by Lee Ramsay
Bitterness colored the old man’s words as he turned and faced his ward son. “I am aware of accusations of pederasty. Those will worsen with a formal adoption. I trust your hide has hardened enough to tolerate such barbs?”
The young man let the question pass unremarked. “What of your reasoning for forbidding me to step beyond Dorishad’s walls?”
Anthoun winced and wrapped himself tighter in his cloak. “That, my boy, is overprotectiveness at its finest. As my ward son, you stand to inherit a sizable tract of land that generates a decent income. That makes you a target for those who would take what I hold. Surely you remember the way Duke Riand and his men treated you? You may want to believe otherwise, but I was not unaware.”
“And yet you did not defend me.”
“It was not the time. I also doubted a young man would want an old man fighting for him.”
“Fair enough.”
The sage met his ward son’s eyes again as the silence between them lengthened. “These are not the questions you want to ask.”
“You are a wizard,” Tristan stated, rather than asked.
“For lack of a better term, yes. It is a misnomer given to those born with the gift of magic and who learn to cultivate it, derived from bards’ hokey stories and mistranslations of ancient legends. The proper term for someone born to the magic and trained in the arts is nec’divinos.” Anthoun cocked an eyebrow. “What were you expecting – a long beard and a pointy hat, and me waving some stupid stick around and while I babbled nonsense? This is reality, Tristan.”
Despite himself, the younger man snorted. “Would it surprise you that Rathus said something similar?”
“A bard who isn’t wrapped up in his bullshit is rarer than true miracles,” the old man said dryly. “I wondered if you might have figured it out.”
“I always thought it strange that you knew when I tried to set foot past Dorishad’s wall or when you caught me doing something I ought not to do. Odd to hear myself say it, but magic is the only explanation which makes any sense.”
Silence stretched between them, broken by the patter of drops falling from the leaves around them. The sage adjusted his cloak to wait with as much patience as he could muster and sighed with irritation as rainwater trickled down his neck.
“Do you know of Ankara?”
“Rather more about her than I might like,” Anthoun said without hesitation. “I will tell you what I can, if you wish. Why do you ask?”
“I didn’t think of it at the time, but she was particularly interested in where I was from,” Tristan said absently. “It was almost as though she already knew the answer and wanted me to confirm her suspicions.”
“I’m afraid I cannot be of much help answering that. There is little evidence for the reasoning behind what Ankara does.” The sage glanced at the sky as the drizzle grew heavier. “Can we go back inside? There is much to discuss, and I’d rather neither of us caught our death of pneumonia.”
“I will come inside soon.”
The old man gave a slight nod. “I’d like to put these past days of anger and resentment behind us.”
“We can work on it. But no more coddling, Anthoun. No more keeping things from me that I need to know.” Tristan lifted the axe from his shoulder. “I also want Dougan to teach me how to fight properly.”
“With luck, you’ll never need such knowledge. I want better things for you than a life of violence.”
“Better a warrior on a farm—”
“—than a farmer in a war.” Annoyance colored the sage’s face. “It figures you would remember that one piece of philosophy.”
The young man held up his left hand to display the gap of his missing fourth finger with a sour smile. “I didn’t, until recently.”
The sage leveled an unamused expression at him as he trudged back to the inn. “Don’t stay out too long.”
Chapter 76
Dresden Township was not what Tristan expected. After years of hearing about the Harvest Festival and how people came from all over Shreth to sell their goods and enjoy themselves, he expected it to be something other than a sleepy town carved from the forest and surrounded by fields.
An imposing inn dominated the town center, three stories tall with steep-gabled roofs sweeping out in exaggerated eaves. A long stable stood nearby; one side of the building sported doors which opened on the cobbled commons, while the other side opened into a vast paddock. Outbuildings and houses similar to those in Dorishad lay in concentric half-circles around the inn. Bootmakers, fletchers, bowmakers, tailors, wine shops, alehouses with attached breweries, and even bookmakers had space along winding lanes lined with towering maples.
