She did understand, and my heart began to warm toward her.
"I too have lost things I should have valued more highly," she said.
The sorrow in her voice evoked my pity. Perhaps she was thinking of her husband. Though I was not aware of it, her charm had begun its work. She was not forming an opinion of my character. She was forming my opinion of hers.
"Sometimes, though, we are given a second opportunity," she said. "You may yet find your way home again."
I nodded. "I have not lost hope."
"You may find some means of making restitution, and so heal the breach caused by your misdeeds. Tell me, what wrong have you done, that your people made you a stranger?"
Her eyes searched mine, as if to find the flaw in me that had created all my troubles. Now, instead of understanding and compassion, in her eyes I saw pity mixed with scorn. For a moment I resented her willingness to believe I was at fault, but my resentment soon gave way to a desire to gain her good opinion.
"I've done nothing wrong," I told her. "I said I was an exile, not an outlaw."
"Much the same thing, I think."
"Not at all. What I did wasn't wrong, only unwise."
"What did you do?"
"I made an enemy of someone stronger than myself."
Elen nodded. "That was most unwise."
She leaned back in her chair and regarded me with amusement, as if I were, not Merin's rightful heir betrayed by a usurper, but just a child who, because of some imagined slight, has run away from home.
"So," she said, "you are a stranger to your people because you made enemies among them, and you have come into my house disguised as something you are not for a purpose you won't reveal. Am I wrong not to be reassured?"
What more could I tell her? I believed then that I had calmed her fears, but I didn't know how to win her confidence.
"Lady," I said, "how can I reassure you?"
"Tell me about the knife."
I had forgotten all about the knife. Before I could reply, she leaned forward and placed an icy finger against my lips, so cold it burned, yet I couldn't draw away.
"Take great care," she whispered. "One false step will be your doom. If you are a thief, say so, and leave this house unpunished. On that you have my word."
She unsealed my lips and leaned back in her chair to await my answer.
"I am not a thief," I said.
She smiled, but all warmth had left her eyes. "Then someone has lied to me," she said. From a hidden pocket in her skirt she drew the knife. Its blade shone in the lamplight. "Now I must have the whole truth out of you. This was my husband's knife, and if you didn't steal it, you had it from the hand of someone in whom I once placed all my trust."
How cleverly she had tricked me. Admitting to the theft would have proved me innocent of a much more serious offense. If I could have named the man I took it from, he would soon have been standing in my place, accused of treachery. Now the knife connected me to Maara, and I knew without her saying so that Elen recognized it, not only as her husband's knife, but as the knife she last saw in Maara's hand, the knife that killed him.
Elen caressed the blade. "Beautiful, is it not?"
Beautiful as it was, I didn't understand why Maara would have kept it. It was a reminder of the harm she'd done. Perhaps that was why.
"I think it's no coincidence," said Elen, "that this knife returns to me so soon after the one who wielded it."
I had to ask, "Where is she? Is she safe?"
"Before I tell you that, will you now tell me your business here?"
"Please, Lady, I beg you. Let her go."
Elen sighed, and a look of sympathy came into her eyes. "You've come a long way for nothing."
"Is she not still living?" I whispered.
"Oh, she is very much alive," said Elen, "but what you ask is not within my power to do."
I had to find a way to persuade her. Elen had saved Maara's life before. She might again, if I could give her a way to justify it. I spoke the first thing that came into my head.
"I believe your self-interest coincides with mine," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Had you not considered that by freeing Maara you will also free yourself?"
"Free myself? From what?"
"Why is the king's chair empty?"
"Because the king is dead."
"So the king is still the power here."
"I am the power here."
"Yet you leave the seat of power empty. And now will you throw away the last thing that keeps power in your hands?"
"What is that?"
"Revenge."
She waited to hear more.
"Among the common folk, they say that once your loss has been avenged, your grief must end, and you will have to provide them with a king."
It was the best I could do, and for a moment I thought I had persuaded her.
Then she smiled, a sad smile. "You misunderstand," she said.
Elen rose from her chair and picked up the lamp. Holding it before her, she took a few steps toward a dark corner of the room, then turned and gestured for me to follow.
"Don't," came a voice from the shadows. It was a voice I knew.
A few steps more and Elen stood by a bed draped all around with tapestry. She pulled aside the veil, and there, unfettered and unclothed, was Maara, sitting up against the headboard. The light fell on her face. She raised one hand to shield her eyes. Not from the light. From me. And in a gesture of modesty that denied what we had once been to each other, she took up the bedclothes, to cover herself. She could not have made it clearer if she had told me in so many words. She was no longer mine.
Elen let the curtain fall. "Maara is free," she said.
78. Love
The world had changed so suddenly that my mind let slip the thread of reason. One thing followed another without my comprehension. While I struggled to pull air into my chest against the weight that pressed upon my heart, I heard as if from a distance Elen's words. At the time they made no sense to me. They came back to me in pieces, while I lay under the table I had been tied to only an hour before, when the world was something that could be understood.
I knew she would return to me one day. I hoped it would be sooner. She has yet to tell me what kept her from me for so many years.
