That elbow. Twist it a little more. And the chin … There. Now I can see you. The blood is almost finished. A bare trickle over the shoulder. Assuredly, the boy struck well. A true killer’s work. I could praise it, were I not his sire.

The furore is almost over too. Shouts, thinning, fading. Avalanche clatters, subsident. Or is that in my ears? The rest is as past-sight has so often shown me. Languor. Muscles’ dissolution. Dulling senses. The world’s departure; not merely receding, but losing colour, detail. A universal grey.

Perhaps the flames are dying as well. There is light enough. Your double cincture gleams, fengsoth big as thumbnails, with the lustre of their birth sea, grey as the shadow of our name; white fenghend, glowing coldly, as you do, but blind. When I girded them on, you were already rich in death. How many divers lost, in the wanton southern ocean? How many miners, crushed in Berfylghja’s drives? As many as the moons for which your attendant gems are named. As many as the fires that wake with my slow breathing. The last thing I shall see. Your white eye, big as my palm, and the slow, winnowing drift within it, sparks of red and golden flame.

#

The oldest image, too. Five, was I? Sun on a black wall of Ker Eygjafell, glistening, facetted stone. A smoke of grey silk hangings on my nursery bed. Eclipsed moons, bright gold and onyx roundels, clasping my grandfather’s belt. His face, my mother’s behind him: amber eyes, flecked with russet motes by sunlight, her eyes, his eyes, my eyes, the eyes of the Maerheage. And sun, fire in milk, upon your fiery weaving depths.

I come to his knee, reaching out, aware of nothing else. Hungry to touch you, who were already my joy, and would be my bane.

"What do you see?" he asks.

Even then I know that word’s manifold possibilities: phare, the sight, into the depths of another mind, phathire, past-sight, yxpharyr, future-sight, pharaone, far-sight, outside human eyes. I answer, wrapped in your fire-dance: "How?"

My mother makes a sound. Too young, unwise, unfitting, I will either fail to see or to understand. He says, "In the stone."

I answer, "Flame."

He laughs and hands you over. Weighty, startlingly cold. Past-sight restores their eyes meeting above me, gold and russet under gold or snowy brows.

He rises, an old man, lean and whippy as she is slender, an earth flame couched in his robes’ black as she in her white gown. "No trouble there," he says.

And she, "It could have waited."

He touches her hand. The great thillian of her bridal ring fountains blue, brilliant stellar fire. "No trouble," he says, "to test him." And she, "My dower, my son, or his sire?"

"Maerian," he says. Even in amusement his voice is cool, slow. A python, which need never pursue its prey.

Her eyes flare at him. "My namestone." She is defiant.

"And that is his," he answers, as the thillian takes fresh fire on her hand. "The hardest."

"But in wedlock."

She is daring him now. And he, encoiling her, "That matters, in this house?"

Her cheeks flame also, fiery as her high-wound hair. "You doubt I’ll hold him?"

His smile chills, a bleakness in the sun. "The thing I’m doubting"– words are always his rapier – "is whether he’ll hold you."

Then he bends, his hand out. Long, knuckled fingers, shadow cupped in the palm, eclipsed moon signet on his thumb. "Come, child. Restore your mother’s dower."

But I am already enslaved. Embarrassing, that childish tantrum, flight, screams, resistance, till he, exasperated, compels me with a Command. And I am left to weep in my mother’s arms, already bereft of my life’s lodestar, its one desire.

That will not happen now. No, it will not happen now.

#

Thilliansar brought you. My father. In wedlock. An alliance of great houses, as always with aedryx, but also a cleaving of desires. Past-sight has shown it me: falcons twinning, twining, twaining, a raptor’s courtship, mastering the skies. You came later: promised as the bride-gift, his house’s heirloom, stolen on the road south. Five years before you reappeared, the blood washed off, as always, the comet-trail of graves hidden by his wild deeds on the quest. Once you were called Geber’s Bane, but in those days it was Yngar’s Eye; he too had owned you, lost you, and lit Geber in his struggles to win you back. How many have lost and found and killed to win you? But they will call you by my name now. Maerdrigg’s maerian.

