Chapter 6 Chapter 5

“OH, MORIAN,” ALESSAN WHISPERED, WISTFUL REGRET INfusing his voice. “I could have sent him to your judgment even now. A child could have put an arrow in his eye from here.” Not this child, Devin thought ruefully, gauging the distance and the light from where they were hidden among the trees north of the ribbon of road the Barbadians had just ridden along. He looked with even more respect than before at Alessan and the crossbow hed picked up from a cache theyd looped past on the way here. "She will claim him when she is ready," Baerd said prosaically. "And you are the one who has spent his life saying that it will be to no good if either one of them dies too soon."

Alessan grunted. "Did I shoot?" he asked pointedly. Baerds teeth flashed briefly in the moonlight. "I would have stopped you in any case." Alessan swore succinctly. Then, a moment later, relaxed into quiet amusement. The two men had a manner with each other that spoke to long familiarity. Catriana, Devin saw, had not smiled. Certainly not at him. reminded himself, he was supposed to be the one who was angry. The present circumstances made it a little hard though. He felt anxious and proud and excited, all at once. He was also the only one of the four of them who hadn't noticed Tomasso, bound at wrist and ankle to his horse.

"Wed better check the lodge," Baerd said as the transient mood slipped away. "Then I think we will have to travel very fast. Sandres son will name you and the boy." "We had better have a talk about the boy first," Catriana said in a tone that made it suddenly very easy for Devin to reclaim his anger. "The boy?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. "I think you have evidence to the contrary." He let his gaze rest coldly on hers, and was rewarded to see her flush and turn away. Briefly rewarded. "Unworthy, Devin," Alessan said. "I hope not to hear that note from you again. Catriana violated all I know of her nature in doing what she did this morning. If you are intelligent enough to have come here you will be more than intelligent enough to now understand why she did it. You might suspend your own pride long enough to think about how she is feeling.”

It was mildly said, but Devin felt as if he had just been punched in the stomach. Swallowing awkwardly, he looked from Alessan back to Catriana, but her gaze was fixed on the stars, away from and above them all. Finally, shamed, he looked down at the darkened forest floor. He felt fourteen years old again. "I dont particularly appreciate that, Alessan," he heard Catriana saying coldly. "I fight my own wars. You know it." "Not to mention," Baerd added casually, "the dazzling inappropriateness of your chastising anyone alive for having too much pride."

Alessan chose to ignore that. To Catriana he said, "Bright star of Eanna, do you think I dont know how you can fight? This is different though. What happened this morning cannot be allowed to matter. I cant have this becoming a battle between you if Devin is to be one of us.” "If he what?" Catriana wheeled on him. "Are you mad? Is it the music? Because he can sing? Why should someone from Asoli possibly be—” "Hold peace!" Alessan said sharply. Catriana fell abruptly silent. Not having any good idea where to look or what to feel, Devin continued to simulate an intense interest in the loamy forest soil beneath his feet. confusion.

Alessans voice was gentler when he resumed. "Catriana, what happened this morning was not his fault either. You are not to blame him. You did what you felt you had to do and it did not succeed. He cannot be blamed or cursed for following you as innocently as he did. If you must, curse me for not stopping him as he went through the door. I could have.” "Why didn't you then?" Baerd asked. Devin remembered Alessan looking at him as hed paused in the archway of that inner door that had seemed a gateway to a land of dreaming. "Yes, why?" he asked awkwardly, looking up. "Why did you let me follow?"

The moonlight was purely blue now. Vidomni was over west behind the tops of the trees. Only Ilarion was overhead among the stars, making the night strange with her shining. Ghostlight, the country folk called it when the blue moon rode alone. Alessan had the light behind him so his eyes were hidden. For a moment the only sounds were the night noises of the forest: rustle of leaf in breeze, of grass, the dry crackle of the woodland floor, quick flap of wings to a branch near by. Somewhere north of them a small animal cried out and another answered it. Alessan said: "Because I knew the tune his father taught him as a child and I know who his father is and he isn't from Asoli. Catriana, my dear, it isn't just the music, whatever you may think of my own weaknesses. He is one of us, my darling. Baerd, will you test him?"

On the most conscious, rational level, Devin understood almost none of this. Nonetheless he felt himself beginning to grow cold even as Alessan spoke. He had a swooping sense, like the descent of a hunting bird, that he had come to where Morians portal had led him, here in the shadows of this wood under the waxing blue moon. Nor was he made easier when he turned to Baerd and saw the stricten look on the face of the other man. Even by the distorting moonlight he could see how pale Baerd had become. "Alessan . . ." Baerd began, his voice roughened. "You are dearer to me than anyone alive," Alessan said, calm and grave. "You have been more than a brother to me. I would not hurt you for the world, and especially not in this. Never in this. I would not ask unless I was sure. Test him, Baerd.”

Still Baerd hesitated, which made Devins own anxiety grow; he understood less and less of what was happening. Only that it seemed to matter to the others, a great deal. For a long moment no one moved. Finally Baerd, walking carefully, as if holding tightly to control of himself, took Devin by the arm and led him a dozen steps further into the wood to a small clearing among a circle of trees. Neatly he lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the ground. After a moments hesitation Devin did the same. There was nothing he could do but follow the leads he was being given; Im on, he remembered Catriana saying in the palace that morning. He linked his hands together to keep them steady; he felt cold, and it had little to do with the chill of night.

