He had found refuge in this place, in the dregs and leavings of the trade that flowed along road and river. As one tenday blended into the next, he had sunk even deeper into its dust, until some days he could not remember why he was here and what he must hide from. He had nothing anyone would want, except these secret, shameful moments of pleasure.
That, and the relentless whisper in his mind.
Kill . . . kill them all . . .
Kill? He had no power to kill, not even himself. His only power was to hold on for one more day, and one more day after that.
Eduin was so tired of struggling against the whispers, so focused on covering the last distance, that he was almost to the hovel before he noticed the brightly-painted caravan drawn up in the field beyond. A slender youth was unhitching a dun cart horse whose sway back and frosted muzzle marked his age, but his coat was glossy and his mane was braided with colored ribbons. A line of Fort women and children, some of them well-dressed, watched the process.
Mingled with the jangle of bells, he caught a lilting melody and the sound of a fiddle. The onlookers moved apart and he saw what they were watching—two women performing an old ballad. The singer was quite young, although no beauty, but with a fresh, pleasant face. She wore a bright green bodice embroidered with straw lilies, open-necked blouse, and gaily striped skirt. A scarf fringed with little bells tied back her dark brown hair. Her sturdy body swayed to the fiddle accompaniment of her older companion, a withered crone in a black dress and shawl.
The music sank into Eduin’s pores. It carried none of the soporific effect of Saravio’s singing, being just an ordinary tune, sweetly sung and lively enough to send toes tapping. The children laughed and the smiles lightened the faces of the audience. If Eduin closed his eyes, he could almost see the common room at Arilinn, where he had first heard this ballad.
Instead of a shanty town and dusty field, walls of pale translucent stone arched gracefully around him. He remembered carpets beneath his feet, cushioned chairs arranged for comfort and intimacy before a massive fieldstone hearth. A girl with hair the color of flame sat on a low stool, her six-fingered hands moving across the strings of a rryl, her voice rising and falling. The weariness in his body fell away. He could almost smell the incense added to the fire.
Eduin startled back to the present. His eyes stung. The song ended with a flourish of the girl’s skirts and a scattering of applause. Some of the women threw a coin or two at the feet of the performers. Laughing, the girl gathered them up and folded them into her sash. The old woman had already put away her fiddle and climbed up into the wagon.
“I’m going now, Tia!” The boy had finished unharnessing the horse. A muffled voice answered him from the wagon.
“Wait,” the girl said. She leaned into the opened wagon door and drew out a gracefully tapering jar.
“Fill this, will you? And don’t you dare use it for practice,” the girl said, wagging one finger in warning. “Find something unbreakable until you learn to juggle properly.”
Laughing, the boy led the horse toward the riverside. Eduin watched him go. He lingered, drawing out the memory of the music.
The two women began wrestling a folded tent from the back of the wagon. The poles were long and awkward, the tent itself too heavy for them. The old woman lost her grasp and it slid to the ground, throwing up dust.
Eduin set down the packet of food inside the shed and went over to them. Since his arrival at Robardin’s Fort, he had set up many such tents, as well as whatever other work he could find.
“Let me help you.”
Working together, the two women managed one side and he took the other. The other roustabouts had taught him the leverages to use, and regular hard work had strengthened his body. He was still thin, but his chest was broader and his shoulders and arms more muscular than ever before.
The tent was more pavilion than enclosure, having only a roof and one wall. It was faded and cleverly-patched, but had been designed with care. He recognized it as the backdrop for a stage. Next came a series of platforms ready for assembly, which would elevate the performers above their audience. He stepped back to admire the final arrangement, imagining a crowd of travelers and Fort folk.
“This is for your labor.” The girl took out a small silver coin from her folded sash. Flushed with exertion, she was actually pretty.
Without thinking, Eduin shook his head. “I did not ask—”
“You earned it. Without you, we would be all evening putting up that wretched thing.”
