Melora touched his hand.
“Enough!” she said sharply. “Now you are beginning to indulge yourself in self-pity, and that will only make it worse. What you feel now is only the aftermath of exhaustion. No more! I tell you—” and her voice was softened—“when you are rested, and can absorb what has happened to you, you will be able to go on. Not to forget, but to put it behind you, and live with what you can’t mend. What you need now is rest and sleep. I’ll stay near you.” She rose and picked up the little table, replacing it, tugged a heavy footstool, thickly upholstered, in front of the chair.
“I should have moved that for you—”
“Why? I’m not exhausted or crippled. Here, put your feet up—yes, like that. Let me get those boots off. And take off your sword-belt, you don’t need it. Not here.” She pulled aside a curtain to an alcove at the far end of the room. He realized that it was where she slept. She brought him a pillow from her own bed. “The chair’s comfortable enough, I’ve slept here plenty of nights when someone was sick, and I knew I’d be called at any moment. If you need to go out in the night,” she added forthrightly, “the place you’re looking for is just past the end of this corridor down the stairs, and it has a door painted red. It’s for the guards; it would be a scandal if I let you use the bath in my suite, since you’re not one of us here.” She tucked a knitted shawl around him. “Sleep well, Bard.”
She went past him, extinguishing the lamp. He heard the creak of her bed as she climbed into it. Strange, how light-footed she was for such a big woman; he could not hear her steps at all. Bard touched the fuzzy texture of the shawl under his chin. It made him feel, somehow, as if he were very small and young; he had a curious flash of his foster mother tucking him up in a shawl like this after some childish illness. Strange. He had always thought of Lady Jerana hating him and treating him cruelly; why had he forgotten the times when she had been kind to him? Had he wanted to believe she hated him and wanted ill for him? It could not be easy for a childless woman to foster her husband’s strong, healthy, well-loved child by some other woman.
As he dropped off to sleep he could hear Melora breathing; the sound was oddly reassuring, that she would let him—a man who had never treated a woman with anything but cruelty—sleep in her very room. Not that he had any designs on her—he wondered, suddenly, if he would ever be able to feel desire for a woman again without this terrible awareness of all the harm he could do. Carlina has had her revenge, he thought, and then in a wry flash of insight he wondered if, since his own mother gave him up, he had never believed he was loved because he’d felt, without knowing it, that even she did not find him worthy of love. He didn’t know; he was beginning to think he knew nothing about love. But he knew that Melora’s trust was, somehow, the first step in his healing. Clasping the pillow that smelled sweetly of some fresh scent about Melora, he slept.
When he woke, it was a day of soft-falling snow, one of the first snowfalls of the year in the Kilghard Hills, and silent flakes, melting as they fell, were drifting across the windows. Melora sent him to borrow a razor and a fresh shirt from one of the guards, and to join their mess at breakfast “That way,” she said, smiling at him merrily, “they will know that I am not entertaining a lover from outside the Tower, which is not proper during my term of service here. I’m not overly concerned for my reputation, but it’s not done—to bring scandal on the Towers that way. Varzil has enough to contend with, without that.”
As he went to eat hot, fresh nutbread and salt fish fried into cakes, with the guards of Neskaya, Bard felt a little shamefaced pride; the Lord General of Asturias, to join a common guardsmen’s mess? But this was not his own country, he would probably not be recognized, and if he was, well, it was none of anyone’s business; surely even a general could come to consult a leronis on urgent private business? Shaved, cleanly clothed, he felt better. After breakfast, a youngster, red-headed, in blue and silver, with the indefinable stamp of the Hastur kin on his face, brought a message that the Lord Varzil of Neskaya wished to see him.
Varzil of Neskaya. An enemy, a Ridenow of Serrais; but Alaric had loved him, and he himself had been favorably impressed by the man when he had come to exchange Alaric for Geremy. Even when he believed Varzil an ally of King Carolin of Thendara, he had been somewhat impressed.
It cannot be easy, to swear to neutrality in a world torn by war! When all the lands lie in flames about you, surely it is easier to join with one side or another!
