“Look behind you,” Aldron said. “Our dead are burning. There would have been more if I hadn’t broken this law. Even you might have been among them.”
Aliser took a step back. Aldron crumpled to his knees, and Alea slipped her arm around his waist.
“I would gladly have died,” Aliser said, “fighting among the Alilan of all the caravans, with my dagger and the strength of my body. That is how Alneth and Alnila commanded us to meet our enemies—not with a cowardly, twisted Telling.”
Aldron laughed. “You’re just furious that it was my power that saved you. My power, which is greater than any you’ll ever know.”
“Great power?” Aldira had to lean forward to hear Aliser’s voice. She saw Alea’s fingers dig into Aldron’s side. “Look at you. You can’t stand. If you weren’t leaning on her, you’d be face down in the sand. You may have power, but they’re punishing you for it—our Goddesses, who are no longer yours.”
Aldron swallowed; Aldira thought she heard it, in the silence. Even the cries of the wounded and the grieving had thinned to nothing in the falling darkness.
“And do the Goddesses speak often to you, Aliser? Was it they who gave you the right to pronounce judgment on me?” Aldron shook his head. “I cannot accept this judgment from you. You know nothing of—”
“Aliser is right.” Alea glanced up at Aldira. She looked ten years old again, her eyes wide and helpless, her mouth open. Aliser nodded once and crossed his arms over his chest.
Aldira kept speaking. She felt tears around the hard edges of her words and was too weary to be surprised. “You have always known what should and should not be, and you have always made light of this knowledge. Your power may indeed be considerable, but it grows uglier every time you misuse it.”
Aldron drew a quick breath, and Aldira held up a hand. “No—listen to me now. You may have saved us today. Tomorrow you may ruin us—even if you do not intend to. So you must never Tell change or destruction or creation again. If you are to remain among us, you must swear this.”
Aliser said, “Don’t give him this chance! And don’t believe any oath of his: he’s a liar who cannot feel remorse.”
“Aliser.” The crowd shifted after Alea spoke. Aldira noticed that Alea’s parents and sisters were in the first ring of onlookers. Her brother pushed his way forward to stand with them as Aldira watched.
Alea rose, though she kept her left hand on Aldron’s shoulder. “You’re angrier at me than you are at him. Let Old Aldira decide what should be done.”
Aldira felt them all looking at her, rustling and muttering as they craned to see her better. She remembered, in the moment before she spoke, that she had once relished being the one to decide. “Perhaps I am too lenient, but I say again: swear that you will never use your Telling power to effect any sort of change in the world. Swear this, and stay among us.”
Aldron put his hand up to Alea’s and their fingers knit and held. “I cannot,” he said, gazing up at Alea. She looked steadily back at him, her face pale beneath the light of the new stars.
Aldira waited for him to say more. She was suddenly dizzy. My wound, she thought, and knew that this was only partly true. But he did not speak again. He rose, holding both of Alea’s hands, and stood before them all.
“Then you will leave the Alilan,” Aldira said, loudly, slipping with relief into the space where only words existed. “You will leave and never again be welcome among us. And we will never speak your name—not even to curse it. You will be a silence to us. Beginning now.”
She turned away from him and from Alea, and for a moment her eyes were filled with darkness. The person who had been supporting her—Alon, she saw when her vision cleared, only a boy, whose Tellings were sloppy and too quick—stood and took her arm. She leaned on him, and he led her away, back among the crowd, which parted again then closed behind and followed. The Alilan of all the caravans walked together to the fires of their dead, and Aldira led them, holding a torch that guttered slightly, as if a wind had touched it.
“No.”
Alea thrust a tunic into an embroidered sack and did not look at her mother.
“Alea—no. Do not go with this . . . person.”
“Sleep here with us tonight,” Alea’s father said, and she shrank from the confusion and tenderness that tangled in his words. “Decisions hastily made one day can be unmade the next. Stay with your family, little foal.”
