“Any requests?” she called to Dale.
“Something good and raunchy.” Her request was followed by what Alton could only perceive as suspicious snickering.
“Good and raunchy, eh?” Estral murmured, looking thoughtful and not at all taken aback, unlike Alton, but it occurred to him that she must get all kinds of requests depending on whatever venue she played and the type of audience present.
She launched into a song about a lumberjack trying to impress the innkeeper’s daughter with the size of his pine. It contained all the vulgar wordplay he was sure Dale could wish for and by the time the tune ended, Alton’s ears were burning. After the final strum, Estral smiled pleasantly at him.
“Is he blushing?” Dale asked.
“Hard to tell in the firelight,” Estral replied. “But I believe he is.”
“Hah!”
Alton glowered. Dale had wanted to make him blush in front of Estral. “Where did you learn that song?” he demanded. Surely this was not what they were teaching the young students at Selium. Surely not ...
“Lumber camp, of course,” Estral replied.
Alton could not imagine her in a camp full of such rough men. She’d be a tasty morsel to them. The stories one heard about their beastly behavior and crude ways! “Lumber camp? Are you mad? With all those rowdy, uncivilized brutes?”
Estral paused as if considering, then shook her head. “No, not me. My mother perhaps.”
“Your mother?”
Estral laughed. “Yes, my mother. She was chief of a camp north of North. I was born there, yes in those woods, in that camp, with all those rowdy, uncivilized brutes. She says they were all like happy papas when I came along.”
Alton scrunched his brow at the image of a group of big, grungy lumberjacks cooing at a baby. “I . . . I thought your father was—”
“Aaron Fiori? He is my father.”
“But . . . how?”
Laughter trickled out of Dale’s tent. “I think you need to explain to him about the lumberjack and the pine.”
Alton scowled at the tent though Dale couldn’t see him. He definitely would not travel with the two women at the same time again. “You know what I mean.”
“Of course,” Estral said, grinning. Alton’s ears just burned hotter. “My father is a minstrel and he travels. He visited the lumber camp for a spell and my mother took a shine to him. Simple as that, and when the time came for him to continue his wandering, he left, never guessing he’d made a child.”
Alton didn’t know what to say. He had imagined Estral’s mother to be some genteel lady strumming on a harp somewhere within Selium’s walls, not a lumber camp chief who ordered around a bunch of coarse, ax-wielding woodsmen.
“Of course,” Estral continued, “he figured it out about a year later when his travels led back to my mother’s lumber camp and there I was. He made a point of visiting twice yearly after that.”
“They never married?” Alton blurted before he could contain himself.
Estral shrugged. “Why would they? My mother was content at the camp and he was busy wandering. It has not been unusual over the generations of Fioris to produce heirs in this manner. A regular spouse would find it difficult to put up with a husband who was constantly away, and a Fiori can’t not travel. Most Fioris, anyway. It’s not very fair to the spouse if you think about it.”
To Alton, who’d been brought up in a noble family with all its strict codes and customs, it was difficult to imagine so casual an attitude toward bastards. As much as he disliked thinking of Estral that way, wasn’t that what she was? A bastard ? When he looked at her now across the fire, however, he did not see a bastard, but a lovely young woman with a voice gifted by the gods. Yes, what was lineage compared to that? And if that was the way the Fioris did things, and had done it for centuries, who was he to argue? It was just startling. To his way of thinking, anyway.
“Is that why,” he said more cautiously, “you go by Andovian and not Fiori? It’s your mother’s name?”
“Yep.” She strummed a chord, then silenced the strings with the flat of her hand. “When I inherit my father’s position, then I’ll become the Fiori. It’s as much a title as a name.”
The breeze shifted and Alton waved campfire smoke out of his face. He’d never thought much about the Fioris. There’d never been any reason to. Selium minstrels and Estral’s father himself had come to Woodhaven, but at the time he’d seen them as just entertainment. Just.
