Chains of Gold (26 page)

“This, too, I have done to you,” he said in a faltering voice.

My silence spoke to him.

“I—do not know how to make it right.”

“There must be some way,” I whispered.

“As earth is my witness,” he said painfully, “I do not know what way.”

“Come with me,” I told him. “Come with me to Arlen. Together perhaps we will think of a way.”

“But I—Rae, I do not dare.” He shook his head wildly. “It—I am free of it for the time, all powers be praised, but at any moment it might return, and I—I may not be strong enough—”

“I think it will never again be as severe. You will conquer it more quickly each time.” I held out a hand to him. “Come. You have seen I am not afraid.”

“Rae, I must be away from you!”

“You have not hurt me. It hurts you the more.”

“Those marks on your face, no hurt?” he muttered.

“Bruises. They will soon fade. Lonn, I know it is hard, but—be brave for me, just this one more time, for Arlen and me. Please.”

All the raving and weeping had left him; he stood calm and terribly pale. “I will make my own way,” he said at last. “I will walk.”

“No. The horse is faster, and it has been long enough, Lonn; please!”

It must be hapless, being a hero, a grievous curse, thinking of oneself in that way. He had to do it for me, and I knew it as well as he did.

Slowly, step by reluctant step, he came over to me, took my proffered hand, and let himself be helped up to sit on the horse behind me.

TWENTY

He would not touch me. Even that first day, when we rode bareback—and it took us half the day to find our way back to my camp, my gear, the saddle—he would not hold onto my waist but balanced himself edgily behind me, and days to follow he clung to the cantle of the saddle, not to me. We rode fast, taking the straight way across the open grassland where the herding beasts roamed. I was filled with urgency.

“Do you think Arlen will be there?” Lonn asked on the day the mountains came in view. He spoke in a tone so low, so diffident, that I could not hate him for echoing my own fear.

“I dare not think differently,” I answered. But yet, I had been gone so long. Autumn leaves were falling.

“If he is angry,” Lonn added after a while, “it will quickly pass. He is like that.”

It was unwonted that he should have said so much. For the most part he would not speak. When we faced each other to eat he would not look at me, or if he did he would wince and glance away. The sight of my bruises hurt him, the purple marks on my face, but it seemed they excited him too, for sometimes he would get up abruptly and go off by himself. I sometimes saw a hint of that winterking splendor about him as he left. But it was never on him when he returned.

It came on him in earnest and without warning one day as we made our way across the meadowland to the mountains' feet. The sun was warm, for a blessing, and I sat drowsily in it, swaying to the gait of the horse, and did not at first pay attention when he spoke. Nor do I know what he had been thinking, that brought it on him.

“Rae—” He spoke but the single word, over my shoulder.

“What?” I murmured. Then I thought how hoarse he had sounded, how struggling, like a drowning person, and I turned in the saddle and looked. And there he sat, all afire with glory and only inches from me. I pulled Bucca to a plunging stop, and Lonn got off, fell off as if he had no strength, as if in the grip of an adversary. That passed quickly. On the instant he sprang up and rushed me.

“Rae, you will be mine!” he roared, and I eluded him easily, cantering Bucca away.

“Don't leave me!” he shouted in fright.

I stopped the horse at a safe distance and turned to watch him. Splendor—it no longer appealed to me. When he came stumbling after me I sent the horse trotting forward again as Lonn cursed me every step of his way with curses I do not care to remember. Finally his noise stopped and I looked at him again. There he stood, still and ordinary, with tears on his face, and I went back to him and offered him my hand.

“That was very well done,” I said when he sat behind me once more. I should not have spoken; he swung his head as if the words hurt him. How I pitied him, for all he was a dead hero gone sinister. He was but a youth, after all, a comely youth with freckles on his cheekbones and brown unruly hair, and he bore a heavy burden.

The burden grew lighter as we went on, for when we reached the terraces beneath the rocking stones he walked, and he no longer had to be so close to me. Sturdy though Bucca was, he could hardly be expected to carry the two of us on that terrain.… I did not entirely trust Lonn and would not let him take the horse alone or lag too far behind me. His steps slowed, and my heart clamored with impatience as we grew closer.