Farms lay at the outskirts, abutting the edge of the Forest of Corarma, with their fields already tilled and planted. Alfalfa, wheat, barley, hops, and other crops were beginning to push through the rich soil, though it would be some time before the waterwheel mill hunched beside the stream cutting through the town was put to use. Wind blowing through groves of fruit trees revealed the golden hues of ripening pears and the soft blush of swelling apples and peaches.
Bemused but cheerful, the people wandering through the streets gave the royal conveyance a curious glance before greeting their guests. Tristan found himself comforted as he descended from the carriage, and it took him a few minutes to figure out why. It was the smell; the combination of wood smoke, fresh-turned earth, and the forest’s loamy scent was familiar in a way he could not describe. The rustic burr of Ravvosi voices – differing from the coachmen’s more urbane tones – added to the sense of familiarity, as did the townsfolks’ simple woolens, linen, and leather.
Food tasted right as well – a plain but hearty fare of potatoes and beef slathered in salted butter and served with hard ciders and thick-crusted brown bread drizzled with honey. He ate until his stomach protested and his belt dug into his belly. When he could eat no more, he excused himself to wander the town’s quiet evening streets.
Despite the earlier comfort of familiarity, trepidation and relief warred in his breast as the warm, humid breeze ruffled his hair. Spring was well and truly on the land; eighteen months had passed since he had slipped over Dorishad’s wall. He had sought adventure and found it, though it had not turned out the way he hoped – and yet he could not wish it had never happened. If not for the suffering and misery, he doubted he would appreciate what he was returning to.
Home.
He stopped at a fence separating a paddock from the road and leaned his elbows on the top rail as his mind returned to the thoughts that had plagued him for months. A mare with her newborn foal coaxed him to scratch their cheeks with bumps of their heads against his shoulder, and he took comfort in giving them the attention they sought.
The dead in particular haunted him, but the living troubled him as well – especially those who had parted company with the band he led from the dungeons shortly after their escape. Though he could remember few of their names, he recalled their faces well. He hoped they had managed to escape, though he doubted they survived; it was unlikely Urzgeth had allowed so many to slip through his fingers.
He thought of Sahra, left with Masha and Fershan, and of Seamus and Heather. He hoped the Dushken had overlooked the former three and that the taciturn Caledorn farmer had gotten his wife away from their homestead before the huntsmen discovered they had sheltered fugitives.
Tristan recalled something in one of Anthoun’s histories, written by a general after a war; it made little sense at the time, but it did now. “The greatest tribute to those we have lost is living a life worthy of them.”
He hoped he would be able to do so. The price of his small life in Dorishad had been paid for with copious amounts of blood and suffering.
The young man turned his thoughts and eyes to an unseen point to the east and allowed himself to touch a thought he had avoided for months. Ensconced in Feinthresh Castle, Sathra would be nearing the end of her pregnancy; she might have already given birth, though it was early to do s
o by his count. A portion of him hoped the child was not his and that Ankara had planted the suggestion in his mind to cause him torment. He knew better. Always one step ahead, knowing her victims better than they knew themselves, the sorceress had orchestrated Sathra’s pregnancy with layers of motivation. While she had indeed wanted to torment Tristan, forcing her proud young kinswoman to bear a nameless orphan’s child had purposes beyond what she had disclosed or that he could puzzle out.
The child would be born soon, provided Sathra had not found a way to void the pregnancy. Considering the surgery Alder had performed, he had little doubt that Anahari physicians were capable of doing so; women had been dealing with unwanted pregnancies forever. Yet there was always a possibility new grand duchess would keep the child, particularly if she deduced Ankara’s goals or conceived her own.
Will she bear a son or a daughter? What manner of person will my child grow up to be, with a mother like that?