A belt, a pair of hide boots, a copper armring. Her mother’s hands fastened on the armring and pulled it away. “If you truly mean to go, you will not take Alilan finery with you. You will take nothing except what you must wear or use.” Aldana’s voice was flat and edged, both, like a dagger, and Alea lowered her head over her sack.
“Very well,” she said, so softly that she could hardly hear herself.
“Why?” her father demanded. She heard him pace to the wagon door and back toward her bed. He would be grinding his fingers through his red beard.
“Because,” Alea said, “I love him.”
Her mother grasped Alea’s jaw and turned her round to face them. “For how long?”
Alea’s throat was ash, and when she swallowed it was ash as well, rough and dry. “Since we were children, I think.”
“But you never spoke to us of this,” Aldill said. “Not even to your sisters. How could you keep this . . . love to yourself?”
Alea laughed. It was the only sound she could make that would be contained by the wood above her, and the air, and the distant net of stars. “And what if I had told you? ‘There’s a young man with no family and a dangerous power—may he eat at our fire tonight?’ You would have forbidden me to love him.”
“We would not.” Aldill put a hand to her cheek and held it there, his palm a hollow warmth. “We would have worried, yes, and perhaps tried to guide you to a more suitable young man—”
“Like Aliser.” She pulled herself away from him and walked to the door, which she opened.
“Yes,” her mother said. “And why not? He is a good, strong Alilan man, and he has loved you with a patience you do not deserve.”
“In that case,” Alea said, looking at Aldana for the last time, “he deserves someone better than me. And now he’s free to find her.”
They called her name as she ran down the wagon steps. Her siblings were waiting by the fire. One of her sisters clutched her hand, and both were sobbing, but Alea did not look at them as she fled. She heard Alder’s feet pounding close behind her for a time, but she ran faster, and soon no one followed her.
Aldron and his horse were waiting by Ralan in the Twin Daggers caravan’s horse line. Aldron was sitting with one hand raised to his horse’s face. Alea squatted before him and took his other hand.
“Can you ride?” she said. He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but the voice that came was not his.
“It makes no difference whether he can or can’t.” Alea rose and turned to Aliser. Five men stood behind him; she saw the separate glints of their daggers. “You can’t have imagined you’d leave the Alilan on horseback? Or that you’d stoke your sad little fire with wood hacked by Alilan daggers?”
“You can’t do this.” Alea backed up until Ralan nibbled at the cloth of her blouse. She put an arm around her horse’s neck, not looking away from Aliser’s face. “You have no right to take these things away from us.”
“Haven’t I?” More men were approaching, silently, holding torches and daggers. “He’s been cast out. You’ve chosen to go with him. Neither of you is Alilan now—so you must leave behind the things that made you so. Or I’ll force you to.”
Aldron laughed as he drew himself to his feet. “I see you required some support to make this threat. I’m flattered.”
Aliser’s eyes did not move from Alea’s. “After you walk away from this place, these men and I will join the rest of our people and ride in pursuit of the Perona army. We will face them ho
norably and Tell our triumph to the Goddesses. We will be forgiven.”
“Aliser.” She walked to him, slowly, willing him to keep looking at her, willing herself not to stumble. When she touched his hair—not as fiery in the darkness—he flinched, and she heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. “You’ve loved me so well, and I’ve needed this love. And though you may not believe it, I’ve loved you, in—”
“Stop,” he said between gritted teeth. “Say nothing more.”
“If the Goddesses can be forgiving,” Alea continued, feeling the tremor in her voice as if it were in the earth, “so can you. Please, Aliser—we’ve shared so many seasons, and you’re so dear to me, truly. . . .”
He blinked at her, lost, for a moment, frowning so that the freckles across the bridge of his nose seemed to flatten. Then he stepped back, away from her touch and her eyes, and said, “Go now. Now, Alea.”
Her horse and Aldron’s were surrounded by men. Ralan pawed at the sand and pulled his head away from the man who held him. Alea saw this, as she went to Aldron.
