“I don’t know, Sutter. But I will tell you what I do know. For as long as you need me, I will help you however I can against these visions.”
Tahn could see his words helped his friend. 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 Restoration. But whatever it is, I will give everything I have to help you. And if we falter, the faces we’ll remember, the faces we go to the end for, are our fathers, the ones who stood by us when others would not.”
Tahn’s throat tightened and his eyes started to water. He gave his friend a strong embrace and stood, his head still filled with the ache of revelations, but now also of warning and doubt and a nameless desire. He left Sutter sitting low against the rock, and returned to Jole to check his saddle, his provisions, to busy himself with any task normal and mundane.
As he fidgeted with the saddle belts, Wendra drew up beside him.
“How are you?” she asked, her voice husky.
Tahn realized it was the first time he and his sister had spoken since she had been attacked by the Bar’dyn, and a prick of guilt brought a weak, blushing smile to his lips. “I’ve had better days. How are you?” He pointed to her throat.
Wendra gingerly touched her neck. “Still hurts,” she managed. “Feels like the bruise goes down my throat. Just talking is a strain.” She coughed lightly.
“Then don’t,” Tahn said. “We can talk later. But I’m glad you’re on your feet. I guess I’ve one reason to thank Vendanj.” Tahn looked up the hill, where several strides away the Sheason cast his hawkish gaze back over the same vista he’d left Sutter appreciating. “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 and sang 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 the danger, it’s been a kind of blessing for me to watch after him.” She turned back to Tahn. “And Balatin would have wanted me with you. He spoke to me often of our duty to each other.” She took his hand. “I love you. You’re my only family now.”
Strong emotions rose in Tahn. Looking at Wendra, he still loved her as a sister. But new knowledge darkened his tenderness. She was not his true sister, though she didn’t know it. Tahn shot a look at the Sheason, wondering if he should tell her. What consequence might that have? 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 hot and 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 his sister’s resilience, and was grateful for this moment, so like the days before her pregnancy, before the night he’d watched the foulness out of the Bourne hover over her birth bed when he’d been unable to defend her. But then, how much could he have helped? The words he spoke when he drew his bow, the need for him to feel in harmony with the Will … were they really him? Perhaps the secrets of the Sheason and Grant—his father—were responsible for his inaction. Suddenly, he wanted badly to tell Wendra everything, so that she could understand what had happened when her child had been stolen away into the night.
So he did. He unburdened himself to her one of his oldest secrets, the need to seek the correctness of his every draw, the words he recited. And he explained how he’d uttered those words when he’d aimed at the Bar’dyn who’d come into their home to take her child.
“I had the feeling that I should not shoot,” he said. “I can’t explain it, Wendra. It doesn’t make any sense. But I’m so sorry. If there was ever a time in my life when I wish I had not heeded those feelings…”
She smiled wanly.
“I want that shot back,” he said. “Even if I couldn’t have saved the baby, I want the chance again to make that shot.”
In his heart of hearts, though, he didn’t know if he could do it differently if he was given the chance.
Wendra shook her head. “Don’t say such things. If these feelings in you are true, you must listen to them.”
Tahn looked over at the Sheason, who stood preparing to continue upward into the Saeculorum. “They tell me that this ability is the reason they came for me in the Hollows.” He looked at her, hoping to find the sisterly compassion he’d always found there. “They want me to use it at Restoration. They think it may be enough to preserve me…”
“Preserve you? From what?” Wendra quickly asked. She then looked toward Vendanj herself.
“I don’t know,” Tahn replied. “But it feels like a long time since we left the Hollows. So much has happened. I don’t feel like myself anymore.” He stopped, and refocused. “I’m sorry, Wendra. I’m so sorry.”
When he finished, he wondered what she would think of it, after all.
Wendra placed her hands on his cheeks and turned his face fully to her own. She looked at him tenderly, and Tahn saw there the might of his father, Balatin, a strength surpassing all he’d seen: a willingness to forgive.
With an intent gaze, Wendra whispered, “Let it go. I do not blame you.”
Of a sudden, he thought he might just go to Tillinghast and succeed. This woman had forgiven him when he had been unable to forgive himself. He wished for a bit of her strength. He pulled Wendra close and folded her tightly into his arms. “Thank you,” he said, and looked up to see Vendanj watching them.
Tahn spared a look at Penit, whose attention had likewise been drawn by his and Wendra’s embrace. A look of gladness played across his smooth features.
Then Wendra drew his attention. “Revelations have been part of this whole journey.” She gave him a steady look, her words carrying a double meaning.
“How do you mean?” Tahn asked.
