Gods be thanked, this will be the last.
Behind him, Iridai put one hand lightly on Halun's shoulder. "I . . . my condolences, wise one," he said, awkward now that the message had been delivered. "I understand that the young man was once your pupil."
Halun shuddered, but did not remove the man's hand. I have to act the same; thank the gods they all think it's just that I'm mourning Zorsha. "Thank you," he said, stumbling over the simple words. These men are acting out of belief that Jegrai is wrong. I acted out of lust for power. They aren't barbarians. I'm the savage. "Yes, he was—something more than just a pupil, in fact, he was an orphan when he came to us. I was something of a father to him. . . ."
He let his voice trail off, and felt the muscles of his throat tensing with the effort of holding back tears.
Not that tears would matter to these people—they would -understand and give him room to weep. Except for Gortan, who was like a block of stone, they were mostly as open about expressing sorrow as they were about expressing joy. Oh, Zorsha, I needed to be brought to my senses—but I would that I could have paid a less dear coin than your life.
He still looked like something dragged through hell, and he knew it; too many sleepless nights, no few of them spent contemplating the amazing number of poisons in his workroom. But suicide would not have served to fulfill his promise to Zorsha. And he had a great deal to make up for.
Felaras had been amazingly decent about the whole thing; she could, so easily, have made every word, every hour painful for him, and yet she had done no such thing.
Not that she hadn't been tempted; she'd told him that herself, with that disconcerting frankness of hers, the day they'd buried the boy. But she'd also told him, "There's been too damned much pain already and damned if I'm going to add to it!"
A remarkable woman. And he'd been blinded to how remarkable she was by his own ambition. Now it was too late; too late for anything except a tentative alliance. Never a friendship. And never anything deeper.
What a fool I've been.
If it hadn't been for the boy . . .
For he'd finally met young Yuchai, who until then had been nothing more than a name and a huddled form under a blanket.
He'd been waiting outside Felaras's door for her summons, when he'd heard a strangled sob from the Master's Folly. Thinking it might be Kasha or Teo, he'd looked in, figuring on finding out which it was and fetching the other. Mourning alone was a lot harder than mourning with someone—as he now knew only too well. And he couldn't think who else would have been quartered next to Felaras besides those two.
But it hadn't been either of them; it had been a young boy, crying painfully into the fur of a pale-gold dog—
A golden gaze-hound like the one Zorsha had owned as a novice . . .
Perhaps it was the sight of the dog that drew him, but without knowing why, he found himself standing by the boy's side. The boy had raised his tear-streaked face, and he'd seen the shape, the bone structure of it, so like Jegrai's; and knew then who it was, and why he wept. So he'd held out his hand. "I'm Halun," he'd said, swallowing down a lump in his throat. "I was his friend too—"
And before he could blink, he had his arms full of crying child, and then Halun found himself weeping with him, and somehow when they both got under control again, they were friends.
He'd picked up Yuchai's education where Zorsha had left off, more out of a sense of duty than any real expectations. That was when he had discovered how absolutely brilliant the boy was, and duty became pleasure—the lone pleasure in all those bleak days.
Gods willing, by tonight this whole messy business will be dealt with, and I can go back to that pleasure. Zorsha, I pledge you, that boy will have everything you'd have given him!
He looked at Iridai out of the corner of his eye, and wondered how that stolid warrior was going to take the shattering of his plans and his own disgrace before the entire Clan.
No bloodshed, Jegrai had said. There's been enough bloodshed already. Felaras had agreed with him. Halun hoped this would work as well as they thought it would. . . .
"Where are we meeting?" Halun asked dully, half-turning, and watching the lamp flame over Iridai's shoulder instead of the mans face.
"Gortan's tent. It seems safe enough. If friends do not gather from time to time at the tents, it begins to look odd. And besides, Jegrai is up at the Wizard's Place."
Halun reached for the lamp again; he should have been feeling anticipation, but he felt nothing but weariness. "Now?"
Iridai nodded, and Halun put out the lamp, then ducked out the tent entrance, following him into the night. He glanced up at the sky; it was not overcast, but it was moonless.
It was going to be a perfect evening for Felaras's plan.
He followed along behind Iridai, stumbling now and again over a rock in the path. Soon. It will all be over soon.
His soundless litany might have been a conjuration: no sooner had they cleared all but the last circle of tents, where Gortan's tent had been pitched, than the sky above them opened up with an incredible display of—
Fireworks. Festival fireworks. But to the Vredai, it surely seemed like a visitation from the gods.
Every color possible bloomed up there, it seemed, accompanied by thunderous explosions that were close enough to hurt the ears. Not surprisingly, every person in the camp was out of his tent and gaping up at the sky within heartbeats—some with stark fear on their faces, some with less readable emotions, and the children with mingled surprise and innocent delight.
The guards at the entrance to the valley ran back to the tents, weapons at the ready, although from the despair on their faces Halun reckoned they'd already counted on those weapons as being impotent.
The stage was set.
The last of the fireworks bloomed and died, a spectacular burst of clusters of red that told Halun to ready himself.
There was a heartbeat of silence, then—
Horns blared from somewhere above them; horns like nothing the Vredai had ever heard, deep and menacing and incredibly loud. Not surprising; these were horns that had been sent to the Order by a wandering Seeker long ago, sent from some mountainous region to the north. They were as tall as a man, and used to warn of (or perhaps trigger, he'd said) avalanches of snow. Two of the most agile Watchers in the Fortress had scaled with ropes and crampons down the mountainside just after dusk with these things strapped to their backs, to set themselves up on the supposedly unclimbable cliffs above the valley.
There was a flash of fire and sulfurous smoke at the valley entrance—and a glowing figure rode through the smoke cloud, seeming to come out of the smoke cloud.
It was Felaras, but a transformed Felaras. The Vredai for the most part had never seen Felaras; those who had had certainly never seen her like this, with her hair streaming free beneath an ancient, dragon-crested Ancas helm, and her body encased from head to toe in burnished chain and plate. What was more, she burned with a bluish light of her own, as did the pale horse she rode—and the horse's hooves made no noise at all on the hard ground. It seemed to flow toward them, a ghost-horse ridden by a stern and angry spirit.
The Vredai behind Halun moaned with fear; Halun heard one or two mutters of "Wind-rider!" and "Lord's Messenger!"—and Iridai sank to his knees.
"Vredai, who were betrayed, you harbor traitors among you," Felaras boomed, using the voice that could be heard from one end of a noisy practice ground to another. And she wasn't speaking Trade-tongue, either; this speech had been carefully written out for her by Teo, transcribing Northwind's words into Ancas phonemes. "Treason is a disease; the Talchai touched you, and you are infected, you are sick with it. The Wind Lords brought you here to safe haven, but you brought a blight with you, in your hearts."