He ignored the question, and after Alice finished her tally they had a list of names that was longer than he had expected. He had lain with twenty-seven women and there were sixteen children who showed every likelihood of being his bastards. With Haley already taken, and Brigid and Tad being there with them, there were thirteen others whom he needed to collect before returning.
Tyrion stood, he had been thinking while they discussed his transgressions, “I’ll be back soon. Gather the children here while I am gone. I want them here before noon.”
Tom finally found his voice, “You expect us to be your accomplices?”
He returned the older man’s angry stare with a face devoid of expression, “The other wardens are already moving. They weren’t far behind. They will probably be here by nightfall. You will have my offspring here for me before then, otherwise I will resort to more drastic means to make certain that they don’t fall into the hands of the other groves.”
Tom Hayes ground his teeth, flinching under the younger man’s wilting gaze, but apparently he had found his spine once more. Refusing to give up he continued, “Drastic means? I don’t believe it. I watched you grow up, Daniel Tennick. You might be sick enough to threaten us, but I don’t believe for a second that you’d hurt your own children.”
“Really?” said Tyrion, his eyes falling on Tad Hayes. “Stretch your arm out on the table, boy,” he commanded.
Tad stared up at him, his lip beginning to tremble, but he didn’t move.
“Wait!” shouted Alice. “We’ll do as you say. Please, don’t hurt him.”
Tyrion relented, “Fine.” Moving for the door, he addressed Tom once more, “I know what you’re thinking, Tom, and if you run it will be worse. You’d best hope that I’m the one who finds you first then. You don’t want to know what they’ll do with your son.”
He left, closing the door behind him and walked behind the building, taking the most direct path out of Colne rather than walking down the main street. He kept going until he was far beyond the edges and then circled around to follow their path from the night before. Once he was out of sight, he stopped and sat on the side of the trail that led back toward the house that belonged to Seth and Kate Tolburn.
His hands were shaking.
Closing his eyes, he took a long deep breath, I feel nothing.
Kate’s green eyes flashed accusingly at him from the shadows in the back of his mind, and he opened his eyes again to dispel the vision.
His parents, Kate, Seth, Tom and Alice Hayes… and the children as well, they all held so much emotion. He could feel it, he could see it. Fear, hope, expectation, it was in their eyes when they looked at him. Things he had grown accustomed to not finding among the She’Har.
The people here, their hearts were shouting at him, projecting emotions that he was no longer capable of dealing with. Most of it was fear, and with it came the inevitable—hatred. Even Kate, she was the worst. Affection mingled with fear and anxiety, flashes of hope, and then the final result, hate.
I feel nothing.
He took to his feet again and made his way back to the small stall where he had left his horse. Saddling the mare he rode back to the camp where he had slaughtered the wardens and their leader, Branlyinti. He hadn’t been thinking clearly the night before. He should have erased the evidence, but he had been overwrought.
He found Branlyinti’s body first. The bolt had entered the body cleanly, slipping between two ribs and skewering the She’Har’s heart. It might have shattered if it had struck bone, but it was still intact. Tyrion carefully removed it, cleaning away the gore on the shaft and wiping it on the dead man’s clothing. He tucked it away. It might come in handy later.
Using the same circle he had the evening before, he surrounded the grisly camp in a hemisphere before filling it with flames. After a short time the air exhausted itself, and the visible flames died away, but he kept his will on the area, driving the temperature even higher until the dead air glowed with strange gases, and everything else was reduced to flickering ash. The heat became so intense that he was forced to step back in spite of the shield, until he was more than ten yards distant.
Satisfied at last he stopped heating the area and then did his best to cool it down to a tolerable level before releasing the shield around it.
The bodies were gone. Only white ash and blackened, glassy soil remained. It would be immediately apparent to anyone who happened upon the site that something unusual had occurred there.
“That won’t do,” he told himself.
The simplest thing to do would be to bury the ashes and glass, but that would still leave an unusual area of freshly turned soil. He wanted the site to look old and undisturbed, preferably with grass growing over it. He could achieve such a look by spending considerable time moving the scorched parts lower and redistributing the plants and other flora at the margins, but it would take a lot of time and painstaking effort.
He decided to take a risk and turned his attention over to the voice of the earth echoing slowly beneath him. It was something he had done only rarely since his fight against the Krytek in the arena some ten years before. He feared the She’Har discovering his hidden talent, but even more, he feared the talent itself. His mind changed when he opened it to the earth, or to the sky, as he had done the night before. He became less himself, and more other. He had no easy way to describe it, even in the privacy of his heart.
Crystalline calm came over him as his mind shifted to match the heart of the world under his feet. Rocks, soil, those things lay close to the surface, but deeper still were different things, greater stones that went on for vast distances, and beneath those an ocean of liquid fire. For a moment he was almost swept away, carried into the unending depths, but he drew back, holding onto himself.
The memory of his desire returned to him and he moved his earthen body in response to it. Soil moved and rocks shifted, churned, and then smoothed again. Contracting he made himself small again, until his consciousness was once again bounded by flesh and bone. It was an uncomfortable sensation, packing himself into such a tiny shell.