Estral started plucking a lively dance tune, this time not asking Dale for a request. It was the story of a goatherd and a milkmaid, and was not at all raunchy. Alton found himself tapping his toe and nodding his head to the beat. When she finished, muffled clapping came from Dale’s tent.
“It seems our patient liked that one,” Estral said.
“I think it is time our patient got some sleep so she’s well enough to ride in the morning,” Alton replied.
Estral nodded in understanding. “Just one more bit,” she said. “Some water music to relax us all.”
Her fingers picked out a series of notes that emerged like the soothing tones of a stream trickling between mossy banks, ripples curling around rocks and beneath ferns. Alton closed his eyes and let the music wash over him. He imagined following the stream to where it flowed into a lake and the music became the give and take of gentle waves. A summer lake with the sun beating down on his shoulders. He strolled along the shore and someone was with him holding his hand. He thought it would be Karigan, but he saw Estral.
A PICNIC BASKET OF VIPERS
They arrived at the encampment the following afternoon. Alton made sure Dale went straight to Leese. The mender pronounced the burn bad, but not as serious as it might have been and proceeded to make a poultice for it. She also advised that Dale spend the night with her for observation, but Dale’s protests were so vociferous that Leese gave in after Estral promised to keep an eye on the Rider.
Alton thought he caught a muttered, “Stubborn Riders,” from Leese before she returned to her tent.
Once Alton reached the secondary encampment, he tended Night Hawk and then headed straight to Tower of the Heavens to tell Merdigen about the previous day’s adventures. By the time he finished, the mage was pacing.
“This is exceedingly alarming,” he said. “The part about the music is interesting and even hopeful, but the rest?” He shook his head.
“What do you make of it?” Alton asked.
“I haven’t the faintest. This is beyond my experience. You saw no sign of Haurris?”
“No, unless that was his skeleton on the floor.”
Merdigen stopped in his tracks and gazed thoughtfully into the dark upper reaches of the tower. “No, I can’t see how. His corporeal self ought to have been burned upon a pyre when he passed on. It’s what we do, and what the keepers were instructed to do to us in the end. Unless . . . unless his corporeal self existed long beyond the rest of us, and even beyond the keepers. It’s not likely, but it’s not inconceivable either.”
Alton yawned and his stomach rumbled. It had been a long couple days.
“I need to consult with the others,” Merdigen said. “And you need to get some food and rest. Do not be concerned if I am not here next time you visit.”
Alton did not need much persuading to call it a day. He left the tower for the sharp air outside, amazed to find afternoon had turned into evening. He headed for the kitchen tent wondering in which tower the mages would assemble. Of course it would only be seven of them since Radiscar and Mad Leaf were cut off by the breach. There was a way for them to circumvent the breach, but it required a lengthy journey. He often wondered if it were an illusionary journey, or if magical projections truly experienced the concepts of time, distance, and danger. The mages seemed to think they could, and that’s all that counted.
At the kitchen tent he filled up on a couple of bowls of stew before returning to his own tent. As he approached it, he was surprised to find the canvas walls aglow with light and soft music bein
g played within. When he folded aside the flap, he discovered Estral sitting on one of his campaign chairs, the lute on her lap, and a lamp at low burn on his table.
“Hello,” she said as he stepped in.
“Hello.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but Dale’s tent was, er, rather busy.”
“Busy?” Alton dropped into the chair across the table from her. “I thought you were supposed to be keeping watch over her.”
Estral made a face. “Her friend, Captain Wallace, is, um, taking care of her.”
“Captain Wallace?” Alton asked, perplexed. “Why would he be taking care of her?”
“Her friend, Captain Wallace,” Estral stressed.
Alton scratched his head. “Friend?”
“More than a friend, I daresay.”
“More than a ... ? Ooh!” Alton’s cheeks warmed. How dense could he be? He had not seen . . . had no idea.
