Kaymar was pleased, feeling he had passed some final benchmark of acceptance and looked out over the grounds. Much as he had loved his own family home, he had never felt about it as he did about this place. This declaration from Menders made him know that he had found a place where he truly belonged.
He took the hand Menders put out for him to shake.
“Thank you, Cuz,” Kaymar said quietly, the endearment slipping out unexpectedly.
“And I thank you, Cousin Kaymar,” Menders returned, smiling.
***
Eiren shrieked and dropped the bottle she’d been holding when the enormous Thrun gong sounded. Hemmett and Katrin raced down the hall, making Menders stick his head out of his office to shout, “Put your coats on or there will be a reckoning, you two!” at them. It was very cold, but dry enough to feel warmer.
Menders dashed to the entryway for his greatcoat. Eiren was already there, frantically fastening her furs over her coat and pulling on her hat. He grabbed her hand, then ran out onto the snow covered lawn with her.
She gasped as she saw the Thrun processing up the drive. Katrin and Hemmett were racing toward them.
“That silly little girl! She didn’t bother with her furs, that coat won’t be enough and she doesn’t have her hat either,” Eiren cried, turning to retrieve the forgotten items. Menders stopped her.
“Tharak will have her covered in fur by the time they get up here,” he laughed. “You don’t want to miss this.”
Eiren watched as Katrin raced up to Tharak, who stopped the procession and grinned down at her. She gave him an elegant formal curtsey, holding her skirts wide and bowing her head. When she rose, he bowed, caught her up and tossed her high, catching her and whirling on his heels to hold her up where his people could see her.
“Light Of The Winter Sun!” he roared.
His people roared back in response, almost as loudly as the shattering vibrations of the enormous gong.
“They do believe it!” Eiren breathed, turning to Menders. “Just like you said.”
“Yes they do – and by the end of their visit, so will I, until sanity returns,” Menders replied. He pulled her forward as Tharak lifted Katrin onto his shoulder. The music began again, and the Thrun continued their procession up the path to the house.
“Magic In The Eyes!” Tharak roared, grabbing Menders in his usual enormous embrace. “Good to see you!” He looked around at the assembling household and grinned. Then his eye fell on Eiren.
“And who is this, my friend?” he asked, not taking his eyes off her.
“Mine,” Menders answered, using a translation of the Thrun word for beloved wife. Tharak looked at him and then back to Eiren. His huge hand and gently cupped her chin as he gazed into her tawny eyes.
“Yes, it is she,” he said to Menders as he perused her. He spoke softly in Thrun, and then translated into Mordanian for Eiren.
“Golden Heart Of Summer,” he smiled. Then he was very much the Thrun Highest Chieftain again. “We will show you hospitality, my friends! Come, you will dance with us!”
In Menders’ opinion, the only thing better than a Thrun carnival was watching Eiren experience one for the first time. She was fascinated by everything, from the way the tents were pitched to the way Thrun children were raised. She made copious notes and took enormous pleasure in sampling the Thrun’s food, playing with their children, trading for garments and trinkets and screaming like a schoolgirl when Menders won a race or contest. It was the third Thrun carnival for The Shadows but the first for her. Menders had the time of his life squiring her around and showing her off.
It was obvious, however, that Tharak was troubled. He came to the house one night to speak privately to Menders. They sat down with a bottle of potent huskberry wine. Eiren whispered to Menders that she would be with Katrin, and left them alone.
“Aylam, my friend, the Mordanians are attacking us again,” Tharak said, coming straight to the point as soon as they were alone. “I have lost many people, including women and children.”
“Is it the Army?” Menders asked. The Thrun had been targeted by Mordania many times. They were considered less than human, worthy of slaughter.
“It is. Not large numbers, but enough. We need guns, my friend. Will you help us?”
“It must be in secret, because of my connections with the Crown, but I will help you,” Menders replied without hesitation. “We have enough here that you can take some immediately. I will arrange for more. I’ll send them to Stettan in care of my tenants, discreetly packaged as farming tools.”
“I thank you. We cannot fight guns with bows, no matter how strong our bows are,” Tharak sighed. The Thrun compound bow was famous for its devastating power, but was no match for the range and rate of fire of a modern rifle. “No-one will ever know how we got them.”
Menders stared into the fire. Centuries ago, the Thrun had indeed raided Mordanian towns. That was something of the distant past and those towns had encroached on traditional Thrun lands. Now they only asked to be left in peace to herd their animals and to go trading in the winter.
From time to time some ass in the Mordanian government would decide that the Thrun’s island was actually a part of Mordania. Campaigns to drive them from it or to obliterate them would result. So far the Thrun had survived, but modern guns would give them some parity.
“I can probably get you two, maybe three thousand bolt action rifles over the next few months. I must order them in small lots and through other people to avert suspicion that I’m raising a private army. Can your people learn to use them fast enough?”
Smiling widely, Tharak said, “You forget we are Thrun. Fighting with any weapon comes easy to us. However, enough talk of war.”
It was obvious that speaking of the persecution of his people was something Tharak wished to set aside for now.
“Golden Heart, your Eiren – you are wed?”
