“What about tonight, sir?”
“Tonight we will do as we always do. Today and tomorrow, however, we will rest as much as we can, to be fresh when they attack.”
“And … that? Him?”
Meddthal looked at the table, at Filis’s face staring upward from the top of the box. It felt—it was—indecent to leave it there like any other box. But he could not close it into the storeroom … or put it outside …
One of the youngest men, Dannrith, spoke up. “Sir, someone dyin’ or dead should have a candle and someone by. They wouldn’t of give him a candle … We should.”
A scrape of boots on the floor as others considered that, and a low murmur, then they all looked at Meddthal. The silence lengthened as Meddthal tried to think, in a mind suddenly fuzzy, whether to say yes or no, where to put the thing, in here or in his quarters or …
“I’ll stay with ’im,” said another. And then a chorus of offers.
That settled it. “In here, then,” Meddthal said. “Bring a trestle and a blanket. We’ll do this right.”
Very shortly the grisly box had been placed at one end of a plank, with a blanket laid flat below it and Meddthal’s best cloak spread over it, hiding the face and making, with the blanket, a pretense of a body laid straight for burial. Though it was not yet sundown, they lit a candle, and one at a time, as if for a new death, each spoke a word about Filis, for all had at least seen him, if they had not known him.
Then Meddthal sent half of them to bed, to be wakened at full dark, and the rest took up their duties except for the watcher. At each turn of the glass another took his place. At full dark, when all assembled, the hearth had been swept clean and a new fire laid but not lit. Only the feeble glow of one candle outlined the shape on the board and the face of the one who sat beside him. The others turned their faces from the light and began the long night’s watch for Sunreturn.
When it was Meddthal’s turn to sit beside his brother’s remains, he wondered if his father would send for him or for the box alone.
Jeddrin, Count of Andressat, looked at the face of his dead son and wept. Rage burned in his heart, but grief drowned it for the moment, and he made no attempt to hold back the tears. Let them fall; let them flow; let them be emptied like a bronze bowl so the flame of vengeance could burn higher.
When the tears ended, he looked more closely. Honoring the dead, especially those who died in war, required the mourners to see and respect every mark life had made on them. “We’ll give him his rightful colors,” he said, and began unwinding the complex knot that the braided hair had been coiled into. “He’ll not go under earth wearing that scum’s.” After the knot came the braids themselves. Three braids; his sons Narits and Tamir, Narits recalled from Cha earlier in the year and Tamir recalled from the south ward, each took one, and he took the last. Deft fingers unbraided the hair, pulled out the black and green ribbons.
Narits finished first. “You’ll want just one braid, won’t you, Father?” he asked.
“Yes—we’ll have to comb it all.”
Narits took up the comb. “There’s blood,” he said.
“Of course there is,” Tamir said. Next to Filis, he had been the hothead of the sons. “What did you expect—”
“The hair’s clean,” Narits said. “They must have washed it, or this didn’t bleed much—” He had parted the hair and was peering closely at the scalp. “It looks … almost like … fingernails dug in. Not scratches.”
The others had finished now and leaned over to look.
“Let me finish,” Narits said. “I think there are more marks …”
“Of pain,” Tamir said, turning away. “What does it matter?”
Narits ignored him and ran the comb through the hair, parting it every half fingerwidth to look for marks. “It’s code,” he said finally. “Like the old scrolls. Father, can you read it?”
Andressat looked. “Not like this. Can you copy it, Narits, one mark at a time, onto paper?”
“Yes, Father.”
When he had done that, it was clear that the marks—each a slightly curved line—formed a definite design. “Alured’s work,” Tamir said. “Maybe an evil spell?”
“No,” Andressat said. “No, it’s Filis’s.” His voice wavered. “He … managed to give us warning. He must have known—” He cleared his throat and went on. “Filis knew what was coming. With only his fingernails to use—knowing Alured was going to send me his skin—he used them where Alured would not see. Under his hair. Perhaps Alured told him he would leave the hair to make sure we recognized him. This—in the old language of Aare, the old writing—tells us that Alured is controlled by a demon inside him, a demon who looks out his eyes at times and has a different voice. That is like the stories from the north of the Verrakaien who stole bodies.”
He looked around at his family and his most trusted servants. “Think on this, any of you who thought Filis might be a traitor. Captive, alone, tormented, yet he thought of us—of saving us—and tore his own skin to warn us. Think what courage that took.” He bent down and kissed the hair, then the forehead, and finally the lips. “My son, you deserve every honor that we can bestow on you. You will be remembered as long as our lives endure. And you will not go under the earth but be borne aloft in Camwyn’s Fire, as if with a dragon for your mount. From Esea came all life; back to Esea you shall go.”
“By Camwyn’s Claw,” everyone responded. “It shall be done.”
“Though first I must write to the north,” Andressat said. “Lord Arcolin must know of this, and his king. Perhaps his captains in Valdaire can get word to the north even in winter.”
