Earth Magic (16 page)

Chapter 19

I
T BEGAN TO RAIN IN THE LATE AFTERNOON
which was premature night. The back of the pen, this close-barred wooden cage, was less wet, so the three waiting to be branded crouched there in the dimness and waited.

There was a lost man, a warty-faced babe of middle years. He would say nothing but, “I am lost. Where am I? I am lost. If someone would explain, I would try to understand. But I am so lost.”

There was a boy younger than Haldane. He said, “There is true freedom in being a serf. That is why I sought so long and skillfully to wear Lyulf’s mark.”

And there was Haldane.

It hardly seemed possible to Haldane that this was yet that same day. Since Oliver and he had set out this morning up the hill, this day had seemed like many days. As yesterday had also been many days.

It was long ago that he had given the horn back to Arngrim. Then he was not a Get. But he was still Black Morca’s son. He had thought then that though he was not a Get, he would still overspread the West and seize it all, from South Cape to the Hook, from Orkay to Grelland. Chastain, Palsance, and Vilicea. From Lake Lamorne to the sea. He would show them who he was. He would show them all who had been hurt!

One day he would meet Arngrim when he, Morca’s son, had men at his back who followed him for choice. On that day, he would give Arngrim, who was the best of all the Gets there were, the choice of becoming other than a Get, or dying than rather. That is why it seemed right that Arngrim should carry the horn and blow it rather than waiting for the empty-handed huntsman to bring the horn back to him.

For Haldane had no doubt that the son of Black Morca could pass safely into Palsance. He could grow great in strength there and return again to Nestor. He could build a maelstrom. He knew that he had the power.

He might not have run from the Get. He might not have thrown the boar’s tooth away. He might have said, “Haldane, son of Black Morca,” to the Get instead of “Giles.” If he had been fearless.

If he had been the son of Black Morca.

But he had not been fearless in the name of Morca.

Who was he? Whose dog was he? Whose name was he fearless in?

The Get came to the cage then and took the lost man away. While he was gone, the boy said, “I only wish I knew beforehand what it is like to be branded.”

Haldane did not want to be branded. He hated the thought. What Get could be branded and live? Arngrim, perhaps. But Black Morca, who was more than Arngrim, could not be branded and be Morca. And Haldane could not be branded and be the son of Black Morca. No man with a brand on his shoulder, and so marred, could be followed from choice by a maelstrom.

Haldane thought that he might escape when the Get should bring the lost man back and take away the boy. If he could but remember the spell that once he had learned from Oliver, the Pall of Darkness that Oliver had cast over them at Arngrim’s. Then when the door was open, he might slip away unseen to find Oliver on Barrow Hill. He still might have his whirlwind and his empire.

It was his if he could think of the spell. And that should be possible. Sometimes as he had hunted in the afternoon, when he was drowsy, the words would come back to him and he would almost be invisible. He should be able to recall now when it was of moment to remember.

But the spell would not reveal itself to him no matter how he strove to approach it. It hid from him. He coaxed. He laid in wait for it. He mumbled to it of Oliver and the way he used to teach. But the spell would not let itself be caught. The rain continued.

The door of the pen opened. The man was returned, and the boy taken.

“Are you ready for my private mark?” Lyulf asked. “Boy, you are so young.”

“I am ready to prove myself! Is your iron hot?”

Then the pen was closed after them. The lost man sat, his smock pulled tight over his brand, as though he would not let Haldane see the mark. He did not speak, he did not babble as before. But he stared directly at Haldane with knowing eyes. He had a secret in his mind and he held it close and looked at Haldane. Haldane could not tell why. Did the man hold the secret so that Haldane might not have it? Or did he wish to tell the secret—if only Haldane could read faces as he could read this great arrangement of country that most men only knew as lice know kings, with intimate ignorance?

This place, this very place, he knew, was an old place, older than Haldane, or Morca, or the Gets, or the Empire of Nestria, or the long-ago Prince Jehannes who came of Bary. It was older than story.

Just so had it been here: A house. A stable and smithy. Even this pen. That had been here too. Waiting for Haldane forever so that this moment might be. Haldane felt certain of that from signs.

But the man said nothing to Haldane, and flickered his eyes away when Haldane opened his mouth to speak, so that Haldane must say nothing. Then the man who had been lost stared at him again with his secret until the door opened.

It was the boy, unconscious. Haldane helped to carry him into the pen. But the Get then pulled Haldane away by the shoulder, jostling him, not allowing his feet firm purchase.

“Come along, Giles. You have hung back long enough. I must see what you are made of.”

The rain dripped on Haldane’s neck as they entered the stable. It was warm there from the heat of the animals. The air was pleasant with the smell of manure.

The building glowed with the light from the smithy fire. Shadows flickered on the wall. Haldane could hear the sound the animals made as they shifted place. He could hear the hiss of late afternoon rain in the thatch. He could hear the separate sound of the drizzle of the rain in the yard. And he could hear the drip drip from the eaves before the door.

