Heritage and Exile (50 page)

The green face of Idriel sank behind the crest of the pass; above us was a bank of cold fog, stained blood color with the coming sunrise. We must begin to look somewhere for shelter; I was sure the hunt would be up soon after daylight. I was enough in contact with Marjorie to know when her weariness became almost unendurable. But when I spoke of it, she said, “Another mile or so. On the slope of the next hill, far back from the roadway, is a summer pasture. The herdwomen have probably taken their beasts down into the valley, so it will be empty.”

The herdwomen's hut was concealed within a grove of nut trees. As we drew near my heart sank, for I could hear the soft lowing of herd animals, and as we dismounted I saw one of the women, barefoot in the melting snow, her hair long and tangled around her face, clad in a ragged leather skirt. Marjorie, however, seemed pleased.

“We're in luck, Lew. Her mother was one of
my
mother's people.” She called softly, “Mhari!”

The woman turned, her face lighting up.
“Domna Marguerida!”
She spoke a dialect too ancient for me to follow; Marjorie answered her softly in the same patois. Mhari grinned widely and led us into the hut.

Most of the inside was taken up with a couple of dirty straw pallets on which an older woman lay, entangled with half a dozen small children and a few puppies. The only furniture was a wooden bench. Mhari gestured to us to sit on it, and ladled us out bowls of hot, coarse, nut-porridge. Marjorie almost collapsed on the bench; Mhari came to draw off her riding-boots.

“What did she say to you, Marjorie? What did you tell her?”

“The truth. That Kermiac was dead, that on his deathbed he had promised me to you, and that you and Beltran had quarreled, so we are going into the lowlands to marry. She has promised that neither she nor her friend, nor any of the children, will say a word of our being here.” Marjorie took another spoonful of the porridge. She was almost too weary to lift her spoon to her mouth. I was glad to down my portion, to put aside my sword and haul off my boots and later, when the conglomeration of babies and puppies had vacated the mattress, to lie down there in my clothes beside Marjorie.

“They should have gone, days ago,” Marjorie said, “but Caillean's husband has not come for them. She says they'll be out all day with the beasts and we can sleep safely here.” And indeed, very shortly the clamoring crew of babies and puppies had been fed on the rest of the porridge and hustled outside. I drew Marjorie into the circle of my arm, then realized that in spite of the noise made by children and dogs she was already deeply asleep. The straw smelled of dogs and dirt, but I was too tired to be critical. Marjorie lying in the curve of my arm, I slept too.

The next thing I knew it was late evening, the room was full of puppies and children again, and we rose and ate big hot bowlfuls of vegetable soup that had been simmering over the fire all day. Then it was time to pull on our boots and go. The women, from their vantage point high on the slopes, had seen no riders, so we were not pursued yet. Marjorie kissed Mhari and the smallest of the babies, and warned me not to offer them money. Mhari and her friend insisted that we take bags of nuts and a loaf or two of the hard-baked bread, telling us they had too much to load on their pack animals on the way down into the valley for winter. I didn't believe a word of it, but we could not refuse.

The next two or three nights of travel were duplicates of that one. We were blessed with good weather and there was no sign of pursuit. We slept by day, concealed in herd-huts, but these were deserted. We had food enough, although we were almost always cold. Marjorie never complained, but I was desperately concerned about her. I could not imagine any woman I had ever known enduring such a journey. When I said so to Marjorie, she laughed.

“I am no pampered lowland lady, Lew, I am used to hard weather, and I can travel whenever I must, even in dead winter. Thyra would be a better companion, perhaps, she is hardened to long journeys with Bob, in and out of season . . .” She fell silent, and quickly turned her face away. I kept silent. I knew how close she had been to her sister and how she felt about this parting. It was the first time she spoke of her life at Castle Aldaran. It was also the last.