I suppose you killed my father too. Twelve years old, I see him come to farewell my mother. Going north, to Stiriand, to succour his beleaguered clan. I am apprenticed then. Amid the grey and auburn tapestries of her private hall I stand, mute, awkward. Seeing in farsight the waters that run from those mountains, Lyngstir, Coellen, Azilien, bright streams falling down long green valleys to merge in Kemreswash, Border River, flowing toward the sun. And Ker Thillianeage, high on its mountain lookout; a spur of glass and silver, a bright banner, tottering above the dark.

Her eyes are red. He holds her tight. He is armed already, in grey mail supple as lizardskin. The thillians in his sword hilt spurt blue light, his helmet bears white and azure plumes. Slight, gay, quicksilver, he bends above her, ruffled tawny hair, a beaky soldier’s nose, the almost white eyes of his house.

He murmurs, smiling, "Strangulation?" She hiccups. Breaks her arms from about his neck. They speak quietly, changing thoughts.

<You know better than to fear for me.> – <You know me better than that!> – <Be sure, then.> – <Losing my only surety?>

Then she gulps, smiles. Stands back. "Off with you. Dallying in a lady’s bower?" – "Where else," he asks, "should a soldier dally?" Smiling also; also not with his eyes. – <Ward the boy,> he says, and turns. "You, son. Ward your mother for me, will you? Yes, I know you will."

He taps my shoulder. Never a grasper, Thilliansar. His feet are light on the steps. From the window, we watch him ride down valley. Horse trappings scarlet and vermilion, the white device aflicker on his azure banner. Not once does he look back.

#

Geber blamed you for that too. Taking you from Ker Thillianeage, they said, he took the luck of the house. And his own; he and his father died in the falling keep. The strangers raided on, further south. Flame years, sword years, right into Slief Hazghend, our own demesne. In past-sight I see my uncles riding home from battle, blood on the horse-hooves, laughter in their mouths. I was kept apprentice; not to be hazarded. My grandfather taught me: past-sight, mind-speech, fengthir, the hidden Command. Thorstang, the king game, fought not on the board, but in the mind. The higher arts.

My mother’s name was Maersoth then: Shadow Tears. The day I set a cup at her elbow with axynbrarve, the mind’s hand, she smiled. When I used wrevurx, the weather art, to call lightning on some raiders, my grandfather also smiled. When I used the fire-art to light Tolhuesh beacon and warn our shepherds, all of forty miles away, I was fifteen.

"Good," said my grandfather at the darkened window. "You will make an aedr yet."

Youth, pride, rashness. I said, "What am I now?"

He turns. Light moves slowly, a python’s yawn, on his lamp-darkened eyes.

"Now," he says, cold, languid, "you are Thillliansar’s brat."

He read my anger. He smiled. Then he went to his coffer. Sprang the lock. The high chamber was very quiet. "So," he said, "aedr. Read that."

You weighed heavy in the cup of my hand. Cold, too. That is common to us both. I looked into your heart. The dance of planets, of gyring dust-motes, of matter itself.

And Yngar stood between us, one-eyed, bloody from his slaughter, rust in his voice. "You hold my stone," he said. "Be sure, it holds your death."

I could not drop you, even then. My fingers clenched, I dropped the hand instead. We both jumped back. The sole time I saw my grandfather afraid. Then he uncoiled himself; raised his brows.

"Phatrexe," he said. "You have some merit after all. He wrote a message. No doubt he foresaw your face. The stone remembers it."

At fifteen, an aedr is hardy. "A kindly token," I said.

My grandfather smiled. "Maerdrigg," he said. "Cold Shadow. I named you well."

He held out his hand. My fingers clove to you. He raised his brows. I turned you over. Big and smooth as a shield-boss, in your plain red-gold setting, white as a cataracted eye.

"Where did it come from? First?" I was making time. I could not let you go.

