The Door into Sunset (21 page)

It was late afternoon: milking time, Lorn thought. The whole scene was bathed in lengthening golden light; the cow’s shadow, and the wall’s shadow and the shadow of the trees at the far side of the field, lay out long behind them. Overhead a lark was climbing up wing over wing into the sky, twittering. There was no other sound but the soft breathing of the cow, and Blackie’s and Pebble’s breath, and the slight clanking of the pots on Pebble’s back when he shifted feet. Lorn sat there and reached down. The cow whuffled at his hand, chewing.

He looked out across the field. I could stay for a long time in a place like this, he thought. Nothing much to do. Feed the cow— He laughed. “Nothing much to do—” On a farmstead so far from anything, survival would not be an easy matter. Even growing enough hay would be a challenge. And this was lonely country. Who knew whether, after a trip to the nearest market town, you would even find your home unburned when you got back? Not just because of Reavers—there were raiders of the Arlene kind, too.He rode on, over the brow of the hill that was part of the cow’s field. The cow ambled on after him in an abstracted manner. Lorn paused at the hillcrest and looked down to see a farmstead, very plain—farmhouse of fieldstone roofed in slate, with several outbuildings, and stone walls surrounding it all and making a yard. There was in fact a house beyond that farmhouse, and then another farm, and several small cottages scattered between them.

He rode down into it, toward the rutted strip between fields that seemed to be the main street. Pebble’s pots clanked softly as they made their way down the hill. Shuttered windows stood open to the warm summer air. He saw a face look out of one and see him coming. The expression the woman wore was wary at first; then it relaxed when she saw the second horse, with the pots.

By the time Lorn made it down into the dusty track between the houses, they were all waiting for him, everyone who wasn’t out in the fields: cautious-looking women, peering out of their doorways: wide-eyed children, staring at the stranger. Lorn remembered how he and his foster-sisters had stared at any new arrival in Elefrua, and smiled; but he wasn’t entirely at ease. There was a nervous look about some of the children, and it troubled him. “The Goddess’s greeting to you this fine afternoon,” Lorn said as he reined Blackie in, “and my own with it. I have pots, and I mend them: and I come looking for trade, or hospitality, or both if you have them.”

“Where have you been?” said the woman closest.

Lorn swung down out of the saddle, narrowly missing a chicken which had been strolling among Blackmane’s legs and scratching about, unconcerned. “Darthen, madam,” he said, “and eastward to the Stel.” All true enough, as far as it went, but he was not likely to mention how much farther east he had gone. The Waste was unlucky to talk about, even here.

“Do you have the news?”

“A fair amount of it,” Lorn said, and smiled. “There’s been battle at Bluepeak, and the young king’s coming back. But there’s plenty of time to tell you all that. Perhaps one of you have a stable I might sleep in with my horses tonight?”

There was an immediate embarrassed outcry, the aggressive courtesy of country people in this part of the world, at the idea that even a tinker should sleep in the straw: there was a bed at Lasif’s house going spare, with a room to itself, and a door that shut, and come this way, sir, and what do we call you? —for here as elsewhere, real names were not lightly inquired after. “They call me Arelef,” Lorn said, lifting his saddle-roll and pack off Blackmane. It was a common enough nickname for a traveler, meaning “footloose” in the vernacular; though in the more ancient dialects of Arlene it meant the young “unprided” lion who was still wandering around in his growing time, gathering experience and strength. Very few people would know that these days, and Lorn felt secure enough to allow himself the joke.

He allowed himself to be drawn into one of the nearby houses. Lorn touched the doorsill in blessing as he went through, and caught an approving look or two from the men and women who accompanied him; the gesture spoke of a country upbringing to them, of someone who knew how to behave. They brought him into the kitchen of the house—it was a sign of the success, or tenacity, of the people who lived here, that the house even had separate rooms. This room was airy and wide-windowed, with bunches of herbs hanging in the light and air by hand-twined hempen strings; and iron pots and a copper one, polished to a high shine, hung from hooks by the fireplace. There was an iron crane in the fireplace, well made, and the flags of the floor, polished from who knew how many decades of use, looked newly scrubbed. The people sat him down at the big scrubbed table in the middle of the kitchen, and gave him bread, the “half-brown” maslin bread of the south country, and some oatcakes on a stoneware plate, with a lump of sweet butter the size of his fist, and buttermilk from that morning’s churning.

