Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (76 page)

“Have a cup, Anais,” he invited. “My beans are fresh from Su’Winde. I ground them myself this morning.” He poured her a cup from a pot, and returned it to its rock beside the fire. “Is there a better smell when day is young?” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “There are advantages on the highroads.”

Wendra intensely desired to plead for help. Seanbea sat just a stride away. She could whisper their trouble, ask him to intervene. Just when she thought she might do so, Jastail and Penit joined them.

“A fine day. Good fortune to our separate enterprises, Seanbea. Hardly a worry on a day such as this.”

“Right you are,” the Ta’Opin answered, lifting the pot of koffee to offer a second cup. Jastail amiably declined. “I’m hitched and loaded. I’ll be off when my cup is empty. Is there any message I can carry for you?”

Wendra hoped the offer would raise concern in Jastail’s face, betray his intentions to the Ta’Opin. The highwayman did not blink. “How good a man you are, Seanbea. Thank you, but we are fine. Is there more we can do for
you
?”

“There is.”

This time Jastail’s expression faltered a moment. Wendra could see her captor mentally working the positions of each of them at the fire. How the physical exchange would develop if he were forced to draw. She knew he’d cut the Ta’Opin’s throat in an instant if what the man said next jeopardized whatever business he meant to conduct with her and Penit.

Seanbea looked at Wendra, and ever so subtly she shook her head. He’d sensed it; he knew. He would ask her if she traveled with Jastail of her own free will. Ask Penit’s true relationship to the highwayman. Deep inside her the thought of it terrified her, but also made her feel relieved. Perhaps Seanbea could beat Jastail in open combat. She and the Ta’Opin locked eyes; to her right, Wendra heard the soft squeak of a tightened palm over a leather hilt.

“I’ve something for you,” Seanbea said. He reached into his coat, and Jastail began to move. Seanbea held in his hand a rolled parchment. He ignored Jastail’s movement. The Ta’Opin only focused on Wendra as he passed the sheet to her with both hands. “It is your song, Anais. The one you made last night in harmony to mine.” He smiled paternally. “I’ve rarely heard instant song so beautifully made. The lines of your music played on in my head and demanded to be written down. Keep this and remember your song. The notation is for only a single instrument, but when you can use that instrument to share the gift of this music, you gift others. Study it. And when you come to Recityv, show it to the Maesteri. They’ll recognize it for what it is.”

Wendra took the yellowed vellum and unfurled the music. With light, thin strokes the Ta’Opin had marked a series of vertical marks, interrupted by small circles with varying numbers of tails like a ship rudder. The circles came at longer and shorter intervals and rose or fell across a straight line, repeating several times down the parchment. She did not understand it, but the delicate work of Seanbea’s hand and the intricate weave of inked symbols delighted her. She rose from her seat and put one arm around the Ta’Opin’s neck, squeezing until she thought she might be suffocating the man.

Drawing back, she said, “Thank you. I never thought … thank you.”

Penit seemed pleased with the gift. He came over to look at it as Wendra sat beside Seanbea and took his hand. Jastail’s guarded look eased, and he dropped his hand from his sword. “How foolish of me,” he said. “You do my fire honor. You have my gratitude as well.” He bowed, but not so deeply that he lost his vantage on all three. “We should be going,” he said.

“And I,” Seanbea added. “Safe haven to you at your … uncle’s, did you say?”

“Safe haven to you,” Jastail responded.

Seanbea ruffled Penit’s hair and squeezed Wendra’s hand. He said to her, “I hope one day to hear you sing again,” then mounted his wagon and drove to the road where he turned north, raising a streamer of dust until the trees obscured him from view.

Jastail’s smile frayed at the edges, but only slightly. The highwayman maintained his good humor, calling Penit to take his saddle. In moments, dirt had been kicked over the fire, and Jastail led them back to the road.

