"And?"
"And they said, if I was looking for you, they saw you go down that path to the meadow a little earlier. With another lady, they said."
I shook my head. "There was no other lady. No one was with me. Charras and her young man must have made a mistake."
Joli laughed again. "They were in such a tangle I wonder they saw anything at all. But I'm glad I found you."
"Me too," I said.
I decided not to tell her, ever, what sort of thing she'd killed.
* * * *
The next morning, as I'd anticipated, Ladygate was abuzz. Harken had gone away. Where? No one knew. When would she return? No one knew. Nor did anyone know I'd been called to see her last of all, and this was because the witch who had brought me her summons--with Kaski and three others, all Harken's special friends--had gone away too. Their leaving was not so mysterious as hers. They'd sent for a coach before sunup and several witnesses had seen them headed east. A small safe in Harken's apartment had been opened and was empty. Speculation was that she'd left earlier and they were on their way to join her--or maybe to escape her, depending on who was speculating. Naturally, her disappearance and theirs was the only topic of conversation at breakfast, which all in all was quite a cheerful meal.
As I was about to leave the refectory, carrying a tray back to our room for Joli, who was still shy of greeting the other witches, I felt a touch on my arm. It was Thelia, the young woman who'd brought me Tedor's letter. "Vivia," she whispered, "come into the hall with me, please." Her eyes were wide with something approaching alarm.
When we were alone she looked around before continuing to whisper. "It's old sister Keln. I took a breakfast tray to her room, and she's different... somehow... I don't..."
"Go on," I said. "Is something wrong with her?"
Thelia shook her head. "Not anymore. She asked to see you, and said I should tell you to hurry. She's--different."
What now? "All right, I'm on my way. Please take this tray to the girl in my room. Her name's Joli." I hurried down the hall and paused outside Keln's door. Ordinarily I'd have walked right in; Keln had been senile since before I'd come to Ladygate, and deaf as well. But now something told me to knock. I did, and the door swung open.
Keln stood there, her eyes flashing. "Vivia! Thank God you're here, sister, and that you've come quickly. I need to know what has happened."
She was the same woman I'd seen during Katra's last illness, when she'd been the great lady here. She was old but not in her dotage. The veil had melted away from her mind like mist from a mountain.
"Harken has died," I said. "I believe that must be why..." I couldn't think how to finish.
"Why I'm back?"
I nodded.
"Three years," she said. "I think. Three years of my life in that foggy place. Dear God. Come sit down, Vivia, and help me understand what she did to me."
* * * *
It took nearly a week for Ladygate to get itself sorted out again, but considering the misdirection of the last three years, that was very little time at all. Keln and I kept the manner and the place of Harken's death between ourselves. We agreed that many of the other women, having known Harken, would guess she'd died and not merely decided to remove her horrible spell from Keln. So we told them part of the truth, that she'd apparently met with a fatal accident shortly after leaving her apartment that last day.
Most, I think, were relieved. Keln was a greater witch, gentler, more just, and certainly more widely respected than Harken, who'd never been popular except with her little cadre of followers. All of them, too, were gone now, and some of the others suspected them of having killed her.
The supposed motive was the usual sordid one: money. Harken's cronies had left the large safe locked in their haste to get away, but they'd taken everything from the small one, which was not a pittance. Besides ruling over the community's lives, Harken had also kept its books. An examination of them showed she'd been raking off the top for all the years she'd been in command, diverting gifts, fees, and dowries into her personal custody. Out of all this she'd redirected payments to her friends who, among other things, had helped her to maintain the spell of influence over Keln. But these payments, or so the theory went, had not been enough.
This meant that Kaski and the others stood accused in the minds of many of their erstwhile sisters of a crime they hadn't committed. Perhaps this ought to have made me feel guilty, but in fact it did not. I suspected that it didn't bother Keln much, either.
