Tigana Part 29

It was with the words of invocation spoken in sequence by the three of them that Baerd finally understood what he had stumbled upon.

Two hundred years ago, in a time of seemingly unending plagues, a time of harvest failures, of violence and blood, the Carlozzini heresy had taken root here in the south. And from the highlands it had begun to spread throughout the Palm, gaining momentum and adherents with frightening speed. And against Carlozzi's central teaching: that the Triad were younger deities, subject to and agents of an older, darker set of powers, the priesthood of the Palm had grimly and in concert set their hands.

Faced with such rare and absolute unity among the clergy, and caught up in the panic of a decade of plague and starvation, the Dukes and Grand Dukes and even Valcanti, Prince of Tigana, had seen themselves as having no choice. The Carlozzini had been hunted down and tried and executed all across the peninsula, by whatever means executions were conducted in each province in that time.

A time of violence and blood. Two hundred years ago.

And now he was standing here showing the leather that held the caul of his birth, and speaking to three who had just declared themselves to be Carlozzini.

And more. Night Walkers, Night Walkers, the one-legged old man had said. The vanguard, the secret army of the sect. Chosen in some way that no one knew. But now he did know, they had shown him. It occurred to him that he might be in danger now, having been granted this knowledge, and indeed, the bigger, bearded man seemed to be holding himself carefully, as if prepared for violence. the one-legged old man had said. The vanguard, the secret army of the sect. Chosen in some way that no one knew. But now he did know, they had shown him. It occurred to him that he might be in danger now, having been granted this knowledge, and indeed, the bigger, bearded man seemed to be holding himself carefully, as if prepared for violence.

The woman who had stood watch was weeping though. She was very beautiful, though not in the way of Alienor, whose every movement, every spoken word might hint at a feline undercurrent of danger. This woman was too young, too shy, he could not make himself believe in a threat from her. Not weeping as she was. And all three of them had spoken words of thanks, of praise. His instincts were on guard, but not in a way that warned of immediate danger. Deliberately Baerd forced his muscles to relax. He said, 'What have you to tell me, then?'

Elena wiped the tears from her face. She looked at the stranger again, absorbing his square, neat, quiet solidity, his reality, reality, the improbable fact that he was here. She swallowed with difficulty, painfully aware of the racing of her heart, trying to move past the moment when she had seen this man emerge from night and shadow to stand before her. And then the long interval when they had faced each other in the moonlight before she had impulsively reached out to touch his hand, to be sure that he was real. And had only then called for Mattio and Donar. Something odd seemed to be happening to her. She made herself concentrate on what Donar was saying. the improbable fact that he was here. She swallowed with difficulty, painfully aware of the racing of her heart, trying to move past the moment when she had seen this man emerge from night and shadow to stand before her. And then the long interval when they had faced each other in the moonlight before she had impulsively reached out to touch his hand, to be sure that he was real. And had only then called for Mattio and Donar. Something odd seemed to be happening to her. She made herself concentrate on what Donar was saying.

'What I tell you now gives you power of life and death over a great many people,' he said softly. 'For the priesthood still want us destroyed and the Tyrant in Astibar will bide by what the clergy say in such things. I think you know this.'

'I know this,' the dark-haired one echoed, equally quietly. 'Will you say why you are confiding in me?'

'Because tonight is a night of battle,' Donar said. 'Tonight I lead the Night Walkers into war, and yesterday at sunset I fell into a sleep and dreamt of a stranger coming to us. I have learned to trust my dreams, though not to know when they will come.'

Elena saw the stranger nod, calm, unruffled, acknowledging this as easily as he had acknowledged her presence in the road. She saw that his arms were ridged with muscle under his shirt, and that he held himself as a man who had known fighting in his days. There seemed to be a sadness in his face, but it was really too dark to tell so much, and she chided herself for letting her imagination run free at such a time.

On the other hand, he was abroad and alone on an Ember Night. Men without griefs of their own would never do such a thing, she was certain. She wondered where he was from. She was afraid to ask.

'You are the leader then, of this company?' he said to Donar.

'He is,' Mattio cut in sharply. 'And you would do well not to dwell upon his infirmity.'

From the defiance of his tone it was clear he had misinterpreted the question. Elena knew how protective he was of Donar; it was one of the things she most respected in him. But this was too huge, too important a moment for misunderstandings. She turned to him and shook her head urgently.

'Mattio!' she began, but Donar had already laid a hand on the blacksmith's arm, and in that moment the stranger smiled for the first time.

'You leap at a slight that is not meant,' he said. 'I have known others, as badly injured or worse, who led armies and governed men. I seek only to find my bearings. It is darker here for me than it is for you.'

