The Tears of the Sun (60 page)

“Farewell, beloved,” Alleyne said, his eyes locked on the body. “Wait for me, until my work here is finished.”

Farewell, anamchara, sister of my soul,
Eilir's fingers said.
The threads of our lives are spun together forever.

Together they stepped forward, their hands on the torch. The pine logs were stacked crisscross in six layers, and the gaps between them had been stuffed with branches and needles and bone-white fallen timber. The wind from the north was still brisk, even though the storm had blown itself out. The kindling caught with an eager
rick-rick-rick
sound, and then the whole pyre seemed to explode into a pillar of flame and smoke that rose and bent away from them towards the southwest. The summer-dry sap-rich wood burned with a dragon's hissing roar, almost instantly hot enough to turn bone to dust. Ritva felt her eyes water and brushed at them again.

Eilir was crying once more as they backed away, weeping quietly, her tears trickling down past a silent sorrow; she and Astrid had met in the first year of the Change, and sworn the
anamchara
oath not long after. They had spent a generation together. John Hordle wept as well, with the harsh jerky sound of a man unaccustomed to it. Alleyne's handsome face looked as if it were carved from ivory; his lips moved silently in words she couldn't make out for a moment, and then he bowed his head.

One thing's changed,
Ritva knew suddenly.

Uncle Alleyne had never taken some things about the Rangers altogether seriously, though he'd been scrupulously polite and never made a fuss even as he gave all his considerable skill and ability to their affairs. The Dúnedain had already been refounded by Astrid and Eilir when he arrived fifteen years ago with his father and John, though not long before that. Now . . .

Now he'll live her dream,
she realized.
And he'll do it perfectly. For her.

They waited silently until the logs collapsed inward and the roar of the fire died down to a crackle that would last all night. Then he raised his head and gave the note. Ritva joined in on the beat, and every one of the Dúnedain as well. Eilir swayed to the rhythm, her hands dancing:

When they were finished, Ritva whispered again to herself:
“Thy starlight on the Western Seas.”

Then she shook herself. You had to be able to put things aside and go on. They were in a dangerous wilderness and there was a great deal to do. The ashes would be carried home in Astrid's helm, and by her long-standing will be scattered in Mithrilwood by the falls whose beauty she'd loved, but that was her husband's work and her
anamchara
's. Caught in the storm's giant fist they had hopelessly overshot their rendezvous south of Boise, where helpers were supposed to be waiting.

They knew in a general sense where they were; it wasn't all that far from where the Quest had passed through going east two years ago, just before they ran into General-President Thurston the elder's column. They could locate themselves on a map as soon as they hit a marked roadway or abandoned town. What they weren't likely to find was people, or any of the things people would have with them.

Ian Kovalevsky looked around. “Looks a bit like the Rockies, only lower,” he said.

Ritva snorted. “That's because it
is
the Rockies, more or less, sweetie,” she said.

Sometimes she forgot that Ian had never been more than a few hundred miles from the place he'd been born. Most people traveled far less than that, of course, but you thought about them as the ones you rode by when you passed a farm or village. It had been all travel since they met. She'd never had the slightest impulse to farm, but she was beginning to feel that two years of rarely sleeping in the same spot for more than a day running was taking mobility too far.

The western horizon was jagged; the plain of sagebrush and yellow-brown grass heaved up into rocky heights, gray striped with red, and woods of aspen and bristlecone and lodgepole in sheltered spots. They had no food with them, but that wasn't the problem it would have been later in the year. They did have their bows and game looked to be available if not plentiful and Rangers learned how to forage for nuts and roots and edible greens. More serious was the lack of all camping gear; no tents, no bedding, no salt, nothing to cook with, only a few axes and hatchets. And . . .

“No horses,” Ian said succinctly. “Plus we've got wounded and carrying them's going to slow us a
lot
. Not to mention a two-year-old.”

Ritva sighed. “We've done what Operation Lúthien was supposed to do, more or less,” she said. “All those people in Boise heard Cecile . . . and Juliet . . . and we've
got
them and Martin doesn't. That was
real
important, it's why this was such a high-priority mission. It would be a lot better if we could get them back to Montival quickly and completely out of his reach, of course. I suppose he'll have a cavalry brigade headed this way as fast as he can.”

A long whistle split the air from the east, where the sentry was stationed. She read its modulations as she would speech or Sign: horsemen in sight.

The stillness dissolved in a rush for weapons and gear.

 

“No, I do not think it was an accident we met you,”
Rimpoche
Tsewang Dorje said later that night, after the rising of the moon.

He leaned forward to pour himself a cup of the herb tea from the pot that rested by the campfire. More glowed across the rolling plain, hundreds of them. The folk of Chenrezi Monastery and the Valley of the Sun that looked to it for leadership and the ranches and tribes allied to it had sent their riders to war, across the wilderness to join the High King's host. That was partly because the questers had lived among them for a whole winter; and more because they trusted the Abbot when he told them it was necessary.

“But then, there are no accidents,” Dorje went on. “We are all pilgrims on the Way; taking different paths, but eventually the paths will meet. Is it then a surprise that the pilgrims do likewise?”

The Abbot of Chenrezi Monastery looked exactly as Ritva remembered in her last sight of him when the questers left the Valley of the Sun in the spring of the previous year. The shabby wrapped orange robe might have been the same one. It left one shoulder bare, and the skinny knotted legs that ended in gnarled sandaled feet. His head needed no razor, and his face was a mass of wrinkles and yet somehow like a boy's, with a flicker of humor in the dark narrow eyes. The hard travel he must have gone through in the mountains and deserts had left no mark that she could see. You could feel the tough mountain peasant he'd been born beneath the bonze still.

