This morning’s dream was different, and he lay close-eyed below the dark-timbered ceiling recalling its particulars. In this dream, she had noticed him. Always before she had been indifferent. The setting had been one dream-familiar, a dark forest lit by tilted columns of sunlight spearing through the trees to brighten the ground briefly, just like the forest around Prospero’s Argylle. The trees were hung with mosses and ferns, and the place was ancient and weary.
Freia stood very still by one of the trees, a drawn longbow in her hands, the arrow nocked and ready to be loosed. She gazed fixedly at something Dewar couldn’t see. Her clothes were plain and sensible for hunting or riding; high boots, divided skirt. Dewar, in the dream, moved to stand at her shoulder to see what her quarry was, but she lowered the bow and turned her head to stare at him.
In the dream, they were eye-to-eye, though he knew she was smaller than he, and her look was penetrating and unavoidable.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked her in the dream.
“You want me to forgive you,” she said.
“I think of you often,” he said. “Tell me where you are, Freia. Tell me how you fare.”
“You forced me to live for your sake, not mine,” she said. “The Balance must be kept.” She lifted the bow and drew the string and arrow back again lightly, smoothly, and loosed the arrow, and Dewar followed its flight to see it strike Prospero, who stood as a tree at the other side of the clearing, and Freia shot quickly again and again, liquidly graceful, her draw and release flawless, and the trunk of Prospero was a very pincushion of shafts. Dewar grabbed at the last arrows, which he knew were meant for Prospero’s eyes, and Freia seized them back and said, “All must go home,” and when he tried to keep them from her he knew that the only way to do so was to put them where she would not take them, and so he drove them into his heart.
Dewar woke.
He had never dreamt persistently about anyone before, not even about his hateful, raging mother when he had fled her house and her curses in Aië. Day and night Freia fretted at the corner of his thoughts; he could close his eyes and summon up her image in any instant, hear the sound of her voice in his mind, no matter what other business he sought to concentrate on; and when he slept she ruled his dreams. Was this the price he would pay for endowing her with life? Was this what half-a-life meant, that each shared all of the other’s? He wondered whether she dreamt of him, wherever she was.
His fascination distracted him from his sorcery. On this wet morning, alone in the tower, he lay staring at the glistening rain-trails on the pane and indulged that part of him that refused to let go of her. He recalled her sweet voice, her generosity; he conjured for his senses the softness of her cheek and the ripe curve of her lips. She was a masterwork of the Art, so surpassing Art as to befool Nature, and so surpassing the common run of Nature as to require no artful enhancement.
But she was not Art, but Nature, now. More than merely existing, she lived, felt, reasoned. If she had ever been nothing more than a sorcerer’s cleverly-constructed experiment, she had changed; she was genuinely human, truly alive, and Dewar suspected she had been for a long time—if not always. She had a soul, that had persisted and been reclaimed.
Reclaimed, but lost again: where was she? He had half-expected to find her as he left the city; he had followed the shore road and crossed the icy, perilous causeway. He had seen only snow and ice and water, and he had gone on expecting to see her any instant, anywhere, as he rode to his retreat, the Tower of Thorns. Seasons had passed and he knew nothing of her; he feared to seek her actively, for what he might find and for what might find him. She never came, but the dreams made her a presence.
Once he had sealed a few drops of her blood in a wax-sealed crystal bottle, spherical in shape; that blood had been the basis of the precarious spell he had shaped to bring Freia home, when he had freed her from Landuc. He’d saved the sphere, of course. Dewar had put it in a little wooden casket in his workroom and he had not touched it, hoping that Freia would find her way to him—guided perhaps by the Stone. But the dreams were becoming too distracting. He had to know more; he had to see her face, hear her voice, behold her living.
Dewar swung his legs out of bed and went purposefully to the workroom, pulling on his dressing-gown as he went.
