to die.” Sutter nodded to himself. “I remember wishing I could watch it happen. They were pageant wagon players like Penit. They didn’t want to be burdened by a kid as they traveled town to town. My true father—the one who raised me—saw them in a field one day when they’d come to the Hollows with their wagons to play the rhea-fols.”
Sutter’s eyes stared into the past. “They were alone in the high grass, hidden. But my father walks the field every day. Accidentally found them. They’d just had me, Tahn. There in a field under a summer sun they’d brought me into the world between sketches on the wagon.”
Then Sutter looked back at Tahn, his eyes brimming with tears. “The man who gave me life was about to put me in a bucket of water. End my life before it started.”
The revelation stole Tahn’s breath. How long had his friend lived with this knowledge? Tahn ached just hearing it. Dead gods, the image of it.
Sutter went on in a low voice. “He rescued me, Tahn. Filmoere took me in as his own. Raised me. Gave me a life. And he told me the truth of it because he said truth was the only way.” Sutter wept silent tears. “He told me the better truth was that he was proud of me, and that none of that business in the field meant a damned thing. Told me he loved me.”
Sutter gave Tahn a determined look. “So your father is still Balatin. He made mistakes. Should have told you the truth. But he didn’t abandon you. And I’m a witness to that.”
They sat together for a time in the dark of the crag, staring out over the Soliel. Tahn’s spirits rose a little. And he imagined the dawn, but briefly.
* * *
Sutter kept his friend company for the better part of an hour before breaking the silence.
“Tahn, have you ever dreamed with your eyes open?” he asked.
He let the inquiry hang. In his mind he stood again at a window seeing unearthly things that he didn’t want to believe were real.
A gust of wind howled around the bluff above them, and with its passing, the breezes vanished altogether. In the distance, the earliest trace of the new day touched the sky in shades of deep violet.
Tahn shook his head.
“I’ve seen some things,” Sutter continued. “Like the kind of dreams you have before you’re fully asleep. I don’t know what to think of them. Maybe I’m tired. No harvest ever worked me so hard as this.” He stuck a thumb toward the horses and the others. “But I think it’s more than just dreams. I see them when I know I’m awake. And I need to tell someone about them, Tahn. I need to tell you.”
Tahn waited without speaking.
Sutter looked away at the horizon. Traces of light streaked the sky in dark violet. “Last night it was the strongest. But I’ve seen it every night since the prison at Recityv.…”
Tahn shifted his weight. “What is it?”
“I see faces, Tahn. All the time, and not like you do when you just think of them and remember. It’s not like that.” Sutter’s voice began to tremble. “Sometimes I think they’re looking at me, trying to tell me something. But their eyes are empty.”
“Who?” Tahn prodded. “Who do you see?”
Sutter gave Tahn a fixed stare. “I think I see the spirits of people who are about to die. I think I see death before it comes.” With a quiet tone he finished, “And I think it walks with us to Tillinghast.”
Sutter looked away from his friend again.
Tahn patted Sutter’s leg. “I think you just need some sleep, Nails. I know I could use some.”
“Maybe,” Sutter agreed, unconvinced. He tugged at the leather loop around his finger that the Sedagin had given him. It reminded him of a different strength he thought he could possess. He clenched his fist and sat straighter. “The night we stayed at the leagueman’s home,” Sutter began slowly. “Do you remember?”
“Of course. You spent half the night under your bed with fever dreams.”
Sutter corrected him. “Not fever dreams. I don’t know what it was. I was tired but still awake when I began to get cold. I got up to close the window a little. When I got to the sill, a face came up out of the dark beyond the glass.”
“You were pretty sick,” Tahn offered. “Maybe you saw your own reflection?”
“That’s what I thought at first. I even remember laughing at myself for spooking at my own face … until I moved … and the image didn’t.�
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“But this all sounds like a fever dream,” Tahn reasoned. “You could have imagined it, and then fallen out of bed and rolled beneath the mattress.”
Sutter stared at him. Even now he dreaded saying it out loud. “The face I saw that night beyond the window belonged to the woman they burned the next day.”
His friend’s face went slack, and Sutter’s own heart pounded.
