A Hero's Tale (27 page)

"Who are you?" she asked, in the language of the mighty.

"You will speak none of that outlandish talk to me," said Bru in his own tongue.

"Has my brother-in-law so few true men that he must employ the ground they walk upon?" said Elen.

In the language of the common folk, true men were simply those of one's own clan. I had heard the mighty refer to the common folk as men of the earth. Until those words passed Elen's lips, I hadn't considered it an insult.

Bru would not be baited. "My lord prefers to keep clean hands," he said. "As I am of the earth, I feel no reluctance to dirty mine."

Though Elen understood the implication, she held her temper.

"I will ask you once to leave my tent," she said. "If I must ask a second time, I will demand of your lord, in appeasement, your head on a pike."

Bru laughed. "It is not my head that my lord values, but without it he would find the rest of me unfit for service."

Elen stared at him, while her mind probed at his defenses. "Your lord and I have an agreement," she said. "Will he break his word?"

She was testing Bru, to see if he was truly who he said he was.

"My lord has heard your words," Bru replied. "He has also heard the words of someone in your household. He finds the two at odds."

Elen waited.

Using what I had told him, Bru crept out on a thin branch. "A curious tale made its way from your private chamber to his ear, that you would offer him your hand but refuse him compensation for his loss."

For the first time since the invasion of her tent, Elen was afraid, not of Bru nor of his men nor of the king's brother. She feared treachery within her own house.

Bru pressed his luck "Worse than that, you would have him keep the assassin in his household, perhaps to relieve you of another unwanted husband."

Elen's face twisted with rage. She was so angry that she forgot herself, and all her cleverness deserted her.

"What traitor carries tales from my house to his?" she demanded. "Who is the spy I have made welcome?"

"The treachery began with you," said Bru. "My lord seeks no alliance. You have only one thing he wants, and it is not your -- ."

Bru said a word I had never heard before, but there was no doubt what it meant. It was a rude word for a woman's private part.

If Bru meant by this exchange to inflame Elen's anger at the king's brother, he was overdoing it. Now Elen would have no reason to surrender Maara. I hoped Bru hadn't forgotten our purpose here. I hoped he knew what he was doing.

The northern chieftains hadn't understood a word, but they guessed that the negotiations were not going well. I felt their apprehension in their stillness.

If this had been a story told around the hearth on a winter evening, Elen would have burst into flame, consumed by rage and by her own evil cast back upon her. Instead another tale told itself in Elen's tent that misty morning. Elen grew calm, and I felt her summon up from deep within herself the power of an enchantress, gifted in her cradle by fairy folk come to celebrate her birth. Before my eyes she transformed herself into an image of beauty and delight. She smiled, and it seemed that sunlight shone through the fabric of her tent and cast a golden light around her.

Bru stepped back.

"There is only one thing I want of your lord," said Elen. The music of her voice sent a shiver down my spine. "I want him to leave my lands forever. He wants the assassin? He may have her. I have no further use for her, for I will never take another husband."

She took a step toward Bru, and he took another step back.

"Come," she said. "Together we will bring her to your king."

She glided past Bru, who made no move to stop her. She slipped through Bru's men. They stood aside for her. Even the northern chieftains stood aside for her. Though they hadn't understood her words, her charm enthralled them too. I half expected them to drop to one knee, to do her honor.

She had almost reached the entrance to the tent. Was I the only one who saw through her lies? Once outside she would be free of us. She would call her men-at-arms.

I stepped into her path. I seized her wrist and moved behind her, twisting her arm behind her back. Before she could resist me, I plucked the knife from her belt and held it to her throat.

"Bru," I said. "Go with your men and search the other tents. When you find Maara, take her to the meeting place. Send someone to let me know when she is safe."

My eyes found the young woman, the chieftains' go-between. "Tell the chieftains to arm themselves," I said. "Bru's men will find the hostage. Have your men wait with me, until word comes to us that she is free. Then let them go and find their own. We will meet you on the hill."

