“Surely that’s perfectly clear by now.”
“Rhodry has a Wyrd that I can’t change, but Ebañy—now, him I can fetch home for you.”
Devaberiel let his hand fall and turned to him with a smile.
“Done, then,” the bard said. “Bring my son home safe and sound, and I’ll tell you everything I know about the Great Burning.”
“Very well, then. We have a bargain, you and I.”
Evandar held one hand up, palm up, in the ancient elven manner, and Devaberiel laid his to match it.
“A bargain,” the bard said. “And the gods of the sky have witnessed it.”
On these winter days the sun climbed slowly and never reached zenith, as if the horizon held it on a short chain and dragged it back down before it could properly rise. Noon announced itself as a brightening behind the silver clouds; night crept over the town like silent water. Niffa would sit with her mother-in-law and practice spinning until her wrist ached from tossing the spindle. Emla would pick up her lengths of lumpy yarn, shake her head sadly, and give them to Cotzi to rework into something usable with her long, thin fingers. Still, Niffa would think, it was better work than drowning rats.
It was a drowsy time, huddled by the fire with the other women, spinning and gossiping to the sounds of the men weaving in the other room. The Wildfolk would come join them, though of course Niffa was the only one who could see them, crouching near her feet and watching the spindle drop and rise, drop and rise. They were fascinated with the weaving, as well; whenever Niffa walked by the door of the shop, she would see big grey gnomes sitting at the foot of the loom and staring at the shuttle as Lark or Cronin guided it through the warp.
On the rare occasions that Demet was home and working, they would crowd round him as he wrapped the shuttles with yarn. Every now and then, Niffa saw a gnome poke one of the skeins with a long warty finger, as if wondering how well it would tangle. When it caught her watching, it would vanish, but slowly, as if creeping away in guilt.
If the weather was clear or the snowfall light, after the midday meal Demet would leave the house and go to his militia post. Last spring a bard of the Gel da’Thae, the civilized members of the Horsekin race, had brought the town a warning that the savage Horsekin tribes to the far north were arming themselves and gathering for trouble. No more news had come their way since, but the town stayed on guard. Niffa’s brother Kyle served in the militia as well, and at times he’d stop by the weavers’ compound on his way back to Citadel and home.
In the evening, Niffa would wrap Demet’s supper in a bit of cloth and take it down to him on the city walls. They would have time for a few words and a kiss or two before the cold drove her back to the house to wait for him to come off watch. As she hurried back to the weavers’ compound, she would look up at Citadel Isle, swimming in the steam of the lake, and wonder how her family fared. The house seemed empty, Dera told her whenever they met at market, with both her and Jahdo gone.
As the new woman in the weavers’ household Niffa watched what she said and did her best to offend no one, but Lark’s wife, Farra, had a nasty temper, flaring like oil spilled into a fire at the least wrong word. Often as they worked, Niffa would let her mind wander, wondering about her family or about what her husband might be doing, there with the other men. At times stranger thoughts came to her, as well, of things she’d glimpsed in her dreams or in the fire, where pictures came and went that only she could see. Whenever Farra caught her “slacking,” as the older girl called it, she would turn on her with a nasty remark or two.
One particularly cold day Farra seemed in a worse mood than usual, snarling at Cotzi, sneering at Niffa, even risking a word back at Emla when she tried to restore peace at the fire.
“Well, it does gripe my very soul,” Farra said, “seeing Niffa just sitting there looking at naught, and us with all this wool to spin.”
“Hush, hush,” Emla said. “It’ll get itself all turned into thread sooner or later. It was needful for Niffa to learn from the beginning, like. It’s not easy work for her.”
“I suppose so.” Farra looked at Niffa with a simpering smile. “There be not much wool for the shearing off of rats, baint?”
“Nor from bitches, either.” Niffa snapped the words out before she could stop herself. “Or did things lie different in the kennel you were raised in?”
