“We have been here for weeks,” the plume of Shéna said. A great purple bruise extended from his swollen, split eyebrow down his cheekbone. “We could have at least kept watch upon the coast.”

  “The new company has already taken up positions upon the coast. I have been receiving their reports,” Hormil said. Tirlav did not mention to Hormil that they already knew about the new company; they had seen them when they rode to the shore.

  “Then why are we still here?”

  “Are you so eager to go to the Mingling?” Selnei cut in. “Has the waiting driven you to madness?”

  “No,” the plume responded, looking down at his half-eaten plate of yams. Tirlav knew that some of the vien had taken to his training regimen with more relish than others, but he had not forced the other contingents to join in. He also knew it was unlikely that they would openly complain about the pressure he kept on the company due to the risk of appearing weak.

  “This is a time of uncertainty,” Hormil said. “Nothing like the Malady has come upon us before, a weapon that strikes at the High Trees. Drennos is destroyed. Canaen sorcery is at play. When the Synod determines the time is right, they will not hesitate to send you into danger. Do not doubt that.”

  The son and third heir of the Tree of Lira was dead. Other members of the High Trees had joined the afflicted in the House of Lira under the care of Jareen. As a result of their nightly meetings, Tirlav knew more about the Malady than most. As far as he knew, relatives of the High Trees and those who had returned from the Mingling or dwelt near it were most at risk. He was thankful Hormil and Selnei had shown no sign of the sickness. A greater and greater dread of the disease grew in Tirlav, as well, but he had not forsworn his visits to Jareen.

  “Has the Synod given any hint?” the plume of Namian asked.

  “The Synod does not give hints, Son of Namian,” Hormil replied. “They either command or they do not.” The company liel stood, placing two hands upon the table. “You may go early tonight,” he said. “I can see you are little use for drinking. The Son of Aelor has drilled your mirth away.”

  Tirlav furrowed his brow, unsure of whether the statement was a critique. Hormil must have seen the expression.

  “It is well for the dead to be mirthless. Go and sleep.”

  The plumes glanced at each other, surprised at this dismissal. Menlane rose first, breaking the hesitation for the rest. Tirlav rose with them.

  “Son of Aelor, stay. I wish to discuss a new exercise,” Hormil said. Tirlav sat back down, disappointed. He had hoped to get to the House of Lira early. Hormil waited as the other plumes filed out. Selnei glanced at Hormil, then took a long drink from his cup of blue glass. He did not look at Tirlav. Even in fatigue, something alerted Tirlav that there was more to this than the discussion of an exercise.

  Hormil waited until the others were well and truly gone, then he set down his cup and locked eyes with Tirlav.

  “We leave for the Mingling in the morning. The order came today. We will carry heavy burdens and lead extra vaela to resupply our other companies.”

  At this news, Tirlav felt a sensation like a great weight pressing upon his stomach and chest.

  “Why did you not tell the others?” he asked.

  “You will tell them in the morning. Let them sleep tonight.”

  “I will tell them?”

  “I have heard that Menlane has spent some nights out of the bivouac, and has been visiting friends and his Tree in the evenings,” Hormil said.

  Tirlav had heard that too, but he had never mentioned it. It was understandable. This was his heartwood and he had lived in the city, itself. Tirlav was not so foolish as to mention such behavior in another.

  “Do you think he allows his contingent the same freedom?”

  Tirlav knew that he didn’t, but the question struck him hard. Selnei watched the exchange, holding his cup in his hand but remaining motionless. Tirlav felt the sweat on his brow. The news of the order had shaken him, and now he sensed a trap.

  “No, liel,” Tirlav said reluctantly. He could not lie to his commander.

  “Do you think Menlane should be censured? Maybe even deplumed? I hear there is another in the High Tir contingent who might do.”

  “No, liel,” Tirlav replied quickly. The way that Hormil and Selnei looked at him without response made it clear that they expected more of an anser than that. “We leave tomorrow,” Tirlav went on. “He has done well in all else, and the temptation will find no more opportunity. And he does his duty every day in the drills without flagging.”

  “A merciful answer,” Hormil said, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “With your measure, it will be measured.”

  Tirlav did not respond. He was terribly aware of the sweat and blush on his face.

  “I have learned much of you, Son of Aelor,” Hormil said. “But that was my task, and now I am satisfied. When you arrive in the Mingling, you will report to Sholrodan, Liel Commander of all our companies there. Selnei will act as your guide upon the journey.”

  “My liel?” Tirlav asked, risking the interjection.

  “Yes, Son of Aelor?”

  “I don’t understand. . . you are coming with us, yes?”

  “No, I am not. I have been directing the new company from here, but the first sails are reported on the coast. I will do for them what I did for you, by order of the Synod.”

  “You will not come with us?” Tirlav asked again.

  “The liel of the new company was a veteran like myself. He died of the Malady over a week ago. There were few of us to begin with. There are fewer now.”

  “Then Selnei will command?”

  “Selnei made special plea to the Synod on that point.”

