The Season of the Plough

by Luke R J Maynard

  “Be calm, dear brother,” she said.

  “Someone’s gone ’round the back,” he whispered. His fixed his bleary eyes on the wall, like a cat who hears the scratching of mice in the plaster.

  “It’s only Poe,” Robyn said. “Aewyn and Poe have come to speak with me. But it’s a matter of some delicacy. That’s why I need the house. Our quiet little farmhouse.”

  Bram looked around at the walls, the strands of garlic and cured meats hanging from the rafters, smelled the fire in the familiar hearth. “Everyone’s all right,” he said.

  She stood him up, helped him to his feet, and gently cupped her hands over his.

  “Everyone’s all right,” she agreed. She kissed him on his forehead—she was the taller one, now—and knelt to open his boots that he might step into them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was far away.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, though she was clearly troubled.

  “It’s too dark in here,” he said. “Altogether too dark.”

  “There’s a lovely sun out this morning,” said Robyn, straightening his clothes. “It’ll be clear all day. Go out with the others. Get yourself under an open sky and feel the wind on your face. Go bathe at the Riffle; it always does you good.”

  “If you need—”

  “I don’t need her,” said Robyn. She cupped her hands over his, and took his sword from him, and pitched it lazily into the men’s bedrolls. He smiled at her, then, as if he were lifting a heavy weight with the corners of his mouth. Roughly attired, he made his way to the door.

  “Give them my best, if you can,” he said, and followed the others out—though probably not to muster with them.

  “It’s clear,” she said at last. “Come in.”

  Poe was the first to enter the house, his long shadow filling the rear doorway just as Bram slipped out the front. Aewyn and Celithrand came together, with the girl helping him over the threshold.

  “Our time is short,” said Robyn. “Speak plainly and speak truth.” Celithrand rubbed at his temples, clearing his throat and his mind.

  “What do you know about the Godswar?” he asked suddenly, fixing his gaze on Aewyn. Her eyes went wide with astonishment.

  “Very little, in truth,” she said. “Just the lessons for children. That Tûr made the world with eleven doors and eleven gods to watch over it. That the Darkness came from beyond, and would have destroyed the whole of Silvalis but for Tamnor, who was wounded eleven times fighting the Darkness, and though he was victorious it seeped into him and corrupted him. I know that the Splintered Shadow is said to live everywhere, and that it calls to him even in his prison Beyond, where Kedwyn has bound him.”

  “That is more than I knew,” said Poe, not without admiration.

  “Since that day,” said Celithrand, “Tamnor has served as the avatar of that Darkness. Lost to his brethren and his consort, he is the door through which evil comes into Silvalis—the dark Craftsman by whose hand the Splintered Shadow is given shape in a thousand different forms.”

  “Theologies differ,” said Robyn, “on the nature of Tamnor. What happened before the Age of Sun is anyone’s guess.”

  “They differ, certainly,” Celithrand conceded. “But since the Age of Sun he has come into the world, now and again, as an agent of its ruin. That ruin has passed into real history. It is no myth what happened a century ago, when Tamnor crossed into Travost and threw down the Towers of the Sun. He loosed a new breed of Horrors across the whole of the northern vasilies. It was a crisis of faith for many that day. It nearly spelled the end of the Tudran faith in these lands.”

  “That’s what happens,” said Robyn coldly, “when you pray to all the gods, and none but Tamnor give answer.”

  “It all seems so long ago,” said Aewyn.

  “The Age of Sun, aye,” said Robyn. “But my grandfather was a boy when Travost fell, and newly a man when Valithar rebuilt it. I never knew him, but he spoke often to my father about the marble towers and the ancient city, like a man long blind remembering his sight.”

  “The Siege of Shadow and the rout of Tamnor had as well been yesterday,” said Celithrand. “Many who endured the Siege thought it was the war to end the Age. In truth, it raged for little more than five years. The Age of the Moons will not let go of us so easily as that. There is another war to come, a war that will outlast the lifetimes of near everyone in this room—but not, Ten willing, the champion who was foretold.”

