by J F Rivkin
“You’ve learned too much from her to suit me. I’ll just take charge of this comb myself. You’re not going to play that trick on anyone but me.”
“It’s mine! Give it here!”
“Not if I know it.”
They tussled over the comb until they had both forgotten about it. It was some time later before Steifann rolled over and felt it jabbing him in the back. He seized it and flourished it triumphantly at Corson.
“Oh, all right, I make you a present of it,” she said. “I can drive men mad with desire without any help. But you’ll have to give it to Annin if she asks. I said I’d lend it to her.”
Steifann glared. “Did you tell everyone about it, you-”
“No, no, only Annin. I’d no choice! You see, I had to wash the perfume out of my hair, that morning, while you were still sleeping, and I called Annin to bring me hot water. I didn’t dare to fetch it myself-I’d have had to fight off half a dozen fellows, and maybe kill a few of them, through no fault of their own.”
Corson laughed, remembering her whispered conversation with Annin through the door. “Annin said, ‘What did you do to him’? They must have heard him howling all the way to Ochram!’ And I said, ‘Never mind that! Believe me, I need to wash my hair now, and don’t send Trask with the water, bring it yourself!’”
By now, Steifann too was laughing. “What did she say to that?”
“Plenty. She was furious. Both of us sleeping half the morning away, leaving her with all the work, and then asking her to fetch hot water, if you please! When she finished cursing me, she said, ‘You just washed your hair last night! Do you think I’m your rutting lady’s maid’?’ So I had to explain. But she wouldn’t help me unless I promised to let her use the comb some time.”
Steifann shook his head. “Asye! No man on the coast will be safe!”
4
corson’s letter was duly dispatched on the Windhover, along with another from Maegor containing urgent messages from Nyctasia’s allies in Rhostshyl. Some weeks later, Destiver turned over the lot to a trustworthy courier in Lhestreq who was bound for the Midlands, but nearly two months passed before he had completed the journey inland, around the Yth Forest, and arrived in Osela. By that time the winter had struck in force, and early blizzards had already buried the Southern Trade Road under impenetrable banks and barricades of snow and ice.
Communication with the Valleylands to the south would be cut off until the way was clear again. Nyctasia’s letters remained in Osela to await the spring thaw.
Winter was a time of some leisure for the farmers of the Midlands. With the crops harvested, the fields cleared, and the winter wheat planted, there was time for a measure of rest, for mending and making, and instructing the children.
On the estate of the Edonaris of Vale, the work of the vintnery went on at a slower pace, now that the pressing was completed and the new vintage sealed in casks. The barrels in their caves had to be inspected daily against damage or spoilage, the vine-stakes and trellises had to be kept in repair, and the plants themselves needed constant pruning, even during their barren season. But still winter was the least toilsome time of the year, and the family took full advantage of the respite. There were gatherings of the local gentry, feasting and flirting, and long evenings of gossip and storytelling about the hearth.
The labors of the estate did not much concern Nyctasia. Though she was willing enough to learn the art of vintnery, she did not share her kinsfolks’ passion for the profession, and she saw all too clearly that they needed no help from her to make and market their celebrated wines.
She did contribute a useful skill to the household, however, by taking upon herself the education of the youngsters. Even the practical Mesthelde ar’n Edonaris, who ran the manor-house with a firm hand and had little use for scholars, was grateful for Nyctasia’s learning, now that she herself was relieved of the unwelcome task of teaching the children their letters. “And you can give some lessons to the older ones as well,” she ordered Nyctasia. “That will cure them of their notions of running off to the Imperial University!”
Nyctasia rather sympathized with her young cousins’ desire to attend the university in Liruvath, but she could see the sense in Mesthelde’s suggestion.
Once they’d had a taste of the hard work that true scholarship demanded, most of her pupils did find the prospect of the university less inviting.
She had better success with the children, who were fascinated by her foreign accent and her exciting past. It was far more interesting to take their lessons from an exiled Rhaicime and sorceress than from Mesthelde, who’d been caring for them and scolding them all their lives.
