Page 28 of Fate's Bane
We washed him with fenswater and burned herbs until the roundhouse was smoky and bitter-scented. His mother knelt at his side while we worked, and her lamentations never ceased. The music of it gave rhythm to our own grief.
We burned him at sunset the next day, on a bed of peat, speaking stories of his young life, stories that I never knew because I was not there to witness them, because I was raised with the clan who killed him. They likened him to Bannos the Clever, and retold stories of Bannos with Onsgar in his stead. I had witnessed many death rites with Clan Aradoc, but I was never so intimately a part of them.
We feasted his honor, for he had died a warrior’s death for the honor of Clan Fein, but I had not the stomach for it. We played music, with my father’s voice loudest and carrying, a mournful baritone. Onsgar’s mother’s keening continued, a counterpoint to the drone of the bow-harp. Her cry followed me every night into my dreams until I thought I would live with it always.
The pyre smoked through the next day, and the next, and on the third day, Garadin Clan Fein gathered us all together around the ashes of his child. He held a wooden bowl of fenswater.
“Pedhri Clan Aradoc.” Garadin Clan Fein took a bellows-breath full of air to give him strength. He gripped the bowl tight in both hands. “He took two of my children from me. One has returned to us. The other will dwell ever more in the fens.”
He turned to the ashes behind him and sprinkled some of the water over them with his hand, then scooped a handful into the bowl. He stirred it with two long fingers and held them up to all of us.
“I make this death-oath for Onsgar Second-Born Garadin Clan Fein. I will take from Pedhri Clan Aradoc what he has taken from me, or the luck-hound turn my own blade against me. He will lose a child, or I will wander the fens without bread, without water, without shelter, for the rest of my days.”
He smeared a streak of Onsgar’s muddied ashes acrosshis forehead, just as a clan member is marked for their oath to the clan.
“Who else will take this oath with me?”
I had never witnessed a death-oath before. I had supposed Garadin Clan Fein and Pedhri Clan Aradoc already held one against each other, given the strength of their hatred. I had also never thought that I would take a death-oath, but I felt the weight of Onsgar’s body in my arms even now. The tackiness of his blood, like wet clay on my hands. Flakes of it still crusted my fingernails and the grooves of Hadhnri’s bracers, though I’d cleaned them as best I could.
Biudir was already getting up from his knees, his chin jutting forward as he strode to our father on his gangly legs. He was three more Sunsteads away from becoming a full member of Clan Fein, but that didn’t slow him.
I also wanted vengeance, and though I was confused, I felt shame as yet another brother showed more courage than me. I put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back so I could go to Garadin Clan Fein first. He followed close on my heel.
Garadin Clan Fein looked down on me gravely. Did he see inside my heart? I wondered. Did he see that this oath would break me? Did he understand that I loved both of Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s children, and that this oath would bind me to end that? Was this yet another test?
I lowered my eyes as Garadin Clan Fein streaked my head with the mix of ashes and fenswater. The water was warm with the summer heat, the ashes gritty. The mixture tickled down the corner of my brow. I thought then how I wished I had kissed Hadhnri at the clan moot, at least once. (She was to marry the Prince-Beyond-the-Fens.) I thumbed the leather on my forearms, warm with that vague sense of her presence. I had thought she did not love me, but at the last, I saw the truth. Too late. And I could not go to the spring as she had asked—we had already looked for it once before and failed. I would not find it again.
None of this would have happened if Hadhnri had left the Making alone. Some of my anger was jealousy—she was brave enough to dare, even without me. To mark the world with her power. (She was to marry the Prince-Beyond-the-Fens.) It seemed like the only power I had was to bring death. Wherever I went, it followed. The clans were right. I was no symbol of greatness; I was born under the shade of ill-luck and lived under it still.
With the ash water on my forehead, I swore.
“By my name and my clan, Pedhri Clan Aradoc will lose a child to Clan Fein, and his debt to us be paid.”
(She was to marry the Prince-Beyond-the-Fens.)
I walked from the pyre. Behind me, Biudir gave his oath earnestly, then my father-sisters. Even Onsgar’s mother shrieked an oath to the sky.
Forgive me.
CLANWAR
THEBANESWOOD
Preparations for war went quickly. So quickly that it became clear to me that they had been underway for much longer than I realized. Visitors from Clans Pall and Hanarin came ever more frequently from the other side of the Baneswood, barricading themselves with my father in the roundhouse. They spoke of supplies and alliances. They spoke of fear and defeat.
The bowyer braved the Baneswood to gather deadfall from its yews, and the geese were plucked for fletching.
Solwin’s anvil rang day and night and the grindstone rasped its harmony.
I began making armor.
All the while, I watched the moon wax in her sky. She seemed closer to us every day, pus-swollen with a sickly yellow turn to her light. The tales go that she and the sun were once lovers until a bitter feud divided them into day and night. Only when she was weak and waning could the sun stomach sharing the same sky. The tales made me think on Hadhnri—as if I’d been able to stop since I last saw her on the killing field. I hated her for what herMaking had driven us to. I wished I had touched her in tenderness.
(She was to marry the Prince-Beyond-the-Fens.)
When I wasn’t caught by the moon, or my impossible longing, the Baneswood called to me. No longer as delicate as spider silk, its insistent tug guided me by the chin. Sucked at my heels. More than once, I tripped and startled from a daze only to find myself halfway out of the hamlet. Halfway to heeding that call.
To save myself, I worked.
