The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [125]
However, if that was so, why had he seen them so clearly in Ar-tolor? Maere and little Durnem, looking just as he remembered, except blanched of all color, all life. And so sad; he had never remembered her looking so sorrowful, even when he told her the king had ordered him on patrol of the northern borders, that he would be gone all the summer and the autumn—but no more—and that he would return to her with the first snow.
Promise me one thing, she had said, pressing her hands to his cheeks. All the king’s knights are so somber, as if the price to win their swords was their smiles. Promise me that you won’t come back grim like them.
It had seemed such an odd request, but never had he refused her anything.
I swear it by my heart, Maere.
However, he did not return with the first snow. A large band of wildmen had moved south with the coming of winter. It was Falken Blackhand who had warned Embarr’s king, and that was how Durge first met the ancient bard. Durge’s patrol was given the task of sending the wildmen fleeing back north. It wasn’t until Midwinter’s Day that he finally returned to his manor at Stonebreak. And he found two fresh graves waiting for him, one large, one small.
Bless them, Yirga, the reeve’s wife, had said in answer to his numb silence. The fever took not one but both. I think the gods did not wish mother and child to be apart. It is a mercy, it is. Oh, bless them, bless them.
Durge had said nothing, but he knew Yirga was wrong, that the gods knew nothing of mercy. He had knelt beside their graves as soft snow fell, and for the last time in his life Durge had wept. He wept long and bitterly, pounding at the frozen soil until his bare hands ran bloody, as if he were burying his own heart there with them.
And, for all these years, he thought he had. Maere had made him promise not to become grim, but she had broken her part of that vow by leaving him. So Durge had become a good and solemn knight in service to King Sorrin of Embarr, and he had put aside joy, love, and other such frivolous things. That was, until …
Durge shut his eyes and once again saw the way Aryn had stared at him two days ago. Memories of ice and sorrow melted under the heat of a fire so long banked he thought it had gone utterly to ashes. But there was yet a spark.
He sat up in bed, sweating. This had to cease at once. Aryn had stared at him because he looked a fool, that was all. One so young and fair could never find him worthy of attention.
True, there were men who turned their gazes from Aryn due to the condition of her arm; but they were not fit to marry dogs, let alone a woman of high station. And there were other men who, like Durge, thought nothing about her arm, except that perhaps because of it she had found a quiet strength to match her beauty.
“Foolishness and fancy,” he whispered under his mustaches. “What is wrong with you, Durge of Stonebreak? These days if you are not drifting in thoughts of the past, then you are picturing futures that can never be.”
Perhaps the same malady afflicted him as Lady Melia. Several times again over the last two days she had become caught in reveries of long ago. Durge could see that Falken was worried, but the bard seemed not to know what to do. Nor did Melia seem aware of her behavior, which was perhaps the strangest fact of all. For Durge had never known another—man or woman—who appeared as assured and in control of her faculties as Lady Melia.
The light had brightened a fraction. Early then, not late. Morning was coming, still an hour away across the sea, but he knew he might as well rise. He stood and clothed himself in his new trousers and vest, grudgingly admitting the garb was practical for the climate. Only as he moved to the door did he notice that Falken’s bed was empty. He stepped into the larger room beyond.
“Good morning, dear.” Melia stood beside a table, using a silver pitcher to fill a pair of cups with a pink liquid. “Would you like some margra juice?”
Durge