Ghost in the Yew

by Blake Hausladen

  They were far too quiet. The despair of death and defeat, the shock of Geart’s song, the rigor of combat, and the suddenness of our victory had come with too fevered a pace. I worried they waited for me to speak to them. Even in victory I was not built for a crowd. I was saved by a slow-growing cheer that began atop the wall. Darmia and her sister were there in the mass of them, whistling and whooping. The sound of it multiplied quickly, and in moments they found their throats and roared.

  I waved in Leger. He left Geart with Avin and led the Chaukai across. I waved Selt and Fana in as well.

  “Report,” I ordered them.

  Our lieutenant was first to reply. “The brothers and a piece of the town’s militia have the conscripts trapped in the enclosure between the palisade and the keep. They seem happy enough to not be dying for now, but it won’t be long before they start getting ideas. The brushfire in the trench will be out soon.”

  Sahin said, “Kuren was spotted fleeing up the road. We should be after him. The gold that paid for all of this may be out there somewhere, too.”

  “He is not going anywhere—we have their ships,” Dia replied. She summarized her adventure along the coast and the deal she had struck with the Tracian captain. It was difficult to believe, but Gern’s father kept nodding and added enough details to reveal her humility. We were all smiling by the end of it, and much of the urgency went out of me. Kuren was finished.

  “Sergeant Furstundish,” I ordered, “collect the heads of the Hessier and get them to the harbor so this Tracian captain will not doubt our victory. Bring our harbormaster with you. I will want his opinion of this man before I sign anything with him.”

  To Sahin I said, “Get the greencoats and villagers organized and start rounding up the enemy before they scatter too far into the forest—and bring me Kuren.”

  “With your permission, I’ll take General Oklas and his officers along. It should make the job easier.”

  “Agreed,” I nodded and added, “And please, Sahin, bring back Merit and the rest of our dead.”

  Sahin bowed low to that, and Dia squeezed my arm warmly before she added, “And be on the lookout for more help from the villages. A few hundred went the long way around through Hippoli. They should arrive tomorrow.”

  I turned to Gern. “Lieutenant, get your men organized around that makeshift prison. Make the space as ready as you can to house all of the captured Tracians. Enlist Eargram and his jailors. They know the business better than any of us.”

  The Chaukai rushed to see it all done, leaving Dia and I alone with Leger, Fana, and Selt. The rumble of Fell hooves gently shook the ground.

  Selt said, “Dia’s idea to offer your pledge of service to some of these men is very sound. We should get busy drawing up the offers you will make to the general and captain.”

  Leger asked, “What will you do with Kuren and the rest?”

  “Too early to say,” I replied, “and too early, I think, to consider offering these men anything. What of Geart? How does he seem?”

  “He won’t respond to questions, so I cannot judge, but Avinda says he is doing well enough. And you? Will you return to the keep?”

  It wasn’t entirely a question, and the appearance of my bodyguards atop the palisade reinforced his point.

  Dia thanked Leger, and the four of us left him to command the surrounds.

  The view of the town as we crossed was heartening. The practice field was empty, and on the far side, the people of Urnedi moved with purpose. I spotted Erom directing traffic.

  “We should go speak to them.”

  “With the stink of Hessier on you and me drenched in my own blood?” Dia frowned. “No. The mayor will have things well in hand. We have an appointment with hot water. Now.”

  “Fana and I will get things started for us in the hall. Join us there?” Selt asked.

  I agreed, and Dia set me into a bath. She scrubbed and scoured while our clothes burned upon a fresh fire. I was dry and well-dressed before I knew it. Dia was still naked. The long white scar upon her right breast was startling. We traced our fingertips along it.

  “I am sorry about your horse,” I whispered.

  “Clever had a good life here. Nowhere else could he have sired so many.”

  “Or eaten so many good apples.”

  That earned me a smile, and she leaned her head upon my shoulder for a time.

  Someone knocked. She flinched and wiped her eyes. “Who is there?”

