There was too much to do to spend life skulking indoors. With the help of Bebeth, Wolf’s children’s old nurse and her housekeeper, Jindabyne ran Wolf’s household more efficiently than any retainer had ever done. There were her beloved birds and her rose garden, and she had set up a healing hospice under the walls of the fortress. Here she spent hours helping Seagani healers to care for the poor and very sick, thus putting the astonishing power she had been gifted with to good use.
Ezratah had said that most Tari were stronger than her, that the mindblast spell that had robbed her of her memory had robbed her of much of her power as well. That was how she had discovered that he had known her before, in that blank time before she had been mindblasted. She had pestered him to tell her about it and eventually he had told her that she had been manipulated by an older relative into killing someone. The mindblast, a spell that destroyed memory and knowledge, had been her punishment for the murder she had committed.
She had been too shocked to sleep for days afterwards, tormented by the wrong she had done.
“It’s past. You are a different finer person now,” Wolf had comforted her. “You’ve paid for your actions. A good life is the true penance for such an act, a creative life that honours the life spirit.”
After that she no longer sought to know about her shameful past. She focussed on the present, on Wolf and their happiness.
Healing work usually refreshed Jindabyne, but that day she felt weighed down by a restless black mood. Several of her most difficult cases were making good progress, yet something was wrong. Had she forgotten to do something important? She wished Ezratah was here so that she could have talked this feeling over with him. But he had been gone for ten days now, on one of his mysterious missions for the Guardians.
She left the hospice with Bebeth and her guard earlier than usual and as they turned towards the fortress, a great cloud of ravens came out of the east and flew a full circle around the tower of the fortress. The harsh croak of their voices was like the sound of darkness breaking into the world and Jindabyne’s presentiment of wrong suddenly became overwhelming.
“Something terrible has happened!” she cried, picking up her skirts to run.
When Jindabyne and her guards came bursting into the great hall they found a peaceful scene. Serge was sitting in the great hall listlessly rolling dice with his friends while around them the servants bustled about at their usual tasks. The moment Serge saw Jindabyne’s face his hand went to his sword belt in alarm but Jindabyne did not stop to explain. Instead she rushed up the stairs, two at a time seeking her daughter, Olga. When she found her playing happily with her nurse, Jindabyne seized her in her arms almost crushing her, trying to make sure she was safe.
“What is it?” cried Serge, hovering in the doorway.
Jindabyne could not stop trembling.
“Something terrible has happened,” she cried and suddenly she knew what it was. “Wolf! Oh no! Please! Life be merciful!”
“Serge, protect Olga!” she cried, thrusting her daughter into Serge’s arms and racing headlong back down the stairs.
Thus it was that she met the messenger as he came galloping into the courtyard to tell her of the Mori attack on the hunting party and thus it was that a short time later, breathless, and with her hair falling loose, she met the survivors of the hunting party at the town gate, bearing the dead body of Wolf Madraga, first Duke of Lamartaine, on a stretcher.
The men tried to stop her, but she brushed them easily aside with her magic. She pulled the covering from the corpse and faced the unthinkable, unbearable truth. There he lay covered in blood, wounds at his neck and chest, dead, her dearest, most beloved man. She could only scream and beg him to come back to her.
As the hunting party had ridden through the deep forest east of Lamartaine, a party of 30 Mori warriors had attacked them. Of the 15 men who went out that day, only four returned alive. Wolf, his two older sons, Paulus and Gideon, and five huntsmen were killed.
Lev Madraga and his friend Neevus had been separated from the main party, exploring another trail and, hearing the sounds of an attack, they had rushed to the party’s aid. Being a very powerful mage, Lev had been able to chase the Mori raiders away, but it had been too late to save most of the party. Only two huntsmen had survived. From the way Lev wept as he told this story, no one could doubt that his brother’s death left him heartbroken.
“We shall make them pay!” he cried, shaking his fist towards the Mori forest in the east.
As for Jindabyne, she let them use healing magic to make her reality hazy and lay on her bed, her hair over her face, too heavy with grief to move. Olga was brought to her, crying because they had told her she would not see her father again and Jindabyne found some comfort in soothing her and cuddling her while she slept. But when she woke, the little girl got bored with Jindabyne’s stillness and Bebeth took her away to play. She was too young to truly understand that Wolf was gone for good.
The sky outside Jindabyne’s window was full of birds. Sparrows chirruped. Finches twittered. Thrushes sang. They had come because they sensed her grief, but their beauty felt like a reproach because he was not here to share it with her. She hardly noticed when they fell silent.
Over the next three days, the castle became full as people came to pay their respects to Duke Wolf.
“I hope that Serge is up to the task,” muttered Bebeth. “He’s so young.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jindabyne, who had given no thought to the world outside her room. Serge had come to see how she was every day, but she had barely noticed him through her dull curtain of grief.
“Serge is Duke of Lamartaine now,” said Bebeth patiently. “It falls to him to keep the peace between the Seagani and the Mirayans.”
Jindabyne knew what that meant. Lamartaine, which covered some of Western Seagan and all of Eastern Seagan up to the Mori forests, was a large territory. In many places Wolf had used the local Seagani tribal leaders to help him maintain it, absorbing them easily into the Mirayan system of vassalage. In others he had used other Mirayans, refugees from the war in Miraya, who had been part of the initial wave of colonisation. He was a good judge of men, taking only those who agreed with his light hand on the natives, but even so there was constant tension between his Seagani and his Mirayan vassals. Wolf had had to work hard to keep the peace between them.
“At least his uncle seems keen to help. Though if he really wanted to be useful, he would send that dog Guilius Appius packing.”
“Is Guilius Appius here?” asked Jindabyne dully. She remembered how Wolf had distrusted the mercenary captain, describing him as a greedy young hound skulking around looking for territories to snatch up.
“Yes, apparently he’s come to pay his respects. Appius is all confidence at a time when Serge is unsure. ‘Let us attack the Mori’, he says. ‘You must avenge your father,’ he says. I see only trouble in that one, worming himself into the empty space.”
She came over to Jindabyne and squeezed her shoulder.
“You must bestir yourself tomorrow, Your Grace. Tomorrow is the funeral and Mirayan widows have duties to perform.”
On the morning of the Duke’s funeral a great flock of silver thrushes, normally solitary birds, flew out of the forest and settled on the battlements and towers of the fortress singing their beautiful liquid songs. The sound woke Jindabyne from drugged sleep. Her heart was filled with joy and she reached out for Wolf before she remembered why she was alone.
Crawling from her bed, she allowed her maids to wash and dress her while she stood at the window in the grey morning listening to the birdsong