Mordraud, Book One (7 page)

“
You know, I had a dream the other night...” Eglade tried to say, but his mind was made up. At last, a name connected with his family! A first step towards normality, he thought in satisfaction.

Eglade
gave birth in their bedroom and, differently from the first time, required her husband’s assistance. It was far more painful and laboured, despite all the herbs she’d prepared. But when she held the still trembling babe in her arms, no pain could compare with the euphoria she felt. Dunwich came in at the end of the lengthy ordeal and cuddled up at his mother’s side. He’d been in a permanent state of excitement since they’d told him he’d be having a little brother. Even Varno, with all his doubts, felt at that moment that he’d be able to overcome his reserves. Eglade was gorgeous with the newborn in her arms and her oldest son lying beside her. A scene worth painting. So it could never be forgotten.

To use
as a shield against time as it slipped through his fingers.

“
I will call you Edio, my son,” Varno proclaimed proudly, stroking the black hair.

But, unexpectedly,
the baby began crying, wailing and writhing in distress. Puzzled, Varno coughed nervously and tried repeating
Edio
. The name seemed to be a sort of torture for the young one. All the father had to do was whisper it and the child started screaming as if a knife were skinning him alive. Varno tried with Edrin, Nedrian and Edrinor, but the reaction was always the same.

“
The other night, in a dream, I heard a distant voice pronounce a name... It was windy and everything was grey... It had never happened to me before. I haven’t forgotten that name,” uttered Eglade.

“
And what was it?”

“
Mordraud...”

The child was immediately peaceful and began studying his
father’s hands. Varno tried saying Edrin, but only stirred desperate screams.

“
Mordraud,” Dunwich said, and the baby started playing.

“
Father, my brother wants to be called Mordraud.”

Dunwich
’s tone was harsh. With one arm, he was attempting to shield his little brother from those names that seemed to cause him inexplicable pain.

“
And so it will be... Your name will be Mordraud.”

Varno
took his son in his arms and gently squeezed his hand. The baby opened his mouth in a long peaceful and satisfied yawn.

Then his
eyelids parted, just for an instant.

Varno
came close to collapsing to the floor.

An inc
redible piercing green, as deep as the sea.

‘
Aris...’ he thought icily.

‘
That accursed Aelian.’

***

As promised, Seneo returned to the village two years on from the first encounter. Dunwich had grown little, but the tutor accepted to take him to Cambria all the same. With a generosity that stunned both his parents, the man did not request money for his keep during his studies, not for the first years at least. “If he’s as gifted as I imagine, money won’t be an issue. The Arcane Academy itself will pay for his studies, and I shall have my fee,” he explained to reassure them.

Dunwich had immediately grown fond of
Mordraud, and spent his whole day with him and his mother. Whenever she allowed him, he’d hold him in his arms and take him for a stroll through the wood. He spoke to the baby ceaselessly, telling him about all the species of trees and the names of the animals they came across. He still seemed noticeably too small for his age, but he could structure long complicated speeches on the make-up of the forest and its plants’ characteristics.

“
It’s nice here, but it’s too small for us,” he would say, pointing to a segment of sky pushing to spread between the intertwined tree crowns swaying in the wind. “You’ll be fully grown one day too and you’ll be able to become someone. You might come and study in Cambria like me, where I’ll be an eminent chanter, and I’ll be able to teach you! Just think, Mordraud... Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

Dunwich
had been waiting for that day since the first time he had seen Seneo, at the end of the path leading to the village. He was about to set off for legendary Cambria, where he’d be able to grow up in the
heart of all things
, as his mother would call the Khartian capital. He wanted to study something to test his intelligence. He couldn’t wait to leave, and he almost found sleeping at night difficult, from the excitement.

Ye
t leaving Mordraud was harder than he’d anticipated.

“
I place you in charge of looking after mum, Mordraud,” pronounced Dunwich, ruffling the thick black hair like his and his father’s. He still looked little more than a newborn, but a year had gone by since his birth. His blood had determined these things, for him too. He would grow slowly. Just like his brother. Eglade had tears in her eyes. Dunwich kissed her to comfort her.

“
Show them what you’re made of in Cambria,” was uttered by Varno alone, and Dunwich embraced him with composed affection. Absurd, his father thought. His son’s eyes and his determination were those of the best of men.

Mordraud
stretched out a hand in a goodbye as Dunwich climbed onto the horse behind Seneo. He trusted that tall gentleman with a wise and dignified gait. His cape was permeated with a pleasing scent. He turned to look at his brother and mother one last time, then they were separated by the bend in the path. On his skin was a vague memory plucked from time.

Eyes
as deep as the sea.

“
When’s daddy back?”

Eglade
was peeling some potatoes, sitting at the kitchen table, removing the skin with a small blunt knife. Her copper hair reflected the sunlight filtering through the delicate lace curtains, like poured molten metal gleaming under a snippet of sun. She checked the pan from time to time as it hung above the flames in the hearth. Mordraud was playing, sat at her side, toying with some old stale bread. Differently to Dunwich, he didn’t speak much, even though he’d learnt how to at a very early age.

