The Last Light of the Sun

SEVENTEEN

Nine nights after leaving Brynnfell, as they rowed into the wind back east, skirting close to Ferrieres to be as far from Aeldred's ships as they could, Bern realized that his father had spoken a last word to him.

It was a bright night, both moons in the sky, a little more light than was entirely safe for them. He remained thinking for some time longer, hands to his oar in the night. He rocked his body back and forth, pulling through the sea, tasting salt spray and memories. Then he lifted his voice and called out to Brand.

They were treating him differently now. Brand came directly over. He listened as Thorkell Einarson's son shared a thought which seemed to Leofson to come, under the two moons, as guidance from a spirit (burned with all proper rites on a strand in Llywerth) benevolently mindful of their fate.

At dawn they lashed the ships together on choppy seas and took counsel. They were Jormsvik mercenaries, feared through the north, and they'd had humiliations beyond endurance on this journey. Here was a chance to come home with honour, not trammelled in shame. There were reasons to roll these dice. It was past the end of raiding season; they'd be entirely unexpected. They could still land nearly a hundred men, and Carloman of Ferrieres had his hands full (Garr Hoddson pointed out) farther east with the Karchites, who were being pushed towards him by the horsemen of Waleska.

And most of them had heard—and each now believed he understood—the last cry of Thorkell Einarson, who'd lost a single combat deliberately, to save their lives. Brand One-eye had stopped even trying to proclaim it otherwise.

There was no dissent.

They put the ships ashore in a shallow cove west of the Brienne River mouth. They knew roughly where Champieres was, though not with certainty. Since the Volgan's raid, no one had been back to that hidden valley where kings of Ferrieres were laid to rest, chanted over by holy men. In the early years, they'd known it would be guarded after what had happened. And later, it was as though Champieres had become sacred to the Erlings too, in Siggur's memory.

Well, there were limits to that, weren't there? A new generation had its needs.

They did, in the event, know enough to find it: beyond the river, an east-west valley, entered from the east. It wasn't hugely difficult for trained, experienced men.

What followed, three nights later, was what tended to follow when the Erlings came. They sacked the royal sanctuary of the Sleepless Ones, set it afire, killed three dozen clerics and guards (not enough fighting men any more, Garr had been right about the Karchites). They lost only eight of their own. Carried—loading the horses, burdened like beasts themselves—sacks of silver and gold artifacts, coins, candlesticks, censers and sun disks, royal gems, jewel-hilted blades (none silver, not this time), ivory caskets, coffers of sandalwood and ebony, spices and manuscripts (men paid for those), and a score of slaves, whipped towards the ships, to serve them in Jormsvik or be sold in a market town.

A raid as gloriously triumphant as anyone could remember.

An echo, even, of what the Volgan had done. Enough looted to leave each one of them wealthy, even after the share given over to the treasury when they came home.

A hearth fire story, too. You could hear the skalds already! The dying hero's last word, Volgan's friend, understood only by his son one night at sea, sending them to Champieres, where the father had been twenty-five years and more ago. In the name of Ingavin, it made a saga by itself!

There were storm winds in their faces for two days and nights as they continued home. Lightning cracked the sky. Waves high as masts roared over the decks, drenching them, sweeping some of the horses screaming overboard. They were Erlings, though, lords of the sea roads, however wild they might become. This was their element. Ingavin and Thünir sent storms as a trial for men, a test of worthiness. They wiped streaming water from eyes and beards and fought through rain and gale, defying them, as no other men alive dared do.

They came into Jormsvik harbour on a bright, cold afternoon, singing at their oars. They'd lost one ship, Hoddson's, and thirty-two men. To be lamented and honoured, each one of them, but the sea and the gods claim their due, and where was glory, after all, when the task was easily done?

It was a very good winter in Jormsvik.

It was judged the same way in Esferth and Raedhill and elsewhere in the Anglcyn lands. King Aeldred and his wife and court travelled north to Rheden to celebrate the marriage of their daughter Judit to Prince Calum there. The red-haired princess was fiercely beautiful, even more fiercely strong-willed, and clearly terrified her younger husband. That, her siblings agreed privately, had been predictable. Why should the prince be different from anyone else?