"Stiriandax, they say. Some mine in the unknown north. Come, boy, it is not yours. Not yet."

He set you in the coffer. Snapped the thought-lock. Light glistened on the banded steel.

I said, "You have five sons."

He went toward the inner door. Slowly. He was an aged man. He paused, having lifted the latch. Firelight showed the bed’s waterfall of grey silk hangings, clear yellow delghend stones on the neck of a seven-stringed aivrifel. The eyes of his latest concubine. He touched the eclipsed-moon signet on his thumb.

"If that stone is your death," he said, "then, for the sake of this one, you had best start making life."

Five sons. None born in wedlock. I had six. It is the manner of our house. Only my mother was legitimate. But I doubt that moved his choice.

#

So when the Maerheage went next spring to Har Geber, I did not scour the market for sword-smiths. Or storytellers. Among the Holym cattle and the Huesh sheep and the smiths, farmers, weavers, flax-growers, gardeners of Geber, I was winnowing for a girl.

For an aedr, women are easy. Fengthir will win your desire, if you cannot do it by your name. Or of yourself. Some came for fear, some for renown, some for fascination, some I drew, some compelled. What do the names matter? In three years I got much pleasure, but no children. Then my grandfather died.

A chest chill, taken in autumn. They lie heavy on the aged. My mother and I were with him at the end. Propped in the great bed, under the plum-red silken coverlet, gone already, but for his eyes. My mother watched him. Composed, as becomes an aedric woman, when her kin die, as they seldom do, in bed.

Presently he said: <Maerian? The aivrifel.>

She brought his own. Gone now, doubtless, in this sack. It was maevetath wood, dark and glossy as blood, twin necks fretted with hazian gems, heart’s blood crimson, a blue glow in their hearts. She played the lament she would sing at his wake. When it ended he looked at me.

I brought the coffer. He sprang the thought-lock. Then he lay back and closed his eyes.

#

After he had been laid out, in the ilam, I went back. I opened the coffer. You were cold and heavy in my hand. Blind, no; a white, baleful, silent eye. I stared in you, enchanted from reality. And Maersal came in.

My eldest uncle. General of Ker Eygjafell, Geber’s watch-hound. And Geber’s wolf. War written on him, from his cold, russet, sword-blade stare to his arched swordsman’s feet.

"I’ll take that, boy," he said.

I said, "It belongs to the house."

He did not smile. He only looked at me. Aedryx, we read each other’s eyes. He said, "Five minutes," and went away.

I tilted you and watched the falling fire. I was nineteen. An aedr, yes, but a mere journeyman. Maersal was my blood, my elder. I had lit a beacon. He had scythed down hosts. And behind Maersal was Maerlos, and Darrond, and Werhmaer, and Maervis. I did not think of my mother exiled; of my own peril; of the stake. I looked in you, and closed my hand, and knew I would lose Ker Eygjafell, Slief Hazghend, Geber, life itself, before I ceded ownership of your slow, sifting fire.

Maersal came back. I held you out. As he touched you I struck his own dagger through his throat with axynbrarve. Dying, he still looked surprised.

#

It is bitter to be landless, yes. But I took you along with my mother, the peoples of Azilien and Kemreswash, the Huesh and Holym who followed me, the very foreign raiders came to say it was my luck as well.

Certainly I left little behind. Maaerlos and Darrond killed each other brawling over a woman, Maervis was ambushed in Deve Istar Hasselian’s salt-white wastes. Werhmaer was another case.

Winter Shadow. As cold as his name. He melted my troops by razing their homes or turning their brigand kinfolk on them, and whatever of Geber I left unravaged he took care to ruin. The land turned against me. I went up into the red Helkent mountains to find young mountain stallions. He drove one mad before I tamed it, and nearly left me dead. Then the last faithful said my luck was gone, and they went too. From the Helkent across Geber Werhmaer hunted me, into the marshes of Deve Hasselian, where nothing goes but outlaws, beasts and fowls. It was there my mother died.

