Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (6 page)

Across the table, Grieva put a chunk
of buttered bread into Kethlyn’s chubby fist, but he threw his head back and
tossed the bread straight into Etivva’s lap.

Rhoslyn’s thin composure snapped
like a cord. “Take him upstairs! Eliad, deliver his plate to the nursery.” The
squire jumped from his post at the sideboard, swept away Kethlyn’s and Grieva’s
settings and fled into the corridor with them.

Settling back again, Rhoslyn’s
scathing glare slid over Thorn.

Enough of this. Out with it. “It’s
hardly
my
doing, Your Grace.”

Alovi’s eyes widened and her mind
shouted,
Don’t go there
.

“Did I blame you?” Rhoslyn bit.

Heeding his mother’s warning, Thorn
tore into the roast duck on his plate. “I’m told it’s rare for two avedrin to
be born so closely in the same line. But I’m also told that the nexus hadn’t
appeared in our family since Anyr. He was the first. A thousand years ago.
We’re just long past due, I guess.”

Rhoslyn sucked her teeth, hardly
mollified.

“It won’t do you—or Carah—any good
to deny what she is,” Thorn added. “Or to try and suppress her gifts, however
they might manifest.”

“When will they…?” Kelyn asked.
“Mother?”

Alovi folded her hands primly and
looked down at her plate. “Soon.”

Thorn pitied her for the guilt she
must be feeling. She had known he was avedra from the beginning and did
everything in her power to keep him from finding out. “As soon as Carah can
move about and communicate with you, you’ll notice.”

“Birdsong?” Kelyn said.

“Maybe.”

“Fairies?”

“Certainly. Saffron claims she can
look out for both Carah and me. Indeed, that it is her ‘sacred duty,’ whatever
that means. Blasted creature wouldn’t explain.”

“What about lightning?” Kelyn’s glance
settled on Thorn’s hands.

Once he would have tried to hide
them. Not now. Nor did he bother hiding the green stripes that peeked from
under the embroidered hem of his sleeve, but he did hope to lighten his brother’s
concern. “Well, don’t expect her to start blasting people when she reaches
those terrible twos, but be careful during those tempestuous adolescent years.”

“That’s not funny!” Rhoslyn
snapped.

“Isn’t it? I thought it rather
witty myself.” Thorn’s toes felt the stomp of Alovi’s foot; he stopped baiting
the duchess. “There’s no need to worry. I’ll come every year to check her progress,
and I’ll train her myself.”

“You’re assuming she will embrace
this life, as you have,” Rhoslyn said. “What if she doesn’t want to be avedra?”

“That
is
Carah’s choice to
make,” he admitted. “But given who her parents are, I think she’ll grab it with
both hands.” He received not one shred of argument on that score. “Etivva? Will
you mind tutoring another avedra?”

“Not if she is as studious as you,”
said the shaddra. “You see? I told you, you are meant for more than hiding away
in a library.”

“Well,” he confessed, “I
do
spend
most of my time in a library.”

“In the trees? A library for
monkeys?”

Thorn laughed. “Have it your way.”

When the last of the dishes were
cleared away and the family drifted into the parlor for brandy and chess,
Etivva stopped Thorn with a light touch to his arm. The lightheartedness she’d
exhibited was gone. Instead, her face was taut with a question far more
difficult to ask. “Do not lie to me now. Please. Your brother told me … he
almost died, but you saved him … and it was then that you …
saw
her. The
Mother-Father. Is it true?” When she took her vows to join the Order of the
Shaddra’hin, she dedicated her life to the study of Ana-Forah’s ways and the
preservation of her sanctity.

“Yes, it’s true,” he whispered. To
speak of it aloud seemed sacrilegious.

Etivva’s breath quickened and a
smile threatened to break free. “Her face. You saw her face?”

“No.” He closed his eyes,
remembering. “Only light. Light everywhere. It was everything, everything real
and desirable. The world, our world, it was nothing but dust and ghosts. But I
heard her voice, Etivva.”

“She spoke to you?” Her
almond-shaped eyes grew large, as if the news were too much to believe. “What
did it sound like? What did she say?”

“It was neither male nor female.
Almost impossible to describe, Etivva, but if love had a voice, it is the voice
of the Mother-Father. It moved through me until I was no longer separate from
it. I didn’t
want
to be separate from it, and when I had to return … it
felt like having my heart broken all over again.”

“She told you to come back to us?”