  “It’s Pemini. I am here with Umera. We brought food.”

  The smell of the stew and fresh bread carried under the door. Dia covered up and said to me, “I’ll stay here until everything is resolved with the Tracians. Be to your business, Prince of Edonia.”

  I nodded reluctantly and left her with her friends.

  Down in the hall, Selt leaned over the broad map of Zoviya Fana had first shown me. On the table next to it, Fana stood over two freshly-brushed sheets of vellum and the stack of ledgers from the census. One lay open to a blank page.

  It seemed they had both already moved on to other tasks. Before I could choose what I wanted to hear about first, Selt pointed at the map. “Who else could Parsatayn have tried to unseat with a late season attack?”

  Fana joined me in an examination of the map. I was slow to his line of thinking. He had placed gold coins on six of Zoviya’s fifteen provinces: Enhedu, Trace, Aderan, and three provinces in the east.

  “Other than me, you mean?”

  “No. He already has your vote. He wants you dead so you can’t take it away from him. These six are all under his control.”

  I felt very dim not having thought my way to it before. I added a gold coin to Heneur. “If Parsatayn gained control over Heneur’s arilas this season, he needs just one more vote in order to have majority control of the Council.”

  “Yes. I think this is why Bendent has left you alone. He is facing a challenge from Parsatayn and hopes you can upset the chancellor’s plans.”

  “The chancellor’s plans?” Fana asked.

  Selt explained it better than I could have. “We were wrong to think Bendent and Parsatayn are allies. It seems more likely that they are competing to see which can replace Barok’s father first. Both need control of the Council to be successful. Parsatayn is doing everything he can to get control of eight of the fifteen votes so he can become chairman and be in a position to decide who takes the crown when Lord Vall is killed. Bendent, in an effort to counter him, has left Barok alone with the quiet hope he can take back Enhedu’s seat and remove Parsatayn from the Council entirely.”

  “Don’t we also think Bendent is responsible for the murder of the princes?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “But his plans were upset by the survival of Crown Prince Evand. Until he can get to him and make Yarik the crown prince, he needs to fend off Parsatayn.”

  She tapped on Enhedu. “It was Bendent’s idea that your father banish you here and make you an arilas.” Her thought was remarkable, and we both nodded. She added, “He must be eagerly waiting for you to ask that Enhedu’s vote be restored. He may even have the votes lined up to approve your petition.”

  I asked Selt, “How many votes do you think he controls?”

  “Hard to say. A vote to restore Enhedu would change a great deal. The votes Bendent relies upon to keep his chairmanship may not support such a move. Your father’s support and today’s victory, together with the terrific increase in your tax revenues this spring, could be enough.”

  “What led you to this?” I asked him happily. “I thought we were going to write a few new pledges for a general and an admiral.”

  “We have already finished those.” He pointed absently at the fresh pages, turned back to the map, and replaced the gold coin on Trace with a silver one. “I was wondering what we might do with Kuren.”

  “Other than skin him alive and stake him to the ground, you mean? What is the silver for?”

  “Votes you control,” he stated. “You might consider
pardoning Kuren, if I might be so bold to suggest it. Collect his signature upon a confession of his crimes against the Yentif today and let him return home Enhedu’s puppet. We take his fleet, his slaves, his timber business, and control of his vote upon the council. Then blame today’s events upon more rogue Hessier.”

  I was convinced. I pointed at the open census ledger. “Dare I ask?”

  “The conscripted churls you will take from Kuren,” Fana said. “You should free them and offer them lives here—principally Geart and Avin. Geart’s jailor friends can tell us which of their number are guilty of real crimes, and Sahin can sort out their skills and where they could best be used.”

  Selt added, “You might also consider offering Kuren’s timbermen their old jobs and sending his levies and regulars home with their arms and whatever gold Kuren promised them for coming to Enhedu.”

  “You think my relationship with Trace worth so much?”

