A Bench on the Hill
S creams reverberated through every nerve of his body, cries of alarm and despair. Voices begged him to help them as evil brushed against stone. The wall guardians wailed as the dark calling slipped through the breach.
Alton D’Yer jerked awake, blinking in the daylight, confused and bleary-eyed.
“Alton? What is it?”
As his sight cleared, his gaze fell upon Estral sitting in an armchair across from him, her legs tucked beneath her. Sunlight streamed in from a near window and a fire crackled on the hearth. A book lay open on his blanket-draped lap.
“Alton?” she asked again, in her hoarse voice.
Sweat cooled on his temple. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “I dozed off, I guess.” Already, the dream was evaporating like shreds of mist.
“Yes, you did,” she replied, “in the middle of a conversation.”
“That was rude of me,” he murmured. He cursed himself inwardly. It would only convince them—Estral, his parents, the menders—that he wasn’t ready to resume his duties at the wall any time soon. “What were we talking about?”
“Bridges,” she said.
He glanced down at the book, a dry treatise on proper bridge construction, and it was upside down.
No wonder he’d nodded off. He’d grabbed the book at random from his father’s library to read while Estral worked on her history of the Green Riders.
Though she’d thoroughly searched the contents of the D’Yer library, she had found little that was pertinent.
Some remnant of his dream came back to him. Voices. Wall guardians. A fell voice calling. He shivered.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Remember that bit of music you were working on? For the wall, I mean.”
“I have never forgotten.”
The wall guardians had taken a shine to Estral in a way they never had to him.
It was her voice and music they responded to, and small cracks around the breach had actually begun to heal.
But then, a malevolent spell had stolen her voice.
She could still speak at times, either in a whisper, or hoarsely as now, but at other times she had to communicate with chalk and slate. She most certainly could not sing.
“In fact,” she continued, “I carry a copy of that measure with me just in case...” She broke off and shook her head, a look of despair in her eyes.
The measure of music had been scribed into a book that documented the building of the D’Yer Wall.
The great mage, Theanduris Silverwood, had written the book and overseen the creation of the wall, but the measure of music had been written in the hand of Estral’s ancestor, the first Golden Guardian, Gerlrand Fiori.
They’d hoped she could find the “answer” to his five notes that sounded a “question,” and that it would help repair the wall entirely, but the magical attack that had stolen her voice had cut the endeavor short.
“Does this mean,” he said, “you’ve been working on it?” When the pain of her expression deepened, he was sorry he had asked.
“You know I’ve tried,” she said. “When I was in Selium, I pulled out all of Gerlrand’s work, his songs and scores, from the archives to see if I could find anything that would illuminate this one measure, but.
..” She shook her head. “It was all gibberish to me. The spell didn’t just take my voice and ability to play my lute; it took my ability to read and understand music.
I can’t make sense of it, even when someone tries to show me how, or reteach me. ”
“I’m sorry,” Alton said. “I should not have brought it up.”
She heaved a deep breath, and said, her voice now a mere wisp, “I have some minstrels working on it for me.”
“That’s a relief.” His sense was, however, that the measure required one of Gerlrand’s blood, specifically Estral, to unlock the missing notes.
The music of the Fioris contained some magic that was able to reach the wall guardians.
“I hope you can forgive me for asking about it. I think my dreams brought it to mind.” Though he’d lost the thread of the dream, a feeling of urgency remained.
In fact, he’d begun to feel rather antsy.
“I forgive you,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he replied, and she smiled.
It had been amazing to wake up from one of his long healing sleeps weeks ago to find her sitting by his bed.
She’d apparently been on her way to Sacor City in the aftermath of the Battle of the Sleeping Waelds, as the defeat of Second Empire was called, when she heard of his wounding.
She had immediately turned for Woodhaven.
He was truly a lucky man. She aided him through his recovery, offering quiet encouragement, and the occasional metaphorical kick in the buttocks when he needed it.
His parents, of course, were thrilled to host the Golden Guardian, and that a lady of such noble station cared for their son.
And yet...though Lord D’Yer was by all measures delighted, if not smitten, by Estral, Alton sensed reservations on his father’s part at the possibility of a marriage match between his heir and the Fiori.
Although Estral’s station as the Golden Guardian was akin to being a lord-governor, what she governed was not land, but a school and city, and the arts, history, and culture of Sacoridia.
Her title would do little to bring the sort of wealth and power to the clan that Lord D’Yer would expect or desire.
Still, Lord D’Yer had not yet spoken of his misgivings to Alton and was, perhaps, taking time to assess how serious the relationship actually was. If it seemed unlikely to endure, then Lord D’Yer would avoid the unpleasant duty of having to intervene.