Mattio opened his mouth and then closed it. He made a small, awkward gesture of apology with his shoulders and hands. It was Donar who replied.

'I am Elder of the Walkers, yes,' he said. 'And so mine, with Mattio's aid, is leadership in battle. But you must know that the war we are to fight tonight is not like any battle you might know. When we come out again from this house it will be under a different sky entirely than the one above us now. And under that sky, in that changeling world of ghosts and shadows, few of us will appear as we do here.'

The dark-haired man shifted uneasily for the first time. He glanced downward, almost reluctantly, to look at Donar's hands.

Donar smiled, and held out his left hand, five fingers spread wide.

'I am not a wizard,' he said softly. 'There is magic here, yes, but we step into it and are marked for it, we do not shape it. This is not wizardry.'

The stranger nodded at length. Then said, with careful courtesy, 'I can see that. I do not understand it, but I can only a.s.sume you are telling me these things to a purpose. Will it please you now to tell me what that is?'

And so Donar said then, finally, 'Because we would ask aid of you in our battle tonight.'

In the silence that followed, Mattio spoke, and Elena had an idea how much pride he swallowed in saying: 'We have need. Very great need.'

'Who do you fight?' the other man said.

'We call them the Others,' Elena said herself, as neither Donar or Mattio spoke. 'They come to us year by year. Generation after generation.'

'They come to ruin the fields and blight the seedlings and the harvest,' Donar said. 'For two hundred years the Night Walkers of Certando would battle them on this Ember Night, and for all this time we were able to hold them in check as they come upon us from the west.'

Mattio said, 'For almost twenty years now, though, it has grown worse and worse for us. And on the last three Ember Nights we have been very badly beaten. Many of us have died. And Certando's droughts have grown worse; you will know about that, and about the plagues here. They have-'

But the stranger had flung up a hand suddenly, a sharp, unexpected gesture.

'Almost twenty years? And from the west?' he said harshly. He came a step nearer and turned to Donar. 'The Tyrants came almost twenty years ago. And Brandin of Ygrath landed in the west.'

Donar's gaze was steady as he leaned on his crutches looking at the other man. 'This is true,' he said, 'and it is a thought that has occurred to some of us, but I do not think it signifies. Our battles on this night each year go far beyond the daily concerns of who governs in the Palm in a given generation, and how they govern, and from where they come.'

'But still-' the stranger began.

'But still,' Donar said, nodding his head, 'there are mysteries to this that are beyond my power to grasp. If you discern a pattern that I do not ... who am I to question or deny that it might be true?'

He reached up to his neck and touched the leather sack. 'You carry the mark we all bear, and I dreamt your presence here tonight. Notwithstanding that, we have no claim upon you, none at all, and I must tell you that death will be there to meet us in the fields when the Others come. But I can also tell you that our need goes beyond these fields, beyond Certando, and even, I think, beyond this Peninsula of the Palm. Will you fight with us tonight?'

The stranger was silent a long time. He turned away and looked upwards then, at the thin moon and the stars, but Elena had a sense that his truer vision was inwards, that he was not really looking up at the lights.

'Please?' she heard herself say. 'Will you please?'

He made no sign that he had even heard her. When he turned back it was to look at Donar once more.

He said, 'I understand little of this. I have my own battles to fight, and people to whom I owe a sworn allegiance, but I hear no evil in you, and no untruth, and I would see for myself the shape these Others take. If you dreamt my coming here I will let myself be guided by your dream.'

And then, as her eyes began br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears again, Elena saw him turn to her. 'Yes, I will,' he said levelly, not smiling, his dark eyes grave. 'I will fight with you tonight. My name is Baerd.'

And so it seemed that he had heard her, after all.

Elena mastered her tears, standing as straight as she could. There was a tumult, a terrible chaos, rising within her though, and in the midst of that chaos it seemed to Elena that she heard a sound, as of a single note plucked on her heart. Beyond Donar, Mattio said something but she didn't hear what it was. She was looking at this stranger, and realizing, as his gaze met her own, that she had been right before, that her instincts had not misled. There was so deep a sadness in him it could not possibly be missed by any man or woman with eyes to see, even in night and shadow.

She looked away, and then closed her eyes tightly for a moment, trying to hold back something of her heart for herself, before it all went seeking in the magic and the strangeness of this night. Oh, Verzar, Oh, Verzar, she thought. she thought. Oh, my dead love Oh, my dead love.

She opened her eyes again and took a careful breath. 'I am Elena,' she said. 'Will you come in and meet the others?'

