Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1) (10 page)

“Come on, girl. Home.” He thought long about that word. An unfinished cabin, one he'd never seen a week before, home? He looked at the trees around him as Kerry slowly walked back. The colors were different. The long twilight had begun and the reds and oranges of the falling sun cast a fantastical glow upon his surroundings. Home. Well, that's where his parents were, where Kerry was, where supper was. His stomach growled. “Giddyap.”

He rode to the door and dismounted, patting Kerry on the neck. Strange, father isn't back yet. He stepped inside, eyes attracted to the candle burning on the table. Astra stood motionless at the fireplace, hand on the long wooden spoon in the stew pot. Kerdae and Enda were sitting on the bench, darting glances from person to person and back down. All this Brian caught in a glance but was pulled away from by his father's tensed frame just to his left.

“What–” he said, not knowing what he was asking. Not even the fire made a sound in answer. As in a dream he took off his boots and kept moving forward. He felt his father and mother's presence burn into his consciousness but did not look. He sat across from Enda. She caught his glance: he saw tears and a red nose. He looked at the hands in his lap and waited.

Astra moved a step forward and clasped him from behind. She kissed the top of his head and then wept into his neck. Then she left him and he felt so alone. And sad, though he knew not what for. Her dress swished over to Devlin and fell silent there.

“Myra too?” she asked.

“Yes,” he choked. “All of them.”

For the second time in his life Brian saw his father cry. The clammy paw that had chilled his heart started wrenching at it in excruciating tugs. His breathing sped up. “All of them... what?”

“Dead,” Devlin said, then cried some more.

His stomach lurched. He tasted bile in his mouth. He collapsed onto his arms on the table. His mind raced, trying to accept the unacceptable. It was like shoving a log into a cupboard. It battered the cupboard, well nigh destroying it, without fitting inside. Happily minds are more flexible than cupboards or the shock would have destroyed Brian. He almost wished it would.

His breath gasped a few times then the pressure found vent through his tears. He cried out then started to sob, a steady mournful trickle, the bitter run off from his soul's leaky wound. He felt hands touching him and, oddly comforted, he was able to find solace in his tears. As if a tree could feel while it was planed into boards and liked it, for it removed—however painful—the roughness. This was a grievous reshaping.

There was not much talk that night. The next day they went for the bodies. Kerry nosed the stiffening bodies, snuffling and prodding them. Brian couldn't look at her. Devlin could hardly bring himself to make her haul her kind so they buried them, side by side, on a little hillock not far distant.

“Why did they die?” Enda asked. She had insisted on coming along.

“Sickness. Something that came on fast and hurt them from the inside. See, her eyes are still bright, but with a touch of fever or something,” Devlin answered. “Brian, don't let Kerry graze here.”

Brian looked at him. He seemed to be repeating someone else's command, not saying something of the utmost importance. He'd heard enough warnings from his father whether it was fording a stream, helping a kardja birth, or climbing a mountain. Devlin was looking all about him on the ground.

Enda nodded. “Like a poisonous plant, right?”

“Something like that,” Devlin said.

Eight

The weeks passed. Gossip flowed through the valley like fire, reawakening the legends of the Accursed and adding a new twist: the Dispossessed. It was awful bad luck to lose one's kardja. No one could expound fully the misfortune of losing a herd to two successive and different causes, though many tried. Black looks accosted Brian whenever he went to Darach: very soon he hated coming within sight of it and stayed away. It wasn't much help, for the blackest looks were on his father's face.

The merchant had left soon after. Some comment was made as to why he missed the shearing. Devlin slowly sheared Kerry and refused sale to half a dozen buyers offering top price, despite the village consensus of his bad luck, until Astra told him it was the fleece or the ring.

Brian had walked in on them arguing over it. “Just tell me, Devlin, and I will sell the ring,” Astra said. He looked at them, wondering what they would say to his disruption. They just glanced at him and continued on.

“No, no, that is yours, the only thing left of who you were, Astra, and I won't let you sell it. We'll figure something out,” Devlin said. Brian sat there and listened.

