Wyclif was blinded by heated sand, flung into his face by one of the crow soldiers. His face was badly burned as well and for a time it seemed he would not survive this and his other injuries. He and his love, Killian, came to stay with us at Little Madding when he was well enough; when Dera came to visit us in the summer, perhaps she could help him. In the meanwhile, he was no stranger to being effective in total darkness, and Wyclif soon found his footing, physically and mentally.
Selas took me to where Tirk's body lay and left me there in privacy for a while. He had lain Tirk to rest in a series of caves to the north of Lalinth, well hidden and safe from intrusion. Tirk lay on a natural ledge, his hands laid on his chest as if he slept there.
I placed flowers on his chest and wept for the lost child, for all the possibility he had once held that had been stolen from him by Guin and Deirdre. I wept for what we could have had in another time and place, where everything was different, I sobbed that my hand had been the one to destroy him. Guin had died for his sins, and I promised Tirk the time would come when Deirdre would do the same. My tears dried and I stood in silence, looking at his cold body. My enemy was dead, I had triumphed, and now I was all alone. My heart and womb remained empty, and for the time being, I could not bear the thought of either being filled by another. At long last Selas arrived to take me back to Little Madding, my new home.
Selas himself had retaken the title of Magnus that he had walked away from many years ago, to end up in Berowalt. He bore that mantle as if he'd never been away from it, as if he'd never kneeled in the same fields I had and dug for lant with his hands. While he hadn't wanted to leave me, he felt he must assist in Lalinth until the new High King was settled in his duties and Dragon's Tooth calmed after the terrible storm that had been the Hand of the Dark God. More than three quarters of the Council of Magnuses had been killed, either in battle or by assassination. Of thirteen, only three remained, including Selas.
The old man told me only that he had been charged with protecting my mother and me twenty-three years ago, leaving only a few times, once to escort the Princess Hyndla to Dragon's Tooth to marry the High King. Contrary to song and legend, Guin and Hyndla had never met until the day they married, though the High King did in fact defeat the Wraith of the Broken Sun to win her hand. For all the rest having anything to do with me or my mother, Selas had been sworn to secrecy by an oath of honor, though he could not tell me to whom. I could see he knew so much more, who my mother really was and perhaps even who my father was. He told me only that he had not known I would be Chosen, but that my mother likely had, and that's why she chose to hide me away from any harm in tiny Berowalt.
Wyntan, Selas and I made several trips to Vansheen to try and find Lord Deirdre. We found her castle abandoned, a distant relative in another city had assumed governance of Vansheen in Deirdre's unexplained absence. This relative, an elder Lady named Kinnat, truthfully told us she did not know where Deirdre had gone or even if she ever intended to return. I read her thoughts and emotions as she spoke, and found no deception in her, at least in this regard. Lady Kinnat told us that Deirdre had left Vansheen in a state of turmoil, with no clear leader. Over the years Deirdre had killed off or imprisoned anyone who could possibly have taken power in her country. Of the imprisoned, none survived or could be found. Lady Kinnat was the only member of Vansheen's ruling family left, and she feared she did not have long to live.
Vansheen itself was much smaller than Dragon's Tooth, and the three of us traipsed from one end of the country to the next for the better part of the summer, searching for some sign of Iceblade's cruel mother. No one, from peasant to judges, from the heart city Gwaeddan to the tiniest, remotest backwater called Meurig knew anything, and I could See nothing about her whereabouts. We decided to return to Vansheen at irregular intervals until Deirdre was located and, I vowed, destroyed like a rabid dog. Selas especially felt that Deirdre remained a threat to the safety of Dragon's Tooth and to me in particular. It was my hand, after all, that had slain her son, and a revenge nursed for twenty eight years was not easily set aside at a single death, or even the deaths of every child she had given birth to or raised. If anything Selas feared Deirdre would be even madder with her lust for blood, power, and vengeance.
Life moved and carried us all with it, and not even I, Ada the Once-Chosen, could hold it back, even to honor the dead fallen on the fields of the home I had called my own. I knew all those fallen now knew peace where they lay, though the job of seeing properly to their remains could take years. In time the darkened villages would be swept away by the years and the elements or filled once again with candlelight and laughter, carrying over the drifted snow on a long winter's eve. In time, the scars would heal and fade, and new beauty arise in their place.
In time all that would remain of this awful destruction would be the empty places in the land and in the people who had lost so much, only the slowly healing but unfading scars we would bear inside of us for all our lives.
Stichwortverzeichnis
Stichwortverzeichnis
Iceblade Page 30