“In fact,” Estral said, “it was darn uncomfortable for me to stay there. Busy, like I said. Usually they go to his cabin.”
Alton coughed. “I see. Wallace? Really?” How had he been so unobservant?
Estral nodded. “I didn’t know where else to go. If it’s a problem, I’ll leave.”
“N-no. Don’t go out into the cold. We could . . . we could talk.”
Estral plucked a series of notes on her lute. “We could. What do you want to talk about?”
“Well ... I—” Alton fumbled about thinking hard for several moments, finally grabbing something out of the air. “The lumber camp. You! I mean, I’d like to hear more about that. When did you leave the lumber camp for Selium?”
Estral stopped playing and furrowed her brow. “When I was six. After an accident.”
Alton groaned inwardly at having managed to pick what was undoubtedly a painful topic. “Karigan mentioned something about that once,” he began hesitantly.
Estral appeared unsurprised. “Yes. I had wandered onto the frozen edges of the river and fell through the ice. I got real sick after, with a bad ear infection. I suppose I’m lucky I suffered no worse thanks to one of the men who saw me go in and pulled me out.”
Alton recalled Karigan telling him the illness had destroyed the hearing in one of Estral’s ears. So hard to believe when she was so fine a musician.
“After that,” she explained, “my parents agreed it was time for me to go to Selium to live with my father. It was safer and more civilized and all that. I’ve been there ever since. Well, that is, until now.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked. “Selium?”
“Well, I’m not much of a traveler—not at all like my father. I’m a homebody. So this has been a bit of an adjustment for me, but a fascinating one.” She smiled.
That smile left Alton feeling much too warm. He glanced away. “Fascinating, eh?”
“Very. It’s good to leave behind all that is comfortable and known every so often. It opens one’s mind to the wide world. You and Dale walking through walls, for instance, is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”
Alton often took for granted how it must look to those without magical abilities. For most people, it certainly was not an everyday occurrence. To his surprise, Estral then commandeered the conversation, asking him about stone working and how, as was the tradition in his clan, he’d been schooled in stonecutting and masonry at a young age. He found himself describing how a stonecutter could sense the grain of the stone and how cutting against the grain could mean an imperfect piece, and how a blacksmith was essential to the process because someone had to keep the tools sharp.
He was flattered by her interest in what he considered the mundane details of his life. Her questions were intelligently framed and not too deeply probing. She appeared to listen to his answers with her full attention.
Suddenly he clamped his mouth shut realizing he’d been talking a lot. About himself. Had Karigan ever taken such an interest in him, or was all the questioning by Estral simply something minstrels were good at?
“What’s wrong?” Estral asked.
“Nothing. We’ve—I’ve just been going on and on.”
“It fills many gaps,” Estral replied. “Karigan naturally did not tell me everything about you.”
“You never did say,” he began quietly, staring into the flame of the lamp, “how Karigan regards me. I’d ... I’d like to know.” He needed to know, but now as his words hung in the air between them, a sense of mortification crept over him that he had even asked. That he’d asked Estral of all people. But who else was there that knew Karigan as well as she?
“I did tell you,” Estral replied. “She cares very much for you.”
“I was hoping. I mean . . .” Now Alton was boiling in his own skin. He looked down at his hands, unable to meet Estral’s gaze. “I thought maybe there was more.”
“When I last saw Karigan, we talked about several things going on her life. Her father, the young Rider she was training, and other matters she told me in confidence and which, as her friend, I won’t betray. In regard to you, she was confused and hurt, but it seemed to me she cared strongly about retaining your friendship.”
Friendship. The word left a sour tang in his gut, but he had to remember Estral had last seen Karigan before he’d apologized. Before his letters.
An awkward silence hung between the two of them. The tent walls rustled, sending misshapen shadows rippling across the canvas. Somewhere in the distance a soldier called out the hour of the watch.
“It’s late,” Estral murmured. “I think I’d better leave.”
“What?”
