Their joy was palpable, obvious. Mirnían could almost smell it, it was so intense. Still it remained outside his reach. He tried to stop himself, but he blamed Voran, as he so often did these days. Surely the hag’s curse was still on him in some way, even after Lebía’s incredible healing.
“Bless them as you blessed Cassían and Cassiana,” intoned Otar Svetlomír, nearly dancing in his ecstasy. “Bless them as you blessed Lassar and Dagana. May their union be a fruitful joining of Heights and earth. May their children bring healing to our land.”
“So be it!” exclaimed the women, all of whom were trying to keep a reverently serious expression on their faces, but failing miserably.
“Honor their petitions, Adonais. Hear their requests!”
Lebía gathered her furs and placed them carefully before her, then knelt on them gingerly, trying to avoid the snow with her clothing. She closed her eyes, her mouth moving in quick whispers, her eyebrows trembling. He did not deserve this perfect creature. Mirnían fell on his face before the tree.
“Feel!” he commanded his heart. “Why can you not feel anything?”
Three hours later, he began to feel a slight flutter of longing in his heart. Seven hours, he thought, and only this. It was enough to make him scream in frustration. For the sake of Lebía, he remained silent. The wedding is tomorrow, he reminded himself, you are just nervous. Everything will be well.
Otar Svetlomír raised them up, taking Mirnían’s right hand and Lebía’s left. He placed a ring of clear quartz on Mirnían’s right ring finger. A single pine needle ran the length of the ring. Mirnían realized someone had crafted the ring around the needle. The artistry amazed him. Lebía’s ring was smaller, of pink quartz, flecked with pine seeds within like insects captured in amber. It was even more wondrous to behold than his ring.
“The promise of fidelity,” said Svetlomír, quiet enough for it to be intended only for the two of them. “Though the temptation be strong, let this night be the pledge of your future faithfulness, for you must wait to perform your duties until after the wedding service.”
Lebía blushed, and even Mirnían could not stop a slight smile. Then his sore throbbed, as though the hag stood invisible by his side and prodded him with a white-hot poker.
“Careful around the sore,” he said to the boy assigned to help him into the ceremonial wedding garb—an absurdly heavy red-gold kaftan whose tall collar chafed his neck even before he put it on. Mirnían suspected the embroidered sunbursts were sewn with actual gold thread on the doubly layered red velvet.
“What sore?” asked the boy, looking directly at it, but apparently not seeing it.
“Never mind,” said Mirnían, fumbling for the boy’s name. The boy had already repeated it three times, but Mirnían forgot it every time. It bothered him even more than the boy’s apparent blindness or idiocy.
As the boy helped him haul the massive garment onto his shoulders, Mirnían almost screamed with pain. The boy had pushed upward onto the open sore, making fire run up and down Mirnían’s side.
“I told you to watch the sore, you idiot!”
The boy looked not at all upset at being called an idiot, but he did regard Mirnían with a look that doubted his sanity. Could the boy really not see it?
Confused by the long vigil and the subsequent lack of sleep, and exhausted by his battle with the kaftan, Mirnían sat down on the long bench against the wall of the main room and closed his eyes. Just for a minute.
He opened his eyes, and saw a vision. Some creature of legend stood before him. Her dress also had a high collar and was also red with gold embroidery of crescent moons and stars. It looked even heavier than his kaftan. Her long sleeves opened at the elbow and trailed to the ground. Her hair was intertwined with a latticework of gold wire and gems that looked like the sun rising over a peak.
“Lebía?” He could do little more than whisper.
She smiled, and the sun itself could hardly compare with the light of joy in her eyes.
In a half-dream state, he stood and took her hand, leading her out through the door into the midwinter sun. A carpet lay before them, made of cut flowers. Where had the villagers found flowers in winter?
The air was still, as though all of created Nature took a long breath before the opening chord to a festal hymn. Villagers stood here and there in loose clumps, every face a red sun surrounded by furs like clouds. Mirnían and Lebía walked by the houses of Ghavan, their road a river of red amid white. The gentle ascents and descents of the village brought the aspens ever closer.
