“Knows what?”
“He knows you are here. He knows we are coming. And he wants me.”
He hesitated only a moment, then with one easy movement lifted her onto his saddle. An instant later he was behind her and they galloped toward the city.
“Take me to my sisters,” Tess begged. “He wants all of the Ilduin! And none of us can withstand him alone.”
I could have, Archer thought grimly as his mount devoured the distance in hungry strides. He had had countless opportunities to deal with Ardred, when they were children or even young men, before the evil had taken root and transformed his brother into his enemy. He had missed them all. But not again. I could have, and this time, I will.
Chapter Eight
Ratha looked at Cilla, uncertain of what to say. She had been with him for two days now, though she had yet to speak a word beyond their brief opening greeting. Nor had he. The initial stage of the telzehten was observed in silence, apart from the customary prayers, and in silence they had remained. But now they had completed that stage, and were supposed to move on to the celebration of a life well lived. And while Ratha knew his brother had lived life well, he also knew that in the end of Giri’s days, an awful bloodlust had consumed him.
Worse, Ratha knew that he, too, had fallen victim to that bloodlust before his sojourn in the desert, and now was perilously close to succumbing again. To openly discuss these things risked falling into the pit that yawned beneath him like a gaping maw. And yet he knew he must face his demons eventually whether alone or not.
Even so, his tongue felt leaden in his mouth, and the concerns he most needed to share were the very things of which he must not speak.
Still, as the closest blood relative, it fell upon Ratha to speak first. At last the silence grew too oppressive to bear, and he drew a breath. “Giri was a man of honor.”
“Aye, cousin,” Cilla said quietly.
“More than once did he risk his life for those whom he loved, and in the end he gave his life for the freedom of the Anari,” Ratha continued.
Cilla nodded. “He spared nothing.”
“Not even his own soul,” Ratha said, tears forming in his eyes. “I have prayed that the gods will forgive him for what he became.”
“He became hardened,” Cilla said gently. “War is a cruel undertaking, cousin.”
“That it is,” Ratha said. “Perhaps if we Anari had been more suited for it…”
“I fear that no one can be truly suited for it,” she replied. “Or perhaps that no one should. I fear that any people truly suited to war would be too cruel and horrible to bear imagining.”
“Perhaps that is true.”
Cilla let a moment pass before speaking. “Giri was a man of laughter.”
“Oh, yes,” Ratha said. “And some of the stories he told…I could not repeat in the presence of a woman, not even my cousin.”
Cilla smiled. “Of that I am certain. There was nothing about which Giri could not laugh, even those things at which most of us would blush.”
Ratha closed his eyes, recalling the long days riding with Archer, when he and Giri had often passed the time with jokes and songs.
“He liked to tell a story of a woman who was out in the field gathering wheat when she came upon a red desert adder. The woman asked of the adder, ‘Why do you have fangs, and venom that kills?’ The adder replied, ‘It is only to defend myself, or to kill prey that I may eat.’ The woman was unconvinced, and said, ‘I would never use venom to defend myself!’ The adder simply smiled. ‘Why must you lie, woman? For I have heard you speak to your husband!’”
Cilla laughed, a rich, hearty laugh that seemed to unlock something within Ratha. His own laughter and tears burst forth in equal measure, each riding upon the waves of Cilla’s laughter, but continuing long after as he recalled the times that he and Giri had combined to make even Archer turn red and cover his mouth.
This was the Giri that Ratha could celebrate. The brother who, no matter how long the days or how rocky the journey, could bring even the stones to laugh. The brother who had hidden pebbles in Archer’s boots, so tiny and placed so well that with every step Archer felt a tickle between his toes.
It had taken Archer half a day to find the pebbles, and three days more to plot his revenge on Giri, carefully weaving a string of nettles into Giri’s breeches that left him hopping and howling until he could find and break open a soothing reed.
For his part, Ratha had laughed along with Archer at his brother’s discomfort, for such were the just desserts of the prank Giri had played, and he knew the nettles were as harmless as the pebbles Giri had employed for his own amusement.
As he told Cilla of these times, and many others besides, her peals of laughter echoed through the rocks below, and the stones themselves seemed to respond with a quiet glow that spoke their approval. She told him of one of her cousins who had been the happy, if unsatisfied, host of Giri’s first clumsy kiss. Her description, doubtless embellished in the telling, left Ratha holding his sides and wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Giri was a gift to us all,” Ratha finally said, when he could catch his breath.
“Yes, he was,” Cilla said. “And whatever he became, dear cousin, he became it only because he never lived by half measures.”
Ratha nodded. “That he did not. Whatever he was, in whatever moment he lived, he lived it fully. And if he lived war no less fully than he lived all else, I pray he did so not from malice but from the same completeness with which he gave every day of his life.”
Cilla reached out and took his hand. “If we can see him thus, my cousin, how could any just and merciful god not see him likewise?”
Ratha did not withdraw his hand, for in that simple touch he felt the beginning of something he would not have imagined possible only days ago. He felt the beginning of healing.
“I will always miss him,” Ratha said.
“As will I,” Cilla said. “But he lives on in our hearts, and in our memories. And I dare say with surety that he lives on beyond the veil, and even now plots his mischief with the gods.”
“If that be,” Ratha said, “then I pity the gods.”
“Share a meal with me, cousin,” Cilla said. “You have fasted enough.”
Something in the quietness of her voice, in the softness of her touch, in the laughter they had shared, and even more, in her having come to share his grief, reached through the anguish that had plagued his soul from the moment he had seen Giri fall. To spend time alone was an honorable thing. But to return to his people, and his duty, was no less honorable, and all the more so in this time of need.
“Yes, cousin,” he said. “Let us return to Anahar and eat together. For duty weighs upon us both, and to duty we must return. But first let us feast in honor of Giri.”
“Long have I waited to hear those words,” Cilla said, rising with him.
“And others that I cannot yet say,” Ratha added, a wry smile on his face.
Cilla laughed. “Tease me not, cousin! Come, strike your tent before I smite your heart!”
Ratha joined in the laughter as they made their way back to Anahar.
Many days and hours of sorrow still lay ahead, but a glimmer of acceptance had at last eased Ratha’s heart.
It was terrible, thought Tess, to rip Sara from the arms of her groom yet again, but it could not be avoided. Come, she cried to her sister in her mind. Come to the temple at