“First and foremost, I am not anyone’s lord. Call me Allystaire. If you must have a title for me, Arm will do. Now. I am going to ask one of you to speak, and while he does, the other will remain silent. Then I will do the same to the second. Then I will offer a decision. Will you abide it, no matter what it is?”
One of them swallowed, but both nodded, with the bald one muttering, “So long as it’s fair.”
Allystaire cleared his throat and fixed his eyes, unblinking, on the muttering one. “What is your name?”
He cleared his throat. “Hugues, m…ah, Allystaire.”
“Well, Hugues, will you abide by the,” Allystaire paused with the word judgment on the tip of his tongue and carefully replaced it with “decision that I think is fair? If you will only abide by your own sense of fairness, coming to me was a waste of time, aye?”
The man bobbed his head and shrugged all at once, a gesture Allystaire found disconcerting, and not a little annoying. He worked hard to keep his face impassive.
“Good. Now, Hugues. The other man is going to speak to me and tell me his side of the story. Aye?”
Hugues made that same odd nod-shrug, his lips clamped tight over crooked teeth.
Allystaire turned to the other. “And your name, goodman?”
“Denys, Arm,” the man said, and Allystaire uttered a small, pleased “hrm” at the use of his real title.
“Denys. What is the problem?”
“Well, since we resettled our farms, he’s been tryin’ t’claim one o’m’fallow fields fer his own,” the man began, still tugging stray locks of hair from his face. “I was plannin’ t’ put cabbages fer the winter harvest in it, and he’s been after fencin’ i’off—”
Allystaire lifted a hand. “How long had this field been yours?”
“Well, always was,” Denys said, slowly.
“How long is always?”
“I’ve lived in Thornhurst o’er five winters now,” the man said.
Allystaire nodded, and turned to Hugues. “And you? Why do you think you have a claim to this field?”
“I been here longer,” Hugues said, his voice scratchy and low. “And tha’ field were ne’r part o’the land he bought.”
“How do you know that?”
“’Cause I knew the man what sold it t’him. And I knew how much he sold to the rod and span. This field has lain fallow now all the years he’s been here, he’s ne’er worked it, but now he thinks he can spread out a bit, right? But if he’s ne’er worked it, ne’er made impro’ments t’it, then e’s—”
“And what were you planning to do with the field?”
“I was gonna put in cabbage as a winter crop now the field’s ready t’be planted,” he said, defiantly.
Allystaire’s head swam, for a moment, with a vision of him shaking both men by the collars and giving them a good toss, but he willed the vision away. Unworthy of me, he thought. Or at least unworthy of my role here.
“So the question as I see it is who gets to plant the cabbages?”
“Aye,” they replied.
“And what do you plan to do with the cabbages?”
“Well, go t’feed the village, aye, after we take our own share, and for a fair price” Denys said.
“I’d do the same,” Hugues said. “Though usually ya get bet’r prices at market fair days and not local.”
Allystaire tried to keep his face neutral; a smile and a scowl were competing for space and so, he hoped, neither one revealed itself completely. “Fine. Work the field together. Divide it in half if you must, lengthways or side by side, I care not. You will each have a third of the crop to do with as you please. The remaining third, by weight,” Allystaire said, emphasizing that point with an extended finger, “will be donated to the common stores.”
“What are common stores?” Denys asked. Hugues kept quiet but looked likely to ask the same question, given the puzzlement on his broad, sun-browned face.
“Food that will be kept here at the Temple of the Mother, available to all in need of it.”
The men frowned and seemed likely to protest, glancing warily at each other and then back at Allystaire, who cut them off. “You agreed to accept my decision, and there it is. Protest, or short the common supply, and the field and all its output for the next year becomes part of the common supply. And if it sounds as though I mean to punish the both of you, I do. This is the sort of squabble that should have been solved amicably, between the two of you, as neighbors,” he said, irritation threatening to rise into anger as he spoke. “We are done. Make such arrangements as you can for the working of the field. I will come by and check the planting myself when it is time.”