Not remotely overlooked in the ceremonies and entertainments of that fortnight was the moment in the Midwinter Rites when Withgar of Rheden knelt before King Aeldred, kissed his ring, and accepted a disk of Jad from him, while clerics chanted praise of the living sun.

You paid a price to join your line to a greater one, and Rheden was not unaware that Esferth was increasingly secure from the Erlings. It wasn't difficult to guess in which direction Aeldred's eyes might turn. Better to marry, turn risk to advantage. They were all one people in the end, weren't they? Not like the dark, little, cattle-thieving Cyngael on the other side of the Wall.

As it happened, some time before leaving Esferth for the north, the Anglcyn king had put his mind (and his clerics) to work on the formal terms of another marriage, west, with those same Cyngael. Withgar of Rheden hadn't been told about these plans, as yet, but there'd been no reason to inform him. Many a marriage negotiation had broken down.

This one, however, seemed unlikely to do so. His daughter Kendra, normally the gentle, compliant one of his four children (and best loved, as it happened), had spoken with her father and the Cyngael cleric in privacy shortly after certain events that had taken place at summer's end by a farm called Brynnfell in Arberth. Events they knew altogether too much about because of her and the young prince of Cadyr, Owyn's surviving son and heir, the man she intended to wed. She told her father as much.

Aeldred, notoriously said to anticipate almost all possible events and plan for them, was not remotely ready for this. Nor could he furnish any immediate reply to his daughter's firm indication that she would follow her mother straight to the sanctuary at Retherly if the union—so clearly a suitable one—were not approved.

"It is marginally acceptable, I grant you. But do you even know he wants this? Or that Prince Owyn will approve?" Aeldred asked.

"He wants this," Kendra replied placidly. "And you've been thinking about a union west for a long time."

This, of course, happened to be true. His children knew too much.

The king looked to Ceinion for help. The cleric's manner had greatly changed over the course of a few days, with word of events at Brynnfell. He bore a genial, amused manner through the days and evenings. It was difficult to provoke an enjoyable argument on doctrine with him.

He smiled at Aeldred. "My delight, my lord, is extreme. You know I hoped for such a union. Owyn will be honoured, after I finish speaking with him, which I will do."

So much for help from that quarter.

"It doesn't matter," Kendra said, with alarming complacency. "Alun will deal with it."

Both men blinked, looking closely at her. This, Aeldred thought, was his shy, dutiful daughter.

She closed her eyes. They thought it was self-consciousness, under the doubled scrutiny.

She looked at them again. "I was right," she said. "He'll be coming here, with my brother. They'll be taking the coastal road. They are on the way to Cadyr now, to speak with his father." She smiled gently at the two of them. "We've agreed not to do this too much, before the wedding, so don't worry. He says to tell Ceinion he's making music again."

There wasn't a great deal one could do about this, though prayer was clearly indicated. Kendra was diligent about attendance at chapel, morning and evening. The marriage did make sense. There had been some brief discussion, the king remembered, about Athelbert and Brynn ap Hywll's daughter. Well, that wouldn't need to be continued, now. You didn't marry two children to achieve the same result.

Ceinion of Llywerth offered his own two wedding gifts to the king. The first was his long-sought promise to spend part of each year with Aeldred at his court. The second was quite different. It emerged after a conversation between the high cleric of the Cyngael and the extremely devout queen of the Anglcyn. In the wake of this frank and illuminating exchange, and after two all-night vigils in her chapel, Queen Elswith arrived at her husband's bedchamber one night and was admitted.

