by Brian Daley
BROTHERLESS
He remembered few things about the ride back to the Singularity. Before he’d properly apprehended the stark fact of Sandur’s death, the body had been lashed across Bordhall’s saddle, Kort fetched, and his own and his brother’s weapons turned over to him.
There had been none of the gloating and glorying he would have expected from the barbarians, perhaps because their Warlord demonstrated none, or perhaps in deference to the Outrider. The mob had dispersed quickly, though many eyes had followed him out of the camp. Ravager had spoken no other word to him.
Crassmor wasn’t stopped or challenged by any patrols. He never knew if that was chance or if the word had gone out in some manner. He didn’t touch the food they’d tied to his saddle, and drank only sips from his waterskin. He paused for no rest, riding numbly, following that instinct common to those born in the Singularity, going home. Had it not been for the task of seeing Sandur’s body back to House Tarrant, he would have dismounted, sat down in the middle of that otherworldly wilderness, and never risen again.
In the descent from the hills overlooking the vineyards of Tolbur, he passed into Blue Dell, whose five waterfalls cascaded to fill the place with the perennial mist which gave it its name. There he encountered his father.
Combard galloped up into Blue Dell like an avenging spirit, his dark cloak flapping behind, at the head of several hundred men-at-arms, assorted archers, swordsmen, knights, and lancers. Crassmor, who had dreaded this moment above any, now found himself inexplicably empty.
Combard registered shock at seeing Crassmor, even as his gnarled hand flew up to halt the fighting men at his back. He reined his own mount to a sliding stop-on-haunches in the slick grass. The Lord of House Tarrant took in Crassmor’s devastated expression, the numbness of it, and the ominous burden draped across Bordhall. Then his face assumed an aspect Crassmor could hardly credit: wide-eyed, white-faced, unbelieving, as if the world had come apart.
The old man was shaking as he drew nearer to Crassmor while the others held to their places. Breath seemed to come to Combard with difficulty; he stopped before his younger son.
“What have you done?” Combard whispered, scarcely to be heard over the splashing waterfalls. He moved closer. They were side, by side, facing each other.
“The Warlord had offered Sandur single combat, offered his medicine wand as safe-conduct,” Crassmor said in a monotone. “Sandur refused, came home to make his report instead. The King’s command…”
He could meet his father’s burning stare for only a second or two at a time, dropping his eyes to his own hands, clenched on his reins. “After he heard of the defeat, Sandur wanted to accept the challenge. The medicine wand would at least protect him until he reached the camp of the lizard riders. So I—went to fetch it.” He touched fingertips to it now, still tucked through his belt. “But Sandur found out; he followed me—”
Combard’s hand flashed, cracking Crassmor’s cheek, snapping his head around. The blow brought tears, but did him neither harm nor good. He went on. “Sandur fought the Warlord and lost, lost.”
Combard threw his head back then, eyes screwed shut and fists pressed to his temples, throating a keening sound resembling nothing Crassmor had ever heard from the man. Hastily, as if to disprove what he had cried, Combard struggled down off his horse. He moved as if palsied staggering to Bordhall, dragging his footsteps in the dewy grass. Crassmor dismounted and went after.
Combard’s quaking fingers slipped the careful knots, threw back the corner of the wrapping. Sandur’s head hung down there, face gray in death, hair still aflame. The old man sank to his knees, cradling his heir’s head with heaving sobs, tears laving his cracked cheeks in the mist. “What… have… you… done?”
Crassmor, coming up slowly behind, thought the question was meant for him. “What I thought would help him, father; what I could to keep him safe.” He moved his hands aimlessly.
Combard came back to himself, releasing the Outrider unwillingly, and stood. He signaled to his troops; Bint came forward alone. Crassmor was surprised to see that the boy rode fully armed, then realized that Combard, on discovering Crassmor’s and Sandur’s absence, had gathered up every available man, even the untried Bint, and set out at once. Had Combard crossed into the Beyonds, it would have been the first time that he, with his special ties to the land and waters of the Singularity, had departed it since his coming of age.
