One man at the table laughed; another glowered. Nellyn glanced from one to the other, then at a woman who had set her stool a bit apart from theirs. Her hair was as dark as Aldron’s, drawn back and knotted at the base of her neck. Her eyes were on a spoon she was turning over and over on the tabletop. She stopped moving it only when Aldron kissed the top of her head. She frowned at him as he sat down on the stool next to hers. He whispered to her and produced a slender-stemmed purple flower from beneath the table. The woman took it, though she continued to frown.
“So, Queenswoman Lanara,” Aldron said after he had taken a long drink from a silver goblet, “what brings you to this corner of nowhere? The thin mead? The leaning buildings?”
Lanara laughed. She sat down across from him and gave some answer Nellyn did not try to hear. He was still looking at the woman and her flower, and as he looked, she raised her head and saw him.
“Greetings,” she said after a moment. “I’m Alea.” She smiled and set the flower down on the table.
“And I am Nellyn,” he said, smiling back at her. “Greetings, Alea.”
My Queen, after months of fairly lonely wandering, we have met two people who are already our friends. They are of the Alilan tribe, but have been travelling on their own for over a year. The man, Aldron, says this is because the strict rules of the Alilan were limiting them, and they needed to be free for a time. I hear in his voice that this is not the true reason—or perhaps it is only part of the reason. And I see in the woman Alea’s face that there is much more to tell. Of course, I am eager to learn their story—all of it. I read about the Alilan as a child, in the Scribeslibrary. I remember what the scrolls looked like, and how I shivered when I read this new name. How I wish I could see one of these scrolls now! But I will exercise the patience I learned with the shonyn. I will talk to Aldron and Alea, and listen. I hope that I will witness another instance of Aldron’s Telling—an Alilan power, he says, that enables him to conjure up visions and make them seem real (though they are not). I will enjoy their company (Aldron in particular is warm and enthusiastic about our conversations) and our shared time in this town, which is attractive and pleasantly large. Nellyn and I will stay here as long as Aldron and Alea do. We continue to feel that our journey is benefiting us, and (as urged by you) are in no hurry to reach Fane.
I have written so many letters to you, and only a few times during our travels have I found a Queensfolk delivery post from which to send these letters back to Luhr. By the time we reach Fane, our wagon will be full of scrawled-upon parchment. We will need an entire boat to return these scribblings to you! And you will need weeks to read them.
I wish I could speak to you—you and Ladhra both. Nellyn and I have encountered wonders. At least we have Aldron and Alea, now to keep us company for a time. We will share our stories with them, and perhaps they will soon share theirs with us.
Nellyn found a stream the night after he and Lanara met the two Alilan. He was walking along streets he had not seen on his other nights here. He passed people huddled around sullen fires, and houses joined by torchlit walkways that arced high above his head. He heard a child crying, though he could not tell from where. He heard a man shouting and another answering him, and their anger made Nellyn shiver. He turned a corner, and as the voices faded he heard water.
He followed the sound to a place where the houses dwindled away and trees began. The trees were squat and gnarled. He put a hand to one of them and felt bark still moist from yesterday’s rain, and leaves, and a smoothness that was fruit. His hand froze for a moment, then traced the shape slowly. He knew already that it was nothing like lynanyn (too small, too narrow at stem and bottom), but he lingered anyway, until the water noise drew him on.
The stream was about three paces wide. When he took off his shoes and stepped into the water, he discovered that it was knee-deep and numbingly cold. He followed the stream among the trees, looking at the familiar reflections of moon and boughs and his own moving body. His foot brushed one of the small fruits (ripe, fallen), and he thought, This is the first time in so long. We have seen rivers and lakes, but I have never touched them in this way, and here too there is fruit. . . .
The trees ended at the town wall. Nellyn put his hands on the dead wood; he bent so that he could see the glimmer of water, which disappeared beneath the wall. There was a low door to one side of the stream. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open and ducked out onto the plain.
