The Towers Of the Sunset (32 page)

MEGAERA BENDS, ANGLES her wand and lets the junior guard’s practice wand slip by, then follows with a quick thrust.

“Oooffff…”

“The thrust was adequate, but you let down at the end and you didn’t recover,” states the senior duty guard. “You’re not supposed to be dueling. You’re fighting to kill and to keep from being killed.”

The redhead wipes her forehead, then glances around the Westwind guards’ practice yard. No one else has even looked directly at her. Three other pairs of guards continue to practice. The rest of the detachment is working with stone or timber to turn the rough-built keep addition into more livable quarters, except for the three working at the cliff house with Creslin.

Why they feel so constrained to help him, she does not know. She tightens her lips and grips the practice wand.

“Don’t grip so tightly that your fingers are white,” adds the guard.

Megaera forces her hand to relax. Before long, she is due to meet with Klerris and Lydya to work on the glass problem.

“Try it again,” suggests the guard. “Remember, there’s always someone else waiting to strike.” She nods sharply and walks to the next pair, studying them for a time before speaking. “Hold it. You’re both going to get killed…”

Megaera takes a deep breath, then resumes her position, signifying with a quick nod that she is again ready. If Klerris is correct, the blade will be her only reliable defense before long.

Her shoulders already ache, and her arms bear more bruises than she would have believed possible. But she always wears long sleeves, and she will until her arms are not purple from shoulder to wrist.

“… Westwind guards… aren’t… the only deadly fighters…” The words hiss under her breath as she parries, giving ground.

“Oooffff…”

This time she is the recipient.

“Are you all right, lady?” asks the junior guard, barely old enough to have been allowed to choose the detachment.

“I’m fine. Let’s try again.”

She should be leaving, but there is never enough time for everything, and she wonders how Creslin has managed to juggle so many projects. But she owes him, owes him so much for his pigheadedness and his failure to understand.

“Damn you…” The words hiss under her breath again as her sword wand weaves her defense, as she imagines that he is the junior guard, as her wand moves even faster. She ignores the twisting in her stomach.

THE LATE-AFTERNOON sun breaks through the clouds above the northwestern seas and pours through the narrow window in the old part of the main keep.

“The public-room idea isn’t working.” Hyel frowns. “My men sit on one side and her guards glare at them from the other. The only people who like it are the fisherwives who pour. That’s because everyone drinks more when they don’t talk. And we don’t have enough to drink, either, by the way.”

“Have your men… I don’t know. We may be dry for a while, but the orchards are going to produce more than enough to ferment something drinkable.” Creslin thinks about other fruits and grains. “We might be able to do something with those purple berries that grow on the cliffs. Isn’t there somebody who’s making his own alcohol in the keep?”

“Several,” admits Hyel. “But would you want to drink it?”

“Put them on half-duty if they’ll gather the berries and use them for something. Let either Megaera, Klerris, or me look at the casks or barrels or whatever they put it in before anyone drinks it.”

Now he is worrying not only about quarters, and the lack of sanitary facilities in the expanded keep, the lack of bedding, the lack of-He even has to suggest a brewery! He shrugs. Megaera is working with Shierra on refitting and further expanding the keep, using the green timbers from Suthya and the tools brought by Lydya. Where additional linens will come from, who knows?

All of the useless things about running a keep, all of Galen’s chatterings, and all of the studies about commodities and supplies that had so bored him-these have become treasures as he flails through his days. These, and Mega-era’s commonsense approach.

“Do we need it?” she asks. “How soon?” He doubts that he has heard those questions less than a score of times. Yet she is right. What do they need, and when do they need it?

Creslin wants everything done now, and with everything to be done now, who has time for wizardry? The order-strengthening he has learned is wonderful for encouraging plant growth, but he cannot encourage what is not growing. So he has managed to dragoon some of the more venturesome consorts, a handful of the remaining fisherwomen, and two disabled fishermen into plowing and sowing the few abandoned fields on the lower plateau to the north side of
Land’s End. Lydya has located another spring or two, and the would-be farmers have rebuilt the ditching.

He rubs his sore shoulders. Someday he may get back to finishing his and Megaera’s house, now nothing more than two half-finished bedrooms and four enclosed and unfinished rooms: the dining room, the common room, the so-called study, and the kitchen.

“That might do it… for now,” Hyel says tiredly. “But that won’t solve the hostility. They still drink and stare at each other.”

“What about a minstrel?”

