The Legacy of Gird (78 page)

Luap stared at him, feeling the hairs rise on his scalp and along his arms. Die at Greenfields? What did he mean? He peered around Gird to meet on Tamis's face the expression of what he felt: fear and confusion.

"They told me," Gird said, now almost conversationally, "that I would not live to see the peace. I came down from the hill to die—and then lived. Is it that?"

"Thank Alyanya's grace you
did
live, sir," said Tamis quickly, and Sterin murmured something similar. Luap couldn't say anything; his mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of it. He had never believed in the drunkard's truth, but this was truth if ever he heard it.

But Gird was shaking his head. "My head hurts," he said. "It's hot. I think—I think I'll go back—if you'll settle with the innkeeper, Luap?"

He walked off, not quite steadily, Tamis and Sterin at either elbow, leaving Luap to pay and—since Sterin had gone—to help the innkeeper in mopping the stinking floor.
That's what I'm good for,
Luap thought.
Pay the bills, keep the accounts straight, clean up after him.
That wasn't a fair assessment, and he knew it, but he indulged himself a little anyway. It wasn't fair that Gird had called him a liar in public, when he was only trying to be tactful.

When he had finished mopping, much of the crowd had melted away, as crowds do. Not as interesting to watch a sober man mop a floor as watch a drunk foul it . . . and Gird hoped to make a strong and peaceful society out of these sheep? The innkeeper accepted his coins with a sour look, although he'd added a sweetener to the total. "Great men!" the innkeeper said, leaving no doubt that he was still angry. "I'm not saying a thing against what he did, y'understand, but that doesn't give him th' right to call honest men thieves or cowards."

Luap couldn't decide if an apology would do any good, and his momentary silence seemed to irritate the innkeeper even more.

"I know what you're like," the man went on, feeling each coin ostentatiously before putting it in his belt-pouch. "You won't tell me what you think, but anything I say goes straight to
him
."

"He's not like that," Luap said.

"Huh. He's not, or you don't tell him everything?" Shrewd hazel eyes peered at him. Luap shrugged.

"Tomorrow he'll be sorry he insulted you; surely you know that. Bring it up at the next market court, and he'll fine himself and apologize before as large a crowd as heard the insult."

"Oh, aye. Apologies don't mend broken pottery or put wool back on a shorn sheep. My da said them's don't make mistakes don't have to waste time on apologies." Luap wondered where the innkeeper had been during the war. The innkeeper answered that, too, in his final sally. "We've had royalty in here, you know, before the rabble—before the revolution. Dukes, even a prince of the blood. Knew how to hold their wine, they did, and it wasn't any of this cheap ale, neither."

Luap's temper flared. "Well, you've had another prince of the blood, for what that's worth."

The innkeeper's eyebrows went up. "Who, then?"

"Me," said Luap, turning to go, sure of the last word. But the innkeeper cheated him of that, as well.

"But raised with peasants, weren't you then? Makes a difference, don't it? It's not like you're a real prince, just some summer folly, eh?"

And if that's not enough to sour a day, thought Luap as he climbed back to the upper city, there's maudlin Gird, who will no doubt spout more difficult prophecy I'll have to explain.

Down below conscious thought, he was not aware of the relief he felt: another day in which he had a good reason not to tell Gird about the cave.

Raheli leaned against the barton wall, arms folded, watching the dancers through the open grange door. Out of courtesy for her, to spare her the long walk to the traditional sheepfold, they had brought the musicians here . . . they were dancing
here
 . . . and she could do nothing but watch. She knew the music, the same as she'd heard all her life, and every step the dancers danced. She could remember, as if it had been yesterday, the night when Parin's hand on her arm changed her from girl to woman. When the dance had changed from entertainment to courtship, and they had begun the dance of life that ended with his death.

She tried not to think of it; she had pushed it aside, so many times, from the moment the mageborn lords had broken his head. She would not let herself brood on it; it did no good. But the old songs ran into her heart like knives; for an instant she almost thought she felt the flutter of that life she had never actually borne. Her child, and his. The face that had come to her in dreams, as her mother had said her children's faces had come. She could smell the very scent of him, feel the warm skin of his chest against her cheek.

