by Greg Curtis
Seeing it for the first time Iros was amazed at how much she’d achieved though he was a little concerned that the water from the potted plants might block the drainage channels leading from the balcony. That would be a problem because directly underneath the balcony lay the library, a part of the castle that could not afford to get wet.
But he hadn’t come to view the garden. He’d come to see the man sitting in one of the rocking chairs, staring moodily off into the distance. Even from behind Iros could see the suffering and regret in the slump of his shoulders.
“Tenir.” He wasn’t completely sure how to approach him, or what to say. The only thing he was sure of was that Sophelia was worried about him. Worried so greatly that she’d asked him to speak with him. As if he had any idea.
“Lord Iros.” Tenir twisted around in his seat to see him and then made to stand up, but Iros stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“Just Iros please. This is Greenlands and we are all family and friends here.” He took a seat in the rocking chair beside him and discovered that it was every bit as comfortable as it looked. His wife could start a successful business in carpentry if she chose. And strangely that was something that she could do in Irothia and not in Elaris. Women in Elaris, especially among the high born, were not expected to work. They ran the home and raised the children. There were only a very few professions open to them.
“Sophelia asked me to come and speak with you. She’s worried for you, and so are the rest of your family.”
“They have no need.” Save that they did. Iros could see the guilt and shame in his eyes. His dying eyes. His house gone, his business destroyed, their status and reputation in tatters, and all their family members left in an invidious position, and Tenir was the one who had caused it. The guilt was eating him alive. The self-pity would destroy what remained. He had brought his family to safety but having done that he was a man with little left.
“You’re right. They should have no need. Should they?” He understood little of elven houses. He was human and his people dealt with families instead. But if there was one thing that he understood it was failing his family. And atoning for that failure.
“Tenir, I’ll give you this afternoon to settle in. To make your family comfortable. But no more. You made a difficult decision, and it cost your family a lot. But it saved their lives, and that is truly what matters. It is the only thing that matters.” Iros took a deep breath as he thought about what he needed to say. The words that had not yet passed his lips, though they should have. Hard words but necessary.
“I am a lord. I have titles, gold, and property. I could live anywhere I chose in complete comfort. Be served all the days of my life. And I would throw all of that away and my life with it for just another day with my family. That is the choice you made, and it was a good choice. When you think about how much you have lost, think on that too. Think on the horror that it is to have to wake up each morning and know that your entire family lies in the ground barely a hundred paces away.”
Tenir stared at him, eyes filled with horror and Iros knew he had told him the right thing. The man needed to know what he had saved as well as what he had lost. And he needed to keep saving his family.
“House Vora may be gone, and I don’t know if it can be restored. But family Vora lives on, and you should be proud of that. But more than that you should be grateful. Your family lives because of you, and that makes you a very rich man. It also gives you responsibilities. Your family is going to need help. Your help.”
“In the morning I want you to come to me with your plans to help your family. To set them on the road to reclaim what they’ve lost. I need to know who they are, where they are, and what they need to start new lives. And that, because you are still the head of the family, will therefore have to be your burden to shoulder.”
“I cannot. I have betrayed them.” Tenir stared at him as if he’d just threatened to hit him in the head with a brick, but that was alright. Iros knew what to say.
“If not you then who? Responsibility does not care about your past. It gives not a wit for your ability to withstand its demands. It knows nothing of worthiness. It is simply yours, and it cannot be put aside. And you will not.”
“Tenir you are the head of your family and you will carry out your responsibilities accordingly. You will put all your efforts, every spare thought and free second, into helping your family find their feet, and you will not complain. You will not even show them your sadness, because that will add to their burdens. Instead you will know the undiluted joy that it is to have a family and give thanks for that blessing.”
“In the morning after breakfast you and I and Juna will discuss your plans.” Tenir stared at him in shock. Maybe staggered by his words, or maybe simply by the fact he could speak to him in such tones. But as Iros stood and left him with a nod, he knew it didn’t matter. Tenir would recover from his shock and hurt. And in time he’d accept that he had work to do and once he began, that work would consume his life for a time.
It wasn’t an easy thing to hear, and he doubted Tenir would thank him for it. But maybe in time he’d discover that that duty was his life. Service was its own reward. And maybe he’d ask Juna to help him. If there was anyone who exemplified that principle it was him.
Who knew, maybe the two of them would become friends. Stranger things had happened.
Chapter Sixty Nine.
