by Lori Martin
“You didn’t tell me any of this.”
“You’ll have to forgive me that. I was sent to observe the camp because I did have training, but I wasn’t supposed to let on to any of you.”
“The Assembly’s outstanding trust in its officers never ceases to amaze me,” Teleus said. “I thought you seemed very familiar with the gahls, for a civilian.”
“But I won’t do it!”
“My dear cousin, you don’t seem to realize that you have no choice. These ‘appointments’ can’t be refused, not in these times. We’re going to war.”
Nichos put his head in his hands, miserable.
“Cheer up,” Teleus said. “With that background, I couldn’t be happier than to have someone like you with us. And the Sixth is a good group of men; they only need someone to follow. Finish this, now, and then we’ll go over to stocks and get you proper army clothes. You can’t be a ranking in all that plumage.”
“Determined to take me under your wing, aren’t you?”
“Well, you’re already under my roof.” Teleus grinned. “I can’t wait,” he said with glee, “to see the look on Quienos’s face when he hears the news!”
“Lilli?” Dalleena’s voice was weak. Her friend bent over, smiling.
“You’ve come back to us,” she said, and sat carefully beside her on the bed. Dalleena was able to focus a bit better, her eyes roaming about the room. The morning light came through the windows, spilling on the floor, which looked freshly washed. No one else was there. She tried to figure it out. “I’ve been ill?”
“Very ill. We thought we were going to lose you. Your mother is talking to Lindis right now.”
Her hands fumbled at the sheets. “The baby –”
“–is fine. You haven’t lost him. Or her.” Lilli bent and kissed her cheek. “Why don’t you go back to sleep now, and this afternoon you can try to eat something. You need rest.”
“But Lilli –”
“Hush now.” She smoothed the sheets down and smiled at her. She seemed determined about something.
Dalleena persisted, “But where’s Rendell?”
“You’re too weak for so much talking now. Get some sleep.”
Her eyes, pale and heavy a moment before, widened in alarm. There was something too forced, too calculated in the reassuring tone. “Has something happened?”
“Dalleena –” But Lilli saw it was no use. The Nialian was strong in her.
“Where’s Rendell? Where is he?”
She tried to sit up and felt dizzy. Lilli gripped her by the shoulders. “I want to tell you something. Can you listen to me?”
She nodded. Her body, drained and empty, weak from the sickness, tried to brace itself for attack. She waited for the blow.
“You’ve been very, very ill. You’ve got to try to be calm and hold yourself together,” Lilli said. Her look was full of pity. “Or your system won’t stand it.”
She couldn’t ask again. Her look pleaded.
“He’s gone from us, Dalla. The gods have taken him.”
Within the space of only a few seconds the outer physical body knew what was expected, and began to shake. The eyes flooded with tears. The hands gripped into Lilli’s skin, nails into the flesh. But none of it was a part of Dalleena. Deep inside her, her soul folded in on itself, and all that was left was a shrill screaming voice, rising in horrified denials. The voice howled and shrieked inside her head. She could hardly hear above it, as Lilli’s quiet words went on.
“You were so ill, my dearest, and he loved you so much, that he couldn’t bear it. He was here every day, for days on end, never leaving, never going home. He took your horse from the stables and went up the road –”
This made no sense. This was not a reality. Rendell was strong and healthy. Rendell was a young man still. She saw him clearly, his hair blown back, his eyes laughing; she could feel his hands far better than she was feeling Lilli’s. He could not be dead. How could he die?
“I don’t believe you,” her mouth said. It sounded hollow. “I don’t believe anything you’re saying.”
Lilli paused with her arms around her. She said softly, “He loved you so much that he went to the arch. The Arch of Sanlin. Do you hear me, Dalla? Do you understand? He did what Armillus did. He gave his life for you, to save you, and the child. The goddess accepted it.” This was all Lilli would ever tell her. Let her hear from others how the Watcher came to her room, but no one knew the cure she had brought. Lilli had washed the floor and bathed Dalleena’s body, fighting back the nausea and almost blind. She would never speak of it.
“Sanlin?”
“Yes. You see, he knew you were dying. We had no hope left. To save you he went through the arch.”
Now she believed. It was the only possible thing, the only way that he would die, willingly and with foreknowledge, giving of himself. This she had to accept and believe in. It was true! It was true, and he was gone from her.
She screamed. Again and again she screamed out his name, wrenching the cries from her very depths, her soul joined back with her body in hoarse and dreadful sobs. The sound shivered up Lilli’s skin and filled her own eyes with tears.
The two women clung to each other. Even in the trap of her first agony some corner of Dalleena’s mind knew the uselessness of its grief. She was helpless. It was useless, useless to stand in the crossroads screaming this way! this way! when her life was already running far ahead, down the other path. Weep as she might, she could not call it back. She could not even reach him. The gods had raised the barriers, and neither the dead nor the living could break through. He must have been so alone. How appallingly alone she would be, now, in the barren and wretched future stretching out before her.
Grief could do nothing. Weeping could do nothing, but she wept, because it was the only thing she could do.
