Something called a blessing bowl from Singréne, who looked to Wil to be barely older than Dallin—the effects of Fæðme, as Wil understood them, because there were no men in Lind Dallin’s age. Singréne had keen hazel eyes that reminded Wil of Brother Millard, and he’d handed Wil the blessing bowl with a soft look and a wide grin.
A tear bottle from Heofon—a thick vial of cut amethyst, hollowed out and stoppered with moss-lined cork—which Wil thought odd at first, until Heofon told Wil it held the tears he’d wept when he learned the Aisling was safe and on his way “home.” Then Wil thought it very odd but smiled and murmured his thanks as he hunted for an empty pocket in which to keep the strange little thing. Anyway, Heofon was a thin, arid husk of a man who didn’t look like he could spare a drop of moisture, so Wil appreciated the gesture, if nothing else.
“Different tears hold different sorts of magic,” Dallin told Wil as they collected their gear and surrendered their horses to the squires looking after the Old Ones. They struck downhill toward the camp, the Weardgeréfan moving on ahead, the others following at a discreet distance behind Wil and Dallin. For what it was worth, Dallin seemed less tense since he’d spoken to the commander. “Tears of joy are supposed to be the most precious, because they’re meant to lend the recipient peace and well-being in times of hardship.”
Wil frowned, his hand going unconsciously to his coat pocket, fingers outlining the vial’s shape. “I’m not meant to drink them, am I?” Because that would be just a little too strange.
“No.” Wil could hear the smile in Dallin’s voice. “You’re meant to keep them, that’s all.”
Good. Wil had eaten weevil-infested bread when it was all he could get, and once he’d hacked off the maggot-encrusted head and hide of a rabbit and roasted the rest of it, but somehow the idea of drinking a withered old man’s tears gave Wil’s stomach a twist. He peered down at the silver bowl still in his hand, swung his pack around, and stuffed it in along with a bottle of wine from…. Seofian, or something like that.
“What’s the bowl for?” he asked Dallin.
“Well, in other places, where reading and writing are permitted, you’re meant to write down all of the things in your life for which you feel blessed. Then you put them in the bowl and burn them, along with something special to you. Here in Lind, you’d take something like a leaf or the like and whisper those things to it, then burn it.”
Wil thought about that. “Why burn them?”
Burning bits of paper or leaves only made his eyebrows rise a bit, but burning something special to you seemed somewhat stupid and wasteful. He clutched his pack more tightly and slipped his fingers along the rifle’s strap over his shoulder.
Dallin shrugged. “Burning releases them.” He waved his big hand. “Their essence joins with the essence of the Mother. She’ll know you love and appreciate those things, so She’ll see to it they’re not taken from you. That’s supposing you’re a decent person and deserve the things you have, of course.”
“Huh.” Wil reslung his pack and peered up at Dallin through the dusky light. “So what if you’re not a good person and don’t deserve the things you have?”
Dallin snorted. “Then you’d be wise not to offer them to a burning. Then again, if you don’t burn them, She’ll just assume you’re ungrateful and perhaps take them from you anyway.” He peered sideways at Wil. “Rather gets you coming and going.”
Most things did, in Wil’s experience. “And what about the wine?”
“Now, that you’re meant to drink.”
“It doesn’t mean anything?”
“Only that Whatshisname probably thought you could use one.”
Too right. “Seofian, I think. I sort of lost track.” Wil looked down. “So….” He cleared his throat. The truce between them seemed… not fragile, really, but shakeable, and he truly didn’t want to argue or be angry. But he also didn’t want to feel like he had to pick his words as though he was trying to step carefully through a nest of sleeping hornets. “So, how d’you know all this?”
“Hm.” Dallin squeezed Wil’s shoulder. “That’s a good question,” he said, and then didn’t answer it. He jerked his chin downhill. “I can see the fires through the trees now.”
So could Wil, now that he looked. Dozens and dozens of them. And he’d been hearing sporadic music and the steady hum of voices and various animal noises since they’d dismounted.