Nor had the task of turning a panic-stricken resort community and a gaggle of quarrelsome Buddhists of a dozen different varieties thrown together by circumstance into a living community made him any softer in the years since the Change. She leaned back against her borrowed saddle and sighed with something that was not exactly pleasure . . .

More like relaxation, as if I were back at Stardell in one of the chairs by the fire and wine were mulling and snow falling against the windows. I don't know why, because we
aren't
home and lot of what the Rimpoche says isn't exactly comforting.

Lawrence Jr. scampered over, with his mother in pursuit; there had been wolf-howls in the distant hills, and it was not the sort of place you wanted a child to wander away from light and people. He took a look at the monk and then crawled into his lap. The man settled him comfortably, and then beckoned to his mother.

Ritva scowled slightly as she turned to her second bowl of stew; it had venison in it as well as dried vegetables and cracked barley and it had been quite tasty, for camp food. A lot of the folk from the Valley of the Sun didn't eat meat, but a lot did, and the ones who didn't weren't the sort who got in your face about it. It tasted less good with Juliet Thurston in the circle, and she wasn't the only one who felt like that.

“A fine boy,” Dorje said, and smiled at the mother. “You are brave, to undertake the responsibility of raising him.”

Juliet's face was usually hard and reserved, but the lines of grief on it were visible now. She made a small sound and seemed to shrink into herself at the glares she would once have ignored.

The lama sighed and looked around at the others; the firelight picked out his wrinkles, like the hills and valleys of a mysterious country. Beyond gleamed the peaks of mountains where bear and cougar and tiger roamed, and men as savage as either.

“My friends,” he said gently, “self-righteousness is the fumes of decomposing vanity; it is the means the Devil's Guard use to cloud the vision of those who truly love virtue. If someone is far along a journey to destruction, shall you hate them for waking to their situation, and turning about, and taking even a single halting half step back? Will that encourage them to take a second step, and a third? Or will it minister only to the darkness in our own souls?”

Ouch,
Ritva thought, wincing; and again she thought she wasn't the only one.
Yup. He really does make you see things
too
clearly.

Dorje went on to Juliet Thurston, his voice mild and implacable:

“He who puts his hand into the fire knows what he may expect. Nor may the fire be blamed. He who intrudes on a neighbor may receive what he does
not
expect. Nor may the neighbor be blamed. The fire will not be harmed; but the neighbor may be. And every deed of every kind bears corresponding consequences to the doer. You may spend a thousand lives repaying wrong done to a neighbor. Therefore, of the two indiscretions prefer thrusting your own hand into the fire. But there is a Middle Way, which avoids all trespassing.”

“I . . .”

Whatever else she might be, Martin Thurston's wife was no fool. Ritva could see her fair brows turn down in thought, and she believed there was a tinge of genuine gratitude there.

“What exactly do you mean, sir?” Juliet asked carefully.

“You have caused much harm, through vicious selfishness, and it turned on you.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“You are fortunate it did so quickly; this is an opportunity. But do not fancy yourself uniquely guilty, a monster who is a wonder to the world; that too is vanity, and leads back to the same errors. You cannot undo the past by regret; nor can you avoid the painful consequences of your actions through fear. Both these things are equally impossible. Do not dwell on the past or deny it; do not fear the future.”

“Regrets and fears are about all I have now,” she said.

“No. You have a son; and you have amends to make to others. You have a task to do
now
, and virtue consists of doing it.” Sternly. “So get to work, child!”

Ritva felt the force of that spear-sentence, even though she was not the target. Juliet blinked, gaping, and then nodded and sank down in a bit of a heap. Dorje inclined his head back to her and turned his glance away, in respect for privacy rather than dismissal. His hand continued to stroke the dark bronze of the boy's curls, and the child snuggled closer and dozed.

“You said that we'd meet again, guru,” Ritva said.

Dorje grinned. “You and the others,” he said. “I understand that you need to return quickly, not at the pace of this great mass of people?”

Alleyne nodded; he seemed to be a little less tight-wound now. “Yes, sir. Our mission was to rescue Mrs. Thurston . . . the elder Mrs. Thurston . . . and her children and reunite them with Frederick, who I understand you've met.”

Dorje nodded. “A most earnest young man, for good and ill; but more for good.”

Which is a great capsule description of Fred!
Ritva thought.

Alleyne went on: “Partly because they were in danger; but also, frankly, because we need to get the truth of what happened out more widely. We've made a start on that in Boise, but it will be extremely helpful if we can get them . . . and the younger Mrs. Thurston and her son . . . back to Montival quickly. Living evidence, as it were.”

Though technically we
are
in Montival,
Ritva thought.

She knew what he meant, though; it was people that made a kingdom, not geography, and what few inhabitants there were in the wildlands probably hadn't heard that the current war was going on, or who the contending parties were. A fair number had survived the Change in this thinly populated wilderness, as numbers went in the modern world. But the reason it had been so empty back then was that there wasn't much in the way of water or good land. Almost all of the survivors had relocated afterwards, moving to where life was easier in places emptied by the great dying and where hands to work and fight were always welcome. There was a very thin scatter left, Rovers who lived by hunting more than herding. Most of them were people you wouldn't want to meet, especially if you were alone.

Still, it's sort of beautiful here. I like deserts, though I wouldn't want to live in one,
she thought, looking up at the aching clarity of the sky, where sparks from the fires were scarcely brighter than the stars.
And it's certainly reassuring to see another twenty-five hundred good cavalry headed our way.

“I will accompany you,” Dorje said, and laughed at his polite dismay. “My son, when I was five years old I walked four hundred miles across the Himalayas to reach Nepal. I know this scrawny old carcass of mine, and I do not delude myself as to what it can and cannot do. It will serve me as long as needed.”

“Ah, Hîr i Dúnedain . . .”
Ritva said. “If he says he can do something, believe him. Really.”