The dancers shouted, ending one dance, and a short silence fell. In the torchlight, the dancers' faces wavered, bright light and black shadow, as strange for a moment as ghosts. Raheli had the feeling for a moment that Parin and the child both were in there, somewhere, waiting for her. She had pushed herself off the wall before she realized what she was thinking. Her movement had caught someone's eye; before she could return to her place, she saw people watching her. She would have to go in, and greet them. She tried to smile, and walked forward.

"Rahi! The Marshal's back!" yelled some of the younger yeomen. A way opened for her. They had been dancing a long time; the grange smelled of sweat and onions and the torches and candles, more like a cottage during a feast than a grange. "Now we can dance the Ring Rising."

They meant it as an honor. They could not know she had danced the Ring Rising with Parin, that first time. Rahi blinked away scalding tears, put off her old grief, and accepted the role they demanded of her. The musicians finished their mugs of ale, and picked up the instruments again.

Ring Rising had been, Gird told her once, older than any other dance. Something about it had to do with the old Stone Circle brotherhood, that Gird had turned into the Fellowship, in his own way. But long before, so the oldest tales went, the dance had raised stones, rings of stones, on hill after hill, until the mageborn came and struck them down with their new magic.

Hand in hand with her senior yeoman-marshal, Belthis, Rahi began the dance to the beat of the finger-drums. Couple after couple fell in behind them. It felt strange to dance this indoors; the walls seemed to lean inward, pressing on them. What if it did move stones? Rahi concentrated on the intricate steps, feeling her way back into the rhythms. Heel, toe, side, back, skip forward, stamp. A step, a double-stamp. Now a double line of couples, two concentric rings, then a swirl that twisted them to interlocking rings, dancing in and out of each other's patterns. Soon all there had joined in, children and elderly as well as the young adults. Rahi found herself moving through four interlocked rings, touching hands with one partner after another for a quarter-turn, then swinging to find another.

It was in the midst of the dance, with the grange full to bursting of music and dancers, that she came face to face with her dream, the child she would have borne. Dark hair, dark eyes, Parin's smile, soft fingers, light-footed and blithe. Her breath caught in her throat, but they had danced the pattern and separated again before she could get a word out. Tears burned in her eyes; she felt them on her cheeks, on the scar . . . and someone she could not see for tears put an arm around her shoulders, making sure she did not falter in the dance, until her breath came easily again.

It was not fair. It had never been fair. She rejected bitterness as instantly as she would have fear. Fairness had nothing to do with it, and everything, and was all Gird had wanted, and more than she would ever have. From bootheel to the top of her head, she felt the beat of that ancient dance, and from hand to hand the warmth and love of her people, and in the middle where the cadence and warmth met, she could feel her heart beating, expanding and contracting, as if it had grown larger than her chest.

Around her the faces glowed, all the children her children, all the men and women her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers. Her own scars bound her to them, to all those maimed or sickened by life's disasters.
Her
people, with their ancient link to land and deeper magic than the mageborn would ever know . . . and it had not been fair, but she would make it fair. Light and dark, true and false, as simple as the realities they had all endured: hungry and not hungry, cold and not cold, pregnant and not pregnant. She felt herself rising above them, lifted on their affection and trust like a leaf on a summer wind, like the stones of the great rings in which peace and plenty dwelt. Here was the child she had lost, and the love she had lost, and here she would serve.

When the music stopped, she did not know it; she came to herself slowly, realizing silence and space around her. The torches had burned low, but gave a light unusually steady. Then, as she drew a long breath, the murmurs began. The senior yeoman-marshal of the grange bowed to her. "Marshal—it was our honor."