He heard Alessan and Catriana following them but he didn't look back. For the moment what was important was the enormous thing—whatever it was—that he could see building in Baerds eyes. The blond-haired man had appeared so effortlessly competent until this moment and now, absurdly, he seemed to have become terribly fragile. Someone who could be shattered with unsettling ease. Abruptly, and for the second time in that long day, Devin felt as if he were crossing over into a country of dream, leaving behind the simple, denned boundaries of the daylight world. And in this mood, under the blue light of Ilarion, he heard Baerd begin the tale, so that it came to him that first time like a spell, something woven in words out of the lost spaces of his childhood. Which is what, in the end, it was.

"In the year Alberico took Astibar," said Baerd, "while the provinces of Tregea and Certando were each preparing to fight him alone, and before Ferraut had fallen, Brandin, King of Ygrath came to this peninsula from the west. He sailed his fleet into the Great Harbor of Chiara and he took the Island. He took it easily, for the Grand Duke killed himself, seeing how many ships had come from Ygrath. " His voice was low. Devin found himself leaning forward, straining to hear. A trialla was singing sweetly, sadly, from a branch behind him. Alessan and Catriana made no sound at all. Baerd went on. "In that year the Peninsula of the Palm became a battleground in an enormous balancing game between Ygrath and the Empire of Barbadior. Neither thought it could afford to give the other free rein here, halfway between the two of them. Which is one of the reasons Brandin came. The other reason, as we learned afterwards, had to do with his younger, most-beloved son, Stevan. Brandin of Ygrath sought to carve out a second realm for his child to rule. " The trialla was still singing. Baerd paused to listen, as if finding in its liquecent voice, gentler even than the nightingales, an echo to something in his own. "The Chiarans, attempting to rally a resistance in the mountains, were massacred on the slopes of Sangarios. Brandin took Asoli province soon after, and word of his power ran before him. He was very strong in his sorcery, even stronger than Alberico, and though he had fewer soldiers than the Barbadians in the east, his were more completely loyal and better trained. For where Alberico was only a wealthy, ambitious minor lord of the Empire using hired mercenaries, Brandin ruled Ygrath and he were the picked soldiers of that realm. They moved south through Corte almost effortlessly, defeating each provinces army one by one, for none of us acted together in that year. Or after, naturally." Baerds voice wasn't quite detached enough for the irony he was trying for. "From Corte, Brandin himself turned east with the smaller part of his army to meet Alberico in Ferraut and pin him down there. He sent Stevan south to take the last free province in the west and then cross over to join him in Ferraut to meet the Barbadians in the battle that I think they all expected would shape the fate of the Palm. "It was a mistake, though he could not really have known it then, eighteen years ago. Newly landed here, ignorant of the natures of the different provinces in this peninsula. I suppose he wanted Stevan to have a taste of leadership on his own . He gave him most of the army and his best commanders, relying on his own sorcery to hold Alberico until the others joined him.” Baerd paused for a moment, his blue eyes focused inward. When he resumed, there was a new timbre to his voice; it seemed to Devin to be carrying many different things, all of them old, and all of them sorrowful. "At the line of the River Deisa," Baerd said, "a little more than halfway between Certando and the sea at Corte, Stevan was met by the bitterest resistance either of the invasive armies was to find in the Palm. Led by their Prince—for in their pride they had always named their ruler so—the people of that last province in the west met the Ygrathens and held them, and beat them back from the river with heavy losses on both sides. "And Prince Valentin of that province . . . the province you know as Lower Corte, slew Stevan of Ygrath, Brandins beloved son, on the bank of the river at sunset after a bitter day of death." Devin could almost taste the keenness of old grief in the words. He saw Baerd glance over for the first time to where Alessan was standing. Neither man spoke. Devin never took his own eyes away from Baerd. his doing so, treating each word spoken as if it were a jeweled mosaic piece to be set into the memory that was his own pride. And right about then it seemed to Devin that a distant bell began to toll in some recess of his mind. Ranging a warning. As might a village bell in a temple of Adaon, summoning farmers urgently back from the fields. A far bell heard, faint but clear, from over morning fields of waving yellow grain. "Brandin knew what had happened immediately through his sorcery," Baerd said, his voice like the rasp of a file. "He swept back south and west, leaving Alberico a free hand in Ferraut and Certando. He came down with the full weight of his sorcery and his army and with the rage of a father whose son has been slain, and he met the remnant of his last foes where they had waited for him by the Deisa." Once more Baerd looked over at Alessan. His face was bleak, ghostly in the moonlight. He said: "Brandin annihilated them. He smashed them to pieces without mercy or respite. Drove them helplessly before him back into their own country south of the Deisa and he burned every field and village through which he passed. He took no prisoners. He had women slain in that first march, and children, which was not a thing hed done anywhere else. But nowhere else had his own child died. So many souls crossed over to Morian for the sake of the soul of Stevan of Ygrath. His father overran that province in blood and fire. Before the summer was out he had leveled all the glorious towers of the city in the foothills of the mountains—the one now called Stevanien. On the coast he smashed to rubble and sand the walls and the harbor barriers of the royal city by the sea. And in the battle by the river he took the Prince who had slain his son and later that year had him tortured and mutilated and killed in Chiara." Baerds voice was a dry whisper now under the starlight and the light of the single moon. And with it there was still that bell warning of sorrows yet to come, tolling in Devins mind, louder now. Baerd said: "Brandin of Ygrath did something more than all of this. He gathered his magic, the sorceous power that he had, and he laid down a spell upon that land such as had never even been conceived before. And with that spell he ... tore its name away. stripped that name utterly from the minds of every man and woman who had not been born