The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (3 page)

That caught Hamar's attention. He was always the sort of person who needed to have something right in front of him to fully understand it, this being the reason he did so badly at playing Jackal and Prey. I sometimes wondered too whether he hadn't inherited most of the Emorian blood in our family, for he was as pale-faced as an Emorian, and he sometimes talked about the unseen gods as though he were not quite sure he believed in them – but of course I would not insult him by pointing this out to him.
Now he said, "I wondered about that book, but I thought it was one of those volumes Fenton taught you to bind."
"He did," I said, "but I only bound blank pages, so I decided to fill them as a journal."
"What does it say? Does it have anything in it about me?" He reached toward the book.
I pulled it hastily from his hands, remembering what I had written about him earlier that day. "Not this one," I said, offering a silent apology up to the Jackal for my falsehood. "My earlier volume has some passages in it about you." Some of those passages, I knew, were complimentary enough to my brother that he would be pleased to hear them.
"Read them to me now," he ordered.
"I can't. I don't have the first volume with me. I hid it back in the house, where you and Mira couldn't paw your way through it."
"Then fetch it," ordered Hamar. He's like that sometimes.
I could see that he was on the point of going into one of his rages, so I said wearily, "You can fetch it yourself. I've hidden it in—"
"I can find it," he said, clearly annoyed that I had so little faith in his hunting abilities.
I shrugged and turned my attention back to my wine flask. When I looked again, Hamar was gone.
After a minute, I regretted his departure. All around me, villagers were chatting and laughing, but Hamar and I had set ourselves slightly apart from the rest, and no one rose now to take Hamar's place.
I looked about. Drew was on the other side of the fire with some of his playmates, and he looked longingly at me, but I was sure it could not be a manly act for me to go sit with a cousin so much younger than myself, so I turned my gaze away from him toward the younger men of the village. They were all standing in a knot, gathered round Drew's father, Lange, who was talking about the latest village council meeting. I realized, with a lowering of the heart, that I would have nothing to contribute to such a conversation.
Leda was sitting nearby, holding her baby and smiling as she watched Lange. I was trying to decide whether it would be manly to go talk with my own sister when, to my relief, I caught sight of Fenton gesturing to me. I rose and rushed to join him.
He said in a low voice, "Adrian, where is your brother? Your father wants to start the village's vow-taking now."
I looked at the hall, which was farther down the mountain. "He went back to our house to fetch something."
"Well, have someone bring him back here. He should be present for the ceremony, and he will need to be here for its sequel, when you and he exchange vows."
I looked round, but Leda was now in conversation with one of the more garrulous older women in the village; I knew that it would be difficult for her to extract herself from the talk. After a minute's more frantic searching with my eyes, I found Mira.
She was sitting with her friend Chloris, who recently married Titus. Some of the older boys were saying at the time of the marriage that Emorians do terrible things to their women, but I had known better than to pass that information on to Mira; my sister is a terrible gossip. Besides, Titus has lived in Koretia for three years now. He has had time to become civilized.
When I told Mira what I needed done, she treated me as though I was still a boy. "Fetch him yourself," she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. Then she said to Chloris eagerly, "Go on. What did he do next?"
Chloris turned pink; she was trying to bite away a smile. I sighed and stepped back out of hearing, turning my eyes toward Drew.
At that moment, though, I heard my father call for silence, and I knew that it was too late. I ran over and was just in time to scramble onto the speaking rock beside Fenton. My father remained below us, waiting for the moment when he would be called forward to help administer the vows.
I looked round from the heights of the speaking rock at the view before me. All in a cluster around us and the balefire were the men and women and children of the village – about thirty households in all, along with a few unmarried men who had become members of our village by vowing their blood to a blood-brother. That same vow – the one I was about to take with Hamar – is always taken by the village's boys when they become men, as a way of showing their loyalty to the village . . . and also, of course, because a double bond of blood to one's village, through birth and through friendship, makes a man more likely to exact vengeance in a feud.
