Hero's Song (2 page)

Collun had been in his garden spreading mulch. The messenger's raiment was travel-stained, his horse flecked with foam. He was a young man, barely out of his teens, and he looked hot and ill-tempered. He seemed
particularly cross about a black bird he claimed to have spotted several times since leaving Temair.

"Bad omen," he muttered. "Like as not it means I'm about to be sent up north to the border country where all the trouble is," he said sourly, giving Collun a dark look as though it were his fault.

Collun quickly called his parents, and the messenger handed over the letter with Fial's seal on it.

Goban wordlessly passed the letter to Emer while he went to tend to the messenger's overheated horse.

Emer entered the house, and Collun followed. He peered over her shoulder at the ink-filled pages as she read them. But Emer moved away so he could not see the letter.

When she had finished, Emer looked up at her son and made a small gesture, like a bird with a broken wing.

"Nessa's gone," she said, her voice dim.

"What?" Collun felt a chill spread through him. He instinctively reached for Fial's letter, but Emer held it from him.

"What do you mean, 'gone'?" Collun demanded, his tone harsher than he intended.

"Disappeared. During the feast to celebrate her coming-of-age ceremony. Fial says an important nobleman named Bricriu hosted the feast, and the court had gathered at his dun, a half day's journey from Temair..." Emer trailed off.

"Yes?"

"Halfway through Bricriu's feast Nessa disappeared, leaving not a trace behind." Emer paused, taking in a deep breath. "A search party was organized, even the king's three sons took part, but..."

"How could this happen?" Collun said, his body rigid, hands clamped onto the top rung of a wooden chair.

"Fial wants to know if we have heard from Nessa, if she might have been homesick and come back to Inkberrow."

"Was she unhappy in Temair?"

Emer shook her head. "According to Fial, Nessa loved her life in Temair. The queen herself had taken a liking to her."

Emer's voice died out. Her face was still and white as milkstone. Slowly she turned and glided out of the room. Collun's hands tightened on the chair. Nessa gone. He felt numb, unbelieving. He released the chair rung and went to find Emer. She was lying on her bed, her face turned to the wall. The letter was still clutched in her hands.

Dinner that night was eaten in silence. Emer had not moved from the bed. Collun had prepared the meal, and father and son ate quickly.

***

Collun knew it was his duty as the only son to go in search of his sister. But the thought of leaving Aonarach, of leaving his garden and fields, made his breath come thin and fast in his chest. His muscles shook with fear. He cursed himself for a coward and went sleepless as each night went by.

He felt his father watching him as the days passed. They had never been close. Goban's life centered around the smithy. He had a reputation for sound, careful work. Collun had disappointed Goban early on by showing no skill at the forge. He was clumsy and slow, and he hated
the stink of the burning keratin in the horses' hooves, and the black metal dust that stung the inside of his nose, and the ear-numbing sound of the pounding of iron. He had tried, over and over, but his heart was not in it, and the misshapen lumps he pulled from the water-filled trough after tempering were greeted with silence from Goban.

Collun's talent lay in giving life to green growing things, in bringing vegetables to the table, grain to the oven, and flowers to the windowsill. He seemed to have been born with an innate knowledge of seeds, soil, and weather. At an early age, he had miraculously brought life to a field that had lain desolate for years. When the corn Collun planted that first year grew to the height of Goban's shoulders and the squash came up in great, ungainly shapes, the blacksmith's only response had been a nod of grudging respect.

Collun was never as happy as when he was kneeling in a patch of rich, dark earth, his trine in hand, winnowing the weeds from the plants, with the sun on his back or rain in his hair.

Because of Collun's skill, the few acres around the smithy that had previously been used for nothing but grazing were now flourishing with crops of fat vegetables. There was always more than enough for both eating and selling at the market in Inkberrow. The garden by the house was usually ablaze with one type of flower or another, depending on the season. There were herbs, too, for cooking and healing, and Collun had developed a small reputation for herb craft. He had begun carrying the most useful of his herbs in a leather wallet he wore slung across his chest. When he went into town
he was called on to minister to minor injuries and sicknesses. A few villagers had even begun to make their way out to the lonely farmhold to seek his advice.