in that province. It was his deepest curse, his ultimate revenge. He made it as if we had never been. Our deeds, our history, our very name And then he called us Lower Corte, after the bitterest of our ancient enemies among the provinces.” Behind him now Devin heard a sound and realized that Catriana was weeping. Baerd said, "Brandin made it come to pass that no one living could hear and then remember the name of that land, or of its royal city by the sea or even of that high, golden place of towers on the old road from the mountains. He broke us and he ravaged us. He killed a generation, and then he stripped away our name." And those last words were not whispered or rasped into the autumn dark of Astibar. They were hurtled forth as a denunciation, an indictment, to the trees and the night and stars—the stars that had watched this thing come to pass. The grief in that accusation clenched itself like a fist within Devin, more tightly than Baerd could ever have known. Than anyone could have known. For no one since Marra had died really knew what memory meant to Devin dAsoli: the way in which it had come to be the touchstone of his soul. Memory was talisman and ward for him, gateway and hearth. It was pride and love, shelter from loss: for if something could be remembered it was not wholly lost. Not dead and gone forever. Marra could live; a cradle song to him. And because of this, because this was at the heart of what Devin was, the old vengeance of Brandin of Ygrath smashed into him that night as if it had been newly wrought, pounding through to the vulnerable center of how Devin saw and dealt with the world, and it cut him like a fresh and killing wound. With an effort he forced himself to steadiness, willing the concentration that would allow him to remember this. All of this. Which seemed to matter more than ever now. Especially now, with the echo of Baerds last terrible words fading in the night. looked at the blond-haired man with the leather bands across his brow and about his neck, and he waited. He had been quick as a boy; he was a clever man. Older by far than he had been only an hour ago, Devin heard Alessan murmur from behind him, "The cradle song I heard you playing was from that last province, Devin. A song of the city of towers. No one not of that place could have learned that tune in the way you told me you did. It is how I knew you as one of us. It is why I did not stop you when you followed Catriana. I left it to Morian to see what might lie beyond that doorway." Devin nodded, absorbing this. A moment later he said, as carefully as he could, "If this is so, if I have properly understood you, then I should be one of the people who can still hear and remember the name that has been . . . otherwise taken away.” Alessan said, "It is so." Devin discovered that his hands were shaking. He looked down at them, concentrating, but he could not make them stop. He said, "Then this is something that has been stolen from me all my life. Will you . . . give it back to me? Will you tell me the name of the land where I was born?" He was looking at Baerd by starlight, for Ilarion too was gone now, over west beyond the trees. Alessan had said it was Baerds to tell. Devin didnt know why. In the darkness they heard the trialla one more time, a long, descending note, and then Baerd spoke, and for the first time in his days Devin heard someone say: " Tigana." Within him the bell he had been hearing, as if in a dream of unknown summer fields, fell silent. And within that abrupt, absolute inner stillness a surge of loss broke over him like an ocean wave. And after that wave came another, and then a third—the one bearing love and the other a heart-deep pride. He felt a strange light-headed dizzying sensation as of a summons rushing along the corridors of his blood. Then he saw how Baerd was staring at him. Saw his face rigid and white, the fear transparent even by starlight, and something else as well: bitterest thirst—an aching, deprived hunger of the soul. And then Devin understood, and gave to the other man the release he needed. "Thank you," Devin said. He didn't seem to be trembling anymore. Around a difficult thickness in his throat he went on, for it was his turn now, his test: "Tigana. Tigana. I was born in the province of Tigana . My name . . . my true name is Devin di Tigana bar Garin.” Even as he spoke, something akin to glory blazed in Baerds face. The fair-haired man squeezed his eyes tightly shut as if to hold that glory in, to keep it from escaping into the dispersing dark, to clutch it fiercely to his need. Devin heard Alessan draw an unsteady breath, and then, surprised, he felt Catriana touch his shoulder and then withdraw her hand. Baerd was lost in a place beyond speech. It was Alessan who said, "That is one of the two names taken away, and the deepest. Tigana was our province and the name of the royal city by the sea. The fairest city under Eannas lights you would have heard it named. Or perhaps, perhaps only the second most fair.” A thread of something that seemed to genuinely long to become laughter was in his voice. Laughter and love together. For the first time Devin turned to look up at him. Alessan said, "If you were to have spoken with those from inland and south, in the city where the River Sperion, descending from the mountain, begins its run westward to find the sea, you would have heard it said that second way. For We were always proud, and there was always rivalry between the two cities.” In the end, hard as he tried, his voice could only carry loss. "You were born in that inland city, Devin, and so was I. We are children of that high valley and of the silver running of that mountain river. We were born in Avalle. In Avalle of the Towers." There was music in Devins mind again, with that name, but this time it was different from the bells hed heard before. This time it was a music that took him back a long way, all the way to his father and his childhood. He said, "You do know the words then, don't you?" "Of course I do," said Alessan gently. "Please?" Devin asked. But it was Catriana who answered him, in the voice a young mother might have used, rocking her child to sleep on an evening long ago: Springtime morning in Avalle And I dont care what the priests say: Im going down to the river today On a springtime morning in Avalle. When Im all grown up, come what may, Ill build a boat to carry me away And the river will take it to Tigana Bay And the sea even further from Avalle. But wherever I wander, by night or by day, Where water runs quickly or high trees sway, My heart will carry me back and away To a dream of the towers of Avalle. A dream of my home in Avalle. The sweet sad words to the tune hed always known drifted down to Devin, and with them came something else. A sense of loss so deep it almost drowned the light grace of Catrianas song. No breaking waves