Over his shoulder, Sindérian saw a slender boyish figure slip out through the open door of the house, heading toward one of the smaller cottages. Seeing which way she looked, Gilrain said: “They are going to set a watch on the road in both directions, just to be safe. If someone comes, we’ll have sufficient warning.”
The smith’s house was solidly built of stone, with a slate roof over massive oak beams. They entered to a savory odor of soup simmering in a copper kettle and griddle cakes browning on hot stones.
Once inside, Sindérian was soon seated on a low bench by the central hearth, with a wool fleece thrown over her shoulders and an earthenware mug full of steaming hot broth thrust into her hands by the smith’s buxom wife.
Through a door standing halfway ajar, she could see into the forge, with its open furnace, flagstone floor, and hammers and anvils. Otherwise, the house seemed to be all one large room, with a staircase leading up to a loft for sleeping. Windows were unglazed and covered by stout wooden shutters, and there was no chimney, only a round smokehole at the peak of the roof. But the fire burned with a clean resinous smell, and there were tall yellow candles in polished brass holders standing on a table of solid oak. It was clear to Sindérian that she had come to a place of homely comfort.
In addition to the smith himself—with his barrel chest and bristling blond beard—his wife, and the boy who had gone out earlier, there were also three daughters, and a white-haired grandmother in a faded blue dress who sat on a three-legged stool by the fire, mending a man’s shirt with a length of linen thread and a bone needle.
It was a goodly family, Sindérian thought. And realizing that she and her companions put all of them in danger, the children and adults alike, she felt a pang of distress.
What right had she to claim their help, to imperil their safety? Yet it was hard to think of moving, harder still to do so, when she was finally warm and comfortable.
Meanwhile, three more men in rough woolen tunics came in through the door, and with them two weather-beaten women, of indeterminate age. They all spoke in low voices, solicitous for the travelers, and very eager to offer assistance.
For these people of Brill, as Sindérian soon gathered, were rustic but hospitable. To the memory of Lord Goslin they were fiercely devoted, but Dreyde they naturally distrusted. He had come from “foreign parts” halfway across Mere and had done nothing since settling at Saer and assuming the title to win their affection. That it was even his title to inherit there was some reason to doubt.
Gilrain, on the other hand, they knew very well. He was the old Lord’s godson and fosterling. And as such, the whole of Brill was apparently ready to do him any and every service, explained the smith’s eldest daughter. If they might in the process cause inconvenience to the upstart Dreyde, then so much the better.
But ought we to believe in the honesty of these people? Sindérian wondered. Ought they to trust in such ready kindness, such open-handed generosity? An unpleasant thought insinuated itself: these men of Mere were no longer allies. In another few months, they might even be enemies. And the last time she had received such pressing hospitality, it had all gone badly.
Yet Brill seemed an altogether more wholesome place than Saer. Here she detected no undercurrent of fear, no false bright smiles, no assumed gaiety. The villagers were sober and practical, they spoke and acted like sensible people. They knew their danger—in truth, they knew their situation very well—and after taking reasonable precautions, they accepted it.
Sindérian decided to trust her instincts. She allowed herself to relax, to bask in the warmth of the fire, to sip her broth, and listen to the conversation going on around her.
“We knew why we were fighting the war,” said a hard-faced man with bright red hair. “Men from this village have been there. My brother was with the army that took back Ceirduillin, after ten years of Pharaxion rule. He saw the great temple there, the blood on the stones. He saw the sick and the lame starving in the streets, and the granaries full of corn: to be burned in honor of the Empress—all for her vanity, while children starved. The Duke did wrong to forsake the Alliance.”
So this, Sindérian thought drowsily, was the temper of the countryside. No matter how insincere Dreyde had been, there was ample resentment against the Duke, even, perhaps, unrest in the villages. These people knew, just as she knew, that the enemy only bided her time before sending armies to invade Mere.