So there were blade-carrying men and boys there, and very young boys who yearned to carry blades, and the women and girls who brought new sons into the world – and daughters too, for women and girls are needed to help with the healing of wounded men and the preparation of corpses. The last is a secret among women: the art of preparing a corpse so that it will stay fresh for three days, even in the hottest weather. But other than that, women are never allowed to take part in blood feuds. I'm glad I was born a boy rather than a girl.
Beyond the villagers stood the wooden houses, built on rock and dirt, including our own house: a hall, along with a loft where Hamar and Mira and I slept.
And beyond that was the Sea of Koretia, as it is called: the long stretch of green woods, nearly unbroken within the triangular bounds of the mountains that enclose Koretia. Sometimes, on clear days when I'm on top of the mountain, I've thought I could see Capital Mountain, where the priests are trained, and at its foot the city where the King lives and his lords meet in council. But my father says that the capital is much too far away to be seen – many days' ride away. Only Capital Mountain serves as a dim and distant sentinel of the capital's position.
We of the borderland are almost a people apart, for it was here, the stories say, that the tribesmen from the northern portion of the Great Peninsula met the tribesmen of the southern portion of the Great Peninsula – who, it was said, had originally travelled over the Koretian Straights to the east, from mainland areas that were turning into desert. And when the northern people met the southern people, they intermarried and formed a common language. And that language was what we now call Border Koretian.
Then, after a few generations, most of the people left the borderland, the northern people spreading north and the southern people spreading south, so that the Three Lands of the Great Peninsula came to be formed: Koretia and Daxis to the south, and Emor to the north. But here in the borderland, some villagers stayed, preserving the ancient manners of speech and living. We who are their descendants hold the memories of what the Great Peninsula was like, back in the years before the Three Lands were formed.
Or so Fenton has told me. None of this was on my mind on my birthday, so I know that the reason I am writing all this down is to avoid writing what came next on that day.
Presently I became aware of Fenton speaking, though not because he was speaking about me. He was describing how the Jackal, after tricking his enemies, would often forgive his enemies and make peace with them. He was leaving out the stories where the Jackal killed his enemies, and I could see from my father's expression what he thought of this selectiveness in the recounting. But like all the other villagers, he remained respectfully silent as the gods' representative offered us a glimpse of the wisdom of the gods.
After a while, Fenton became more concrete in his examples of acts that should be forgiven: he was citing acts that had taken place during our present feud in Cold Run, and I realized that Hamar had been right when he said that Fenton would require us to take a peace oath with Cold Run.
This reminded me that Hamar had still not reached the speaking rock in order to exchange his blood vow of friendship with me. I scanned the crowd with my eyes, trying to see whether, after finding my journal, Hamar had dilly-dallied in order to talk with some of the other boys.
Fenton was saying, ". . . and those who seek peace will experience the peace of the gods in their hearts, but those who seek fire and blood—"
He stopped suddenly. His head jerked up, as though he had heard the eerie wail of a jackal.
And at that moment, as Fenton was staring up the slope, and I was staring at Fenton, a woman screamed. A man cried, "The hall! It's on fire!"
By the time we reached my house, flames were leaping through the roof. I – who had shouted almost incoherent warnings on the way that Hamar might be in the hall – would have run into the building immediately, even though black smoke was pouring out of the open door. But Fenton caught hold of me and held me; for a priest, he is very strong. As I struggled in his arms, he said, "No. Look – your father is going in."
I turned my head in time to see my father duck his way through the doorway. He was carrying a face-cloth in his hand, which seemed odd, until I saw that it was dripping with water. He had it over his mouth and nose as he disappeared into the blackness.
More water was arriving, brought by the women from the mountain brook – women always seem to be quick-witted at such times. I saw Leda thrust her baby into Mira's arms so that she could help with the water-carrying. Drew and some of the other boys had run off to fetch the village's one ladder, other than our loft ladder, but they returned, panting, to report that the ladder was in a state of disrepair, as it was being mended by Warner, who is our village carpenter.
