Chapter 3
Huldarion walked forward to the edge of the escarpment. When he looked back, Thoronal stood on the skyline holding both the horses. Huldarion shook his head in faint irritation. Why be so conspicuous when you didn’t need to be? But Thoronal thought he was invincible. As well as always being right.
However, it didn’t really matter, since there was nobody to see them here. These uplands by the Darkburn head were as free of man as any place could be. A strange region; almost otherworldly. What had Rothir said that northern woman called the place? The Loft. It suited it. Remote, aloof.
Not so remote just now. Thield was camped only fifteen miles distant: the town of tents had moved for the winter, not to Bruilde’s meadows as it sometimes did but to a hidden wooded valley not too far away. Today he’d ridden here from Bruilde’s burnt-out homestead at Deloran, which he had visited to see if the northerner’s report had been correct.
When he got there the place was indeed in ruins, although he found unexpected signs of life. Two of Bruilde’s farmhands had returned and were dispiritedly sifting through the blackened debris; but of the whereabouts of Bruilde herself, they could tell him nothing. It had been a darkburn that was responsible, of course – in fact two darkburns, so they said, with a dozen stonemen following: they’d been spotted from the look-out in the cedar tree and Bruilde had organised a swift evacuation in the carts.
But once her household was a safe three miles from the fire, Bruilde herself had saddled up her horse and thrown some things into the saddlebags, and left. She couldn’t say where she was going, she had told her people, because she didn’t know herself.
Huldarion allowed himself a wry inward smile as he thought about Bruilde. At over seventy you might have expected her to settle down to quiet retirement. She was a determined woman, though, and once she took something into her head she carried it through. Wherever she had gone, he had to trust that she could look after herself – despite a crawling doubt that warned him that she had not been seen for several weeks now; and that she was old, and that every person’s body failed at some point.
“Be safe, Bruilde,” he said aloud, although it might already be too late for that. From this long cliff-edge he looked down upon the mysterious vastness of the Darkburn forest disappearing under distant layers of cloud. It seemed almost to steam. Possibly it created its own weather system. Down there, only a mile or so away, was the spot where the crawling darkburn must have pursued Eled before heading back into the forest.
Poor Eled. An admirable young man, lots of potential there if only he recovered. Huldarion hoped Farwithiel was kind to him. At least Eled was safe. The Riders of the Vonn were all safe, for now: most of the patrols had returned from their far-flung journeys, and were back in Thield or dotted around various farms and villages south and east of Kelvha.
His own trip up to the northern Outlands had been annoyingly inconclusive. General Istard had been a positive. Being from West Vale, not Kelvha, he had the resourcefulness and toughness of those people. A keen and capable soldier, in Huldarion’s judgement; they had agreed that a watch should be kept on the Outland Forts over winter, and the country readied for attack early in the spring. In saying readied for attack the General clearly hoped to be the one doing the attacking.
But whether Kelvha would back him up was another question. The General would put in his reports, and Huldarion would make his deputations – wording still to be decided – and at some point he hoped to go himself to Inner Kelvha. Somehow he needed to win himself an invitation. He hadn’t been there for six years; and last time it had been in disguise. But Kelvha’s friendship was critical to him.
Meanwhile he was living in the chilly tents of Thield. He didn’t mind; the cold seemed to ease the pain of his burnt side to some degree. Although Tiburé had brought some painkiller called belvane back from Farwithiel, he was reluctant to use it unless it became absolutely necessary. Not as addictive as ethlon, she had assured him, but still.
Thield held the additional comfort of company: that of those Riders with nowhere else to spend the winter. However, two of his closest friends – or counsellors, rather, for they were no longer the carefree comrades of his youth – would not be at Thield. Parthenal and Rothir had gone to stay with Rothir’s sister, a calm and practical farmer’s wife whom Huldarion admitted freely to himself that he wouldn’t have minded marrying if he could. He liked her very much. But he couldn’t marry her, of course, it had never even been a possibility: had never even been suggested by him. He had not shown by word or look or touch that he had any preference. Olbeth had chosen her farmer, and seemed content.
As for himself… He sighed. Marriage might be forced upon him soon, and dear stars, how he had sometimes wanted a woman in the last few years, but he wished it could be one of his own choosing. That looked increasingly unlikely.
He walked restlessly a little way along the ridge. It was easy for Parthenal. He knew that Parthenal had been hunting, up at the Outland forts. His friend had probably thought that nobody would notice; and maybe he wouldn’t have noticed, had he not been so attuned to Parthenal’s moods. Hunting … No, that was unfair. His human prey were unlikely to complain at being caught. They might complain about being dropped again so quickly afterwards.