now, or trumpets along the blood: only the waters of longing. A longing for something taken away from him before hed even known it was his—taken so completely, so comprehensively he might have lived his whole life through without ever knowing it was gone. And so Devin wept as Catriana sang. Small boys, young-looking for their age, learned very early in northern Asoli how risky it was to cry where someone might see. But something too large for Devin to deal with had overtaken him in the forest tonight. If he understood properly what Alessan had just said, this song was one his mother would have sung to him. His mother whose life had been ripped away by Brandin of Ygrath. He bowed his head, though not to shield the tears, and listened as Catriana finished that bitter-sweet cradle song: a song of a child defying orders and authority, even when young , who was self-reliant enough to want to build a ship alone and brave enough to want to sail it into the width of the world, never turning back. Nor ever losing or forgetting the place where it all began. A child very much as Devin saw himself. Which was one of the reasons he wept. For he had been made to lose and forget those towers, hed been robbed of any dream he himself might ever have had of Avalle. Or Tigana on its bay. So his tears followed one another downward in darkness as he mourned his mother and his home. And in the shadows of that wood not far from Astibar those two griefs fused to each other in Devin and became welded in the forge of his heart with what memory meant to him and the loss of memory: and out of that blazing something took shape in Devin that was to change the running of his life line from that night. He dried his eyes on his sleeve and looked up. No one spoke. He saw that Baerd was looking at him. Very delicately Devin held up his left hand, the hand of the heart. Very carefully he folded his third and fourth fingers down so that what showed was a simulacrum of the shape of the Peninsula of the Palm. The position for taking an oath. Baerd lifted his right hand and made the same gesture. They touched fingertips together, Devins small palm against the other mans larger, called one. Devin said, "If you will have me I am with you. In the name of my mother who died in that war I swear I will not break faith with you." "Nor I with you," said Baerd. "In the name of Tigana gone." There was a rustling as Alessan sank to his knees beside them. "Devin, I should be cautioning you," he said soberly. a thing in which to move too fast. You can be one with our cause without having to break your life apart to come with us.” "He has no choice," Catriana murmured, moving nearer on the other side. "Tomasso bar Sandre will name you both to the torturers tonight or tomorrow. Im afraid the singing career of Devin dAsoli may be over just as it truly begins." She looked down on the three men, her eyes unreadable in the darkness. "It is over," Devin said quietly. "It ended when I learned my name." Catrianas expression did not change; he had no idea what she was thinking. "Very well," said Alessan. He held up his own left hand, two fingers down. Devin met it with his right. Alessan hesitated. "An oath in your mothers name is stronger for me than you could have guessed," he said. "You knew her?" "We both did," Baerd said quietly. "She was ten years older than us, but every adolescent boy in Tigana was a little in love with Mi-caela. And most of the grown men too, I think." Another new name, and all the hurt that came with it. Devins father had never spoken it. His sons had never even known their mothers name. There were more avenues to sorrow in this night than Devin could have imagined. "We all envied and admired your father more than I can tell you," Alessan added. "Though I was pleased that an Avalle man won her in the end. I can remember when you were born, Devin. My father sent a gift to your naming day. I dont remember what it was.” "You admired my father?" Devin said, stunned. Alessan heard that and his voice changed. "Do not judge him by what he became. You only knew him after Brandin smashed a whole generation and their world. Ending their lives or blighting their souls. Your mother was dead, Avalle fell, Tigana gone. He had fought and survived both battles by the Deisa." Above them Catriana made a small sound. "I never knew," Devin protested. "He never told us any of that." There was a new ache inside him. So many avenues. "Few of the survivors spoke of those days," Baerd said. "Neither of my parents did," said Catriana awkwardly. "They took us as far away as they could, to a fishing village here in Astibar down the coast from Ardin, and never spoke a word of any of this." "To shield you," Alessan said gently. His palm was still touching Devins. It was smaller than Baerds. "A great many of the parents who managed to survive fled so that their children might have a chance at a life unmarred by the oppression and the stigma that bore down—that still bear down—upon Tigana. Or Lower Corte as we must name it now.” "They ran away," said Devin stubbornly. He felt cheated, deprived, betrayed. Alessan shook his head. "Devin, think. Dont judge yet: think. Do you really imagine you learned that tune by chance? Your father chose not to burden you or your brothers with the danger of your heritage, but he set a stamp upon you—a tune, wordless for safety— and he sent you out into the world with something that would reveal you, unmistakably, to anyone from Tigana, but to no one else. I do not think it was chance. No more than Catrianas mother giving her daughter a ring that marked her to anyone born where she was born.” Devin glanced back. Catriana held out her hand for him to see. It was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to that, and he could make out a strange, twining shape upon the ring: a man, half human, half creature of the sea. He swallowed. "Will you tell me of him?" he asked, turning back to Alessan. "Of my father?" Of stolid, dour Garin, grim farmer in a wet gray land. Who had, it now appeared, come from bright Avalle of the towers in the southern highlands of Tigana and who had, in his youth, wooed and won a woman beloved of all who saw her. Who had fought and lived through two terrible battles by a river and who had—if Alessan was right in his last conjecture—very delicately sent out into the world his one quick, imaginative child capable of finding what he seemed to have found tonight. Who had also, Devin abruptly realized, almost certainly lied when he said hed forgotten the words to the cradle song. It was all suddenly very hard. "I will tell you what I know of him, and gladly," Alessan said. "But not tonight, for Catriana is right and we must get ourselves away before dawn. Right now I will swear faith with you as Baerd has done. I accept your oath. You have mine. You are as kin to me from now until the ending