It was good to be outside in the late summer sun, even if it was only to walk the few hundred paces from the castle grounds down to the junction between the main road and the major eastern street where Master Enderi’s wagon train awaited him. Iros had been spending far too much time in the castle of late. Now that he had much of his health back, an hour or so training in a courtyard a day was simply not enough. And he yearned to go out riding, maybe even hunting. If he could ever find the time.
Still a walk was a walk, especially with Saris back with him, and as he recalled there were a few quite pleasant inns on the junction of the two roads. Would anyone really mind if he partook of a jug of ale on his return?
Of course not before then. And as he approached the traders wagons he knew that there was business to attend to first. Master Enderi was one of his more reliable sources of information on the other realms. The man might be a little too larcenous of heart but he travelled widely and always made sure to listen to the rumours as well as the criers’ news.
The thing he didn’t understand was why, if he had important information for him why hadn’t he come directly to see him? That was the way it normally happened. When he had information Master Enderi would either come to him in person if he thought it was important, or wait for him to arrive in the market after he’d set up his stall.
It seemed odd that instead he had simply parked his caravan on a street corner and sent word through the guards for Iros to attend him.
Iros walked towards the nearest of the wagons still wondering why he’d been called. Wagons and trader caravans arrived every day, he didn’t need to be there for them, and he had plenty of other duties to keep him busy. But even as he was about to ask, the driver of the lead wagon pointed a finger towards the people in the wagon behind him and he realised that one of them had blue hair. He had visitors.
“Herodan?” It took Iros a moment to recognise him. It was his brother in law, though he looked far less composed than he had before. His clothes were a mess, his hair the same, he’d lost weight and there was tiredness in his eyes. But then he saw the stiffness in the way he moved as he tried to stand up and get down from the wagon, and understood. He was heavily bandaged, and clothes didn’t fit well over bandages. Iros had known that same stiffness.
“Here.” Iros went to him as quickly as he could, helping him down the last step, making sure he didn’t fall, and feeling the heavy bandages under his robes. Bandages much like those he had worn not that long before, and he guessed for the same reason. His family had said he’d been thrown in the dungeon. It seemed that he had been tr
eated no better than him during his stay. But at least he too had made it out.
“Your family is here, safe behind our stone walls, and you will be too.”
“Good. I had hoped as much.” Iros looked up to see a woman on the wagon, smiling oddly at him. As if she knew something he didn’t. He didn’t know her, but he did know her voice.
“By the Divines I know you woman.” And he surely did. A woman travelling with two cats, and a woman meddling in affairs of state, not to mention his private affairs, there could be only one. It just didn’t make sense. Not when she was a creature of very mixed blood accompanied by two huge crag cats, and the woman in front of him was an elf. But an elf with startling green eyes, and her two cats he noticed, had bright green eyes as well.
“Trekor Aileth? Elder?” It couldn’t be and yet it had to be. And he noticed that when she got down from the wagon it rocked far more than it should. And it did the same when each of her cats jumped to the ground.
“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you boy. Moving around freely, thinking clearly, and so I hear, even playing with your toy weapons.” Did she mean his swords or the cannon he wondered? They were probably both toys as far as she considered such things. Yet he didn’t really care as he realised she’d identified herself.
“An illusion?” Something that twisted at either the eye or the mind. It was all he could guess.
“A gentle thought to let the mind see what it will.” She smiled at him, and for all the world it looked like a genuine sweet maiden’s smile, despite the fact that he knew she had tusks protruding from between both her top and bottom teeth. “Now can we get this poor elf to somewhere that he may rest.”
“Of course.” She was right and thoughtlessly he had forgotten all about his brother in law for a moment. Iros waved at the nearest guards.
“Take Herodan to the south chamber of the castle and his family, and send for the physicians at once. Send for Koran.” The guards quickly grabbed Herodan by the shoulders, lifted him into their arms, and started carrying the sick elf to the castle, while another took off at a run for the physician’s house. Herodan he noticed, didn’t really move a lot, and when he did he had to stifle his gasps of pain. But if what he had heard was true and he too had been in the high lord’s dungeon, then he too surely had a set of the same scars much as Iros did. It would take a long time to let them fade and for his body to recover. And that was assuming that he had not also been poisoned.
“Ah, the old man.” Trekor smiled warmly. “I’ve missed him. I should say well met to him again.”
“No you should not woman.” Iros had to be firm on that at least. “Koran may be a trifle proud, but he is the best physician this town has and he is needed. You will not upset him again.”
“Oh.” She actually managed to pout at him. The genuine disappointed pout of a young woman denied her amusement. Or a cat denied her mouse. It was so real even when he knew it was an illusion and that she was funning him, and it caused him to chuckle a little.