Harken had been gone for a week when I went to Keln's room on a bright, brisk fall afternoon. She welcomed me kindly, poured me a cup of tea, and for a while we talked of Katra, whose friend she had been. The talk gradually drifted to my second teacher, Raym, whom Keln also knew and respected. After a few minutes, I told her what I planned to do, and she looked at me gravely.
"This is a dangerous, serious undertaking, Vivia, as you know. I won't ask if you've thought it through. I'm sure you have, and that nothing I could say now would dissuade you."
"That's right, sister. Thank you."
"Well, then. I'll take care of Joli for you, and I trust when you come back you'll take her away with you. She really doesn't belong here, you know. She's spent her life with a bad witch. For a while longer she'll have to stay with you--a good witch, my dear, and I hope you remain so--but then you must push her out of your nest." She embraced me. "Now go. I'll pray for you."
The next morning before sunup, I put some things in my backpack, dressed plainly, pulled on my walking boots, and woke Joli up.
"I'm going away for a few days. Or maybe a little longer. You'll be fine here, and then I'll be back to get you."
She asked me where I was going. When I told her, she smiled. "Good," she said. "He's lonely, Vivia. He misses you so much."
CHAPTER TWENTY
I didn't use the Great Shift. I was eager to reach my destination, but for some reason I wanted to get there on my own feet, not on borrowed wings. For two nights I camped, making small fires, sleeping lightly but well. How long ago it seemed that I'd last made this journey in disguise, afraid of being accosted, even though I was protected by guile, only to find Raym gone and Orath's glimmer fading.
Now nothing scared me but myself, a little. I knew I was capable of big mistakes, and I hoped I wasn't making yet another. At the same time, I trusted myself more than I had then. I knew myself better.
I remembered again what Katra had told me about someday wishing I'd not been gifted with guile. Now I remembered, too, what she'd said just afterward. When you do wish that, you'll have a choice to make. I know you pretty well, Vivia. I think you'll make the right one.
On the third morning I heated water in my kettle, bathed, and put on fresh clothes. A half-mile from Raym's cottage, an hour after sunrise, I shielded my glimmer. I wanted to sneak up on him. Long before I got there, I heard his axe ringing. When I came out into the clearing I stopped and watched him for a little while. He was splitting logs for firewood. There was a huge pile of wood already, enough for three winters, but he was working like a man getting ready for an ice age.
This was how I'd seen him first, nearly five years before. He was naked to the waist. His shirt was laid neatly over the front porch rail, his hair tied down under a folded square of cloth. He was turned mostly away from me, and I saw the rippling of muscle in his shoulders and back; a light sheen of sweat gleamed over his dark skin. My heart turned over. I took a step toward him.
He turned, saw me, and stood still, the axe in his right hand.
"Yes, it's really me." I let him feel my glimmer at last.
He frowned. "Vivia? What's wrong? Didn't the children come back? Joli and Tedor, I mean?"
"They did. They're both fine, and I've left Joli with Lo Keln."
His perplexity deepened. "Keln?"
"Yes. Harken's dead and Keln's herself again. I'll tell you all about it later." I crossed the yard and halted close to him.
He didn't move.
; I refused to use guile to touch him, but I didn't need to. I felt his longing take fire from a spark of my own.
He spoke carefully. "What is it, Vivia? Why are you here?"
For answer I slipped my tunic over my head and flung it in the general direction of his shirt. The axe hit the ground with a thud. I took his hand and held it against my left breast. My heart was beating very fast. "This is why. I don't think making love with you will cost me my guile or any part of it. But if it costs all of it, every glimmer, every flicker, I don't care. There's more to life than guile. You and I love each other, Raym. I'm not going to let us live all our lives and never...never--"
By then he was kissing my hair and my forehead and I was speaking somewhat at random, so I stopped talking and offered him my mouth to kiss. His tasted like spring water, and when I felt his tongue exploring just beyond my teeth, my knees buckled. I'd never guessed how intense physical desire could be. After a minute he lifted me and held me against him, kissing my breasts. After another minute, without a word, he carried me into the cottage.