of my days." Devin turned to look up at Catriana. "Will you accept me?" She tossed her hair. "I dont have much choice, do I?" she said carefully. "You seem to have entangled yourself rather thoroughly here." She lowered her left hand though as she spoke, two fingers curled. own with a light, cool touch. "Be welcome," she said. "I swear I will keep faith with you, Devin di Tigana." "And I with you. Im sorry about this morning," Devin offered. Her hand withdrawn and her eyes flashed; even by starlight he could see it. "Oh yes," she said sardonically, "Im sure you are. It was very clear, all along, how regrettable you found the experience!" Alessan snorted with amusement. "Catriana, my darling," he said, "I just forbade him to mention any details of what happened. How do I enforce that if you bring them up yourself?" Without the faintest trace of a smile Catriana said, "I am the aggrieved party here, Alessan. You dont enforce anything on me. The rules are not the same." Baerd chuckled suddenly. "The rules," he said, "have not been the same since you joined us. Why indeed should this be any different-ent?" Catriana tossed her head again but did not design to reply. The three men stood up. Devin flexed his knees to relieve the stiffness of sitting so long in one position. "Ferraut or Tregea?" Baerd asked. "Which border?" "Ferraut," Alessan said. "They'll have me placed as Tregean as soon as Tomasso talks—poor man. If Id been thinking clearly I would have shot him as they rode by." "Oh, very clear thinking, that," Baerd retorted. "With twenty soldiers surrounding him. You would have had us all in chains in Astibar by now." "You would have deflected my arrow," Alessan said wryly. "Is there a chance he wont speak?" Devin intercepted awkwardly. "Im thinking about Menico, you see. If Im named . . ." Alessan shook his head. "Everyone talks under torture," he said soberly. "Especially if sorcery is involved. Im thinking about Menico too, but there isn't anything we can do about it, Devin. It is one of the realities of the life we live. There are people put at risk by almost everything we do. I wish," he added, "that I knew what had happened in that lodge." "You wanted to check it," Catriana reminded him. "Can we afford the time?" "I did, and yes, I think we can," said Alessan crisply. "There remains a piece missing in all of this. I still dont know how Sandre dAstibar could have expected me to be the—" He stopped there. Except for the drone of the cicadas and the rustling leaves it was very quiet in the woods. The trialla had gone. Alessan abruptly raised one hand and pushed it roughly through his hair. "Do you know," he said to Baerd, in what was almost a conversational tone, "how much of a fool I can be at times? It was in the palm of my hand all along!" His voice changed. "Come on —and pray we are not too late!” The fires had both died down in the Sandreni lodge. Only the stars shone above the clearing in the woods. The cluster of Eannas Diadem was well over west, following the moons. A nightingale was singing, as if in answer to the trialla of before, as the four of them approached. In the doorway Alessan hesitated for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture Devin already recognized. Then he pushed open the door and walked through. By the red glow of the embers they looked—with eyes accustomed by now to darkness—on the carnage within. The coffin still rested on its trestles, although splintered and knocked awry. Around it though, lay dead men who had been alive when they left this room. The two younger Sandreni. Nievole, a quiver of arrows in his throat and chest. The body of Scalvaia dAstibar. Then Devin made out Scalvaias severed head in a black puddle of blood a terrible distance away and he fought to control the lurch of sickness in his gorge. "Oh, Morian," Alessan whispered. "Oh, Lady of the Dead, be gentle to them in your Halls. They died dreaming of freedom and before their time.” "Three of them did," came a harsh, desiccated voice from deep in one of the armchairs. "The fourth should have been strangled at birth.” Devin jumped half a foot, his heart hammering with shock. The speaker rose and stood beside the chair, facing them. He was entirely hidden in shadow. "I thought you would come back," he said. The sixth man, Devin realized, struggling to understand, straining to make out the tall, gaunt form by the faint glow of the embers. Alessan seemed quite unruffled. "Im sorry I kept you waiting then," he said. "It took me too long to riddle this through. Will you allow me to express my sorrow for what has happened?" He paused. "And my respect for you, my lord Sandre.” Devins jaw dropped open as if unhinged. He snapped it shut so hard he hurt his teeth; he hoped no one had seen. Events were moving far too fast for him. "I will accept the first," said the gaunt figure in front of them. "I do not deserve your respect though, nor that of anyone else. Once perhaps; not anymore. You are speaking to an old vain fool—exactly as the Barbadian named me. A man who spent too many years alone, tangled in his own spun webs. You were right in everything you said before about carelessness. It has cost me three sons tonight. Within a month, less probably, the Sandreni will be no more.” The voice was dry and dispassionate, objectively damning, devoid of self-pity. The tone of a judge in some dark hall of final adjudication. "What happened?" Alessan asked quietly. "The boy was a traitor." Flat, uninflected, final. "Oh, my lord," Baerd exclaimed. "Family?” "My grandson. Giannos boy.” "The his soul is cursed," Baerd said, quiet and fierce. "He is in Morians custody now, and she will know how to deal with him. May he be trammeled in darkness until the end of time.” The old man seemed not to have even heard. "Taeri killed him," he murmured, wonderingly. "I had not thought he was brave enough, or so quick. Then he stabbed himself, to deny them the pleasure of whatever they might have learned of him. I had not thought he was so brave," he repeated absently. Through the thick shadows Devin looked at the two bodies by the smaller fire. Uncle and nephew lay so close to each other they seemed almost intertwined on the far side of the coffin. The empty coffin. "You said you waited for us," Alessan murmured. "Will you tell me why?” "For the same reason you came back." Sandre moved for the first time, stiffly making his way to the larger fire. He seized a small log and threw it on the guttering flame. A shower of sparks flew up. He nursed it, poking with the iron until a tongue of flame licked free of the ash bed. The Duke turned and now Devin could see his white hair and beard, and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were set deep in their sockets, but they gleamed with a cold defiance. "I am here," Sandre said, "and you are here because it goes on. It goes on whatever happens, whoever