"A Song for Arbonne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER 14

The blue moon is full tonight, Ranald realizes belatedly, lending its strange luminosity to the trees and rocks of the mountain pass. The creatures of the otherworld are rumoured to be able to move between their own land and this one on nights when Escoran is full. The mountains, in the shepherds' tales, are the haunts of many of them: ethereal creatures the size of flowers; hairy, great-footed monsters who can seize and devour an unwary horse and rider and leave nothing but bones for the morning sun to find; or the spirits who steal babies from their cradles by the fire and take them away under barrow and hill forever.

Ranald tries, again, to decide exactly why he is so unhappy to be here. He likes hunting, and night certainly holds no terrors for him, especially not in the company of fifty of the king's best men. In a sense this is simply a larger, more wide-ranging hunt.

In another sense, a more honest one, it is no such thing at all.

He looks over to his left and stares for a long moment at the grim profile of the only man who seems even less pleased than he to be here. Fulk de Savaric had the misfortune to be paying one of his rare visits to Cortil when the message came of his sister's flight and the king decided that same evening to ride. Ademar had made it clear that the dukes of Garsenc and Savaric were not merely being given the opportunity to join his company. They were expected to do so. Loyalty, the message was explicit, was very much at issue on this ride.

For two days and a night, with a second night upon them now, they have been in the saddle, changing horses three times, eating at speed and usually at a gallop. Ranald has never seen King Ademar like this, so intense, so focused in his rage.

This, he decides, is probably what is disturbing him most. That the king is visibly so much more incensed than he himself by Rosala's flight with the child. It is almost as if she fled from Ademar and not Ranald. In some ways that might even be true. Not that he harbours illusions about the strength of his relationship with his wife, but Ranald does wonder, almost wistfully, if she would have risked so much, including the life of the unborn child, just to leave Garsenc and his own company if his father and the king had not also been part of the picture. Large parts, both of them, with Galbert threatening to take the babe, and Ademar threatening… what? A seduction of the wife of the most powerful duke in the country? A ravishing of her if she proved unwilling?

It seems, on the evidence, that she has indeed proven unwilling, has chosen the astonishing, surely terrifying option of flight alone to another country rather than trust her husband to guard and shelter her from his father and their king. And what, he wonders, whether one considers it by the light of day or the blue shining of this moon, do all these things say about the character and strength of Ranald, duke of Garsenc, who is even now riding, however unwillingly, in the wake of his king across the mountain pass towards a slaughter in Arbonne?

In the end it is precisely as easy as any experienced soldier might have predicted it would be. The three Arbonnais corans in the watch-tower on the southern slopes of the range are accustomed to traffic from the north during the month of the Lussan Fair, and utterly confident—as they have every right to be—of the truce that always accompanies a fair.

Ademar halts his full company out of sight and sends five corans down towards the tower. They are greeted with courtesy by the guards, offered shelter and food and straw for the night. The three Arbonnais are killed even as these offers are being made. On the instructions of the king, as the signal is given and the rest of the company rides up, the three guardsmen are decapitated and castrated and the wooden buildings beside the stone tower are set on fire.

They ride more swiftly then, to be ahead of any message in the flames. A short time later they sweep down upon the nearby hamlet of Aubry like a wild hunt out of the shepherds' night terrors: fifty howling men on horses, swords out, torches in their free hands, burning and slaying without warning, without reason offered, without respite. This raid in a time of truce is a message, and the message is to be made as unambiguous as it can be.

Ranald, aware that he is being watched by the king and by the Elder who is here as his father's representative, makes a point, slightly sickened, of seeking out those few villagers who have some sort of weapon in their hands as they stumble from the huts amid the screaming of animals and small children. He is a very good fighter, once a celebrated one, though his brother latterly might have had the reputation, travelling the world in search of tournaments and wars. But it was Ranald who first taught Blaise anything about swordsmanship, and it was Ranald de Garsenc who, the year he turned nineteen, was named King's Champion in Gorhaut by Ademar's father, Duergar.

That had been, he has often thought, easily the best time of his life. Honoured by the king and the court for his prowess, excited by the attention of women of high rank and low, continually gratified by his own smooth, effortless skills, immersed in the oblivious, expansive confidence of youth, and free—more than anything else, free of his father for a little while.

Then his uncle, Ereibert de Garsenc, had died and Ranald had become duke, with all the defining burdens and powers of rank, and the specific implications of being near to an often-disputed throne. A new champion had been named ceremoniously, even as Ranald, returned to Garsenc Castle in the south, and his father, again, began to tell him what to do. More than ten years ago, that was. For all those years he has mostly been doing what Galbert tells him. He wonders what he could point to, if he tried, that has given him real pleasure in that time.

Certainly not this slaughter, or the meaning of it, in a time of truce. Ranald de Garsenc is hardly a sentimental man, and he has no trouble with warfare, or even the idea of conquest here in Arbonne. This isn't a war though, not yet. This is something ugly and vengeful. It is supposed to be his own revenge, he knows. He has not been consulted on the issue; he has only ridden, as required by his king, to deliver a message in blood and fire.

There is a small temple to the goddess Rian not far from the village, the northernmost temple in Arbonne, the nearest to Gorhaut. That is why they are here. The thirty or forty inhabitants of Aubry, awakened in the middle of the night, are killed, down to the last child. Like the guardsmen in the burning tower, the men—mostly shepherds and farmers—are decapitated and their genitals are hacked off. Ademar of Gorhaut knows exactly how to say what he thinks of the men in woman-ruled Arbonne. Then they ride on to the temple.

Under the light of Escoran at its full and the just-risen crescent of Vidonne, the eight priestesses of Rian in that small sanctuary are taken from their beds and are burned alive. The soldiers are made free of them first, by order of the king. Ademar moves his big horse restlessly back and forth, watching first one cluster of corans with a woman and then another. There is a great deal of screaming and a growing roar from the swiftly gathered bonfire of dry autumn wood. At one point, his pale yellow hair reddened in the firelight, Ademar looks over at Ranald and laughs.

"Do you not want a woman, my lord of Garsenc? A gift from your king, solace for your great loss?" He shouts it so others can hear.

Ranald, his sword still in his hand, though unnecessarily now, says, "Not before you, my liege. I will follow in this, as in all things."

