THREE DAYS LATER AT SUHEY CROSSED THE BORDER south of the two forts and Deviered Tigana for the first time since his father had carried him away as a child.
Only the most struggling musis came into Lower Corte, the panies down on their lud desperate fagements of any kind, however slight the pay, however grim the ambience. Even so long after the Tyrants had quered, the iti performers of the Palm khat Lower Corte meant bad lud worse wages, and a serious risk of falling afoul of the Ygratheher ihe province or at the boing in or out.
It wasnt as if the story wasnt known: the Lower Corteans had killed Brandins son, and they were paying a pri blood and money and brutally heavy oppression for that. It did not make for a genial setting, the artists of the roads agreed, talking it over in taverns or hospices in Ferraut or Corte. Only the hungry or the newly beguured to take the ill-paying, risk-laden jobs in that sad provin the southwest. By the time Devin had joined him Menico di Ferraut had been traveling for a very long time and had more than enough of a reputation to be able to eschearticular one of the nine provinces.
There was sorcery involved there too; no one really uood it, but the travelers of the road were a superstitious lot and, given an alternative, few would willingly veo a place where magic was known to be at work. Everyone khe problems you could find in Lower Corte. Everyone khe stories.
So this was the first time for Devin. Through the last hours of riding in darkness he had been waiting for the moment of passage, knowing that sihey had glimpsed Fort Sinave north of them some time ago, the border had to be near, knowing what lay oher side.
And now, with the first pale light of dawn rising behind them, they had e to the line of boundary s that stretched north and south betweewo forts, and he had looked up at the of the old, worn, smooth monoliths, and had ridden past it, had crossed the border into Tigana.
And he found to his dismay that he had no idea what to think, how to respond. He felt scattered and fused. He had shivered untrollably a few ho when they saw the distant lights of Sinave in darkness, his imaginatiolessly at work. I』ll be home soon, he had told himself. In the land where I was born.
Now, ridi past the , Devin looked around pulsively, searg, as the slow spread of light claimed the sky and theops of hills and trees and finally bathed the springtime world as far as he could see.
It was a landscape much like what they had been riding through for the past two days. Hilly, with dense forests ranging in the south on the rising slopes, and the mountains visible beyond. He saw a deer lift its head from drinking at a stream. It froze for a minute, watg them, and then remembered to flee.
They had seen deer iando, too.
This is home! Devin told himself again, reag for the respohat should be flowing. In this land his father had met and wooed his mother, he and his brothers had been born, and from here Garin di Tigana had fled northward, a ith infant sons, esg the killing anger of Ygrath. Devin tried to picture it: his father on a cart, one of the twins on the seat beside him, the other—they must have taken turns—in the back with what goods they had, cradling Devin in his arms as they rode through a red su darkened by smoke and fires on the horizon.
It seemed a false picture in some way Devin could not have explained. Or, if ly false, it was unreal somehow