The queen placidly informed her royal spouse that—upon reflection and religious counsel—his soul was not so very gravely in danger as to require her to withdraw to a sanctuary immediately after Judit was married, after all. She was content to wait until Kendra, in turn, was wed to this prince in the west. Perhaps in late spring? Aeldred and Osbert, in her view, would be incapable of properly dealing with this second celebration without guidance. Further, it now struck the queen as reasonable to spend some of her time at court even after she retired to the sanctuary. These matters could be addressed in a… balanced fashion, as the teachings of faith suggested for all things. On the subject of balance, the king's earthly state was, certainly, part of her charge.

His diet, for example, with the winter feasting season approaching (Judit's wedding in Rheden ahead of them), was excessive. He was gaining weight, at risk of gout, and worse. He would need her with him, at intervals, to observe and assess his needs.

The king, who had not suffered another of his fevers since a certain conversation with Ceinion on the ride back from chasing the Erlings to the coast (and would not endure one again, ever), happily proposed she begin such assessing right where they were. The queen declared the suggestion indecent at their age but allowed herself to be overmastered, in this.

You're taking a long time.

You know why. I had to go to my father first, couldn't rush away. I'm almost with you. Three more days. There are emissaries with us. We'll present the marriage proposal to your father. I'll ask Ceinion to help. I think he will.

Doesn't matter. My father's going to consent.

How do you know? This is a very—

I spoke with him.

And he just said yes?

Right now I think he'll say yes to anything I ask of him. A small silence in the shared channel of two minds. So will I, you know.

Oh, good.

She'd done her first harvest-time sacrifice, two lambs and a kid. Anrid had added the goat to the ceremony, naming it as Fulla's offering, mostly to be seen to be doing things the old volur had not done. Changes, setting her own imprint upon rituals, as a seal marked a letter. She'd worn the accursed snake about her neck. It was growing heavier. It had crossed her mind that if the ship from the south came back in spring, it would be prudent to arrange for another serpent. Or perhaps they'd have one on board, perhaps arrangements had already been made.

Frigga, when consulted, thought this might be so.

The harvest turned out to be a good one, and the winter was mild on Rabady. The new governor and volur were both toasted in the taverns, and the women's compound saw its share of after-harvest gifts. Anrid claimed only a dark blue cloak for herself, let the others divide the rest—they needed to be kept happy. And a little bit afraid.

The serpent helped with that. The wound on her leg had become a small pair of scars. She let the others see them now and again, as if by chance. Serpents were a power of earth, and Anrid had been given some of that power.

It was mild enough through winter that some of the younger men took their boats across to Vinmark for the adventure of it. In a hard winter the straits might freeze, though not safely so, and Rabady could be entirely cut off. This year they did learn things, although in winter there wasn't much to know. A blood feud in Halek, six men dead after a woman had been stolen. It appeared the woman had consented, so she was killed as well when reclaimed by her family. People were too close to each other when the snow came. In spring the roads and sea opened again and pent-up violence could be sent away. It had always been like that. They were shaped by the cold season; preparing for winter, needing it to end, preparing again.

One day, with spring not yet arrived, a small boat was rowed across to the isle. Three mariners aboard, heavily armed, spears and round shields. They came ashore with a chest and a key, spoke courteously enough to the men sent down to meet them. They were looking for a woman. From the town they were sent through the walls and across the ditch to trudge snow-clad fields to the women's compound. A half-dozen boys, glad of the diversion, escorted them.

The chest was for Frigga. It revealed, when opened in Anrid's chamber (only the two of them there for the turning of the key), silver enough to buy any property on the isle, with a good deal left over. There was a note.

Anrid was the one who could read.

Frigga's son Bern sent his respects to his mother and hoped she remained in health. He was alive himself, and well. He was sorry to have to tell her that her husband (her first husband) had died, in Cyngael lands, at summer's end. His passing was honourable, he had saved other men with his death. He had been given rites and burning there, done properly. The silver was to make a new beginning for her. In a hard way to explain, the note said, it was really from Thorkell. Bern would send word again when he could, but would probably not risk coming back to Rabady.

Anrid had expected the other woman to weep. She did not—or not when Anrid was near. The chest and silver were hidden (there were places to hide things here). Frigga had already made her new beginning. Her son could not have known that.

