A Play of Shadow (6 page)

Such questions died on his lips, unspoken, and he knew himself a coward, afraid to see the terrible truth in every face. That once beyond Marrowdell, even they forgot her magic.

He would not. Dared not. Ylings. They lived in the old trees—the neyet. The ylings had been left in the valley; the neyet grew through from the Verge for their own reasons and, once, had sacrificed themselves so the turn-born could build a village. A village to attract people, ordinary people, to harvest the kaliia, the grain that also grew from the Verge and was tended by the deadly efflet.

Jenn Nalynn had hair of gold.

The kaliia was the reason for the mill, too, for the turn-born—however dangerous and powerful—happened to like the beer they could make from that grain.

He did too, come to think of it. Tasty stuff. To turn-born it was more, Jenn had told him, the brew being their way of bringing some of this world with them into the Verge, for they wouldn’t cross in winter.

Willingly would he drown in her eyes, their deep blue purpled by magic. Her smile took hold of his heart and made it sing. When she laughed, the world brimmed with hope and anything was possible.

The road, the crisp air, even the patient horse beneath him faded as Bannan thought of Jenn Nalynn; he started when Tadd Emms rode up beside him and said his name.

“Is something wrong?” As if everything wasn’t, the truthseer told himself grimly. Give him bandits. Anything but this betrayal.

“That’s what I came to see.” Though both twins showed their Naalish ancestry in a stocky build and tight black curls, with a sallowness to their skin despite its weathering, only Tadd had their mother’s dimples. They weren’t in evidence now, his features serious. “Hettie said you shouted a name she didn’t know.” After a quick, searching look at Bannan’s face, he smiled broadly and leaned back in the saddle. “Jenn’s. Jenn Nalynn. You remember.”

“How—?” How didn’t matter. Bannan’s relief was akin to pain. “I do. Now. But Tadd, I—I forgot her.” Said aloud, it sounded worse than impossible.

Tadd merely nodded, as if unsurprised. “What matters is you remember,” with certainty. “We’d bet, Allin and me. If you would or not. I told him a truthseer might.” His head tilted, like a curious bird’s. “You have, haven’t you? Remembered Marrowdell the way we do. Not only Jenn. All of it. The magic.”

“Yes.” With help. Bannan decided not to mention the moth. Though unoffended to be the subject of a wager—it was hardly the first time—he found himself abruptly indignant. “Why didn’t anyone—” Ah, but he’d been warned, hadn’t he? He took a steadying breath. “How is it you remember?”

Tadd found the ends of his reins of surpassing interest. Their horses, long-time companions, matched stride for stride in an easy walk. After a moment, he answered quietly, “We’re different, Allin and me. We’ve known since we first left the valley.”

Something they’d done each summer since being old enough to ride. Tadd’s becoming the miller’s apprentice and his twin living in Endshere, the question of who would graze the livestock beyond the valley next year remained to be settled. From what he was hearing, with what he’d felt himself, Bannan wasn’t sure who else could. “Davi didn’t remember Jenn.”

“Not anymore.” Tadd shrugged. “He used to, but she’s changed, hasn’t she? More—more Marrowdell than anyone else. That’s what they can’t remember, Bannan.”

Jenn had told him turn-born couldn’t live outside the edge. She’d done her best to accept that terrible truth. Now this? That outside, her very existence was forgotten? He’d have to tell her.

He couldn’t imagine how.

“Does anyone else remember?” Bannan asked, dropping his voice below the clop of hooves on the road. “Sennic—Horst?” Surely the old soldier.

“He taught us to keep what makes Marrowdell special secret.” A dimple showed. “’Course, once in a while we slip. I got in a fight at the inn last year, bragging about our grain, and Allin—well, fortunately no one believed him about the dancers in the trees. But Horst?” He shook his head and Bannan’s heart fell. “Our first trip outside, we didn’t know any better. Horst wouldn’t talk about Marrowdell, so we didn’t. Then Allin saw.” Lower. “I did, too.”

“Saw what?”

Tadd looked askance at him, then brought his horse closer. “You see when someone speaks the truth.” He waited for Bannan to nod. “We see something—Allin calls it ‘Marrowdell’s light’—in a person’s eyes. I can see it in yours.

