In the end, staring through the branches at the small mourning party, he knows he always knew the answer to his question. He is too restless to stay. Death is only a change in existence; it is neither ending nor beginning, no matter what these Soft Ones may think. He will return to Hundse, to Gent.
The mourners file past him on the narrow track. One of them, a young female with hollow eyes and a body frailer than most, still cries her salt tears though the others attempt to soothe her. Did the infant come from her body? And if so, how was it planted there? Are they the same as the beasts, who also plant their young in and feed them out of the mother’s body? But though the Soft Ones resemble brute animals, he thinks it cannot be completely true. They speak, as people do. They gaze above themselves into the fjall of the heavens and wonder what has brought them to walk on the earth. This, also, true people do. And they do something he has seen no other creature, not RockChildren, not animal, not the small cousins of the earth nor the fell beasts of the ocean water, do.
They weep.
Alain woke to the profound silence of Lavas stronghold asleep in the dark and cold of a late winter’s night. But a tickle nagged at him, like a hound scratching at the door. Rage slumbered on. As he rose, Sorrow whuffed softly and clattered to his feet, following him. The other hounds lay curled here and there on the carpet or near the bed. Terror lay atop Lavastine’s feet, the two of them snoring softly together, in concert. Alain slipped on a tunic. He had heard something, or perhaps it was only the residue of his dream.
He latched the door carefully behind him and placed a hand on Sorrow’s muzzle. It was cold in the hall and cold on the stairs. A draft leaked up the stone stairwell, a breath of warmth from the hall. He followed its scent and at last, beneath the breathing silence of hall and stone, heard what he was listening for: the sound of weeping.
It was so soft that he only found its source when he was halfway into the hall, attracted by the red glow of hearth fire. In the alcoves, servants and men-at-arms slept; others would have returned to their own huts outside the palisade or down in the village. But a single heaped shape more like a forgotten bundle of laundry lay by the fire, shuddering.
The Eagle wept alone on her rough pallet by the fire.
Sorrow whined nervously.
“Sit!” Alain whispered, leaving the hound sitting in the middle of the floor with his tail thumping in the rushes. He approached the Eagle.
She did not notice him until he was almost upon her. Then, gasping aloud, she choked on a sob, started up, and reached for a stick in the fire.
“Hush,” he said. “Don’t be scared. It’s only me. Alain. Don’t burn yourself.”
“Oh, God,” she murmured, but she drew her hand away from the fire and used it to wipe her nose instead. He could not make out much of her face, but he could smell the salt of her tears in the smoky air.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
“Ai, Lady,” she whispered. “It wasn’t so bad, riding away. But now I must go back.”
“Go back where?”
She shook her head, trying now to dry her tears, but they still came despite her wish. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!”
She was silent for so long that he began to think he would have to speak, or that he had somehow offended her.
“Why should it matter to you?” she asked at last, haltingly.
“It should matter to every one of us when we see one of our kinsfolk lost in sorrow.”
“We are not kin, you and I.” The words came choked from her mouth. “I have no kin.”
“We are all the sons and daughters of God. Isn’t that kinship enough?”
“I—I don’t know.” She stirred restlessly and held out her hands toward the coals to warm them. Reflexively, he fetched some sticks from the woodpile just inside the door and fed the fire. She watched him, still silent.
“You don’t want to go back,” he said, settling beside her and pulling his knees up to his chest. Sorrow whined softly but kept his distance. “I saw you,” he added, “when you rode in from Gent, when the king was in Autun. You and the other Eagle. I don’t know his name.”
“Wolfhere.”
“Aren’t Eagles your kin?”
“In a way.”
“You’ve really no one at all?”
“My mother died about ten years ago. And Da is dead.” How bitter this admission came he could hear in the tight rein she held on her voice. “Ai, Lady, almost two years ago now. He was all I had.”