  “So he will lead us.”

  “No. In thanks and recognition, they granted his request to serve but not lead.”

  “Why would they not allow him to lead?”

  “You misunderstand me,” Hormil said. “Our good Selnei requested that he not lead, though he desired to return to the Mingling. You are to command the company.”

  At this, Selnei took a long drink and reached for the pitcher to refill his cup.

  “Why would he request that?” Tirlav asked.

  “Why do you now seek to avoid it?” Hormil retorted.

  “What do I know about leading a company?”

  “You seem to think that Selnei or myself feel any other way.”

  “But you have led before. You survived the Mingling. What if I blunder?”

  Hormil raised a hand.

  “Yes, we have led. As those before us fell, we had no choice. You also have no choice. You are to let Selnei serve as any other in the company, in the contingent of his choice, but you are not to force him into authority. This is by order of the Synod. You face only what many others have faced before you.”

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  Tirlav was having trouble breathing. His heart pounded in his chest. All he’d ever wanted was to play the harp, to bask in the music that surrounded him. He’d always known that others were dying in the Mingling, but. . . it had never truly been a risk for him. He never thought himself cowardly; a member of the High Tree would not be permitted to go, even if he chose it. But the Synod’s ruling had changed it all. Now, he might be responsible for decisions that would send them all to their deaths.

  “If it is any consolation, Son of Aelor, your command will not last long. Such is the way of things. You have pushed them hard. One or two might live because of it. You should be proud of that, if it is so. But do not count on it. The chosen are already dead. You died when you were called, and all your vien with you. You cannot get the dead killed.” Hormil smiled and rose, picking up a pitcher as he walked around the edge of the oval table. He poured a full glass of old pomegranate wine into Tirlav’s cup. “Drink, Son of Aelor,” he said. “Drink with us, the noble dead.”

  Tirlav could not extricate himself from the Hormil and Selnei before he had drained three cups and more. His hopes of arriving early to the House of Lira were dashed, and with the lightness of his head, he wondered if he should not go straight back to the bivouac. His feet did not heed that thought. Tomorrow they would ride. He must at least say goodbye to Jareen. This was his last opportunity to gaze in her visage, eyes unlike any he had known. He would not miss it.

  Since the first, he’d tried to accept the idiom that they were already dead. He tried to suppress his desire for music. He tried not to notice the beauty all around him that stirred his spirit. But those things only strengthened his desire to live. Always, part of him clung to the hope that he might survive. At first, like all the rest, he hoped they would stay on the coast for their entire service period. That hope was dashed. Then came Jareen, the dawn of a light like nothing he’d known before. Like a moth, he was drawn to it, even though it promised only to burn.

  It was not just her appearance that captivated him; he had seen fairer vienu. The earliest signs of age had crept upon the skin of her neck and the corners of her eyes. She was passing, a fading thing, immune to the blessing of Findel. She was beautiful not in spite of her doom, but it some way because of it. It amplified her loveliness, like the music of a moment that cannot be retained. He was about to leave for the Mingling. His time of service was a hundred years and eleven. If he survived it, she would already be dead when he returned, for the Insensitive did not live long.

  But Tirlav would never return. The appointment as company liel was like the blow of the quth axe. He felt it within himself. Whether he survived one year or fifty, why should he be special? He would never see her again, or his home, or touch the strings of a harp. He was already dead.

  This night was his last taste of life—a life he could not keep, a beauty that, like all beauty, must fade.

  The night was full of fragrance rising from the flowers and music falling from the trees. As he approached the garden, he saw Jareen glance out of the door. He had never experienced anything so sure as the awareness that this was his last moment of life. Jareen was the beauty of a song that could never be played again.

  ***

  Jareen had just finished checking on the afflicted—there were nine, now, all members of High Trees from across Findeluvié. The more that grew ill, the more the other members of the Trees stayed away, as if finally coming to take Jareen’s warning of contagion seriously. Only the servants ventured down the hallway now, and they did so with great reluctance. Tirlav had come every night, and she ruminated on her time with him throughout the days as she cared for the Malady-stricken, remember what he had said, picturing his face, imagining their next meeting.

  She hurried to the small side door and cracked it to survey the garden. Tirlav was striding down the path, his helm tucked beneath his arm. She smiled at him, and their eyes locked. There was a strange expression on his face. Instead of a smile in return, he looked at her with an intensity she did not recognize. She stepped out of the house to meet him.

  “Blessed night,” she said in greeting. He didn’t respond in kind, breaking their eye contact by looking aside. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He took a deep breath.

  “They’re sending us to the Mingling. We leave in the morning.”

  “No,” she said, grabbing the sleeve of his silk as if she could hold him in place.

  Why must everything be taken from her? She’d lost her whole life, and just when something good had come into it, they were taking that away, too.

  “It’s true,” Tirlav said. Jareen could see the pain on his brow. Tirlav glanced up as someone came around the side of the house, walking along the path. It was one of the house servants. The servant glanced at the couple, furrowed his brow, but kept walking. A servant hardly had authority to question a plume.

