Margaret thought of Ivor, getting feebler before her eyes, and nodded. “Yes, my teacher was like that. He was sharp as a whip when it came to music, but with day-to-day things, his mind was getting very . . . I don’t know. Muddled?”
“The very word! Where is he, your teacher?”
“He died last week, right after we arrived.” She found tears welling in her eyes and blinked them away as quickly as she could.
“That is terrible! I can see you miss him greatly.
There, there, lambie, you just cry all you like. It is healthy to weep!”
“I did so much crying that I feel as if I should have used up all the tears I have.” But Margaret found herself weeping again, the old woman’s kindness releasing her still fresh grief. She mopped her face with her sleeve after a few minutes, and snuffled noisily. “We had been traveling together for many years, going to planets to study the indigenous music. He was very precious to me.”
“Death is a path we are all on, though so far I haven’t reached the end of it. I have outlived a husband, two sons, one daughter, and three grandchildren. Now Alan is married, and when his wife has her child, I will be a great-great-grandmother, and here I still am. Sometimes I think it is unnatural to live this long.”
Margaret decided it would be rude to mention that citizens of the Federation often lived two centuries, with the help of treatments. It seemed unfair that Ivor had not been one of them. “So, Gavin is cantankerous?”
“Hmmph! He is a crabby old man, but then, he was a crabby young man. He knows a lot of songs. I have to give him that. And there is an inn in the village, too, so you can be at your ease.”
Margaret reddened and wondered if Jerana knew how she longed for a bath. “I cannot thank you enough for your hospitality, Jerana.”
“Pah! It was my pleasure. Singing last night made me feel seventy again!”
Rafaella and Margaret set out a little later, their food-bag stuffed with a fresh loaf, some cheese, and salted meat, Jerana’s parting gift. They had gone about an hour beyond the tiny hamlet when Margaret began to feel queasy. Her stomach roiled, and her head ached, but she said nothing to her companion.
They paused beside a gurgling creek for a midday meal, and Margaret dipped her wooden cup into the water and drank thirstily. Then she sat on a rock and did not move for several minutes, feeling achy and tired. She dragged herself to her feet and nearly stumbled.
“Are you all right, Marguerida?”
“I think the altitude must be affecting me. I have lived most of my life at sea level, and even though these hills are not very high, my body is reacting. I can’t seem to catch my breath.”
“You look pale.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine after I eat some bread and cheese.”
But she wasn’t. They had not gone a mile from the creek when her stomach rebelled and spewed up her lunch and much of her breakfast. She barely managed to dismount before it happened.
“You are sick,” Rafaella insisted as Margaret stepped away from her mess. The guide looked very worried.
“No, really. I am fine now. It is just the altitude, or maybe my belly didn’t like something I ate.” She rinsed her mouth out with some clear water, then pulled herself back onto the horse. “How far is it to this village where Gavin lives?”
“Another three hours, at least. Perhaps we should camp here instead.”
“No. I feel better now.” That was true. She was very thirsty, but having emptied her stomach had made her feel less breathless and weak somehow.
The trail wound higher and higher, growing narrower and rougher for a while. Then it broadened out, and Margaret realized they were on the ridge of the hills. She glanced back the way they had come. The River Kadarin was a serpentine flash of silver in the distance, far below. The ascent had been so gradual she had not really noticed.
It was close to sunset when they arrived at the village. It was much larger than the one Jerana lived in, with several roomy houses of stone between humbler cottages. The inn was marked by a swinging sign with a picture of a deerlike beast painted on it. They brought their horses to a halt before it, and a sharp-eyed boy ran out to greet them.
“Ho, Rafaella! Welcome back!”
“Thank you, Valentine. You have grown two inches since my last visit.”
The boy puffed his chest out and grinned. “True. I am now in Tomas’ hand-me-downs, but his old boots are already too small.”
“And how are your parents?”
“Last winter was hard on Ma—her joints hurt something dreadful. But she perked up when it got warmer, like she alwus does. And Pa is Pa. Come in. I will stable the horses, and Ma just cleaned the front bedroom.”
Margaret dismounted, her head spinning. She took some deep breaths, then waited for the giddiness to pass. She had been feeling less and less well during the past hour, but she had not said anything to Rafaella. She didn’t want to spend the night on the trail. She wanted a bed and a bath! And supper. No! The thought of food made her queasy again. All she needed was some sleep, and she would be fine again.
Inside the inn was a deep-beamed taproom. Several men in rough tunics were drinking mugs of beer and lounging around tables, talking quietly. Margaret could hear their voices, but their dialect was so thick she could not follow it. They looked at her with mild curiosity, but no more than that. Two or three of them greeted Rafaella in a friendly way, and Margaret was glad her guide was well-known there.
The room was smoky from the large fireplace, and the smell of burning wood and beer nearly overwhelmed her. She willed herself to stand up straight and ignore her spinning head. She had disgraced herself once that day, and she did not intend to do it a second time. She was grateful when they left the taproom, climbed a narrow staircase, and were shown to a large, airy room on the upper floor.