She wasn't at all certain she wished to leave the compound and the women, go back to a house in or near the town, and she wouldn't go to her daughters in Vinmark, even with wealth of her own. That wasn't a life, growing old in a strange place.

It was a great deal of money, you couldn't just leave it in the ground. She'd think on it, she told Anrid. Anrid had memorized the note (a quick mind) before they put it back in the chest.

Probably not, was what he had said.

She took thought, and invited the governor to visit her.

Another new thing, Sturla's coming here, but the two of them were at ease with each other now. She'd gone into town to speak with him as well, formally garbed, surrounded by (always) several of the women.

Iord, the old volur, had believed in the mystery that came with being unseen, removed. Anrid (and Frigga, when they talked) thought power also came from people knowing you were there, bearing you in mind. She always had the serpent when she went to the town, or met with Ulfarson at the compound, as now. He'd deny it, of course, but he was afraid of her, which was useful.

They discussed adding buildings to the compound when the last snow melted and the men could work again. This had been mentioned before. Anrid wanted room for more women, and a brewhouse. She had thoughts of a place for childbirth. People gave generously at such times (if the child was a boy, and lived). It would be good to become known as the place to come when a birth drew near. The governor would want a share, but that, too, she'd anticipated.

He wasn't difficult to deal with, Sturla. As he was leaving, after ale and easy talk (about the feud, over on the mainland), she mentioned, casually, something she'd learned from the three men with the chest, about events a year ago, when Halldr Thinshank's horse had gone missing.

It made a great deal of sense, what she told the governor: everyone had known there was no love lost between the old volur and Thinshank. Ulfarson had nodded owlishly (he had a tendency to look that way after ale) and asked, shrewdly, why the boy hadn't come home by now, if this was so.

The boy, she told him, had gone to Jormsvik. Choosing the world of fighting men to put behind him the dark woman-magic that had brought him shame. How did she know? The chest was from him. He'd written to his mother here. He was greatly honoured, it seemed, on the mainland now. His prowess reflected well on Rabady. His father, Thorkell Einarson, the exile, was dead (it was good to let a man have tidings he could share in a tavern), and even more of a hero. The boy was wealthy from raiding, had sent his mother silver, to buy any home on the isle she wished.

Ulfarson leaned forward. Not a stupid man, though narrow in the paths of his thought. Which house? he asked, as she had expected he would.

Anrid, smiling, said they could probably guess which house Thorkell Einarson's widow would want, though buying it might be difficult, given that it was owned by Halldr's widow who hated her.

It might be possible, she said, as if struck by a thought, for someone else to buy the house and land first, turn a profit for himself selling to Frigga when she came looking. Sturla Ulfarson stroked his pale moustache. She could see him thinking this through. It was an entirely proper thing, she added gravely, if the two leaders of the isle helped each other in these various ways.

Construction of her three new buildings, Sturla Ulfarson said, when he rose to leave, would commence as soon as the snows were gone and the ground soft enough. She invoked Fulla's blessing upon him when he left.

When the weather began to change, the days to grow longer, first green-gold leaves returning, Anrid set the younger women to watch at night, farther from the compound than was customary, and in a different direction. There was no spirit-guidance, no half-world sight involved. She was simply… skilled at thinking. She'd had to become that way. It could be seen as magic or power, she knew, mistaken for a gift of prescience.

She had another long conversation with Frigga, doing most of the talking, and this time the other woman had wept, and then agreed.

Anrid, who was very young, after all, began having restless nights around that time. A different kind of disturbance than before, when she hadn't been able to sleep. This time it was her dreams, and what she did in them.

He was doing what his father had done long ago. Bern kept telling himself that through the winter, waiting for spring. And if this was so, it was important not to be soft about it. The north was no place for that. Being soft could destroy you, even if you left raiding for a different life, as Thorkell had done.

He would leave with honour. Everyone in Jormsvik knew by now all that had happened on what had come to be called Ragnarson's Raid. They knew what Red Thorkell had done to keep them from going to Arberth, and what Bern had done, and how the two of them (the skalds were singing it) had shaped destiny together, after, leading five ships to Champieres.