This must be what dying is like. The words echoed through him, but he wasn’t sure of their meaning at first. Slowly his awareness returned, and the babbling sounds within began to make sense once more.
Tyrion blinked, his eyes feeling dry. He must have forgotten to do that while he was listening to the earth.
The ground was smooth and undisturbed. The grass was thinner and the soil rockier, but it didn’t look as if it had been touched in a long time. Nothing remained of the incinerated campsite. “I have to learn to do that without completely losing my mind,” he told himself.
Last night had been better. The situation, the tension and hostility, those things had served to anchor his mind more firmly. So firmly that he had almost been unable to sense the voice of the wind. Today he had nearly lost himself completely.
He wondered what would happen if he forgot himself.
His actions had only cost him an hour or so, and he had more to do before he returned to Colne. Continuing along the path, he made his way back toward the house that Seth and Kate had shared. There were things that needed to be said, and debts repaid.
Chapter 10
Seth was coming out of the barn when Tyrion arrived. The barn itself was new, at least in Tyrion’s mind. When he and Kate had been children there had been no barn, but after Seth married her he had built it to house some of his tools and keep his livestock from freezing in the winter.
Tyrion stopped the mare by the barn and tied her reins to a small post there. Then he made his way directly to where Seth stood waiting with a look of disapproval on his face.
“Where are Kate and Brigid?” asked his childhood friend with an expression of genuine concern on his face.
“In Colne,” said Tyrion, “gathering my children. They don’t know I’m here.”
“Oh,” said Seth, watching him cautiously.
“You said something the othe
r night that I thought needed to be corrected.”
Seth shifted nervously, “Listen Daniel, I was really worked up, and I know I might have said some things that I shouldn’t have. It had only been a few hours since they took Kate’s sister, and I felt ten kinds of useless after they humiliated us.”
Tyrion ignored the statement, “I never had sex with Kate.”
His old friend went still, remembering his accusation. It was the sort of motionless that one might find in a forest creature, when it knows the hunter is about to strike.
The fear annoyed Tyrion. “I’m not here to kill you. I know you think I’m a crazed murderer, and—well maybe I am to some extent. I’m not like I was, I’m not like you anymore, but I’m not going to turn rabid on you. I’m just here to talk.”
“I didn’t believe her,” said Seth, staring uncomfortably off to one side. “When she came back that day, after you left—she said nothing happened, but I knew that couldn’t be true.”
“I kissed her,” said Tyrion, “that’s all, and she wasn’t pleased with that either.” The last part was a lie. She had kissed him, and there had been nothing innocent about it. He pointed at the collar around his neck, “This thing, it prevents me from doing much else in that regard.” He glanced downward, to emphasize his point. “Only my owner can grant permission for me to—well, you get what I’m saying.”
Seth waved his hands, “Alright! I believe you. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Too bad,” said Tyrion. “’Cause I’m not done. I want to know if that’s why you started hitting her.”
“Hitting? No. You’re mistaken there. That was just once, yesterday. We started fighting after they took Brigid, and she wouldn’t leave me be. Kept shouting for me to go after them, but I knew it was hopeless. I couldn’t stop them, but I was ashamed of myself for not going anyway.” Seth looked down, clenching his jaw. “Then she called me a coward and—I just snapped.”
Tyrion nodded understandingly, “I know just exactly how that can be.”
Seth glanced up at him, surprised at his friend’s sympathetic response. He saw Tyrion’s shoulder tense, but the motion was so swift that he could barely twitch before a fist smashed into his jaw. Reeling, he stepped back, tripped and fell hard to the ground. Tyrion stood over him.
Seth closed his eyes, Damn, he’s going to kill me anyway. Nothing happened for several moments, so he opened his eyes again. His friend was offering him his hand.
“Take it,” said Tyrion. “We’re even now.”
Seth took his hand and stood shakily. His vision seemed slightly blurry, and it felt like one of his teeth was loose. “You really pack a punch, Daniel.”
“Violence is about all I’m good for anymore,” he responded.
“Kate seems to feel differently,” said Seth somewhat bitterly.
“Did you mean what you said, about her not coming back?” asked Tyrion seriously.
“No,” admitted Seth. “I was out of control, but I knew I was lying even as I said it. Doesn’t matter though, she’s not planning on coming back anyway.”
“It’s really a bad idea for her to come with me,” said Tyrion.
Seth squinted at him, “I agree.”
“Last night I showed her a sample of what my life is like…” began Tyrion, “…and I’m pretty sure she didn’t like what she saw. In fact, I think she’s afraid of me now, if she doesn’t hate me outright.”
Spitting a mouthful of blood to the ground, Seth worked his sore jaw, which was beginning to swell. “You do tend to have that effect on people,” he gave a half-hearted laugh as he said it, but then stopped. He looked at Tyrion worriedly.
Tyrion laughed, and Seth joined him, but it was an uneasy laughter.
“I’ll do my best to convince her not to come with me,” he told his friend. “When she comes back, be kind, and try to remember that some of what she describes about me, will have been for your benefit.”
