Guy Kay - Tigana

The brown-haired man stepped forward, an unexpected hesitation in his eyes. He wasn't as stern as he had first seemed, Scelto realized, and he was younger as well.

"Tell me," the man. "Was she… did she ever…" He stopped, in confusion. The other man, the Prince, looked at him with compassion in his eyes.

"She was from Certando, Baerd. Everyone knows the story."

Slowly, the other man nodded his head. But when he turned away it was to look out toward the sea again. They don't seem like conquerors, Scelto thought. They didn't seem like men in the midst of a triumph. They just looked tired, as at the end of a very long journey.

"So it wasn't me, after all," the grey-eyed man was saying, almost to himself. "After all my years of dreaming. It was his own Fool who killed him. It had nothing to do with us." He looked at the two dead men lying together, then back at Scelto. "Who was the Fool? Do we know?"

She was gone, claimed by the dark sea far down. She was at rest. And Scelto was so tired. Tired of grief and blood and pain, of these bitter cycles of revenge. He knew what was going to happen to this man the moment he spoke.

They ought to know, she had said, before she walked away to the sea, and it was true, of course it was true. Scelto looked up at the grey-eyed man.

"Rhun?" he said. "An Ygrathen bound to the King many years ago. No one very important, my lord."

The Prince of Tigana nodded his head, his expressive mouth quirking with an inward-directed irony. "Of course," he said. "Of course. No one very important. Why should I have thought it would be otherwise?"

"Alessan," said the younger man from the front of the hill, "I think it is over. Down below, I mean. I think… I think the Barbadians are all dead."

The Prince lifted his head and so did Scelto. Men of the Palm and of Ygrath would be standing beside each other down in that valley.

"Are you going to kill us all now?" Scelto asked him.

The Prince of Tigana shook his head. "I told you, I have had enough of blood. There is a great deal to be done, but I am going to try to do it without any more killing now."

He went to the southern rim of the hill and lifted his hand in some signal to the men on his own ridge. The woman went over and stood beside him, and he put an arm around her shoulders. A moment later they heard the notes of a horn ring out over the valley and the hills, clear and high and beautiful, sounding an end to battle.

Scelto, still on his knees, wiped at his eyes with a grimy hand. He looked over and saw that the third man, the one who had tried to ask him something, was still gazing out to sea. There was a pain there he could not understand. There had been pain everywhere today though. He had had it in his grasp, even now, to speak truth and unleash so much more.

His eyes swung slowly down again, away from the hard blue sky and the blue-green sea, past the man at the western edge of the hill, past d'Eymon of Ygrath slumped across the King's chair with his own blade in his breast, and his gaze came to rest on the two dead men beside each other on the ground, so near that they could have touched had they been alive.

He could keep their secret. He could live with it.

THREE MEN ON HORSES IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS LOOKING over a valley to the east. There are pine and cedar woods beyond, hills on either side. The Sperion River sparkles in the distance, flowing down out of the mountains, not far from where it will begin its long curve west to find the sea. The air is bright and cool, with a feel of autumn in the breeze. The colors of the leaves will be changing soon and the year-round snow on the highest peaks of the mountains will begin moving down, closing the pass.

In the tranquil green of the valley below them, Devin sees the dome of Eanna's temple flash in the morning sunlight. Beyond the Sanctuary he can just make out the winding trail they had ridden down in the spring, coming here from the east across the border. It seems a lifetime ago. He turns in the saddle and looks north over the rolling, gradually subsiding hills.

"Will we be able to see it from here, later?"

Baerd glances over and then follows his gaze. "What, Avalle and the Towers? Easily, on any clear day. Meet me here in a year's time and you'll see my green-and-white Prince's Tower, I promise you."

"Where are you getting the marble?" Sandre asks.

"Same place as Orsaria did for the original tower. The quarry is still available, believe it or not, about two days' ride west of us near the coast."

"And you'll have it carried here?"

"By sea to Tigana, then on river barges up the Sperion. The same way they did it back then." Baerd has shaved his beard again. He looks years younger, Devin finds himself thinking.

"How do you know so much about it?" Sandre asks with lazy mockery. "I thought all you knew was archery and how not to fall on your face when you were out alone in the dark."

Baerd smiles. "I was always going to be a builder. I have my father's love of stone if not his gift. I'm a craftsman though, and I knew how to look at things, even back then. I think I know as much as any man alive about how Orsaria built his towers and his palaces. Including one in Astibar, Sandre. Would you like me to tell you where your secret passages are?"

Sandre laughs aloud. "Don't boast, you presumptuous mason. On the other hand, it has been almost twenty years since I was in that palace, you may have to remind me of where they are."

Grinning, Devin looks over at the Duke. It has taken him a long time to adjust to seeing Sandre without his dark Khardhu guise. "You will be going back after the wedding, then?" he asks, feeling a sadness at the thought of another parting ahead.

"I think I must, though I will say that I'm torn. I feel too old for governing anyone now. And it isn't as if I have any heirs to groom."

After a moment's stillness, Sandre takes them smoothly past the darkness of those memories: "To be honest, the thing that interests me most right now is what I've been doing here in Tigana. The mind-linking with Erlein and Sertino and the wizards we've managed to find."

"And the Night Walkers?" Devin asks.

"Indeed, Baerd's Carlozzini as well. I must say I'm pleased that the four of them are coming with Alienor to the wedding."

"Not as pleased as Baerd is, I'm sure," Devin adds slyly. Baerd gives him a look, and pretends to be absorbed in scanning the distant line of the road south of them.

"Well, hardly as pleased," Sandre agrees. "Though I do hope he'll spare his Elena for a small part of the time she's here. If we are going to change the attitude of this peninsula to magic there's no better time to start than now, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, certainly," Devin says, grinning broadly.

"She's not my Elena," Baerd murmurs, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the road.

"She isn't?" Sandre asks in mock surprise. "Then who's this Baerd person she keeps using me to relay messages to? Would you know the fellow?"

"Never heard of him," Baerd says laconically. He keeps a straight face for a moment longer, then gives way to laughter. "I'm beginning to remember why I preferred keeping to myself. And what about Devin, if you're on that subject? You don't think Alais would be sending him messages if she could?"

"Devin," says the Duke airily, "is a mere child, far too young and innocent to be getting involved with women, especially the likes of that guileful, experienced creature from Astibar." He attempts to look stern and fails; both of the others know his real opinion of Rovigo's daughter.

"There are no inexperienced women in Astibar," Baerd retorts. "And besides, he's old enough. He even has a battle scar on his ribs to show her."

"She's seen it already," Devin says, enjoying this enormously. "She taped it up after Rinaldo healed me," he adds hastily as both of the others raise their eyebrows. "No thrill there." He tries and fails to conceive of Alais as guileful and deceptive. The memory of her on the window-ledge in Senzio keeps coming back to him of late though; the particular smile on her face as he stumbled along the outside landing to his own room.