Yet if the people rose up against their Duke—She caught her breath at the thought. If the people rose up in rebellion against the Duke, then so much the better for Ouriána of Phaôrax, so much the worse for the people of Mere. A house divided would the sooner fall. Whatever happened, Ouriána’s victory was practically assured.
Yet there remained the prophecy and the quest, Sindérian reminded herself, and the success or failure of that might yet change everything. If she had momentarily forgotten, Prince Ruan had not. She could hear him bargaining with the smith and another man for horses.
Two venerable geldings and a five-year-old mare—“rawboned, ungainly, with a jolting gait”—those were all, said the blacksmith, that could be spared.
“We have only a dozen horses in the entire village, do you see? We use oxen and asses for draft animals mostly. And if half of the horses in Brill suddenly disappeared—” He shrugged a broad shoulder. “That might draw the attention of Lord Dreyde’s men.”
“Very well,” said the Prince. “The mare will do to carry the baggage, if her gait is as bad as you say. We can take it in turns to ride the geldings.”
When the smith named a price that was ridiculously low, Ruan’s eyebrows rose. It must go against his pride to accept what amounted to charity from such simple people. But he clamped his mouth shut in a thin hard line, dug in his purse, and produced the necessary coins.
“It is one thing to pay for the horses, which they can hardly spare,” said Gilrain in Sindérian’s ear. “Also for the things that you take with you. But do not allow the Prince or his men to offer money for what you eat here. It would be worse than insulting. In this part of the world, hospitality is sacred.”
The villagers offered packets of waybread, of dried fruit and smoked meat wrapped up in fresh leaves, some boiled eggs, and a small cask of ale: ample provision for the next fortnight, and longer if they were prudent. To Sindérian, one of the women brought a homespun gown, faded to a butternut brown, and a pair of scuffed boots that she said had belonged to her son who had gone to the war and not come back.
Just when, precisely, Sindérian drifted off, her mind going vague and her thoughts wandering, she did not know. The voices in the room receded to a distant murmur. She came back awake only when somebody stirred the embers under the pot, and the fire flared up. As if in response, angry voices rose and clashed in another part of the room.
She looked over her shoulder and saw the Prince and Gilrain facing each other beside the door. Ruan’s jaw was set in a stubborn line, and his arms were folded across his chest. Gilrain’s slim body quivered with tension, and his eyes flashed.
Reluctantly, she left her warm seat by the fire and swept across the room, trailing her sheepskin blanket behind her.
“He says he has offered to guide us through the mountains,” Ruan hissed between his teeth. “Surely you don’t mean to accept?”
She felt a flush of annoyance pass over her. “And why not, after all? You don’t know the way and neither do I. We would be fools to attempt the Cadmin Aernan without a guide.”
“Neither do we know, yet, why this Ni-Ferys is so eager to be of assistance!”
Gilrain put his hands in his belt, stood with his feet well apart. “To spite Dreyde. To spite Thaga. You can understand that, I think. My people may not love revenge as yours do, but it is possible to injure us. Goslin was old, but Dreyde lied when he told you that he was ill. I am not the only one convinced that his sudden death was caused by Dreyde and his tame sorcerer; it came too pat, it was far too convenient. And he lied about something else, too. Whatever he said
to the wizard, he is the Duke’s man. Dreyde came to us from Clowes, with the Duke’s blessing, and Thaga came with him.”
He lowered his voice. “And when Thaga was at Clowes, they say he was always at the Duke’s side whispering, whispering in his ear. I do not think it was simple cowardice, ‘simple prudence’ as Dreyde would have it, that caused the Duke to desert his allies. I think he was corrupted, somehow, and that Dreyde and his hedge wizard were a part of that, too.”
Sindérian rubbed at her eyes. She would rather not think about Thaga, but she supposed that she must. “Not a hedge wizard, or a simple country sorcerer. I begin to suspect that Thaga must be an Otöwan magus, though probably not of the highest order. The magi, they say, practiced many of the old Earth Magics, as well as their own spells, which were wholly of the Dark. I sensed both kinds of magic at Saer.”