Eakring Hisyrx. A cold islet, low and boggy, full of fever; grey. The mists open seldom, so deep in Deve Hasselian. The fowlers gave us a little reed hut. I had a bow, a cloak, my mother. And you.

You were cold as her skin when I leant over her that night. The rushlight jumped and shuddered on her clammy grey cheek, and the old herb-wife shook her head. "Aedr or no aedr," she said, "the morning turn will see her gone."

"Leave," I said. I did not drive her mad, or strike her blind. I have had charity, at times.

The night passed, under the hidden stars. Then came a little wind, a chill northerly, and I heard

the grey herons rouse. A flight of eyglaevan thundered over, black swan shapes on a colourless sky. My mother opened her eyes.

<Go home,> she said. <This is no place for a son of Thilliansar.>

<Thilliansar is lost,> I told her. <And I am a Maerheage.>

Her eyes moved. She said, <Give it to me.>

<This?> I can still shut my hand on you, as I did then.

<It was my bride-gift,> she said. <Bury it with me. It is a bane.>

Overhead the black swans flew, the herons cried. The rushlight was guttering. She tried to smile, and sighed.

<I will not make you promise. You would only break it. But it is no luck-bringer. You know that.>

<I know what it will bring,> I said.

<Maerheage,> she said, and tried to smile again. And died.

#

When it was light, the village came. I was a morval, a carrion crow. They would not give land-room to my dead. I struck the headman down in the mud with asparre, the killing eye. The others ran squeaking home. I went back inside. I held you in my shield hand, and my mother’s hand in my sword hand. And both of you were cold.

She was there when I looked up. By the pallet end. She seemed to have been there a long time. She held a jug, and a cloth. On her brown homespun kirtle her hair was gold, two long braids the clear gold of delghend stones. Her skin was pale, clear as ice, and ice was in her pale, pale green eyes. She did not look afraid. Or hostile. Only still, a deep mere among reeds, invulnerable.

"Was my speech unclear?" I said.

She said, "They will make a place. With honour. She must be prepared."

I said, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She came to my mother’s side. Knelt. Dipped the cloth. Began to wipe my mother’s face. Her voice was still too. She said, "My name is Delyn. I am the ystanor."

I said, "Take your bastard sorceries away. We are aedryx. We do not traffic with soothsayers."

She kept wiping. With axynbrarve I struck the cloth from her hand.

She looked up.

In a while I said, "You should be afraid."

She looked at me for a longer time. Then she answered, "You are afraid enough for us both."

She went to take the cloth. I said, "Give it to me."

I used it in one hand, the other holding you. She held the pitcher. Presently she said, "Not even for her."

I said, "It is my luck."

She said, "I know your luck. And mine."

#

From across the mere, I looked back. The mist was already thickening. The posts of those rickety swamp causeways stuck through it, dark grey amid grey reeds, grey water, grey sky. Only she was not grey. She was halfway over the bridge, bright, cool, gold and green, watching me as she came.

"Soothsayer," I said, "your inkpool lied."

"I use water," she answered. "And it never lies."

"You are a Hasseli," I said. "A mongrel swamp-rat. I am a Maerheage."

"And if you are not careful," she said, "you will be the last."

#

It was at Tirlos, the Holym cattle-mart, that Maerond was born. She smiled up at me from the leather pillow; sweat on her face, transparent, all cheekbones and ice-pale eyes. I could hear the cattle bellowing outside. Closer, something mewled. The old wives behind her grinned and bobbed and chortled. She said, "Here he is. At last."

I sat down by her. She moved her arm. In the crook of it, small, seamed purple, topped by a fuzzy black cap. When I said, "Oh," she laughed.

She rarely laughed aloud. When she did, it was a spring in Deve Istar Hasselian. "Oh," she said. "Kiss me, if you will not kiss your son."

I bent close, and you swung free in your new leather pouch about my neck. Dropped on her throat. I felt her take breath. Then we finished the kiss.

#

"Show me," she said, from my shoulder coign, after love. She had never asked before. Maerond slept in the wolfskin beyond her, Har Geber’s night-booths pulsated outside our little tent. The firelight danced on the linen wall as it dances in your heart.