That night Lilli stumbled wearily down the stairs. The healer had given Dalleena a draft, and she had finally fallen asleep. Lilli’s tired legs gave out midway, and she sat down. Her robe clung to her in the heat.
“May I speak with you?” A young man came out of the shadows at the bottom of the staircase, as if he had been waiting for her.
“Who is it?” She was bewildered. He came up, and as he did his face came into the torchlight. “By Nialia,” she said dully. “If it isn’t Temhas.”
He paused, his face lit up with emotion, his eyes searching. “You were at the truth-seeking? You saw me?”
“Oh, yes. It was long work, standing in the crowd listening to you.” She staggered to her feet. He put out a hand to help her, but she flung it off. “How dare you come here,” she said, her voice low and slicing. “How dare you!”
“Please. I waited all day to speak with you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I only wanted –”
“And I don’t care what you wanted, either!” Here was someone to hold responsible. “You blood traitor, it’s your fault, it’s all your doing! You and your spite and your ambition. You exiled Dalleena and you’ve murdered your own brother!”
Temhas collapsed against the wall of the stairwell. “I knew,” he said more to himself than to her, “I knew you would hate me. But I kept hoping – I couldn’t help hoping –”
Lilli was out of breath. She saw the family resemblance, but his features were much sharper than Rendell’s – than Rendell’s had been. The dark hair, too, seemed to cast deep hollows on the cheeks. He murmured, “Forgive me for bothering you, Lilli,” and turned to descend.
“How do you know my name?”
He stopped. “I – heard someone call you.”
“I’m so tired,” she said abruptly, and sat back down. He hesitated, uncertain, then sat down beside her. Her anger was gradually replaced by exhaustion. They were silent.
After some moments Lilli said, “You knew how Rendell met her. You knew about the horse. If you knew that you must have known about me, but I was never charged, I wasn’t even called to testify.”
“I knew
every night that you came, and you went up the left stairs to avoid my rooms. But I saw you. I used to stand there, sometimes, and watch you sleep.”
She said nothing.
Temhas tilted up his chin. “I knew if I came to you you’d judge me and accuse. But I wanted to tell you – I wanted you to understand –”
It was a mistake. Lilli’s hands clutched at her skirts, her voice hard again. “I do understand. You’re grasping and greedy, and when an opportunity came along you grabbed it, even betraying your own brother. It was uncontrollable ambition, that’s all. Good even’.
“Just as the relas and Rendell committed their crime out of uncontrollable passion?”
She halted. “That’s not true. They had a reason.”
“So did I. I did! Don’t you see? You’re condemning me the same way the council condemned them.”
She had a sense of justice, and he had caught her in it. “All right. I’m listening.”
Temhas looked away, down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t have as good a reason as they said they had,” he said. “I can’t claim a god told me to. I did it for myself, I admit it. You have to try to understand, I don’t have a real home or family. My father despises me, he always has. He would never have helped me, never have let me come to court, because he thinks I’m ignorant and selfish and stupid. Well, if I wasn’t ignorant I wouldn’t have fallen into Sillus’s traps, and you saw for yourself just how selfish I can be. But I’m not stupid. I could have been good in a court life. I have the talents for it, it’s what I’ve always wanted. Rendell – Rendell wasn’t against me but he had no court contacts, he couldn’t help me. So when Sillus offered – I just had to take it.”
“By selling your brother and Dalleena?”
“No, that’s just it! Sillus swore to me they’d come to no harm. No, no,” he protested over her derision. “I swear it’s true. He told me he had no interest in Rendell, that my family would be kept out of it. At the time even he didn’t know where it was all leading.”
“Then why did he want you to do it?”
“He wanted a hold over the relas. He’s been trying to marry her to Carden, hasn’t he?”
“Well, yes, but –”
“So if he threatened her with scandal, maybe she’d give in. That’s all I thought it would be.”
She turned this over. It sounded like something Sillus would try. “But how could you? To casually give away her life and her chance of happiness!”
“But I didn’t even know her!” he pleaded. “I hadn’t even met her. I didn’t think she was real. I didn’t really think of her as a person at all. Why should I have cared if she was forced into a marriage or who was right in her quarrels with her relatives?”
“That woman –” Lilli pointed up the stairs, shaking with indignation –”that woman that you think isn’t real, that woman who isn’t a person, has cried hysterically and hopelessly over your brother. Have you?”
He could not meet her look. He said thickly, “No. And that’s the worst of all.”
Another wave of weariness hit her, and she actually pitied him. He looked like a little boy, not a murderer. He couldn’t have foreseen Dalleena’s illness, or the child, or the consequences of it.
“Temhas, how old are you?”
“Eighteen.” His voice was lifeless. “I had to testify against him, waiting for Pillyn to come home – my sister, I mean – and hate me as my father hates me. But I’d written those reports – I thought it was a little strange he’d asked for them in writing, but I didn’t worry about it – and there they were with my name on them. I couldn’t deny it, I couldn’t refuse. And now Rendell’s dead – I never even spoke to him again –”
“Why didn’t you give my name to Sillus?”
“I watched you,” he said. “Risking yourself for a friend. Loyal. You’re with her still. Tell me, what is it like?”