The two men stood there for a moment, equally confused, equally disappointed, which, Allystaire reflected, probably meant he had made the right decision. Finally, they walked off. To Renard, he said, “Remind me that we have got to build something to store these cabbages. And anything else the folk decide to donate.”
The old soldier nodded, and scratched his bearded cheek. “Will do,” he rumbled, and Allystaire considered that as good as it being written down. “Next,” Renard called out then, pointing to another pair of men. “Stolen beehive, Arm,” he said to Allystaire, indicating the pair.
“Fine,” Allystaire replied. “I have not the patience to listen to a lot of talking and blame. Which one of you is accused of thieving?” Both men stared at him, one tall, the other shorter and broader.
Finally the tall one said, “He’s accusin’ me but I never—”
Allystaire walked over to him and carefully but implacably placed a hand on the man’s arm. “Did you steal the other fellow’s beehive? Do not attempt to lie to me.”
“I…I did,” the man admitted, his eyes widening in shock as the words squeaked out of his mouth.
“And why did you do this?”
“I wanted t’try mixin’ honey into some o’the malt mash I had in my cellar.”
Allystaire sagged a bit, letting go of the man’s arm. “You make spirits, then? Strong drink?”
The tall man nodded sheepishly, his eyes downcast, his face scrunched up. “Please m’lord, I’ll beg ya not t’imprison me, or ‘ang me, I’ve a daughter, and my wife was killed by the reavers.”
“Cold, man!” Allystaire exclaimed, startled. “I am not about to hang or imprison a man for simple petty theft. Give him the beehive back. And a small barrel of your best malt spirits.” He turned to the other man. “Does that suffice?”
The other farmer seemed taken aback at the speed with which his claim had been judged. “I s’spose it would, Arm,” he said.
“Good. Then go. Do it. And for the Mother’s sake, be kind to each other. If you want honey, ask him for it. Trade for it.” Allystaire turned away from them, trying not to roll his eyes.
“Next,” he called out, even as Renard was waving another pair of village folk forward.
* * *
“That was more about farm implements and lands and fences than I ever wanted to know,” Allystaire told Idgen Marte. The swordswoman had been, along with Mol, meeting with a group of a dozen or so of the village’s women. As the sun climbed higher in the sky and noon approached, though, all the meetings and business the five Ordained had been about had ceased, with the villagers gathering in anticipation at the edge of the Temple field.
Gideon and Torvul came walking in unison down the road in animated conversation, if conversation could be said to include Torvul speaking and gesturing as he walked, and Gideon mostly nodding.
When they joined Mol, Allystaire, and Idgen Marte at the foot of the steps, Gideon was clearly deep in thought, but Torvul was grinning. In spite of himself, Allystaire felt the contagious pull of it.
“That look on your face can only mean you know something the rest of us do not, Torvul,” Allystaire said.
Torvul snorted
playfully. “If that were true, I’d look this way all the damned time. Yet, there’s truth in your words—me and the bright boy here have put our heads together and have just about got this rain problem clubbed into submission. Only question remaining is whether we bring clouds here, or wait for some clouds to show up and give ‘em a thorough shaking so the rain falls out.” Pause. “Metaphorically speakin’, of course. No actual shaking.”
“Drawing clouds here would have widespread effects on the rest of the region’s weather,” Mol said. “The weather is like a loosely knitted muffler. You can’t just tug on one end without unraveling some of it.”
“Seems like the Sea Dragon’s priests have already done that,” Idgen Marte pointed out. “Keeping weather at bay could be just as dangerous as pullin’ it towards you, aye?”
Mol frowned. “Doing wrong in order to combat the wrong done to us is not the Path the Mother would see us walk, Shadow,” she said, her voice growing unmistakably grim as she spoke. “I would not see us create a drought on the Innadan border because we need the rain.”
Idgen Marte’s face stiffened at Mol’s rebuke, but she nodded. Mol, impulsively it seemed, reached up and clasped the woman’s hand.
“Heavy storm clouds should pass near enough within the next few days, or a week,” Mol said. “We need not worry over it now. Come,” she said, pointing to the Temple.
