Page 36 of Fate's Bane
ORMAYBE, THETALEGOES LIKETHIS
Once, a girl fell in love with her father’s ward, and they plighted their troth in the luck-hound’s wood.
But their clans went to war, as all and fate knew they should, and the girl who had been ward was now a woman grown, marked with the ink of her true-blood clan.
Bold as Bannos, Agnir Clan Fein stood against her foster brother as he made to hew her down, but strength of arms was not her strength. If battle was not her blessing, it was the fates-bane’s own luck that she had mastered. Her brother who was not her brother held a sword she’d bound with guilt, and on her arms she bore a promise: She could not be harmed, so long as her true love yet lived.
And Hadhnri Clan Aradoc did live; she sprinted ’cross the sucking fens, without heed for the luck-hound’s treacherous gaps. She cried out only once, clear as the anvil-strike:
“Agnir!”
Clever as Bannos, Hadhnri Clan Aradoc threw herown blade at her brother’s feet, where it stuck, point down, in the mud. He turned his eye upon her, and where he looked, his blade followed.
They say she ran upon that bloody point by accident, but if so—why did she smile with her last breath?
They say Agnir Clan Fein’s anguish echoed through the land, and even the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens in her cold-stone halls on her cold-metal chair wept, though she did not know the reason.
They say that Gunni Clan Aradoc, that slayer of kin, knelt in Hadhnri Clan Aradoc’s blood as Garadin Clan Fein ran upon him with death-oath sworn and no mercy in his heart.
They say Agnir rose silently from the fens like the luck-hound itself and stood alone between them, her open hands full of grief.
As long as I live, swore her love in the Baneswood—but Hadhnri’s blood was nothing now but lacquer upon leather.
And her father did not stop, and her brother did not rise, and Agnir Clan Fein did not move.
So she fell, curled like a shield over her lover, where she died in the fens of Bannos.
ORPERHAPS, THETALEGOES LIKETHIS
Once, a girl fell in love with her father’s ward, and they plighted their troth in the luck-hound’s wood.
With their bond came a gift—which may not have been a gift but a curse—which may not have been a curse, only luck—which may not have been any of these things at all—that held the destiny of all on that field. They snared even themselves in the web of their Makings, caught between the young warrior with the heavy soul and that chief burning bright with vengeance.
Their love spelled the doom of Clan Aradoc.
Their love meant the end of Clan Fein.
And how did they end, these great clans of Bannos, these rulers of all the fens?
They say Gunni Clan Aradoc’s blade drove itself into the earth when his sisters two knelt at his feet, held tight in the fates-bane’s grip. They say when Garadin Clan Fein brought his sword up to settle his death-oath, his own daughter Agnir rose from her knees to the sound of a hundred hundred starlings, and their music gave wing to her voice:
“Father, please. I love them. Will you spare their lives for me?”
“His child’s life to answer mine,” said he. “So we swore it by the fates-bane.”
Agnir the Bold did not waver between her father’s blade and her brother’s, with her wife’s strong heart beating against her back.
“I cannot kill one brother to answer the death of the other. I will not,” said she. “Discharge the oath and claim my wife kin. Take his child as your own.” As she had dreamed in the Baneswood with Hadhnri, so could it be. Hadhnri took her hand.
“You are a snake who bites both ways,” said Laudir Clan Fein, who did not trust. She turned her blade on Hadhnri, and Agnir stepped between, her father-sister’s seax against her breast.
The chieftain’s voice cut between them. “You would fast yourself to an enemy of Clan Fein?”
“I would, Father. I have. Under the eye of the luck-hound itself.”
They say that the sight of the lovers’ clasped hands softened the heart of that grieving father. They say he was weeping when Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s arrow pierced his right eye, and that Agnir flew to him as he fell.
But they also say that Laudir Clan Fein did not weep for love of her brother-daughter, nor did she weep for her brother and his shrike-spear agonies. They say her rage jagged like a heron’s beak, once, twice, thrice, and thatGunni Clan Aradoc dug his own barrow as he failed to raise his blade.