Bard had remembered Varzil as young, but the man who faced him in the small stone-floored study, wearing a simple robe and sandals rather than the ceremonial robe of office, seemed old; there were heavy lines in the care-worn face, young as it was, and the bright red hair was already graying. Varzil, after all, could not be so young; he had rebuilt Neskaya after its fire-bombing, and that had been before Bard was born, although, he had heard, Varzil had been very young then.
“Welcome, Bard mac Fianna. I will speak with you presently—but I have a few matters to arrange first. Sit there,” he said, and continued speaking with the young man, wearing Hastur colors, who was facing him. At first this made Bard’s skin prickle—so much for the vaunted neutrality of Varzil and the Tower—but after he had heard a few words he relaxed.
“Yes, tell the people of Hali that we will send healers and leroni to care for the worst-burnt cases, but they must realize that the physical wounds that can be seen are not all that has happened. The pregnant women must be monitored; most of them will miscarry, and they are the lucky ones, for of those who bear children from the time of this disaster, at least half will be born marred or deformed; they must be monitored, too, from birth. Women of childbearing age must be taken out of the area as soon as possible, or they will run the same risk, if they conceive children before the land has healed, and that may not be for years.”
“The people will not want to leave their estates or their farms,” the Hastur man said, “and what shall we tell them?”
“The truth,” Varzil said with a sigh, “that the land is poisoned past redemption and will be so for years; no one can live there, conquered nor conquerors either. Only one good thing has come of all this.”
“A good thing? And what is that, vai laranzu?”
“The Dalereuth Tower has joined us in neutrality,” Varzil said. “They have sworn to make no more laran weapons, whatever the inducement; and their overlord, Marzan of Valeron, has pledged to the Compact, and Queen Darna of Isoldir. And Valeron and Isoldir have taken the oath of fealty under the Hasturs.”
Bard’s teeth were set on edge by this. Would all this land lie under Hastur command someday? And yet . . . if the Hasturs were sworn to fight no more wars except under the Compact, there would be no more such atrocities as at Hali. He had been a soldier all his life, and he felt no special guilt for the men he had struck down face-to-face with the sword; they had had an equal chance to strike him down. But for the men slain by spells and sorcery, for the women and children killed in fire-bombings, he felt nothing could atone, not ever. He felt, too, that his armies could face, and conquer, the Hastur armies with any weapons they chose; why should they need sorcerers too?
When Varzil had finished with the Hastur envoy, he said, “Say to Domna Mirella that I would like to speak with her.”
Bard heard the name without surprise—it was not so uncommon as that—but when the young woman came in, he recognized her at once. She was still slight and pretty, wearing the white robe of a monitor.
“Are you working in the relays, child? I thought you were simply resting, after your ordeal at Hali,” Varzil said. Mirella was about to answer, but stopped when she saw Bard.
“Vai dom, I heard from Melora that you were Lord General of Asturias now—forgive me, Lord Varzil, may I ask news of my family? Is my grandsire well, sir, and Melisendra?”
Bard found, from somewhere, the strength to face her. It was too much to hope Mirella did not know of his depravity; for all he knew, everyone in the Hundred Kingdoms knew, a
nd was ready to spit on the name of Bard mac Fianna, called di Asturien. “Master Gareth is very well, though of course he grows old,” he told her. “He rode with us on the campaign against the Ridenow before they surrendered.” He glanced hesitantly at Varzil. Not a tenday ago, he had hanged this man’s overlord, Dom Eiric of Serrais, after the battle, as an oathbreaker. But although Varzil looked sad, there seemed to be, in him, no hatred for Bard or his armies.
“And Melisendra?”
Melisendra is mother’s-sister to this girl. What has she said of me? “Melisendra is well,” he said, then, on an impulse. “I think she is happy; I—I think she wishes to marry one of my paxmen, and if that is her wish, I will not prevent her. And King Alaric has promised Erlend a patent of legitimacy, so his status need not trouble her.”