“Well, then, my little heartflower,” he said, and pulled her in to him.
They placed their daggers side by side on the ground, hafts out, as if giving them directly into Aliser’s hands. She glanced at her horse, so quickly that Aliser almost did not see it. He knew he should rejoice in her pain, but he felt nothing. The daggers lay on the sand, and his men stood solid as stakes around the horses, and his own horse waited to bear him into battle—but he felt nothing.
He watched Alea and the nameless man loop their arms around each other’s waists and lean their heads together. He watched them draw apart, but only a little; their hands were still touching as they began to walk. They walked along the line of horses, away from the torchlight. Soon he saw only the white of her blouse and leggings. He imagined her hair and limbs, darknesses slipping into a greater darkness, and he turned sharply and called out to his men.
As they gathered to return to the main camp, four notes sounded—a whistled fragment, nearly a melody. Aliser’s voice died mid-sentence as the notes came again, and again. He knew the almost-tune. He looked at Ralan, saw the horse toss his mane and flare his nostrils. When the last whistled notes had faded, the horse threw back his head and bellowed, his hoofs churning the air. “We’ll have to kill it, and the other too,” Aliser heard someone say, but he did not answer. “Aliser? Should we—”
“Leave me,” he said, and they did, one by one, until he was alone. They had taken all the torches, but he had no need of more than starlight for what he had to do. He picked up her dagger and turned it over in his palm three times. It would likely be sharp enough; she took care with such things.
Ralan was standing on all four hoofs now, his breath gusting from nostrils and mouth. Aliser walked up to him and laid a hand on his neck; he felt sweat and the coursing of blood beneath thick hair and skin. He drew the edge of her dagger across the place, and it was sharp enough.
SEVENTEEN
Nellyn woke to sun and birdsong. He did not open his eyes right away. He lay and listened to the singing, and to the rustling of wind through dry-tipped leaves. Some of the leaves had already fallen; he felt them crackle beneath him as he stretched and rolled onto his side. He still did not open his eyes. He listened for Lanara, who always rose hours before he did, just as he always walked or sat for hours after she had fallen asleep.
“It’s right, that you’re sleeping like this,” she had said once, a few months after they had left Luhr. “You were so sick when you were trying to sleep at the same time I did. This is more . . . natural.”
Nothing will be natural again, he had thought with a rush of pain and surprise that had subsided, bit by bit, as he breathed. She is right. This is how I spend my nights and dawns and mornings. This is the river that carries me now.When the journey began, it had been so difficult waiting for sleep. He had not strayed far from their wagon: too raw and frail, too alone. He had heard lynanyn and paddles in water and had known that these sounds were memories but also real now, somewhere. As they drew further and further away from Luhr, he had begun to wander more at night. He was less fearful listening to sounds that were not memories. Night creatures, wind, thunder: he listened and walked and found that his body was at home, again, in darkness.
Lanara was writing; he heard her writing stick scratching on one of the many pieces of parchment she had brought with them. He heard herb water bubbling as well, and smelled it, and he opened his eyes at last with a groan of thirst and contentment.
They followed the broad forest path while the sun edged westward. Its light fell through half-stripped branches, and Nellyn remembered other light, other places: a waterfall surrounded by jungle, a field of bare black rocks, a mountain wreathed in smoke, and spitting fire. This forest was the most peaceful place he had yet seen. The leaves shone as they turned in the breeze, and every sound seemed muffled, even that of the horse’s hoofs.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Lanara said, lifting her face to the sky. “I wouldn’t mind another few days of this.” But a short time later, trees and path ended at a plain of crackling gold.
“This is lovely too,” Nellyn said, wading into the grass. Lanara said nothing. He turned back and saw her sitting very still on the wagon’s bench, the reins slack in her hands. He turned again, following her gaze, and saw wooden walls and a tower, and smoke rising into the dark blue sky.
