Chapter 42
Leor could feel the sadness as they all rode out. You did not need to be Maeneb to sense the loss, the pull at the hearts of every Rider as they left the dead behind with the great mountains guarding them. He should be used to death by now, after so many centuries. Yet it always surprised him with its suddenness and irrevocability.
He saw Sashel, sitting in the cart ahead of him, twist around for one last look. Was the loss of a twin doubly hard?
Adon had been almost his twin. Although he resisted giving Adon the status of a brother, they had been made at the same time, of the same matter; so much Leor had been told. The rest he did not know. There was no-one whom the two boys called parent; they had a group of six guardians, not wizards but ordinary men and women, or ordinary as far as lifespan went. However, the guardians between them held a great amount of knowledge, including something about wizardry – enough to set Adon and Leor on their paths of self-discovery.
Paths which intertwined throughout their early years. As boys the two of them had been glad of each other’s company, running through the fields and woods together, revelling in their invulnerability. It made them thoughtless of their safety; for they could feel no lasting hurt. A bone that was broken swiftly mended. A fall from a tree had no ill effects. Cuts healed without trace. They were invincible.
He never understood whose power it was that made them and then kept them safe. Adon declared back then that they had made themselves. Nowadays Adon would probably declare that he – Adon – had made them both, and much of the world besides. Huldarion had told Leor what the stoneman said about Adon: a god with a shining face. Well. No surprise.
He looked over to his right, where the Kelvhan company formed a shorter, separate line of carts and riders two hundred yards away. They moved in perfect, disciplined formation. Behind them trailed the few men of Melmet who had chosen to come this far: a short untidy straggle, outnumbered by the hunters at their rear. There was little communication between the two lines, although Huldarion had ridden over at one point to speak to the Kelvhan commander, Rhadlun; and Yaret had come over from Melmet’s ranks to join the Riders.
“I don’t like being the only female in the train,” she said.
“You don’t trust Melmet?” Solon asked.
“Oh, they’re all right. My old captain Jerred’s still with them and he has a fair amount of clout. But I don’t trust Kelvha. They all seem to know; I suppose word had to get out some time. Actually it’s not fair to say that I don’t trust them – I expect they’re trustworthy enough. But I don’t care much for the way they look at me. I expect the female Riders get the same sort of looks from them.”
“We do,” said Maeneb, with a harshness that surprised Leor till he remembered seeing that Kelvhan soldier seize and kiss her. Was a kiss in victory so terrible? To, Maeneb, yes; any kiss would be terrible, he supposed.
But then Maeneb was comely: even beautiful. He wouldn’t have thought Yaret had much cause to worry. Although she had a pleasant enough face it was made so by its alert expression, and her baggy clothes did her no favours. He had heard the occasional shouts of peg-leg as she passed.
“At least you’re not surrounded by them here,” said Yaret.
The line of Vonn was looser than that of the Kelvhans, and soon began to flow and ebb around him like a shoal of fish, as various Riders sought friends to exchange sombre words with. Nobody came out of their way to ride alongside Leor. Trying not to mind, he kept his eye on Durba, who was sitting with Sashel and the others in the jolting cart.
Leor didn’t think the jolting could be good for her. He had seen battle shock before, on many occasions through the years. He did not know the answer to it except kindness. Poor Durba; she was so young, hardly older than a child…
But older than those stonemen, he reflected. Huldarion had told him, quietly, about that as well, requesting him to tell nobody else before he asked Leor if such a thing were possible.
Stone children. It made his heart sink because he felt at once that it was true. Had he himself not played with men’s longevity to give the Wardens of Farwithiel longer life? It hadn’t been all that difficult. He’d been proud of the feat until its consequences gradually revealed themselves.
Adon could have done the same thing, in reverse, he told Huldarion; speeding up the stonemen’s growth. It would not have been beyond him.
“But why on earth would he want to?” Huldarion had said, in a rare failure of understanding.
“To swell his armies the more swiftly,” Leor had replied. To him it was obvious. “And so that he can bring them up more easily in the way he chooses. Indoctrinate them.”
“Such youngsters can have no judgement.”
“Adon doesn’t want them to have judgement. He just wants them to obey.”
“If it were true,” said Huldarion, “it would be grossly immoral, to breed children to be maimed, and led into addiction, and then to make them fight.”
