E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
ARCHIVE: Ask, please.
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Dec. 24, 2006
SUMMARY: Certainty has never been a concern before for Mathom of An.
AUTHOR NOTES: Written as a stocking stuffer-turned-pinch hit for Vanzetti for the Yuletide 2006 Challenge. So many thanks to Jenlev for her keen eye and good heart.
DISCLAIMER: Read
Mathom of An breathes in the long-view. He lives in it, more than once to the detriment of the now, and there have been times when he's disappeared into it.
This time is one of those times.
A crow isn't the most noble of birds, but it is efficient in its design and flight. Its commonness also provides a fairly certain cover, stealth coming in the form of sheer numbers even within a land with a king whose alternate form is well known. Effectiveness is far more important than nobility to those with the least bit of sense.
The first day's flight after disappearing from his own great hall is a short one. Duac will set his watch and his anger and his fears to the border, not to the immediate environs of where he stands. Mathom is as sure of this as he can be of anything from his land-heir. When it comes to comprehension of methods and madness, to Mathom, Duac is a half-open book with pages glued together in no visible pattern. There have been times when Mathom was convinced the boy was asking questions with no other intent than frustrating his father, and if that was his goal, he succeeded more often than not. In any case, Mathom decides, Anuin is a good place to start satisfying his curiosity, because the High One be damned thrice to the cold reaches of Hel, what he most wants to know, to understand, is the core of his son. The stubbornness comes naturally to Duac from all sides, Mathom knows; crows aren't the only animal associated with their line. Where the muleheaded desire for details took root, that's a riddle deeper than any that the masters may have allowed Rood to take on at Caithnard. And if Rood understands his brother, that's one secret he's never blurted out in front of his father.
As the sun sets, Mathom tips his wings and sinks downward with the cooling air, perching on the highest branch of a wide old tree to eye the activity around the gates of his family's home. Yes, Duac is sure to reach far -- that's what he does -- but the boy must learn to see, to know what is already before him, and what is coming for him and his.
Under Mathom's sharp gaze, Elieu returns with Raith reining in hard at his side before the walls. The brothers enter together, disappearing from even Mathom's sight while talking urgently to each other, and Mathom would give much to be able to hear their words, but the knowledge that their horses are already under the care of his stablehands tells him plenty. If Duac is hard reading, Raith is a proclamation shouted loud, and Mathom has been -- still is -- selfish enough to wish that there had been a switch or a confusion at birth. That wish never lasts past the thinking of it, though; Hel is Raith's, all Three Portions are what make An, and Duac and Mathom are tied together by more than land-law and blood.
Mathom's land flashes below him as he flies: a stream of blue water confined by winding banks and the sweep of green farms stretching as far as his scavenger eyes can see. He goes west, not due north, staying within An until he passes over the dense forests that define the end of where his will is law. For two days he flies for speed, circling in ever wider arcs as he examines the turbulence in the grass and the trees that bend away from the sun. Then, when the brown and red wallows where the pigs wait out the heat of midday are no bigger than the seeds of the sweetest fruit...then Mathom simply flies.
This is what he needs as much as answers. His burdens aren't lifted; none of his obligations are eased; there are hundreds of ties binding him to the earth below with velvet and with hooks, but they don't hold him down when his wings carry him up, up, faster and farther in a rush that blanks his mind and brings him to the edge of what makes him a man.
He could never forget himself, lose himself, in this form. But when he flies high enough, for a while he can do nothing but that and be glad in it.
A week isn't enough time to reach Erlenstar Mountain, but it is enough time to come around the backside of Ymris, far from its seat and the politics that boil there.
In those extreme places, there's little to distinguish Ruhn from Hel. A man, or a bird, caught in a storm and tossed far off the Trader's Road would have no real clue about where he landed until the first encounter with people who spoke and dressed in the manner of their land. A king can tell the difference, but only in the awareness of strange strictures and agreements that he can't -- and shouldn't -- control.
Where there are people, there are whispers, though. They're soft enough to not make waves, but strong enough to be impossible to ignore. Talk of what is passing through the land to the east is moving fast. Tales of bloodshed move faster than anything else, and there are few happy stories following behind.