"My pleasure," she replied, hardly thinking. She felt different, but could not yet define the difference; she would have to think about it later. She glanced around. They were all watching her, most smiling, as if she were the favorite grandchild at a family gathering.
Once, I was,
she thought, and felt the scar on her face stretching to her grin. Now they moved closer, touching her arm, her shoulder; her heart lifted, suddenly exultant. She could have hugged them all, but had no need—she could tell by their expressions that they felt what she meant, just as she felt what they meant. Once, and again, she had a place, the place she had thought lost forever.

The next morning, she set out for Littlemarsh barton with a lighter heart than she'd had for years. She felt in place, comfortable; she thought of Gird suddenly with a warmth that surprised her. Could he have felt estranged, in these past years? She thought of him once more as a father, as the father he had been to her. Not perfect, not with his temper and his occasional bouts of drunken depression, but a man who loved his children even more than his beloved cows. For the first time in years, she let herself think of her mother: her face came to memory only dimly, but her words, her movements, the very smell of the bread she made and feel of her strong arms were as clear as if she'd died the day before. That was what she'd hoped to be—another woman like her mother—but time and chance had stolen that from her, as the lords' cruelty had stolen her mother's life, robbing her of peaceful old age.

Yet this morning, bitterness could not swamp the better memories. Mali had laughed a lot; even her scoldings had held warmth and good humor in their core. They had been, within the limitations of hunger and cold and fear, a family drenched in love. From that love, Gird had found the strength to hold and lead an army; from that love she herself had found the strength to come back from an easy death, lead others in battle, and care for them after. For all that had gone wrong, all the wickedness loosed on innocents that she had seen, love and caring had not abandoned the world—or her.

"Alyanya's blessing," she murmured, feeling the tears run over her face, knowing they were healing something. She was not cut off, alone, alienated from her people, a useless barren woman who could only hope for death. She had a family: all of them. She had given her blood, though not in childbirth, and this day she knew that gift had been accepted, by the gods and by her people.

I
will go to Gird,
she thought, half in prayer and half in promise.
I will tell him he has a daughter again, and not just another Marshal.
In her mind's eye, she saw him grin at her; she saw his arms open; she felt the welcoming hug she had told herself she would never seek again.

Raheli dismounted stiffly. After six days in the saddle, she felt every one of her old wounds, and twice her age. She led her brown gelding into the stable, shaking her head at the junior yeoman who would have helped her. Taking care of her own mount came naturally to a farm girl. She stripped off the saddle and rubbed the sweat marks with a twist of straw. The junior yeoman had brought a bucket of water and scoop of grain; when her horse was dry, she put feed and water in the stall and heaved the saddle to her hip, closing the stall door behind her. Gird's gray horse, in the next stall, put its head out and looked at her.

"You," she said, with emphasis. The gray flipped its head up and down. Cart horse, she thought. Da should know better than that. She would never forget how it had shone silver-white in the sun at Greenfields. Here, in the dim stable, it looked gray enough, but she knew its coat would shine in the sun. It took her sleeve in its lips, carefully, its eyes almost luminous. She rubbed its forehead, scratched behind its ears, and it opened its mouth in a foolish yawn. "You don't fool me," she told it, and it shook its head. "Right." Gird had loved cows, from her earliest memory, as much or more than people; she wondered that the gods had sent him a horse and not a magical cow. A snort from the gray horse. "I know—I'm not supposed to know the gods sent you." She herself had discovered an affinity with horses, and the gray had responded much as others did, with its differences in addition.

Out of the stable, across the inner courtyard. In her Marshal's blue, with the saddlebags that proclaimed her a visitor from some outlying grange, she found a way opened for her in the crowds (they seemed like crowds) that thronged the court and the passages of the old palace. The two guards at the outer door had nodded to her, not questioning her right to enter. Up the stairs, along the corridor, to the office where Luap—she had come to calling him that after Gird did—kept accounts and made the master copies of Gird's legal decrees. She looked in—empty, but for the sick lad she'd heard about, asleep again. Gird's office, near the end of the corridor, was empty too. She frowned. Usually this time of day one or both of them were at work here. She left her saddlebags on his desk, and went down to the kitchen.