But most of Nyctasia’s time was devoted to her own studies, researching the volumes of the Cymvelan library, copying and translating rare and ancient texts, discovering works unknown to her. She took part, from time to time, in the family’s winter pastimes, but she could usually be found in the tower room where the books had been housed when they were removed from the abandoned temple of the Cymvelan Circle. She pored over their pages day and night, often forgetting meals and sleep, driven by the desire to possess their secrets, as if the knowledge gained could fill the emptiness left by her losses.
Her newfound kin still hardly knew what to make of her. She had arrived in their midst suddenly, unexpected, a stranger from far-off Rhostshyl, the home of their remote ancestors, and a place known to them through tradition and rumor as a city of splendor and of danger. They had been wary of her at first, suspecting that she had come to enlist their aid in the warfare between the Houses of Edonaris and Teiryn in Rhostshyl. But much to the disappointment of the younger, more adventurous members of the family, Nyctasia had implored them to have nothing to do with the feud. She had sought only to live in peace among them, a request it would be churlish to refuse; the laws of hospitality forbade them to turn her away.
She looked like one of themselves, after all. She was nearly identical to Frondescine ar’n Edonaris, resembling her more closely than did her own twin brother, Raphistain. And though the Edonaris of Vale were hard-working folk who dealt in trade, they were mindful of their noble descent nonetheless, and Nyctasia’s lofty rank made her all the more welcome to the family. They were flattered that a Rhaicime should acknowledge them as kin, and they could not but be impressed by her elegance and her aristocratic ways. Not a few of her distant cousins were half enamored of her already, and when Lady Nocharis suggested one evening, “Let someone fetch Nyc to give us a song,” several voices promptly answered, “I’ll go!” and the others laughed.
Frondescine winked at her younger brother Jenisorn. “You go, Jheine. You can talk the birds out of their nests when you’ve a mind to. I daresay you can lure our little lone owl down from her tower,” Frondescine, who was always called
’Deisha, had been Nyctasia’s most ardent admirer from the first, but her feelings had since cooled to a somewhat more sisterly affection. Dear as Nyctasia was to her, ’Deisha could not help finding her brooding visions and dark spells a little frightening. She had seen more than the others of Nyctasia’s strange humors and forebodings.
Jenisorn got up from the bench, grinning. “At least Nyc has the wit to appreciate my charm and talents, unlike my nearer relations and my loutish siblings,” he declared. With his thick brown curls and laughing blue eyes.
Jenisorn gave promise of becoming the handsomest of a handsome family, in time.
He was used to being a favorite, but was too clever to be truly conceited.
“Get along with you, you strutting cockerel,” said Mesthelde. “Tell Nyc she’s not to blind herself, reading all night by candlelight.”
“At once, Aunt. She’ll not dare to disobey you.”
Mesthelde glanced up from her sewing and gave him one look that sent him hastening from the hall.
“We ourselves are the true link between the world of the spirit and the world of matter,” Nyctasia read. “For humankind is equally composed of flesh and spirit, of earth and air, of fi
re and water, and thus the gateway where the two realms meet is rightly to be sought within ourselves and not otherwhere.”
She looked up from the page when the great hound sleeping by the fire stirred and sat up, thumping its heavy tail on the hearthstones. Before long, Nyctasia too heard footsteps on the tower stairs. She quickly closed her book and returned it to the chest beside the table, locking it and pocketing the key.
Some of her young kinfolk had already been pestering her to teach them about spells and spirits, and she dared not leave such a thing to chance. By the time Jenisorn knocked and looked around the door, a different treatise lay open on the table before her.
“Ah, Jheine, have a look at this,” she invited. Jenisorn was the only one of her older pupils who showed a true gift and inclination for scholarship. He was already making good progress at learning Ancient Eswraine. “It’s a collection of the Isperian Maxims. How would you translate this one? The words are all simple ones.”
Jenisorn joined her and bent over the manuscript. “Veshayin heocht
…” he pondered. “To speak to a dog? Oh, I see-‘Speak to the dog at your hand.’ That makes some sense, but why ‘Speak to the bird at the bread’?”
