Restoration (36 page)

The last of the company was a bearded Suzaini named Admet. Admet was clearly not a warrior. His long robes draped over a severely twisted back. He had the pleasant, outgoing, and authoritative manner of a merchant, and while Blaise and Roche discussed the raid, he stared with unembarrassed curiosity at the Prince and me. As the general conversation moved on, he asked us a few polite questions. Had someone found us a place to sleep? Did we need weapons or clothing or blankets? Had we injuries that needed tending? Once these exchanges were completed, he turned back to Gorrid and was soon laughing with the other man over some private amusement.

Farrol served out the supper of flet, a thick mush of boiled millet stuck together with pig fat and flavored with onion and scraps of meat. A poor man's staple, it sat heavy in the gut, but would hold a man through lean days. As we ate, the talk turned back to outlawry, with Gorrid and Admet berating Blaise for poor scouting, insisting that better knowledge of the terrain was needed before commencing such large-scale ventures. I felt, rather than heard, Aleksander's snort of disdain. No one else seemed to notice—except perhaps Admet, who flashed a sharp glance our way.

Elinor was not present, and no one mentioned her whereabouts. I listened to the conversation with only half an ear, preferring to let my mind dwell on a child as bright as sunlight on snow, who ran and climbed and talked ears numb. Aleksander and I took our leave early, thanking Blaise and Farrol for the meal and returning to our beds without so much as a word between us.

 

 

As Mattei had recognized, the next weeks were indeed Aleksander's quiet time. I had brought him to Taíne Keddar to heal and think, and he worked diligently at the physical healing, at least. He was off before I woke in the mornings, trudging up and down the hillside tracks to strengthen his leg. Sometime near midday, he would return to the hut, build a small fire, and make himself a cup of nazrheel. Then he would grab flatbread and honey or fruit and take it with him out to the grassy spots between the olive trees, where he would bend and squat and stretch, working to regain his flexibility. I assumed he was also doing a considerable amount of thinking during this time, but he shared none of it with me. When we were alone together, most often at night as we lay on our grass pallets in the stone shed, I tried to draw him into conversation, telling him what tidbits of news I had learned. He listened without comment, but did nothing to prolong the conversation. He was not rude or sullen, only distant, withdrawn from the intimacy of the past months, as if I were already departed on my long-delayed journey.

Because Aleksander occupied so little of my time, I tried to make myself useful around the encampment: helping with the building and hauling, cleaning the kill brought back by hunters, whatever was needed. I saw little of Blaise during those first few days and nothing of Elinor. From Mattei I gathered that Blaise's sister was also one of his chief lieutenants, well respected among the company. Elinor and Admet, the Suzaini with the twisted back, set the timing of the outlaw ventures and chose the targets from the reports of scouts and sympathizers throughout the Empire. Unlike my earlier sojourn with the outlaw company, I was not invited to sit in on the sessions where they planned their activities, nor was I asked to teach the men and women fighting skills or sword work. I understood their feelings. How could I be trusted when I kept company with the living symbol of everything they detested?

After a few days I took up running again. Rising early as he did, Aleksander would throw himself on his pallet and fall instantly asleep as soon as we returned from Blaise's fire. I was increasingly shy of falling sleep, however. My dreams had not abated, and rather than spend an unsatisfying night repeatedly waking myself up, I would run the length and breadth of Taíne Keddar under the stars until I dropped onto my pallet like a dead man.

 

 

 

Not long after our arrival, as Aleksander and I were seeing to our horses in the common pasture, a man rode into the valley with news. The Prince and I joined the hundred people who quickly gathered to hear the appalling tale. By the Emperor's order, every village within ten leagues of Andassar had been burned, the man reported. Every field had been salted, every beast slaughtered. What few souls remained in the villages had been killed or sold. “What of the local lord?” said Aleksander, ignoring the surprised gawking of the crowd, who drew away from him when they realized who stood in their midst. “Did you hear news of the Derzhi Lord Naddasine?”

