He made a decision and turned to face his bondsman. 'In that case, Vesna, I would be grateful if you would not forget that I have a real name. It might not be impressive, I might not like it all that much, and it might have been given as an insult, but it's mine. Isak is who I am. If you're to be a friend of mine, you had better remember that.' 'I will, my Lord. Thank you.'
Isak turned sharply, in case he was being mocked, but found only a broad smile on Vesna's face. 'Unfortunately, I suspect I have more enemies than friends,' he said, quietly. 'I don't pretend to understand why I was made Krann, or why I was given these gifts. I'm far from being a Saviour-'
'Perhaps it is something you have to become, rather than be born into?' Vesna didn't sound particularly enthusiastic.
'Me? Not in this lifetime!' replied Isak with a bitter laugh. 'But it doesn't matter what I think. Within a few hours of being Chosen, two men I'd never met tried their best to kill me. That's too much of a coincidence for me.'
Vesna looked surprised. 'I heard about the training ground, but I met Sir Dirass Certinse several times. I can't see him offering to be assassin for anyone – and his family would hardly have wanted him to do it that way if they'd been involved.'
I know, which makes me think there's someone watching from the shadows. They both looked like rabid dogs, like they were not themselves.'
Vesna made a choked sound and his face paled. 'That sounds like the sort of magic necromancers play with.'
Let's not get too excited. Half the Land is worried about what I might be – either Aryn Bwr returned to life, or an obstacle to his rise. How many of them would think it better I just died?'
'True enough. If you weren't Farlan, I'm sure the Chief Steward would have your murder planned already. Anything else that might make sense of all this?'
Isak hesitated. There were some things he didn't mean to tell anyone, not until he understood them himself- he had no idea what was significant or not. The Gods didn't work in obvious ways; the Age of Fulfilment was just that, an Age. It could last centuries. Still he found himself saying, ‘There is one thing. A voice.'
'A voice?'
'I hear it in my dreams sometimes, a girl's voice. I think she's calling me, but I can't understand her.'
'Looking for you? I doubt that would impress Lady Tila.' He winked.
'Tila? You've never even met her!'
'You forget that soldiers gossip worse than washerwomen.' Vesna laughed. 'From what I hear, your pretty little maid's taken quite a fancy to you.'
Then you're as bad as the rest of them,' he growled. 'In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a white-eye. She isn't.'
'She might not mind what you are, not all do.'
'And not all have parents expecting to marry their daughters off well, and expecting children. I may well live long enough to fight beside your great-grandson, but I'll never have one of my own.'
'I'm sorry, my Lord- Isak. I didn't mean to offend.'
Isak gave a sigh and stretched his arms up into the air, then rolled his shoulders forward and back, attempting to work the stiffness from them. 'I know, and I'm not, really, but Tila's nothing to do with all this, so let's keep her out of it. As for the girl in my dreams, I feel I recognise her, and yet I don't.'
'What are you going to do?'
'What can I do? It's just another mystery about me that I can't do anything about. Maybe it's just designed to drive me insane wondering about it. But I will find out one day, there's no doubt about that, and all I can do is be ready for whatever's waiting.'
The following weeks saw the army getting ever smaller as knights and hurscals slipped away in small groups to their own holdings. The rest of the troops searched the horizon for the peaks of Tirah's towers as the miles passed away beneath their tramping feet. When they reached
Fordan, the sombre mood deepened. The new suzerain, a greying man of forty summers, had struggled into his father's armour despite a deep wound in his shoulder. Now he walked before the coffin, leading the cortege home.
That evening, the suzerain crammed as many as possible into the manor's great hall and spoke for a few minutes with dignified grief about those they had lost. As a last gesture to his beloved father, he ordered up the contents of their cellars, and barrels of beer and wine were rolled out for the endless toasts to the regiments who'd fought and the men who'd died. Everyone knew the late Suzerain Fordan would have hugely approved of having a hundred drunken soldiers as his memorial.
Isak sat back from it all, feeling out of place, though he'd been as much a part of the battle as any of them. A pang of guilt ran through him as he saw a tear in the new suzerain's eye as he raised a glass to his father's memory. That was something Isak would never be able to do – not even if his father managed some great feat of heroism. Isak doubted he'd feel much at all when Herman died.
His hands tightened into fists as part of him cried shame. Rising abruptly, he slipped away from the increasingly drunken mourners, following a servant's directions to a tight spiral staircase that led away from the hall. He told himself he didn't belong there, belting out marching songs, and stepped out on to a high terrace overlooking the fields. The crisp quiet of evening, with the hunter's moon dropping behind the distant pines, was a better place to remember the dead.
Isak idly caressed the emerald set into Eolis's pommel. The cut surfaces were silky in the sharp winter air; the silver claws that held the stone were wet with cold. The wide river that cut through the neat lines of fields looked calm in the moonlight, but it ran both swift and dangerous. Isak watched the phantom clouds of his breath push out over the crenellations, then they were swept away into nothing.
A finger of cold suddenly flashed down Isak's spine and he flinched in
surprise. Then an icy prickle on his neck made him look abruptly over his shoulder. The terrace was only ten yards long, and it remained resolutely empty. Alterr's light from high above had cast a deep shadow on the wall behind him, but no one – or thing – loitered in it, as far as Isak could see. There was no window where someone could observe him, and when he embraced a sliver of magic, he was assured that there truly was not a soul nearby.
Still Isak felt uncomfortable, as if there were a physical presence standing at his shoulder. The bite in the air crept inside his clothes, and the shadows grew deep and ancient. His hand closed tight about Eolis. Still he could see nothing. A flicker of panic set in. As a cloud moved over Alterr's face, Isak shuddered: this bitter, dark place was not for mortal breath. He turned and hurried back inside.
From the shadows, the boy's precipitous flight was noted with some amusement. His uncertainty, melancholy and jumbled fears left a sweet aroma lingering in the air.
So blind, still, but have no fear. Not yet. You hardly know who you are - you're not yet ready to know my name.
CHAPTER 2O
Isak was glad of the silk mask covering his face as the column of horsemen clattered their way through the streets of Tirah. The crowds had braved a brisk wind and swirling eddies of snow to line the streets all the way to the palace. Under scarves and caps skin was reddened and raw, but lifted by the smiles and cheers that greeted the troops. A victory parade through the city always brought out the people, if only to gawp at the Parian cavalry in all their colourful finery. Even the Ghosts had made the effort to look their best, and the knights were as gaudy as ever, but it was Isak who drew everyone's attention.
At Bahl's request, the Krann was in full armour, the only conces-sion to the cold a bearskin around his shoulders, He managed not to shiver too obviously. No matter how uncomfortable, he could not deny the effect he was having on the people – his people. They might still be fearful of what lay behind these particular gifts, but the sight of Siulents and Eolis, and the proud emerald dragons decorating the flanks of Isak's hunter, were irresistible.