Leor felt himself condemned along with Adon. Not by Huldarion; but by himself. He saw so clearly what Adon was doing – yet he had no idea where he was or why. He could be anywhere in the world. He could be in this very train amongst the Vonn and Leor would not know. The mere idea made him shudder.
He looked round for Maeneb, who had been riding close behind him, and called to her to catch him up.
“Maeneb,” he said, “Can you feel where I am? With your mind, I mean?”
She looked surprised. “I can feel you, certainly. You’re a different note, a different colour to the rest.”
“From how far away can you detect me?”
“A few miles, perhaps. I could tell when you were up in the hills back there with Veron, some of the time. At other times you were too distant.”
“Have you ever felt someone that… that might have been Adon?”
She shook her head. “No. But I wouldn’t expect to. I should think he always cloaks himself. I’m surprised you don’t.”
At that, he was surprised; even though he’d cloaked, or camouflaged, his body several times recently, it had never occurred to him to camouflage his mind. “Why should I cloak myself? Who would ever sense my presence anywhere, but you? A maybe a few Wardens of the Farwth, but they’re a long way off.”
Maeneb looked at him. “Who might sense you? Adon, of course,” she said, as if he were a child.
Adon. I have never cloaked myself from Adon, he thought, because he told me long ago that I was an eternal beacon to him, that he could always see me no matter where I hid, my soul no less flaming than my hair no matter how I tried to cover it. I have tried to hide that flaming soul. To quench its fire. To not do what I want to do, because it has so often not turned out the way I thought it would. I have tried not to be Adon.
“I don’t think I could cloak myself from Adon,” he muttered.
“Why not? If he can cloak himself from you?”
“He cloaks everything,” said Leor. He felt depressed, and turned the subject. “I think you ought to go and have a talk with Durba.”
“Why?” demanded Maeneb. “What about?” She sounded almost angry.
“Why? Because she looks up to you, and a kind word or two might help. As for what about…” He spread his hands. “Does it matter? It’s the act of talking that makes the difference.”
“I don’t see that,” said Maeneb. But after a moment she nudged her horse ahead to draw level with the cart. It was another moment or two before he heard her speak to Durba, making some comment on the roughness of the road. Her tone was not kind, not unkind. He sighed.
But then Yaret rode up to the cart on her new horse, Poda. A fine mare, too fine for her really, he thought, and she evidently thought so too. She hadn’t wanted to ride it, saying her little Melmet hack had served her well; but Huldarion had insisted. The little Melmet hack was carrying baggage in the rear instead.
Now Yaret joined the two women in conversation, to Leor’s great surprise: because Maeneb had been speaking Vonnish, and so did she.
Yaret spoke very halting, rather strangely accented Vonnish. She would try out a few words and then wait for Maeneb to correct her. Even Durba smiled at her attempts and tried to stammer out a word or two, never getting further than the first letter.
Nearby, Parthenal laughed. Then, in a long stream of rapid, idiosyncratic Vonnish he told Yaret just what a slow and rustic illiterate donkey she was to be riding such a noble horse.
“Say that again,” said Yaret eagerly. “One bit at a time. Slow and… what?”
He said it again, and now more of them were laughing as she carefully repeated it, with Parthenal correcting her accent until she got it right.
“Could you teach me some Vonnish swear words?” she asked.
“There aren’t any,” said Rothir.
She looked over at him with a hint of mischief in her eyes. “No, you won’t know them. I remember, you’re unfailingly polite. But Parthenal isn’t.”
“You really don’t want to know any words that Parthenal can teach you,” Thoronal put in.
“But swear words are always useful. I could say them to the Kelvhans and they’d never know.”
“Don’t do that,” said Rothir.
“Melmet, then. There are one or two of them that I’d quite like to swear at. A man called Inthed, for a start.”
“Why? What did he do to you?”
She shrugged. “He’s just a turnip-head. But he’s stuck it out this far, so I don’t want to insult him too conspicuously.”
Now suggestions came thick and fast, and the laughter became more general as Yaret repeated them, mangling the words with an air of enquiring innocence. He could tell that it was a relief for the Riders to have an excuse to laugh.
The dead were not dismissed, but they could be put behind them for a while. The elastic thread of memory and regret would be drawn out further and further as they moved west, but it would never break. Lost, but not forgotten, Leor thought. In the end everything would be forgotten. But not yet.