Everran's Bane (29 page)

* * * * *

It had broken when we came down toward Asleax, so Everran lay out beneath us with that vividness only winter sunshine can bestow, azure and pigeon's breast purple and iridescent emerald. South of Asleax they were flying the kites for Air, specks of color that ducked and towered on the shrewd, gay wind.

As the road appeared Beryx reined in, and took a breath. “Well, Harran,” he said, matter-of-fact as if it had long been agreed to, “this is where we say goodbye.”

The best I could do was, “G-g-g?”

“Goodbye, yes.” His eyes danced with that disconcerting aedric mirth. “Maerdrigg's asleep. Hawge is dead. There's only one ghost left to lay. And if you're going to Maer Selloth and I'm going to—where I'm going—this is where our roads divide.”

“M-Maer Selloth?” None of it made sense.

“Maer Selloth.” He was still smiling, eyes green and scintillant against his damp black hair and scruffy jacket and stubbled face. “Saphar may not look much, but I think it's fit for a queen—don't you?”

I thought he had lost his wits. Did he think Sellithar, who had lost him for a scar, would take an aedr back? Horrific images filled my eyes: the old life in Saphar, shameful secrecy, furtive lust, more horrific images of Tenevel when I announced that the king refused to accept a divorce, the reply I should have to relay to Beryx, agonizing images of Sellithar, lost before she was found, brought back to someone else...

I caught for a straw, any straw. “But—but—where are you going yourself?”

His eyes took on a distance that made them wells of emerald.

“I... don't know yet. Eskan Helken first. There were a lot of things I didn't learn. Then... they say there's another ocean beyond Hethria. I haven't used Pharaone. Some things should be seen with eyes. But an aedr could do things in Hethria too. Dam Kemreswash. Send the water south. Fengthira might be interested. Or she might travel with me...”

It had taken me this long to reach comprehension, let be speech. Even after aedryx, some things exceed the compass of the mind.

“You're going—away?” He nodded. “Right away?” He nodded again. “Leaving Everran?” He nodded once more. I was too dazed to see that every question would hit him harder than Fengthira's that first day. “Leaving Everran?” He nodded yet again. His face was set now, stripped of its smile. “But, but, you can't! It's what you fought for—what you went through all that for—it's, it's—it's your whole life!”

I must have bared nerves with every phrase. He looked steadily back at me. Fengthira was right: he never had an ounce of vice.

“Everything I fought for,” he agreed. “But the fighting's done.”

“But, but, but, the rebuilding!” I yelled. “Saphar, Everran, the Confederacy, the—” Now I glimpsed a catastrophe wider than his own. “You can't, you can't! We have to have a king!”

At that he grinned in genuine amusement. “Of course they do. Why do you think you've been schooled these last three weeks? Why do you think Fengthira told me, if I'd make her welcome in Everran, to guard my harper well?”

That winded me altogether. I could not so much as gasp. He surveyed the shimmering lowlands and spoke as if selecting a new town governor.

“Morran's too young, and a soldier anyway. My uncle's a clot. The Council needs a leader. Any lord or Resh-lord would make the others revolt. Tenevel's only a Resh-lord too. But you know the Confederacy. And kingship. You've traveled with me, you've done things yourself. The people will accept you. It's the only choice.”

This time speech came without any travail.

“No!”

“Now, Harran,” he began reprovingly, “don't be foolish—”

But I was beyond considering foolishness. “No, no, no! I won't do it! You can't lose all—give all—suffer all you've done and then—not to me! I won't!” I could not even voice the ultimate shame. If I had been his savior, I was also his betrayer. That he should gift me with Everran as well as Sellithar was such injustice as the heavens would not countenance.

“Harran,” he said gently. He waited till I looked round. His eyes were withdrawn, the marks of old suffering clear in his face. “You know better. You've seen how they look at me. Do you think I could bear to rule... like that?”

I could not speak.

“And do you think Tenevel would stomach an aedric king?” He shook his head. “More to the point: every line has its ending. I am the end of mine.”

“Hawge said that!” I exploded. “It's a lie!”

He shook his head. Very gently he said, “I already knew.”

I could only gape.

“When it first came,” he went on in that voice like falling water, gentle, irrecoverable, “Hawge made me suspect. After Phare, I knew.”

It was more than I could bear to contemplate, that he should find he was himself Everran's bane. And atop that, I had betrayed him. So long it had lain between us, and it lay there still. But it could lie no longer.

I turned my head away. Then I got out, “Sellithar—and I—”

He answered softly, “I knew that too.”