  All eyes turned to Aewyn.

  “The druids of Nalsin are the last keepers of the Uliri Imidactuai—the Mysteries of the prophets,” said Celithrand. “Long have I studied them, alone and with all the druidlords. For centuries we have puzzled over the champion who would end the Age—the child born of the womb of an êtril, a dyrad of the first forests. The fae as we know them are childless—never dying, never born—and when word came to me that your mother was with child, I knew then that you must be the girl they spoke of.”

  “The Havenari are no less dedicated to the fight against Tamnor’s Horrors,” said Robyn. “And yet you have shared no such prophecies with us.”

  “We did, in the beginning,” said Celithrand. “Janus knew the prophecies well. The first Havenari, among other things, supported my search for Aewyn in the early days. Valithar’s first Imperial Harper offered a healthy reward for information that led to her.”

  “Something changed,” said Robyn. “I heard none of it. Toren, my predecessor, knew of no such reward—or else things might have gone differently when we found her.”

  “It would have been before his time,” said Celithrand. “We did not know when or where to seek her. But what we found, of course, in the far places of the Empire, was that when we drove Tamnor’s Horrors from the city, they went to ground according to their nature. The crudest Horrors, the low creatures that survived the Siege, appear in the form of twisted beasts, misshapen creatures that hunt and kill like wolves or sabercats. But there are other, older spirits. They take different forms and guises—even, in the case of very powerful Horrors, human ones. We realized quickly that if we could find you, our enemy could as well. So we worked in silence, Janus dissolved all central authority, the Havenari became a loose coalition of independent forces, and I searched for you in secret.”

  Aewyn, suddenly cold, drew her cloak tighter around her.

  “You found me easily enough,” she said.

  Celithrand let out an awkward laugh. “Easily? Centuries I waited, child, and through all the decades of the Reconstruction I hunted you across Tamnor’s aftermath. While Valithar was crowned in gold and revered in bronze atop the Shadewall, while he united the vasilies and the old kingdoms to great adulation, I roamed the desolate North, slept in ditches and hollows. I grew old past old on the blasted earth in the hope that you would come. And come you have—in fairer form and better heart than I might have hoped.”

  “All my life, I have heard these words,” said Aewyn. “All my life I have been held to be important—and it has only made me feel small. I am smaller than myself. Always you have told me I had a destiny. But now that we come down to it, it does not feel like mine. I am no champion, Celithrand. I am no warrior, and I have no taste for blood. The touch of iron burns my skin. The sight of blood makes me swoon. That’s a poor beginning to prophecies about swords and champions.”

  “I never expected you to be born with sword in hand,” said Celithrand. “Well enough for your mother, you were not. There is time, yet, to make you ready. Indeed, your training has already begun.”

  “A few days with the bow I’ve given her,” Robyn said. “Nothing more. You give me much credit.”

  “Days with a bow,” said Celithrand. “Weeks, on and off, by example, of leadership. Months drawing living things from the earth. Years speaking the language of the Iun, learning their ways.”

  “The village has taught me many things,” said Aewyn. “About being a villager.”

  “I spent long years making things ready,” the old druid
replied. “I told you in the deep wood, there is not much the Iun will not do for silver. By what secret art do you suppose silver was called into those hills—and by whose wagging tongue has word of it spread?”

  Robyn looked at him in disbelief and decision. “You cannot mean that the village—we are all here for her sake? By your design?”

  “Those who came,” said the druid, “came mostly for their own reasons. I do not pretend to know the hearts of me. I only know the land called out for a champion, and the Uliri foretold one. And so far, then, was she from the world that needed her, that they had to be brought together. United, like the vasils of the Empire, by a common purpose against a common enemy.”

  Poe, who had long been motionless, snorted his distaste.

