The following morning, I woke to find Hwyn already awake, regarding me with eyes that seemed red at the rims. “Hwyn, are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice husky.
“You are not still worrying about what that madman Klem said of you, are you?”
“No, it isn't that,” she said, which was as good as admitting that something was indeed wrong.
“What, then?” I said softly.
“Nothing, really,” she said. But I was more convinced than ever that she had been weeping.
Uncertain what to say, whether to simply touch her shoulder as I had in the boat, I noticed her bare left arm and remembered that I had a promise to fulfill. “I've been forgetting to attach your sleeve,” I said, rummaging for it in my pack. “Shall I try it now?”
“All right,” she said.
I moved toward her, needle in one hand, cloth in the other. She shied a bit as I reached for her shoulder. “Come now, hold still,” I said. “I'll be careful. But I can't do a thing if you're afraid of the needle—I doubt you want to take off your shift in full view of the street so I can work on it.”
“No, of course not,” she said, reddening. “I'm not afraid, really. I'm just not used to this.”
I worked cautiously, drawing the needle toward myself lest any sudden motion on her part should plant it in her neck or shoulder. Holding the fabric taut around the armhole, I noticed again the whip-marks that had alarmed me the night I met her, extending from her shoulders down out of sight. They were healing and fading, but still unmistakable. “You've been hurt here,” I said.
“It's nearly healed,” she dismissed it.
“I noticed those that night in Kelgarran Hall,” I said, “when I still thought you were the servant girl. It made me think Trenara must have had you whipped.”
Hwyn cast an eye on the lady, who still slept with her dark locks tumbled over her fair face, as elegantly disordered as the rambling roses in the temple court. “Gods! Trenara cries over a squashed spider. She couldn't hurt anyone.”
I pulled the thread taut delicately, and spoke as carefully as I worked. “Who did this?”
“Why do you need to know?” she demanded.
“Never mind,” I retreated. “I was just concerned.”
“Klem would not be surprised at those,” she mused. “There are some very harsh places to live in Swevnalond; I guess Kreyn is one of them. It's not always so easy as we've had it in Sebrin. Festivals are the best times for roaming; between them it's lean, hungry traveling. I was sorry to miss singing at St. Bridwen's Day, but I had bigger things to do, and couldn't risk making myself noticeable. Still, it's a grand feast for a player and it stung to miss playing it.”
“Well, we'd better stir ourselves to make the most of this one,” I said, though I was still nettled by her evasion and disturbed to hear our time in Sebrin called easy; the playing, certainly, was pure joy, but the early days in the inns had been back-breaking drudgery. “We only have two days left.”
“Maybe only one,” Hwyn said faintly, avoiding my gaze. “I may want to slip out of town quietly before the festival ends.”
“Why?” I said. “The brawl seemed to end peacefully enough.”
“True,” she said, “but it would not do to have Klem know I am going to Kreyn.”
“To Kreyn!” I said, dropping the needle and thread, which dangled uselessly from the half-attached sleeve. “You are madder than he is!”
“Have you just discovered it?” She smiled crookedly.
“After all Edwold said—and more, after all Klem almost did—”
“I know. It's pure folly. But—”
“The prophecy,” I finished for her. “You need to know it—or simply can't resist it.”
“How could I?” she said. “It's out of the way, but there's much to be gained. How much have you ever heard of the Sky-Raven, beyond the sparse tale told over midwinter fires? The tale is so old it is half forgotten—and I hold the dark half of it sleeping in my pocket. I know so little about this thing I've taken into my care.”
“You knew enough,” I said, “to find it when it was hidden, to set it free from necromancy, to know when it was safe to let your enemy get his hands on it, to talk back to the ghosts that came out of it and leave with their blessing. Why should this Speaking Stone hold any prophecy you don't already know?”
“All I know is by touch, as it were, one step at a time, the way I grope through a strange house in the dark.”
“You do that well enough,” I remembered.
