Tigana (64 page)

No one spoke. No one had spoken since they had reached the outskirts of this village of some twenty homes. The only sound for the last few moments after they tethered the horses and began to walk had been Alessan’s pipes softly playing. Playing—and Devin wondered if he alone knew this, or if Naddo recognized it too—a certain nursery melody from Avalle.

Here in the barn Alessan was still playing, as gently as before. The tune was one more thing that seemed to be trying to carry Devin back to his family. He resisted: if he went that way in the condition he was in right now he would probably end up crying.

Devin tried to imagine how the haunting, elusive melody would sound to anyone huddled inside the walls of their lightless homes on this Ember Night. A company of ghosts passing by, that was what they would seem to be. The dead abroad, following a small, forgotten tune. He remembered Catriana singing in the Sandreni Woods:

But wherever I wander, by night or by day,

Where water runs swiftly or high trees sway,

My heart will carry me back and away

To a dream of the towers of Avalle.

He wondered where she was tonight. And Sandre. Baerd. He wondered if he would ever see any of them again. Earlier this evening, pursued into the pass, he had thought he was about to die. And now, two hours later, they had killed twenty-five Barbadians with those same outlaws who had pursued them, and three of the outlaws were here with them in this unknown barn listening to Alessan play a cradle song.

He didn’t think he would understand the strangeness of life if he lived to be a hundred years old.

There was a sound outside and the door swung open. Devin stiffened involuntarily. So did Ducas di Tregea, a hand reaching for his sword. Alessan looked at the door, but his fingers never faltered on the pipes and the music continued.

An old man, slightly stooped, but with a leonine combed-back mane of white hair, stood for a moment, backlit by the sudden moonlight, before he stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him with a stick he carried. After that it was dark again in the barn and hard to see for a few moments.

No one spoke. Alessan did not even look up again. Tenderly, with feeling, he finished the tune. Devin looked at him as he played and wondered if he was the only man here who understood what music meant to the Prince. He thought about what Alessan had been through in this past day alone, about what it was he was riding towards, and something complicated and awkward stirred in his heart as he listened to the wistful ending of the song. He saw the Prince set his pipes aside with a motion of regret. Laying
down his release, taking up the burdens again. All the burdens that seemed to be his legacy, the price of his blood.

‘Thank you for coming, old friend,’ he said now, quietly, to the man in the doorway.

‘You owe me, Alessan,’ the old man said in a clear strong voice. ‘You have condemned me to sour milk and spoiled meat for a month.’

‘I was afraid of that,’ Alessan said in the darkness. Devin could hear affection and an unexpected amusement in his voice. ‘Menna has not changed, then?’

The other man snorted. ‘Menna and change do not coexist,’ he said. ‘You are with new people, and a friend is missing. What has happened? Is he all right?’

‘He is fine. A half-day’s ride east. There is much to tell. I came with some reason, Rinaldo.’

‘So much is clear to me. One man with a leg that is torn inside. Another with an arrow wound. The two wizards are not happy but I can do nothing about their missing fingers and neither is ill. The sixth man is now afraid of me, but he need not be.’

Devin gasped with astonishment. Beside him Ducas swore aloud.

‘Explain this!’ he growled furiously. ‘Explain everything!’

Alessan was laughing. So, more softly, was the man he had called Rinaldo. ‘You are a spoiled and petty old man,’ the Prince said, still chuckling, ‘and you enjoy shocking people simply for the sake of doing it. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘There are so few pleasures left to me in my age,’ the other retorted. ‘Would you deny me this one too? There is much to tell, you say? Tell me.’

Alessan’s voice grew sober. ‘I had a meeting in the mountains this morning.’

‘Ah, I was wondering about that! And what follows?’

‘Everything, Rinaldo. Everything follows. This summer. He said yes. We will have the letters. One to Alberico, one to Brandin, and one to the Governor of Senzio.’

‘Ah,’ said Rinaldo again. ‘The Governor of Senzio.’ He said it softly, but could not quite disguise the excitement in his voice. He took a step forward into the room. ‘I never dreamt I would live to see this day. Alessan, we are going to act?’

‘We have already begun. Ducas and his men joined with us tonight in battle. We killed a number of Barbadians and a Tracker pursuing a wizard with us.’

‘Ducas? That is who this is?’ The old man gave a low whistle, a curiously incongruous sound. ‘Now I know why he is afraid. You have your share of enemies in this village, my friend.’

