The Last Light of the Sun Page 6

  “Needful as night’s end,” Dai said gravely, without a pause, which was very good, actually. An image of darkness, the fear of it, a dream of dawn, when the god returned from his journey under the world.

  As the real applause for this faded, as they waited for someone to throw the third leg of the triad, a young woman entered the room.

  She moved quietly, clad in green, belted in gold, with gold in the brooch at her shoulder and on her fingers, to the empty place beside Enid at the high table—which would have told Alun who this was, if the look and manner of her hadn’t immediately done so. He stared, knew he was doing so, didn’t stop.

  As she seated herself, aware—very obviously aware—that all eyes were upon her, including those of an indulgent father, she looked down the table, taking in the company, and Alun was made intensely conscious of dark eyes (like her mother’s), very black hair under the soft green cap, and skin whiter than … any easy phrase that came to mind.

  And then he heard her murmur, voice rich, husky for one so young, unsettling: “Needful as night, I think many women would rather say.”

  And because this was Rhiannon mer Brynn, through that crowded hall men felt that they knew exactly what she was saying, and wished that the words had been for their ears alone, whispered close at candle-time, not in company at table. And they thought that they could kill or do great deeds that it might be made so.

  Alun could see his brother’s face as this green-gold woman-girl turned to Dai, whose phrase she had just echoed and challenged. And because he knew his brother better than he knew anyone on the god’s earth, Alun saw the world change for Dai in that crossing of glances. A moment with a name to it, as the bards said.

  He had an instant to feel sorrow, the awareness of something ending as something else began, and then they asked him for a song, that the night might begin with music, which was the way of the Cyngael.

  Brynnfell was a spacious property, well run by a competent steward, showing the touch of a mistress with taste, access to artisans, and a good deal of money. Still, it was only a farm, and there were a dozen young men from Cadyr now staying with them, over and above the thirty warriors and four women who’d accompanied ap Hywll and his wife and oldest daughter here.

  Space was at a premium.

  The Lady Enid had worked with efficiency informed by experience, meeting with the steward before the meal to arrange for the disposition of bodies at night. The hall would hold fighting men on pallets and rushes; it had done so before. The main barn was pressed into use, along with two outbuildings and the bakehouse. The brewhouse remained locked. Best not to put such temptation in men’s way. And there was another reason.

  The two Cadyri princes and their cousin shared a room in the main house with a good bed for the three of them—honour demanded the host offer as much to royal guests.

  The steward surrendered his own chamber to the high cleric. He himself would join the cook and kitchen hands in the kitchen for the night. He was grimly prepared to be as stoic as an eastern zealot on his crag, if not as serenely alone. The cook was notorious for the magnificence of his snoring, and had once been found walking about the kitchen, waving a blade and talking to himself, entirely asleep. He’d ended up chopping vegetables in the middle of the night without ever waking, as his helpers and a number of gathered household members watched in rapt silence, peering through the darkness.

  The steward had already determined to place all the knives out of reach before closing his eyes.

  In the pleasant chamber thus yielded to him, Ceinion of Llywerth finished the last words of the day’s office, offering at the end his customary silent prayer for the sheltering in light of those he had lost, some of them long ago, and also his gratitude, intensely felt, to holy Jad for all blessings given. The god had purposes not to be clearly seen. What had happened today—the lives he had likely saved, arriving when he did—was deserving of the humblest acknowledgement.

  He rose, showing no signs of a strenuous day, or his years, and formally blessed the man kneeling beside him in prayer. He reclaimed his wine cup, subsiding happily onto the stool nearest the window. It was generally believed that the night air was noxious, carrying poisons and unholy spirits, but Ceinion had spent too many years sleeping out of doors, on walks across the three provinces and beyond. He found that he slept better by an open window, even in winter. It was springtime now, the air fragrant, night flowers under his window.

  “I feel badly for the man who yielded me his bed.”

