Hearing the words that had plagued him all his life, had often driven him mad, and that had stayed his hand when he wanted to aid his sister—not his sister, Wendra—the words spoken here, by this man who had abandoned him … it was almost more than Tahn could bear. He shut his eyes and waited for this nightmare to end.
“You see, Tahn. When you go to Restoration, all your choices will return to you. Even for melura, such is a grave risk. But you … your choices have been guided by your unique sensitivity and bond to the Will. You possess less guile, Tahn. It will still be painful, but your gift may make you the one person who can stand at the Heights of Restoration, feel the caress of the abyss, and survive having to confront all at once a lifetime of any doubts, misdeeds, arrogance, and bitterness.”
Tahn opened his eyes again, and stared with hatred at the exile. “Why? What happens if I survive Restoration?”
Neither the Sheason nor Grant immediately replied. Finally, Vendanj said, “Soon, Tahn, we will prepare you for it. But you have learned enough tonight. Too much, perhaps. Nevertheless, you must make your peace with what we have shown you. Not this instant, but soon. Very soon. You have had your Standing, Tahn. More, now, is required of you.”
Tahn took a deep, bracing breath, trying to gather his composure. But it would be no use, not tonight, anyway. To endure these things, he could only harden his heart. These many long years he’d suffered with doubt of the deepest kind; his own sense of identity and worth had been taken from him. Looking back now, he thought he could see the questioning glances of those in his own home, Balatin, Voncencia—had they ever really worried about Tahn, the instrument of schemes plotted by exiles?
Distantly, he realized the Sheason and the exile (whose name he did not wish even to utter) were trying to talk to him. But Tahn no longer heard them.
He crawled over the rough stone back to the shallow cave and lay down, wondering if the dreams that came would at last be truly his own. And if they might, after tonight, be darker than all the secrets and lies and doubts that had plagued him these many years.
As he fell down toward nightmare, he shivered not from the cold of the Saeculorum, but from wounds of the soul he didn’t know how to heal.
* * *
The guilt descended on Grant in a rush.
He sat at the edge of the cliff as his son crawled away, and let the self-recriminations scourge him. The gentle but firm hand of the Sheason on his shoulder did little to reassure him before the three-ring left to tend to his own needs. In the dark solitude, his own remembrance grew full and bitter.
He knew and still believed that sending Tahn away into the Hollows had been the right thing. The boy had received from him that which would serve him all his life, but the Scar and being in Grant’s company were not healthy for the lad. More important, he’d be safer in the the Hollows.
Still, he’d sent away his own son, and the thought of it had never been far from him. If his exile held any real punishment, it had been that.
He’d not stood beside his son through it all.
He’d done the next best thing, convincing his closest friend, Balatin, to leave his life in Recityv and take his young bride into the Hollows to rear Grant’s son. Balatin had been a good father, and Voncencia a good mother. The boy had had a good, simple, safe life. Still, though, remorse and shame touched his heart.
Abandonment. Something Grant knew about, and hated in himself.
As he stared into the distance, he knew that the long years of placing the children from the forgotten cradle in the homes of those who might better care for them had been a kind of personal atonement. Not because Helaina had sentenced him to it. But because he sought to correct, by that service, his own act of desertion.
And if he was honest, he even resented his old friend, Balatin, despite the immense favor the man had done him. For he imagined the moments his friend had shared with Tahn that Grant would never know.
But those many years of rearing wards in the Scar, of protecting those he’d placed into homes here and there, gave him confidence that he knew what was best for a child, for a young man. He would have to find some comfort in that knowledge. He might even have to use it to guide Tahn yet later in the Saeculorum.
Or afterward, if Tahn was not destroyed at Restoration.
And though the Scar had not gotten into Tahn as it had gotten into him, he nevertheless saw much of himself in his son: honesty and doggedness in service of what was right. It pleased him in the same way it would any father, but those traits had also caused Grant a lifetime of sorrow. He could only hope it would not be the same for Tahn.
