Chapter 38 Aleksis
38
Aleksis
They were seated by the fire again, with the long day turning to night. Matiss had made a familiar soup, using wild mushrooms and herbs gathered by Karolis and Stasya and flavoured with a few slivers of the salt fish. Considering their circumstances, it was a good meal.
Aleksis had relaxed the requirement that there always be someone awake at night. The lack of sleep was taking a toll. Not that he slept much himself; each day must bring the pursuit closer. When they did get moving, they’d be slower. Lukas would be weakened by this illness. Chances were this tale that they were living would be, not a heroic saga, but a story of bitter failure. But no; he must not think that way. Stasya would say that a tale could end in all sorts of ways. That the teller could steer it according to their own wishes. He must move on and make the next part happen.
Balance, Aleks, his father had said long ago. You need to hold the balance. People had forgotten that when Elisabeta became Ruler. Perhaps she had never really understood it. Bishop Petras, he suspected, had never grasped what it meant. And now the Northlands was teetering on the brink, a once strong and peaceful realm falling under the control of individuals governed by their hunger for power, their need for control outweighing their understanding of those for whom they had responsibility. Some, like Rihard, were not true leaders. That was a man trying to do a job he’d never been fitted for. A man desperate to make up for past errors, a man clinging to his last threads of authority and doing appalling damage as a result.
Oh, Lord Kasimir, Aleksis thought, you would weep to see how quickly your peaceable realm turned to the dark once you were gone. He wanted to say, I will make it right. I will restore the balance. But he could not. Not yet. It was not for one man or woman to make such a promise. He studied his companions on the journey: stalwart, dark-bearded Matiss, a friend since they were young; Karolis, a quick-witted man with the hands of a physician and the strength of an elite fighter; Lukas, who might yet prove asset or burden; and Stasya. The irreplaceable Stasya, whom he lacked the words to describe. Without Pavel, they were only five. But great works often started small. Given the time they needed, this could grow and grow and become something great. With the death of Lord Kasimir, the heart had been ripped out of the Northlands. But it was not entirely broken. It could be restored, if the people kept faith, stayed strong, held their nerve.
Sometimes the thought of what lay ahead filled him with terror. To lead such a movement was to risk all, not only for himself, but for those who put their faith in him and his cause. He bore their suffering as his own burden; he grieved their loss invisibly, as another wound to the heart. Hold the balance. Gains and losses. A step forward; a fall backward. Maintaining the pretence where he needed to; speaking the truth when it was the time.
‘Aleks?’
Stasya’s voice jolted him back to the here and now. He met her gaze, lifted his brows in question.
‘I’ll tell the next part of my story tonight. Maybe you can tell us the rest of yours. It feels like time you trusted us with that.’
She meant tell us the whole truth . The dangerous truth. He hadn’t expected that so soon. But he couldn’t make any assumptions about Stasya. She was full of contradictions and surprises. Those oddities added up to a person of formidable strength. A person who understood what hold the balance meant.
‘Go ahead, then,’ he said. She had given them several instalments of her animal tale as they made their way up the mountain. Hawk and his companions had progressed through some dramatic adventures and had formed an iron-strong bond despite their differences. Their strange company had become smaller; Squirrel had been snatched away by ghosts, never to be seen again. Somehow, the way Stasya told it, the whole thing was entirely believable.
Tonight, she had Hawk and his expedition surprised in the forest by a pack of wolves, who circled, growling deep in their throats, making Fox’s hackles rise. Goat swung his head to and fro, displaying his fearsome horns; Hawk dived and rose, demonstrating his own mode of attack. But the wolves only moved in closer. Bear, Stasya explained, had been delayed after picking up an interesting scent, and was quite a distance behind the rest. When the wolves were close enough to be plainly visible, the human character, Storyteller, intervened.
‘Now, the thing about storytellers,’ Stasya said, ‘is that they sometimes jump the barrier of language. Sometimes what they say, or rather what they see in their mind, can reach creatures who lack the gift of human speech. Thus it happened this time, and just as well, or Hawk’s friends might have been dinner for the wolf pack. None of them heard Storyteller speak. But she stood very still and lifted her hands, and they knew she was sending some kind of message, for her eyes were distant, and her face was curiously blank, as if she had stepped into another realm entirely. As for the little dog who was her constant companion, the creature startled them all by sprouting miniature wings and flying to the woman’s shoulder, where it settled with a soft hoot. It had become a tiny owl. For a storyteller can turn things any way that suits her; she can conjure magic from nothing, provided folk are willing to listen.
‘So, she held out her hands, and stood quiet, and after a time the growling in the shadowy depths of the wood diminished, then faded right away. A creature with excellent hearing, such as a fox in fear of attack, would have detected the soft pad of the wolves’ feet as they retreated into the forest. They are gone , Storyteller said aloud. I promised them peace. We must keep that promise. She turned her gaze on Bear, who had caught up now, and was perhaps the only one who might have considered a wolf as a possible supper. And Bear gave something close to a nod, showing he understood.’ Stasya looked around the group and smiled. ‘That’s all for now. I’m too tired to go on.’
