Pelufer wasn’t all awake yet, and her refusal came out whiny and peevish. “We need those things to get started some where else.”
“Consider it a trade, then. Your spiritwood goods for that donkey and the food they’ve packed for the trip. And me.”
Pelufer snorted. “We don’t need you.”
“Jiondor thinks you do, so I’m going. I have only my cousins here anyway; otherwise I’m just like you.”
She knew that he meant having no parents or other family, but it came out anyway: She said, “You’re not.”
He nodded. “I know that much,” he said. “Now, you listen to me. You’ll want to come back here someday. You’re going to need people who can help you. Jiondor and Beronwy went to a lot of trouble for you today. I think that proves you can trust them. So I want you to tell them whatever it is before we go. You don’t have to tell me. You can tell me later, or not tell me ever, I don’t care as long as we’re all safe. But you owe it to them.”
“It’s not that kind of secret,” Pelufer said. “It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than owing people things. Anyway, we promised my father.”
“Your father’s dead, Pel.”
“Only mostly.”
He regarded her in silence. Then he said, “Maybe he’ll come with you.” His voice was low, as if he might embarrass himself and wanted as few people as possible to hear. “Maybe he’s always with you.”
The spirit wood was a long way from their house in Lowhill. The feeling she had gotten there was more than just the jabs and [95] punches of other people’s lives and selves. He’d been with her, in some way she didn’t understand. Not like right after he died, not like in the house he died in. But more there than any of the things she’d thought were haunts and now it seemed were only echoes.
“Maybe,” she said at last, and felt a cold wind blow through her, an intimation of profound things she didn’t understand.
Jiondor and Elora were bidding Beronwy good night—she was going back to spell whoever had been looking after their children. Elora joined Pelufer and Caille, and then Jiondor did, and the five of them sat together in the dark and the quiet for a while, and then Jiondor said, “I’m sending you to my cousin’s place below Gir Nuorin. Country’s a bit more rugged than what you’re used to, right up against the mountains there, but the water’s pure, not like this Druilor runoff that’s killing us. And it’s not so hot. If you’re not happy there, you send us word, and we’ll work out something else. Nolfi will see you as far as their place, make sure you’re settled in.”
Make sure we don’t run away the first night, Pelufer translated. Well, they wouldn’t. Not if this cousin was kind, and not too bossy, and there was work for them to do. Not the first night, anyway.
“In exchange for that, since we’re all traders here, I want the truth.”
Pelufer didn’t check with Elora before she answered. Elora’s head was down, she could see it from the point of her eye; she was tired, and she’d never been any good at lying. This was a job for Pelufer. “I can feel haunts,” she said. “I can tell how people died. I go to where the dead were, and their names come out of me, and I ... see things, or feel things, there’s no word for it ... I know things. About them.”
Jiondor considered this, then shook his head and said, “You went to the spirit wood with a gift like that.”
“It’s not a gift. Every time names come out of me it might give me away. I can’t stop it when it happens. If people knew I could do that, they’d be wanting me to talk to their dead, and find out things for them, and ...”
“You might make a good trade of that. Why not tell?”
“Because I promised my father I wouldn’t.”
“What did he think might happen if someone found out?”
She shrugged, lowering her lashes. “I don’t really know.” “They’ll use you,” he’d said. “They’ll control you, and use you, and your lives won’t be your own anymore.” Their lives had to remain their own.
“And all this time, you turned away from your friends, you kept to yourselves, all three of you, to keep this secret that you can talk to the dead?”
[96] She nodded. “Except I don’t think I can really talk to them. Hear them, maybe, but that’s not it either. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a thing I can do. Other things I can’t do.” She frowned. This part, the true part, she was trying to explain right, to make up for all she was leaving out, so they’d believe her when she said That’s it. That’s the whole secret. But she wasn’t doing it very well. She didn’t know how to describe it. She didn’t know how it worked.