In the end, though, the guilt was unavoidable. His heart ached with it. He could not undo what had gone before. He might hope it had prepared his son for what lay ahead, but he was not deceived that even should Tahn survive, he would never truly be the boy’s father.
He had given away that honor.
And so on this rocky ledge, the Sheason’s restoration had been dual. Grant’s own lifetime whirled back on him, and left him as immeasurably and completely in the Scar as if he had never left its barren confines.
Grant needed the stoniness of his heart to creep back in, to relieve the pains of memory and choice.
If there was any blessing to his life in the Scar, it was the emptiness it inspired. And there were times the exile could call upon it to soothe him.
Here at his own Tillighast, he hoped it would come to him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Waking Dreams and Forgiveness
Tahn woke to the crush of dirt and scree under Sutter’s boots. His friend was uncustomarily up before the sun, and walking away into the night alone. A moment later, Tahn followed.
Frigid winds swept down the face of the mountain, tamed by the heat that rose off the Soliel. On the face of the short, sheer bluff, Tahn hunkered down next to Sutter, who’d found a crag to sit in. Out of the wind, everything became suddenly quiet, and he stared with his friend into the predawn dark out over the Stretches, away to the far south and west, and out of sight.
They shared a companionable silence.
In an hour maybe, all would waken to the birth of a new day. Tahn tried to remember the excitement morning used to hold for him, when the smell of sweet-root and eggs filled the air as they sizzled over a griddle on the hearth. Strong warm tea brewed in Balatin’s pot, and from the yard came the sounds of wood being split to fuel the endfast fire and feed being thrown down for the animals. Then he would race through chores before he took to the trees and discovered a new way through the woods to Sutter’s house, where hopefully his friend would be stooped over his furrows, and Tahn could send a dirt clod into his ass without being heard.
As he peered deep into the darkness from the Saeculorum arête, Tahn beheld in his mind a greater light that shone weakly and indifferent over the crests of these far mountains. The promise he’d always felt when imagining the sun was somehow gone.
Why does anyone believe in their next day? Why do they want it?
Tahn shut his eyes and rested his head against the rock, grateful in the world for only one thing: his friend, Sutter, who did not try to fill the air with word or jest at this predawn hour. Nails was the only person in all the world he could talk to about the horror of his last few hours. And Sutter, perhaps better than anyone, would understand.
His friend had himself been abandoned.
Finally Tahn broke the silence.
“You’ve been a good friend, Sutter,” he began. “Despite the strange things you’ve seen of me all these years, questions I’m sure you’ve had … you never asked. And it never affected our friendship.”
Sutter, still staring into the darkened plain, gave a wan smile. “You were my friend, too.”
“Then can I ask you something? Something about your parents … all of them?”
Sutter turned, and nodded.
Tahn didn’t need to debate if he would tell Sutter the whole truth. “Last night the Sheason somehow restored my memo
ry of my childhood. And among all the memories and secrets, Sutter, I learned that I am not Balatin’s son. The dreams and loss of memory, all the things that have plagued me, they’re all because of my real father … Grant.”
In the dark, Sutter’s eyes widened. But he did not speak, allowing Tahn to go on uninterrupted.
“I spent many years with him, but eventually he sent me away to live in the Hollows with Balatin and Voncencia, who knew but said nothing. A Sheason clouded my mind so that I would not remember my true father or mother, or even who I really was.” Tahn choked the words out. “Why didn’t he want me, Sutter? Why do parents not want their children?”
Silently, Sutter wept with his friend and took his hand in a firm Hollows grip. He spoke through the tears. “Tahn, Grant is not your father. Your father is Balatin; your mother is Voncencia. I don’t know all the reasons why they made the mistake of not telling you the truth, but they loved you, Tahn. Do not doubt it. I was in your home, I knew your father. Hold to that.”
“How do you do it? How do you put a parent’s abandonment aside?” Tahn waited, hoping for some truth that would help him. If anyone would have it now, it would be Sutter.