Two days later, the funeral pyre stood ready on the cliff just outside the walls of Cortes Andres. On it lay the box, now drenched in oil, and in the box was Filis’s badge. “If it is Camwyn’s will that this fire may send every bit of Filis left below, wherever it may be, on the same smoke rising to the sky, then I invoke Camwyn’s Curse,” Andressat said. “By the Claw and the dragon who bore it, and by the power of Camwyn and the dragon together, I invoke it.”
When they lit the fire, the flames roared up to the sky as if drawn by the air itself and burned the pyre completely; white ash lifted and swirled like snowflakes. Then far, far above, a white line of fire raced across the sky, from above Cortes Andres to the east, and vanished.
“Camwyn consented,” Andressat said. He felt hollow of a sudden, and then a pain as if a horse had kicked him in the chest took all his breath, and he knew he was falling.
Cortes Immer
A servant’s screams brought the Duke of Immer from his study to his bedroom to find the bedside rug—patched together of skin from Filis Andressat, the Count of Cilwan, Cilwan’s wife, and several other people he’d had flayed—in flames, flames that quickly spread to the bedclothes. More servants ran in with pitchers of water, but the flames could not be stopped until every flammable thing in the room had burnt to ash: stinking, black, oily ash that clung to and dirtied whatever it touched.
“How did you start the fire?” he asked the servant.
“I—I didn’t, lord. I swear—I was sweeping when it—it burst into flames. Then I screamed.”
“Nonsense. Leather doesn’t burst into flames by itself. You dropped a lighted spill if you didn’t start it by intention. And the way the bed burned—what did you do, splash oil on the bed?”
“No! I didn’t!”
He made a gesture, and one of the guards ran her through. Even as she fell, a commotion broke out in the courtyard below. Immer looked out the window to see a fire in the kennels. He looked back at the guards. “It seems we have more than one firestarter. See to it.”
Some time later the guard reported that the dogs in question had been seen to burst into flame while in the dog yard. Nothing burned but the dogs … and not all the dogs. Only the dogs that had been fed human flesh. Immer shrugged. Someone had thrown a curse at him, clearly. Given the time of year—could it have been the old man, Andressat? He hadn�
�t thought the man had that much power—any power at all, in fact. He’d never been spoken of as a mage. But he claimed to be bred of Old Aare, a true line, so perhaps—perhaps he had been hiding it all these years.
Ferran Andressat, heir to the title, stood watch over his father’s body turn and turn with the others. No attack had come after all, and he had called Meddthal in from his guard post for the mourning. They must all be there; in the absence of a king to confirm any of them in the title, they used a ceremony passed down in the family for generations. But that would come after placing Jeddrin’s body in the appointed cave. Until then … they stood watch.
While he watched, each of his brothers had other chores to complete. Narits received visitors, then ushered them one by one into the chamber where Jeddrin’s body lay. Meddthal organized the household for the reception that would follow the funeral, and Tamir organized the funeral itself. Ferran had given them those assignments. No one had argued.
As the day wore on and he took his turn at his own assignment—reviewing the status of his father’s governance—servants brought meals he ate, out of necessity, but did not really taste. He knew his father had insisted on the need for nobles to work, but he had not realized how much of the work of managing Andressat and its outlying lands his father had done personally.
He ate the last meal of the day with his brothers in the room where the body lay—it could not be left alone—and nodded his approval of what they had accomplished. “We are ready for the burial, then, thanks to you. How one manages alone—how our father managed—I do not know.”
“And how stands Andressat as a whole?” asked Narits. “I know he had been concerned about the costs of governing the South Marches.”
“Solvent and whole, thanks to him, and may we do as well now that it is up to us.”
“Indeed,” Narits said.
“Do you remember, Ferran, the time you told him you were not going to spend one more morning in the library? You must have been ten or so.”
Ferran grinned. “I do indeed. As I recall, I spent that entire day copying lists and wishing I could do it standing up.”
“I was in awe,” Meddthal said. “Arguing with him? Amazing. But seeing the result saved me the trouble of trying it myself.”
They shared memories for a while … times with their father, with their mother, with both. The candles around Jeddrin’s body burned bright, flames standing up straight, without a flutter. At last Ferran said, “I need to stay with him tonight—go, sleep, and I’ll sleep tomorrow, after—after it’s done.”
When they had left, he sat by the body and began the old Song of Death his father had taught him. It was in the language of Aare, which he had been forced to learn, as had they all, though none could speak it but themselves.
The candle flames stirred. He sang on, the near drone of the song fitting his mood, fitting death itself.
There is a lord above all lords
And a death below all deaths
Go to the highest lord, to the court of that one
And be free of death, but never return,
Or lie in restful sleep, safe from harm
Far below, below the deepest death
And never return.
This night decide, before the death is done,
While still the spirit has will enough
Make that choice, make it soon,
For the sand runs through the glass
And candles shorten and daylight ends the night
Come, spirit, make that choice
So this body may be laid in honor
Where it should be laid
Then never return.
The cloth over his father’s body quivered like the quivering candle flames. It lifted over his mouth, and Ferran quickly folded back the cloth. Out of Jeddrin’s mouth came the spirit, a pale wraith of Jeddrin, shivering, trembling … and then it steadied.
“Son?” The voice was softer than a whisper, the merest touch of sound on Ferran’s ear.