The two Faey looked at her doubtfully. “But the magi were destroyed,” said Ruan. “We were taught the story as children: a thousand magicians died in a single hour, and the world was Changed.”
“A thousand magicians died, but a handful may have survived. Some of them must have lived to pass on their arts to men like Thaga. Didn’t he tell us as much himself?” she asked. “Not of our order on Leal, he said, but educated at a school in the east, no longer in existence. Ouriána may have found him when she was in Otöi, and sent him to Mere to spy and work mischief.”
Ruan uncrossed his arms. “There is more than one kind of spy, more than one way to work mischief. I don’t trust this half-blood Ni-Ferys, and neither should you.”
She was suddenly aware of a hush in the room. Everyone was listening to their dispute. No one spoke, no one moved. With a sigh and an apologetic glance for Gilrain, Sindérian invited the Prince to step outside and discuss the matter privately.
He went out before her, his sky-blue cloak swinging and his head very high. The wind had risen, sending rags of cloud sailing across the face of the westering moon.
They stood just outside the light from the open door and conversed in low voices. “Has it never occurred to you,” said Ruan, “to wonder why he only bestirred himself to befriend us after your father died? If he wanted to help us, why didn’t he try to save Faolein first?”
Sindérian ran a tired hand through her hair. “Perhaps—perhaps he believed, as you did, that Faolein could look after himself. What was reasonable for you to think could hardly be suspicious in him.”
The Prince stiffened, as though hearing himself and the Ni-Ferys mentioned in the same breath was highly offensive. Sindérian struggled to master her own impatience. But she had felt too much in the last day and two nights; her nerves were unstrung. She answered with more heat than she intended: “Whatever there is between his people and yours, we can’t allow it to influence our decision. We can’t—”
“My people,” he said, a flush creeping up to his cheekbones, “are the Men of Thäerie. You know nothing about me if you think otherwise. But at least admit that I know more about the Faey than you do!”
She leaned back against the side of the house. “And what do rivalries and prejudices among the Faey matter to us now? This Gilrain is just as much a Man of Mere as you are of Thäerie. What can you possibly say against him, except that you do not like him?”
The Prince shook his head, unable to reply, though the set of his jaw and his rigid, angry posture were argument enough.
And somehow that aroused as much resentment in Sindérian as anything he had said. “Tuillo died. Faolein died, to bring us this far. We can’t allow their deaths to mean nothing, or throw aside this chance my father bought for us and paid for so dearly.”
Now Ruan looked bewildered. It was his turn to slide his hands through his hair, to draw it back from his face. “Chance? What chance did Faolein buy us with his death? When you speak in riddles, how am I to understand you?”
Sindérian caught her breath sharply. She had not known this thing herself until the words came out of her mouth unbidden. “Do you think that Faolein walked into that trap at Saer without even suspecting?” she asked fiercely. “Do you imagine he couldn’t see into Dreyde’s mind, into his rotten black heart, within moments of meeting him? My father knew long before that. He knew when he stood before the gate that he was in danger—he saw his peril, but he knew also that we would pass through the fortress unscathed. For our sake he gave himself up.”
The Prince gave a short, harsh laugh, astonishment melting into disbelief. He walked to the door, but then he turned back again. “When we might just as well have avoided Saer altogether? That makes no sense at all!”
She clenched her hands, so that the nails drove into her palms. “And what chance do you think we would have had, on foot in the hills, in country that even Faolein did not know well, with Dyonas and Camhóinhann hunting us, and Goezenou following right behind them? Whereas now we have horses, supplies, and a guide, if we will accept him, and most likely the Furiádin believe we are dead or prisoners at Saer—or else they would never have left the fortress when they did. They will be miles away by now, and unlikely to spare us another thought.”
He looked her over in frowning silence, his handsome face very pale, his silvery eyebrows coming together. “And you think that his Foresight revealed all of these things to Faolein?” he said at last. “You think that he knew exactly how it would be? Even for a seer like your father, that would be a remarkably detailed prediction!”
Sindérian bit her lip. “Not exactly how it would be, no. He could hardly have seen everything. Just enough to choose his path and know that it was right.”