His friend looked back, his eyes distant. “Maybe you never do.” A calm touched his face. “I think you have to find a way to live past it. For me … I consider myself an orphan. Not because the parents who bore me were already dead. They weren’t.” Sutter looked out on the vista before them. “They just didn’t want me.”
He wept more silent tears and spoke of the pain he’d held secret from Tahn all their lives.
“I thought for a long time that I wanted them to die. I remember wishing I could watch it happen. I hated them. They were performers on a pageant wagon much like Penit, and didn’t want to be burdened in their vagabond lives. My true father, Filmoere, saw them in a field one day when they’d come to the Hollows with their wagons to play the rhea-fols.”
Sutter’s eyes stared into the past. “They were alone in the high grass, hidden, but my father walks the field every day to survey his farm, and came upon them. They had just given birth, Tahn. There in a field under the sky, they’d brought their child into the world between sketches on the wagon they trod for coin.”
Then Sutter looked back at Tahn, his eyes streaming their sorrow as he said, “The man who sired me was about to put me in a bucket of water to silence my cries and end my life before it had begun.”
The revelation stole Tahn’s breath. How long had his friend lived with this knowledge? Tahn ached just hearing it, and the image rose up like a specter that even Tahn knew he would never be able to forget.
Sutter held Tahn’s gaze, and went on in a low voice. “He rescued me, Tahn. Filmoere, my father, took me in as his own. Raised me. Gave me a life. And he told me the truth of it because he said truth was the only way.” Then Sutter wept again, but silently. “He told me the better truth was that he was proud of me, and that none of that business in the field meant a thing. Told me he loved me.”
Sutter looked back at Tahn, quiet again. “So your father is still Balatin. He made mistakes, and he should have told you the truth, but he did not abandon you. And I am a witness to that.”
They sat together for a time in the dark of the crag staring out over the Soliel. Tahn’s spirits rose a little. And he imagined the dawn but briefly.
Until Sutter spoke again.
“Tahn, have you ever dreamed with your eyes open?” Sutter asked. He let the inquiry hang. “Ever stood at a window, seeing unearthly things that you did not want to believe were real?”
A gust of wind howled around the bluff above them, and with its passing, the breezes vanished altogether. In the distance, the earliest trace of the new day touched the sky in shades of deep violet.
At last, Tahn shook his head.
“I’ve seen some things,” Sutter continued. “Like dreams in the moments I first rise, and the last moments before I fall to sleep. I don’t know what to think, fatigue maybe. No harvest ever worked me so hard as this.” He pointed back toward the horses and the others. “But I think it’s more than just dreams. I see them when I know I am awake, and try as I do, they don’t leave when I tell them to go. It’s hard to sleep. I need to tell someone about them, Tahn. I need to tell you.”
Tahn nodded. “What have you seen?”
Sutter looked away at the horizon. Traces of light streaked the sky. “Last night, sleeping under the eyes of the Far, it was the strongest. But I’ve seen it each night since the prison at Recityv…”
“What is it?” Tahn shifted, uncomfortable with the import of his friend’s words.
“I see faces, Tahn. All the time, and not like you do when you just think of them and remember. It’s not like that.” Sutter’s voice began to tremble. “Sometimes I think they’re looking at me, trying to tell me something. But their eyes are empty; it’s like they’re looking through me, or that they’re not really here at all in this world, and I can just glimpse them in whatever world they inhabit.”
“Who?” Tahn prodded. “Who do you see?”
Sutter’s head swiveled with ominous deliberation. He settled Tahn a fixed gaze. “Will you believe me if I say it? Will you forgive me if it’s true?”
“What?” Tahn asked. But inside he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Have you ever thought the stories we told around the fire were more than just an evening’s entertainment? Have you ever”—Sutter swallowed—“seen the soul of a man, Tahn? Because I think I see them. I think I see death before it comes.” With a quiet tone he finished, “And I think it walks with us to Tillinghast.”