“This must be Galhadrell,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to reach it for another few days, but this is it—I’m sure. . . .” She looked down at him. “It’s been so long since we slept in a bed. And it’s not a very big town, not even as big as that one we stopped in when we were a week away from Luhr.”
“No,” he said, aching because he heard and saw her longing, and because she was trying so hard to be careful of him. “It looks like quite a nice size. So let’s go—it will be dark soon.”
The bed they found, in an inn so ancient it leaned, was a delight. It was high off the floor, with a straw-stuffed mattress and brown sheets worn smooth by travellers’ limbs, with flat pillows and a headboard that creaked. He had slept well in the wagon and on rock and cushions of vine or moss, but this bed lulled him even further away than sleep. He stayed in it for nearly two days and two nights. Lanara often joined him, sleeping and not sleeping. Mostly he lay alone, looking at the room as he had once looked at the clay walls of his hut. These walls were plaster, white smudged grey by the soot from the fireplace across from the bed. The floorboards were cracked and dotted with holes through which, Lanara had discovered, the dining room below could be glimpsed. She left the shutters open in the morning; he woke to sunlight and cloud-streaked blue.
He left the bed only when midnight was well past and Lanara was asleep. The town’s streets were nearly empty, those two nights. He saw shadows of cats and dogs, and even a few people; he stepped back into doorways to watch them. He was not afraid, as he had been in Luhr. He saw the animals and people, saw that they were alone and purposeful in the darkness, and was content to watch them pass.
On the third day Lanara said, “So—are you ever going to leave this room when there are people around?”
“Maybe,” he said, pulling her back down to lie beside him. She laughed as he kissed her, and dragged her fingers down his back so that he wriggled away from her.
“Because you know,” she said, twining a strand of his hair around her left forefinger, “I’ve met some very friendly people. Townspeople mostly, who come to eat here in the evening.”
Nellyn moved from his side to his back. “Oh,” he said. The sky above the roofs was grey today: no rain, but the clouds looked heavy and full. Like other clouds I have seen, he thought, and wished he could burrow into the blankets until he was blind.
“Come down with me. I know you like the food here, and I’m tired of carrying it up to you. Come and meet these people.”
He followed her down the stairs later, just aft
er the rain had started. He heard it against their shutters, and against the roof when they were in the corridor—but he could not hear it at all on the stairs above the dining room. There were so many voices, and a constant clatter of plates and mugs, and the spit and crackle of the fire in the wide stone hearth. He had heard these sounds from the bedchamber, but they had been merely ripples. Lanara squeezed his hand, and they both stepped onto the next stair—and then suddenly all the noise stopped, and leaves began to fall.
Lanara let go of his hand. She raised her arm, tried to catch one of the leaves, a crimson one, which still looked smooth and bright. It reached her hand and passed through it: a leaf without substance, surrounded by a forest of others, all vivid and silent, all gone as soon as they touched the floor below. Nellyn watched them, and he heard their silence, and when the last one had vanished, he did not want to move.
“Come on!” Lanara cried, above the burst of applause and shouting that had risen. “We have to find out who did that. . . .”
She led him down to a round table. All of the people at the table were looking at the hearth—or rather, Nellyn realized, at the man who was leaning against the wall beside it. He was tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, smiling through a rough sheen of beard.
“Who is he?” Lanara hissed to a woman who was sitting at the table. “Is he the one who made the leaves?”
The woman nodded and rose, grasping Lanara’s tunic sleeve. “Aldron!” she called, and her voice was very loud as the clapping and shouting faded. “Aldron, here’s Queenswoman Lanara, who’s never met you before. Why not show her something spectacular? I’ve seen you conjure up balls of lightning and a mass of spinning daggers. Surely you could offer her something more than a bunch of leaves?”
The man inclined his head, still smiling. “Greetings, Queenswoman Lanara,” he said. “And apologies, Pareya,” he went on, looking at the other woman, “for the leaves are all you’ll get of me tonight.”
The Silences of Home Page 14