Menders shook his head. “I cannot marry, because of my duty to Katrin, but in our hearts, she is mine and I am hers.”
Tharak nodded.
“That is wed. She loves the child?”
“Like life. She was Katrin’s nursemaid when she was a baby.”
“I am joyful for you but must assure you that I will beat you in the next farlin race,” Tharak grinned, proffering his wine glass for another measure.
“To your long life, my friend!” he said.
“And to yours,” Menders replied, raising his glass in salute.
***
Eiren found Menders’ Men participating in a Thrun carnival to be a hilarious scene. They traded for huge quantities of the explosively alcoholic kirz, as well as for knives and jewelry. They bought mountains of furs and took part in the contests of skill and speed as if their lives depended on it.
The Men had a betting pool on whether Menders would give in to the ongoing offer Tharak had set up. Tharak considered it great fun to offer trade goods for Eiren to become his seventh wife. Each day the pile of saddles, furs, jewelry and knives grew higher. Menders would make a show of squiring Eiren out to the pile, walking around it perusing the new additions, picking up various bits and pieces, holding up the saddles, testing the knives with his thumb. Then he would make the Thrun wiping-dust-from-hands motion which signified something beneath contempt. He would take Eiren’s arm and escort her proudly away while Tharak laughed and pounded his knees with his huge hands before seeking more plunder to add to the pile.
“It’s a good thing my father didn’t know of this Thrun tradition before now,” Eiren joked. “I might have been traded off long ago.”
“Not a chance,” Menders said, slipping an arm around her waist. “He always knew he had a jewel of rare price. And so do I.”
***
Katrin was incredibly happy that the Thrun were back. She was special friends with Thira and loved to ride and play with her. She was given every honor and became so laden with presents that she had to make multiple trips to the house. One day she sought Menders out a
nd climbed on his lap.
“Should I take all these things the Thrun are giving me?” she asked. “Will it make it hard for them not to have them to trade?”
“It would hurt them if you refused their gifts,” Menders told her gently.
“I wondered if I should stay away from the carnival sometimes, because every time I’m there, they give me things,” she explained.
“I understand, but they come here specifically to see you. I’m sure they’ve taken what they will be giving you into account, so you don’t have to worry about this. I’m proud of you for thinking of it though.”
She had made a point of wearing the strand of grey stones around her neck while the Thrun were there. She fingered them now, looking for the flashes of light in the grey depths.
“What is Light Of The Winter Sun?” she asked, turning the stones this way and that.
“It’s what Tharak Karak calls you, because of the color of your hair,” Menders answered, thinking ‘I’m not about to tell you what the Thrun believe, because that is far too great a burden for someone your age.’
“But it means more. I can tell by the way they say it.”
“It’s because they respect you because you’re the Princess.”
“I can tell you’re lying.” She said it quietly, without impudence, just a simple statement of fact.
“Yes, I am. But the reason why they call you that is something that you are simply too young to know,” Menders said softly. “I won’t tell you now. Sometimes, my Little Princess, there are going to be things that you don’t need to be told, and this is one of them.”
“Is it something bad?”
“No. It’s something good, but it’s too difficult for you to understand at the moment. And that’s all that we’re going to say about it, Katrin.”
She wasn’t happy with that, slid off his lap and turned to look at him reproachfully.
“If it’s about me, I should know about it,” she said respectfully and politely, but insistently.
He was about to refuse her outright and send her on her way, but something in her eyes made him hesitate.
“Let me think for a minute,” he said.
Could he possibly tell her what the Thrun believed without placing a terrible burden of expectation on her? He did not want her to live according to the expectations of others. Her life would be circumscribed enough because she was a Mordanian Princess, without her feeling pressured to be the prophecy-become-flesh of Thrun legends.
He tried to think of a way to make it into a fairy tale, but the outcome was the same – that Katrin would feel pressured, in one way or another, to live up to an enormous task. No matter how much you want to know, my little one, not this time. Not yet.
He looked back at her standing there, waiting patiently.
“No, my Snowflower,” he said softly. “Not now.”
She opened her mouth to argue but he lifted a finger and looked at her. She paused.
“I don’t like you to tell me no,” Katrin said after a minute.
“I don’t do it very often but I’m doing it now. I have to draw a line somewhere, sometime.”
He could tell she was angry. He watched as several expressions crossed her face in rapid succession. Finally she looked up at him.
“I’m not happy, but I’ll do what you say,” she sighed.
“Thank you, little one,” he smiled, and after a moment she smiled back and came to him for a hug.
“Now then, shall we go out and see what our Thrun friends are up to?” he suggested. “Want to see if I can win another farlin race?”
“With Demon you win every time.”
“Maybe I should try the knife throwing contest then.”
“You win that every time too.”
“Are you saying I should retire from competition?” he asked with mock seriousness.
“No, go win!” She smiled up him again as he escorted her from the office.
***
The last night of the Thrun carnival was, as always, the wildest. Menders’ Men were much in evidence, wearing an absurd and motley assortment of Thrun hats bristling with horns, spikes and fur. When they sobered up some of them weren’t going to be happy with their trading, but for now, they were jubilant.
