“You’d have gotten yourself killed,” the old man said, even more softly.
“You—what do you know about it?”
“Shh.” Gird felt a strong, bony hand on his forearm, and the faint warmth of the old man’s body leaning against his. In the brief silence, he was aware of other movement on the beggars’ steps, movement that might have been the restlessness of disturbed sleepers.
The old man’s body was warmer than he’d thought at first; along his right side he began to feel as if he sat before a fire. He had not thought he could sleep, but now he felt himself sinking into that warmth, as the exhaustion of the day and the night’s exertions landed on him. It was so comfortable—and he could not, at the moment, feel threatened.
He woke at dawn, when the great bells of Esea’s Hall rang out to declare the sun’s daily triumph. The sound crashed through him, shaking him out of peaceful dreams, and for an instant he thought he was being attacked. The old man’s hand on his arm quieted him. Gird looked around wildly. The others who had spent the night on the beggars’ steps were stirring, sitting up, stretching. The man beside him—was someone else. He jerked his arm back.
“Easy,” the old man’s voice said, out of a different face. “It’s just a face.” It wasn’t a very different face, after all: still old, still with the same basic shape. He looked less feeble, this morning, and was certainly not blind—“A miracle, remember? We came for that.”
“But—”
“We should find something to eat.” The old man stood, and Gird unfolded himself, less stiff than he’d expected to be. “What is that?” the old man asked.
It was the tally the guard sergeant had given him. “It’s—I can get food, at an inn. A tally from the sier.”
The old man’s wispy white brows raised. “So—the sier himself. I knew it was important, but—”
Gird had had enough of the old man, who was certainly not the helpless, tortured creature who had aroused his pity the evening before. “I will share my breakfast with you, but then—”
“You wish I would go away. I worry you, don’t I?” That face was not guileless at all; Gird was more than worried. Whatever this was—and he was no longer sure it was a man and not some kind of demon—it kept forcing him into impossible situations.
“I have business,” Gird said, through clenched teeth. “I only wanted to help you, and—”
The thin hand, so very strong, slid under his elbow and gripped his arm as if to steady a fragile, tottering oldster. “And you think I’ve brought more danger on you, more trouble. And you think I was blind, as I know you are. Come along, Gird Strongarm—I know you, and you will know me better before this day is done.”
As before, he could not shake that grip, and found himself walking where the old man willed. To the public fountain, to wash his face and hands. To a cheap inn, where he bought hot, meat-stuffed rolls from the serving window, getting double the amount because he refused the ale that the servant offered. To a crooked alley, where they leaned against the bulging wall of a baker’s oven, and ate the rolls, while cats wound around their ankles, begging. The food steadied him, and restored the town walls and streets to their normal colors, no longer bright and scintillating as if he had a fever, but ordinary, subdued, under a gray wintry sky.
“You are better now,” the old man said, still clutching his elbow. Gird looked down at him.
“In body, yes. But you—what are you?”
“What I told you. A priest of Esea, presently in difficulty with his fellow priests. You have my gratitude for your service—”
“You didn’t need me!” Fed, awake, alert, Gird had been remembering that whole sequence of events. “You only seemed hurt— you tricked me.”
“No.” The man’s voice was low. “No—I could have died. I almost did. You do not understand—you could not—all that happened to me, or what my powers are. But I was near death, when you found me: that is true. You saved my life.”
“But you healed—” Gird could not quite say it; his fingers wanted to make warding signs.
The man sighed. “Gird, we need to talk, you and I. You have done me a great service; so far I have done you only a small one, which you don’t yet realize. You do not trust me—and no, that’s not reading your mind; you smell of fear. But we should both leave this town, before we find more trouble than your strength or my powers can handle. Will you trust me for that?”
“I know I have to leave,” Gird muttered. “He said so, and—and I don’t know towns, that well. But I have tallies for two days more.”