Ademar throws his head back and laughs again. For a moment, Ranald is afraid the king will indeed dismount and join his corans among the pinioned women, but Ademar only slashes his horse again and moves nearer to where the Elder that Galbert has sent is watching the pyre. Ranald watches the king go, a bleakness in his heart. He knows what he should do. He knows he will not do it. In the mingling of firelight and the moons his eyes briefly meet those of Fulk de Savaric. Both men look away without speaking. He has seen burnings before, has ordered a number of them himself on the Garsenc lands, following his father's regime of having one such spectacle every year or so to keep the serfs and villagers properly subdued. He has watched impassively, time after time, setting an example. He has never seen eight women burned at once, though. The numbers shouldn't matter, but, when it finally begins, it appears that they do make a difference.

Through the screaming and the terrified noises of the farm animals all around, Ranald hears his father's designated Eider intone the ritual of denunciation and the formal curse of Corannos, and then, his voice rising in genuine triumph, invoking the god's gift of fire to eradicate heresy.

A scourging of the god, Galbert called this raid in the throne room of Cortil, when the king came out from a meeting with his High Elder and announced that he would be riding for Arbonne that same night.

The screaming continues among the flames until the smoke stops it, which is what always happens. The women slowly begin to turn black and the smell of burning flesh is strong. Ademar decides to leave. Having done what he came to do, his fury slaked for the moment, the king of Gorhaut leads his corans back towards the mountain pass. As they go past the still-smouldering outbuildings beside the lone watchtower one coran begins to sing, and soon almost all of them are doing so—a song of Gorhaut victorious in battle, the chosen warriors of Corannos in his most beloved land.

Three guardsmen in a tower, a hamlet of shepherds and farmers, eight priestesses raped and set on fire. A scourging of the god.

It is a beginning.

The west wind blew the smoke the other way, so he was able to see, quite clearly from the ridge at the fringe of the forest, exactly what was happening below. He watched the massacre in the village without expression, and felt a disturbing but unmistakable stirring in his loins when he saw men he knew dragging the women out from the temple, some naked, some in night-robes that were quickly ripped away. He was quite close, actually, though hidden among the trees. He heard not only the screams but the shouted jests of the corans. He recognized the king immediately, and a moment afterwards saw his own liege lord, the duke of Garsenc. These were, in fact, the men he had been riding north to find.

He was bothered by the burning, though in itself that would not have been enough to make him pause. He did pause, however, silent and watchful on his horse above Aubry, as the corans of Gorhaut finished their games and their work and the screaming died away. Nor did he move, though it was clearly past time to ride down, when he saw the king make a sudden, sweeping gesture and fifty horsemen swiftly remount and ride away, east and north towards the pass.

He was trembling, in fact, confused and unsettled by his own hesitation, visited, as he had been all day, by thoughts he would never have entertained before this morning. Habit and fear, the compulsions of his discipline, had sent him riding north from Lussan at midday to carry news to Cortil of what he had seen on the tournament ground that morning. He had stopped at a roadside inn for ale, and had then lingered there absurdly long, telling himself over and over that it was time to get up in the saddle again, that his tidings were critical, dangerous, that he was even at risk of suspicion if he delayed too long.

It was very nearly day's end, though, when he left that inn, riding at a gallop but not straining his horse. It was a long way to Cortil, he told himself, he had to be careful not to exhaust his mount. In the darkness under Escoran's blue light he had approached Aubry, preparing to bypass it on the road towards the pass, when he heard the sounds of horses and shouting men and stopped at the forest's edge to see, astonishingly, the king he had been riding north to warn.

And he stayed up there watching, motionless, as they slaughtered the people of a village and a temple and rode away. He wasn't especially shocked by what the corans were doing to the priestesses, nor even, really, by the burning of the women after they were done, though no halfway normal man could really enjoy such a thing. That wasn't what kept him silent up on the ridge. He had seen worse, or as bad at any rate, in the brutal years of war against Valensa, especially among the farms and towns on either side of the border. The longer a war went on, his father had told him once, the more terrible the things one saw, and did. It seemed to him to have been a true thing to say; he felt that way about much of what his father had told him over the years.

It wasn't even, though this was a part of it, the thrill he had felt that morning, straight up his spine and tingling in his hair, when Blaise de Garsenc had raised the banner of the kings above his tent and gone forth to battle. He had always thought—and had once or twice even said, though only to trusted friends—that the youngest of the de Garsenc was much the best of the three of them.

That wouldn't have made the difference, not in and of itself. A coran in Gorhaut learned, early, to keep his thoughts where they belonged: away from any actions he might be ordered to perform. His own sworn liege lord was Ranald, duke of Garsenc, and if the duke took most of his own orders from the father in Cortil, well, the corans of Garsenc were not expected to have any thoughts at all about that.

He would have gone down with his tidings, he realized finally, still sitting silently on his horse long after the king's company had gone, watching the burning fires spread from two of the wooden houses to a third, if it hadn't been for the one additional thing, drawn slowly up from his own history during this long day like a bucket from a well.

There was no sound now save the cackle of the flames and the wailing, very faint, of a child or an animal that was somehow not yet dead. After a moment that crying also stopped and there was only the rising sound of wind and the fires, growing to a roar as the last of the wooden houses caught.

What had kept him here, rooted to this ridge, watching his king and liege lord and corans he had known for years, was the memory of his father's last year.

His own family home had been a small tract of farmland proudly entered in their own name on the baron's records since the last plague had made labour scarce and left too many farms untended. A small bit of land, but his father's own, after a grinding lifetime of brutally labouring for someone else. It had been in the good grainlands in the north of Gorhaut, that farm. Or, to speak properly now, in the north of what had been Gorhaut. It was Valensa now, since the treaty that had surrendered land kept safe by King Duergar's own sword and the corans of the king and the courage of farmers and villagers fighting for what was theirs.

He had fought at Iersen Bridge himself. Fought and won in ice and blood among the army of Gorhaut, though grieving solely for his king after swords were sheathed and spears laid aside. A season later, no more than that, back in the south at Garsenc Castle where he served the young duke as an anointed coran, to the vast pride of his family, he had learned that his parents, along with all the other farmers and the inhabitants of entire villages of the north, were being told to pack and travel south to wherever they would, wherever they could find shelter.

It was only for a time, they were advised by the messengers of the new king, Ademar. The new king, in his wisdom, had taken thought for them, the messengers said—there would be wider, richer lands for all of them very soon. In the meantime, his father's lifelong dream and prayer of his own farm was gone, handed over to the Valensans they had been fighting for fifty years. Just like that.

His parents had actually been among the fortunate, in a way of thinking, finding a place with his mother's sister's husband east of Cortil; working for someone else again, but with a roof over their heads at least. He had seen his father twice there, but though the old man said little at the best of times, after the northern fashion, his eyes didn't convey any sense of good fortune to his son.

