Tigana

EPILOGUE

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.

"They are coming, aren't they?" the Duke asks. "It occurs to me that I could sail home with Rovigo."

"They'll be here," Devin confirms. "They had a wedding of their own last week, or they'd have arrived by now."

"I see you are intimately versed in their timing," Baerd says with a straight face. "Just what do you plan to do after the wedding?"

"Actually," Devin says, "I wish I knew. There must be ten different things I've thought about." He evidently sounds more serious than he'd meant to, for both of his friends turn their attention fully to him.

"Such as?" Sandre asks,

Devin takes a breath and lets it out. He holds up both hands and starts counting on his fingers. "Find my father and help him settle here again. Find Menico di Ferraut and put together the company we should have had before you people side-tracked me. Stay with Alessan and Catriana in Tigana and help them with whatever they have to do. Learn how to handle a ship at sea; don't ask me why. Stay in Avalle and build a tower with Baerd." He hesitates; the others are smiling. He plunges onward: "Spend another night with Alienor at Borso. Spend my life with Alais bren Rovigo. Start chasing down the words and music of all the songs we've lost. Go over the mountains to Quileia and find the twenty-seven tree in the sacred grove. Start training for the sprint race in next summer's Triad Games. Learn how to shoot a bow, which reminds me, you did promise me that, Baerd!"

He stops, because they are laughing now, and so is he, a little breathlessly. "You must have gone past ten somewhere in that list," Baerd chuckles.

"There are more," Devin says. "Do you want them?"

"I don't think I could stand it," Sandre says. "You remind me too painfully of how old I am and how young you are."

Devin sobers at those words. He shakes his head. "Never think that. I don't think there was a moment last year when I didn't have to work to keep up with you wherever we went." He smiles at a thought "You aren't old, Sandre, you're the youngest wizard in the Palm."

Sandre's expression is wry. He holds up his left hand; they can clearly see the two missing fingers. "There's truth to that. And I may be the first to break the habit of screening what we are, because I never got into the habit."

"You're serious about dropping the screening?" Baerd asks.

"Utterly serious. If we are to survive in this peninsula as a whole nation in the world we are going to need magic to match Barbadior and Ygrath. And Khardhun, come to think of it. And I don't even know what powers they have in Quileia now; it has been too many years since we dealt with them. We can no longer hide our wizards, or the Carlozzini, we can't afford to be as ignorant as we've always been about how magic is shaped here. Even the Healers, we don't understand anything about them. We have to learn our magic, value it, search wizards out and train them, find ways to control them too. The Palm has to discover magic, or magic will undo us again one day the way it did twenty years ago."

"You think we can do that first thing though?" Devin asks. "Make a nation here, out of the nine we are?"

"I know we can. And I think we will. I will wager you both right now that Alessan di Tigana is named King of the Palm at the Triad Games next year."

Devin turns quickly to Baerd, whose color has suddenly risen. "Would he take it?" he asks. "Would he do that, Baerd?"

Baerd looks at Sandre and then slowly back to Devin. "Who else could?" he answers finally. "I don't even think he has a choice. The knitting together of this peninsula has been his life's cause since he was fifteen years old. He was already on that path when I found him in Quileia. I think… I think what he'd really like to do is find Menico with you, Devin, and spend a few years making music with you two, and Erlein, and Catriana, and some dancers, and someone who can play the syrenya."

"But?" Sandre asks.

"But he's the man who saved us all, everyone knows it, everyone knows who he is now. After a dozen years of being on the roads he knows more people who matter in each province than anyone else. He's the one who gave the rest of us the vision. And he's the Prince of Tigana, too, and in his prime. I'm afraid", he grimaces at the word, "I don't see how he can avoid this, even if he wanted to. I think for Alessan it is just beginning now."

They are silent a moment.

"What about you?" Devin asks. "Will you go with him? What do you want?"

Baerd smiles. "What do I want? Nothing nearly so high. I'd badly like to find my sister, but I'm beginning to accept that she's… gone, and I think that I may never know where, or how. I'll be there for Alessan whenever he needs me, but what I most want to do is build things. Houses, temples, bridges, a palace, half a dozen towers here in Avalle. I need to see things rising, and I… I suppose it's part of the same thing, but I want to start a family. We need children here again. Too many people died." He looks away for a moment toward the mountains and then back again. "You and I may be the lucky ones, Devin. We aren't Princes or Dukes or wizards. We're only ordinary men, with a life to start."

"I told you he was waiting for Elena," Sandre says gently. Not a gibe, the voice of a friend, speaking with deep affection. Baerd smiles, looking into the distance again. And in that moment his expression changes, it grows charged with a fierce, bright pleasure:

"Look!" he cries, pointing. "Here he comes!"

From the south, winding out of the mountains and the hills of the highlands along a road that has not been used in hundreds of years there comes a caravan, many-colored, stretching back a long way. There is music playing beside it and ahead, with men and women riding and on foot, donkeys and horses laden with goods, at least fifty banners flapping in the wind. And now the tunes drift up to the three of them, bright and gay, and all the colors are flashing in the morning light as Marius, King of Quileia comes riding down from the mountain pass to the wedding of his friend.

He is to spend the night in the Sanctuary where he will be formally welcomed by the High Priest of Eanna, whom he will remember as the man who brought a fourteen-year-old boy to him over the mountains long ago. There are barges waiting in Avalle to take them down the river to Tigana in the morning.

But the right of first greeting is Baerd's, in Alessan's name, and he has asked the two of them to ride here with him.

"Come on!" he cries now, joy in his face. He urges his horse forward down the sloping path. Devin and Sandre glance at each other and hasten to follow.

"I will never understand," Devin shouts, as they catch up to Baerd, "how you can possibly be so pleased to see a man who calls you Pigeon Two!"

Sandre gives a cackle of glee. Baerd laughs aloud, and mimes a blow at Devin. The three of them are still laughing as they slow their horses to swing around a cluster of sonrai bushes at a wide curve in the downward trail.

And it is there that they see the riselka, three men see a riselka, sitting on a rock beside the sunlit path, her long sea-green hair blowing back in the freshening breeze.