dies. While there is breath to be drawn and a heart with which to hate. My quest and your own. Until we die they go on.” "You were listening, then," said Alessan. "From in the coffin. You heard what I said?” "The drug had worn off by sundown. I was awake before we reached the lodge. I heard everything you said and a great deal of what you chose not to say," the Duke replied, straightening, a chilly hauteur in his voice. "I heard what you named yourself, and what you chose not to tell them. But I know who you are.” He took a step towards Alessan. He raised a gnarled hand and pointed it straight at him. "I know exactly who you are, Alessan bar Valentin, Prince of Tigana!” It was too much. Devins brain simply gave up trying to understand. Too many pieces of information were coming at him from too many different directions, contradicting each other ferociously. He felt dizzy, overwhelmed. He was in a room where only a little while ago he had stood among a number of men. Now four of them were dead, with a more brutal violence than he had ever thought to come upon. At the same time, the one man hed known to be dead—the man whose mourning rites he had sung that very morning—was the only man of Astibar left alive in this lodge. If he was of Astibar! For if he was, how could he have just spoken the name of Tigana, given what Devin had just learned in the wood? How could he have known that Alessan was—and this, too, Devin fought to assimilate—a Prince? The son of that Valentin who had slain Stevan of Ygrath and so brought Brandins vengeance down upon them all. Devin simply stopped trying to put it all together. He set himself to listen and look—to absorb as much as he could into the memory that had never failed him yet—and to let understanding come after, when he had time to think. So resolved, he heard Alessan say, after a blank silence more than long enough to reveal the degree of his own surprise and wonder: "Now I understand. Finally I understand. My lord, I thought you always a giant among men. From the first time I saw you at my first Triad Games twenty-three years ago. You are even more than I took you for. How did you stay alive? How have you hidden it from the two of them all these years?” "Hidden what?" It was Catriana, her voice so angry and bewildered it immediately made Devin feel better: he wasnt the only one desperately treading water here. "He is a wizard," Baerd said flatly. There was another silence. Then, "The wizards of the Palm are immune to spells not directed specifically at them," Alessan added. "This is true of all magic-users, wherever they come from, however they find access to their power. For this reason, among others, Brandin and Alberico have been hunting down and killing wizards since they came to this peninsula.” "And they have been succeeding because being a wizard has— alas!—nothing to do with wisdom or even simple common sense," Sandre dAstibar said in a corrosive voice. He turned and jabbed viciously at the fire with the iron poker. The blaze caught fully this time and roared into red light. "I survived," said the Duke, "simply because no one knew. It involved nothing more complex than that. I used my power perhaps five times in all the years of my reign—and always cloaked under someone elses magic. And I have done nothing with magic, not a flicker, since the sorcerers arrived. I didnt even use it to feign my death. Their power is stronger than ours. Far stronger. It was clear from the time each of them came. Magic was never as much a part of the Palm as it was elsewhere. We knew this. All the wizards knew this. You would have thought they would apply their brains to that knowledge, would you not? What good is a finding spell, or a fledgling mental arrow if it leads one straight to a Barbadian death- wheel in the sun?" There was an acid, mocking bitterness in the old Dukes voice. "Or one of Brandins," Alessan murmured. "Or Brandins," Sandre echoed. "It is the one thing those two carrion birds have agreed upon—other than the dividing line running down the Palm—that theirs shall be the only magic in this land.” "And it is," said Alessan, "or so nearly so as to be the same thing. I have been searching for a wizard for a dozen years or more.” "Alessan!" Baerd said quickly. "Why?" the Duke asked in the same moment. "Alessan!" Baerd repeated, more urgently. The man Devin had just learned to be the Prince of Tigana looked over at his friend and shook his head. "Not this one, Baerd," he said cryptically. "Not Sandre dAstibar.” He turned back to the Duke and hesitated, choosing his words. Then, with an unmistakable pride, he said, "You will have heard the legend. It happens to be true. The line of the Princes of Tigana, all those in direct descent, can bind a wizard to them unto death.” For the first time a gleam of curiosity, of an actual interest in something appeared in Sandres hooded eyes. "I do know that story. The only wizard who ever guessed what I was after I came into my own magic warned me once to be wary of the Princes of Tigana. He was an old man, and doddering by then. I remember laughing. You actually claim that what he said was true?” "It was. I am certain it still is. I have had no chance to test it though. It is our primal story: Tigana is the chosen province of Adaon of the Waves. The first of our Princes, Rahal, being born of the god by that Micaela whom we name as mortal mother of us all. And the line of the Princes has never been broken.” Devin felt a complex stir of emotions working within himself. He didnt even try to enumerate how many things were tangling themselves in his heart. Micaela. He listened and watched, and set himself to remember. And he heard Sandre dAstibar laugh. "I know that story too," the Duke said derisively. "That hoary, enfeebled excuse for Tiganese arrogance. Princes of Tigana! Not Dukes, oh no. Princes/ Descended of the god!" He thrust the poker toward Alessan. "You will stand here tonight, now, among the stinking reality of the Tyrants and of these dead men and the world of the Palm today and spew that old lie at me? You will do that?” "It is truth," said Alessan quietly, not moving. "It is why we are what we are. It would have been a slight to the god for his descendants to claim a lesser title. The gift of Adaon to his mortal son could not be immortality—that, Eanna and Morian forbade. But the god granted a binding power over the Palms own magic to his son, and to the sons and daughters of his son while a Prince or a Princess of Tigana lived in that direct line. If you doubt me and would put it to the test I will do as Baerd would have had me do and bind you with my hand upon your brow, my lord Duke. The old tale is not to be lightly dismissed, Sandre dAstibar. If we are proud it is because we have reason to be.” "Not any more," the Duke said mockingly. "Not since Brandin came!” Alessans face twisted. He opened