Yes. The close watch on Vuinlod could wait that long. Even longer, perhaps, for other towns and cities also demanded his attention, if he was to have some notion of what came against him.
Wilthur touched the scrying glass and it went dark. He breathed on a wad of cloth of gold hanging over the arm of his chair. It leaped into the air and set busily to polishing the glass, and afterward its wooden frame.
It sometimes amused Wilthur to think that the cloth now doing menial work held the spirit of a slain minotaur, who would have killed at once any human who asked his living self to labor so.
Pirvan and Haimya walked up into the hills above the town before they felt ready to talk of the night's news.
"Will our Eskaia know?" Haimya said. She pulled up a few withered brown grass stems and tried to braid them, but they were too brittle.
"Lady Eskaia wrote that the new couple were probably going to sleep late," Pirvan answered. "Even then, she promised not to tell them today."
Pirvan stood up. He had slept little and walked long and hard, but he was too restless to sit for long. Tirabot Manor in danger? His first thought had been that Sir Niebar would call him a fool, and while he was ashamed of the thought, it had not altogether gone away.
The older knight would not say, "I told you so," but everyone in the room would be able to hear his thoughts. Even now, Pirvan shaped the words slowly and reluctantly.
"The first person we ought to tell is Sir Niebar," he said.
Haimya's reply was an eloquent look. Pirvan struggled on. "The men he has with him," he said, "knights and others alike, are his to send where he will. He can send-oh, two knights and ten men-at-arms-without weakening his strength for the voyage to Suivinari."
"That will put our son under the authority of a total stranger," Haimya said. "I thought we had decided his arguments against that had weight."
"They did," Pirvan said. "They do. But not leaving him with only the manor guards and staff to face a feud with a great house also has weight. More, to my mind."
"Private feuds are illegal," she said flatly.
"If that law still ran, why is everyone within a day's ride of Tirabot strengthening his defenses?"
"I was not putting more faith in the laws of Istar than they can bear, Pirvan. I was reminding you that we are also bound by the law not to fight House Dirivan over a small matter.
"But this may not be a small matter," she said. "It may not even be one in which the kingpriest is wrong. We do not know what the offense to the flock's owner was."
That sober reminder made Pirvan pause. It was difficult to believe that no one ever suffered at the hands of the kingpriest, but fraud, theft, misappropriating funds, illegally pasturing cattle… one could not ask that enemies of the kingpriest go free over any of these. Not and observe the Oath and the Measure, as Pirvan was bound to do as a Knight of Solamnia. Or even listen to the voice of common sense, as he had tried to do even as a village boy some days' ride from Istar and a week from the nearest keep.
He sat down on the rock and put his head in his hands. The surest protection for Tirabot Manor and Gerik would be his own return. It would be a humiliation for his son, but a lesser one than ending up under the protection of total strangers, even if they were his father's comrades-in-arms.
It would also set chaos loose among the Vuinlod squadron of the expedition to Suivinari. Chaos there would weaken the ranks of the wise and honorable sailing to the island, and leave it under the command of those eager for reckonings with the "lesser breeds." A war with the minotaurs might be the least of the results of that.
No. He must go to Sir Niebar, swear that he will sail with the fleet, but ask that some form of protection be devised for Tirabot and its people.
Also he must pray that House Dirivan saw reason. They were as proud as the Silvanesti and as quick to take offense, but Pirvan himself had earned honors from those arrogant forest-dwellers. Perhaps House Dirivan could also be brought to see reason. Or at least not to see a cause for blood-feud in every petty slight.
"Well and good," Pirvan said, rising. "We go down and straight to Sir Niebar. Then, whatever his answer, we go to our Eskaia. She will not forgive our hiding the matter for long, and Hawkbrother hardly less. I do not want my next duel of honor to be with my new son-by-marriage!"
Chapter 5
When they were in residence, Pirvan and Haimya held formal manor councils once a month. Also once a month, they sat in some state to hear grievances and complaints from the manor's people. Istaran law, the oaths sworn when they look the manor, and common sense all demanded it.
Gerik was glad that his parents had held both councils for the month before departing for Vuinlod. With some luck, the manor's people would not feel the need for any more for a while. With even more luck, Gerik's parents would be home before the time appointed for the next council.
He knew that last hope asked a great deal of the weather, the Istarans, and the gods, to say nothing of the enemies he seemed to have made by taking in Ellysta. Everything would have to move like a well-ordered banquet for Gerik's parents to be back in less than two months.
In truth, he was of two minds about wanting them back. He had begun to realize that if he was not to enter the ranks of the Knights of Solamnia, he needed to find some other way to prove himself a worthy son of his father. His own honor demanded this, for all that his father had not demanded it, by so much as a single word or even a momentary look upon his weathered face.
Ordering the affairs of Tirabot Manor so that its quarrel with House Dirivan did not end in a bloody clash of arms would be proof of both courage and wisdom. These were two gifts that anyone would expect in the son of a Knight of the Rose.
However, if matters went so awry that House Dirivan continued to secretly wage private war against the manor, then Gerik badly wanted his parents back home and himself loyally obeying their orders. Attacking the son of a Knight of the Rose might seem to some folks unlike attacking the knight himself. By the time they learned the error of their ways, much harm might have been done.
So Gerik held council almost daily, with the chief of the masons, the steward, and the chief of the guards. Five days after he judged his message should have reached Vuinlod, he was seated in his chamber across a low table from Bertsa Wylum, commanding the guards. Her dark eyes flicked him like a riding whip as he poured more ale for both of them.
"You think I drink too much?" he asked, trying to keep challenge out of his voice.
"No," she said. "Just remember, though, that our enemies might try magic against our water. They did when your parents defended Belkuthas, and here we have no dwarves to save us."
"No, and the masons would not stay to work in the face it danger." He hesitated. "I would not ask them, either. They have families for whose sakes they must remain at peace with our enemies."
Wylum clapped Gerik on the shoulder so hard that he nearly choked on his ale. "Well said, and even more, well thought before you spoke," she said. "You needn't tell the masons that yet, of course."
Gerik didn't see where the "of course" came from, but Wylum was going on with the report he had interrupted by pouring the ale.
"No more 'ghost-riders,' by what my people say." Her tone made it plain that any of her people who saw riders with their faces painted grayish-white and did not report it would regret it, and possibly more.
"Somebody chased Pel Orvot's flock of geese all along the bank and killed a few," Wylum added. "But we don't know if that was enemies, common thieves, or children pranking."