‘I am aware of that,’ said Ducas drily.

‘Rinaldo,’ Alessan said, ‘do you remember the siege of Borifort when Alberico first came? The stories about a red-bearded captain, one of the leaders of the Tregeans there? The one who was never found?’

‘Ducas di Tregea? This is he?’ Again the whistle. ‘Well-met then, Captain, though not, as a matter of fact, for the first time. If I remember rightly, you were in the company of the Duke of Tregea when I paid a formal visit there some twenty years ago.’

‘A visit from where?’ Ducas asked, visibly struggling to get his bearings. Devin sympathized: he was doing the same thing, and he knew rather more than the red-bearded man did. ‘From … from Alessan’s province?’ Ducas hazarded.

‘Tigana? But of course,’ Erlein di Senzio interjected harshly. ‘Of course he is. This is just another petty injured lordling from the west. Is that why you brought me here, Alessan? To show how brave an old man can be? You will forgive me if I choose to pass on this lesson.’

‘I didn’t hear the beginning of that.’ It was Rinaldo, speaking softly to the wizard. ‘What did you say?’

Erlein fell silent, turning from Alessan to the man by the door. Even in darkness Devin could see his sudden confusion.

‘He named my province,’ Alessan said. ‘They both think you are from my home.’

‘An outrageous slander,’ Rinaldo said calmly. He swung his large, handsome head towards Ducas and Erlein. ‘I am vain enough to have thought you might know me by now. My name is Rinaldo di Senzio.’

‘What!
Senzio?
’ Erlein exclaimed, shocked out of his own composure. ‘You can’t be!’

There was a silence.

‘Who, exactly, is this presumptuous man?’ Rinaldo asked, of no one in particular.

‘My wizard, I’m afraid,’ Alessan replied. ‘I have bound him to me with Adaon’s gift to the line of our Princes. I spoke to you of that once, I think. His name is Erlein. Erlein di Senzio.’

‘Ah!’ said Rinaldo, letting his breath out slowly. ‘I see. A bound wizard and a Senzian. That explains his anger.’ He moved another few steps forward, sweeping his stick over the ground in front of him.

It was in that moment that Devin realized that Rinaldo was blind. Ducas registered it in the same moment:

‘You have no eyes,’ he said.

‘No,’ Rinaldo said equably. ‘I used to, of course, but they were judged inappropriate for me by my nephew, at the suggestion of both Tyrants seventeen years ago this spring. I had the temerity to oppose Casalia’s decision to lay down his Ducal status and become a Governor instead.’

Alessan was staring fixedly at Erlein as Rinaldo spoke. Devin followed his glance. The wizard looked more confused than Devin had ever seen him.

‘I do know who you are, then,’ he said, almost stammering.

‘Of course you do. Just as I know you, and knew your father, Erlein bar Alein. I was brother to the last real Duke of Senzio and am uncle to the craven disgrace who styles himself Casalia, Governor of Senzio, now. And I was as proud to be the one as I am shamed to call myself the other.’

Visibly fighting for control, Erlein said, ‘But then you knew what Alessan was planning. You knew about those letters. He told you. You know what he intends to do with them! You know what it will mean for our province! And you are still with him? You are
helping
him?’ His voice rose erratically at the end.

‘You stupid, petty little man,’ Rinaldo said slowly, spacing the words for weight, his own voice hard as stone. ‘Of course I am helping him. How else are we to deal with the Tyrants? What other battleground is
possible
in the Palm today but our poor Senzio where Barbadior and Ygrath circle each other like wolves and my crapulous nephew drowns himself in drink and spills his seed in the backsides of whores! Do you want freedom to be
easy,
Erlein bar Alein? Do you think it drops like acorns from trees in the fall?’

‘He thinks he
is
free,’ Alessan said bluntly. ‘Or would be, if it wasn’t for me. He thinks he was free until he met me by a river in Ferraut last week.’

‘Then I have nothing more to say to him,’ said Rinaldo di Senzio, with contempt.

‘How did you … how did you find this man?’ It was Sertino, speaking to Alessan. The Certandan wizard still kept to the far side of the room from the Prince, Devin noted.

‘Finding such men has been my labour for twelve years and more now,’ Alessan said. ‘Men and women from my home or yours, from Astibar, Tregea … all over the peninsula. People I thought could be trusted and who might have reason to hate the Tyrants as much as I. And a desire to be
free that matched my own. Truly free,’ he said, looking at Erlein again. ‘Masters of our own peninsula.’

