A Gray Dawn over Findrak
"Good heavens."
Ilesin, who had been laughing until he could hardly breathe, went quiet. Fatigue seemed to roll over him, and his body sagged.
"Do you want to sleep?"
He nodded.
"You were a serviceable mage today."
"That is the finest thing you've said all day."
"So Hisnil had a gift for teaching after all. I always took him for a handful, and here he is, actually capable of giving something to someone else."
"Don't tell Hisnil. He's insufferably pleased with himself as it is. If he swells any further, he'll become a truly dreadful man."
"True enough. Even so, don't hate him too much."
"I know why you take his side. To you he's like a youngest brother."
"The fellow is six years older than I am, and he still can't look after himself."
Ilesin let his head rest against the wall of the carriage.
"I'll sleep now."
"All right."
Worn out as he was, he soon settled into an even breath. Artila eased the sleeping man down onto the floor, fetched a sack to pillow his head, and drew the cloak up over him. A glance around told her the others were already asleep, so she crawled in beneath the cloak herself. It was warm. She had lost her spirit stone in the flight and been miserable for it; now she borrowed his heat and let herself drift. She would only have to wake before he did. It was so warm, and so good, and the broad shelter of his arms was cozy besides. Relieved that he had sunk deep, she pressed her forehead to his chest and slept. She was simply too cold to do otherwise.
When Ilesin opened his eyes, it was still dawn.
Under a damp, blue-gray sky the wind cut sharp and cold, and Artila slept against him, pressed close as a stone.
"…."
She had been sleeping like a contented rabbit, but the cold on her face made her frown. Ilesin drew the blanket higher, and she burrowed straight under it. Once he had tucked her in properly, he stepped out of the carriage. The wind was bitter, though not more than a man raised beneath the gales of the northwest could bear. Beyond the horizon several shadows appeared and came racing toward them.
"Ugh—!"
A strange sound rose behind him. He turned and found Artila sitting there in a daze, her hair swollen around her head like a heap of brush. She clapped a hand to the back of her skull and began to search in a panic. Ilesin came over, found the tie buried in the tangle, and drew it free.
"Looking for this?"
"Yes…."
He raked his fingers roughly through the wreck of her hair, set it more or less to rights, and bound it. Still half asleep, Artila let him do as he pleased and looked past the horizon.
"They don't seem dangerous."
She glanced up at him.
"Do you know them?"
"I think so."
One horse pulled far ahead of the rest, and a moment later it came down on them in a thunder of hooves. A few of the Pobern soldiers who had been unconscious opened their eyes. The rider reined in, leapt down, and ran.
"Ilesin!"
He opened his arms. The rider threw back her hood: a girl with dark brown hair and thick brows.
"Ilesin!"
She flung herself against him. He caught her and patted her back.
"Good to see you, Beni."
"You're safe? Not hurt anywhere?"
"I was perfectly intact until just now. I think you're about to snap a bone."
"Oh, is that so."
She hugged him harder.
"There. Snapped."
She let go and thumped him between the shoulders. While the two of them carried on, Artila climbed down from the carriage and came up behind Ilesin. The girl turned on her with bright, expectant eyes.
"And who might this be, Ilesin?"
He made the introductions.
"Artila, this is Benislava, my sister. Beni, this is Artila. A mage who's joined our castle."
Beni crowed.
"A mage! Heavens, that isn't fair. Two mages! We've got one ancient fellow whose staff is a walking aid!"
"He won't retire."
"We can't retire him. No mage will come all the way out here. Honestly, he might as well be retired already—Sekiana does nearly all the work. And Ilesin has two of them. I'm jealous. A pleasure to meet you, Mage Artila!"
"Hello."
Unlike the strikingly handsome Ilesin, his younger sister had a thoroughly sturdy, spirited face. She was tall enough that, at a glance, she might have been taken for a boy.
"A patrol watching the plain reported in yesterday. They'd spotted a party traveling by magic. I thought it might be you, so I came out myself."
"We would have arrived today. Why ride all this way?"
"As if I could sit still. Wait—then where is Hisnil?"
"Guarding the castle."
"If Hisnil's holding the place, Nazares and Zeldia must have stayed too."
"In a fight, Artila's better than Zeldia. She doesn't look it, but she throws a good punch, and she's strong. She might even beat you in a fistfight."
Artila stared at him, startled. How does he know that? Beni was gazing at her in open admiration.
"Is she the applicant you took in last time?"
"No."
Ilesin shook his head and rubbed his brow.
"That applicant… let's say his luck ran out. Mine, not his. In his case, he brought it on himself."
