However, Hestillion was increasingly absent from these uncomfortable conversations. She had been caught up by something he did not understand, and her face was lit from within with something he did not recognise, while he felt like he was being pulled out to sea by an invisible tide.
‘She will be with us shortly, I’m sure,’ he said, looking at his boots. ‘As you can imagine, there is an awful lot for Hest – I mean, Lady Hestillion – to deal with at the moment.’ He gestured around at the central plaza. For the first time in as long as he could remember, it was teeming with people: delegations from across Sarn, from Mushenska and Jarlsbad, Reidn and Finneral. A natural meeting place had grown here, sprouting from caravans and tents, while the officials from each gathering were given quarters inside the palace. Being one of the few Eborans left who wasn’t bedridden, Aldasair had ended up with the task of finding them all places, of listening to their needs and making adjustments accordingly. At first he had been terrified. For the last few decades there had been only silence to deal with, the empty corridors of the palace, and the sense that everything was lost. He had gone weeks, months even, without having to talk to anyone, until the only person he saw with any regularity was Hestillion herself, and even then she was always too annoyed to talk to him for more than a few moments. Aldasair had been left to himself, and the tarla cards, and his days had been filled with the soft rasp of paper against paper, and a gentle cascade of images, weaving a web of inescapable doom. The cards had grown so familiar that even the frightening ones looked like old friends to him: The Broken Tower, with the tiny frightened figures falling from its windows; The Endless Death, featuring an old man bricked up inside his own tomb, still alive, his fingertips bloody stumps. The cards carried on their own infinite conversation, and Aldasair listened in, content that any role he had to play in the world had long since passed him by.
Only that wasn’t the case any more. Almost, he could remember how it had been when he was very young, when he had had a sense of a future for himself. He had intended, he remembered now, to be an art merchant. He had loved painting, and paintings, very much. He was going to go out into the world and sell them, but that had been before everyone he knew had retreated to their rooms to cough out their lungs, and Aldasair had found himself suddenly alone. Answering the irate questions of Mother Fast and the other diplomats was not what he had envisioned for himself, and it was frightening, but it was also something new. He had thought all new things forever lost to Ebora.
Mother Fast sniffed. ‘It’s all very well, boy, us being here and bringing our medicines and our knowledge, but if we are not permitted to see this god of yours, how are we supposed to help?’
And that puzzled him most of all. Despite all of these people coming to lend their aid, Hestillion had suddenly become incredibly protective of the Hall of Roots. No one was to see their god, she had told him. Not until she said so. The time, she said, was not right. Tell them to help the sick ones, she had told him, and so he did; healers now went to the Eborans suffering from the crimson flux, and sometimes they were even allowed to assist. And all the while, that strange light burned behind Hestillion’s eyes.
Mother Fast was still glaring at him with her one good eye. He forgot, sometimes, that long gaps in conversations were considered rude. Aldasair opened his mouth to reply, when an imposing figure strode towards them from across the lawn. The man was a full head taller than Aldasair, which meant he towered over Mother Fast like a mountain. The hair on top of his head was yellow and wild, and he had a neat golden beard, braided here and there with tiny stone beads. He wore scuffed travelling leathers, festooned with more of the carved stone beads hanging from horsehair loops, and his bare arms were traced with ink. He had come in with the contingent from Finneral – Aldasair remembered, because even amongst that well-armed folk, this man’s pair of war-axes had been formidable. He still wore them, slung at his belt, as easily as if they were made of leaves.
‘You are in charge here, are you?’ He spoke the plains language with a touch of an accent and looked Aldasair up and down with such an expression of frank concern on his face that Aldasair found himself quite unnerved.
For want of a better idea, Aldasair nodded.
‘Stone knock me down. You’re older than you look, I imagine?’
Aldasair blinked. The man looked no older than him, which meant that he was very young indeed, in Eboran terms.
‘How old do I need to be?’
The man grinned, green eyes flashing. Aldasair had never seen a human with green eyes. ‘Now, there’s a bloody question. My name is Bern Finnkeeper. You are?’
Distantly, Aldasair was aware of Mother Fast’s eye following them, her thin mouth twisted into a near invisible slash.
‘I am Aldasair.’
‘Good to meet you.’ To his shock, Bern Finnkeeper took hold of his arm and gripped it fiercely. The strength in his long-fingered hands was surprising. ‘There’s no need for your people to die, Aldasair.’ Bern Finnkeeper met his gaze steadily. ‘No need for it. Now, what needs doing?’ Then, before Aldasair could answer, the tall man had dropped his arm and was gesturing beyond the plaza. ‘You’ve a lot of dead wood to the east, looks like it’s been building up for decades, so you’ve got a deep layer of mulch under it. Once we’ve got that cleared, you’ll have more space for these people and their nonsense.’ He turned back, grinning happily. ‘I’ll start on that, shall I? I don’t want to step on your stones, Aldasair, but I’ve a strong back and I’ll be honest, days in a horse’s saddle don’t agree with me. I like to use my hands, if you understand me?’
‘Uh . . .’
‘I shall start there, then, but if you need any other heavy lifting done, you grab me. Go to my people, they’re the ones trying to build a giant fire by your rockery – sorry about that – and ask for Bern. Actually, ask for Bern the Younger or you’ll get a lot of funny looks. My father is a big man to my people.’
Aldasair swallowed and realised he’d been staring. He was trying to imagine a human man even bigger than this one, with his golden beard and green eyes.
‘Thank you. I – anything you can do is much appreciated,’ Aldasair took a deep breath. It was still dizzying to talk this much at once.
Mother Fast looked less impressed. ‘We’re not here to tidy your gardens, Eboran. We must heal your god. What good will a tidy garden do us when the worm people darken our skies again?’