This is what Mathom had feared before he left, because he has never been deaf or blind. It made him sharper than necessary, and made him keep thoughts closer than ever He fears it now even more that he knows it's true. When he's flying late at night from one tavern to another, he can also admit that under the frustration is fear that he did the wrong thing, that in leaving he tossed Duac and Rood and Raederle into deeper and more troubled water than they can swim in, and that peace is suddenly a too precious desire for everyone who deserves it to achieve. He fears what he can see unfolding in right front of him almost as much as does the word that Cannon Master brought from an island that is shaking the world all out of proportion with its size. A simple farmer stood hesitantly before him with a message from a worried land-heir-turned-reluctant land-ruler on an island separated from the world by more than water. Hed is filled with peace that may not last, and with even more farmers who cannot understand why the High One hadn't raised even the wind to protect or avenge their Prince, a man who Mathom refuses to believe is dead, because those stars still haunt his dreams.
And so he is ever more careful. Even a true common bird knows discretion. It is coming up on a month when Mathom comes close enough to Caerweddin to actually scent the change in the land beneath him. The nearer he flies to Wind Plain, the quieter Ymris gets under all of the noise of unexpected occurrences and new conflicts, as if the entire population can feel how dangerous it is to draw the attention of whatever, or whoever, is the source of the unease that permeates the air to such a level that it's almost a visible fog.
Shape changers... That's what he's heard. Those who bring death with sword and water and fire that burns all, and dead who live to tell tales.
As the days grow colder, Mathom finds himself staying in crow form longer, craving the comfort of the simpler way of thinking that keeps some lid on the boiling pot of his mind. He listens over and over to stories that should be stories, but that refuse to be anything other than dangerous truths. People are talking with experience, and they're speaking of things that should belong behind them with the wars and the bindings and the wizards that are gone, gone, nowhere to be found.
Those three stars shining on Morgon of Hed's face have shaped so much already and they are not done, Mathom feels that in his soul. With that certainty comes more than enough fear to paralyze or goad, and while he listens to more traders and weavers and potters and farmers, his heart tightens around the wish for those he loves to forge through whatever is surging to stand in their path, and find some form of peace on the other side.
Mathom doesn't want to go to Wind Plain. It's almost physical, the urge to not pass over that land. It makes him cry out, a sharp ca-aaaw of frustration, before both human and animal instinct make him turns away to find food that isn't tainted by violence.
There is bloodshed everywhere around him in the east, an aggression that is overwhelming in a way that squabbles and feuds have never tumbled into as they've run through the portions of the southern lands. Borders have always provided limits in the past, but the vague worry that Mathom held close while within his own kingdom is turning quickly into reality, and more and more what he's thinking isn't about Morgon and the High One.
Has my kingdom prepared itself? That's what he wants to know now. Have my children done what I could not afford to do?
Mathom has always lived with a long-view, and that is how An thrives. In these days, however, if those two questions aren't answered in the positive, he isn't sure that Morgon's fate and the High One's existence matter. Because something is hurt, something in the earth, and it's lashing out through the people living on it. Rebels with every kind of cause are nothing more than an excuse, and they have become the strong arm of a purpose that Mathom still can't pick out from the chaos and confusion. The fighting makes no sense. All of the death seems to be toward no goal other than more death at the hands of those who should stay dead. There is nothing and no one in full control in Ymris; Heureu is holding the reins still, but with the weakest grasp that Mathom has ever thought to see in a land-ruler.
Duac is strong. He is smart, and so is Rood. Raederle...she is maybe stronger and more brilliant than all of them, but she truly is Morgon's and now Mathom knows why. He can only hope that their joining together will make a difference.
He fights with himself for nearly three days before he finally flies around Wind Plain, skimming the air-parched edges. When he reaches the water, he knows that choice has little to do with anything any more.
Certainty has never been a concern before; his will is strong, his mind steady, and what Mathom sees in his dreams are paths that he's accepted will be traveled at some time that no one can pinpoint.
Now, for once, Mathom wishes for sure sight of the immediate future. It feels like the past is rushing up to overwhelm them all, and that is something that he knows they should all fear.
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