Toma.s.so went over to the sideboard and smoothly poured a gla.s.s of wine for him. Devin was impressed with the composure of the man. He was also aware, from the exaggerated courtesy and the undeniable sparkle in bar Sandre"s accentuated eyes, that although the fluting voice might be faked, Toma.s.so, in certain matters and propensities, was still very much what he was said to be. Devin accepted the gla.s.s, careful not to let their fingers touch.
"I wonder now," drawled Lord Scalvaia in his magnificent voice, "are we to be treated to a recital here while we pa.s.s our vigil? There does seem to be a quant.i.ty of musicians here tonight."
Devin said nothing, but following Alessan"s example did not smile.
"Shall I name you a provincial grower of grapes, my lord?" There was real anger in Alessan"s voice. "And call Nievole a grain-farmer from the southwestern distrada? What we do outside these walls has little to do with why we are here, save in two ways only."
He held up a long finger. "One: as musicians we have an excuse to cross back and forth across the Palm, which offers advantages I need not belabour." A second finger shot up beside the first. "Two: music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of detail. The sort of precision, my lords, that would have precluded the carelessness that has marked tonight. If Sandre d"Astibar were alive I would discuss it with him, and I might defer to his experience and his long striving."
He paused, looking from one to another of them, then said, much more softly: "I might, but I might not. It is a vanished tune, that one, never to be sung. As matters stand I can only say again that if we are to work together I must ask you to accept my lead."
He spoke this last directly to Scalvaia who still lounged, elegant and expressionless, in his deep chair. It was Nievole who answered, though, blunt and direct.
"I am not in the habit of delaying my judgement of men. I think you mean what you say and that you are more versed in these things than we are. I accept. I will follow your lead. With a single condition."
"Which is?"
"That you tell us your name."
Devin, watching with rapacious intensity, anxious not to miss a word or a nuance, saw Alessan"s eyes close for an instant, as if to hold back something that might otherwise have shown through them. The others waited through the short silence.
Then Alessan shook his head. "It is a fair condition, my lord. Under the circ.u.mstances it is entirely fair. I can only pray you will not hold me to it though. It is a grief-I cannot tell you how much of a grief it is-but I am unable to accede."
For the first time he appeared to be reaching for words, choosing them carefully. "Names are power, as you know. As the two tyrant-sorcerers from overseas most certainly know. And as I have been made to know in the bitterest ways there are. My lord, you will learn my name in the moment of our triumph if it comes, and not before. I will say that this is imposed upon me; it is not a choice freely made. You may call me Alessan, which is common enough here in the Palm and happens to be truly the name my mother gave me. Will you be gracious enough to let that suffice you, my lord, or must we now part ways?"
The last question was asked in a tone bereft of the arrogance that had infused the man"s bearing and speech from the moment of his arrival.
Just as Devin"s earlier fear had given way to excitement, so now did excitement surrender to something else, something he could not yet identify. He stared at Alessan. The man seemed younger than before, somehow-unable to prevent this almost naked showing of his need.
Nievole cleared his throat loudly, as if to dispel an aura, a resonance of something that seemed to have entered the room like the mingled light of the two moons outside. Another owl hooted from the clearing. Nievole opened his mouth to reply to Alessan.
They never knew what he would have said, or Scalvaia.
Afterwards, on nights when sleep eluded him and he watched one or both moons sweep the sky or counted the stars in Eanna"s Diadem in a moonless dark, Devin would let his clear memory of that moment carry him back, trying-for reasons he would have found difficult to explain-to imagine what the two lords would have done or said had all their briefly tangled fate lines run differently from that lodge.
He could guess, a.n.a.lyse, play out scenarios in his mind, but he would never know know. It was a night-time truth that became a queer, private sorrow for him amid all that came after. A symbol, a displacement of regret. A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once, until Morian called the soul away and Eanna"s lights were lost. We can never truly know the path we have not walked.
The paths that each of the men in that lodge were to walk, through their own private portals to endings near or far, were laid down by the owl that cried a second time, very clearly, just as Nievole began to speak.
Alessan flung up his hand. "Trouble!" he said sharply. Then: "Baerd?" "Baerd?"
The doorway banged open. Devin saw a large man, his very long, pale-yellow hair held back by a leather band across his brow. There was another leather thong about his throat. He wore a vest and leggings cut in the fashion of the southern highlands. His eyes, even by firelight, gleamed a dazzling blue. He carried a drawn sword.
