by Diana Rivers
Yolande wailed from the top of the Hill, a loud, terrible cry of grief and anguish. As if that had been a signal, those who had been watchers at the top came roaring down the hill, riding full speed. They joined those waiting at the bottom and suddenly all the Kourmairi and Wanderers, howling and screaming with rage, were charging straight at the Shokarn troops. The Shokarn, leaderless and vastly outnumbered, turned and fled. The battle that Lorren would have given his life to avoid was suddenly in motion all around us. All we could do now was try to shelter his body until the mass of riders had passed. He was still breathing, but there was blood bubbling between his lips.
Yolande had quickly ridden up to us. With a cry she threw herself off her horse. In an instant, she was at Lorren’s side. Taking hold of his hand, she pleaded, “Stay with us, Lorren. Alyeeta will mend you. Trust us. We will take you home.”
Lorren was shaking his head. It was plainly a struggle for him to speak. “Too late, my love…Just as well…So sorry…Loved you so much…Take care of her, Tazzil…Good friend…” He groaned and his head slumped back. The bubbling of blood turned into a flow. He gave a last few gasps and then was still.
“Do something, Alyeeta! Help him! All of you! Why are you just standing there?” Yolande jumped up, grabbed Alyeeta’s shoulders, and began shaking her. Gently, Pell and I took hold of Yolande’s arms from either side to restrain her.
Alyeeta was shaking her head. “It is too late, child. I would have tried anything possible to save him, but the damage was already done.” Alyeeta, who never cried, had tears in her eyes.
“No! No! No!” Yolande was shouting, struggling in our arms.
The captain had fallen nearby, trampled by the rushing horses. His body looked broken and he was groaning in pain. With a yell, Yolande broke free of our grip, snatched up Perthan’s sword, and rushed over to him. Carried by the force of her fury, she stabbed him through the heart, driving the sword straight down and covering herself with blood. Then she stumbled back to Lorren and threw herself down on his body, screaming and beating the ground with her fists. “I told you not to go! I told you! I told you! Oh, Lorren, why did you have to leave me?”
The rush of the battle had already moved past us. Lorren was dead, Rhomar was dead, the captain was dead, and there were other bodies lying on the ground beyond them. Yolande was sobbing in Bathrani’s arms. Ormorth took down the truce flag and hacked the pole in two with the captain’s bloody sword. Then we bound the flag to the two pieces of pole, making a litter of that bright, hopeful yellow flag to carry Lorren’s body home. Yolande got to her feet with Bathrani’s help. At that moment, Garrell’s two companions came forward, dragging Garrell between them, bound with rope. They had been watching the scene intently. “Lady, do you want us to kill him now or do you want to cut his throat yourself?”
Yolande glanced down at her bloody hands and tried to wipe them on her bloody skirt. Next, she looked Garrell full in the face with a long, silent stare. Then she turned away and said to the men, “No, keep him a prisoner. Let him stand trial before all our people. Let him answer for what he has done here.” She stood very straight at that moment. Her eyes were dry now. She spoke with an icy calm that was even more frightening than her rage had been.
We shifted Lorren’s body onto the cloth. As soon as we lifted him, his blood made a sea of orange-red on that yellow cloth. Together we made our way slowly up the Hill, carrying Lorren home. Ormorth and two other Wanderers took the weight of the pole on one side, while Pell, Rishka, and myself went on the other. Yolande went alongside with a hand on his body. She was stately and dignified again, with no sign of the fierce rage that had just killed a man, though I could feel it simmering just under her surface cold. Though her hands and clothes were covered with blood, she took no notice of it. When others tried to take her arm to give support, she shook them off.
No one rode. Everyone walked slowly behind us. The mourning dirge started from in back of us and swept forward, suddenly making Lorren’s death very real. It had all happened so fast that it was hard to comprehend. Now, with that sound, I suddenly understood that Lorren was not wounded. We were not really taking him home. He would not be healed. He would never sit up again or speak or smile or share his study with me. He was really dead. The rest of us were caught in the dirge and added our own voices. Only Yolande remained silent, her silence ringing louder in my ears than the chant itself. In the distance, I could still hear the sounds of battle. The sun was setting now over Wanderer Hill, in a bank of blood red clouds.