“I did,” said the rider, clearly not understanding who was asking. “The Naddasine first lord was accused of harboring the Kinslayer, for the tale had got back to the Emperor that the missing Prince was seen near Andassar. The old man was gutted and hanged as a traitor in Zhagad. The rest of the lot—his five sons and three daughters—were rounded up and given to the Veshtar.”

“Given? Enslaved?”

“Aye. Imagine it! Derzhi nobles sealed into slave rings. Though I'd say if they were only enslaved, even to the Veshtar, they got off lucky.”

Aleksander shoved his horse's lead into my hand and walked away. No one who looked at him at that moment would have noticed anything out of the ordinary, but I had touched his cold hand and felt its trembling.

 

Every evening Aleksander and I walked the path through the gnarled olive trees to share Blaise's food and fire. On the fourth evening of our stay, Elinor had joined the dinner company. She served a pottage of beans, carrots, and onions, and nodded politely when I thanked her. Later I saw her frowning, eyes narrowed, as I talked to Gorrid and Blaise about how Aleksander and I had come to be in Andassar and get involved in the raid on the slave caravan. I told myself not to worry so much. Time would reassure Elinor that neither Aleksander nor I was a threat. As to the past ... I knew I could have done nothing more to save Gordain, and that the horror I had wrought on the namhir was but a product of my madness. There was no need to feel guilty whenever I was around her. But of course I did. Such feelings are not subject to reason. She was the guardian of my child, and I longed to see him. I wanted her to think well of me.

As the others grew accustomed to our presence, conversation flowed more freely. Those who gathered at Blaise's fire spoke of politics and hopes, of worries about supplies, of questions of geography, or of their small victories of the past months—the brutal overseer replaced when his lord's almond harvest mysteriously vanished, or the peasants who had used their own lord's wheat to pay their village's crushing tax levy. The lively discussions provoked a number of arguments. Every person in Taíne Keddar fought for a different reason, some benevolent, some vengeful, some that were little more than a preference for creating havoc over following anyone else's rules. While Blaise was the soul of the Yvor Lukash, infusing even the most mundane concern with the eloquence of true passion, Elinor was its head, her intelligent questioning leading the others to think beyond the limits of their education and experience. To see her argue Gorrid, the fiery debater, into confessing that it was probably useful to have one person to govern, rather than letting every man do as he pleased, or to watch her nudge the shy Roche into demonstrating his facility with verse, was unexpected pleasure.

Though I enjoyed listening to the exchanges and occasionally found myself tempted to offer an observation, I rarely did so. Elinor carefully avoided any repeat of our initial confrontation. She was polite, but cool, accepting the Prince and me, I believed, only because it was Blaise's wish. But my active participation in the group seemed to force her behind a wall of reserve, depriving the whole company of her delightful conversation. So unless directly invited to add my comment, I took my pleasure by watching and listening.

Aleksander remained aloof, never speaking beyond an occasional “well enough” to Blaise's inquiries as to his health and comfort. He always sat to the side, out of the firelight. Sometimes he watched the group of comrades as they talked and teased and argued, prodding one another to be better and wiser. Sometimes he kept his back to them, facing out into the camp where other men and women clustered around other cook fires, their laughter and serious talk blending with the distant bleat of goats and the calls of night birds. I worried about him, but he had closed me off along with everyone else, and I could find no word or deed to open the way again.

 

On one evening when we had lived in Taíne Keddar almost a month, Farrol asked me how to enchant a fire to burn brighter and longer, and I was taking him through the rudimentary steps, working at the difficult task of dissecting an action that had been second nature since I was seven. “No, the word is
‘felyyd,'
which means flame, not ‘
flydd
,' which means damp,” I said when the supper fire hissed and almost went out, and then flared up hugely, threatening to melt the iron pot hanging over it. “And you don't say it aloud.”

“But when I just think it, nothing happens ... not even when I think the right word,” said Farrol, his round cheeks drooping. No one could portray an image of dejection as could Farrol.

I smiled at him despite my frustration at being unable to explain something so simple. “Well, you see that's the difficulty. You can't just
think
it. You have to
feel
it, express it with melydda rather than thought or tongue. That's the secret to simple enchantments. I'm sorry I can't explain it better.”

