by Dave Smeds
"That's no mean feat," he countered, and briefly his glance focussed on some distant place. Remembering Ivayer, she guessed. "Toren has been asking about you," he added abruptly.
"Oh?" she said, feigning calm.
"I told him you had stopped by while he was asleep, learning the High Speech. It's been five days since he woke up. Are you avoiding him?"
"No," she answered instantly. "He's just been very busy. I understand Struth and Janna have started teaching him how to use his abilities. I haven't wished to disturb him." She carefully steadied her hand, and added a dollop of honey to her tea. She licked a drop off her thumb. "How is he doing?"
"He's progressing even faster than we had hoped. It's now easy to understand why Struth was so adamant that we locate him in spite of the incredible distance. Had we found him as a child and nurtured that talent as he grew… well, let's just say he's doing the best that can be hoped for in spite of the lack of proper shaping, distinctly better than the previous candidates. He may not be quite right for the gauntlets, but he's close. Very close."
"How long before he's ready?"
"That's not the question. We only have about two months, whether he's ready in that time or not. The Dragon's army is becoming too entrenched in the East. The situation in Cilendrodel is deteriorating. We have to set our strategies in motion and hope for the best. The uncertainty at this point is Toren's motivation."
"What more incentive does he need?" Deena remarked sarcastically. "We stole him from his land, ripped out his ancestors' spirits and then alienated him from them. Surely he is hopping with eagerness to help our cause."
Obo chuckled humorlessly. "Geim said much the same thing only yesterday. But it's not entirely hopeless. Though Toren believed in his tribe, his life in the South was not happy. I glimpsed pieces of his life, just as he did of mine, when I gave him my ability to use the High Speech. His shaman was jealous of him, and I have no doubt the man worked behind Toren's back to eat away at the tribe's opinion of him. Toren was a fabulous scout, and yet he was given the least desired missions and was seldom acknowledged for his successes. At the very least, his shaman kept him from developing his sorcerous talents. A man of Toren's abilities could never have prospered among the Fhali. I think the boy is beginning to realize that, beginning to see that his culture was so tradition-bound by the weight of all those generations of ancestors living inside every adult that an aberration such as he could only be stifled and shunned. And wasted. I am not guilty for what we've done. I know how I would have felt if my family had denied me the chance to study with the master wizards of Acalon."
Deena felt a burden lift from her shoulders. Thank the gods for wise old men.
"We will see what happens," Obo continued. "The transformation I am hoping for is not one that all the high sorcery in the world can manage. It's up to Toren himself." Obo slurped a quick, bracing sip of tea. "I've invited him to join us, by the way. He's done with his tests early today."
"You did?" Deena blurted. Her pulse quickened.
"Yes," he replied smugly. "In fact, here he comes now." He lowered his voice. "Keep in mind what I've said, young woman. And keep blushing. It becomes you."
Damn him, she thought. The heat in her cheeks increased. The conniving old trickster must have known his comment would have that effect.
The modhiv ambling toward was not the same man she had journeyed with across long reaches of two continents. The aura of disorientation had left his posture, replaced by determination, interest, and alertness.
He stared at Deena a long time. "You look different," he said. Was that approval she detected in his tone?
"I don't have to wear such, um, sturdy clothing now that I'm not on the road," she replied, adjusting the laces of her bodice.
"You've let down your hair."
"That, too."
"She's also had a bath recently," Obo said dryly. "Have some tea, boy, or it will get cold while you catalog all the changes in her appearance. I get the feeling you didn't know you were in the company of a woman on your trek."
"We were busy fighting cannibals and wizards," Toren said. "She was my comrade-in-arms."
"You'll be reassured to know I've been keeping up my archery practice this week," she informed him pointedly.
He chuckled. "That's good. But to be frank, I rather like the change." His speech pattern did sound remarkably like Obo's, she reflected. "Women shouldn't be warriors."