This moment was immediate. All the world was gathered here in this little building, expressing presence in the feel of the air, and the smell of the air, and the taste of the air, and the various sounds. The sag of two posts, one this way, one that. The mustiness of straw. That it was late afternoon was token that all rightness should be gathered in dark late afternoon.

Even the smell of burnt flesh that lingered was late afternoon, and now, and very much of this thisness.

The Get took Haldane into the smithy. Against the wall was a framework of wood and leather.

“Kneel down on that,” said the Get. “Place yourself in yon mother’s arms.”

Haldane took his place on the frame. It held him comfortable but helpless, his arms around the wooden bar, his cheek laid against leather that was surprisingly cool. It made him think of the pitcher that sweated in the summer house.

The Get moved to his fire and Haldane could hear the sound of bellows working, the clank of metal, and at last the hiss of an iron being tested in water.

The Get came back to Haldane and without warning pulled his smock down so that his shoulder was naked to the air. Then he touched Haldane with cold wet fingers. Haldane waited for the sizzle of flesh, but it hardly hurt.

“It is a great test you are facing,” the Get said to Haldane. “Have you strength to face it, boy? Or should I knock you insensible as I did the last one?”

“I know not,” Haldane said. Into the leather he said, “I would flee you and not be branded.” He spoke in Nestorian.

“But, Giles, you must be branded,” said the Get in Gettish, and rumpled Haldane’s hair fondly. “Hold your chief strength in mind, and leap with it when the iron strikes. Only then will you live.”

Haldane could hear the even pace of a horse walking in the yard beyond the sounds of rain. The Get ceased to rattle his ironware. He walked to the door. There was silence then.

Haldane lay helpless in the arms of the kneeler. He might struggle to his feet. He might strive to break the machine with the strength of his arms. Or he might lie as he was and be branded.

Then Haldane heard the sound of a cough, deep, rough and gaunt. Was it asking a question?

The Get said, “Is your nose stopped? Branding serfs.”

The cough again.

“And why should I answer the questions of one like you, Romund, who was never a friend of my clan?”

The cough, scratched and hoarse, said, “Because Black Morca is dead and you Deldrings have no friends, Lyulf.”

“Is Morca dead, then? And who could kill a man who was as much as Morca? Tell me that.”

“Many men might have killed Morca, but it was I, and Egil Two-Fist, and Ivor Fish-Eye, and others!”

There was the sound of force against force, the panting of breath, and then a rattle and thump.

Romund said, “I will stand inside. I have been in the saddle from one Libera’s Day to the next, and from that one to this. I have been eight days on the trail of the cub of dead Morca to see him dead, too, much of that in rain. I will stand where it is dry until it is time for me to leave. Shall I kill you, Lyulf?”

“Carry your quarrels elsewhere than me,” the Get said.

“But you are a Deldring, and you are loyal to your Deldring master—Morca, sprung of Deldring Garmund.”

“Who says this is cause to fight?”

“I say it. I, Romund, who am Farthing. What say you, Deldring?”

“I say, yes, that I am a Deldring. And if the son of Black Morca should come to me, then I would aid him as I could against you and all Farthings. But I have not seen him. So ride on, Romund.” There was the clank of iron. “Ride on, unless you would fight.”

“Nay,” said Romund. “I will not try to kill you now. I would not wear your brand by accident, Lyulf. Men would not understand. When you are armed with other weapons, we will meet again. Mayhap we will meet at the Storthing.”

There was the sound of one moving sideways in the straw.

“Who is this?” Romund asked, and touched Haldane’s bare shoulder with a hand like dry nettles or snakebite.

“It is a serf I brand as my own. Do not stand between us or you may wear his mark.”

“No, I will not. I will go back to my divided trail. I will hunt Morca’s Get until that boy is dead. I will hold night and day to his trail in my slow steadiness and the son of Morca will be as nothing as your old dreams of Morca who was, and now is not.”

There was silence. Haldane could not hear the Get Lyulf. There was rain. There was dancing shadowplay. There were the warm animals in the darkness of the stable.

Then he heard the horse move slowly on through the yard. At last gone. At last only the sound of rain again.

Haldane lay cradled in the arms of the kneeler, trying to recall his chief strength.

Lyulf worked at his fire.

Haldane smelled hot metal.

Fingers fumbled at his neck and his heart was suspended. His shoulder was gripped. And then something so cold that it penetrated his entire being, bowled his heart over like a swollen stream after the early melt of winter, the opposite of expectation, the pain of pains that cracked him apart, the great cold burning of flesh,
that
touched Haldane.

He must ride the kneeler as helpless as the great white back of the wurox. He floated in that which passed his understanding.

He was now no son of Black Morca. Who would believe that he was? Morca’s Son could not wear the private mark of a Get burnt in his flesh. The choice had been his. When Lyulf had approached with his iron, he might still have announced himself Haldane, the son of Black Morca. And if he had, the maelstrom and the empire would have been his. But he had passed that binding and loosing by.

He could not live Morca’s dream. He was a branded man, and the one who would live Morca’s dreams would not wear the private mark of anyone burnt in his flesh.

He was someone else.