Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga) Page 18

They crested a rise, and Laine hesitated there. Ricasso stopped with no cue from Ehren, having grown used to the ways of their own little caravan, and it was only Shette who was taken by surprise. Ehren heard her muffled comment— a word she wasn't supposed to use, he was sure— and after a moment she joined Laine in the widened path.

  "Home," he said to her. "Always gotta take a minute to look at it, Shette."

  "I've seen you," she said, as they both looked down at the yard and the little log house built into the hill behind stacked split rails. It had one story in back and two in front, with the front door on the second floor by way of a front porch on stilts. The lower floor had a big solid door, securely barred from the outside.

  There was little extra décor— no flower plots, no ornamentation, just a large vegetable garden to the side and an air of neatness and care. But the as they emerged from the copse at the crest, they were surrounded by waist-high field flowers along the path, and swallows swooping in over the fields, and it seemed more than enough.

  Laine looked back at Ehren and grinned. Then he started them moving again, down the hill and into the yard. They hadn't reached the weighted gate before Ehren heard the distant, commanding bark of a herding dog and the rustle of a horse in the trees behind the house. About the time a tall man on a small, Nell-like horse emerged from the trees, traveling recklessly down the sharp pitch of the slope, the door on the upper level of the house opened and a woman ran out.

  "We're home!" Laine called unnecessarily, and winked at Shette, who dropped Nell's halter rope and shoved through the gate to meet the woman as she came down the stairs. They embraced in a solid hug as the man's pony scrambled to a stop in front of Laine. "Da," Laine said, and the grin still showed in his voice.

  Ehren could only stare at the man. Benlan.

  But not. Not at all.

  Dannel dismounted and met his son with a brief if crushing hug. "You're late," he said, as they parted. But he was looking at Ehren.

  "We had some trouble," Laine told him. "You're not going to believe some of it... but let me tell you now— for once, Shette won't be exaggerating."

  Ehren still held the man's gaze over Laine's shoulder. "My name is Ehren," he said. "I met Laine on the caravan route."

  "On the route?" Dannel said, his voice even but his expression unwelcoming; he glanced at his son.

  "We had some trouble," Laine repeated. "Ehren was badly hurt... he needs a place to heal." Laine pitched his voice as a request…one growing less certain by the moment.

  "If he's your friend, and he's hurt, of course he may stay until he's able to travel easily." The words were formal, and if they were grudging, it didn't show. But Dannel's eyes never left Ehren's, even as Laine cast his gaze back and forth between the two of them, his expression puzzled with the growing tension.