Obo guffawed. "There's a woman I know in Cilendrodel who would have a few words to say about that."
Deena smiled. "No, Toren's right." She nodded toward the modhiv. "By the way, your High Speech is excellent."
"It should be," Obo quipped.
Toren shrugged. "It is a very… round-about tongue. When a Vanihr needs to say something, he says it. I prefer Mirienese. It's more direct."
"We can speak it if you'd like," Deena offered in the aforementioned language.
"No," Toren replied in the High Speech. He dipped honey in his cup. "You know I still speak it in a fractured way. I like not having to search for the words I want."
"I suppose I could have taught you Mirienese as well," Obo mused. "You could have slept another couple of days…"
"That's all right," Toren said quickly. "I'm content."
There was a short, pregnant gap in the conversation. Each of them sipped from their cups.
Obo cleared his throat. "I have a matter to attend to. If you'll excuse me?"
Deena almost stepped on the hem of his robes to keep him in place, but the sorcerer slipped out of his seat with the elusiveness of a child, and sauntered away across the flagstones, his gait barely betraying his feebleness.
Deena turned, and found Toren staring into the pattern of the tea leaves at the bottom of the pot. He looked up, met her glance.
"I was not myself when I last saw you. I'm sorry."
She sucked in her lips. "Yes. Well. I knew that. Don't worry about it. I trust you and your ancestors have… come to an arrangement?"
"They are there, should I call them," Toren said wistfully. "But not in the way they used to be."
She nodded sympathetically. "Aside from that, how has it been for you? The tests?"
A sly smile crept over his features. He set two fingers on her cup. His eyes glazed. Steam began to rise from what had been lukewarm tea. When he was done, she picked up the cup, darted her tongue in it, and nearly scalded the tip.
"Clever," she muttered. "You could be handy in the winter."
"I feel like an eagle whose wings have been bound all its life, freed. I can't ride the thermals yet, have yet to make my first kill, but I have learned to glide from nest to ground. True flight is only a matter of time."
"And has Janna been a good teacher?" she asked, pretending nonchalance.
"Yes, though it's difficult at times to think of her as a teacher."
"Oh?" Deena eyebrows rose. "And what else would you think of her as?"
"A female."
"I see." She smoothed her skirts, was annoyed at the knobbiness of the knees under them.
"But I keep my attention on her lessons. The alternative is to study with Struth. I do enough of that. Something about learning from a big frog raises the hair on the nape of my neck."
"I didn't know you had any," she snapped, referring to the relative hairlessness of his body.
He blinked at her tone. "Janna has a gift for clear explanations. Hasn't she ever instructed you?"
"Not about sorcery. I have no gift."
"Of course," he said quickly. "So much goes on in this temple, it seems that everyone is a magician."
"No," Deena said. "Some of us must settle for less."
He frowned. "I didn't mean to imply you were a nettle among flowers."
"Sometimes I feel that way."
He regarded her carefully. "You are a mystery, Deena. How did you come here? How long have you lived at the temple?"
"Not long. Early winter before last, the Dragon's troops invaded Mirien,
sacked my home, killed all my family. I fled to Serthe. One day I happened by the Oracle of the Frog God. I threw in a coin and asked what I could do to hurt Gloroc. Struth liked that. She gave me a home. I was not suited to be a priestess, so I helped in small matters of business. The goddess found it handy to have a woman around who had had some martial training-that happened because my father was a career soldier who had no sons. I escorted the last candidate from her home in Aleoth, and then I was chosen to help fetch you."
"What happened to that candidate?"
Deena paused. "She failed the tests. She died."
Toren scratched his chin.
"So you see," Deena continued, "why I have reason to favor the Elandri resistance against the Dragon."
"Yes. Did you lose children in the invasion?"
"No. I've never been married."
He refilled his cup. "I've never been married either. That did not keep me from having a son."
