was one: the Farlain. Under their leader, Farla the First, they journeyed to Druin more than six hundred years ago, escaping some war in their homeland. The Farlain settled in the valley below here, and two neighboring valleys to the east. They prospered and multiplied. But, as the years passed, there was discord and several families broke from the clan. There was a little trouble and some fighting, but the new clan formed their own settlements and began calling themselves Pallides, which in the old tongue meant Seekers of New Trails. In the decades that followed other splits developed, giving birth to the Haesten, the Loda, the Dunilds, and many more. There have been several wars between the clans. In the last, more than one hundred years ago, six thousand men lost their lives. Then the mighty king Ironhand put an end to it. He gave us wisdom-and the Games.”
“What are the Games?” asked Gaelen.
“Tests of skill in a score of disciplines. Archery, swordsmanship, racing, jumping, wrestling… many, many events. All the clans take part. It lasts two weeks from Midsummer’s Night, and concludes with the Whorl Feast. You will see it this year-and you will never forget it.”
“What are the prizes?”
“Pride is the prize-and always has been.” The old man’s blue eyes twinkled. “Well, pride and a small sack of gold. Caswallon took gold in the archery last year. A better bowman has never been seen in these mountains.”
“Tell me of him.”
The old man chuckled and shook his head. “Caswallon. Always the children seek stories of Caswallon. If Caswallon were a swallow he would stay north for the winter, just to see how cold it gets. What can any man tell you of Caswallon?”
“Is he a warrior?”
“He is certainly that, but then most clansmen are. He is good with sword and knife, though others are better. He is an expert hunter and a good provider.”
“You like him?” asked Gaelen.
“Like him? He infuriates me. But I love him. I don’t know how his wife puts up with him. But then Maeg’s a spirited lass.” Oracle rose from the bedside and moved to the table, filling two clay goblets with water. Passing one to Gaelen, he sat down once more. “Aye, that’s the story to give you a taste of young Caswallon.
“Three years ago at the Games, he saw and fell in love with a maid of the Pallides, the daughter of their Hunt Lord Maggrig. Now, Maggrig is a formidable warrior and a man of hasty and uncertain temper. Above all things on this earth he hates and despises the Farlain. Mention the clan name and his blood boils and his face darkens.
“So imagine his fury when Caswallon approaches him and asks for his daughter’s hand. Men close by swore his veins almost burst at the temples. And Maeg herself took one look at him and dismissed him for an arrogant fool. Caswallon took the insults they heaped on him, bowed, and departed to the archery tourney, which he won an hour later. Most of us thought that would be the last of the affair.” Oracle rose and stretched his back, then moved to the fire and added two thick logs. He sighed and refilled his goblet.
“Well, what happened?” urged Gaelen.
“Happened? Oh, yes. I’m sorry, my boy, but the mind wanders sometimes. Where was I? Caswallon’s courting of Maeg.” Returning to the bedside, he sat down again. “Many of the Farlain enjoyed the jest for such it had to be. Maeg was almost twenty and unmarried and it was considered she was a frosty maiden with little interest in men.
“Two months later, in dead of night, Caswallon slipped into the Pallides lands, past their scouts and into the heart of Maggrig’s own village. He scaled the stone wall of the old man’s house and entered Maeg’s room unseen. Just before dawn he awoke Maeg, stifled her scream with a kiss, climbed from the window, and was gone into the timberline. Oh, they chased him all right. Fifty of the fleetest Pallides runners, but Caswallon was the racer to beat them all, and he made it home without a scratch.
“Now, back at Maggrig’s house there was rare fury, for the young Farlain hunter had left a pair of torn breeches, a worn shirt, and the hide cut out in the shape of a new pair of shoes. Soon the entire Highlands chuckled at the tale and Maggrig was beside himself with fury. You have to understand the symbolism, Gaelen. The trousers, shirt, and hide were what you’d leave a wife to mend and make. And the fact that he’d spent the night alone in her bedroom made sure no other man would marry her.