  Dannel, it was clear, knew he'd been found.

  ~~~~~

  It took both of them to get Ehren dismounted. Jenorah came down, then, her arm still over Shette's shoulder— looking like an older version of Shette, though age had done little but pad her frame and turn her black hair silver. Dannel introduced her as Jenny and himself as Dan.

  But Ehren discovered that his feet weren't exactly firmly on the ground. He held Shaffron while Laine pulled the packs off, and then, too much in the sun and too long in the saddle, he wavered. Laine caught him up with a grunt and Dannel came up to take his other side, and Ehren had the merest impression of dragging his feet up wooden stairs and into a room that was cool and shaded and smelled of spicy wood. He fell instantly asleep, with Shette's voice in his ear urging him to drink the drugged wine.

  It was waiting there for him on the small bedside table when he woke. A table carefully crafted, rubbed with an oil that brought out the beauty of the grain and made with the same painstaking skill that characterized the rest of the solid little room.

  A room Dannel had made. Benlan's older brother. It didn't yet seem real.

  The table, on the other hand, was definitely real. And so was the sweat dried on his body, and the smell of the clothes he'd worn since he was hurt.

  A sound alerted him to the arrival of some at the door, but the figure within its rectangle of light was shadowed to obscurity. Too tall and rangy to be Laine, too familiar to be anyone but Benlan's brother. Briefly, Ehren rested his hand over the ring on his chest; the thing was beside itself with excitement.

  Dannel entered the room, coming right up to the bed; he leaned over Ehren and opened the shutters at the small, unglazed window. Quiet light flooded the room. He retreated to sit on the chest on the short wall opposite the foot of the bed. From there he watched Ehren for a time; Ehren's honor feather in his hand. At last, he said, "My son trusts you."

  Ehren didn't answer the unspoken question. Are you about to betray that trust? He said instead, "Your brother Benlan was my liege... and my friend."

  Dannel absorbed that. "But Benlan didn't send you here."

  "No." Ehren drew himself up in the bed. He sat against the wall and brought his good knee up, resting his elbow on it. "Benlan..."

  "Is dead. Yes, I know. And his son rules in his stead."

  "More or less," Ehren said, his mouth crooked in a humorless smile. "He didn't send me, either."

  "Who did?" Dannel said. Blunt words, untempered.

  "Varien."

  Dannel straightened. "Since when does Varien order the king's men about?"

  "Since recently, it seems." In Dannel, Ehren saw features were quieter than Benlan's had been wont to be, more contemplative. His hair had greyed from brown, and his eyes were a lighter shade of Laine's blue eye. Ehren thought he saw the strong texture of Laine's hair, and perhaps the slant of jaw, but it was no wonder he hadn't immediately recognized Laine as being born of Benlan's line— all his other features belonged to Jenorah. "Laine doesn't know, does he?"

  "Neither of them have been told. Nothing could come of it but trouble— and Jenny and I had no wish to be found. "

  "You've done well with that, for good and long."

  "But no longer," Dannel said heavily. "Isn't that right?"

  Ehren shook his head once, for some reason not ready to answer that— though three days before he'd thought his answer was an inevitable yes. "I don't understand how no one ever realized... "

  "You think someone should have put Dan and Jenny together with the lost royal lovers?" Dannel asked, somehow seeing humor in the question. "Ehren, the people in this valley…half of us have escaped our past in this place. We all respect that. It's certainly possible that someone knows who we are, although we traveled the Trade Road for years before we settled down here. But if anyone does know, they simply don't care. I raise quality hill cattle and provide half the meat and leather the valley uses. That's what they care about."

  "I'm surprised Laine never put it together for himself."

  "What makes you think he's heard about Dannel and Jenorah in the first place?" Dannel asked. "He never went outside this valley until three years ago. As far as I know, he's never even heard the whole story."

  "He knows you ran away together through the Barrenlands. He knows your families were against your pairing," Ehren countered.

  Dannel blinked. "The Dreams," he said, looking a little stunned. "I'm surprised he told you those things."

  "He didn't. He thought I was unconscious." Ehren's mouth quirked. "For all I know, he thought I was dead. It was close enough."

  "So I understand. Laine's told me about your time together. However I feel about your presence here, I'm glad you were there when Shette needed help."

  "Did he tell you how bad the Dreams have been, this last year?"

  "No." Laine's form blocked the doorway. "Da," he said, "did I ever mention to you that the sound from this room carries downstairs to the dairy?"

  Dannel winced. "I should have thought realized your mother would set you to chores down there." He rubbed his hand over his face. "Well, son, perhaps it was time you knew some of this."

  Ehren didn't have t
o see Laine's face to know the anger it held; his voice held it plainly enough. "Long past it," he said. "Or was this something you intended to hide forever?"

  "Only until the time was right." Dannel sounded tired. "It wasn't an easy decision, Laine. But... your mother and I never wanted anything but to be together. We made a life here— and as the years passed, we just couldn't seem to make ourselves give that up."

  "Give that up?" Laine said. "We're talking about sharing a heritage, not giving anything up!"

  "It was our past, Laine! It had nothing to do with your life— or ours, anymore. If it hadn't been for those Dreams of yours, I doubt we'd have considered telling you at all." Dannel abruptly stood to face his son, no supplication in his posture. "Once we told you, we would give something up— the illusion of who we were trying to be. And what if you'd wanted to do something about it? What if you'd wanted to go to Therand, or Solvany, and explore the life you might have led? In Therand, with their floating monarchy, it wouldn't have made that much difference— perhaps they'd scrape up some land for you, or let you spend the summer in the high clan home. But in Solvany, it would have been a different story."

  He sent Ehren a sudden, piercing look; his voice dropped low, almost a whisper. "That's why you're here," he said. "I know the way the court thinks. I know the way Varien thinks. You're afraid I'm a threat, or that my children are."

  Ehren said nothing. He didn't have the opportunity, in any case; Laine had moved into the room, right up to the bed. "That's what this has been about, all along? You were here because of me, and you never told me? You acted like a friend all this time, and let me believe it?"

  "Laine," Ehren said, and his voice was hard, deliberately punching through Laine's anger. "I didn't know you were Dannel's son until the night you and Shette stayed up with me. I'm surprised I even remember it, but I do. Anybody from Kurtane, hearing what you told Shette, would have known exactly who your family was."

  "You didn't say anything. You asked to come here— you knew you were the last person that would be welcome!"

  "I did at that. I'm a King's Guard."

  "The question," Dannel broke in, "is what you're going to do now."

  Ehren knew what he was supposed to do. He had his orders— and once he triggered the ring, whatever its various spells, he was free to return to Kurtane and untangle what was happening there. To face Varien.

  But suddenly, somehow, it didn't seem that clear-cut. He had new alliances here, people who didn't deserve to be caught up in Solvany's problems.

  Ehren looked at Laine and slowly shook his head. "I don't know."

