Return to Alastair (33 page)

“Tahn! Please—why are you punishing yourself?”

The words cut through searing pain, and he felt her touch again. She’d asked him the question almost a year ago, but still it hung in the air unanswered.

“I love you,” she said, and he knew she was speaking to him now, whispering those words through tears.

No,
he wanted to tell her
. Don’t love me. I’m not worthy of you. Don’t you see? Don’t you realize what I am?

He felt her hand on his face, and he heard her words coming to him again across time. “Jesus counted you worthy of eternal life. Of his love! How could you not be worthy of mine?”

Oh, Netta.

He knew he had not spoken aloud, and yet he had dared to open his heart to say her name. He felt his own tears striking against the blackness, and for a moment he thought he saw the tiny shimmering light.

Father, forgive me! I have killed! I am a man of blood.

And the voice spoke again from all around him. “I have forgiven you. The moment you asked. When you were beside the stream, despairing of life, I spoke into your heart and you received me. I washed you clean from that moment on. I cannot see the blood that plagues you now. But I cannot free you, I cannot give you more, until you have forgiven yourself.”

He felt Netta so tenderly beside him, whispering something in his ear. The swirling grayness tried to brush the sound away, but still he heard it. “He loves you dearly. The only blood he sees now is that of his own Son, and it gives you all the favor of heaven.”

The blood dripped from his hands; the sword fell away. The cold, hard hands that had held him began to fade. Even the rope was loosening. With a gasp of effort, he strained for another breath. It did not come easy.

The river of blood beneath him seemed to rise, and the rope was slipping away. With horror he realized that without the rope, the chains, and the cruel hands that held him, he would fall into that river and be washed away.

Why? Oh, God, I thought you had given me life.

He looked up into the shimmering light. The blackness was fading, and he saw another valley, peaceful and bright. But the river filled it, and he was afraid. As the rope slipped away, he reached out for it. Grasping at it, he could barely keep his head above the rising waves. Blood. Washing over him. Through him.

“I am yours,” he whispered toward the sky. “I am your child.”

“It’s all right, Tahn,” he heard Netta’s voice telling him. “Breathe. God give you peace.”

“Trust me,” the all-encompassing voice spoke to his heart. “I have made you clean.”

With his eyes on the light, Tahn finally understood.
I have asked you to receive me. But Lord, it is done. Now help me to receive.

He felt the river washing over him, the blood rising higher, filling the valley as far as the eye could see. “I will trust you,” he whispered and then let go of the rope that held his head above. He could feel himself floating, falling. He remembered his mother’s kiss, his sister’s embrace. And God’s hand that had reached to him in the midst of torment.

“Breathe,” Netta had said. “God give you peace.”

He breathed in the blood of the river, and it was clear and clean and light as air. “God—God, thank you. I am clean.”

He felt the coolness, the wetness on his tongue, and suddenly realized that someone held him again. Someone was giving him drink, and it felt like the rushing river, quenching the fires inside him. He tried to open his eyes and wasn’t sure whether he’d succeeded.

Netta was there. It must be a dream. Lucas held him. Tiarra stood nearby with pain in her eyes.

“No, sister,” he tried to tell her. “Don’t weep. God’s river holds me.”

Netta leaned and kissed him. He felt her tears brush his face. She could not be here. It was only a dream. But he could see the simple room around him, the dangling herbs, the woman and her baby standing near. And Tobas, friend of the Triletts, was here too. He was the one who had ridden on the horse of his priest through the misguided crowd at Onath, to the cage-wagon to bring a word of hope.

“The Lord look down on us this day,”
he had said.
“The Lord have mercy on his soul.”

Tahn closed his eyes, soaking in the strange coolness that he felt.

“Can you drink more, Tahn?” Lucas asked. “Please.

Try.”

He opened his eyes again and looked around him at the faces. No one was shouting. No one was laughing. And the only tears were small and silent, springing from eyes of hope.

“Netta . . .”

He tried to lift his hand to her but couldn’t for the weakness. Instead, she leaned and kissed him again. Marc Toddin burst through the door behind her, and Tahn realized they were all in Alastair. This was no dream. Netta had come here to be at his side.

