by Lee Ramsay
He frowned at the pair. Birth had occurred within the past few minutes, which explained the woman’s ability to manifest her magic so strongly; her natural connection to the weave had strengthened with the need to protect herself, and her child, at their most vulnerable. Delivery had eased her grip on the magic...as had her hemorrhaging. By the copious pool of blood pooling on the bedding and dripping to the floor, he did not expect the woman to survive much longer.
Two hundred thirty-nine, a detached portion of his mind said.
“You...”
There was no mistaking the anger and fear in the woman’s voice as she stared, glassy-eyed, at the old man. Currents of energy swirled around him as she reached for the weave, but she was too weak to grasp the filaments and weave them together. Her pallor deepened as she struggled with her weakness and failed.
“I know you. You...did this.”
The old man shook his head, and made no move toward the bed. “What befell your village happened before I arrived.”
“You lie.”
“Madam, if you know who I am, then you know I have no cause to lie – at least about this.”
Pain contorted her face as her belly’s distended swell contracted. Blood spurted from her body as she struggled to expel the afterbirth, but nothing emerged. The contraction passed after a moment, and she sagged against her pillows. Consciousness slipped away with a flutter of her eyelids, but she soon roused. Her breathing was shallow and ragged.
“If you did not do this, then you had help.”
“I have never needed assistance before, nor do I need it now.” The old man leaned against the wall and regarded her with a steady gaze. “I hoped you might know who was responsible.”
“To thank them?”
“To determine if an extant rival line exists. Our fragmented kin are as likely to band together as turn on each other.”
The woman glowered at him as her fists clenched on the bed. “A summary which includes you, kinslayer. Well, why are you waiting? Finish me off.”
“There is no need for me to do so. Your body is doing an admirable job.”
“Then why do you remain? To gloat over another of your kin breathing her last?”
“You have a son, and he needs a name.” The old man let out a slow breath. “Heartless as you may believe me to be, I can be empathetic. You have only a few moments of life remaining. I will not deprive you of what little comfort your child will bring.”
Her tongue moistened her lips. “You must be delighted, finding one to end so young.”
“I take no joy in what I do, madam; it is something which must be done. Name your son.”
“So you can add his name to the tally dead by your hand?”
He shook his head and folded his arms over his narrow chest. “Every child deserves to hear their name from the lips of their mother at least once.”
Silence, broken only by her rattling breath, lingered between them for several. At length, her green eyes fell to the child lying on the bloody bedding. Her voice softened as it caught in her throat. “I name him Tristan.”
“A strong name.”
“He is born of tumult. It seems a fitting one.”
“I am familiar with its meaning.”
She lifted her eyes to the old man. “What do you mean to do to him?”
His steel-gray eyes lingered on the child for several long, silent moments. A frown crossed his face, knitting his brow as his slender fingers undid his cloak’s toggles. He draped the brown wool over a nearby chair and remained with his back turned toward her for a moment longer. Steel hissed against leather as he drew a triangular dagger from a sheath strapped to his belt at the small of his back.
Candlelight glittered along the blade’s edge as he paced toward the bed. “I will do what I believe is necessary.”
Chapter 2
Summer, 1412
Of all Dorishad’s seasons, Tristan hated summer the least. There were always chores to tend, and there remained plenty of work to keep his hands occupied. Animals needed feeding and grooming, and their stalls required mucking. Roofs damaged by winter snow and ice required reshingling, and many of the homes and outbuildings needed fresh coats of whitewash. The split-rail fences dividing the hamlet’s fields and orchards were always in need of repair, but most of the work was completed before summer’s heat arrived.
With his daily chores done, his time was his own. So long as he did not leave the hamlet’s borders, marked by a waist-high stone wall, he could do what he wished. The problem, as he often lamented, was that there was not much for him to do.
The land contained within those walls covered about four square miles, which gave him a goodly bit of ground to roam. Dorishad’s shallow stream wound through the northern orchards, pooling in a deep pond near the hamlet’s center before continuing to the southern wall. The hamlet’s western pastures had few shade trees, one of which Agmer – the massive black bull who serviced the dairy cows – claimed as the undisputed lord and master. Other than that monster, the sheep, goats, draft horses, and other livestock were more than happy to receive scratches from attentive hands.
Alfalfa, wheat, corn, barley, and rye crops destined for sale and trade dominated most of the settlement’s southern reaches. Vegetable gardens and berry plots grew closer around the homes clustered around the hamlet’s commons and provided most of the inhabitants’ food. There was little in either section to distract his often bored mind. Orchards and fruit groves commanded the hamlet’s northern lands, and their tame and orderly rows offered little to occupy or interest him.
Tristan preferred the Dorishad’s eastern expanse, where maple and nut groves grew thick. Few people came to this part of the settlement, save when it was time to harvest, and he often sought escape here. There was a wildness to this part of Dorishad and the nearby oak groves, and he frequently imagined wandering the forest’s depths on some grand adventure. When he spared monsters and soldiers from being slain by a stick pressed into service as a sword, he leaned his elbows on the low stone wall bordering the hamlet and stared into the actual forest beyond to dream of someplace far from where he stood.
