Exile's Challenge by Angus Wells Page A

the crowd, through the shouting bustle of friendly greetings. “What have I done to make him an enemy?”
    â€œNothing that I know of.” Arcole shrugged. “But even so … Watch your back around him, eh? I’ve seen that look before, in the eyes of men who sought my death.”
    Then he laughed as Davyd’s face fell, and hung an arm around the young man’s shoulders and said, “But I’m still alive, no? By God, we’re all alive—against all odds—and come amongst friends.”
    Of that, save for Taza, there was no possibility of doubt: they were crowded round with cheerful faces and before long found themselves seated by a fire on which meat roasted, flasks of tiswin passing round, and they the guests of honor.
    They were introduced to Arrhyna—Rannach’s wife, as they understood, and who was, Davyd thought, almost as beautiful as Flysse, with red hair like his own, save hers was darkly burnished copper and his bright as a new-picked carrot. She was sweet and gracious in her skirt and tunic of soft hide, with dark, doe eyes that swooped lovingly on her husband and were answered with glances no less adoring.
    Davyd wondered if he should ever find such a union.
    And then there was Lhyn, who sat between Morrhyn and Rannach, and was older, with silver in the gold of her hairand lines on her smooth cheeks and about her eyes. For all her smiling generosity, she had an air of contained sadness, and also of pride—as if she had lost things or people but also won, and was not sure which were better. And Yazte came with his fat and beaming wife, Raize, who was plump and rounded as her husband and no less cheerful, and plied them and her husband with food and tiswin—like, Davyd thought, some busy Bantar tavern wife who’d see her customers eat and drink their fill. And also Kanseah, who seemed to have no wife, for he sat alone; and Morrhyn and Kahteney, who neither came with women. And a warrior called Dohnse, who also sat alone within the circle, and seemed shy as Kanseah.…
    It was happiness and confusion, mingled. Davyd ate and drank, and wondered where the future might lead.
    Morrhyn—he was sure—had spoken of dreaming together: of some oneiric union beyond his immediate understanding, which should gift him with … he could only think of revelation … some order that lay like God’s will somewhere beyond his immediate comprehension, like the light of the rising sun dispelling mist and night, promising the clarity of a sunlit day. But yet it was as if, even as he sat with succulent meat in his mouth, a cup of tiswin at his elbow, and friends all around him, there existed a dark dawn none there, not even Morrhyn, could see.
    He was not sure of it, himself; only that it came: of that, somehow, he was certain. Suddenly, as he sat with these new-won friends and ate their meat and drank their tiswin he
knew
that he
would
see it, and that it was his future, and Flysse’s, and Arcole’s, and Morrhyn’s, and—he looked around the circle of smiling, laughing faces—Kanseah’s and Yazte’s: all of them.…
    He had seen it in Taza’s eyes: it came. He felt it in the surety of his blood. It was in the laughter of the Matawaye and the color of Arrhyna’s hair, the shade of the sky and the lines on Lhyn’s face. But he could not name it, or—without proper comprehension of their language—explain what he felt. What he
knew
.
    So he waited for further explanation, afraid he had it wrong and unsure what to say—even had he the words toexplain it—save thanks for the food and the tent he was brought to when the feasting was done, which was his alone. Flysse and Arcole were given another, which was a kindness to them and chaos to him, for he needed to talk but was embarrassed to interrupt what they might—surely!—be doing, now they were at last alone.
    And he would have