The Prince, who had been about to leave again, stopped with one hand on the doorframe and a suddenly arrested look on his face, as though considering her words, considering them deeply. “That much I can believe. I have known Elidûc to have such inexplicable insights. To know what needed to be done, without knowing why it was right—or even how he knew it. It might have been the same with Faolein.”
And then he capitulated all at once, with a twist of a smile and a low graceful bow, so that Sindérian wondered if he might be mocking her. “If Faolein’s daughter says that it was, it must be so. Very well, then, let it be as you wish. The Ni-Ferys shall be our guide. After all, he need not be entirely trustworthy in order to be of use. And it may be as well to have him travel beside us, where we can keep an eye on him, instead of following behind us, unseen and uninvited.”
They went back inside the house and told Gilrain, Aell, and Jago of their decision—an arrangement that seemed to find favor with the men-at-arms. With that matter settled, Sindérian gathered up the dress and the boots she had been given earlier and went up to the loft with two of the smith’s daughters to change her clothes.
The older girl, Brielli, unlaced the wine-colored gown, and Sindérian shrugged out of the soiled velvet. It fell at her feet on the plank floor, and she stepped away with a shudder of distaste, glad to be rid of the thing and the memories it evoked.
“I will burn it, after you are gone,” said the younger girl, picking up the gown, wrinkling her nose. It still reeked of the sewers at Saer.
But Sindérian shook her head. “Better to bury it under the midden, and leave it there to rot,” she said, thinking of the stench it would make when the fur began to scorch.
She reached for the homespun gown, slipped it over her head and shoulders. As the loose-fitting garment settled into place, Brielli gave her a worn leather belt to cinch it in. The dress had obviously been made for a woman who was shorter and a good deal heavier than Sindérian; the hem just skimmed her ankles, but the skirt was very full. Paired with the boots, it would make a suitable costume for riding and walking.
Brielli handed her a pair of long woolen stockings, and she sat down on a cot to pull them on, one after the other. Then she took up one of the knee-high leather boots and worked it on over the bulky stocking.
A dog barked somewhere outside; the geese set up a terrible clamor. Everyone in the room down below went suddenly silent. Sind�
�rian stopped with one foot shod and the other boot still in her hand. She listened, over the hammering of her heart, as the door opened and closed when someone went out.
“It’s nothing,” the younger sister assured her. “Just someone going to the well for water, or to fetch in some firewood.”
For all that, she tugged on the other boot as quickly as she could, jumped to her feet, and stood poised for flight—until the door finally creaked open again, and a voice down below was heard to announce that all was well.
Possessed by a sudden urge to be off, a nervous pounding in her blood, Sindérian plaited her hair, her hands grown suddenly clumsy with haste, and tied the end with a bit of ribbon provided by Brielli. Then she ran downstairs to rejoin her fellow travelers.
They were already preparing to leave, gathering up the things so generously provided: besides the food and the ale, there were blankets and fleeces to serve them as bedding, and a fine yew bow and a quiver of arrows with grey-goose fletchings, which Gilrain slung over his shoulder.
“You ought to be gone before the sun comes up,” cautioned the redheaded man. “You will want to be well on your way, with Dreyde’s men out searching the countryside.”
“We will hear them long before they hear us,” said Gilrain, with a thin smile. “Especially if they travel with such a noise as we heard before.”
“I have it in mind,” said the smith, rubbing his stubbled cheeks with thumb and forefinger, “that very few of the men of Saer have their hearts in this hunt. Only the men that Dreyde brought with him from Clowes. The rest obey him only because they fear him.”
Gilrain nodded. “I think the same thing. So for their sake as much as our own we ought to be off.”
When the others went out, Sindérian was impelled by a sudden impulse to enter the forge. A bucket of water stood by the cooling furnace. She stooped low, scooped up water from the bucket, and dribbled it in a circle on the flagstone floor. Then she traced a symbol in the center of the circle.
The Hidden Stars Page 22