  “I do. You would let the survivors leave with their pride and aim the ire of the bereaved at Kuren and the Hessier. The timber market in Almidi will not be worth much to you if we are hated.”

  I pointed at Almidi. “I should send Onmar to run the market there—hire the best of what’s left of Kuren’s army to guard our interests,” I said and added, “I wonder if Almidi celebrates any winter events we could contribute to.”

  “Erom would know,” Fana said.

  “Right,” I agreed. “Let’s get them up here.”

  “Excellent,” Selt said with a smile. “Best, perhaps, to get it all in writing now—make it seem as though you were prescient enough to have planned it all before the Tracians set sail.”

  This last thought I liked most of all. We sent summons, and the conversation that followed with the mayor and our merchant broadened our notions for the evening considerably. Others were summoned. Selt’s bookkeepers were soon busily working on a dozen documents in the gallery alcoves, and by the time word arrived that Kuren had been captured, everything was prepared.

  96

  Druid Geart Goib

  “Get up, druid,” Dia said to me while the din of battle still wrung in my ears.

  I did not know the word, but the way she said it gave me strength. I did as she asked.

  The world seemed so dim. The great vein of silver was a thin thread once more, and the shadow that veiled the world was diminished, now little more than a diluted soup.

  The rumble of horses drew me back but only briefly. Dia moved on somewhere. Avin stood with me for a time. Then Leger and others. They said words, but I could not hear them. It was difficult to stand. I stumbled, and someone helped me sit upon the ground. Avin sang to me. The blue warmth woke me, but it felt rather like trying to stand with just one leg.

  I considered the sick film that hung about the world, and dreading its taste, I took a sip of it. I flinched from the rancid bite, but the world came into focus.

  The sun was down, the last of its color leaving the sky. Avin and a proper half company of men stood guard around me—guarding me. I would have given this extraordinary turn more thought, but the ragged field beyond was littered with the dead. The warmth of their bodies added vapor to the slow-forming fog. The mists stirred more than it should. I stood to get a better look but stumbled. My limbs were too heavy. The cool air of the gathering twilight did not help. I shivered.

  Someone spoke of a blanket and a fire. It was a long trudge, but I managed to walk back through the broken wall to one of the wide fire pits still burning on the far side.

  “You should come inside,” someone said.

  I might have agreed but did not like the idea of being so confined. I craved the open air, said something similar, and lay myself down. I vaguely recall Avin coaxing me between blankets. The young night aged, and I found sleep.

  The crackling roar of the campfire stirred me. My guardians were fast asleep around other campfires that circled mine. Avin stood before the bright flames that gripped the fresh log he had stacked upon the overfed fire.

  He turned when he heard me stir and asked, “Are you well?”

  “Thank you, teacher. Yes, I am well. I was going to ask the same of you.”

  He sat beside me, and we were quiet for a time. Barok’s town was silent. The warmth soothed me, and I understood why Avin had built up the fire. It was something a free man could do.

  Avin, though, was troubled. He eventually asked, “Geart, the magic you made, I—I don’t understand. What have you become?”

  “The girl called me a druid. Do you know the word?”

  “No. But I believe we may have come into the service of the Spirit of the Earth. These men serve Her. It is like I am dreaming. I did not believe you when you said we would escape.”

  “And I did not believe you when you told me where the magic comes from. I felt Her, Avin, just like you said I would—felt Her watching me when I called to the horses. You were right.”

  “Did She teach you these things? The song that healed so many?”

  “Perhaps. There is something there, a whispering, but I cannot explain it. I needed to know the word for horse, so I knew it. I needed to heal men instead of a man, so I changed the song. I do not know how I learned the words.”

  Avin blinked at me but eventually managed to say, “I would ask you to tell me the words you have learned but worry they would kill me.”

  I scratched at the headache that nagged behind my ears and nodded my head. I started to tell him how I’d swam in the darkness and used its power, but stopped myself for fear of what he would say.