Everyone knew where the promised new lands were supposed to be. It was common talk in the country as much as in the taverns and castles. His father had said only one thing about that, at the end of his second visit, his last, to the farmyard hut that was now his parents' home.

They had been walking out together, he and his father, at twilight, looking out over the grey moorland in a drizzle of rain. "What," his father had said, turning aside to spit into the mud, "do I know about olive trees?"

His son had not replied. He had watched the thin rain falling on the moor. There was nothing to say. Nothing, that is, that would not be treason, or a lie.

This morning, though, on a challenge ground in Arbonne under a clear sky he had heard the younger son of Garsenc name Ademar a traitor and claim the throne of Gorhaut before lords and ladies of all six countries. And the simple truth was, he realized finally, sitting his horse on that ridge above a burning hamlet, he agreed with Blaise de Garsenc. His father would have felt the same way, he knew with certainty, though he would never have put such a thought into words. They were people of Gorhaut, their lives and lands charged to the protection of the king—and their safety and history and trust had been given away by him with a signed piece of paper. It was said that Galbert the High Elder had been behind the whole thing. That he wanted to destroy Arbonne because of the goddess they had down here. He didn't know much about that or very much care, but he had seen his father destroyed by living on another man's farm far from the northern lands he had known all his life.

His father had died at the end of that same summer, taking to his bed one morning, the scribe's letter had said, and passing to the god four days after without any last word spoken. He had not appeared to be in great pain, the scribe wrote. His mother had made her mark at the end, after the part wishing him all best fortune. He still carried it, that letter.

He looked down a last time on the burning of Aubry. He drew a long breath, finally clear in his mind, though not any the less afraid for that. When he began to ride again it was south, the way he had come, carrying a different message, grim with fire and death and with more of each to come, certain as mortal man was born to die.

He had actually made his choice, he realized, on the evening of that last walk with his father in the rain. He had had no way to put that decision into action. Now he did.

He put spurs to his horse, leaving the fires of Aubry behind him. His eyes were on the empty road before him, seeing how bright and strange it had become in the mingling of the moons.

Blaise hadn't been happy about it, but the priestess and the physician, agreeing with each other, had insisted that he drink an herbal concoction that led him to sleep for most of the day.

When he awoke, in a room in Barbentain, the western sky outside his window was soft with the hues of sunset, dark rose and purple, with the blue-black of twilight soon to come. He couldn't see the river from his bed, but through the open window he could hear it rushing past; in the middle distance lights were beginning to come on in the houses of Lussan. He watched for a while, feeling curiously at peace though conscious of pain in his legs and aware of bandages about his left ear. He brought one hand up and felt them.

Tentatively he turned his head back the other way and so realized, for the first time, that he was not alone.

"It could have been worse," Ariane said quietly. She was sitting in a chair halfway to the door. "You lost part of the earlobe, but they say it will be no more than that. Much the same as Bertran, actually."

"How long have you been here?"

"Not long. They said you would sleep until sundown. I asked if I could speak with you alone when you woke."

She had changed to sober clothing from the bright regalia of the morning; her gown was a dark blue in colour, with her customary crimson only in the trim of the sleeves. She looked very beautiful to him. She smiled. "Bertran has been going about the castle all day claiming that the two of you are now clearly revealed as long-separated brothers. The current version is that you were stolen by brigands from your cradle in Talair Castle and sold for three goats in a village in Gorhaut."

"Three goats? I'm outraged," Blaise said with a sigh. "Five at least. Tell him I refuse to be undervalued, even in a story."

Ariane's smiled faded. "You are unlikely to be undervalued, Blaise, here or anywhere else. Not after this morning. Your problems are almost certainly going to be of the opposite kind."

He nodded slowly. It seemed that he could do that much without pain. With an effort, he pushed himself up until he was sitting. There was a flask on a table by the bed.

"What is this?" he asked.

"More of what you had before. They said you might want it."

He shook his head. "Is there anything else?"

There was wine, in a decanter by the far wall. There was food as well, cold meats and cheeses and fresh-baked bread from the castle kitchen. He was, he discovered, ravenous. Ariane watered the wine and brought him a tray. Blaise ate swiftly for a few moments, then looked up again. She was smiling, scrutinizing him carefully from her chair.

"They said the herbs might make you hungry when you woke."

He grunted. "What else did they say, since they seem to know me so well?"

"That I wasn't to agitate or excite you." Her expression was demure.

Blaise felt oddly happy suddenly. A feeling of well-being suffused him, looking at the woman, feeling the calm and silence of the twilight. When he did leave this room the burdens of the world were waiting to be taken up. For the moment though, however brief the moment might be, all of that seemed agreeably remote. He was aware of her scent again, subtle as ever, but very much her own.

He said, "You aren't very good at not doing that, you know."

Surprisingly, she flushed. Blaise grinned. He shifted position and moved the lacquered tray to the chest beside his bed. She remained seated where she was.

"Has anything happened that I need to know about?" he asked. He really did feel remarkably well. More than well, actually. He wondered if the two physicians had predicted this, too. "Anything that requires me, or you, for the next little while?"

Ariane, her dark eyes wide, shook her head.

"Is there a lock on that door?"

The hint of a smile returned to her face. "Of course there is. And there are also four guards of the countess outside who would hear any key turning. Everyone knows I am here, Blaise."

She was right, of course. Deflated, he leaned back against the pillows.

Ariane rose then, tall and slender, her black hair down as it always was. "On the other hand," she murmured, walking to the door, "the corans of Barbentain are legendary for their discretion." She turned the key in the lock with a click. "And since the whole castle knows I'm here, we couldn't possibly be doing anything but discussing what happens next, could we?"

She walked slowly back towards him and stood by the edge of the bed. Blaise looked up at her, drinking in, as a draught of cool, reviving wine, the dark-eyed, flawless beauty of her.

"I had been wondering about that," he said after a moment. Her hand was playing idly with the coverlet, pulling it back a little from his chest and then tugging it up again. He was naked beneath. "What happens next, I mean."

Ariane laughed then, and drew the coverlet fully back from him. "We'll have to discuss it," she said, and, sitting on the bed, lowered her mouth to his. The kiss was brief, delicate, elusive. He remembered this about her. Then her lips moved down, found the hollow of his throat, and then down again, across his chest, and down again.

"Ariane," he said.

"Hush," she murmured. "I did promise not to make you agitate yourself. Don't make a liar out of me."

