Suddenly, something about the view seemed to make Cormac explode. Whirling about, he slammed the glass down on the desk, his expression as stormy as the sky behind him.
"Damnation, Guerrand, I can't afford it! I've had to sell off valuable DiThon land-my heritage-to pay for your shilly-shallying."
You mean for your drinking and mismanagement of affairs, Guerrand thought, but he held his tongue. As the son who inherited little, he was at Cormac's mercy in every conceivable way.
"Then stop paying for my training," the younger sibling suggested calmly. "Knighthood has always been your ambition for me, not mine."
Cormac snorted. "I should leave you untrained, instead? My sense of charity and family honor would force me to support you still. This lazy streak of yours must be the result of your mother's pale blood." Guerrand noticed that his brother's eyes were not focusing entirely; the drink affected his senses.
"Why couldn't you have taken to it as Quinn did?" slurred Cormac. "He's a year younger than you and has a self-supporting vocation already! Not only that, his marriage will return to the DiThon family what is rightfully ours-Stonecliff."
Guerrand now knew why the view had set Cormac off-it took in the promontory overlooking the bay, the land he so coveted. Stonecliff would be his again within the month, as part of the dowry agreed upon between Berwick and Cormac. Quinn had done this for him, while Guerrand drained him of funds.
Guerrand wouldn't be shamed. "As I've said before, I am not Quinn. The training comes hard to me, because my interests are not the same as his."
"If you're going to bring up going to Gwynned to study damnable magic again, I won't hear it!" Both of them were obviously thinking of Cormac's previous visitor. "I'll not have one of those sneaky wielders of witchery in my home, let alone my family, even if we are only half-blooded brothers!"
"You've made that abundantly clear, Cormac. I never thought to suggest it." Guerrand twined his fingers together in his lap and flexed them. "If you'd like my promise to work harder at my training, you have it. More than that I cannot do."
Looking beyond Cormac now, to the view through the glass, Guerrand absently took note of three distant, dark spots, as of riders approaching in the gloom. Merchants were always arriving from Thonvil to sell something to their lord. Strange, thought Guerrand, that they should approach from the east, when the village was to the north and west.
"I suppose you think I'm at your mercy, since I can't force you to learn faster," growled Cormac. Guerrand had to chuckle at the irony of Cormac feeling powerless. It was so like him to feel the victim.
Guerrand felt some relief when a knock at the door interrupted Cormac's self-pity. The large man swaggered impatiently across the room and yanked open the door. In the hallway stood a cluster of five men: two household servants carrying torches, two rain-soaked men-at-arms, and another soggy herald wearing Quinn's colors. Guerrand's heart leaped at the sight, as he realized that this meant Quinn must be in the castle.
The men in the hallway stared at Cormac for several moments, until he prodded one of the servants to life with a question. "Well, what is it?"
"Sir," blurted one of the servants, "these men have brought Master Quinn."
He is here, thought Guerrand. Still, the servants seemed very uneasy and stared fearfully at Cormac. The other men shifted uncomfortably in their dripping clothing.
Oblivious to the awkwardness of the messengers, Cormac's face lit up like a child's on his birthday. "And about time, too," he thundered. "Where is my great, conquering champion? Drying his hair? Fetch him and send him in! I would see him at once."
The men exchanged nervous glances. The servants with the torches seemed about to turn and flee. After an uncomfortable silence of several heartbeats, the herald stepped forward and spoke. "Master Quinn is dead."
"Dead?" roared Cormac. He stepped menacingly into the knot of retainers, fists clenched. "If this is someone's sick idea of a joke, I'll crack his thick skull. Where is my brother?"
Guerrand did not hear the answer to the desperate question, if indeed one was given. He had shifted his gaze back out the window, to the dim, starless night and the pattering rain. The study had grown very dark during their conversation, and no servant had come in to make a fire. His mouth was dry, his hands and feet suddenly so cold he could not move them.
To Guerrand, a pall seemed to cover the entire castle. It grew outward from his own heart and then hung, sodden and tattered, over every room and corridor and building. Guerrand was certain the gloom would never lift-the rain would fall forever, and the sun would never again shine on Castle DiThon.
Chapter Two
In the stale, windowless great hall of Castle DiThon, Guerrand shivered. He had not been able to get warm since the messengers arrived with the news. No amount of hot tea or fur wraps or fuel on the fire could warm this coldness of the soul.
Guerrand blamed the chill on the weather, which had steadily worsened since he and Kirah outran the black clouds on the heath. Gale winds and fierce rain pounded the coast relentlessly for days, damaging crops and dropping mighty limbs. Moving about like zombies, the villagers seemed to lack the energy to remove the debris. The winds continued, adding loose bricks to the wreckage outside, while the stifling stillness of the funereal viewing wrought devastation inside.
Guerrand had seen too much of death in his nineteen years. At seven he was not permitted even to say farewell to his mother, whose own life had ebbed away at the same time she gave it to Kirah. He hadn't understood death fully then, half expecting his mother to return as if on holiday. But she never did.
So, by the time their father died just two short years later, the nine-year-old boy understood too well that Rejik would not be returning, that life would never be the same. In his anger and his sorrow, he'd stood as still and pale as white marble next to his father's coffin for the entire two days of viewing. Day and night, no one could move him, not even to tears. He'd had a job to do.
Guerrand had held a secret to himself in those dark days, one he'd not even told Kirah in the time since. On his last day of life, Rejik DiThon had summoned his children, one by one, to his bedside. Scrawny nine-year-old Guerrand stood in the dark and fetid air of Rejik's death room, the father's once-fleshy hand clutching the son's small, sweaty one. "Don't leave me, Guerrand," Rejik had pleaded. "The way is dark, my eyesight is failing, and I'm frightened."
Guerrand's breath had caught for a moment. The once mighty and terrifying Rejik DiThon was afraid of death. Guerrand, growing frightened himself, said the only thing he could think of. "I'll not leave you, Father. Not until Habbakuk comes to take you home."
"I fear I've not been as faithful as some, but it's a comforting thought anyway. You're a good lad, Guerrand." Rejik's frail hand, cool and death-dry, suddenly wrapped around Guerrand's like a hawk's talon on a perch. "Promise you won't leave until I see the Blue Phoenix's face at last. Promise me!"
"I promise, Father!" Young Guerrand had kept his promise, staying at Rejik's side until his coffin was placed upon its pedestal in the family crypt. He'd had no way of knowing when Habbakuk would come for his father, but he would take no chances. Guerrand DiThon kept his promises.
Standing next to the bier that held his younger brother Quinn now, Guerrand searched his memory for promises made to Quinn. There were the little ones between close brothers-"Don't tell Father I broke the leaded window in his study." The great, unspoken oath to defend each other, no matter the cause or cost. But, unlike Rejik's death, there had been no warning, no way for Guerrand to help Quinn when he needed him most. The young cavalier had survived two years on the road only to be slain by bandits mere leagues from his home and family.