“But the prophecy could let me see a long way down the road,” she said. “I don't know what the end of this journey will be.”
“Do you mean we might not be headed north after all?”
“No, that much I'm sure of,” she said. “All the dreams say north. The thing itself urges me north, ever since I touched it.”
“Then why go off the path?” I said. Kreyn, I knew from maps, lay almost due east of Sebrin, across the rugged land north of Annelon. It would not be an easy detour. Nor would there be an easy route north from Kreyn, for it lay just south of the Hills of Penmorrin, which rose toward the impassable mountain range of the east, the Wall of Magya.
“It's a detour, I know,” Hwyn said. “I should take it alone; you might stay here with Trenara till I find out the prophecy and return.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “All this talk of traveling together has just been to trick me into taking Trenara off your hands. We can wait forever in this nondescript middle-Swevnian town while you travel light—”
“You don't understand!”
“No, I don't,” I said. “Maybe if you told me something, anything, instead of hiding behind cryptic hints, always asking more questions than you answer, repaying my questions with an evasion or a lie—”
“I've never lied to you,” she spat back.
Trenara, lying just beyond her, stirred uneasily.
Hwyn's body was tensed as for a fight, her chest heaving with furious breath, but the look she gave me was not of anger but of pain. Slowly, as if I were coaxing a shy animal out of its hole with a bit of food, I lifted my hand, opened it, brought it toward her till I touched her crumpled left cheek, gently tracing the scars under her misaligned eye. My thumb found a drop of brine. “I'm sorry,” I said very quietly, “but you did, this morning, when I asked you if you were all right. You have been weeping.”
As slowly and cautiously as I had touched her cheek, she raised her hand to place it over mine, holding it against her face. “I'm sorry,” she said. “There was one other time, also, now I remember: I told you I was looking for water. Pity: I thought that if I had lied to all the world, at least I had a clear conscience with one man. I swear by the Sky-Raven's Egg that in all the great things, I have dealt honestly with you. But there are things I cannot speak of, and things I simply don't want to speak of. Klem is right, in a sense: to name something is to call it, and there are ghosts I fear to raise. Can you accept a few evasions if I promise you no lies?”
“All right,” I said, then looked down at the dangling needle. “I'd better finish that sleeve.”
“I'm hungry,” said Trenara, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
“All right, Trenara,” I said, “I'll finish this and then find us some food.”
Hwyn complied docilely as I fitted the underside of the sleeve; it looked funny, a fresh scarlet patch on an old gray sack, like wild plumage on a sparrow's wing. Most likely it would need to be reattached when it shrank out of proportion to the old garment. But seeing Hwyn finger the new wool and hold up her arm to admire the rich color, I felt this was far better than reat-taching the old sleeve. It was probably the first pretty thing she'd had to wear.
I left her and Trenara to guard our patch of the market-square against other performers, while I went off to the victualers' booths to get us some breakfast. After starting the day with jangled nerves and hurt feelings, I felt we needed some sort of treat. I remembered Hwyn's fondness for the s
weet seed-cakes at the Golden Chain; in sharing table-leavings with her, I also noticed that she seemed partial to cheese. I made up my mind to see what I could find in this line without spending too much of our song-money. Some decent dark ale, if I could find it, would go well with the cheese and cakes, and go a long way toward assuaging my own ruffled feelings. I was not sure what Trenara would like best, but as far as I could see, she ate anything we gave her with equal relish, and would probably be pleased with the same things we chose.
I was deep in contemplation of the wares in a baker's cart, wondering whether the cakes were made with the same sort of seed as the ones I remembered, when a voice behind me made me whirl around in alarm.
“By all the gods on the Wheel,” said Turl of Ectirion, “Jereth son of Garmund!”
“Hidden Goddess,” I swore, “if my father's ghost sent you to haunt me, he's done a rare job of it.”
