“But that is nothing!” Voran’s voice echoed. “Nebesta was invaded not merely by an army of men, but by something the Nebesti call changers. Dark creatures, half-man, half-beast, capable of changing physical form to suit their needs. They are led by the Raven.”
The hall erupted in noise—laughter, shuffling cambric, frantic whispers, hands wringing sword-hilts. Voran kept his gaze firmly on the Dar’s. He saw understanding there and the beginning of fear.
The older military man boomed over the noise. “Highness, must we listen to stories? This man is charged with treason.”
“Perhaps Vohin Voran would care to elucidate?” It was the courtier. He did not even try to hide his derision. Voran’s gut twisted. This man was wrong, somehow. Voran had a compulsion to run him through with a sword. It was so strong that he had to physically restrain himself.
“Fools,” Voran said more quietly, but his voice echoed still. “Are you blind to the dying of the tree? The fire on the aspen sapling is dying, far earlier than its allotted time. Does this bother no one?”
Voran turned slowly to look at the rest of the Dumar. Some faces were paler than when he entered. A few did not return his gaze.
“We have caused Nebesta’s fall. We have broken Covenant with Adonais, and now the fire on the tree will fade, and we will not be able to bring it back. The ancient protection girding Vasyllia will fade, and our city will fall.”
“Father, will you do nothing?” Mirnían shook with anger. “This man is charged with abandoning innocent pilgrims in the wild, and he is raving about covenants.”
Dar Antomír continued to stare at Voran. Voran returned his gaze, willing himself to be still. He focused on the flame in his heart. It burned strongly. Dar Antomír nodded slightly and seemed to come back to life.
“Peace, my children.” He raised his hands and the clamor died. “These are serious things Vohin Voran speaks of. Otar Kalún. Is what Voran says possible? This covenant between Adonais and Vasyllia. Is it anything other than an old story? And if it is, under what circumstances can it be broken?”
“Well,” said the cleric, feeble voice dripping with disdain, “in the more recent redactions of the Old Tales there are several obscure references to the Vasylli being a ‘High People, chosen by Adonais,’ but it would be very difficult to extrapolate any covenant from those few passages. I cannot account for the older collections of tales; they have serious textual inconsistencies. As for the Sayings, there are a few references to a covenant, yes, but the writers of the Sayings seem to assume the reader knows of such a covenant as established fact. They never describe it explicitly.”
“Then there is reason to believe that the Covenant exists?” asked Mirnían, his face once more an impassive mask.
“Highness, if I may speak?” said the courtier. He reminded Voran of a snake with his insinuating and effeminate gestures.
“Speak, Sudar Yadovír,” said the Dar.
“I have studied the Sayings,” said Yadovír. “If one reads them literally, then yes, the Covenant is an established fact. But if so, then we must take every verse in the Sayings as literally true, must we not? In that case, animals can speak with human tongues and Sirin are still flying around in the deepwoods.” He laughed, and his neck muscles stuck out obscenely.
Voran had a nagging sense that Yadovír knew more than he should, that he was challenging Voran to make a compromising admission. He had a sensation of panic, like a drowning man with legs cramping in pain. Yadovír continued.
“It makes a great deal more sense to read the sections concerning the Covenant as a metaphor for the mutual love between Adonais and Vasyllia.”
“I agree with Yadovír,” said Kalún.
“Do you really, Otar Kalún?” Rumbled the younger military man, huge and red-faced and red-bearded. Until that moment, Voran hardly noticed him, he was so silent. “I am not a learned man, but I know that if you start subjecting all the old truths to the test of your own fallen mind, everything collapses.”
He looked at Voran and nodded, though his expression was still guarded.
“Dumar,” said Voran, heartened by the big warrior’s support. “Tell me, did our scouts give us any indication of this enemy that razed great Nebesta in a single night?”
No one answered.
