Tigana (43 page)

‘Coward!’ Erlein exclaimed. ‘Rot you, you arrogant princeling! What would you know about it?’

‘Only what you have told us yourself,’ Alessan replied, grimly now. ‘Safer roads, you said. One government where you
might
have wished for another.’ He took a step towards Erlein as if he would strike the man, his composure finally beginning to break. ‘You have been the worst thing I know: a willing subject of two tyrants. Your idea of freedom is exactly what has let them conquer us, and then hold us. You called yourself
free?
You were only free to hide … and to soil your breeches if a sorcerer or one of their Trackers came within ten miles of your little screening spell. You were free to walk past death-wheels with your fellow wizards rotting on them, and free to turn your back and continue on your way. Not any more, Erlein di Senzio. By the Triad, you are in it now! You are in it as deep as any man in the Palm! Hear my first command: you are to use your magic to conceal your fingers exactly as before.’

‘No,’ said Erlein flatly.

Alessan said nothing more. He waited. Devin saw the Duke take a half-step towards the two of them and then stop himself. He remembered that Sandre had not believed that this was possible.

Now he saw. They all saw, by the light of the stars and the fire Baerd had made.

Erlein fought. Understanding next to nothing, unnerved by almost all that was happening, Devin gradually became aware that a horrible struggle was taking place within the wizard. It could be read in his rigid, straining stance and his gritted teeth, heard in the rasp and wheeze of his shortening breath, seen in tightly closed eyes and the suddenly clenched fingers at his sides.

‘No,’ Erlein gasped, once and then again and again, with more effort each time. ‘No, no, no!’ He dropped to his knees as if felled like a tree. His head bent slowly downward. His shoulders hunched as if resisting some overmastering assault. They began to shake with erratic spasms. His whole body was trembling.

‘No,’ he said again in a high, cracked whisper. His hands spread open, pressing flat against the ground. In the red firelight his face was a mask of staring agony. Sweat poured down it in the chill of night. His mouth suddenly gaped open.

Devin looked away in pity and terror just before the wizard’s scream ripped the night apart. In the same moment Catriana took two quick running steps and buried her head against Devin’s shoulder.

That cry of pain, the scream of a tormented animal, hung in the air between fire and stars for what seemed an appallingly long time. Afterwards Devin became aware of the intensity of the silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of the fire, the river’s soft murmur, and Erlein di Senzio’s choked, ragged breathing.

Without speaking Catriana straightened and released her grip on Devin’s arm. He glanced at her but she didn’t meet his eye. He turned back to the wizard.

Erlein was still on his knees before Alessan in the new spring grass by the riverbank. His body still shook, but with weeping now. When he lifted his head Devin could see the tracks of tears and sweat and the staining mud from his hands. Slowly Erlein raised his left hand and stared at it as if it was something alien that didn’t even belong to him. They all saw what had happened, or the illusion of what had happened.

Five fingers. He had cast the spell.

An owl suddenly called, short and clear from north along the river, nearer to the trees. Devin became aware of a
change in the sky. He looked up. Blue Ilarion, waning back to a crescent, had risen in the east.
Ghostlight,
Devin thought, and wished he hadn’t.

‘Honour!’ Erlein di Senzio said, scarcely audible.

Alessan had not moved since giving his command. He looked down on the wizard he had bound and said, quietly, ‘I did not enjoy that, but I suppose we needed to go through it. Once will be enough, I hope. Shall we eat?’

He walked past Devin and the Duke and Catriana to where Baerd was waiting by the fire. The meat was already cooking. Caught in a vortex of emotion, Devin saw the searching look Baerd gave Alessan. He turned back in time to see Sandre reaching out a hand to help Erlein rise.

For a long moment Erlein ignored him, then, with a sigh, he grasped the Duke’s forearm and pulled himself erect.

Devin followed Catriana back towards the fire. He heard the two wizards coming after them.

Dinner passed in near silence. Erlein took his plate and glass and went to sit alone on the rock by the stream at the very farthest extent of the fire’s glow. Looking over at his dark outline, Sandre murmured that a younger man would very likely have refused to eat. ‘He’s a survivor that one,’ the Duke added. ‘Any wizard who’s lasted this long has to be.’