At home, Nessa had been the only one who could ease the strain between father and son. Emer would try to bring them together, but her careful efforts always seemed to make things worse. But then Nessa would come along with her latest attempt at bookmaking and soon even Goban's face would crease into a smile. Nessa brought warmth and light into the house. When she left for Temair, Aonarach seemed to go dark.

Collun knew his father would have gone in search of Nessa himself, but his left leg had been lamed in an accident at the forge some years back, and he walked with a limp. If he was on his feet for too long, his mouth went white at the corners with pain. There was also the smithy to run, and Collun did not have the ability to stand in for his father.

But still Collun put off leaving. He kept hoping another messenger from Temair would come up the dusty road with a letter explaining that it had all been a great mistake, that Nessa had been found in some overlooked corner, lost in a book. But no messenger came. The silence between father and son deepened. Mealtimes grew unbearable for Collun, and he began to avoid them, taking food with him out to the fields. Before leaving in the morning, though, he would go to his mother's room.

Each day, she grew thinner, barely leaving her bed, never speaking, her hands cold as ice. Filled with foreboding, Collun tried to cure his mother with hot broth made of healing herbs from his garden. But even as he
ladled the liquid into her mouth, he knew her illness was not of the body but of the spirit. She loved Nessa deeply, Collun knew, but something else ate at her. He wondered if she blamed herself for letting Nessa leave the farmhold.

Emer had always been protective of both daughter and son. Aonarach was some distance from Inkberrow, and neither Emer nor Goban made the trip often. The blacksmith was a dour, solitary man, and Emer, too, showed no interest in mingling with the people of Inkberrow; her family was enough for her, she had always said. Emer fretted when Nessa or Collun was out of her sight for too long. Staying home did not bother Collun overmuch. He had one friend, Talisen, an aspiring bard who lived in Inkberrow, and had no desire for more. But Nessa chafed at her mother's restrictions, and it was partly these that had made her so determined to go to Temair.

***

Collun worked in the fields or in his garden each day from dawn until long past nightfall, but he found it more and more difficult to concentrate. His trine, the two-pronged tool he always carried that served him for weeding, tilling, and sowing, felt clumsy and heavy in his hand. The ground seemed harder, the weeds tougher and more plentiful.

And then the kesil had come.

All that night after his encounter with the old man, Collun remained in the garden, his thoughts full of Nessa, the kesil's burning eyes, and Emer's white face turned to the wall. When dawn's light filtered through
the branches of the small hazel tree beside him, the spray of alyssum was still clutched in his fingers, the fire ant long gone.

Emer had told Collun long ago that this hazel was his birth tree, planted when he was born. Goban's tree was a large copper beech out beside the west field, and Nessa's was the whitethorn that grew at the other end of the garden. Emer's birth tree was the silver fir, but it had been planted somewhere near Temair.

Collun rose stiffly, his joints cold. He went and stood for a moment by the whitethorn tree. Collun told himself he did not believe in the superstition of the birth tree—that it reflected the health of the person for whom it was planted. Even so, it comforted him to see that the tree looked as it always did, its leaves shiny and deep green.

Collun entered the house and walked into the kitchen, where his father already sat at the worn wooden table, eating a bowl of oats and sugared maple. Father and son acknowledged each other with their eyes but did not speak. Collun heated a pan of chicory tea and poured it into a mug. Wrapping his fingers around the bowl of the cup, grateful for the warmth, he sat down at the table facing his father.

"I leave tomorrow for Temair."

There was a momentary glimmer of surprise in the older man's eyes. Collun's face flushed. He felt a hot bud of anger in his throat. He swallowed hard, and the anger was replaced by the familiar ache of knowing that, no matter what he did, his father would feel no pride in him. Then the moment passed and Goban simply nodded.

"I cannot spare Febo, you know. He is having trouble with his back leg, anyway."

"I had intended to walk."

"It is a long journey to Temair. Two weeks or more by horse," observed Goban.

"Yes," replied Collun, and he closed his eyes and drank down the chicory, savoring the hot burn as it filled his mouth.