his mouth and closed it. "How dare you!" Catriana snapped. Bravely, Devin thought. Prince and Duke ignored her, rigidly intent on each other. San-dres sardonic amusement gradually receded into the deep lines etched in his face. The bitterness remained, in eyes and stance and the pinched line of his mouth. Alessan said, "I had not expected that from you. Under all the circumstances.” "You are in no position to have any idea what to expect from me," the Duke replied, very low. "Under all the circumstances.” "Shall we part company now then?” For a long moment something lay balanced in the air between them, a process of weighing and resolution, complicated immeasurably by death and grief and rage and the stiff, reflexive pride of both men. Devin, responding with his nerve-endings to the tension, found that he was holding his breath. "I would prefer not," said Sandre dAstibar finally. "Not like this," he added, as Devin drew breath again. "Will you accept an apology from one who is sunken as low as he has ever been?” "I will," said Alessan simply. "And I would seek your counsel before we must, indeed, part ways for a time. Your middle son was taken alive. He will name me and Devin both tomorrow morning if not tonight.” "Not tonight," the Duke said, almost absently. "Alberico apprehends no danger anymore. He will also be quite seriously debilitated by what happened here. He will leave Tomasso until a time when he can enjoy what happens. When he is in a mood to ... play.” "Tonight, tomorrow," said Baerd, his blunt voice jarring the mood. "It makes little difference. He will talk. We must be away before he does.” "Perhaps, perhaps not," Sandre murmured in the same strangely detached voice. He looked at the four dead men on the floor. "I wish I knew exactly what happened," he said. "Inside the coffin I could see nothing, but I can tell you that Alberico used a magic here tonight so strong it is still pulsating. And he used it to save his own life. Scalvaia did something, I dont know what, but he came very near." He looked at Alessan. "Near to giving Brandin of Ygrath dominion over the whole peninsula.” "You heard that?" Alessan said. "You agree with me?” "I think I always knew it to be true, and I know I succeeded in denying it within myself. I was so focused on my own enemy here in Astibar. I needed to hear it said, but once will be enough. Yes, I agree with you. They must be taken down together.” Alessan nodded, and some of his own rigidly controlled tension seemed to ease away. He said, "There are those who still think otherwise. I value your agreement.” He glanced over at Baerd, smiling a little wryly, then back to the Duke. "You mentioned Albericos use of magic as if it should have a meaning now for us. What meaning then? We are ignorant in these matters.” "No shame. If you arent a wizard you are meant to be ignorant." Sandre smiled thinly. "The meaning is straightforward though: there is such an overflow of magic spilling out from this room tonight that any paltry power of my own that I invoke will be completely screened. I think I can ensure that your names are not given to the torturers tomorrow.” "I see," said Alessan, nodding slowly. Devin did not see anything; he felt as if he were churning along in the turbulent wake of information. "You can take yourself through space? You can go in there and bring him out?" Alessans eyes were bright. Sandre was shaking his head though. He held up his left hand, all five fingers spread wide. "I never chopped two fingers in the wizards final binding to the Palm. My magic is profoundly limited. I cant say I regret it—I would never have been Duke of Astibar had I done so, given the prejudices and the laws governing wizards here—but it constrains what I am able to do. I can go in there myself, yes, but I am not strong enough to bring someone else out. I can take him something though.” "I see," said Alessan again, but in a different voice. There was a silence. He pushed a hand through his disordered hair. "I am sorry," he said at length, softly. The Dukes face was expressionless. Above the white beard and the gaunt cheeks his eyes gave nothing away at all. Behind him the fire crackled, sparks snapping outward into the room. "I have a condition," Sandre said. "Which is?” “That you allow me to come with you. I am now a dead man. Given to Morian. Here in Astibar I can speak to no one, achieve nothing. If I am to preserve any purpose now to the botched deception of my dying I must go with you. Prince of Tigana, will you accept a feeble wizard in your entourage? A wizard come freely, not bound by some legend?” For a long time Alessan was silent, looking at the other man, his hands quiet at his sides. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned. It was like a flash of light, a gleam of warmth cracking the ice in the room. "How attached are you," he asked, in a quite unexpected tone of voice, "to your beard and your white hair?” A second later Devin heard a strange sound. It took him a moment to recognize that what he was hearing was the high, wheezing, genuine amusement of the Duke of Astibar. "Do with me what you will," Sandre said as his mirth subsided. "What will you do—tinge my locks red as the maids?” Alessan shook his head. "I hope not. One of those manes is more than sufficient for a single company. I leave these matters to Baerd though. I leave a great many things to Baerd.” "Then I shall place myself in his hands," Sandre said. He bowed gravely to the yellow-haired man. Baerd, Devin saw, did not look entirely happy. Sandre saw it too. "I will not swear an oath," the Duke said to him. "I swore one vow when Alberico came, and it is the last vow I shall ever swear. I will say though that it shall be my endeavor for the rest of my days to ensure that you do not regret this. Will that content you?” Slowly Baerd nodded. "It will.” Listening, Devin had an intuitive sense that this, too, was an exchange that mattered, that neither man had spoken lightly, or less than the truth of his heart. He glanced over just then at Catriana and discovered that she had been watching him. She turned quickly away though, and did not look back. Sandre said, "I think I had best set about doing what I have said I would. Because of the screening of Albericos magic I must go and return from this room, but I dare say you need not spend a night among the dead, however illustrious they are. Have you a camp in the woods? Shall I find you there?” The idea of magic was unsettling to Devin still, but Sandres words had just given him an idea, his first really clear thought since theyd entered the lodge. "Are you sure youll be able to stop your son from talking?" he asked diffidently. "Quite sure," Sandre replied briefly. Devins brow knit. "Well then, it seems to me none of us is in immediate danger. Except for you, my lord. You must not be seen.” "Until Baerds done with