Melora said I would find a way to make what amends could be made. This is only a beginning, and so little, but it was a place to begin. Paul’s almost as bad as I am, but for some reason she cares for him.
Mirella smiled at him, sweetly, and said, “I thank you for your good news, vai dom. And now, Dom Varzil, I am at your command.”
“We are happy to have you here while you recover from the shock of what happened at Hali,” Varzil said. “How came you not to be within the Tower?”
“I had had leave to ride in the hills, hunting, with two of my bredin-y,” Mirella said. “And we were just about to turn homeward when the rain came, and we sheltered in a herdsman’s hut—and then, oh merciful Goddess, we—we felt the burning—the cries—” her face turned pale, and Varzil reached out his hand and gripped the young woman’s in his own strong clasp.
“You must try to forget, dear child. It will be with you always—indeed, none of us in any of the Towers will ever be able to forget,” Varzil said. “My youngest sister, Dyannis, was a leronis at Hali, and I felt her die . . .” his voice trailed off and for a moment he looked inward at horror. Then, recovering himself, he said firmly, “What we must remember, Rella, is that their heroism has taken another step toward the time when all this land will lie under Compact. For you know, they deliberately broadcast what happened—while they were dying they kept their minds open so that we should all see, and hear, and feel what they suffered, instead of quickly taking their way out of life . . . which they could have done, so easily—”
Mirella shuddered and said, “I could not have done it! At the first touch of fire I think I should have stopped my heart and died a merciful death—”
“Perhaps,” Varzil said gently. “We are not all equally heroic. And yet you might, surrounded by the others, have found your own courage.”
Bard saw in his mind the picture of a woman’s body, blazing like a torch . . . but Varzil shut it away, and said, “You must go to another Tower, Rella; do you wish to go to Arilinn or Tramontana?”
“Tramontana is the post of danger,” she said, “for Aldaran has not yet sworn the Compact, and may strike at Tramontana. I owe a death to all of you; I will go to Tramontana.”
“That is not necessary,” Varzil said gently. “There will be plenty of work for leroni here, healing the wounds of children burned and damaged at Hali, or in the Venza hills where they sowed bonewater dust and children are dying.”
“That task,” said Mirella, “I will leave to the healer-women and to the priestesses of Avarra, if they can bring themselves to leave their isolation on the Island of Silence. My task lies at Tramontana; it is laid on me, Varzil.”
Varzil bowed his head. “Be it so,” he said. “I am not the keeper of your conscience. And I foresee no peace at Aldaran, nor any safety at Tramontana for my lifetime, or many lifetimes to come. But if it is laid on you to go to Tramontana, Mirella, then all the gods go with you, little one.” He rose, and took Mirella in his arms, pressing her close. “Take my blessing, sister. And be certain to speak to Melora before you go.”
When he released her, she turned to Bard.
“Carry my greetings to my grandfather and to Melisenda, via dom. And say to them that if we do not meet again, it is the fortunes of war. You, who were the commander when I first rode to war as a leronis, will understand that.” She looked more sharply at him, and something she saw in his face caused her eyes to soften. She said, “Now that you are one of us, I shall pray for your peace and enlightenment, sir. May the gods protect you.”
When she had gone away, Bard turned to Varzil in puzzlement.
“What the hell did she mean—one of us?”
“Why, she saw that you were laran-gifted, newly so,” Varzil said. “Do you think one leronis cannot tell another with donas?”
“Does it—by the wolf of Alar—does it show?” His consternation was so apparent—did he bear a visible mark of what he had become?—that Varzil almost laughed.