Combard held out Bordhall’s rein; Bint took it hesitantly. “Get you all back to House Tarrant,” was the order. “Await me there.”
Not “Await us,” Crassmor noticed dully. An icy node of fear was born in his middle. No matter; banishment or disownment meant nothing against the tragedy of Sandur’s death.
As Bint took the rein, Combard’s grief changed to reproach, which he turned on Crassmor. Bint led Bordhall out of Blue Dell with the rest at his back. Hooves drummed; in moments father and son were alone in the mist. Crassmor made a last effort to explain. “It was—when Sandur reported to the King of the Warlord’s—”
Combard, erupting in rage, swept out his longsword, his heart a wasteland. His strong, aged hands gripped it tightly, so that the blade quavered a little. He lifted the weapon.
A life for a life, a part of Crassmor intoned, citing the justice in which his father believed. Stunned, feeling himself as culpable as his father did, he made no move to defend himself or withdraw.
“No word spoken before the King was spoken to you,” Combard grated. The last word bore such a weighted despisal that Crassmor’s anger flared. His resignation fell away; his voice filled Blue Dell.
“If you didn’t mean the words, why did you say them? How could I ever know that my father’s words and his intent were two different things? When did you ever teach me that, Combard?”
The longsword poised in the air, lifted for a headsman’s stroke. Crassmor turned his jaw aside, presenting an unprotected neck, but held eye-lock with his father.
Combard’s strong, stooped frame vibrated; the sword point made erratic debate overhead. Then the Lord of House Tarrant let his blade fall to the misted grass, turning away with face buried in hands. The shuddering of his shoulders and back tore at Crassmor’s heart even more than had Combard’s wail of lamentation. Crassmor stared dumbly, arms hanging uselessly at his sides.
Combard, presenting his back to Crassmor, said at last, “Tell me, please, how my—how your brother died.”
Crassmor did, haltingly, in simplest terms, as Combard seemed to shrink in on himself. At the end, the old man stared off into the mist for long minutes. As Crassmor was about to speak again, Combard retrieved his sword, wiped the dew from it slowly, and returned it to its scabbard. The old man gathered his horse’s reins, then went to his surviving son. Combard embraced him with a free arm, an embrace that was heartfelt, yet lacked all vigor. But with that, Crassmor found that he no longer wished to die.
“When you have made your report to the King,” Combard bade him, “then come you home to your mother and me.”
He mounted tiredly for the ride back to House Tarrant and the funeral of the son of his heart.
Ironwicca was in his throne room this time. He was the only one there. Crassmor covered the floor that was more vast than a drill field and ascended flights of broad steps leading to the dais, crossing landings where whole companies of courtiers and luminaries kept their places at other times. He listened to his own footfalls come back from the sculptured ceiling; he went the whole way under the King’s watchful eyes. Crassmor knew from his instant ushering-in by servitors that Ironwicca expected him; he wondered just what the monarch’s hidden sources of information were.
The King waited out Crassmor’s approach in silence, drawing long fingers through the ringlets of his beard. Next to the monolithic throne was the King’s heroic, curled drinking horn, lacquered in red and blue, heavily gilt, rimmed in weighty, twisted silver. The horn had been torn, it was said, from the skull of its original owner by the King himself. It w
as in its stand of platinum-leafed teak, half the height of Ironwicca himself.
The King indicated it as Crassmor topped the last step to stand before him. “Empty. And I’ve no Cup Bearer to fill it, have I?”
Crassmor’s mouth worked. Though Ironwicca usually drank from ordinary vessels, it had been Sandur’s honor as Outrider to fill and fetch the great horn on occasions of highest importance. “You have not,” Crassmor confessed at last, eyes sliding from the King’s.
“Then you fill it,” Ironwicca commanded harshly.
Crassmor saw a keg nearby, set on a rack to one side. He ascended the dais and, with a final look to assure himself of the King’s permission, lifted up the drinking horn. It was heavy, as Sandur had said it was, and clumsy to handle.
“You know the protocol, of course,” Ironwicca said with particular emphasis; Crassmor’s “yes” was less steady than he’d have wished. They both knew why Crassmor was familiar with the process; he’d seen Sandur discharge this duty scores of times.