‘Will he be all right then,’ Catriana asked softly, ‘with us?’

‘I think so,’ Sandre answered, sipping his wine. He turned to Alessan. ‘He’ll try to run away tonight though.’

‘I know,’ the Prince said.

‘Do we stop him?’ It was Baerd.

Alessan shook his head. ‘Not you. I will. He cannot leave me unless I let him. If I call he must return. I have him … tethered to my mind. It is a queer feeling.’

Queer indeed, Devin thought. He looked from the Prince to the dark figure by the river. He couldn’t even imagine
what this must feel like. Or rather, he could almost imagine it, and the sensation disturbed him.

He became aware that Catriana was looking at him and he turned to her. This time she didn’t look away. Her expression, too, was strange; Devin realized she must be feeling the same edginess and sense of unreality that he was. He suddenly remembered, vividly, the feel of her head against his shoulder an hour ago. At the time he’d hardly registered the fact, so intent had he been on Erlein. He tried to smile reassuringly, but he didn’t think he managed it.

‘Troubadour, you promised us harp music!’ Sandre called out abruptly. The wizard in the darkness didn’t respond. Devin had forgotten about that. He didn’t feel much like singing and he didn’t think Catriana did either.

So, in the event, what happened was that Alessan expressionlessly claimed his Tregean pipes and began to make music alone beside the fire.

He played beautifully, with a pared-down economy of sound—melodies so sweetly offered that Devin, in his current mood, could almost imagine Eanna’s stars and the blue crescent of the one moon pausing in their movements overhead so as not to have to wheel inexorably away from the grace of that music.

Then a short while later Devin realized what Alessan was doing and he felt, abruptly, as if he was going to cry. He held himself very still, to keep control, and he looked at the Prince across the red and orange of the flames.

Alessan’s eyes were closed as he played, his lean face seemed almost hollowed out, the cheekbones showing clearly. And into the sounds he made he seemed to pour, as from a votive temple bowl, both the yearning that drove him, and the decency and care that Devin knew lay at the root of him. But that wasn’t it, that wasn’t what was making Devin want to cry:

Every song that Alessan was playing, every single tune, achingly high and sweet, heartbreakingly clear, one after another, was a song from Senzio.

A song for Erlein di Senzio, cloaked in bitterness and the shadows of night by the riverbank alone.

I will not say I am sorry,
Alessan had told the wizard as the sun had set.
But I can tell you that I grieve
.

And that night, listening to the music the Prince of Tigana made upon his pipes, Devin learned the difference between the two. He watched Alessan, and then he watched the others as they looked at the Prince, and it was when he was gazing at Baerd that the need to weep did grow too strong. His own griefs rose to the call of the mountain pipes. Grief for Alessan and overmastered Erlein. For Baerd and his haunted night walking. For Sandre and his ten fingers and his dead son. For Catriana and himself, all their generation, rootless and cut off from what they were in a world without a home. For all the myriad accumulations of loss and what men and women had to do in order to seek redress.

Catriana went to the baggage and she opened and poured another bottle of wine. The third glass. And as always, it was blue. She filled Devin’s glass in silence. She’d scarcely spoken a word all night, but he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. He drank slowly, watching the cold smoke rise from his glass and drift away in the cool night. The stars overhead were like icy points of fire and the moon was as blue as the wine and as far away as freedom, or a home.

Devin finished his glass and put it down. He reached for his blanket and lay down himself, wrapping it around him. He found himself thinking about his father and of the twins for the first time in a long time.

A few moments later Catriana lay down not far away. Usually she spread her sleeping-roll and blanket on the far side of the fire from where he was, next to the Duke. Devin
was wise enough now to know that there was a certain kind of reaching out in what she did, and that tonight might even mark a chance to begin the healing of what lay badly between them, but he was too drained to know what to do or say among all these complicated sorrows.

He said good-night to her, softly, but she did not reply. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, but he didn’t say it again. He closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again, to look at Sandre across the fire. The Duke was gazing steadily into the flames. Devin wondered what he saw there. He wondered, but he didn’t really want to know. Erlein was a shadow, a darker place in the world against the dark by the riverbank. Devin lifted himself on one elbow to look for Baerd, but Baerd had gone away, to walk alone in the night.

