No one moved to touch her pack until Averan pulled it off her own back and handed out the food. There wasn't much, enough for each person to have an apple or a handful of nuts. Yet the folk seemed greatly touched by the gesture, and Averan heard one man weep in gratitude as he bit into an onion.
There was a long silence, and one old man, his face lined with wrinkles and gray in his hair, asked, “You was saying that you hail from Keep Haberd?”
“Aye,” Averan admitted.
“I'm from there,” he said. “But I don't remember much anymore. I try to imagine grass or sunlight, and I can't. There were people that I knew, but their faces… “
Averan didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to admit that Keep Haberd had been destroyed, its walls knocked down by reavers, its people slaughtered and eaten. Everyone that this old fellow had known would be dead. “Do you have a last name?”
“Weeks, Averan Weeks.”
“Oh,” the fellow said. “Then you must know of Faldon Weeks?”
“That was my father's name,” Averan said. “You knew him?”
“I knew him well,” the old fellow said. “He was a prisoner here, captured in the same battle as me. I remember that he was married to a small woman whose smile could light the stars at night. But I don't remember a daughter.”
“He was here?” Averan asked, disbelieving. She had been told that reavers had eaten him. She had never guessed that he might have been carried down here.
“He always dreamed of going home,” the old fellow said. “But he could not hold on forever. Even with endowments, none of us can hold on for-ever. And now our endowments have been taken. He succumbed within the very hour that it happened.”
Averan peered into the fellow's face. Here was someone who had known her father. The man was little more than bones with a bit of skin draped over him. He was so thin that his eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. His only clothing was a scrap of dirty gray cloth tied around his loins. He looked as if he might expire at any moment.
With sudden certainty, Averan realized what had happened. Raj Ahten had killed the Dedicates at the Blue Tower. When he'd done it, Averan had lost her own endowments, and had grown so weak that she thought that she would die. How much worse would it have been if she'd been a prisoner down here, with nothing but an endowment or two of stamina to sustain her?
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she began to shudder, as if she would collapse. “My father is here?”
“Yes,” the old fellow said. He pointed back to a far wall, where white bones glistened wetly, and blind-crabs still scuttled about the remains. “But there is nothing left of him.”
Ten years, Averan thought. Ten years he'd been down here, and she had missed meeting him by only a week.
Bitterly, Averan cursed the reavers that had brought them here, and wished them all dead.
She found herself sobbing. The old man reached out timidly, as if begging permission to comfort her, and she grasped him around the neck, hugging him.
These could have been my father's bones, Averan thought. This could have been the smell of his unwashed neck.
A sullen rage grew in her, and she swore to take revenge.
18
AN UNEXPECTED PARTY
There is no surer refuge than a close friend.
—a Saying in Heredon
“Hide underground tonight!” Uncle Eber told Chemoise as he came in the door that morning, bringing home from the village a pail of fresh milk and a loaf of bread. “That's what the Earth King said to do. Hide underground. I just heard it in town from the king's messenger.”
Chemoise looked up from the breakfast table. She was at her uncle's estate in the village of Ableton, far in the north of Heredon. Her aunt had just finished cooking some sausages and had asked her to sit until Eber got home. And grandmother sat in her rocker before the fireplace, deaf as a doorpost and half-blind as well.
“Why did he send messengers?” Chemoise asked. “He could have just told us that we are in danger.”
“I… don't know,” Eber said. “He's off way down in Mystarria. Maybe the Earth King's warnings won't carry so far. Or perhaps he wanted to be sure that everyone was forewarned, not just his Chosen.”
Chemoise looked around the room with a rising sense of panic. It was early in her pregnancy, but for the past few days, the very mention of breakfast had made her too ill to eat. She was beginning to feel that sense of fragility that often accompanies gestation. So coming down for breakfast had given her a sense of accomplishment.
Now this. “Underground?” she asked. “Why?”
“I'll bet it's the stars,” her aunt Constance offered. “They've been falling every night, each night worse than the night before!”