The tiny stream curved away, shallower with every step, and was soon swallowed by earth and grass. He turned around, feeling the grass whisper and cling, held to his legs by the water that was drying on his skin. In four paces his feet were dry, and he slid them back into his shoes.
He wandered back toward the wall and gatehouse towers, where fire flickered. He gazed for a moment at the torchlight and the stars above it. When he looked back down, he saw a woman standing outside the main gates. Her back was to him, and all he saw was dark cloth and darker hair, which fell smooth to the middle of her back. As he hesitated, she turned her head into the light.
“Alea,” he said when he was beside her. She started, and he held up a hand, almost touched her arm. “I am sorry. I thought you heard me,” he said as he looked at her wide eyes and the shaking fingers she raised to her mouth.
“I didn’t.” Her voice was steadier than her hand. “You were so quiet. Or I wasn’t listening.”
He nodded. “When I listen only to wind and earth, I also am deaf to other voices.” She turned to him, and he saw her face clearly. “Why are you sad?” he asked, though “sad” was not the whole word for her eyes and her white, stretched skin.
She did not answer for a long time. He waited, very still.
“I miss the earth when I’m in there.” She gestured behind her with one hand. “And tonight I . . . thought I might see something.” He listened to a second, longer silence. The grass sounded like his river. “Wagons,” she continued in a rush. “I thought the Alilan wagons might start arriving.”
“But they did not.”
She shook her head. “There would be fire,” she said, and he looked with her into the emptiness of the plain.
“So you are waiting. That is why you are here, in this town?”
He saw the flutter of Alea’s lashes as she closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Yes. We’ve been travelling for so long, seeing no one but each other—and for so long we’ve avoided the paths of our caravans. But this year, when autumn came to the forest, we couldn’t keep away from here. Aldron says we’ll only look from a distance, but I know he wants to be among the horses and the fires. Like I do.”
“But if you want to return to your people—” Nellyn began, and Alea said, loudly, “No! Please—you don’t understand—we can’t return.” Her words trembled into a quiet that he knew would endure beyond his waiting. I might understand, he thought, but he saw her sadness and her struggle and did not say this.
“We should go back to the inn,” he said instead. “It is getting colder. And they will be waiting for us.”
Alea nodded and turned. They walked together to the wooden walls, and in.
Aldron drew the bowstring back until it was level with his left ear. He held it there, squinting and smiling at the same time. He had been smiling since Lanara had handed him the bow. He had touched—slowly, with his fingertips—the dark wood, the arrows’ golden fletching, even the leather of the quiver. “May I?” he had asked, and smiled as if he were hungry.
His first arrow landed flat on the damp earth of the inn courtyard. His second lodged in the outer edge of the sackcloth that stretched over the straw and wood of the target. His third thudded into the centre. They watched it shudder into stillness.
“You told me you’d never done this before,” Lanara said.
“I haven’t.” He looked down at the arrow in his hand and angled it so that the sunlight glanced off its metal tip. “But I’ve had experie
nce with other weapons. I used to throw my dagger—probably because I was told not to.”
“Where’s your dagger now?”
Aldron nocked the fourth arrow and loosed it. It buried itself in the centre, and the other arrow trembled with it. “I left it behind. It would have reminded me too much of people I wanted to forget.”
“And did you leave your horse behind for the same reason?”
He turned to frown down at her. “How do you know of Alilan ways?”
Lanara handed him another arrow, which he took without looking away from her. “Queensfolk have travelled far and written about many people. I’ve been reading their tales since I was a girl.”
“So you found out about Alilan horses from writings,” he said, one eyebrow raised. “What else did you learn about them?”
“That’s all I remember clearly: horses, another tribe—in the desert, I think—something about storytelling. These were all second-hand accounts, though.” The sunlight was beginning to slant. She put up a hand and peered at him beneath it. “Why don’t you give me more details?”