For a moment, he entertained a fantasy of storming back into Anahar to steal the babe. He knew the way into Feinthresh Castle, provided Brenna’s little hole in the catacombs had not been discovered and sealed. Even if it were, Sathra herself had told him the castle was connected to the sewers beneath the city of Feinthresh.
Tristan dashed the thought with an angry exhalation. Basic honesty compelled him to admit he feared the idea of returning to Anahar. He recalled Gwistain’s advice to put the experience behind him and move on with his life, though his sense of rightness rebelled at abandoning his child.
There was nothing he could do, and he was damned for it.
DORISHAD SEEMED BOTH unchanged and unfamiliar. The hamlet’s whitewashed buildings clustered in the center of the hamlet as always. Fields greened with ripening crops against the blossoming orchards' vibrant colors. The carriage was halfway down the tree-lined lane, the rumbling of its wheels faint enough with distance for him to hear the lowing of cattle, the neighing of horses, and the distant chatter of sheep.
Over breakfast, it had seemed a reasonable request to let out of the coach at the gap in the stone wall that passed for Dorishad’s gate. He had left the hamlet on foot; he thought it appropriate to return in the same manner. Anthoun had shrugged while Dougan gave Tristan a strange, unreadable look.
Standing at the gate, he breathed in the fresh rain scenting the early evening breeze rustling through the forest and understood the looks they gave him when he climbed down. Beneath his clothes, his body was a patchwork of old scars and new. His left hand was mangled, and a Dushken axe rested on his shoulder. He felt bigger than he had been, yet somehow diminished.
Faced with reality instead of a romantic notion, he felt foolish. He could not return as he had left, as he was no longer the boy he had been. Cursing himself for clinging to the idea of some storybook ending, he rolled his shoulders and strode down the lane leading to the hamlet’s heart.
Dairy cows lowed from across the fenced pastures and fields, and bleating lambs called out to their mothers. Infants cried from the homes around the commons. In the distance, he heard children laughing and the excited barking of dogs at play. He listened to the metallic tapping of a smithy hammer from the forge and the good-natured complaining of women dealing with washed clothing gone damp with rain. The manor house looked the same as always, its windows and doors open to the breeze.
The grim thoughts plaguing him sloughed away with each step, and his feet grew lighter with the sights and sounds of home. Never had a mile seemed both so long and so short, and his eyes stung as he strode into the commons. The carriage stood abandoned in the center of the dirt yard, the horses unhitched and taken to the stables to be groomed and fed. Though he heard people moving about and felt curious eyes on him, Tristan saw no one.
No one waited for him, save for Karilen’s short, plump figure beside the abandoned carriage. The matronly woman stood with her arms wrapped around herself, her face pale and eyes glistening as he drew closer. The closest thing he had to a mother, the sight of her made his breath catch in his throat and hot tears spill down his cheeks. He leaned his axe against the coach’s wheel as he stopped an arm’s length from her.
“I’m home,” Tristan said. His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat to dislodge the lump sitting in it.
Karilen closed the distance between them in a rush. Her palm cracked his cheek hard enough to turn his chin to his shoulder. Dazed, he barely registered the impact repeated on his other cheek until the offended skin started throbbing.
“I’m home,” the matronly woman huffed, propping her fists on her broad hips. “Of all the stupid, half-witted, asinine...”
The young man’s head hung low as she paused her stream of invective to catch her breath. Feeling as though he were five years old and caught swiping a fresh-baked pie as it cooled on a countertop, he looked up at her. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m sorry? Eighteen months, and that’s the best you can do?” She gripped the front of his coat and gave him a violent shake. “This isn’t like chasing chickens, or scaring the cows by banging pots together, or shirking your chores. Don’t you ever do something so idiotic ever again, you damned fool. You could have gotten yourself killed!”
When she stopped shaking him, he grinned and pressed his hand over the healing wound in his side. “I think that point has been made.”
“That’s not funny,” Karilen said with a glower. Her arms embraced his middle hard enough to make his still-tender muscles twinge. He did not mind, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders as she sobbed against his chest.