Parthenal appeared unchanged by his last trip. Not so Rothir; he’d come back more set, more silent than before, if that were possible. Seeing the woman go over the cliff seemed to have affected him despite the surprisingly good outcome. Yaret. She sounded like a useful person; although Rothir had said little about her. He’d learnt more from Parthenal. He had gained the impression of something turning in the depths of Rothir’s mind, rising to the surface after long submersion. Perhaps it was the result of the stonemen’s unforeseen movements – the same sense of approaching conflict and resolution that he himself felt. The awareness that the long years of waiting might be coming to a head.
On this spot Rothir too had stood. A sound man. He did not spare himself.
Huldarion gazed down at the forest and a solitary goat on its edge gazed back. Unlike Rothir he had come here looking not for swords or saddle-packs, but for space to think.
So think. Stop rambling, he told himself: and he expected himself to be obeyed. Stand still and consider. What was the right thing to do?
He stood still and considered. He knew what he wanted to do: to forge an alliance with Kelvha, march on Caervonn and claim it back as lawful king. To claim Caervonn had been his wish for the past twelve years. That did not make it necessarily the right thing for him to do.
What would be best for Caervonn? If he loved his homeland as he hoped he did, he should choose what would be to its greatest benefit, not to his own. But he had so little information to go on.
Not much news had come out of Caervonn since his exile. Traders said it was prosperous enough: its terraces still alive with lights and music in the evenings, its craftsmen dextrous, its huntsmen successful, its satellite demesnes awash with grain.
But that was news from traders, not from Caervonn itself. There was no diplomatic route in. Caervonn had cut him off and shut him out. Its only ambassadors were murderous stonemen sent out to pursue him; if not by Olvirion’s command, then with his connivance. From the people of the city itself, all he had were rumours.
It was the latest disturbing rumours that made him seek for answers now. Stonemen were marching through the fields, not marching on Caervonn but around it in a threatening flow. And with them were the darkburns that had made the city so obedient to its ruler.
As for the self-styled king, Olvirion himself – was he even still alive? He was little seen and only from a distance. Some of the rumours spoke of doubles. And where Adon stood in all this was unknown, although he was bound to be somewhere, and dangerously so.
No, all was not well in Caervonn. But if Huldarion tried to take back his city uninvited he would be fought bitterly; and even if he were successful – which would need Kelvha’s help – he would be resented and opposed. And in debt to Kelvha. Better to be invited back, although how that could be done he did not know. But he would certainly be more persuasive with Kelvha’s weight behind him.
Before any of this became possible he needed to put Kelvha into debt to him. So he had offered the forces of the Vonn to defend the Outland Forts and anywhere else that they might be required. It would not be the first time that the Vonn had fought for Kelvha, although most of those previous occasions had been mere border disputes. Still, that history meant that although Kelvha might sneer at his Riders in terms of numbers, they would not sneer at the Vonn’s ability in battle. That had proved itself.
So. That was what he wanted to do. But what ought he to do?
Moving his gaze upward from the vapours of the Darkburn forest and its hidden river, he sought for some message in the long unattainable coastlands of the sky. Give me an answer, he thought, although he knew that any voice he heard could only be his own.
Nevertheless. Advise me now. Help me to find some answer. He looked along those territories made of cloud and light and felt his heart empty upon some strangely glowing shore. Such a light. Such inhuman glory. We make of it what we will. But it is just itself.
Protect the land. Protect the people.
He stared out at the layers of light, thinking, well, that was my own voice. And an inane one at that. What it said was obvious enough. Protect the land. Protect the people.
Which people? My people? Caervonn’s people? All people? The people.
So not my people only. What I choose to do will affect far more than the Vonn. I have to take that into account. Protect the people.
Protect the land. Which land? It is all land. Why does the land come first?
The land always comes first. Without the land there are no people to protect. The land is sacred.
That was something he had never thought before. Momentarily bewildered, he cast his eyes down from the island kingdoms of the sky to the green clouds of the forest, a multitude of trees, each its own realm and of its own importance. Who was he to decide that his small kingdom should take precedence?
Protect the land. Then protect the people. Very well. That was something to think about, at least.
He turned to go, when a movement close by caught the corner of his sight. A small person had just stood there, surely? But when he looked there was only a lump of rock.
“So which are you?” he said aloud. “Are you land or people?”
Then he saluted the rock and smiled at his own folly; and set off walking back to Thoronal, still waiting on the skyline.