“Dead gods, Nails, are you sure?”
“And it’s not the only time.”
Silence settled over them. Sutter turned and stared thoughtfully into the cold of dawn.
Death walked with them to Tillinghast.
“That’s not all of it, Tahn.” Leaves stirred by a cold breeze whispered a warning, as Sutter prepared to tell Tahn the rest.
It was such a burden. The anguish and loss and confusion and regret in the faces of these spirits. And drawn to Sutter. Was this thing in him permanent? How would he live with this? How would he ever find love and have a family, knowing that he would see their souls before they died, and then have to spend those last days with them knowing what would come?
And what of his parents, Filmoere and Kaylla, who’d given him a life and home? Already Sutter dreaded the day he might see their spirits.
It was too much.
He wanted to return to his roots. Just till the earth and leave Tillinghast and everything else behind. No waking nightmares anymore. No shadows of death that came to him. Not his friends. Not his parents.
But he gripped Tahn’s hand and looked him in the eye. Because somewhere inside him he wanted to believe that the things he saw could be changed. “The face I see now, every night since Solath Mahnus … is Mira’s.”
* * *
Tahn sat in silence.
Forgotten was the hammer scar on his hand—a brand he knew now belonged to the children of the Scar.
Forgotten were his misgivings about Grant.
His eyes ached from sleepless nights and the endless stream of days that had preceded them.
He thought about a Bar’dyn in his home, a leagueman on a gallows, and others he’d aimed at, uttered words for, and felt something about their life. What did he feel about Mira’s life? Was she meant to die?
Tahn shook away the thought when Sutter spoke again. “Do you think it’ll be like this forever? Will I see them all my life? Will I see my own…?”
“I don’t know, Sutter.” Tahn gave his friend a sturdy look. “But I’ll tell you what I do know. For as long as you need me, I’ll help you however I can.”
Sutter’s jaw set with determination. “I don’t know what’s at the end of these mountains, Tahn. I don’t know what waits for us at Tillinghast. But whatever it is, I’m with you. And we’ll go there for our fathers. The ones who stood by us when others would not.”
He gave his friend a strong embrace and stood, his head still filled with the ache of revelations.
* * *
He left Sutter sitting low against the rock, and went to saddle his horse.
As he fidgeted with the saddle belts, Wendra drew up beside him.
“How are you?” she asked, her voice sounding bruised.
“I’ve had better days. How are you?” He pointed to her throat.
Wendra gingerly touched her neck. “Still hurts,” she managed. “Just talking is a strain.” She coughed lightly.
“Then don’t,” Tahn said. “We can talk later. But at least you’re on your feet. I guess I’ve one reason to thank Vendanj.” Tahn looked up the hill, where several strides away Vendanj cast his hawkish gaze back over the same vista he’d watched with Sutter. “You ever feel like it might have been better if we’d just stayed in the Hollows?”
Wendra followed Tahn’s gaze, then pointed toward Penit, who methodically rubbed his mount’s legs. The boy was singing soft snippets of a song Tahn had often heard Wendra singing.
She whispered, “Sometimes. But mostly I’m grateful to have come along. I’d never have met Penit otherwise. And in spite of everything, it’s been a kind of … blessing for me to watch after him.” She turned back to Tahn. “And Balatin would have wanted us to stay together.” She took his hand. “I love you. You’re my only family now.”
Tahn fought the emotion clenching his throat. He still loved her as a sister. But she didn’t know they weren’t truly related. Tahn shot a look at the Sheason, wondering if he should tell her. He decided to leave it be for now. She’d been through too much already.
“Besides, when this loveliness is over, we’ll go back, and Hambley will keep our plates full for the stories we’ll have to tell his patrons.” Wendra playfully rolled her eyes. “It might even fetch me some attention from eligible men … besides Sutter.” She coughed again, quickly stifling the noise with her palm.
Tahn marveled at her resilience. And he was grateful for this moment. A normal kind. Like the days before the Bar’dyn who took … He wanted suddenly to tell her. Tell her that he hadn’t fired because of the old words and the feeling that came. He might not be ready to tell her that they weren’t related, but by hells he could explain why he hadn’t helped her that night.
