Days Of Light And Shadow (44 page)

“And a debt is owed to her and you both. I will make the arrangements.”

“No the Elder said this is not for payment for her services to you. No payment is needed or asked for. This is because it must be. She said you would ask though!” The captain’s face was carefully deadpan as he said it, but Iros could hear a couple of his riders tittering away under their breath. He knew why.

“Let me guess. She said it would be very human of me?” Of course she had.

“Come. Empty buildings are few in the town and most of them are burnt out. But there is an old now roofless stable on the west side that may in time make a suitable quarters for your troop. It will not be comfortable, but it will be large enough for all of you and your horses and animals, and I can send you some artisans to help with the repairs.” A lot of artisans if what he remembered of the burnt out stables was correct. But that was no different to the rest of town.

Of course the instant he tried to walk away Saris was in front of him yipping frantically, worried that he was leaving her again, and so he had to go down on his knees before her and give her some more reassurance.

She was such a woman!

Chapter Sixty Seven.

It was late in the afternoon before Sophelia finally had a chance to sit down in her new garden with her mother and speak of the matters of the heart. By then there had already been hours of talking and weeping as they had shared their news and discovered how much had happened that neither of them had known about. With the roosts not open, she hadn’t heard of her brother’s arrest, and the thought of Herodan in that dark and terrible place was almost too much to bear.

But there was so much more. House Vora was no longer! That was a shock and worse. It was almost a death. For an elf their house was their world. Even for the low born. So for her father to have done such a thing was inconceivable. He had surely had to have been truly desperate. And something in the cast of his face when he’d told her the news, spoke of regret. Terrible regret.

And of course she knew, many more of House Vora, would not even have heard the news yet. They were scattered across the entire world, and without the pigeons flying it might be weeks or even months before all of them realised that they were without a house. She couldn’t imagine the shock and pain that that would cause them. And then what would they do? Along with their house, they had lost everything. Their homes and businesses, their work, their status, and even their futures. They were refugees. Beggars. Hundreds and hundreds of beggars.

The only ones spared the indignity were those who had wed into other families. Those who no longer were of House Vora. Those like her.

There was an irony in that, bitter and sad but still true. Her marriage, as poor as it had seemed at the time, was suddenly the best hope for their family. Just as the others of their family who had wed into other houses would have to take in their relatives, so would she. And as the Lady of Drake, she had both the highest station of any of them, and the greatest wealth. It was her duty to help them.

It was only a question of how she was going to explain it to her husband.

Iros would agree. She knew that. He denied her nothing. But still she knew, he would find it hard to give succour and provide aid to those who had once scorned him. Even if they were family.

But her mother didn’t want to ask her about that just then. She had other worries on her mind.

“Are you happy?” Her mother sounded hesitant as she asked the question, probably because she was frightened of the answer. No parent could live knowing that their child hurt. But the surprising thing was that Sophelia knew the answer. It lay in her heart for all to see.

“Yes.” She was happy and the word came to her lips by itself, even though she hadn’t asked herself that question before. She hadn’t even thought to ask it in so long.

“My marriage is good. A blessing from the Mother.” Somehow she could imagine the elder laughing gently as she said it. But her mother didn’t look so convinced.

“Iros is a man of utmost honour and heart. He is noble in all he says and does. And he treats me with all the respect a wife could ask for.” But still she knew, there was a space between them. One that could not so easily be spanned. He did not love her completely. He could not trust her as he should. And that was purely because of how her people had treated him. She watched him each morning when he awoke and knew that he saw her both as a desirable woman and his wife. But though he hid it she knew that he also saw her as an elf, and that was not such an easy thing for him to forget. Even in a lover. In time though, she had hope that he would forget. Perhaps by the time she could tell him that she was carrying his child.

“Respect?” Her mother heard her words and she didn’t like them.

“He likes me very much and desires me. But he still sees my blue hair and pointed ears. He sees my cousin. But every day that grows less a thought in his heart. The rest of what a marriage should be will come in time.” Of that she was sure because she knew his heart. He was a creature of light. Though he had been hurt, in time he would be able to put the anger and pain and fear behind him, and then the light would shine through. He couldn’t help himself. That was why his people loved him.

