“It is still raining, Covril. You cannot seriously be suggesting we set out again when we have a sound roof over our heads and proper beds to sleep in for a change. No, I say. No! I will not sleep on the ground tonight, or in a barn, or worst of all, in a house where my feet and knees hang over the end of the largest bed available. There have been times I’ve seriously thought of refusing hospitality, and to the Pit with rudeness.”
“If you insist,” his mother said grudgingly, “but I want an early start come morning. I refuse to waste an hour more than I must. The Book of Translation must be opened as soon as possible.”
Loial jerked erect, aghast. “That’s what the Great Stump is discussing? They can’t do that, not now!”
“We must leave this world eventually, so we can come to it when the Wheel turns,” his mother said, striding to the nearest fireplace to spread her skirts again. “That is written. Now is exactly the right time, and the sooner the better.”
“Is that what you think, Elder Haman?” Loial asked worriedly.
“No, my boy, not at all. Before we left, I gave a speech of three hours that I think swayed a few minds in the right direction.” Elder Haman picked up a tall yellow pitcher and filled a blue cup, but rather than drink, he frowned into the tea. “Your mother has swayed more, I fear. She may even get her decision in months, as she says.”
Erith filled a cup for his mother, then two more, bringing one to him. His ears quivered with embarrassment yet again. He should have done that. He had a great deal to learn about being a husband, but he knew that much. “I wish I could address the Stump,” he said bitterly.
“You sound eager, Husband.” Husband. That meant Erith was very serious. It was almost as bad as being called Son Loial. “What would you say to the Stump?”
“I won’t have him embarrassed, Erith,” his mother said before he could open his mouth. “Loial writes well, and Elder Haman says he may have the makings of a scholar about him, but he gets tongue-tied before even a hundred. Besides, he is only a boy.”
Elder Haman had said that? Loial wondered when his ears would stop quivering.
“Any married man may address the Stump,” Erith said firmly. There was no doubt this time. Her ears definitely slanted back. “Will you allow me to tend my own husband, Mother Covril?” His mother’s mouth moved, but no sound came out, and her eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. He did not think he had ever seen her so taken aback, though she must have expected this. A wife always took precedence with her husband over his mother. “Well, Husband, what would you say?”
He was not eager, he was desperate. He took a long swallow of the spice-scented tea, but his mouth felt just as dry afterward. His mother was right; the more people were listening, the more he tended to forget what he intended to say and go off on tangents. In truth, he had to admit that sometimes he rambled a bit with only a few listeners. Just a bit. Now and then. He knew the forms—a child of fifty knew the forms—yet he could not make the words come. The few listening to him now were not just any few. His mother was a famous Speaker, Elder Haman a noted one, not to mention being an Elder. And there was Erith. A man wanted to stand well in his wife’s eyes.
Turning his back on them, he strode to the nearest window and stood rolling the teacup between his palms. The window was sized decently, though the panes set in the carved casement were no larger than those in the rooms below. The rain had dwindled to a drizzle falling from a gray sky, and despite bubbles in the glass he could make out the trees beyond the fields, pine and sourgum and the occasional oak, all full of new growth. Algarin’s people tended their forest well, clearing out the deadfall to rob wildfire of its tinder. Fire had to be used carefully.
The words came more easily now that he could not see the others watching him. Should he begin with the Longing? Could they dare leave if they would begin dying in a handful of years? No, that question would have been addressed first thing and suitable answers found, else the Stump would have finished inside a year. Light, if he did address the Stump. . . . For a moment, he saw the crowds standing all around him, hundreds and hundreds of men and women waiting to hear his words, perhaps several thousand. His tongue tried to cling to the roof of his mouth. He blinked, and there was only the bubbled glass before him, and the trees. He had to do it. He was not particularly brave, whatever Erith thought, but he had learned about bravery watching humans, watching them hang on no matter how strong the winds grew, fight when they had no hope, fight and win because they fought with desperate courage. Suddenly, he knew what to say.
“In the War of the Shadow, we did not huddle in our stedding, hoping no Trollocs or Myrddraal would be driven to enter. We did not open the Book of Translation and flee. We marched alongside the humans and fought the Shadow. In the Trolloc Wars, we neither hid in the stedding nor opened the Book of Translation. We marched with the humans and fought the Shadow. In the darkest years, when hope seemed gone, we fought the Shadow.”
“And by the War of the Hundred Years we had learned not to get ourselves tangled in human affairs,” his mother put in. That was allowed. Speaking could turn into a debate unless the pure beauty of your words held the listeners. She had once spoken from sunrise to sunset in favor of a very unpopular position without a single interruption, and the next day, no one had risen to Speak against her. He could not form beautiful sentences. He could only say what he believed. He did not turn from the window.
“The War of the Hundred Years was a human affair, and none of ours. The Shadow is our affair. When it is the Shadow that must be fought, our axes have always grown long handles. Perhaps in a year, or five, or ten, we will open the Book of Translation, but if we do it now, we cannot run away with any real hope of safety. Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and on that hangs the fate not only of this world, but of any world we might flee to. When fire threatens the trees, we do not run away and hope that the flames will not follow us. We fight. Now the Shadow is coming like wildfire, and we dare not run from it.” Something was moving among the trees, all along the line he could see. A herd of cattle? A very big herd, if so.
“That isn’t bad,” his mother said. “Much too plainspoken to carry any weight at a stedding Stump much less the Great Stump, of course, but not bad. Go on.”
“Trollocs,” he breathed. That was what it was, thousands of Trollocs in black, spiked mail spilling out of the trees at a run with scythe-curved swords raised, shaking their spiked spears, some carrying torches. Trollocs as far as he could see to left and right. Not tho