While the chieftains took back their weapons from Bru's men, Bru stood staring at me, uncomprehending, as if he had been turned to stone.

"Bru," I said. "Go now."

Slowly he began to move. I drew Elen away from the entrance to the tent. With Bru leading them, the men filed past me. Some shook their heads, as if they were awakening from sleep. For a moment I feared the northern chieftains would follow them, but they did as I had asked and stood quietly, waiting.

I still had hold of Elen, and I dared not release her. To my surprise she didn't resist me. The strength had gone out of her, or perhaps her strength had been all an illusion. The flaccid arm by which I held her felt like a dead man's. It made my flesh crawl.

The knife I still held against her throat. I saw that its edge had drawn a little blood. With only the slightest provocation, I would have plunged it into her heart, as she had plunged this very knife into the heart of the man for whose death she had intended that Maara pay the price. Whether or not Bru thought it through, his insult had torn the veil from my eyes, so that I could see what Maara, blinded by love and guilt, could not.

Bru seemed to think that Elen had used Maara, had either commanded her or manipulated her into doing murder for her. I knew better. I knew Maara's heart, and now I'd had a glimpse of Elen's heartlessness.

I saw what had happened as clearly as if I had been a witness. Who but his wife could come so close to him? And Maara had told me that she and Elen were both covered with his blood. Maara awakened with the knife in her hand. I knew who put it there.

Maara's escape must also have been part of Elen's plan. She convinced Maara of her guilt, then sent her from the house, making certain she had the weapon with her. She never meant for Maara to get away. She wanted her caught, in bloody clothing, in possession of the king's knife, her flight as good as a confession of her guilt. Elen wanted Maara caught and killed, so that she would escape suspicion.

Before I had time to wonder why no one had yet raised the alarm, Bru was back. He was smiling and seemed to have recovered himself.

"She's safe as houses," he told me. "It's so thick out there, no one saw a thing. We went into the tents and out of them again, making our apologies to the captains, when we woke them. She was in the last tent but one. I told her Tamras says hello."

"Thank you," I said, "with all my heart."

"Nothing to it. What's next?"

"Next we let the chieftains go."

Bru nodded. "No sign of the prisoners yet. Not that they could have seen us."

"Take the chieftains to them, then. Arm them if you can, but see if you can get them out of the camp without anyone noticing."

"What shall we do with her?" He gestured at Elen without looking at her.

"Leave her with me a while," I said.

"What for? We're done with her."

"I'm not."

"What do you have in mind?"

I wasn't sure I knew. "I'll keep her quiet until you're all well away."

Bru frowned. "Don't put yourself at risk. We'll bind and gag her. Half her men are still asleep, and I convinced the sentry to tell his captain that she left orders not to be disturbed. We'll be gone before she can make any trouble for us."

I didn't tell Bru that my mind was playing with the idea of seeing to it that Elen would never make trouble for anyone again. Instead I said, "Bru, trust me."

For a long moment, he looked at me. Then he said, "I do," and left the tent. The chieftains followed him. Elen and I were alone.

When I let go of her, she turned to face me. With one hand she rubbed her wrist, while the other rubbed her throat. When I had seized her, the head of my wolfskin fell back, and now, for the first time, she saw my face. She didn't seem surprised.

"You understand why you mustn't call out, don't you?" I said.

She nodded. She had felt my desire to spill her blood and chose not to give me an excuse.

"Sit down," I told her.

She sat down on the edge of her bed.

"Do you walk through walls," she asked, "or is there more than one spy in my house?"

"You killed him," I said.

She smiled at me. "So your lord believes."

"Do you deny it?"

She shrugged.

"It was a clever plan," I said, "but you made one mistake. You let Maara get away. If she hadn't come back, no one would have ever given the matter another thought."

"Yes," she said. "How did it happen that she came back? Was your lord behind it? Did he deliver her to me so that he would have an excuse to enter my house with his men-at-arms?"