"What happened to him?"
"He was being digested in a monster's belly when I killed the thing, so you could say he vanished into the earth."
Beni pointed at Artila.
"Then she's a mage you found in his place?"
"No. I was nearly dead when I met her, and I was lucky enough to live. She insists the debt I owe her for my life has already been paid in full, but I mean to tell Mother it hasn't. Back me up on that. She was badly hurt then, too. She needs a little help."
"Hurt where?"
"She lost her memory."
Beni's face fell with genuine pity.
"Good heavens. But she still remembers her magic?"
"Fortunately the knowledge is intact. What she's lost are the memories of experience—the things she actually lived through. I'm hoping Sekiana can help with that. Is she back?"
"Yes. It's autumn. Sekiana always stays at the castle from autumn through spring."
"And Mother?"
"She went into the castle yesterday. She means to stay a few days and prepare for the gathering. The moment she hears you're back, she'll summon you, no question."
"…And Father?"
Artila noticed that he hesitated before he asked after the man he called Father.
"In Mokarim village."
"Why there?"
"Monsters turned up, so he went out with the household knights. It's been five days."
"Does he mean to stay long?"
"Nothing's settled. He might not make it back before you leave for Pobern."
"Well, then. That's a relief."
Soon the Findrak knights who had followed Beni arrived. They snatched off their hats and greeted Ilesin at once. So many of them were pale that Artila's brown skin would stand out among them.
Ilesin smoothed a few stray strands of her hair back into place and said,
"Half a day's travel, and we'll reach Findrak Castle."
Artila caught the ends and worked her fingers through the tangles. He helped tidy the back of her head as he went on.
"I'll introduce you as a mage there, too, so swagger all you like. They'll treat you well."
"But I'd be deceiving them. Is that all right?"
"There's no deception in it. A mage of two months is still a mage."
"That's true, but…."
Once her hair was more or less in order, he pointed behind them.
"Come with me a moment?"
He led her up the slope, and the plain opened before them all at once, wide as a sea.
"Oh."
A jagged mountain of rock was vanishing toward the eastern rim, and beneath it the trees stood thick, dyed in every autumn color. Below the mountain a canyon cut the land as if it had been split open. White water churned under cliffs of gray-brown stone. Artila pointed at a heap of rubble on the slope.
"What is that? It looks like the ruins of a city."
"An old city. The site of the capital Braglon built. After he died, it was left like that. His three knights buried him there with his sword and crown, then went home."
"I suppose no one wanted the sword and the crown."
"They say the Giant Princess of Thunder Mountain, Braglon's mother, made them for her son alone, and that's why. But I think people gave them up because they looked too strange. See the drawings of the sword and crown that were left behind, and you understand."
He took her by the shoulders, turned her north, and lifted a hand.
"Look there."
Where he pointed, a vast castle stood. At first she had taken it for rock; looking closer, she saw it was a wall. It was so crude and massive that it had seemed so.
"That is Findrak Castle."
He indicated the procession of carriages and horses making for it.
"People going for the gathering in a few days."
"Is there a gathering every year?"
"The great gathering, when all three houses of the Galt—Findrak, Targal, and Andriol—come together, is once every three years. The lesser gathering, only the houses of the Findrak clan, is once a year."
Targal, Andriol, and Findrak: the houses founded by Braglon's three knights. When Braglon died without an heir, the three returned each to his own homeland and raised his domain. Ever since, the Galt had lived almost as three separate nations.
"If they've lasted since that age, they're very old houses."
"That's how they count it. The line has broken several times, and each time a representative was raised from another house. The present head of House Findrak was elevated the same way, to stand for the Findrak clan. Targal and Andriol are no different."
"So that's when the houses' right to vote, and their right to elevate someone, actually matter."
"You know it well."
"I read it in a book. I must have come from a land ruled by a king or a grand duke. The idea of a council, or of voting, felt strange to me."
Artila looked out over the plain. It was not only the politics that were unfamiliar. The land itself was strange and uncanny, as if evil spirits and wicked fairies might be hiding in the shadow of rock and tree. The stone was gray-brown and the sky dark; the winding river ran fierce, and the grass looked tough as wire. Flocks of eagles splitting the heavens were vast as dragons even from afar, and the deer that moved in herds were the size of houses. Unlike the deer of the south, their antlers spread broad as shields, and their legs were long as uprooted trees set beneath them. When the herd passed, the ground itself shuddered. She was certain that even in the past she could not remember, she had never seen a sight like this, and she marveled. A strange and lonely place, and beautiful.