She tried to envision such a happening, and struggled to do so. She had never known loyalty to a home, to a place where her ancestors had toiled and sacrificed. Where vows had been shared and children born.
Only to one day be told that that they had to move on. To take what could be carried and be given a new strip of land, to build, but not restore what had been taken. Not truly.
She swallowed. “And all went? They did not try to fight?”
The sage eyed her steadily. “I did not say that.”
Penryn did not immediately know how to respond to that. The books in her Keep were written by those who had survived the hunts and established the accord, and they spent little time detailing how the boundaries had been erected. There were maps, ones she even now could sketch from memory if given a bit of charcoal and a parchment, but she thought of the dwelling she had found with Grimult, his discomfort at seeing that which was forbidden.
Not merely a dwelling.
A home.
With surrounding lands that presumably had been a farm before a treaty had demanded the lands be emptied.
She swallowed thickly. “Do you believe,” she began when she felt she was able to form the words without making a fool of herself with an emotional display. “That some might have found a way to remain behind?”
The sage steepled his fingers. “It has always seemed to me that the texts were arrogant in their reports of the ease in which it was done. Some hinted at the conflict, but most suggested that all were compliant.” He tilted his head, regarding her critically. “If you were suddenly informed that you would be vacating your ancestral lands, would you take that order lightly?”
A coil of tension tightened in her belly. “Of course not.”
The sage nodded. “I would suggest, given the manner of dress and even the mount itself, that rather than a defector or one sent by our order to trespass beyond the Wall, you caught a glimpse of a remnant of what once was.” He leaned forward. “And if they attacked you, I would take that as a grave warning. It is possible they do not understand the significance of your coming, of the maintenance of the treaty they likely detest, but if they do...”
He shook his head. “You are fortunate you made it through alive. I doubt the next would be so fortunate.”
Penryn tried to think, tried to make sense of what he was telling her. If it was true, which a begrudging part of her was beginning to accept that possibility, they had never truly been safe. Not in the whole of the wretched time of Lightkeeps and sages, of sequestering an entire people from any they thought might hurt them.
Even while an entire set of people nursed old wounds and grudging resentment at being so thoroughly displaced.
Perhaps that was not truly the case. Perhaps they had moved on, become nomads until settling elsewhere, finding the places where the Wall ended and navigating either the mountains of the sea, depending on their determination. Maybe the attack had not been directed at her specifically, but she had merely been the first he had noticed, and it did not mean her successor was in danger, that the future of the treaty was in peril.
Penryn smoothed her hands down her skirt, trying to order her thoughts, scattered and jumbled as they were becoming.
She had asked for an explanation. She had not expected it to frighten her so much when it was proffered.
“By the terms of the alliance,” Penryn began, her voice suddenly small and she had to force herself to speak clearly. “Would you not be obligated to assist in dealing with such persons?” She glanced about the table, looking for some sign of agreement. “They were yours too originally, and although I can appreciate the difficulty of the task, the accord was clear that their exile was to be dealt with by you.” The words felt harsh and utterly lacking in compassion, and she did not like how hollow they sounded even to her own ears. She was accusing them of not being harsh enough, of not taking more care as they drove people from their homes, even if it was for the protection of her own kind.
“That might have been true,” the elder sages acknowledged. “But we are bound by different impediments than we once were.”
He must have caught the brush of confusion from Penryn for he elaborated. “To cross now would be a breach of that same accord, if we were even able to do so, which we are not.”
Penryn grimaced at that. Some sort of construction could be crafted that would make it possible, but at what cost? And to what explanation for those sent to fight?
And what if they saw the lands on the other side and decided not to retreat to their proper place, but surge forward instead, either in a lust for exploration or resources.
Penryn looked at the sage. “Then what do you suggest?”
He sighed deeply and if she was not mistaken, there were tinges of pity in his returning glance. “That we sign our treaty as we have always done. And then your people may attend to whatever threat befalls you, in whatever means you deem necessary.”
A war? That was what he so nicely suggested without ever using the word, without speaking of the blood and the trauma, the fighting that seemed never ending when she read countless battles recounted through numerous perspectives.
But what alternative did she have to offer? Everything in her rebelled at the notion of allowing them to cross the Wall, the ultimate failure on her part if she permitted it.
But the sages had given her no suggestion of what to do in these circumstances, and she was angered by that.
So very angry.
Why had no one noticed? In all the centuries that
