David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

But when she’d wakened after her battle with the Lords of the Seventh Swarm on Ruin, Thomas had been the one at her bedside, and he’d not left her night or day for the first three days.

She’d never expected the kind of gentle attention he’d shown her after that battle, and, frankly, she’d grown to be the kind of woman who no longer had much use for it.

Except for his songs. For he sang to her during those first dark and painful days, sang songs that were soft and sensitive and full of pain. Songs he’d composed himself.

She learned from Thomas that he’d been captured by Lord Karthenor, knew that the Aberlain had wrung information from Thomas, information that had led to Maggie’s own capture. But she never did find out exactly what Thomas had to endure.

Maggie only knew, by the look in his eyes, that the old Thomas was gone, dead. Something had died behind his laughing eyes, a fire had sputtered and extinguished.

The evening before she said goodbye to him forever, Thomas came to her room on Fale with a mandolin and played for baby Orick in his crib. Lately, the lad could hardly be put to rest without Thomas’s lullabies. So Thomas had told Gallen and Maggie to go for a walk by the starlit river outside Toohkansay while he cared for the child. Yet even after Gallen and Maggie returned, Thomas sang for long hours to the sleeping babe, as if hoping this gift of song would fill the boy’s sleeping head, last the child a lifetime.

Maggie had listened, and when at long last Thomas fell silent and sat gazing out the window to the starlight shining on the river, Maggie said, “Your singing is more beautiful now than ever. How is that?”

“Och, I used to sing for myself,” Thomas confided, “so that I could hear the praise of other folk. Now, I sing for the babies, and the children, and the young lovers in the back corners of the room, and for the old folks ambling off toward forever.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said.

“For what?” Thomas asked, leaning over with a grunt to put his mandolin in its case.

“For your songs. Maybe Orick won’t remember, but I shall. And when he’s old, I’ll try to sing some of them for him.”

Thomas’s eyes misted at those words, and he gazed up at Maggie, then sat back in the deep rocking chair. “You’re a good girl, Maggie. It’s proud I am to be having you as a Flynn.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said.

“You were your mother’s favorite, you know,” Thomas said. “Three strapping boys she had, and when you were born, I told her she ought to toss you in the river-a worthless, skinny little girl, you know.

“But you were your mother’s favorite. She said you were her reward for living a good life. The jewel in her heaven.”

“I laughed at the notion,” Thomas recalled, “but now, now I think maybe she had pegged it right. You would have made her proud. You’ve made me proud.”

It was perhaps the only sincere compliment Thomas had ever given her, the only one she was likely to ever receive. “Thank you,” was all Maggie could manage to say.

“Maggie,” Thomas said. “I know I’ve never been much of an uncle to you, but I’ve been thinking: I’d like to go to Tremonthin with you. That babe of yours, he might need some kin to look after him, sometimes.”

“I thought you liked it here on Fale,” Maggie said. “I thought you had a woman to see.”

“Oh, there are plenty of women in the galaxy, I’m starting to learn,” Thomas said. “And Fale is a fine place, if you’re after singing for yourself. But it doesn’t matter where I am. Songs are needed everywhere. And I think that wherever I go, my songs will outlast me.”

Maggie went and hugged him then, for she knew how much the offer had cost him. “There may be other women in the galaxy, Thomas,” she said, “but I think there’s one here on Fale that has a special hold on you. You were right all along. You’ve got your own road to follow, and I’ll not have you dogging my steps just because I’m kin.”

When she let Thomas go, he sighed; and though Maggie didn’t doubt that he’d follow her to Tremonthin if she asked, she was happy to hear him sigh in relief, to see a bit of that mischievous gleam shining in the back of his eyes.

When Gallen, Maggie, their son, and Orick and Tallea took the final world gate to Tremonthin, they came to the land in high summer, when the fields lay ripe and golden. Because technology was outlawed over most of the world, Gallen and Maggie first went to the City of Life, where Maggie turned over her mantle of technology to the lords there, and Gallen laid his weapons aside for safekeeping.

They then took a brief journey to the Vale of the Bock, where they visited the Tharrin, Ceravanne, and told her of their plans to settle on her world, in the wild southlands, near Battic.

Ceravanne seemed surprised. “Are you certain you can do this, Gallen? My beloved Belorian, from whom you are cloned, could never have settled like this. He was forever seeking after adventure.”

They were sitting on the lawn, beneath the shade of a portico up above the hot springs where the Bock wintered. It was a sunny day, and Gallen reached over absently, stroked the cheek of his son, Orick.

“I am more than just the clone of Belorian,” Gallen answered her. “I won’t repeat his mistakes. I think that loving a woman and raising a child are adventure enough for me, these days.”

Ceravanne’s eyes grew wide. “Why, Gallen, the way that you say that, I think perhaps you’ve found a peace that Belorian never knew.”

Orick could tell that she wanted to say more. She merely stepped close, touched Gallen’s chest shyly. “I wish you well. I only wish your father could have done so well, that I could have made him so happy.”

And not for the last time, Orick wondered how a woman could love so deeply that even four hundred years after her husband’s death, she could yearn for the man the way that Ceravanne yearned for Belorian now. It was so un-bearlike.

Ceravanne wished them joy, and then they left, taking a slow journey by land through the ripening fields.

In the months that followed, they sailed over calm seas to reach their new home, then Gallen felled trees and let them cure for the winter, while they took apartments in the underground chambers of Battic.

By winter’s end, Gallen’s son could nearly stand on his own, and the child was delighted when Tallea delivered twin cubs.

That summer, Gallen and Orick built two fine houses in a wooded glen near Battic. They chose a peaceful valley filled with maple trees, where a clear river rushed through the rocks and formed small pools. It would be a good place for children and cubs to play and climb and learn to fish.

Both families lived side by side in that glen for many years. In time, neighbors began to move in, and a small village sprang up around them.

The village was a study in cultural diversity, there were over two thousand subspecies of humans about on the continent, and a full quarter of those subspecies built homes in the region. No one ever seemed to question Orick’s and Tallea’s origins, to wonder at talking bears. Nor did they worry about the origins of Gallen and Maggie, two seemingly normal humans in this land that had long been a stronghold for those who sported various genetic upgrades.

Gallen settled down to a life of farming, calling himself by the name of Farmer Day.

More children followed to Gallen and Maggie-two more boys, and two daughters, all of whom grew to be bright and strong. In time Maggie added enough room to her log home so that it could function as an inn, where travelers passing through brought news of distant lands. Gallen often teased her for this. As a girl she’d hated working at Mahoney’s Inn-hated it so much that she’d rejected her home world. Now she seemed to love it, rising at dawn, falling down in a weary stupor at night.