“This is not a normal enemy we face. Surely there have been enough omens, even for your doubts! I have spoken to Lord Farlaav. He is a man known to many of you. He himself told me of the monsters in Nebesta…”
“You do seem to know a great deal, Vohin Voran,” said Yadovír. “But why must we submit to your superior knowledge in this? You abandoned your own people in the wild. And you say nothing of that.”
Voran felt backed into a corner. He was still sure, somewhere deep within, that Yadovír wanted him to admit to seeing the Sirin, though why, he could not say. As Voran spoke, his own body tried to stop him from speaking. But it was too late to turn back.
“Highness, Dumar assembled, I did not abandon them. On the third day after we left, I encountered a Sirin by the road. She sang to me, and our souls are now bound. But it is a perilous thing—to encounter the Higher Beings. I passed into another place. Another time. When I came to myself, I found myself in a completely different part of Vasyllia, more than twenty miles away from the Dar’s road. It was there that I found the refugees. Ask the scouts. They know how far the refugees traveled, and by what woodsmen’s roads. I lost the pilgrims, yes. But not through my own volition.”
They didn’t believe him, Voran saw it immediately. All he heard was silence, intense as the hum that follows the ring of blade against blade. Mirnían’s expression shifted subtly, and Voran thought there was a glimmer of something behind it, maybe yearning. Sabíana now looked straight at Voran’s eyes, her cheeks barely touched with pink. When he met her gaze, she did not look away. He found he could not hold her gaze for long.
“Chosen speakers of the Dumar,” said Dar Antomír, his voice touched with finality, as though he were condemning a man to death. “Have you anything further to say before I speak in judgment?”
No one answered, and the silence echoed.
“Very well. Vohin Voran, we hereby find you guilty of dereliction of duty. You are exiled from Vasyllia, you and any children you may come to have, until your death, under the pain of public execution.”
Voran remained in his own home, a prisoner, for three days. Outside, Vasyllia mustered. The great marketplace of the second reach—clearly visible from the high room in Otchigen’s house—was cleared of its ornate booths, and long planks were set on trestles. Women and girls sewed, gathered, and packed provisions on the tables. Men and boys sharpened swords and spears, polished mail, brushed the horsehair tails of the peaked Vasylli helmets. Merchants gathered food in barrels and granaries that were built overnight. Voran sat at the window, his body itching for action.
On the evening of the third day, they came. A swarm of guards, spear-points catching the half-moon’s light. Three waiting-women in furs surrounded Sabíana, who stood a head taller than all of them. Ahead of all walked the Dar, erect and proud, giving no sign of his many years. Voran’s heart warmed with love at the sight, then frosted over with regret. Would the Dar ever embrace him as a father again?
Voran put on his finest kaftan—sleeveless, the collar and shoulders tipped with rabbit fir—and tried to brush the dirt off his boots. He left his head uncovered, quickly tied his now shoulder-length hair back into a tail, and rushed to the hearth-hall. The Dar entered alone, his face drawn in anger. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking at Voran, waiting for something. Voran bowed his head and dropped to his knees, then fell on his face in a full penitential bow. He remained there.
Nothing happened. The Dar spoke no word, but Voran did not dare move until the Dar released him.
Something metal clanged on the floor. Voran looked up in alarm, thinking the Dar had fallen. The first thing his eye glanced on was the ancient crown wrought by the smiths of Dar Cassían’s rein almost five hundred years ago—cloudy silver with white-gold flowers blooming. It was on the ground. The Dar had thrown it down. His eyes were brimming with tears.
“Highness,” whispered Voran in shock.
“My son,” the Dar said, voice broken by a sob. “How you remind me of your father. He was so sure of himself, so brazen. Until the time for penitence. Then he was a lamb. How I miss him.”
Voran stood up and ran forward. He grasped the Dar’s outstretched forearms as he began to go down on his own two knees before Voran.
“No, Highness, not before me.” Voran’s tears rose at the sight of the bent, careworn Dar.