him," Alessan interposed. "But go on.” Devin turned to him. "Id like to say farewell to Menico and try to think of a reason to give for leaving. I owe him a great deal. I dont want him to hate me.” Alessan looked thoughtful. "He will hate you a little, Devin, even though he isnt that kind of man. What happened this morning is what a lifelong trouper like Menico dreams about. And no explanation you come up with is going to alter the fact that he needs you to make that dream a real thing now.” Devin swallowed. He hated what he was hearing, but he couldnt deny the truth of it. A season or two of the fees Menico had said he could now charge would have let the old campaigner buy the inn in Ferraut hed talked about for so many years. The place where hed always said hed like to settle when the road grew too stern for his bones. Where he could serve ale and wine and offer a bed and a meal to old friends and new ones passing through on the long trails. Where he could hear and retell the gossip of the day and swap the old stories he loved. And where, on the cold winter nights, he could stake out a place by the fire and lead whoever happened to be there into and out of all the songs he knew. Devin shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his breeches. He felt awkward and sad. "I just dont like disappearing on him. All three of us at once. Weve got concerts tomorrow, too.” Alessans mouth quirked. "I do seem to recall that," he said. "Two of them.” "Three," said Catriana unexpectedly. "Three," Alessan agreed cheerfully. "And one the next day at the Woolguild Hall. I also have—it has just occurred to me—a substantial wager in The Paelion that I expect to win.” Which drew an already predictable growl from Baerd. "Do you seriously think the Festival of Vines is going to blithely proceed after what has occurred tonight? You want to go make music in Astibar as if nothing has happened? Music? Ive been down this road with you before, Alessan. I dont like it.” "Actually, Im quite certain the Festival will go on." It was San-dre. "Alberico is cautious almost before he is anything else. I think tonight will redouble that in him. He will allow the people their celebrations, let those from the distrada scatter and go home, then slam down hard immediately after. But only on the three families that were here, I suspect. It is, frankly, what I would do myself.” "Taxes?" Alessan asked. "Perhaps. He raised them after the Canziano poisoning, but that was different. An actual assassination attempt in a public place. He didnt have much choice. I think hell narrow it this time—there will be enough bodies for his wheels among the three families here.” Devin found it unsettling how casually the Duke spoke of such things. This was his kin they were discussing. His oldest son, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, cousins—all to be fodder for Barbadian killing-wheels. Devin wondered if he would ever grow as cynical as this. If what had begun tonight would harden him to that degree. He tried to think of his brothers on a death-wheel in Asoli and found his mind flinching away from the very image. Unobtrusively he made the warding sign against evil. The truth was, he was upset just thinking about Menico, and that was merely a matter of costing the man money, nothing more. People moved from troupe to troupe all the time. Or left to start their own companies. Or retired from the road into a business that offered them more security. There would be performers who would be expecting him to go on his own after his success this morning. That should have been a helpful thought, but it wasnt. Somehow Devin hated to make it appear as if they were right. Something else occurred to him. "Wont it look a bit odd, too, if we disappear right after the mourning rites? Right after Albericos unmasked a plot that was connected with them? Were sort of linked to the Sandreni now in a way. Should we draw attention to ourselves like that? It isnt as if our disappearance wont be noticed.” He said it, for some reason, to Baerd. And was rewarded a moment later with a brief, sober nod of acknowledgment. "Now that cloth I will buy," Baerd said. "That does make sense, though Im sorry to say it.” "A good deal of sense," Sandre agreed. Devin fidgeted a little as he came under the scrutiny of those dark, sunken eyes. "The two of you"—the Duke gestured at Devin and Catriana—"may yet redeem your generation for me.” This time Devin refused to look at the girl. Instead his glance went over to the corner where Sandres grandson lay by the second, dying fire, his throat slashed by a family blade. Alessan broke the silence with a deliberate cough. "There is also," he said in a curious tone, "another argument entirely. Only those who have spent as many nights outdoors as I have can properly appreciate the depth—as it were—of my preference for a soft bed at night. In short," he concluded with a grin, "your eloquence has quite overcome me, Devin. Lead me back to Menico at the inn. Even a bed shared with two syrenya-players who snore in marginal harmony is a serious improvement over cold ground beside Baerds relative silence.” Baerd favored him with a forbidding glare. One that Alessan appeared to weather quite easily. "I will refrain," Baerd said darkly, "from a recitation of your own nocturnal habits. I will wait here alone for Duke Sandre to return. Well have to burn this lodge tonight, for obvious reasons. Theres a body that will otherwise be missing when the servants come back in the morning. Well meet the three of you by the cache three mornings from now, as early as you see fit to rise from your pillows. Assuming," he added with heavy sarcasm, "that soft city living doesnt prevent you from being able to find the cache.” "Ill find it if he gets lost," Catriana said. Alessan looked from one to the other of them, his expression wounded. "That isnt fair," he protested. "It is just the music. You both know that.” Devin hadnt. Alessan was still gazing at Baerd. "You know it is only the music Im going back for.” "Of course I know that," Baerd said softly. His expression changed. "Im only afraid that the music will kill us both one of these days.” Intercepting the look that passed between them then, Devin learned something new and sudden and unexpected—on a night when hed already learned more things than he could easily handle—about the nature of bonding and about love. "Go," said Baerd with a scowl, as Alessan still hesitated. Catriana was already by the door. "We will meet you after the Festival. By the cache. Dont," he added, "expect to recognize us.” Alessan grinned suddenly, and a moment later Baerd allowed himself to smile as well. It changed his face a great deal. He didnt, Devin realized, smile very often. He was still thinking about that as he followed Alessan and Catri-ana out the door and into the darkness of the wood again.