“Also, once. Now I’m here. This is my son, born here. And you’re Rem Am Karmiss, escort maker for caravans, and yourself once a soldier in the employ of King Kesarh.”
“And how did you hear that?”
“I asked someone. The way you fight your bandits is evidence enough of the skills of an academy of arms somewhere. And this afternoon you left a few more, I gather, for the goddesses to make bone hairpins.”
The server came.
“A jug of your best. I’m paying,” said Yannul the Lan.
“Sir—the inn will pay, if you’ll do us the honor—”
“If I’d done you the honor every time you offered it, you’d be on the street by now. Take this. For the gentleman’s meal as well.”
The server went off.
“What do you want?” said Rem.
“My son,” said Yannul.
Rem looked at Yannul’s son, who smiled. Rem looked back at Yannul.
“Well?”
“You know the way it is with Free Zakoris,” said Yannul. “In a year or so there’ll be bloody war. There has to be.”
“If you say so. You should know.”
“Yes. I should. Lur Raldnor here has a wish to go to the High King’s court at Anackyra, and take arms with him at the proper time against his enemies.”
“The Storm Lord will doubtless be happy to have his support.”
It was Yannul now who looked narrowly. His eyes scanned over Rem, as if searching something out, and suddenly the boy said, in a golden voice, “My father thinks I should arrive with at least a modicum of martial training. It’s sensible. He’s taught me a lot, but I need more. We were about to ask if you—”
“Would leave a profitable business to tutor you in the latest techniques for slaughtering men.”
The boy—called for the hero-comrade, of course—Lur Raldnor, met Rem’s eyes.
“I’m aware killing isn’t a game. My father taught me that, as well. But Yl Am Zakoris has his new kingdom in Thaddra as a base, and the world knows—”
“No,” said Rem. “I’m sorry. No.”
The wine came then. When the server left, Yannul lifted the jug and Rem put his hand over his cup.
“Drink it,” said Yannul. “We’re still talking.”
Rem let the wine pour in his cup.
“I thought we’d finished. You can soon buy another arms-master for your son.”
“Here? There isn’t even an army here.”
“Shansarians.”
“They’re berserkers in battle. That kind of fighting—unless you’re born to the way of it, you get killed.”
“He doesn’t want me to go,” said Lur Raldnor. “I’ve only just persuaded him. If you refuse, I’m done for.”
“Lan’s a pleasant enough place,” said Rem.
“Not if Free Zakoris comes and takes it in the night.”
Yannul swore.
Rem perceived the father saw himself in the son, the same spirit which had followed Raldnor Am Anackire against all the hating might of Vis. Something strange stirred in Rem. He would never have a son, he would never know this feeling, for good or ill. And for the first time in fifteen years, he wished he had known his father, or at least his father’s name.
Across the room. Rem abruptly beheld the merchant’s agent, standing with his mouth open at Yannul.
Yannul intercepted the look. He rose, and the young man rose, no longer protesting, only very still.
“If you change your mind, the innkeeper here knows my farm, and how to get there. Four miles from Amlan, and the grapes are potent. Think about it.”
The wolves were busy on the slope above the ice, tearing something in shreds between them. Rem knew what it was. The child.
Kesarh stood at his elbow, watching the wolves.
“It’s nothing to me,” Kesarh said.
The wolves lay down, growling, chewing. Blood made smoking ribbons along the ice.
Kesarh had gone. Yannul’s son stood where Kesarh had been, and he said softly, “It’s all right. It’s just a dream.”
Rem woke, sea-salt-wet as from the ocean off Lan, and almost as cold in the hot close night.
He had not had that dream for years. It had happened a great deal in the beginning. Ever since that morning, new in Lan, he had woken to find the girl and the child were gone, and, stumbling across the hills he met the men from that little village, out on their wolf-hunt. They had taken him in, cared for him. But they had seen no woman, no baby. The wolves had preyed on them terribly through the snow. The deduction was blatantly there for him to make, if never spoken.
Eaten alive, that fully cognizant, fully helpless being. . . .
Rem got up. He went to the window and looked out on Amlan, the late-burning lamps, the five tops of the palace.
Yannul’s son arriving in the dream, that at least was different.
Yannul’s son.
At the boy’s age, Rem had been breaking necks to steal purses. Lur Raldnor wanted to break necks to save the world.
The vision madness coming back tonight, when he thought himself free of it forever, had shaken Rem. Odd that, at last, the picture had brought with it some information. Who had he been at that moment in the boiling square, black jungle behind him, the man who had served with Yannul, somewhere? The obvious idea was bizarrely ridiculous. The obvious idea was that he had been Raldnor son of Rehdon and Ashne’e, Raldnor Am Anackire, the Lowland messiah.
Days went by, and no work offered itself. No merchandise was going to the port of Amlan, and the only caravans faring south had their escorts fixed. Five of Rem’s men asked leave and went off in the same direction, having families in Lanelyr. On the other business, the continuous, pointless search, a man came to the inn and stood in the courtyard with Rem.
“I heard you were trying to trace a woman and a child, sir.”
“That’s so.”
“I’ve come out of my way here.”
“I’m sure you have.”
After an unfruitful silence, disgruntled, the man said, “There’s a woman in the far north, a Karmian.”
“Yes?”
“She’s got the child, about seven years old, a mix child, very fair.”
Rem never moved. He had been brought similar facts, or lies, before. Sometimes he followed them up, and never found what he looked for.
“And the child’s male,” he said.
“No, a girl.”
“Did you speak to the woman?”
“Yes. But I didn’t tell her you were looking.”
“How did she seem to you?”
“A bit simple,” the man said. “Slow. But good-natured enough. And the child was bright.”
Rem felt his belly tighten.
“And the limp,” he said.
The man frowned.
“The child?”
“Or,” said Rem, “the woman.”
The man licked his lips, decided.
“Yes, sir.”
Rem laughed. He did not realize the devastating darkness in his face, something he had learned, perhaps, from Kesarh. The man, who had found out some of what Rem wanted but not quite enough, blustered, scowled, and soon hurried away, without reimbursement.
Rem walked the streets, through the market. He looked at the palace, like a sightseer. Yannul, Raldnor’s captain, had once ridden all the way through the long snow to persuade his King and Queen, then children, to ally Lan with the Plains.
Yannul had married a Lowland woman, they said. And between them they had formed the glorious son who wanted to go to Dorthar.
Dorthar. Dragon land. Land of the goddess, now.
A man passed on the street. He was like Yannul’s son, but only for an instant. Lur Raldnor, do what Rem would, was very much in Rem’s mind. And no other thing, even by night, had come to divert the image. Rem was wary. The boy was young enough still to be at an age when sexuality was fluid, therefore corruptible, therefore to be avoided. In all his life, despite several contrary opportunities, Rem had never sought the company of any save those he could take for pay. But then he had also, in that way, grown accustomed to proximity without culmination.