Crown of Renewal(3)

When Kolfin had ridden away, Meddthal set about readying for attack. By midday, he had completed that chore as well as sending couriers to the two nearest towers to warn them. “Half of you must rest this afternoon,” he said. “If they attack, it will be when they think we have all spent a sleepless night in the dark after a day of grief and worry or perhaps drunken rage. Tomorrow—or even the day after—is when they will come.”

“What about tonight, sir?”

“Tonight we will do as we always do. Today and tomorrow, however, we will rest as much as we can, to be fresh when they attack.”

“And … that? Him?”

Meddthal looked at the table, at Filis’s face staring upward from the top of the box. It felt—it was—indecent to leave it there like any other box. But he could not close it into the storeroom … or put it outside …

One of the youngest men, Dannrith, spoke up. “Sir, someone dyin’ or dead should have a candle and someone by. They wouldn’t of give him a candle … We should.”

A scrape of boots on the floor as others considered that, and a low murmur, then they all looked at Meddthal. The silence lengthened as Meddthal tried to think, in a mind suddenly fuzzy, whether to say yes or no, where to put the thing, in here or in his quarters or …

“I’ll stay with ‘im,” said another. And then a chorus of offers.

That settled it. “In here, then,” Meddthal said. “Bring a trestle and a blanket. We’ll do this right.”

Very shortly the grisly box had been placed at one end of a plank, with a blanket laid flat below it and Meddthal’s best cloak spread over it, hiding the face and making, with the blanket, a pretense of a body laid straight for burial. Though it was not yet sundown, they lit a candle, and one at a time, as if for a new death, each spoke a word about Filis, for all had at least seen him, if they had not known him.

Then Meddthal sent half of them to bed, to be wakened at full dark, and the rest took up their duties except for the watcher. At each turn of the glass another took his place. At full dark, when all assembled, the hearth had been swept clean and a new fire laid but not lit. Only the feeble glow of one candle outlined the shape on the board and the face of the one who sat beside him. The others turned their faces from the light and began the long night’s watch for Sunreturn.

When it was Meddthal’s turn to sit beside his brother’s remains, he wondered if his father would send for him or for the box alone.

Jeddrin, Count of Andressat, looked at the face of his dead son and wept. Rage burned in his heart, but grief drowned it for the moment, and he made no attempt to hold back the tears. Let them fall; let them flow; let them be emptied like a bronze bowl so the flame of vengeance could burn higher.

When the tears ended, he looked more closely. Honoring the dead, especially those who died in war, required the mourners to see and respect every mark life had made on them. “We’ll give him his rightful colors,” he said, and began unwinding the complex knot that the braided hair had been coiled into. “He’ll not go under earth wearing that scum’s.” After the knot came the braids themselves. Three braids; his sons Narits and Tamir, one recalled from Cha earlier in the year and Tamir recalled from the south ward, each took one, and he took the last. Deft fingers unbraided the hair, pull out the black and green ribbons.

Narits finished first. “You’ll want just one braid, won’t you, Father?” he asked.

“Yes—we’ll have to comb it all.”

Narits took up the comb. “There’s blood,” he said.

“Of course there is,” Tamir said. Next to Filis, he had been the hothead of the sons. “What did you expect—”

“The hair’s clean,” Narits said. “They must have washed it, or this didn’t bleed much—” He had parted the hair and was peering closely at the scalp. “It looks … almost like … fingernails dug in. Not scratches.”

The others had finished now and leaned over to look.

“Let me finish,” Narits said. “I think there are more marks …”

“Of pain,” Tamir said, turning away. “What does it matter?”

Narits ignored him and ran the comb through the hair, parting it every half fingerwidth to look for marks. “It’s code,” he said finally. “Like the old scrolls. Father, can you read it?”

Andressat looked. “Not like this. Can you copy it, Narits, one mark at a time, onto paper?”

“Yes, Father.”

When he had done that, it was clear that the marks—each a slightly curved line—formed a definite design. “Alured’s work,” Tamir said. “Maybe an evil spell?”