* * *
The altar in the meeting hall at Wanderer Hill had been cleared, and Lorren’s body had been laid out there, covered with flowers and aromatic leaves. The Wanderers took turns loyally standing watch over him. Ormorth, his craggy face all twisted with grief, was the first to stand at Lorren’s head, while Conath, crying openly, stood at his feet.
The funeral seemed endless. Though the funeral pyre was lit on the third evening, the mourning and commemoration went on for weeks afterward, with people coming from as far away as Mishghall and even Eezore. The Koormir of Indaran and Zelandria were there in peace. Many Kourmairi came from settlements still farther away. Some even came from Darthill. Hadra arrived from the coastal settlements to grieve with us for our loss, and many stayed to see what we were building at Zelindar. Wanderers returned from wherever they had been traveling when the awful message had caught up with them. Hereschell had already been on his way home. Now, though his own grief was crushing, he was prepared to stay and help in whatever way he could.
The funeral taught me much about Lorren that I had not known when he was alive. He was my friend, and I had my own terrible loss to deal with. Now I also saw how much he meant to others, in ways I could not have imagined. So many stories were told of him. All throughout Yarmald, he had stood for hope and change. He had been a guard captain and trained killer who had become a man of peace; a Highborn who gladly let go of all he owned and shared what he had; a Shokarn who treated Wanderers and Kourmairi and Hadra as equals; a soldier who felt grief and guilt and pain for everyone he had ever harmed; a man of factual learning who had opened his mind and heart to the learning that only Witches and Star-Born could teach. He had made possible a home for the Wanderers and a place for the Hadra to live in peace. Even the Witches had found a refuge because of him. The Kourmairi from both settlements had ended their deadly little war under his guidance. He had touched and transformed all our lives. As I watched and listened to all this, I felt numb with grief and disbelief. Some part of my mind was still unable to accept the reality of what had happened.
* * *
It was not till after the funeral was over that the trial began. Garrell had been held prisoner all this time by his own people. From his appearance, he had been badly beaten and scarcely fed at all. When he was brought into the hall, he looked about, dazed and bewildered. This was clearly not the end of the drama as he had envisioned it.
The proceedings lasted two days, two days that seemed endless to me. As councilor for the Hadra, out of respect for Yolande, out of my deep love for Lorren, and for a dozen other reasons, it was necessary for me to attend. But if it were just up to me, if I had had the choice, I would not have set foot in that place. Once there, I could not sit still for long. Sometimes I paced at the back of the hall and sometimes I had to go out for air. I felt as if the breath were being sucked out of me.
The trial was convened at Wanderer Hill in the great hall. This time the hall felt dark and somber. There were no banners and bright flowers to grace the stark stone walls. A platform for speakers had been set up in the corner again and Hereschell had been chosen to preside. The Kourmairi of Indaran had wished to hold the trial in their own settlement. Perhaps they had wanted to show how harsh they could be to one of their own who had broken his pledge. After all, Garrell had disgraced them all by going against his word. But Yolande had insisted on it being held at the Hill. Hereschell had given her his backing. Because of her loss and the Kourmairi’s
terrible debt to her, she had her way. Yolande said almost nothing during those two days, until it was her own turn to speak. She sat very still and pale the whole time, listening intently to every word, her eyes sometimes fixed on the speaker and sometimes on Garrell.
With all the heated feelings in that constantly shifting crowd, Hereschell often had to struggle to keep order. Ossan was the first to speak. His words were tight and his body stiff, almost rigid, with barely suppressed fury. “It was no sudden impulsive anger that caused Lorren’s death. That man,” he said, pointing at Garrell as if he could not bear to say his name, “that man has been planning betrayal and vengeance for a long time. His first visit to Darthill was over a year ago. That was probably when he started plotting this treachery with Rhomar, cursed-be-his-name!