His turn to laugh, helplessly, and then, not long after, to stop laughing as other sensations took control of him. It had grown dark in the room by then, night deepening outside. They had lit no candles. In the shadows he saw her lift her head from his body and then rise to stand by the bed, another shadow, and slip free of her clothing. Then she moved again, in a swirl of scent and a rustle of sound, to rise up over him where he lay.

"Now remember, you aren't to get excited," Ariane de Carenzu said gravely as, with a smooth, liquescent motion, she lowered herself upon his sex.

Lights were shining now in the town across the water, someone's footsteps came down the hall, a voice answered a quiet challenge from the guards and then the footsteps went on. The river ran softly below, aiming for the distant sea. Blaise felt Ariane's movements above him like the rhythm of a tide. He lifted his hands to her breasts, and then began to trace the outline of her face in the darkness like a blind man. He slid his fingers over and over through the long glory of her hair. Once again, aware of how unfair such a thing was, he could not help but contrast her to Lucianna. It was the difference, he suddenly thought, between love-making as a process of sharing and as an act of art. There were dangers in both, Blaise thought, for the unwary. It occurred to him that he might very easily have given the morning's red rose to this woman, had he not wanted to send a private and a public message beneath the canopy of the Portezzan pavilion.

He must have slept, afterwards, he didn't know for how long. Ariane had dressed herself, and there were candles burning throughout the room. She had not left him, though, she was watching from the chair again, as if this were his first awakening. There was something deeply reassuring about waking to find her watching him; he wondered if she knew that was so. He felt differently this time, drowsier. He looked from her calm face to the window again. The feel of the night had changed while he slept; a moment later he realized why: the blue moon, which would be full tonight, was riding above the castle and the world.

Blaise turned back to Ariane. And with the movement, remembrance of the morning came flooding back over him, the clear, sunlit image of that banner of the kings flying in his name. He lifted one hand, in an instinctive gesture. And still half-asleep said, in a whisper near to dream: "But I don't want to be king of Gorhaut."

"I know," Ariane said, without moving. "I know you don't." With her night-black hair and her pale, almost translucent skin she looked like a ghost, a racoux, in the candlelight. She smiled ironically. "I wouldn't worry about it, Blaise. We are unlikely to live so long."

She left a little while after that. Bertran came in and visited briefly, sharing his new jest about their fraternity, deliberately avoiding anything of more weight or substance. Rudel and Valery came by. Blaise ate again while they were with him, a proper meal this time, brought by Hirnan; he was still hungry. The doctor and the priestess arrived afterwards and urged him to drink more of their herbal infusion. He declined. He felt all right, actually. Some pain in the ear, rather more at the moment across his shins and the back of his calf where the Arimondan's sword had caught him, but, on the whole, he was better off than he'd any right to be. He didn't want to be drugged again.

They left him alone for a time, going downstairs to the banquet and the singers. Blaise dozed a while, then got out of bed and sat by the window looking out. Faintly he could hear the music from below. He was thinking of Rosala, as it happened, when there came a knocking at his door again, and the countess herself came in, with Ariane and Bertran. Rudel was just behind them, and the chancellor, Roban. Their faces were grim. Ariane, Blaise saw immediately, had been crying. Before anyone could speak he made himself take a slow, deep breath as if pulling himself back to the world.

"There is a man who has come," said Bertran as the countess, very pale, kept silent. Her face was a mask, a carving in marble. There was a look in her eyes though, a depth of anger he had never seen before. "A man from Gorhaut. He has given us some extremely bad news and asked leave to be brought to you."

Valery and Hirnan ushered the man in. Blaise knew him, if only slightly. A coran of Garsenc, one of the better ones, he remembered Ranald saying once. The man, without a word spoken, sank to his knees before Blaise. His hands were uplifted and pressed together in position for the oath.

Slowly, aware that this too was a beginning of something irrevocable, Blaise rose from the window seat and cupped his own hands around those of the coran. He heard the ancient oath of Corannos spoken to him then in that high room in Barbentain Castle as if he had never heard the words before. Exactly as with the banner, he thought: it was different when it was meant for you. For a moment he looked over at Ariane. She was weeping again. He turned back to the coran, concentrating on the words.

"I swear to you in the name of the high god Corannos of fire and light, and on the blood of my father and his father, that I will keep faith with you. I offer my service to the gates of death. I acknowledge you in the eyes of men and the most holy god as my liege lord."

The man paused. Blaise, just then, remembered his name: Thaune. He was from the northlands, the accent had given that away in any case. Thaune looked up and met his eyes for the first time. "And I acknowledge you also," he said, his voice surprisingly strong now as he spoke words that went beyond the ancient oath, "as my true king. I will not lie easy at night nor unclasp my sword belt until you are upon the throne in Cortil in the stead of the traitor now sitting there. In the name of Corannos, all this I swear."

Blaise cleared his throat. There was a feeling of dread in him; Ariane's tears, the silence of those around him. He said, "I accept your homage. I take you as my man, Thaune of Gorhaut. I offer you shelter and succour and my own sworn oath of fidelity before the god as your liege. I bid you rise." He shifted his hands and helped the coran stand. "And now," he said, "you had better tell me what has happened."

Thaune did so. In the midst of the telling, Blaise discovered with some real urgency, that he wasn't as fully recovered as he had thought he was. It was Hirnan, watching closely, who moved the chair by the window quickly over for him. Blaise sank down into it.

It seemed that his father and King Ademar had not begun with messengers and elegantly phrased demands for Rosala's return with her child. They had begun with fire.

Cadar was having an odd night, waking often to feed and then falling asleep again almost as soon as the wet-nurse put him to the breast. The priestess was indulgent, unworried. It took a week or two, she said, for some of the little ones to learn that the dark hours were for sleeping more and eating less. Rosala, aware that under normal circumstances at home she would be far removed from her baby at this stage, with Cadar and his nurse living in another wing of the castle, or indeed, elsewhere entirely, had still not been able to stop herself from walking down the corridor to look in on him when he cried.

She was coming sleepily back up the hallway clad only in the night-robe the countess had given her when she saw someone waiting in the shadows outside her door. She stopped, instinctively afraid, a hand fumbling to more properly close her robe.

"Forgive me," said the duke of Talair, moving forward into light. "I did not mean to frighten you."

Rosala took a shaky breath. "I am easily frightened of late. I never used to be."

"You are in a strange place," En Bertran murmured gravely, "and have a new responsibility. It is not unnatural, I think."