“Which no one will be surprised if you use to get food for travel, and then leave. That’s what the sier would expect you to do. If you stay in Grahlin, they’ll begin to wonder if you have more people to meet.”
“Can I use the tallies again so soon?” asked Gird, staring at the ragged break on the end as if he thought it would speak to him. The old man chuckled, but it was a friendly chuckle.
“We don’t have to go to the same inn. Besides, the sier gives these tallies to many men—to anyone on his service that day. Didn’t you notice that the inn servant scarcely looked at you?” Gird had not noticed; he had been trying to see if anyone were following them, “You can use both tallies at one inn; tell them you want food to travel. They’ll be used to that.”
So it proved. His request brought no comment, and the servant handed over a cloth sack bulging with bread and cheese, and a jug of ale. On the old man’s suggestion, Gird had retained the bit of wood with the sier’s mark on it, left when the last of the tally was broken. That got him past the gate guards with hardly a glance. The old man had left ahead of him; Gird was tempted to go out the other gate, but felt it would not be fair.
The old man waited just out of sight of the gate, squatting in the windshadow of a tree beside the road. As Gird came alongside, he stood up and began walking with him, steadying himself with Gird’s staff.
“Let me start with what is strangest to you,” he said without preamble. “My powers and my knowledge.”
Gird grunted. He was trying to think how he was going to explain to the others that his foray into the town had been not only useless, but disastrous. They had lost their one contact; the sier knew his face. Worse, the sier knew he had active enemies. Yet they needed someone in this town; it was sitting right there where the trade road met the river road, and soldiers based here could ruin any plan he might make for the whole area. That might be more than a year away—he knew that—but still the town could not be ignored.
He jumped as the old man’s hand bit into his elbow. “Listen,” the old man said. “You need to know this.”
He did not need to know anything except how to get the old man to leave him alone, he thought sourly. They did not need a renegade priest of their enemy’s god who might revert to orthodoxy at any moment and turn them in. But the twinge of pain got his attention, and he listened unwillingly.
“I am a priest of Esea,” the old man repeated. Gird managed not to say that he knew that much. “You clearly think of Esea as a power of evil—from the way you reacted to my blessing. But Esea, in old Aare, where your lords came from, is the name we give the god of light. The sun is his visible form, but it is not the god.”
“Sunlord, Sealord, Lord of Sands and Chance …” muttered Gird, unwillingly.
“You learned that verse in childhood, no doubt. So far as it goes, it’s accurate enough. Our people worshipped Esea, the Sunlord— though only peasants called him Sunlord. Sealord, that’s Barrandowea. Ibbirun, the Sandlord—more feared than worshipped. And Simyits, god of chance and luck. We had other gods, many of them, including your Lady, Alyanya the fruitful.” The old man looked at Gird calmly, as a man might look at an ox he was thinking of buying. “Tell me, what do you have against Esea?”
“Esea’s the lords’ god. He brings droughts, dries springs, overlooks wells. The merin hate him, and he withers the flowers we bring to please them.”
“I see. Because you think of Esea
as the Sunlord, and in dry weather you see more sun?”
Gird shrugged. “I’m no priest. But so the grannies said, in our village. If there’s a drought, never let a priest of Esea near the wells: they’ll call the sun’s curse on them, and the water will fail.”
The old man snorted. “Do they think priests need no water? That we need no food, so a failing harvest means nothing?” Then he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. It’s natural enough, that you’d blame outlander gods for your troubles, and even more natural, when your rulers are as bad as they are.”
“Yes, but you—”
“I’m human. As human as you are: not a demon, not a god. I am of the old blood, of Aare—kin to your lords, if you look at it like that.” He walked on a few paces, glanced sideways at Gird, and said, “I see you do look at it like that. And no wonder. But there is much you do not know. The old Aareans had powers, all of them, which none of your people had. Now this cold land has thinned our blood, some say, or the gods of your people have sought vengeance. I think all that is ridiculous.”