“I don’t write,” he said, and she heard him smile. She laughed as he nocked the last arrow and sent it out, shining and singing and straight.
That night, as they all sat again at the round table, Lanara turned to Aldron and said, “Don’t think that your little jest distracted me. I still want to know more about the Alilan.”
He took a long swallow of wine and wiped his mouth with two fingers. “About the Alilan, or about why I left them?”
She felt as if she were dwindling beneath his eyes. He is afraid of what he hides, she thought, and he wants me to be afraid as well. She said very softly, “Whichever is more interesting. Whichever you’d prefer not to talk about.”
He stared at her, and she held herself still, hardly blinking. Then Pareya, who was sitting near Alea and Nellyn, cried, “Aldron, listen: this one’s from a place where people sleep during the day and wake at night! Isn’t that the silliest thing?”
The noise of the full dining room seemed deafening in the silence that fell at the round table. Nellyn looked at the woman as the others looked at him. She shifted on her chair and frowned.
“The silliest thing, Pareya?” Aldron said. “Hardly.”
“I’d like to hear more about this place,” Alea said quickly to Nellyn. “If you don’t mind telling us.”
Lanara let out a slow breath as Nellyn began to speak. He gazed steadily at Alea, then at Lanara. When he struggled to find words, he gazed at the shutters that were latched against night and chill. Lanara thought, He never told me all this when I first asked him, and felt a rush of warmth at the change, and her part in it.
Alea and Aldron nodded or smiled at Nellyn as he spoke, but they did not interrupt him. Maybe it’s obvious, he thought, how difficult it is for me to say these things. For although he did not explain time and understanding and madness, what he did describe was painful enough: lynanyn in the river, moonlight on silver leaves, the steady fanning of blue curtains. As he spoke, he saw the images, but blurrily, as if the words stood between himself and his memories. When he told them of the Queensfolk ships and the tents on the ridge, his voice faltered and he turned to Lanara. She smiled and laid her fingers lightly on the back of his hand. Then she spoke of the same tents and ships—and also of Luhr and Ladhra and her own sun-moulded house behind the palace.
Lanara’s words were effortless and light; Nellyn watched Alea and Aldron lean forward and change the way they listened. Aldron began to ask questions, which Lanara answered and which led her to new stories. She glanced at Nellyn often as she spoke, sometimes serious, sometimes smiling, and he felt himself bending toward her too.
Pareya rose and left them when Lanara began to talk; the tables around them emptied as she continued. The innkeeper fed logs into the fire for a time and shuffled over to bring them more wine and bread, but soon he disappeared as the others had, silently and unnoticed.
“I think I’m losing my voice,” Lanara said at last. The other three stirred and stretched. “And you haven’t said one thing about yourself,” she added, and Aldron sighed dramatically.
“How regrettable that it’s so late and we’re all so tired,” he said as he pushed his chair back.
Nellyn saw Alea look up at him and thought, She is so sad, because of him.
“Soon,” Lanara said, half-smiling, and Aldron raised an eyebrow at her before he turned toward the stairs.
“Thank you,” said Alea, looking from Lanara to Nellyn. It seemed to him that she wanted to say more, but after a moment of hesitation she smiled quickly and followed Aldron.
“They’re fascinating, aren’t they?” Lanara said when she and Nellyn were back in their room. She was sitting on a low stool in front of a basin of water she had heated over their fire, squeezing a wet cloth against her forehead, her neck, her breasts. She shone like dark wood in the firelight.
“Yes,” he said. He lay on their bed with his hands behind his head and the blanket drawn up to his chin, and watched her as the wind blew hard against the shutters.
EIGHTEEN
My Queen, the Alilan began to arrive today.