“That’s not quite right, though it’s not quite wrong either. That form of the word can mean ‘at’ or ‘by’ or ‘with,’ you know. And ‘hound’ will match the pattern of consonance better than ‘dog’: ‘Speak to a hound with your hands.
Speak to a bird with bread.’”
“’Deisha will like that.” The livestock of the estate were his sister’s particular concern.
Nyctasia smiled. “Well, it doesn’t really have to do only with animals. It means that one should deal with everyone according to each one’s ability to understand. Here, now try this next one-it’s rather more difficult.”
Jenisorn puzzled over the unfamiliar passage for a time. “How can stars have echoes?” he said doubtfully.
“They used the same word for ‘echo’ and ‘reflection,’” Nyctasia explained.
“That’s why you often see mirrors called ‘echo-glass’ in old translations. It’s usually easy to tell which meaning is intended, though there’s sometimes a deliberate ambiguity. I think. Here it’s clear enough.”
“Hmm…” He tried again. ‘Long after those… perhelid?”
“Ancient.”
“‘Long after those ancient stars had fallen, their reflections could still be seen on the still, dark water below.’ Is that right?”
“Yes, well done!”
“But what does it mean?” he demanded.
Nyctasia laughed. “No one knows, but scores of disquisitions have been written to interpret it. None of them satisfies me, but I don’t claim that I can explain it any better myself.”
“Is it about ghosts, do you think?” Jenisorn asked, lowering his voice instinctively. It might be unwise to ask such a question in this isolated, ill-lit tower room, with the snowstorm howling at the windows.
“That has been suggested. Or it might simply mean that we ought always to consider the consequences of our actions. It seems to mean something different to everyone who reads it.”
“No wonder she was called Isper the Mad,” sighed Jenisorn.
Nyctasia rumpled his hair. “All poets are a bit mad, no?” She knew that Jenisorn had tried his hand at writing verses himself.
Suddenly the dog gave a short bark and trotted out to the stairway to greet another hound as huge as itself. It was followed by the twins, who’d come in search of Nyctasia and Jenisorn both.
“There, Raphe, just as I told you-Nyc’s netted him,” ’Deisha exclaimed. “We’d have waited all night while the two of them discussed philosophy.”
Nyctasia looked bewildered, and Jenisorn guilty. Raphistain laughed and swept a low how to Nyctasia. “My dear Nyc, this scatterwit was supposed to fetch you to sing for us, at Mother ’Charis’s desire-and Aunt Mesthelde’s command.”
Raphe too was fond of Nyctasia, and he knew that the family still had hopes of a marriage between them. He had indeed considered the advantages of the match, for it would enhance the family’s prestige a good deal if the title of Rhaicime should descend to a child of their line. Still, though it was most agreeable to have a mysterious, solitary scholar for a cousin, Nyctasia was hardly what Raphe needed in a wife. Someone with more stamina, less reserve, and, especially, a far greater interest in grape-farming and winemaking would be the only practical mate for him, he had concluded.
But what had in truth decided him, in the end, was that he found he simply could not court a woman who was the very image of his own sister. Nyctasia’s slender frame and fine features, her long, slim throat, high cheekbones and wide brow were all mirrored exactly in ’Deisha. Both had the grey Edonaris eyes and smooth black hair, as did Raphe himself. But the Edonaris of Rhostshyl were fair-skinned, the Edonaris of Vale dark from years of working in the sun. And Nyctasia had a scholar’s sloping shoulders, while ’Deisha stood straight as a young tree.
During the harvest season, Nyctasia had grown so brown in the sun that it was sometimes difficult to tell her from ’Deisha, and even now that the winter had restored her pale complexion, the resemblance was still uncanny. Raphe and Nyctasia had become excellent friends, but both knew that they would never be more.
“If you would consent to honor us with your company,” he said, offering his arm to Nyctasia, “allow me to serve as escort, since Jheine has shown himself unworthy.”