He nodded. “My family needed me,
she said.” And something else.
When this Age of Kings is over …
What did
that mean? How long must he wait until she came for him?

Etivva listened eagerly for more,
but Thorn kept those words to himself.

~~~~

“The
Houses of Athmarr and Nathrachan
are implored upon to restrain their tenants and militias from the raiding and
seizure of Aralorr’s livestock and property upon pain of immediate and complete
retribution…

—
Precepts for Peace,

by King Rhorek, 982
A.E.

T
hat spring at Assembly,
Laral was knighted, and after eight years of serving at Ilswythe, he returned
home to Tírandon, cringing under his father’s boisterous approbation. Lander
clapped his son on the back so often on his first day home that Laral felt
bruises rising. “Your brother would’ve been proud of you. And your mother. Now
to teach you how to be a lord of Tírandon.” How to tell Da that he had other
obligations first? Better just to go.

Laral saddled the dapple-gray
warhorse Kelyn had given him and stuffed a pair of saddlebags full of food and
supplies for a long journey south. Nothing would keep him from this journey,
not even his father’s temper.

“Son, this girl hasn’t replied to
your letters in over a year. You said so yourself!” Lander’s red-faced bellowing
filled the stable yard. The grooms made themselves scarce. Waiting at the gate
to the courtyard, Drys and Kalla kept their eyes down and their mouths shut.
Laral was grateful his friends had agreed to accompany him; otherwise, his
resolve might crumble under his father’s onslaught. “She came to her senses.
Why can’t you? Or maybe she married somebody else by now, eh? Consider that?
She thought so little of you, an
Aralorri
, damn it, that she didn’t even
bother telling you. Son, I know how these things are. Boys go off to war, they
see a pretty face, they think they fall in love and will die without their
enemy’s daughter. Mother’s bosom, Laral, do you see how ridiculous this is?
She’s a Fieran! Think, damn you.”

“I
have
thought!” Laral shouted,
startling the warhorse.

“With your head or with something
else?”

“I promised, all right? If she’s
forgotten about me and refuses, at least I will have kept my word.”

“To a
Fieran
?”

Laral’s face flushed hot. It must
match Da’s in hue by now. “
Bethyn
, Da. Her name is Bethyn.” He didn’t
need his father listing the possibilities; he had lain awake at night, sick
with wondering. Was she ill? Was she dead? Had she grown impatient and married
someone else? Did she burn his letters the instant they reached her? Had she
received them at all?

“I don’t care if her name is
Ana-Forah,” Lander retorted. “You will both be subject to scrutiny and insult,
not to mention the fact that your loyalties will always be called into
question.”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

“That’s the problem, Laral! You
don’t care. The rest of us must. I will take no pleasure in telling His Majesty
that my heir married one of his enemies.”

“Then don’t tell him.
I
will
tell him. And I’ll be damned if I hang my head or hide my face because the
woman I love lives on the wrong side of the bloody river.”

“Hiding your face may be exactly
what you find yourself doing. What if war breaks out? Who will you fight for?
Will you break those vows you just took to protect king and country? Eh?”

“I won’t fight at all!”

“You won’t have that option, son.”

He saw the sense in his father’s
tirade, but the last thing he meant to do was admit it aloud. He checked the
cinches on his saddle for the tenth time, feeling all the while as if he faced
a great storm and having no choice but to ride into it. If he didn’t, he would
always wonder if … if. And what would his promises mean? “I can’t break my
word,” he said and led the warhorse from the yard. Drys and Kalla hurried after
him, dragging their own skittish mounts.

“I’ll revoke your inheritance,”
Lander called after him, “give it all to your sister.”

“Fine! Do!” Laral shouted over his
shoulder, though it felt like spitting glass to say it.

“If this Fieran turns you down,
you’ll be outcast.”

Laral turned back at that. “Ruthan
would never cast me out as you would. She still has a heart.”

“Laral?” The tiny voice came from
the steps to the keep. Ruthan stood in the morning sunlight, fair hair shining like
a ray of dawn, dark eyes large and sad. She carried a bundle half as large as
she was as she descended the steps. “It’s going to be cold at night. And it’s
going to rain.” Was it? The skies looked clear to him, but he knew better than
to doubt her word. As much as he wanted to avoid the extra weight, he accepted
the heavy woolen blanket. Ruthan flipped back a corner. Secreted inside the