Chemoise's heart skipped a beat. She knew little of such things. She'd heard of men mining iron from fallen stars, and so she imagined that perhaps it would rain down like grapeshot from a catapult. But that couldn't be right. Falling stars were hot. The stars wouldn't be like grapeshot; they'd be more like fire raining from the skies, fire and molten iron. After last night's meteor showers, with the fireballs roaring through the heavens, it wasn't hard to imagine such a thing.
Uncle Eber shot Constance a furtive look, warning her to be quiet. He didn't want to trouble Chemoise with wild speculations about what might happen. That look worried her even more.
Chemoise often missed her life at Castle Sylvarresta. At least if I were there, she thought, I might have heard more about the threat. Even if the folks in the castle didn't know any more than Uncle Eber does, there would have been some juicy speculations.
But Chemoise knew of things more terrifying than meteor showers that Gaborn might warn them about.
“Perhaps another Darkling Glory is coming,” Chemoise offered. The threat hung in the air like a cold fog.
Constance set the spatula beside the stove and began wiping her hands. She turned the subject, “So, where will we stay tonight?”
“I've been thinking we could use the winecellars,” Eber responded. “They're old and dusty, but they go back quite far under the hill.” A dozen years ago the estate had had some large vineyards. But blight had killed the grapes. With the loss of both his crop and the plants, Eber hadn't been able to afford to replant, so he'd leased his fields to sharecroppers.
“Those old tunnels?” his wife asked in surprise. “They're infested with ferrin!”
The thought of the little ratlike creatures gave Chemoise a shiver.
“The ferrin won't mind a bit of company for just one night,” Eber said. He nibbled his lip. “I've invited the sharecroppers to stay with us.”
“That's half the village!” Constance said.
“I invited the other half, too,” Eber confessed. Constance opened her mouth in surprise as Eber set the bread and milk on the table and made a great show of sitting down, waiting for Constance to bring his breakfast. “There's nowhere else for them to go!” he apologized. “Only a few folk have root cel-lars, and the nearest caves are miles from here. We'll be safer together!”
“Well then,” Constance said with a tone of false cheer, putting the sausages on the table. “We'll make a party of it.”
Chemoise and Constance hiked up to the wine cellars half a mile behind the hill. The air had a strange quality today. The sky was hazy, and yet seemed to be heavy and looming. The path in front of the cellars was choked with tall grass, shrubs, clinging vines, and wild daisies. A few pear trees were growing before the door. This late in the season only a few dry leaves still clung to the trees.
It took some hard work even to wrench the door open. The odor of mold permeated the old winery. The floors were thick with dust, and little trails showed where ferrin had walked. A pile of their dung moldered next to the door.
“Yech,” Aunt Constance said. “What a mess!”
The cellar had been dug far back into the hill so that the wine could age at an even temperature. Chemoise left the door open and waded through the dust, past so
me vines white from lack of sunlight, back into the dark storerooms. After twenty feet, the tunnel branched. To her right lay a little shop with hammers and benches where a cooper had made barrels. “Well,” Constance said. “The heavier hammers are still here, but it looks as if the ferrin stole all the lighter chisels and files.”
Straight ahead were rows and rows of old wine barrels. Winged termites crawled about on the nearest ones. Signs of ferrin were everywhere in the little trails on the floor. There were ferrin spears leaning against one barrel, and some ferrin had made a conkle—a fiendish image constructed of straw and twigs—and set it in a corner. Strange paintings, like scratch marks made with coal, surrounded the conkle. No one quite knew why the ferrin built them. Chemoise imagined that they hoped it would frighten away enemies.
She tapped the nearest wine barrel to see if it held anything. Inside, some sleeping ferrin awoke. They began snarling like badgers and whistling in alarm, then raced out the back of the barrel through a small hole.
Soon the whole wine cellar reverberated with such whistles, ferrin talk for “What? What?”