It was why she loved him.

Chapter Sixty Eight.

Iros stepped out on to the balcony, and was immediately surprised by how much work Sophelia had put in to it. There were brightly coloured pottery troughs filled with rich soil and plants ringing the entire balcony, and the plants in them while still small were clearly meant to grow tall. Why else would they be tied to stakes that stood as tall as a man? In time he realised, the dark grey stone of the walls would be completely hidden. But that was only the beginning of her work.

Little of the stone floor of the balcony remained. From somewhere she’d found flooring timbers and laid an entire wooden floor over the top of it, before polishing it with a lacquer that made it shine like the sun. A lacquer very similar to the one on the floors of the Royal Chamber that he’d so admired. Maybe that was something he’d have to ask her about.

Then, from out of nowhere she had somehow managed to find or build a large wooden archway that butted against the doorway from the chambers. A very large archway that stood eight feet tall and spanned eight feet in width. More brightly coloured troughs on both sides of it and long thin tendrils of green tied halfway up its sides, told him that when a few years had passed, the archway would become a small cloister leading to the garden. And of course that garden would be filled with more plants in pots scattered all around, and some comfortable looking rocking chairs.

Seeing it for the first time Iros was amazed at how much she’d achieved though he was a little concerned that the water from the potted plants might block the drainage channels leading from the balcony. That would be a problem because directly underneath the balcony  lay the library, a part of the castle that could not afford to get wet.

But he hadn’t come to view the garden. He’d come to see the man sitting in one of the rocking chairs, staring moodily off into the distance. Even from behind Iros could see the suffering and regret in the slump of his shoulders.

“Tenir.” He wasn’t completely sure how to approach him, or what to say. The only thing he was sure of was that Sophelia was worried about him. Worried so greatly that she’d asked him to speak with him. As if he had any idea.

“Lord Iros.” Tenir twisted around in his seat to see him and then made to stand up, but Iros stopped him with a wave of his hand.

“Just Iros please. This is Greenlands and we are all family and friends here.” He took a seat in the rocking chair beside him and discovered that it was every bit as comfortable as it looked. His wife could start a successful business in carpentry if she chose. And strangely that was something that she could do in Irothia and not in Elaris. Women in Elaris, especially among the high born, were not expected to work. They ran the home and raised the children. There were only a very few professions open to them.

“Sophelia asked me to come and speak with you. She’s worried for you, and so are the rest of your family.”

“They have no need.” Save that they did. Iros could see the guilt and shame in his eyes. His dying eyes. His house gone, his business destroyed, their status and reputation in tatters, and all their family members left in an invidious position, and Tenir was the one who had caused it. The guilt was eating him alive. The self-pity would destroy what remained. He had brought his family to safety but having done that he was a man with little left.

“You’re right. They should have no need. Should they?” He understood little of elven houses. He was human and his people dealt with families instead. But if there was one thing that he understood it was failing his family. And atoning for that failure.

“Tenir, I’ll give you this afternoon to settle in. To make your family comfortable. But no more. You made a difficult decision, and it cost your family a lot. But it saved their lives, and that is truly what matters. It is the only thing that matters.” Iros took a deep breath as he thought about what he needed to say. The words that had not yet passed his lips, though they should have. Hard words but necessary.

“I am a lord. I have titles, gold, and property. I could live anywhere I chose in complete comfort. Be served all the days of my life. And I would throw all of that away and my life with it for just another day with my family. That is the choice you made, and it was a good choice. When you think about how much you have lost, think on that too. Think on the horror that it is to have to wake up each morning and know that your entire family lies in the ground barely a hundred paces away.”

Tenir stared at him, eyes filled with horror and Iros knew he had told him the right thing. The man needed to know what he had saved as well as what he had lost. And he needed to keep saving his family.