With Mol at their head, Allystaire and Idgen Marte to either side, and Torvul and Gideon behind them, the five Ordained ascended the short row of steps to the Mother’s Temple and the newly erected altar within.
In a reverent silence, they each moved to their pillars, and felt the stone-walled space begin to grow brighter as the sun moved towards its zenith. Allystaire put his hand on the hammer carved into the Pillar of the Arm.
The stone quickly grew warmer, but not uncomfortably so. He felt, rather than saw, the other four place their hands on the altar, and the light inside the Temple grew.
The same sound as the night before began to fill his ears, the harmony of five notes—or was it one note shaped out of five sounds? He could not tell. And truly, it did not matter, for it was the Music and the Light of the Goddess, and the entire Temple began to fill with both, with a brightness so intense he shut his eyes against it.
The music rose and blended till Allystaire could not pick individual strains from it; he thought he heard the clear ringing of a trumpet such as Idgen Marte had described, but it slipped away from him, and then he simply heard the Goddess’s own voice.
“Open your eyes, My servants, and look upon each other.”
Allystaire opened his eyes slowly. The light was not painful, now, but lent a clarity to the world, burned away all that was fleeting. They were no longer standing in a Temple, but in a well of pure, streaming brightness. He looked to his right. Mol did not appear any longer to be a child of ten or so summers; she was tall, slim, clad in a simply cut blue robe, with a hood that deeply shadowed her face, leaving only her mouth visible. From her belt hung a sickle, and in her cupped right hand, a ball of green light.
His eyes flitted to Idgen Marte—and almost past her. When he could force them to focus upon her, she was still indistinct, but what he saw was much like the tall, long-limbed warrior he knew —only more so. Her skin was even darker and flawless, without the scars that trailed from lip to collar. The curved sword in her hand blazed with light—but only along its razor-sharp edge, so faint that most would miss it. She was nearly impossible to see unless she turned to face him fully. When she turned away, she winked out of his sight—yet he could still feel her there, at his side, like a limb or a weapon no one else could see that he held.
Torvul still had the proportions of his race, but he had grown in stature, and would have stood equal to Allystaire in height. His eyes were deep, wide pools of solid, liquid blue—and they were set in a face that had the texture of stone, and the mottled grey and brown of granite. He raised his hands, spreading them before his eyes in wonder, and Allystaire saw a familiar grin spread across the dwarf’s mountainous face.
Gideon was a being of pure, gleaming fire. Almost featureless, still slim, and vaguely human-shaped, but as Allystaire watched, he changed, becoming more like the boy he knew, the fire shifting colors from blue, to white, to green, to deep orange.
Only then did Allystaire look at himself, and the reflection of light that came back to his eyes would have blinded him had he seen it with his mortal eyes. He was clad in armor straight out of a story. It was light against his skin, lighter than any steel could be. It was as bright as newly polished silver, and it clung to him from toe to chin, leaving only his face bare.
No, not only his face. Also his left palm, which pulsed with a deep golden glow in time with the pounding of his heart. His right arm, he now saw, gleamed even brighter than the rest of him—gone from silver to white flame, and at the merest thought, his hand held a hammer made of fire—fire of the sun. Though he could feel the heat radiating from it, it did not burn him.
The five Ordained Servants of the Mother stared at each other in wonder, speechless, till they heard their Goddess’s voice.
“What you have been, who you have been, you must leave behind—take only the parts of your lives that strengthen you for the trials ahead. The Arm, the Shadow, the Voice, the Wit, and the Will—what you see now in each other is who, and what, you must become. More than a woman, more than a man, more than a mere alchemist, or sorcerer, knight, warrior, or priestess.”
“Return now to the world of men, with my undying love. I will speak with each of you this night.”
Suddenly, the bright, unearthly world was gone, replaced with the world of stone and shadows —but a powerful glow still filled the Temple, streaming through its windows to the crowd beyond.