“Who would come here? At least now?”

The silver-haired man nods, thinking of his sister’s note. “Perhaps there is a solution. We can at least try.”

“What-”

“I’ll meet you at the public room after the evening meal.”

The tall man stands with a puzzled look on his face.

Creslin smiles. “It either works, or it doesn’t.” Then he departs, heading uphill toward the black stone house that still remains unfinished and alone upon the cliffs overlooking the eastern shores of Reduce.

When he reaches the door, he calls. “Megaera!” But there is no answer, and he senses no one in or around the dwelling or on the terrace.

After fetching the guitar, he sits on the wall, the low sun at his back, and lets his fingers find the strings and the tones. Despite the calluses on his hands, his fingertips are no longer as tough as they once were. So he puts the guitar back into the black leather case, and thinks. Thinks about the songs he once sang, the few he has composed, and the many he has learned, left to him by another silver-haired man.

As he reflects, the sun drops behind the hills at his back, but Megaera has not shown up, not that he would expect her now that she has begun to identify with the Westwind guards. Most nights she sleeps in her room, but that is all; she takes her meals in the keep with Shierra, or spends time talking to Lydya.

As twilight nears, Creslin picks up the guitar and walks down to the town and makes his way to the public room at the half-finished inn.

Hyel is waiting. “What is that?”

“A guitar. Someone once told me that sometimes music helps.”

Hyel follows the younger man through the open door at the western, and mostly completed, end of the inn. The windows have neither glass nor shutters, although Klerris has been working with Megaera and a small furnace and has promised that rough and cloudy glass will be on hand before long.

As he stands inside the too-large room, Creslin waits a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. Only half a dozen small lamps-borrowed, he suspects, from the keep-light the walls, and a faint odor tells him that they are fueled with some type of fish oil.

He drags a wobbly table-another of Klerris’s efforts, he suspects-to a point directly before the doors, then turns to Hyel. “Find me a stool of some sort, if you can.”

The guard captain shakes his head but makes his way toward the small doorway that leads to what will be a kitchen but serves now only to store their limited stock of beverages, plus too-old cheese and crumbling biscuits.

“… what’s he doing here?”

“First… she starts coming with the bitches… now he’s sitting apart from anyone…”

Creslin ignores the whispers and looks into the center of the Westwind contingent, toward a halo of flame-red hair. Megaera looks away, her eyes cool, yet puzzled.

“This is the best I can do…” Hyel sets a rough-sawn, four-legged stool by the table.

“That’s fine.” Creslin carries it into the empty space between the tables, perhaps six cubits across. Then he returns to the small table and takes the guitar from its case and carries it to the stool, where he seats himself.

The whispers and mumbles die away.

Creslin lets his fingers caress the strings of the guitar, wishing that he had practiced more, but who has had time for practice? Finally he settles himself on the stool and looks out to the rough tables… to the Westwind detachment sitting on the near-windowless shoreward side, and to the Montgren keep soldiers gathered at the four trestle-style tables before the unshuttered open windows that carry in the chill breeze, salt, and the odor of fish from the harbor.

He smiles raggedly. No one smiles back, not even Megaera, who is seated next to Shierra. “I don’t know too many songs that don’t favor one group or another. So enjoy the ones you like, and ignore the ones you don’t,” he announces quietly. His fingers touch the strings.

Up on the mountain where the men dare not go, the angels set guards there in the ice and the snow.

The guards they are women, with blades out of steel, and their hearts they are colder than any ice you can feel.

Up on the mountain where the trees do not grow, the sun seldom shines nor the rivers do flow.

From out of the Westhorns, guards march from the stone.

Their blades are the fires, that slice to the bone.

They’ll cut you and leave you all bleeding and cold, and no one will find you, till the mountains grow old.

The rocks they will splinter, and the snows will fall deep, and the guards of the mountains will hold to their keep.

Their castle will stand, dear, till the whole world is white, till the Legend’s forgotten, with the demons of light.

Till my songs have been buried in the depths of the nights, and all the young men shun the mountain’s chill heights.

Up on the mountain where the men dare not go, the angels set guards there in the ice and the snow.

And there they will stay, dear, till the whole world is white, till the Legend’s forgotten, with the demons of light.

Till my songs have been buried in the depths of the night, and none of the young men seek out that cold height; and none of the young men seek out that cold height.

There is silence as Creslin finishes the song. Not muttering, just silence. The notes had been silver, with only a few traces of copper. Rather than talk, he touches the strings and begins again.