“When we don’t, when it’s gone, the person has lost Marrowdell. We saw it leave Horst. Oh, he knew about home. About us. But when we talked about what makes Marrowdell special—what he’d warned us to keep secret before we left? He warned us not to make up wild stories. Said they’d attract attention. They weren’t stories, Bannan.” A resigned shrug. “Horst simply couldn’t believe them, away from Marrowdell. He’d forgotten.”

If not for the moth, Bannan thought desperately, he’d have done the same. “The others?”

“Hettie’s lost it,” with regret. “My parents. Loee hasn’t, but she’s a baby. The Treffs and Frann have. Devins. Naught’s wrong with any of them.” This was said hastily, as if worried what Bannan might think. “The light comes back, once they pass between the crags. Once home.” His fingers circled his heart. “Ancestors Blessed and Bountiful. It’s just—they won’t remember having forgotten.” He added, almost too quietly to hear, “Or believe us, if we tell them. Here or there.”

“Tell me the Lady Mahavar remembers,” Bannan pleaded. If Aunt Sybb forgot her youngest niece, if her letters from this time forward came without mention, Jenn Nalynn would be heartbroken. “She must.”

“Aie. Her light’s there, bright as yours.” Tadd carefully examined his reins again. “Allin and I, we keep hoping to talk to her, when our paths cross each spring and summer, but every time there’s no way to—the lady’s not someone we—she’s—” He looked up helplessly. “She doesn’t care for magic.”

For this was magic, no mistake.

Bannan reached out and gripped the villager’s shoulder. “Hard enough to bear such a gift when you can’t tell those you love. Harder still when you can see them change as you have. You’ve done well, Tadd. Both of you. Very well.”

The other’s eyes shone. “Allin said you’d understand if anyone could. We just had to wait until—”

“You saw,” Bannan finished for him.

“Yes.” Tadd beamed. “Which means I win for once!”

Their bet. He laughed. “Glad to be of service.”

“We must talk again. With Allin.” Tadd glanced over his shoulder and waved. “I’d best get back to Hettie.”

“Thank you.” And when they spoke, Bannan resolved to ask Allin about the Dema and the Eld, and their servants. Roche too. Much as he’d come to respect Qimirpik, it might be as well if Marrowdell kept its deeper secrets.

From Tir as well?

Ancestors Witness. Doubtless his friend would sleep better at night if he forgot Marrowdell’s eccentricities. Why did it feel like betrayal? Because that’s how Tir would consider it. He’d demand a way to remember.

Which there was. The moth.

As Tadd reined back to rejoin his family, who’d forgotten magic, Bannan found himself reconsidering it. Was this forgetting deliberate, with a cause and purpose? Or, like the dreams within the valley, simply a consequence of moving between a place saturated with magic and one—almost—without.

No wonder Scourge had wandered, lost.

Heart’s Blood. He should turn around, now, before he was.

Should, but wouldn’t. Dropping the reins, Bannan’s fingers found that now-cool spot on his neck. The moth—be it the sei or Marrowdell itself—had marked him for a reason. Had saved him, that was the truth, and he was beyond grateful. He’d fulfill his duty, though the next few days would be an eternity.

It was then Bannan realized he’d let himself become dangerously distracted.

They weren’t alone on the road.

“I’m pleased you’re going at last, Dearest Heart.” Peggs Nalynn Uhthoff brushed a lock of black hair from her brow, leaving a whimsy of soap bubbles above a shapely eyebrow. “Just tell me before you do.”

“So you can worry?” Beckoning her sister close, Jenn moistened the corner of her apron and wiped the bubbles from otherwise flawless skin, then stood back and admired. Happiness sparkled in Peggs’ eyes these days and, though always graceful, wasn’t she now the most beautiful woman in Marrowdell, perhaps even in all of Rhoth? Now she moved as if hearing music. “Kydd agrees with you,” Jenn declared with satisfaction.

Roses bloomed along those high cheekbones, but Peggs merely shook her head. “And you’re changing the subject.”

The subject being Jenn taking that first step beyond Marrowdell, though the process wasn’t so much a step as a desire and intention to be somewhere and someone entirely not here and her?

