“This is not the path, my friend,” I said. “It's another dream-vision of the valley, with the lake drained and the houses in ruins.”
Ethwin laughed. “No, Jereth, it's just the other side of the mountain. I thought you might not want to argue with the Nine Voices of the Folc whether you should be allowed to take away the Raven's Egg.”
“That is wise,” said Hwyn. “Thank you a thousand times.”
“This is the Valley of the Red Oak,” Ethwin explained, “abandoned long ago when the surviving Folc drew together. I stay here sometimes when I'm hunting northwest of the village, and I keep a cache of supplies in the house nearest the stream. You can wait for me there while I go back to Folcsted to fetch your things.”
“You are a wonder,” Hwyn said. “I can't thank you enough.”
Anlaf stepped toward us, oddly hesitant. “This is farewell, for us,” he said. “We did not meet well. That is—I judged you too harshly when you first came. Hwyn, I sensed something uncanny about you, and I thought you a necromancer, come to drink power from the dead. I feared to allow you among us. I see now that I was wrong.”
“Why, what have you seen?” Hwyn said.
“If you had entered the Hall of the Dead seeking power, I doubt your dreams would have been as innocent as the harp that appeared to tempt you,” Anlaf said. “And you did not try to take anything else with the Eye of Night, though you might easily have called it an honest mistake.”
“How did you do that?” said Night. “You didn't move a seed when you took that stone. I watched you very closely, and I don't understand.”
“Easy as taking a coin from a merchant's purse without making the others clink,” said Hwyn, smiling ruefully. “This was a task for a thief—and I have been one at need.”
“Whatever you have been,” Anlaf said, “you proved your worth today, and I am sorry I doubted you. And Jereth, I hope that if you come again to Folcsted, you can tell me of your teaching and your travels. May the gods go with you.”
“Thank you,” I said, and Hwyn added, “May the gods be with the Folc.”
Night smiled down at Hwyn. “We will never forget you, you know.”
“I expect not.” Hwyn grimaced. “I left Mother Halred with such scathing words. How I wish I had not! She taught me so much—even this, even this was a teaching. She did not, after all, lock up the Eye of Night in a magic circle; she placed it safely where I would have found it when I finished training for the priest-hood—in her eyes, when I would have been ready to be trusted with it. It was kindly meant, I am sure. Will you tell her—not exactly that I'm sorry, because I had to do this, but—I don't know—”
“I will tell her that you remember her teaching kindly,” said Night.
“Thank you,” said Hwyn. “And thank you for coming to look for us. I will never forget you either. You'll be a wonderful priestess.”
“Do you think so?” said Night, looking sheepish. “I'm sorry—I— We were so jealous of you, Day and I!”
“Were you really?” Hwyn said. “Gods on the Wheel, I've never been so flattered. Bless you. Be happy.”
“And you,” said Night, “will you be happy?”
“As a fish returned to the water,” said Hwyn.
“Godspeed, then,” said Night.
They disappeared into the mountain, and my companions and I started down the weedy path to the house by the river, shading our eyes from the slanting beams of late-afternoon sun. We passed a long house with only half a roof, another with a great section of wall in rubble. About halfway down the path stood a covered well; we lifted the cover, found a new rope on the old iron ring inside, pulled up the bucket, and drank.
“Sky-Raven's Bones! I've been so overwrought, that's the first I've realized I didn't drink a drop all day,” said Hwyn. “Or eat, for that matter.”
“We had a feast last night to last a week,” I said. “But I was thirsty. If someone in the seacoast world had offered me a dipper of water, I might have been lost.”
“Do you miss the sea so much?” Hwyn said.
I smiled ruefully. “I don't know why I dreamed of the sea. Every nightmare I have ends with the shipwreck, the drowning. And yet the scent of it lightened my heart before I could think what it was I smelled. It was home. But I'm sorry: I nearly lost the way. I should have remembered our quest.”