“I have no doubt that my own poisoning was part of his plot. I met with that man to share some food and drink and talk on the night before those of us from Indaran were to set out for Wanderer Hill. I had said he could not come, and he was trying to change my mind. Later, I was so sick I almost died. The next morning he rode off with our people, telling them I had appointed him to go in my place. I cannot prove his was the poisoner’s hand, but I know it in my heart as surely as I know the sun will rise each morning. It was days before I could stand on my own feet again. It is only by Her mercy that I am here today or, for that matter, that any of us are here. He deliberately brought the Shokarn army down on our heads. He could have gotten us all killed.” At those words, the crowd exploded in shouts of agreement and loud angry curses. Ossan sat down abruptly. He still looked weak and ill.
After that, there was an outpouring of words. Many of Garrell’s own people spoke against him, especially the men, trying to distance themselves as much as possible from his guilt. Several of them recounted the violent and inflammatory things he had said to them and assured us of their own total innocence in all this. “I told him that he was mistaken. I said over and over that Lorren was a great man and a great leader who had finally brought peace to the Koormir, but he would not listen. Even after he was no longer headman, he still wanted us to follow him into all kinds of dangerous mischief. I knew he was not a sound man, but I had no idea he contemplated murder or that he thought of bringing in the Shokarn guards.”
I heard many versions of these words in those two days. The Kourmairi spoke hour after hour in this vein, each trying very hard to make as much space as possible between the speaker and “that man” with his loathsome deeds. The rest of us added our own litany of accusations. Poor Garrell, he had unintentionally brought us all together by uniting us against him.
Aside from this self-serving talk, the most important information to surface was that Garrell had taken that first trip to Darthill not long after the incident with Friana. He had returned several more times. It was no accident that Rhomar thought Lorren to be our war leader. Garrell must have enflamed his mind with such absurd ideas. When Garrell finally spoke for himself, he was both defiant and bewildered, not yet able to comprehend what great wrong he had done. He even spoke freely of conspiring with Rhomar. “I had hoped the guards would fight the Wanderers and the Hadra, leaving Zelindar open to my people. Then we could reclaim what was rightfully ours, all that had been stolen away by that man’s trickery.”
Even after all his people had said, somehow Garrell still managed to see himself as a misunderstood hero and leader, a brave and clever man ridding the world of traitors like Lorren who stood in the way of his grand plans. He had pictured driving out the Hadra and the Wanderers and leading his people to victory—over the small inconvenience of piles of dead bodies. Hereschell kept having to call for silence over the crowd’s indignant buzz. When Hereschell questioned Garrell about breaking his sword-oath, Garrell answered scornfully, “That had no meaning. It was not even my own sword I swore on, just one taken at random from the pile.” He went on, with righteous anger, to tell how Lorren and Yolande had personally done him wrong. “They lured away my wife and little children, turned them over to the Hadra for their use, judged against me, and sent me home bereft.”
Rishka, standing next to me, kept saying, “Liar, liar, liar,” like an angry little chant, but I shook my head. I thought something far more disturbing was happening here. The man was not a liar. He believed his own words, all of them, no matter how preposterous they sounded to the rest of us. His mind was held captive by bitterness. His thoughts had been shaped by it. When Pell, on the other side of me, began echoing Rishka by also chanting, “Liar, liar,” I snapped impatiently, “Well, Pell, you are not so fond of the truth yourself.”
At that, Pell answered indignantly, “I may tell stories, but I never lie.” I smiled then, for the first and only time during that trial. How could I hope to explain to either of them that I was in an anguish of pity for this man who pictured himself as a noble and heroic leader and appeared to others only as a treacherous murderer and a fool?