They spoke no word to each other, though Mirnían could not tear his eyes from her, and almost fell on his face several times. Every time she looked at him, the rosebuds on her cheeks blossomed. Only when they stood before the trees did she meet his gaze, stopping him with a gentle squeeze of her fingers on his hand.
“Mirnían,” she whispered, “whatever Voran may have done to you, forgive him for my sake. That is the only gift I ask of my husband on our wedding day.”
Mirnían’s chest constricted, his breath rasping with difficulty. The sore prickled, taunting.
“Yes,” he whispered and smiled. His face felt like deer-hide being stretched on a rack for the tanning.
She had not seen it.
The lambswool blanket was like butter on his skin. The hearth crackled and smelled pleasantly of apples. A drowsy inactivity suffused through his body slowly, groping toward his fingertips, as though he had drunk just the right amount of Otchigen’s famous wine. At the heart of his contentment was a lightness in his chest that he had imagined gone from his life forever. And yet…
She had not seen it.
Lebía slept. In his own bed. In their own bed. There was a wonderful dreaminess about seeing her there, a kind of mystery to her sleep that warmed him more than any fire or blanket. He could sit here staring at her sleep for countless ages, and not feel the need to move. And yet…
She had not seen it.
Their lovemaking had been awkward and—he had never expected it—absurdly comical. He smiled at the memories, embarrassing and warm. No one knew, no one would ever know—though every lover in history were to write a paean to first love—the strange madness of the wedding night, not without experiencing it firsthand. And yet…
She had not seen it.
Was the sore even there? The pain of it, underlying all his thoughts and emotions, seemed all too real. But how was it possible that only he could see it? He had to remind himself that for all the normality of daily life in Ghavan, the boundary between real and legendary was translucent. That left him with the uncomfortable suggestion that no amount of medicine would heal this last sore. No physical medicine, that is.
A Sirin-song sounded outside the house, urging itself on his attention. He dressed quietly and wrapped himself in his thickest furs. He suspected this conversation would be a long one.
Lebía had told him of the soul-bond with Aína on the same day that she had healed him, but he had not fully believed her until Aína herself appeared, her rebuke evident in her hard eyes. He had never imagined eyes could cut so deeply into his very essence.
Now Aína waited for him by the house, looking over the slight descent toward the middle of the village. The houses were all dark, though the paths between them were still visible in the light of the torches kept alight throughout the night. Each of the braziers holding the torches had been made by a member of the village, and even after so many weeks here, the whimsy of each design—a fish, a horse with wings, a many-headed serpent, a six-winged giant with coals for eyes—continued to amaze Mirnían.
“Did you know that the aspen sapling in Vasyllia is no longer on fire?” Aína said, her voice wafting in from some unspeakable depth of antiquity. He never felt fully there when she spoke to him. His wife—how extraordinary to think of her as “wife”—tried to explain it by saying that Aína was only really present for her. For all others, it was like speaking through a transparent door.
“Is there
no hope that this place can be a rebirth of Old Vasyllia?” he asked her.
“There is a very great hope of that, Mirnían. You stand in the way.”
Mirnían laughed dourly. “It’s always my fault.”
“Mirnían, self-pity is the refuge of the weak. You are not weak.”
“Tell me then.”
She nodded, her eyes half-lidded, assessing him as she spoke. “Among our sisterhood there is one who is apart from us. She is named Gamayun, the Black Sirin. She alone has never felt the fire of soul-bond, for she is set apart, an oracle. Gamayun sings all possible futures, and Gamayun sings invariably of one thing concerning your future. You will meet Voran again, and soon.”
“I can’t trust myself not to kill him.”
“That is why you still have the leprosy on you, though it slumbers, and that is why you alone prevent Ghavan from becoming the hope of Vasyllia.”