Margaret sank onto the bed, leaned back on the pillow, and let her body go slack. Distantly she heard the voice of Rafaella and another woman, probably Valentine’s mother, but she felt too weak to listen. Strong hands tugged her boots off, and she felt her tunic being pulled over her head. She tried to protest, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“I just need to sleep,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes.
A wide plain of snow spread from horizon to horizon, and the sky was white with clouds. The smell of cold seemed to freeze her bones. The clouds separated, and a white moon shone in the sky for a moment. Two women walked toward her, like and unlike at the same time. Each had red hair, but one’s was lighter than the other’s. They moved as one, their slender arms swinging in time, their long legs moving easily across the snow-clad landscape. Their garments were soft and flowing, the white of the snow, and their hair was unbound across their shoulders.
The women stared at her with gold-flecked amber eyes, and reached for her with white hands. She felt herself shrink away from their touch. “Child,” said one. “Marja,” the other spoke. She knew they were sisters and that one was her mother, but she could not decide which was which, so similar were they in appearance.
Suddenly a man appeared between them, strong and dark-haired. He put his hands on their shoulders and pushed them apart. Then he seemed to grow taller, until his head brushed the clouds in the sky. Margaret stared at her father as she had never known him, two-handed and powerful, unscarred and handsome. “I tried to warn you! I told you that a wild telepath was a dangerous thing! Why didn’t you listen to me? Get up! Stop running away from your duty! Stop trying to avoid your Gift!”
Margaret sat up in the bed, her head throbbing. She stared at the whitewashed walls and the heavy wooden beams above her, and felt disoriented for a moment. Then she remembered that she was in the inn with the sign of the deer outside it, and not trapped in some snowy landscape with her mother and her aunt and a furious Lew. Relief flooded her, and she felt her hands unclench. Her rapidly beating heart returned to normal after a few minutes.
She looked around and found that Rafaella was asleep on a ma
ttress on the floor beside the bed. A large gray cat was curled in the curve of her legs, and it looked up at her and yawned. The sheer ordinariness of it all calmed her. She swung her legs from under the covers and found that she had been undressed completely, and Darkovan nightclothes had been put on her. The pungent smell of the trail still clung to her skin, though, and she longed for a bath.
Rafaella prized an eye open and examined her. “There is a bathing tub two doors down the hall, and Mestra Hannah washed your clothes. They should be dry by now. How do you feel?”
“Much better, thank you. It must have been the altitude.”
“I am glad. I was very worried. Go bathe while I get a little more sleep. You must have had some fearsome dreams—you kept whimpering—when you weren’t screaming.”
“I am sorry if I disturbed your sleep, Rafaella.”
“Not me—I can sleep through anything—but the horse merchants in the next room might have lost some.” She grinned, showing all her teeth. “They deserved it—if they are horse merchants, then I am a rabbit-horn.” With this cryptic comment, she turned over and went back to sleep.
Bathed and dressed in the outfit she had originally purchased from MacEwan, Margaret felt almost herself for the first time in twenty-some hours. The sense of a headache just a breath away persisted, but her stomach seemed to be the reliable organ it usually was, one which could consume almost anything without discomfort. She decided not to overdo it and ate a light breakfast with several mugs of tea.
Rafaella joined her as she was sipping her tea, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I talked to old Gavin last night in the taproom, and he is expecting us later this morning,” she announced. “He wasn’t glad to see me, but I promised him a few reis for his song, and told him you were a Terranan.”
“Why did you do that?” Margaret was surprised, because she had been to some effort to appear as a Darkovan.
“The man is very selfish—egotistical, I guess. He was ready to say he wouldn’t sing until I told him his songs would be heard in far places. They will, won’t they? I wouldn’t want to have lied to him.”
“Certainly. My recordings will go into the archives on University, and students of music will listen to them. And after that, who knows?”
“What does that mean?” Rafaella asked, helping herself to a huge bowl of porridge.
“A few years ago some popular musicians got hold of some folk songs from New Hispaniola and turned them into hits.”
“Hits? Did they strike people with the songs?”
Margaret nearly choked on her mouthful of tea. The Darkovan word she had used meant a “blow” and lacked any other meaning. She coughed and recovered her breath. That would teach her to try to translate Terran into Darkovan without thinking first!
“No, nothing so violent. What I meant was that the songs were recorded and much acclaimed—played over and over until everyone in the Federation got totally sick of them. They call that a hit.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”
At mid-morning the two women approached the cottage of Gavin MacDougal. It was still cool, and the street was a little muddy from rain the previous night. Margaret carried her precious equipment in a bag over her shoulder, and looked around with interest. She had been too ill to notice much the previous afternoon.
MacDougal’s cottage was something of a hovel. The little garden beside the building was full of rank weeds and a few drooping bushes, and the walk to the door was littered with oddments. Margaret saw a broken plow, a saddle which had sat out in the weather for several seasons, and several other things she could not immediately identify.
Rafaella opened the poorly-hung wooden door and entered without knocking. It was dark and fairly ripe within. It smelled of old man, wood-smoke, cooking, and dirty clothing. Margaret was shocked. Somehow she had created an image in her mind where all Darkovan homes were clean and smelled of balsam and freshness. How did the old man live in this filth?