folds was a roughly stitched doll wearing a knight’s surcoat. “I charmed it,”
she said. “It’s for luck.”

Laral descended to a knee and
hugged her tight. Last night he’d been tempted to ask his sister if Bethyn
would accept him, but Ruthan hadn’t peered into the future after Leshan died,
not so much as to see which horses would win the races at Assembly. In any case,
Bethyn’s refusal was certain if he didn’t go; it was best if he didn’t know
anything beyond that. “Don’t let Da hurt himself, eh?”

Ruthan smiled, so much older and
wiser than her ten years.

Laral tied the blanket behind his
saddle, tucked the wee knight into his undershirt alongside the ash pouch she
had embroidered for him, then climbed into the saddle.

Lord Lander mounted the steps to
the keep so that his son had to ride out under his angry gaze.

“If I return alone, you can laugh
in my face.”

“So help me, I will!” exclaimed Lander
as his son put spurs to the warhorse’s flanks. “
If
you return. You’ll be
lucky if you’re not run through as soon as you step across that bridge. You’ll
never make it to Brengarra. Laral!”

He did not turn back. He’d break if
he did. Drys and Kalla rode to each side of him, lending him courage.

The stones of the gatehouse still wore
the scars of war. Gouges from trebuchet shot, black scorch marks from Dragon
fire. Everything inside the curtain wall had been burned to cinders: keep,
stables, artisans quarters, granaries, smithy, kennels, and gardens. Leshan had
rebuilt them all, exact replicas of the originals. But for the newness of the
stone and mortar, these buildings might have been standing for a thousand
years.

Beyond the original gatehouse,
construction continued. At the end of a straight road a quarter-mile long, a
second gatehouse neared completion. The plans, written in Leshan’s own hand,
called it Andett’s Bastion, after his mother; it dwarfed the inner gate in
height and breadth, and boasted three iron portcullises that could be lowered
in times of trouble. Extending to each side of the Bastion and encircling the
old castle was a new wall so wide at the top that two supply wagons could pass
each other without fighting for space. Seven fat towers studded this outer
curtain. Rickety webs of scaffolding surrounded three of the new towers even
now. Craftsmen scampered up and down the wooden beams as deftly as spiders,
raising barrels of mortar and flats of stone.

The stone came from all over the
Northwest. Dense red sandstone, torn from the Fieran fortress of Ulmarr,
provided the foundation for Andett’s Bastion. More red stone topped the old
inner towers, increasing their height by three stories, so that sentries could
see over the outer wall. Clashing with the dull yellow-gray of the keep, this
red stone caused the turrets to blaze like flame in the light of the setting
sun.

 Scaffolding hemmed in the marvel
that was to be called Ruthan’s Skybridge. It connected one of the old curtain
towers to the northernmost new tower. Laral’s Skybridge, its twin to the south,
had been declared complete only a month ago. Laral had never seen anything like
these bridges. They were so expansive that a column of cavalry, twenty riders
abreast, could parade between the columns. They allowed the garrison to race
straight from the barracks in the inner gatehouse to the outer curtain without
having to descend one tower and climb another. The soldiers joked that one
might serve Tírandon for years without once touching the ground.

Beyond the outer wall was not one
moat but two. A drawbridge spanned the first, a permanent bridge the second,
and between the two bodies of water stood the King’s Dike, a steep-sloped mound
from which Tírandon’s defenders could make a stand. Men and women from across
Tírandon’s lands had risen early this morning to resume digging on the outer
moat. Winter rain and snow had filled the first one already, and groundwater
wasn’t too deep here on the plain. Though the people were paid in coin and food
for their labor, they also toiled willingly because the razing of Tírandon remained
fresh in their nightmares.

Laral’s, too, though he hadn’t
witnessed it.

After the peace talks when Lander
finally returned home, he decided his oldest son had been mad indeed, going to
these elaborate extremes, and called a halt to the construction. As ever, King
Rhorek disagreed with him. “Let the building continue,” he’d said. “It was
Leshan’s desire to make Tírandon unbreachable. Your fortress will be our
greatest defense should war come again.”

Free of the crowds of laborers and
craftsmen, Laral, Drys, and Kalla broke across open plain, scattering herds of
sheep. When they were well away from the vast shadow of the walls and Lord