'Yes,' said Mattio gruffly, 'come in with us, Baerd. Be welcome in my home.'

This time she heard the hurt that came through in his voice, though he tried to mask it. She winced inwardly at that sound, caring for him, for his strength and his generosity, hating so much to give sorrow. But this was an Ember Night and the tides of the heart could scarcely be ruled even by the light of day.

Besides, she had a very grave doubt, already, as the four of them turned to go into the house, whether there would be any joy for her to find in what had just happened to her. Any joy in this stranger who had come to her out of darkness, in answer to or called by Donar's dream.

Baerd looked at the cup that the woman named Carenna had just placed in his hands. It was of earthenware, rough to the touch, chipped at one edge, the unpainted colour of red soil.

He looked from Carenna to Donar, the older, maimed man-the Elder, they called him-to the bearded one, to the other girl, Elena. There was a kind of light in her face as she looked back at him, even in the shadows of this house, and he turned away from that as something-perhaps the one thing-he could not deal with. Not now, perhaps not ever in his life. He cast his gaze out over the company a.s.sembled there. Seventeen of them. Nine men, eight women, all holding their own cups, waiting for him. There would be more at the meeting-place, Mattio had said. How many more they could not tell.

He was being reckless, he knew. Swept away by the power of an Ember Night, by the undeniable truth of Donar's dream, the fact that they had been waiting for him. By, if he were honest with himself, the look in Elena's eyes when he had first come up to her. A complex tempting of fate, that aspect of it, something he seldom did.

But he was doing it now, or about to do it. He thought of Alessan, and of all the times he'd chided or derided the Prince, his brother of the soul, for letting his pa.s.sion for music take him down one dangerous path or another. What would Alessan say now, or quick-tongued Catriana? Or Devin? No, Devin would say nothing: he would watch, with that careful, focused attention, and come to his own conclusions in his own time. Sandre would call him a fool.

And perhaps he was. But something had responded deep within him to the words Donar had spoken. He had borne the caul of his birth in leather all his life, a minor, a trivial superst.i.tion. A charm against drowning, he had been told as a child. But it was more here, and the cup he held in his hands would mark his acceptance of that.

Almost twenty years, Mattio had said. Mattio had said.

The Others from the west, Donar had said. Donar had said.

There might be little in it, or a great deal; or nothing at all, or everything.

He looked at the woman, Elena, and he drained the cup to the lees.

It was bitter, deathly bitter. For one panicked, irrational moment he feared he was undone, poisoned, a blood sacrifice in some unknown Carlozzini rite of spring.

Then he saw the sour face Carenna made as she drank from her own cup, and saw Mattio wince ruefully at the taste of his, and the panic pa.s.sed.

The long table had been put away, lifted from its trestles. Pallets had been spread about the room for them to lie upon. Elena moved towards him and gestured, and it would have been ungracious to hold back. He walked with her towards one wall and took the pallet she offered him. She sat down, unspeaking, on the one beside it.

Baerd thought of his sister, of that clear image of walking hand in hand with Dianora down a dark and silent road, only the two of them abroad in the wide world.

Donar the miller swung himself towards the pallet on Baerd's other side. He leaned his crutches against the wall and subsided on the mat.

'Leave your sword here,' he said. Baerd raised his eyebrows. Donar smiled, a hieratic expression, devoid of mirth. 'It will be useless where we are going. We will find our weapons in the fields.'

Baerd hesitated a moment longer; then, aware of even greater recklessness, of a mystic folly he could not have explained, he slipped the back-scabbard over his head and laid it against the wall beside Donar's crutches.

'Close your eyes,' he heard Elena saying from beside him. 'It is easier that way.' Her voice sounded oddly distant. Whatever he had drunk was beginning to act upon him. 'It will feel like sleep,' she said, 'but it will not be. Earth grant us grace, and the sky her light.' It was the last thing he heard.

It was not sleep. Whatever it was, it was not sleep, for no dream could be this vivid, no dream-wind this keen in his face.

He was in an open field, wide and fallow and dark, with the smell of spring soil, and he had no memory at all of coming here. There were a great many people-two hundred perhaps, or more-in the field with him, and he had no memory of any of them either. They must have come from other villages in the highlands, from gatherings in other homes like Mattio's.

The light was strange. He looked up.

And Baerd saw that the moon in the sky was round and large and full, and it was green like the first green-gold of spring. It shone with that green and golden light among stars in constellations he had never seen. He wheeled around, dizzied, disoriented, his heart pounding, searching for a pattern that he knew in the heavens. He looked south, to where the mountains should be, but as far as his eyes could track in the green light he saw level fields stretching away, some fallow, some fully ripe with summer grain in a season that should only be spring. No mountains at all. No snow-clad peaks, no Braccio Pa.s.s with Quileia beyond. He spun again. No Castle Borso to north or east. Or west?

