Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) Read Free Page B

had never before mentioned Arthen in this manner. Jarred looked sheepish and never brought up the subject of heading to Cordyssa again.
     
    It is odd, to one as young as I was then, to know that one’s parents can be afraid. Grandmother Fysyyn’s stories took on more weight with each passing day, and I began to understand that we had been in the midst of a kind of war all our lives. The Queen in Ivyssa was not satisfied with what she could take from us in taxes, in corn or in gold. If she could have taxed the blood in our veins or had payment in pounds of flesh, she would have done it. Why did she want so much?
     
    I learned to be afraid myself. Sometimes, leading the flocks through the green hillsides, I felt the wide world hovering around me ominous on every side. Sometimes I was afraid with a fear I didn’t understand and would sing Kimri alone with my hound and my sheep, in sight of the shimmering sea of Arthen’s blue-green leaves. I was fourteen that year, nearing manhood as we define it. I could hardly have guessed, when I was able to drink the watered wine of the fourteen-year-old at my naming supper, that this would be the last such celebration I would pass on Kinth’s farm with my family.
     
    While I was grazing the sheep in the hillsides later in the spring, a strange man mounted on a handsome horse rode into our farmyard, leading an even handsomer horse behind him, a black stallion with silver trappings, the horse of a lord or a rich merchant. The stranger said he was my mother’s brother Sivisal, and at the sight of him my mother burst into tears.
     
    The first I learned of this was when Jarred came running toward me across the outer meadow. I had not planned to return home for several days and was surprised to see him. When I spied him headed toward me across the swale I thought some trouble had come up at home, that soldiers had come to live at the house again, or worse, and Jarred’s expression and haste only made me the more fearful. When he came near enough to make himself heard, he shouted, “Jessex, we’re to gather up the flock and take it home, now. Our uncle Sivisal has come here and he’s asking for you.”
     
    “Sivisal? Our uncle?”
     
    “He came from Arthen. But he won’t talk about it. He asks for you by name as if he knew you all your life.”
     
    “Does Mama know him? Is it really her brother?”
     
    “Mama fell down in the milk when she saw him, and you should have heard her scream. Father came running in from the planting, he thought the Blue Cloaks had killed us all. Now they have Uncle Sivisal shut away in the house, in case any of the Queen’s men happen to ride by. Uncle Sivisal isn’t afraid though.”
     
    We gathered the flock for our return while he described the whole scene for me, from the beginning, our lost uncle riding into our farmyard with horses only noble folk could own, and with a rust-colored cloak streaming from his shoulders. We had all heard the story a thousand times, from Grandmother and from Mother, how he vanished while hunting in Arthen years ago.
     
    The poor sheep rambled home confused with half a meal in their bellies. We hurried them relentlessly through the split-log gates into the pen, where their dried clover would not seem as rich to them as the sweet grass of the hillsides. Axfel, seven years old by now, but still fit and able, nipped at the heels of stragglers and lay down with his chin on his paws to keep watch on the farmyard.
     
    In the stable Jarred showed me the fine horses Uncle Sivisal had brought. One of them was a well-built gray sorrel stallion, sturdy and of good stock, but the other beat him by a stade. He was a stallion taller than any horse I had ever seen. Even the horses of Papa’s rich relatives could not compare with this one. His coat was glossy black and had a shine as if it were carefully brushed every hour, culminating in an extravagant black waterfall of mane. Silver trappings hung beside him in the stall, a