“House Vora may be gone, and I don’t know if it can be restored. But family Vora lives on, and you should be proud of that. But more than that you should be grateful. Your family lives because of you, and that makes you a very rich man. It also gives you responsibilities. Your family is going to need help. Your help.”

“In the morning I want you to come to me with your plans to help your family. To set them on the road to reclaim what they’ve lost. I need to know who they are, where they are, and what they need to start new lives. And that, because you are still the head of the family, will therefore have to be your burden to shoulder.”

“I cannot. I have betrayed them.” Tenir stared at him as if he’d just threatened to hit him in the head with a brick, but that was alright. Iros knew what to say.

“If not you then who? Responsibility does not care about your past. It gives not a wit for your ability to withstand its demands. It knows nothing of worthiness. It is simply yours, and it cannot be put aside. And you will not.”

“Tenir you are the head of your family and you will carry out your responsibilities accordingly. You will put all your efforts, every spare thought and free second, into helping your family find their feet, and you will not complain. You will not even show them your sadness, because that will add to their burdens. Instead you will know the undiluted joy that it is to have a family and give thanks for that blessing.”

“In the morning after breakfast you and I and Juna will discuss your plans.” Tenir stared at him in shock. Maybe staggered by his words, or maybe simply by the fact he could speak to him in such tones. But as Iros stood and left him with a nod, he knew it didn’t matter. Tenir would recover from his shock and hurt. And in time he’d accept that he had work to do and once he began, that work would consume his life for a time.

It wasn’t an easy thing to hear, and he doubted Tenir would thank him for it. But maybe in time he’d discover that that duty was his life. Service was its own reward. And maybe he’d ask Juna to help him. If there was anyone who exemplified that principle it was him.

Who knew, maybe the two of them would become friends. Stranger things had happened.

Chapter Sixty Nine.

It was good to be outside in the late summer sun, even if it was only to walk the few hundred paces from the castle grounds down to the junction between the main road and the major eastern street where Master Enderi’s wagon train awaited him. Iros had been spending far too much time in the castle of late. Now that he had much of his health back, an hour or so training in a courtyard a day was simply not enough. And he yearned to go out riding, maybe even hunting. If he could ever find the time.

Still a walk was a walk, especially with Saris back with him, and as he recalled there were a few quite pleasant inns on the junction of the two roads. Would anyone really mind if he partook of a jug of ale on his return?

Of course not before then. And as he approached the traders wagons he knew that  there was business to attend to first. Master Enderi was one of his more reliable sources of information on the other realms. The man might be a little too larcenous of heart but he travelled widely and always made sure to listen to the rumours as well as the criers’ news.

The thing he didn’t understand was why, if he had important information for him why hadn’t he come directly to see him? That was the way it normally happened. When he had information Master Enderi would either come to him in person if he thought it was important, or wait for him to arrive in the market after he’d set up his stall.

It seemed odd that instead he had simply parked his caravan on a street corner and sent word through the guards for Iros to attend him.

Iros walked towards the nearest of the wagons still wondering why he’d been called. Wagons and trader caravans arrived every day, he didn’t need to be there for them, and he had plenty of other duties to keep him busy. But even as he was about to ask, the driver of the lead wagon pointed a finger towards the people in the wagon behind him and he realised that one of them had blue hair. He had visitors.

“Herodan?” It took Iros a moment to recognise him. It was his brother in law, though he looked far less composed than he had before. His clothes were a mess, his hair the same, he’d lost weight and there was tiredness in his eyes. But then he saw the stiffness in the way he moved as he tried to stand up and get down from the wagon, and understood. He was heavily bandaged, and clothes didn’t fit well over bandages. Iros had known that same stiffness.

“Here.” Iros went to him as quickly as he could, helping him down the last step, making sure he didn’t fall, and feeling the heavy bandages under his robes. Bandages much like those he had worn not that long before, and he guessed for the same reason. His family had said he’d been thrown in the dungeon. It seemed that he had been treated no better than him during his stay. But at least he too had made it out.

“Your family is here, safe behind our stone walls, and you will be too.”

