Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (12 page)

Adria surprised herself a little with her words, or at least with the presumptive chastisement. But she had begun to realize that if Sir Marbury’s obvious good sense was passed on to his heirs, there was some hope for Aeman Heiland after all. Her speech was not so different from Marbury’s, though it had come more from her experience among the Aesidhe tribes than the Aeman feudal hierarchy.

Regardless, her agreement with the master’s protocol, if not his opinion, seemed to have settled the matter, and Adria was curious how things would proceed. She had already virtually insulted the lady of the house and admonished the eldest son, and yet Adselm looked to be considering the words well. Lady Marbury seemed even to have an air of satisfaction.

Has her opinion settled in my favor,
Adria wondered.
Or have I somehow supported her suspicions?

Adria glanced to the girl beside her with whom she shared her plate. Along with most of the family, Peryna had long remained silent, but now she was beaming, appearing to take great joy that her father had been complimented by a stranger of importance.

The other children had mostly lost interest by this point, likely having heard such a disagreement many times before, and finding it generally above their notice anyway.

After a few moments of silence, Lady Marbury continued the conversation. “I assume you are being recalled because of Palmill? Surely yours was a mission of peace… and not so easy to maintain now.”

A mission of peace?
Adria thought.
Just when I thought I had navigated the treacherous path…

All eyes now followed the exchange, and Adria realized that Palmill had become a household word. It then occurred to her that the best answer might be a question, and that she might suddenly be in a position to use the truth. “Is this the common assumption?
What is said of the Palmill… incident, outside of the Sisterhood and Knights of Darkfire?”

Sir Marbury frowned, tapping the fingers of one hand on the tabletop. “They call it the Massacre of Palmill, where the Aesidhe finally revealed their true savagery.”

Adria could not help but swallow, choking on a sudden swelling of anger, though she nodded simply to conceal her indignation.

“Of course, it is the Knights, and the Sisterhood itself, who have spread the story,” Marbury continued. “Their garrisons, schools, and churches grow, and more and more young men and women seem likely to apply for recruitment, just as you say.”

Again, Adria nodded. She knew of such stories, but to hear it from the Aeman themselves, without being able to reveal her anxiety, proved difficult. She took a long sip of wine.

Lady Marbury countered, “Considering this, it is remarkable that you’ve maintained a home among the… wilder folk.”

Though her implication might still have been accusatory, her use of the quaint phrase put Adria more at ease with her plan. “The Aesidhe with which I am acquainted have been nothing but welcoming. They are neither as wild nor as savage as the typical opinion holds.”

“Then I daresay you will be reacquainted with such speech upon your return to the Temple,” the lady said. “Freshly indoctrinated.”

“No doubt.” Adria smiled grimly, obviously, hoping she had dodged the final arrow.

Pudding was served, and smaller and more relaxed conversation began. The adults spoke mostly of duties and concerns for the next day, while the children chattered with word games and the like. At one point, one of them started howling, imitating the wind through bare trees. While others took up the sound, the rest giggled. Sir Marbury smiled a little as well, shaking his head.

“It is a joke the children have,” he explained to Adria, followed by what seemed a complete change of subject. “We shall have to send some strips of venison with you in the morning. It should be cured by then, if you’re not afraid to eat it.”

Much of the family laughed at this, and it was clear that the joke was somehow now a little at her expense.
This is certainly not so different from the Aesidhe
, Adria thought.

Beside Adria, Peryna gained her attention, trying to remain polite for her dinner companion. “Some of us are convinced that there are ghosts in the woods.” She was trying to pretend neutrality, but by her eyes it was obvious she was one of the believers. “Something has been scaring deer out of the forest the past few days, making them easy sport. But some call it an evil omen, and refuse to kill or eat the deer.”

“They usually don’t stray into the fields,” Sir Marbury explained. “It’s enough to spook the superstitious.”

“That was why we were going into the woods today.” Adselm laughed. “We were bequested with hunting a ghost.”