“I’ve learned a little about myself, too, Tahn. Apparently, gifts run in the family.” She smiled at him, and explained about the power of her song. 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 the Descant Cathedral and the Maesteri.
“I learned why Vendanj brought me out of the Hollows,” she said. “He meant for me to study music at the Descant, and join the Leiholan in singing the Song of Suffering.” A look of regret crossed her face. “Belamae needed my help, but I couldn’t stay, Tahn. I have to be sure Penit remains safe. Still, the look of disappointment on his face … I hope I haven’t made my own worst choice. The Sheason drove us all to Recityv because of me. And I didn’t stay.…”
The realization sank in: Wendra was the other half of whatever Tahn was being marched to Restoration to do. Vendanj had meant for her to help keep the Veil strong through her gift of song; and the Sheason meant to have Tahn’s spirit tested at the place where the world touched the abyss, to relive every moment he would hope never to recall. Why? It had to have something to do with Wendra and the Veil. He believed the answer must be treacherously simple, and yet it eluded him, and filled his heart with dread.
Until Wendra took him by the shoulders and drew back to arm’s length.
“Now, to more important matters.” She looked around, taking inventory, it seemed, of all the company she kept, then whispered, “How true are these rumors of your feelings for the Far?” A playful smile spread on her lips.
Tahn shook his head. “You’ve been talking to Sutter.”
“No, I’ve overheard Sutter. You’d think a root-digger so used to his own company might have learned a softer voice. But he seems to have only one volume, and I couldn’t help but hear more than one reference to your fondness for her.”
Tahn put his hands on Wendra’s shoulders. “Sister, if I ever choose to do anything with regard to Mira, you’ll be the firs
t to know.”
“Good enough, brother,” Wendra answered. “It’s clear you’re drawn to her, but I wonder if you’ve thought what could come of it.”
The question caught Tahn off guard. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ve just ended my days as a hopeless melura.” He smiled wanly. “I suppose it’s natural for me to make some mistakes in matters of love. You just take care of that voice. I miss your songs.”
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 will be your greatest ally, if you keep faith with her.”
Bile rose at the back of Tahn’s throat. His anger thrummed in him so that he could not even get out the words to revile the man.
“Tahn, I want—”
His words found him. “I don’t care what you want, exile. You forfeited your right to give me advice a long time ago. You are an insult to any who know you.”
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 did not want to send you away. It was the best, safest thing for you. And I prevailed on 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 voice came without apology.
Not the voice of reconciliation. Not the voice of a father.
And Tahn hated him the more for it. “Yet I understand you are father to children in your Scar. How did you decide that they were worthy of your care and protection, but your own son was not?” Tahn raised his hand. “No. I don’t want an answer. You could have none but lies, and I won’t listen to them anymore. Balatin may have been too weak to tell me the truth, but he loved me. He was good to me. He was my father. You are only a tired, used husk that keeps vigil in a dying place. Even death is too good for you.”
“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 go to 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 try to say something more, but finally only walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Stain
Winds drove the clouds from the Saeculorum, leaving Tahn and the others in brittle cold under clear skies. For two days they trekked into the mountains, attended by a groaning that was as much a vibration under their feet as a warning to their ears. The mountains themselves seemed to resist them, denying whatever purpose Vendanj had brought them here to achieve.
For most of that time, Tahn kept his own company in silence. He had not turned back, but neither had he decided he would go to Restoration. And he would take no counsel on it from anyone.
On the morning of the third day, beneath the shimmering sun, glittering points of refracted sunlight sparkled like gems on a blanket of snow. The clean, bright vista relieved, if only slightly, the sullenness that had afflicted them all since they’d entered the Saeculorum. Somehow, this brightness spoke of another season in which dormant seeds nourished on melting ice would flourish and set in motion another cycle.
For the first time since her kiss, Tahn sought out Mira. “We’re close, aren’t we?”
Her eyes continued to search the tree line. “Yes. And how are you?”
A bitter smile rose on Tahn’s chapped lips. “I’m still headed to Tillinghast.”
“I heard your cries on the bluff above the Soliel. And I inquired of the Sheason. It does you honor that you have stayed on this path.”
Tahn hurried to clarify. “I haven’t turned back. But I also don’t know if I can go to the Heights, Mira. I’m trying to understand…”
“That is all anyone can ask, Tahn. But I have faith that you will find your way. There is much more in you than the hunter who left the Hollows. I have seen it.” She smiled. “And not just under a Far blanket.”
Tahn laughed for the first time in longer than he could remember.
He looked down then at the ground. “Won’t the snow make it easy for Quietgiven to track or hear us?” Tahn had often taken immediately to the Hollow Wood after a good winter fall of snow had made hunting simpler.