On the fourth or fifth morning we had to ride far into daylight to find any shelter at all. We were now in the wildest part of the mountains, and the roads had dwindled away to mere trails. Marjorie was dropping with weariness; I had half resolved that for once we must find a sheltered place in the woods and sleep in the open, when suddenly, riding into a small clearing, we came on a deserted farmstead.

I wondered how anyone had ever managed to farm these bleak hills, but there were outbuildings and a small stone house, a yard which had once been fenced, a well with wooden piping still splashing water into a broken stone trough in the yard—all wholly deserted. I feared it had become the haunt of birds or bats, but when I forced the door open it was weathertight and almost clean.

The sun was high and warm. While I unsaddled, Marjorie had taken off her cloak and boots and was splashing her hands in the stone trough. She said, “I am past my first sleepiness, and I have not had my clothes off since we set out. I am going to wash; I think it will refresh me better than sleep.” She was suiting action to words, pulling off her riding-skirt and fur-lined tunic, standing before me in her long heavy shift and petticoat. I came and joined her. The water was icy cold, coming straight down from a mountain spring above us, but it was marvelously refreshing. I marveled how Marjorie could stand barefoot in the last melting runnels of the last night's snowfall, but she seemed not as cold as I was. We sat in the growing warmth of the sun afterward, eating the last of the herdwomen's coarse bread. I found a tree in the yard where the former owners had farmed mushrooms, an intricate system of small wooden pipes directing water down the trunk. Most of the mushrooms were hard and woody, but I found a few small new ones high up, and we ate them at the end of our meal, savoring their sweet freshness.

She stretched a little, sleepily. “I would like to sleep here in the sun,” she said. “I am beginning to feel like some night-bird, never coming out into the light of day.”

“But I am not hardened to your mountain weather,” I said, “and we may have to sleep in the open, soon enough.”

She made a mock-serious face. “Poor Lew, are you cold? Yes, I suppose we must go inside to sleep.” She gathered up our heavy outer clothes and carried them. She spread them out on an old, abandoned pallet in the farmhouse, wrinkling a fastidious nose at the musty smell. I said, “It is better than dog,” and she giggled and sat down on the heap of clothing.

She had on a thick woolen shift, knee-length and with long sleeves; I had seen her far more lightly clothed at Aldaran, but there was something about being here like this that roused an awareness that fear and weariness had almost smothered. All during this trip she had slept within the circle of my arm, but innocently. Perhaps because I was still recovering from the effects of Kadarin's brutal beating. Now, all at once, I was aware again of her physical presence. She felt it—we were lightly in rapport all the time now—and turned her face a little away, color rising along her cheekbones. There was a hint of defiance as she said,

“Just the same, I am going to take down my hair and comb and braid it properly, before it gets tangled like Mhari's and I have to cut it off!” She raised her arms, pulled out the butterfly-shaped clasp that held her braids pinned at the nape of her neck, and began to unravel the long plaits.

I felt the hot flush of embarrassment. In the lowlands a sister who was already a woman would not have done this even before a grown brother. I had not seen Linnell's hair loose like this since we were little children, although when we were small I had sometimes helped her comb it. Did customs really differ so much? I sat and watched her move the ivory comb slowly through her long copper hair; it was perfectly straight, only waved a little from the braiding, and very fine, and the sun, coming in cracks through the heavy wooden shutters, set it all ablaze with the glint of the precious metal. I said at last, hoarsely, “Don't tease me, Marjorie. I'm not sure I can bear it.”

She did not look up. She only said softly, “Why should you? I am here.”

I reached out and took the comb away from her, turning her face up to meet my eyes. “I cannot take you lightly, beloved. I would give you all honor and all ceremony.”

“You cannot,” she said, with the shadow of a small smile, “because I no longer . . .” the words were coming slowly now, as if it were painful to speak them. “—no longer acknowledge Beltran's right to give me in marriage. My foster-father meant to give me to you. That is ceremony enough.” Suddenly she spoke in a rush. “And I am not a Keeper now! I have renounced that, I will not keep myself separate from you, I will not,
I will not
!”