So he did. He told her his oldest secret, the need to seek the correctness of every draw, the words he recited. And he explained how he’d spoken those words when he’d aimed at the Bar’dyn who’d come into their home to take her child.
“I had the feeling I shouldn’t shoot,” he said. “I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make any sense. But I’m sorry. If there was ever a time in my life when I wish I hadn’t listened to those feelings…”
She smiled wanly.
“I want that shot back,” he went on. “Even if I couldn’t save the baby, I want that chance again.”
In his heart of hearts, he didn’t know if he could do it differently.
Wendra shook her head and placed her hands on his cheeks. She turned his face fully to her own. She looked at him tenderly, and Tahn saw in her the might of his father, Balatin: a desire to forgive.
With an intent gaze, Wendra whispered, “Give me time.”
He wished for a bit of her strength. He pulled Wendra close and folded her in a tight embrace.
“Revelations have been part of this whole journey, haven’t they?” she said. “I’ve learned a little about myself, too. Apparently, gifts run in the family.” She smiled at him, and explained about the power of her song. She shared more than she had before. She told him about Jastail, and the slave blocks, and the terrible song she’d sung down on the Bar’dyn. She told of Seanbea and Descant Cathedral and the Maesteri.
“Belamae wanted me to stay and learn to sing Suffering.” A look of regret crossed her face. “But I couldn’t, Tahn. I had to make sure Penit stays safe. I disappointed Belamae. Vendanj, too, I think. The reason we went to Recityv was because of me—”
“While you’re working on forgiving me, do it for yourself.” He offered her a smile.
She nodded her thanks, and then took him by the shoulders. “Now, to more important matters.” She looked around. “There are rumors that you have feelings for Mira. True?” A playful smile spread on her lips.
Tahn shook his head and smiled again. “You’ve been talking to Sutter.”
“No, I overheard Sutter. He has one volume. Hard not to pick up a thing or two.”
He took her hands. “If I ever choose to do anything with regard to Mira, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good enough,” she answered. Then she kissed his cheek and went to Penit, the two of them returning to her horse with arms intertwined.
“She’s a strong woman.”
The voice startled him. He turned to find Grant at his side.
“Wendra, your sister.” Grant nodded toward Wendra. “She’ll be your greatest ally, if you keep faith with her.”
Bile rose at the back of Tahn’s throat. His anger thrummed inside him.
“Tahn, I want—”
“I don’t care what you want.” He spoke sharply.
The stoic look in
Grant’s eyes flickered. Another man might have risen to the bait. This man stared back with the patience of long isolation. “Whatever you decide to think is your choice. But you’d better search your newfound memory. You have a task at the end of these mountains and you need to be straight in your heart and mind to do it.
“I didn’t want to send you away. It was the best, safest thing for you. And I convinced my best friend and his wife to go into the Hollows to raise you and their young daughter, because I wanted you to have the best possible life.” Grant’s words came as though he’d thought them over.
They had the tone of a father.
And Tahn hated him for it.
“Yet you kept some wards in your Scar,” Tahn said. “How did you decide that they were worthy of your care and protection, but I wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t easy…” Grant started and failed.
Tahn held no sympathy. “You stole my childhood from me twice: once when you used it to prepare me for your own purpose, and again when you wiped it from my mind and sent me away. If I survive Tillinghast it will be because of the decency of another man, not the secrets and lies of an exile.”
Grant stood a moment, as if he might say something more, but finally just walked away.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Stain
Man has eighteen years to learn accountability. There’s no reason—or means—to transfer guilt.
—Discourse on Sacrifice, authored by the Second Prelate of the Church of Reconciliation
Winds drove the clouds from the Saeculorum, turning the air brittle cold under clear skies. Tahn and the others climbed for two days. The wind through the pines and over the crags was a constant moan.
Tahn kept his own company.
On the morning of the third day, glittering points of sunlight sparkled like gems on a blanket of snow. The clean, bright vista relieved the sullenness that had settled in since they’d entered the Saeculorum.
Tahn rode up beside Mira. “We’re close, aren’t we?”
Her eyes continued to search the tree line. “Yes. And how are you?”
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