Return to Alastair (29 page)

The woman nodded. “It was a brave thing. But there are many sides even to a brave man.”

“Maybe so,” Tiarra answered, feeling a remnant of anger stirring inside her. “But why do you ask me that? Do you think he is a villain? This city claims it, but how can anyone be so hard and blind? How can they face what they’ve done to him?”

To Tiarra’s surprise, the old woman nodded. “It is good that you don’t blame him for what happened here. I have always felt that the sin was not a child’s.”

Those words were like balm to Tiarra’s spirit. “Thank you. For understanding. I don’t like it that people hate him. I wish I had known sooner the spot he was in.”

“Do you truly believe he has given his heart to the Savior?”

“Yes.”

“If that is true, child, take comfort that you need not worry for his soul.”

“I know.” Tiarra sighed. “And I have heard that heaven is a prize to gain. But I pray he recovers quickly anyway. He need not gain it soon.”

The old woman glanced her way. “I have heard he is a strong one. Surely he can fight this.”

Tiarra nodded. The healer woman turned her attention for a moment to the fire and the small pot that hung above it. In the next room, the baby Gabriell began to cry, and Catrin soothed the child gently with her quiet song.

21

T
he baby’s cries reached Tahn’s ears as he watched himself running breathless toward the painted house again. What was wrong?

His sister, that tiny, squirmy baby with the funny hair and indigo-blue eyes, was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. It bothered him to hear her cry. She must be hungry.

Where could their mother be?

As he neared the house, apprehension welled inside him. Somehow he remembered the old woman coming out with her pointing accusation, and he did not want it to be real.

“Mother?” he called.

A warm hand touched his hand. The baby’s cry was gone. Instead he could hear a gentle voice singing a reassuring lullaby.

It was just a dream,
he thought.
Mother is here. Everything is all right.

It was good to feel her soft touch again, and her kiss upon his brow. There were no demons here, no hateful, shouting faces making him want to run. Strangely, he wondered about their father. Why was he not here as well? Where had he gone?

“Mother, I want Father to be happy like us.”

“He tries, son,” the soft voice answered him. “But there is a battle in his soul.”

Such strange words. He didn’t understand them. How could a battle be waged on the inside? Where would be the horses, the soldiers, the swords?

“Just know that he loves you,” the gentle voice continued. “He will always love you.”

“And baby?”

“Yes. Baby too.”

“And you?” he persisted, needing to hear the answer.

“Yes,” his mother spoke softly. “And I love him too. No matter what shall come.”

The words hung in the silence for a moment, and then faintly Tahn could hear the baby begin to cry again. Strangely, he could not run to it now. He couldn’t respond at all. He could see himself standing and staring down the dismal street, and he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if he’d just wakened. But everything was not all right.

“Mother?”

His stomach felt so cold and hard that he could scarcely breathe. He knew all the things that would happen now. He knew that the old woman would point her long finger at him, and the crowd would run him down. But the worst thing of all was that his mother could not answer his cry. He would never hear her gentle voice again.

Tiarra was sitting beside Tahn, hoping to help the healer woman, when Tahn suddenly started shaking. She didn’t know what was happening. She tried to take his hand, to wake him from his dream or at least calm him in his sleep. But she could tell that he didn’t know she was there. He curled on his side. He wept like a child, the tears coursing down suddenly from tightly shut eyes. “What’s wrong with him?” she cried.

The old woman’s brow furrowed with concern. “God knows, child.”

Lucas came close to them. His steady voice spoke words of prayer as he clasped hold of Tahn’s hand. At first Tahn tried to pull away from his touch, but finally he calmed.

Tiarra prayed that he would wake. But he did not.

A rooster crowed in the distance. Over and over, the healer woman bathed Tahn with cool water, but the fever only seemed to worsen. Catrin laid her sleeping baby down and rose to offer their guests bread. But neither Lucas nor Tiarra felt like eating.

They heard horses, many of them, well before dawn, stopping at the church. Tiarra rose to look, but Lucas pulled her away from the window. The baron’s men must have come back, just as the priest had warned. Lucas paced the floor in tense silence, but no one came to the small cottage.

Tahn trusts you, God,
Tiarra prayed.
But he is so sick. And we are at the mercy of the priest and the soldier. They could yet send the baron’s men this way to slaughter us. At least we would know heaven. But help us if you will. My brother believes you can. And I want to believe it too.

22

A
t the crowing of another rooster, Tahn began to wake. For some reason, he couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t seem to move. He felt as though a strange fog had encircled him and held him in. But he could hear pieces of a conversation around him.

“The soldiers have gone,” Marc Toddin’s voice told someone. “And that priest is a devil of a liar.”

Tahn knew his sister was near him. He heard her voice speaking something softly and felt her hand on his arm. And there was someone else, an old woman’s voice. Martica?

No, he remembered that could not be.

But he heard a baby again, and he was confused. Where was he? What had happened to make him so weak?

“He told them about Tahn coming to the church,” Marc’s voice was saying.

“That was no lie,” Lucas replied.

Marc continued, “But the priest claimed the misunderstanding was not his own fault, that Tahn told him the bandits now rode under his hand.”

Tahn could hear a strange rustling of wings. It was hard for him to concentrate on the words floating around him. He wanted to hear what Lucas and Marc were saying. He wanted to respond to them, but the fog still held him. It was hard to tell how much of what he heard was real. He knew the pictures in his mind were somewhere separate from the voices he heard. Martica was spooning something from a pot. Tiarra was just a baby behind her, waving her little arms the way babies do. But she was also beside him with the voices, all grown, and suddenly sounding angry.

“Has he done this on purpose? If the townspeople believe Tahn to be chief of the bandits, they’ll be all the more against him! They could gather a mob. Who can tell what they might do?”