A form crouched beside the hearth stirred, and as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Margaret saw Gavin. He was small and wizened, his head entirely hairless and his shoulders stooped with age. He coughed and hawked into the fireplace, and the sound of sizzling broke the silence for a moment.
“Welcome,” he muttered gruffly. He peered nearsightedly at the women. “I thought you told me she was Terranan.”
Rafaella scuffled her boots on the floor and looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, she is, and she isn’t.”
“Don’t you try to riddle me, girl. I may be old, but I am not senile! She is one or the other.” He moved closer, and she could smell ancient sweat on his garments and beer on his sour breath. He looked at her closely in the poor light.
Margaret was annoyed at being discussed as if she were invisible. “In truth, I am both. I was born on Darkover, but I have spent most of my life . . .”
“Forgive me, domna,” he interrupted. “Even these old eyes can see you are of the comyn. You honor my house.” He glared at Rafaella. “What are you playing at—trying to pass this woman off as a Terranan to me? You are a bad girl, and you will come to a bad end. And none too soon either. Dashing around like a hoyden, instead of behaving like a proper woman.”
Rafaella bristled and was about to answer in her forthright and heedless way when Margaret spoke. “My father was comyn, Mestru MacDougal.”
“I knew it! Think you can fool me! May I know his name, my lady?” He managed to combine spite and servility in a way Margaret found extraordinarily distasteful. She could see why Jerana had not wished to marry him, for she was sure he had been an extremely unpleasant young man.
“My father is Lewis Alton, the Imperial Senator for Darkover.” She saw the look of startlement on Rafaella’s face, and realized that somehow she had never mentioned her father by name before. It didn’t really matter that he had resigned, because he would always carry the rank of Senator. Besides, these people probably never thought about the Senate, or the Terran Federation, if they were anything like the back-country people she had encountered on other planets.
An expression of distaste came across Gavin’s face, and he pursed his wrinkled mouth. “I wish you nothing but good, domna, but if I were you, I would not be too quick to claim that lineage here in the hills. There are many who are old enough to remember the burning of Caer Donn, and some of them bear old grudges.”
“I know nothing of that,” she replied abruptly, silently cursing the Senator for being a close-mouthed old—She cut off that thought. “I don’t even know what Caer Donn is.”
“Was, domna, was. It was one of the oldest cities in the world. The Terranan came there and built their first spaceport, making pacts with those blasted Aldarans. I visited there long ago, and sang my songs, but it was never a generous place. Those Aldarans hardly give a man a drink for his song. And some years back, it was destroyed.”
“I am sad to hear that, but since I was not yet born, I can’t see it has much to do with me. I can’t be held responsible for something that occurred so long ago.”
Gavin MacDougal gave a snort. “That is Terranan thinking, for sure. We in the hills have long memories, especially for that time. Here, the very name Alton will remind many who do not wish to be reminded of the burning of Caer Donn and of the Forbidden Tower.”
“You are croaking like a raven of ill-fortune, old man,” Rafaella replied.
“You are too young and too headstrong to know what you speak of, so keep your tongue behind your teeth. Your father Lewis was part of the reason Caer Donn was destroyed, though he was only a child when the last members of the Forbidden Tower were slain. We make no songs of those times, but we remember.”
Margaret tried to imagine what role her father might have played in the events old Gavin referred to, but could not manage it. The mists of Darkovan history were too thick, too impenetrable for her. Then she remembered her dream, and how her father had come between the two women, and had still had both hands. She held back a shudder with a great effort
.
“I came here to listen to you sing, Mestru MacDougal, not to hear old tales.” This was not entirely true, but that part of her which was cold and distant insisted that she quell her curiosity. It was a frustrating feeling, for the questions formed in her mind, but did not seem to be able to get to her mouth. She felt silenced, as she had as a small child, and outraged.
Margaret realized she was extremely interested in this story, but at the same time, she did not want to know what had happened. She remembered how Lord Hastur and Brigham Conover had hinted at terrible events in the past, and realized now that they had not told her everything because they knew it would only distress her.
I will record this old man, and then we will turn back for Thendara! Rafaella will be pleased, and I will escape from . . . leave the work unfinished? No, I can’t do that. I have to go on, for Ivor’s sake!
“Well, if it is song you want, then song you will have.” He waddled over to the wall and took down an ancient bowed ryll, caressing it gently. “Let’s go out into the sunlight.”
They sat on some stones in front of the cottage, and Gavin tuned his instrument while Margaret set up her equipment. He had a thready voice now, the remnants of a good tenor, but his memory was capacious, and by the time the sun was descending, he had considerably enlarged Margaret’s store of Darkovan music. Her bottom ached from sitting on a rock, and she was glad to stand up and stretch.
She thanked the old man and offered him payment, but he shook his head. “I would take money from a Terranan as quick as a rabbit-horn, but it goes against the grain to accept payment from an Alton. You mind yourself, young woman, and don’t you let Rafaella get you into mischief.” Then he walked into his hovel and slammed the door.