Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

his father was still dead and would never come back to him, and his mother and sister were dead, or lost somewhere in the world.

Baerd sank to his knees on the ruined hill. The ground was cold as winter. It was colder. His sword slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He looked at his hands by starlight, at the slim hands of the boy he had been, and then he covered his face with those hands for the second time in that Ember Night, and he wept as though his heart were breaking now and not broken long ago.

ELENA REACHED THE HILL and began to climb. She was breathless from running but the slope was not steep. Mattio had grabbed her arm when she started to enter the river. He had said it might mean death to be among the ruined lands after moonset, but Donar had told her it would be all right now. Donar had been unable to stop smiling since Baerd had made the shadow-figure withdraw. There was a stunned, incredulous glory in his face.

Most of the Walkers had gone back, wounded and weary, intoxicated with triumph, to the field where they had claimed their weapons. From there they would be drawn home before sunrise. So it had always happened.

Carefully avoiding Mattio’s eyes, Elena had crossed the river and come after Baerd. Behind her as she went she could hear the singing begin. She knew what would follow in the sheltering hollows and the darkness of that field after an Ember victory. Elena felt her pulse accelerate with the very thought. She could guess what Mattio’s face would have revealed as she walked away from him into the river and then across. In her heart she offered him an apology, but her stride as she went did not falter, and then, halfway to the hill, she began to run, suddenly afraid for the man she sought, and for herself, alone in all this wide dark emptiness.

Baerd was sitting on the crown of the hill, where the shadow-figure had stood in front of the setting moon just before he fled. He glanced up as she approached, and a queer, frightened expression flickered for an instant across his face in the starlit dark.

Elena stopped, uncertain.

‘It is only me,’ she said, trying to catch her breath.

He was silent a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone. For a moment . . . for a moment you looked almost exactly like a . . . like something I saw once as a boy. Something that changed my life.’

Elena didn’t know what to say to that. She had thought no further than getting here. Now that she had found him she was suddenly unsure of herself again. She sat down on the dead earth facing him. He watched her, but said nothing else.

She took a deep breath and said, bravely, ‘You should have expected someone. You should have known that I would come.’ She swallowed hard, her heart pounding.

For a long moment Baerd was very still, his head tilted a little to one side, as if listening to the echo of her words. Then he smiled. It lit up his young, too-thin face and the hollow, wounded eyes.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for that, Elena.’ It was the first time he’d used her name. In the distance they could hear the singing from the cornfield. Overhead the stars were almost impossibly bright in the black arch of the sky.

Elena felt herself flushing. She glanced down and away from his direct gaze. She said, awkwardly, ‘After all, it is dangerous here in the dead lands, and you wouldn’t have known. Not having been here before. With us, I mean. You wouldn’t even know how to get back home.’

‘I have an idea,’ he said gravely. ‘I imagine we have until sunrise. And in any case, these aren’t the dead lands any more. We won them back tonight. Elena, look at the ground where you walked.’

She turned to look back. And caught her breath in wonder and delight to see that along the path she’d taken to this hill white flowers were blooming in what had been barren earth.

Even as she watched she saw that the flowers were spreading in all directions from where she had passed. Tears sprang to her eyes and spilled over, gliding unheeded down her cheeks, making her vision blur. She had seen enough though, she understood. This was the Earth’s response to what they had done tonight. Those delicate white flowers coming to life under the stars were the most beautiful things she had seen in all her days.

Quietly, Baerd said, ‘You have caused this, Elena. Your being here. You must teach Donar and Carenna and the others this. When you win the Ember war it is not only a matter of holding the line of battle. You must follow the Others and drive them back, Elena. It is possible to regain lands lost in battle years before.’

She was nodding. Hearing in his words an echo of something known and forgotten long ago. She spoke the memory: ‘The land is never truly dead. It can always come back. Or what is the meaning of the cycle of seasons and years?’ She wiped her tears away and looked at him.

His expression in the darkness was much too sad for a moment such as this. She wished she knew a way to dispel that sorrow, and not only for tonight. He said, ‘That is mostly true, I suppose. Or true for the largest things. Smaller things can die. People, dreams, a home.’

Impulsively Elena reached forward and took his hand. It was fine and slender and it lay in hers quietly but without response. In the distance, east of the river, the Night Walkers were singing songs to celebrate and welcome the spring, to cry the blessing of the season on the crops that summer would see. Elena wished with all her heart that she were wiser, that she