A Song for Arbonne (71 page)

It had been winter then, too, she remembered, that night twenty-three years ago, with a rain wind lashing the trees and lake when she came to that shore in the dark of night. Twenty-three years, and oh, it was as yesterday if she let her mind go back. It was as fierce and hard and terrible as if she were standing there now, thirteen years old, an oath newly sworn, sobbing wildly with grief and terror as she stood on that strand in the shelter of the signal hut.

She had been a child when that night had begun. A quick, curious, overly indulged young girl. She had not been young any longer when that long night was done and she watched the pale sun finally come up across the lake and listened to water dripping mournfully from the trees all around.

She had kept her promise. All these years she had kept the promise sworn to her cousin Aelis, whom she had loved. She could see herself so clearly even now: the thin, shivering girl riding in a wild storm, white face and black hair lost in the darkness except when the lightning flashed. And she had been crying, crying in the cruel lashing of the rain. She was crying again now, all these long years after, weeping for innocence lost, for the dead of that night and the awful burden she had been given then and had carried all these years.

After a long time Ariane wiped her eyes and squared her shoulders and turned away from that western shore and its weight of memory. She was the duchess of Carenzu, queen of the Court of Love in Arbonne, a woman of power in the world, and there was a great deal to be done. Starting with the ending of a silence.
Aelis,
she thought, whispered it to herself actually; only the name, nothing more than that, realizing as she did so that it was a kind of letting go. That almost brought her tears again, but she held them back this time.

She went along the curving path to the temple and waited there for the slow, beautifully chanted service to come to an end. Then, after it was done, in the privacy of a small room beside the dome, with a necessary economy of words but as much gentleness as she could command amid the fevered emotions of that day, she told the first person who needed to know.

Afterwards, going back to the strand alone, she had herself rowed across the water into the wind, wrapping herself in her crimson cloak against the chill at the end of day, and once ashore she went looking for the second person who had to be told before the whole world knew.

He had left the valley by then, they told her, and so, with time only for a brief embrace of her husband and a whispered word, she took horse to go after him. On the way, as she realized where it was he had gone, where she was following, she began to cry again, unable to help herself, the tears cold on her cheeks as the sun sank lower in the west, red as a fire.

Blaise had gone with Bertran and Thierry to where Urté de Miraval lay dying on the ground, a folded cloak under his head and another one, heavy and lined with fur, covering his body. Urté was very pale, and Blaise saw at a glance that the cloths they had used to try to stanch his bleeding were soaked through. He had seen this before; it would not be long.

Urté was still conscious, though, and there was a hard glint of triumph in his eyes. Thierry hesitated beside him and then stepped carefully back and away so that Bertran de Talair could stand alone next to Urté. The silence that followed was taut as a drawn bowstring.

Another hesitation—nothing was being done easily here, Blaise knew—and then Bertran knelt beside the older man.

"We have won," he said calmly. "Your decision to join us after all was what turned the battle."

Urté de Miraval laughed then, a terrible sound, and the movement started another flowing of blood. In obvious pain he shook his head. "
After all?
You don't understand, do you? There was no decision to make. We staged that scene in Barbentain when I walked out."

Blaise felt his mouth fall open. He closed it with a snap. He heard Thierry de Carenzu make a small sound.

"We?" said Bertran.

"The countess and I. I advised her the night before to name you leader of the army. We agreed that I would storm from the room and contact Ademar the next day."

"Oh, sweet Rian, I don't believe it." It was Thierry, the words like a prayer.

"Why not?" said the dying man, prosaically. "We were going to be outnumbered, we had to devise some trap for them. It seems that it took two of the older generation to do it. The younger ones didn't have any ideas at all, did you?" He did not smile.

There was another silence.

"None at all," said Bertran at length. "I am astonished the countess didn't tell me."

"I asked her not to," Urté said. "I told her you might alter your strategy, knowing what was coming. Make a move that might have alerted them that something was amiss. That was the reason I gave her."