He might have protested in fear for her. But God’s words still rested on his heart. “Trust me.”

“Yes,” he said in answer, and received what more he could from the cup in Lucas’s hand. “Thank you,” he whispered, but he wasn’t sure if anyone could hear him. A peaceful weariness washed over him, and he closed his eyes, letting the river carry him away.

25

H
e was gone, lady,” the healer woman spoke softly with a shake of her head. “His breath was gone. I thought it was done.”

Netta did not answer. The heaviness was just now lifting. The shock of seeing Tahn this way had taken her breath as soon as she stepped through the door.
Thank God,
she repeated over and over in her heart.
Thank God he’s alive.

A few feet away, a young woman was staring at her. With Tahn’s hair and haunted eyes, she was his sister, there could be no doubt. Netta wanted to say something of peace, to make some gesture between them, but she couldn’t find the words. So she only reached out and took the girl’s hand in her own.

“It was God’s providence that you’ve come,” the man called Lucas told her.

She turned her eyes again to Tahn on the bed. He lay so still, but she was not afraid for him now. His breaths were good. His color was already better.

“Tell me,” she said to no one in particular. “Everything.”

The hand in hers shook and pulled away. “It’s my fault,”the girl cried.

Netta quickly spoke words of comfort. “It’s all right now. He’ll be all right.”

She didn’t know what had happened to turn this girl’s heart to favor her brother, but Netta knew that it was so. She’d known it as soon as she came in, that the fear in those eyes was for him. And it made Netta love the girl, no matter what she had been taught about him or what she may have done. She reached forward and took Tiarra in her arms. The girl shook and sunk away in sobs.

“It’s all right,” Netta told her again.

“He was dead.”

“But he breathes. Peace. He’ll be all right.”

Slowly, Tiarra nodded. “You don’t know what I did to him.”

“Little sister,” Lucas said quickly. “All is forgiven. He walked to the post willing. And it was not by your hand.”

The post?
Netta tensed inside. “A whipping post?” Her eyes filled with tears.
Oh, not more stripes, torn across the old!

Lucas nodded. “The fever came on him after,” he explained. “He seemed strong until then.”

Oh, Alastair!
Netta lamented.
City of horrors! May God judge you!

“I’m so sorry,” Tiarra was telling her. “I know you love him. I can see that you do. And I didn’t mean for him to be hurt—”

“Did they do this . . . because of your mother?” Netta saw the weight of uncertainty in the young woman’s eyes.

“They did it because of me,” she answered. “Because I tried to steal my mother’s necklace.” She reached beneath folds of fabric to the pocket of her ragged skirt and pulled out a box. “He went and bought it back for me. But I think it should be his. And yours.”

She put the box in Netta’s hands. But Netta only looked at this dark-eyed girl who seemed to have such an aching heart. “It was your mother’s. If Tahn wants you to have it, who am I to say otherwise?”

“Look at it,” Lucas prompted.

She glanced at him in surprise and then obediently opened the box. The beautiful emerald shone up at her even in the dim light. Set in gold and trimmed with diamonds, it was a rich piece, and no one else in this room could possibly have known its significance as well as Netta did. It was the Trent jewel, symbol of their title and position, passed down through generations and worn with pride by the wives of barons and the wives of sons destined to become barons.

She knew because she had one like it, passed down through her own noble house and given to her only because she had no living brother. If this was Karra Loble’s, it was not such a surprise that she’d been murdered. Naysius Trent himself may have longed to kill her. Because unless she had stolen it, it could only mean that for some reason their father had chosen to exclude the adopted son and pass his inheritance along to his daughter and her descendants.

She looked over at Tahn, suddenly shaking. She had loved him as a common man. He had won her heart as an exmercenary, an ex-killer to whom the mercy of God meant everything. She knew he would not want what this necklace represented. He wouldn’t want it to matter. She almost pushed it away, but then she remembered the opening it would surely have in back. Each new generation could place a new treasure within. Carefully, she lifted the jewel in her hand and opened the locket. Curls of hair were all it held. Baby’s hair, black as midnight.

“She must have loved her children,” Lucas said softly.