Her cup slipped from her grip and landed noisily on the table top, nearly tipping over. She sucked spilled tea from her fingers. "No wife? When you mentioned your child, I assumed…"
"A natural mistake, I suppose. modhiv are not permitted to marry. Their lives are constantly at risk; it would not be fair to a wife. In addition, a warrior must be able to go to a skirmish without worrying about a spouse left behind."
"But your son."
"A Vanihr must have offspring to carry the totem. I made an arrangement with a woman. She bore Rhi, and cares for him when I cannot. But she is not my wife. In fact, three years ago she married my cousin."
Deena traced patterns in the spilled tea. "Yes, it would be important, to have a recipient for your totem. Your immortality, as you said last week. I almost expected you to leave as soon as Struth restored your ancestors, to go back and be with Rhi."
"I long to," Toren replied. "But what would be the point of dying on the way? Until I pass on my totem for the first time, I must survive at all costs. I don't know what my final decision will be, but for now staying at the temple and developing my talents seems more sensible than running for the Wood with the Dragon's assassins at my heels."
"I hope you will choose to aid us," she said. "It is a good cause. And good people stand to die if the Dragon has his way. Like my family."
"I've thought of that. Self-preservation is not my only emotion." Suddenly he reached out and tenderly brushed the tip of her chin. "I'm well aware of the goodness of some of the people here."
She coughed, and to her dismay, the action caused him to remove his touch. "Whichever you decide-to go back to the Wood or to take up the gauntlets-I pray you do survive," she said emphatically.
She interlaced the fingers of her right hand with his. He did not pull away.
XXI
THE SUN BURST OUT from behind a thin, solitary wisp of cloud as Wynneth climbed the hill. She trod carefully due to the extra weight in her belly, but vigorously, no longer burdened by the sleepiness of the second and third month, no longer weakened by morning sickness. This was the good part, her female relatives told her. She had started to swell; she could feel the baby move. It was becoming real.
She clambered to an outcropping, joining Solint the Minstrel at his lookout station. To the south stretched yellow prairie. A dark line denoted the edge of the great forest, nearly lost in the shimmer of the warm, midday air. A hundred leagues farther, separated by tracts of pristine, barely explored timberland, lay the coast of Cilendrodel and the town of Old Stump.
"Do you think we've lost them?" she asked. No telltale smoke or cloud of dust rose into the sky.
Solint strummed his lute; he was not one to allow guard duty to prevent him from composing. "For the moment."
Eight weeks after the sack of Puriel's fortress, Omril still pursued the rebel band, accompanied by two cohorts from the garrison at Yent. He had left the punishment of Old Stump's citizens to the acting governor and had singlemindedly chased Alemar and Elenya into the wilderness. Nothing dissuaded him, not the difficulties of supplying such a large group of men over such a distance, not the tediousness of cutting their way through tracks of untamed forest, not the attrition of the company by wild animals, booby traps, or nighttime rebel harassment. Three times the twins had tried to establish camps and enjoy some much needed recuperation; three times Omril had located them.
In their latest effort, they had waded along a river for a day to conceal their tracks, while a few members of the band created a false trail. Wynneth hoped they had finally bought themselves some time. The wizard would think it unlikely that they had ventured into open terrain. He would assume that the rythni were still helping Alemar's band, and rythni would not leave the forest.
Thus far it had worked. For the first time, the rebels looked less haggard, and had caught up on sleep. But Wynneth still fretted. Alemar needed more than a few days respite.
"I brought some sour cakes," Wynneth told Solint. "We've got the oven working." She waved at the crude construction down in the camp. A faint trace of smoke rose from the stack: a risk. However, the plains were often dotted with the campfires of the indigenous nomads. It had been too long since the rebels had tasted fresh bread and other baked goods. The presence of the oven had already boosted morale.
Solint smiled, stuffed his mouth full, and kissed her. She brushed the crumbs off her lips and laughed, recalling the sweetness of his kisses during the years before Alemar returned from the Eastern Deserts and married her. If music and sex had been enough to fulfill her, she might have lived a very different life.
