invasion and struck mute by goblin atrocity as they passed
through with their flames and long knives. Orestes spirited
her away to the woods of Lemish, where in seclusion they
lived a dozen years in narrow hope.
A dozen years, the druidess said, in which the child they
awaited never came.
That part I knew. Mother had told me when I was very
little, the soft arc of her hand assuring me how much they
had waited and planned and imagined.
That part I knew. And Mother had shared his death with
none but me. But I had never heard just how he had died.
“In despair,” the Lady Yman told me, the cavern
lapsing into shadow as her brown, leafy robes blocked out
the firelight, the reflection on the ice. “Despair that his
country was burning still, and that no children of his would
extinguish the fires. He did not know about you. Your
mother had come to me, and she knew, was returning to
your cottage to tell him, joyous through the wide woods.
“She found what you’ve seen. Orestes could wait no
longer. Your mother brought me his note to read to her: I
HAVE KILLED ARION, AND THE BURNING WILL
NEVER STOP, it said. THE LAND IS CURSED. I AM
CURSED. MY LINE IS CURSED. I DIE.”
L’Indasha reached for me as I reeled, as the room
blurred through my hot tears.
“Trugon? Trugon!”
REDEEM NOR CONTINUE. I understood now, about
his anger and guilt and the terrible, wicked thing he had
done. The BEATHA raced through me, and the torchlight
surged and quickened.
“Why did you finally tell me?” I asked.
“To save your life,” the lady replied. She passed her
hand above the broken water, and I saw a future where fires
arose without cause and burned unnaturally hot, and my
scars were afire, too, devouring my skin, my face, erasing
all reason and memory until the pain vanished and my life
as well.
“This … this is what will be, Lady?”
“Perhaps.” She crouched beside me, her touch cool on
my neck, its relief coursing into my face, my limbs.
“Perhaps. But the future is changeable, as is the past.”
“The past?” The pain was gone now, gone entirely.
“Oh, yes, the past is changeable, Trugon,” L’Indasha
claimed, passing from firelight to shadow, “for the past is
lies, and lies can always change.” She was nearing the end
of the answer and the beginning of another riddle.
“But concern yourself now with the present,” she
warned, and waved her hand above the troubled water.
I saw four men wading through an ice-baffled forest,
on snowshoes, their footing unsteady, armed with sword
and crossbow.
“Bandits,” L’Indasha pronounced, “bound to the service
of Finn of the Dark Hand”
I shivered. The bandit king in Endaf.”
The druidess nodded. “They are looking for Pyrrhus
Orestes. Remember that only your mother and you know he
is dead. They seek him because of the renewed fires on the
peninsula. They are bent on taking your father to the beast,
for the legend now goes, and truly, I suppose, that no man
can kill a bard without dire consequence, without a curse
falling to him and to his children.”
She looked at me with a sad, ironic smile.
“So the bandits are certain Orestes must die to stop the
fires.”
Mother helped me to my feet.
“I … I don’t understand,” I said. “It’s over. He’s killed
himself and brought down a curse on me.”
L’Indasha waved her hand for silence. “It wasn’t the
killing that cursed you. It was the words – what he said
before he died. Now you must go from here – anywhere, the
farther, the better. But not to Finn’s Ear, the bandit king’s
stronghold on the Caergoth shore.”
“Why should I leave?” I asked. “They are after my
father, not me. I STILL don’t understand.”
“Your scars,” she replied, emphatically, impatiently.
“The whole world will mistake you for your father, because
of the scars.”
“I’ll tell them who I really am!” I protested, but the
druidess only smiled.
“They won’t believe you,” she said. “They will see only
what they expect. Hurry now. FIND the truth about