“I don’t think I’d want to eat a ghost, either,” one of the younger children said loudly, in a display of childish wit which was rewarded with more laughter.

Somewhere amidst this conversation, Adselm’s young wife cast him a sharp glance, and made a little mark with her hands — a warding sign, borrowed from the Aesidhe and passed to her by a servant, no doubt. Adria almost smiled at the irony. Aeman who still followed the old ways might yet invoke a Hunter’s hand sign to grant them power or protection, it’s borrowed meaning long since forgotten.

Adselm had not noticed. He had leaned in to hear his father’s words, nodding, and Adria could see how alike they truly were, remembered the strength of his voice from the forest before, his hesitation to kill the wolf. Like his father, he still bore the faint tan of last summer’s sun, and Adria had no doubt he worked the fields alongside their laborers.

Suddenly, Adria had a vision of Adselm fighting a war against the Aesidhe, instead of planting, harvesting, hunting. She had the utmost sympathy for Lady Marbury, for they likely shared similar visions of young men bleeding in the snow.

Adselm is someone I might have slain.
And Adria’s head swam suddenly, her eyes passing from Lady Marbury, through her husband, to Adselm and to Adselm’s son.
Even the Knights of Darkfire are the sons of women and men such as these.

She took a sip of wine, swallowed heavily, and cleared her thoughts as best she could.

“You searched for a ghost, and you found a wolf, instead,” Adria said as Adselm and his father finished their talk.

“Yes,” Adselm agreed reluctantly, his humor diminished.

“Or a werewolf,” Peryna suggested, though only loudly enough for Adria to hear.

“It explains the deer well enough,” Sir Marbury nodded. “A wolf pack this close to the border will cause twelve kinds of trouble.”

“There was only one wolf,” the older sister said, seated to Adria’s right and until then quietly sharing a meal with a young man, perhaps her betrothed. “A winter wolf, alone. And it wasn’t afraid, even when Adselm aimed at… her. She just watched him. She watched us all, and she turned, and she… disappeared, just before….”

She stopped suddenly, with a quick side glance at Adria. She seemed to get younger as she spoke, though she was likely nearly old enough to marry. By the end of her story, she was almost pleading like a young girl accused of a lie.

Many around the table exchanged glances as she spoke, and by the end, everyone was less filled with humor, fallen into silence. The mood had changed, and Adria could not understand precisely why.
Some superstition, after all?

“That is a strange story, Alice,” Sir Marbury said. He didn’t seem to know how to respond, and he looked to Adselm for any confirmation or denial of the girl’s tale.

“She was neither frightened of us, nor did she frighten the wildlife,” Adselm nodded.

“It is a strange wolf that does not fear men,” Marbury said. “Though a deer may fear many predators, ghosts least among them. Tell me, young lady, for you have long been among the great hunters of the forest... what ghosts might frighten the deer themselves from the wood?”

“There is one predator they fear above all others,” Adria nodded. “And it is neither a lone wolf nor a ghost.”

A figure in gray
, Adria considered again.
Following, fleeting, fading…

Sir Marbury nodded. “All this talk of ghosts and of Palmill... I am reminded of something from years ago... from the War of Union following the War of Scars.”

“Tell me, Sir Marbury,” Adria urged, before noting the look on Lady Marbury’s face. She glanced to the younger children, then to Adria, but said nothing.

“There was a time when the king still used his feudal armies after the Knights were formed but still few. This was after Highreach was conquered, though many in the south and Violet West still resisted. Whenever there was a particular difficulty with a still-rebellious lord, His Majesty would send the Knights in to some village under the protection of that lord. They would slaughter everyone they found and burn every building to the ground, until the lord was forced to meet them in a battle of the king’s choosing, or else to forfeit rule.”

Adria could see why the lady had looked uncomfortably to the children. Still, she bore no objection.

“It was a terrible affair,” Sir Marbury continued. “For which the Crown used the rest of us merely as carrion. After the Knights were finished with their destruction, we were sent into each village to strip it of anything of use which might remain. There was always very little, never enough to be worth our efforts. And so, we finally came to understand, in the end, that he was merely warning us, showing us the full... devotion… of his Knights of Darkfire.”

