your cloak, Abelaard, and leave the child." He stared bale-fully at the druidess. "We must be off for Nidus while there's aught of the night to travel. It's still a good walk home, by my reckoning."
The boy put on his garment, but he would not give the baby back to the druidess. "I've looked forward to a brother for so long, Father. Please. We must take care of him."
Daeghrefn could refuse Abelaard nothing short of this request. Nothing short, but not this.
"No," he replied.
The druidess stepped forward and placed her hand on Abelaard's shoulder, an idea forming as she spoke.
"No, Daeghrefn," she began, a dry warning in her voice. "You'll keep this child and keep him well. If you leave him-or worse-all those in your command will know of your cuckolding. And who would follow such a man? You cannot be undone before them, can you?"
Daeghrefn's dark eyes locked onto L'Indasha's, and she knew she had won his undying hatred.
And the baby's life.
"Nidus is ten miles from here," she urged, calmly holding his vacant stare. "You have seen our weather. You have challenged the storm enough for tonight."
Daeghrefn broke his gaze and removed his boots. For a moment, L'Indasha's hopes rose, until she realized he was only drying them by the fire, preparing for the long trek through the mountains.
"You have heard the stories," she began quietly, "about these mountains in the winter."
"I've no time for lore," Daeghrefn objected.
L'Indasha persisted. She told Daeghrefn about the frozen horses, the dozens of travelers irrecoverably lost. She told him of the bandits, sealed in ice like insects in a million years of amber. All the while her touch was light on the shoulder of the boy. Daeghrefn did not listen, but
Abelaard did.
As she knew he would.
And it was enough. When Daeghrefn drew on his boots and walked to the mouth of the cave, Abelaard remained by the fire. "Father?" he asked, his voice thin and uncertain.
Daeghrefn turned to him warily.
"Can't we just wait out the night here?" Abelaard pleaded. "We left Laca's castle ten days ago. We're away from the bad place now. Tomorrow we can all go home. The baby, too. Please, Father."
As he looked into Abelaard's hollow eyes, something in the knight seemed to turn and soften. It was sudden and unforeseen, as a line of troops will break in the midst of a pitched battle. Daeghrefn's shoulders slumped, and slowly he removed his sodden gloves.
"I suppose," he began, "that a night's stay could not altogether harm us, Abelaard. But just one night, mind you. We'll be home at Nidus on the morrow, regardless of storm or cold."
"One night is all you will need," the druidess said, for the lad's encouragement more than Daeghrefn's information. "Storms blow over quickly here, and there will be sun and a clear path come morning."
"We're off to Nidus regardless," the knight insisted, staring into the fire.
L'Indasha buried the dead woman at the far end of a side cavern, deep in the soft clay floor, while Daeghrefn huddled in blankets around the fire and Abelaard fed the newborn something the druidess had mixed and warmed for him.
When she finished singing the funeral prayers, they all
slept. Twice in the night L'Indasha stirred-once at the roar of wind across the high plateau/carrying the cry of a dozen lost travelers beyond her help in the hills of Est-wilde, and once when the baby awoke and whimpered. It was the baby's cry that brought her to full waking. It began softly and rose steadily until she heard Abelaard's voice join with it awkwardly, singing a Solamnic lullaby. The child's voice was small and fragile amid the roar of wind tumbling through the surrounding hills.
May. your gods keep you, L'Indasha thought, a modest spell shielding her ears against the plaintive sounds of the children in the center of the cave. If your gods can do anything, may they keep you in the days to come.
Chapter 2
Thc Bridge of Dreed arched narrowly over the canyon, a dark, knobby spine against the bright autumn sunset. It was the northernmost of three bridges across the gorge. The southern two were made of vallenwood and were old as the Cataclysm. But this structure was far older, a narrow stone footpath, one man's width, that had spanned the great chasm for as long as the histories recalled and the legends remembered. At its very top, a level, slightly wider area had provided this ceremony a perfect platform.
Barely twelve years old, Verminaard shifted nervously in the saddle. Of course, he had heard much about this place. Indeed, he had seen the Bridge of Dreed once
before, from a distance, when he and his brother had been goat hunting in the high reaches above Daeghrefn's castle. It had seemed menacing even then-a black, crooked bow spanning the gorge from east to west. Abelaard had pointed it out to him, then steered him to lower ground as the younger lad glanced back at the ancient structure, his thoughts filled with legends of how the world was made.
The finger of Reorx, the forge god. A handle for the mountains he had raised in the Age of Dreams, as the stories told.
Two years after that hunt, and much closer now, the bridge looked no less grand and precarious. It arched from one side of the gorge to the other, and, below, there was a breathtaking drop of three hundred feet to the ragged igneous rocks on the chasm floor. The stones were littered with brush, dead wood, and old bones.
He would walk that narrow span of rock and exchange places with Laca's son. He would live in a foreign land and learn to be a knight, for his father said Laca still kept to the Order.
It was a place for solemn oaths indeed, the boy thought. And he closed his eyes amid the company, the armed men around him oblivious to his silent prayer.
He prayed that his knighthood would come in another way, that the two quarrelsome fathers-their rift as old as the night just before his birth, as wide as the spreading chasm before him-would knit their discord in the face of the coming war. That Daeghrefn would go back to the Order. Surely the organized Nerakan army, impelled from somewhere in the dark heart of the mountains, would persuade Laca of East Borders and Daeghrefn of Nidus to relent, to trust each other at last. Couldn't they join swords in good faith, without the approaching dance of deal and transaction? Couldn't they postpone the swapping of sons until the Nerakans were subdued?
He prayed he would do his father proud in this
exchange. But he knew his prayers tumbled like loose stones into the chasm below him, away from the starry hand of Paladine, from the eyes of Majere and Kiri-Jolith-far from the various gods Daeghrefn once revered and worshiped….
Then renounced, when he left the Order.
Daeghrefn stood behind the boy, masking his smile due to the solemnity that would follow. It was perfect, this gebo-naud, a prime arrangement of fortune and war and politics. As the years had passed, the Lord of Nidus feared more and more that the secret of his cuckoldry would be guessed by the other knights. As Verminaard grew, the boy looked the very picture of Laca.
Who had played nicely into his hands with this treaty and exchange.
He would be rid of Verminaard, Daeghrefn thought with a grim contentment. And Laca would have his own bastard visited on him. It could not have been better arranged. ,
Verminaard started. You will bid your brother farewell today, the Voice told him. Oh, yes, farewell, for you will not see him again, though good riddance will it be. And you will be the elder, the scion, your father's eventual heir.
It always took him by surprise, that sinuous suggesting. The Voice had been with him for years-for as long as he could remember. Melodious and haunting, its tone neither masculine nor feminine, it would merge with his own thoughts and rise suddenly into hearing, its suggestions always a mixture of despair and grief and a strange, dark longing. He had never spoken to his father about it. Daeghrefn would not hold with voices.
What does this mean? Verminaard puzzled, wrestling as always with the Voice's dark prompting. It is an exchange of noble hostages, not a giving away!
And as always, the Voice was silent when he argued, slipping back into some dark recess, some alcove of mem-
ory, leaving him alone to bicker and wrestle with its insinuations. I will return! Verminaard assured himself. But the Voice was gone, leaving him to his rising dread and misgiving.
He opened his eyes and turned in the saddle. Abelaard, seated importantly amid the armed escort, winked at him solemnly.
Let it be over soon, the younger boy thought. If the exchange must take place, as the fathers have sworn on their swords and honors, let it take place quickly.
"You have your instructions?" the stern voice prodded behind them. Abelaard turned to Daeghrefn, murmuring something hasty and obedient.