Caught off guard, Leal froze for an instant before clearing his throat. "Which version would you prefer?" he asked.Hilde snorted. "There are versions? What are my choices?"
One corner of Leal"s mouth lifted. "The one you won"t mind others overhearing," he began with a hint of teasing in his tone, "and the other kind."
When understanding of what he might mean dawned, Hilde threw him a look full of venom. "You really can"t help yourself, can you?" she hissed.
Leal inwardly kicked himself and thought, "What am I doing?"
He said aloud, "It would seem that I can"t."
For one moment of pure regret, he thought the conversation he had managed to open -- something that already went against all expectations -- had now ended. But then...
"Well, Prince?" Hilde urged, choosing, it would seem, to exercise patience. "What"s the acceptable version?"
From falling straight down, Leal"s mood hit a pliant surface that made it bounce straight back up.
"What is this?" he asked himself with self-directed humor, torn between pleasure and confusion over the irrationality of the experience. "How much of these extremes would I be able to take, I wonder?"
From the outside, though a small smile really was playing on his lips, he made it seem like he was merely formulating a response that was appropriate for polite company.
"I have been trying to figure out why we hate each other," he finally said. In the dark, he was able to see how Hilde"s eyebrows rose. Her look seemed to say "I can explain it to you if you"d just ask," which made his smile tighten before he clarified, "Lys and Arnica, I meant."
She mouthed a silent "oh" of understanding and averted her eyes. His mood was on the drop again.
"Isn"t it because of the most recent war?" she then said, now giving the matter due thought as well. "And the war before that, and the one before..." As she continued, a frown began to form and then deepen between her brows.
Leal nodded. "The wars were us having it out with each other, just the most obvious manifestations of our hatred. I"m sure you"re also familiar with our shared history, Princess."
Though it was not phrased as such, the last sentence was a question.
"Er..." The Princess" eyes wandered in obvious evasion. "I might have missed a few lessons..."
"How fortunate," he replied with a grin.
Hilde was still not looking at him as she shook her head. "Something I"ll have to amend."
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The sudden gravity in her tone made Leal pause and observe her downturned profile closely.
On purpose, he put on a casual manner and said, "If you"ll permit, I"ll be happy to recommend you books on the subject -- proper discourses and layered a.n.a.lyses of events, not dry recountings of dates and names that we are only expected to memorize."
This finally made Hilde snap out of the funk she"d fallen into. With a hesitant smile that spoke of skepticism, she faced Leal again.
"You would?" she wondered aloud. "I mean... yes, please, Prince. I"d appreciate it."
"I"ll draw a list for you tomorrow," he replied with a pleased glint in his eyes. Then he recalled...
"If there is a tomorrow," Hilde muttered absently, very much oblivious that she"d echoed what Leal himself had said earlier and was thinking now. Her frown returned. "Why DO we hate each other? Does our shared history say?"
Leal shook his head. "Baron Harmin has made a deeper study of this. He might have a better answer. The accounts I"ve read grow fuzzier and... more muddled, I suppose, the farther back in time they go. Truth be told, a lot of them are just pure speculation, or practical retellings of oral traditions that had been pa.s.sed down..."
He trailed off. He had sensed more than seen the glazed look of disinterest in Hilde"s eyes despite her continuing show of attention.
Keeping an indulgent chuckle to himself, Leal got to his point.
"The best answer I"ve come across is not part of the histories, strictly speaking. It"s deep in the territory of legend. Would you still like to hear it?"
It took the other person a while to realize she was being directly questioned. She looked surrept.i.tiously around her as she replayed in her mind the last few sentences she only half-heard to figure out what they meant.
In the process, she saw what Leal himself observed when he followed her gaze.
Hilde answered, "Yes, Prince, I think many of us here would like to hear it."
She had said this in a low voice, speaking in Lysean. It had occurred to her belatedly that Leal had been speaking in Arnican all this while, which perhaps contributed to the degree of interest their conversation had garnered from the nearer soldiers who could hear their quiet voices.
Some were so tired of both mind and body that they"d taken this chance to s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep, but one or two of those with their eyes closed gave off the aura of alertness and attention. There were also a few who seemed interested in the subject for its own sake. Whatever the case, it appeared they found something intriguing in how an enemy was speaking in their presence about the root of hatred.
"Long ago..." Leal intoned without warning, startling Hilde and the others. But through that instinct that must be as old as time itself -- or as old as human beings have been around -- his listeners settled down the very next instant, preparing to receive a tale with at least one ear open.
It was not a story that was unknown to them. Arnicans of all walks first received it from the cradle, and then again during their days of schooling. It was eventually integrated into the fabric of their ident.i.ty after becoming full-fledged men and women of Arnica.
The legend told of Ellanher, son of Ansigar and Amalasuintha, who were the chief of the G.o.ds and the G.o.ddess of the wilderness.
His father Ansigar ruled the s.h.i.+ning city atop the highest peak in the mountain ranges of the north. As the manifestation of Order, all that was Just and True stemmed from him, and he was all that was Just and True.
Amalasuintha"s dominion was the forests and the caves, the deep valleys and the fathoms of the seas, and these were all outside the other divinities" spheres. It was said that Ellanher"s mother was of the earth itself, not birthed from Thought and the cosmos as the others had been.
"The two formed a union not out of love, for it was not in their nature to love, nor out of l.u.s.t, for they were not mortals with primal needs to propagate life -- they did so to create a bridge between their realms: that the divine might step into the lands of those who"d called them into being; that Nature might seep into the veins of Power and make of them forces of good and not control, of service and not domination. The bridge that was the result of this union, your legends call the Child of Balance."
Leal paused and swept his gaze over the shadowed faces of his listeners. Having made sure they were still with him, he continued, "There is a little-known version of this tale from my own land. In it, Ellanher was referred to by a different name, and his parents were described in slightly different ways. The differences are... perhaps best embodied in what their offspring was called: the Child of Light and Dark."