The silence drew out. Who could have thought a man who had been senior adviser to two Rulers of the Northlands might find it so hard to get a single word out? Tell the story. Tell the truth, he willed himself, but still he sat mute.
Matiss got up and started a fresh round of tea preparations, with somewhat more clinking and clanking than was strictly necessary. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said, managing to sound completely natural. ‘Start whenever you like.’ Which was nonsense, of course, since Matiss and Karolis both knew the whole story already. But it helped Aleksis to take the first step.
‘Very well, then.’ He gathered himself. ‘Long years after young Markus went missing in the forest, later to be assumed dead, I heard a rumour. It sounded far-fetched, a pure invention. I don’t usually give credence to such tales. But I had never forgotten my lost friend, and this story touched me. It made me hope.’ He paused, looking directly at Stasya. The firelight on her face; the keen attention in her eyes. ‘I’d grown up at court. When my father died, I took his place as senior adviser to the Ruler, first to Lord Kasimir, and then to Lady Elisabeta. Dragon’s Keep under her rule is no place for imagination or wonder or anything beyond the known world. And this was only a fragment of a tale, passed on third- or fourth-hand. Unreliable. Barely believable. But … it was a tale of a lost child found, and protected, and raised far from home. The details were vague. Nothing as to how, or precisely where, or by exactly whom. It might have been a story from ancient times. But it could have been a tale of my own time. I was already concerned about the future of the Northlands; I was aware certain leaders were erring in their decisions. I thought of Markus; of what kind of man he might have grown to be. And of what he might achieve if I could find him and bring him home.’
Matiss chose that moment to put a steaming cup in his hands, and then to set his own large hand reassuringly on Aleksis’s shoulder.
‘What are you saying?’ Stasya’s eyes were wide.
‘Markus was the only child of Lord Kasimir. He would have become Ruler on Lord Kasimir’s death. He was raised in peaceful ways. If he had grown to be a man, he would have learned to keep the balance as his father did. He would have governed his realm wisely. But everyone believed him dead. When Lord Kasimir died of a malady the best physicians in the Northlands could not banish, Elisabeta was the next in line. A capable, competent woman, so folk believed, though she had been raised far from court and had seldom visited Dragon’s Keep. Lord Kasimir’s death was a shock. The way things played out afterward was … None of us was ready for it.’
They sat quiet for a while, thinking. It was Lukas who finally spoke up, his voice a shadow of what it had been. ‘Say he did survive and was raised by someone who lived up there on the mountain. Why wouldn’t they bring him home? It’s cruel to keep a child from his family. And … he’d be changed by this, no matter what. Twisted, warped, taken off his true course. Yes, he’d be a man by now. But not the same man he would have been if he’d grown up with his family and his friends and the familiar places of his childhood. He might be …’ His voice tailed off, as if whatever came next was too terrible to speak aloud.
‘Unsuited to rule?’ Aleksis could not keep the bite from his voice.
‘Not ready to rule,’ said Stasya. ‘Perhaps even less ready than Lady Elisabeta was. You might find him, and he might not want to come back.’
How to answer that question, which he’d pondered over for hour on hour? ‘I’m not a fool,’ he said. ‘There are plans in place; there have been for some time. How do you think we managed to get away from Dragon’s Keep that night undetected? Only with help from folk who live and work there, folk who support this cause but keep their allegiance secret for obvious reasons. Not many have the full story; it’s too dangerous to share. But they know we are working for a better future.’
‘And that explains why there were safe places to stay. Those farms, those households so ready to take us in without question, to take the horses …’
‘It’s been a long while in the planning,’ said Matiss. ‘The support is widespread. But everything needs to be covert. You’ll understand why.’
‘And all because of a tale.’ Stasya’s gaze was warm now; something about it felt almost … healing. ‘Who’d have thought you had it in you, Aleks? The stern court adviser.’ Her mouth quirked into a crooked smile.
He found himself smiling back, despite the weight of the whole situation. ‘If we manage to find him, and if he’s willing to come with us, we most certainly don’t plan to head straight back to court and present him publicly as the true heir,’ he said. ‘Many folk are loyal to Elisabeta, and others are too fearful to risk speaking out against her. His return will need careful managing. But … I have faith in him. Even at ten years old, he had qualities that shone bright as a beacon of hope. Another like his father. But we must prepare him, and we ourselves must be prepared. That will take time.’
‘And first we have to get there,’ Karolis said, ‘whether that means all the way to the Hermit, or to some point where the truth becomes plain.’
‘All the way, I think.’ Stasya might have been speaking to herself. ‘The place in my visions looks like the Hermit, as I imagine it. A rock wall, a cave. And the old woman. If she’s real, if those are visions of now, maybe she’s the one who rescued him all those years ago.’