Freia’s cheek stung still when she thought of Prospero, but pleasant though Montgard was it was not home, and as kind and courteous as Gaston was, he was not Prospero. She wanted her own hearth in winter, her own bed, her own trees and flowers. Prospero was intertwined with all these things, his storm-growl voice or zephyr-soft whispers, the flash and darkening of his eye, the movement of his hands. Freia yearned for the quick illumination of his stories and observations and the slow, savorous way he recited poetry and gestes to her. His anger was terrible, but it was a familiar anger, whose rhythm of rise and fall, swift and violent, was familiar also. Surely he had not meant to strike her.
Snow came early, falling as she and Gaston arrived at his castle in Montgard the city, and Freia retreated to her winter napping. Mornings were when she most thought of her home. Something about languid waking, about her winter habit of lying curled half-dozing for hours after sleep was finally lost, made everything about Montgard more foreign when she finally rose and looked at it. The square stone geometry, the mountains crowding on every side, the tilled fields and rutted roads around the town, the tower-bells that counted time, and the bright-clothed people teeming everywhere were all strange to her eyes wanting high trees, the dark river, stillness.
In a few days she would have been here two years. Two years of Gaston’s kindness, of his comfortable hospitality and the warm, soothing domestic feeling of being beside a low-burning fire in a safe place. Two summers in Montjoie, on the steep-sided mountains that were like and unlike the ones at home.
Two years from home, and more counting all that time, nearly a whole winter, in Landuc. If she ever got home again, she would stay there, Freia swore to herself. Standing in a patch of midday sun, she poured hot water from the heavy ewer to the warmed silver basin and bent over to wash, untying the neck of her nightdress to sponge her shoulders and chest. As she towelled her face dry, her reflection floated in the water and shimmered in the rocking water. The image changed, darkening; the sunlight gathered into a ball at the bottom of the basin and popped like a bubble.
Dewar gazed at her, straight-on, biting his lip.
“Freia, this is sorcery, a Lesser Summoning, by which I can get sight and sound of you and you of me,” he said.
“Dewar?” she whispered, her eyes wide.
“Yes.” He had shaved off his beard; he appeared boyish without it. His voice rang metallic from the edges of the basin. She saw him as she might through thick glass, slightly blurred. “Freia, I’m sorry about what—what happened. What I said, what I did. It gnaws me.”
Freia leaned forward, gazing down into the water at Dewar. He had done this vision-making before, when they were looking for Prospero. But how had he found her this way?
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It was an evil thing for me to do, betray your trust and turn on you.”
She still said nothing, spellbound by the wonder of the sorcery.
“Should I stop speaking to you now?” he asked finally, tormented by the tension.
“No,” she whispered, and later she didn’t know why.
“Thank you. I—I wanted to know you were—are—all right. That’s all. Don’t—I hope you’re happier than you were in Landuc.”
“I’m not home,” Freia said to his image.
“Don’t go there. I believe Odile is there. She’s poisonous; she has Prospero in her net, and she’d do horrible things to you, Freia, if she could reach you. Stay away.”
“I want to go home,” she replied softly.
“I know. I’m sorry, Freia—”
“I can’t. I don’t know the way,” she said, and swallowed tears and the ache-knot below her throat. She twisted the linen towel in her hands.<
br />
Dewar moistened his lips and swallowed too. “Dear sister, I do not want to take you there now, not with Odile there,” he said again.
“You—” Freia began—and she jarred the basin. The image broke apart in ripples and was gone.
She waited for it to happen again, and the water remained water and the basin remained a sunlit silver hemisphere with no other activity than the rocking of the water within. Dewar had Summoned her as he had Summoned Josquin and Golias when she had been searching for Prospero with him. Could he be watching her as they had watched those two? Would she know if he were? Freia revolved slowly, looking at the windows, the door, the bed, the cupboard and chests and furnishings.
“Talk to me more,” she whispered to the air.
Nothing happened.
The door moved; Helma came in with a fresh-brushed gown, and Freia dressed, her inner senses straining to hear Dewar.
Freia heard nothing more from Dewar through the whole of the winter. She said no word of the Summoning to Gaston. He had, after all, been her jailer in the Palace, and pleasant and honorable though he was, kind even, he was still oath-bound to the Emperor Avril, and he might deem Dewar’s whereabouts as important as Prospero’s.
