by J. L. Doty
“This is all academic,” DaNoel said, “You can’t escape. At least not with your life.”
“But what if someone were to help me?” Valso asked carefully.
“Only someone of Elhiyne blood could get you past that veil.”
Valso nodded. “I know. And it must be someone of great power.”
“I could get you past that veil,” DaNoel said proudly. “But I will not. Because I am not so easily fooled, Decouix, and I see through your manipulations. I’ll stand there in the Hall of Wills tomorrow and I’ll laugh as the whoreson kills you.”
“And if he doesn’t kill me,” Valso asked, “will you then help me escape?”
DaNoel ignored the question. “Good night, Decouix. Sleep well.”
Valso nodded politely. “Until we meet again, Elhiyne.”
“If we meet again,” DaNoel said, then spun about and left the room.
When he was gone Valso smiled. “Oh we will meet again, Elhiyne. We will most certainly meet again. Your uncontrolled hatred for your brother is my assurance of that.”
Valso nodded carefully and smiled. “Yes. We will meet again.”
~~~
Morgin stood on the lip of a high plateau overlooking the valley of his homeland. Far in the distance he could see the castle itself, nestled with the nearby village and the small wood that separated them. Together they formed a distinct and separate blotch on the gently rolling landscape of the surrounding fields, a land ripe and overflowing with wheat and corn and rye.
More than once, as a boy, he had stood on this same spot looking down upon the valley below. But now he was, almost regrettably, a man. Then he had worn the clothes of an adolescent, and now he wore the red of a great Elhiyne lord. Then or now, boy or man, he felt he laid claim to a stature that was not rightly his. And while it was actually the old woman’s ambition that propelled him forth, he knew that it was his responsibility to temper her machinations, and he felt that his inability to do so reflected no less than a lacking within himself.
It was still well before the noon hour, but down below he could see the crowds forming along the road that led across the valley floor to the main gates at Elhiyne. Olivia knew well that his homecoming would be today, for riders had been sent forward daily to keep her informed of his progress, and it was clear she would not miss this opportunity for a show. Today the ShadowLord would come home in victory and triumph.
Morgin heard the soft fall of Ellowyn’s footsteps as she approached behind him. That was odd, for ordinarily she seemed to walk as if her feet did not touch the floor. But recently she’d taken to imitating mortals as if it were important to her to be as mortal as possible. Unfortunately, poor Ellowyn’s efforts at mortality were stilted and unnatural, and Morgin just didn’t have the heart to tell her so. Without turning from his view of the valley floor, he said, “Each day you are among us you walk more like a mortal, my Ellowyn.”
“Yes, my lord. I know. And that is why I must go.”
He had been expecting that. “Why must you go?” he asked.
“Because it is right, my lord. You are healed. You no longer need me.”
“Oh but I do,” he said, refusing to turn and face her, knowing he could not win this, their last argument. “I need you more now than ever. I need you more with each passing day, for who is there to explain what’s happening to my dreams?”
He heard her sigh. “And that too is why I must go. It is not good for you to become so dependent upon me.”
“And what of you, Ellowyn? Do you ever need me as I need you?”
“Oh yes, my lord. And that too is not good.”
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“Wherever my master bids.”
Ellowyn’s master! Morgin itched to know the identity of this mysterious master, but he knew better than to ask. “Will I ever see you again?”
“That I do not know, my lord.”
“Go then,” Morgin said softly. He wanted to be bitter and angry at her for abandoning him, but he could not find the heart to treat her so. “Leave me if you will. But remember I do need you.”
She made no reply. Slowly he turned to face her, and was not surprised to find her gone, vanished as if she had never been, leaving only a shimmering in the air to mark her passing.
He stood there silently for a long time, until Abileen finally approached from the direction of the camp, glancing about uneasily, wondering why his master would stand alone facing nothing. Of course, the soldier did not voice his thoughts, but dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “My lord.”
“What is it, Abileen?”
“We are ready to ride, my lord.”