Cotzi laughed, then stuffed the side of her hand into her mouth as if to shove the sound back in. Farra flung her spindle onto the floor and leapt up, going for Niffa with an open-handed slap. In a swirl like dead leaves gnomes materialized and flung themselves at the older girl’s feet. With a yelp she fell spraddled onto the floor in front of Emla’s chair. The gnomes disappeared. With a long sigh Emla laid her spindle and thread down on the rush-covered floor.
“Get up, Farra,” she said. “And do you mind your tongue from now on. Niffa, you apologize to her.”
Niffa hesitated, then decided that peace in the house would be worth it.
“I be sorry, Farra. It were a wrong thing for me to call you a bitch.”
Farra got up, smoothing her dresses down, and refused to look her way. Emla sighed again.
“If you can’t be civil and take an apology—”
Farra sat down on the bench and grabbed her spindle from the floor. Emla looked at her, considering, then merely shrugged and returned to her own work.
By then it was growing dark. As Niffa struggled to twist her wool into thread, she felt her mood blackening to match the day. Farra would find a way to get back at her, and after all, they’d have to live here together forever. All at once she felt dread like the slap of a clammy hand across her face. With a gasp for breath she let her spindle fall into her lap.
“What be wrong?” Emla said. “You do look as pale as death.”
“Be I so? I know not, Mother. I did feel so faint, all of a sudden.”
Yet she lied. She knew what was wrong, knew what she could never tell the others, that some great evil had marked her Demet out with hate-filled eyes. She felt the danger to him like a shout, ringing in her ears. When she glanced around, she found all the women staring at her.
“May I go take Demet his bread and cheese?” Niffa said. “It do be a bit early, but the fresh air would do me good.”
“By all means,” Emla said. “But be you well enough?”
“That I am, truly.” Niffa managed a bright smile. “I’ll just be putting his supper together and grabbing my cloak and going.”
By the time she left the compound, the full moon was rising in a cloudless sky. With Demet’s supper in one hand and a lantern in the other, Niffa made her way across the crannogs to the lake shore. In the moonlight the stone town walls rose like the shadow of death. Her heart began to pound so hard that she had to stop for a moment and gulp cold air.
“Who goes?” The voice belonged to Gart, the watch-sergeant.
“Just Niffa. I’m bringing my man’s supper.”
Gart himself materialized out of the shadows at the base of the wall.
“Well, now, it be needful for you to wait a bit,” the sergeant said. “I did send him across to Citadel.”
The shouting voices in her mind roared, deafening her. Dimly she was aware of Gart hurrying forward. He caught her elbow and steadied her.
“What be so wrong, lass?”
“Oh, the cold air and little else. Citadel? Will he be there long?”
“I’ve no idea. We were up on the walls, and we did see the strangest thing, so I did send him across to see what it might be. It were a light, a silvery light up on the very peak of the isle, where that fallen house or whatever it might be lies.”
“The stone ruins, then.”
“Those, indeed, and they lie too close to our armory for me to ignore any strange goings-on among them. Here, give me that lantern, and then walk you down the shore a little ways, and see if you can see it there still. It were such a strange light I did wonder if we both were seeing some fancy, Demet and I.”
Picking her way across the dark and trampled snow, Niffa walked a fair bit away from the pool of lantern glow. When she looked up toward Citadel, she could see its crest clearly above the mists. Sure enough, a silver light shone, the strangest color she’d ever seen burning, but no, it was too cold for a fire—more like moonlight, turned thick and brought down to earth, but touched with blue. It flickered, a mere point or glint, disappeared for a moment, reappeared, then swelled, grew brighter, spread and swelled into a huge moon that spilled silver light, washing over her and dragging her off like a great wave. She heard Gart shouting in alarm.
Silence cut the shout short, a strangely live silence that hovered on the verge of sound. She rode the silence as if it were a swell of lake water, carrying her across to Citadel, or rather, her vision did. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware of lying on cold snow and of Gart, kneeling beside her, but him she could not see, because her power of seeing had gone across the lake. What she did see was stone, draped by silver light like tattered cloth, clinging to the walls of a tunnel. On the ground, on a stone floor, lay a man, facedown, his arms and legs all akimbo. Nearby stood a woman with long dark hair, laughing as the light faded.