“If only,” I burst out in bitter, futile retrospect, “I had not ‘thought so loud'—”

“No,” he replied quietly. “I knew in Saphar. Phare made me know I knew.”

A pit yawned under me. When I came to him on the hill he had been raw with these manifold wounds, and it was I who reached him first. He had not only to confront Fengthira, but to look at me, speak to me, as if I were in truth a friend...

His voice was not bitter, only sad. “I couldn't blame you—or Sellithar. What did Fengthira tell you? ‘Horses' morals are simpler than men's.' After Phare... I had to use them. So it didn't come between us then. It doesn't now.”

There must, there had to be, some recompense. “We'll go away,” I burst out. “Out of Everran. You can be king until—the new line can begin after you!”

When he did not speak, I looked around. There was a kind of laughter in his face, the laughter with which some men meet the deepest hurts of all. He started to speak, and shook his head.

Then he said, “Harran... Hawge didn't lie, you know. Aedryx and dragons are—kin.”

My hair rose. I choked.

“You saw it,” he insisted softly. “When we did Letharthir, you thought I was Hawge. Fengthira warned me, ‘And dragons have green eyes.' When you fought me, I felt it for myself.”

He turned his eyes to Everran. “She lives in Eskan Helken, to avoid temptation. But I would be a king. It would be so easy. Lose your patience with one incompetent, coerce one balky council—” His eyes were still and steadfast and irredeemably sad. “I made myself an aedr. I can't go back. Unless I leave it... I am still Everran's bane.”

I tore the reins through and through my fingers. The pity, the injustice, the sorrow of it was too much. Everran lay below us, scars masked by the falling sun, the thing he loved best in life, for which he had given his health, his manhood, his very humanity. And now was going, of his own will, to give the thing itself.

“You mustn't think I'm so unselfish,” he said softly. “Fengthira said once, ‘If tha walkst, t'will not be for any trumpery maerian.' Maerdrigg taught me such a lesson. To waste your life, your inheritance, your very death, for a stone. If you must have an obsession, it should be worth the price. Like Everran. It will be easier leaving than you think. Everran's still—my whole life. And I know Everran will be safer without me.”

I thought of the Quarred clans, the Estar guild leaders, the lords like Vellan, the myriad small daily choices upon which Everran rested, as upon the harp's firm arms the fragile strings. I think I howled aloud.

“Of course you can do it.” His crispness told me the smile had revived. “You'll have Morran. A reasonable Council. Tenevel to second you.” I tore my head away. He chuckled. “Four, man, if you can get me off Coed Wrock and bring me back this last time, you can do anything!”

I looked round. He was grinning, those green eyes full of simple human mirth. Swinging down from his horse he said gravely, but with a twinkle, “Do you think you could bring yourself, without shrinking, to—er—give me a farewell?”

When we embraced, I found I did not want to let him go. Not only for the injustice, the terror of the future, our broken comradeship, the loss of the man himself, but because I knew now why those he tranced had followed him. He was an aedr. If his going would free me of something fearsome, beyond nature, it would also leave life empty, robbed of a glamour, a savor, that only imminent peril can bestow.

It was he who stood back first. “And,” he said, more gravely, “you really should call me Beryx now.”

He clicked his tongue to summon the horse. Swung astride. Then he looked back, and there was no laughter in his eyes.

“Harran?” he sounded tentative, almost appealing. “When everything's healed... if I'm to be known hereafter as the king who forsook his kingdom, I'd like them to—understand why?”

* * * * *

Now, with Saphar rebuilt, Everran re-united, back in tune with the Confederacy, with Morran for my general, Zarrar for a hearthbard, and the queen to rescue this song from the jaws of our small but terrible son, I can say to him as truth what I said then as promise, there on the hill above Asleax before he rode away.

“Wherever you are, lord, rest easy. I am still your harper. The songs will be sung.”

Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and has been writing or telling stories for as long as she remembers.
Everran's Bane
is the first of the Chronicles of Rihannar, followed by
The Moving Water
and the third novel,
The Red Country.
Two of her novels, including
The Moving  Water
, have been finalists for best fantasy novel in the Aurealis Australian genre fiction awards. Her latest novel is a contemporary fantasy duology,
The Solitaire Ghost
and
The Time Seam,
set in an alternate North Queensland. Sylvia Kelso lives in a house with a lot of trees, but no cats or dogs. She makes up for this by playing Celtic music on a penny whistle, and is now learning the fiddle as well.

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Everran's Bane

eBook edition published by Book View Café
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Copyright © 2005 Sylvia Kelso

ISBN: 978-1-4523-4185-9

All rights reserved.

First published by FiveStar Books 2005

Cover Art by Caroline Husher

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.