"It wasn't really the reason, was it?"

Urté de Miraval did smile then. "Of course it wasn't," he said.

Bertran slowly shook his head. "As it happens, I had no strategies today. The battle started too soon."

"I know. That is why we were late."

Silence again. The westering sun sent a reddened light along the valley. Urté made a sudden, wry face that Blaise knew was that of a strong man wrestling with great pain.

"What shall I say to you?" asked Bertran de Talair.

A gasp that might have been laughter again. "Spare me," Urté whispered. But a moment later Blaise saw him turn his head a little so he was looking directly at Bertran. Urté opened his mouth and then closed it, as if wrestling with something inwardly, but then, very clearly, he said, "I did not kill her. Or the child."

Bertran became absolutely still, his face white as the dying man's.

"I took the child from her," Urté said, his eyes holding Bertran's, "after she told me… what she told me. I took it downstairs to the kitchen where there was a fire. It was very cold, there was a storm that night. You weren't here, you will not remember. I had the priestess thrown out of the castle. I left the child with the women in the kitchen. I didn't want Aelis to have him… after what she'd said, and I wasn't going to rear him as my own. I might have decided to kill him, I might have sent him away where he'd never be known or found. I was not thinking clearly and I knew it; I needed time. That child, if he had been mine, was heir to Miraval and Barbentain both, he would have ruled Arbonne."

"But instead?" Bertran's voice was so low it could barely be heard. Blaise saw that he had laced his fingers tightly together.

"But instead Aelis was dead when I went back to her room. I was going up to tell her she would never see her child, that no one would ever know who he was, even if I chose to let him love. I wanted to… hurt her so much for what she had done. She cheated me, though. She was already dead when I returned. When I went back down again, after, I had them give me the child. I took him alone into the great hall and sat by the fire, holding him. I could see he was not strong. It wasn't very long before he died. They rarely live, born so soon. He was two months early."

"I know. That's why I wasn't here." Silence again. Blaise could hear the wind whistling down the valley and the cries of wounded and dying men. Overhead, very high, a flock of birds cut across the sun, heading south, late in the year. He could see that some of the priests and priestesses had crossed from the isle to tend to the injured, fires were being lit on the battlefield. He shivered again, in his heavy cloak.

"You might have told me this," Bertran said, finally.

"Why?" Urté" said. "To ease your mind? Why would I have wanted to do that? I was happy to have you wondering if he was alive—that meant you could never kill me, didn't it?"

That thin smile again. But after a moment his expression altered and he added, "You wouldn't have believed me in any case. You know that."

Slowly Bertran shook his head. "No. I wouldn't have. I was almost certain you had killed them both."

"I know. Almost certain, not quite. I enjoyed your thinking that. I hope it was in you like poison all these years."

"It was. Like poison. All these years."

"She was my wife," said Urté de Miraval. "What did you think I would do when I found out?"

Bertran was very still, his head lowered. When he spoke, it was in a voice scraped raw. "I loved her. I have never stopped loving her. You never did, my lord. For you this has been about nothing but pride all these years."

With a tremendous effort Urté managed to lift himself on one elbow. "That would have been enough," he said. "More than enough. But you are wrong again. You have always been wrong about that, you and everyone else." He paused to draw a difficult, gasping breath; blood was seeping from his wound. "It was Aelis who didn't love me, not the other way around. I could never write songs, you see. I am glad we have won. Rian shelter this land of Arbonne forever in her arms."

Slowly then, with a soldier's grace and considerable courage in the face of mortal pain, he lowered himself to the cold ground, and his eyes closed as he died.

Bertran remained on his knees beside the body for a long time. No one else moved or spoke. When Bertran finally rose, he turned to Thierry de Carenzu.

"May I leave what remains with you?" he asked, with toneless formality.

"Of course," said the other man.