Niffa screamed, and with her scream her sight returned to the lake side and the golden flickering of the candle lantern. Gart was trying to help her sit up.
“Demet!” she whispered. “You’ve got to get to Demet. In the stone ruins.”
In the lantern light she could see him staring at her, puzzled at first. Suddenly he made some decision.
“Right you are,” Gart said. “Here, let me get you to your feet and off this frozen ground.”
With his help Niffa could stagger up and retrieve the lantern. Bellowing out names, Gart ran for the guardhouse down by the main gates. She saw other lanterns bloom as men hurried out and answered him. She hesitated, wondering where she should go to wait, but Gart called to her to follow.
“You do wait in here by the fire, lass. Me and Stone will be rowing over to fetch your man.”
The men left on guard ignored her. She sat down on a stool in the corner of the tiny wooden room and watched the fire burning on the stone hearth. Smoke swirled and flew upward, sucked toward the smokehole in the roof. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder if she could call upon her visions when she wanted them rather than waiting for them to come to her. Demet, she thought. Show me Demet, oh please, show him to me. The smoke and the flames remained naught but fire and smoke.
The wait went on and on. At a table the other guards diced for splinters of wood but said next to nothing. Were they alarmed, too, she wondered, or did they think her daft and their sergeant more so, to listen to the witch girl? Now and again someone got up to put a log on the fire, then sat back down without looking her way. In the glowing palaces of the coals she tried to see pictures, begged the pictures to come to her—nothing. Eventually she heard a voice from outside and leapt up, but it was Emla, letting herself in the door. She was muffled in a dark cloak that set off her pale face.
“Niffa!” she snapped. “And what be you up to, sitting here? Where’s Demet?”
The men all turned to look at her as she shook her head free of the cloak’s hood. Niffa tried to speak but found no words.
“What be so wrong?” Emla whispered. “Where be my son?”
“I know not, Mother.” Niffa stood up and held out her hand. “Do come sit and I’ll stand.”
Emla perched on the stool. At first she seemed to be framing some question, but the mood of the room caught her, and she stayed silent. More waiting, more smoke and flame that leapt upward without visions or hints—the men diced, speaking not at all now.
“Hola!” A shout in Stone’s dark voice. “Come out, come out!”
The men rose and grabbed cloaks, then rushed out the door. More slowly Niffa and Emla followed, carrying lanterns. Stone and Gart were hauling a coracle up onto the lake shore and straining on the rope as if they pulled a burden, not a little leather boat. Niffa screamed and went running, so fast the candle in her lantern lost its flame. She knew, then, knew with the coldness of a sliver of ice stuck into her heart even before she reached them. She grabbed the slimy-wet side of the coracle and leaned over.
Demet lay in the bottom of the boat, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes still open, staring at nothing. Somewhere a woman was screaming, high and wordlessly, over and over. Why don’t they make her stop? Niffa thought to herself. Only when Gart grabbed her shoulder did she realize that the voice was her own.
“He did see, Verro!” Raena hissed the words out. “It were needful to silence him. He saw, I tell you. He saw Lord Havoc!”
Verrarc wanted to grab and hit her, so badly that the urge burned as strong as lust. When he took a step forward, she shrank back and threw one hand up before her face. What are you? he told himself. Your father’s son indeed! He crossed his arms hard over his chest and tucked his traitorous hands into his armpits.
“What if he’d told his wife?” Raena said, and her voice shook on the edge of fear. “Think, Verro! What if he’d told little Niffa?”
“Well, now.” He forced his voice steady. “That would have been a worse thing, truly. But by all the gods, Rae, yours and mine both, a death in Cerr Cawnen is a grievous thing. No one will be letting this matter lie.”
“Ah, but you be the one looking into it, like, baint? Who but you, a councilman and the powerful man that the ratters do hold as a friend?” She risked taking a few steps toward him and smiled. “You be the man who’ll be saying who did what or that naught did happen but a sudden fever. There be not a mark on him, Verro. You did see that when the sergeant fetched you.”
