“No home,” Gird said again. “Never . . . it will never be. . . .” All around the eyes stared, the ears listened; Luap could almost see the legend growing. In a moment someone would decide it was prophecy, that Gird had the foreseeing gift beside all his others. He caught Tamis’s eye, and Sterin’s, and gave a minute nod. “It is not finished!” Gird’s voice sharpened, and Sterin, who had reached for his other arm, stopped to give Luap a worried glance. Somewhere outside, Luap could just hear pattering hooves of sheep or goats, and a voice calling to them. Everyone in sight was silent, motionless, waiting Gird’s next word. And this, too, he would have to explain, somehow, when Gird sobered up the next day, for all that some thought the gods spoke truly to men drowned in wine.
“It is not finished!” Gird said again, louder. “Not until mageborn and nonmage live in peace, not until the same law rules farmer and brewer, crafter and crofter, townsman and countryman. Not until they agree—” He paused, breathing hard, as if from battle, then he shook his head. “And they won’t,” he said quietly, sadly. For all Luap’s recent annoyance, he found himself moved, almost to tears, by that tone. “They want what cannot be—” He turned to face Luap. “You do, whether you know it or not—and they—and maybe I myself wish for what cannot be.” He spoke still quietly, but with such intensity that everyone around stood breathless, straining to hear. “It should not be so hard, by the gods! To agree to live in peace: what’s so hard about that? Or is it because I didn’t die at Greenfields?”
Luap stared at him, feeling the hairs rise on his scalp and along his arms. Die at Greenfields? What did he mean? He peered around Gird to meet on Tamis’s face the expression of what he felt: fear and confusion.
“They told me,” Gird said, now almost conversationally, “that I would not live to see the peace. I came down from the hill to die—and then lived. Is it that?”
“Thank Alyanya’s grace you did live, sir,” said Tamis quickly, and Sterin murmured something similar. Luap couldn’t say anything; his mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of it. He had never believed in the drunkard’s truth, but this was truth if ever he heard it.
But Gird was shaking his head. “My head hurts,” he said. “It’s hot. I think—I think I’ll go back—if you’ll settle with the innkeeper, Luap?”
He walked off, not quite steadily, Tamis and Sterin at either elbow, leaving Luap to pay and—since Sterin had gone—to help the innkeeper in mopping the stinking floor. That’s what I’m good for, Luap thought. Pay the bills, keep the accounts straight, clean up after him. That wasn’t a fair assessment, and he knew it, but he indulged himself a little anyway. It wasn’t fair that Gird had called him a liar in public, when he was only trying to be tactful.
When he had finished mopping, much of the crowd had melted away, as crowds do. Not as interesting to watch a sober man mop a floor as watch a drunk foul it . . . and Gird hoped to make a strong and peaceful society out of these sheep? The innkeeper accepted his coins with a sour look, although he’d added a sweetener to the total. “Great men!” the innkeeper said, leaving no doubt that he was still angry. “I’m not saying a thing against what he did, y’understand, but that doesn’t give him th’ right to call honest men thieves or cowards.”
Luap couldn’t decide if an apology would do any good, and his momentary silence seemed to irritate the innkeeper even more.
“I know what you’re like,” the man went on, feeling each coin ostentatiously before putting it in his belt-pouch. “You won’t tell me what you think, but anything I say goes straight to him.”
“He’s not like that,” Luap said.
“Huh. He’s not, or you don’t tell him everything?” Shrewd hazel eyes peered at him. Luap shrugged.
“Tomorrow he’ll be sorry he insulted you; surely you know that. Bring it up at the next market court, and he’ll fine himself and apologize before as large a crowd as heard the insult.”
“Oh, aye. Apologies don’t mend broken pottery or put wool back on a shorn sheep. My da said them’s don’t make mistakes don’t have to waste time on apologies.” Luap wondered where the innkeeper had been during the war. The innkeeper answered that, too, in his final sally. “We’ve had royalty in here, you know, before the rabble—before the revolution. Dukes, even a prince of the blood. Knew how to hold their wine, they did, and it wasn’t any of this cheap ale, neither.”
Luap’s temper flared. “Well, you’ve had another prince of the blood, for what that’s worth.”
The innkeeper’s eyebrows went up. “Who, then?”
“Me,” said Luap, turning to go, sure of the last word. But the innkeeper cheated him of that, as well.
“But raised with peasants, weren’t you then? Makes a difference, don’t it? It’s not like you’re a real prince, just some summer folly, eh?”
And if that’s not enough to sour a day, thought Luap as he climbed back to the upper city, there’s maudlin Gird, who will no doubt spout more difficult prophecy I’ll have to explain.
Down below conscious thought, he was not aware of the relief he felt: another day in which he had a good reason not to tell Gird about the cave.
Chapter Four
Raheli leaned against the barton wall, arms folded, watching the dancers through the open grange door. Out of courtesy for her, to spare her the long walk to the traditional sheepfold, they had brought the musicians here . . . they were dancing here . . . and she could do nothing but watch. She knew the music, the same as she’d heard all her life, and every step the dancers danced. She could remember, as if it had been yesterday, the night when Parin’s hand on her arm changed her from girl to woman. When the dance had changed from entertainment to courtship, and they had begun the dance of life that ended with his death.
She tried not to think of it; she had pushed it aside, so many times, from the moment the mageborn lords had broken his head. She would not let herself brood on it; it did no good. But the old songs ran into her heart like knives; for an instant she almost thought she felt the flutter of that life she had never actually borne. Her child, and his. The face that had come to her in dreams, as her mother had said her children’s faces had come. She could smell the very scent of him, feel the warm skin of his chest against her cheek.
The dancers shouted, ending one dance, and a short silence fell. In the torchlight, the dancers’ faces wavered, bright light and black shadow, as strange for a moment as ghosts. Raheli had the feeling for a moment that Parin and the child both were in there, somewhere, waiting for her. She had pushed herself off the wall before she realized what she was thinking. Her movement had caught someone’s eye; before she could return to her place, she saw people watching her. She would have to go in, and greet them. She tried to smile, and walked forward.
“Rahi! The Marshal’s back!” yelled some of the younger yeomen. A way opened for her. They had been dancing a long time; the grange smelled of sweat and onions and the torches and candles, more like a cottage during a feast than a grange. “Now we can dance the Ring Rising.”
They meant it as an honor. They could not know she had danced the Ring Rising with Parin, that first time. Rahi blinked away scalding tears, put off her old grief, and accepted the role they demanded of her. The musicians finished their mugs of ale, and picked up the instruments again.
Ring Rising had been, Gird told her once, older than any other dance. Something about it had to do with the old Stone Circle brotherhood, that Gird had turned into the Fellowship, in his own way. But long before, so the oldest tales went, the dance had raised stones, rings of stones, on hill after hill, until the mageborn came and struck them down with their new magic.