Two of the most experienced captains had spoken with Bern on separate occasions, urging him to stay. No coercion Jormsvik was a company of free and willing men. They'd pointed out that he'd entered among them by killing a powerful man, which boded well for his future, as did his lineage and the way he had begun on his first raid. They hadn't known his lineage when he'd entered; they did now.

Bern had expressed gratitude, awareness of honour. Kept private the thought that he really didn't agree with this vision of his prospects. He'd been fortunate, had received aid beyond measure from Thorkell, and even though the idea of the attack in Ferrieres had been his by way of his father, he'd discovered no battle frenzy in himself, no joy in the flames, or when he'd spitted a Jaddite cleric on his blade.

You didn't have to tell people that, but you did need to be honest with yourself, he thought. His father had left the sea road, eventually. Bern was doing it earlier, that was all, and would ask Ingavin and Thunir not to pull him back, as Thorkell had been pulled back.

He set about balancing accounts through the winter.

When you changed your life you were supposed to leave the old one behind cleanly. Ingavin observed such things, cunning and wise, watching with his one eye.

Bern had wealth now. A fortune beyond his deserts: the Champieres raid was being talked about, word spreading, even on the snowbound paths of winter. It would be in Hlegest by now, Brand had told him in a tavern one night, icicles hanging like spears on the eaves outside. Kjarten Vidurson (rot his scarred face) would know that Jormsvik was still no fortress to set himself against, though he was likely going to try, sooner or later, that one.

Bern had begun making his reckoning that same night. Had left the tavern for the rooms (the three rooms) in which he'd kept Thira since returning. He'd offered her a sum of money that would set her up back home with property and the choosing (or rejecting) of any man in her village. Women could own land, of course, they just needed a husband to deal with it. And keep it.

She'd surprised him, but women were—Bern thought—harder than men to anticipate. He was good, he'd discovered, at understanding men, but he'd not have expected, for example, that Thira would burst into tears, and swear at him, and throw a boot, and then say, snapping the words like a ship's captain to an oarsman out of rhythm, that she'd left home of her own choice for her own reasons and no man-boy like Bern Thorkellson was going to make her go back.

She'd accepted the silver and the three rooms, though.

Not long after, she bought herself a tavern. Hrati's, in fact. (Hrati was old, tired of the life, said he was ready for the table by the fire and an upstairs room. She gave him that. He didn't, as it happened, last long. Started drinking too much, became quarrelsome. They buried him the next winter. Thira changed the name of the tavern. Bern was long gone by then.)

He'd had to wait until spring, when challengers began coming again. In the meantime, he paid three of the newer, younger ones to carry a chest to Rabady as soon as the weather made that possible. These were Jormsvikings, they weren't going to cheat him, and mercenaries could take a paying task from a companion as easily as from anyone else.

More balancing in that chest. His mother would surely be locked into a grim life, a second husband dead (and she only a second wife in Thinshank's house), no rights to speak of, no sure home. Bern had left her to that, taking Gyllir into the sea.

Silver didn't make redress for everything, but if you didn't let yourself get soft you could say it went a long-enough way in the world.

He couldn't safely return to Rabady: he'd almost certainly be known (even changed in his appearance), taken as a horse thief, and more. The horse had been named and marked for a funeral burning, after all.

The horse, in fact, he sold to Brand Leofson, a good price, too. Gyllir was magnificent, a warrior's ride. Had been wasted on the isle with Halldr Thinshank, bought by him merely because he could buy such a creature. The pride and show of it. Leofson wanted the stallion, and wasn't about to bargain with Bern, not after all that had happened. Bern hadn't hesitated or let himself regret it. You couldn't allow yourself to be soft about your animals, either.