Morgin nodded. “Then lead the way.”
Abileen’s men waited by their horses, dressed in their own finery and milling about impatiently. In Morgin’s absence the camp had disappeared, packed up and loaded on the backs of sixty pack horses. Such a waste, Morgin thought. To carry a pavilion merely for his comfort, and pillows to sleep on, and soft sheets and blankets. A small tent would have been sufficient to keep out the rain, and they could have made the trip in a quarter of the time. Why, with sixty pack animals he could keep twelve twelves of fighting men provisioned for a month. But then, of course, without such a retinue the old woman’s show would be far less impressive.
Abileen led him to a small rise where Roland, AnnaRail, JohnEngine, Val, Cort, Tulellcoe, and Rhianne waited with their horses and his. He stood by while the women were assisted into their saddles, then climbed into Mortiss’ saddle. He stood high in his stirrups and scanned the waiting soldiers for France’s blond head. But of course, on a day such as this, the swordsman would choose to make his own way to Elhiyne.
Morgin spurred Mortiss forward into a comfortable trot. She snorted and blustered, and seemed to be enjoying the idea of the coming extravaganza. Seconds later he crossed the lip of the plateau and began his descent into the valley. He followed the meandering path of the valley road and the wind felt good on his face. He knew without looking back that his family would be immediately behind him, and behind them Val and the other lesser clansmen, then Abileen and his men, with the pack train and servants in the rear. It was an order that Olivia had specified, and of course she had orchestrated today’s event in the finest detail, including, no doubt, instructions that the peasants should line the road and cheer raucously. “Tell them to have a good time,” the old witch had probably commanded, “or I’ll have them whipped to within an inch of their lives.”
Morgin tried to picture himself as the peasants might see him now: a distant blotch of red riding down into the valley. He wondered if beneath their forced exuberance they were laughing at him. Then again, the old woman had probably declared a festival and day of feast for all, and with that kind of bribe the peasants would cheer anyone, for any reason.
As the road leveled out onto the valley floor he came upon a cluster of peasants waving red banners and shouting. He wanted to speed past them, to avoid having to see the derision in their eyes, but just then a young girl ran into the road in front of him.
He yanked back viciously on Mortiss’ reins. She screamed angrily, reared, and he just missed trampling the girl as Mortiss brought her fore hooves down in the middle of the road.
“ShadowLord,” the peasant girl called joyously as she stuffed a bouquet of ripe wheat into his saddle harness. It had been dipped in red dye, which was a custom among the peasants since colorful flowers were rare thereabouts.
The girl was buxom and fair, with large, jiggling breasts that threatened to burst from her dress. She had full red lips and big round eyes, and her face was filled with honest and sincere joy. She tugged on his sleeve, almost pulled him from his saddle. To keep his balance he bent low toward her until their faces touched. She whispered in his ear in a voice hot and sensuous. “ShadowLord,” she said. “I am yours.” Then she kissed him passionately, scandalously, with absolutely no regard for the propriety of the situation.
Morgin broke free of her
almost reluctantly, realized he had been surrounded by a small clutch of peasants, all stuffing colorfully dyed bouquets of wheat into his pockets and harness. They touched him reverently and cheered him joyfully, until he broke away from them and spurred Mortiss forward. “Long live the ShadowLord,” they cried after him.
His next encounter with a cluster of peasants was little different, and so too was the next, though he took care to be certain the earlier incident was not repeated. He slowed as he approached each group, but did not stop, and in response to the joy he saw in their faces he found himself waving at them triumphantly, exactly as the old witch would want him to.
Well short of the village the spectators were no longer grouped in clusters, but lined the road on both sides all the way to the castle. The shouts of individuals blended into a continuous indecipherable roar, and among the peasants Morgin saw clansmen and women, merchants of high and low caste, laborers, farmers. They all shouted and cheered, and while they did not mob him as he feared, they were easily as jubilant as that first cluster of peasants he had met far back on the road.