“Don’t shoot anyone,” Dallin said, the smirk plain in his voice. “There should be a sentry melting out of the dark any second.” He let go of Wil’s shoulder and raised his hand. “Hullo out there! Step out, please. We could do with some light.”
Perhaps it was all the talk of magic, or just the fact that magic seemed to define this place—wound into the soil itself, pulsing from it—but it seemed to Wil as though the wide figure formed itself from shadows on the path and became whole from nothing in the blink of an eye. A woman, Wil guessed by the shape, and armed. He could see the shape of the bow silhouetted on her shoulder and the long barrel of the rifle slung across her middle.
“Cawle!” she shouted. “Torches! Step quick!” And then she went silent, bowed her head, and stood with spine straight and shoulders squared.
Dallin stepped forward, slowly and with a tilt to his head Wil recognized—measuring and calculating. Wil didn’t even need to see Dallin’s narrowed eyes or the slight curl of his mouth.
“Greetings,” Dallin said. “I am—”
“We know who you are,” the woman blurted, then gasped at her own audacity and dipped her head lower. “Forgive me, Shaman.” Her voice was subdued now, and wobbling. “I meant no disrespect. It’s only—” Her head bobbed up, gaze flicking to Wil and then back down to the ground. “With your permission…?”
Torchlight flickered through the trees, resolving itself into a middle-aged man. His broad face didn’t need the fire to light it, bright with expectancy and something that was, if not actual joy, at least close to it. Wil could see the woman more clearly now, the torchlight glimmering over her fair, plaited hair and sharding over her clear, hopeful face. Now that Wil could see her better, he realized she was no more than a girl, probably not even in her twenties yet.
“Um.” Dallin shot a quick glance at Wil.
Wil didn’t know why—he had even less of a clue about what was going on than Dallin likely did. He shrugged.
Dallin turned back to the young woman. “As you will.”
Having been granted whatever permission she’d been seeking, the girl’s face turned nearly beatific. She bowed low to Dallin, her long braid flopping over her shoulder and swinging down like a pendulum.
Nervously she mumbled, “Thank you, Shaman. We’ve waited for you for so long.”
She straightened, and stepped cautiously over to Wil. Again she bowed, then reached out with her wide hand and hesitantly took up one of Wil’s… kissed it. It was all Wil could do not to snatch it back in alarm.
“Aisling.” The woman’s voice was breathless. There were actual tears tracking down her smooth cheeks. “Welcome home.”
Wil… stared. He couldn’t do anything else. A vague bit of something that felt like mild horror was curling in his gut, and he couldn’t make his mouth work. He dragged his gaze up and over to Dallin, slack-jawed.
Dallin didn’t look quite as poleaxed, but it had clearly caught him off guard too. “Hunter!” He yelled it without looking away, gaze still pinging between Wil and the girl, brow drawn down and mouth tightening by the second. “I think you’d best get down here and handle this.”
Yes. Hunter. These were Hunter’s people. He’d know how to… to… to make them stop it.
As gently as he could, Wil withdrew his hand, resisting the impulse to wipe it on his trousers. There was nothing repulsive about it, after all, and the girl clearly meant nothing but good, but…. Wil couldn’t explain it, even to himself. He’d never been welcomed anywhere, never, and this was just too… something.
Wil took an unconscious s
tep back and waited for Dallin to quickstep over to him. He didn’t care even a little bit that he was still supposed to be annoyed with Dallin, and he cared even less that he probably looked like a terrified five-year-old as he sank into Dallin’s arm around his shoulders, almost cowering from people who had been kinder to him in these first few seconds than anyone before—ever.
“What the hell?” he croaked.
No answer but a tightening of Dallin’s arm and then a low near-reprimand from Hunter, striding down the path as if he owned it. “Andette! Cawle!”
They both straightened. Andette dropped one more quick double-bow to both Dallin and Wil, then turned to Hunter.
“All is ready, brother.” Her shoulders were straight and her chin jutted proud, for the first time since Wil had seen her materializing like a ghost from the dark.
