Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

Instead, it seemed that he must take his father.

Tobin’s eyes felt hot and his chest burned as if he’d run all the way from the town, but no tears would come. He felt as dry inside as the dust beneath his feet.

Tharin mounted his horse again and someone helped Tobin up behind him, still clutching his father’s sword.

Ki met them halfway, breathless and limping. He seemed to know already what had happened and burst into silent tears at the sight of the arms lashed to the empty saddle. Going to Tobin, he clasped his friend’s leg with both hands and rested his forehead against his knee. Koni came and gave Ki a hand up onto his horse.

As they rode the rest of the way up the hill, Tobin could feel his father’s gold signet swing heavily against his heart with every beat of the horse’s hooves.

Nari and the others met them at the main gate and set up an awful wailing before Tharin could even tell them what had happened. Even Arkoniel wept.

Nari caught Tobin in a fierce embrace as he climbed down. “Oh, my poor love,” she sobbed. “What will we do?”

“Go to Ero,” he tried to tell her, but doubted whether she heard him.

The arms and ashes were carried into the hall and laid before the shrine. Tharin helped Tobin cut off Gosi’s mane and burn it with a lock of his own hair in the barracks yard to honor his father.

Then they sang sad songs at the shrine that everyone except Tobin seemed to know, and Tharin kept both hands on Tobin’s shoulders as he said prayers to Astellus and Dalna to take care of his father’s spirit, then to Sakor and Illior, asking them to protect the household.

For Tobin it was all a blur of words. When Brother appeared and placed one of his dirty, twisted tree roots on the shelf of the shrine, Tobin was too tired to sweep it away. No one else noticed.

When the prayers and songs were done, Tharin took Tobin aside and knelt beside him, pulling him close again. “I was with your father as he died,” Tharin said softly, and he had that odd look in his eyes again. “We spoke of you. He loved you more than anything in the world and was so sad to be leaving you—” He wiped at his eyes and cleared his throat. “He charged me to be your protector, and so I shall for the rest of my life. You can always depend on me.”

He drew his sword and placed it point down before him. Taking Tobin’s hand, he placed it on the worn hilt and covered it with his own. “I pledge by the Four and my honor to stand by you and serve you the rest of my days. I gave the same oath to your father. Do you understand, Tobin?”

Tobin nodded. “Thank you.”

Tharin sheathed his sword and embraced him for a long moment. Pulling back, he stood and shook his head. “By the Four, I wish it was my ashes in that jar and not his. I’d give anything for it to be so.”

Daylight was failing by the time it was all finished. Mealtime came and went, but no one lit a fire or cooked, and everyone spent the night in the hall. A vigil, Tharin called it. As night fell, he lit a single lamp in the shrine but the rest of the house was left dark.

Some of the servants lay down to sleep, but the warriors knelt in a half circle around the shrine, their swords unsheathed before them. Nari made a pallet for Tobin by the hearth, but he couldn’t lie down. He joined the men for a while, but their silence made him feel shut out and alone. At last he crept away to the far end of the hall and slumped down in the rushes near the staircase.

Ki found him there and sat down beside him. “You’ve never seen anything like this, have you?” he whispered.

Tobin shook his head.

“They must have done something when your mother died?”

“I don’t know.” Thinking about that time still sent a shiver through him. Ki must have noticed, for he shifted closer and put an arm around him, just as Tharin had. Tobin slumped against him and rested his head on Ki’s shoulder, grateful for the solid, simple comfort. “I don’t remember. I saw her lying on the ice, then she was just gone.”

He’d never asked what had happened to her. Nari had tried to speak of it once or twice soon after, but Tobin hadn’t wanted to hear it then. He’d put his fingers in his ears and burrowed under the covers until she went away. No one in the house had spoken of it since, and he’d never asked. It had been bad enough, knowing that his mother’s spirit still walked in the tower; it hadn’t mattered to him where her body was.

Sitting here in the dark now, though, he considered what Tharin had said. His mother was in Ero.

Little as he recalled of that terrible day, he knew that the king had been gone by the time he’d been let out of bed. And so had his mother.

Like a tiny seeding stone dropped into one of Arkoniel’s alchemical solutions, the thought crystallized years of half-realized memories into a single sharp-edged conviction: the king had taken his mother away. His grief-clouded mind worried at this like a bad tooth too painful not to touch and prod.

No , Brother whispered in the dark.

“My mam died when I was six,” Ki said softly, drawing him back to the present.

“How?” For all their talking, they’d never spoken of this before.

“She cut her foot on a scythe and the wound wouldn’t heal.” A hint of the old upcountry accent crept back. “Her leg went all black and her mouth locked shut and she died. The ground was froze, so Father left her wrapped in the byre loft ’til spring. I used to climb up and sit by her sometimes, when I was lonesome. Sometimes I’d even pull back the blanket, just to see her face again. We buried her in the spring before the leaves came out. Father had brought Sekora home by then and her belly was already big. I remember staring at it whilst we sang the songs over my mam’s grave.” His voice broke high.

“You got a new mother,” Tobin murmured, suddenly feeling heavy and tired beyond words. “Now I’ve got no mother or father at all.”

Ki’s arm tightened around him. “Don’t suppose they’d let you come back home with me, eh? We’d hardly notice one more underfoot.”

Still dry-eyed and aching inside, Tobin drifted off and dreamt of sleeping with Ki in a great pile of brown-haired children—all of them snug together like a litter of pups while dead mothers lay frozen in the byre outside.

Arkoniel woke with a stiff neck just after dawn. He’d propped himself in a corner near the shrine, meaning to keep the vigil with the others, but dozed off sometime in the night.

At least I wasn’t the only one who fell asleep , he thought, looking around the hall.

The lamp in the shrine still burned, and by its dim light he could see dark forms sprawled on benches and in the rushes by the hearth. He could just make out Ki and Tobin near the stairs, slumped together with their backs to the wall.

Only the warriors had stayed awake, spending the night on their knees to honor the man whom they’d followed for so long.

Arkoniel studied their worn faces. Nyanis and Solari were new to him; from what he’d heard from Nari and Cook last night, both had been loyal liegemen, and so perhaps future allies for Rhius’ daughter.

He looked over at Tobin again; in this light he could have been any urchin from the slums of Ero, sleeping against a wall. Arkoniel sighed, recalling what Iya had told him of her own visions.

Too uneasy to sleep again, Arkoniel went outside and wandered onto the bridge to watch the sun come up. A few deer were grazing at the edge of the meadow, and several others had picked their way over the river’s stony banks to the water’s edge. A tall white heron stalked the shallows, looking for its breakfast. Even at this hour the day promised to be hot.

He sat down at the middle of the bridge and let his legs dangle over the edge. “What now, Lightbearer?” he asked softly. “What are we to do, if those who protect this child keep being taken away?”