“Are you saying you’re going to pretend to be a frightening, murderous, asshole, just to convince her to come back home?” asked Seth.
Tyrion shook his head, “No. I’m just not going to hide the fact that that is exactly what I am.” He turned away and began walking toward the house. He could sense his father and mother inside, and he had some words for them as well.
Seth didn’t move to follow, but he raised his voice for one more question, “Are you sure you can’t just let Brigid come home too?”
He looked back at his friend sadly, “I wish I could, but the She’Har will send more wardens. There won’t be any peace until they have all of them.”
Passing through the back door of the house, he found his mother, Helen, waiting there for him. He almost flinched when she opened her arms, but after a moment he relaxed. Her embrace felt good, too good; it threatened to undo the walls he had built around his weakness.
I feel nothing, he chanted mentally, but he knew it was a lie. “Mother,” he said aloud.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said immediately. “Last night you seemed…” she stopped. “When your father returned—I just couldn’t believe it.”
He pushed her out to arm’s length. “It’s true, Mother. I’m not who I was, and it doesn’t do any good to pretend otherwise. I’m not safe for civilized society.”
Helen frowned, “Don’t say that, Daniel.”
Hearing his old name fall so naturally from his mother’s lips sent another shiver of pain through him. “Stop,” he told her. “I need to see Dad, then I’ll go.”
His words hurt her, that was obvious, but she stood aside and let him enter the small bedroom where his father lay. Alan Tennick was bruised and swollen, his features almost unrecognizable. The old man lay with his head turned away, staring out the window with his one good eye.
“Father.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” said the old man hoarsely.
Tyrion nodded, “I just wanted to check your wounds before I leave.” His magesight was already searching, checking Alan’s battered body for fractures or more serious wounds. He found none, though. The wardens were good at what they did. They knew how to beat a man senseless without doing permanent injury. They had been careful. It was a matter of practice, refraining from inflicting deadly wounds until you knew you were done with your prey.
Finished, he waited, staring at the man whom he had admired for so much of his younger life. Silence filled the room, until at last he started to leave.
“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” Alan’s voice broke the silence without warning.
Tyrion paused, bowing his head, “I did.”
“I thought maybe, after you left last time—I thought maybe it was a fluke. Maybe you were just angry, or too worked up, but last night, you proved me wrong. I’ve been a failure as a father.”
“No…”
“If I had known,” continued Alan, “back then, what you would become.” The older man’s voice faltered. “Forgive me son, I should never have become a father.”
Tyrion turned back, surprised. “It isn’t your fault. You did the best you could.”
Alan was looking at him now, tears running down his swollen cheek, “When I see you, I can see your pain, son. And that hurts, but what hurts most, is that I wish…,” his voice broke.
Unable to help himself, Tyrion took his father’s shaking hand and then let the old man pull him into a painful hug. “What do you wish, Dad?” he asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell of alcohol on Alan’s breath.
The words were almost incoherent, but he heard them anyway, “I wish you’d never been born, Daniel.” The old man was sobbing now, “I’m so sorry.”
His stomach twisted as he heard the words, but he did his best to keep his body still. I feel nothing.
He had to get away. Untangling himself from Alan’s arms, he stood up again. He could sense his mother’s presence, listening on the other side of the door, so he wasn’t surprised when he found her standing there as he opened it.
“He’s
been drinking whiskey for the pain, Daniel. He’s not himself,” she began.
“I know,” he agreed, letting her hug him one more time. Then he pushed her away and went back out the same door he had entered. The truth is still the truth, though.
He nodded at Seth and began walking back toward the small road that led to Colne.
“What about your horse?” asked Seth.
“Keep her,” he replied. “I won’t be able to make much use of her with a bunch of kids in tow.”
“You sure? She’s a valuable animal.”
So am I, Tyrion thought with a sense of irony. “Yeah, keep her, trade her, whatever suits your needs.” He kept walking.
Seth followed for a short distance, “You really think she’ll come home?”
Tyrion didn’t look back, but he ground his teeth, “I’ll make sure of it.”
***
Colne was buzzing with activity when he returned. The tension in the air made him think of a hive of angry bees. Some of the people who were in the streets went inside when they saw him coming. Faces stared at him from windows.
There was a small crowd in front of the Hayes’ store. It was composed of familiar faces, particularly the women. For the most part, they were the ones who had borne his children, along with quite a few unhappy spouses and some other assorted family members. The teenagers among them all held a certain resemblance to one another.
None of them looked particularly pleased to see him.
“What’s he doing here?!” said Brad Wilson with a certain amount of alarm. Gasps went up from the others as they recognized him. The quicker thinking among them began to scatter, heading as rapidly as they could away from the area without actually running.
They came up abruptly against an invisible wall. Tyrion was taking no chances.
“The children stay, the rest of you can go,” he announced.
“What’s the meaning of this, Tom?” shouted Greta Baker, directing her words at Mr. Hayes. “You said you had a way to hide them.”
Tom’s eyes were on the ground now.
The Silent Tempest (Book 2) Page 9