“I trust you. I know there's a way. There has to be. We may just have to give up more than we thought possible.” Astra walked over behind where Brian sat and wrapped her arms around him. “Who I was is in the past. What's important is my family.”

She looked down at Brian and took off her ring. “Take a look, son. Feel the ring, the weight of the metal, the fire in the stone. Isn't it beautiful?”

He turned the ring over in his fingers. It had been years since he remembered last holding it.

“It is famous in Avallonë. They call it the Ring of Artemis. Wars have been fought over it and it has broken many hearts. It is accounted one of the Treasures, though not one of the Gifts.” His heart beat faster. She squeezed him, leaned forward and whispered. “But beside you, my son, it is but a pretty trinket.”

She kissed him. Tears came to his eyes. All her stories rushed upon him—the throne room, flowing dresses, rivers flowing down waterfalls through the middle of the court, the look in her eyes as she told him—and she had given it all up. And for what now? A destitute, beggarly family.

Devlin stood before them. “My love and my pride,” he declared. “My son, today I give you a new name. A name chosen before your birth. A name hidden until the cloaking darkness would be cast aside.” He put his hand on Brian's collar. “A name that you will put on once you return to the land of your mother's kin. I name you Orion.” Devlin gripped his hand. “Orion.” Devlin touched his brow. “Orion.” Devlin laid his palm over his heart.

His mother released him to his father's grasp. He didn't know what to think. Orion. He liked the sound of it. It would take some getting used to, though, so for the moment he avoided what thoughts he could. “Return? Why do you say that, father?”

His father laughed. The seriousness of the moment dissipated with the sound but his earnestness remained. “The time will come when you must go. You will not always live here.”

“But I love it here.” His words sounded tinny and distant.

“Really?” his father said gently. “Your body has lived nowhere else and so would not know. But where does your heart soar when you lay beside the grazing kardja?”

“But when? And why can't we go together?”

“When the time is right, you will know,” Astra said. “I will never go back. And that is not your father's home.”

Orion lived through the next days as a dream. What they had said, earlier conversations, his new name—Orion, his lips tasted the creation of the word—throbbed in him. He thought about it as he watched his father sell Kerry's coat. He thought about it as he gathered firewood, built fires, cleaned the house, or did a dozen other chores. He thought about it as he wandered through Darach, helping Kerdae with the odd thing.

He wanted to tell Enda when he saw her but didn't want to at the same time. It felt strange and normal all at the same time. Was he Brian still, just playacting Orion? Or was Brian a fake the whole time, just the hodgepodge amalgamation of a hundred different people's expectations? It was wonderful to be given the name Orion.

He could be that young lord he dreamed of. His mother had been a princess, so why not? He stood at the brink of a cliff—waves licking at the cliff foot, the horizon far in the distance, the sensuous sea beckoning him into her unfathomable depths.

Who was he?

Orion didn't see them buy anything with the money from the fleece. He knew where they kept it hidden, along with some other saved from previous years. They didn't keep much. Unlike kardja gold didn't grow or multiply. It just sat there. It was always a time of celebration when they had enough to buy a new animal, especially in the early years before Devlin's stock became known for their quality. But gold doesn't die, Brian thought, and rued last year's purchase, one of those whose carcass lay on the side of the mountain.

One day Astra ran out of things to keep him busy and as Devlin was off finding the right piece of wood for cabin furniture, a recent fixation of his, she sent him off to Kerdae's with a “Make yourself useful.” This soon repeated itself and after a few weeks it became routine. More days than not he went to Darach, trying to avoid all but Kerdae and Enda. Sometimes he brought Kerry, sometimes not.

This time Enda was darning a hole in Kerdae's other pants. Orion liked watching her at her craft: the simple movements, yet quick and fluid, quietly making the hole disappear. It kept her green eyes occupied, too, and made silence comfortable. He heard a rush of birds and a low rumble in the distance past the village.

“What is it, Brian?” she asked. She sat leaning against a tree facing the northeast and could not see without getting up.