Collun spent the rest of the morning working in the fields. He labored hard, with a sense of urgency. The first frost was not far off, and he did not know if he would be back in time for the spring planting.

The fields done, Collun moved to the garden by the house, where he weeded and finished planting the bulbs. He cut most of the remaining late summer flowers and put them in an earthenware pitcher. He took them in to his mother. She turned her face toward him, but she did not notice the brightly colored blooms.

"Goban told me," Emer said, and she looked frightened.

"I must go. I should have gone earlier."

"You cannot. I will not lose both my son and my daughter."

"I will find Nessa and bring her back," Collun replied with a confidence that rang as false in the small room as it did inside him. "Perhaps we will even return to you by the month of Ruis, and we can all celebrate the Feast of Tuilioc together."

"No!" Emer cried out. "You must not go."

Collun stared at his mother's stretched, pale face. "Why do you not want me to go?"

Emer's eyes slid away from his. "You must not," she repeated dully.

***

Late in the afternoon, as Collun was tamping down the earth over the last of his bulbs, his father approached.

"What will you use as a weapon?" Goban asked.

"I do not know ... I hadn't thought."

"You will need a weapon. The road to Temair is not safe. Especially on foot."

He held out his hand. Collun looked at him, puzzled.

"Your trine. Give it to me."

"What?"

"I will make it useful."

Collun hesitated. He had carried the trine with him for many years. It fit his hand exactly, its handle smooth and worn.

Embedded in the handle at the top of the trine was a dull blue-gray stone. His mother had given it to him when he was a small boy.

It was on a spring morning, he remembered, and he had been out riding the then young farm horse, Febo.
The animal had suddenly shied at a field mouse that darted across his path, and Collun had been thrown. He could not breathe, the wind knocked out of him. Emer had come, hearing his strangled cry. She held him, soothing the panic in him until his breath came back. Later that day she had handed Collun the stone. She smiled and told him it would bring him luck, and even if he should fall off Febo again and lose his breath, he had only to touch the lucky stone and he would know his breath would come back.

It had been Collun's own idea to set the stone into the handle of his trine. Thereafter it seemed to him that the trine with its lucky stone could till the soil like no other. The plants seemed to grow faster, the flowers bigger and brighter.

His father made a sound of impatience. "You cannot defend yourself with a trine. Give it to me."

And so Collun reluctantly handed over his trine. Later that evening, Goban returned from the smithy, his face red from the heat of the forge, and gave it back to Collun. Only it was no longer a trine but rather a shining, sharp-bladed dagger. Its handle was the same, the lucky stone still embedded at the top, but in place of the two graceful prongs which slid into hard ground like knives into warm butter, there was a thin and deadly looking blade.

The smith's eyes shone with pride.

"Test it," he said.

Collun ran his finger over the blade. A few drops of blood sprang up suddenly, and he almost dropped the knife in surprise.

"It is ... very sharp. Thank you, Father."

Goban then silently handed Collun a leather sheath for holding the dagger on his belt. Collun took it, again thanking him.

He was relieved when his father limped off, leaving him alone with his new weapon. Collun looked down blankly at the knife that had been a trine. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to throw it as far away as he could. It was as if some evil thing had come and taken away a beloved friend and left a changeling in its place.

And yet his father was right. He had made his choice, and it would be foolish to set off with the wrong tools. A gardener knew this as well as a blacksmith. There would be no use for a trine on the road that lay ahead.

Collun slept through the night for the first time since the messenger's arrival. His decision had been made, and yet when he woke in the morning he did not feel any comforting sense of certainty. He feared his choice, and he realized suddenly it had been Nessa who, unknowingly, had first shown Collun that he was a coward.

He had not been more than seven years old when it happened. He had been in the garden as usual. Nessa had just finished her chores and was sitting on a fence watching the chickens. She was eating a peach, her short legs dangling. Suddenly he heard her give a strangled cough and a gasp. He turned and saw to his horror that her face, shiny around the mouth with peach juice, was turning a mottled shade of red, her dark eyes wide and frightened. Her hand clutched at her throat. The peach pit had lodged there. She was choking.