t times? It was in the palm of my hand all along!" His voice changed. "Come on, and pray we are not too late!"
The fires had both died down in the Sandreni lodge. Only the stars shone above the clearing in the woods. The cluster of Eanna's Diadem was well over west, following the moons. A nightingale was singing, as if in answer to the trialla of before, as the four of them approached. In the doorway Alessan hesitated for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture Devin already recognized. Then he pushed open the door and walked through.
By the red glow of the embers they looked, with eyes accustomed by now to darkness, on the carnage within.
The coffin still rested on its trestles, although splintered and knocked awry. Around it though, lay dead men who had been alive when they left this room. The two younger Sandreni. Nievole, a quiver of arrows in his throat and chest. The body of Scalvaia d'Astibar.
Then Devin made out Scalvaia's severed head in a black puddle of blood a terrible distance away and he fought to control the lurch of sickness in his gorge.
"Oh, Morian," Alessan whispered. "Oh, Lady of the Dead, be gentle to them in your Halls. They died dreaming of freedom and before their time."
"Three of them did," came a harsh, desiccated voice from deep in one of the armchairs. "The fourth should have been strangled at birth."
Devin jumped half a foot, his heart hammering with shock.
The speaker rose and stood beside the chair, facing them. He was entirely hidden in shadow. "I thought you would come back," he said.
The sixth man, Devin realized, struggling to understand, straining to make out the tall, gaunt form by the faint glow of the embers.
Alessan seemed quite unruffled. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting then," he said. "It took me too long to riddle this through. Will you allow me to express my sorrow for what has happened?" He paused. "And my respect for you, my lord Sandre."
Devin's jaw dropped open as if unhinged. He snapped it shut so hard he hurt his teeth; he hoped no one had seen. Events were moving far too fast for him.
"I will accept the first," said the gaunt figure in front of them. "I do not deserve your respect though, nor that of anyone else. Once perhaps; not anymore. You are speaking to an old vain fool, exactly as the Barbadian named me. A man who spent too many years alone, tangled in his own spun webs. You were right in everything you said before about carelessness. It has cost me three sons tonight. Within a month, less probably, the Sandreni will be no more."
The voice was dry and dispassionate, objectively damning, devoid of self-pity. The tone of a judge in some dark hall of final adjudication.
"What happened?" Alessan asked quietly.
"The boy was a traitor." Flat, uninflected, final.
"Oh, my lord," Baerd exclaimed. "Family?"
"My grandson. Gianno's boy."▽本▽作▽品▽由▽▽網▽提▽供▽下▽載▽與▽在▽線▽閱▽讀▽
"The his soul is cursed," Baerd said, quiet and fierce. "He is in Morian's custody now, and she will know how to deal with him. May he be trammeled in darkness until the end of time."
The old man seemed not to have even heard. "Taeri killed him," he murmured, wonderingly. "I had not thought he was brave enough, or so quick. Then he stabbed himself, to deny them the pleasure of whatever they might have learned of him. I had not thought he was so brave," he repeated absently.
Through the thick shadows Devin looked at the two bodies by the smaller fire. Uncle and nephew lay so close to each other they seemed almost intertwined on the far side of the coffin. The empty coffin.
"You said you waited for us," Alessan murmured. "Will you tell me why?"
"For the same reason you came back." Sandre moved for the first time, stiffly making his way to the larger fire. He seized a small log and threw it on the guttering flame. A shower of sparks flew up. He nursed it, poking with the iron until a tongue of flame licked free of the ash bed.
The Duke turned and now Devin could see his white hair and beard, and the bony hollows of his c