“Father, she’s dead,” said his son, Lionheart. Except Lionheart was gone, run away, vanished. “Mother died in the Occupation. Don’t you remember?”
“There. I can’t see her anymore,” said the Eldest, and he struggled a little to free his hands from that earnest grip. His eyes, clouded from too many years of breathing sorrows and nightmares, filled suddenly with tears.
He bowed his head.
“You remember now?” asked Lionheart.
“Yes,” whispered the Eldest. “Yes, I do. She’s dead. She’s not in the garden. She’s gone. Like Lionheart.”
“No,” said his son. “I’m here, Father. I went away for a time, but I’m here now. Can’t you see me?”
The Eldest could see nothing, for he refused to look. His son knelt at his feet, still clad in the groundskeeper’s hood and the bloodstained nightshirt with the hole in the breast where a unicorn’s horn had pierced it. Tears filled Lionheart’s eyes for, though he knew his father was frail from the years under the Dragon’s thrall, he had not expected to find him so far gone. When Lionheart entered into exile when the Dragon first came all those years ago, the Eldest had been a strong man yet in his prime. Now he sat in his chair by the window, huddled with unexpected age, his face withered and gray.
Lionheart rubbed his father’s thin, papery fingers, feeling how loose the signet ring with the sign of the rampant panther had become. He struggled to speak, both because his throat clogged with sorrow and because, well, what could he say?
“Father,” he whispered thickly, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” The Eldest turned to him then, and for a moment his old eyes were bright. “Sorry for what, lad?”
“For leaving you.”
“Oh, that’s nothing to be sorry for! You have your other duties. I understand. But you always come back to me, don’t you? Faithful boy.”
Lionheart forced himself to breathe, though it pained him. Tears fell down his face, one from each eye. The last time he wept had been in the gardens of Hymlumé, standing at the crest of Rudiobus Mountain. He’d wept there at the sudden piercing beauty of the Spheres and their Songs and at what they made him realize about himself.
He wept now because he loved his father, and his father was dying. He was a child again, but without the comfort of childhood innocence. So he clutched the Eldest’s hands between his own and let the tears come as they must.
Then the Eldest pulled one of his hands free and rested it on Lionheart’s head. “Ah. It’s you.”
The words were simply spoken. But they went to Lionheart’s heart. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead into the signet ring on his father’s other hand.
“There was . . . there was some difficulty between us?” the Eldest said, and his voice held a question but also a trace of comprehension. For a moment he was himself, and though he could not remember much, what he did remember was true.
“Yes, Father,” Lionheart managed. “There was some difficulty. But I’m here now, and I’m sorry that I left.”
“Did I wrong you, my son?” the Eldest asked, a world of tenderness in his words and in his hand upon Lionheart’s head. “I’m an old man now, older than I should be. Did I wrong you without understanding?”
Lionheart shook his head. “You did right,” he said. “You did right by me, and I failed to see it. But I see now, and I thank you for what you did.”
The Eldest nodded solemnly. “I used to hate my father sometimes,” he said. “Hard blows are difficult to take with grace. But you know what? I think sometimes his punishments hurt him as much as they hurt me.” He frowned, the creases of his tired face wrinkling slowly, with great effort. “I don’t remember what I did to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lionheart, and he lifted his face and met his father’s gaze. For a shining moment, each saw the other truly, and in that truth, they each loved. “None of that matters now. I am here. And I am sorry, and . . . and you did right. You are a great Eldest, the ruler of Southlands. And you are a good father.”
The Eldest nodded and turned once more to the window. His brow relaxed, then wrinkled again, and he leaned forward, squinting into the dusky garden. “Lights Above, is that the queen?” he said, his voice quavering. “What is she doing out at this hour? Quickly, boy, go tell her of her error before it gets too dark.”
6
A NEW PAIR OF EYES. Young eyes.
Eyes a hundred years old are still young. Eyes a thousand years old are still young. It’s all a matter of comparison.
These young eyes are keen and see many things, even blurred as they are by tears.
Tears . . . such a strange sensation! Not just the feel of water upon flesh or the burning inside the head. Tears fountain up from the soul. They wash or they drown, but they never truly cleanse. Not a soul such as this.
A strange feeling is a soul, especially one so fierce.