“That woman wanted you,” Jiondor said. “I watched her close today, and it was you she wanted, Pelufer, not your sisters. No offense to your father, but I’ve seen drunks look at drink with less interest than that woman looked at you. Like a fever in her eyes. I don’t think she even knew why. Do you?”
“She wants to kill me,” Pelufer said. “Because I know the names of the people she’s killed. And her friend too.” She explained about the fit of names on Tin Long, about the man in the spirit wood, and all the while the back of her mind was saying, Good. This is good. It keeps them thinking and wondering about something besides Caille and Elora.
Jiondor opened his mouth to respond, but a terrible thought came to her and she cut him off. “They might—You were the one who—Suppose they—”
“Ah.” Jiondor gave a slow, cold smile and said, “No, I don’t imagine they will. But Beronwy and me might welcome them trying.”
“They’re killers,” Elora said. Her voice was dulled by the effort of what she had done in the tavern. “Someone should ...”
“You let me worry about that,” Jiondor said. “We’ll keep our end of the bargain, young Pel. You’ve told us the truth. I’ll keep it tucked in my own thick noggin. You get yourselves on that donkey. There’s food for a threeday in the smaller bag, and hay for old Bristlecone in the canvas sacks.”
Though his instructions were goodhearted and his manner kind, there was something in Jiondor now that made the chill go through Pelufer again, and she was relieved to be on the donkey and away up the High Road, with Highhill passing to the left and Pointhill to the right, and Nolfi talking softly to the donkey from where he walked up at its head, and Elora’s arms around her from behind and Caille snugged close in front. It was still the spirit days, the between-days, the dark of the moon. The way was black between blacker hills, and it would be a long trip round the back of Highhill and over to the Knee Road on the narrow dirt path. Caille’s head lolled against her chest, and Elora’s bobbled loosely, giving a half-snore now and then in her ear.
She woke when the dim, scattered lights of Gir Doegre were [97] almost lost behind them, like guttering candles engulfed in mist.
Goodbye, Mamma, she said, deep in the privacy of her heart.
Goodbye, Padda.
She listened with every sense she had, but felt no answer.
The boy crept out of his bedchamber as his mother was chalking a casting circle on the door of the common room. The stone looked smooth, but the chalk bounced over tiny bumps and the line came out raggedy. He smiled. His lines came out raggedy, too. “You’ll never be a wordsmith, my boy, with lines like that,” his father would say. “Nor illuminator, either.” “Why not?” his mother would reply, with a funny sidelong look at their own illuminator—their pledge, his other father, Ellerin. “It never stopped him.” They were always teasing each other. It came from when they were vocates together. Vocates were mages called to serve the Holding because they were powerful. Bright lights. He’d never seen the light in them. That was fair. They’d never seen the light in him either. But he wasn’t six yet. Almost. As good as. But not quite. When he was six, he might show a light. “You’ve a whole year of being six ahead of you,” his mother would say. “It might not show right away.” But it would. He knew it would. The moment he turned six, there it would be. He’d look down at his hand and see it glowing. He’d look up and see
his mother glowing, and his father, and his second father. His mother would hug him and say, “I knew it!” His father would slap him on the back, a little too hard like he always did, and Ellerin would ruffle his hair, like he always did. It wouldn’t be that different from not showing a light, except for how proud they’d be. And maybe then they’d let him go out into the Holding instead of keeping him here all the time. They kept him here because they loved him, they said. They said he could explore the Holding when he was older. He’d slipped out of their chambers once, and [99] nothing bad had happened, there was only a corridor with walls and lampwells the same as in their chambers, but he still felt the sting of the spanking. His mother had cried after she was done being angry. He was afraid she would cry if he showed a light, too. He knew she didn’t want him to. He didn’t understand why. When she saw it, she’d be happy. She would. When he was six.