"Will you enter?" she asked. "I think I have wine left from earlier this evening. I can send a servant for more."

"No need," he said, "but thank you, yes, I will come in. There are tidings you should hear."

It was late at night. Something thumped within Rosala: her heart, pounding as if on a drum. "What has happened?" she asked quickly.

He made no immediate reply, opening her door instead and ushering her in. He waited until she had taken one of the chairs by the fire and he sat down on the low bench opposite. In the firelight his eyes were remarkably blue, and the scar on his cheek showed white.

"Is it Blaise?" she asked. She had been told about this morning, several times already, by many people. The duchess of Carenzu had brought her a white flower and explained the meaning of it. The flower was in a vase by the window now. She had sat looking at it for a long time after Ariane had left, thinking of what Blaise had done, and had surprised herself by beginning to cry.

"He is fine," said Bertran de Talair, reassuringly. He fingered his ear. "I'm afraid he is going to rather resemble me, in one regard at least, when the bandages come off, but other than that he is not seriously harmed." He hesitated. "I don't know how much it means to you, at this point, but I can say that he honored his name and his country's this morning."

"So I have been told. It does mean something to me, obviously, given what he declared before the challenge began. They will not wait long before coming after him."

The duke of Talair shifted a little in his seat then and left a small silence.

"I see," Rosala said, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. "They have come already."

"They have, but not for him. They will not learn about him for some days yet. They destroyed a village named Aubry tonight, killing everyone, and then they burned the priestesses of the temple there.

Rosala closed her eyes. Her hands began to tremble. "That was for me, then," she said. Her own voice unsettled her; it was dry and thin as a stream in a season of drought. It seemed to be coming from someone else, a long way off. "It was because of me."

"I'm afraid so."

"How many people?"

"We aren't certain yet. Perhaps fifty."

"Who was there? From Gorhaut, I mean." Her eyes were still closed. She brought, her arms up to wrap them around herself. She felt cold, suddenly.

His voice was gentle, but he was not shielding her from any of this. She understood that there was a large measure of respect for her in his not doing so. "The king himself, we are told." He hesitated. "Your husband and your brother as well."

Rosala opened her eyes. "They would have had no choice. I don't think either of them would willingly have done this."

Bertran de Talair shrugged. "I would not know. They were there." He looked closely at her a moment and then rose to tend to the fire. It had burned low, but there was fresh wood and kindling beside it, and he knelt, busying himself with them. She watched him, the neat, precise movements. He had not turned out to be what she'd expected from his verses, or from the tales told of his dealings with women in many countries.

"How do we know of this?" she asked at length.

He said, without turning, "A coran from Garsenc who was here for the tournament. He watched Blaise this morning and was riding north to tell the king what had happened."

"Why did he change his mind?"

Bertran looked briefly over his shoulder and shook his head. "That I do not know. I'll have to ask Blaise later." He turned back to the fire, shifting the wood. First one side caught, and then a moment later the other did. With a grunt of satisfaction he rose. "He swore fealty to Blaise tonight, as his liege lord and true king. He named Ademar as a traitor."

"Iersen Bridge, then," said Rosala quietly. "That is why he did it. He was probably a man from the north. There will be many who feel that way about the treaty."

"How many?" asked the duke of Talair. She realized that he meant the question seriously, that he was treating her as someone whose views on this would matter.

"That is hard to judge," she said. The fire had caught now, warming her. "Not enough, I don't think. Most of the men of rank who might matter are afraid of the king, and the common folk are even more afraid of the brethren of Corannos—who are ruled by my father-in-law."

He was silent. Looking into the fire Rosala saw a future there shaped of flame. Fifty people had died tonight for her. She closed her eyes again, but the imprint of the fire was still against her eyelids. The shock was beginning to pass.

"Oh, my son," she said. "Oh, Cadar." And then, "I will have to take him back. I cannot let them do this to people here. It is because he is a boy, you see. They will not let us be."

It seemed that she was crying again, the tears spilling to slide down her face before the fire. She heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor, and then a rustling, and then competent, capable hands had taken her and laid her head against a strong shoulder. His arm went around her.

"Neither of you is going back," said Bertran de Talair, his voice roughened. "The countess herself stood up for your child before Corannos and Rian and so did I. I swore an oath to you the night Cadar was born. I did not do so carelessly. I will swear it again: neither of you is going back to them while I live."

Something hard and tight in Rosala seemed to loosen, or she let go of her hold upon it, and she allowed herself to weep without shame in the arms of the duke of Talair. She wept for Cadar, for herself, for the dead and burned of that night, for all the dying and burning yet to come. His clasp was firm holding her, his voice low, murmuring words of comfort and heart's ease. No one had held her like this, Rosala thought, since her father had died. She wept for that, as well.

She could not know it, but Bertran de Talair's thoughts just then were almost a mirror of her own: he was thinking that he could not remember the last time he had held a woman in this way, offering shelter and strength and not simply the passion of a moment. And then, a moment later, he realized that this was untrue: that he could remember the last time, quite well actually, if he allowed the memory in through his barriers.

The last woman he had held this way, his own heart beating as if for hers, had later died in Miraval giving birth to his child, twenty-three years ago.

Blaise stopped outside the partially open door of Rosala's room. He had been coming to tell her of the news that had reached them that night, feeling the dread of all such message-bearers, but not wanting her to learn it badly, from a stranger. Ranald had been at Aubry, Thaune had said, and Fulk de Savaric, her brother. About to knock, he heard two voices, and realized a moment later that he had been anticipated in his errand. He felt an unexpected mixture of emotions. Relief, mostly, in the end.

Uncertain whether to enter or leave, he heard Rosala abruptly speak in a stricken voice of taking the child back to Gorhaut. Grieving for her, understanding exactly what she meant, and humbled again by what it seemed she was, he heard Bertran de Talair, unexpectedly gruff, repeating an oath he'd evidently sworn to her before. Blaise heard Rosala begin to weep then, and through the angle of the door, in the light of the fire's glow, he saw the duke move to the arm of her chair to hold her while she cried.

He felt an intruder, a cause of the distress the other man was trying to assuage. He ought to have been comforting her himself, he thought. He owed her that much. He owed her at least that much. Blaise looked back up the corridor and saw Hirnan waiting discreetly at the farther end. Feeling his wounds again and weary still, but with a suddenly urgent need to at least finish what he had begun with the white rose this morning, he knocked on the door and said, quietly, so as not to startle them too greatly, "For what it is worth, I have an oath of my own from this morning to repeat."