  ~~~~~

  Their small barn was just around the sharp curve of the hill from the house, and that's where Laine took himself the morning after his world changed, his feet leaving a clear trail through the heavy silver of the early morning dew.

  If only he and Shette had been out at the barn instead of in the dairy— or if Laine had told Dannel of the time he'd discovered how easy it was to hear from directly below Shette's room. But he'd found it when he'd accidentally overheard their mother explaining certain aspects of womanhood to Shette, and somehow he wanted to make sure his sister never discovered that fact.

  Yesterday afternoon he'd left her in the dairy, too stunned to move as fast as he, or to protest being left out. But come evening, while Ehren slept again, Shette had burst into question. Hard questions, and tearful ones. Like Laine, she didn't think twice about their heritage. But the fact that their parents hadn't told them…hadn't trusted them…

  It was their life, their mum had said— Jenorah had said. It had been their decision to make. And so Shette had lost herself to sobs and Laine had left in silence, only to find himself sleepless and on his way out to the barn so early in the morning.

  Jenorah. Laine kicked a small stone in his path, and it skipped through the grass in its way, a bright green trail in the dew. He'd heard that name before, dropped now and again, right along with Dannel's. He wondered how he'd been so thick, and if he had actually heard the whole story, would he have managed to put it together anyway?

  Probably not. His parents were Mum and Da, Jenny and Dan. Cattle farmers, private people who were still deeply in love. They had nothing to do with disembodied names of two royal runaways— and the Dreams hadn't been that specific. Not when the couple had already taken on the guise of two runaway lovers, disheveled and worn.

  Deep down, Laine could accept the situation— but Shette was having a harder time. She and their mum were close; they shared many things, including their tempers— and how deeply they felt things. Laine winced at the tempestuous days to come, grateful that she didn't fully understand that Ehren was poised to betray them as well.

  No, the questions that had driven him early from sleep dealt not with the past, but the present— and the future.

  Ehren.

  Would he take Dannel and Jenorah's hospitality, only to return to Kurtane and announce the lost branch of the royal family? And if he did, were Laine's parents in danger?

  Ehren had said Laine should avoid using the new swordplay skills he'd learned— but perhaps Ehren would be the one to plunge him into it.

  The barn stood before him, small, tidy and familiar. One of their two goats stood in front of it, staring at him like he was an intruder. It gave a sporadic chew, grasses hanging out of its mouth, and bounded away. "Good morning to you, too," Laine grumbled, wishing he'd actually had chores waiting for him here— anything to take his mind away from its endless circles of thought.

