There was another long silence while the demon considered, peppered now by the increasing noise from the docks, the cacophony of activity as the harbor swelled with life and traffic. Finally the voice within his mind spoke; it was soft, as though tired, resigned, but still bore a resolute tone.
Very well. Let us be off, but with the intent on returning as soon as you have retrieved that which is owed to you. I wish to get back to the terror, the burnings, the mad beauty of the destruction we have wrought here.
The seneschal absently fingered the hilt of Tysterisk as he thought back for one last moment to the image of Rhapsody’s face as she swore her pledge to him; she had called him by a name he had long forgotten until now. There; is that enough for you now, Michael?
Michael, he had been called in that other life. He had all but lost the memory of it.
Michael, the Wind of Death.
“Believe me,” he said again, “where we are bound, there will be more than ample opportunity for terror, for burnings. I promise you, the mad beauty of the destruction we have wrought here will pale beside what is to come when we make landfall on her shores.”
7
Violet
The New Beginning
The master of the range flashed the signs from one hundred fifty yards—twelve centers, two inner ring, nine outer ring, one perfect alignment.
Gwydion Navarne sighed, then signaled for the targets to be moved back. While the rangekeepers dragged the haybutts about in the distance he gave his longbow a shake, then gently ran his fingers up the grip. He had spent more than a year in its making, had carefully blended wood, horn, and sinew, cured it lovingly. It was a weapon of which he was greatly proud, even if it was still not a masterpiece; it, like he, was in training, learning, stretching to its potential.
This afternoon he was not proving worthy of it.
He was so focused on trying to sort out the problem with his angle of flight that he did not hear the approach of the hoofbeats until Anborn was already upon him.
“You disappoint me, lad.”
The snort of the black stallion shook Gwydion from his concentration, and he looked up into the face of the Lord Marshal, the ancient general of the Cymrian army, who was staring down at him from his high-backed saddle, watching him as intently as a bird of prey watches a mouse. Gwydion shook the bow again.
“My apologies, Lord Marshal. I’m working on my free-flights, albeit dismally this afternoon.” He nodded to Anborn’s man-at-arms, an older First Generation Cymrian with gray hair and a deeply lined face, weathered from the sun, who always traveled on horseback with a pair of crossbows drawn. “Well met, Shrike.” The soldier nodded in return, dismounting.
The general snorted in the same timbre as his war horse, then reached behind him and unstrapped his crutches from their saddle bindings.
“I’m not disappointed in your accuracy, boy, but in your choice of projectiles. I see you have a fondness for those flimsy Lirin sticks.” Anborn sighed dramatically. “I should have had a long talk with you before your adopted grandmother moved in here and destroyed your sense of arrow flight with her Lirin preferences.”
Gwydion laughed, then took the reins as the Lord Marshal dismounted slowly, Shrike standing ready, as always, to support him should he lose his balance. In the three years since Anborn’s crippling, Gwydion had never seen it happen.
“Actually Rhapsody has little preference for arrows, and not too much interest in archery anymore,” he said. “She brings me back the long whitewoods whenever she goes to Tyrian if she can.”
Anborn steadied himself on the two specially made canes and stared at Gwydion in mock disgust. “So you came to this tendency on your own? Appalling.”
“I am still studying the crossbow as well, Lord Marshal.”
“Well, then at least you shouldn’t be taken out and fed to the weasels yet.”
Gwydion Navarne laughed. “Perhaps someday you can enlighten me as to why your family is so fascinated with the feeding of incompetents to weasels,” he said, glancing at the squire who was approaching with the general’s chair. “If I recall correctly, your brother, Edwyn Griffyth, declared the same fate should befall Tristan Steward at the Cymrian Council.”
“Being devoured by weasels is far too good a fate for Tristan Steward,” Anborn said contemptuously. “In addition, it would be cruel to the weasels.” He observed the gesture of the rangekeeper. “They are ready for you, lad.”
“So what have you been occupying yourself with, Lord Marshal?” Gwydion Navarne asked as he nocked his arrow. “Rhapsody said you had gone south to the Skeleton Coast of Sorbold.”
“Indeed.” The Lord Marshal allowed Shrike to assist him into the wheeled chair, then laid the crutches across his now-useless legs.
Gwydion Navarne watched the general thoughtfully as he settled himself. He had met the legendary soldier as a child of seven at his mother’s funeral, and had been terrified by the experience. He was too young to have yet heard of the general’s cantankerous reputation, so Anborn’s very appearance was intimidating to him; the broad, menacing musculature of back and shoulders, gleaming azure eyes set within a face dark with terrible memories, black hair streaked with white flowing angrily to his shoulders—everything about the general was sufficient to make him want to hide behind his father, who had understood his fear innately and did not require him to come out and shake hands until the general was ready to leave.
And now, since the council held in the wake of the great battle three years ago, he had come to know and admire the man, to love him much the way his godfather, Gwydion of Manosse, did—respectfully and from a safe distance.
There was something in the general’s eyes that Gwydion Navarne didn’t grasp. He recognized, in the incomplete wisdom of youth, that there were thoughts, emotions, and insights in the head of someone who had lived for as many centuries as Anborn had, seen as many horrors as Anborn had, and contemplated life in ways that Anborn had that he himself could not comprehend now, if ever.
Gwydion Navarne drew back and let fly; the arrow’s arc was slighted a hint to the lee; it struck the hay target at one hundred sixty yards and glanced off.
“Drat!”
The Lord Marshal stared at him as if thunderstruck.
“Drat?” he said disdainfully. “Drat? Dear All-God, what has my useless nephew been teaching you? Is that the best oath you can muster, lad? After you finish here we will go directly into Navarne City and find a suitable tavern, where we will tend immediately to your proper education in the essential things—drinking, wenching, and swearing properly.”
“Oh, I do know how to swear fairly well, Lord Marshal,” Gwydion Navarne said pleasantly. “I just didn’t want to offend your ears, knowing you to be the frail and discreet gentleman that you are.”
Anborn chuckled as Gwydion Navarne drew back again. “Well, I would certainly hope so. My nephew, your namesake, has been schooled by the best—that would be me—in the finest curses ever wrought of the dragon tongue, which is the preeminent language in which to swear. You don’t have the physiology for that, alas—without the serpentine aperture of the throat you could never manage the double glottal stop—but certainly you should have acquired an impressively vulgar vocabulary after living with him for a few years. And your ‘grandmother’—well, a Namer of her power should have access to some utterly splendid oaths.”