They both looked up; Bertran calmly, Rosala wiping quickly at her eyes. She shifted a little then and the duke rose, allowing her to stand and then walk forward. A little too late Blaise realized what she was about to do. Quickly, trying to forestall her, he moved into the room so that, in the end, they ended up on their knees, both of them, facing each other before the fire. He wouldn't have blamed Bertran for laughing, but the duke was silent and watchful.

The lost children of Gorhaut, Lucianna had said two nights ago. Truth to that, Blaise thought. Through her tears he saw Rosala offer the glimmer of a smile.

"Will you not accept my homage, my lord?"

He shook his head.

"You will have to become accustomed to this," she murmured. "Kings can't go about kneeling to women."

"I am not a king yet," he said, "and to some women I think they can. I understand the duke of Talair has vowed that he will not let them take you while he lives." He looked at Bertran, whose expression remained devoid of irony. "Hear me, then. In the name of the most holy god, I swear I will keep faith with you, Rosala. My claim to the throne is as nothing if we surrender you and Cadar." He heard the roughness in his own voice at the end.

It was the first time he had actually spoken the child's name. It sounded strange to him as an infant's name. Cadar was a name of power for Blaise, for an entire generation in Gorhaut, given their vivid images of Rosala's father. It was a name of pride, of hope… if the child lived long enough.

Rosala shook her head. "We should not matter so much, he and I," she murmured. "There is too much at stake here."

Behind her, Bertran said quietly, "Sometimes people end up mattering more than one might expect. My lady, the two of you are what is at stake. They will use you to begin the war. They already have."

"Then send us back," she whispered. She was looking at Blaise, not at Bertran.

"It would make no difference," the duke answered quietly. "Not now. They would kill you and keep him and still find a reason to come down on us. They have all the dispossessed of their northlands hungry to be assuaged. This isn't like the old romances: Elienna carried off to Royaunce and an army going after her. This is pure politics now, the hard game of nations. My lady Rosala, Arbonne is the last clause, if you will, of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge."

Blaise, closely watching her, saw the handsome, intelligent features accept the truth of Bertran's words. She knew as much about these things as Ariane or Lucianna, or indeed, he and Bertran. She always had. There were tears still on her cheeks, revealed by the firelight; awkwardly, regretting how difficult such gestures seemed to be for him, he brought up a hand and brushed them away. He wished he were more graceful, more at ease with himself. He said, "You owe no homage to me, Rosala."

She looked again as if she would protest, but in the end said only, "I may thank you for the flower?"

Blaise found that he could smile. "I would expect you to."

Bertran laughed quietly. Rosala, a second later, returned the smile tremulously, but then she lowered her face into her hands.

"How can we speak thus?" she cried. "They burned women tonight. Because of me. They never even knew who I was and they were taken from their beds and raped by Ademar's corans and—say nothing, I know they were! — and then they were burned alive. With all that the two of you know, will you tell me how I am to live with that? I can hear them screaming now."

Blaise opened his mouth and closed it. He looked past her at Bertran, whose eyes were shadowed and dark with the fire behind him. The duke said nothing either. With all that the two of you know. He knew nothing, in the face of this. There were no words he could think of to say.

So he spoke her name. What was it about the speaking of a name? Slowly he brought up his arms again and gently took her head between his hands and, leaning forward, he kissed her on the brow. He wished there were more he could do, but there didn't seem to be. Women had been burned tonight, on a pyre of his father's long dreaming. Men had been slain and mutilated. He, too, could hear the screaming.

"In the morning… " he said roughly. "We will all be stronger in the morning." Lame words, an empty truth. It was this night that needed dealing with. He looked over at the duke again for a moment and then rose and left the room. Bertran would be better at this, he thought, than he himself would be. There was less history here for the duke, he knew women so much better. There was an ache inside Blaise, though, walking from her chamber.

Oh, Ranald, he thought; said it aloud, actually, softly in the empty corridor. She might even have made a man of you, this one, if she had been allowed. His brother had been at Aubry tonight. Blaise was nearly certain that Ranald wouldn't have wanted to be, but that didn't matter, did it? He had been there.

Heavy with burdens, of past and future both, Blaise suddenly stopped and stood very still. A child had cried out in a room behind him. He listened but there was no other sound. A cry in a dream that must have been. Cadar's.

Did new-born infants dream? Blaise didn't know. He only knew that he could not turn back, could not now, if ever, ask Rosala the question in his heart. It doesn't matter, he told himself. It makes no difference at all to anything.

A lie, of course, but the sort of lie that lets one carry on.

By the time she reached the top of the stairway and saw the guards outside the door, Lisseut was already regretting she had come. She had no business here, no claim to this man's attention, especially so late at night after he had been seriously wounded in combat. She didn't even know exactly what she wanted to do, or say, if he should happen to be still awake, and should happen to receive her. Someday, she thought despairingly, she really was going to have to absorb her mother's so-often-repeated lesson and accept that one did not always have to follow the path lit by impulse and first reactions.

More than anything else, she knew, it had been the news from Aubry that had drawn her here. It hadn't taken long for the tidings to sweep downstairs through Barbentain and race along the great hall, where those joglars and troubadours honoured with places in the morning's pavilion were offering their performances after dinner.

The music had stopped, of course. One did not sing liensennes of courtly, unrequited love or ribaldries of enthusiastically answered passion in the forests of Arbonne when news came of a village destroyed and women burned alive by the king of Gorhaut. Love had no place in the scheme of things in the wake of such horror.

But if that were the case, what, in truth, was she doing here, hesitantly approaching a doorway on this upper level of Barbentain? Alain had agreed to wait a little while for her downstairs. She didn't much want to walk back to the inn alone. An old man had been murdered in an alley a few nights ago. There were too many unknown people from too many countries wandering in the darkness of Lussan during the fair. She hadn't had the courage to ask Aurelian to wait-he knew too much, after this morning. It was the first time Lisseut could remember that she'd wanted to hold something back from him. Alain was easier; they had their understandings after two seasons together now. He wouldn't even speculate.

The horror of the tidings from Aubry had drawn her back, in a single dark leap of memory, to that garden in Tavernel last summer, when she had listened from a place of hiding on the wall and learned who the bearded northern coran was, and heard him speak with Rudel Correze of war coming with Gorhaut. Now everyone knew who he was, since this morning, and war was no longer coming, it was upon them. And the coran she had impulsively followed that Midsummer night had claimed Gorhaut's crown today.