He broke off a bit of oatcake and dunked it in the buttermilk, and set it aside for the Goddess; then fell to with great pleasure, for he had been living on dry journeycake and water the past few days. Around him the farm people sat, and watched him intently. It was considered bad manners to ask a guest for news before feeding him, but at the same time, the effect of being stared at while eating made him feel both uncomfortable and amused. “Please,” he said to them, “you’re kind to a hungry traveler, but you needn’t wait. Who are you all, and what do you call your town?”

“Imisna,” said one of them, and Lorn nodded: it was Arlene for “flint”, and he had noticed when they first sat him down that the big stone lumps in the walls, which he had first taken for plain fieldstone, were in fact whole flints, some chipped in half to show the beautiful brown and cream striping inside. “There’s a lot of it around here,” said the woman who had been first into the kitchen.

“And this is your house,” Lorn said. “Thank you for the food. And thank your cow: the butter is lovely.”

That got him a smile, and a small gracious bow like that of a great lady accepting a compliment from a courtier.

Introductions were made. The housewife was Lasif; her husbands Gare and Eglian, and her sister-wife Meo; their daughters Arine and Cylin, their son Orrest: and their neighbors were their cousin Paell and her wife Gierne. They were all tall, big-boned people. The family resemblance was strong among the fathers, the children, and the great-family’s cousin—dark or dark-fair hair, light eyes, and prominent chins and cheekbones that reminded Lorn of the facial cast of some of the people in the Brightwood. Lasif’s was the face that stood out among them, though; fair-haired, with eyes so light blue as to be almost colorless, and an intent, intense expression that sat oddly on a farming lady in a remote kitchen almost up against the south wall of the world. Looking at her, Lorn knew the mistress of this family—their spokesman, and the one who made choices after options were discussed. He finished the oatcake he was eating, broke the bread and began to butter it with the delicately carved bone knife they had given him. “What shall I tell you first?” he said.

“You said there was a battle,” Lasif said. “At Bluepeak.”

“There was,” Lorn said. “And the Queen of Darthen has set aside the Oath, since Cillmod attacked her there and at Barachael, with Reavers as his allies—”

Some of the family muttered at this. “Broken oaths,” Lasif said, “a bad business, always.... But Reavers on Cillmod’s side? That’s worse yet. When did they ever come into our country except to do us harm?”

Lorn thought of the Reaver chieftain down south, and the man’s frightened, resolute face. “It seems strange,” he said slowly, “but so many things are changing... I’m not sure it’s all bad.”

Paell and Gierne looked askance at him. Lorn took momentary refuge in buttering an oatcake. “You can smell the flowers in this,” he said. “Wonderful cow you have there.”

“What happened to the Reavers?” said one of the smallest of the children. “Did they all get burnt up and chopped and killed in pieces?”

Freelorn had to chuckle. “No,” he said. And then he lost the laughter in the memory of that cold night up on the slopes of Lionheugh, the cold of the knife-edge on his wrist, of the arrow in his chest, and the echo of the feeling of a sword in someone else’s heart. Slowly, hunting words, he tried to tell them what that night had looked like, and also tried not to make it sound as if he had been there himself. It was hard to dry it out to mere facts—an army routed, thousands of Reavers and mercenaries suddenly removed by Flame to their points of origin—when you had before the mind’s eyes the reality of it: the huge black Dragon-shadow tearing itself away from the hillside, suddenly coming real, the blaze of blue Fire running down the hill, the huge doors that opened awfully onto places thousands of miles away, the cries of the terrified souls falling through them—

Freelorn blinked at the memory. He had not been conscious to see those things. He had heard them described often enough by his people, but that was not the same as remembering.

He looked up to find Lasif’s thoughtful gaze resting on him.

“You were near to the battlefield,” Lasif said.

“Too near by far.” Lorn reached for another oatcake. “The people coming away from there... had quite some stories to tell.”

The people around the table looked at one another. “And what happened then?” Lasif said. Of that, Lorn had not much more than “rumor” to tell them. Armies were moving, certainly, but Lorn was purposely vague about locations.

“And is it true the young king’s coming back?”