  But the cattle were out in their summer fields, and the second stand of hay wasn't ready to cut. Maybe he'd just throw a saddle on his father's sturdy little horse, Nimble. Or maybe he'd simply stand around and think, which was what he'd come out here to do.

  The barn was built like the house, into the hillside; the indoor-outdoor sty held a pig, flat on its side in the sun and making happy little snorty noises, and the barn was otherwise empty.

  So what, then, had made the little scuffle he'd just heard from inside?

  Laine suddenly wished he'd brought his sword out here with him. Just as abruptly, he scoffed at himself— he was home, now, and not on some grand adventure. Still, when he moved to the lower double doors of the forge and found one ajar, he hesitated before slowly opening it.

  "Ehren!" He could hardly have been more surprised if he'd discovered a magicked monster there. "How the Hells did you get down those steps?" And how long had he been here, that there was no sign in the dew?

  "Slowly," Ehren said, then shook his head and added a grin. "Very slowly."

  "But why—"

  "I needed a place to think." He sat beside the anvil in an chair with half the seat slats broken out; doubtless it was here waiting to be fixed. As he looked up at Laine, his hand closed into a fist. Holding something.

  "You and me both," Laine said, eyeing that hand. "My head's still spinning."

  Ehren rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked at Laine, his expression one of speculation. "I've made decisions— but I can see I'm going to need help to act on them." His eyes flicked down to his closed fist. Laine couldn't help it; he looked again, too. But it was still nothing but a fist. A fist suddenly dark with aura.

  Startled, Laine looked at Ehren, looking for that same aura. Nothing. He tore his attention away from his Sight. "What do you need?"

  "I need this forge fired up, if you've charcoal for it. Or I need to get into town."

  Laine snorted. "No town today, or the next, either. Now that we've got you here, you're stuck until you heal. And by then maybe you'll know us well enough to suffer over the trouble you're going to cause us."

  Silence sat between them. After a long, stony moment, Ehren asked, "Do you have charcoal?"

  "I'm not sure. What do you need it for?"

  "Does it matter?" Ehren asked.

  "Everything you do matters now."

  Laine thought he saw a flash of temper rise to the surface of that hard expression, but Ehren seemed to swallow
it. "This was never something I wanted," he said, his voice low and strained. He closed his eyes, and the struggle was clear on his face. After a moment, he uncurled his fist and held it out to Laine. "I need to destroy this."

  The ring.

  "Destroy it?" Laine asked, protest in his voice. He took a step back, surprised by the depth of his feelings. Wilna's ring. The ring that could send him off into True Dreams, that had brought him closer and closer to understanding the bits and pieces he'd seen all these years. But I'm not there yet. All the times this summer that he had felt sharp metal bite into Benlan's flesh, without seeing what waited, who watched— and the ring had the power to plunge him into those Dreams, maybe far enough in that he might just discover those unseen things.

  But he'd been getting closer and closer, as well, to some sort of boundary. Shette's hushed description of the Dreaming fits had made an impact. And that last time in the wagon, when he'd almost touched the ring…he could have stayed down, then— but it hadn't been the time or place, not with Ehren fighting for his life.

  It was then that Laine had realized what the ring could do for him— or to him— but it hadn't occurred to him then that it might be his last opportunity. Nor that it had been the ring creating the darkness he occasionally saw around Ehren.

  "Ehren," Laine said, holding his roil of reaction down to a strained question, "just what is this ring?"

  To his surprise, Ehren answered readily enough, holding the silver and emerald ring up to catch the light coming in through the open door. "You said it once. Wilna's ring. Benlan was wearing it when he died. Varien said that gave it a sort of power— made it easier to use in conjunction with spells. And because it came from Dannel's brother, it was easier yet to use in locating Dannel. It was pretty happy about you, too. Took me a while to figure that out."

  "But it didn't react to Shette?"

  Ehren shook his head. "No. I'd finally decided it reacted to you because of your Sight. Now I know it's because you're firstborn."

  "But..." Laine said, groping for some logical protest, "why destroy it now?"

  Ehren gave him a sharply probing look. "Why not?"