For half a day they rode, Penit tirelessly asking the highwayman questions. Wendra stayed behind them, a mixture of gratitude and simmering anger contending within her. More than once the image of the Bar’dyn clutching her child erupted in her vision; each time it came when she saw Jastail put an encouraging hand on Penit as the two laughed and talked. She fought back the sounds that struggled to escape her lips, wondering what they might appear like in Seanbea’s beautiful script.

Shortly after meridian, the highwayman turned them west off the road. No trail guided them, but he seemed to know his way, and never paused even when fording a shaded river running in the depths of the tall evergreens.

Night had not fully come when they emerged from a thin grove of aspen into a flat hollow at the base of three mountains. In the center of a clearing, a small log cabin sat low and virtually hidden by several holly bushes. A large moon shimmered on a narrow stream that wound through the hollow and near one side of the cabin. In the dark, the smell of wild honeysuckle and high-mountain lilac hung heavy in the air. Jastail surveyed the basin before going ahead, his sharp eyes searching the dark. Several times he turned around to watch the way behind, allowing Wendra to pass. He appeared more skittish than she’d ever seen him. The furtive look on his face pleased her. But what might make a hollow man jumpy?

Jastail left the horses saddled while he checked the cabin. No lock secured the door, and the highwayman entered so quietly that the sound of the brook concealed his entry. The fleeting thought to run teased Wendra. But she could no longer be sure Penit would follow her—the boy and the highwayman seemed good friends.

In the neutral glow of the lesser light, the boy’s silhouette showed the image of the man he would become. A fuller nose, a deeper jaw, eyes set in lines earned by experience he couldn’t yet dream of, broader shoulders and chest. She would fight to save the brave lad’s future.

“Come,” Jastail whispered.

Penit jumped down and bounded inside. Wendra climbed down with stiff legs and wrapped her reins in a nearby shrub, then did the same with Penit’s. Jastail emerged from the doorway and skulked like a shadow to her side. He rolled a tobaccom leaf into a small wrapper. With a curling motion, he drew a knife across a cylinder of flint and brought an oil lamp to flame. He puffed his tobaccom alight, and stood drawing deeply of the sweet-leaf.

“We are almost done, you and I.” He spoke like a merchant describing a business arrangement.

Wendra smelled the smoke on the air, and watched it, silver and dreamlike in the moonlight. She remembered Balatin striking alight his pipe, the gentle soap and tobaccom smell of his beard and sleeves as he pulled her to his chest and rocked back in the shadows of their porch. A hundred lesser cycles ago this night, this moon, and this smoke would have meant something entirely different. Tonight, they came as an insult to her memory, more bitter, cold resin than sweet, warm leaf.

She withdrew her parchment from her pocket, and followed the graceful strokes as she remembered her melody.

Without looking up from the page, she said, “I can only imagine that we will die,
highwayman
.” She uttered the defamatory term with as much derision as she had. “Either in body or in spirit, but whatever trade or sale you conduct in this remote vale is meant to be kept secret. An arrangement you keep with men that are less comfortable beside the road. I come to comfort the boy, or you would have had to kill me long ago to have my obedience.”

“Are you sure you’ve never read Toille?” She could feel his sarcastic smile in the darkness. “You speak much as he wrote, such unvarnished truth. But really you have seen an unlikely end to this.” He scrubbed one side of his face. “No matter. I won’t convince you. You’ll know when you know. Not that you’ll be any happier, but you are resilient, my dear. A good deal more so than I’d have guessed when I first found you seeking out the boy. And a good lad, too.”

“You strain your hold over me, highwayman.” This time Jastail bristled at the epithet.

“Meaning if you believed him lost to you that you would take to these hills alone and leave him behind?” Jastail chuckled. He drew deeply of his tobaccom, and let out the sweet-smelling smoke as he spoke. “A poor threat, my lady. I know more about you than you may realize. Learned, as a matter of fact, in just keeping your company. And what I know tells me that you will stay close to the boy until you’ve no more power to do so. That the child fancies me, that I’ve encouraged it, makes you hate me. But I really don’t care.”