  His companion shifted his considerable bulk up from the floor and grasped his own cup, refilling it to the brim, without water. He took the other, sturdier chair, keeping the flask close by. “And well you should,” Brynn ap Hywll said, smiling through his moustache. “Brynnfell’s bursting. Since when do you travel with an escort?”

  Ceinion eyed him a moment, then sighed. “Since I found a Cadyri raiding party looking at your farm.”

  Brynn laughed aloud. His laugh, like his voice, could overflow a room. “Well, thank you for deciding I’d sort out that much.” He drank thirstily, refilled his cup again. “They seem good lads, mind you. Jad knows, I did my share of raiding when young.”

  “And their father.”

  “Jad curse his eyes and hands,” Brynn said, though without force. “My royal cousin in Beda wants to know what to do about Owyn, you know.”

  “I know. I’ll tell him when I get to Beda. With Owyn’s two sons beside me.” The cleric’s turn to grin this time.

  He leaned back against the cool stone wall beside the window. Earthly pleasures: an old friend, food and wine, a day with some good unexpectedly done. There were learned men who taught withdrawal from the traps and tangles of the world. There was even a doctrinal movement afoot in Rhodias to deny marriage to clerics now, following the eastern, Sarantine rule, making them ascetics, detached from distractions of the flesh—and the complexities of having heirs to provide for.

  Ceinion of Llywerth had always thought—and had written the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and others—that this was wrong thinking and even heresy, an outright denial of Jad’s full gift of life. Better to turn your love of the world into an honouring of the god, and if a wife died, or children, your own knowledge of sorrow might make you better able to counsel others, and comfort them. You lived with loss as they did. And shared their pleasures, too.

  His words, written and spoken, mattered to others, by Jad’s holy grace. He was skilled at this sort of argument but didn’t know if he would be on the winning side of this one. The three provinces of the Cyngael were a long way from Rhodias, at the edge of the world, the misty borders of pagan belief. North of the north wind, the phrase went.

  He sipped his wine, looking at his friend. Brynn’s expression was sly at the moment, amusingly so. “Happen to see the way Dai ab Owyn looked at my Rhiannon, did you?”

  Ceinion took care that his own manner did not change. He had, in fact, seen it—and something else. “She’s a remarkable young woman,” he murmured.

  “Her mother’s daughter. Same spirit to her. I’m an entirely beaten man, I tell you.” Brynn was smiling as he said this. “We solve a problem that way? Owyn’s heir handled by my girl?”

  Ceinion kept his look noncommittal. “Certainly a useful match.”

  “The lad’s already lost his head, I’d wager.” He chuckled. “Not the first to do so, with Rhiannon.”

  “And your daughter?” Ceinion asked, perhaps unwisely.

  Some fathers would have been startled, or offered an oath—what mattered the girl’s wishes in these things? But Brynn ap Hywll didn’t do that. Ceinion watched, and by the lamplight saw the big man, his old friend, grow thoughtful. Too much so. The cleric offered an inward, mildly blasphemous curse, and immediately sought—also silently—the god’s forgiveness for that.

  “Interesting song the younger one sang before the meal, wasn’t it?”

  There it was. A shrewd man, Ceinion thought ruefully. Much more than a warrior with a tw
o-handed sword.

  “It was,” he said, still keeping his own counsel. This was all too soon. He temporized. “Your bard was out of countenance.”

  “Amund? It was too good, you mean? The song?”

  “Not that. Though it was impressive. No, Alun ab Owyn breached the laws for such things. Only licensed bards are allowed to improvise in company. Your harper will need appeasing.”

  “Spiky man, Amund. Not easily softened, if you are right.”

  “I am right. Call it a word offered the wise.”

  Brynn looked at him. “And your other question? About Rhiannon? What sort of word was that?”

  Ceinion sighed. It had been a mistake. “I wish you weren’t clever, sometimes.”

  “Have to be. To keep up in this family. She liked the … song, you think?”

  “I think everyone liked the song.” He left it at that.

  Both men were still awhile.

