Guy Kay - Tigana

Ducas laughed at that, a deep sound in his chest. Then, sobering, he said, "I wish it had happened earlier."

"So do I. You have no idea how much. I have a friend I think will take to you as much as you will to him."

"Shall I meet him?"

"In Senzio, later this spring, if events fall right. If we can make them fall right."

"If that is so, you had best start by telling us how you need them to fall," Rinaldo said prosaically. "Let me tend to your two wounded while you tell what we should know."

He moved forward, tapping the ground ahead of him as he came up to Devin. "I am a Healer," he explained gravely, the sharpness gone from his voice. "Your leg is bad and needs dealing with. Will you let me try?"

"So that is how you knew us," Ducas said, wonder in his voice again. "I have never known a true Healer before."

"There are not many of us and we tend not to announce ourselves," Rinaldo said, the empty sockets of his eyes fixed on nothingness. "That was so even before the Tyrants came: it is a gift with limits and a price. Now we keep ourselves hidden for the same reason the wizards do, or almost the same: the Tyrants are happy to seize us, and force us serve them until they wear us out."

"Can they do that?" Devin asked. His voice was hoarse. He realized that he hadn't spoken for a long time. He cringed at the thought of what he would sound like if he tried to sing tonight. He couldn't remember the last time he had been so exhausted.

"Of course they can," said Rinaldo simply. "Unless we choose to die on their death-wheels instead. Which has been known to happen."

"I will be happy to learn of any difference between that coercion and what this man has done to me," Erlein said coldly.

"And I will be happy to tell you," Rinaldo shot back, "as soon as I finish my work." To Devin he said, "There should be straw behind you. Will you lie down and let me see what I can do?"

In a few moments Devin found himself prone on a bed of straw. With an old man's gingerly caution Rinaldo knelt beside him. The Healer began rubbing his palms slowly against each other.

Over his shoulder Rinaldo said, "Alessan, I'm serious. Talk while I work. Begin with Baerd. I would like to know why he isn't with you."

"Baerd!" a voice interrupted. "Is that your friend? Baerd bar Saevar?" It was Naddo, the wounded man. He stumbled forward to the edge of the straw.

"Saevar was his father, yes," Alessan said. "You knew him?"

Naddo was so distraught he could scarcely speak. "Knew him? Of course I knew him. I was… I…" He swallowed hard. "I was his father's last apprentice. I loved Baerd as… as an older brother. I… we… parted badly. I went away in the year after the fall."

"So did he," Alessan said gently, laying a hand on Naddo's trembling shoulder. "Not long after you did. I know who you are now, Naddo. He has often spoken to me of that parting. I can tell you that he grieved for the manner of it. That he still does. I expect he will tell you himself when you meet."

"This is the friend you mentioned?" Ducas asked softly.

"It is."

"He has spoken to you of me?" Naddo's voice skirled high with wonder.

"He has."

Alessan was smiling again. Devin, weary as he was, found himself doing the same. The man before them sounded remarkably like a young boy just then.

"Do you… does he know what happened to his sister? To Dianora?" Naddo asked.

Alessan's smile faded. "We do not. We have searched for a dozen years, and asked in a great many places, wherever we find survivors of the fall. There are so many women of that name. She went away herself, some time after he left in search of me. No one knows why, or where she went, and the mother died not long after. They are… their loss is the deepest hurt I know in Baerd."

Naddo was silent; a moment later they realized that he was fighting back tears. "I can understand that," he said finally, his voice husky. "She was the bravest girl I ever knew. The bravest woman.

And if she wasn't really beautiful she was still so very…" He stopped for a moment, struggling for composure, and then said quietly: "I think I loved her. I know I did. I was thirteen years old that year."

"If the goddesses love us, and the god," Alessan said softly, "we will find her yet."

Devin hadn't known any of this. There seemed to be so many things he hadn't known. He had questions to ask, maybe even more than Ducas had. But just then Rinaldo, on his knees beside him, stopped rubbing his palms together and leaned forward.

"You need rest quite badly," he murmured, so softly none of the others could hear. "You need sleep as much as your leg needs care." As he spoke he laid one hand gently on Devin's forehead and Devin, for all his questions and all his perturbation, felt himself suddenly beginning to drift, as on a wide calm sea towards the shores of sleep, far from where men were speaking, from their voices and their grief and their need. And he heard nothing more at all of what was said in the barn that night.

THREE DAYS LATER AT SUNRISE THEY CROSSED THE BORDER south of the two forts and Devin entered Tigana for the first time since his father had carried him away as a child.

Only the most struggling musicians came into Lower Corte, the companies down on their luck and desperate for engagements of any kind, however slight the pay, however grim the ambience. Even so long after the Tyrants had conquered, the itinerant performers of the Palm knew that Lower Corte meant bad luck and worse wages, and a serious risk of falling afoul of the Ygrathens, either inside the province or at the borders going in or out.

It wasn't as if the story wasn't known: the Lower Corteans had killed Brandin's son, and they were paying a price in blood and money and brutally heavy oppression for that. It did not make for a congenial setting, the artists of the roads agreed, talking it over in taverns or hospices in Ferraut or Corte. Only the hungry or the newly begun ventured to take the ill-paying, risk-laden jobs in that sad province in the southwest. By the time Devin had joined him Menico di Ferraut had been traveling for a very long time and had more than enough of a reputation to be able to eschew that particular one of the nine provinces. There was sorcery involved there too; no one really understood it, but the travelers of the road were a superstitious lot and, given an alternative, few would willingly venture into a place where magic was known to be at work. Everyone knew the problems you could find in Lower Corte. Everyone knew the stories.

So this was the first time for Devin. Through the last hours of riding in darkness he had been waiting for the moment of passage, knowing that since they had glimpsed Fort Sinave north of them some time ago, the border had to be near, knowing what lay on the other side.

And now, with the first pale light of dawn rising behind them, they had come to the line of boundary cairns that stretched north and south between the two forts, and he had looked up at the nearest of the old, worn, smooth monoliths, and had ridden past it, had crossed the border into Tigana.

And he found to his dismay that he had no idea what to think, how to respond. He felt scattered and confused. He had shivered uncontrollably a few hours ago when they saw the distant lights of Sinave in darkness, his imagination restlessly at work. I’ll be home soon, he had told himself. In the land where I was born.

Now, riding west past the cairn, Devin looked around compulsively, searching, as the slow spread of light claimed the sky and then the tops of hills and trees and finally bathed the springtime world as far as he could see.

It was a landscape much like what they had been riding through for the past two days. Hilly, with dense forests ranging in the south on the rising slopes, and the mountains visible beyond. He saw a deer lift its head from drinking at a stream. It froze for a minute, watching them, and then remembered to flee.