* * * *
About a half-hour before sunset, I woke and remembered that I'd brought something I'd taken from Raym's trunk several months before. I opened my pack and found it.
He was sleeping, so I went outside quietly. The day was beautiful, the most beautiful of my life, a perfect fall afternoon, the aspen leaves like gold coins against a deep blue sky, the pines of the forest dark and secret. A little flock of sparrows hopped around in one of the big trees that shaded the cottage, chirping excitedly. I held the thing I'd brought out with me close to my heart, and after a moment I joined them.
Almost immediately Raym stepped outside. Something, maybe my leaving, had awakened him. He looked around, searching for me, I knew. Where had I gone? At last he called and his voice startled the birds, causing them to dart up and fly away. I flew up with them but not away. After a couple of seconds I lit on a low branch near Raym's head and then, as he began to laugh, on his outstretched hand.
"Ah, Vivia, my love," he said. "Thank God."
I fluttered down to the ground and became myself. "Yes. But I meant it, what I said this morning. If it had all disappeared, all my tricks, all my guile, that would've been a small price to pay for today. Even for just today. I would thank God still." I handed him back the guilish object I'd taken.
"You'll need to choose a talisman for yourself," he said, smiling. "A diamond or a ruby--that would suit you." His eyes were full of love.
I laughed. "I'll choose a stone from the stream bed down by your bridge. That will suit me. But not now. It's getting cold."
"I'll build a fire in the cookstove," he said, "and we'll heat up some soup. When we've eaten, maybe we should get back into bed."
* * * *
The next day we talked, mostly. We'd not actually talked together for over two years, so we had a lot of catching up to do.
"If I'd known what Harken was," he said, "I'd never have left you there, Vivia."
"Of course you wouldn't. No one knew what she really was, then. Except Keln, who couldn't tell anyone, or even reason it out for herself." I thought for a moment. "And not even Keln. One would have to have known Orath, and to have known Harken was her sister, and what Orath had done to that innocent child. What a tragedy, Raym. I'm glad Harken's dead, but I have it in my heart to be sorry for her."
"Yes," he said, "you do. You have a good heart, my sweet, a fine heart. That's not entirely your doing, of course. Part of it's from your mother, your father, the people who had a hand in your raising. From Katra. But you made choices too, small ones maybe, that led you--" He kissed me. "--here. Harken made her own choices. And so did Orath."
I lay in his arms, remembering Orath. "Raym, Orath knew she was too old to live much longer, and she wanted to live forever. Why didn't she use the Great Shift? She could have shifted into a young person's body. Why didn't she?"
He looked away for a while. At last he said, "Have you ever done that? Shifted into a different human form?"
"Yes." I told him, briefly, about Krinos. "I took his form, or something very close to it, so the ship's crew would think he was still there. I put an illusion on his body and got some men to throw it over the side, thinking it was me."
I thought Raym might laugh, but he didn't.
"I didn't mean for him to die," I added. "Not like that, anyway. I only wanted to get free of him. He had bad plans for me."
"What was it like, Vivia, being in that other form?"
"It was strange. It was still me, of course, just like it was still me when I took the form of the goose that time. And another time too, another goose. Remind me to tell you about that someday. But you know how there's a little bit of goose in you when you're in that form? I was myself when I looked like Krinos, but I was different. I didn't feel exactly..." I didn't know how to explain it. "I was angry a lot, for no reason. Surly. I threw a lot of darts at a board."
He did laugh that time, but stopped right away. "You understand, then. It's dangerous to take another human form. The body and the mind, the soul, the emotions, everything we are besides the body, they're not separate from each other. When you looked like the pirate, you also felt like him, thought like him. Not much, but if you'd stayed in that body it would have increased. I'm not saying you were that man, of course. But in choosing that form you also chose everything the form touched and shaped in yourself. In time you'd have become like him, without very much of yourself left."
"So, Orath...?"
"Yes. If she'd taken another form, that form would eventually have changed her. And she didn't want to change. She loved herself too much." He didn't say anything for a while, and I knew he was thinking of his bondage to her.