He knew it, had known it for a long time, but hearing it from a Sirin gave it the kind of finality that a man condemned to death is sure to feel in the long agony of the blade’s descent to his exposed neck.
“Mirnían, your father is dead.”
He heard the words, and his body involuntarily tensed in anticipation of the inevitable shock, but nothing came.
“Vasyllia?” He asked, his voice hoarse, his throat bone-dry from the cold.
“She still stands, but is besieged. Her fate is no longer yours. At least not for now.”
No. His fate was rooted here, in the fertile earth of Ghavan. The remnant of Vasyllia must flourish. He must find a way to forget Voran. Forgive him? He could not.
“Aína, there is some measure of protection against the Raven here, on this island, is there not?”
She half-nodded. He sighed, relieved of tension he hadn’t realized was there.
“However,” she said, looking back over the town. “You, Mirnían, are outside that protection while you are marked.”
Marked. Would he never be free of some kind of mark? Dar’s son, Sabíana’s brother, heir to Cassían’s throne, beloved of the people…it was tiring. When would he ever be able to be merely Mirnían, to do with himself as he pleased?
“What can I do, Aína?” he asked.
But she was no longer there, if she had been there at all.
“Why do the innocent suffer?” asked Dar Cassían. “Why do the guilty prosper?”
A voice thundered from the heavens. “When you have given your life to the suffering innocents, then you may ask. Not before.”
-From “Dar Cassían and His Daughter” (Old Tales: Book IV)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Training
A thin brushstroke of gold painted the tips of the pines on the horizon, but the marshes were already the deep purple of twilight. Achingly close were the wood-smells, the fire-lights, the meal-sounds of the village ahead of them, and yet Tarin remained in maddening stillness on his knees, head bowed, leaning on his old sword. His stained mantle wrapped around him, he blended into the darkness like a boulder or a barrow. Only the sibilance of his repeated whisper marked him as living.
The change was uncanny—the lunatic had become an old warrior again, a kind of warrior Voran had never encountered. Tarin continued to repeat the word, or words, under his breath. Voran could not catch the meaning, but whatever it was, it seemed to diffuse a vibrant calm, as though Tarin were a pebble dropped into a pond, and his calm presence rippled outward. Voran found himself sharing the stillness, entering into it bodily. It reminded him of singing in a choir, in the way that seasoned chanters seem to be absorbed into each other’s sound, unconsciously wringing their voices into a single, multifaceted music.
They had spent the day on the threshold of the village, just near enough for Voran to imagine the villagers hosting a feast in their honor on trestle tables in the village square. He knew it was mad to expect anything of the sort, but it was so long—how many days? Three?—since his last proper meal. Instead, he had to content himself with hearing the sounds of the evening meal, which echoed in the clear air of the marsh-valley.
“YEEEAAAAAAOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUU!!!!”
Voran managed not to jump, but he was sure three grey hairs had sprouted on his head instantaneously from that cry. Tarin crouched to the ground, arms akimbo, neck stretched out. He yowled like a wounded animal. Then he retracted his head into his neck like a rooster, and proceeded to cluck as he waddled back and forth in a figure-eight.
All over the village, storm-shutters slapped back, making the houses look like they opened their eyes. The doors swung open, and the houses yawned. The village stirred from sleep, a wild noise rising toward Voran. The strangeness of it disoriented him. Only when he saw them did he realize what it was—a crowd of children, followed by disapproving parents, many of whom ran after their bare-headed charges, armed with hats.
“Tarin! Tarin!” They all cheered wildly, expectant joy in every face, even in the faces of the disapproving parents.
He clucked and clucked and let himself be enfolded in their mittened hands and arms, until he could no longer contain his own joy. His laugh was so natural, so unforced, that Voran thought he was a completely different man. Despite all Tarin’s strange behaviors, this reaction to the children was one Voran never expected.
The wave of children had crested and was about to pull Tarin back into the depths of the village. Voran followed, already tasting meat and mead, his mouth filling with saliva. They had all surged to the edge of the village when Tarin turned, so suddenly that Voran nearly ran into him.