She was sobbing now. I flung the comb away and drew her into my arms, holding her to me with sudden violence.

“Keeper? No, no, never again,” I whispered against her mouth. “Never, never again—”

What can I say? We were together. And we were in love.

Afterward I braided her hair for her. It seemed almost as intimate as lying down together, my hands trembling as they touched the silken strands, as they had when I first touched her. We did not sleep for a long time.

When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the wind was whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I came inside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.

“I delayed us. I'm sorry—”

“I think we are beyond pursuit now,
preciosa
. But we would only have had to turn back; we cannot ride in this. I'll put the horses into the outbuilding and give them some foder.”

“Let me come and help—”

“Don't go out in the snow, beloved. I'll attend to the horses.”

When I came in, Marjorie had kindled a fire on the long-dead hearth and, finding an old battered stone kettle discarded in a corner, had washed it, filled it at the well and put some of our dried meat to stew with the mushrooms. When I scolded her for going into the yard—in these snow-squalls men have been lost and frozen between their own barnyard and doorway—she said shyly, “I wanted us to have a fireside. And a . . . a wedding-feast.”

I hugged her close and said, “The minute he sees you my father will be delighted to arrange all that.”

“I know,” she said, “but I'd rather have it here.”

The thought warmed me more than the fire.

We ate the hot soup before the fire. We had to share one spoon and eat it straight from the old kettle. We had little fuel and the fire burned down quickly, but as it sank into darkness Marjorie whispered, “Our first fireside.”

I knew what she meant. It was not the formal ceremony,
di catenas,
the elaborate wedding-feast for my kin, her proclamation before Comyn Council, that would make her my wife. Everywhere in the hills, where ceremonies are few and witnesses sparse, the purposeful sharing of “a bed, a meal, a fireside” acknowledges the legal status of a marriage, and I knew why Marjorie had risked losing her way in the snow to kindle a fire and cook us up some soup. By the simple laws of the hills, we were wedded, not in our own eyes alone, but in a ceremony that would stand in the eyes of all men.

I was glad she had been sure enough of me to do this without asking. I was glad the weather kept us here for another night. But something was troubling me. I said, “Regis and Danilo are nearer to Thendara now than we are to Arilinn, unless they have been recaptured. But neither of them is a skilled telepath, and I doubt if a message has gone through. I should send a message, either to Arilinn or to my father. I should have done it before.”

She caught my hand as I pulled the matrix from its resting place. “Lew, is it really safe?”

“I must, love, safe or not. I should have done it the moment I had my matrix back. We must face the possibility that they will try again. Beltran won't abandon his aims so quickly, and I fear Kadarin is unscrupulous.” I backed off from speaking the name of Sharra aloud, but it was there between us and we both knew it.

And if they did try again, without my knowledge or control, without Marjorie for Keeper, what then? Playing with forest fire would be child's play, next to the risk of waking that thing without a trained Keeper! I had to warn the towers.

She said hesitantly, “We were all in rapport. If you . . . use your matrix . . . can they
feel
it, trail us that way?”

That was a possibility, but whatever happened to us, Sharra must be controlled and contained, or none of us would ever be safe again. And in all these days I had sensed no touch, no seeking mind.

I drew out the matrix and uncovered it. To my dismay, I felt a faint, twisting tinge of sickness as I gazed into the blue depths. That was a danger signal. Perhaps during the days I had been separated from it, I had become somewhat unkeyed. I focused on it, steadying my mind to the delicate task of establishing rapport again with the starstone; again and again I was forced to turn my eyes away by the pain, the blurring of vision.

“Leave it, Lew, leave it, you're too tired—”

“I cannot.” If I delayed, I would lose mastery of the matrix, be forced to begin again with another stone. I fought the matrix for nearly an hour, struggling with my inability to focus it. I looked at Marjorie with regret, knowing that I was draining my strength with this telepathic struggle. I cursed the fate that had made me a telepath and a matrix mechanic, but it never occurred to me that I should abandon the struggle unfinished.