For Alton’s part, his intentions for Estral were extremely serious, and soon his father would have his answer.
She gazed into the fire. She’d had her own horrific time last winter as she traveled with Karigan and an Eletian into the north.
Hardship, capture, torture, the loss of her father.
..Alton had not been there for her the way she had been here for him.
His role at the wall had prevented it, but still he felt guilty.
He would do his best to make it up to her.
But first, he had to do something about that antsy feeling, which he took as a sign that he was truly mending.
“Do you feel like a walk?” he asked.
· · ·
As they climbed the hill, Alton was dismayed by how the effort stole his breath, breath that steamed in the air. He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets because, of course, he hadn’t worn gloves. He tried to conceal his labored breathing from Estral, but she was too observant.
“You all right?” she asked him in a whisper.
He nodded curtly. It was troubling how the wound had enfeebled him. Every day he tried to increase his stamina, and time after time he was humbled.
“You are doing well,” she told him. “It’s steep.”
He appreciated her encouragement but he didn’t believe her one bit. When he was a child, he ran up this hill with friends so he could fly back down it on his sled at breakneck speed. He’d never be able to ascend with the ease he had as a child, but at least he’d made it to the top.
A thicket of low-growing trees skirted the summit, but largely left the view of Woodhaven below unimpeded.
It was a large town with the walled compound of the D’Yers on a hill of its own in its midst. Hundreds of chimneys puffed plumes of smoke into the sky.
On the outskirts, daylight glanced off the half-frozen water of ponds and flooded quarries.
Beyond Woodhaven, beyond the dull browns and grays and evergreen of the farmland and forests that surrounded the town, were clearings where active quarries continued to produce some of the finest granite in all of Sacoridia.
Far to the east, he could make out the jagged ridges of the Wingsong Mountains beneath a ceiling of clouds dense with the promise of snow.
Something of the scene tugged at his memory.
Not his boyhood memory of sledding, but something more.
..recent? He couldn’t recall the last time he’d climbed the hill, certainly not since he’d become a Green Rider.
It was like a dream, or maybe like someone stepping on his grave.
He rubbed his eyes as a shadow seemed to sweep over him.
“Alton?” Estral said, her sea green eyes full of concern.
“My grandsire used to walk up here with me on occasion,” he replied.
“Used to talk about how fine the granite beneath our feet was, but he would not allow this hill to be quarried. He liked to get a look at the surrounding country, the lay of the land, and he believed that the K’maernians who taught us stonework once lived up here.
There are some old foundations down the south slope a ways, but they could be from anything. ”
He turned south, but the ruins were not visible from this vantage, and vegetation was grown up around them anyway.
A range of higher hills blocked his view toward the great wall and the Blackveil Peninsula.
If the magic in the wall made it appear to ascend to the heavens when he stood next to it, then why, he wondered, couldn’t he see it from here?
Illusion, he supposed. It was there, but not visible unless you were right at the wall.
A throb passed through his veins, a summons pulling him southward. To the wall. Voices sang in his mind. He closed his eyes and forcibly turned away. An icy breeze stung his cheeks.
“Kind of cold,” Estral said. She wrapped her arms around herself.
He frowned. “Sorry, let’s head back down. I’m sure they’ll have some hot-spiced cider on the stove.”
They began their descent, but he stopped short. Estral gave him a questioning look.
He strode over to a clump of overgrown shrubbery and started pushing it aside.
Matted by layers of leaves and moss was a bench of rusted wrought iron that had been formed with a leaf and branch design.
He had last sat on it with Beryl Spencer.
No, that wasn’t right. He’d been told that she had perished on some mission in the east. Even though she was a Green Rider, the king had often sent her off on secretive spy missions which meant he’d rarely ever seen her.
So why did he seem to think the two of them would have sat together on this bench?
He could not recall the how or why of it, but he was quite certain they had. He scratched his head in consternation.
“What is it?” Estral asked in a faint voice.
It must have been a dream. So many dreams.
“Alton?”
He turned to her and smiled. “Sorry, I got distracted. Doesn’t look like anyone has used that bench in many years. I forgot it was there.”
As they descended the hill, he felt a prickling on the back of his neck, but it must have been the touch of a snowflake on his skin.
· · ·
When they reached the inner courtyard of the lord-governor’s compound, they found it full of soldiers milling about taking care of horses and baggage. They were not D’Yerian militia, but Sacoridian regulars.
“That’s the River Unit,” Estral said, “or some of it.” She looked eagerly about, and when her gaze landed on an officer talking to Lord D’Yer, she exclaimed, “Miles!” and sprinted off to join him.
Alton watched aghast as she ran into the man’s arms and hugged him soundly. It was, to his mind, a far too friendly greeting.