She descended the hill. Elenya was still drilling a half dozen of the company in unarmed combat. At the moment they were performing an endurance exercise, kicking by her count. They paused for one deep breath between each set of ten. They were up to three hundred, and had the other leg yet to go. Elenya still kicked high and strong. All but one of the others had withered. Two barely raised their feet higher than shin level.
Wynneth kept her face averted, sparing them the embarrassment of an extra observer. They grimaced in frustration. They had exercised continuously for over three hours. She might soon have to interrupt. She could use the freshly baked treats as an excuse.
Elenya was a hard taskmaster; she demanded performance close to her own level. Even those with the youth, strength, and stamina to match her normal pace were being taxed to their limits lately. Wynneth winced as the princess yelled for everyone to kick higher.
They needed Alemar's tempering influence. She glanced nervously up the hill to the north, to the cave where her husband had secluded himself. She should not interrupt him. Still, he might appreciate some of the sour cakes. She had not bothered him for an entire day.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she loaded a small basket and started up the path. She felt Elenya's glance follow her all the way up.
****
Alemar lay at the mouth of the cave, staring up at the sky. The crescent of Serpent Moon hung there, a pale imitation of the brilliant blue and white half-circlet displayed at night. He heard Wynneth approach, but did not react.
She set the basket down near his head. "Your son and I have come to visit you," she said cheerfully.
He gradually turned and met her gaze. He glanced at the basket. "Just leave it. I'll eat later."
Wynneth sucked her lips inward, then puckered them, then sighed. She moved the cakes next to his other supplies and left, chin hung low.
Guilt settled on him like gnats at a lakeside. But he did not call her back. The visions in his head killed his involvement in the current moment. His relationship with his wife, his sister, and his comrades paled against the misery of those internal images. Rythni wings burned like oiled torches. Iregg's hand, crippled in battle, turned blue and lifeless as he held it. Memories of power now lost haunted him. The gentleness that caused the little people to be enamored of him eluded his grasp. He knew Wynneth had only been expressing concern, but all he wanted was to shut out the world.
Retreat. He waited for the r
itual that he had learned in Zyraii to heal the healer. He clung to the belief that it would. Until it did, he could not face the challenges before him, could not forgive himself, could not care if he lived or died.
What had his teacher said? "The sorcery within is a fragile gift. When nothing is left but embers, it must be banked and nurtured, or it will expire."
Perhaps the embers had gone out.
****
Elenya's group paused. As Wynneth went to splash some water on her face at the spring, the princess walked over, limping slightly. "Well?" she asked, obviously trying to keep the tone conversational.
"No change," Wynneth said. The chill of the water made her shudder.
"They have a saying in Zyraii. 'There is nothing so distant as a Hab-no-ken on Retreat.'"
"I know why they say that," Wynneth murmured.
"In fact, if he were to follow the tradition of Zyraii healers, he would have sequestered himself in a spot where no one could have found him."
"Then I suppose I should be grateful." Her sarcasm dripped off her tongue like acid.
Elenya gently laid a hand on her sister-in-law's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Wynneth said, sighing. "I just didn't expect him to cut himself off from me."
"Why don't you show me some of those things you've been creating in that oven? I was wondering when someone was going to make use of all these sourberry vines," Elenya said, waving at the brambles near the camp.
Wynneth tried to smile. Elenya took her by the arm and they walked together toward the rich, enticing scent. One of the other camp women withdrew a fresh batch of the tiny cakes. Elenya and Wynneth each snagged one. They blew on them to help them cool.
They had just swallowed them when Solint let out a cry. Instantly the entire camp was in motion. Elenya sprinted toward the lookout point, rapier drawn, followed by four others. Men rushed to put on their armor and saddle the oeikani. Wynneth and the women gathered supplies. She cast a quick glance toward Alemar's position, but could not see him.