The unfortunate thing about his home was that there was only so much to it. After fifteen years, he had explored every inch. He wanted to leap the wall, follow the stream that watered the hamlet, and explore the surrounding forest. Traveling with the woodsmen as they hunted deer and trapped animals for their pelts had its appeal as well. He would have gladly gone with the woodcutters to harvest and haul hardwood for the shops where craftsmen made the furniture sold in the autumn.
Of course, doing so would have violated the fundamental rule governing his life – not to step beyond Dorishad’s border. The dictate was the least flexible of those Anthoun – his ward father and a learned sage – had given the boy.
More than exploring beyond the wall, his truest desire was to attend the Harvest Festival in nearby Dresden Township. One of four seasonal faires, the autumn festival was reputably the most exciting. People from the other hamlets, homesteads, and isolated farms in the District of Corarma attended the Harvest Festival to trade goods, share news, feast, and dance. People even came from other parts of the Kingdom of Shreth, allied neighboring kingdoms in the Hegemony of Ravvos, and even lands beyond the Hegemony’s borders.
Tristan had never been allowed to go. Only fifty miles away, the town may as well have been on the other side of the world. For that matter, five feet beyond the hamlet’s wall was as unreachable as the silver-white face of the moon, Theragus. He hungered to see the sights the Harvest Festival offered and had often considered daring to break the sternest of Anthoun’s rules to do so.
He dared not break his ward father’s commandment not to step foot past Dorishad’s perimeter. The three times he had done so, his other ward father, Dougan, had tanned his hide with a vigorously wielded belt while the old man looked on. Tristan had not dared cross that line since he was nine summers old.
All this ran through his mind for
the hundredth, or perhaps thousandth, time this year alone. The branches over his head were gaining their autumnal blaze of gold and crimson; the harvest would soon the end of his relative freedom as the harvest began. He was more irked than usual with this season’s change; most of his peers would attend the Harvest Festival, though many had been going since they were younger. Desperate to go, he had asked Anthoun for permission to attend that morning. As anticipated, his ward father denied his request and tutted him out of his library domain in the manor house.
“Another year,” Tristan sighed, swinging a thin branch against a maple hard enough to snap it. Tossing the broken stick aside, he leaned against the tree with his arms crossed and heel propped against the trunk. “I’ll leave this place someday, and I don’t care if Anthoun likes it or not.”
There was, of course, no reply, though he had the impression the wind sighed in sympathy. Loneliness was a common thing for him, especially the older he grew.
The other boys did not like the fact that he was different and therefore excluded him. For that matter, most of the adults regarded him as an oddity. He was taller than many of the hamlet’s grown men, but the differences did not stop there. Where Dorishad’s people possessed light brown skin, Tristan’s paleness and smattered freckles stood in stark contrast. Where most Ravvosi had straight hair in dark brown or black tones, his hair fell well past his shoulders in loose auburn waves. The eyes through which he looked upon the world were the green of pine needles in shadow, whereas everyone else’s was as rich as moist earth.
In a society valuing family and a web of kin, he was an orphan; his appearance furthered the gap between him and the others, marking him as having no blood relations. While few cared that Dorishad’s master and his soldier-turned-farmer consort were lovers, their relationship set the youth further outside the social norm. Worse, he stood to inherit Dorishad on the old man’s death – provided the sage ever legally adopted him, which he had been promising to do for years. Regardless of the inheritance’s legality, some resented a nameless orphan standing to become a wealthy man. Jakkan loathed Tristan; all too often, the blacksmith’s son led Dorishad’s other young men and women in tormenting him.
“I don’t belong here,” he said as he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree’s solidness. He never thought it strange to talk to himself, for it always felt like someone was listening. “I wish I could go to the Harvest Festival. I might meet someone who doesn’t think me strange or treat me like an outcast. Perhaps I’d find someone my age who might want to talk to me.”
He knew he was taking the situation far too seriously. While Jakkan and his friends – especially the twins Mikken and Beren, and Ryjan – preferred to ignore him, the girls noticed him. Tristan was unsure if this was an improvement. Where once they tolerated his presence, they now evaluated him concerning the betterment of their situation. Though often excluded from their conversations – which had matured as their bodies grew sleeker, rounder, and did things to their clothing that he appreciated – his curiosity often allowed him opportunities to eavesdrop on discussions much like one overheard the day before.
“What of Tristan?” Lyona asked the group of seven mid-adolescent young women. A few months younger than he, she was the daughter of one of the extended Tejedor families residing in Dorishad. She was lovely, with eyes a rich golden brown to match her waist-length hair. Her bosom was generous in a way he – and, in truth, most of the other young men – could not help but appreciate. She was hopelessly in love with the young woodsman, Ryjan; everyone knew it – except, of course, the object of her affections.