Netta nodded. “Yes. I’m sure she did.” She replaced the necklace carefully and closed the box. “I can’t accept it,” she told Tiarra. “I have one of my own. It is yours.”

Tiarra only stared at the lady in front of her. Netta Trilett. She couldn’t take her eyes away. The woman was beautiful and wore the most beautiful clothes she had ever seen in her life. Only a thin gold chain decorated her neck now, but Tiarra could imagine her to have many lovely necklaces at her rich home in Onath. This one surely meant nothing at all to someone born so extraordinarily privileged.

She couldn’t help it. Her eyes studied every inch of the lady’s dark blue riding gown. And she had never seen a lady’s boot before. Slender and shined. She wondered how her own feet would feel in something like that.

But even more, she wondered what favor of God her brother had won that someone like this would love him so greatly. When the lady first came through the door with Lucas and her guardsman, when she first saw Tahn, she had looked so scared, so overwhelmingly stricken, as though her heart would fall away into a million pieces. Mikal Ovny had never cared so much about Tiarra. What she saw in his eyes had never been anything like what she was seeing now as Netta Trilett looked at Tahn.

Why had he left her side? Why was Alastair so important to him that he would ever leave a prize like this? She couldn’t imagine. Alastair was nothing but a wicked town of evil memories. Why had he come?

“Your father is writing his warning to be sent to the baron,” Marc Toddin was telling the lady. “He has a way with words. I daresay Trent soldiers will not trouble us again.”

“At least not now,” Netta said with a sigh. “What of the bandits? Do you know?”

“This is too much for them. They like to bully unarmed travelers and use their numbers to advantage. They’ve gone. They will still be trouble on the roads, I expect, but not to us here so long as your father’s men stand at watch.”

“Where is my father?”

“He and Lorne and others of his men were with the priest when I left them. They will seal and send the message by the hand of Lionell Trent’s captain. They will be here shortly.”

“Does he know yet that I’m here?”

Toddin looked surprised. “I didn’t think to tell him. When Lucas and I saw you arrive, we assumed he knew you followed him.”

Netta nodded and glanced from him to Lucas. “I thank you. Both of you, for standing by your friend. You’ve shown the depth of your hearts.”

Lucas said nothing, only returned Tahn’s sword to its place against the wall. But Toddin answered her with solemn expression. “I’d stand with him again. And it wouldn’t much matter what we faced. But my hope is you’ll keep him at Onath so occupied at peace that he’ll forget the world outside. Maybe he can live a long time if you do.”

“I hope to see him grow old with me,” Netta agreed. “But it seems there is more meaning than that to your words.”

Toddin sighed. “I mean he can’t see a soul burned but that he put himself in the fire to push them out. It’s more than he ought to bear. But maybe you’ll touch his heart concerning that. It could save his life.”

“Thank you,” Netta said softly. “I will remember your words.”

Toddin was ready to find his brother among Benn Trilett’s men and return to their families. It was with some sadness that Netta bid him farewell, thinking that Tahn might have wanted to speak to him again were he awake. Lucas went out with him, but he would return, he said, with Lorne and Lord Trilett.

Tahn stirred enough to sip from Anain’s cup again, but he was not awake long enough to speak to them. Netta watched the healer woman dab his forehead with a damp cloth. He rolled toward his stomach, and the old woman lifted the bedcovers to check the wounds on his back. Netta’s stomach tightened to see the sore welts and broken skin. She could tell that Tiarra was just as troubled, and she reached to touch the young woman’s hand again.

Anain glanced her way. “We are honored to have you in our house, Lady Trilett. And your father, when he comes. You grace us.”

“You have had the higher honor to care for this man,” Netta told her. “We are deeply grateful and will happily repay you.”

“Strange, your opinion of him,” Anain remarked. “It is beyond my heart to understand.”

“There is more to my brother than what Alastair has taught,” Tiarra told her abruptly. But the old woman did not answer, only turned away solemnly.

Netta wanted to ask the girl about the accusations, about their mother and what had happened so long ago. She wasn’t sure she should speak of it now. She wasn’t sure of the response she might get. But to her surprise, Tiarra spoke of it first.