Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

the foothills, flashing with light. The temple dome in the midst of the Sanctuary gleamed silver in the middle distance.

‘What name, then?’ Erlein asked quietly. He seemed subdued, whether because of Alessan’s tone or the awareness of danger, Devin did not know.

‘Adreano,’ the Prince said, after a moment. ‘I am Adreano d’Astibar today. I will be a poet for this reunion. For this triumphant, joyous homecoming.’

Devin remembered the name: the young poet death-wheeled by Alberico last winter, after the scandal of the ‘Sandreni Elegies’. He looked closely at the Prince for a moment and then away: this was not a day to probe. If he was here for any reason it was to try, somehow, to make things easier for Alessan. He didn’t know how he was going to go about doing that though. He felt badly out of his depth again, his earlier rush of excitement fading before the grimness of the Prince’s manner.

South of them, towering above the valley, the peaks of the Sfaroni Range loomed, higher even than the mountains above Castle Borso. There was snow on the peaks and even on the middle slopes; winter did not retreat so swiftly this high up, this far south. Below them though, north of the contoured foothills, in the sheltered east–west running of the valley Devin could see green buds swelling on the trees. A grey hawk hung in an updraft for a moment, almost motionless, before wheeling south and down to be lost against the backdrop of the hills. Down on the valley floor the Sanctuary seemed to lie within its walls like a promise of peace and serenity, wrapped away from all the evils of the world.

Devin knew it was not so.

They rode down, not hurrying now, for that would have been unusual in three musicians come here at midday. Devin was keenly, anxiously aware of danger. The man he was riding behind was the last heir to Tigana. He wondered what Brandin of Ygrath would do to Alessan if the Prince was betrayed and taken after so many years. He remembered Marius of Quileia in the mountain pass: Do you trust this message?

Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.

Even before meeting Alessan, Devin had had his own thoughts about that. On the subject of the clergy his father had never been shy about speaking his mind. And now Devin remembered again Garin’s single candle of defiance twice a year on the Ember Nights of his childhood in Asoli. Now that he had begun to think about it, there seemed to be a great many nuances to the flickering lights of those candles in the dark. And more shadings to his own stolid father than he had ever guessed. Devin shook his head; this was not the time to wander down that path.

When the hill track finally wound its way down to the valley floor, a wider, smoother road began, slanting towards the Sanctuary in the middle of the valley. About half a mile away from the stone outer walls, a double row of trees began on either side of the approach. Elms, coming into early leaf. Beyond them on either side Devin saw men working in the fields, some lay servants and some of them priests, clad not in the white of ceremony, but in nondescript robes of beige, beginning the labours that the soil demanded at winter’s end. One man was singing, a sweet, clear tenor voice.

The eastern gates of the Sanctuary complex were open before them, simple and unadorned save for the star-symbol of Eanna. The gates were high though, Devin noted, and of heavy wrought iron. The walls that enclosed the Sanctuary were high as well, and the stone was thick. There were also towers—eight of them— curving forward at intervals around the wide embrace of the walls. This was clearly a place built, however many hundreds of years ago, to withstand adversity. Set within the complex, rising serenely above everything else, the dome of Eanna’s temple shone in the sunlight as they rode up to the open gates and passed within.

Just inside Alessan pulled his horse to a halt. From ahead of them and some distance over to the left they heard the unexpected sound of children’s laughter. In an open, grassy field set beyond a stable and a large residence hall a dozen young boys in blue tunics were playing maracco with sticks and a ball, supervised by a young priest in the beige work-robes.

Devin watched them with a sudden sharp sadness and nostalgia. He could remember, vividly, going into the woods near their farm with Povar and Nico when he was five years old, to cut and carry home his first maracco stick. And then the hours—minutes more often— snatched from chores when the three of them would seize their sticks and one of the battered succession of balls Nico had patiently wound together out of layers and layers of cloth, to whoop and slash their way about in the mud at the end of the barnyard, pretending they were the Asolini team at the upcoming Triad Games.

‘I scored four times one game in my last year of temple schooling,’ Erlein di Senzio said in a musing voice. ‘I’ve never forgotten it. I doubt I ever will.’

Surprised and amused, Devin glanced over at the wizard. Alessan turned in his saddle to look back as well.