No assassin was at a loss on a dance floor, even with Thrun dances they had never seen before. Eiren laughed until she could hardly breathe as Ifor frolicked along in the line of male dancers, tooting on a Thrun horn, wearing an absurd hat with a very big point at the crown.
“He’ll be in agony tomorrow!” she groaned. “Poor thing, he’ll wreck his back! You should stop him.”
“Not me. He’s having a wonderful time, and he knows the consequences,” Menders laughed in response.
“Tharak was wondering if you’d like to do the Wedding Dance,” he continued, when she finally managed to stop gasping with laughter by turning away from the spectacle.
“What? Darling, I don’t know their dances.”
“I do and this one is easy. All you have to do is mirror exactly what I do.”
“In front of everyone?”
“You couldn’t look more absurd than that lot,” Menders smiled, gesturing at the wildly cavorting Men, then handing her a cup of kirz. She looked at the dance floor, where several of Menders’ Men had collided and were in the process of retaliatory thumping. She laughed.
“Do you want to?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Then I’ll try. But if I fall over or go the wrong way, you’ll have to forgive me. I knew you had Thrun blood but didn’t think you grew up with them. How is it that you know their dances?” Eiren asked.
“I grew up – at least to the age of eleven – where the Menders and Tailors made their summer encampments. Tharak is of that tribe. I – life wasn’t very pleasant at home, and I spent as much time as I could playing with him and hanging around their camp.”
“Poor love. I’m glad he was there for you.”
“I love you for that,” Menders said and kissed her.
“For what?”
“For not saying you’re sorry. People always say they’re sorry that my childhood was miserable, when it wasn’t their fault.”
Franz romped by with a couple of Menders’ Men, wearing a Thrun coat and a massive fur hat that made him look as if some maddened animal had jumped on him and was attempting to swallow his head. He was waving a large metal goblet brimming with kirz, splashing a lot of it about in the process. Menders’ melancholy moment was shattered.
“It will be interesting to see him tomorrow morning,” Menders remarked, remembering Franz’s Thrun horn solo into Cook’s ear.
“This dance you want me to do…” Eiren began.
“Us to do,” Menders corrected.
“Kirz makes you nitpicky,” she said with a smile. “How is it done?”
“You echo my movements. It’s in sequences, presented by the man and then repeated by the woman, so do as I do. I move right, you move right, I stamp my foot, then you stamp your foot, and so on.”
“All right,” she said with conviction.
“That’s my girl.” Menders took her hand and began moving through the throng toward the High Chieftain.
“The musicians will play the Wedding Dance whenever you are ready, my friends,” Tharak said. “But if you wish, I will say the words as well. It is up to you.”
“What are the words?” Eiren asked, surprising Menders. She’d been a bit shy around Tharak, possibly because he kept insisting on bargaining for her to be his seventh wife and she wasn’t quite sure that it was entirely a joke. “Are there vows?”
“No, Golden Heart. I bless you and wish you eternal love. Then you dance. Nothing Magic In The Eyes cannot do – but once the dance is finished, in the eyes of the Thrun, you are wed.”
“Then yes, please, say the words,” Eiren smiled. Tharak roared with laughter.
“Very forward, this one! I shall go and take a few saddles off the p
ile I’m giving you for her. I would be afraid of such a powerful wife!”
“I didn’t think you were man enough,” Menders grinned, ducking as Tharak pretended to take a swing at him.
Menders and Eiren watched as the Thrun evicted those Menders’ Men who were still standing from the dance floor. Tharak strode onto it, the silver trimmings of his magnificent coat shimmering in the firelight.
He spoke, first in Thrun, then translated his words into Mordanian.
“Tonight we celebrate the union of Magic In The Eyes and Golden Heart Of Summer.” He beckoned to them and Menders escorted Eiren onto the floor.
Tharak took their hands, making a circle with them. He spoke again in Thrun, then Mordanian.
“The blessing of Thrun be on you both. From the birth of spring to the death of winter, may your lives be long. May your love be as strong as the sea, as warm as the fire, as lasting as the land, as vital as the air. Now dance, to seal your wedding.”
Menders removed his glasses and thrust them into a pocket of his coat, which he shucked off and handed to Tharak. He had enough kirz in him that he would feel no cold.
Eiren removed her hat and shook her hair free. It flamed in the firelight and Menders could hear a palpable murmur of admiration from the crowd. Red hair was prized by the Thrun.
Tharak bowed to them and stepped off the dance floor.
A small gong sounded. A woman’s voice began weaving a sultry web of Thrun words, accompanied by a slow, throbbing drum. Menders caught Eiren’s eyes with his and stepped out in the slow, seductive dance, weaving his way across the floor from her. Seven hip-swaying steps to the right, then a pause while she did the same. Three definitive foot stamps, another pause as she made the floor ring with the heel of her boot, then a slow, deliberate turn and seven steps in the opposite direction, followed by the stamping again.
It brought man and woman together slowly in a choreographed courtship, zigzagging across the dance floor like brightly colored threads in a loom.
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 32
