Guy Gavriel Kay - The Last Light of the Sun

Alun shook his head again, didn’t answer. Would never answer that question, he decided. Brynn cleared his throat again. From inside the house, beyond the double doors, they heard someone cry in pain.

Neither of them, Alun realized, was standing in such a way that they could see if there was still a shimmering above them on the hill. If he turned his head …

The big man abruptly slapped his hand against his thigh, as if to break a mood, or a spell. “I have a gift for you,” he said brusquely, and whistled.

Nothing for a moment, then out of the blackness a shape appeared and came to them. The dog—he was a wolfhound, and huge—rubbed its head against ap Hywll’s thigh. Brynn reached down, a hand in the dog’s fur at its neck.

“Cafall,” he said calmly. “Hear me. You have a new master. Here he is. Go to him.” He let go and stepped away. Nothing again, at first, then the dog tilted its head—a grey, Alun thought, though it was hard to be sure in the darkness—looked at Brynn a moment, then at Alun.

And then he came quietly across the space between.

Alun looked down at him, held out one hand. The dog sniffed it for a moment, then padded, with grace, to Alun’s side.

“You gave him … that name?” Alun asked. This was unexpected, but ought to have been trivial. It didn’t feel that way.

“Cafall, yes. When he was a year old, in the usual way.”

“Then he’s your best dog.”

He saw Brynn nod. “Best I’ve ever had.”

“Too great a gift, my lord. I cannot—”

“Yes, you can,” said Brynn. “For many reasons. Take a companion from me, lad.”

That was what the name meant, of course. Companion . Alun swallowed. There was a constriction in his throat. Was this what would make him weep tonight, after everything? He reached down and his hand rested on the warmth of the dog’s head. He rubbed back and forth, ruffling the fur. Cafall pushed against his thigh. The ancient name, oldest stories. A very big dog, graceful and strong. No ordinary wolfhound, to so calmly accept this change with a spoken word in the night. It wasn’t, he knew, a trivial gift at all.

Not to be refused.

“My thanks,” he said.

“My sorrow,” said Brynn again. “Let him … help keep you among us, lad.”

So that was it. Alun found himself blinking; the lights in the farmhouse windows blurring for a moment. “Shall we go in?” he asked.

Brynn nodded.

They went in, to where lanterns were burning among the dead in the room beside the chapel, and among all the wounded children of Jad—wounded in so many different ways—within the house.

The dog followed, then lay down by the chapel door at Alun’s murmured command. Outside, on the slope to the south, something lingered for a time in the dark and then went away, light as mist, before the morning came.

Chapter V

It had not been a good spring or summer for the traders of Rabady Isle, and there were those quite certain they knew why. The list of grievances was long.

Sturla Ulfarson, who had succeeded Halldr Thinshank as governor of the island’s merchants and farmers and fisherfolk, might have only one hand but he possessed two eyes and two ears and a nose for the mood of people, and he was aware that men were comparing the (exaggerated) glories of Thinshank’s days with the troubles and ill omens that had marked the beginning of his own.

Unfair, perhaps, but no one had made him mano euvre for this position, and Ulfarson wasn’t the self-pitying sort. Had he been so, he’d have been inclined to point out that the notorious theft of Thinshank’s grey horse and the marring of his funeral rites last spring—the start of all their troubles—had happened before the new governor had been acclaimed. He’d have noted that no man, whatever kind of leader he might be, could have prevented the thunderstorm that had killed two young people in the night fields shortly after that. And he might also have bemoaned the fact that it was hardly within the power of a local administrator to control events in the wider world: warfare among Karch and Moskav and the Sarantines couldn’t help but impact upon trade in the north.

Sturla One-hand did make these points decisively (he was a decisive man, for the most part) when someone dared challenge him directly, but he also set about doing what he could do on the isle, and as a result he discovered something.

It began with the families of the young man and woman killed in the storm. Everyone knew Ingavin sent the thunder and all manner of storms, that there was nothing accidental if people were killed or homes ruined by such things (a world where the weather was utterly random was a world not to be endured).

The girl had been doing her year of service to the volur at the compound by the edge of the forest. The young women of Rabady Isle took this duty, in turn, before they wed. It was a ritual, an honourable one. Fulla, the corn goddess, Ingavin’s bride, needed attention and worship too, if children were to be born healthy and the fields kept fertile. Iord, the seer, was an important figure here on the isle: in her own way, as powerful as the governor was.

Sturla One-hand had paid a formal visit to the compound, bringing gifts, shortly after his election by the thring . He hadn’t liked the volur, but that wasn’t the point. If there was magic being used, you wanted it used for you, not against you. Women could be dangerous.

And that, in fact, is what he discovered. The families of the young man and the girl were elbowing each other towards a feud over their deaths, each blaming the other’s offspring for the two of them being out by the memorial cairn, lying together when the lightning broke. Sturla had his own thoughts as to who had inveigled whom, but it was important to be seen to be conducting an inquiry first. His principal desire was to keep a blood feud from Rabady, or, at the least, to limit the casualties.

He set about speaking with as many of the young ones as he could, and in this way came to have a conversation with a yellow-haired girl from the mainland, the newest member of the circle of women in the compound. She had come (properly) in response to his summons and had knelt before him, shy, eyes suitably downcast.

She had little assistance, however, to offer concerning the two lightning-charred young ones, claiming to have seen Halli with the lad only once, “the evening before Bern Thorkellson came to the seer with Thinshank’s horse.”

The new governor of Rabady Isle, who had been leaning back in his seat, an ale flask in his one good hand, had leaned forward. The lightning storm, the two dead youngsters, and a possible feud became less compelling.

“Before he what?” said Sturla One-hand.

He put the flask down, reached out with his hand and grabbed the girl by her yellow hair, forcing her to look up at him. She paled, closed her eyes, as if overwhelmed by his powerful nearness. She was pretty.

“I … I … should not have said that,” she stammered.

“And why not?” growled Ulfarson, still gripping her by the hair.

“She will kill me!”

“And why?” the governor demanded.

She said nothing, obviously terrified. He tugged, hard. She whimpered. He did it again.

“She … she did a magic-working on him.”

“She what?” said Sturla, struggling, aware he was not sounding particularly astute. The girl—he didn’t know her name—suddenly rocked forward and threw her arms around his legs, pressing her face to his thighs. It was not actually unpleasant.

She said, weeping, “She hated Thinshank … she will kill me … but she uses her power for … for her own purposes. It is … wrong!” She spoke with her mouth against him, arms clutching his legs.