“Good. I had hoped as much.” Iros looked up to see a woman on the wagon, smiling oddly at him. As if she knew something he didn’t. He didn’t know her, but he did know her voice.

“By the Divines I know you woman.” And he surely did. A woman travelling with two cats, and a woman meddling in affairs of state, not to mention his private affairs, there could be only one. It just didn’t make sense. Not when she was a creature of very mixed blood accompanied by two huge crag cats, and the woman in front of him was an elf. But an elf with startling green eyes, and her two cats he noticed, had bright green eyes as well.

“Trekor Aileth? Elder?” It couldn’t be and yet it had to be. And he noticed that when she got down from the wagon it rocked far more than it should. And it did the same when each of her cats jumped to the ground.

“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you boy. Moving around freely, thinking clearly, and so I hear, even playing with your toy weapons.” Did she mean his swords or the cannon he wondered? They were probably both toys as far as she considered such things. Yet he didn’t really care as he realised she’d identified herself.

“An illusion?” Something that twisted at either the eye or the mind. It was all he could guess.

“A gentle thought to let the mind see what it will.” She smiled at him, and for all the world it looked like a genuine sweet maiden’s smile, despite the fact that he knew she had tusks protruding from between both her top and bottom teeth. “Now can we get this poor elf to somewhere that he may rest.”

“Of course.” She was right and thoughtlessly he had forgotten all about his brother in law for a moment. Iros waved at the nearest guards.

“Take Herodan to the south chamber of the castle and his family, and send for the physicians at once. Send for Koran.” The guards quickly grabbed Herodan by the shoulders, lifted him into their arms, and started carrying the sick elf to the castle, while another took off at a run for the physician’s house. Herodan he noticed, didn’t really move a lot, and when he did he had to stifle his gasps of pain. But if what he had heard was true and he too had been in the high lord’s dungeon, then he too surely had a set of the same scars much as Iros did. It would take a long time to let them fade and for his body to recover. And that was assuming that he had not also been poisoned.

“Ah, the old man.”  Trekor smiled warmly. “I’ve missed him. I should say well met to him again.”

“No you should not woman.” Iros had to be firm on that at least. “Koran may be a trifle proud, but he is the best physician this town has and he is needed. You will not upset him again.”

“Oh.” She actually managed to pout at him. The genuine disappointed pout of a young woman denied her amusement. Or a cat denied her mouse. It was so real even when he knew it was an illusion and that she was funning him, and it caused him to chuckle a little.

“For the moment please you will come with me, put your feet up and have a mug of tea and maybe some sweet rolls if the cooks have finished their baking. And then if you could tell me of what has happened in Leafshade, and how it is that Herodan is no longer a prisoner of the toad lord, I would be grateful.” Which reminded him of another matter. He gestured at another of the guards.

“Soldier, please go and find my wife and her family and inform them that her brother is here. She should be in the gardens with her mother.” The man ran off to do his duty, his armour clattering as it was not properly tied down. Iros tried not to wince as he heard it. 

Their world had been at peace for such a long time prior to the war that the people had been taken unawares by the war. No one had been ready for war. Not even the soldiers. Standards had slipped, and even now, after so much horror, it wasn’t easy to raise them.

“And how is sweet Sophelia?” asked Trekor. “I must see her.” By the divines how could she sound so much like a lady of the court simply asking after a friend, when she so clearly wasn’t? Iros shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs from it. But he at least wasn’t fooled by her innocent words.

“She is well, and as you well know, possibly with child.” Everyone knew that. Nothing happened in the castle that did not immediately get discussed in the town. Some days it was shouted by the town criers. And after a few days the merchants took the news beyond the town walls as they travelled from town to town. He had no secrets, though some days he thought he’d like to keep some.

“Good.”  She sounded so smug when she said it, and Iros instantly knew why. It was the same reason that all parents sounded smug when their children did as they asked and finally found that they’d been right all along.

Iros decided to be a little impertinent. Since it seemed that he was to be treated like a wayward child in his own home, again, he might as well play the part.