“Ah, Raven Son! I had forgotten about you. You may not enter the village. There is a task I need you to perform. Here.”
He pointed to the second pack on Voran’s back, the one that felt like it was filled with stones. Voran opened it. The pack was filled with stones.
“These are stones imbued with power,” Tarin said in his sing-song storyteller voice, more to the children than to Voran. They all approved, tittering. “Raven Son, you must arrange a perfect cairn here, where you stand. Then wait for me. I will come out to you and give you leave to enter the village.”
“You cannot be serious,” Voran said, before realizing that silence was probably a better strategy.
Tarin stiffened and fixed Voran with a gaze that promised repeated retribution.
“Children,” Tarin said in a voice that brooked no opposition, “go on home. I will come to you soon.”
Only after the houses had once again fallen asleep did Tarin release Voran from his gaze.
“Have you forgotten your word?” he whispered through gritted teeth. “You are my slave. My commands are not to be questioned, especially by a well-known lunatic such as you.”
Voran breathed deeply, trying not let the sparks come tumbling out of his eyes.
“Cairn,” Tarin growled. “Now.”
He turned and walked into the village.
It took all of five minutes to construct a cairn of stones. It took all of three quarters of an hour for Tarin to return for his inspection.
“Good. Now put the stones back into the pack.”
“But what about their protection?”
Tarin looked genuinely puzzled.
“You had said they were invested with power.”
Tarin threw his head back and laughed, his hands on his belly. It was a parody of a laugh. Voran wanted to strike him.
“So I did,” Tarin said, wiping his eyes of the tears of laughter. “Well, I lied. Get on with it, then.”
Tarin only let Voran into the village after midnight, and by that time he was obviously the worse for wear. Voran didn’t look at him, hoping the churning annoyance—so thick he was sure it would eat him before he ever had supper again—would be obvious. He wanted Tarin to apologize, or at the very least, to notice his displeasure. Tarin hardly seemed to notice anything.
As a final insult, Tarin let Voran no further than a mudroom that smelled of old furs, wood, and rats. A plate of bread and dried meat sat next to a clean straw p
allet. Voran tried to console himself with the blessed warmth of the room, but it did little good. He silently promised himself that he would not sleep all night. That would show Tarin.
Voran was awoken by a laughing Tarin. The door was open and a nearly midday sun streamed into the mudroom.
“Well, you proved your point, Raven Son,” said Tarin, and erupted into his lunatic laugh. The crowd of children cheered and jumped and laughed with him. Voran found his resolve to punish Tarin—for what, he had already forgotten—fading at the sight of the children. In the daylight, they looked much worse than last night. Most of them were stick-thin, the whites of their eyes more like yellows. Some had bellies protruding even through the furs. With a rush of shame, Voran realized that Tarin was probably the only joy this village had experienced in months. And all Voran had thought of all night was his own comfort. He swore and promised to curb his pride better next time.
In the center of the village, Tarin climbed a rickety table that shuddered every time he moved, and he moved constantly. Voran was just about to utter a curse about breaking wood and fallen warriors when he remembered his promise. Grumbling, he moved closer to the assembled throng. It seemed the entire village was present.
“In a certain kingdom, in a certain land,” declaimed Tarin with a flourish, the table reeling like a drunken man underneath him. The children all hopped up and down, clapping and screaming their delight at the top of their voices. Even Voran, in spite of himself, felt propelled into the energy of Tarin’s speech. For all of his madness, the old goat had a way with words.
The Tale of the Cub’s Hunger
It was spring, the time for a new-born bear cub to attempt the hunt for the first time. The cub was, as you might expect, excited and full of energy. He left in the morning, sure he would bring something big home—a badger maybe, or even a buck—but the figure he cut when he returned that evening was not what his mother expected. He was bedraggled, wet, and utterly miserable.
The Song of the Sirin (Raven Son Book 1) Page 22
