Swordmage

THIRTY

2 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

The rumble of distant thunder rolled over the misty green peaks of the Highfells as a springtime storm drifted eastward past the harbor of Hulburg. It was raining, but it was a soft, cool drizzle-not the icy downpours of Tarsakh or Ches. The magnificent Arches that graced the southeast side of the harbor glimmered white in a dazzling sunbreak only a mile away. It seemed a good omen to Geran. He looked up at the skies and said, “You’ll have fair weather for your crossing, Hamil.”

The halfling grimaced. “I think I’m owed it,” he answered. He no longer wore his arm in a sling, and he walked with only the trace of a limp from the wound he’d taken in the fight by the postern gate. “To be perfectly honest, I’d rather ride around the Moonsea than cross it.”

“It’s at least six or seven hundred miles out of your way,” Kara said with a smile. She’d come down to the harbor to see Hamil off, despite her many duties as commander of what was left of the Shieldsworn. She wasn’t the only one; Mirya and her daughter, Selsha, were there to say their good-byes too, and of course Natali and Kirr had insisted on escorting Hamil to his ship. The ranger rested a hand on Natali’s shoulder and smiled at Hamil. “Most of that’s impassable mountains and trackless wilderness filled with hungry monsters. Are you certain you’d like to go that way?”

Hamil made a show of thinking over his answer for a long time. “No, I suppose not,” he finally sighed. “Better the sea I know than the mountains I don’t. Besides, if I take too long getting back to Tantras, the Double Moons or Sokols or Marstels will gobble up all of Veruna’s leavings before the Red Sails can stake a claim.”

“Don’t be worried about that,” Geran replied. “My uncle’s already promised the Red Sails the best of the Veruna docks and storehouses.” House Veruna, of course, was no longer welcome in Hulburg. After their role in the attack against Griffonwatch-an accusation that Darsi Veruna had vehemently denied, though she had no answer to the charges that her mercenaries had dealt with the King in Copper or abandoned the field during the Battle of Lendon’s Dike-the Verunas had holed up in their fortified compounds for three days before it became obvious to Darsi that she and her clerks, servants, and sellswords would be burned out by a Hulburgan mob if they remained. In the dark hour before dawn, the Verunas had boarded their ships and slipped away to Mulmaster, abandoning their holdings throughout the harmach’s domain. Harmach Grigor had already revoked their concessions and leases anyway, and the Merchant Council had chosen not to lodge any protests on Veruna’s account… a wise decision in Geran’s estimation. His only regret was that they’d also carried away his cousin Sergen, who’d made his escape aboard one of the Veruna ships.

“I think the captain’s anxious to cast off, Hamil,” said Kara. “You should go aboard.”

The halfling sighed. “Some dutiful persons often say that there’s no point in putting off unpleasantness,” he observed. “For my own part, I’ve never understood that reasoning. Should I be struck dead by a bolt of lightning a minute from now, I’d rather not have spent my last moments beginning to get seasick.” But he picked up his satchel and slung it over his shoulder, setting foot on the gangway.

“Farewell, Hamil!” Natali said. She darted over and gave him an enthusiastic hug, followed a moment later by her younger brother.

“Don’t go, Hamil!” Kirr said. “You can stay in Griffonwatch with us!”

“Now, that’s enough of that,” Hamil managed to say, and Geran smiled to see a bright gleam in the corner of his friend’s eye. It seemed that Hamil wasn’t quite as unattached as he would like to believe. Both children were only half a head shorter than he was, and it took the halfling a long moment to extricate himself from their embrace. He grinned fondly at the two of them and reached over to muss Kirr’s hair. “I always liked human children. It’s the only time your kind are sensibly sized. Anyway, I’ll be back by the end of the summer, sprouts. I promise.”

Geran stepped back and touched his hand to his brow. “A swift and safe journey, Hamil. I’ll see you in Tantras soon. Sweet water and light laughter until we meet again.”

“Someday someone must explain that bit of Elvish nonsense to me,” the halfling muttered. But he waved to Geran and the others, and boarded the ship-a sturdy two-masted ketch named Thentian Star. The master of the ship shouted orders to his sailors. They hauled up the gangway and took in their mooring lines, raising a half-sail on the foremast to carry them away from the wharf. Kirr and Natali ran along the dock, waving to Hamil, as the ship slid clear of the pier and began to beat away from Hulburg. Hamil stood by the sternrail waving back at the children until the ship began to rock in the sea-swells.

“I’m going to miss him,” Kara said as she watched the Thentian Star beginning to pick up speed. “A good friend, and a better man than he lets on.”

“He’d never admit it,” Geran said. It pleased him that Kara and Hamil had hit it off so well. Few people impressed the halfling, and Kara had never been one to let many people get close to her. The spellscar had something to do with that, of course. So many people regarded it as some sort of character flaw instead of an accident of birth. The rain began to fall more heavily, and he finally shivered and looked away from the retreating ship. “We ought to be going. Hamil’s going to outrun this rain, but we won’t be so lucky.”

