The Ordinary (16 page)

She felt its touch and knew it had come for her and wondered why she felt no fear. Arvith was in the car, moving in the back among the luggage. The shadow figure was very close now, but Jedda felt herself receding, and Arvith touched her hand.

Someone else was here, a glimmer of a form intervening between Jedda and the shadow. She felt the presence only for a moment, before a wave of pure nausea doubled her over and the shadow bore down on her.

In the next moment she was standing on the top of a hill, a sunny, breezy day. A man was reaching for her, but withdrew his hand when she moved. He was about her height, slim, dressed plainly in something that looked like a Prin underrobe, a somber gray garment, pleated once in front and back, a lot of fabric, intricately embroidered along the hems. He asked, “Are you all right?” His voice, soft as it was, made her shiver.

“Where am I?”

“Answer my question, first. Then I'll answer yours.” The voice touched her ear in a soothing sound, speaking Erejhen, though some of the words struck her ear oddly, a new accent.

She looked around at the trees, a small stone building nearby, a garden. The hill was tall and topped a massive forest that undulated in an easy wind as far as the horizon, a sea of branches and leaves. Her hand flat on her belly moved where the sickness had felt so acute only moments ago, in the plaza, in the rain. She felt fine now, and looked into the man's dark eyes. “I'm all right.”

“The shadow never touched you.”

“No. You got there first.”

He was smiling now. An oval face, graceful features, dark curls. Skin of so fine a texture, creamy brown, that Jedda could not guess the age at all. “You saw me, at the last moment, I believe.”

“Yes.”

He walked past her, and she turned.

From this view she counted three hills, and a kind of valley between. On the highest of the hills, across the valley, stood an immense city or town of stone, with a shenesoeniis rising over it, many colors of stone visible in its slender spire. The town occupied the crest of the hill and ran along it. “Is that your town, over there?” she asked.

“It's a house, not a town,” he said. “My name is Jessex, and I've brought you here to my home.”

He neither offered his hand now nor turned to her at all. She was feeling dazed, uncertain what to say. “Why?”

“You're being fought over, have you not understood this?”

“Me?”

“The figure, the shadowed one, was coming for you.”

“Irion.”

His smile was droll and he turned to her for a moment. “Very good. He was Irion, yes, and he made the storm that caught you in the plaza, and he intended to leave the plaza with you.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, yet.”

“I'm tired, sir, and I don't exactly feel like riddles at the moment. Please explain what's going on.”

“That's what I brought you here to do,” he said. “I've already started, in fact, by giving you my name.”

“I don't know your name,” she said, and then she remembered it very well. “Jessex.”

“Yes.”

She was studying the huge stone palace again, the impossible walls rising round it, polished perfectly smooth, figured with designs she could barely make out. “This is crazy.”

“Yes, I agree,” he said. “Though not at all insane, if you follow my drift. If you'll be patient, I'll explain as much as I can. But, as you've guessed, the story is a very strange one and will take a lot of telling. I have a carriage waiting here to take us to Inniscaudra, my house yonder. Will you please join me?”

Out of her confusion, she found herself liking this man and wanted to follow him, maybe because his eyes had such a gentle light, but even then she resisted for a moment. “You can send me back, can't you? To where I came from? I'm not stranded here.”

“No, you're not stranded.” He shook his head. He had the kind of nose she admired in a man, thick and strong without being overprominent. The bony ridge across his brows was slightly heavy, though his eyebrows were finely drawn. He had the look of a person in his thirties but among the Hormling that could have meant anything, and she imagined it was as difficult to guess the age of an Erejhen as it was a Hormling. He gave her the most pleasant smile.

“All right, I'll trust you for the moment,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Where am I?”

He had begun to walk and she fell in beside him. His voice was really extraordinary, a velvet texture that made her skin shiver in the cool air of the day. “You're farther north than you've ever traveled, I believe. You're in the country that you've been hearing rumors about, the high north country. This region is called Illaeryn. I'm using the older name for it, for reasons I'll explain later.”

“And the name of the house again?”