While Garrell defended himself during the trial, Yolande sat very straight, listening to his every word. She said not one word in response. In the end, when she rose to speak for herself, she was painfully brief. First, she looked all around in silence, as if trying to gather her words. Finally she shook her head. “All ruined, his life and Lorren’s and mine. I have listened and listened, waiting for my time to speak, thinking I had so much to say—but what does any of it matter now? All ruined. The person that mattered most to me in the world is dead. Garrell has had his revenge and destroyed his own life as well. Nothing that you do to this man will bring Lorren back. And what can I possibly say that will change in any way what has happened here?” With that, she sat down again, suddenly putting her head in her hands. Bathrani went to put her arms around Yolande, and I felt a sharp stab of pain in my chest, as if a knife blade had twisted there.
After the trial was over and everyone had had their say, Yolande rose one last time. “I want nothing to do with the sentencing. I only wanted the truth to be spoken here and the truth to be heard.” We Hadra said the same and so did the Wanderers. It was left to the Kourmairi leaders of both settlements to decide, and that took most of the next day. The rest of us milled about Wanderer Hill, not part of making the decision and yet unable to go home till we had heard it.
Hereschell came up to me and laid an arm over my shoulder. “This has not been easy to listen to, Tazzi, not for those of us who loved Lorren as we did.” Then he shook his head. “Poor Garrell. Poor fool, poor, poor fool. He even deluded himself into believing he was doing something good for his people. He knows nothing of the Cerroi. I am very glad it was the Wanderers who fostered me and not the Kourmairi. I myself could have been that man if I had been raised on such a diet of bitterness and hate.”
“So could I,” I said softly, “but my powers would not let me. I could almost feel sorry for him, even after all the damage he has done. Tell me, Hereschell, is that too strange?”
He shook his head. “What else could one feel? He has lost everything, even his soul. And he still has no comprehension of what he did.”
I nodded. As we were speaking, I had been looking out from Wanderer Hill over the hills of Zelindar toward the sea. “There is so much here along this southern coast with which to make a good life. There is as much as any of us need, as much as we could possibly desire. How did he manage to shut his eyes to all of it?” Even as I said those words, my heart ached with pity.
In the afternoon a gong was rung. We all rushed to fill the hall again. Such a large crowd had assembled that many were left outside, straining to listen and to see in through the doors and windows. A loud, expectant hum of voices filled the room. Hereschell raised his hands for silence. But it was Ossan who finally rose to speak those words: “Naked exile!”
I could feel the shock run through the room. Now the sound rose from a hum to a roar. The Kourmairi consider such a sentence worse than death, worse even than hanging. The person is sent out with nothing but his bare skin. No Kourmairi is to help him in any way: no healing, no food, no wate
r, no clothes, no shelter. They cannot even speak with him. If they do anything to even acknowledge his existence, they will suffer the same sentence. It had not been only Lorren’s murder that had weighed in the decision but also Garrell’s betrayal of his own people, his treachery in conspiring to bring Shokarn troops among us.
It would have been kinder to slit his throat, much kinder. From now on, he was a marked man, his forehead tattooed for all to see. If he ever came back to Indaran or Zelandria or if he was sighted anywhere along this southern coast by the men of those settlements, he could be killed on sight.
Over the uproar I suddenly heard Friana cry out across the crowded hall, “No! No! No!” Her voice rose in a terrible wail. I saw Hereschell and Bathrani rush to her, but I was trapped where I was. By the time I was able to struggle through the crush, they had carried her outside and laid her down on some sort of mat under a tree. I dropped to my knees beside her and she grabbed my hand. “Thank the Goddess you are here. Talk to them, Tazzil; make them change. They will listen to you. It is the madness in him that made him do such a terrible thing, and now he is to be punished for it. Oh, what will become of him? It is a walking death. It would have been more merciful to kill him outright. If not for the children, I would go with him and share his exile.”
“You would be exiled too, branded as he will be, cut off from all the rest of us.”
“Part of me will be exiled with him anyway. How can I sleep at night, thinking of him wandering alone with no clothes and no weapons? How can I ever have any peace during the day? And I feel some terrible responsibility for what happened. If I had not come here, if I had stayed with him, none of this would have happened.”