The calls seemed to echo from everywhere, and Chemoise spotted little holes dug into the walls behind the barrels. Fierce little ferrin warriors wearing scraps of stolen-cloth poked their heads out of the holes.
“What a mess!” Aunt Constance said, coming in behind. “We'll never get it all cleaned up in time.”
“Would you like some help?” someone called. Chemoise turned. In the doorway stood a young man of perhaps eighteen years. He was tall and broad of shoulder, with blond hair that swept down his back and halfway covered his green eyes.
It had only been four days since Chemoise had come to Ableton. As of yet, she had met only half of the villagers. But she hadn't been able to help noticing this young man plowing a field across the valley.
“Chemoise,” her aunt said. “This is Dearborn Hawks, our neighbor.”
“How do you do?” Chemoise asked.
“Fine, thank you,” Dearborn replied. He was staring at her, as if her aunt didn't exist, as if he wanted to speak to Chemoise but couldn't find the words. By now, he couldn't help knowing all about her, at least the rumors that her uncle had spread. “Uh,” he offered lamely, “I, uh, I promised Eber that I'd come early, to help clean up.”
“Well then,” Aunt Constance said, “I'll let you two get to it, while I go do some baking.”
There was a clumsy silence as her footsteps echoed out the door. Dear-born stood for a long minute. Chemoise knew what this was. She was going to have a babe in seven months, and her aunt and uncle were trying to find the lad a father.
“So,” Dearborn finally managed. “You're new in the village?”
“You haven't seen me before, have you?” Chemoise asked.
“I think I'd remember if I had,” Dearborn said, smiling appreciatively. “In fact I'm sure I'd remember. I, uh, I live across the valley, in the old manor.”
Chemoise had seen it, a dilapidated building that had been old two hundred years ago. The Hawks family was large, ten children at least, from what Chemoise could see. Dearborn had two brothers who were close to his age. “I've seen you,” she said. “You're the oldest?”
“Aye,” Dearborn said. “And the best looking. And the hardest worker, and the cleverest, and funniest.”
“Ahah. That must give you a lot of comfort. Say something clever.”
The young man looked as if he wanted to bite his own tongue off for making a fool of himself. He looked up at the ceiling and said at last, “A true friend is one that will bear your burdens when you are down, and bear your secrets to the grave. And no lesser kind of friend is worthy of the name.”
It wasn't exactly clever or funny. It was more sincere. “Are you implying that I have burdens that need to be borne, or secrets that need to be kept?”
“No,” he answered. “It was just a thought.”
Chemoise felt sorry for the cold welcome she'd given him. He knew that she carried a child, and had probably guessed the rest. Yet he'd come acting as if he'd elbowed his brothers aside to be the first to meet her. “Well then,” she said, “let's see if you're as industrious as you are clever.”
With that they pulled up their sleeves and went at it. Dearborn began rolling the old wine barrels from the back in order to make room for the party. Some barrels had ferrin families living in them, and as soon as he began to roll them out, the ferrin would whistle in terror and come bolting out of one hole or another, diving into the tunnels that they'd dug into the winery walls.
Others barrels were used by the ferrin for food storage—and thus held a bit of wheat stripped from the fields, or dried cherries, or rubbery turnips plundered from gardens. Two barrels had been used as graveyards, and were filled with old ferrin bones.
All of the barrels stank of musk.
They were halfway done pulling the barrels out when Aunt Constance brought some tea.
“I think we should burn these barrels,” Chemoise said. “The ferrin have peed all over them.”
But Aunt Constance would have none of it. “No, we'll put them back tomorrow. The ferrin would starve without their food stores, and there are mothers living there, with wee babes to feed.” She looked pointedly at Chemoise's stomach. Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance had only managed to have one daughter of their own, and she had died in childhood, so she was perhaps a bit tenderhearted when it came to children. “Ferrin don't eat much, you know—a few cherries that fall from the trees, mice and rats and sparrow eggs, things like that. The rats down in the wine cellar were terrible until Eber brought some ferrin up from Castle Sylvarresta. Ferrin don't like wine, you know. Now we always put a load of hay in the winery come fall, to help keep their nests warm through the winter.”