“I don't know.” A raven flew through the village, croaking. It circled near them and then disappeared to the north. The rumbling sound continued. All of a sudden panic gripped Brian—he'd heard something similar before. He couldn't place it until a clack of Enda's needle for some reason made him think of rain. His stomach clenched. Kardja running in terror, hooves beating on the mountainside.

“Brian, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” It wasn't kardja but horses. Like those the merchants had for their carts. But these were bigger. Each had a rider, blond-haired men in greens and browns with occasional purple or gold tassels or light shirts peeping through the robes.

“What is it?” Enda asked again.

“A whole bunch of people. Riding horses. Like soldiers.” He noted the spears in their boots and boughs—what was the word?—with the feathered little spears on their backs. His father had made him one when he was eight and he played with it for a fortnight before it broke. He hadn't asked him for another.

“Soldiers? Here?” Enda whispered.

“No, hunters, I think.” He wasn't sure, but no reason to worry her yet. He glanced at Kerry. Her ears had perked up at the distant snorting and stamping and and nostrils flared in the wind. Orion tried to figure the distance to the deer path where he was pretty sure no horse would follow. He made himself breath slowly.

Enda placed her darning in her bag. He motioned for her to stay where she was. She stood up and pressed herself against the tree.

By this time most of the cavalcade had dismounted. They reminded him of his father, only younger. He wondered why. Then he realized that they did not fear anyone, unlike the craven weavers and the superstitious herders. He hated them for it, and feared them, and wondered where his father was.

“Ho boy!” the man called out.

Orion froze. Gulping, he started walking towards them. They had stopped in front of the blacksmith shop and were calling for him, amidst yells for ale and wine. He knew Kerdae was there; that was the only thing that kept him walking forward.

“Where's the blacksmith lad? We need a horse shod. And quick.” His accent was different. The rest of the men fell silent as they looked at him walk up. He was as tall as they were though of slighter build.

Why am I thinking about his accent right now? Brian asked Orion. For that matter, why am I going towards them? Orion shushed him. These are just Anatolians. You are Orion, remember?

“This is his place, sir,” he said.

“Don't 'sir' me, fool,” the man spat, “and to think I don't know what a smithy looks like?” The other young men laughed.

“I will go for him, if it pleases you, my lord.” The words tasted like bile. But he'd heard his father say the same once, several years ago to a man he thought unfit, so Orion figured he could do it too.

The young lord looked at him closely. “The clothes of a peasant, and the tongue of a squire! This is not the game we came for, friends, but is it not gamey?” More laughs. Orion wondered if this is how all lordly people acted—one leader, the rest a herd. Kerry had more spirit than these fools. “Yes, get you off, but ho! What have we here? The maiden with sunburned locks hides from us. Come, come!”

Orion stopped walking away. The other men, dismounted with halters in their hands, joined the lord. Orion counted six, less than he had first thought.

“How coy these country rustics are! Perhaps I should teach her some of our manners?”

“Manners must be learned first.” Orion jumped, Kerdae's voice sounding right next to him. “Take Enda to your mother,” he said under his breath. “Now.”

Orion nodded and walked back to Enda. He didn't hear what the young horsemen were saying at the latest show of country entertainment. When he got to Enda his dry mouth wouldn't obey so he took her by the arm and then laid hold of Kerry's halter. They walked into the forest and then mounted, leaving the calls of the men to fall unheard on the leafy ground.

They were halfway to the cabin before Orion felt Enda relax. Her arms loosened and allowed him to breathe better and her cheek fell against his shoulder blade. He didn't say anything until he heard her make the quivering breath that usually precedes a cry.

“Enda, are you okay?” He could not have said this even two weeks ago. Why ask a question you know the answer to? Or worse, open a problem you can't fix? But he was not thinking of himself right now.

The arms tightened again. But it was a clasping tightness, not a frozen stiffness, this time. In a few moments the arms relaxed again. “Fine,” she said. Orion made a note that this was the first conversation they had had where he had said more than she had.

As if that mattered.