Page 26 of Fate’s Bane

O R P ERHAPS, THE T ALE G OES LIKE T HIS

Once, a girl fell in love with her father’s ward, and they plighted their troth in the luck-hound’s wood.

With their bond came a gift—which may not have been a gift but a curse—which may not have been a curse, only luck—which may not have been any of these things at all—that held the destiny of all on that field.

They snared even themselves in the web of their Makings, caught between the young warrior with the heavy soul and that chief burning bright with vengeance.

Their love spelled the doom of Clan Aradoc.

Their love meant the end of Clan Fein.

And how did they end, these great clans of Bannos, these rulers of all the fens?

They say Gunni Clan Aradoc’s blade drove itself into the earth when his sisters two knelt at his feet, held tight in the fates-bane’s grip.

They say when Garadin Clan Fein brought his sword up to settle his death-oath, his own daughter Agnir rose from her knees to the sound of a hundred hundred starlings, and their music gave wing to her voice:

“Father, please. I love them. Will you spare their lives for me?”

“His child’s life to answer mine,” said he. “So we swore it by the fates-bane.”

Agnir the Bold did not waver between her father’s blade and her brother’s, with her wife’s strong heart beating against her back.

“I cannot kill one brother to answer the death of the other. I will not,” said she. “Discharge the oath and claim my wife kin. Take his child as your own.” As she had dreamed in the Baneswood with Hadhnri, so could it be. Hadhnri took her hand.

“You are a snake who bites both ways,” said Laudir Clan Fein, who did not trust. She turned her blade on Hadhnri, and Agnir stepped between, her father-sister’s seax against her breast.

The chieftain’s voice cut between them. “You would fast yourself to an enemy of Clan Fein?”

“I would, Father. I have. Under the eye of the luck-hound itself.”

They say that the sight of the lovers’ clasped hands softened the heart of that grieving father. They say he was weeping when Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s arrow pierced his right eye, and that Agnir flew to him as he fell.

But they also say that Laudir Clan Fein did not weep for love of her brother-daughter, nor did she weep for her brother and his shrike-spear agonies. They say her rage jagged like a heron’s beak, once, twice, thrice, and that Gunni Clan Aradoc dug his own barrow as he failed to raise his blade.

And they say Hadhnri Clan Aradoc wept blood over his body in those brackish fields of Bannos until Pedhri Clan Aradoc came, not with knuckles but with axes bared to kill the kin of Garadin Fein—that girl who had once been his ward.

And that Hadhnri raised her brother’s sword—lighter in her hands than a willow leaf—to her own father’s throat, saying, “Let it be done, Father. Let it end.”

And that chief of all chiefs laid his cold weapons down in the bloody red fens of Bannos.