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In half an hour, Pallavi was awake, they were all packed, and Ellard had the horses saddled and ready. So they rode out to the main highway and took the turn south toward the great bridge and the ancient city of Leornian.
Caedmon was in good spirits. Speaking to no one in particular, he said that this was really something of a homecoming for him, as he had been born near here and had been riding this very road for nearly a thousand years. He told them all about the ferry that had once run on the Trahern, and about the Frost Fairs that had been held on the rare occasions when the river iced completely over. He realized that he was rambling a bit, and that the others were expressing no more than polite interest in his stories, so after a while he fell silent. But he was still pleased to be back in his childhood home.
He had other reasons to be happy, too. Stasya was avoiding Ellard. The boy was leading the way on his snow white palfrey, and there was more than enough room on the broad road for the girl to ride beside him on her little black mare, but almost immediately after leaving the manor house, Stasya had fallen back to ride by herself. Ellard had turned in his saddle to shoot her a quizzical glance, but when she looked away from him, he had shrugged and carried on without her. That was good. Caedmon didn’t wish to cause any hurt feelings between the two younger hillichmagnars. He had no objections if they wished to be friends. Quite the contrary, in fact. But it would probably not be a bad idea for them to spend a little time apart so that the warmth of their initial meeting could cool slightly.
Pallavi spurred up to ride beside him. “What do you suppose is going on with those two?” she whispered, nodding in the direction of Stasya and Ellard. The girl was ten yards ahead of Caedmon, but even so, he didn’t want her to overhear them talking about her, so he reined in his horse, and Pallavi did the same, and he told her about the conversation he had had with Stasya back at the house. He was sure that she would approve of what he had done, but to his surprise and consternation, she did not.
“You did what?” she demanded. “Oh, Caedmon, you didn’t! What were you thinking? Oh, that poor girl!”
“That ‘poor girl,’” he said defensively, “will be much better off if she learns to be careful.”
“Holy Valamir,” sighed Pallavi. “As if those two need more self-control. Here we are, going to visit the great duke in his castle. And here we are, in the midst of this terrible plague, where every day we could all drop dead, and what do you do? You make the girl even more nervous. Stasya is wound up so tightly she’s going to snap one of these days. And Ellard...oh, you don’t even want to know what I think about Ellard.”
“I think I do,” Caedmon shot back. “What is wrong with him?”
“Dear Caedmon, I have never met a young man in my life who needs so badly to get laid.”
“I think you forget of whom you are speaking. Ellard is—”
“I think you forget what it’s like to be a young man. Ellard is an exceptionally powerful hillichmagnar—”
“A Machtigmagnar,” he pointed out.
“Yes, whatever. He is exceptionally powerful. That just makes him more dangerous. In my experience with young men, and with young hillichmagnars, and especially with young male hillichmagnars, they need a frequent release of their pent-up energy.”
Caedmon felt his face burn. “I am not even going to pretend to know what you mean by that.”
“I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I mean. As I was saying, if young, male hillichmagnars do not find some way to release that energy, it starts to manifest itself in other, more dangerous ways. Witness young Ellard’s execution of our prisoner last night.”
“How absurd. You think Ellard killed that woman because he was not permitted to have sex? You cannot be serious.”
“I am perfectly serious. The same principle, by the way, applies to female hillichmagnars, too, though they are generally better at hiding those sorts of feelings than boys are. It’s a side effect of having human bodies, you see. We all need a regular sexual release, or we start to go a little insane.”
“You are being facetious, Pallavi,” he snapped, and spurred his horse down the lane again.
A few seconds later, she drew alongside him. “And you claimed you could never be angry with me. You know, when I said that we all need a regular release, that wasn’t a proposition.” He ignored her, and they rode on. Then she spoke again. “On the other hand, if you chose to take it that way, I wouldn’t say no.”
He glared at her until she started to giggle. “I swear, Pallavi,” he grumbled, “I cannot imagine how you managed to last as long at Diernemynster as you did.”
Her giggles stopped, and she said, in a more subdued voice, “Sometimes I wonder that, myself.”
They had no further opportunity for discussion, because they rounded a bend and saw, stretched out before them, the great city of Leornian, all along the southern bank of the mighty River Trahern. Caedmon’s first instinct was to scan the long, gray walls facing the water. It had once been his job to know every inch of the city’s defenses, and he was glad to see that the new duke was keeping the wall in good repair. That spoke well of him, though really, one would hardly expect less of a man who had been a military engineer by trade. Above the wall, the spires of churches and the ancient university rose, like new shoots from a flower bed in spring, and above them all, the massive cathedral, watching over the city like a patient gardener.
Set into the city wall, about halfway along, there was a section with thicker towers and higher battlements. Beyond them, there were slate roofs and more towers, some squat and brooding, one delicate and spindly, reaching higher than any ordinary human architect would ever dare. This was the castle of the Bocburg, once the royal palace of the Kingdom of Leornian. When the kingdom had been renamed Myrcia, and the capital had been moved west to Formacaster, the castle had been given to the Dukes of Leornian, who headed a branch of the Myrcian royal family.
It seemed to Caedmon that he had spent half his life at that castle. It was packed with memories for him—some good, some bad, others quite horrible. Some of the memories had once been beautiful and perfect, but were now forever tainted with grief and anger, so that he could hardly bear to think of them anymore. He would not have returned to the place without a good reason. But that was where the duke lived, and so that was their destination.
The bridge into the city was quite close at hand. As they rode down to it together, they noticed that the toll gate was down, and when they were a few yards away, soldiers came bustling out of the bridge keeper’s lodge. The men had spears and the officers had their swords out. All of them had white robes on over their mail, and the officers had strange, bird-like masks. “Halt!” one of them cried. “Halt in the name of the duke!” His voice came out strained and muffled through the beak.
“What is this?” asked Caedmon.
“It’s the wrong season for a Seefest play,” laughed Ellard, gesturing at the odd, pointed masks. “And you really ought to have animals other than birds.”
“The masks shield us from the plague,” said the officer.
“Ah, there must be herbs in the ‘beak,’” said Stasya. “The nurses at the hospital in Tendria did something similar. I have to tell you that it didn’t seem to work terribly well.”
“What do you want here?” demanded another officer, apparently feeling that they had lost the initiative in the conversation.
“We are here to see Duke Rodgar,” said Caedmon. “We are here, in fact, at his invitation.”
“What invitation? No one has told us about any invitation,” said the first officer.
Caedmon nodded to Ellard. “If you please.”
Ellard reached into his saddlebags and pulled out the duke’s notice, taken from the door of the cathedral in Rawdon all those months before. Ellard unrolled the paper and then he levitated it and sent it floating gently over to the officer, until it hung in the air in front of his mask. The man studied it for a second, then reached up and ripped his mask away so that he could see it more clearly. “Hillichmagnars?” he gasped. “Are you hillichmagnars, then?”
Caedmon held out his hand and kindled a ball of blue flame over it. “Indeed we are. You may have heard of me. I am Caedmon Aldred.”
The officers consulted quickly, and then an ordinary soldier was sent sprinting away over the bridge. “My apologies, sir,” said the first officer. “We need to, er...inform the duke of your arrival. A few minutes, at most. My apologies.”
The hillichmagnars drew back to sit together and wait. “Is it just me,” said Ellard, “or do they not seem quite as happy to see us as you would expect?”