In wonder, Lilli put her hand under his chin and raised his eyes to meet hers.
“Lilli, I’m in love with you.”
“Ohhhhhh,” she sighed, and in the sound was all her sorrow, for the sadness in the world. The proud and petulant mouth broke, and he began to cry like an abandoned child. For the second time that day Lilli comforted grief, and felt someone else’s tears on her neck.
“Ranking, the gahl carts are packed.”
“Thank you. Tell the men we’ll be marching after the Third Band,” Nichos ordered. “The archery bands will be riding behind.”
“Yes, Ranking.” The man disappeared. Nichos mounted his horse. His band of foot soldiers would walk, but his rank entitled him to ride. He adjusted his war clothes, still unused to their weight. It was one of the many trivial things that irritated him about the army. As for the larger problem of participating in the war in the first place, he endeavored not to think about it.
“Good morn, cousin,” Teleus called, riding up. “Are your men ready?”
“They should be. They’ll be happy to be marching in front of the women.”
“Of course. It’s no joy walking in the tracks of all those horses.” He grinned. “The commander must be relieved to finally get the orders to move out. I certainly am. With any luck it’ll be over before the snow falls. I’ll ride along with you, by the way, as our bands are together.”
“Good, but let’s get them going first. And Teleus – don’t underestimate the Lindahnes.”
The two men parted to join their bands. Up and down, the company lines were forming. At the very head was the commander, still clutching his orders from the Assembly. Behind him the bands of men stretched out, the long carts carrying the gahls on either side. The chilhi was conferring with the ranking of the Second Band. Farther back, the horses of the archery bands stamped and blew, impatient to move. Their glossy hides, mostly gold and chestnut, contrasted with the black outfits of their riders; the women themselves lifted glowing faces to the crisp air. Nichos turned to look at them as they raised their voices together in a traditional song. In a moment they had reached the chorus; deeper voices from the foot soldiers began to answer. He thought that the company was beautiful, composed of the best of his people; the young men cheerful and eager, their husky and healthy bodies ready for the long miles, the women singing sweetly, their movements supple and strong.
He thought, And all this, this true and deep loveliness, is going to war.
Horns blared. The commander shouted. Man and horse stepped forward, and the carts began to roll. They would march for several hours, and pause to eat at midday.Teleus rejoined him.
“So we’re finally off,” he said with satisfaction. “Don’t look so glum, Ranking, it’s bad for morale.”
“Teleus, how did I get into this?”
“If I hear that question one more time! Stop complaining. Your men shaped up well, didn’t they?”
“Yes, you were right. They only needed someone to follow. Of course, they were a little suspicious to have a civilian suddenly promoted to ranking. That cleared up as soon as I knocked down Sidelk – he’s their best man – in gahl practice.”
“You’ve done well all around. The Sixth was beginning to get a reputation for rowdiness until you calmed them down. One of these evenings the commander will probably tell you, over his wine cup, how happy he is with you.”
“He did last night, as a matter of fact, but it was over dinner.”
“So there you are.”
“It was in place of the farewell dinner I would have had,” Nichos added, “if I had gone home.” He looked so wistful Teleus laughed at him.
“We’ll make a soldier out of you yet!”
“You already have, cousin, you already have. But I haven’t learned to like it.”
“The leaves have begun to fall,” Dalleena said listlessly, looking out her window.
“They’ve been falling, for quite a while,” Lilli answered pointedly. “Quite a while.”
At first she did not react. Then her eyes widened. “Wait,” she said, just beginning to r
emember. “I was supposed to – I was supposed to be in exile when the leaves began to fall.”
“I was wondering if you were ever going to think of it.” She looked up from her needlework and studied the form at the window. Dalleena was bulky, heavier than she should have been, now in her sixth month. Her eyes were rimmed with dark circles; she could not sleep at night, and if she did she cried in her dreams, and called Rendell’s name.
“But why hasn’t someone forced me out?”
“When you first became ill the king went to the council and demanded – well, I don’t know what it’s called formally, but it amounted to an extension for you and – for both of you. They were still arguing about it when the Watcher came.”
“And then?”
“Dalleena, everyone was awed by what he did. They’re still afraid. They won’t take back the sentence, but they agreed with the king that you should be allowed to stay until you are well enough for the journey.”
“Because of Rendell.”
“Yes. They say several councilors spoke very highly of him.”
Dalleena closed her tongue on her bitterness. She ran her hand along the sill, a small part of her thought missing the shine of the relasii ring. It had been surrendered after the sentencing. Presumably Sillus – the heir now – had it. She doubted if it would fit on his heavy hand. With a related idea she said, “He must have been very angry.”
“Who?”
“Sillus. He must not like it that I’m here.”
Lilli put down her needle. “That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been trying to watch him, though I don’t get much chance of it. Dalleena, there’s something at work in him. It’s frightening.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s hard to explain. Of course he was furious that they’re letting you stay, but this is more than that. He hates you. It’s not just that he’s jealous or wants your position – he’s got it now! But it’s as if he were getting closer and closer to the edge of something. I don’t understand. Why should he hate you so much? It’s not rational.”