  “I refuse to believe,” said Robyn, “that destiny alone laid low my family and brought me to this place. Or did your silver buy the scutcheoned thanes of House Fane as well? Our vasil did not fall so that this girl, or any girl, could have a convenient archery teacher. Bram and I—gods, his wife, Celithrand—you had nothing to do with it, however much you loved the idea of an Empire. You had no hand in my father’s betrayal. That I know. We came here of our own will. Not for Aewyn, whatever love we may bear for her now. Not for any prophecy, either.”

  “My dead have not died that she might live,” Poe agreed. “To suggest it is disrespectful to them. Worse, it is unkind to her.”

  “All things have unseen ends,” said Celithrand, but Poe would have none of it.

  “I have heard enough,” Poe growled to Aeywn. “You need not pay this prophecy business any heed. Destinies and champions belong in other stories. Not mine, and not yours. We can return to the woods. You can live your life in peace, free of meddling old men. Even a druid has no place in those woods, if we tell your mother what ill-fated designs he has on you.” He fixed Celithrand with his yellow eyes and spoke with a measured calm: “We are sorry you have traveled so far. But she does not like her destiny. She chooses another. You have been my friend for many years, old one. But if she asks it of me, you can expect me to keep her from you.”

  “I admire your courage, P’őh,” said Celithrand, pronouncing Poe’s true name far back in his long throat with immense effort. “It was always your way to be silent until strong words came. But these things are larger and more long-lived than you or I. You are come now into your full strength, and if you wish to shield her from her fate, you may well succeed for a time. But the flower of your kind blooms only a short while. Aewyn will be timeless, as her mother. In time she will outlive even me. If we prepare her now, perhaps she will even see the end of the Age. But not if she is unready for the inevitable. In two dozen years you will be dead—may the noble crows take your eyes—and the night will come for her all the same. We would do well to make it a little less dark for her in the time that we have.”

  “If two dozen years, I have,” said Poe defiantly, “then two dozen I swear to her. And let the night come when it must. But I suffer no evil in this world, not even a deceiver speaking nonsense in the full bloom of his dotage, to touch her while I yet draw breath.” Without standing, exactly, without doing much more than shifting his weight, his bulk seemed to swell in the narrow cottage as the muscles of his shoulders rose and his head lowered.

  “Please don’t fight,” said Aewyn.

  “I am not your enemy,” said Celithrand, gently but without fear. “And I am sorry to be the messenger. But this peril will come, whether you stand to answer it or no. I would have you both ready to meet it on that day. Or would you claim to protect her, only to let her face the future unready?”

  Poe growled wordlessly, but turned the thought over in his mind. His fierce jaws hung open a long time, on the edge of more and harsher words, until he begrudgingly shut them with a snort.

  Aewyn felt very small in the silence that followed. “My home is here, in Haveïl,” she said. “But if I must come away with you, I will do as you ask.”

  “Where she goes,” Poe warned, “I go.”

  “I would not dream of separating you,” said Celithrand, “and I would not spirit you away in the night from those who helped shape you—not if it can be avoided. I cannot stay the winter, of course—I must stay on the move, and would not draw the eye of Travalaith down on you here. But I will return to you at the first thaw, when you have settled your affairs and said your farewells.”

  “Where will we go?” asked Aewyn. “I have never even left the woods.”

  “Westward to the Sea,” said Celithrand. “And thence beyond all reach of Travalaith, to Dær Móran, my ancestral homeland. The druidlords will train you in ways of power not seen since the Age of Sun. And it may be that you live out a lifetime, or more, in relative peace before the time comes.”

  “Will—will I return?” Aewyn asked.

  “Certainly,” said Celithrand. “But this world may well have moved on before you do.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  Poe’s nostrils flared. The tears did not stray from Aewyn’s eyes, but they were there.

  “I thought you wanted to take up the Leaf,” said Robyn, frowning. “To ride out with the Havenari, when you were old enough. To be a steward of the wood, and care for the people here as I do.”

  Aewyn shook her head. “I don’t suppose destiny is a thing that cares much what we want.”

  “Then worms take it,” Poe said. “The karach have no destiny. And to my tribe I have bound you with my stories. You have a new destiny, now, if you wish it.”