"She would have done it eventually," he went on finally, "or at least she told herself she would, I believe. You're right, she didn't want to die. But she wanted to be herself, to be Orath, for as long as she could. In the end she waited too long."
We lay close together, watching the shadows cast by the fire as they flickered on the ceiling. "Where had Harken been?" Raym said after a few minutes. "When she came back to Ladygate exhausted, I mean. Did she tell you?"
"No, she didn't say. East, somebody thought. My guess is it had something to do with the pirates' raids. We'd had no word of that, you know. Not at Ladygate, nor had Horok either. I heard of it from my father before I came to Maal. But it was strange--no, it was intentional--that Horok hadn't been alerted to send help to the towns in the East." I told him what the guard captain had said. And what I'd thought he meant.
"Guile," Raym said. "Strong guile. Then you think Harken somehow...what? Used influence on people coming west, bringing messages to Horok? Was she that strong? Could she have done that? And why?"
"I think she had people in the East to help her, people she'd known, women who'd been at Ladygate perhaps, just as she had her friends here. I mean there. Ladygate."
"And?"
"And I think she and Orath were in touch, somehow. Not necessarily by guile. Through the pirates, maybe. Harken loved money, Raym, and Orath had money to promise her. The piracy would make both of them rich.
"Tada and her friends had heard that a witch from Monsara was in league with Orath. I think Harken was that one. But I think when Orath died, Harken found out about it somehow. Maybe felt it, who knows. And she knew then that she'd have to call off her dogs, whoever had been using influence to keep the news of the Maalian raids from Horok. The ones at Ladygate were easy, but there must have been others in the East. So she went to stop them."
"Stop them?"
"Make them turn off that guile, maybe. Pay them, maybe, but probably not. She must have run into trouble from someone. She was stronger than she might have been, but whatever happened to her there took a lot out of her. It was a long time before she felt strong enough to confront me, and she had no reason for waiting except that. She wanted to surprise me with the Great Shift." I shivered. "And she certainly did."
The shadows
flickered and lengthened. Raym got up and put more wood on the fire, set the screen before it, and came back to bed.
* * * *
I think we might have stayed in Raym's cottage, maybe in Raym's bed, all winter, if we hadn't eventually run out of eggs. We had almost everything else in abundance. But without eggs our breakfasts were not as good as they might have been, and besides we were nearly out of the sort of tea we both liked. In fact, although we hated to admit it, we were getting a bit restless.
I'd been right. Guile isn't everything. But neither is love quite everything. One also needs eggs, tea, and every now and then a brisk walk. So one morning Raym and I set off, not for our nearby village but for the nearest large town, where Lord Khori's stronghold was. That was where Raym had gone to attend the birth of twins to Khori's lady more than two years before. And this, he said, was market day.
It was almost winter now but still dry and sunny, so we dressed warmly and walked fast. When we arrived in the early afternoon, Raym said he wanted to pay a courtesy call on Lord Khori. "If he's not in, or busy with something else, I'll at least have done him the honor of calling." Each of them respected the power of the other, I took it, nearly as much as each respected his own power; it was an interesting friendship.
As it turned out, Khori was in, was not busy, and was delighted to see Raym. He was a burly man, towering over Raym. He laughed frequently with a show of bright white teeth. When Raym presented me as his companion and "soon-to-be wife," Khori bent low over my hand to kiss it. I managed to smile coolly, just as if this weren't the first I had heard of our impending marriage. The prince inspected my hand before letting go of it.
"But where is your ring?" he asked.
"We haven't picked one out yet," Raym said. "That's one of the reasons we're in your town now."
"Ah, then, you've chosen a good day," said the prince. "A traveling goldsmith is here at the court, showing his wares. Beautiful things. He's the son of a man I've patronized for years, but the father, I take it, has finally retired. And I must say the son's work is finer. Come with me, both of you, and I'll introduce you." He started off at a healthy pace and we followed.
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