“Come along, children,” Mirya said firmly. She corralled the young Hulmasters and her own daughter and shooed them on; the three children skipped ahead of the adults, leading the way as they climbed from the wharves up into the center of the town. There were still plenty of foreigners thronging the streets, but Geran thought the mercenaries and House bravos they passed seemed to swagger just a little bit less. Of course, most of the storefronts displayed small silver shields with blue crescent moons on them, and on two occasions they passed by small bands of Hulburgan men who wore blue bands around their left arms. More than a hundred Spearmeet had been killed at Lendon’s Dike, and hundreds more wounded, but those who’d stood shoulder to shoulder against the Bloody Skulls were no longer shy about proclaiming their allegiance to the harmach and their willingness to stand up to anyone- anyone — who had a mind to push around Hulburg’s folk.

“When do you think you’ll be leaving, Geran?” Mirya asked as they walked.

“A couple of days, I suppose. I want to finish looking through Sergen’s papers before I go.” His traitorous stepcousin had been forced to abandon his private villa and his chambers at Council Hall and take shelter in the Veruna compound with little warning, so Geran had appointed himself the task of sifting through the correspondence and accounts Sergen had been unable to take with him or destroy. He’d also helped Kara organize bands of riders in the last two tendays to chase off orcs and ogres lingering in Hulburg’s hinterlands. After their defeat at Lendon’s Dike, the horde had fallen apart swiftly, with the subject tribes quickly abandoning the orcs and retiring to Thar. The last Geran had heard, several minor Bloody Skull chiefs were feuding over control of the tribe. “And I heard that a wyvern was sighted up near Lake Sterritt. I really should borrow a few Shieldsworn-”

“Geran,” said Kara, interrupting him, “we’re glad to have your help, but if your heart’s telling you to go back to your life in the south, then you should go. No one in Hulburg will hold it against you.”

Mirya glanced at Geran but said nothing. He walked on in silence for a short time, watching Natali, Kirr, and Selsha exploring the street ahead. He hadn’t been much older than Natali when he’d started to discover the familiar streets and squares for the first time, though Hulburg had been a smaller and safer place then. He looked into his own heart, trying to read what was written there, and discovered that he simply couldn’t tell any longer. Certainly he’d come to Hulburg with the intention of returning to Tantras after satisfying himself that Jarad Erstenwold’s charge had been kept, that justice was dealt out to his murderers, and that Jarad’s family and his home were well. He’d seen to that as well as he could, and if Darsi Veruna or his traitorous cousin ever crossed his path again, well, he’d attend to them as well. He had a house in Tantras, and friends, and a stake in the Red Sail Coster. But he couldn’t honestly say that his heart was calling him back to the city on the Dragon Reach. If there was a place that called to his heart, it was Myth Drannor, and that was a place he could never return to. Perhaps there was some far shore, some hidden treasure, that might cure him of that, and he thought for a long moment about how it would feel to go in search of it. It hadn’t been so different when he’d left Hulburg for the first time as a twenty-year-old with the whole world ahead of him.

“I’m afraid my heart hasn’t seen fit to tell me much of anything in quite some time, Kara,” he finally said. “I’ve got some affairs to look after in Tantras, but after that? I have no idea. I have a hard time remembering what seemed so important to me only a couple of months ago.”

They arrived at Erstenwold’s, and the three children pelted up the steps of the porch and into the shop. Mirya had reopened it a tenday ago, and she was doing quite well; miners and woodcutters who had been abandoned by Veruna’s withdrawal had turned to Erstenwold’s for their provisions, especially since many of the outlying camps had been burned or sacked by marauding bands from the Bloody Skull horde.

“Natali! Kirr!” Kara called after the children. She winced as something crashed inside the store. “I’d better collect them before they wreck your place, Mirya,” she said. “Excuse me.”

She hurried inside in pursuit of the two young Hulmasters. Geran and Mirya climbed up the steps to get out of the rain, and Geran paused on the wide covered porch to shake the raindrops from his cloak. “Did it always rain this much?” he wondered aloud.

“In springtime? Aye,” Mirya answered. She hung her own cloak from a peg by the door, and then tilted her head to undo her long midnight braid, finding it too frayed to rescue. When she absently shook out her hair and began to gather it again, Geran found himself standing still to watch. Mirya’s hair was still as long and dark as he remembered, and the strong lines of her face softened without the stern braid. She’d be thirty this year, but for a moment she looked just like the girl he’d fallen in love with a dozen summers past, with a small spray of freckles across her nose and a strange wistful dreaminess to her gaze when she thought no one was looking at her. Then Mirya glanced up and caught him watching her. She frowned. “What are you looking at, Geran Hulmaster?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I suppose I was wondering why you braid your hair.”

“Because that’s for a married woman?”

“Well… yes. Is it for Selsha’s father?”