  “She has been chosen,” said Celithrand. “It will not matter. Destiny has a way of finding us just the same.”

  “My ancestors did not believe in stories about Chosen Ones,” said Poe. “Nor do I. There is no Chosen among my people, and never has been. Only those who make choices. And now that we come to it, she wishes no such destiny. She is afraid, old man, do you not smell it?”

  “She will be more afraid,” said Celithrand, “when the Riddle of Kedwyn is broken.”

  “I have been lost,” said Aewyn, feeling acutely the ache of tears that had not yet fallen. “These long years, I have been lost. And now that I am found, I wish I were lost again. Grim called my destiny a fine tale. He never really believed it. I wish only that he’d been right. But I know…I am meant for something more—no, other—than this place. I am sorry to share that curse with those I love.”

  Celithrand sighed and laid an arm around her. “You have done no wrong,” he said. “I too prayed it was not so. The more I came to know you, the more I prayed. But it is as Robyn says—the gods of goodness seldom give answer. At least, no answer we wish to hear.”

  “I don’t even know what to tell the others,” said Aewyn. “What will they think when I am gone?”

  “I do not mean to steal you away,” said Celithrand. “Your destiny has been long years in the making, and there will be time enough for farewells. When I return in the spring, one last time, we will speak of this prophecy, and of many others. In time you will know all that I know. This world is going to ask a great deal of you, and I pledge myself to helping you in any way I can. There is much yet I can tell you.”

  “But you have said so much already,” said Aewyn. “My head is spinning.” The old druid rose with a grunt and brushed down his clothes.

  “There is more, so much more,” he said. “Our years together will not be easy. But they will be my pleasure. I have not stayed the season with you since you were very young.”

  “If she stays the winter,” said Robyn, with some hostility, “I will keep up her lessons in the use of that bow. I made a promise to her, and you ought to let me keep it. If she is a champion of legend, it will not serve her poorly to have some skill at arms.”

  “As you wish,” said Celithrand. “I have not forgotten who founded the Havenari, nor why. Your role in the Siege of Shadow has made you the natural masters-at-arms to begin her training, if you have kept up the old ways.”

  “I can’t blood her against the Aldwode,” said
Robyn. “Not without the ceremonial blood that I thank the Ten is in short supply. But I can teach her the bow and the spear. There’s not much call for the old styles now, dealing with bandits, deserters, settling property disputes, quelling rowdies on the homesteads. But we have not forgotten.”

  “I should like to train with the Havenari,” said Aewyn. “If you had not come, I thought—well, it was my greatest hope to train with them over the winter.”

  Celithrand waited a long moment before nodding his assent. “As you wish. We have some time, yet. I come to you now out of necessity, for I was evading the Legions in this direction. But I wanted time to tell you everything. Over the next few months, you will—”

  The creak of the heavy door interrupted Celithrand’s words. Fletch swung it inward and staggered into the room, gasping for breath. The druid hastily threw his hood over his face as the boy stumbled in without a knock.

  “Fletch?” Robyn asked, rising to meet the boy. “You were given orders—”

  “Pardons— C-Captain,” he stammered, small chest heaving. “Hendec—sent me down from the Road. They’ve picked up some tracks…”

  “Follow them, then,” Robyn interrupted, a little impatiently. “We’re in the midst of something important, here. The others can handle a deserter on their own.” The hesitation in Fletch’s voice was chilling and immediately out-of-place.

  “Not deserter’s tracks,” he breathed. “A true Horror. What sort, exactly, we cannot tell.”

  All was silence and stillness. Robyn was the first to move, rising to her feet and belting on her sword. “Show me,” she said. As she rushed to the door, the others followed suit.

  “I may be of some use,” said Celithrand, “though, as we have now said it, the bloom of my strength is much withered.”

  “I’m coming too,” said Aewyn, which of course meant that Poe would not leave her. The druid shot her a stern glare.

  “It is too soon,” he said. “You are not ready.” But she had learned much in her time with Grim’s human daughter, and raised her chin haughtily.