“I thought it was a sign from the gods that we should meet three times by chance,” said Turl. “But I'm sorry I startled you so with your father's name, last time we met. You looked like you'd seen a ghost indeed. I know I cost you your job, and I mean to offer you something to make up for it. Come, this inn on the corner's not bad. I'll buy us a bit to eat while I explain myself.”
For what I realized was the first time, I met Turl's eyes, noticing the soft lines of humor and worry around them, counterbalancing his hard jawline. “It's kind of you to offer,” I said, “but I'm not alone in Sebrin. I was just buying breakfast for myself and two friends; they'll be expecting me.”
“In that case, I'll buy what you came for, if you'll hear me out,” said Turl, “but I want to speak to you apart. Pick what you'll have.”
“My friend liked those sweet seed-cakes they had at the Golden Chain. If those are the same—”
“Not that,” Turl said, pointing to what I'd almost bought. “Those are bitter. I know where you can find them—without going back to the inn.” So we set off across the lane.
“I still don't understand why you should take an interest in me,” I said. “I thought I'd been fairly rude to you.”
Turl laughed. “Smooth words I can get anywhere. When people fawn on me, I know they lack buyers for whatever they're selling. You've never shown the least interest in anything I might have to give you, so I have to wonder what you have that's worth more than anything you think I could pay.”
I had to smile at that. “Gods! You sound like my father. But even so, I can't understand— You seem, almost, to be offering me a position tutoring your sons.”
“There, you've cut to the heart of the matter,” said Turl.
“But how can you trust me? For all you know, I could have been turned away from the monastery for stealing the alms-money or molesting the village girls—or boys.”
“Wrong,” said Turl. “At first, it's true, I was playing a hunch. But since then, I have heard quite a solid report of your character.”
“Not from the innkeepers, surely!” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Turl. “From Brother Becmon of the House of the Tarvon Order at Annelon.”
“What?”
“Among the merchandise I brought with me was a chest of plain sheep-gray woolen cloth for the Tarvon House here in Sebrin,” Turl said, grinning at my bemused appearance. “Now, from my first glimpse of you, I'd wondered about you. Despite the clerical dress, you were once obviously a seaman or a merchant; no one else speaks that horrid trading-tongue of the islanders. And by the Upright God, you meet few people in this whole godforsaken, Trouble-ridden land anymore that speak anything but Swevnian. The foreigners are all going home— have you noticed? Even the Kettrans, who still think they own this land, centuries after their stinking empire fell—they're giving up on it. They're too cunning to stay in a doomed land. Little Kettra may not be Northern, but it's the first place in the South to see the sort of migrations we've heard of from the North. They're getting out of Swevnalond, back to the mother country.
“Anyway, there you were, cleaning a tavern floor in your cassock, a man of learning, an ex-priest and ex-merchant, as I had no doubt once I'd spoken to you. And I put it together with a terrible story that made the rounds of the fairgrounds a couple of years ago, the sort of story that travels far because it sounds like our worst nightmares: how in the height of his wealth, Garmund the Sea-Trader went to the bottom of the sea with his best ship and his whole family, save one son, the sole heir, who gave away everything and buried himself in a monastery.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed.
“A dozen of those,” Garmund said to the baker, pointing at just the sort of little cakes Hwyn had liked. “What now?” he said to me.
“Excuse me?”
“What else were you going to buy?”
“Cheese and ale,” I said tonelessly, putting the cakes into my pack. “Brown ale, preferably. How did you hear our story?”
“Lad, your father was no market-square peddler,” Turl said impatiently. “When a great man falls, there's talk of it.”
I rolled my eyes to hear that “great man” again; I'd thought I was long quit of it.
“At any rate,” Turl said, “I asked about you at the monastery when I came to sell the cloth: did they know a Brother Jereth who had left the Order? The Sebrin monks didn't, but as it turned out, they had a visitor from Annelon, the Scriptorium Master, who confirmed my hunch: Jereth son of Garmund the Sea-Trader joined the Order after his family drowned, but was never cut out for it; he had left this year, as anyone should have predicted, before the Feast of the Rising God, with the snow still on the ground and the ruts in the road still frozen, like a man fleeing destruction. He said you should never have been allowed to join in the height of grief, when no man can see his path clearly.”