Now we see the root of his fear,
Adria thought.
He has earned it, likely more even than I. My father’s secret history. And my legacy, as heir or as enemy.

“But… in all of this there was something… odd that some of us noticed.” Sir Marbury took a sip of his wine, considered the cup thoughtfully. His eyes and thoughts were distant. “Whenever we arrived, there would always be small signs that someone else had been there already — after the knights, and before us. There could not have been many. They left no obvious sign of their passage, except for one — on the outskirts, or in some enclosed place where a building had not burned utterly, we might find a few sets of children’s clothing.”

This chilled Adria a little. Invoked memories from long before, and more recent ones with Preinon.

Sir Marbury nodded. “At first it seemed coincidence, but then we began to use dogs to search for survivors. Sometimes they would catch the scent on these clothes, and follow it away from the settlement for awhile, but we would always find nothing. And sometimes, wherever we thought they had lost the scent, they would stamp and growl, or whine, until finally we would lead them away.”

Adria could hear Peryna swallow loudly beside her. Adselm fidgeted again.

“Never once did we find one of these children who seemed to have fled, unclothed,” Sir Marbury went on. “The soldiers began to call them ghosts, or changelings — either the children, or that which had stolen them. Some more happily believed servants or angels of whatever god they followed had taken them, for had we found the children, we would have been forced to give them to the Knights, and whatever fate…

“At first, the commanders of the Knights were furious. They assumed we had hidden the children ourselves, somehow. But after Knight Captains led us on these searches a few times themselves, they fell silent about it. At season’s end we were released from our duties, and Heiland settled beneath the flag of Idonea.”

“My uncle...” Adria spoke before thinking. “He... was also a captain of men. He had similar stories, but I always thought they were merely meant to frighten children.”

Lady Marbury nodded. “Even the strangest of fantasies holds some truth. This land, as any other, has its share of ghosts. New cities are often built upon the ruins of old, and likewise we build our beliefs. Memories become myths, and those we should have buried become our ghosts.”

“Chushezogmeya-ogu at’e p’o pugalo choachowela. Washemame zhechetegma p’o zhepushepi choachowela.” Adria said. “The true ghosts are not the spirit divided from the body, but fear divided from memory.”

“Well said,” Sir Marbury chuckled. “But the intended moral of my story is more simple. I only mean to say that… despite what we may see or not see, hear or not hear, I have never found a deer or dog who did not know a man by scent alone.”

Adria hesitated for only a moment, though careless memories again crowded her thoughts: a white wolf, arrows frozen in flight, blades and blood on the snow, wood and thatch burning. She thought.
Sh
í
sha was right
….
I am still divided and afraid.

“I have only just first visited your land,” Adria said, and her voice broke a little. “But I know now that today I am your ghost. A test was set before me, I understand now. And I have failed.”

There was a moment of silence, and Sir and Lady Marbury exchanged a glance, a frown, and a nod.

“What is your name, child?” Lady Marbury said gently, and Adria knew that the lie was ended.

“Mother,” Adselm almost sputtered. “Each speaks for all... You cannot ask the name of a Sister…”

“I do not ask. I demand.” And she raised her voice a little, obviously at her son, for she softened when returning to Adria. “Tell me your name, so that I may ask you formally for an apology, particularly in regards to my eldest son, for you have played upon his sympathy foremost.”

Adria blinked twice, quickly, and to her surprise felt her face redden with shame. She had rejoined the Aeman under an oath to her brother, one which the Aesidhe would approve with absolute honesty. But to deceive in order to fulfill such an oath was a dishonor to this family, to her brother, and to the Aesidhe who she had needed to leave. She could not pick and choose the particulars of her honesty, not now.

I am acting like a spoiled Aeman princess, again
…
is this to be my fate among the people of my birth? I fear to reveal my royalty to these people, and at this moment these people are far more noble than I.