The Legend of Broken

before the child must be left to the Wood? Or, worse yet, after he is thus outcast? Weigh the matter carefully, Radelfer — why should we pay that man Caliphestros greater heed than we do our own healers? He said himself that these are all issues of debate, of opinion — and has he arrested the deterioration of the God-King Izairn? No. Why, then, Radelfer? Why heed him …?”

The seneschal wished to utter the simplest reason why: that Rendulic Baster-kin knew himself, from personal and bitter experience, that Broken’s Kafran healers were fools, and that Caliphestros, while he could not stop the inevitable progression of the God-King Izairn’s decline, had at least softened that march of mortality. But, ultimately, the seneschal found that calming his lord was far more important than proving this point: and so, as soon as the drunken wet-nurse appeared, wiping grease from her mouth with the same filthy sleeve that she would shortly use to wipe the face of the unfortunate infant in the crib, Radelfer guided the somewhat stunned Merchant Lord from the room.

And as they went, Rendulic Baster-kin made only one sensible statement: “I can prove it, Radelfer — you think me near-mad, at this moment, but I can prove my assertion …”

“My lord?” Radelfer replied, wishing simply to get the master of the house abed.

“Another child,” Rendulic Baster-kin replied; and at that, Radelfer was forced to pause in the hallway.

“But my lord, we have just heard—”

“An opinion,” the young master replied, with the fire of inspiration in his eyes. “The great Lord Caliphestros said as much, himself. Well — I have formed my own opinion: if my wife and I can conceive another child, one that resembles Adelwulf rather than that horror we have just left, then, then I shall know the truth. And then there shall be punishments enough to slake even my wrath …” Walking unsteadily, Lord Baster-kin moved toward the bedchamber where Lady Chen-lun now lay alone, attended constantly by the marauder woman Ju. “Fetch Raban back here,” Rendulic Baster-kin said, pausing by the chamber’s door. “Send for him. I would have my wife well enough, at least, to conceive, and he shall accomplish it, if he wishes to live. Tell him that I have determined his tale of the alp from Davon Wood having invaded this house and violated my wife to be correct. We shall have a priest to purge this Kastelgerd, and protect it from such beings in the future. And then …”

{vi:}

The Lady Chen-lun’s health did improve sufficiently for childbearing, for the most part because of Healer Raban, or so the lord and lady of the house believed; in reality, it was because of liberal reliance on various instructions which Lord Caliphestros had, Radelfer later learned, left behind with the marauder woman Ju, the only person in the great house who knew what had actually transpired between her mistress and Rendulic Baster-kin’s father, and therefore the only person, as well, who knew the truth of Caliphestros’s statements concerning Chen- lun’s illness.

The birth of a baby girl brought immediate joy into the home of the greatest of Broken’s ruling secular families, joy that lasted half a dozen years unabated. The beast-child Klauqvest remained exiled to the maze-like cellars of the Kastelgerd, along with a new and kindly nursemaid. By Kafran rites, Klauqvest should have been exiled to Davon Wood, a fate he escaped only because of the increasingly vexing nature of his brother, Adelwulf. While still a young boy, that publicly acknowledged scion of the clan Baster-kin had become so much the delight of the women of the household, and had learned how to use their adoration to achieve his every young desire, that he had grown spoilt and intellectually lazy, facts that often irritated his father; yet Klauqvest paid undivided attention to learning and development of the mind, achievements that were ever made clear to Rendulic Baster-kin by Radelfer. A taste and talent for knowledge could not, however, overcome the utter disgust his lordship felt upon simply looking at the boy; and so it was that the youngest child of the group (who believed Adelwulf to be her only sibling) became the joy of the family, embodying enough of both qualities — loveliness and true quality of intellect — to make her father constantly proud.

