Next day, Laintal Ay wished to stay close to the priest from Borlien, in case he had more toys hidden in his garments. But the priest was busy visiting the sick, and in any case Loilanun kept firm hold of her son.
Laintal Ay’s natural rebelliousness was curbed by the quarrels that broke out between his mother and his grandmother. He was the more surprised because the women had been loving to each other when his grandfather lived. The body of Yuli, he who was named after the man who came with Iskador from the mountains, was carted off, stiff as a frozen pelt, as if his last act of will was to hold himself rigidly away from his woman’s caresses. His absence left a black corner in the room, where Loil Bry squatted, turning only to snap at her daughter.
All the tribe were built solid, buttressed with subcutaneous fat. Loil Bry’s once renowned stature still lingered, though her hair was grey and her head lost between her shoulder bones as she stooped over the cold bed of that man of hers—that man loved with intense passion for half a lifetime, since she first beheld him, an invader, wounded.
Loilanun was of poorer stuff. The energy, the power to love, the broad face with seeking eyes like dark sails, had missed Loilanun, passing direct from grandmother to young Laintal Ay. Loilanun was strawy, her skin sallow; since her husband died so young, there was a falter in her walk—and a falter too, perhaps, in her attempt to emulate her mother’s regal command of knowledge. She was irritable now, as Loil Bry wept almost continuously in the corner.
“Mother, give over—your din gets on my nerves.”
“You were too feeble to mourn your man properly! I’ll weep, I’ll weep till I’m taken, I’ll bleed tears.”
“Much good it will do you.” She offered her mother bread, but it was refused with a contemptuous gesture. “Shay Tal made it.”
“I won’t eat.”
“I’ll have it, Mumma,” Laintal Ay said.
Aoz Roon arrived outside the tower and called up, holding his natural daughter Oyre by the hand. Oyre was a year younger than Laintal Ay, and waved enthusiastically to him, as he and Loilanun stuck their heads out of the window.
“Come up and see my toy dog, Oyre. It’s a real fighter, like your father.”
But his mother bundled him back into the room and said sharply to Loil Bry, “It’s Aoz Roon, wishing to escort us to the burial. Can I tell him yes?”
Rocking herself slightly, not turning, the old woman said, “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust Aoz Roon—he has too much effrontery. He and his friends hope to gain the succession.”
“We’ve got to trust someone. You’ll have to rule now, Mother.”
When Loil Bry laughed bitterly, Loilanun looked down at her son, who stood smiling and clutching the horn dog. “Then I shall, till Laintal Ay becomes a man. Then he’ll be Lord of Embruddock.”
“You’re a fool if you think his uncle Nahkri will permit that,” the old woman responded.
Loilanun said no more, drawing her mouth up in a bitter line, letting her regard sink down from her son’s expectant face to the skins which covered the floor. She knew that women did not rule. Already, even before her father was put under, her mother’s power over the tribe was going, flowing away as the river Voral flowed, none knew where. Turning on her heel, she shouted out of the window, without more ado, “Come up.”
So abashed was Laintal Ay by this look of his mother’s, as if she perceived he would never be a match for his grandfather—never mind the more ancient bearer of the name of Yuli—that he hung back, too wounded to greet Oyre when she marched into the chamber with her father.
Aoz Roon was fourteen years of age, a handsome, swaggering, young hunter who, after a sympathetic smile at Loilanun and a rumple of Laintal Ay’s hair, went over to pay his respects to the widow. This was Year 19 After Union, and already Laintal Ay had a sense of history. It lurked in the dull-smelling corners of this old room, with its damps and lichens and cobwebs. The very word history reminded him of wolves howling between the towers, the snow at their rumps, while some old boney hero breathed his last.