“Yes but there is no mystery about where we’re headed. The Bar’dyn know it. The Velle assuredly have counseled their scouts to find an opportune place to make their stand.” She looked out over the delicate green and white blanket of pine and snow spread below them. “And you, Tahn, have sacrificed yourself in showing the Bar’dyn scouts which of us is the prize.”
“What do you mean?” Tahn’s breath billowed in the air.
“When last the Quiet came upon us, you showed them your awareness of something within you, when you drew your bow with no arrow. They won’t hesitate to kill us all.” She paused, seeming to judge whether to say anything more. “But I think they will want you captive, to employ your gifts in the interest of those who lay within the Bourne … the interest of Quietus himself.”
The unanswered questions from their night together at Naltus came again to him with renewed anger. “I’m weary of the threat of secrets. If the Quiet wants me, tell me why. Why do a Sheason and a Far come into the Hollows to find a hunter? It must be more than my connection to the Will. And what is it that awaits us at Tillinghast? Haven’t I a right to know?”
Tahn’s last words echoed over the tops of the trees below them, startling several ravens from their perch. As the flutter of wings answered Tahn’s fury and filled the morning air, Mira turned to him. “Let me speak to you plainly, hunter.” The replacement of his name with the common term felt like a slap across the face. “I respect your willingness to be here, to place your faith in a renderer and his designs. But do not put us at greater risk with your foolishness, your insecurities. Why do you think Vendanj has kept his tongue about so many things? Perhaps it is because a child, barely become a man, hasn’t the fortitude to hear the fullness of truth. Perhaps if you knew all, you might have shrunk from a task clearly greater than you, greater than any of us.
Tahn felt the bite in her words and wished to retreat. But there was no place to go, and he became aware that all ears heard this exchange.
“We may well reach Tillinghast safely. I suggest you make peace with your decision to come, and lend us whatever skills you possess to reach our destination. Do you understand? What a waste of words to have to say all this to you. You may have alerted our pursuers with your declaration of your rights. Turn back if you cannot stand it another moment, if insecurity causes your heart to falter. Because that will surely cause you to fail at Tillinghast.”
She stopped; the silence that followed was deafening. Tahn could bear her gaze no more and looked out over the peaceful scene he’d shared happily with her a mere moment before. When at last Vendanj proceeded down into the trees, the others following, Mira shocked Tahn by placing a hand over his own as it rested on his saddle horn. “Sometimes we must speak sharply to those we care about. But fear not, Tahn, I have faith in you.”
With that she kicked Solus ahead, passing everyone and disappearing deep within the pines.
Tahn thought of what Sutter had said, about the horror of his true parents and what almost happened to him. He thought of what his friend had said about their fathers, the ones who hadn’t abandoned them. He thought of Wendra’s forgiveness.
And then he thought of the cutting truth in the words Mira had just spoken to him.
The indecision he had felt since th
e painful revelations had threatened to undo him was gone. These many small wonders of words and actions had stiffened Tahn’s resolve. He would stand at Tillinghast, whatever it meant to do so.
And stronger still than this, though still a small thing, was a love for the Far that he could neither explain nor deny. Yet even that concerned him, when he considered Sutter’s vision.
* * *
They moved with caution over the undisturbed blanket of snow. Towering pines rose around them, many with an ivory bark Tahn had not seen before. Patches of sunlight fell through the trees, producing crystalline shards of reflected light. With the scent of pine needles and snow, the air smelled clean, free of the mold of last year’s leaves. The crunch of hooves broke the silence, much louder than usual in the stillness, but even Grant seemed at relative ease until the boom of a beaten drum shattered the morning air.
The deep sound spooked the horses. Several of them reared up, as though they recognized the portent the drums bore. Their shrill whinnying filled the morning with chaos as another drum answered the first, and a third called back to both, from ahead, downslope, and upslope.… They were trapped.
When the horses quieted, Tahn quickly surveyed every direction. He pulled his bow and nocked an arrow. Braethen already had his sword in hand, touching the blade in a thoughtful fashion. Then distantly, the sound of feet breaking through the snow rose from every quarter like a mother shushing her child, rushing in upon them.
Mira dismounted and pulled Tahn from Jole. They ran into a clearing, just up the hill from the path they’d been taking. Vendanj and Grant already stood at the northern edge, the Sheason preparing his hands, the exile kicking snow back and clearing a wide circle in which to stand. Wendra sheltered Penit behind Sutter and Braethen as she strode into the small clearing and shot worried glances at Tahn. Only Sutter seemed both prepared and anxious. He made several figures in the air with his Sedagin blade, his muscles now more used to its employ.
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