The village headman waited for him in the center of the village, standing in the middle of the road leaning heavily on an old staff. Morgin stopped, but did not dismount.
The headman raised his staff and slowly the crowd quieted. “Yee have come home, ShadowLord,” the old man said in a voice far stronger than Morgin had expected of him. “We owe yee much, ShadowLord, for Illalla would have cost us grievesome hurt. We owe yee our lives, and our fields, and our crops, ShadowLord. But more than that, we owe yee our lands.”
A long silence followed the old man’s words. On impulse Morgin dismounted, crossed the short distance between them and stood before the old man as an equal, thinking of Rat who could not have even claimed the stature of a peasant. He reached out and took the old man’s hand, then bowed deeply and kissed it.
A hushed gasp floated through the crowd, for clansmen did not humble themselves to a peasant. “I am deeply honored,” Morgin said, and the old man smiled.
Someone cheered, a single voice that drowned the silence of the crowd. Then a second voice joined the first, and suddenly they were all screaming and shouting. Now they did mob him, reminding him painfully of his not fully healed wounds as they pulled him toward the castle gates.
He’d been careful not to let go of Mortiss’ reins, so he fought his way through the mob to her side, managed to get hold of the saddle horn, to find a stirrup. He struggled for a moment, unable to mount in the moving, shifting throng. But then someone in the mob gave him a rather rude helping hand and catapulted him into the saddle. He spurred Mortiss lightly, and caught only a momentary glimpse of France’s grinning, mustachioed face as she trotted forward, clearing a path through the mob.
Ahead of him the crowd waited obediently along the sides of the road, but as he passed they spilled into it behind him, forming a pleasantly unruly mob of which Olivia would never approve. He could leave them behind, he knew, by applying his spurs a bit harder, but perversely he chose not to.
The castle gates were open, and beyond them he saw the old woman waiting amidst several clansmen of high caste, among which were representatives of the other Lesser Clans. Morgin pulled Mortiss to an abrupt halt just outside of the castle wall, and the crowd behind him crested like a wave on a rocky shore. But where they had mobbed him before, they now held back, reluctant to stand between him and the old witch. An uncomfortable silence descended upon them all.
Olivia’s patience had not improved with time, and she barked some whispered command at Brandon, who obediently trotted across the yard and through the castle gates. “Cousin,” Brandon asked. “What are you waiting for?”
Morgin dismounted, stood squarely before his cousin, and suddenly both he and Brandon had the same impulse. They abandoned propriety and wrapped their arms about one another in a heartfelt hug while the crowd cheered them.
“It is good to see you,” Brandon whispered in his ear. “But don’t spoil the old woman’s show. You know how she is when she doesn’t get her way.”
“Come now, grandson,” Olivia interrupted them impatiently. “We are waiting.”
Morgin pulled free of Brandon’s embrace. Olivia too had crossed the courtyard and stood just within the threshold of Elhiyne, while Morgin stood just without. He did not move to enter.
Olivia’s brows slowly narrowed. “Well?” she demanded.
Morgin shrugged. “When last we met,” he said, speaking softly and with care, though his voice rang loudly through the silence about them, “you accused me of cowardice. You condemned me to a death that would not be fit for the worst of criminals, and swore by the gods that should I ever return, you yourself would order my death.”
Olivia’s eyes went stark with anger.
“Now I know you to be a woman of your word,” he continued, “so I stand here now, at the threshold of my home, and rightly I wonder: Have you changed your mind, or will I fall to treachery?”
This was the moment he had waited for. In many ways it was the moment he had lived for: to see the old witch eat her words, to see her for once humbled as she chose to humble others. But just as her anger seemed ready to explode and shower down upon them all, she smiled warmly; she stepped forward and embraced him, though it was a gesture for public viewing, grand and cold and lacking the love that had been in Brandon’s tightly clenched welcome.
“All is forgiven,” she announced loudly, somehow turning the tables so that it was she who forgave him for her own sins. “Let it not be said that Elhiyne does not welcome the return of its wayward son. We rejoice that you have come home to us, oh ShadowLord.”