“Maggrig swore he’d have his head. Pallides hunters spent their days hoping Caswallon of the Farlain would darken their territory with his shadow. Finally, some three months later, as winter took its hold making the mountains impassable, the Pallides withdrew to their homes. On this night in the long hall, where the clan chiefs were celebrating the Longest Night, the doors opened and there, covered in snow and with ice in his beard, stood Caswallon.
“He walked slowly down the center of the hall, between the tables, until he stood before Maggrig and his daughter. Then he smiled and said, ‘Have you finished my breeches and shirt, woman?’
“ ‘I have,’ she told him. ‘And where have you been these last months?’
“ ‘Where else should I be?’ he answered her. ‘I’ve been building our house.’
“I tell you, Gaelen, I would have given much to see Maggrig’s face that night. The wedding took place the following morning and the two of them stayed most of the winter with the Pallides. Caswallon would not hear of taking Maeg back the way he had come, for he had scaled the east flank of High Druin-no easy task in summer, but in winter fraught with peril.
“Now, does that help you understand Caswallon of the Farlain?”
“No,” answered Gaelen.
The old man laughed aloud. “No more should it, I suppose. But keep it in your mind and the passing years may explain it to you. Now strip off that shirt and let me check that wound.”
Oracle carefully cut away the bandages and knelt before the bed, his long fingers prizing away the linen from the blood-encrusted stitches. Gaelen gritted his teeth, making no sound. As the last piece of linen pulled clear Gaelen looked down. A huge blue and yellow bruise had spread from his hip to his ribs and around to the small of his back. The wound itself had closed well, but was seeping at the edges with yellow pus.
“Don’t worry about that, boy,” said Oracle. “That’s just the body expelling the rubbish. The wound’s clean and healing well. By midsummer you’ll be running with the other lads at the Games.”
“The wound seems wider than I remember,” said Gaelen. “I thought it was just a round hole.”
“Aye it was-on both sides,” Oracle told him. “But round wounds take an age to heal, Gaelen. They close up in a circle until there is just a bright tender spot at the center which never seems to close. I cut a wider gash across it. Trust me; I know wounds, boy. I have seen enough of them, and suffered enough of them. You are healing well.”
“What about my eye?” asked Gaelen, tenderly fingering the bandage.
“We’ll know soon, lad.”
Maeg placed the babe in his crib and covered him with a white woolen blanket. She ran her fingers over the soft, dark down on his head and whispered a blessing to protect him as he slept. He was a beautiful child, with his father’s sea-green eyes and his mother’s dimpled chin. Tomorrow his grandfather would arrive, and Maeg was secretly delighted that the child had Maggrig’s wide cheekbones and round head. She knew it would please the fiery Hunt Lord of the Pallides. For all that he was a warrior and a man to be respected, Maeg knew that within the crusty shell was a soft-hearted man who had always doted on children.
Men walked warily around the old bull, but children clambered over him, shrieking with mock terror at his bloodcurdling threats and tugging at his rust-red beard. He was a man who had always wanted sons, and yet had never made his daughter feel guilty, nor blamed his wife for becoming barren thereafter.
And Maeg loved him.
The sound of the axe thudding into logs drew her to the thin north-facing window. In the yard beyond, stripped to the waist, Caswallon was preparing the winter fuel. An hour a day through spring and summer and the logs would be stacked against the side of the house three paces deep, thirty paces long, and the height of a tall man. In this way the wood performed a double service, keeping the fire fed and the north wind away from the wall, insulating their home against the ferocity of the winter.
Caswallon’s long hair was swept back from his face and tied at the nape of the neck in a short ponytail. The muscles of his arms and shoulders stretched and swelled with each smooth stroke of the axe. Maeg grinned as she watched him, and rested her elbows on the sill. Caswallon was a natural showman, imbuing even such a simple task as chopping wood with a sense of living poetry. His movements were smooth and yet, every now and then, as