Gird fastened to the little he had understood. “You are the same blood as the lords—as that sier, or my old count?”
“Not close kin, but of the same origin—from Aare across the sea.”
“But—I have seen no powers, in the lords.” Even as he said it, he remembered the uncanny light that had come to a dusty, dark storeroom when the sier willed it. “Except—”
“Except last night. First with me, and then with the sier.” He caught Gird’s hand as he was about to make another warding sign, and said, “Stop doing that. It won’t work, because I’m not what you think, but it is annoying. You’ll convince anyone on the road I’m an illwisher.” There was no one on the road, before or behind. Gird scowled. The old man sighed. “Gird, our people had power, and now most of them don’t, or they have little. I have, and the sier has, and of course I know about the sier—I have known him for years. We have talked together, dined together—I’ve been his guest—”
Gird struggled to break the grip on his wrist; the old man was feeble—had to be weaker than he was—but he could not get free. He yanked back again and again, panting, without success. The old man merely smiled at him, a sunny, friendly smile of perfect calm and joy. “Let—me—go!” Gird said finally, when force had not worked.
“When I’m sure you have understood what I’m saying. Not until.” The same quiet smile, but Gird felt the threat behind the words.
“Understood, or accepted?” he asked, still angry.
“Understood. Esea’s Light, Gird, if I had wanted to charm the wits from you, I could have done it any time.”
“Could you?” He glared at the old man, wondering if that had been the answer all along. Had he been charmed into thinking the man hurt, charmed into taking him into the city, charmed into going unarmed into that trap? That peaceful smile seemed to fill his eyes, as if the old man were suddenly larger; warmth and peace seeped into his mind, washing the anger away. But he clung to the core of it, stubborn as a stone in the earth: he might be shifted, but he would not be changed. The old man sighed, at last, and that imposed warmth and peace left him abruptly. He was shivering in a cold wind, aware of sleet beginning to sting the left side of his face.
“Well. Maybe I couldn’t, at that. Not now, anyway. The gods must know what they’re doing.” The old man shivered now, too. But he was still smiling, if ruefully.
Gird looked around. They were on a rise, where the wind could get at them from any angle, and the sleet bit into him. The road ran on eastward, past an outcrop of rock that offered no shelter. Downslope to the right, downwind, scrubby grass thickened to knee-high scrub, and he thought he could see trees in the distance. “I’m cold,” he said. “I’m going to find shelter, and if you won’t let go of me, you’ll have to come too.” He was sure he could drag the old man, if he couldn’t get rid of him.
“Good idea,” the old man said, and nothing more until they had tramped through the scrub into the meager shelter of a leafless wood. Gird hunkered down behind a fallen log, and dug into the dry leaves. Deep enough. He pointed, and the old man crouched there, releasing Gird’s wrist. Gird found fallen branches to stack on the windward side, then piled leaves to cut the wind under the log. He kept working, as the sleet came down harder, to cut poles and make a low roof over them. The first flakes of snow floated between the chips of falling sleet as he finished, and crawled under it.
The old man had dug out the leaves to form a nest, and huddled in it. Gird put the sack of food and the jug where he could reach them, and squeezed close to the old man. He was not as cold as Gird had expected—but then he had never been as feeble as Gird expected. Beyond the edge of the shelter roof, more flakes danced. The hiss and rattle of sleet lessened, and that magical silence that heralds falling snow spread around them. Snow clung to the edges of fallen leaves, forming a fantastic tracery until more snow covered the ground in unbroken white.
Gird stared at it. He had slept fireless in winter before, and he had food and ale, but how was he going to get back to his troop? He had expected to spend some days in the town—to leave with enough food to reach the next town—and then to return, with a guide, through three different bartons. He had come to the town from the south; now he was east of it, in a country he had never seen, which was rapidly disappearing under snow. Snow in which his tracks would be all too obvious, in which he could not hope to travel unnoticed. In which he could starve, or die of cold. Beside him, the old man snored, the easy sleep of the old. He was warm enough, and unafraid—and what did he have to be afraid of, if he could heal himself of such wounds as Gird had seen? If they had been real.