And now Dewar edged into her dreams. Often as she woke she would be confused, having just dreamt of him lying beside her, his arm around her, his breath against her neck; or she dreamt of flying on the gryphon Trixie’s back, conscious of the unfamiliar hardness of his body against hers. Often before she’d dreamt such dreams, which had always become terrifying rehearsals of Golias’s brutality or projections of Ottaviano into Golias’s role, but these latter dreams were innocent, flying over strange or clouded lands and waters, often leaving her with a feeling that someone had been speaking lovingly to her as she slept. She wanted to dream deeply of home and the forest, but instead she dreamt of Dewar and flying, though Prospero and Cledie and other folk of Argylle flickered through.
His brief conversation with her had told her much. Freia extracted every hint of meanings from it, fermenting it in her homesick heart through the winter. He was not with Prospero himself, as she had thought he must be, favored son and heir. Someone named Odile was, and Dewar thought Odile was to be feared. That Dewar would fear anything was novel. Who was Odile? Someone Prospero preferred to Dewar—that was incredible to Freia. Surely after allowing Dewar to see his precious books, Prospero would do anything to keep him there.
And Dewar apologized, freshening the ache of his insults and betrayal. Freia had passed two years barely thinking of him, and now he dominated her thoughts. She had thought of home, of Prospero—not of Dewar, the alien interloper. Interloper indeed—he had said he could not take her home now, and that implied that he could take her home, but chose not to, and it galled her that he could go home to the island and chose not to, and she wanted the place more than she wanted to breathe and could not have it.
Cambia had three words: “Taddy,” “Muvver,” and “Duck.” “Duck” had come first, in the miller’s yard where the large spotted ducks loitered and nabbled. Cambia was passionately enamored of ducks, and she followed the flock around until it seemed that she had become a duck honoris causae herself. She had been doing exactly that—following the ducks as they investigated a rain-puddle—when her mother arrived for one of her rare, usually brief, visits.
“Oh, there she is,” Otto said, pointing. “Playing with the ducks again.”
Luneté followed his finger and then stiffened. Cambia was filthy. Her hair was a mess of muddy knots. Her shins and knees were black. Her clothing was made of the solid, fine-quality wool and linen Luneté had provided, and the child looked like a peasant.
“Playing with the ducks again,” Luneté repeated in a cool voice. “She does this often?”
“She likes ducks. I told you. I gave her the duck on wheels because she likes ducks.”
“I didn’t realize she had adopted them as her preferred companions,” Luneté said. “Cambia! Come here.”
“Taddy!” Cambia obeyed happily. She fell only once, despite the uncertain footing. Luneté wrinkled her nose on seeing the fresh green smears.
Otto, grinning, swung down from the saddle and swung Cambia up and around in a swooping circle. “Upsy-daisy!”
“Eeeeeee!”
“Here’s Mother to see you, Cambia. Say Mother.” Otto had had a lot of trouble teaching Cambia to say Mother.
“Muvver. Duck.”
“This will not do,” said Luneté, staring at her child.
“The ducks—” began Otto defensively.
“The dirt. It is time to bring you to the castle, Cambia. We shall find a proper nurse for you.”
Accordingly, Cambia was borne back to the castle on Ottaviano’s saddle-bow. On arrival, she was bathed under the pump, stripped, carried naked indoors and bathed again in the hot baths, had her hair clipped, and was brought back to her father when she was free of duck-muck and tangles.
Otto took Cambia from Laudine, who had scrubbed her, and held her, leaning against the solar’s mantelpiece. “All clean and pretty like a princess,” he told her.
“That is more suitable,” Luneté said, coming in to them. “Hm. Her hair is getting darker.”
“It’s just dark when it’s wet. I think it’s going to be your color.” The baby-down was nearly black now, very pretty against Cambia’s fair skin and striking with her blue eyes. “You’re going to be a pretty lady like Mother, aren’t you, pet?”
“Taddy. Duck.” Cambia twisted in Otto’s arms, staring around at Luneté, and suddenly grabbed at the Countess’s necklace: a rope of pearls, given to her by the Baron.