“I’d have brought her!” Jenisorn protested. “I was just-”
“Oh, come along, both of you,” laughed ’Deisha. “Send a goose to fetch a goose, and neither you’ll see again,” she chanted.
5
As the winter wore on, Corson grew increasingly bored with her lot in Chiastelm.
She never tired of Steifann’s company, but the endless routine of chores that ordered life at The Jugged Hare always began to wear on her restless spirit after a time. The work itself was not so burdensome as the tedium of doing the same tasks day after day, like an ox at a treadmill, always plodding over the same circle of ground. There was the occasional fight with a truculent customer to relieve the monotony, but that did nothing to satisfy Corson’s wanderlust.
When the captain of the city guard heard that she was in town, he offered her a position on the night watch-a post she’d held before, from time to time.
Patrolling the streets and wharves looking for trouble was work more congenial to Corson’s nature than marketing, or chopping wood, but serving in a garrison of guards reminded her of her years in the army-years she would rather forget.
And she far preferred Steifann’s bed to the municipal warders’ barracks.
Corson decided to forego the job, but she let it be known that she was for hire as a courier or armed escort in the vicinity of Chiastelm. Most coastal trading was carried on by ship, but there were merchants enough on the roads-and bandits enough-to ensure regular employment for such as Corson. The pay was not of the best, but the brief journeys eased Corson’s sense of confinement, and the harsh weather through which she had to ride made her appreciate the comforts of the Hare all the more, each time she returned. At every homecoming she swore she wanted no more of riding all day in the winter wind and standing watch in the snow at night, with her feet freezing in her boots; she’d be happy to sit by the fire peeling potatoes till spring.
But as the weeks passed, and spring seemed as far away as ever, Corson would feel again that the walls of the tavern were closing in around her. She wanted to be in the open, where there was room for her long limbs to move freely, where the very air she breathed wasn’t shared with a dozen other people. Everyone and everything seemed to be in her way, and she found it hard to control her quick temper. She knew, at such times, that there would be trouble if she didn’t get away soon.
At the close of the day, when the last customers were gone, and the tavern scrubbed and secured, Steifann and the others often sat in the warm kitchen for a while,
drinking ale, quarreling amiably, and eating any food that was left in the place. Corson usually enjoyed these times, but it had been several weeks since she’d last been away, and tonight the room seemed unbearably close and stifling to her. Everything her friends said she’d heard them say many times before, on nights exactly like this one, and she suddenly felt that she couldn’t bear to hear them said again. Only by maintaining a sullen silence did she keep herself from snapping angrily at the others for no reason.
If only, for this one night, she could be traveling with Nyc again, through some wild, lonely place where anything might happen
… I never knew what that one would say next, she thought wistfully, the addlepated chit! Nyc was unpredictable, always changing-like quicksilver, the mirrorlike living metal Corson had once seen an alchemist use at a fair. And she could be as dangerous as that pretty poison as well, Corson reminded herself, Nyctasia was by turns sorceress and scholar, noblewoman and vagabond, benefactor and deceiver, stranger and friend. Corson had known her as an arrogant aristocrat and as a humble healer. She had thought nothing of letting Corson risk life and liberty in her service, yet she’d nursed Corson through a desperate illness with patience and selfless devotion. She might be flattering and affectionate one moment, then sharp-tongued and mocking the next. She was capable of quite convincingly impersonating a pickpocket, a penniless student, a common tavern-singer, a pert messenger-boy, or any other guise that would suit her purpose. Nyctasia was the will-of-the-wisp that could never be clearly seen, that disappeared when you thought you’d caught it. She was sly and perplexing and altogether exasperating. She was an insufferable vexation, and Corson missed her.
There was no mystery about Steifann, but Corson did not want to discover any.
His frank, forthright nature and steady reliability were the very qualities that made Corson trust him as she trusted no one else, and made her return to the Hare as often as she could. If she ever found Steifann changed, she’d feel that the earth had given way beneath her, that she was falling helplessly, with nothing to catch hold of. There would be no stability or certainty in all the world.