“
Soon. I got a letter from him. Want to read it?”

“
I’m not sure.”

Eglade
knew how much Mordraud missed his father, and she made an effort to try and alleviate his absence. She got up and handed him the tied parchment roll a messenger had left in the village a few days earlier. It was brought by a woman Eglade bought vegetables from, the ones she didn’t grow herself in her patch behind the house. Mordraud began reading, slowly mouthing out the words, eyes half-closed in concentration as he deciphered Varno’s awkward handwriting. Eglade was teaching him to read and write in the common language of men, as well as in Aelian. He was good at it, but less so than Dunwich. Especially at reading.

“
The front... is retre... retreating, and Eldain has called up the... the...”

Eglade
knelt beside his chair, and helped him follow the wobbly lines of the letter with her finger.

“
The troops. That means soldiers.”

“
...has called up the troops. Winter’s coming, and there are fewer battles. Our employer has paid us, and soon he’ll dis...”

“
Dismiss. It means Eldain is sending daddy home.”

“
I know what it means, mum!”

Mordraud
stiffened in annoyance. He looked like his brother in his slightly wavy black hair, and in his naturally balanced features, yet there was already the hint of a harshness Dunwich did not have. His eyes were a shining green. They seemed to have been dipped in a pool of mountain water. Instead, his elder brother’s were azure, tending to deep blue.

The differenc
es in character were more pronounced. Dunwich loved to speak and learn all he could, while Mordraud preferred to stay silent, and listen to the many stories Eglade would tell him about her Aelian people, absorbing them passively without actively memorising them. Or he would spend a great deal of time on the edge of the wood, studying in wonder all the insects and little animals he managed to capture. He loved to look about in silence, without ever revealing what he was thinking.

“
Carry on then if you know it!”

“
...has paid us, and soon he’ll dismiss us. I’ll be able to stay home until spring. Any news of Dunwich? I hope he’s doing well. Say hello to Mordraud from me. See you soon.”

“
Well done, you read that really well!”

Mordraud
didn’t reply. His eyes stared at the unrolled letter.

“
What’s wrong?”

“
Where’s my brother?”

“
Dunwich’s in Cambria, and he’s studying at an excellent school. You might go there too, if you’re...”

“
I don’t want to go to Cambria,” Mordraud broke in abruptly.

“
And what do you want to do?”

“
Stay here with you. Not like dad.”

Eglade
took him by the hips and brought him down from the chair. She pretended to gobble his head and he burst out laughing as he struggled to get away.

Varno
had returned to his old job of mercenary four years after Mordraud was born. The war between Cambria and the rebel noblemen had changed face and players. In 1611, eight years after Dunwich’s birth and two years before Mordraud’s, Elder had passed full command to his son Eldain, who had already been handling the complex and many-sided alliance of fiefs, towns, villages and confederations on his father’s behalf for some time, opposing Cambria’s attempts at expansion. Emperor Loren had passed away some years earlier and had been succeeded by his son, Lorelin, who was already advanced in age. By tradition, newborns of noble descent took the root of their name from their fathers, as a symbol of time-honoured prestige. Many were awaiting the ascent of the house’s last descendant, Loralon: Lorelin’s first and only son. The outcome of the war, which was slowly setting in place, was more than uncertain. Hot fiery years, rich in opportunity for anyone wishing to earn a bagful of money by fighting.

Varno
was one of those. Weary of working as a blacksmith, he hadn’t wanted to listen to reason. Eglade had cried, she’d raged in anger, but she was met with nothing but silence and stony stares.

Her husband had changed since
Mordraud’s birth.

Eglade,
try as she might to understand the Khartian mentality, found it hard to work out what was going on in her man’s mind. She’d seen him age over the years, grow old, as he would say, but this process didn’t cause her any worry. It was human nature to follow the passage of time with more apprehension and involvement. The Aelians simply had a different way of perceiving the passing of the years. As if they weren’t aware that they lived longer, just that their own lives were lived far more slowly. Not even the fact that he was gradually succumbing to age bothered her. She loved Varno for what he was, not for the way he looked. And she also loved her children to distraction, even if, from her standpoint, they grew up too quickly.

Yet he seemed not to want to understand. She tried to explain
to him what she thought, but he could only see the mean reality of the facts. Eglade still possessed that unsettling and vaguely non-human beauty, the same as when they had first met. Her blue eyes were as bright as they once were, her skin still smooth and completely flawless. To make things worse, there was also the children’s inexplicable – at least for the Khartian – abnormal growth. Brilliant minds trapped in stunted bodies.

Varno
wasn’t actually pursuing money, or a better job. He’d never been a good soldier. Quite the opposite. What was driving him was to stay away from a family that seemed ever younger to him, year after year, while he was growing old. They’d still be alive and well long after his death. Too long for him to accept.

Unchanged by the decades.
Preserved in a youthfulness he realised he sordidly envied.

