Boy and beast worked hard that afternoon, with the lead and then without it, and even from where she and her fellow Borderswords sat on the log, Feren could see the sheen of sweat on the mare’s black hide; and when at last the gate sergeant had the Lord’s son turn his back on the charger, and the animal strode freely to come up alongside Arathan, Galak grunted and muttered, ‘That was well done.’
‘Grudging admission,’ Ville commented. ‘Thought I heard something split inside you, saying that, Galak.’
‘Uniforms and hard-heeled boots. I admit I wasn’t much impressed by these house-dwellers.’
‘Just a different way,’ said Rint. ‘Not better, not worse, just different.’
‘Back in the day, when there were still boars in the wood-’
‘When there was still a wood,’ Ville cut in.
Galak went on. ‘The grand hunts had beaters and dogs. In a square of trees you’d need less than three bells to ride around. As if the boar had anywhere to go. As if it wasn’t just minding its own business, tryin’ to smell out a mate or whatever.’
‘Your point?’ Rint asked, laconic as ever.
‘You’re saying no better or worse just different. I’m saying you’re being generous, maybe even false. You want to cut the carpet for them to walk on, you go ahead. I’ve watched a tereth come down to drink from a stream, in the steam of dawn, and the tears went silent down my face, because it was the last one for leagues round. No mate for it, just a lonely life and a lonelier death, even as the trees kept crashing down.’
Feren cleared her throat, still studying the boy who was now walking, the horse heeling like a faithful hound, and said, ‘The ways of war leave a wasteland. We’ve seen it on the border, no different here. The heat sweeps in like a peat fire. No one notices. Not until it’s too late. And then, why, there’s nowhere to run.’
The gate sergeant was limping as he led his charges back towards the house.
‘So she took a lover,’ Galak said in a growl, not needing to add so what?
‘The sorcery surrounding her is said to be impenetrable now,’ Rint mused. ‘Proof against all light. It surrounds her wherever she goes. We have a queen no one can see any more, except for Draconus, I suppose.’
‘Why suppose that, even?’ Galak demanded.
Feren snorted, and the others joined in with low, dry laughter, even Galak.
A moment later, Feren sobered. ‘The boy is a ruin of anxiety, and is it any wonder? From what I heard, until this day, his own father was as invisible to his son as his new lover now chooses to be in her Citadel.’
‘No sense to be made of that,’ Galak said, shaking his head.
Feren glanced across at him, surprised. ‘Perfect sense,’ she replied. ‘He’s punishing the boy’s mother.’
Brows lifting, her brother asked, ‘Do you know who she is?’
‘I know who she isn’t, and that’s more than enough.’
‘Now you’ve lost me,’ Ville said, his expression wry.
‘Galak’s tereth, Ville, lapping water at the stream as the day is born. But the day isn’t born at all, not for her. You know she’s doomed, you know it’s finished for the sweet-eyed doe. Who killed her mate? With arrow or snare? Someone did.’
‘And if that killer writhes in the arms of Chaos for all eternity,’ Galak hissed, ‘it’ll only be what’s deserved.’
Ville was now scowling. ‘That’s rich, Galak. We hunt every few days. We kill when we have to, to stay alive. No different from a hawk or a wolf.’
‘But we’re different from hawks and wolves, Ville. We can actually figure out the consequences of what we do, and that makes us… oh, I don’t know the word…’
‘Culpable?’ Rint suggested.
‘Yes, that’s the word all right.’
‘Rely not upon conscience,’ Feren said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice and not caring. ‘It ever kneels to necessity.’
‘And necessity is often a lie,’ Rint added, nodding.
Feren’s eyes were now on the churned-up turf and mud of the practice field. Insects spun and danced over the small pools left by hoofs as the light slowly failed. From the coppiced stand behind them came evening birdsong, sounding strangely plaintive. She felt slightly sick.
‘Impenetrable darkness, you said?’ Ville said. He shook his head. ‘’Tis a strange thing to do.’
‘Why not,’ Feren heard herself say, ‘when beauty is dead?’
Cut in half by the river Dorssan Ryl, the lands of the Greater House of Dracons consisted of a range of denuded hills, old mine shafts by the score, three woods that had once made up a small forest, a single village of indentured families, modest strip farms bordered by low stone walls, and a series of deep ponds filling abandoned quarry pits, where various breeds of fish were managed. Common land provided pasture for black-wool ahmryd and cattle, although forage was poor.
These lands marked the northwest border of Kurald Galain, fed by a single, poorly maintained rutted road and a single massive Azathanai bridge, since most traffic plied the Dorssan Ryl, where passage was facilitated by an extensive series of tow-lines and winches; although even these ox-powered machines were left idle during the spring flood, when even at a distance of a thousand paces the roar of the river could be heard from every room of the Great House.
The hills immediately to the west and north of the keep were mostly granite, of a highly valued dark, fine- grained variety, and this was the lone source of wealth for House Dracons. The Lord’s greatest triumph, however — and perhaps the greatest source of envy and unease prior to his attaining the title of Consort to Mother Dark — was his mysterious ties with the Azathanai. Bold and impressive as was the native Galain architecture, with the Citadel its crowning glory, the masons of the Azathanai were without equals, and the new Grand Bridge in Kharkanas was proof enough of that, a bridge gifted to the city by Lord Draconus himself.
The thinkers in the court, those capable of subtle consideration, anyway, were not unmindful of the symbolic gesture the bridge represented. But even this proved sufficient cause for bitterness, resentment, and quiet denigration. The witnessing of an exchange of gifts will taste sour when one is neither giver nor recipient. By this measure station is defined, but no definition holds for long, and gratitude is thin as rain on the stones from a single cloud on a sunny day.
If words were carved upon the massive stones of the Grand Bridge, they were well hidden. Perhaps, if one were to moor a boat beneath the span, using one of the massive stone rings so cleverly fitted there, and shine a lantern’s eye upward, one might find row upon row of Azathanai script. But in all truth this is probably a fancy and nothing more. Those who lived on and worked the river in Kharkanas did not mingle with the highborn, nor the artists, painters and poets of the time, and what they saw was their business.
Did they dream of peace, those grimy men and women with the strange accents, as they slipped past in their craft above depthless black waters? And where they walked, beyond the city, out where the banks were worn down and the silts were black along the shorelines, worshipping that kiss of water and land, did they fear the time to come?
And could we — oh gods, could we — have ever imagined the blood they would sacrifice in our name?
There will be peace.
TWO
The candles painted the air gold, made soft the pale sunlight streaming in from the high, narrow windows. There was a score of them affixed to a disparate collection of holders — as many as could be spared from unused rooms of the keep — and more than half were melted down to stumps, their flames flickering and sending up tendrils of black smoke. A servant stood watchful nearby, ready to replace the next one to surrender its life.
‘See the genius in his vision,’ Hunn Raal said under his breath, a moment later catching young Osserc’s cautious nod from the corner of his eye. There was risk in speaking at all. The man working the bristle brushes through pigments on the palette and then stabbing at the surface of the wooden board was notorious for his temperament, and the scene was already tense enough, but Hunn had judged his comment a sufficient compliment