Marc Toddin’s voice was quieter. “I believe he meant only to slow the soldiers, to convince them that Tahn is not alone nor helpless. And Korin claimed that one of the bandits killed his companion. He and the priest stood for one another and got themselves believed. So the soldiers don’t know if the bandits have lied to them, or if Tahn has other men, other bandits, with him in hiding.”

Through the gray swirling fog, Lucas spoke. Tahn knew his voice, but it seemed now as though the words were stretching toward him across some great distance. How could this be?

“Father Bray’s is a strange plan. I hope it will be to our good. Do you know where the soldiers were going?”

“No. But they’ll be searching. For you, as well as Tahn. They intend to offer a generous sum to any man who can tell Tahn’s whereabouts.”

“Why do they search for Lucas?” Tiarra questioned.

“Because the bandits told of him,” Marc said. “And the priest admitted Tahn was looking for him. He got them to let Mr. Korin stay at the church to question Lucas, when he returns.”

Tiarra’s voice was glazed with anger. “The priest has hemmed us in! Even the reverend will not be safe in the streets.”

“Please don’t think the good father would mean you harm,” another voice spoke. It was a soft, feminine voice, and quiet. “He has respect, especially for you, Lucas. And a conscience toward the injustice of the past. He’ll not endanger you or your friend.”

Tahn wished he could see the woman, whoever she was, through the fog. But there was nothing but a gray, dusky light. And then a man walked slowly forward to stand beside him tall and straight, with hair as dark as his own. Beyond him the voices began to fade.

“Perhaps he wouldn’t endanger Lucas,” Tiarra was saying. “But who is to say what he would do with my brother and me?”

The unknown old woman answered her, but Tahn could barely hear the voice. “Before the dawn, child, you trusted God. Trust him still.”

Then the man with the dark hair reached and took Tahn’s hand, and suddenly they were walking in a gray haze, away from the bed and the voices around it.

“I have to send you far away,” the man said. “Your mother and your sister too. You can’t stay here.”

Tahn looked up at the face in front of him. It was strange to be a little boy again, and to see those tired, haunted eyes. “Will you come too?” Tahn asked, suddenly feeling pinched inside, aching for an affirmative answer.

The long silence was difficult, but he knew better than to be impatient. His father was looking somewhere distant. It almost seemed he was listening for something in the wind. “No,” he finally answered. “There’s something I have to do. To make sure you are safe. But I will know where you are. I will come if I can.”

“What do you have to do?”

His father turned to him. Sanlin Dorn was tall, long of face, older. But still it was like looking in a mirror.
This is who I am,
Tahn thought.
This is part of me.

His father sighed, and the sound was heavy with burden. “I have to kill a man. He is bad. If I don’t, he will send men to follow you, and we’ll never be free of him. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Tahn felt a fearful tension spread in him like fire. “I can help you. I can fight the bad man.”

“No, son. I only want you to remember, in case I don’t come. A man will fight for those he loves, regardless of cost.”

For a moment, Tahn thought he heard someone else talking again, behind them. Warm hands were spreading something cool across one of his wounds. It was dizzying to realize that he was still on a bed. But even as he lay there, he could feel his father’s hand. His father stood before him, just as real as whoever it was at his bedside, and he could not tell which was the dream.

“I will remember,” he said, suddenly afraid. He should not know two worlds like this. And he wasn’t sure if either of them were real. What was wrong with him?

“Father,” he asked timidly. “The bad man you told me about—can he make me think strange things?”

There should have been an answer, but his father was gone. He couldn’t understand why he was suddenly alone. For a moment he was dazed. But then he could see himself running through crowded streets, looking for his mother. With happy relief, he found her at the painted house and hugged her tightly, confused by what he was feeling.

“Where is your father?” she asked him. A pain he didn’t understand made her voice sound strangely different.

“He—he sent me to you.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes.” With wonder he studied his mother’s smooth face, so lovely, so pale, and yet strong. She turned her eyes to an old woman stirring something in a pot across the room.

“Martica, we are going out.”

“You’re not going to look for him, are you?” the sharp voice replied. “Karra Dorn, you can’t be sure of him! They told me—”

“I know. That he deceived me. That he married me to gain what he could of Trent wealth. I’ll not argue it with you.”

“And now he wants the jewels, my lady.”

Karra actually smiled. “Yes, indeed he does.”

Despite the old woman’s protests and her own words, Karra grabbed for her shawl. “Come,” she told Tahn simply, reaching for his hand.

The baby Tiarra lay sleeping behind them in a basket crib. But Tahn could also hear her at his bedside again, saying something with worry in her voice. He couldn’t make out her words or find any way to answer her. So with his hand clasped tightly in his mother’s, he went out with her to the street.

“People change,” Karra Dorn was telling him softly. “People become new, when they learn to love.”

He stared up at her as she continued.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that your father is a scoundrel. He was once. I know that now. But he fell in love. And that changed everything. He wants the jewels to pay for our passage.”

They walked down the darkened street, farther and farther from Martica’s house. They walked through the market, and it was strangely quiet now that most of the people had gone home.
We will be leaving here together,
Tahn thought.
That’s what mother wants. To tell my father not to stay behind, not to kill the bad man. We’ll all leave together at the morning light.

Tahn did not doubt that his mother would know how to find Sanlin Dorn. She said he would be with someone who used to be his friend, trying to purchase a weapon he thought he needed. They were passing by the rug maker’s booth, but the rug maker was gone. There were only his tables and a few old rugs left in a pile and scraps on the ground in a heap. Tahn thought they would keep right on going, but abruptly his mother stopped, suddenly squeezing his hand so tightly that it hurt. He knew by her voice that she was afraid, and it made him afraid too.