“No!” exclaimed Luneté, and Cambia yanked back as her mother tried to pull the pearls from her fist; the string broke, and pearls bounced on the floor. “Don’t! Oh, you naughty girl!”
“No, no, Cambia, that’s Mother’s,” Otto chided her, moving away from Luneté; Laudine, tsking crisply, was picking up the loose pearls, gathering them into a handkerchief with the broken necklace. “I bet you’re hungry, lambkin. It’s dinner-time. Laudine, see if you can find her some food, would you? A coddled egg and bread, maybe a baked apple. She’ll get fussy soon. As fussy as she gets.” The maid curtsied and left.
“We must have someone to look after her at once. Her manners are atrocious,” said Luneté. She was fond of the broken necklace.
“Who did you have in mind for a nurse?” Ottaviano pried at Cambia’s still-closed fist and extracted two more pearls from it.
“Duck duck duck Taddy duck,” carolled Cambia.
“I hardly know, but I won’t have her rolling around in the mud like that,” Luneté said. “Hm. Sir Matteus has a granddaughter just widowed.”
“That girl whose sot husband fell from the bridge. Are you sure? She didn’t act too clever when I saw her.” Otto shifted Cambia, who was squirming.
“She has no children of her own,” Luneté said, “and no husband to distract her. I think she’d do very well. Do you know anyone better?”
“Duck Taddy.”
“Not here,” he said. “In Ascolet, yes.”
“I want her where I can watch her.”
“She’s Ascolet’s too, Lu. Don’t lose sight of that. The Emperor could award her either or both—depending on her siblings.”
“I don’t want another child now,” Luneté snapped. “This one has been more than enough trouble.”
“Duck,” said Cambia loudly, and Otto let her down. Naked, she pattered over to the bag of toys and clothes hurriedly packed at the miller’s house and took out her wooden duck. “Duck,” she said again, offering it to Luneté.
“Goose,” said Luneté, shaking her head.
The animal’s wings were wide and russet-bronze-gold. It was ripping apart a black-striped Montgard hind, tearing skin and flesh, crushing bones, and swallowing all, its beak red with the prey’s blood. The feathers were spattered with gore, and the eyes were a hot, angry yellow.
The gryphon shrieke
d, bloodcurdling and raucous, and a replying sharp whistle preceded the emergence, from the trees surrounding the landslide-meadow, of Freia. Smelling blood and the strange animal, Freia’s horse tried to rear; she kept her seat and put her cloak over the mare’s head. Then, the mare stilled but shivering, Freia dismounted and dragged her horse to a tree, looping the reins, never taking her eyes from the gryphon.
The gryphon was crouching now, its neck parallel to the ground, warbling softly.
“Trixie,” Freia said softly to the gryphon. Her voice shook. Could it be Trixie? There were no gryphons in Montgard—
It crooned.
“Pretty Trix, pretty Trixie,” Freia said, edging closer, “see, it’s me, it’s me—”
Trixie’s hind legs folded; she sat, still mantling her kill, and burbled unbirdlike.
“—did you look for me, Trix, as you looked for Papa? Ooo, fine kill, well done, pretty Trix …” More cajolery, and Freia was smoothing the gryphon’s throat-feathers, scratching her, talking to her in a rippling patter of repetitious flattery, and Trixie fawned and preened and warbled at the attention.
“I saw you, pretty Trix, saw you flying, yes, today, and I followed you, brave Trixie,” Freia whispered, “and they won’t like you poaching here, no, and that foot doesn’t look well. What did you do, poor silly thing, hm, a bite I’d guess.…”
Her mind raced as her mouth rambled. She had to hide the gryphon. She would hide Trixie, take care of the infection in her foot, make a harness for her, and—and—
And what?
If she could find Freia, could Trixie find Prospero again? Find home from here? Freia had never been sure how she did it the first time; the creatures of Argylle all seemed to be able to follow him and find him, and she had relied on that when she’d used Trixie to venture after her absent father. Captured by Otto, Freia had sent Trixie to find Prospero alone, and when she’d returned to Argylle with Dewar, Scudamor had told her that Trixie had come, stayed long enough to eat once, and flown away again.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 34