“Not physically. But she sees it, as any of us would—we don’t look at one another much with our physical eyes, you know; we see it in—in the outside of your mind. None of us would read your thoughts uninvited, not even I. But, in general, we can tell one another.” He smiled. “After all, do you think that the Keeper of Neskaya gives audience to anyone who comes here—even the Lord General of Asturias and Marenji and Hammerfell and God knows how many other little countries up in rebel territory? I don’t care that for the Lord General,” he said, with a smile which made the words somehow inoffensive, “but Bard mac Fianna, the friend of Melora, whom I love, and newly made aware of his laran—Bard mac Fianna is another matter. As laranzu I have a duty toward you. You are—how shall I say this—you are a pivot.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Neither do I,” said Varzil, “nor how I know it; I only know that when first I set eyes on you I knew it was on you that many great events of our time would turn. I am also one of those pivots, people who can change history, and who have a duty to do so if they can, whatever happens. This, I think, is why you became Lord General of Asturias.”
“That sounds a bit too mystical for me, vai dom,” Bard said, scowling. He had won back from exile, by his own efforts, and he didn’t like the metaphysical notion that he might just be a pawn of fate.
Varzil shrugged. “Maybe so. I’ve been a laranzu all my life, and one of my gifts is to see time lines—not many, not very clearly, not in a way that would let me choose clearly between the many paths I might take. I heard there was a gift like that, once, but it died out. But sometimes I can recognize a pivot when I see it, and choose what has to be done to keep from wasting an opportunity.”
Bard’s mouth twisted. He said, “And suppose you can’t get anyone else to go along with your idea of what should happen? Do you just tell them they have to do so-and-so or the world will collapse?”
“Ah, no, alas, that would be too easy, and I don’t suppose the gods will that we should have perfection,” Varzil said. “No, everyone else does his best as he sees it, and it isn’t always what I see. Otherwise I’d be a god, not just Keeper of Neskaya. I do what I can, that’s all, and I’m always terribly conscious of the mistakes I make, and have made, and even the ones I will make. I just have to do the best I can, and—” suddenly his voice hardened—“in view of your experience, Bard mac Fianna, I think that’s something you’re going to have to learn, fast—to do the best you can, where you can, and live with what mistakes you can’t help making. Otherwise you’ll be like the donkey who died of hunger between two bales of hay, trying to decide which one to eat first.”
Was this, Bard wondered, why Melora had sent him to Varzil?
“Partly,” said Varzil, picking up his thought, “but you are in command of the Army of Asturias, and one of your tasks is to unify all this land. So you must go back.”
It was the last thing Bard had expected him to say.
“I will send Melora with you,” Varzil said. “I think she may be needed in her homeland. Asturias is where the important things of our world are happening. But before you go, I will ask you once again what I asked of you when we met before, in Asturias: will you pledge yourself to Compact?”
Bard’s first impulse was to say yes, I will. Then he bowed his head.
“I would do so willingly, tenerézu. But I am a soldier, and under orders. I have no right to do so without the command of my king and his regent. For good or ill, I am sworn to obey them, and I cannot do so without their leave; and if I did it would be dishonorable. He who is false to his first oath will be false to his second.” With crawling shame, he remembered how he had taunted Carlina with that same proverb, but that did not lighten his duty at this moment.
I have broken and trampled all else. But my honor as a soldier, and my loyalty to my father and my brother—these are still untarnished. I must try to keep them so.
Varzil looked at him steadily. After a moment he held out his hand to Bard, touched him very lightly on the wrist. He said, “If your honor demands it, so be it; I am not the keeper of your conscience either. Then I must come with you to Asturias, Bard. Wait until I speak to my deputies and be certain who can be left in charge here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carlina woke from an uneasy sleep, aching in every nerve and muscle of her body, to see a woman standing in the doorway of her room. She shrank away, pulling the black cloak over her; then, shaking, remembered that she had no right to it. Not now. She would have let it fall away, but remembered that she was still half naked, wearing the torn, bloody chemise which was the only garment Bard had left her. She felt numb and battered, and now she recognized the woman, who was tall and rounded, wearing a handsome green gown trimmed with fur; it was Bard’s concubine, Lady Jerana’s household leronis, who had borne him a son years ago. All she knew of her was that her name was Melisendra, and she had seen something hazy about her in Bard’s mind and memory. . . . She could not remember the details, but felt sure they were sickening. She hid under the black mantle, thinking she could not endure to let this calm, self-possessed woman see her shame.
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