“Ferran, Father. Death came suddenly, but not from an enemy.”
“I choose light.” The wraith leaned to a candle flame, and at once the candle burned brighter, a clear white light bright as summer sun, and the wraith was gone. But in the silence, inside Ferran’s head, his father’s voice said one more thing:
“I leave you my magery.”
“What magery?”
No answer came.
Valdaire, Aarenis
Aesil M’dierra’s nephew Poldin, beginning his second year as a squire in that company, rode over to the Fox Company winter quarters at least thrice in a fiveday. Everyone in Valdaire knew the boy had spent more than a quarter year with Fox Company. Golden Company and Fox Company had long been strong supporters of the Mercenary Guild Agreement, and their commanders were friends. This explained the trips back and forth.
So though the omnipresent spies noted the boy making yet another trip to Fox Company, this time on one of his aunt’s chargers, it meant nothing more to any of them than that Aesil M’dierra’s horse needed exercise and the boy was thought skilled enough to ride it in city traffic. Poldin, for his part, paid attention to other horsemen and pedestrians both, alert for someone who might want to grab a rein or cut it. He found the potential for danger exciting.
“Morning, Squire,” the Fox Company gate guard said. “That’s your commander’s horse, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Poldin said. “It’s the first time I’ve ridden him in the city. Is Captain Selfer here?” The stallion fidgeted under him.
“Yes, he is.” The guard turned his head. “Tamis, hold the squire’s mount while he speaks with our captain. Walk him up and down in the courtyard.”
Poldin dismounted and handed the reins to the soldier who had come to take them.
“I swear you’ve grown a hand this quarter,” the guard said.
Poldin grinned. “That’s what my aunt—Commander M’dierra says. She threatened to put a rock on my head and hold me down.”
“Well, you know where the captain’s office is.”
Poldin nodded and jogged quickly along the near side of the courtyard. He felt relieved to be in this safe place again, though when it had become “safe” he could not determine. Valdaire itself was more dangerous than when he’d first arrived, his aunt insisted. He could see some signs of that himself.
He knocked at the closed door of the captain’s office and heard Selfer’s familiar voice. “Come in.”
“Squire M’dierra with a message from Commander M’dierra,” he said as he opened the door and saluted properly.
“You grow a finger a day,” Captain Selfer said. “Any news?”
Poldin closed the door. “Yes, Captain. A message from Count Andressat, very urgent my—Commander M’dierra says. And she asks when Duke Arcolin will be coming, if you are permitted to say.”
“Immer’s on the move?”
“I don’t know what the message is, Captain,” Poldin said. “It’s for the north.”
“The pass isn’t open yet,” Captain Selfer said. “Though I hear it may open in the next hand of days. Let’s see.”
Poldin put the leather message case into Selfer’s hand, then stood back.
“Sit down, lad. I may have an answer to return.” Selfer untied the strings and lifted the flap. Inside were two scrolls and a folded sheet, the sheet marked with M’dierra’s sigil. He unfolded that. “So,” he said aloud without looking at Poldin. “She worries for your safety, Poldin—and for the safety of the message. Andressat declares it most secret and most urgent, and she advises me to find you something to do that will take a half-day and look as if you’re idling. She will send a few men to escort you back later.”
“I’m careful!” Poldin said, stung.
“I’m sure you are, but these are chancy times. The worst since Siniava. She says to tell you to expect an undeserved scolding—it’s all for a reason.”
“Yes, Captain,” Poldin said. Would Captain Selfer open the other scrolls or wait
until he was out of the room?
“I’ll tell you what,” Selfer said. “You rode her chestnut stallion over here, she says. Why not show him off to the troops—exactly what you wouldn’t dare on your own. Have you practiced any fighting on horseback?”
“Only a little,” Poldin said.
“Captain Burek’s out with a troop at our practice ground—you know where it is. I’ll write him a note for you to take, and then you dawdle about showing the horse off. That’s something a boy your age with less sense than you have might do.” Selfer scrawled a note and handed it to him. “Then you’ll eat midday with us, and by the time the escort arrives to scold you for not returning right away, everyone will have seen a safe reason why.”
Poldin reclaimed his mount, told the gate guard he had a message from Captain Selfer to Captain Burek, and—feeling very daring despite the permission—touched the stallion with his spurs. The horse was more than ready to prance along, in full view of the main road down the hill, to the east side of the compound, where Captain Burek and his cohort were doing mounted exercises.
“That’s a fancy fellow you’re on, Squire,” Captain Burek said. “Your commander’s favorite, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Captain; here’s a note from Captain Selfer.”
Burek halted, waved the troops on to continue their exercise, and took the note, nodding as he read it. “Well, then, your riding’s improved a lot—let’s see how you do with our formations. Unless you have to get back.”
“I can’t stay too long,” Poldin said.
“Join up with that third group,” Burek said, pointing. “See if you can keep an even line.”
Jumping low obstacles—a row of rocks, a log—followed formation riding. Poldin had been through that with Golden Company, though not on this mount. The stallion had his own idea of the pace they should take and bucked after some of the jumps, apparently just for fun.
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