She released him, turned to the crowd, lifted her hands high to demand the attention that she already commanded. “The grandson of Elhiyne is home; AethonLaw et Elhiyne; ShadowLord; hero of Csairne Glen; and now, by my command, Warmaster of the Council of Elhiyne. From this day hence the ShadowLord will attend all council of Tribe and Clan and House Elhiyne. The ShadowLord has come home.”
The crowd cheered and shouted, but Olivia silenced them with a wave of her hands. “Come,” she said to them. “Let us adjourn to the Hall of Wills. It is time for the ShadowLord to meet his enemies, for by his own hand they are now his prisoners in defeat.”
She spun about then and strode purposefully across the castle yard, leaving Morgin and the crowd behind. But the crowd was now hers, and would have trampled Morgin had he not followed. As it was they allowed him only the barest instant to move out ahead of them, and then stayed close on his heels, forcing him to match Olivia’s pace. They drove him through the gates, across the castle yard, up the steps and into the main entrance of the castle proper. And only when he entered the Hall of Wills did they slow, for even peasants could sense the power that waited there.
Clansmen of middle and high caste filled the hall, and Olivia was nowhere to be seen. For an instant Morgin saw nothing but another milling throng blocking his way, though the one before him was dressed somewhat better than the one behind him. And then, as if the entire thing had been rehearsed to perfection, the crowd before him parted slowly like calm, still water cut by the bow of a ship. They withdrew to the edges of the Hall and left Morgin at one end, facing Olivia at the other where she sat upon her throne; and between them, in the center of the Hall, two lone figures, on their knees, facing him, their hands bound behind their backs. Illalla and Valso looked at him carefully, Illalla with uncertainty, and Valso with no expression at all.
Morgin felt ill and numb. Everyone there waited to see what he would do, what he would say, but he could find no grand speeches within him, nor could he think of an appropriate action, or gesture, or command. He wanted merely to disappear into a shadow, perhaps go hunting in the mountains, or fishing by the river. And suddenly he decided that he would do exactly that. To netherhell with all of them! he thought. Olivia could play her games without him, and damn the crowd’s need for a show.
Oddly enough, it was Valso who stopped him. V
also must have sensed his hesitation, for at that moment Valso’s lips curled slowly into a triumphant grin, a smile that reminded Morgin of Salula’s evil pleasure with the lash.
Morgin had crossed half the distance to Valso before he realized what he was doing. He could not remember drawing his sword, but it was in his hand now, alive with such power that the clansmen about him stepped back. It was a mistake to bring that weapon to life with no power of his own to control it, but with the memory of Valso’s grin etched on his mind he no longer cared.
Olivia cried, “No. I forbid you,” and the sword flared even more powerfully in his hands until even she cringed back from him. And in that instant, as he stood over Valso and Illalla about to take their lives, he saw fear in Valso’s eyes, stark and naked terror, and it pleased him.
But the air between them suddenly shimmered, and Erithnae appeared, in every way a goddess that did not belong among mortals, and Morgin understood that she was there only for his eyes. She held up her hands to stop him. “No, Lord Mortal. Please. You must not.”
“Out of my way, Erithnae,” he screamed. “Go back to your king and your world of dreams.”
“Please, Lord Mortal,” she begged.
Morgin advanced another step. “What care you for this offal that calls himself a man?”
She shook her head. “I care not for them, but for you, Lord Mortal. You must not harm yourself so by killing them.”
“Be gone,” he screamed, and at his anger she reluctantly disappeared.
Something tugged at his sleeve. He looked down and found young Aethon standing next to him. “Please, Lord Mortal,” the boy begged with tears in his eyes. “Please don’t harm them. For you will harm yourself far more than you will harm them.”
Aethon held Morgin’s sleeve in one hand, buried his face in the other, and his shoulders shook with sobs as he cried openly. And while he cried he slowly faded from sight, until only his memory remained.