“It’s getting late. I’d best find someplace to stay for the night.”
“No,” Alton said too sharply. “I mean, please don’t leave. Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Leese’s maybe.”
“That’s all the way to the main encampment and it’s very dark out.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You stay here tonight,” he said. “I’ve got someplace else I can go.” He stood and without another word, so she could not argue, he left his tent, grateful for the cold of night bleeding away the heat burning inside him. He inhaled deeply, surprised by the tautness of his body. He scrubbed his face and strode rapidly for the tower.
Once he was inside, he found the tower chamber empty but illuminated by a soft glow. Merdigen had already left to confer with the other mages. He could be gone for days. Alton was relieved to be alone.
He busied himself by preparing a fire in the big hearth, first laying down kindling, then using flint and steel to ignite it. When a small flame crackled to life, he blew on it to enlarge it, then threw in larger sticks to build the blaze.
As he worked, he thought about Estral Andovian sitting alone in his tent. She awakened something in him that had been absent for a long while, aroused a craving for her company, her attention, her touch, and it was only growing. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but it had been too dangerous to stay. He could not trust himself. Could not trust himself now not to flee the tower, run back to his tent, and immerse himself in her presence, to quell the loneliness within that he hadn’t recognized before.
Those letters he wrote to Karigan must have been in reaction to this loneliness, but her few replies had been circumspect, almost cool, which he’d found frustrating, hurtful. If she wanted to be friends and nothing more, why hadn’t she been plain and just said so?
He paused, leaning against the mantel, considering, trying to imagine how he might feel in her place. He’d been volatile. Would he have wanted to further incense someone already burning with so much anger by telling him something he didn’t want to hear? He’d put her in an impossible position. And truly, as caught up in his own fantasy as he was, he’d found it inconceivable she’d want anything less than a much deeper relationship with him.
He shook his head like a horse with a fly in its ear. Deluded by his own desires he’d built castles of moonbeams. He’d mistaken her concern for their friendship and r
eadiness to forgive him as something more. He laughed harshly and threw another stick onto the fire. Here he was once more caught up in his own little world around which everyone else revolved. How self-centered could he be? For all he knew, there was someone else in her life now, someone he had not heard about.
As he thought about it, another man in Karigan’s life made perfect sense. He’d been stupid not to see it, not to even think of it. She wanted to stay friends with him, but feared telling him the full truth would anger him. Especially because it involved another man. Who was she in love with? One of their fellow Riders? A merchant? Who?
He stood there stock still waiting for the eruption of his own fury, but to his surprise, it did not come as it would have in the past. It just wasn’t in him now. Maybe after all this time he was finally healing from the venomous influence of Blackveil.
A tinge of jealousy did burn inside, but it was subdued. He was more saddened by the loss of what could have been between him and Karigan for he had envisioned it well and in detail. Above all else, however, he was amazed to discover he was ... relieved? Yes, relieved and free. Karigan did not want him the way he had wanted her to want him, and maybe he no longer wanted her that way either.
The revelation set him free. And he liked it.
He had a good notion of how he would use that freedom. The sizzle and pop of the hearthfire became music, the strumming of a lute, perhaps, and in the blaze he saw her face. Not Karigan’s, but Estral Andovian’s. She stirred something deeper in him than Karigan ever had.
But how free was he to pursue Karigan’s friend—her best friend?—a most sacred bond. He groaned thinking that his interference could be like opening a picnic basket of vipers.
He didn’t want to turn Estral against him by seeming to wrong Karigan, yet Karigan had made her decision, unvoiced as it might be. Somehow he’d have to work around her. Karigan, after all, was not here. She was not here to be hurt, nor had she made any effort to lay claim to him. He was free to do as he wished and so was she. There should be no reason for him to feel guilty about moving on, and one couldn’t help to whom one was attracted. Still, he’d have to go carefully. He’d—
Blackveil: Book Four of Green Rider Page 31
