True words, although he hadn’t understood them then.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“Lavastine’s heir? It transpired that he was not after all Lavastine’s son, bastard or otherwise. Lord Geoffrey’s daughter was named as heir. The one called Alain might have been punished more severely, but it wasn’t possible to prove that he had had a deliberate hand in the deception. Some declared that Lavastine had forced the youth to accept his position as son. Most in the county praised his stewardship. The king chose to be merciful and allow the lad to serve him another way. He marched as a Lion into the east. After that, I do not know.”
“He showed me kindness. I can’t forget that.”
He returned to the locals, who had obviously explored this site before and in the intervening years scavenged what they could from the wreckage. On the highest windswept curve of the bluff he stood knee-deep in windblown grass as he surveyed the land.
Liath and her companions had struck out across the old channel, following the path made by the massive chain. Beyond the riverbed, to the east, lay rockier ground, and beyond that a delta of reeds and drowned grass. In the other direction, to the west, had once lain pastureland and broken woodland, but these had turned to marsh, and now the scrub and trees soaked their feet in water. North, the old tidal flats that had once surfaced only at low tide gleamed in barren splendor, completely exposed. The sea shone in the distance, visible as a shimmer of silver running below the pale horizon of cloud.
“Snowmelt,” said the crone. “Floods from the melt cut those little channels through the flats. There was plenty of snow last winter and too much rain in the autumn, before the great storm. But we’ve had no rain for planting season.”
“It’s like the heavens closed right up,” said her cousin, who was quieter but more inclined to fancy. “Like they was a wineskin run dry.” He nodded to himself, and grinned, liking his comparison.
“You’re quite the poet!” retorted his skeptical cousin. She was steward at a royal estate and had, as a child, spoken once to King Arnulf the Younger himself, so she had no hesitation in addressing a new king young enough to be her grandson. “What it means to us, Your Majesty, is that we’ve had no planting season, what with this frost and every night so cold. Will these clouds ever leave?”
Sanglant had no answer. The tides of destruction had reached farther than he had ever dreamed possible. He could only assess the changes in the land and, with his progress, ride on through a world transformed.