“You brought them here?” Erin asked. “I thought they were wild.”
“Down south, in the Dunnwood, they live wild,” Constance said. “But not up here, dear. It's too cold in these mountains come winter.”
In southern Heredon, the wild ferrin were enough of a nuisance that the tax collector would pay two copper doves for every ferrin hide you brought in. Many a poor family avoided taxes altogether by collecting the bounties. But Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance didn't seem the kind to want to slaughter a whole village full of ferrin for a few coins.
“All right, then,” Chemoise promised, “we'll work around them.”
So Chemoise and Dearborn spent the morning clearing out the room and sweeping the dust from the floor. The dust cloud raised a stink, and the ferrin whistled in outrage and kept poking their heads from their burrows to let the big folk know about it.
Chemoise found that she and Dearborn worked well together. He was a farmer, used to guiding a plow, and chopping down trees for firewood, and shoeing his own horse. He was strong enough to move the heaviest barrel, and graceful enough to wrangle it around without stepping on Constance's feet while she swept and mopped.
Indeed, as they worked, she found that it almost became a dance. Dear-born would wrestle the barrels while she swept. She found herself continu-ally drawing close to him, and sometimes she'd look up to find that he was gazing into her eyes, but they never touched. Instead, he'd merely smile shyly and look away.
Sometimes he tried to make small talk, joking and asking about her “husband.” She told him how Sergeant Dreys had died at the hand of an assassin after only two months of marriage.
She watched Dearborn withdraw at the news. He hadn't really wanted to know about her “supposed” husband. Instead, he wanted to know how he fared against his memory, and he knew that it was not an equal contest. Dreys had been in the King's Guard, and had made sergeant by age nine-teen. He'd have been a captain by forty, and would most likely have been retired as a baron of the realm. He would have had title and lands, and serfs working his fields.
Hawks could not compete against that. He was the oldest of ten, and had the birthright of his family. But it wouldn't fetch him much in the long run. His father was a farm
er and a landowner, almost as wealthy as Chemoise's Uncle Eber, but once the farm was split among the six boys, they wouldn't all be able to make a living on it.
Hawks had little to offer a woman. So he worked. He tried to make light of it, but she soon saw the sweat staining the back of his tunic. Hawks took most of the barrels outside, and since Constance had said that she would want them replaced later, he piled them on each side of the path, and then, with the help of old shelving boards, stacked them overhead, making a sort of arch that the townsfolk could walk under. There were at least two hundred old barrels.
By noon, the tunnels were nearly cleared, and the smell of mold and dust and ferrin had receded, but there was still much to do. Both Chemoise and Dearborn just went outside and sat down, too tired to continue.
Downhill just a tad, her uncle's manor squatted. The foundation was stone. The mud and wattle on the sides had all been whitewashed, and a new load of thatch was on the roof. A pair of geese fed in the garden out back, and her uncle's old plow horse stared at her dolefully from the corral behind the barn.
It was a good life here in Ableton. Everything a person needed seemed to be close at hand. Her uncle had been living here, eating from his own garden from the time that he was born forty-six years ago. If Chemoise needed a new dress, Mrs. Wycutt would sell her a bolt of cloth, or sew it for her for a couple of copper doves. If her uncle needed a new plow, the smith could have it done in a week. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone watched out for everyone else.
Chemoise had thought that this would be a fine place to raise her son. She knew the child would be a boy, for she'd loved Sergeant Dreys so much that when he died, she'd lured his spirit back into her womb.
Now she felt apprehensive. The sky had gotten heavier since dawn. The haze was as thick as cream, and Chemoise could feel an electric thrill in the air. “There's going to be a storm tonight,” Hawks said. “I'll bet that's what the Earth King was warning us about—grand storm, with lots of wind. I'll bet it knocks whole houses down.”
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