“I had nothing to give you for your song,” he stumbled. “And I made no bargain for my help. I am no beggar.”
“Well, that’s the way it is,” she said tartly, replacing the coin. Her gray eyes appraised him, taking in the worn clothes, the smeared dust. She turned back to the wagon, then paused, considering. “Would you take your wages in a hot meal?”
He lowered his eyes, knowing what she saw—a man who could not find a place among decent people, a drunkard, a wastrel, a man who had some good reason to hide.
“Think of it as a business proposition,” she said. “That is, if you’re interested. I’m Raynita, and it’s my grandmother who runs this troupe. We’ve been short-handed since my father died two years ago, and we just lost our roustabout. Tia and Jorge and I, we can do well enough once we’re set up, but we need another man for the road.”
Work? And a way out of here . . . and music? Eduin wasn’t sure he had understood, or if that nostalgic memory had befuddled his wits.
“Perhaps,” Raynita went on, “you aren’t interested in a job?”
“I take whatever work I can find,” he admitted, “and a man can’t live on song.” Though he can try.
“A man can’t live without it,” she laughed.
“I—I have a friend. He goes where I do.”
“Bring him along. With Tia’s cooking, there’s always enough for one more. No promises, though. Just a meal and talk. We may not suit each other.” Clearly finished with the conversation, Raynita turned back to the wagon.
Through the long twilight, Eduin and Saravio sat around the cook fire of the musicians. At the edge of the firelight, the old horse dozed beside the wagon. Night birds called and then fell silent. In the distance, frogs chorused along the river.
The old woman, called Tia or Auntie, had simmered a concoction of roasted grain, summer greens, and onions. Eduin couldn’t identify the seasonings; he thought some of the spices might have come from as far away as Ardcarran or Shainsa in the Dry Towns. The food was the sort of simple, nourishing fare that country people ate when meat was scarce, flavorful and nourishing compared to the swill he’d lived on in Thendara. Even the tisane, a delicate brew of herbs in boiled water, had a clean taste that left his stomach warm and his tongue satisfied.
Eduin said as little as possible about his own history, but Raynita freely answered his questions about the troupe. They had been performing in the countryside around Isoldir for the last year.
“We thought there would be a good welcome at Cedestri, where the Tower is, for we’d heard there was a great lord of the Comyn there, a tenerézu of renown, and that always means a need for music,” she said.
Comyn . . . a great Keeper . . . Eduin masked a surge of excitement. Could it be true? Could he have stumbled upon a second piece of unbelievably good luck?
“Was it Varzil Ridenow, who’s Keeper at Neskaya?” he asked.
“I know not. Before we drew near, the whole area was laid waste. Isoldir and the great lands of the Aillards have been at each other’s throats ever since I can remember, but it has never been this bad.”
Eduin nodded. Rumors spread like fleas through the shanty town when men had too much idle time on their hands.
“There was a great battle, with fire-bombings and desolation, and no money for entertainment. We played now and again for those poor folk, to lighten their hearts, but as the wise man said, joy fills no one’s empty belly.”
Eduin frowned. Varzil proba
bly never went to Cedestri. It was dangerous to think such things. Better to believe that Varzil, like Carolin, was forever beyond his reach, that the life he knew was all there was.
You swore . . . whispered through his mind.
“As we traveled toward Valeron,” Raynita went on, “we saw more of the war. Oh, it was terrible! An aircar had been blasted from the sky and there was blackened earth all around. You could see little pieces of it, even bits of metal.”
“Accursed witchery,” Saravio said.
At his outburst, Raynita paused and looked strangely at him. “Yes, that is what Tia said. She forbade us to go near, not even to harvest the metal.”
The old woman rocked herself, sucking air through the gap between her teeth. “In such places, death hangs in the very air you breathe. You cannot see it or touch it, but it is there all the same.”
“She frightened Liam, our roustabout, so badly that he took off one morning,” Raynita told Eduin in a stage whisper.