On that thought she almost did turn back, but she had reached a place where the wall torches lit the corridor, and she realized that the guards outside his door were watching her. One of them she knew, a coran from Vezét, from a farm not far from her father's. She wasn't sure whether she was happy about that or not.

Having been seen, though, and almost certainly recognized, she was not about to turn and skulk away. Grateful that she looked presentable, at least, in her newest tunic bought for the fair and the vest Ariane had given her, and aware that if the guards knew her they would almost certainly also know she'd been among the selected performers tonight, Lisseut walked forward with her head high.

"Hello, Fabrise," she said to the man she knew. "I didn't realize you were in Barbentain. Is your father well?"

He grimaced briefly in response. "He is, I thank you. Will you tell us what you are doing here?" Formal, extremely formal. No warmth at all. They had clearly been instructed that guard duty tonight outside this door was not ceremonial. After Blaise's declaration this morning it stood to reason, and after the attack on Aubry tonight every coran in Arbonne would be on edge. Again, Lisseut wondered why she had never listened to her mother more attentively.

She said hardily, "I thought if Blaise de Garsenc was awake he might be willing to speak with me." There was no reply at all to that. "We are friends," she added—it was almost true, in a manner of speaking—"and I wanted to see how he was. Is he sleeping?"

For a long moment four grim corans regarded her in silence. Finally one of them, evidently concluding that whatever she was, it was something other than an immediate danger, made a wry face. "What is it," he said, addressing Fabrise, "about your women from Vezét, will you tell me?"

Fabrise frowned. Lisseut felt herself flushing. This was pretty much what she'd feared would happen. Oh, mother, she thought. It had actually occurred to her several times during the day that it might be a good time for a visit home. She could sleep in her old bed, see people she'd grown up with, talk with her mother while they did the endless needlework in the doorway, or with her father, walking among the olive groves. It might be a good thing to do, she'd thought. It had been a long time since she'd been back, and home sometimes was a place where the heart could be eased.

"I know this woman. She is not like that," said Fabrise of Vezét; her pulse quickened at his loyalty.

"Nor is this a night," she said, emboldened, unwilling as ever to have someone else fight a battle for her, even a small one, "when a man of Arbonne should speak any ill of the women of his country. I will accept an apology, coran, if you offer one."

There was a great deal to be said for the training that regular appearances in public gave one. She was easily able to outface the coran who had made that jest. He lowered his head and mumbled words that did sound contrite. He looked young, Lisseut thought. He had probably meant no real offense, though he did have a great deal to learn.

On the other hand, what innocuous reason could she offer for being here? Truth was, the young coran was right, if not about the women of Vezét, then rather definitely about this particular one. We are friends, she had said. If a friendship could be built on a night's clandestine spying like an audrade on a garden wall followed by a rejected invitation to share her Midsummer bed. He had smiled at her two nights ago here in Barbentain. Did that count? She had even thought he was about to come over to her, before Rudel Correze had appeared at his elbow and the two men had walked away.

That had been before this morning's challenge, though: before everything had changed. These corans in the hallway were, she made herself repeat it again in her mind, the guards appointed for a man who had claimed a throne.

She bit her lip. Began her retreat. "It is late, I know… " she murmured.

"He is awake," Fabrise said, "but not in his room. He went to see his sister. His brother's wife, I mean. The one who gave birth last week. I think he wanted to be the one to tell her the news."

"Her husband was there," the coran she'd reprimanded now confided, as if anxious to make amends. "At Aubry, I mean. And also her—" He stopped with a grunt as one of the others sank an elbow in his ribs.

The four men looked quickly down the corridor, and so Lisseut turned with them—to see Blaise de Garsenc approaching from the shadows.

"And also her brother," Blaise said, finishing the sentence. He was walking quite slowly, limping a little; he looked pale beneath the beard and there were smudged circles of fatigue under his eyes. He came up to them and stopped, looking at the four men, not at her. "There is going to be gossip, of course, but we might appropriately leave it to others, don't you think?"

It was mildly said, but the young coran went crimson to the roots of his hair. Lisseut actually felt sorry for him. Then she forgot about the man entirely as she met Blaise's scrutiny.

"Hello, Lisseut," he said. She hadn't been positive he would remember her name. He seemed unsurprised to find her in the hallway outside his room.

She took a breath and said, straining for a normal tone, "I'm not sure, do I curtsey?"

"I'm not sure either," he said calmly. "Why don't we omit it for now? I thought I heard your voice earlier. The song from Midsummer, the woman singing in the garden?"

"I didn't think you had listened so carefully back then," she said.

"I didn't either," he murmured. "Evidently some of it stayed with me. Will you come in?" He opened the door to his room and stepped aside for her to enter.

Feeling suddenly shy, Lisseut walked in. He followed, closing the door behind them. There were candles on chests beside and at the foot of the bed and on the two tables in the room. They were guttering low, though, and others had gone out. He busied himself for a moment lighting new ones.

"There is wine by the far wall," he said over his shoulder. "Pour us each a cup, if you will." Glad of something to do, she moved to the sideboard and did so. A faint scent of perfume lingered in the air. She thought that if she tried she would recognize it; she didn't try. She carried the cups back and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room. The bed, she noticed, was rumpled, the covers in disarray. He seemed to notice this at about the same time, moving over to smooth them as best he could.

"Forgive me," he said. "This room is in no condition to receive a lady."

He was being astonishingly kind, she thought. Kindness wasn't what she needed, though. She said, "Even the sort of lady who spies on you at night?"

He grinned, though his fatigue was still evident. He came over and took his wine, motioning her to one of the chairs by the window. He sank into the other, with a half-suppressed sigh of relief.

"You are in pain," Lisseut said quickly. "I have no right to keep you awake."

"You won't be able to for very long," he said, somewhat ruefully. "Much as I'd like to talk, they gave me some herbal thing earlier and I'm still sleepy with it. They wanted me to have more but I said no."

"You probably should have taken it," she said.

He grinned mockingly. She remembered that quickness from Midsummer. It had been one of the things she hadn't expected from a coran of Gorhaut. "I wouldn't have taken you for so obedient a woman. Do you always do what you're told?" he asked.

She smiled then herself, for the first time. "Always," she said. "I can't remember the last time I didn't obey instructions."

He laughed, and sipped his wine. "I saw you in the troubadours' pavilion this morning," he said, surprising her again. "Ariane told me only those of the first rank are invited there. Is this new for you? Should I be offering congratulations?"

Ariane. That was the perfume. Of course, she told herself: they would have had a council here when the tidings came. But what she was remembering was five corans in crimson escorting him away on Midsummer Eve.