You could get irritated, mind you, and swear at them, and at yourself for not choosing more carefully. He'd picked a placid bay from the stables for his new mount, discovering too late its awkward trot and a disinclination to sustain a gallop. A landowner's horse, good for walking sedately to town and tavern and back. He wasn't going to need more, he kept telling himself, but he was accustomed to Gyllir. Was that softness? Remembering a horse you'd had? Maybe you didn't talk or boast about what you'd done, where you'd been, but surely you could remember it? What else was your life, except what you recalled?

And perhaps what you wanted next.

He waited, as he had to, for spring to unlock the roads and the challengers to begin arriving at the gates. He was letting Brand advise him. Leofson had been taking a protective attitude towards Bern since they'd returned, as if killing Thorkell (being allowed by Thorkell to kill him) gave him responsibilities to the son. Bern didn't feel he needed it, but he didn't really mind, and he knew it wouldn't last long. It was useful, too: Brand would take care of Bern's money, send it where he needed it, as he needed it.

Once he'd figured out where that was.

They watched the first few men arrive before the walls and issue their challenges and Brand shook his head. They were farmhands, stableboys, with outsized dreams and no possible claim to being Jormsvik men. It would be unjust to his fellows to claim their challenges and ride away and let them in. They drew the runepieces inside the walls and the challenges were randomly taken. Two of the boys were killed (one by accident, it appeared to those watching, and Elkin confirmed that when he came back in), two were disarmed and allowed to go, with the usual promise that if they returned and tried again they'd be cut apart.

The fifth challenger was big-boned, older than the others. He had a serviceable sword and a battered helmet with the nose-guard intact. Brand and Bern looked at each other. Bern signalled to those on duty at the gate that he was taking this one by choice. It had come. You waited for things, and then they were upon you. He and Leofson embraced. He did the same with a number of the others, who knew what was happening. Shipmates, drinking companions. It had only been a year, but warriors could die any time, and forming bonds here didn't take long, he'd discovered. Bonds could be cut, though, Bern thought. Sometimes they needed to be.

Thira, hard little one, only waved to him from behind the counter of her new tavern when he went to bid her farewell before going out. Her life was the opposite of his, he thought. You took care not to form any links. Men sailed from you and died, different men climbed your stairs every night. She'd saved his life, though. He lingered in the doorway watching her a moment. He was remembering the fourth stair, the one missing on the way up to her room. Important, he reminded himself, not to be soft.

He took his new horse from the stable, and the gear he'd carry north, and his sword and helm (roads were dangerous, always, for a lone man). They opened the gates for him and he went out to the challenger. He saw relief and wonder in the man's blue eyes when Bern lifted an open hand in the gesture of yielding. He motioned to the gates behind him. "Ingavin be mindful of you," he said to the stranger. "Honour yourself and those you are joining."

Then he rode away along the path he'd taken coming here. He heard a clashing sound behind him: spears and swords being banged on shields. His companions on the walls. He looked back and lifted a hand. His father wouldn't have, he thought.

No one troubled him going north. He didn't avoid the villages or inns this time. He passed the place where he'd ambushed a single traveller himself because he'd needed a sword for the challenge. Hadn't killed the man, or didn't think he had.

It wasn't as if he'd lingered to be sure.

Eventually, after what felt like a long, slow journey, he caught his first glimpse of Rabady in the distance on his left as the road dropped near to the coast. (Inland, the mountains rose, and then the endless pines beyond, and no roads ran.)

He came to the fishing village they all knew on Rabady, the one they usually went to and from. He might even be known here, but he didn't think so. He'd grown his beard and hair, was bigger now across shoulders and chest. He waited for twilight to fall and the night to deepen and even begin its wheeling towards dawn before he offered the prayer all seamen spoke before going upon the water.

He prepared to push the small boat out into the strait. The fisherman, roused from sleep in his hut, came to help; Bern's payment for borrowing it had been generous, far more than a day's lost catch. He left the horse with the man to mind. He wouldn't be cheated here. He'd said he was from Jormsvik, and he looked it.