Early in her life this happy creature exhibited a joyous, almost ethereal talent and taste for dancing about the halls and rooms of the Kastelgerd; and yet this inclination did not cause her to ignore the studies that she was tasked to undertake early, and that she would need, should she ever in fact find herself leader of the clan Baster-kin. In addition, she was undeniably lovely, with beautiful, thick hair and the wide, dark eyes that made visitors — especially male visitors — innocently indulge her with gifts; although her father was delighted when she sometimes informed these acquaintances, quite earnestly, that she had not achieved enough that day to merit reward, and put off acceptance of such tokens. Thus did Baster-kin become ever more certain that, even if his eldest son became a useless wastrel, his daughter would never do so, and the clan would be secure. Keeping all this in mind, and still feeling most fortunate that the legacy of illness and despair that his father had intended to inflict upon Rendulic’s children had not, in two of three cases, materialized, the lord of the Kastelgerd had determined that he would name his young daughter Loreleh. When he explained to his wife the well-known myth of the beautiful spirit who was to be the child’s namesake, a siren said to stand on a large, rocky protrusion in the storied river Rhein,† drawing river sailors to their crashing doom with her irresistible beauty and peerlessly beautiful voice, the yet superstitious Chen-lun believed the tale to be true. She found it a recklessly impertinent name to give a child who had, only by divine grace, escaped the terrible fate that had befallen the now-unmentionable creature that had emerged from her womb, and whom, Chen-lun believed, her husband and Radelfer had long ago left in the wilds of Davon Wood. Whatever god or gods one worshipped, she pleaded with Rendulic, why tempt them by flouting such a myth?

Rendulic Baster-kin was only mildly irritated by his wife’s continued clinging to marauder ignorance; for had not all his prayers to Kafra been rewarded by the lovely girl’s birth? The golden god had forgiven and rewarded the Baster-kin family, after punishing it for sins that Rendulic did not wish to mention, he told Chen-lun. And, in the end, Chen-lun’s guilt over the “sin” of which her husband had spoken forced her to submit to his reasoning. In addition, their daughter’s beauty, as well as her affinity for singing and her almost spirit-like ability to dance — both not only displayed from an early age but quickly developed by tutors of such arts — even convinced her mother, after a time, that her husband might have been right: his golden god Kafra just might have been more powerful than all other deities. And so, Loreleh became the child’s name; and if Adelwulf represented the clan Baster-kin’s public hopes, so Loreleh represented its private pride, joy — and security.

In all this, Rendulic was encouraged and comforted by an exceptional Kafran priest (whose name has been lost to history, with his eventual elevation to Grand Layzin); and among the many subjects upon which the two maturing men found they agreed completely was a fundamental disdain for the Second Minister of the realm, whose advice to Lord Baster-kin had been so foully wrong. In addition, the priest, although he could speak only in pieces of the matter, indicated that the God-Prince Saylal had been given good reason not only to rebel against, but to find moral fault with Caliphestros — particularly so far as his royal sister, the Divine Princess Alandra, was concerned.

This maiden had evidently fallen under the Second Minister’s influence and become his disciple, not only of in matters of healing, but in the study of all of Nature’s wonders: and the perfection of and delight in the human form that Kafran tenets idealized seemed to hold no place in such learning. Rendulic Baster-kin urged the priest to tell the young God-Prince that, should the day ever come that he or his sister might need “practical” assistance (for it remained clear that their father, the God-King Izairn, was wholly in the thrall of Caliphestros’s undeniable intellectual refinement and power), he could depend upon the full weight of the clan Baster-kin being brought to bear in support of his cause …

Here, then, was a portrait of a family that seemed to have righted the ship of its fate long ago; and yet on this night, the Merchant Lord kneels at the bedside of his wife to find that her ailments of mind and body are only worsening — and becoming, to him, ever more repellant.

Yet how can we have reached such a pass? Lord Baster-kin wonders, for an instant uncertain if he has murmured the words aloud. What was our sin? We lived pious lives; and when the God-King finally died, we followed the will of his son, Saylal, not only in ensuring the investiture of a new Grand Layzin, but by working for and bringing about the downfall, exile, and mutilation of that blasphemous