“I don’t know about all those who’ve lived here,” said Tennice. “But a family stayed here once. This is where Karon healed the family of plague, and where Martin watched from that window and saw what he did.”
“Here?” I pushed the shutter wide open and leaned on the damp sill of the crudely cut window. Gazing into the darkening forest, I heard Martin tell once more of the strange and poignant sight that met his eyes as he watched the young sorcerer work his magic on the dying family. Karon had been here in this room, worked his magic, given of himself. I looked afresh at the crude walls, the dirt floor, the cold firepit, the timber roof, as if somewhere in their grime and splinters might be scribed a reflection of the past, one glimpse… oh gods, one glimpse of his face. Such a dagger of grief pierced my breast at that moment that I almost cried out with it.
“He stayed with me, you know. In my head, through it all.” Tennice, sitting on the dirt floor and leaning tiredly against the wall, twirled his spectacles in his thin hands. D’Natheil watched us from his corner, where Baglos sat beside him, listening to our talk and murmuring into the Prince’s ear. “I would have lost my mind otherwise. I held onto him like one drowning, though what they did to me was nothing to what they’d done to him. After everything else they decided to finish me off with a sword. I suppose I was boring next to Martin and Julia. I told them everything I knew in the first day, said everything they wanted me to say, and signed whatever they wanted me to sign soon after. At the last I lost consciousness, believing and hoping I’d never wake again.”
He drew up his knees and rested his long arms on them. “There was a guard—he never told me his name. You know how you could never go anywhere without meeting someone who’d been one of Tanager’s ”bully comrades.“ That held true even in the foul pits of our foul king. Instead of hauling us out for the gravediggers, this man carried the two of us to an out-of-the-way cell. He cared for us as best he could and sent word to Father—”
“Tanager! Is he—?”
Tennice shook his head. “It must have taken a great deal to break him. I believe he was dead already. For certain he died long before Father’s men could retrieve us. I, for whatever reason the mad gods dreamt up, did not.”
“That’s why your father refused to claim your bodies.” For all these years I had cursed the old baron for abandoning his dead sons.
“The guard would have had to produce two corpses, and he had only one. It was weeks before I knew anything. Father told me of Karon’s death, and he tried to find out what became of you. Oh, damnation, Seri, we thought you were dead. Father was told that both you and the child were ”taken care of.“ When I recovered, I came here and never looked back. Ferrante heard that my brother Evan was killed two years ago in the war, so Father is left alone now. I daren’t write him, though. To protect him, I must be dead, too.”
“Is it your choice or his?”
“He believes it’s his, and that’s enough.”
“Be sure, Tennice.”
He glanced up, his face wrinkled into a rueful smile. “You sound like Karon. ”Everyone must choose their own danger.“ I hadn’t thought of it so… the Way of the J’Ettanne.”
My skin grew cold. What was I thinking to speak such drivel? “This has nothing to do with the Way of the J’Ettanne.” The Way of the J’Ettanne brought only death. Wasted, useless death. There was no “following life,” no greater good, and, for those of us left behind, no reprieve from the cost of such wretched, foolish idealism.
As Baglos shared out bread and apples, I told Tennice of Anne and Jonah and my life in the past ten years. The story didn’t take long. There wasn’t much else to say. We were all exhausted.
Frightful dreams plagued me that night. Each time I woke, I saw D’Natheil standing in the doorway of the hut, his unshaven face hard and fierce, lit by the traveling moon. I woke again when the sky was just beginning to lighten, and he was no longer there. He must have given in to sleep at last. But as I turned over, hoping to find a more comfortable position and wrest another hour of sleep before the day to come, I glimpsed him sitting in the shadows, his eyes fixed on me.
CHAPTER 17
Year 4 in the reign of King Evard
Evard’s war was going badly. Only a month into the fourth year of his reign, his armies had been repulsed at the very gates of Kallamat and driven into the mountains. Even the weather seemed to side with the pious Keroteans, for a ferocious winter storm had assaulted the already decimated Leiran troops. Five thousand soldiers died of starvation when supply wagons foundered in chest-high snow. Five thousand more froze to death, the injured men abandoned by their comrades in fear of the bloodthirsty pursuit. The remnants of the Leiran army straggled into Montevial on the heels of winter, Evard and his household among them.
Baron Hesperid, a young noble who had lost his right arm in the spring campaign, publicly accused Evard of mishandling the war, of proceeding too fast and too far. He hinted that the king had promised his friends new leaseholds of Kerotean lands before taxes were due in the spring. Only intervention by the Council of Lords prevented Hesperid’s execution for treason. Instead, Evard stripped him of his lands and title and banished him from Leire for thirty years.
“Lucky, I think,” Martin said. “Luckier than the rest of us who were less pointed in our criticism of this course of stupidity. I wouldn’t want to be in the way when Evard decides who’ll be the scapegoat for this mess.” But, of course, he was. We all were…
“Of course, it’s the cursed sorcerers. Kerotea is ruled by barbarian priests. They claim to speak for this vile horse god or frog god, or whatever it is… Come, Seri, you’d know. Your husband studies these barbarian things.”
“Ilehu is half-man, half-wolf.” Stupid, ignorant woman. I restrained my hand from knocking away the wineglass the countess was waving in my face.
“Just so,” she said to the three other women who stood gawking at her idiocies. “The savages claim this Ilehu commands them to destroy any of their children born defective or weak. I’ve heard they eat the hearts of the dead babes, just as sorcerers do! It’s a mercy King Evard survived their magics.”
Yes, Karon had taught me about the Keroteans. They believed that their terrible custom was a mercy for those who had to survive in their harsh mountain kingdom. But Leirans had never understood such ways, and so every unusual behavior was wrapped in the mantle of the evil they’d been taught to abhor above all others—sorcery.
“I’ve heard—” The sparrow-like young baroness on my left was twitching, her thin fingers flitting over her mouth and chin. The black dots of her eyes darted about the crowded drawing room, and then she leaned forward, drawing the other women close. “I’ve heard they walk among us again,” she whispered. “Sorcerers—”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I think my husband is ready to leave. A lovely evening, Countess. Karon is thrilled with the addition of your artifacts to the antiquities collection.”
“Well, I don’t see how such a gentleman as your Karon can enjoy mucking about with such refuse, but I told Fenys that I wouldn’t have them here any longer. What if there were spells on them? My dogs have been acting most strangely of late…”
Within hours of Hesperid’s banishment, rumors had begun flying that the Keroteans had orchestrated their victory by means of sorcery. In a matter of days one could not walk down a street without hearing some demagogue ranting that the Kerotean priests were devilish wizards. Survivors of the campaign swore that snow monsters had appeared in the Kerotean mountains to steal their supplies and mesmerize their comrades. Frost wraiths had lured Leirans into blind-ended valleys, and spells of paralysis had overwhelmed the soldiers to make them lie down in the snow until they died. Every misfortune of that winter battle was attributed to diabolical influence.