  Avin stared into the fire. “We are free now, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” I said to him. “You can make a place for yourself with these people if you would like or move on. We are free.”

  He let go of a tear and smiled. The sight put much life back into me. He settled onto blankets of his own, and after we bid each other a goodnight, my friend fell fast asleep.

  My headache was slow to subside. I could not sleep. The noise of the day still buzzed in my ears. I moved close to the fire to try and warm away the pain. The ache subsided, but as it did a familiar whisper tickled my ears.

  ‘Druid. Druid, come to me …’

  I stood, left my guardians lay, and started walking in the moonlight. The forest took me in like a warm embrace. I came to a halt and stared at them as if they had appeared from thin air. I felt at home, and this voice—it was somehow a part of them. It was a tree that spoke to me. These were her kin, she was close, and I obeyed.

  I reached a bridge during the warming dawn, and on the far side I entered an ancient forest, vast and regal. The mighty trees rose like arms of the earth reaching up to catch the sky. I walked amongst the red, shaken limbs to the colossus standing centermost among them.

  “Are you the Spirit of the Earth?” I asked uncertainly.

  ‘Welcome, druid,’ a powerful voice responded, full of gracious humor. ‘No, I am not She. I have been called many things: the Mother Yew, the Great Lady, the First Tree. You may address me as you please.’

  “Hello to you,” I said and bowed clumsily. “My name is Geart Goib. Your call, Great Lady, has it been your voice in my head all these seasons?”

  ‘Yes. Since the blood of the Vesteal walked again in these woods.’

  “Barok?”

  ‘Yes, druid. Barok is an heir to two thrones.’

  So many mysteries were unraveled by it, but each seemed mundane to the trees around me. I looked to them and began to see differences—an extra aspect to some. It was the female trees that were different but not just because of the red berries they bore. The longer I studied them, the more I saw.

  “Great magic affects you and your daughters. Are you injured?”

  ‘No,’ she said, her happy humor gone. ‘Men have been entombed within us—the last king of Edonia and his kin. They sleep well this night. Your coming brings us much peace. I had begun to despair. No one else has heard my call.’

  “No one?”

  ‘No. And fortu
nate we are that you did, child. The Earth is threatened. She sleeps while the Shadow grows strong. But only you have come. Only you have survived with strength enough for the task. And strong you are, so I am left with a terrible question and must beseech your aid. Will you help me save the world from the cold end that comes?’

  The sadness in her voice was old. She was ill from the weight of it. The earth was weak, and the lonely tree had no way to wake or warn Her. She knew no peace.

  I closed my eyes as the words pressed into me. My long way to this place was somehow only the beginning. I thought to pray to Bayen for strength. I sank to my knees and bowed my head instead, trying with all my will to rightly ascribe this power to the Spirit of the Earth. I stayed silent for a long time. I had lived with their lies my whole life—had obeyed every order of officers and priests. To be asked, instead, by one such as she—her request sank strong roots deep into my soul.

  “I don’t know how to take all of the world upon my shoulders, Great Lady, but I will if you say it must be done. What will rouse the Spirit of the Earth?”

  I felt her relief, the relief of the forest, and that of the dead men bound inside. Her reply came slowly. ‘A song, Geart. A song must be sung that names all things and gives new life to the world.’

  “If you teach me, Great Lady, I will sing to our mother.”

  ‘I will, but neither your voice nor mine is enough to wake her. Many are needed. You must learn well and find others who can be taught to sing.’

  “There is one who came with me,” I said excitedly. “A healer—a former priest of Bayen if you can forgive it. He says he is but average, but his voice—it is what first stirred me. Could he learn it, too? Could he become a druid?”

  ‘I have heard this man’s song. It is beautiful, yes, but so very weak. Bayen’s priesthood will be a barren place for you to search for those who are capable. The Hessier allow only the weakest voices to light a candle to their lies. I doubt any of Bayen’s priests could survive singing even a portion of the Song of the Earth. You have felt the pain.’