This time he inflected the name differently, so that the name took on the meaning “House of Winter.” He smiled at her change of expression upon understanding and said, “You really do speak our language well.”

“It's taken me long enough to learn it, so thank you.”

“The dialect in this region is different, is rather archaic, in fact. You may have some trouble at first but you're likely to catch on, with your talent for languages.”

They had reached a wheeled thing with a cage or a basket in the middle of it, where there were seats. The vehicle was similar to the wagons she had seen in her northern travels; most southern traffic had transferred to more modern vehicles provided by trade with the Hormling. A door cut the side of the carriage and she stepped into the cab, settling onto a leather-covered seat.

The carriage driver's back looked familiar, and when the fellow turned she saw it was Arvith, and that he had her luggage with him in the carriage. He smiled at her as if to bid her the most ordinary of good afternoons. Seeing him, she felt the same prickle of intuition that had been finding her since the trip from Evess had begun. “So you're part of this whole plot, or whatever it is?”

He gave her a perfectly placid look, not a glimmer of his feeling in it.

From behind, Jessex said, “Plot is a good word for it, I think. Go ahead, Arvith, answer her.”

Was there a trace of unease in his expression now? “I'm sorry if you're feeling deceived,” he said. “I had no choice.”

“I suppose I needn't take it personally.” She looked over her baggage, the large trunk and the small one, along with her carry-bag. “Especially since you've brought my things with you.” She turned to Jessex, who was settling himself into the seat across from her, the fabric of the robe looking luxuriously soft, a gray like a rainy sky. “I've already been kidnapped once, why not twice? Will I be staying here for a long time?”

“That's up to you,” Jessex answered. “Once you've rested and we've talked, you'll tell me when you want to go back.”

“You're serious?”

“Yes. There are a few stories you'll need to hear, and then you'll decide for yourself how long to stay here. The choice is yours, I assure you.”

Something in his face led her to believe he was telling the truth. Treacherous, to attempt to get the truth from a face like that, she thought. He had a kind of good looks that could become a distraction, a look in his eyes as if he were lost, in some way. At moments he appeared very young. The carriage rode very smoothly, out the grove of unfamiliar trees, past the stone shrine, onto the beginning of a stone road.

He filled the ride with the names of the places around them. The hill onto which she had arrived was Immorthraegul, the hill on which sat the stone palace was called Vath Invaths, and the third hill was Kellesar, the untouched, as her guide called it, since there were no roads or trails to break the old forest there.

They rode through a breathtaking woodland, trees of an immensity, twenty or thirty stories tall; she could hardly guess how high they reached. She found Jessex watching her and blushed.

“I was drinking your pleasure,” he said.

“I've never seen trees like this before, even in my travels here.”

“There are no other trees like these in your world, or anywhere else in mine,” he said. “These are in the tree family we call ‘laryn,' and these are called, ‘mothers of laryn,' duraelaryn. The name of our country is a corruption of that word.”

He offered her a flask of water, she accepted it, and they rode through the valley between the hills, which was called, as he informed her, Durassa's Park. The word was familiar to her, Durassa, and he must have seen her trying to remember where she had heard it before. “He was one of our elders, a Prinu, like me, but from the distant past. One of those we call the Twelve Fathers and Mothers, the Twelve Who Lived. You've heard his name before, it appears.”

“Yes. I've traveled here a good deal. As you seem to know already.”

He gave her the long, slow blink of a cat. “You're not a person who's flattered by attention.”

“No. It's not a good thing, where I come from.”

The carriage crossed along the shore of a dark-watered lake, the road curving through the trees again to the base of the hill called Vath Invaths, where the horses headed up and round the hill toward the summit. The slope of the hill grew steeper to the long ridge where the huge house clung, looking down on their progress. Wind swept down the hillside to strip through her hair and wash over the trees and the retreating lake, a brisk, sharp wind with a chill in it.

“Are you warm enough?” Jessex asked.

“Yes. I'm fine, as long as the wind's not too steady.”

“We're close to the western mountains here. The wind always has a bite.”

“I've never seen these mountains before.”