So each step covered many that the Outrider had taken. Every gesture was a haunting; the filling of the horn resurrected Sandur. He should be doing this, not me! Outrider, I’d have died in your place if I could!
His brother’s casual comments on the ritual came back to him. There was a trick to charging the horn, turning it at first so as not to trap air in its pointed tip. By the time he presented the brimming horn to Ironwicca with the prescribed bow, laboring a bit under its weight, Sandur was all around him. Nothing could have been more evocative of his brother’s death than this.
The King’s hand took the horn’s handle; muscle jumped as Ironwicca lifted it. The sound of the keg had told Crassmor that the King had already done prodigious drinking, but he showed no sign of it. Nor had Ironwicca ever, even on nights of revelry that had left wooden-legged drinkers under the tables.
The King drank deeply, then looked at Crassmor. “I have no Cup Bearer.”
“No, Majesty.” Crassmor’s voice had nearly broken.
“And now,” Ironwicca declared in a tone more alive, one that stood the Tarrant son straight up and riveted his attention, driving out remembrance. “Now that you’ve walked his steps and felt his absence, you have been punished as much as you deserve. That is my decree. And the punishment isn’t for Sandur’s death; it’s for your presumption in thinking to shoulder guilt that only fate may bear. Be warned, or you’ll be of no use to me, Crassmor; the next time it may be a capital offense, and the verdict handed down by a practical world. Keep Sandur in your heart, but only punish yourself the more if you care to dispute my judgment.”
He drank again. Crassmor stared at the toes of his own boots, throat working, then nodded.
“Enough,” Ironwicca boomed, setting aside the horn in its stand. “I have the bare facts already. Tell me now the whole of it. Mind you omit no detail.”
Crassmor obeyed, though he found it hard to put some things into words. Mention of the medicine wand brought questions from the King and explanations from Crassmor, since Sandur hadn’t spoken of it or of Ravager’s challenge and insults. When that had been clarified, Ironwicca growled, “Your brother’s report was incomplete that morning in the egret tower. Why didn’t you speak up then?”
Crassmor gulped. “Majesty, whoever invited my comment, or gave me leave to make it?”
The monarch reclined in his throne, stroking his beard. “Fair enough,” he admitted at length. “Go on.”
Crassmor complied, telling of the sad parade along Fey Passage, Sandur’s words, his own foray into the Beyonds, and what had come after. When his voice choked with emotion from time to time, the King chose to ignore it, drinking contemplatively from the great horn until Crassmor regained his composure.
The story finished, Ironwicca gazed off into the reaches of his throne room for long moments. Then he said with finality, “It’s changed.” Remembering Crassmor, who was afraid to ask what that had meant, he went on. “And that is the medicine wand there in your belt? The safe-conduct talisman?”
Crassmor affirmed it and held out the wand. “It’s linked to the aura of him who shaped it, Ravager himself. Part of the peace that binds his hordes and prevents blood feuding is the exchange of these rods and the soul oaths that are sworn by them.”
Ironwicca took and examined it, asking, “Would you say that the Warlord’s challenge still stands?”
“His safe conduct does, at any rate,” Crassmor judged. “And so, by implication, does his challenge. What’s more, he boasted in loud words before his men. I doubt he would refuse single combat.”
The King rose up from his throne in thought, to pace the dais with the tread of a feline. “No, he cannot,” the King decided at last, hands tensed on the wand. Crassmor almost gathered the temerity to warn against Ravager’s prowess, but it came to him that Ironwicca, who’d known Sandur well, would appreciate the danger posed by the man who’d killed him.
“It would please my father to have Sandur’s death avenged,” he told the King.
“It will please him even more, then,” Ironwicca returned, “when you describe it to him. You’ll be there to see it.”
Crassmor stuttered, shocked that events still included him, not unterrified at the idea of returning to the encampment. “That is, thank you, Highness. You do my House, uh, good honor. But why—”
“To chastise you, in some part,” Ironwicca replied. “To exonerate you as well, for your role in all this. And to have at my side a companion who knows the lay of the land and is familiar with the barbarians. Before all else, though, your being at my side when I ride into that camp will let every man there know why I’ve come. You took forth Ravager’s challenge and Sandur’s body; you return with me. Ravager won’t be able to change his mind, even if he should wish to.”