Which was punishable by death this close to Astibar.
"Let"s go!" the man said urgently. "You and the boy. The others belong here-the youngest son and the grandson have easy explanations. Get rid of the extra gla.s.ses."
"What is it?" Toma.s.so d"Astibar asked quickly, his eyes wide.
"Twenty hors.e.m.e.n on the forest path. Continue your vigil and be as calm as you can-we won"t be far away. We"ll return after. Alessan, come on! come on!"
The tone of his voice pulled Devin halfway to the door. Alessan was lingering though, his eyes for some reason locked on those of Toma.s.so, and that look, what was exchanged in it, became another one of the things that Devin never forgot, or fully understood.
For a long moment-a very long moment, it seemed to Devin, with twenty hors.e.m.e.n riding through the forest and a drawn sword in the room-no one spoke. Then: "It seems we will have to continue this extremely interesting discussion at a later hour," Toma.s.so bar Sandre murmured, with genuinely impressive composure. "Will you take a last gla.s.s before you go, in my father"s name?"
Alessan smiled then, a full, open smile. He shook his head though. "I hope to have a chance to do so later," he said. "I will drink to your father gladly, but I have a habit I don"t think even you can satisfy in the time we have."
Toma.s.so"s mouth quirked wryly. "I"ve satisfied a number of habits in my day. Do tell me yours."
The reply was quiet; Devin had to strain to hear.
"My third gla.s.s of a night is blue," Alessan said. "The third gla.s.s I drink is always of blue wine. In memory of something lost. Lest on any single night I forget what it is I am alive to do."
"Not forever lost, I hope," said Toma.s.so, equally softly.
"Not forever, I have sworn, upon my soul and my father"s soul wherever it has gone."
"Then there will be blue wine when next we drink after tonight," said Toma.s.so, "if it is at all in my power to provide it. And I will drink it with you to our fathers" souls."
"Alessan!" snapped the yellow-haired man named Baerd. "In Adaon"s name, I said twenty hors.e.m.e.n! Will you Will you come?" come?"
"I will," said Alessan. He hurled his winegla.s.s and Devin"s through the nearest window into the darkness. "Triad guard you all," he said to the five in the room. Then he and Devin followed Baerd into the moonlit shadows of the clearing.
With Devin in the middle they ran swiftly around to the side of the cabin farthest from the path that led to the main road. They didn"t go far. His pulse pounding furiously, Devin dropped to the ground when the other two men did so. Peering cautiously out from under a cl.u.s.ter of dark-green serrano bushes they could see the lodge. Firelight showed through the open windows.
A moment later Devin"s heart lurched like a ship caught by a wave across its bows, as a twig cracked just behind him.
"Twenty-two riders," a voice said. The speaker dropped neatly to the ground on Baerd"s other side. "The one in the middle of them is hooded."
Devin looked over. And by the mingled light of the two moons saw Catriana d"Astibar.
"Hooded?" Alessan repeated, on a sharply taken breath. "You are certain?"
"Of course I am," said Catriana. "Why? What does it mean?"
"Eanna be gracious to us all," Alessan murmured, not answering.
"I wouldn"t be counting on it now," the man named Baerd said grimly. "I think we should leave this place. They will search."
For a moment Alessan looked as if he would demur, but just then they heard a jingling of many riders from the path on the other side of the lodge.
Without another word spoken the four of them rose and silently moved away.
"This evening," murmured Scalvaia, "grows more eventful by the moment."
Toma.s.so was grateful for the elegant lord"s equanimity. It helped steady his own nerves. He looked over at his brother; Taeri seemed all right. Herado was white-faced, however. Toma.s.so winked at the boy. "Have another drink, nephew. You look infinitely prettier with colour in your cheeks. There is nothing to fear. We are here doing exactly what we have permission to be doing."
They heard the horses. Herado went over to the sideboard, filled a gla.s.s and drained it at a gulp. Just as he put the goblet down the door crashed loudly open, banging into the wall beside it, and four enormous, fully armed Barbadian soldiers strode in, making the lodge seem suddenly small.
"Gentlemen!" Toma.s.so fluted expertly, wringing his hands. "What is it? What brings you here, to interrupt a vigil?" He was careful to sound petulant, not angry.