She pushed herself away once the storm of tears passed and brushed aside the tears streaking her cheeks. “You had best say your hellos to the others. They have been waiting for you to arrive almost as long as I have.”
He wiped away his own tears and turned in time to see Jayna running toward him. She had grown since last he saw her – rounder at hip and breast and plumper in the cheek, but more beautiful than he recalled. She flung herself at him, arms going around his neck as she pulled him down for a kiss. He caught his breath, enfolded in a scent redolent of dough, dye, and wool.
“Let the man breathe – or at least take it from him later,” a familiar gruff voice said.
Tristan broke the kiss and blinked with confusion as Groush stepped from the kitchen behind Anthoun and Dougan. His brain blanked, unable to process the sight of the bull standing before him chewing a roll stuffed with meat paste. “What in all hells are you doing here?”
The Hillffolk jerked his thumb at the sage. “His idea, to keep you from doing anything colossally stupid. Can’t say I disagree with his reasoning.”
“Which will be a challenge. He has been known to throw himself over waterfalls, after all,” another voice said from the doorway.
He blinked at the woman leaning against the doorframe. A brown leather bodice clung to her slender frame, setting off creamy skin against a bleached linen shift. Soft black boots crossed at the ankles beneath an underskirt of earthen brown, an overskirt the green of spring moss in shadow tucked into the leather belt around her waist. Shoulder-length black hair had been drawn back beneath a loose-knit snood, accenting a swanlike neck and sharp, angular features. In the hollow of her throat, suspended by a plain leather cord, glittered a clear shard of quartz. “Brenna?”
The Anahari woman smirked at him and rolled her eyes. “After all this time, you ought to recognize me.”
Confused, the young man turned his eyes to Dougan and Anthoun. Both men wore amused expressions.
“Your physician told me of the companions who brought you to the Temple of Maponos,” the sage said. “When you made it clear you weren’t quite ready to talk with me, I tracked them down. Finding a lone Hillffolk in Caer Ravvos was easy. Convincing the sisters in the Cloister of Siranon to convey a message, much less admit me, was a bit more difficult.”
“You had your wounds to heal, as did I. Mine couldn’t be tended in the Temple of Maponos, though,” Brenna said, fidgeting with her overskirt when Tristan’
s eyes turned back to her. “When Anthoun received permission from the Sisters to see me, I asked if I might be allowed to come and stay. There was nowhere else to go.”
Anthoun folded his arms across his thin chest. “Aside from knowing good people when I see them, I thought you might appreciate having your friends close by.”
“By the way, you don’t live here anymore,” the Anahari added with a slight shrug.
Tristan’s brow knotted in confusion. “What?”
Karilen brushed past him with a chuckle. “We gave her your room. Come along, before the bread burns and your dinner gets cold.”
Chapter 77
Darkness smothered the light from the oil-fed lantern Urzgeth carried. His footsteps sounded muffled as they struck the passage’s bare stone. Reflected light glittered off condensation on the rough-hewn walls; the fine film granted illusory life to impassive granite. The weight of his sword swinging at his hip did little to comfort him. Stone whispered against the coat covering his broad shoulders, and the low ceiling grazed the crown of his skull. The Dushken hunched against the claustrophobic embrace of the world’s bones.
The alpha loathed this passageway. Much as he despised the folly of Ankara’s labyrinth, the scents and sounds of life filled those corridors and chambers. Not so with this sloping hall or the rooms buried in the mountain’s heart. Only three people, himself included, knew the passage and its hidden chamber existed.
Two living people, now that Ankara is dead, he amended.
An imposing door cut from a single hornbeam plank filled the end of the hallway. The petrified ironwood, hard as the metal it was commonly associated with, had grayed with age to a ghostly pallor. So perfect was the fit of the door that the alpha doubted a piece of parchment could slide between the wood and the stone frame. No handle marred the smooth surface.