West. With a sudden premonition he turned to look there. Low hills rose and fell in seemingly endless progression. And Baerd saw that the hills were bare of trees, of gra.s.s, bare of flower and shrub and bush, bleak and waste and barren.

'Yes, look there,' Donar's deep voice said from behind him, 'and understand why we are here. If we lose tonight the field in which we stand will be desolate as those hills next year when we come back. The Others are down into these grainlands now. We have lost the battles of those hills over the past years. We are fighting in the plain now, and if this goes on, one Ember Night not far from now our children or their children will stand with their backs to the sea and lose the last battle of our war.'

'And?' Baerd's eyes were still on the west, on the grey, stony ruin of the hills.

'And all the crops will fail. Not just here in Certando. And people will die. Of hunger or of plague.'

'All over the Palm?' He could not look away from the desolation that he saw. He had a vision of a lifeless world looking like that. He shivered. It was sickening.

'The Palm and beyond, Baerd. Make no mistake, this is no local skirmish, no battle for a small peninsula. All over this world, and perhaps beyond, for it is said that ours is not the only world scattered by the Powers among time and the stars.'

'Carlozzi taught this?'

'Carlozzi taught this. If I understand his teaching rightly, our own troubles here are bound up with even graver dangers elsewhere; in worlds we have never seen or will see, except perhaps in dream.'

Baerd shook his head, still looking out at the hills in the west. 'That is too remote for me. Too difficult. I am a worker in stone and a sometime merchant and I have learned how to fight, against my will and inclination, over many years. I live in a peninsula overrun by enemies from overseas. That is the level of evil I can grasp.'

He turned away from the western hills then and looked at Donar. And despite the warning they'd given him, his eyes widened with amazement. The miller stood on two sound legs; his grey, thinning hair had become a thick dark brown like Baerd's own, and he stood with his broad shoulders straight and his head held high, a man in his prime.

A woman came up to them, and Baerd knew Elena, for she was not greatly changed. She seemed older here though, less frail; her hair was shorter, though still white-gold despite the strangeness of the light. Her eyes, he saw, were a very deep blue.

'Were your eyes that same colour an hour ago?' he asked.

She smiled, pleased and shy. 'It was more than an hour. And I don't know what I look like this year. It changes a little for me every time. What colour are they now?'

'Blue. Extremely blue.'

'Well then, yes, they have always been blue. Perhaps not extremely extremely blue, but blue.' Her smile deepened. 'Shall I tell you what you look like?' There was an incongruity, a lightness in her voice. Even Donar had an amused expression playing about his lips. blue, but blue.' Her smile deepened. 'Shall I tell you what you look like?' There was an incongruity, a lightness in her voice. Even Donar had an amused expression playing about his lips.

'Tell me.'

'You look like a boy,' she said with a little laugh. 'A fourteen-or fifteen-year-old boy, beardless now and much too thin and with a shock of brown hair I would love to cut if we had but half a chance.'

Baerd felt his heart thud like a mallet in his breast. It actually seemed to stop for an instant before beginning again, laboriously, to beat. He turned sharply away from the others, looking down at his hands. They did seem different. Smoother, less lined. And a knife scar he'd got in Tregea five years ago was not there. He closed his eyes, feeling suddenly weak.

'Baerd?' Elena said behind him, concerned. 'I'm sorry. I did not mean to-'

He shook his head. He tried to speak but found that he could not. He wanted to rea.s.sure her, her and Donar, that it was all right, but he seemed, unbelievably, to be weeping, for the first time in almost twenty years.

For the first time since the year he had been a fourteen-year-old boy forbidden to go to war by his Prince's orders and his father's. Forbidden to fight and die with them by the red banks of the River Deisa when all the shining had come to an end.

'Be easy, Baerd,' he heard Donar saying, deep and gentle. 'Be easy. There is always a strangeness here.'

Then a woman's hands were briefly upon his shoulders and then reaching around him from behind to meet and clasp at his chest. Her cheek rested against his back and she held him so, strong and sharing and generous, while he brought his hands up to cover his face as he cried.

Above them on the Ember Night the full moon was green-gold and around them the strange fields were fallow, or newly sown, or full with ripened grain before the planting-time, or utterly bare and desolate and lost, in the west.

'They are coming,' someone said, walking up to them. 'Look. We had best claim our weapons.' someone said, walking up to them. 'Look. We had best claim our weapons.'