The mercenaries didn"t even deign to look at him, let alone reply. Two of them quickly went to check the bedrooms and a third seized the ladder and ran up it to examine the half-loft where the young singer had been hiding. Other soldiers, Toma.s.so registered apprehensively, were taking up positions outside each of the windows. There was a great deal of noise outside among the horses, and a confusion of torches.
Toma.s.so abruptly stamped his foot in frustration. "What is the meaning of this?" he shrilled as the soldiers continued to ignore him. "Tell me! I shall protest directly to your lord. We have Alberico"s express permission to conduct this vigil and the burial tomorrow. I have it in writing under his seal!" He addressed the Barbadian captain standing by the door.
Again it was as if he hadn"t even spoken so completely did they disregard him. Four more soldiers came in and spread out to the edges of the room, their expressions blank and dangerous.
"This is intolerable!" Toma.s.so whined, staying in character, his hands writhing about each other. "I shall ride immediately to Alberico! I shall demand demand that you all be shipped straight back to your wretched hovels in Barbadior!" that you all be shipped straight back to your wretched hovels in Barbadior!"
"That will not be necessary," said a burly, hooded figure in the doorway.
He stepped forward and threw back the hood. "You may make your childish demand of me right here," said Alberico of Barbadior, Tyrant of Astibar, Tregea, Ferraut and Certando.
Toma.s.so"s hands flew to his throat even as he dropped to his knees. The others, too, knelt immediately, even old Scalvaia with his game leg. A black mind-cloak of numbing fear threatened to descend over Toma.s.so, trammelling all speech and thought.
"My lord," he stammered, "I did not ... I could ... we could not know!"
Alberico was silent, gazing blankly down upon him. Toma.s.so fought to master his terror and bewilderment. "You are most welcome here," he bleated, rising carefully, "most welcome, most honoured lord. You do us too much honour with your presence at my father"s rites."
"I do," said Alberico bluntly. Toma.s.so received the full weight of a heavy scrutiny from the small eyes, close-set and unblinking deep, in the folds of the sorcerer"s large face. Alberico"s bald skull gleamed in the firelight. He drew his hands from the pockets of his robe. "I would have wine," he demanded, gesturing with a meaty palm.
"But of course, of course."
Toma.s.so stumbled to obey, intimidated as always by the sheer, bulky physicality of Alberico and his Barbadians. They hated him, he knew, and all his kind, over and above everything else these conquerors felt about the people of the Eastern Palm whose world they now ruled. Whenever he faced Alberico, Toma.s.so was overwhelmingly conscious that the Tyrant could crack his bones with bare hands and not think twice about having done so.
It was not a comforting line of thought. Only eighteen years of carefully schooling his body to shield his mind kept his hands steady as they carried a full gla.s.s ceremoniously over to Alberico. The soldiers eyed his every movement. Nievole was back by the larger fire, Taeri and Herado together by the small one. Scalvaia stood, braced upon his cane, beside the chair in which he"d been sitting.
It was time, Toma.s.so judged, to sound more confident, less guilty. "You will forgive me, my lord, for my ill-judged words to your soldiers. Not knowing you were here I could only guess they were acting in ignorance of your wishes."
"My wishes change," Alberico said in his heavy, unchanging voice. "They are likely to know of those changes before you, bar Sandre."
"Of course, my lord. But of course. They-"
"I wanted," said Alberico of Barbadior, "to look upon the coffin of your father. To look, and to laugh." He showed no trace of an inclination towards amus.e.m.e.nt.
Toma.s.so"s blood felt suddenly icy in his veins.
Alberico stepped past him and stood ma.s.sively over the remains of the Duke. "This," he said flatly, "is the body of a vain, wretched, fatuous old man who decreed the hour of his own death to no purpose. No purpose at all. Is it not amusing?"
He did laugh then-three short, harsh barks of sound that were more truly frightening than anything Toma.s.so had ever heard in his life. How had he known? How had he known?
"Will you not laugh with me? You three Sandreni? Nievole? My poor, crippled, impotent Lord Scalvaia? Is it not diverting to think how all of you have been brought here and doomed by senile foolishness? By an old man who lived too long to understand how the labyrinthine twistings of his own time could be so easily smashed through with a fist today."
His clenched hand crashed heavily down on the wooden coffin lid, splintering the carved Sandreni arms. With a faint sound of distress Scalvaia sank back into his chair.
