The Lair of Bones (32 page)

“Chemoise,” her aunt said. “This is Dearborn Hawks, our neighbor.”

“How do you do?” Chemoise asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Dearborn replied. He was staring at her, as if her aunt didn't exist, as if he wanted to speak to Chemoise but couldn't find the words. By now, he couldn't help knowing all about her, at least the rumors that her uncle had spread. “Uh,” he offered lamely, “I, uh, I promised Eber that I'd come early, to help clean up.”

“Well then,” Aunt Constance said, “I'll let you two get to it, while I go do some baking.”

There was a clumsy silence as her footsteps echoed out the door. Dear-born stood for a long minute. Chemoise knew what this was. She was going to have a babe in seven months, and her aunt and uncle were trying to find the lad a father.

“So,” Dearborn finally managed. “You're new in the village?”

“You haven't seen me before, have you?” Chemoise asked.

“I think I'd remember if I had,” Dearborn said, smiling appreciatively. “In fact I'm sure I'd remember. I, uh, I live across the valley, in the old manor.”

Chemoise had seen it, a dilapidated building that had been old two hundred years ago. The Hawks family was large, ten children at least, from what Chemoise could see. Dearborn had two brothers who were close to his age. “I've seen you,” she said. “You're the oldest?”

“Aye,” Dearborn said. “And the best looking. And the hardest worker, and the cleverest, and funniest.”

“Ahah. That must give you a lot of comfort. Say something clever.”

The young man looked as if he wanted to bite his own tongue off for making a fool of himself. He looked up at the ceiling and said at last, “A
true friend is one that will bear your burdens when you are down, and bear your secrets to the grave. And no lesser kind of friend is worthy of the name.”

It wasn't exactly clever or funny. It was more sincere. “Are you implying that I have burdens that need to be borne, or secrets that need to be kept?”

“No,” he answered. “It was just a thought.”

Chemoise felt sorry for the cold welcome she'd given him. He knew that she carried a child, and had probably guessed the rest. Yet he'd come acting as if he'd elbowed his brothers aside to be the first to meet her. “Well then,” she said, “let's see if you're as industrious as you are clever.”

With that they pulled up their sleeves and went at it. Dearborn began rolling the old wine barrels from the back in order to make room for the party. Some barrels had ferrin families living in them, and as soon as he began to roll them out, the ferrin would whistle in terror and come bolting out of one hole or another, diving into the tunnels that they'd dug into the winery walls.

Others barrels were used by the ferrin for food storage—and thus held a bit of wheat stripped from the fields, or dried cherries, or rubbery turnips plundered from gardens. Two barrels had been used as graveyards, and were filled with old ferrin bones.

All of the barrels stank of musk.

They were halfway done pulling the barrels out when Aunt Constance brought some tea.

“I think we should burn these barrels,” Chemoise said. “The ferrin have peed all over them.”

But Aunt Constance would have none of it. “No, we'll put them back tomorrow. The ferrin would starve without their food stores, and there are mothers living there, with wee babes to feed.” She looked pointedly at Chemoise's stomach. Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance had only managed to have one daughter of their own, and she had died in childhood, so she was perhaps a bit tenderhearted when it came to children. “Ferrin don't eat much, you know—a few cherries that fall from the trees, mice and rats and sparrow eggs, things like that. The rats down in the wine cellar were terrible until Eber brought some ferrin up from Castle Sylvarresta. Ferrin don't like wine, you know. Now we always put a load of hay in the winery come fall, to help keep their nests warm through the winter.”

“You brought them here?” Erin asked. “I thought they were wild.”

“Down south, in the Dunnwood, they live wild,” Constance said. “But
not up here, dear. It's too cold in these mountains come winter.”

In southern Heredon, the wild ferrin were enough of a nuisance that the tax collector would pay two copper doves for every ferrin hide you brought in. Many a poor family avoided taxes altogether by collecting the bounties. But Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance didn't seem the kind to want to slaughter a whole village full of ferrin for a few coins.

“All right, then,” Chemoise promised, “we'll work around them.”

So Chemoise and Dearborn spent the morning clearing out the room and sweeping the dust from the floor. The dust cloud raised a stink, and the ferrin whistled in outrage and kept poking their heads from their burrows to let the big folk know about it.

Chemoise found that she and Dearborn worked well together. He was a farmer, used to guiding a plow, and chopping down trees for firewood, and shoeing his own horse. He was strong enough to move the heaviest barrel, and graceful enough to wrangle it around without stepping on Constance's feet while she swept and mopped.

Indeed, as they worked, she found that it almost became a dance. Dear-born would wrestle the barrels while she swept. She found herself continu-ally drawing close to him, and sometimes she'd look up to find that he was gazing into her eyes, but they never touched. Instead, he'd merely smile shyly and look away.

Sometimes he tried to make small talk, joking and asking about her “husband.” She told him how Sergeant Dreys had died at the hand of an assassin after only two months of marriage.

She watched Dearborn withdraw at the news. He hadn't really wanted to know about her “supposed” husband. Instead, he wanted to know how he fared against his memory, and he knew that it was not an equal contest. Dreys had been in the King's Guard, and had made sergeant by age nine-teen. He'd have been a captain by forty, and would most likely have been retired as a baron of the realm. He would have had title and lands, and serfs working his fields.