He raised a brow, his smile a bit twisted. “If you choose to stay for a while, I'll take you for a good look. Within a day's ride of here, you can see the ridge of the Caladur, leading off to the end of the world.” His hands, spread on the robe on the seat of the carriage, shone with rings, very delicate metalwork, violently colored gems, including an intricate array of silver on each thumb. His skin glittered in the sunlight, as if it, too, were flecked with gems, or at least with dust from their grinding. At first Jedda thought she was imagining the effect but noticed it over and over as the carriage moved briskly along. Jessex nodded good day to people walking the road, who nodded good day in return, making way for the carriage to pass. Jedda looked for signs of fear in their faces, and in the faces of the other traffic they met along the narrow road; she found that some averted their eyes from him while others greeted him with pleasant respect. But this was a road that led only to his house, apparently, so how was she to judge from the reactions of folk so close by?

If he was a magician, a wizard, there was nothing particularly unusual about him, except for the points of color that flashed at moments on his skin. If he really was the most powerful being in this world, shouldn't she be able to feel it?

“Do you mind a few stairs?” he asked. “There's a room with a grand view I'd like to give you, but it's near the top of a tower.”

“Which one?” she asked, looking at the slender spire of the tallest tower.

“Not that one,” he said. “That one is my high place. I have in mind a much lower one for you.”

“Mercy is appreciated.”

When he laughed, a look of complete relief took him over, and she found herself liking him again, though she detached herself from the feeling as much as she could. “You can't see it yet, the Twelve House. Five flights, a bit much, and then a last bit to the room at the top.”

“I think I can manage. Since you say the view is worth the trouble.”

Arvith grunted on the driver's seat, shifted his posture.

“We'll get Arvith some help with the luggage.” He added something that Jedda couldn't make out, containing a word she hadn't heard before. He appeared to guess this, and said, “A device for hauling weights up a height,” he explained. “Not quite big enough for people.”

Jessex pointed out the formal halls as the carriage picked its way through the traffic on the stone road. She wished for her stat, suddenly; this kind of note-taking was what such technology was made for. The Hall of Many Partings, the Hall of the Woodland King, the Hall of the Crone: Thenduril, Halobar, Yydren. She made him spell the words, though she had to adjust to the fact that he pronounced the names of the letters of urikur, the alphabet, differently than Jedda had learned; she would probably forget the words anyway, since she couldn't write them down. He appeared delighted at her interest, and pointed out other parts of the house as the carriage progressed toward her lodgings.

The architecture appealed to her, its grandeur counterbalanced by its simplicity of ornament. The height of the halls was softened by the fact that the walls tapered inward on all sides; the weight of the worked stone broken by windows of intricately colored glass. Beyond the formal halls lay gardens and low residences, most of the courtyards occupied, figures in clothing that looked much different from what Jedda had seen before. Southerners in Irion had adapted some of the more modern fashions of the Hormling, as a result of trade, and wore coveralls, trousers or shifts. These folks had adapted nothing of the Hormling style whatsoever, wearing tunics, leggings, blousy shirts, boots in a dozen styles.

“You're finding the people here to be much different from the ones you knew in Ivyssa. Pardon me, in Evess.”

“Is that an older name for the city?”

“Yes. At times I forget.”

She nodded. “I suppose I'm just disoriented. Everything looks strange to me at the moment.”

“That's understandable. We're nearly there.” He stood as the cart passed through a garden where the scent of flowers drenched Jedda, leaving her momentarily distracted. Beyond lay the carriage entrance to a tower that stood in the center of this garden, white stone fitted without even a trace of mortar. An arched lintel over the entrance teemed with carved birds of a hundred kinds, and the inner planes of the stonework were worked to feign a lattice of leaves, as if this were a stone forest.

The stairs were harder than she had reckoned, but she was still so distracted by the house that it was easy to stop to gawk at something—a stone, a statue, a piece of ceramic, a tapestry—long enough to get her breath a bit. Arvith had stayed behind to find help for the luggage; Jedda followed Jessex, who glided up the steps without apparent effort, the trailing hem of his robe embroidered minutely in what looked like words, golden threads making words that themselves looped and twisted.