… white was the color of my love, as bright and white as a dove, and white as he, as fair as she, who sundered my love from me…

He pauses after finishing, stretching fingers that are already sore from lack of practice and hoping that he has recalled truly the words.

“Another one…”

The request is whispered, but the whisper carries even against the rustling of the breeze. He shrugs, resettling himself on the stool.

… sing a song of gold coins, a pack filled up with songbirds, a minstrel lusting after love, and yelling out some loving words…

Finally a few faces smile as he finishes the silly song he learned so long ago, but the Westwind guards seem a bit chill. Creslin thinks, then takes a deep breath and begins, picking through the words.

Ask not what a man is, that he scramble after flattery as he can, or that he bend his soul to a woman’s wish… after all, he is but a man.

As not what a man might be, that he carry a blade like a fan, and sees only what his ladies wish him to see… after all, he is but a man…

He exaggerates the phrases and is rewarded with sardonic smiles from the Montgren soldiers and a chuckle or two from the older Westwind guards.

His fingers are sore, and he needs at least another song or two. But he stands for a moment, looking around for something to drink, and Megaera brings him a small cup of redberry. She is so pale as to be nearly white.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Fine, thank you. I thought you might need this.” She steps away and resumes her place beside Shierra.

He takes a swallow, aware of the continuing quietness, before finally setting down the empty cup by the stool and touching the strings again.

… from the skies of long-lost Heaven… to the heights of Westwind keep, we will hold our blades in order, and never let our honor sleep!

He almost loses the melody as the guards finally begin to sing, and more voices join in as he continues playing.

At the end, he turns toward the Montgren group. “I’d sing your songs, too, but I must confess that I had to leave the Duchy before I learned any of them. Someone… anyone… who can work out the melody with me?”

Slowly a dark-haired man stands; it is Thoirkel. “Ser, I don’t know as I can sing much…”

A snicker comes from his companions.

“… but I do know the words to a few songs.” Creslin glances at the Westwind faces, conscious that the cold hostility has somewhat relaxed. Creating some sort of unity among the two groups is going to be a long, tough job.

… the Duke he went a-hunting, a-hunting he did go…

Thoirkel’s voice warbles off-key and off-tempo, but Creslin can pick up the basic melody and words, and before long stronger voices rise up in chorus.

At the end of two more songs, Creslin stands, shaking his hands. His fingers are not quite bloody. “I’ll surrender the guitar to anyone…”

For a moment, he is afraid that no one will take it; then a slender Westwind guard steps forward. He hands the instrument to her and walks toward the small, empty table set between the two groups.

The guard has a fair voice and a good sense of the guitar, and she begins with an old ballad.

Creslin holds his cup up, and one of the women fills it with redberry. Then he fumbles, realizing that he has no coins with him.

“I think you need not pay at your own tavern, ser,” suggests the woman with a smile. “Especially after such a lovely performance.”

Two chairs slide into place to his right, and Megaera and Shierra sit down. As he looks up, Megaera beckons to Hyel, who immediately picks up his chair and crosses the five cubits. He sets down the straight-backed and armless chair, roughed out of the castoffs from the building timbers, and sits to Creslin’s left.

“I didn’t know you could sing.” Megaera’s statement is an accusation.

“I never had a chance until now, and you never seemed to be interested,” Creslin says absently, still watching the guard on the stool.

“Fiera said that the hall guards used to sneak up outside his door when he practiced,” adds Shierra, her voice warmer than Creslin has ever heard it.

He tries to keep his mouth from opening. Fiera? Shierra? Are they related? Is that why the older woman appears familiar? “Fiera?” he finally asks. “Is she your-?”

“My youngest sister. She talked a lot about you, probably too much.”

“How is she?”

Megaera stiffens, but Creslin ignores it for the moment. “She went with the detachment to Sarronnyn. She’ll be rotated back later in the year sometime.”

“Where did the guitar come from?” asks Hyel. “It was mine. I left it… behind. Lydya—the healer- brought it. My sister, Llyse, thought I might like to have it.”

“You’ve never played in public?” Shierra smiles, as if she knows the answer.

“No. I was scared to do it, but sometimes music helps. The second song, the white - as - a - dove one, probably saved me from the White Wizards.”

“You didn’t exactly sound scared.” Megaera’s voice remains cool.

“That wouldn’t have helped much,” he responds slowly. “Besides, no one born in Westwind shows fear. Not if they can help it.”