Nellyn and I were walking in a market—though even writing “market” makes me think of the open sky and wide ground of Luhr’s market, and here the space is vastly different. Here you enter what appears to be a private home and climb to the second floor, where the rooms are small and connected by a corridor. When you follow the corridor, it turns into a bridge over the street below—and on the other side is another house with tiny rooms, each one containing wares and a seller, and another corridor that also becomes a bridge. . . . I realize that these enclosed spaces are necessary, since there is so much rain and snow here—but I still found myself looking up at the wooden beams and soot-stained ceilings and longing for the hot wind of home.
We saw a chamber stacked with green baskets, each one holding a wriggling knot of snakes (apparently the rodents here are numerous—though I can’t imagine why the townspeople prefer snakes to mice!). Another room was strung with dried herbs and spongemoss, and the smell was delicious. My favourite chamber was full of painted wooden leaves that hung from the walls and ceiling and even lay on the floor. When we first stepped inside we thought we were in a living forest. I bought two scarlet ones (oak) and two golden ones (elm, the woman told me). I’ll give you and Ladhra one of each when we see you next.
As we were about to cross yet another bridge we heard someone cry, “The horse people are coming!” The crowd around us began to push and jostle, and we were swept along with them to an archway that led out onto the town wall. We peered over the wall with everyone else (though Nellyn was hesitant to at first: he’s discovered he has a fear of high places).
“Accursed filth,” the woman beside me grumbled in the thick accent of this town.
I turned away from the distant wagons (so distant they looked like insects in the grass) and asked her why she spoke of them this way. She eyed me with obvious distaste.
“You’re a stranger yourself if you need to ask,” she said. “Those horse herders are trouble-makers. Every fall they camp outside our forest, and for weeks we get no peace. They drum and hoot all night until the snows come—and then they leave, and our fresh white grass is battered down and stained with black wood and horseshit.” She spat over the wall. “We’ve sent elders out to ask them to go somewhere else, but they’ve always refused. We don’t want violence, of course—we’re good people—so we tolerate them and count the days until winter.” Despite the rancour of her words, this woman watched as avidly as the rest (such petty people—and so insensitive to those not like them!).
The wagons drew closer, and I could see the horses that pulled them, and other horses that rode apart with single riders. Before they halted, though, I told Nellyn that we should go find Alea and Aldron, who would doubtless want to know about their people’s arrival. We returned to
the inn, but found it empty—and now, hours later and darkness falling, we still have not seen them.
The fire had burned down to glowing ash when Nellyn stepped into the dining room. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the billowing rain. He stamped his feet and peeled off his cloak and moved toward the stairs.
His vision (as keen in darkness as in daylight) sharpened as he walked. He saw a shadow beside the fireplace, saw it shift and bend, and he stopped and turned to it. “Aldron,” he said quietly, and the Alilan man raised his head from his knees. Nellyn added a log to the fire and poked at it until it caught, then he drew a stool over to Aldron, who was still staring vacantly at him.
“Oh,” Aldron said at last, thickly, “you. The one who wakes at night.” He lifted a bottle from the floor at his feet and tipped it to his mouth. The liquid that trickled between his lips and down his neck looked black. Nellyn saw that Aldron’s skin was already veined with wine, some of it dried, some still glistening. His eyes too were black.
“Lanara send you to torment me with questions, did she? ‘What are the wagons and why are you not with them and what crime did you commit to be alone in the world?’” He drank again. This time the bottle fell when he put it down. Nellyn watched the wine spreading against the floorboards and remembered when he had dropped a goblet on a balcony high above the desert.
“No,” he said. “I have no questions like that. But I will ask—where is Alea?”
Aldron grunted. “Don’t know. Probably lurking ’round her caravan. I told her they won’t listen to you; they’ll pretend they can’t even see you. And that’s what happened—just like I said. Not sure why I went with her. I knew. She’s probably crying and watching them now. Crying and spying. Twins rot them,” he shouted, and kicked the wine bottle so that it rang and splintered against the stone of the fireplace.
The Silences of Home Page 15