“So I did.”
Under the bedchamber window stood a wooden chest. He sat on it and let his arms go limp, his hands hanging between his spread knees. The cold draft from the shutters soothed him, like the touch of a hand on a fevered face.
“How did you kill him?” he said.
“What? I did never!” Raena crossed to him in two graceful strides and flung herself down in a kneel. “Verro, Verro! How could you think it of me? It were Lord Havoc!” She caught his hands and pressed them to her chest while she leaned against his knees. “I know not how he did slay the lad. It were dweomer, stronger than any that ever I did see before.”
“Ai! Forgive me, my love. I did think—I know not what to think, truly. Forgive me!”
He pulled her tight against him and held her, shaking against his chest. But even as he murmured soothing words, he wondered at himself, that he’d been so ready to think her a murderess, the moment that the town watch had woken him to tell him of Demet’s death.
As the youngest member of the town council, Verrarc was in charge of the town watch and all matters pertaining to it. How was he going to satisfy his fellow citizens while protecting Raena? The question kept him awake for what was left of the night, even though Raena slept soundly right beside him, not waking even when he gave up the fight for sleep and left their bed.
After a few bites of breakfast he left the house and went down to the lake shore and the boathouse belonging to the Council of Five. He found Admi, the town’s chief speaker, waiting for him. Wrapped in the red cloaks of council members, they walked back and forth on the gravelled shore in the dark grey of a winter’s morning. The lake lapped and steamed beside them.
“There be no use in our going across till proper sunrise,” Admi said.
“Just so,” Verrarc said. “Last night by candlelight I could tell naught. If there had been a wound, though, we would have found such.”
“And what were the lad about, there in the stone ruins?”
“Sergeant Gart does tell me that they saw a light, a strange silver light, he did say.” Verrarc hesitated, thinking of lies, but Gart had doubtless told half the town by now. “It were the strangeness of the light that did make him send a man across. I do think that they were seeing fancies, myself. It be a long and lonely job, holding the winter watch.”
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“Gart be a solid man, though. If he does say he saw a light, I believe him.”
“Oh, the light be real enough! What I’m finding hard to believe is this talk of strange silver witch lights.”
“Ah.” Admi nodded, sending his prodigious jowls dancing. “Now I do see your meaning.”
“I’ll be talking with every guard who went over to the armory. I told Gart to make sure they assembled at first light.”
“The armory? Gart told me they did find the lad in the stone ruins.”
“Was it now? Well, that’s another matter I’d best get clear.”
At the guardhouse by the gates, Gart and the other men who’d been on duty were waiting. When Verrarc opened the door, they stopped whatever they were doing and rose to greet him.
“Sit down, sit down all of you,” Verrarc said. “I’ll not be troubling you long.”
The others sat. Gart brought a stool over, which Verrarc placed at the head of the table. The guards watched him with eyes so weary he could assume they’d not slept all night.
“Very well,” Verrarc said. “Here be the tale as I heard it. There be a need on you all to tell me if I’ve heard wrong.”
They nodded, glancing back and forth among themselves.
“Early in the evening watch,” Verrarc went on, “Demet and Gart did stand upon the catwalks near the South Gate. They saw a strange silver light upon Citadel’s peak, near the armory. Demet rowed across alone and did go up the hill to see what it might be.”
The men nodded. Verrarc turned to Gart.
“You did say that Demet were a long time about it. And then his wife did come with his supper?”
“She did, Councilman,” Gart said. “And sore upset she was, too, when she did hear where her Demet had gone. So I did take one of the lads and went over to look for him.”
“But what made you decide to go look?”
“His poor woman, that’s what. Everyone knows there’s a touch of the witch about Niffa. She did fall into a faint, like, and then she began talking in this strange voice, babbling of Demet lying in the stone ruins. It were like she was up on the walls and looking down, telling me what did lie below where I could not see.”