“How many days until I’m six?” he asked. They’d settled down on the casting circle now, after all the big rush and excitement. They made a triangle, the way they sat. Circles and triangles were powerful. Their proxy rings had circles carved inside a triangle, and the faces of the rings were circles too. That meant that they were powerful enough to be proxies for the Ennead. Proxy meant “in place of.” It meant you could do things the Ennead would do if there were more of them, and there had to be proxies because nine wasn’t enough to do everything. Being proxy meant you could speak for the Ennead, except that there were two kinds of proxies, reckoners and warders, and his parents were warders, which meant they stayed here in the Holding to work for the Ennead. They had to stay in the Holding the way he had to stay in their chambers. That was fair. But he’d like to get a proxy ring, only be a reckoner instead. Reckoners went out into the world to speak for the Ennead. The silver rings shone in the lamplight. That shine was something he could see. When he was six, his whole body would shine like that. When he showed a light, it would be so bright that the Ennead would call him to be a vocate, and then he could get a ring and be a reckoner. And wear black. He’d never seen black clothes. They’d be mysterious and powerful. His parents always wore white, but reckoners got to wear black.
He had startled them. They hadn’t heard him come out. “Go back to your chamber,” his father said, as Mother set out the last of the quills and started mixing pigment in a saucer. Preparing the casting materials. That always took a little while. The binder had a lot to do in the beginning, getting everything ready. He didn’t know if he wanted to be a binder, but if he drew squiggly lines then he wasn’t going to be an illuminator or a wordsmith when he showed a light, when he was six.
“How many days till I’m six?” he said again, peeved. This was important! What was all the rush about anyway?
Father whipped around fast and said “Now!” in a tone so sharp it didn’t sound like his voice at all.
It was like a stranger had spoken. He fell back a step, stung. There was a pained looked on Mother’s face, but she didn’t stop what she was doing. He looked to Ellerin for aid. Ellerin always stuck up for him. Ellerin always made a joke to take the edge off any scolding. But Ellerin’s eyes were closed. He was meditating. They had to meditate before important castings. Ellerin called it “centering.” He had to pull into himself so that the guiders would [100] form to show him the way to illuminate the manuscript when his turn came. It was like he wasn’t even listening.
The boy turned wide eyes back on his father, afraid of the angry face he’d see, and Father seemed to sink into himself.
“You were born in sowmid,” he said. He looked very tired. “In a few breaths it will be Ve Galandra. That’s the sowmid equinox. It’ll be soon, son. Too soon. Spirits willing, the light will skip you. Being lightless keeps you safe. Now, what did I say to you before?”
“To stay in my bedchamber. But I like to watch you cast!”
“Not this time, son. Do as I say, please. We must cast this warding now. It’s very important.”
An emergency, they’d said. It was an emergency. They’d never had an emergency before. He had memorised a lot of instructions about what to do in different emergencies—if there was a fire, if someone came into the chambers he didn’t know, if he was ever left alone for a very long time. But he didn’t know which kind this was, and there was no stranger in the common room, or smell of smoke, or anything scary or different at all. It made no sense.
He opened his mouth to object, then closed it. His father was always fair. His father had answered his question. Now he should be a good boy and go inside.
Just one more question. One more question, one more answer, and he would go and be good. “Which day of sowmid, Father?”
Mother and Father looked at each other. There was a little pause. They never thought he noticed things like that, but he did. It meant he’d made them think of some important grownup thing they didn’t want to tell him. Then Father said to Mother, as if it summed up all the sadness in the world, “We know the triplets’ day, yet we don’t know our own boy’s.”
“You don’t know?” he burst out. Was that what they were keeping from him? Was that the terrible thing that always hung over them? Was that why he couldn’t go outside their chambers? Because he didn’t have a day of his own?
“Oh, my sweet,” Mother said, swaying toward him as if to take him in her arms ... but she couldn’t get up, you weren’t supposed to leave the casting circle once you sat down, and her hands were pressed together into her shins so hard he could see the white where the blood couldn’t reach. It frightened him. He went to her. He couldn’t help it.
