Shaman's Crossing
Page 56

In my Uncle Sefert’s mansion in Old Thares, an entire wall of his grand library was given over to tall shelves that held rank upon rank of such journals. Sefert Burvelle was my father’s elder brother, the eldest son who inherited the family home, title, and lands. To him came the duty of preserving the family history. My own father, Keft Burvelle, had been the second son, the soldier son of his generation. Forty-two years before my eighteenth birthday, my father had mounted his cavalla horse and set out with his regiment for the frontier. He had never returned to live at Stonecreek Mansion, his ancestral home, but all of his military journals had. His writing occupied a substantial two shelves of his brother’s library, and was rife with the telling of our military’s final battles with the Plainspeople as King Troven had expanded his holdings into the wilds.
In time, when my father had gained rank and been offered private quarters at the fort, he had sent word home that he was ready for his bride to join him. Selethe Rode, then twenty but promised to him since she was only sixteen, had traveled to him by coach, wagon, and horseback, to be wed to him in the regiment chapel at Fort Renalx. She had been a good cavalry wife, bearing child after child to the lieutenant who became a captain and eventually retired as a colonel. In their youth, they had believed that all their sons would go for soldiers, for such was the destiny of the sons of a soldier son.
The Battle of Bitter Creek changed all that. My father so distinguished himself in the final two charges that when King Troven heard tell of it, he granted him a holding of four hundred acres of the land so painstakingly and bloodily won from the Plainspeople. With the land grant went a title and a crest of his own, making him one of the first elevated into the new nobility. The king’s new lords would settle in the east and bring civilization and tradition with them.
It was my father’s crest, not his older brother’s, sharply stamped into the fragrant leather of my new book, which I held up for my brothers and sisters to see. Our crest was a spond tree resplendent with fruit beside a creek. This journal would return here, to Widevale Mansion, rather than being posted to our ancestral home at Stonecreek in Old Thares. This book would be the first volume on the first shelf set aside for the soldier sons of my father’s line. We were founding a dynasty here on the former edge of the wilds, and we knew it.
The silence had grown long as I held the journal aloft and savored my new position. My father finally broke it.
“So. There it is. Your future, Nevare. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it.” My father spoke so solemnly that I could not find words to reply.
I set my gifts down carefully on the red cushion on which they had been presented to me. As a servant bore them away from the table, I took my seat. My father lifted his wineglass. At a sign from him, one of the servingmen replenished all our glasses. “Let us toast our son and brother, wishing Nevare many brave exploits and opportunity for glory!” he suggested to his family. They lifted their glasses to me, and I raised mine in turn, and then we all drank.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, but my father was not finished. Again, he lifted his glass. “And.” He spoke, and then waited until my eyes met his. I had no idea what might come next but I desperately hoped it would be a cavalla horse of my own choosing. Sirlofty was a wonderful mount, but I dreamed of a more fiery horse. I held my breath. My father smiled, not at me, but the satisfied smile of a man who had done well for himself and his family as his gaze traveled the full table. “Andlet us toast to a future that bodes well for all of us. The negotiations have been long and very delicate, my boy, but it is done at last. Show Lord Grenalter three years of honorable service on the frontier, earning a captain’s stars on your collar, and he will bestow on you the hand of his younger daughter, Carsina.”
Before I could say a word, Yaril clasped her hands together in delight and cried out, “Oh, Nevare, you will make Carsina and me sisters! How wonderful! And in years to come, our children will be both playmates and cousins!”
“Yaril. Please contain yourself. This is your brother’s moment.” My mother’s rebuke to my lively younger sister was soft-spoken, but I heard it. Despite her words, my mother’s eyes shone with pleasure. I knew that she was as fond of young Carsina as my sister was. Carsina was a lively, pleasant girl, flaxen-haired and round-faced. She and Yaril were the best of friends. Carsina and her elder sister and mother often came of a Sixday to join the women of our house in meditation, needlework, and gossip. Lord Grenalter had served alongside my father, and indeed won his lands and family crest in the same engagements that had led to my father’s elevation. Lady Grenalter and my mother had attended the same finishing school and had been cavalla wives together. As the daughter of a new noble, Carsina would be well schooled in all that was expected of a soldier’s wife, unlike the old nobility wives I’d heard of in tales, who were near suicidal with despair when they discovered they were expected to cope with a home on the border and Plainspeople on their doorstep. Carsina Grenalter was a good match for me. I did not resent that whatever dower of land she might bring would enrich my brother’s estate rather than come to Carsina and me. That was how it had always been done, and I rejoiced for how it would expand my family’s holdings. In the dim future, when I retired from the cavalla, I knew we would be welcomed home to Widevale, to finish raising our children here. My sons would be soldiers after me, and my brother Rosse would see that my daughters married well.