  “Well,” Brynn said finally, “she’s of age, but there’s no great rush. Though Amren wants to know what to do about Owyn and Cadyr, and this …”

  “Owyn ap Glynn isn’t the problem. Neither’s Amren, or Ielan in Llywerth. Except if they cling to these feuds that will end us.” He’d spoken with more fire than he’d intended.

  The other man stretched out his legs and leaned back, unruffled. Brynn drank, wiped his moustache with a sleeve, and grinned. “Still riding that horse?”

  “And I will all my life.” Ceinion didn’t smile this time. He hesitated, then shrugged. Wanted to change the subject, in any case. “I’ll tell you something before I tell it to Amren in Beda. But keep it close. Aeldred’s invited me to Esferth, to join his court.”

  Brynn sat up abruptly, scraping the chair along the floor. He swore, without apologizing, then banged his cup down, spilling wine. “How dare he? Our high cleric he wants to steal now?”

  “I said he’d invited me. Not an abduction, Brynn.”

  “Even so, doesn’t he have his own Jad-cursed holy men among the Anglcyn? Rot the man!”

  “He has a great many, and seeks more … not cursed, I hope.” Ceinion left a pointed little pause. “From here, from Ferrieres. Even from Rhodias. He is … a different sort of king, my friend. I think he feels his lands are on the way to being safe now, which means new ambitions, ways of thinking. He’s arranging to marry a daughter north, to Rheden.” He looked steadily at the other man.

  Brynn sighed. “I’d heard that.”

  “And if so, there goes that rivalry on the other side of the Wall, which we’ve relied upon. Our danger is if we remain … the old sort of princes.”

  There were three oil lamps burning in the room, one set in the wall, two brought in for a guest: extravagance and respect. In the mingling of yellow lamplight, Brynn’s gaze was direct now. Ceinion, accepting it, felt a wave of memory crash over him from a terrible, glorious summer long ago. This happened more and more as he grew older. Past and present colliding, simultaneous visions, the present seen with the past. This same man, a quarter-century ago, on a battlefield by the sea, the Volgan himself and the Erling force they’d met by their boats. There had been three princes among the Cyngael that day but Brynn had led the centre. A full head of dark hair on him then, far less bulk, less of this easy humour. The same man, though. You changed, and you did not change.

  “You said he’s after clerics from Ferrieres?” Picking up the other thing that mattered.

  “So he wrote me.”

  “It starts with clerics, doesn’t it?”

  Ceinion gazed affectionately at his old friend. “Sometimes. They are notoriously aloof, my colleagues across the water.”

  “But if not? If it works, opens channels? If the Anglcyn and Ferrieres join to push away the Erling raiders on both sides of the Strait? And mayhap a marriage that way, too … ?”

  “Then the Erlings come here again, I would think.” Ceinion finished the thought. “If we remain outside whatever is happening. That’s my message to Beda, when I get there.” He paused, then added the thought he’d been travelling with: “There are times when the world changes, Brynn.”

  A silence in the room. No noises from the corridor either, now; the household abed, or most of them. Some of the warband likely dicing in the hall still, perhaps with the young Cadyri, money changing hands by lantern light. He didn’t think there would be trouble; Brynn’s men were extremely well trained, and they were hosts tonight. The night breeze came through the window, sweetened with the scent of flowers. Gifts of the god’s offered world. Not to be spurned.

  “I hate them, you know. The Erlings and the Anglcyn, both.”

  Ceinion nodded, said nothing. What was there to say? A homily about Jad, and love? The big man sighed again. Drained his cup one more time. He showed no effects from the unwatered wine.

  “Will you go to him? To Aeldred?” he asked, as Ceinion had expected.

  “I don’t know,” he said, which had the virtue of being honest.

  BRYNN LEFT, not down the corridor to his own bedchamber, but for one of the outbuildings. A young serving lass waiting for him, no doubt, ready to slip out wrapped in a cloak as soon as she saw him go through the door. Ceinion knew it was his duty to chastise the other man for this. He didn’t even consider it; had known ap Hywll and his wife for too long. One of the things about living in and of the world: you learned how complex it could be.