Brother? Wil peered between Hunter and this Andette. In truth, all Linders rather resembled each other to his eye, but these two…. Yes. It wasn’t merely some kind of honorific—these two were kin. Perhaps even twins, if Wil was judging their ages correctly. He shot a quick glance at Dallin, noting the reluctant realization, the reflexive roll of Dallin’s eyes. Wil almost snorted. Poor Dallin—he couldn’t seem to get away from Calders.
“The Weardas are alerted, and the captain of the Commonwealth agreed to come across this afternoon.” Andette glanced quickly at Dallin, then blushed, turning her eyes back to the ground. “After your message came back, he agreed to meet with you here, unarmed, with only a small entourage. The bulk of his party waits across the river on the other side of the Bounds. Your….” She frowned, seeming to hunt for the proper word. “Your companions from Putnam joined us in camp several days ago. We saw no need to disarm them.”
“I see.” Dallin smiled, smirky and knowing in the flickering light. “I assume just about everyone’s met Corliss, then.”
Andette smiled, her expression fond and light, some of the awe leaking from it and making her seem more… real. More like the young girl she was and not the abject devotee she’d seemed a moment ago.
“Constable Stierne has been… busy,” Andette agreed. “We thank the Mother that she was sent to us, and we thank the Shaman for guiding her words.”
She peered up at Dallin, that same look back again, the obsequious devotion and fervor Wil had seen when Hunter had spoken of his Lost Shaman. Complete and utter adoration. The tension in Dallin’s grip on Wil was telling, and Wil knew Dallin saw it too. Wil had never in his life expected to see that same look directed at him, but every time Andette’s glance skimmed shyly to his, a new spike of sympathy for Dallin struck Wil. It was unnerving, perhaps even a bit obscene. These people knew nothing about Wil, after all—how could they even pretend to love him? And why did they just assume they had the right?
The rest of their party had dropped back, heads bent together, and appeared to be deep in conversation farther up the path. Wil should want to know what they were talking about, but he didn’t. Instead he only wondered why the lack of their buffering presence was making him like them more than he had ten minutes ago. Hunter was familiar, and so his presence somewhat comforting, but just thinking about those dozens of fires down there through the thin screen of the trees separating him from them, and the no doubt dozens of people to whom they belonged….
Not caring anymore what it might look like, Wil pushed back more into Dallin. It felt stupid to fear these people, any of them, but it was fear—burned at the stake or crammed on a makeshift throne, Dallin had snarked at the Old Ones just that morning. Right now, both seemed too possible.
Wil leaned up. “Are they all going to be like this?” he whispered to Dallin.
Dallin sighed. “I’m afraid that’s all too possible. It’s best we get it over with, I think.”
Wil wasn’t entirely sure he agreed, but he let Dallin push him past Andette and urge him once more down the path. Hunter silently took up a position to Wil’s other side, nodding to Andette as they passed. Wil watched it all with growing trepidation.
“This,” he told Dallin, voice thin and strained, “is not at all what I thought it would be.”
“It rarely is.” Dallin drew Wil in close. “Just don’t shoot anyone.” He snatched the torch from Cawle as they passed, then nodded at Hunter. “You first. Make sure they’re not scraping and kneeling when we get there, yeah?”
Hunter shot Wil an apologetic glance before he dipped his head at Dallin. “I’ll do what I can.” He looked rather dubious, but he nonetheless turned and sprinted off ahead.
Dallin watched him go and then twisted to glance over his shoulder, presumably at Andette, who was neglecting her watch and instead staring after them with a look of blatant longing. Dallin turned back, looked down at Wil, and rolled his eyes.
“Fucking Calders.”
“HUH,” WIL breathed, overwhelmed and a bit shock-stupid as they paused on the ridge, staring out over the camp. “I thought I smelt cows.”