“I had almost forgotten it in this world,” Hwyn said, “till you woke me.”
“And will you look back in regret on the dream you left behind?” I said gently. “You would have been a wonderful priestess, yourself.”
Hwyn shook her head. “Like you, I think, I would have chafed at obedience, at order. I did not belong under Halred's tutelage— at least, not for long. This road is home for me. I meant what I said to Night: I am where I ought to be, where I want to be. I might have liked being a priestess, but I would rather be the Night-Bearer—claws and all, as Paddon would have it!” Her lopsided mouth stretched in laughter. “Gods, what ideas people have of me. Imagine Night saying she was jealous of me. Whatever for?”
“Don't you know?” I said. “You were Halred's favorite, her most brilliant pupil.” We reached the house by the water; it was indeed the best of the lot. A small corner of slate roof had fallen, but had been thatched in, no doubt by Ethwin. Most of the shutters were still intact, flecked with the remains of red paint; the faded red door still swung on leather hinges, letting us in to a wide, echoing hall, empty save for a few broken benches, a cauldron on the hearth, and a huge oaken chest.
“I know Mother Halred saw something in me,” Hwyn admitted, tugging open a shutter to let in the ruddy light of sunset. “But there was so much I couldn't learn! I could never learn to read, and so much of the rest depended on it. When she held open that mouldering old book and pointed at something on the page, it was like staring at a cloud of flies in the firelight that wouldn't stand still. I couldn't see where one rune-staff ended and the next began.”
I wondered how to respond, whether sympathy would sound welcome or insulting. I had never been sure how little she saw; certainly she compensated well enough with touch that it was rarely apparent. In the cave, she had read the walls with her fingers when I had been blind.
“Let me try something,” I said. I went to one of the broken benches, drew out my knife, and cut four rune-staves in the wood: Hail, Will, Yng, Night.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Come here and see,” I said, then winced at my choice of words, but she did not seem to mind. She came, and I took her hand and placed it on the first rune-staff.
“That's Hail,” I said. “‘Hail and harsh weather make a hard rune,’ or so they taught me as a child. Can you trace it again on my palm?”
Hwyn ran her finger down the trails in the wood that formed the first rune-staff, then easily reproduced them on my hand.
“Not so hard, eh?”
She laughed. “And what good will this be? For books written with a very sharp pen?”
“For messages cut in beech-trees,” I said. “The beech-tree is the book-tree, ever since the Rising God brought the rune-staves up from under the earth on the bark of the first beech-tree. There must be many beech-trees on the road ahead of us.”
We had covered the bench with rune-staves before Ethwin arrived with our things: our packs, the cook-pot, the fishing-net and line, my cloak and Trenara's. “There's a water-skin in the chest,” he said, “and some smoked meat. You had better take them. It's rugged land to be traveling without food or water, even in summer. There's a sheepskin you can have, too. You're going north, and I see only two cloaks for the three of you. I can easily get another one in the blood-month, before the cold.”
“Aren't you coming with us?” I said.
Trenara put out her hands to him silently. He took them and stood looking in her eyes, silent as his lady.
“You would be a fine companion, Ethwin,” Hwyn said. “You're a good man and I know you would always protect Trenara. If you need to go home
first and bid your parents farewell, we can wait the night here; it's late for travel, anyway. If you need to ask us any questions, you have well earned your answers: we would have been hard-pressed to recover the Eye of Night without you.
“You have a great gift,” she continued. “If I have left that for last, it is not because I underprize it. I am still amazed, too amazed to quite know what to say about it. But if you had no special ease in the spirit world—if you were simply what I thought you before, a good-hearted young man, skilled with the bow, who loves one of my companions—I would still say, come with us if you choose. But only if you choose.
“I don't understand your gift. I won't pretend to know whether you were meant to use it in Folcsted, among your people, or on the hard road north with us. But I believe every gift comes with a calling, and when you are truly called, there's joy in following. Consider carefully: are you called onward to the north, or back to the Folc?”