“For the moment please you will come with me, put your feet up and have a mug of tea and maybe some sweet rolls if the cooks have finished their baking. And then if you could tell me of what has happened in Leafshade, and how it is that Herodan is no longer a prisoner of the toad lord, I would be grateful.” Which reminded him of another matter. He gestured at another of the guards.
“Soldier, please go and find my wife and her family and inform them that her brother is here. She should be in the gardens with her mother.” The man ran off to do his duty, his armour clattering as it was not properly tied down. Iros tried not to wince as he heard it.
Their world had been at peace for such a long time prior to the war that the people had been taken unawares by the war. No one had been ready for war. Not even the soldiers. Standards had slipped, and even now, after so much horror, it wasn’t easy to raise them.
“And how is sweet Sophelia?” asked Trekor. “I must see her.” By the divines how could she sound so much like a lady of the court simply asking after a friend, when she so clearly wasn’t? Iros shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs from it. But he at least wasn’t fooled by her innocent words.
“She is well, and as you well know, possibly with child.” Everyone knew that. Nothing happened in the castle that did not immediately get discussed in the town. Some days it was shouted by the town criers. And after a few days the merchants took the news beyond the town walls as they travelled from town to town. He had no secrets, though some days he thought he’d like to keep some.
“Good.” She sounded so smug when she said it, and Iros instantly knew why. It was the same reason that all parents sounded smug when their children did as they asked and finally found that they’d been right all along.
Iros decided to be a little impertinent. Since it seemed that he was to be treated like a wayward child in his own home, again, he might as well play the part.
“Of course an apology from you to her would not go amiss.”
“What?” The elder stared at him, somewhat taken aback and he tried not to smile at her discomfort. “For what?”
“You did command her into my bed. A command that caused her great alarm. And now that I think upon it, interfered in the order of my life as well. Perhaps an apology to both of us is in order.” If the elder had seemed taken aback before, it was nothing to the look of shock that was growing on her face then.
“But -.”
“I can arrange a session for you to formally give your apology if that would help.” He tried to look innocent as he said it, but he couldn’t and a hint of a grin started lifting the corners of his mouth no matter how he tried to keep his face grim. It was enough to tell her the truth of his words, and she made a strange rumbling sound as she understood his humour.
“Impudent child!” The rumbling turned into a snort of vexation. “Do you truly think such wit clever?”
“Apology accepted elder.” He gave up trying to maintain his calm faced and chuckled a little too loudly while she stared at him, unimpressed. Unimpressed too with the nearby caravan guard who was trying to stifle a laugh of his own. And the chuckles coming from the others.
“Children!” She was one step away from stamping her foot he thought. It didn’t help though, and so she had to stand there in the street looking irked while he and the rest finished their merriment, something Iros discovered was easier said than done. But it had been a long time since he’d known a simple, innocent laugh. So maybe that was as it should be.
In the end though, after wiping away a few tears of laughter from the edges of his eyes, he decided to try and turn the conversation to more serious matters.
“Pita said that the Grove had vied with the Throne Elder?” And thus far they’d heard nothing other than that. Nothing of how the battle had been fought or the outcome. Things he needed to know. Things the king needed to know.
Trekor nodded. “And Finell is no longer high lord. But we can speak of that in time. When you’ve grown a little older perhaps.” Iros guessed that it would be a while before she forgot his impertinence. Not that he really minded. Besides he could still be clever.
“So is it that at this time you don’t want to be seen Elder, or that last time you most surely wanted others to notice you?”
“Perhaps a little of both. But surely a lord wise in the ways of the world would know better than to ask boy.” Trekor smiled pityingly at him as if he’d asked a foolish question . Which of course, he had. And Iros realised that no matter how clever he’d thought he was being as he tried to prove that he could get the better of her, she was leagues ahead of him. Iros tried not to groan, but failed. It was her turn to laugh, at least a little.
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice he knew well coming from one of the other wagons. “You should know many things boy, including how to welcome your guests. Or is it your intention to leave us out here hungry and tired?”
It was to be a day for surprises as Iros recognised Elder Yossirion’s
dry tones coming from another of the wagons, and he very nearly broke into laughter. He very nearly did something completely impolite as well, and only years of discipline and training kept him from running over and grabbing the elf and wrapping him up in a huge bear hug. But he couldn’t stop the smile from finding his face.
“Elder, the divines themselves have blessed this day. It’s good to see you.” Iros’ words could not have been more heartfelt.
“This from someone who believes in nothing?”
“I do not disbelieve in the Divines either Elder. I simply have little time for such things, and they I fear for me.”