To
tarnish things further, Varno didn’t nurture the same fondness for Mordraud he felt for Dunwich, his first child and the one who reminded him of the early years of romance with Eglade. A wonderful era, of love and hardships they’d overcome together, united as if they were one and the same person. A couple without concerns.

With no worries for the future
.

Instead
, Mordraud had become – and became more so by the day – the symbol of that difference standing between him and Eglade. The rift in the perception of time that his mind was unable to bridge.

He could find no beauty in his son
’s green eyes.

He saw only
Aris’s insane irises staring at him steeped in hatred. Bent over him as he tried to kill him. The same dense green, rich in nuances.

Sometimes he even wondered if
Mordraud really was his son.

Varno
was fleeing. But he didn’t feel he was behaving vilely.

They were the one
s who weren’t human.

***

“How long will you be home?”

“
All winter.”

“
You say it as if it bothered you.”

Varno
didn’t reply. Eglade was clearing the table after the dinner, while Mordraud played alone in the room next door. He was spinning a little red whirligig in boredom.

“
It doesn’t,” Varno grunted, without looking at her.

The war campaign had gone
tremendously. Changing sides had been the right decision. Eldain’s rebels were more motivated and knew the land far better. The pay was less, but more regular. Eglade, as usual, did not approve. And never lost a chance to let him notice it.

“
You’re fighting against the city our son’s studying in!”

Always the same topic,
Varno mused. Every time they had to talk.

Luckily for
him, this happened very seldom.

“
The rebels will never reach Cambria, you can be sure of that. Dunwich needn’t worry. And you neither.”

She knew nothing, he told himself. Indeed
all her ideas were totally wrong. He’d found getting back into the mercenary routine very tough. He didn’t need to be nagged from morning till evening those few times he returned home. He’d had to contact his old friends, struggle against the suspicion of the younger men who couldn’t comprehend why a man of his age would want to go back to fighting. That was precisely the problem: he didn’t feel old. Or rather he didn’t want to feel old.

So h
e did all he could to prove he wasn’t.

“
Play with your son for a while – he hasn’t seen you for three months...”

“
Later.”

Eglade
’s eyes were mournful beyond the bearable. Varno decided to humour her, at least that time. He got up to join Mordraud in the living room, sat on the settee and watched the boy as he played. He still looked tiny, yet he must have been eight. It was absurd how he couldn’t get used to this, he reflected in distress. Mordraud stopped the spinning top and stood up to go to his side. Neither of them said a word at first, like two perfect strangers waiting for a coach. In fact, that was exactly how Varno felt: he did not see the child as his own son. Mordraud, instead, would have liked to tell him many a thing, and ask him even more. But he was embarrassed, he felt uncomfortable. He only managed to open up a little with his mother. With Varno it was a pitiful collection of primitive half-phrases and episodes of awkward silence.

“
When’s Dunwich coming home?”

Mordraud
’s great torment. He remembered almost nothing of his brother, except for some extremely rare visits lasting a few days. But he could still recall the brief period they’d lived and played together, when he’d been very young. Dunwich had seemed like a blue-eyed giant.

He still was a sort of hulk, but merely in Mordraud
’s mind.

A mountain concealing him with his sha
dow, preventing his father from noticing him.

“
I don’t know. Sometime next year maybe...” Varno replied.

“
Why does he come home so little?”

“
I really don’t know, Mordraud! Why’s it so important to you?!” he burst out, annoyed at the boy’s insistence.

“
Mummy misses him so much...” he stammered. He’d have liked to add that he missed him too, but he didn’t feel his father was interested in his opinion. Some days everything seemed to go fine. They would stay in the garden together, exchanging the odd word and playing at hunting out the hens’ eggs.

But
these moments grew ever rarer. Fading even before they finished.

Now his f
ather returned for a mere few weeks, then set straight off again. Unfortunately it was always during winter, when Mordraud could play outside less: the weather was cold and it often snowed, so the boy had to stay in the house.

Varno
didn’t like being shut up indoors. Mordraud had already worked this out.

“
Shall we go outside?”

“
And what do you want to do out?”

“
Well... I’d like to learn how to use a sword.”

The request took
Varno by surprise. For him, his sword was a mere work tool. Nothing special. He’d started handling one in secret, in the company of a few kids from his village, during the tiresome long afternoons when they’d hang around after skipping the work in the fields. He’d learnt the rest in battle.

Nothing more than a work tool
.

“
Why do you want to learn to use a sword?!”

“
Well, you go off to war... And if I were to go one day?” Mordraud retorted. The real reason was quite another, but he didn’t state it openly. He knew his father wasn’t interested in any case: he wanted to learn how to protect his mother. He didn’t actually even know what a war was.

“
You’re too young for these things.”

“
Let me try. If I don’t manage it, I won’t ask you again.”

Varno
smiled, caught unawares by the promise. A wave of affection drove him to sweep Mordraud up in him arms and take him outside. It wasn’t such a bad idea, he considered. Just the sort of experience a father should share with a son. At least he wouldn’t have to strain to pretend he was more educated than he was, as he had done so many times with Dunwich. Making himself look like a fool.