"My lord," Toma.s.so gulped, gesticulating. "What can you possibly mean? What are you-"
He got no further than that. Wheeling savagely Alberico slapped him meatily across the face with an open hand. Toma.s.so staggered backwards, blood spattering from his ripped mouth.
"You will use your natural voice, son of a fool," the sorcerer said, the words more terrifying because spoken in the same flat tone as before. "Will it at least amuse you to know how easy this was? To learn how long Herado bar Gianno has been reporting to me?"
And with those words the night came down.
The full black cloak of anguish and raw terror Toma.s.so had been fighting desperately to hold back. Oh, my father Oh, my father, he thought, stricken to his soul that it should have been by family that they were now undone. By family. Family! Family!
Several things happened then in an extremely short span of time.
"My lord!" Herado cried out in high-pitched dismay. "You promised! You said they would not know! You told me-"
It was all he said. It is difficult to expostulate with a dagger embedded in your throat.
"The Sandreni deal with the sc.r.a.pings of dirt under their own fingernails," said his uncle Taeri, who had drawn the blade from the back of his boot. Even as he spoke, Taeri pulled his dagger free of Herado and smoothly, part of one continuous motion, sheathed it in his own heart.
"One less Sandreni for your sky-wheels, Barbadian!" he taunted, gasping. "Triad send a plague to eat the flesh from your bones." He dropped to his knees. His hands were on the dagger haft; blood was spilling over them. His eyes sought Toma.s.so"s. "Farewell, brother," he whispered. "Morian grant our shadows know each other in her Halls."
Something was clenched around Toma.s.so"s heart, squeezing and squeezing, as he watched his brother die. Two of the guards, trained to ward a very different sort of blow at their lord, stepped forward and flipped Taeri over on his back with the toes of their boots.
"Fools!" spat Alberico, visibly upset for the first time. "I needed him alive. I wanted both of them alive!" The soldiers blanched at the fury written in his features.
Then the focus of the room went elsewhere entirely.
With an animal roar of mingled rage and pain Nievole d"Astibar, a very big man himself, linked his two hands like a hammer or the head of a mace and swung them full into the face of the soldier nearest to him. The blow smashed bones like splintering wood. Blood spurted as the man screamed and crumpled heavily back against the coffin.
Still roaring, Nievole grappled for his victim"s sword.
He actually had it out and was turning to do battle when four arrows took him in the throat and chest. His face went dully slack for an instant, then his eyes widened and his mouth relaxed into a macabre smile of triumph as he slipped to the floor.
And then, just then, with all eyes on fallen Nievole, Lord Scalvaia did the one thing no one had dared to do. Slumped deep in his chair, so motionless they had almost forgotten him, the aged patrician raised his cane with a steady hand, pointed it straight at Alberico"s face, and squeezed the spring catch hidden in the handle.
Sorcerers cannot, indeed, be poisoned-a minor protective art, one that most of them master in their youth. On the other hand, they most certainly can be slain, by arrow or blade, or any of the other instruments of violent death-which is why such things were forbidden within a decreed radius of wherever Alberico might be.
There is also a well-known truth about men and their G.o.ds-whether of the Triad in the Palm, or the varying pantheon worshipped in Barbadior, whether of mother G.o.ddess or dying and reviving G.o.d or lord of wheeling stars or single awesome Power above all of these in some rumoured prime world far off amid the drifts of s.p.a.ce.
It is the simple truth that mortal man cannot understand why the G.o.ds shape events as they do. Why some men and women are cut off in fullest flower while others live to dwindle into shadows of themselves. Why virtue must sometimes be trampled and evil flourish amid the beauty of a country garden. Why chance, sheer random chance, plays such an overwhelming role in the running of the life lines and the fate lines of men.
It was chance that saved Alberico of Barbadior then, in a moment that had his name half spelled-out for death. His guards were intent upon the fallen men and on the taut, bleeding form of Toma.s.so. No one had spared a glance for the crippled lord in his chair.
It was only the fact-mercilessly random-that that evening"s Captain of the Guard happened to have moved into the cabin on Scalvaia"s side of the room that changed the course of history in the Peninsula of the Palm and beyond. By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.
Alberico, turning in a white rage to snap an order at his captain, saw the cane come up and Scalvaia"s finger jerk upon the handle. Had he been facing straight ahead or turning the other way he would have died of a sharpened projectile bursting into his brain.