Ethwin held her gaze a long while before turning his face to the ground. “I am the only son my mother has left. My brothers all went away; I cannot.” He took Trenara's hands again and kissed them one by one, then pressed them to his heart. “Trenara, if I were my own man, I would beg you to stay and marry me. But my father would not be kind to you.”
“Come with us,” Trenara said, tugging at his tunic. “Come, Ethwin.”
“I wish I could, my love,” he said. “Farewell. Be happy.”
He embraced her, and I looked away, abashed. Then, leaving her arms long enough to throw open the oaken chest, he took out the things he had promised: the water-skin, the sheepskin, and the bundle of smoked meat wrapped in fragrant herb-leaves. “Take these, please.”
“Are you sure you can spare them?” Hwyn said.
“Of course. What's to stop me from killing game for meat and pelts, curing the hides, making bedrolls or water-skins as I need? They are nothing to me. I will be angry if I find them here when I come again. I would not want Trenara to be hungry or thirsty in the wilderness, or her friends to freeze in the north without a cloak.”
“May the gods be good to you, Ethwin,” said Hwyn. “You are a wonder.”
“My friend,” I said, “you have saved our lives and our quest, and we owe you everything. I wish you were going with us. I wish there were something we could give you in return for all your kindness.”
“You've given me a story I can tell again and again, till everyone tires of it but me,” he said. “And a seacoast in the mountain's inner paths—gods, I never expected such a thing. Be well. The river is the source of the Ferend: they say it leads to the lowlands. Follow it, and you will not be lost. Farewell.” We clasped hands warmly. Then he turned to Trenara again, pulled her close, and held her long.
“Come with us,” she pleaded again.
“I can't, my love. Farewell,” he said.
“Trenara,” Hwyn said gently, “do you want to go back with him, and stay with him?”
Trenara looked from Hwyn to Ethwin and back again. “I go with Hwyn,” she said softly.
“Farewell. Be happy,” said Ethwin.
He kissed Trenara one more time. She watched him till he disappeared into the swift-falling twilight of the hill country. We sat in silence a long time, ruminating.
“The moon will be just past full tonight,” I said to Hwyn. “Should we move on?”
“Let's stay here till morning,” she said, “in case the poor boy changes his mind.”
But Ethwin did not return with the sun. In the morning we filled the water-skin, took up our bundles, and went our way: the same three travelers on the road that was our home.
11
THE FEAST OF THE TURNING GOD
As summer ripened into autumn, we made our way slowly north, spending a few days on the roads and then a few in whichever town or village we found in our way, earning food for the next stage of the journey. We harvested oats in the blazing days of late summer, then rye, then barley, then wheat, then black grapes and tart early apples, then the sweeter apples of full autumn.
Though the lowest of the farmhands, we ate well in all these towns, where few hands gathered what many had sown. The flood of refugees, haunted and reticent to speak of the apparitions that drove them southward, continued even as the fruit ripened on the tree with none to gather it. We might have thanked the ghosts for our comfort: the hardships of Kreyn receded like a half-forgotten nightmare, for we never lacked work while the long harvest season lasted in any abode of the living. With so many gone, and with many landed gentry loading caravans for the south, our share of the harvest was greater than it might have been in quieter times. After a few of these harvest-days of nut bread, stewed apples, and dark, malty porter, Hwyn looked a little less brittle, and I in my cassock a little less like a skeleton in a sack. Trenara looked as sleek and content as a cream-fed cat.