It was black on the water as he rowed towards the isle. He looked at the stars and the sea and the trees ahead of him. Spring. Full circle of a year, and here he was again. He dipped a hand in the water. Bitterly, killingly cold. He remembered. He'd thought he was going to die here. He missed Gyllir then, thinking back. Shook his head. You couldn't be this way in the north. It could kill you.

He was stronger now, steady and easy at the oars. It wasn't a difficult pull, in any case. He'd done it as a boy, summers he remembered.

He beached the small craft on the same strand from which he'd left. He didn't think that was an indulgence, or weak. It felt proper. An acknowledging. He gave thanks to Ingavin, touching the hammer about his neck. He'd bought it in autumn, nothing elaborate, much like the one that had burned with his father in Llywerth.

He moved inland, cautiously. He really didn't want to meet anyone. People here had known him all his life; there was a better-than-decent chance he'd be recognized. That was why he'd come at night, most of the way towards dawn, why he hadn't been sure he would come at all. He was here for three reasons, last of the balancings before he changed his life. All three could be done in a night, if the gods were good to him.

He wanted to bid farewell to his mother. She was in the women's compound now, those who'd brought the chest had told him. A surprise, a good decision for her, though with his silver she could change that.

After, in the same place, he intended to find the old volur. He wouldn't need long with her but he'd probably have to leave quickly, after. Though he also wanted to speak, if possible, perhaps only for a moment, depending how events unfolded, to a girl with a snakebite scar on her leg. He might not actually be able to do so. It was unlikely he could linger after killing the volur, and he wasn't sure he could find a girl he wouldn't recognize. The women kept watch at night, even in the cold. He remembered that.

Remembered these fields, too. He'd ridden Gyllir the last time, had a long walk now. He kept close to the woods, screened by them, though it was unlikely any lovers would be out this early in spring. The ground was cold. You'd need to be wild with desire to come out here with a girl, and not find a barn or shed with straw.

He had two farewells to make, he told himself, and someone to kill, then he could leave with his past squared away, as much as that was ever really possible. He was going to Erlond, he'd decided, where his people had settled in the Anglcyn lands. It was far enough away, there was land to be claimed, room to settle and thrive. He'd had a winter to think about possibilities. This one made the most sense.

He heard a twig snap. Not his own footfall.

He froze, drew his sword. He had no desire to kill yet, but

"The peace of Fulla be upon you, Bern Thorkellson."

When all you have to remember, through the circle of an eventful year, is a voice in the dark, and the voice is that of someone saving your life, you remember it.

He stayed where he was. She came forward from the trees. Carried no torch. He swallowed.

"How is the snakebite?" he said.

"Only a scar now. My thanks for asking."

"She is… still sending you out on cold nights?"

"Iord? No. Iord is dead."

His heart thumped. He still couldn't see her, but the voice was embedded in him. He hadn't realized until this moment how much so.

"How? What…?"

"I had her killed. For both of us."

Matter-of-fact, no hint of emotion in her voice. One less task for him tonight, it seemed. He struggled for words. "How did you…?"

"Do that? One of the young women in the compound told the new governor how the volur had used magic to force an innocent young man to steal a horse from someone she'd always hated."

He was still holding his sword. It seemed silly to be doing that. He sheathed it. Was thinking hard. He was good at thinking. "And the young man?"

"Went to Jormsvik after the spell left him. Wanting to win glory, efface his shame. And did so."

He was fighting an entirely unexpected urge to smile. "And the young woman?"

She hesitated for the first time. "She became the volur of Rabady Isle."

The desire to smile seemed to have gone, as suddenly as it had come. He couldn't quite have put into words why this was so. He cleared his throat. Said, "A great and glorious destiny for her, then."

After another pause, a stillness in the dark, he heard her say, just a shape, still, an outline in the night, "It isn't, in truth, the destiny she would choose, had she… another path."

Bern found it necessary to draw a breath before he could speak again. His heart was pounding, they way it had at Champieres. "Indeed. Would she… have any willingness to leave the isle, make a different life?"

The other voice grew softer, not as assured. Like mine, he thought.

"She might do that. If someone wished her to. It… it could also be here. That different life. Here on the isle."