Mirya paused and looked away. “No, it’s not. He’s dead, Geran, seven years now. And I’m no widow in mourning. We never married. Once Selsha came along, I didn’t much think I was worth courting any longer. I suppose I began to braid my hair because it was the easiest way for me.”

“I shouldn’t have asked. It isn’t my business.”

“You’ve a better right to expect an answer than you know,” Mirya said softly. “I did something terrible not long after you left, Geran. I was angry with you, and bitter, and perhaps I thought that if I hurt someone the way I thought you’d hurt me, I’d feel better. I fell in with a sisterhood of sorts, a circle of women who met in secret and never showed their faces. They said they understood what grieved me, and I believed them. After a few months they arranged for me to meet Selsha’s father.” She folded her arms and paced away across the old wooden porch. Water dripped from the eaves. “A nobleman of Melvaunt he was-and a married man. Now I know that they meant for me to have his child so that they could blackmail him, but I didn’t know it at the time.” She flinched from her own words, but made herself to finish. “Later I learned that he took his own life to spare his family the shame.”

Geran did not say anything for a long time. He heard the shouts of the children playing in the store, the small thunder of their feet on the old floorboards as they raced about inside, but it seemed a thousand miles off. “Who were they, Mirya? Who arranged it all?”

“Better if I didn’t say, Geran. Besides, they didn’t make me do anything. They only asked, and I was willing.” She looked back to him. “I turned my back on the sisterhood after I learned what had happened. I was of no more use to them, anyway. But I’ve spent every day since wondering how I can ever make amends for what I did.”

He winced, thinking of a cold fall morning in Myth Drannor’s glens not so long ago. No one had made him maim Rhovann; that impulse had been waiting somewhere in his darkest depths, waiting for its chance to do him harm. Strange how the human heart could be moved to injure itself so deliberately. “No one can change the past, Mirya,” Geran said softly. “The gods know there are things I’d take back if I could. All we can do is face each new day and try to do better.” He nodded at the door leading inside; the laughter of children spilled out from somewhere behind the long wooden counter, just out of his sight. “Your daughter’s beautiful. She’s the best part of you, isn’t she? Sometimes good things come to us even when we don’t believe we’re worthy of them. It’s a reason to treasure them even more.”

“I know it.” Mirya looked down at the floor and brushed her eyes. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “You’ll be leaving soon, then?” she asked.

“I suppose. But I think you’ll see me again before long. It won’t be ten years, that I promise you.”

“Geran… I’m glad you came back to Hulburg. I know it’s been a hard time for you-for all of us, I guess-but Jarad would be pleased to see what you’ve done in the last few ten-days. You’ve honored his memory well.”

“If things turned out better, Mirya, it wasn’t my doing. I led the Verunas to Aesperus’s book. I put you and Selsha in grave danger. I was in a cell when the Spearmeet took a stand against the foreign companies. And I was only one blade at Lendon’s Dike.” Geran laughed softly at himself. “Whatever I managed to do right, I did by accident. I doubt I deserve your gratitude.”

Mirya’s mouth quirked upward in the ghost of a smile. “Nevertheless, you have it.” She leaned close, took his hands in hers, and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then she drew away and turned back to her store. “Selsha, if you made a mess, you’re going to clean it up!” she called.

“Natali, Kirr-come on now!” Geran heard Kara say. “You have your lessons waiting at home.”

The children protested, as expected. Geran smiled and drifted back out into the street, waiting for Kara and Mirya to usher the young Hulmasters out of the store. The rain was diminishing; he stood in the street, uncertain which way to go. High Street ran down toward the waterfront, where several more ships were making ready to sail on the morning tide. In an hour he could be on his way to Thentia, Melvaunt, or Hillsfar… and from those cities he could find passage to any of the ports on the Inner Sea. The world was wide and open. Old Dragon Shield comrades were scattered in half a dozen cities around the Sea of Fallen Stars, and he could find good reason to visit almost any of them. But it was the white towers of Myth Drannor he longed to see again.

“What did I just tell Mirya?” he murmured aloud. “Meet each day as it comes, and make the most of it.” Besides, Hulburg wasn’t as small of a town as he remembered. Geran realized that for the first time he was standing in the streets of his home and did not feel that it didn’t have room enough for all his ambitions. He snorted, amused at himself. Either the town had grown in the last two months, or his ambitions had narrowed.

Kara, Natali, and Kirr emerged from Erstenwold’s and clattered down the wooden steps. His cousin caught sight of his face and frowned. “What is it, Geran?” Kara asked.

He looked again to the cold gray waters of the Moonsea beyond the rooftops and masts and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He scooped up Kirr, who squealed with delight, and set his young cousin on his shoulder. In the other direction the old turrets of Griffonwatch shone in another fleeting sunbreak, worn and familiar above the crowded city streets. “You know, there’s nothing in Tantras that Hamil can’t see to for me,” he decided. “Come on-let’s go home.”