After the meal, young Jorge, who had scarcely said a word, brought out a small, round-bellied lute from the wagon and began picking out a melody. Humming, Raynita tapped out a counterpoint on her lap. Within a few notes, Eduin recognized the song.
Oh, no, not now . . .
“Oh, the lark in the morning,
She rises in the west . . .”
Swaying gently, Saravio began to sing. There was nothing Eduin could say to stop him. Eduin braced himself for the underlying laran vibration that would signal the manipulation of his pleasure centers. Then he would be lost, trapped between sick oblivion and the rage of guilt and torment, without even the shelter of darkness to hide him. These people, Raynita and Jorge and Tia, whose black eyes missed very little, would see him for what he was. . . .
What should that matter? Those years in the Thendara streets, he had never spared a thought for the opinion of anyone else, only that they gave him as little notice as possible. The mob at the lake was but a means to an end, Naotalba’s faceless army. Before that, at Arilinn, he valued his teachers for the learning that would buy his place, his chance. Varzil had been an obstacle, and Carolin . . .
Carolin had loved him as a brother, had taken his part, Carolin . . . Carolin must die, Carolin still must die . . . he must tear this weakness from his heart, now and forever. . . .
In a flash, Eduin relived that moment when Saravio pulled him from the Thendara gutter, that crack in the black armor of his aloneness. Carolin had first pierced it, and then Dyannis, and now the weakness lay within him, waiting for another such moment.
At any other time, he might have tried to block out Saravio’s mental sendings, to maintain his barriers, but not tonight. Not with the insistent pressure building almost to the breaking point these last days. Not with the memory of Carolin’s friendship so fresh in his thoughts.
“And comes home in the evening with the dew on her breast.” Her voice clear as a silver bell, Raynita answered Saravio. She smiled, watching his face, but he gave no response, not even when she wove a descant harmony above his voice.
“. . . she whistles and she sings,
And comes home in the evening
With the dew on her wings.”
Eduin braced himself, but no mental touch bore through him. No surge of ecstasy caught him up in its remorseless grip. There was only the music, sweet and simple, the girl’s trained voice soaring above Saravio’s, the boy strumming along, the old woman nodding in time to the beat.
Of course, he realized. These people harbored no deep pain to trigger Saravio’s Gift, only warmth and easy affection. He himself had not asked, had masked his own need.
Jorge finished the song with a cascade of arpeggios. Raynita clapped her hands. “What do you think, Tia? Shall we take both of them? Eduin to haul around heavy things and Saravio to back me on a ballad or two?”
The old woman drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders, although the night was mild. “My grand-daughter’s taken with you,” she spoke to the space between Eduin and Saravio. “She has all the haste of youth. It’s true enough we need a pair of strong arms, and a second man’s voice will not be a bad thing. But there’s no need to rush into things. If you will, we can pay you by the day while we’re here. Then when we’re ready to move out, we’ll talk again.”
All through the summer, the musicians remained at Robardin’s Fort. Eduin hauled water and firewood, and Saravio sang with Raynita. They played for the Fort merchants and the succession of travelers and traders who passed through. Tia decided to cut their stay short and move on before the season turned, for Isoldir had closed its borders and there were fresh rumors of war. She would take her little company on to Valeron for the winter. The milder climate and the strength of the powerful Aillard clan would provide shelter against more than one kind of storm.
After Raynita invited both of them to come along, Saravio seemed singularly unenthusiastic. Eduin sat with him in their little hovel, which had become even shabbier and more confined as the summer wore on. Now every day spent outdoors, amidst laughter and music, left him less able to endure the squalor and isolation. The huts and tents were dismantled after the first snowfall, and Eduin did not think he could bear a winter immured behind the town walls, assuming by some miracle he could find a place for both of them there. The musicians’ offer had come as a lifeline.
When he asked Saravio what his objections were, Saravio simply replied, “They are not Naotalba’s own.”
“What do you mean?” Eduin said, stung.
