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IIIFor weeks after Creslin vanished, Fiera was silent. She threw herself into arms practice, so much so that, one morning, as ice flakes drifted across the courtyard under a gray sky, I had to caution her, if quietly. "Getting yourself impaled on a practice blade won't bring him back." "They're blunted," she snapped back "That just means the entry wound is jagged and worse." "You should talk, sister dearest. I've seen you watch him as well." "I have. I admit it. But only because I admired him, young as he was. I had no illusions." "You don't understand. You never will. Don't talk to me." "Very well." I didn't mention Creslin again, even indirectly. IVSlightly more than a year passed. The sun began to climb higher in the sky that spring, foreshadowing the short and glorious summer on the Roof of the World. The ice began to melt, if but slightly at midday, and the healer in black appeared at the gates of Westwind. Since she was a woman, she was admitted. Word spread through the Guard like a forest fire in early fall. Creslin was alive. He had somehow found the Sub-Tyrant of Sarronnyn, or she had found him, and the Duke of Montgren had married them and named them as coregents of Recluce. I'd never heard anything much about Recluce, save that it was a large and mostly deserted isle across the Gulf of Candar to the east of Lydiar. Fiera avoided me, and that was as well, for what could I have said to her? Creslin was alive, but wed to another, as had been fated from his birth. No male heir to the Marshall could ever remain in Westwind, and none ever had. That night after inspecting the duty guards, I settled onto my pallet in the private corner alcove I merited as a guard captain without a consort. I awoke in a tower. It was Tower Black, and the walls rose up around me. I looked up, but the stones extended farther than I could make out. The stone steps led upward, and I began to climb them. Yet they never ended, and at each landing, the doorway to the outside had been blocked by a stone statue of an unsmiling Creslin in the garb of a Westwind Guard. Behind the statue, the archway had been filled in with small black stones and deep gray mortar. I kept climbing, past landing after landing with the same statue of Creslin. The walls rose into a gray mist above me. Blood began to seep from my boots. I refused to say anything. I kept climbing. Surely, there had to be a way out of the tower. There had to be . . . "Shierra, wake up." Dalyra shook me. "Wake up," she hissed. "You'll rouse everyone with that moaning and muttering. They'll ask what you were dreaming. Guard captains don't need that." "I'm awake." I could tell I was still sleepy. My words came out mumbled. "Good," whispered Dalyra. "Now go back to sleep." She padded back to her pallet in the adjoining alcove. I lay there in the darkness under the thick woolen blankets of a single guard captain. I'd never wanted a consort. Not in Westwind, and it wasn't likely I'd ever be anywhere else. Even if I left Westwind, where would I ever find one strong enough to stand up to me? The only man I'd seen with that strength was Creslin, and he'd been little more than a youth when he'd escaped Westwind, and far too young and far too above me. Unlike Fiera, I knew what was possible. Yet what had the dream meant? The Tower Black of my dream hadn't been the tower I knew. Tower Black was the oldest part of Westwind. Its smooth stones had been cut and fitted precisely by the ancient smith-mage Nylan under the geas of Ryba the Great before he had spellsung the traitor Arylyn to free him and fled with her to the world below the Roof of the World. The great hall, the Guard quarters, the stables, the craft buildings, all of them were far larger than Tower Black. Yet none of them conveyed the solidity of the far smaller Tower Black that they dwarfed. I finally drifted back into sleep, but it was an uneasy slumber at best. The next morning, Aemris mustered all the Guards, and even the handfuls of consorts, and the guard captains, in the main courtyard of Westwind. She stood in the gusty spring wind and snowfall, the large fat flakes swirling lazily from the sky. Beside her stood the healer. "The Marshall of Westwind has learned that Lord Creslin made his own way to the Sub-Tyrant of Sarronnyn," the Guard Commander began. "They were wed in Montgren, and, as a token of his esteem, the Duke named them coregents of Recluce. They are expanding the town of Land's End there on Recluce, and the Marshall will permit some from Westwind to join them in Recluce. The healer will explain." Aemris delivered her speech without great enthusiasm. Even so, everyone was listening as the healer stepped forward. "My name is Lydya. I am a healer, and I bring news of Creslin. He crossed much of Candar by himself and unaided. For a time he was imprisoned by the white wizards of Fairhaven, but he escaped and made his way to Montgren. He and Megaera are coregents of Recluce. They are building a new land, and there is opportunity for all. The land is much warmer and much drier than Westwind, but there are mountains and the sea." She smiled crookedly. "The mountains are rugged, but much lower and not nearly so cold. For better or worse, neither men nor women rule, but both can prosper, or suffer, according to ability. . . ." Somehow that did not surprise me, not from a youth who had crossed much of Candar alone. What puzzled me was that he had married the woman he had left the Westhorns to avoid being consorted to. That suggested that Megaera was far more than he or anyone had expected. After the healer finished speaking, Aemris added a few words. "Any of you who are interested in accompanying the healer to Recluce remain here. That includes consorts." Perhaps forty guards out of three hundred remained in the courtyard. I was the only guard captain. Aemris motioned for me to come forward first. "You, Shierra?" asked the Guard Commander. "You have the makings of an armsmaster or even Guard Commander in years to come." How could I explain the dream? That, somehow, an image of Creslin kept me walled within Westwind? I could only trust the dream. "Someone must bring his heritage to him," I finally said. Aemris looked to Lydya. The healer nodded. "She's the most senior guard who wishes to go," Aemris said. "She should be guard captain of the detachment." "That she will be." The healer smiled, but I felt the sadness behind the expression. In the end, Aemris and Lydya settled on twenty-five guards and ten consorts with five children—all boys under five. For the two days until we rode out, Fiera avoided me even more pointedly than before, walking away when she could, giving only formal responses when she could not. She could have volunteered, but she had not. Instead, she had asked to accompany a trade delegation to Sarronnyn. She hadn't told me. I'd discovered that from others— as I had so many things. Directory: ebooks ebooks -> Hcm cộng hòa xã HỘi chủ nghĩa việt nam ebooks -> "That was our view and I believe it right." ebooks -> The Teachings of Don Juan ebooks -> I’ve got it let’s invade Iraq! ebooks -> Appendix 9c sa army unit histories1 Infantry ebooks -> 8. 0 Cellular Phone Systems 01 Cellular Voice Reference Model ebooks -> War against the machine accountability meter has expired. Time ebooks -> Reader Description Download 2.63 Mb. Share with your friends:
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