Gird reached out and pulled the sack of food to him. Don’t look too far ahead, his Da had said. There are times to plan for planting and harvest, and times to eat the food at hand, and be grateful. Inside were bread, cheese, a slab of bacon, an onion. He looked at the sleeping man, and sighed, and put the sack aside again. They could share it when the old man woke.
As it happened, the old man woke before he did; Gird had not meant to fall asleep, but the silence and monotony had done it. Outside the shelter was dark, cold, and the silence. Within, the old man had made light, and radiated warmth like a hot stone. He was holding his finger—his glowing finger—to a ragged chunk of bacon, which sizzled and dripped onto bread beneath it. It had been the smell of cooking bacon which roused Gird, and it was the sight of it cooking at the old man’s touch which sent him out into the dark and cold in one panic-stricken rush.
“Come back!” the old man cried. “I was cooking it for you!”
Gird crouched in the snow, uncertain, shivering… half with fear, and half with the cold. Snow caressed his head, his cheeks, his arms and hands, icy kisses like those of the snow maidens that lived in the far north. The old man’s head poked out of the shelter.
“It’s all right. It won’t hurt you. I promise.” What good was the promise of someone who could cook bacon with his finger, and make light out of nothing? What good was the promise of someone who could change faces? But the smell of the bacon went right to the pit of his belly; his mouth watered. A lump of snow fell on his head, and he shuddered. Fear and warmth and food, or cold and hunger and—more fear. He was moving before he knew it, back to the shelter, praying fervently to whatever gods might be out this dark night to protect him from one old man.
Once face to face with him again, Gird could find nothing specific to fear. His hands were the gnarled and bony hands of any old man, holding out now a chunk of bread with a chunk of hot bacon on top. Gird looked at the food, but did not take it. “We must share,” he said hoarsely.
“I don’t like bacon,” the old man said, almost wistfully. “A slice of a lamb roast now, or even beef—but I never could eat bacon without trouble. Go on, you take it.”
Gird looked him in the eye. Could he not know the customs of Gird’s people? Were their people so different? “We must share,” he said again. “I cannot take food
from you, if you do not take it from me.” Or rather, he thought to himself, I will not take it and put myself in that kind of relationship.
The man shrugged. “It was yours to start with, I merely cooked it. You don’t prefer it raw, do you?”
Gird sighed. Either he was ignorant, or he was being difficult. His head ached, and he didn’t want to explain it, but he was going to have to. “It’s important,” he said. “You cooked it; that means you have the hearth-right, the fire-right. I cannot take—no, I will not take your food unless you take some from my hand, because that would mean you were my—you had the right to give or withhold food, and I needed your protection.”
“Oh.” The old man looked surprised, but drew his hand back. “Is that why your people first brought food to ours when they came?”
“Did they?” Gird had no idea what had happened when the lords first came. “What did your people do?”
“Made a very large mistake, I think,” said the old man, as if to himself. “What should they have done?”
“Were they seeking aid in hunting, or against an enemy? Or were they starving?”
“No—at least not as the chronicles tell it.”
“Then if they wanted an alliance of hearthings, they should have offered food of their own, and all shared.”
The old man pursed his lips. “And what would it mean to you, if they ate the food offered, but offered none.”
“That is the way of accepting the giving hearth as the leader— as the protector.”
“Could they offer something else, in exchange? Arms, protection?”
Gird shook his head. “No—what protection could someone without food offer? The strong hearth has food to offer; the weak accepts it, and gives service for protection. If they wish friendship, it is as I said: food shared, both ways. Or more, if more than one are meeting. Famine rule, that can change things, but not always.”
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