Some few golden leaves still hung on our small trees at the entry of the haven. The day stood at noon, the sun suspended in blue-gray sky, and I stopped Bucca, sat as breathless as the sun, looking at the few golden leaves.

“Go on,” Lonn said. “Take your horse and go. I will follow.”

“Lonn.…” I shifted my stare to him, studied him warily.

“I will, you know I will! I will be after you within a few minutes. I cannot do otherwise.”

So I rode forward, fearing that Lonn would turn back and knowing in a deeper way that he would follow for the sake of his honor. Just as I feared that Arlen would not be awaiting me, and knew in a deeper way that he would, for the sake of his love.…

Soft grass, tilled fields fallow for winter. Smoke wisping from the chimney of the small stone cot—and a man splitting kindling near the door.…

He looked so strange, almost as if I had never seen him before, and yet he had not changed, he was Arlen still, russet hair, broad shoulders, deft and gentle hands, and—turning, staring at me as if I were a stranger.

I stopped Bucca, suddenly shy, awkward, unsure of my welcome. If he were angry with me—but he dropped his ax with a clatter and came running toward me, and all doubts left me at the sight of his beloved face. I slipped down from Bucca, took one step to meet him—and I was in his arms.

“Rae,” he whispered. “Ai, my Rae—” and I was crying. “Are you all right?” he was asking, but of course I was all right, and for a moment we babbled at each other, neither answering the other's questions.

“You've managed?” I said anxiously. “You've eaten, tended the animals, the garden—”

But of course he had managed. He loosened his clasp on me somewhat, studied me at arm's length. “So my swallow has returned,” he murmured, smiling, lifting a sleeve to brush away tears.

“Goddess be willing, I shall never have to leave you again.”

“That is as it comes,” he said soberly. “Did you find what you were searching for?”

“I—am not sure.” I turned to look behind me. Lonn should be coming soon.

“You found something, I can see that. There is a newness about you, a—sureness.”

I gazed at him, at his quiet, open face. “I have found a true love,” I told him, “awaiting me here.”

He moved his mouth wordlessly.

“If you are no hero, Arlen,” I told him, “then there ought to be a title of higher honor.”

Behind me Lonn came walking into view.

I saw Arlen staring past me, then turned to look myself. Lonn walked slowly, very slowly, as if every step were weighted with felon's chains, but steadily onward, toward us. I could only begin to imagine what courage that march was costing him.

“Lonn?” Arlen breathed, incredulous. “But how can that be?”

Lonn forced himself closer, forced himself to raise eyes filled with shame, to meet Arlen's astonished gaze.

“You are dead. I—slew you. I saw your severed head.”

Lonn reached us, and with a groan he sank to the ground at Arlen's feet in posture of supplication. “I have wronged you,” he said. His voice came out as hollowly as if it sounded from a grave.

“Lonn! I—get up.” Arlen grasped Lonn's left arm and tugged him bodily to his feet, lifted Lonn's chin with one hand; there was about Arl that air of reckless daring, abandonment of reason, that he had worn once at an esker. “I don't care,” he said fiercely, staring into Lonn's anguished eyes. “I don't understand, and I don't care what you have done; there is nothing that can stop me from being your friend. Not even death, it seems. Nothing.” And he kissed him on the cheek and embraced him.

“He looks faint,” I said. “Take him inside. I will tend to Bucca.”

Brothers, I thought, taking the horse to the barn. There was another horse in there, a bay. Arlen must have bought it for want of Bucca while I was gone. Brothers, not merely friends, but brothers, twins. I had told Lonn nothing of Erta, nor would I tell him now, nor would I tell Arlen. The two of them bore trouble enough.

I went inside, and there was honey and porridge to eat, and the three of us talked for a fortnight.

Understanding always comes about piecemeal after long separations. It was well into the evening before Arlen understood what had happened to bring Lonn before him in living flesh, and farther into the night before I learned what he had done when I left.

