Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

‘He is,’ Mattio cut in sharply. ‘And you would do well not to dwell upon his infirmity.’

From the defiance of his tone it was clear he had misinterpreted the question. Elena knew how protective he was of Donar; it was one of the things she most respected in him. But this was too huge, too important a moment for misunderstandings. She turned to him and shook her head urgently.

‘Mattio!’ she began, but Donar had already laid a hand on the blacksmith’s arm, and in that moment the stranger smiled for the first time.

‘You leap at a slight that is not meant,’ he said. ‘I have known others, as badly injured or worse, who led armies and governed men. I seek only to find my bearings. It is darker here for me than it is for you.’

Mattio opened his mouth and then closed it. He made a small, awkward gesture of apology with his shoulders and hands. It was Donar who replied.

‘I am Elder of the Walkers, yes,’ he said. ‘And so mine, with Mattio’s aid, is leadership in battle. But you must know that the war we are to fight tonight is not like any battle you might know. When we come out again from this house it will be under a different sky entirely than the one above us now. And under that sky, in that changeling world of ghosts and shadows, few of us will appear as we do here.’

The dark-haired man shifted uneasily for the first time. He glanced downward, almost reluctantly, to look at Donar’s hands.

Donar smiled, and held out his left hand, five fingers spread wide.

‘I am not a wizard,’ he said softly. ‘There is magic here, yes, but we step into it and are marked for it, we do not shape it. This is not wizardry.’

The stranger nodded at length. Then said, with careful courtesy, ‘I can see that. I do not understand it, but I can only assume you are telling me these things to a purpose. Will it please you now to tell me what that is?’

And so Donar said then, finally, ‘Because we would ask aid of you in our battle tonight.’

In the silence that followed, Mattio spoke, and Elena had an idea how much pride he swallowed in saying: ‘We have need. Very great need.’

‘Who do you fight?’ the other man said.

‘We call them the Others,’ Elena said herself, as neither Donar or Mattio spoke. ‘They come to us year by year. Generation after generation.’

‘They come to ruin the fields and blight the seedlings and the harvest,’ Donar said. ‘For two hundred years the Night Walkers of Certando would battle them on this Ember Night, and for all this time we were able to hold them in check as they come upon us from the west.’

Mattio said, ‘For almost twenty years now, though, it has grown worse and worse for us. And on the last three Ember Nights we have been very badly beaten. Many of us have died. And Certando’s droughts have grown worse; you will know about that, and about the plagues here. They have—’

But the stranger had flung up a hand suddenly, a sharp, unexpected gesture.

‘Almost twenty years? And from the west?’ he said harshly. He came a step nearer and turned to Donar. ‘The Tyrants came almost twenty years ago. And Brandin of Ygrath landed in the west.’

Donar’s gaze was steady as he leaned on his crutches looking at the other man. ‘This is true,’ he said, ‘and it is a thought that has occurred to some of us, but I do not think it signifies. Our battles on this night each year go far beyond the daily concerns of who governs in the Palm in a given generation, and how they govern, and from where they come.’

‘But still—’ the stranger began.

‘But still,’ Donar said, nodding his head, ‘there are mysteries to this that are beyond my power to grasp. If you discern a pattern that I do not . . . who am I to question or deny that it might be true?’

He reached up to his neck and touched the leather sack. ‘You carry the mark we all bear, and I dreamt your presence here tonight. Notwithstanding that, we have no claim upon you, none at all, and I must tell you that death will be there to meet us in the fields when the Others come. But I can also tell you that our need goes beyond these fields, beyond Certando, and even, I think, beyond this Peninsula of the Palm. Will you fight with us tonight?’

The stranger was silent a long time. He turned away and looked upwards then, at the thin moon and the stars, but Elena had a sense that his truer vision was inwards, that he was not really looking up at the lights.

‘Please?’ she heard herself say. ‘Will you please?’

He made no sign that he had even heard her. When he turned back it was to look at Donar once more.

He said, ‘I understand little of this. I have my own battles to fight, and people to whom I owe a sworn allegiance, but I hear no evil in you, and no untruth, and I would see for myself the shape these Others take. If you dreamt my coming here I will let myself be guided by your dream.’

And then, as her eyes began brimming with tears again, Elena saw him turn to her. ‘Yes, I will,’ he said levelly, not smiling, his dark eyes grave. ‘I will fight with you tonight. My name is Baerd.’

And so it seemed that he had heard her, after all.

Elena mastered her tears, standing as straight as she could. There was a tumult, a terrible chaos, rising within her though, and in the midst of that chaos it seemed to Elena that she heard a sound, as of a single note plucked on her heart. Beyond Donar, Mattio said something but she didn’t