“Pirra ...” Father warned.
“I know, I know,” she said, as her arms and her scent—wax and oak gall and linseed oil—closed around him. She buried her face in his hair and he could feel the damp of tears seeping through to his head. “But if we fail ...”
“We should have brought the others in,” Ellerin said. “If we fail, there won’t be anyone to ...” He trailed off in a way that the boy knew meant [101] he was talking with his face or hands, but he twisted around too late to see. Then his mother took him by the shoulders and stood him up straight, facing her.
“We can’t fail,” she said to Ellerin. “But he knows what to do, if we do. Right, sweetling? What did I tell you?”
“I’m Flin,” he recited, the words to say if strangers came and he couldn’t hide or run or there was a fire and he had to go out into the corridor. “My mother was called a vocate. She brought me here and told me to hide. Now I can’t find her.”
“What’s her name?” his mother said.
“I don’t know. She’s Mother. I call her Mother.”
“What does she look like?”
“She’s tall and fair.”
“And what else?”
“That’s it. That’s all I’m to say, ever. I’m Flin ...”
“It’s madness,” Father said.
Mother glanced at him sharply. “It will keep him alive.”
“His foster name would alert the others—”
“We can’t trust the others now. We can’t trust anyone.”
“I’m not Flin?” Flin said softly, hopelessly confused and now frightened too. He had no name and no day. ...
“Of course you’re Flin, my sweet. You’re you, you’re Flin, you know the words to say, that’s all that matters.”
“There’s no purpose to this confusion, Pirra, there’s no light in him, no danger to him, I’m telling you—”
“We can’t have this debate again,” Ellerin cut in. “We must begin now, or Pirra’s fears will come to pass.”
“I’m Flin,” Flin whispered.
His mother pushed him gently from the circle. He walked past his father, too scared to lower his eyes, and turned only once, when he got to the door of his bedchamber, to see them bent over their casting, Father’s quill scritch-scritching on parchment, Ellerin so centered he seemed no longer to be there at all, the skin around Mother’s eyes and mouth scrunched and stretched as if waiting for her wor
dsmith and illuminator to do their work was the hardest thing she had ever done. Then he went into his bedchamber as he’d been told. His head swam with names and days. He’d only wanted to know how long he’d have to wait before he showed a light. He didn’t want to know that names and days were more important even than that, not if they wouldn’t tell him why. He crawled into his bed, missing his mother’s hand smoothing his hair, smoothing him into sleep, his father’s firm weight on the bed until the weight of dreams took him. He loved bedtime. Now he slept and rose alone and stumbled to the doorway and found they were still casting. “We might be at it till midday or even midnight next,” he remembered Ellerin [102] saying, and Father saying, “I’ll set out food for him, he’ll be all right.” The food was there on the side table, cream and honey and dry cooked wheat, and he knew they’d want him to eat it, so he mixed it and spooned it into his mouth and swallowed it, and by the time it was gone he was more awake, and had decided to make a list of questions for them to answer when they were finished. He would present them like a good proxy, in order. He would be very grownup about it, and they would answer because they’d see that during the night he’d grown up, he’d grown a night closer to being six.
Outside, they said, it got light during the day and dark during the night, as if the spirits lit a great candle overhead, in something called the sky, and at the end of the day it had burned down and things got dark until the spirits lit another. Well, that was how he thought of it. He so wished to see the sky. He wished it so badly, and he felt so alone, that he started to cry, and went to the doorway again, but he could hear the quick, soft, sure whisper of Ellerin’s brushes over parchment and knew they were still casting, still, how long could it take, castings took forever but he’d slept and woken, they never took that long, and then he started to get angry, but he heard his mother’s weary voice raised in bindsong, the voice as warm and delicious as hot porridge, and that meant the casting it was ending, the binder always sang last and then the manuscript went away and the casting was complete. So he went to the doorway again, thinking it was pretty silly going back and forth and back and—
The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination') Page 12