Saravio shrugged. He had been biddable enough since their flight from Thendara, but he could turn obstinate, particularly if he believed it was the will of Naotalba. Yet he had been more responsive and alert, sometimes almost joyful, since he began singing with Raynita. Tia’s stews and tisanes had put some needed weight on him, and he’d smiled more than once at Jorge’s antics.
“They are good people,” Saravio said, “but they have nothing to do with Naotalba, or her with them. It matters not whether we go with them or remain here. But . . . but I cannot hear her voice or see her hand in this place. She cannot have forsaken us. She would not—she promised. We—we did not fail her, did we? Back at the lake? She would not turn away from us because of that?”
“No, no,” Eduin replied, with all the reassurance he could muster. “Naotalba keeps faith when all others fall away. You know this, and that is why she chose you for her champion.” The words sprang from his mouth unbidden, without intention or thought. He thought of the ease with which he and Saravio had joined up with the musicians, and for the first time it seemed more than a lucky chance.
Another thought came to him, and he seized upon it. “Perhaps there is something here that prevents us from feeling Naotalba’s presence,” he suggested. “She must have sent the musicians to us in order to bring us away from this place. Only when we are free of it can we know her will for us.”
Saravio brightened. “Yes, that must be the way of it. Naotalba has many servants, and not all of them are sensible of her glory.”
After that, Saravio bent to the preparation for the journey with a will. They left Robardin’s Fort walking beside the wagon along with Raynita and young Jorge, while Tia rode, just as if they had always belonged together.
16
The troupe stopped on the side of the road in an open area between two ranges of hills to rest the aged cart horse. Clouds filmed the sky, diffusing the early afternoon light. Stones, some of them the size of the wagon, dotted the slopes, but the flat ground was mostly fine gravel. Hardy grasses had taken root and then dried to ashen curls. Jorge asked if there were any danger from flash flooding, but Tia said no, the river that once flowed here had dried up long ago.
The old woman soon had a small campfire lit and water boiling. She produced meals for everyone, including Eduin and Saravio, on some schedule of her own, sometimes serving hot meals in the morning and cold in the evening. Now she bent over her pot, stirring in slivers of wild green onion.
Raynita sauntered
over to where Eduin stood. Her eyes followed Saravio, who had wandered off by himself. He stood, head thrown back, cap rucked forward over his brow, looking east along the river bed.
“He’s a strange one,” she said. “He stays right with me when we sing together, but the rest of the time I’m not sure he knows we exist.”
Jorge came up to them, grinning. “I’ve found the perfect spot over there. It’s wide enough, and almost sandy.”
Raynita sighed. “Go on, then, and start warming up. I’ll be along shortly.” When Jorge trotted off happily, she turned to Eduin. “I was hoping Jorge would give his tumbling a rest, but he’s bent on practicing whenever he can. He’s right, of course. Back at the Fort, the performances were enough to keep him happy, but when we’re traveling, he always wants to try something new.”
Eduin confessed he knew nothing of acrobatics.
“Then come and learn. It would help if someone else could spot for him. I’ve felt so weary this last tenday, all I want to do is sleep.” Yawning, Raynita headed for the wagon. She emerged a short time later in boy’s breeches instead of her usual skirt.
Eduin watched for a distance as Jorge went through his preliminary exercises, stretching and rolling, flexing his muscles. Such feats of physical skill had never held much interest for Eduin. His years at Arilinn had left him convinced of the superiority of mental powers. He sensed Jorge’s concentration as he settled into a hand-stand, straightened his legs and then parted them, wobbling so badly he almost fell, brought them together again and rolled forward. The boy bounded up without pausing and cartwheeled several times. He was clearly enjoying himself. Raynita followed him closely, laughing.
Raynita gestured as she commented on Jorge’s technique. To Eduin’s surprise, she then proceeded to repeat the same motions, only with a startling lightness and grace. Jorge groaned, “I just can’t keep steady on the splits like you do.”