Chapter 12
The third time Bruilde went back to her ruined farmstead at Deloran, she found that someone else had moved in.
The place was smoking all over again, but this time from the chimney. She cursed as she dismounted stiffly from her horse – her long trip along the Darkburn having left a legacy of aching muscles and stiff joints – and stalked over to the building to confront the intruder. She knew it wasn’t any of her own people; she’d just come from visiting them in the village a few miles away.
She drew her sword before she entered, moving as stealthily as she knew how. In the hands of a rheumatic old lady the sight of the sword wouldn’t scare off bold invaders; but she knew how to use it. They would discover that if necessary.
However, she at once perceived that there was only one intruder, squatting huddled by the great stone fireplace where the remnants of the roof still gave some cover. The fire was smoking dreadfully and the cloaked and hooded trespasser was poking it with a stick to try and rouse the flames. After a moment, with an impatient exclamation, he dropped the stick and pointed a thin finger at the hearth. At once the fire sparked and crackled with energy.
And then Bruilde knew who it was. She stepped forward.
“You’re on my property, Leor,” she said coldly.
The intruder stood up and turned round. He let his hood fall back to reveal a head of startlingly red hair, tempered with two long streaks of white. He was very tall, and just as upright as he had ever been.
“Hello, Bruilde.” The same deep voice. It seemed to speak out of the earth. It had always pulled her to listen.
“What are you doing here, Leor?”
“I came to ask you for your hospitality. I’ve been travelling a lot lately, and hoped to find some rest and comfort.”
“Well, you won’t find it here,” said Bruilde tersely. “You can see what’s happened. It was months ago now. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been all over,” Leor said, “gathering news, and hunting.”
“Then you won’t need me to tell you what’s been going on.” Bruilde knew she sounded waspish. But what did he expect? The cheek of the man – the wizard, rather – turning up like this after a year’s unexplained absence and then not even bothering to say Sorry about your farm...
Instead he asked, “Have you got anything to eat?”
“In my saddle-bags,” she said coldly, and made no move to fetch them.
“Bruilde, please will you put that sword away?”
She compressed her lips and did so, sending it reluctantly back into its scabbard with a long metallic sigh.
And now he came over to her and took one of her cold hands in both his warm ones. “Bruilde. I’m sorry about what happened here.”
“You could have prevented it,” she said, pulling her hand away.
“How?”
“You could have used your wizardry. You could have prevented all this–” she waved her arm to indicate not just her farmhouse but the wider world beyond – “all this mess. You could have stopped Adon, who surely is behind it all.”
“I could only have stopped him if I knew where he was. And not even then.”
“No? So you allow him all the power in the world to use his magic, and you won’t use yours to thwart him?”
“You know I have forsworn all wizardry,” Leor said gravely. For once his eyes were dull, not alive and bright as usual.
“No, you haven’t. You miss it too much to do that,” said Bruilde sharply. “I saw you light the fire just now.”
“That was nothing. A small faradiddle.”
“Fire is never a small faradiddle. Look around you! Is this a faradiddle?”
“I couldn’t make it any worse,” said Leor. “That’s why I risked lighting the fire.”
“And yet you won’t use your wizardry for anything that counts. A senseless decision if you ask me. What’s the point of being a wizard if you renounce all use of magic?”
“The point of being a wizard is to be wise. And I have not been, in the past.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Bruilde. She shook her head. “Wait here. I’ll go and get some food.”
She marched outside and Leor followed.
“Hallo, Hama,” he said to the horse, who responded with a whinny of recognition and an investigating nose. Leor had an annoyingly good way with horses; with all animals. Perhaps it was from long years – or centuries – of learning how to deal with them. But she suspected some residual magic that clung to him in spite of his vow.
“You could mend these walls for me, Leor,” she said, pointing to the ruins around them. Many stones had cracked and crumbled in the heat. “It’ll take me most of this year to rebuild. Then two years to restock. You could do it in a moment.”
“I couldn’t. I can’t make sheep and cows breed any faster than they should.”
“You know that’s not what I mean! Anyway, I expect you could do even that if you tried.”
“I wouldn’t want to try,” he said, caressing Hama’s head. “You shouldn’t tamper with biology. There are always unforeseen consequences: I’ve found that in the past.”
Bruilde sighed. Then, digging the loaf of bread out from her pack, she broke it and gave Leor half. She leaned against the blackened wall to study him.
He looked just the same as he had over the fifty years – almost sixty – that she’d known him. A little younger maybe: though most likely that was just because she herself was old now. She was leaving him behind. Heading towards the death that he would never know.
Bruilde gave herself a mental shake. She had no plans to let death catch her for a long while yet.
“So what are you doing here, Leor?”
“Like I said – looking for rest and comfort.”
“And what else? Why didn’t you just go away again when you saw the place burnt out?”
