By the time they had settled other business, and finished the meeting, Rahi had cooled down. She came to him quietly, when the others had left.
“I know you don’t agree,” she said. “I know you thought you were doing the best for Gird’s memory. You may think you’ll outlive all of us, and maybe you will. But think about what Cob said, not my words alone. I am not that important; what happened to me happened to many, and I believe Gird would have come to his decision even without that. It might have made a neater pattern if Gird had been different. But he wasn’t different; he was what he was, and it’s that—the man he really was—that you must celebrate. The same man who did nothing all those years is the one who led us to victory, and at his death accomplished what his life could not. It makes no pretty pattern, but it’s what really happened. He never asked anyone to believe something of him they had not seen; his Life must show what he really was, for that is what will help later.”
Luap managed to smile. “I will do my best, Rahi.” She asked no more, but went on out. He would do his best, his very best, to make Gird’s life live in memory. She might not like it, but she might not be there to complain.
It occurred to him then that this might be another reason to move his people to the distant stronghold. There he could produce Gird’s life as he knew was best, without interference. If—as seemed likely, given their age and health—he outlived the older survivors of the war, he might find less resistance to his version of events.
The only problem was that he could not tell his people where he was leading them because he still had no idea where that land lay from Fin Panir. Arranha’s curious method of determining sunwise distance had not been proven right in theory, let alone accurate. Besides, it would not work for distance summerwards or winterwards. It would not help at all to start riding west in the hope of finding the place; as narrow as those clefts and valleys were, they could ride right past it and never find a thing. Perhaps he should ask one of the elves or dwarves who would be in Fin Panir for the spring Evener: surely they would know where it was.
A few days later, he found time to ask Arranha’s advice. The priest’s study, with its broad work table and two chairs, looked out on the little sunlit courtyard where he often sat. But the spring sun had not melted all the snow in the corners. The old man sat by the window, wrapped in a parti-colored knit shawl, in a chair softened with pillows, looking far more frail than Luap expected.
“Ask the Elder Races? Of course—that’s what I said in the first place.” Arranha did not look up from the scroll he was reading; Luap recognized his own handwriting. “This bit here, in your Life of Gird—are you sure this is how it happened?”
Luap felt himself reddening. “I’m changing some things,” he said. “Surely you heard that the Council asked me to.”
Arranha waved a dismissive hand. “That’s to be expected. Nothing would please everyone the first time around. But I don’t recall this conversation.” He pointed, and Luap craned his neck to read the passage. He sighed.
“I was trying to make clear Gird’s reasoning,” he said. “At the time it seemed muddled, but later we could all see how it made sense.”
Arranha looked up at him. “Luap, if you are telling the tale of people stumbling around on a dark night, you can’t bring sunrise earlier so that you can see them stumble around. I remember this; Gird’s reasoning was muddled, and it became clear later only because he himself straightened it out. If you make it too neat, it’s not real.”
Luap threw himself into the other chair in Arranha’s study. “So I have been told,” he said, trying not to let the resentment he felt color his tone. “Evidently I misunderstood the whole purpose of writing Gird’s story. I thought the important thing was to have him remembered for what he did: freeing the peasants from oppression, establishing a new and fairer law, and his final sacrifice. I thought the details didn’t matter, so long as people understood the structure of his life. That’s why you can’t write a life in progress: it has no shape yet. The shape you think you see cannot be the real shape.”
“That’s true enough, but—”
“But the Council—and now you—seem to think the details of the embroidery are as important as the design. I’m sorry. I thought making the whole design clear and easy to see was more important.” He ran his hand up and down the chair’s arm, enjoying even now the smooth curves and fine texture of the carving.
Arranha looked at him, that clear gaze which even Gird had found disconcerting. Luap remembered Gird telling the story of their first meeting, how the gaze of the old man’s eyes unsettled him. “If you had been telling the story of a more conventional hero, I might agree: leave out the little inconsistencies. But Gird was in no way conventional, as we all know. He transcended all the easy definitions; he was a tangled mat of contradictions, heroic knotted firmly to unheroic. He fits no pattern, Luap, and it is that which you must make clear. Not trim and tuck and pad the old man to fit an existing model.” He tilted his head slightly. “Why does this bother you? Why are you so determined to make Gird like any other hero of legend?”
Luap tried to subdue his anger, knowing that would move Arranha no more than it would have moved Gird himself, though for different reasons. His hands had clenched; he opened his fingers consciously, forcing himself to calmness. “Because I think that’s what people remember. That’s why the heroes of legend are alike, because that’s what it takes for people to believe in them. If I told Gird’s story exactly as it was, some would say he was no hero at all. They would disbelieve in his greatness precisely because it fit no pattern. Such a man, they would argue, could not have done those things; the gods would not work with someone who failed so often, and remained so muddled for so long. Even his death: think, Arranha—will any description in words of that cloud of malice and fear convince someone generations hence that Gird’s death was more than a sick old man’s vision? I can almost hear someone complaining that it was not enough, that he had done nothing to deserve the gods’ favor, that cleansing all of us from all the dark desires of our hearts was less than killing a monster of flesh and blood.”
“But it was more, of course,” said Arranha.
“Of course it was.” Luap heard his voice go up, and took a deep breath. “It was far more than that; we all knew it who lived through it. But later—I think of those in the future, Arranha, who will not have even the shadow of a real memory handed down from grandparents. To say that Gird was, for most of his life, as confused, frightened, and ignorant as they are will not make them believe in his greatness later. To say that he died uttering strange words, with no mark or wound upon him . . . well, so do many old people die, and if their families feel a sudden wave of relief and joy that the elder’s struggle is over, that’s no proof of the gods’ intervention.”
“So you do not trust Gird’s own people to understand his real life?”
Luap shook his head. “No, I don’t. I read all the old legends I could find, Arranha, and had the elders tell me the legends they recalled—of their own folk, not just mageborn tales. There’s a difference, of course. The mageborn legends all name their heroes prince or king, princess or queen; the peasant legends are full of younger sons and daughters, talking animals, and the wise elder. But they still follow a pattern. The young hero looks like one—it’s clear to friends and family that this is the hero. The hero never works with the evil he overcomes—he never submits to it. And he always knows what he’s doing. I’ll grant you, after knowing Gird I doubt this has always been true. But it’s what people believed to be true, believed enough to remember. If I show Gird too different from that pattern, I don’t think his legend will survive.”