“Of course an apology from you to her would not go amiss.”

“What?” The elder stared at him, somewhat taken aback and he tried not to smile at her discomfort. “For what?”

“You did command her into my bed. A command that caused her great alarm. And now that I think upon it, interfered in the order of my life as well. Perhaps an apology to both of us is in order.” If the elder had seemed taken aback before, it was nothing to the look of shock that was growing on her face then.

“But -.”

“I can arrange a session for you to formally give your apology if that would help.” He tried to look innocent as he said it, but he couldn’t and a hint of a grin started lifting the corners of his mouth no matter how he tried to keep his face grim. It was enough to tell her the truth of his words, and she made a strange rumbling sound as she understood his humour.

“Impudent child!” The rumbling turned into a snort of vexation. “Do you truly think such wit clever?”

“Apology accepted elder.” He gave up trying to maintain his calm faced and chuckled a little too loudly while she stared at him, unimpressed. Unimpressed too with the nearby caravan guard who was trying to stifle a laugh of his own. And the chuckles coming from the others.

“Children!” She was one step away from stamping her foot he thought. It didn’t help though, and so she had to stand there in the street looking irked while he and the rest finished their merriment, something Iros discovered was easier said than done. But it had been a long time since he’d known a simple, innocent laugh. So maybe that was as it should be.

In the end though, after wiping away a few tears of laughter from the edges of his eyes, he decided to try and turn the conversation to more serious matters.

“Pita said that the Grove had vied with the Throne Elder?” And thus far they’d heard nothing other than that. Nothing of how the battle had been fought or the outcome. Things he needed to know. Things the king needed to know.

Trekor nodded. “And Finell is no longer high lord. But we can speak of that in time. When you’ve grown a little older perhaps.” Iros guessed that it would be a while before she forgot his impertinence. Not that he really minded. Besides he could still be clever.

“So is it that at this time you don’t want to be seen Elder, or that last time you most surely wanted others to notice you?”

“Perhaps a little of both. But surely a lord wise in the ways of the world would know better than to ask boy.” Trekor smiled pityingly at him as if he’d asked a foolish question .  Which of course, he had.  And Iros realised that no matter how clever he’d thought he was being as he tried to prove that he could get the better of her, she was leagues ahead of him. Iros tried not to groan, but failed. It was her turn to laugh, at least a little.

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice he knew well coming from one of the other wagons. “You should know many things boy, including how to welcome your guests. Or is it your intention to leave us out here hungry and tired?”

It was to be a day for surprises as Iros recognised Elder Yossirion’s dry tones coming from another of the wagons, and he very nearly broke into laughter. He very nearly did something completely impolite as well, and only years of discipline and training kept him from running over and grabbing the elf and wrapping him up in a huge bear hug. But he couldn’t stop the smile from finding his face.

“Elder, the divines themselves have blessed this day. It’s good to see you.” Iros’ words could not have been more heartfelt.

“This from someone who believes in nothing?”

“I do not disbelieve in the Divines either Elder. I simply have little time for such things, and they I fear for me.”

“The Mother has time for all her children.” Priests! Iros knew that he would not win that argument with him. Or any other. And that he didn’t really want to.

Saris though saved him from losing too badly as she ran for the aged elf, and he quickly fell to one knee to greet her. After that it was as it had been many times before. She beat her tail against the ground and yipped and nuzzled him excitedly while the elder praised her and bemoaned her master’s many failings. For a moment it was almost as it had been many months before in Leafshade. Before the war. Before so many things.

But as usual the pain of the scars reminded him that it wasn’t, and the ache of his backside from having  sat for too long, told him that there were important matters to be discussed.

“Thank you Master Enderi.” He tossed the wagon master a couple of silver pieces for having brought the elders to him, even though the man had probably been paid before they’d left. But the man had proved a useful source of information in the past and he wanted him to remain that way. “Hand their bags to the guards and find yourselves a good place in the market. You will find no shortage of people wanting to purchase your wares.”