“I knew you’d been here, Bruilde, and I knew you’d come back. I wanted to see you, because I have news from Ilo.”
Bruilde paused with her bread halfway to her mouth. This was awkward. Leor had been her lover too, once; long before Ilo, when she had still been young. Too young for Leor, she thought now. Another instance where he ought to have known better – even if she had made the running. She had been the one who wanted him. That voice. That sense of wisdom. She had assumed, back then, that Leor was wise.
But that had been more than fifty years ago. If she had been too young for Leor then, she was too old now; and she had no wish to revisit that particular past. It was over.
“News from Ilo?” she repeated. “The weaver in Obandiro? So what did he have to say? No, don’t tell me. I think I can probably guess. I had a letter from him. Or I should have had a letter. I heard enough about the contents.”
Leor was silent. She turned to look harder at him. “Well? What did Ilo say?”
“He said nothing. Bruilde – I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“Ilo’s dead? Oh...” She let out a long breath and rubbed her face. “Oh, Ilo. The old charmer. I know he was eighty, but I thought he’d keep going for a few years yet. Did you see his wife when you were up north? How is she? I know you were always more friendly with Thuli than with Ilo.”
“Thuli knew a lot of interesting old lore. I used to be friendly with them both, many years ago. But I hadn’t seen them lately, not for twenty years and more. Nor did I see them this time – not alive. I’m afraid Thuli is dead too.”
She stared at him. “Both of them? Was it the fever? What happened?”
“A darkburn happened,” said Leor soberly. “Along with a stoneman army which swept through the area. Obandiro wasn’t the only place.”
“Obandiro? What… Burnt? The whole town? Leor, you can’t mean that!”
But he nodded.
Bruilde put down her bread. Her appetite had gone. She gazed across at the farmhouse, seeing it again in flames: feeling the heat’s murderous intensity, hearing the dreadful roaring fury of the fire.
But she’d had warning. She’d got out in time.
“What about the people?” she said, her mouth dry.
He shook his head.
“Leor, there must have been some survivors.”
“Maybe there were, somewhere. I don’t know. I didn’t see any.” He sounded very weary. “I didn’t stay long: I was passing through, travelling down to Farwithiel from the north. I wanted to talk to the Farwth.”
Bruilde rested her head in her hands for a moment before raising it again. “Was Yaret still in Farwithiel when you got there? Ilo’s grand-daughter. She was staying there for a while.”
“Yaret… Do you know, I’d forgotten her. I haven’t seen her since she was a toddler. No, I didn’t see anyone in Farwithiel, not even the Wardens. My business was only with the Farwth.”
“I hope it had something useful to tell you,” said Bruilde bitterly, “worth abandoning a whole razed town for.”
“It told me only what I already knew: of fire and destruction. It had no remedy for the burnings and neither did I. There was nothing that I could have done,” said Leor, his voice very low.
She knew that was probably true. Her anger should not be at him. The knowledge did not lessen it.
“If you had allowed yourself to use your magic, Leor, would you have known of this disaster in advance? Would you have been able to act against it?” she demanded.
Leor did not answer; nor did he even look at her. Instead he strode over to a portion of the farmyard wall where the sooty stones had cracked and splintered in the heat and had fallen to the ground. As he bent to pick one up, it split some more, revealing an interior that was as clean and sandy-pale as a ripe apricot. He placed the stone on the broken wall, picked up another and jammed it in next to the first. Took up a third and tried to prise it in.
Bruilde stood back and watched his hands at work as more stones were clunked on to the wall. The gap was slowly filling but left many smaller gaps. The sight of his long fingers filled her at first with the shadow of fond memories, and then with exasperation.
“What are you trying to prove?” she said. “That you don’t need magic to rebuild a wall? Well, that one is full of holes. And it’s already bulging. You don’t need magic, but you do need skill.”
Leor hefted up another stone without replying. His knuckles were bleeding: she saw red scrapes amidst the soot.
“And how else do I gain the skill,” he said slightly breathlessly, “except by trying?”
“You ask somebody who knows.”
“And how did they gain the skill?” More stones clunked on to the ragged wall. They would not fit. Leor pushed and pulled at them in vain until three fell clattering to the ground, narrowly missing his foot. He was inept.
When he paused to wipe his brow, Bruilde noticed that the bloody scrapes on his hand had gone. Did he do that himself, or was it some gift inflicted on his body? Just an everyday miracle for Leor, no doubt. Despite the pain in her own hip and knee, she felt no jealousy. She’d rather be human than be him.
Leor leant against the wall, and another stone fell off.
“I only learned the stoneman army was marching,” he said in a low voice, “once it was too late. And when I was in the north they almost caught me. I had to… ” He stopped, and after waiting for a moment she filled in the words for him.