“I didn't think at first that you could be gone more than a day,” he explained with a wry look. “Where I believed you were to go in that time, I am sure I do not know, but I felt certain you would be back by suppertime.”

“She went to the Afterworld,” Lonn put in.

Arlen stared blankly, for he could not yet encompass that. “And then,” he continued, “I thought you would be back the next day, and the next. And when a week had passed in that way, it was too late for me to try to follow, even if I had known which way you had gone. And there were the crops to be tended to, if we were not to starve in the winter. I could only trust you would be back before winter.”

“As I am,” I remarked.

“Yes. Well, but I was not always reasonable. There came a time near midsummer when I cared nothing for crops or the care of animals and not much for you, either, should you return while I was gone, and I took Teague—”

I raised my brows at him.

“The new horse. He is hard-mouthed and obstinate, but steady.”

“You took Teague,” I prompted.

“And went in haste to see Briony. I hoped you had perhaps had the sense to go to him. He loves you, and he would help you in any way he could.”

I gaped at him. “He told you that?” I gasped.

“No indeed. But one could always see it when he was near you. He even cherished you so far as to save me.” Arlen smiled crookedly. “A most remarkable mandrake. And when I reached him and talked of searching for you, he told me not to be a fool, to go back home and await you or I would destroy your faith in me.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes. So I did. And when I returned, the beans were still hanging on the vine as tender and green as when I had left them.” Arlen gave a bemused shrug. “So I took that as a sign of the blessing of the goddess and went back to work.”

It was very late. Lonn got up. “I will go sleep in the barn,” he said, “on the hay, with the horses.”

“No need,” Arlen protested. “We can spread a pallet for you here, before the fire.”

“I have no wish to lie so near your bed. Arlen, have mercy on a poor stray from the beyond, and loan me a blanket.”

I found him two, and he went out. And presently Arlen and I celebrated our love.

Even so, it was the next day before Arlen understood fully where I had been, the dangers I had faced and why, and that indeed, yes, it had truly been necessary, or at least so it had seemed at the time. His mind balked at the thought that he could have lost me to Rahv or the Gwyneda or the Naga.

“If only that fool Briony had told me,” he said hotly, “I could have come after you, saved you—”

“I had to save myself,” I said. Though admittedly Ophid had been there. And I had been a dolt to let Rahv take me to start with.

Perhaps Arlen still did not understand, but he accepted. “Well,” he said ruefully, “I should have known or guessed that you had gone after your babe.”

“How were you to comprehend, you or Lonn either? You two were reared in a place where each woman sacrificed her child.”

I had glossed over the matter of Erta, her reason for freeing me, and there was so much to think about they had not remarked it.

“For all I know,” Lonn added softly, “my own mother helped to kill me.”

I said nothing. She had. But he had her courage, he to think it and she to acknowledge it. Now she lay dead and gone beyond.

“I thought of that, there on the tree,” Lonn added with difficulty. “I wondered which one of those white ghouls might be my mother. It makes it hard, the anger.…”

It was a week and more before we heard most of the story from him, the tale of his own experience of death: wanderings full of fear and hatred, terror and pain. He would not speak much in front of me, for my presence made him taut and unhappy; indeed, he was plainly unhappy most of the time he was with us. But sometimes, as I hummed and puttered about the hearth and scullery, cooking or clearing away the summer's worth of mess Arlen had left me, he would forget me for a while, and he would talk more freely to Arlen as they sat at the table.

“I hated you,” he said to Arlen once, painfully. “I wanted you to die, there at the esker, and I made no move to save you, only Rae. And I wanted you to die at the soddy.”

Arlen sat staring at him, surprised but not angry. “I must have known, in a way,” he said finally. “I bade you go.”

“And I went because I felt miserable, even then.”

“I had been near to death myself, so I knew. But then I forgot.”

“Yes, you generous fool.… All that I did, the food, the treasure, all for Rae, and you were merely with her—and then, you dolt, you had to go and name your firstborn after me.”