Seven Brothers Blessed [ Lore of Penrua: Book IV ]

[ 12 ]

"It weighs on you more than you admit," said Uachi.

The two men were seated on a balcony—the same balcony from which Uachi had watched Padréc leap seemingly to his death the first time he'd been here. They were sharing a jug of mead, watching the last trembling fingers of light slide down beyond the dark horizon.

Diarmán did not respond to him. He gazed off at the sunset, his cup at his lips. He had just filled it for the third time.

"You're not about to jump off of here, are you?" Uachi asked.

Diarmán slid him a look, only faintly amused. "I told you. Padréc's the only one who can sprout feathers on a whim. Besides, I've just won the heart of the most eligible bachelor in this party of the country. I've got everything to live for."

"Mm."

Silence fell again. Uachi took a sip of his mead, a small one. He didn't like it; it was too sweet. It was growing cooler as darkness fell, and he thought about suggesting they move inside, but they were used to nights beneath the stars. Besides, there were not a lot of comfortable areas to sit and talk inside House Eldran. It was dark, a gloomy world of creeping shadows seldom warmed by fires on the hearths.

"I didn't expect him to be like that," said Diarmán.

Uachi looked at him in question, waiting for more.

"So...wasted."

"Wasted?"

"His skin, it was..." He shook his head and took another swallow of his mead. "He looked like a crumple of white paper lying there on the bed. And he sounded like paper, too—like a bit of paper being blown about the courtyard by a breeze. His breath, it was like..."

Uachi looked down into his cup, although he could not see the surface of his drink in the encroaching darkness. "It must have been difficult for you to see."

"I hate him," Diarmán whispered. For once, there was no flippant good humor in his tone, nor bitterness, nor anger. It was sorrow. Old, tired sorrow. "I can hardly remember not hating him, Uachi."

"Hardly. So you didn't always?"

"No." He gave a soft laugh now. "For a matter of minutes, I loved him as much as anyone in the world. When my family and I escaped the wood, when we came here, it was like nothing I'd ever seen: this beautiful castle, these towers, the courtyards, and inside there were people—people like I'd never seen before, more of them, and they were so...different from the ladies and lords of my father's court. Dozens of them. Hundreds, I don't even know. And they brought me to him. To Grandfather. Sitting there at his high table, wearing a circlet of gold and this—" He gesture to his own chest, a sweeping motion— "this doublet in a shade of blue that made my eyes hurt just to look at it. And there were plates and bowls and goblets and food and wine and ladies everywhere with their mantles and their trains, and I was dazzled by it."

"You've said that your father was a king," Uachi said. "Did he not have such treasures?"

Diarmán laughed. "A king he was, but no. He didn't live in a castle. I don't think he even lived under a roof, before he met my mother and stole her away. He built her a little cottage in a clearing in the woods. The same sort of humble home any peasant could claim. Thatching for a roof, earth for a floor, covered over with rushes. When he assembled with his court, his so-called court, we all came together in a clearing in the wood, and they danced by moonlight. The ladies wore flowers and feathers, not jewels, though they were no less beautiful for it—but different. So different."

"It must have been a lot to see, then, coming here. A lot to try to understand."

"You cannot imagine." Diarmán looked at Uachi, hesitating. "Well. Perhaps you can. You spent your share of time on the streets before you came to your bosom-friend's palace, after all."