The Ghost's Crusade

XXII. Drystan

The Inferi looked over to his side at the sullen-eyed squire riding beside him. "Are you all right, Eoran?"

Shrugging his narrow shoulders the young man replied, "Lasair went with Archer."

Not more than two days in to his hard press towards Whiteshire, Drystan had joined up with Farseeth's youngest squire at the small roadside inn that marked his first stopover. Trotting along the dirt road out of Morvayne into the unclaimed grassy plains that sat between it and Wardenfell, Eoran was dour as ever, but the Inferi had brushed it off as his usual attitude and the fact that Farseeth had ordered him west as well. The young man did not like the idea of journeying into the region where his family had been put to the torch over a foolish squabble between nobility and Farseeth had always obliged him by giving him duties that didn't require traveling any further west than Gendelheim. Now, though, it was apparent that it was something else entirely which was bothering him.

"He wasn't going to take the trials, right? Lasair, I mean. As an Éadoren."

"He would have but his mother had a baby girl last year," replied Eoran quietly. "Éador and pairs, you know. He decided he wasn't going to let his baby sister be a third child."

Farseeth's oldest squire was the third son of the Steward of Icemarsh, an Éador fortress city far out in the southwestern Herenveil Steppes. Horse lord superstition placed dire significance on odd numbered things, so rather than bring bad luck upon his family, Lasair had joined Antenox when he had come of age. It was actually quite a common thing in the steppes for the "odd" children to join the order, as their legends also said that Antenox could make the "odd" children "paired;" it was just as common for them to leave when their mothers gave birth to even-numbered children for the same reason. Despite the centuries-old tradition there were actually very few Éadoren Inferi—to them the City was the site of a great war between three gods, and treading there invited misfortune as well as the ire of the Éador's earth and sky gods, said to protect the pathway in to the City itself by sending violent winds, earthquakes, and floods to wipe out any who tried.

Drystan doubted it was common knowledge that Inferi made pacts with revenants from the City but he knew how such a superstition could come about. Wandering the steppes seeking out his mother's relatives after learning the truth about his own birth had garnered him quite a few strange looks. As the sole child of a dead woman, he was cursed to bear either a great or terrible fate according to the old wives' tales. What he never had been able to quite figure out was how everyone seemed to know he as an only child merely by looking at him. Most of the time they blessed him in the names of their gods and asked them to look kindly upon him before Drystan had a chance to open his mouth and introduce himself as the son of Etanna Cúlmarrin. He doubted it was because he looked anything like her. By all accounts he bore a striking resemblance to his father, though he had never found even the smallest portrait to make his own comparison.

"I didn't know that," said Drystan finally. "Healthy, I expect?"

"They named her Meara. She has red hair like he does."

"Remind me to congratulate him when we find him."

Eoran let loose a sullen sigh and yawned, "He's probably dead."

For a moment Drystan couldn't decide whether to be angry at the young man's offhanded comment or laugh at how it was exactly what Akkali would say in the exact same disinterested tone. "Well we don't know anything for certain yet."

"That's why I said 'probably'."

He shot the squire a sidelong glare. "I'm not going to like traveling with you am I."

Eoran's thin brown eyebrows arched in surprise, giving him the look of a scolded child. "Why not? I've not done anything wrong."

Laughing Drystan shook his head. "Smile more, Eoran! While there's still time."