"Watch over him," he said. Not more than that. She would know.
She came forward a few steps, to the tree again. One hand on it, as if embracing, merging into it. Brynn turned his back and started resolutely down and Alun followed him, not looking back, knowing she was there, was watching him from the slope, from the other world.
When he reached the farmyard, Brynn had already reclaimed their swords. He handed Alun his, and his belt.
"I'll get my knife in the morning," ap Hywll said.
Alun shook his head. "I saw where it fell, I think." He walked across the yard. The lanterns inside did not cast their glow this far, only lit the windows, showing where people were, the presence of life among the dying and the dead. He found the knife almost immediately, though. Carried it back to Brynn, who stood for a moment, holding it, looking at Alun.
"Your brother was our guest," he said at length. "My sorrow is great, and for your mother and father."
Alun nodded his head. "My father is a… hard man. I believe you know it. Our mother…"
Their mother.
Let the light of the god be yours, my child,
Let it guide you through the world and home to me…
"My mother will want to die," he said.
"We live in a hard world," Brynn said after a moment, reaching for words. "They will surely find comfort in having a strong son yet, to take up the burdens that will fall to you now."
Alun looked up at him in the darkness. The bulky presence. "Sometimes people… don't take up their burdens, you know." Brynn shrugged. "Sometimes, yes."
No more than that.
Alun sighed, felt a great weariness. He was the heir to Cadyr, with all that meant. He shook his head.
Brynn bent down and slipped the dagger into the sheath in his boot. He straightened. They stood there, the two of them in the yard, as in a halfway place between the treed slope and the lights.
Brynn coughed. "Up there you said… you asked her to take care of him. Um, what did…?"
Alun shook his head again, didn't answer. Would never answer that question, he decided. Brynn cleared his throat again. From inside the house, beyond the double doors, they heard someone cry in pain.
Neither of them, Alun realized, was standing in such a way that they could see if there was still a shimmering above them on the hill. If he turned his head…
The big man abruptly slapped his hand against his thigh, as if to break a mood, or a spell. "I have a gift for you," he said brusquely, and whistled.
Nothing for a moment, then out of the blackness a shape appeared and came to them. The dog—he was a wolfhound, and huge—rubbed its head against ap Hywll's thigh. Brynn reached down, a hand in the dog's fur at its neck.
"Cafall," he said calmly. "Hear me. You have a new master. Here he is. Go to him." He let go and stepped away. Nothing again, at first, then the dog tilted its head—a grey, Alun thought, though it was hard to be sure in the darkness—looked at Brynn a moment, then at Alun.
And then he came quietly across the space between.
Alun looked down at him, held out one hand. The dog sniffed it for a moment, then padded, with grace, to Alun's side.
"You gave him… that name?" Alun asked. This was unexpected, but ought to have been trivial. It didn't feel that way.
"Cafall, yes. When he was a year old, in the usual way."
"Then he's your best dog."
He saw Brynn nod. "Best I've ever had."
"Too great a gift, my lord. I cannot—"
"Yes, you can," said Brynn. "For many reasons. Take a companion from me, lad."
That was what the name meant, of course. Companion. Alun swallowed. There was a constriction in his throat. Was this what would make him weep tonight, after everything? He reached down and his hand rested on the warmth of the dog's head. He rubbed back and forth, ruffling the fur. Cafall pushed against his thigh. The ancient name, oldest stories. A very big dog, graceful and strong. No ordinary wolfhound, to so calmly accept this change with a spoken word in the night. It wasn't, he knew, a trivial gift at all.
Not to be refused.
"My thanks," he said.
"My sorrow," said Brynn again. "Let him… help keep you among us, lad."
So that was it. Alun found himself blinking; the lights in the farmhouse windows blurring for a moment. "Shall we go in?" he asked.
Brynn nodded.
They went in, to where lanterns were burning among the dead in the room beside the chapel, and among all the wounded children of Jad—wounded in so many different ways—within the house.
The dog followed, then lay down by the chapel door at Alun's murmured command. Outside, on the slope to the south, something lingered for a time in the dark and then went away, light as mist, before the morning came.
FIVE
It had not been a good spring or summer for the traders of Rabady Isle, and there were those quite certain they knew why. The list of grievances was long.
Sturla Ulfarson, who had succeeded Halldr Thinshank as governor of the island's merchants and farmers and fisherfolk, might have only one hand but he possessed two eyes and two ears and a nose for the mood of people, and he was aware that men were comparing the (exaggerated) glories of Thinshank's days with the troubles and ill omens that had marked the beginning of his own.
Unfair, perhaps, but no one had made him manoeuvre for this position, and Ulfarson wasn't the self-pitying sort. Had he been so, he'd have been inclined to point out that the notorious theft of Thinshank's grey horse and the marring of his funeral rites last spring—the start of all their troubles—had happened before the new governor had been acclaimed. He'd have noted that no man, whatever kind of leader he might be, could have prevented the thunderstorm that had killed two young people in the night fields shortly after that. And he might also have bemoaned the fact that it was hardly within the power of a local administrator to control events in the wider world: warfare among Karch and Moskav and the Sarantines couldn't help but impact upon trade in the north.
Sturla One-hand did make these points decisively (he was a decisive man, for the most part) when someone dared challenge him directly, but he also set about doing what he could do on the isle, and as a result he discovered something.
It began with the families of the young man and woman killed in the storm. Everyone knew Ingavin sent the thunder and all manner of storms, that there was nothing accidental if people were killed or homes ruined by such things (a world where the weather was utterly random was a world not to be endured).
The girl had been doing her year of service to the volur at the compound by the edge of the forest. The young women of Rabady Isle took this duty, in turn, before they wed. It was a ritual, an honourable one. Fulla, the corn goddess, Ingavin's bride, needed attention and worship too, if children were to be born healthy and the fields kept fertile. Iord, the seer, was an important figure here on the isle: in her own way, as powerful as the governor was.
Sturla One-hand had paid a formal visit to the compound, bringing gifts, shortly after his election by the thring. He hadn't liked the volur, but that wasn't the point. If there was magic being used, you wanted it used for you, not against you. Women could be dangerous.
And that, in fact, is what he discovered. The families of the young man and the girl were elbowing each other towards a feud over their deaths, each blaming the other's offspring for the two of them being out by the memorial cairn, lying together when the lightning broke. Sturla had his own thoughts as to who had inveigled whom, but it was important to be seen to be conducting an inquiry first. His principal desire was to keep a blood feud from Rabady, or, at the least, to limit the casualties.