The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 255

The text was hedged round with prologues and appendices, legal wordings that had to do with humankind’s propensity for complicating matters best left simple. At last Brother Severus laid the parchment open on a board and held it out for his mark. He wet his fingers in the blood of the young queen and drew two slashes beneath the neat letters, none of which he could read.

That would have to change. If he meant to treat with humankind, he must be sure they were not tricking him through his ignorance. “It is done,” said Severus with satisfaction. “We will continue with our reconstruction as soon as you provide us with laborers—” Even a man of such self-control flinched when he surveyed the bloody corpses, the ruin of the battle, the restless dogs. “When the island is habitable again.”

“Just so,” agreed Stronghand.

He lifted his standard again, the gesture that brought quiet over his troops even to the limit of the islands. When he spoke, he spoke in the tongue of the RockChildren that few humans bothered to learn. “Here we begin.”

He stared over the fens toward the horizon. The last wisps of fog dissipated under the sun’s cold light and a bracing north wind off the distant sea. It had not taken so long, after all, to destroy the Alban queendom: a few seasons, one long campaign.

“Once, in the old days, the chieftains of our people would have plundered Alba and sailed home to celebrate their prowess, gaining nothing more than gold and trinkets. We have walked all of our lives in the old ways. But there is more to gain here than treasure. We need not be content with plunder alone. I say now, let us follow the old ways no longer.”

His army waited. They had learned that it was worth their while to find out what came next. Severus and his retinue backed up as Stronghand paced forward; not one among them did not look uncomfortable as they glanced around and, perhaps belatedly, realized the size and power of the people to whom they had just allied themselves. A hundred-score warriors here on this island and countless more spread across Alba or waiting their turn in the land of their birth, which the humans called Eikaland. For the humans would name each thing, because names were power.

“There is something every human possesses that all but the greatest among us do not. It is a thing few have thought to ask for, and many have feared to obtain.” In OldMother’s hall, in a darkness dense with the scent of soil and rock, root and worm, the perfume that marks the bones of the earth, he had suffered her judgment and heard her words. He repeated them now, thrown as a challenge. “Who are you?”

They watched and they waited, Rikin and Hakonin, Isa and Vitningsey, Jatharin, what remained of Moerin, and many more, hands shifting on axes and spears, feet nudging aside corpses so that they might shift to get a better view.

“By what name will you be called when the measure of the tribe is danced? When the life of the grass is sung, which dies each winter? When the life of the void is sung, which lives eternal?”

“It’s wrong!” cried Jatharin’s chief, speaking for the first time. “You cast disrespect on the OldMothers, who alone can judge whether a son is worthy of a name!”

“Perhaps. But perhaps they are only waiting for us to take this thing for ourselves which up until now we have feared. We know each one of us his place in the litter from which we sprang. That place has defined us for long years. Why need it define us any longer? We are young in the world, and we will never grow old. Even the frailest Soft One can hope for a greater span of years than the strongest among us, my brothers.”

He paused to let them survey the bodies strewn across the ground, to let them examine the dozen clerics clustered around Severus. The loose robes worn by the circle priests could not disguise the weakness of their bodies—or the sharpness of their minds, honed by learning and the ability to plan and plot.

“Why do we wait? Why should each one among us not possess a name? Why should each one among us not hope to be named in the dance that is the measure of each tribe? Why should each one among us not seek to be named in the chronicles of the Soft Ones? Let them know the names of the ones they fear.”

He bared his teeth. He lifted his standard a little higher.

“Who is bold enough?”

Silence followed, dense and suffocating. It was one thing to follow the road of war and another to go against oldest custom, all the measure of safety they knew in their brief lives ruled by the OldMothers and the chieftains, strongest among them.

Tenth Son took a step forward. “I will be known. I want a name.”

“By what name will we call you, Brother?”

“Trueheart.”