We'd been at it for almost an hour, and by this time Blaise and Roche were engaged in the lesson with little success but great good humor. Gorrid was trying to boil chicken bones for soup, and he kept grumbling at us to leave off, for he was either being singed by soaring flames or having to throw more sticks on the fire to keep it from going out. Admet, the Suzaini who had no melydda, sat on a log and laughed at us all. Eventually, the fire took on a slight silver-edged cast that told me someone was getting close to success, but I couldn't figure out who it was.

Only Elinor and Aleksander remained aloof. Elinor sat in the light of a lantern, intent on some sewing project. Aleksander sat expressionless at the edge of the group, his chin propped on his fists and his eyes half closed.

“Linnie, why don't you try it?” said Blaise, after Gorrid threw down a lid in exasperation when a sudden geyser of sparks threatened to set his arm afire. “You were taught some of this. Perhaps you'll have better luck.”

“Why would I want to do such a thing?” she said, glaring at me as if I had made the suggestion. “Fires burn as they will, and one learns to control them with fuel and air. Only a fool cares about such tricks of magic.”

“This ‘trick' can keep you warm if you've limited fuel,” I blurted out, caught off guard by the vehemence of her retort. “Or allow you to sleep safely when you're desperate and there are wild creatures about, or enable you to eat or to cleanse wounds when you might not otherwise. Only a fool would refuse to learn what could save a life.” During my last two years in Ezzaria, I had fought continually with those who believed that sorcery should never be used to serve human purposes, but only to further the demon war. I thought I had left my resentments behind, but clearly I was wrong.

Elinor's cheeks flamed scarlet and her lips tightened as she returned to her sewing. Our exchange had quenched the playful mood like a cold rain.

Idiot. Could you have insulted her more directly?
Hoping to recover lost ground, I tried to make a lesson out of the dispute. “It might seem foolish to keep a fire burning if you don't need it right away, but if you've no means to make one at all, sometimes it's the only answer. To strike a new fire from nothing is far more difficult. Try it ... here . . .” I grabbed a wad of tangled grass from the tinder basket and set it on a flat stone. “Alter the image in your mind—first see the grass, taste its dryness, smell it, and then consider the spark, quick, clean like the prick of a knife, the heat, the first smoke—and use the words
diargh inestu
instead of the other.”

I felt the sputtering flickers of enchantment, and heard the others muttering.
Cold ... it just leaves me cold ... can't find it ... Quiet, dolt. Feel it, don't say it . . . I'll never get it ... Impossible . . .

I fixed my eyes on the little wad of grass. To set it alight on the damp stone without touching it would be very difficult. But that was the beauty of sorcery, of course, the art of it . . . to combine the imagining, the tale of the senses, the deep-rooted understanding, and then to loose the warm flood of melydda ... just enough, shaping it with the word. I closed my eyes and breathed the words
diargh inestu
... oh, gods, I never tired of it ...

“Damn! Who did it?” said Farrol, sitting back on his heels and staring at the tiny golden flame consuming the wad of grass.

Blaise smiled and raised his cup to me. “Our master, of course. Can't you feel it? We creep along the ground while he soars.” Which was truly strange for him to say, who could change himself to a bird with a single thought.

I moved away from the fire and sat down on a thick log next to Aleksander, allowing the lesson to lapse. Soon Gorrid was ladling his broth into the wooden bowls stacked beside him, and Roche began passing them out. Elinor abandoned her sewing and brought out bread and cheese.

Though I tried not to let her see me staring, my eyes followed her as she moved around the circle. I was surprised by the implication that she was capable of wielding melydda. When the Ezzarian elders had rendered the cruel verdict that Blaise was demon-possessed and must be left in the forest for wolves to devour, their parents had taken the two children and fled Ezzaria. In the ensuing years, Blaise's parents had given up all use of melydda, terrified that Blaise's “demon” might someday use it to wreak havoc upon those who fought the demon war. They surely would have insisted that seven-year-old Elinor abandon her short years of experience, too, and the ability to control melydda dwindled away with prolonged disuse. Had she recovered it somehow? What other mysteries lay hidden within her?