With a faint smile he turned to Ducas. ‘As it happened, you hid yourself well, friend. I thought you might be alive, but had no idea where. We lived in Tregea on and off for more than a year but no one we spoke to knew, or would say anything about your fate. I had to be terribly clever tonight to lure you into finding me instead.’

Ducas laughed at that, a deep sound in his chest. Then, sobering, he said, ‘I wish it had happened earlier.’

‘So do I. You have no idea how much. I have a friend I think will take to you as much as you will to him.’

‘Shall I meet him?’

‘In Senzio, later this spring, if events fall right. If we can make them fall right.’

‘If that is so, you had best start by telling us how you need them to fall,’ Rinaldo said prosaically. ‘Let me tend to your two wounded while you tell what we should know.’

He moved forward, tapping the ground ahead of him as he came up to Devin. ‘I am a Healer,’ he explained gravely, the sharpness gone from his voice. ‘Your leg is bad and needs dealing with. Will you let me try?’

‘So
that
is how you knew us,’ Ducas said, wonder in his voice again. ‘I have never known a true Healer before.’

‘There are not many of us and we tend not to announce ourselves,’ Rinaldo said, the empty sockets of his eyes fixed on nothingness. ‘That was so even before the Tyrants came: it is a gift with limits and a price. Now we keep ourselves hidden for the same reason the wizards do, or almost the same: the Tyrants are happy to seize us, and force us serve them until they wear us out.’

‘Can they do that?’ Devin asked. His voice was hoarse. He realized that he hadn’t spoken for a long time. He cringed at the thought of what he would sound like if he
tried to sing tonight. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so exhausted.

‘Of course they can,’ said Rinaldo simply. ‘Unless we choose to die on their death-wheels instead. Which has been known to happen.’

‘I will be happy to learn of any difference between that coercion and what this man has done to me,’ Erlein said coldly.

‘And I will be happy to tell you,’ Rinaldo shot back, ‘as soon as I finish my work.’ To Devin he said, ‘There should be straw behind you. Will you lie down and let me see what I can do?’

In a few moments Devin found himself prone on a bed of straw. With an old man’s gingerly caution Rinaldo knelt beside him. The Healer began rubbing his palms slowly against each other.

Over his shoulder Rinaldo said, ‘Alessan, I’m serious. Talk while I work. Begin with Baerd. I would like to know why he isn’t with you.’

‘Baerd!’
a voice interrupted. ‘Is
that
your friend? Baerd bar Saevar?’ It was Naddo, the wounded man. He stumbled forward to the edge of the straw.

‘Saevar was his father, yes,’ Alessan said. ‘You knew him?’

Naddo was so distraught he could scarcely speak. ‘Knew him?
Of course
I knew him. I was … I …’ He swallowed hard. ‘I was his father’s last apprentice. I loved Baerd as … as an older brother. I … we … parted badly. I went away in the year after the fall.’

‘So did he,’ Alessan said gently, laying a hand on Naddo’s trembling shoulder. ‘Not long after you did. I know who you are now, Naddo. He has often spoken to me of that parting. I can tell you that he grieved for the manner of it. That he still does. I expect he will tell you himself when you meet.’

‘This is the friend you mentioned?’ Ducas asked softly.

‘It is.’

‘He has spoken to you of
me?
’ Naddo’s voice skirled high with wonder.

‘He has.’

Alessan was smiling again. Devin, weary as he was, found himself doing the same. The man before them sounded remarkably like a young boy just then.

‘Do you … does he know what happened to his sister? To Dianora?’ Naddo asked.

Alessan’s smile faded. ‘We do not. We have searched for a dozen years, and asked in a great many places, wherever we find survivors of the fall. There are so many women of that name. She went away herself, some time after he left in search of me. No one knows why, or where she went, and the mother died not long after. They are … their loss is the deepest hurt I know in Baerd.’

Naddo was silent; a moment later they realized that he was fighting back tears. ‘I can understand that,’ he said finally, his voice husky. ‘She was the bravest girl I ever knew. The bravest woman. And if she wasn’t really beautiful she was still so very …’ He stopped for a moment, struggling for composure, and then said quietly: ‘I think I loved her. I know I did. I was thirteen years old that year.’