His glib words and easy manner as he smoked and admired the waxing light of the moon rankled Wendra as nothing else had done. She wanted to tell him she’d try to kill him. She longed to clutch his throat and drive his head into the ground. The images blossomed in her head and brought with them snatches of melody that cooled her heart.

“Nothing to say,” Jastail mocked. “Dear me, what can this mean?” He puffed again on his tobaccom. “I gave the boy a bed. Tomorrow will bring revelations to him for which he’ll need his strength. You should sleep as well.”

Wendra said nothing, and did not move. She only looked again at her parchment and followed her song in her mind.

Lost in the internal sound, she did not notice the highwayman draw nigh. Suddenly, he stood very near, hunched slightly to stare at the page she held in her fingers. A derisive smile curled his lips in the strong moonlight. “Seems we both have our favorite poets. Yours, a Ta’Opin who drives a wagon filled with useless artifacts.” A quiet chuckled escaped him. “You see, even now I am not unkind. A petty scoundrel would snatch your song from your hands to deprive you of its distraction.” He put one hand on his chest. “While
I
recognize the value that tinder holds for me in quieting your vengeful thoughts.”

Wendra seethed at his disregard for her parchment of music. Her captor’s arrogance stirred the unsettling song in her bosom.

“No poem tonight?” Wendra asked in response, her voice neutral, mocking his penchant for verse. “You would let your education slip so that you could taunt me, a piece of merchandise. Or have you just realized that your poet is a buffoon?”

Wendra knew her words seared him, for even as she spoke, the familiar callousness stole over his eyes as he turned them toward her in the lunar light. The rays of the moon in his pupils, his face very close to her own—the smell of sweet-leaf soft as a lover’s kiss between them. No anger, no regret, no fear, no expectation showed in his hollowed cheeks or slash of a mouth. He stared at her, his eyes focused and unmoving. Then he recited from memory:

Some lift prying eyes to discover the motive hands.

Some toil daylight hours to rest and dream their days a different end.

Still others make brash sounds,

And many tormented supplication say on bended knees.

Youth scrapes and hides and practices for its own time to stare the wall.

I these things observe and name them wounds,

And by so doing create my inmost salve,

With which to rise and watch it all again.

Jastail held her gaze a moment more. Then he tossed his tobaccom into a bulrush and unsaddled the horses. The words leapt to spontaneous melody inside her. They felt like song that mustn’t be sung. The mere thought of it chilled her heart. She rushed inside and left the highwayman to his neutral moon and dark verse. Tomorrow, she felt, would be her last chance to save the boy and herself, and to have any hope of seeing Tahn again.

She offered a silent good-bye to her brother at the lesser light, just in case …
I love you, Tahn.

*   *   *

Light came through the window, diffused by the ungainly branches of several holly bushes growing beside the cabin. Wendra lay in a fetal position, Penit curled up against her chest. The soft intake of his breath against the blanket made her sure she’d been right to find him. Hoping that their silence would keep Jastail away, she lay watching the sun strengthen in the sky and at last heard old melodies in her head and let go the worry of imminent confrontation she’d carried since meeting the highwayman.

In another part of the cabin, she heard preparation for endfast. Penit would be hungry, but she did not want to wake him. He had not been this close to her in days. His smooth brow and downy cheeks glowed just a finger’s breadth from her own, his face a portrait of unconditional trust. The memory of sleeping this way with her father, especially in the months after her mother had died, stole over her. His broad chest and strong arms had made her feel safe. Then, like now, she’d woken first, but lain still so the spell of morning calm could linger.

The way she imagined she would have done with her own child.

A soft moan, response to some fanciful childhood dream, escaped Penit’s mouth. He squirmed and settled again even closer. Wendra fought the urge to hug him. He might wake if she did. In her softest voice, she began to hum, the sound delicate, so soft that Penit’s breathing could be heard to keep time. She found phrases from her songbox in her mind and wove them into variations as bright and promising as the light from the window. Penit did not stir, and Wendra thought she could feel herself healing as she had in the cave, though somehow differently now.