Hawks could not compete against that. He was the oldest of ten, and had the birthright of his family. But it wouldn't fetch him much in the long run. His father was a farmer and a landowner, almost as wealthy as Chemoise's Uncle Eber, but once the farm was split among the six boys, they wouldn't all be able to make a living on it.

Hawks had little to offer a woman. So he worked. He tried to make light of it, but she soon saw the sweat staining the back of his tunic. Hawks took most of the barrels outside, and since Constance had said that she would want them replaced later, he piled them on each side of the path, and then, with the help of old shelving boards, stacked them overhead, making a sort of arch that the townsfolk could walk under. There were at least two hundred old barrels.

By noon, the tunnels were nearly cleared, and the smell of mold and dust and ferrin had receded, but there was still much to do. Both Chemoise and Dearborn just went outside and sat down, too tired to continue.

Downhill just a tad, her uncle's manor squatted. The foundation was stone. The mud and wattle on the sides had all been whitewashed, and a new load of thatch was on the roof. A pair of geese fed in the garden out back, and her uncle's old plow horse stared at her dolefully from the corral behind the barn.

It was a good life here in Ableton. Everything a person needed seemed to be close at hand. Her uncle had been living here, eating from his own garden from the time that he was born forty-six years ago. If Chemoise needed a new dress, Mrs. Wycutt would sell her a bolt of cloth, or sew it for her for a couple of copper doves. If her uncle needed a new plow, the smith could have it done in a week. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone watched out for everyone else.

Chemoise had thought that this would be a fine place to raise her son. She knew the child would be a boy, for she'd loved Sergeant Dreys so much that when he died, she'd lured his spirit back into her womb.

Now she felt apprehensive. The sky had gotten heavier since dawn. The haze was as thick as cream, and Chemoise could feel an electric thrill in the air. “There's going to be a storm tonight,” Hawks said. “I'll bet that's what the Earth King was warning us about—grand storm, with lots of wind. I'll bet it knocks whole houses down.”

“I hope not,” Chemoise said. “I'd hate to see my uncle's house knocked down.”

“Stay close to me,” the Hawks boy offered, “whatever it is.”

She almost laughed, but she could see sincerity in his eyes. He was offering to protect her, and no matter how melodramatic his appeal, she would not mock him for it.

Aunt Constance came out to check on the situation. She inspected the rooms, and said, “Give me an hour.”

She came back half an hour later with twenty women from the village. They finished pulling out the last of the barrels, and in the back of the storeroom found three old kegs that still held wine. Uncle Eber was called upon to test it. The first barrel had gone to vinegar, but after a sip from the second, he declared, “Why, this is worth a king's ransom! Tonight we will have a party indeed!”

So the women swept and mopped the cobblestones, and strewed the floors with fresh rushes and pennyroyal to clear the air. The old door had rotted half away, so the miller, who was also the closest thing the village had to a carpenter, came and put up new posterns of fresh oak, and bolted together some planks to make a door so thick it would keep out a cavalry charge. The villagers brought in bedrolls and tables and chairs, and slowly the party room began to take form.

Then folks began to bring the food, as fine a feast as was ever served on Hostenfest. One table was loaded with plates of eels, just fished from the River Wye, and a pair of roast geese, and a suckling pig stuffed with baked apples and cinnamon. Another table was heaped with breads—hazelnut rolls, and butter muffins, and loaves of dark rye with wild honey. A third table was reserved for bowls full of salads made with fresh greens from the garden and the woods, sweetened with rose petals. It also held fruits—grapes just plucked from the vines, and ripe woodpears—along with carrots, beans, and buttered turnips. The last table was for desserts: chestnut pudding, nutmeg custards, and blackberry cobbler—all to be washed down with the finest wine that anyone in the village had tasted in years.

Aunt Constance was mindful of the ferrin, and she made sure that plates were set near the mouth of every burrow, with a few meaty bones on them, and plenty to drink. The growls of outrage that had come from the ferrin all day turned into whistles of delight, and often one of the little rat-folk would rush out of the warrens and snatch a bit of bread or some other delicacy, then race back into its warren.

Thus, the party began two hours before sunset. It was a strange affair. There were smiles and genuine laughs when a good joke was told. Some boys played lutes and drums, and Chemoise danced with Dearborn after the tables were cleared.

But behind the smiles there was worry. What would come tonight? Why had the Earth King warned everyone in all of Heredon to hide? Was a war coming? Would the ghosts of the Dunnwood be riding over the land?

It didn't take long to find out.

Just before sunset, a strange wind began to blow from the east. One of the boys who had been keeping watch at the door, atop the pile of barrels, yelled, “Come see this!”

Everyone rushed outside. The sky was covered with lowering greenish bruised clouds to the east, a strange and sickly haze that baffled the eye. Miles to the west, a wall of darkness approached. Blowing dust and chaff blotted out the sun. The wind began to rage, a boisterous gale circling this way and that, as if to announce a rising storm.

Veiled lightning crashed in the distance, grumbling again and again, as if the sky cursed in tongues of thunder.

Chemoise's heart froze. “I've only heard such a sound once before—at Castle Sylvarresta. It sounds like a Darkling Glory is coming!”

19

Inkarran politics are subtle and hard for an outsider to grasp. The royal families are at war on so many levels that only one thing is sure: for every friend you make in Inkarra, you will make a dozen enemies.