He had two farewells to make, he told himself, and someone to kill, then he could leave with his past squared away, as much as that was ever really possible. He was going to Erlond, he'd decided, where his people had settled in the Anglcyn lands. It was far enough away, there was land to be claimed, room to settle and thrive. He'd had a winter to think about possibilities. This one made the most sense.
He heard a twig snap. Not his own footfall.
He froze, drew his sword. He had no desire to kill yet, but
"The peace of Fulla be upon you, Bern Thorkellson."
When all you have to remember, through the circle of an eventful year, is a voice in the dark, and the voice is that of someone saving your life, you remember it.
He stayed where he was. She came forward from the trees. Carried no torch. He swallowed.
"How is the snakebite?" he said.
"Only a scar now. My thanks for asking."
"She is… still sending you out on cold nights?"
"Iord? No. Iord is dead."
His heart thumped. He still couldn't see her, but the voice was embedded in him. He hadn't realized until this moment how much so.
"How? What…?"
"I had her killed. For both of us."
Matter-of-fact, no hint of emotion in her voice. One less task for him tonight, it seemed. He struggled for words. "How did you…?"
"Do that? One of the young women in the compound told the new governor how the volur had used magic to force an innocent young man to steal a horse from someone she'd always hated."
He was still holding his sword. It seemed silly to be doing that. He sheathed it. Was thinking hard. He was good at thinking. "And the young man?"
"Went to Jormsvik after the spell left him. Wanting to win glory, efface his shame. And did so."
He was fighting an entirely unexpected urge to smile. "And the young woman?"
She hesitated for the first time. "She became the volur of Rabady Isle."
The desire to smile seemed to have gone, as suddenly as it had come. He couldn't quite have put into words why this was so. He cleared his throat. Said, "A great and glorious destiny for her, then."
After another pause, a stillness in the dark, he heard her say, just a shape, still, an outline in the night, "It isn't, in truth, the destiny she would choose, had she… another path."
Bern found it necessary to draw a breath before he could speak again. His heart was pounding, they way it had at Champieres. "Indeed. Would she… have any willingness to leave the isle, make a different life?"
The other voice grew softer, not as assured. Like mine, he thought.
"She might do that. If someone wished her to. It… it could also be here. That different life. Here on the isle."
He shook his head. Tried to make himself breathe normally. He knew a little more of the world than she did, it appeared. In this matter, at least. "I don't think so. Once she's been volur it would be too hard to live an… ordinary life here. There's too much power in what she's been. This is too small a place. Whoever became volur after wouldn't even want her here."
"The next volur might give permission, a release from power," she said. "It has happened."
He didn't know about that, had to assume she did. "Why would she do that?"
She waited a moment. Then said, "Think about it."
He did, and it came to him. He felt a prickling at his neck. That sometimes meant the half-world, spirits, were nearby. Sometimes it meant something else. "Oh," said Bern. "I see."
She realized, with a kind of thrill, that he really did. She wasn't used to men being so quick. She said, still carefully, "Your mother asked me to welcome you home, to say that she is waiting, at the compound, if you wish to see her now. And to tell you that the door on the barn needs fixing again."
He was silent, absorbing all of this. "I know how to do that," Bern said. "How do you know it is broken?"
"We've been to the farmhouse together," the girl said. "Your father's. It… can be bought again. If you want."
He looked at her. Only a shape. You were not to be soft. It was dangerous in these lands. But you were allowed, surely, to feel wonder, weren't you? A man went through the world carrying only his name. Some left that after them when they died, lingering, like a burning on a hill or by the sea. Most men did not, could not. There were other ways to live through the days the gods allowed you. In his mind, he spoke his father's name.
"I've never even seen you," he said to the girl.
"I know. There are lights in the compound," she said. "She's waiting. Will you come?"
They walked that way, the two of them. It wasn't very far. He saw the marker stone in the field, a greyness beyond. Dawn, he realized, would be breaking soon, over Vinmark and the water, upon the isle.
A greyer, windier dawn would also come, a little later, farther west.
He still liked to keep a window open at night, despite what wisdom held to be the folly of doing so. Ceinion of Llywerth sometimes thought that if something was offered too readily as wisdom, it needed to be challenged.
That wasn't why he opened the window, however. There was no deep thinking here. He was simply too accustomed to the taste of the night air after so many years moving from place to place. On the other hand, he thought, awake and alone in a comfortable room in Esferth, the year gone by had made one change in him.
He was entirely happy to be lying on this goose-feather bed and not outside on the ground in a windy night. Others would deny it, some of them fiercely (with their own reasons for doing so), but he knew he'd aged between the last spring and this one. He might be awake, sleep eluding, but he was comfortable in this bed and guardedly (always guardedly) pleased with the unfolding of events in Jad's northlands.
He had wintered here, as promised, would be going home to his people, now that spring was upon them again. He would not travel alone. The Anglcyn king and queen would be sailing west to Cadyr (showing their new fleet to the world), bringing their younger daughter to the Cyngael.
He had wanted this—something like this—so much and for so long. Alun ab Owyn, to whom she would be wed in what could only be named joy, was the heir to his province, and a hero now in Arberth, and Ceinion could deal with his own Llywerth, easily. There was so much that might come of this.
The god had been good to them, beyond any deserving. That was the heart of all teachings, wasn't it? You aspired to live a good and pious life, but Jad's mercy could be extended, as wings over you, for reasons no man could understand.
In the same way, he thought, as the night outside began to turn (a ruffle of wind entering the room) towards morning and whatever it might bring—in the selfsame way no man could ever hope to understand why losses came, heart's grief, what was taken away.
Waiting for sunrise, lying alone as he had these long years, he remembered love and remembered her dying, and could see, in the eye of his mind, the grave overlooking the western sea behind his chapel and his home. You lived in the world, you tasted sorrow and joy, and it was the way of the Cyngael to be aware of both.
Another breeze, entering the room. Dawn wind. He would be going home soon. He would sit with her, and look out upon the sea. Morning was coming, the god's return. Almost time to rise and go to prayer. The bed was very soft. Almost time, but the darkness not quite lifted, light still to come, he could linger a little with memory. It was necessary, it was allowed.