“You had to use your wizardry to hide. You turned yourself into a jackdaw. Something of the sort. Didn’t you?”
“Not a jackdaw.”
“You fraud,” she said. “Hypocrite. So you’ll use magic to save your own skin.”
“The smallest amount possible. I’d gone north on an errand,” said Leor, “looking for something that I think may offer a defence against the darkburns. It wasn’t just a casual journey.”
“And did you find it?”
“No. The stonemen got there first.”
“So what marvellous weapon were you looking for?”
“Not a weapon. A defence. It’s something I made a great mistake about, many years ago. I was hoping I might set it right. Or alleviate it, at least.”
Bruilde put her bread back in the saddle bag. She couldn’t eat. What had the population of Obandiro been? A thousand? A thousand and a half? All slain by stonemen or annihilated by darkburns. Her imagination began to work, too efficiently. To stop it she said,
“You’d better explain that to me. What mistake?”
Leor sighed. “Many years ago – two centuries ago – I brought some seedlings down to the southern coastlands from the far northern wastes, and planted them where they should not have been planted. I did it as a favour to the people living by the sea, who revered those particular trees in their worship, and whose own sacred trees had died. There was no more to it than that – simply goodwill. I used my wizardry to make the seedlings thrive. I meant well, but it was an error.”
“What people?”
Again he paused. “Don’t shout at me.”
“Am I shouting?”
“No. But you will. They were stonemen, only they weren’t called that then, and they weren’t as they are now.”
“Stonemen. I’m not shouting. But I am surprised.”
“This was two hundred years ago,” said Leor.
“All right. What were these seedlings?” Bruilde’s eyes narrowed as she made deductions. “Were they used for a drug? Because we know the stonemen drug themselves.”
But he shook his head. “They didn’t back then. It’s not a drug. The stonemen’s ancestors had carried the trees with them in some long-ago migration. As the trees aged and died, they asked me to look for others on my travels. It seemed a harmless enough request.”
“A harmless request from stonemen.”
He shrugged with something like despair. “Like I say, they weren’t then as they are now. They worshipped stones, it’s true – or rather, the spirits of the stones and of the earth – but back then, they didn’t drill stones into their own skulls. That only started after they came into contact with Adon.”
“So what did they use these sacred trees for?”
“To make incense for their rituals. They felt it gave them control over the spirits. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But recently I learnt the stonemen have been hunting for these trees again: so the replacements that I brought them must have died. I think the trees may offer a defence against the darkburns, or hold some power over them – hence the stonemen’s urgency to find more.”
“As far as I am aware,” said Bruilde coldly, “the stoneman army marched up to Outer Kelvha to raid and invade, not to do a little light gardening.”
“But that army heading north split into two. Half the stonemen turned north-east towards the wastes where those trees grow. I know because I arrived up there before them.”
“To do what?” she demanded.
“To prevent them from getting their supplies, if I could.”
Now she was angry. “You gave the stonemen this means of power over darkburns, and it took you two hundred years to realise that, oops, that wasn’t such a good idea?”
Again he shook his head, the red hair rising briefly against the breeze like a smoking flame. It brought an answering flame of memory. That first time she had seen him… Well, she had been young and foolish; so she ignored the unwanted lurch of her heart.
“You must remember that darkburns didn’t even exist all those years ago. Believe me, Bruilde, I meant nothing but good. Don’t be angry with me.”
“We all mean nothing but good,” she said. “Or we think we do.”
“Most of us do. Not all. Not Adon. He means nothing but harm. He enjoys harm. He enjoys destruction. He’s behind the darkburns: I don’t know how or why, but I am sure of that much.” Leor’s voice was hard again.
“And yet he’s your brother.”
“He’s not. Never call him that. We were made from the same clay, that’s all. Wizards can’t have brothers. They don’t have parents.”
She wanted to ask him what they did have, then; but that was not important right now. Instead she asked,
“What sort of tree is it, that repels the darkburns?”
“An ancient one,” said Leor quietly. “A very rare tree, called by some the skeln, and very hard to grow. It was the trees’ resin which the stonemen valued.”
“And did you find these trees, on your trip up north?”
“Yes, I found them.”
She waited. “And you destroyed them before the stonemen got there?”
“There was no need,” said Leor. “They were already dead. And they were the last of their kind.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“I hunted through the region without finding any more. That’s why I then went south to consult with the Farwth, because of its unsurpassed knowledge of all things that grow.”
“And what did the Farwth tell you?”
“It said I had confirmed what it already feared. It was saddened. It seemed to mourn – in fact, it grieved more for those lost trees than for all the burnt-out houses and their dead. Walls can be rebuilt, it said, and humans will insist on breeding: but a family of trees once lost cannot return. The Farwth told me that no more skeln remain alive within its reach. And its reach is very wide indeed.”