The men had joined the water-carrying now, and people were throwing water onto the flames, though it was clear that this was of no use. The flames were eating the walls of the house like a ravenous beast.
And my father and brother were still inside.
Suddenly my father emerged, stumbling, coughing. Fenton let go of me, and we both ran over to him.
"No . . . good," he was saying to Lange when we arrived. "Loft ladder is . . . burnt. Can't reach . . ."
At that moment, there was another scream, and the villagers, crying out, began to point.
I looked up. There in the tiny loft window, too small for anyone to crawl through, was a face I knew well, and a hand carrying a blade. I could not hear the voice above the roar of the flames, but the gestures that Hamar made with his dagger were clear enough.
The villagers had gone silent. Someone said, quite unnecessarily, "He wants us to avenge his death."
There was a crack, like the crack on the day that the gods split the Great Peninsula from the mainland, and I heard Hamar give a great cry, and then the hall collapsed, and there was no sound but for the crackle of flames.
Lange was shouting again, calling upon the village men to dig into the rubble of the hall. The men came forward eagerly enough, but it was clear that it would be some time before they could follow these instructions, for the fallen timber was still red-hot. Leda, crying openly, continued to pour water onto the lingering flames, while Drew and Mira huddled together with the baby, with my mother standing behind them, her arms protectively round them as she gave out small, whimpering sobs.
And I – I who had stood by all this while and done nothing, I who had sent my brother to the place of his death – stood numbly, unable to weep as a man should weep on such a day. I felt nothing, except for the presence of Fenton's hand on my shoulder.
Then I heard my father call my name. I turned and saw that he had tears streaming down his face. He gathered me into his arms, and I pressed my face into the hollow of his shoulder, closing my eyes and trying to rid myself of the image of the flames and the sound of Hamar's voice in the final moments.
When I looked up again, Fenton was gone.
 
CHAPTER TWO
The third day of September in the 940th year a.g.l.
I'm sitting on the back of our mountain – that is, on the northern side of the mountain, the side that is beyond the border and located in the no-man's-land of the black border mountains. Hamar and I used to sit in this spot to eat meals and to pretend that we could see as far north as Emor. Of course, our mountain is only a foothill in comparison to the other mountains, but the land to the north of us dips in such a way that our mountain actually looks taller than some of the other mountains. From this vantage point, you can see about one day's journey into the mountains, which takes you a third of the way to Emor, according to Fenton.
There isn't much to look at here, for what scrubby vegetation exists on the mountains is overwhelmed by the blackness of the rocky slopes, but right now I can see a flickering of light in the distance, accompanied by a low rumbling sound that has managed to travel this far, so I know that there must be a thunderstorm occurring to the north of us. It won't come this far – none of the clouds from Emor make it this far. Mountside receives all its rain from the south or the west or from whatever clouds have made their way over the ridge of mountains along the eastern sea-coast.
Mainly, what Hamar and I used to do here was listen: listen to the winds, and listen to the animals in the mountains, and pretend that we could hear the mountain patrol guards talking to each other, though we're too far south for that. Then, when we'd finished eating and listening, we'd play Jackal and Prey.
Father caught us playing here once, a few years' ago, and we could tell that his anger that we had crossed the border was combined with puzzlement that we could play Jackal and Prey in such a place. On the southern side of our mountain, where all the trees are located, Jackal and Prey is a game played through the eyes: you try to locate the prey by sighting him as he ducks around trees and bushes and rocks. But the rocks in the no-man's-land are so numerous that my father thought that you would have to spend years here before you could ever find your prey.
So we told him that we located the prey through sound, which made him even more confused. "How can you hear
anything
in the mountains, much less a prey?" he asked.
It's not as bad as everyone thinks, actually. It's true that the winds whistle through the mountains nearly without cease, and there are times when Hamar and I have to shout in order to hear each other. But every few weeks, the wind dies down altogether for a long period of time, and even when it doesn't, the wind is usually low enough that you can hear any sounds in the nearby mountains. Besides, there are the echoes.