Alessan hadn’t moved, or opened his eyes. He was still playing, lonely and high and sorrowful, when Devin fell asleep.

He woke to Baerd’s firm hand on his shoulder. It was still dark and quite cold now. The fire had been allowed to die to ember and ash. Catriana and the Duke were still asleep, but Alessan was standing behind Baerd. He looked pale but composed. Devin wondered if he’d gone to bed at all.

‘I need your help,’ Baerd murmured. ‘Come.’

Shivering, Devin rolled out of his blankets and began pulling on his boots. The moon was down. He looked east but there was no sign of dawn along the horizon. It was very still. Sleepily he shrugged into the woollen vest Alais had sent him by way of Taccio in Ferraut. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep or what time it was.

He finished dressing and went to relieve himself in the trees by the river. His breath smoked in the frosty air. Spring was coming, but it wasn’t quite here yet, not in the middle of the night. The sky was brilliantly clear and full of stars. It
would be a beautiful day later when the sun came. Right now he shivered, and did up the drawstrings of his breeches.

Then he realized that he hadn’t seen Erlein anywhere.

‘What happened?’ he whispered to Alessan as he returned to the camp. ‘You said you could call him back.’

‘I did,’ the Prince said shortly. Standing closer Devin could see now how weary he looked. ‘He fought it so hard that he passed out just now. Somewhere out there.’ He gestured south and west.

‘Come on,’ Baerd said again. ‘Bring your sword.’

They had to cross the stream. The icy cold water drove all the sleep out of Devin. He gasped with the shock of it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Baerd said. ‘I’d have done it alone, but I don’t know how far away he is or what else is out here in this country. Alessan wants him back in camp before he revives. It made sense to have two men.’

‘No, no, that’s fine,’ Devin protested. His teeth were chattering.

‘I suppose I could have woken the old Duke from his rest. Or Catriana could have helped me.’

‘What? No, really, Baerd. I’m fine. I’m—’

He stopped, because Baerd was laughing at him. Belatedly Devin caught on to the teasing. It warmed him in a curious way. This was, in fact, the first time he’d ever been out alone in the night with Baerd. He chose to see it as another level of trust, of welcoming. Little by little he was beginning to feel more of a part of what Alessan and Baerd had been trying to achieve for so many years. He straightened his shoulders and, walking as tall as he could, followed Baerd west into the darkness.

They found Erlein di Senzio at the edge of a cluster of olive trees on a slope, about an hour’s walk from the camp. Devin swallowed awkwardly when he saw what had happened. Baerd whistled softly between his teeth; it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Erlein was unconscious. He had tied himself to one of the tree-trunks and appeared to have knotted the rope at least a dozen times. Bending down, Baerd held up the wizard’s waterflask. It was empty: Erlein had soaked the knots to tighten them. His pack and his knife lay together on the ground, a deliberate distance out of reach.

The rope was frayed and tangled. It looked as if a number of knots had been undone, but five or six still held.

‘Look at his fingers,’ Baerd said grimly. He drew his dagger and began cutting the rope.

Erlein’s hands were shredded into raw strips. Dried blood covered both of them. It was brutally clear what had happened. He had tried to make it impossible for himself to yield to Alessan’s summons. What had he hoped for? Devin wondered. That the Prince would assume he had somehow escaped and would therefore forget about him?

Devin doubted, in fact, if what Erlein had done carried any such weight of rational thought. It was defiance, pure and simple, and one had to acknowledge—not even grudgingly—the ferocity of it. He helped Baerd cut through the last of the bonds. Erlein was breathing, but showed no signs of consciousness. His pain must have been devastating, Devin realized, with a flashing memory of the wizard beaten to his knees and screaming by the river. He wondered what screams the night had heard, here in this wild and lonely place.

He felt an awkward mixture of respect and pity and anger as he gazed down at the grey-haired troubadour. Why was he making this so hard for them? Why forcing Alessan to shoulder so much more pain of his own?

Unfortunately, he knew some of the answers to that, and they were not comforting.