“It wasn't so simple as that,” I muttered, but Turl paid no heed.
“Brother Becmon described you as a master of languages, a clear thinker, and the sort of man who could be trusted with his enemy's purse or an absent friend's wife, without reservation,” Turl said. “And I was looking for a trustworthy tutor, fluent in several languages, who would not nudge Torrin toward the abbey. That is not an easy thing to find in the shadow of the Troubles; with all the foreigners gone, the only teachers worth a wooden farthing are hopelessly mired in monastic orders.”
“Don't be so sure I'd be your ally in making a merchant of Torrin,” I said. “Most likely the lad already knows his own mind. He'll find his own way into the Order or away from it; by pushing, you may make him a bitter and half-hearted merchant or an angry and rebellious priest. If the advice of a stranger is worth anything, I'd say, let him choose whether to accept his birthright or give it to his brother.”
“Well,” Turl said, “you're frank with me, as I've been frank with you. We may not agree, but at least we know where we differ. Isn't it better that way?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“And whether you think he should be monk or merchant, you'll be able to teach him what he needs for both paths,” Turl said, steering me away from a clean-looking brewer's stall to a dirty but agreeable-smelling one. “There, that's a better buy; trust me. Anyway, it's not just the languages—or the navigation. You're the son of Garmund; you must have learned something from him. Besides,” Turl said, wrinkling his face in the most vulnerable look I'd seen on him, or on any of the merchants whose ghosts he'd raised in my memory, “you remind me of Torrin, somehow. You might understand the boy. I don't; I understand him only well enough to know that. And he likes you already. That boy doesn't like many people, Jereth. Gods know he doesn't like me right now, any more than you do. Did you think I didn't know that? And what do you think, eh? Do you think that means I don't love my son?”
I stood gaping at him, more amazed by this display of feeling than by his deduction of my identity. He put a jug of ale in my hand and steered me toward a dairyman's cart without further speech. I let him choose for me, and accepted the leaf-wrapped bundle as if I had forgotten what I had wanted it for.
“Where are you staying?” Turl asked.
“Northwest corner of the market-square,” I said.
“There's no inn there,” Turl said.
“Who said anything about an inn?”
“Gods on the Wheel!” said Turl. “If your father could see you now—” My grin cut him short. “Maybe that's not the best thing to say,” he conceded. “I know if you'd wanted the merchant's life, you'd have it already. But you don't have to be a merchant. You could teach. You'd like my boys. They're good children. Think about it.”
He had known which notes to sound. I did think I'd like the boys, from the little I'd seen of them; they stirred memories in me of the boy I had once been and the brothers I had once had. I'd loved my tutors then—except the Magyan, who had been abruptly substituted for a great favorite of mine, a one-legged bard with a dry sense of humor and a great wealth of stories. To become a tutor myself seemed so natural that I wondered why I had never thought of it before. But I shook my head. “I'm touched by the offer, and I wish your sons every blessing of the gods: they seemed like fine lads. But I never meant to settle here—or in Ectirion, either; I'm only here for the festival. I can't stay in one place.”
“We're going, too,” Turl said. “I can feel which way the wind's blowing. The foreigners have the right of it: the Troubles of the North are sweeping down over all Swevnalond.”
I looked at him with more interest.
“I've always been a landlocked trader, small-time, just up and down the Pengar River, not a seafarer like your father,” Turl said. “But the future is at sea. I want to take my family to Magya or Iskarron, take the leap into sea-trading. You could help us. I know my Magyan's piss-poor; I saw it in your face when I spoke to you. You could teach me, too. And I could give you a steady place, a home. After all, we're going the same way, aren't we?” He turned to look at me, then burst out, “Curse it, man, why are you leering at me like that again, like a man that has something I couldn't buy with all I have?”
The Eye of Night Page 8