So many years. How many years had Maara stayed in Merin's house? Then I remembered, a hurt so old the scar had faded until I never noticed it anymore. Maara never intended to stay at all. She had abandoned me, after she had been in Merin's house less than a year. But she came back. Why? Maara's own words told me, in the answer she gave Fodla. Obligation. A debt unpaid. Not love.
I knew I could persuade my husband's brother to forego his vengeance after time had eased his grief a little. Though I too felt the injury, the assassin was one of my own household, and I took upon myself the debt. I paid him well in gold, not a king's price, but the hint of a promise went with it, that one day I might ally my house to his. Now I intend to keep my promise. Maara's life is bought already, but as a wedding gift I will ask him to forgive, so that I can welcome my faithful servant home.
She meant to marry him. That much I understood. Why he would allow his wife to keep an assassin in the bosom of his household, I didn't understand at all. But that was no concern of mine. I had so much else to worry the fragments of my heart.
I remembered Elen's hands. They were smooth and soft, but very cold, as they led me from the bedside. They drew me down beside her on a bench where we sat close together. She smelled of roses. I began to breathe a little easier.
I want you to know that she did not betray you. Even when I questioned her more closely, once I had seen the knife. Had anyone come with her? Could someone have followed her? I had to show the knife to her, to persuade her that you were here. Even then she withheld the truth from me, but I felt it in the trembling of her hands. So she must bear you some affection. I wish she had trusted me to deal kindly with you.
Ele
n gazed back at the bed, now hidden by the dark. Even so, I dared not look again.
She knows my jealousy, and I am a little jealous, but I'm also grateful, that she had someone who would care for her, while she couldn't shelter under my care.
Elen put her arm around my shoulders.
I'm sorry to have hurt you, but I had to show her to you. Now you can go home, knowing that she is well and safe.
Home? Elen knew I had none.
Well, if not home, you may find another household that will welcome you. I will not offer you a place with me.
She drew away from me a little.
Oh, I'm not afraid of you. Not at all. I'm thinking of your pain. I don't doubt Maara's heart. That she came here willingly was proof enough, and she has since given me many more proofs of love.
The image of Maara's nakedness in Elen's bed came again before my eyes. I washed it away with tears.
A kitchen servant woke me, then held a plate under my nose.
"Here, have a bite of breakfast," she said.
The smell of food made me feel sick.
"I wouldn't stick my nose up at good food if I was you," she said.
I sat up and took the plate, and she left me alone. I crept back into my out-of-the-way corner and set the plate down beside me.
After my grandmother died, I woke every morning innocent and free for just a moment before the memory of loss fell upon me like a blow, and I remembered that death had stolen someone from me. Weeks it was before I could accept it, and that sudden blow softened into a thing more like regret.
That morning death of a different kind fell upon me.
At first I thought I must have dreamt it all. None of it could be true. And yet my eyes had seen the proof, my ears had heard the story.
How had I been so deceived? I saw a new vision of events that once I had seen so differently. Maara had intended to return to Elen years before, but obligation kept her tied to me, and when at last she had the opportunity, she led me here. Why here, when we could have gone anywhere?
And when we began our journey home, she intended all along to leave me. She made me memorize the map, told me, if we were parted, to go on alone, while she returned to one whose love she still desired.
If we had not been captured, would she have left me in the middle of the night? Would she have told me what she meant to do, or would she have let me go on believing that she loved me, so that my heart would have been hers for years to come, for all the years to come. Could she have been as cruel as that? Would she have kept my heart from loving someone else?
How had I so deceived myself? I never doubted that she loved me. Now memories I once cherished filled me with shame. Had I misunderstood the barriers between us? I had thought she wanted me to breach them, to free her from the fortress that held her heart fast. The thought that I had forced from her an intimacy she didn't want made me ashamed of the love that I had once been proud to offer her.
So intent was I upon my own misery that I was unaware of the activity around me, until I opened my eyes to see several pairs of boots, all pointing at me. I was surrounded.
Someone picked up my plate. "Waste of good food," she mumbled. Then a woman said, "He's taken ill, poor lad." A cool hand felt my brow. "She can't send him off like this. Tell the captain he can go. We'll find another escort in a day or two, when he's feeling better."
A woman gathered me into her arms, carried me into another room, and laid me on a cot. When she settled a blanket around my shoulders, I pulled it over my head, and she left me alone.
Escort. Elen had said something to me about an escort. I didn't take it in. She could have been offering to provide me with an escort from her lands or with an escort to the graveyard. It would have been the same to me. I was dead already. Only my body had not noticed it. If it wouldn't follow my heart into the oblivion of death, perhaps it would fall into sleep, and for a time release me from my pain.
But pain followed me into sleep and haunted my dreams. Wolves in their many guises, some on two legs, some on four, danced with me along the edge of the abyss. And when I fell, they looked down at me and laughed. The fall woke me. It was dark.
Hunger made me forget my mortal wound. As Maara once said, the body keeps us living, even against our will. I sat up and saw all around me the sleeping forms of the household servants, lying on cots like mine or on pallets on the floor. I got up as quietly as I could and crept into the kitchen, where I made myself a meal of meat scraps and heels of bread that I found in a basket beside the door that led out into the yard. Then I retreated again to my out-of-the-way corner.