Lander’s scrutiny, they slowed to a trot. “Do you really think your father will
disinherit you?” Kalla asked. Her curls shone like strands of copper in the
sunlight. She wore her hair in a sensible braid down her back. She wasn’t a
vain woman; at least, she made no attempt to hide a heavy rash of freckles and ears
that stuck out. Older than Laral and Drys, she’d been knighted the year before.
She carried her sword easily. Laral had yet to grow accustomed to the weight of
the new sword on his own belt. The training swords he’d practiced with had been
made of wood, and no one wanted to look foolish by wearing a training sword.
The real thing felt as cumbersome as a tail he’d grown in the night. He had
asked his father to permit him to carry Contention as well, but Lander refused
to part with the trophy he had won from the Warlord Goryth. The greatsword hung
in a place of honor above the mantelpiece in the Great Hall, its moonstone
gargoyle glimmering like a sulking ghost. The sword his father had commissioned
for him was fine enough. Rough-cut sapphire onyx, and mother-of-pearl shaped
Tírandon’s double chevron on the pommel. He told himself he would never draw it
for an unjust cause, and upon its first bloodletting, he would name it
Peacekeeper. He also knew better than to speak that promise in anyone’s hearing,
because he doubted he would be able to keep it. On his right, he wore the
diamond-studded dagger he’d won in the races at Assembly so many years ago.
With it he had saved Queen Briéllyn from Zhiani mercenaries and defended Bethyn
against his fellow squires. He had come to think of it as simply Guardian.

“Father is rash enough to
disinherit me, aye,” he said, “then regret it ever after. It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does,” Kalla argued.

“What matters is that no one can
disinherit Bethyn.”

“The White Falcon might. Does the
Princess Regent have that power?”

“Oh, Goddess,” Drys groaned, “what
a snake’s pit we’re wading in. Ki’eva scares the shit outta me. Those eyes … green
and mean. Glad I am that she didn’t turn ‘em on me at the peace talks. I mighta
shriveled up and died.”

Laral grinned down at his friend. Drys
was head and shoulders shorter, but insisted he ride as tall a horse as any
other knight. He had a special ladder-type stirrup that he lowered and tied up
again when he rode. A comical pair the two of them had made, standing side by
side on the dais to take their vows and accept their swords from Rhorek. At
least the highborns thought so, snickering behind their hands at Laral’s height
and young Lord Zeldanor’s lack of it. At the banquet afterward, Drys had felt
the need to defend himself: “Aye, but you’re a scrawny shit. I’m twice as broad
in the shoulders, and look at that fist, will ya? Solid granite. I could squash
you flat, so mind yourself.” Laral knew his friend well enough to take the
threat seriously.

“If Bethyn loses Brengarra, too,”
Laral said, “we’ll come live at Zeldanor.”

“Don’t drag me into this.”

“You’re in so deep, you’re treading
water.”

Drys’s chest puffed out. “You
calling me short?”

“No, I’m calling you chicken. If
you don’t ride across that bridge with me tomorrow—”

“You dare!” Drys balled his fist.

“I dare!” Laral shouted back.

“Boys!” Kalla looked to the heavens
as if appealing to the Goddess. “Can we save the tree-pissing until
after
we cross into Fiera? Some moral support you are, Drys. And
you
.” She
jabbed a finger at Laral. “Some attractive suitor you’ll make, beat all black
and blue.”

Drys grinned and winked. “Thanks
for the confidence in my prowess, Kalla.”

“Hnh, you’d look the same, but you’re
not trying to impress anyone, so what do you matter?”

Drys deflated.

“Let’s just get to the bridge with
our friendship intact, all right?” Kalla urged her warhorse to a canter. The
boys followed in resentful silence.

Rather than risk fleas at the
Twisted Oak Inn, they decided to camp under the eaves of Whitewood Forest. The
next morning, they stuffed their telltale surcoats into their saddlebags and
changed into civilians’ garb. Laral owned little more than squire’s livery with
Ilswythe’s sword-wielding falcon on it, nor had there been time to have a wardrobe
made, so he had dug into Leshan’s things. Heart-wrenching, sorting through the
doublets, cloaks, and fine silk shirts; for some reason, it was sight of
Leshan’s gloves that had brought the sob out of him. Wearing those gloves, the black
leather worn and creased, Leshan had tried to build a new future. Sliding them
on, Laral found that his fingers were longer than Leshan’s had been. His arms and
legs, too, but lace cuffs and knee-high boots hid that fact. He only hoped that
by the time he reached Brengarra, the velvet would smell less of moth balls.