“What of him?” sniffed Rhynna Curtidor, daughter of Dorishad’s leatherworker, as she held court over the young women. She stood to be the third wealthiest person in the hamlet, with only Jakkan and Tristan richer. Shorter than the others, many considered the young woman the prettiest of her peers. She habitually looked down her nose at everyone, but Tristan often felt like she viewed him as dung clinging to the bottom of her shoe. “I suppose he would be interesting to take for a tumble, but why would anyone lower themselves to bedding an orphan?”
“He is Anthoun’s heir,” Alazne, one of the plainer girls, said as she wound a ball of yarn.
“That remains to be seen, as the old sodomite appears to be in no hurry to adopt him. Besides, what strange notions do you think he has picked up living with two men who like to bugger each other?” Rhynna laughed as though her comment was funny, oblivious to the others’ forced amusement. “You would do well to avoid Tristan, lest you risk marrying someone without an honest family name.”
Shunned by the young men and women his age, he felt like a ghost everyone avoided.
Tristan raked his hands through his hair pushed aside the depressing, repetitive thoughts which had plagued him for years. Patting the maple, he set off toward the hamlet’s heart to tend his afternoon chores. “Thanks for listening, as always,” he said over his shoulder. “Not that you care.”
SUMMER’S EASY DAYS transitioned to the harvest’s hard work as the days cooled and grew shorter. Nearly all Dorishad residents rose before dawn, the younger children tending to the feeding and milking of the animals while the older pruned trees and plucked the last fruits and nuts from the orchards.
Tristan worked with the other men, mowing grain crops with a scythe and helping put the fields to sleep for the winter. It was dull, dirty work which blistered his hands and put kinks in his muscles, and a new form of monotony over younger years when he could have escaped to the maple groves to drive taps into the trunks. He missed the easier work; at least there, the turning leaves provided shade against the sunlight. Out in the fields, his shirt stripped off and tucked into his belt, his pale skin reddened under a film of dirt turned muddy by sweat. Freckles exploded across his face, chest, and shoulders.
With each passing day, the autumnal cloak draping the woods around Dorishad grew more vibrant. Despite the beauty, he found it difficult to swallow his sullenness as preparations began for the Harvest Festival.
Dougan cursed and worked with Herran – Dorishad’s blacksmith and Jakkan’s father – to repair the wheels and tend the wagons’ springs for the journey to Dresden Township. Daily the wagons grew more ready, adding to the youth’s irritability as he and the other young men carried harvested crops to granaries.
Autumn’s first brisk day signaled it was time to load the wagons. Dougan pressed every able-bodied person into service, hauling bales of processed wool from the textile mill or carrying finished leathers from the tannery. Crates of preserves were loaded into a pair of wagons, while others took on barrels of whisky, ale, and hard ciders. Finished furniture emerged from the woodshops and was packed. Grain crops filled the beds of other wagons, which would be used as samples to secure orders from neighboring settlements incapable of growing their own. With its small forge built into the back and a cramped sleeping compartment, the smithy wagon was the last to emerge from the storehouse behind the blacksmith’s shop. Several other wagons were also prepared, though these would transport people rather than goods.
It took fewer than three days to load Dorishad’s goods and cover them with canvas tarps. Draft horses were harnessed in the fourth day predawn light. As the sun crested the eastern horizon, some ninety people – more than half of Dorishad’s residents – set off with a clatter of wheels, laughter, and excited conversation.
Tristan followed the caravan with his eyes until it reached the end of the tree-lined lane and turned northward. Those who remained in Dorishad were old enough to prefer the comfort of their homes, the sickly, or mothers with children at their breast or waddling around on unsteady feet. Children as young as ten summers of age had gone to the festival, along with everyone his age. No matter how he begged and bargained with Anthoun, his ward father refused without explaining his reasoning.
He kicked a rock and sent it bouncing. “Someone had to stay behind to haul water and cut wood, I suppose. I can’t wait to hear about how much fun I did
n’t have. Again.”
Chapter 3
Tristan did not hear about what he missed at the Harvest Festival after all. The weather turned two days after the caravan departed for Dresden Township, bringing a hard freeze. Three days later, the first snowstorm arrived with a windy roar, stripping trees of brilliant foliage and draping the hamlet in a snowy blanket.
Wrapped in a light cloak and with a scarf pulled up over his nose and mouth, Dougan put him to work clearing walkways between the houses, outbuildings, and the privy. The sun emerged from behind the clouds, its faint heat combining with the warmth rising through the houses’ shingled roofs to dislodge snow and send it tumbling to the ground – most often in places he had already shoveled clear.
“I hate winter,” he muttered, heaving the heavy, wet whiteness off the path.
On the one hand, Tristan supposed he was grateful for the snowstorm as it gave him something to do besides sit in his room and stare out the window. On the other, he could have been enjoying himself had he been allowed to attend the Harvest Festival. He might have managed to buy a tankard of ale as minstrels played reels and possibly find a pretty girl with whom to dance. By all accounts, the festival was a wicked fun place where young people from around the region met, mingled, and began courting.
His mood soured the more he thought about it. Chill air froze the sweat on his face and made his lungs burn as he leaned on the shovel’s handle and glowered at the wandering pathways he had managed to dig thus far. “We’ll probably have to do this again before too much longer.”
