In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

At length daylight filtered into the haze of ash and dust that clouded the heavens. After a long time he realized that he was alive and that, impossibly, the world had survived. The great weaving that Adica had made so long ago with her compatriots was at long last finished. The spell had come all the way around and returned to where it began. The Lost Ones had returned from their exile.

He had seen both beginning and end, only of course the end was now a beginning.

After all, he was not alone in the ruins, as he had thought. The hounds came and with them his foster father, Henri.

“Where are we going?” Alain asked him.

“Home, Son. We’re going home.”

2

BECAUSE the ridge had been obliterated by the dragon’s waking, their way proved rough and strenuous as they walked toward home through a jumble of boulders, fallen trees, and tide-wracked debris. In the end Alain’s legs failed him and his strength gave out. He could scarcely breathe. Once they reached a real path, Henri had to carry him, stopping at intervals to rest.

“You’re nothing but bones and skin,” Henri said one of those times. He sat, sweating, on a smooth beech tree, uprooted in last night’s storm. Alain wheezed, curled up on the ground because he hadn’t the strength to sit upright. The hounds nosed him fretfully. “You weigh no more than a child. I’ll never forgive Lord Geoffrey for doing this to you. It’s a sin to treat another human being so cruelly.”

He was too weak to answer. The world seemed dim, but perhaps that was only because of clouds covering the sky.

Henri sighed. “You do stink, though, Son. Whew!” The affection in his voice made Alain’s lips tremble, but he could not manage a smile. For so long he had endured. Now, safe, he thought he might at last die because he had been worn too thin. He wanted to go on, but he had nothing left.

“Here, now, you beasts, move aside.”

Henri hoisted him effortlessly, shifted him onto his own back so Alain’s head rested on Henri’s shoulder, and kept walking. It seemed likely that they should have passed through Osna village, but apparently Henri kept to those woodland paths that took them around the village and onto the broad southern road. Many trees were fallen. Branches littered the path. It was silent, not even bird call to serenade them, and not a soul out on the roads the morning after. Where the road forked, Henri veered to the right along a narrower side path that wound through oak and silvery birch, maple and beech. Long ago he had ridden down this path with Count Lavastine. The memory seemed as a dream to him now, no more real than his life with Adica. All gone, torn away by death.

Yet there was life here still. Some manner of person had husbanded these woods, cutting down trees for firewood and boatbuilding in many spots but fostering quick-growing ash and sparing half the slow-growing oaks in others. Coppice-cut willow, hazel, and hawthorn flourished in various states of regrowth, some freshly cut and others ready for felling again. Sorrow barked. Pigs squealed away into the undergrowth.

“Who’s there?” came a cry from ahead.

“I’ve found him!” cried Henri.

Alain hadn’t the strength to raise his head, so, sidewise, he watched the estate emerge as the path opened onto neatly mown hayfields and a tidy garden, recently harvested. Two corrals ringed sheep and a pair of cows. Geese honked, and chickens scattered. There was even a horse and a pony, riches for a free-holding family without noble forebears. Folk had come out of the workshop and the house to stand and stare, but it was the ones he knew best who ran up the path to meet them. Julien was scarred and lean. Stancy was pregnant; she ran forward with a child grasping her hand. Was that third adult little Agnes, grown so comely and tall?

“That can’t be Alain,” said Julien. “That creature’s nothing more than skin pulled over bones.”

“It’s him,” said Stancy. “Poor boy.” She wiped away tears.

“Stink! Stink!” wailed the child, tugging to break free and run. “He scares me.”

“Hush!” Aunt Bel strode up to them, looked at him hard, and frowned. “Stancy, kill a chicken and get a broth cooking. He’ll not be strong enough to eat solid food. Agnes, I’ll want the big basin tub for bathing him. Outside, though. Julien, haul water and tell Bruno to heat it on the workshop fire. We’ll need plenty. He can’t be chilled.”

Like the chickens, they scattered but to more purpose.

“Dear God,” said Aunt Bel. “That’s a strong smell. We’ll have to wash him twice over before we bring him inside. I’ll have the girls make a good bed for him by the hearth. He’ll be abed all winter, if he survives at all. He looks more like a ghost than like our sweet lad.”

“He can hear you.”

“Can you hear me, boy?” she demanded. Because it was Aunt Bel asking, he fluttered his eyelids and got out a croak, not much more than a sigh. “It’s a wonder he’s still alive, abused like that.” She made a clucking noise, quite disgusted. “It’s a good thing you went after him, Henri.”

“Don’t let him die, Bel. I failed him once already.”

“It’s true you let your pride get the better of you. You were jealous.”

The movement of Henri’s shoulders, beneath Alain’s chest, betrayed a reaction.

“Nay, there’s nothing more to be said,” retorted Bel. “Let it be, little brother. What’s in the past is gone with the tide. Let him be. I’ll nurse him myself. If he lives, then we can see.”

A drop of moisture fell on Alain’s dangling hand. At first, he thought it might be rain from those brooding clouds, but as they trudged down into the riot of the living, he realized that these were Henri’s tears.

II