Once I had eaten, I felt a little better, but I didn't feel like myself at all. I no longer cared for anything or anyone. Where not long before a searing pain had been, now there was no feeling, none at all. Can a body go on living whose heart lies dead within? Perhaps it can, but to what purpose? Injury provokes a desire for revenge, but who had injured me? I could only turn my sword against myself.
Who else could I accuse? Not Elen. Hers was a prior claim. If I accused her of the theft of Maara's heart, I would make of myself a thief. A would-be thief, I reminded myself. And how could I blame Maara? Of what could I accuse her? Only that she had lied to me, not once, but many times. Why? To shield me from a painful truth or to keep me from keeping her from Elen? Either way, how could a lie have killed me?
Then I saw in my mind's eye, as if I were a witness, a battleground where the dead, the truly dead, would lie, and I remembered the northern army, at that very moment gathering its strength, intending to lay waste to Merin's land.
Because I had believed in Maara's love, I had left to their fate all those who truly loved me. I had betrayed them because Maara had betrayed me.
Where love had fled my heart, now hatred hastened to rush in. Never before did hatred find more than the briefest welcome there. Even my hatred for Vintel was a little tempered with pity and understanding. Now my hatred for one I had so loved raged like a storm within me, though my body still sat slumped against the kitchen wall between a table and a rubbish bin.
And I did indulge it. I used it, to push my love away from me, to reclaim myself a little. Hatred lit the spark, and anger fueled it, until it burst into a flame that revealed to me the darkest places in my heart, where I would fight for what I wanted, where I would murder any who opposed me. That fell knife that had betrayed me, I held to Elen's throat. I could not bring myself to imagine taking Maara's life, but to take love from her as she had taken love from me seemed only justice.
I'll never understand how love can turn so quickly into something else.
Merin's words. They echoed in my head as if her voice had spoken them aloud beside my ear. At last I understood. I set my heart in Merin's place and watched my mother, her beloved, turn her back and walk away. At last I understood.
Merin's voice spoke to me again. The rest of it. Her sorrow, her regret. And the very thing that had kept the two apart, whose hearts still yearned toward one another.
It was bad enough to call her love for me a lie. It was unforgivable that I denied my love for her, even to myself.
I refused to see her meaning. Her words did not apply to me. Maara's love was a lie, and Maara's lie released me. I could deny anything I liked. If I did not deny it, how could I bear the humiliation of giving her a love that was unwanted. She had made a fool of me.
How could loving someone ever be a foolish thing? This was a side of love I had never seen before. Isn't love always about the other person?
And that thought stopped me.
What I had just been calling love was something else. If my love for Maara depended on her love for me, it was not love, but a bargain. I thought of the night we spent together in a shelter in the wilderness, when I first told Maara that I loved her. I never asked her if she loved me back. I only asked her if she wanted what I had to give her. My heart. Myself. And she had accepted.
Maara hadn't taken love from me. I had it still.
But now Ma
ara didn't want it. Of what use was my love if Maara didn't want it? What could love do for her? What could love offer her?
Once I asked the question, I knew the answer. I could let her have her heart's desire, even if it wasn't me. I could wish her well and let her go.
Still I resisted. It can't be done, I thought. Not by the human heart. Perhaps the hearts of gods can grow as great as that. Not mine.
Yet what choice was there? What else could I do?
I blew upon the embers of my anger, envisioned myself at the head of a great army, breaking down the walls of Elen's house, bludgeoning the tower door to splinters, finding Maara there and taking her by force, to carry her away with me. Yes, if I had the power, I could force her body. No power in the world could force her heart. Nor, if I imprisoned her, could I ever hope to win it.
The last little flame of anger flickered out. The ashes began to cool. I wish I could say I felt a little better. In fact I felt a good deal worse. Now there was nothing I could do but reconcile myself to the greatest loss of all. Greater than the loss of life itself, I thought it was, because death brings forgetfulness. While I lived, I would remember.
My mind reached the end of thinking, and I sat quietly for a little while without a thought left in my head. The ravaged place within my breast began to knit itself together. The raw pain had subsided, though it was still tender to the touch. Like all pain, it would someday fade to just an ache that I would grow accustomed to.
Then it occurred to me that I couldn't pass the rest of my life sitting under a table in Elen's kitchen. What should I do now? Wait for Elen's escort? Where would they take me? I had friends to meet. Finn and the armorer. Bru's band of warriors. I should release them from their obligation to me and send them home. And it might not be too late to take a warning back to Merin's house.
I stood up.
79. The Abyss
The first glimmer of dawn had begun to light the yard. The shuttered windows let in feeble rays that tangled in the smoke of the banked fires. On one of the kitchen hearths I saw a suckling pig still on its spit, well roasted and keeping warm beside the coals, ready for the warriors' breakfast. Loaves baked the night before filled the kitchen with their fragrance. I began to step back into the world. It was a world both familiar and strange.
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