He had asked a question; Lisseut shook her head, pushing such thoughts away. She said, "Congratulations? Wouldn't that be absurd? After you didn't let me salute you?"

His eyes were bright in the light of the candle on the table and the beard showed quite red. "Go ahead if you really want to. Curtsey and kneel. Kiss my foot three times. You'll help me get used to it." There was a bitterness she hadn't expected in his voice. He paused a moment. "I'm not a king yet, you know. I probably never will be. I'm only someone who's made a large and foolish claim because I hate what's happened to my country."

"From what I understand of the men of Gorhaut, that's worthy of honour in itself," she murmured.

His expression changed. "I'm not sure that isn't as much an attack as a compliment."

"Can you blame me, tonight?"

There was a silence. Without speaking, he shook his head. She took a quick sip of her wine and averted her eyes. This wasn't at all how she had wanted this conversation to go. She didn't really know what she had wanted, but it wasn't this. Thinking quickly, reaching for a new direction, she said, "You did miss something… unique in the hall tonight. A canzone about your morning's triumph, written at dazzling speed, rhymed in triplets, with a refrain that was simply your name sung four times on a descending scale."

"What?"

She kept her tone blandly innocuous. "We should be fair about that last bit, though: «Garsenc» is a difficult rhyme in Arbonnais."

He looked pained. "You're not being serious?"

"I'm a serious person, hadn't you noticed? It was composed by an old companion of yours, too, Evrard of Lussan."

"An old what?" He blinked. "Evrard? He called himself that?" He looked so astonished she had to laugh. "How… how does anyone know my connection with him?"

She was smiling now, enjoying this. "From Rian's Island? He began telling us all about it immediately after the challenge this morning. No one knew before, but as of today you are a link worth exploiting. Apparently you yourself and no lesser mortal were entrusted by En Mallin de Baude with the delicate task of assuaging Evrard's wounded sensibilities last spring. Is it true, Blaise?"

He was slowly shaking his head, though in wonder, not denial. "I thought he was a pompous, offensive fool, but Mallin asked me to bring him back so I did. Unconscious, actually. My companion." He snorted. "We slung him like a sack of grain into a skiff. I wouldn't have been greatly distressed if he'd fallen overboard." He shook his head again, as if bemused by the memory. "I thought all the troubadours were like that."

"And all the joglars? Do you still think so?"

"Hardly," he said directly, not bothering to make a jest of it or a compliment, or anything at all. He met her gaze for a moment, and it was Lisseut who looked away, out the window. There was silence then for a while. She sat gazing out at the late-night stars, listening to the river. It was not a difficult stillness, she decided.

"May I ask something of you?" he said at length, quietly. She looked back at him. "I am genuinely weary, Lisseut. I 'm afraid I m too tired to entertain you properly, I'm almost too tired to sleep, and there is a great deal to be done tomorrow. I don't know if this is an imposition, something one doesn't ask of a professional, but will you sing for me, to help me rest?" A faint smile in the flickering light. "To show me again that all of you aren't like Evrard?"

"I didn't think you liked music." She was sorry the moment she'd said that. Why was she always challenging him?

He didn't take offense, or else he was being very patient with her. "If I said that I regret it. I grew up with music in Gorhaut, however different it might have been. One day I will want to try to explain to you that my country is not only… what it has been made to be tonight." He hesitated, choosing his words. "I think there are… parts of the troubadour world here, courtly love, that I find unsettling. Perhaps I needed time to understand it better. I thought once it made your men weak, your women presumptuous." He paused again. "There is no weakness I have found in the men of Arbonne."

"And the women?"

He had been waiting for that, she realized. "The women are intolerably presumptuous." She knew that tone though, by now, and he was grinning at her again, tired as he was. She found that she could smile back.

"I will be happy to sing for you," she said quietly. "It is no imposition. Not when asked of a friend." There, she had said it.

He looked surprised again, but not uncomfortably so. He opened his mouth and closed it. She silently willed him to voice whatever thought he was struggling with, but all he said after a moment was, "Thank you." He rose, with a difficulty he didn't bother to hide, and limped over to stretch out on the bed. He pulled off his boots but didn't bother with the covers or his clothing.

Nothing of any great import had been done, nothing said, but Lisseut stood up as well, feeling a warmth inside and an unexpected calm. Moving quietly about the room she began blowing out the candles. She left two burning, one on the sideboard and one on the small table by the window, and then, in the near darkness, she began to sing. Not of love or war or the goddess or the god, or anything at all of the adult world. On the night he had named himself king of Gorhaut, the night Aubry had burned, Lisseut sang for Blaise of Gorhaut lullabies of childhood, the ones her mother had sung to her so many years ago.

Only when she was certain, from the steady rise and fall of his breathing, that he was asleep did she allow herself a last song for her own heart's easing. It was another very old melody this one, so ancient no one was certain who had written it, or even what dim, half-remembered legend or tale it recounted. It had always seemed to Lisseut to be almost unbearably sad. She had never thought she would feel it applying to her own life. But in Blaise de Garsenc's room that night, while he slept, she sang it softly for herself, and when she came to the verses at the end, she realized that she was very nearly offering them as a prayer:

Thy table set with rarest wine,

Choice meats, sweet ripened fruit

And candlelight when we dine

In Fionvarre.

On we two the high stars will shine

And the holy moon lend her light.

If not here you will be mine

In Fionvarre.

Her uncle had taught her that song in Vezét, long before he had taken her from her father's house and offered her the life of the singers on the road. And the roads had been good to her, had given her friends and companions, a generous measure of success, fame almost, and they had led her here tonight, following, as ever, the quick impulses of her spirit, and now the unbidden need of her heart.

Strangely at peace now, Lisseut realized that she had come looking for an answer in this room and she had found it after all. This was not a man whose life she had a right to share. He was a friend; she knew that now, knew that he would make some place for her in the pattern of his days, however long or short they were to be. But for more than that, more than that small place, she had no right and he no proper space in what his life had now become. The banner in the wind this morning had made this so.

And it would be all right, Lisseut thought, as she ended the song. She was no longer a child. Life did not always or even normally grant one the wishes of the heart. Sometimes it came near, sometimes not very near at all. She would accept, with gratitude, what seemed to have been allowed her tonight—with a hope, a prayer to Rian, that there might be more such moments graciously allowed, before the goddess called either or both of them back to her.

She left him sleeping, with the last two candles burning down and the moons long set and the river murmuring its own infinitely older, endless song far below the window.