When I took you out, she did not try to touch. You shone in the dimness, a half-orb of milk; but milk lacks that fitful, inner fire. She watched it turn, and breathe, and die.

"That one," I said. "That is you. Golden. Clear."

"Morning gold," she said, under her breath. It was her name, indeed.

I put you back in the pouch.

"Twenty-five years old," she said. "A Maerheage. Heir to Shadows’ Home. With a son. Sitting in a tent at Har Geber, where tomorrow you will go out to play ystanor to a bunch of yokels for your bread. A homeless, landless wanderer, with nothing to bequeath him but your pride."

Was I more surprised tonight? No. I was never more surprised.

She was smiling. "You thought gold did not sting?" she said. She put a finger to your pouch and pushed it into my other armpit. "You won’t throw it away. Use it, then."

#

At first light I went outside. Har Geber is half a mile across, a turf rampart about a human cauldron, tents, booths, pens, men, women, children, sheep, cattle, dogs, pigs, fowls, merchandise. Somebody’s wyresparyx followed me, hopeful of scraps, yellow, snaky, five-foot lizard on tall crocodile legs. I went to the rampart, and watched the sun make toward Meldene. The long rollers of the Slief, bronzed with dew, blonde with tussock-grass, the distant silver smoke of trees in Elond pass, the Helkent ranges, rose and carnation and alexandrite, barricading the sky. I saw in farsight, south to the black gore of Eygjafell. Thence, to the market, Werhmaer would come. I took you out, red-shot as the Helkent’s hillsides, and asked: How?

Then I went back to the tent and said, "Very well, stinging gold. Make me a stinging song."

By that first evening it was everywhere. In Geber, they sing it still. Small wonder Werhmaer heard. Small wonder he could not stomach this urchin, this minstrel charlatan, this pretender who boasted that Werhmaer dare not meet him in the market, alone, eye to eye.

He came. He stood alone, without so much as a swordbelt, in the lake of dust at Har Geber’s heart. He spoke over the shrinking crowd, with a blizzard in his golden eyes.

<Whelp,> he said. <Come out.>

They sing songs also of the fight. King rams, bull emperors. Clash of storms. A lightning duel. All imagination. When aedryx fight there is nothing to see with eyes. Perhaps they sweat. Or pant. Or go red. Or white. Or shake in their shoes. The trumpets, the charges, the thunderbolts and carnage, they are all in the mind. There to be sure, I had battle enough.

She came to me while the corpse was still twitching at my feet. She wiped my eyes clear. She smiled. She would smile into a volcano’s gullet, I think. And when I could speak, I said, "Now, stinging gold, we will go home."

#

I never married her. It was here, in the inner chamber, that I asked. She was wearing silk then; pale as her eyes, pale green as fimbravos stems, the harbingers of spring. She had been singing to her own aivrifel. A syrel wood drum, the sweetest, and pale green berghend stones along the necks. She swept the final chord. I said, "Seven honeys, they call it. This honey has hived seven years. Shall we store it now?"

She put the instrument by and came to me. She said, "For Maerond? And Darven? And this one?"

I said, "For me."

She put a knee up by me on the seat. I twisted a hank of hair, loose now, crowned with berghend stones. A golden cloud. She said, "The water never lies."

I said, "Have I?"

She shook her head. Then she looked across at the coffer that my own thought-lock hasped. "The water told me it would lie between us," she said. "As it lay in Maerond’s birth-bed. As it always will."

I said, "It need not." And she smiled and pulled my ear and said, "Cold Shadow, you are beginning to melt. But you must not begin to lie."

She died that summer, bearing Perranor. A vice of heat, a high, crystal, heat-hazed sky. The very earth blew off before we could throw it back in the grave. Standing there, I took you in my hand, and in the sun you were glaring, blazing white, but through your depths the flakes of gold turned and shifted, and the sun shot green among them, fugitive fireflies. I closed my hand around you, and turned away.