Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

The southland cities dwindled into villages, or, if flexible and energetic enough, they changed their character and turned their faces northward and to other things, as Avalle of the Towers had done in Tigana. Here in the Certandan highlands the mighty lords who had once held glittering court in their huge warlike castles became living anachronisms. Their forays and battles with each other—once integral to the flow of events in the Palm—became more and more inconsequential, though not the less bitter or vicious for that.

To Devin, touring with Menico di Ferraut, it had sometimes seemed that every second ballad they sang was of some lord or younger son pursued by enemies among these crags; or of ill-fated southland lovers divided by the hatred of their fathers; or of the bloody deeds of those fathers, untamed as hawks in their stern high castles among these foothills of the Braccio.

And of those ballads, whether wild with battle and blood and villages set afire, or lamenting parted lovers drowning themselves in silent pools hidden in the misty hills—of all those songs, half again, it seemed to Devin, were of the Borso clan and set in and around the massive, piled, grim splendour of Castle Borso hard under Braccio Pass.

There hadn’t been any new ballads for a long time, very few in fact since the Quileian caravans had stopped. But of fresh stories and rumours there had been many in the past two decades. A great many. In her own particular way, and in her own lifetime, Alienor of Castle Borso had already become a legend among the men and women of the road.

And if these newer stories were about love, as so many of the older songs had been, they had little to do with anguished youth bewailing fate on windswept crags, and rather more to tell about certain changes within Castle Borso itself. About deep woven carpets and tapestries, about imported silk and lace and velvet, and profoundly disconcerting works of art in rooms that had once seen hard men plan midnight raids at trestle-tables, while unruly hunting dogs had fought for flung bones among the rushes of the floor.

Riding beside Erlein in the second cart, Devin dragged his gaze away from the last shining of light on the peaks and looked at the castle they were nearing. Tucked into a fold of hills, with a moat around it and a small village just beyond, Borso was already in shadow. Even as he watched, Devin saw lights being lit in the windows. The last lights until the end of the Ember Days.

‘Alienor is a friend,’ was all that Alessan had volunteered. ‘An old friend.’

THAT MUCH, AT LEAST, was evident from the greeting she gave him when her seneschal—tall and stooped, with a magnificent white beard—ushered them gravely into the firelit warmth of the Great Hall.

Alessan’s colour was unusually high when the lady of the castle unlaced her long fingers from his hair and withdrew her lips from his own. She hadn’t hurried the encounter. Neither, even more interestingly, had he. Alienor stepped back, smiling a little, to survey his companions.

She favoured Erlein with a nod of recognition. ‘Welcome back, troubadour. Two years, is it?’

‘Even so, my lady. I am honoured that you remember.’ Erlein’s bow harkened back to an earlier age, to the manner they’d seen before Alessan had bound him.

‘You were alone then, I remember. I am pleased to see you now in such splendid company.’

Erlein opened his mouth and then closed it without replying. Alienor glanced at Alessan, a fleeting enquiry in her very dark eyes.

Receiving no response she turned to the Duke and the curiosity in her face sharpened. Thoughtfully she laid a finger against her cheek and tilted her head slightly to one side. The disguised Sandre endured her scrutiny impassively.

‘Very well done,’ said Alienor of Borso, softly so the servants and the seneschal by the doors could not hear. ‘I imagine that Baerd has the whole Palm taking you for a Khardhu. I wonder who you really are, under all of that.’ Her smile was quite ravishing.

Devin didn’t know whether to be impressed or unsettled. An instant later that particular dilemma was rendered irrelevant.

‘You don’t know?’ said Erlein di Senzio loudly. ‘A terrible oversight. Allow me the introduction. My lady, may I present to you the—’

He got no further.

Devin was the first to react, which surprised him, thinking about it afterwards. He’d always been quick though, and he was closest to the wizard. What he did— the only thing he could think of to do—was pivot sharply and bury his fist as hard as he could in Erlein’s belly.

As it was, he was only a fraction of a second ahead of Catriana on Erlein’s other side. She had leaped to clap her hand over the wizard’s mouth. The force of Devin’s blow doubled Erlein over with a grunt of pain. This in turn had the unintended effect of throwing Catriana off balance and stumbling forward. To be smoothly caught and braced by Alienor.

The whole thing had taken perhaps three seconds.

Erlein sank to his knees on the opulent carpet. Devin knelt beside him. He heard Alienor dismissing her servants from the room.

‘You are a fool!’ Baerd snarled at the wizard.

‘He certainly is,’ Alienor agreed in a rather different tone, all exaggerated petulance and flounce. ‘Why would anyone think I’d want the burden of knowing the true identity of a disguised Khardhu warrior?’ She was still holding Catriana around the waist, quite unnecessarily. Now she let her go, with an amused expression at the girl’s rapid retreat.

‘You are an impetuous creature, aren’t you?’ she murmured silkily.

‘Not especially,’ said Catriana hardily, stopping a few feet away.

Alienor’s mouth quirked. She looked Catriana up and down with an expert eye. ‘I am horribly jealous of you,’ she pronounced at length. ‘And I would be, even if you had that hair chopped off and those eyes sewn shut. What magnificent men you are travelling with!’

‘Are they?’ Catriana’s voice was indifferent, but