There had to be more than a hundred of them—people, not cows—spread out in various clusters below, campfires set in front of tents that fanned out along the riverside in small constellations. It was lighter down there than where they now stood, still screened inside the cover of the trees. Dusk was only beginning to snatch at the fringes of the lingering gold of failing daylight, and shadowed only slightly the various faces of the people below. Torches were only now being lit, a loose circle around the knots of tents and fires.
It wasn’t like up at the caves. These people looked settled in, as if they’d been here for a while and planned to stay for a while more. Chickens clucked and scratched down by the strand, several goats wandering among them and bleating irritation at their fusty complaints.
On a brighter note, maybe that meant there’d be eggs and milk for breakfast.
Dogs roamed through clots of people, sniffing at campfires, then agreeably wagging their tails and scuttling off when they were shooed away. Another fenced pasture was set farther downriver, scores of horses and several cows nosing at winter grass and bundles of hay set at intervals around the wooden fencing. Three great fire pits smoldered beside what Wil guessed was some sort of small barracks or guardhouse, the smell of roasting meat singing its usual siren call to his stomach. Cauldrons steamed nearby, barrels and casks piled and propped against the outer wall of the short stone building.
It didn’t look anything like a campsite. It looked like a village.
Children rammed around the place in various stages of play, squeezing through clumps of adults and laughing as they scampered away from half-hearted chiding. They shot at each other with guns made of grubby fingers, then clutched at small chests and crumpled in heaps of giggles as imaginary bullets struck them down.
It gave Wil an eerie shudder—echoes of violence he hadn’t seen, had refused to see, but that Dallin had escaped only through… what?
Wil frowned. For the first time, he wondered how Dallin’s mother had known, how she’d managed to smuggle her son out before the Brethren found the one child they’d wasted so many other young lives looking for. They’d been thorough, wiping out an entire generation of males, so how did the one male who might as well have had a target painted on his back manage to waft through their crosshairs like so much smoke?
The thought was abruptly troubling. Dallin’s dark eyes scanned the scene below, assessing and measuring, and not even seeming to register the children or their macabre sport as they teased death and innocently mocked its reality. Ignoring it deliberately, Wil wondered, or genuinely not seeing because he was so used to looking away?
“What did that commander say to you?” Wil asked quietly. “That Weard… Weardger…?”
“Weardgeréfan.” Dallin squinted against the gloom as he marked a squad of armed men and women striking off away from the river and heading west into the treebrake. “He said the Old Ones had already alerted them. They’ve sent runners uphill to warn everyone, and hunting parties to flush out as many as they can. They didn’t know which path we�
�d take down, or they would’ve sent pickets up to meet us.”
Wil watched the fires, thinking. “So they knew.”
“Good thing, yeah? One thing that went right today, at least.”
Wil didn’t reply, somehow disturbed and surprised that there was nothing in Dallin’s gaze that marked the significance.
They knew.
He dragged his gaze away and pointed it over his shoulder, watching the old men hobble ever closer, still chattering among themselves about… whatever old men chattered about. Except these old men…. Somehow, and all at once, they didn’t seem quite as friendly and benevolent as Wil had been thinking them, and Dallin’s withholding of trust seemed much more reasonable.
They knew.
Wil turned back to the camp. “Why are there children here?”
“Whole families. They follow along when the Weardas have extended patrols. This is their camp—the sentries are billeted farther downriver, broken up into squads and scattered along the Bounds throughout Cildtrog. They’re allowed to come to camp when they’re not on post.” Dallin swiveled his glance up and down the strand with a shrug. “It makes long posts easier on the Weardas, and it makes sense, so far as the children. Some of them have both parents on watch at the same time, so the rest of the adults look out for them. Defense is something of a family business here.”
Wil watched two children—a boy and a girl, it looked like from here, but since they all wore their hair long, he couldn’t tell for sure. They were scrapping over something between them Wil couldn’t see, but by the aggression of the encounter, it must be something valuable. Those were some serious punches being thrown. One of the dogs yipped and danced around them, anxiously wagging its tail and sticking its nose into the mix, then leaping back again.
Beloved Son Page 9