Between towns, too, we fared well, following the roads when we might and Hwyn's dark sense when the road vanished into pathless wilderness—or when it seemed more perilous than wilderness itself. On the old north-south trading road we met solitary travelers, bands, and whole caravans heading south, none at all heading our way. When they saw us striding northward toward them, some warned us of plagues or wars or ghosts in the towns they had just quit. Others refused to speak to us, making the warding sun-sign of the Bright Goddess against misfortune or the key of the Upright God against the madness that surely drove us. We sang all the louder when they did. We avoided the plague-sites and war-zones when we could, but marched on squarely to the ghost-haunts—at first because I believed my Gift of Naming would defend us and Hwyn felt we might have some mission to perform there, but eventually, simply because these towns always proved harmless to us. The ghosts, it seemed, only haunted those who belonged to them. In their wake, there would be empty beds for us to sleep in, work for us to do, and food for us to eat.
North of the Dark Eye Lake, we saw the first of the deserted towns: the houses stripped bare of everything that could be carried away; the temple an empty husk; the grainfields choked with weeds. We went from house to house, but found neither a living soul nor a ghost. In the monastery, books had been left abandoned in their embossed cases; I toyed with the idea of taking one, but reflected that they had given their prior owners no insight into whatever had driven them away.
We filled our packs with potatoes dug up near a peasant's cottage and nuts gathered in a burgher's garden, and we spent the night in dusty featherbeds in what must have been the lord's palace. Then we hurried on, not haunted but strangely unsettled by the silence, glad to find the next town still populated. Of the fate of the town we had passed through, they knew nothing: “No news from the south,” they said, “in a year or more, till now.” They welcomed our hands in the fields, but would say little to us, holding apart from the mysterious vagabonds moving in the wrong direction, against the tide.
We did not stay long, and in the next few towns spoke less about where we were going and where we had been. We took to entering walled towns through the north gate to attract less suspicion.
Once along the road, in sight of the spires of a city, we came upon two warriors in gilded armor, lying entwined, each man's sword in the other's breast, the earth around them dyed red by their death-wounds.
“The crests on their shields are identical,” I noticed.
Hwyn nodded. “Brothers? Or pretenders to the same name?”
“They're not telling,” I said. “I could speak to the ghosts—”
“No,” Hwyn said, “I don't think there's anything for us to do here.”
We walked wide of that town, though it forced us to wander the pathless forest, eating beech nuts and ground-cherries and the watery pods of wood sorrel, sleeping under the bushes or in hastily made shelters of branches. The nights had grown chilly and, for me at least, wakeful; while Trenara and Hwyn curled together against the cold as unthinkingly as kittens, I hung back, embarrassed, awkward, and cold. I wished they would invite me closer, and feared that if they did, I
would not know how to take it.
In time we found new signs of human presence: bloody strips of venison left on a tree branch, the hunter's offering to the crow, an old tradition I had read of but never seen before. We tracked the hunter carefully, anxious not to miss even the poorest human habitation. The trail led to another chain of dwindling, anxious villages and towns strung along the ghost of a road, full of uneasy rumors of a doom coming down from the North, full of gossip of those who would leave next or remembrance of those who had left for the southern regions of which they had no news. Once we followed a path that looked well trodden, only to find no town but the smoking ruin of one. Most of the time, however, we found a little life, poised on the brink of vanishing southward.
After a succession of these dying towns, each more hopeless than the one before it, we were pleasantly surprised one bright cold morning, emerging from the woods, to stride past well-kept orchards and tidy barns, and see ahead of us on the path a knot of people and two wagons, headed north.
We ran faster after that little caravan than we had run from the guards of Kreyn. Coming abreast of a plodding oxcart on which three children sat atop a load of apples, we stood panting till we could draw breath enough to introduce ourselves. Both the children and the grown people who ringed the wagons turned to stare at us in undisguised curiosity, but without the scowls of suspicion we had come to expect.
“Good morning, fellow-travelers!” I cried as soon as I could speak again. “What brings you on this northward road?”
A bigger boy of ten or twelve who walked beside the cart stuck his fist in his mouth to mute his laughter. The oldest of the grown men ranged around the wagon said, “Blessings of the day, strangers. And who are you that don't know what day this is, or where we're going?”
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