She didn't expect an answer. She was thinking out loud, trying to understand the situation, and at the same time hoping to provoke in me some reaction that would tell her when she was getting near the truth.

She knit her brows, as if there were a stubborn knot she couldn't untangle. "Even if your lord suspected me of causing my husband's death, I'm surprised he was willing to surrender the instrument."

"She was not the instrument," I said. "She was the scapegoat."

"Did she persuade him of her innocence? No matter. Let him believe what he will. One thing I don't understand. He gave her up willingly enough. Why is he now so keen to have her back?"

Then she remembered our first encounter in the tower room.

"No," she said. "You are the one who is keen to have her back."

I wouldn't have denied it, even if I had been as accomplished a liar as she was.

"You will find her changed," Elen said.

After she dropped that bit of poison into my heart, she smiled and started in a new direction. "So. It was not your lord who sent you. Now you have given him away. What treachery has he devised, I wonder. He has too few men here to challenge me on the battlefield, but it seems there is a plan to turn my prisoners loose. If he expects them to join forces with him, he will be disappointed. They don't want another taste of what we have already served up to them. They will vanish into the mist."

I listened to her, fascinated, as I watched her entangle herself further in her web of lies.

"You had better take your prize and vanish with them," she said, "before your lord discovers what you've done."

When I made no move to leave her tent, she sighed. "I begin to find our conversation tiresome. Is there something else you want from me?"

"If it's possible for one true word to escape your lips, I want to hear the truth from you."

"You want me to admit I killed him? Of course I killed him. Are you satisfied?"

In that moment I knew what evil was -- the shadow that falls over the human heart, the unnecessary suffering, the destruction of possibility. To Elen the death of innocents meant nothing. Maara's death meant nothing. The suffering she caused meant nothing. That she had crippled Maara's soul meant nothing. The harm she had done to Maara was incalculable, yet to her it carried not one feather's weight.

What Maara believed about herself, that she brought grief to those she loved, came from Elen's lie. Because of that lie, she had tried to shut herself away from love, and when love found her, the lie led her to her sacrifice, as if her death would buy my happiness. Evil spread out from Elen like a stain, tainting, not only Maara's life, but the lives of everyone who loved her, corrupting what should have been pure and perfect.

I felt open up within me the place I had discovered for the first time in Elen's house, the place deep within my heart where hatred dwells.

"Show me," I said. "Was he lying in his bed?" I pushed her down. I pushed her hard. She lay across the bed, and I knelt over her. "Was he awake, or did you kill him in his sleep? Did you slip the knife between his ribs? Like this?" I set the knife under her left breast, over her heart. I let her feel the point, but I didn't push it in. I wanted her to see her death coming for her.

Elen showed no fear. Perhaps she felt none, so certain of her power that she could stay my hand by her will alone. She looked up at me and met my eyes.

"What was he to you?" she asked me. "He was nothing to you. You never cared for him. She is the one you care for. Go ahead. Make sure of her. Leave her nothing to come back to."

I willed my hand to strike. My hand refused me. I didn't understand what stopped me. To me Elen's death meant nothing. Her rotting corpse belonged in the privy trench. But if I killed her, I would never know. I would never know for sure. I dropped the knife and fled.

Outside Elen's tent half a dozen of Bru's men waited for me. One took my arm and drew me into the fog behind the tents. We passed through the palisade of spears without stumbling into anyone. Behind us I heard Elen's voice, summoning her men-at-arms.

Though we could see nothing but the ground a yard or two in front of us, Bru's men seemed to know where they were going. We followed a path newly made, the grass trodden down but not yet worn away. It must be the path from the tents to the place where the mighty kept the prisoners.

When we reached it, the hollow in the hills was empty. The prisoners were gone. They had left only flattened grass, some shreds of tattered clothing, broken bits of armor, and a few bloody bandages. We followed the path they had made into the hills.

Bru met us on the path. "I was worried," he said. "Are you all right? What's happening down there?"

"I don't know," I told him. "The camp is still quiet, though I heard Elen call her men to arms."