  He doused two of the lamps, disliking the waste. A habit of frugality. He left the door a little ajar, as a courtesy. With Brynn outside, the lord of the manor would not be his own last visitor of the night. He’d been here, and in ap Hywll’s other homes, before.

  Somewhat as an afterthought, while he waited, he went to his pack and drew from it the letter he was carrying with him north-west to Beda on the sea. He took the same seat as before, by the window. No moons tonight. The young Cadyri princes would have had a good, black night for a cattle raid … and they’d have been slaughtered. Bad luck for them that Brynn and his men would have been here, but you could die of bad luck.

  Jad of the Sun had allowed him to save lives today, a different sort of gift, one that might have meaning that went beyond what a man was permitted to see. His own prayer, every morning, was that the god see fit to make use of him. There was something—there had to be something—in his arriving when he did, looking up the slope, seeing movement in the bushes. And following, for no very good reason besides a knowing that sometimes came to him. More than he deserved, that gift, flawed as he knew he was. Things he had done, in grief, and otherwise. He turned his head and looked out, saw stars through rents in moving clouds, caught the scent of the flowers again, just outside in the night.

  Needful as night’s end. Needful as night.

  Two subtle offerings in the triad game, then a song, improvised as they listened. Three young people here, on the cusp of their real existence, the possible importance of their lives. And two of them would very likely have been lying dead tonight, if he’d been a day later on the road, or even a few moments.

  He ought to kneel and give thanks again, feel a sense of blessing and hope. And those things were there, truly, but they lay underneath something else, more undefined, a heaviness. He felt tired suddenly. The years could creep up on you, if a day lasted too long. He opened the letter again, the red, broken seal crumbling a little.

  “Whereas it has for some time been our belief that it is the proper duty of an anointed king under Jad to pursue wisdom and teach virtue by example, as much as it is our task to strengthen and defend …”

  With the lamps doused, there wasn’t enough light to read by, particularly for a man no longer young, but he had this committed to memory and was communing with it more than actually considering the contents again, the way one might kneel before a familiar image of the god on one’s own stone chapel wall. Or, the thought came to him, the way one might contemplate the name and stone-carved sun disk over a grave visited so many times it wasn’t really seen, only apprehended, as one lingered one more time until t
wilight fell, and then the dark.

  In the dark, from the corridor, she knocked softly then entered, taking the partially open door for the invitation it was.

  “What?” said Enid, setting down the tall candle she carried. “Still dressed and not in the bed? I’d hoped you’d be waiting for me there.”

  He stood up, smiling. She came forward and they kissed, though she was kind enough to let it be a kiss of peace on each cheek, and not more than that. She wore some sort of perfume. He wasn’t good at naming these woman-scents but it was immediately distracting. He was suddenly aware of the bed. She’d intended that, he knew. He knew her very well.

  Enid looked at the wine cups and the wide-necked flask. “Did he leave any for me?”

  “Not much, I fear. There may be some, and water to mix.”

  Enid shook her head. “I don’t really need.”

  She took the seat her husband had so recently vacated to go out with whichever girl had been waiting for him. In the softer light she was a presence sitting near to him, a scent, a memory of other nights—and other kisses of peace when peace had not been what she’d left behind when she went away. His restraint, not hers, or even Brynn’s, for these two had their own rules in this long marriage and Ceinion had, years ago, been made to understand that. His restraint. A woman very dear.

  “You are tired,” she said after a moment’s scrutiny. “He gets the best of you, coming first, and then I arrive—always hoping—and find …”

  “A man not worthy of you?”

  “A man not susceptible to my diminishing charms. I’m getting old, Ceinion. I think my daughter fell in love tonight.”

  He took a breath. “I’ll say, in sequence, no, and no, and … perhaps.”

  “Let me work that out.” He could see she was amused. “You are finally yielding to me, I am not yet old in your sight, Rhiannon might be in love?”