Allystaire blinked, the afterimage of the vision the Goddess had given them slowly fading against the back of his eyelids. By the time he had recovered enough, Torvul’s voice had begun to fill the Temple.
Allystaire knew nothing of the dwarf’s native tongue, though he’d heard the dwarf sing in it many times. Still, he thought he recognized something in the words, though the tone of it harkened back to the day when the dwarf had saved Allystaire’s life by cleansing the poison from his body.
The dwarf’s voice was as low-pitched and potent as ever, and yet something—or someone, judging by the way Mol and Gideon were both staring intently at the dwarf—was amplifying the sound, for it filled the Temple and spilled to the field beyond.
Allystaire had nothing to offer the song and yet he felt it vibrating in his chest, as the unknown words rolled, lyrical and thunderous, from the dwarf’s barrel chest. Torvul’s eyes were closed and his hands upon the altar. Allystaire touched his own pillar and felt the oval of stone humming beneath his hand.
Torvul’s voice did not flag or quail, and it began to seem to Allystaire as if the stone beneath his hand was not humming so much as it was drawing the sound into itself through him—that the entire Temple was absorbing the deep rumblings of the dwarf’s voice.
Finally, Torvul broke off with a gasp, and the sound sank into the stones.
“It is done,” Mol said, giving the silence that followed in the song’s wake only a moment. “With the completion of the altar, and Torvul’s song, we have completed the consecration of this Temple.”
A warm glow still surrounded them, suffusing the air and spilling into the field. Mol gestured towards the doors. “It is time to go amongst our people and celebrate.”
“Not yet,” Allystaire said. He swallowed hard. “I have something I must say to them.” With the set shoulders and hardened walk of a man striding into battle, Allystaire walked to the doors and threw them open. The people of the village cheered. He raised his hands for quiet, and began to speak, reaching for the voice that had served him well in courtyards and on battlefields—a voice that rolled out over the assembled crowd and gathered all
of them in.
“People of Thornhurst, people of the Mother, people who are unsure whether they are either one. Many of you have come to know who I am—the Arm of the Mother. You know my name, even if many of you still refuse to use it when I ask,” he said, his admittedly weak jest met with a smattering of muted chuckling.
“What most of you may not know,” he said, sliding his hands behind his back, “is who I was for most of my life, before the Goddess came to me. The name, and title I was born to, was Lord Coldbourne, of Coldbourne Moor and Coldbourne Hall.” He paused, and added, “We are not so good with names up north in Oyrwyn, I suppose.” That got a rather livelier bit of laughter—none more so, Allystaire saw, than from the Ravens, who were a leather-and-metal clad knot in the back of the crowd.
“The name might mean something to you. It might mean nothing. What it meant for me, all my life, was war. In that, we are not so different. Yet the role I was given to play, bred for, prepared for, was very different than yours. I was a leader of men, a captain, a maker of knights. Over the last score of years I rode in, and eventually led, hosts to every barony that borders Oyrwyn, and some that do not. Whatever village, town, hamlet, or city you call home—in that life, I probably raided, burned, or besieged it.”
He paused waiting for the reaction. There was only silence, wide eyes, slightly open mouths. He began to pace.
“To say I did those things is false, really. In the main, I ordered them done. I knew that there was always a terrible cost to men on every side of any battle. I knew that their families, widows, children, parents paid a price as well. I consoled myself that I was better than the men I fought against, because I had rules. I tried to take care of my own, I thought. I tried to minimize the harm they did, as if it were possible for one man to oversee the actions of hundreds, of thousands.
“And I tell you, I was skilled at it. I won more battles than I lost. I thought my men loved me. I gained honors, riches, acclaim. I never thought, not really, about the cost of what I did. I measured my success in battles won, lands taken, in the count of the enemy dead. I rarely questioned any of this—fighting, you see, is what Coldbournes did. My grandfather won the name and the Lordship for himself and his sons back in the beginning of the war that has plagued us now for more than two score years, and he did it with a sword, and a brutality that remains legendary among Oyrwyn’s knights and nobles.
Stillbright Page 20
