He was to wait in that tree, the High Priestess told him, her hands clasped together in her lap, for a moment that might come if Rian offered them her grace—a moment when he might kill the king of Gorhaut. No man or woman, she told him, not even any priest or priestess, knew what he was being sent to do. No one was ever to know. He had knelt before her then and sworn the holiest oath he knew. He had felt her strong fingers on his head as she granted him her blessing.
Then she had given him his arrows, crimson dyed, fletched with crimson owl feathers, and he'd concealed them in a covered quiver and had himself taken by boat to land. He bought a good horse with money she had given him and rode, travelling swiftly by day and night, until he came to the valley of which she had told him. Arriving at twilight, before either of the armies had come, he saw the tree she had so clearly described to him, and he climbed it in the darkness and settled in to wait.
The soldiers had come the next day. Battle began that afternoon. Late in the day, when En Urté de Miraval had brought his corans sweeping down the ridge from the west, the king of Gorhaut had battled Duke Urté and had swept off his dented helmet and hurled it away after taking a blow in that combat.
It was exactly as he had been told it might be. He offered his heart's most fervent prayer, speaking the words aloud, though softly, and he lifted his bow from where he sat among the branches of that tree above the valley, and he sent a crimson arrow almost straight up into the bright sky along the high pathway of Rian, the soaring arch he had mastered through those solitary weeks and months on the island.
He was not greatly surprised, only humbled and full of gratitude, beyond any words he could ever have encompassed, when he saw that arrow strike the king of Gorhaut in the eye and end his life.
After that it had been a matter of waiting silently, hidden in the branches of his tree, for darkfall, and then slipping away unseen.
In time, as he rode, he left the lake behind. Not long after, white Vidonne rose in the eastern sky lighting the road that stretched away before him to the south. There was no one else in sight. He was not weary at all. He felt exalted, blessed. I could die now, he thought.
The wind had lessened with the rising of the moon. It wasn't even cold any more, and he was heading south with a full heart to where it was never truly cold, where there were flowers throughout the year by the sweet grace of Rian. When the blue moon also rose, following the white one up the sky, he could restrain himself no longer. Luth of Baude, who was Luth of Rian's Island since being taken in exchange for a poet last spring, and who thought he might even be found worthy now to be consecrated a priest of the goddess in her sanctuary, began to sing.
He was not a musician, not a very good singer at all; he knew that. But songs were not only for those who could perform them with artistry. He knew that, too. And so Luth lifted his voice without shame, feeling a deep richness, a glory in the night, as he galloped his horse down the winding, empty road to the south, past farm and castle, village and field and forest, under the risen moons and the stars above Arbonne.
From the vidan of the troubadour, Lisseut of Vezét…
Lisseut, who was one of the first and perhaps the greatest of the woman troubadours of Arbonne, was of reputable birth, the daughter of an olive merchant whose lands lay to the easy of the coastal town of Vezét. She was of middling height for a woman, with brown-coloured hair and pleasing features. Her disposition was said to have been forthright in youth, and this trait appears to have remained with her all her life. Her mother's brother was himself a joglar of some small repute, and it was he who first noticed in the young Lisseut a purity of voice that led him to take her under his tutelage and train her in the craft and art of the joglars. It was not long, however, before Lisseut had greatly outstripped her uncle in renown…
It was in the time after the Battle of Lake Dierne, when Arbonne was saved from the peril of invasion from the north, that Lisseut's prowess moved into the realm of the troubadours and the shaping of her own songs. Her 'Lament for sweet music gone, mourning two of her slain companions, was her first, and perhaps her most celebrated song. It became, in a short time, the anthem for all who had died in that war…
Lisseut was close in friendship all her days with the great King Blaise of Gorhaut, and also with both his first wife and his second, and many are of the view that her 'Elegy for the crown of all kings' written at the time of the death of King Blaise is her most accomplished and moving work… Lisseut of Vezét never married, though she had, as all know, one child, Aurelian, who will surely need no introduction for those reading or hearing these words. Many tales were spread during Lisseut's life and after her passage to Rian with respect to a person of the very highest renown who might have been he father of her son, but it is not our intent to repeat such idle speculations here, only those truths as may be ascertained with some certainty after all the years that have gone past since that time…
Guy Gavriel Kay is the author of the international bestseller Tigana and the acclaimed Fionavar Tapestry, comprising The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road. Translated into eight languages, the trilogy has won awards and accolades all over the world and was named by David Pringle in Modem Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels as one of the best fantasy sequences of all time. Previous to this, Kay was retained by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien to work with Christopher Tolkien in the editorial construction of the posthumously published The Silmarillion.