“That’s what we hear—”

This produced a storm of opinion. Some of the children scowled: one burst into tears and put her face into Lasif’s apron to be comforted. Paell and Gierne looked at one another and nodded, with slight smiles. Gare looked concerned, and Eglian said, “That one! He ran away until he saw his chance—the country half starved and ready to take off their belts for any ruler that’s not the Uncraeft. A real king would have taken his chances right away, not left us to starve slowly and the land to rot, just to suit his purposes. He wants killing.”

“Cillmod will have his chance,” Lorn said, trying to hold onto his composure. “There will be a great battle, this fall.”

“And how many of us will die in it?” Orrest said, somber. “Or of it? No matter who wins. Who knows which side to be on? For the winning side will punish the losers. And even winners are forgetful about the people who helped them, the country people, when the battle’s done. There’s nothing in all this for us. This shouldn’t have been let to happen!”

“But a moment,” Lasif said, and the room got quiet. “There is something about this that matters more than mere battles. If the young king now knows he was wrong, and has come back to live or die, that’s worth knowing. And more than that, even; is this true, what they say? About the man, the man with the Fire?”

“I saw him at Bluepeak,” Lorn said. “It’s true.”

“And is it true what we heard, that he found his Fire because of the king? For love of him?”

Lorn swallowed. “That’s what I’ve heard too.”

Lasif nodded for a moment, and drank. “Then,” she said, “the young king is an instrument of the Goddess, a tool of Hers, and perhaps had less chance in what he did than we might think. Such a one’s to be pitied, poor thing.”

Lorn sat still, desperately hoping that nothing showed in his face of the hot wave of shame that ran right through him at her words. For he knew perfectly well that this was not the case, that it was his own cowardice, and occasional downright stupidity, that had dragged Herewiss into the situations which had resulted in the breakthrough of his Fire. No Goddess Who was good would force one of Her creatures into such idiocies, such thoughtlessness, just to produce a miracle in someone else, no matter how great.

... Would She?

“But it’s the Fire that’s important,” Lasif was saying to Orrest now, he having said something that Lorn had missed. “If one man can have it, so can others. That’s the wonder of all this! And the danger too,” she added, more quietly. “For the gift was lost once before, the stories say. By misuse. It could happen again... “ She shook her head. “But that danger’s a hundred lifetimes off. Not our problem! This next season will be bad enough.”

“Has the weather been bad for you?” Lorn said, desperately glad to retreat into something safely banal.

Orrest gave him a wry look. “Not as bad as last year,” he said, “when we had the drought. Or the year before that, when we had the windstorms. It seems as if Cillmod’s tame sorcerer has been doing some good after all.

Lorn became purposefully interested in the buttermilk for a moment. “Well,” he said. “There’s much more time for the news while I’m here. But perhaps you’ll tell me what you need that I might have, or be able to mend?”

The bargaining process took nearly three hours. Lorn was given an earthenware cup half the size of his head, filled with ivy wine cool from the house’s cellar, and the proceedings then adjourned to the stable, where his packs were disassembled and minutely scrutinized while the chickens wandered in and out. Everything from his smallest hook and needle to his biggest pot was passed from hand to hand, critiqued and argued over. Offers were made and rejected, made once more with slight alterations, rejected once more (though less violently); there were commiserations, complaints about rising prices and declining values, and once or twice (for the sake of form) Lorn invoked the Goddess and declared that they were all out to ruin him. It was basic market-place stuff, but the pleasure of it was sharpened by the evening light, growing more golden by the moment, as it slanted in through the small windows of the stable; by the friendly stoup of wine being passed from hand to hand, and by the sheer delight that all these people took in having someone to talk to who they’d never seen before.

My people,
Lorn thought. It was too easy to think of Arlen as mostly Prydon—as the city, all astir, with its high handsome houses and streets, and Kynall Castle off behind its ancient walls: the feasts and the festivals, the crowds and splendor. But many fewer Arlenes lived in Prydon, in the houses, than lived like this... scattered through the empty fields, feasting only rarely, chaffering over bits of metal as if they made the difference between life and death... because they did. The Lion’s throne might be in Prydon, but this was its foundation—the flagstones of this household’s hearth, and all the others like it. Héalhra had been a farmer, had worked a holding like this once, had mucked out a stable like this. And then the Goddess had spoken to him....