He shook his head. Tried to make himself breathe normally. He knew a little more of the world than she did, it appeared. In this matter, at least. "I don't think so. Once she's been volur it would be too hard to live an… ordinary life here. There's too much power in what she's been. This is too small a place. Whoever became volur after wouldn't even want her here."

"The next volur might give permission, a release from power," she said. "It has happened."

He didn't know about that, had to assume she did. "Why would she do that?"

She waited a moment. Then said, "Think about it."

He did, and it came to him. He felt a prickling at his neck. That sometimes meant the half-world, spirits, were nearby. Sometimes it meant something else. "Oh," said Bern. "I see."

She realized, with a kind of thrill, that he really did. She wasn't used to men being so quick. She said, still carefully, "Your mother asked me to welcome you home, to say that she is waiting, at the compound, if you wish to see her now. And to tell you that the door on the barn needs fixing again."

He was silent, absorbing all of this. "I know how to do that," Bern said. "How do you know it is broken?"

"We've been to the farmhouse together," the girl said. "Your father's. It… can be bought again. If you want."

He looked at her. Only a shape. You were not to be soft. It was dangerous in these lands. But you were allowed, surely, to feel wonder, weren't you? A man went through the world carrying only his name. Some left that after them when they died, lingering, like a burning on a hill or by the sea. Most men did not, could not. There were other ways to live through the days the gods allowed you. In his mind, he spoke his father's name.

"I've never even seen you," he said to the girl.

"I know. There are lights in the compound," she said. "She's waiting. Will you come?"

They walked that way, the two of them. It wasn't very far. He saw the marker stone in the field, a greyness beyond. Dawn, he realized, would be breaking soon, over Vinmark and the water, upon the isle.

A greyer, windier dawn would also come, a little later, farther west.

He still liked to keep a window open at night, despite what wisdom held to be the folly of doing so. Ceinion of Llywerth sometimes thought that if something was offered too readily as wisdom, it needed to be challenged.

That wasn't why he opened the window, however. There was no deep thinking here. He was simply too accustomed to the taste of the night air after so many years moving from place to place. On the other hand, he thought, awake and alone in a comfortable room in Esferth, the year gone by had made one change in him.

He was entirely happy to be lying on this goose-feather bed and not outside on the ground in a windy night. Others would deny it, some of them fiercely (with their own reasons for doing so), but he knew he'd aged between the last spring and this one. He might be awake, sleep eluding, but he was comfortable in this bed and guardedly (always guardedly) pleased with the unfolding of events in Jad's northlands.

He had wintered here, as promised, would be going home to his people, now that spring was upon them again. He would not travel alone. The Anglcyn king and queen would be sailing west to Cadyr (showing their new fleet to the world), bringing their younger daughter to the Cyngael.

He had wanted this—something like this—so much and for so long. Alun ab Owyn, to whom she would be wed in what could only be named joy, was the heir to his province, and a hero now in Arberth, and Ceinion could deal with his own Llywerth, easily. There was so much that might come of this.

The god had been good to them, beyond any deserving. That was the heart of all teachings, wasn't it? You aspired to live a good and pious life, but Jad's mercy could be extended, as wings over you, for reasons no man could understand.

In the same way, he thought, as the night outside began to turn (a ruffle of wind entering the room) towards morning and whatever it might bring—in the selfsame way no man could ever hope to understand why losses came, heart's grief, what was taken away.

Waiting for sunrise, lying alone as he had these long years, he remembered love and remembered her dying, and could see, in the eye of his mind, the grave overlooking the western sea behind his chapel and his home. You lived in the world, you tasted sorrow and joy, and it was the way of the Cyngael to be aware of both.

Another breeze, entering the room. Dawn wind. He would be going home soon. He would sit with her, and look out upon the sea. Morning was coming, the god's return. Almost time to rise and go to prayer. The bed was very soft. Almost time, but the darkness not quite lifted, light still to come, he could linger a little with memory. It was necessary, it was allowed.

End it with the ending of a night.