They watched as the duke of Talair walked back to where his horse was being held by a coran. Bertran mounted up without assistance and rode slowly from the valley, west, towards the avenue of trees that led to the arch.

Valery made an awkward movement, as if minded to follow but then checked himself. Blaise, looking over at him, saw a huge, vivid grief stamped on the coran's normally calm features. He walked over to stand close by Valery, not touching him, but wanting to be near. Then, a moment later, he realized that Thierry was looking at him with unexpected compassion and he realized what was left to come. Blaise closed his eyes, and it was Valery who reached out and touched his shoulder briefly.

Blaise looked at Thierry de Carenzu. "Have I the right to ask that it be done cleanly?" he said quietly.

"It will be," said Ariane's husband. "For you, and for ourselves, because of what we are, what we refuse to become."

Blaise nodded his head. Thierry turned and Blaise followed him across the darkening field to where his father was still standing, ringed by men with swords.

"I am holding this man," said Rudel Correze, speaking clearly and with unwonted gravity as they approached, "for the judgment of Arbonne."

"Final judgment," said Thierry, "belongs to Rian and Corannos, not to us, but punishment is, indeed, our duty now. Not for acts of war. Ransom and release could be granted if it were only those. For what has been done to the priestesses, though, this man must surely die."

No one spoke. Only the cries of the wounded and the sound of the wind marred the stillness. There were fires all over the valley now, more for warmth than anything else; the light was still clear though the day was waning.

"Will you deny that the burning of women was by your command?" Thierry asked of the man in the ring.

"Hardly," said Galbert de Garsenc.

No more than that. The High Elder stood, blood on his smooth, handsome face and on his blue robes, surrounded by mortal foes at the end of his life, and it seemed to his younger son as if he had, even now, nothing but contempt for any man here.

"Out of respect for your son, we will grant you a death by arrows," Thierry said stolidly. Not far away, on his wheeled platform, Aurelian the singer had been unbound. Someone had covered his body with a cloak.

"I would like," said Galbert de Garsenc, "a few moments with my son before I die." Blaise felt his mouth go dry. There was a silence. "This is a last request," added the High Elder of Gorhaut.

Thierry turned to Blaise, so did Rudel, concern in the eyes of both, a desire to shelter him from this. Blaise shook his head. He cleared his throat. "I believe it is a fair request. One that we can honour." He looked carefully at Thierry. "If that is acceptable to you?"

Thierry nodded slowly. Rudel still looked as if he would protest, and Blaise heard Valery behind him murmur something fierce under his breath, but the duke of Carenzu, with a wave of his arm, motioned the circle of guards to draw back.

When they had done so Blaise walked forward. The ring of men parted to let him through.

"It seems," said his father calmly as he came up, "that I misjudged Urté de Miraval." He might have been discussing the wrong track a hunt had taken, or some mistaken crop rotation on the Garsenc lands.

"He was hardly likely to join you after women were burned."

Galbert shrugged. "Was that it, do you think? Did he change his mind, or was it planned?"

"Planned," said Blaise. "By him and the countess. No one else knew."

"Clever, then," said his father. He sighed. "Ah, well, at least I have lived long enough to know my son will rule in Gorhaut."

Blaise laughed bitterly. "With so much aid and nurture from you."

"Well, of course," said Galbert. "I have been working towards this for years."

Blaise stopped laughing. "That," he said harshly, "is a lie." Something hard and awkward seemed suddenly to have lodged itself in his chest. He swallowed with difficulty.

"Is it?" said Galbert placidly. "You are supposed to be the clever one. Think, Blaise."

He couldn't remember the last time his father had called him by name.

"What is there to think about?" he snapped. "You showed your devotion to your family with Rosala and now here with Ranald. You killed your son."

"I gave him life and I took it away," said Galbert, still mildly, "though I was sorry to have to do it. He was worthless as a man until the end, but he was about to undo my one chance to cleanse this land."

"Of course.
That
is what you have been working towards all these years."