Sutter looked away from his friend again.
Tahn patted Sutter’s leg. “Maybe you just need some sleep, Nails. I know I could use some.”
“Maybe,” Sutter agreed, unconvinced. He tugged at the leather loop around his finger that the Sedagin had given him. Tahn thought it must remind Sutter of a different strength and truth he knew he could possess. He clenched his fist and sat straighter. “The night we stayed at the leagueman’s home,” Sutter said slowly. “Do you remember?”
“Of course. You spent half the night under your bed with fever dreams.”
Sutter corrected him. “Not fever dreams. I don’t know what it was, Tahn. I was falling asleep but still awake when I began to feel cold. I got up to close the window a little. When I got to the sill, a face rose up out of the dark beyond the glass.”
“You were pretty sick,” Tahn offered. “Could you have seen your reflection?”
“That’s what I thought at first. I even remember laughing at myself for spooking at my own mirrored image … until I moved, and the image didn’t.”
“But this all sounds like a fever dream, Nails,” Tahn reasoned. “You could well have imagined it, and ended up falling out of bed and rolling beneath the mattress.”
Sutter stared at him; even now he dreaded saying it out loud. “The face I saw that night beyond the window belonged to the woman they burned the next day.”
His friend’s face went slack, and Tahn’s own heart pounded. His mind swam.
“Will and Sky, Nails, are you sure?”
“As if she was my own mother,” Sutter replied.
“Do you suppose she got away from Lethur? Got away long enough to find our window and throw a scare into us?” Tahn wasn’t convinced of his own explanation.
“I might have convinced myself of that, until I saw the spirits of two scops in my cell at Solath Mahnus. Two faces, Tahn … that were hanged after I’d spent a night under their unearthly stares.” He looked Tahn in the eye. “I’m seeing the dead before they go to their final earth. And it scares me, Tahn. It scares me.”
Silence settled over them. Sutter turned and stared thoughtfully into the cold of dawn.
Tahn took Sutter’s hand again in the Hollows clasp, stirring in him a look of gratitude so overwhelming that he nearly wept. Sutter surely knew that whatever caused him to see the things he did, Tahn would believe hi
m.
Death walked with them to Tillinghast.
“That’s not all of it, Tahn.” Sutter pulled his legs in against his chest, and wrapped his arms around his knees. The greater light offered no warmth of body or mind. A soft sussuration of leaves stirred by a cold breeze whispered a warning, as Sutter prepared to tell Tahn the rest.
It must be such a burden. The anguish and loss and confusion and regret in the faces of those panaebra, unhoused from their bodies in anticipation of their death. And drawn to Sutter. Was this thing in him permanent? How would he live with this? How would he ever find love and have a family, knowing that he would one day see their souls before they died, and then have to spend that last day with them knowing what would come?
And what of his parents, Filmoere and Kaylla, who had given him a life and home? Already Sutter must dread the day he would see harbingers of their deaths and grieve for them while they yet lived.
It was too much.
I’d like to return to my roots. Just till the earth and leave Restoration and everything else behind. No waking nightmares anymore. No shadows of death coming to me. Not my friends. Not my parents.…
But he gripped Tahn’s hand hard and looked him in the eye, as though somewhere inside him he wanted to believe that the things he saw could be changed. “The face I see now, every night since Solath Mahnus … is Mira.”
Tahn sat in silence. Forgotten were the mark that scarred his hand—a brand he knew now belonged to the children of the Scar—and his misgivings about secrets and Vendanj and Tillinghast. His eyes ached from sleepless nights and the endless stream of days that had preceded them. In his mind he saw the image of a terrible water funnel beating a helpless elk into the mud, and remembered the animal wasn’t meant to die. What did he feel about Mira’s death? Was she meant to die?
Tahn shook away the thought when Sutter spoke once more. “Do you think it will be like this forever? Will I now see those soon to die all my life, until I join them?”
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