  “Let us walk,” Tirlav said. He took Jareen’s hand and led her through the garden that surrounded the House of Lira. He had not touched her since the night he told her of the destruction of Drennos, when he had put his arm around her shoulders as she wept. She didn’t know what she would have done if he had not been there. If it weren’t for him, she wasn’t sure she could have continued her labors.

  There was an arbor of dark seeded grapes at the edge of the garden. The vines were left unpruned, allowed to grow thick more for seclusion than productivity. They had sometimes sat on the cool moss within the arbor to talk during their visits. She had often wondered since her return how such vines could grow in the low light beneath the dense canopy above. Such musings were far from her mind as he led her there, now.

  “Don’t go,” she said.

  “The Synod commands it.” He took both her hands in his, facing her.

  “We can run. I have run before.”

  “I cannot disobey the Synod, you know that.”

  “You can. I can.”

  “I cannot. And even if it were possible, the sea is full of foe-ships. There is nowhere to go.”

  “We must try. Why go and die?

  “Lovniele,” he said. “Please.” He raised his hands, cupping her cheeks in his palms and sliding his fingers into her hair. He laid his forehead against hers. Tears ran down her face. Their lips touched, gently at first, and then her arms were around him.

  She had taken on many of the trappings of the humans, but never this. She had seen humans acting thus. There had even been rumors about certain Sisters and clandestine meetings with men. Never had she expected to find herself so entwined. Her heart pounded.

  To the Vien, such acts were sacred, kept for the marriage bed. Yet he held her and kissed her. She felt his hunger, and she was the object of that hunger. She had never known such a feeling. He desired her, and she wanted that desire, and she felt that desire.

  Should those doomed so soon to die care about what was sacred?

  They ought to care, she thought, but the encompassing embrace of him subsumed the thought.

  It was hours later when Tirlav pulled his arm from under her head.

  “No,” she said, grabbing his shoulder. “No.”

  “I have no choice, Lovniele.”

  “You do.”

  Even in the dark of night beneath the arbor she could see the grimace on his face.

  “I’m sorry.” He leaned over and kissed her again, his lips sweet as the night air, but it was fleeting. Her grasp meant nothing as he pulled away. Without him pressed against her, she felt the chill. She reached for her dress and draped it across herself. He donned his silks and his mail, his sword-belt, his boots, and took his helm beneath his arm, looking the warrior once again, when so recently he had just been him, Tirlav, and she Lovniele, and they one.

  “Find me, when your time is done,” she said. Yet even as she said it, she knew it was impossible. Insensitives did not live so long.

  “I am already dead,” he said, his voice breaking. A shudder shook him. “You were my last taste of life.”

  With that, he strode from the arbor, and she wept as she dressed.

  ***

  That day, Jareen tried her best to care about the afflicted. She went through the motions. If Silesh had thought her brusque before. . . but Silesh was dead. They were all dead. How was she supposed to go on caring? How could she make sense of what had just happened? How could she look on it with joy, when he had walked away from her? He rode now to the Mingling by order of the Synod, casting her off to go die. What had she done?

  Day followed day. She no longer took walks at night, sleeping instead. Sleep was her greatest comfort, the only forgetting. The paths of the High Tir lost their loveliness. With long-practiced skill she tended to the pain and breathing and cleaning of the afflicted. Servants brought her food and drink and washed her clothes. Yet there was no one who asked how Jareen felt, or how she bore up beneath it all. That was something Tirlav had done.

  She had never heard of her people engaging in the sacred union of vien and vienu with anything like the garish degeneracy of the profligate humans and their rapacious appetite for the carnal. She still remembered the first time she had cared for a Departing prostitute in the dockside district of Nosh. The young woman looked as if she was not yet twenty, and she lay wasting away in a small closet while her noisome fellows continued to ply their awful trade throughout the dirty clapboard house. The humans in such places had barely the decency to cover themselves when the Voiceless Sisters arrived. But then, she had been a child when she’d left Findeluvié, and what was done by her folk was done in secret. What did she know of it? Her heart raced again at the memory of Tirlav.

  What was she supposed to do, now? In caring for the Departing of Nosh, she thought she had found some scrap of meaning. Now, she cared for the Departing of her own kind, but it felt empty. The Synod sent her more of the stricken, and she took over a second hallway in the House of Lira. No one aided her in their care, but she did not mind. Having time to herself was not her wish. Her body and mind knew the motions of her labor. She tended the stricken, mixed tinctures, administered doses, cleaned bodies, checked pulses, listened to breathing, kept records of progressions, relapses, and responses to tinctures. Labor kept her distracted, at least. The future held no promise, and she did not care for it. Somewhere to the east, the Mingling had swallowed Tirlav and his vien. Anger now mixed with her sorrow. How could he have taken so much of her soul and carried it to that awful place?

  TO BE CONTINUED IN VOLUME TWO OF FINDEL'S EMBRACE

  The Synod's Curse, on Monday, May 19th.

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