A gust of chill air greeted him as he entered. A window was wide open. The room was gloomy, and the only sound was the shifting of the sea outside. His father lay in the great bed against the far wall. Kennet’s grey-haired head rested on pillows; his arms lay limp across the bed cover. His eyes were closed. There were deep lines in his face as if his skin had folded in upon itself beneath the weight of sorrow, and heavy shadows lurked beneath his eyes. His visage had gathered at least another decade to itself in the last few years.
Anyara, Orisian’s elder sister, was sitting by the bed and looked up as he came in. She was tired, he could see, and her long auburn locks were lifeless. She put a finger to her lips and mouthed, ‘He’s sleeping.’
Orisian hesitated, mid-way between door and bed. He could have left, absolved of some responsibility by his father’s slumber. He went instead to close the window. Kennet stirred at the sound of his footsteps.
‘Leave it.’
‘I thought it was cold,’ said Orisian. His father’s eyes were red and empty.
‘I prefer it.’
Orisian came to stand at Anyara’s side.
‘You’ve come back,’ said Kennet.
‘Barely an hour ago.’
Kennet grunted. Speaking seemed an effort for him. His eyelids fluttered, and closed. Anyara laid a soft hand on Orisian’s arm and looked up at him. She squeezed gently.
‘Croesan wished you well,’ said Orisian. ‘He wants you to visit him. I think he would like to show you how Anduran is growing.’
‘Ah,’ said Kennet without opening his eyes.
‘Will you be well for the Winterbirth feast?’ asked Orisian, the question sounding hasty and harsh even to his own ears. He did not know what he could say that would reach the father he remembered, and loved.
His father turned his head on the pillow to look at him. ‘When is it?’ he asked.
‘Father, we were talking about it only this afternoon,’ said Anyara. ‘It’s the day after tomorrow. Remember? There will be acrobats and songs and stones. You remember?’
Kennet’s gaze became unfocused, as if he was looking no longer upon the here and now but on memories more real to him than the present.
‘Inurian told me that the acrobats are masterless men,’ said Orisian, knowing from his own heart that remembrance of Winterbirths past could bring as much pain as warmth. It was often this way between the three of them: conversations skirted around dangerous territory. As much was unsaid as was said. Knowing the pattern made it no easier to break.
Kennet sighed, which prompted a shallow, dry cough that shook him.
‘The day after tomorrow,’ he said after the coughing had sub-sided. ‘Well, I must be there, I suppose.’
‘Of course,’ said Anyara. ‘It will do you good.’
Kennet smiled at his daughter, and the sight of that weakened, shallow-rooted expression was almost enough to make Orisian turn away. ‘Go with Orisian,’ he said to her. ‘You should not be always at my bedside. Have someone light some candles here, though. I do not want the darkness. Not yet.’
‘He is no better,’ said Orisian as he and Anyara made their way down the stairs. ‘I had hoped he might be, by now.’
‘Not much better,’ agreed Anyara. ‘But still, he will be there for Winterbirth. That’s something. He did miss you, you know. It’s good for him that you’re back.’
Orisian hoped that might be true. His father’s affliction touched upon painful places within him. In the months after the Fever had taken them, the absence of his mother and brother had been an aching, unbridgeable emptiness in Orisian’s life. It was a wound that had not healed, but had at least become something he could bear. So too it had seemed with his father, for the first year: the sadness deep and immovable, yet accommodated as it had to be if life was to continue. The change had come with the first anniversary of their deaths. After that, these black moods had descended with growing frequency, shutting Kennet off from all around him.
Orisian felt deep sorrow for his father, and a nagging guilt at his own inability to ease his pain. But he had other, less kind, feelings too and they brought with them a different kind of guilt. He sometimes had to battle against bursts of resentment at the strength of his father’s attachment to the dead. It was an attachment so intense that it both robbed Kennet of any strength he might have shared with the living and seemed to overshadow—to dismiss—the grief and loss that were lodged in Orisian’s own breast. Often, when his father looked at him, Orisian had the sense that he was seeing, or perhaps longing to see, his dead brother Fariel; and Fariel had been so strong, so clever, so fast of hand and eye, that Orisian could never match the man he would now have been.
He and his sister went out into the courtyard. Night was coming on fast, and the temperature had fallen. The clouds of earlier had dissipated, unveiling a sky in which countless faint stars were already glimmering. Soon, that moon would turn, and winter would be born. Brother and sister stood in the centre of the yard, gazing upward. Anyara soon lost interest.
‘How was Anduran, then?’ she asked, rubbing her arms against the cold.
‘Thriving,’ said Orisian. ‘Uncle Croesan is full of plans.’
‘As always.’
‘He’s built a great hall on the square and new barns near the castle. All the forests to the south are being cleared for farmsteads and grazing lands. Everyone is busy.’
‘Well, it’s not before time. The Fever’s long gone,’ said Anyara in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had never been touched by it. Orisian had not forgotten how it felt, when his sister lay at the very brink of death, to think that he was going to lose her as well. Perhaps it had been easier, in a way, to pass those long, terrible days inside delirium than to watch it from without.
Anyara sniffed. ‘It’s cold out here. Are you hungry?’
‘A little.’
Anyara pulled him along by the arm.
‘Let’s go to the kitchens, see what’s cooking.’
‘Anyara,’ protested Orisian, ‘we’ll only get in trouble.’
‘Old woman!’ grinned his sister.
The kitchens filled most of the ground floor of the keep. They were, as always at this time in the evening, a hive of activity. Young boys carried pots and pans from table to stove and back again, while cooks chopped and stirred, pounded and chattered in a frenzy of organised chaos. A row of fat forest grouse were hanging from hooks along one of the roof beams. On one of the tables, a dozen loaves stood cooling, filling the air with their delicious aroma. At first no one seemed to notice that Orisian and Anyara had arrived. A moment later Etha the head cook was hobbling over, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a small, ageing woman, whose joints were seizing up and giving her a clumsy stride as time went by. Her spirit, however, was uncowed by such assaults. She clapped Orisian on the arm with a crooked hand.
‘Back at last,’ she said. ‘Just in time, too. It’ll be a fine feast this year. Wouldn’t do to miss it.’
‘I wouldn’t want to,’ he said seriously, and waved at the black-feathered birds above their heads. ‘Looks like we’ll be eating well.’
‘Yes, yes. And plenty more.’
She was interrupted by an angry shout from behind her. Anyara darted past, juggling a still-hot loaf of bread from hand to hand. One of the other cooks was waving a soup ladle after her, flicking thick drops of broth in all directions.
‘Why, that girl,’ muttered Etha. ‘Still acting the child.’ She turned on Orisian and poked a stiff finger into his chest. ‘And you, young man. A year or two younger, but no better excuse than she. You’ve not been back a day and already the pair of you acting like a brace of thieves!’