Changing it was exactly what she wanted to do. “I’ll hang these.” Jenn grabbed an armload of steaming shirts and headed for the door. She paused to look over her shoulder. “I promise to tell you.”

That won her the smile she’d hoped. “I suppose I should be grateful you’ve decided to talk about this at all. If not with me, then with—” Peggs waved the big paddle, shedding bubbles “—someone.”

By which she meant “someone” who knew everything. Oh, each and every resident of Marrowdell had their version of what had happened at the fall equinox, when the eclipse had passed over the valley on the Ancestors’ Golden Day. Most believed Uncle Horst had succumbed to old guilt and tried to leave the valley, only to be mauled by a bear. How fortunate the tinkers had still been in the valley to help heal his wounds.

Most believed the mysterious and magical Wyll, once Jenn Nalynn’s promised husband, had spurned her and also left, for good. Both events, it was tacitly agreed, had been for the best, Horst now happily married to Riss Nahamm and Wyll, never easy company, surely better off elsewhere.

Few knew the whole truth. Wainn and Wen, of course, who likely knew more. Bannan. Peggs and Kydd. Radd Nalynn, because his daughters had blurted it all out over supper and who, to his credit, had merely nodded and gone a bit pale. Aunt Sybb? It was difficult to say if the Lady Mahavar would bother with the truth, being unsettled by magic and toads at the best of times, and they’d promised their father not to disagree with their aunt’s view of things, whatever that became.

Of the rest, Jenn suspected nothing in Marrowdell slipped the notice of Master Dusom, Kydd’s elder brother, or Old Jupp, but none of them spoke of it. She hoped Uncle Horst had told Riss, which was their business and not hers, but surely Riss deserved to know he’d almost died defending Jenn Nalynn so she could reach the Verge to save the sei—and, not incidentally, Marrowdell itself—and that Wyll hadn’t left at all, but had been returned to his true self.

A dragon named Wisp.

Jenn slipped through the doorway, her breath joining the steam from the damp clothing. It wasn’t quite winter, but her fingers numbed as she hastily pegged shirts, shirtwaist, and—oh, yes—a pair of men’s full undergarments that did not belong to their father. She managed not to drop them or blush.

Back inside, Jenn ducked under the line of clothing hung across the kitchen and planted herself on the second last rung of the ladder that, before the equinox and weddings and all else, had led to her bedroom as well as Peggs’. “Nice underwear your husband has,” she commented, reaching chilled hands toward the cookstove with its bubbling pot of laundry. Every window stood open despite the cold outside; it was that, or have the entire house smell of wet cloth and soap.

“I’m sure Bannan’s are more modern,” her sister retorted.

“Peggs!”

“When he wears any.” With a wink.

Jenn launched a soggy sock. Laughing, Peggs caught it in midair and sent it flying back, but not before Jenn found another, then another. When they finally ran out of socks, the pair settled side-by-side on the stair, laughter subsiding. “Were you tempted?” Peggs asked quietly.

Jenn leaned into her sister’s shoulder. “To stop him? For a moment. But the others need him. After all. There could be bandits.”

“More likely a baby.” Both chuckled then shook their heads. There’d been no arguing with Hettie, who’d pronounced, firmly, that babies were like calves and would be born whenever and wherever they chose. “It’s because Bannan’s away you’re going now, Dearest Heart, isn’t it?”

Was there anything Peggs missed? “I need to cross alone. I must.”

She felt her sister tense, then relax. “Ancestors Witness. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Not in the least. That’s why, you see.”

Peggs fell silent. Jenn waited; her sister preferred to chew on a thought, especially when it involved change. Finally, “I’ve no idea what that world—the Verge—is like. How can I give you advice? Or help?” Her arm came around Jenn and hugged, hard. “Just know you’ll be doing dishes the entire winter for two households if you aren’t careful. Including the pots!”

Though the consequences of her not being careful in the Verge would be far worse, Jenn pretended to shudder. “Anything but pots. I promise, Peggs. I’ll visit Mistress Sand and come straight back.”

Perhaps having learned enough, she added wistfully and to herself, to welcome Bannan’s interesting laundry into a pot with her own.