Remembering Combard’s last instruction, Crassmor ventured, “But my father—”
“Serves me!” the King thundered, and Crassmor could not bow quickly or deeply enough. “By oath of fealty, as does your entire family,” Ironwicca finished. That settled the issue.
“Majesty.” Crassmor quaked.
The King stared down at him, hands clasped behind his back. “Do you know what it is that your father fears in you?”
No question could have astonished Crassmor more. “Fears, sire?”
“The blood of Lewan-the-Rake Tarrant,” the King told him, watching to see what effect that would have. The name was little more than words to Crassmor, the name of Combard’s father, a face gazing down from old busts and portraits. It evinced features in common with Crassmor’s own, granted, but the resemblance had never sparked much curiosity.
Lewan’s lordship over House Tarrant hadn’t been one of great repute, though the land and water had been kind. It had only been with Combard’s ascendancy that House Tarrant had regained its reputation for deeds of arms, along with a weightier influence in matters of politics and additional, grants of lands and holdings.
“Your servant doesn’t have the least idea what your Majesty means,” Crassmor confessed.
“There are resemblances, at least in Combard’s mind. Lewan-the-Rake had your love of parties and feasts. He had a roving eye for women as well, and enjoyed a good jape more than anything.”
Crassmor had heard approximately these same things, in more condemnatory phrases, from Combard. The long-lived Ironwicca’s speaking this way, though, from personal knowledge, gave Crassmor fresh insight into his grandfather.
The King continued. “Lewan’s arranged marriage gave him a spouse who had none of those things in common with him. She took refuge in raising her sons, Combard and Furd, keeping apart from Lewan as much as she could. He made no objection. I would be surprised if she did not speak against him to them. Your grandmother died embittered and young. It is understandable that her sons felt that she’d been driven to an early grave.”
Of his grandmother Crassmor had heard much; she’d been sainted by his father and uncle. Not focused on the King, the polished artistry of the
throne, or the opulence all around him, he listened closely.
“Combard of Tarrant saw his own image in Sandur,” Ironwicca said. “He took comfort that his heir was a kindred soul.”
Crassmor couldn’t keep his lips from turning up at the corners. “Then I came along.” It was rueful.
“Yes; Crassmor, with some symptoms of becoming another Lewan-the-Rake. Or so thinks Combard.”
Crassmor made no answer. The King went on. “Has your father ever condemned himself for having a second son, have you wondered? For not being content with Sandur?”
Crassmor had, but right now he wondered another thing. “Why do you tell me this?”
Ironwicca ignored the lapse in protocol; his face betrayed nothing. “For now, simply lay it to the fact that you’ve rendered service in fetching that medicine wand, and will do another in returning to the Beyonds. How else am I to reward you? What would a bauble or sword or another parcel of land matter to a scion of House Tarrant? A piece of yourself is what I give you. Do with it as you see fit. My own advice is to keep it to yourself, at least for the time being.”
He rang for servitors. “You’ll rest here while preparations for our journey are made. I’ll dispatch word to your father. Come the dawn, we set forth.”
Crassmor warned, “My father will certainly remind your Highness that I am no appointed knight.”
“Easily attended to,” Ironwicca drawled. His sword came forth from its scabbard all in an instant, a plain, long, heavy, well-used weapon that left a wicked chiming in the air. The King approached him. Crassmor stood rooted for a moment, then hurriedly dropped to one knee.
The sword touched his shoulders, the King setting aside solemn rituals and days-long ceremony, saying the words that made Crassmor a knight of the Singularity. Crassmor stammered his fealty in all things and his promise to uphold the King’s laws, and was bidden rise as a knight. It was done before he’d overcome his shock.
“Take that as an object lesson,” Ironwicca advised matter-of-factly. He sheathed his blade with a sound like cymbal and drum. “There’s no technicality or huggermugger that is indispensable. Substance is all; form, nothing.”