“Is Your Ladyship lost or in need of aid …?” faltered the catalyst, somewhat confused by the woman’s shabby appearance and the fierce, defiant expression on her dirt-streaked face.
“I am neither,” the woman answered in a low, tight voice. Her gaze darting from one to the other of them; she lifted her chin. “I am in need of work.”
The catalyst opened his mouth to refuse, but at that moment the overseer coughed and made a slight gesture with his hand, pointing to the bundle on the woman’s back. Looking where indicated, the catalyst swallowed his words. The bundle had moved. Two dark brown eyes stared out at him from above the woman’s shoulder.
A baby.
The catalyst and the overseer exchanged glances.
“Where do you come from, milady?” asked the overseer, feeling it was up to him to take charge.
But the catalyst struck in. “And where is the babe’s father?” This asked in a severe tone, as befitted a member of the clergy.
The woman appeared undaunted by either question. Her lip curled with a sneer, and, when she spoke, it was to the overseer, not to the catalyst. “I come from yonder.” She indicated the direction of Merilon by a nod of her head. “As for the babe’s father—my husband”—she said this with emphasis—“is dead. He defied the Emperor and was sent Beyond.”
Both men exchanged glances again. They knew she was lying—no one had been sent Beyond in a year—but there was such a strange, wild glint in the woman’s eyes that each man was wary of challenging her.
“Well?” she said abruptly, shifting the position of the baby that was swaddled in the bundle on her back. “Do I get work or not?”
“Have you sought aid of the Church, milady?” the catalyst asked. “I am certain—”
To his astonishment, the woman spit on the ground at his feet.
“My babe and I would starve, will starve, before I accept a crust from the hands of such as you.” With a scathing glance at the catalyst, she turned her back upon him and faced the overseer. “Do you need another field hand?” she asked in her low, husky voice. “I am strong. I will work hard.”
The overseer cleared his throat uncomfortably. He could see the baby peering out from the bundle, staring at him with wide, dark eyes. What should he do? Certainly nothing like this had ever come up before—a noblewoman seeking work as an ordinary field hand!
The overseer flicked a glance at the catalyst, though he knew he could expect no help from that quarter. Technically, the overseer, as Master Magus, was in charge of the settlement, and though the Church might question his decisions, it would never question his authority to make them. But now the overseer was in a tough spot. He had no liking for this woman. Indeed, he felt a certain revulsion as he looked at her and her baby. At best, it was probably an illegal mating—there were certain unscrupulous catalysts who would perform such a thing if paid enough. At worst, it was a rutting, the result of the abhorrent joining of male and female bodies. Or perhaps the child was Dead, he had heard rumors that such babies were being smuggled out of Merilon. His inclination was to send this woman and her child away.
But to do so, he knew, was to send them to certain death.
Seeing the overseer hesitate, the catalyst frowned and trudged over to stand beneath where the overseer floated in the air. Irritably motioning the overseer to come down to his level, the catalyst muttered, “I can’t believe you’re really considering this! She’s obviously a … well … you know ….” The catalyst flushed in embarrassment, seeing the overseer leer, and hurried on. “Tell her to be on her way. Or, better still, send for the Enforcers—”
The overseer scowled. “I don’t need the Duuk-tsarith to tell me how to manage my settlement. And what would you have me do, send her and the babe into the Outland? This is the last settlement this side of the river. “You want to try to sleep nights, thinking about what’ll happen to ’em out there?” He glanced back at the woman. She was young, probably not more than twenty. Once she might have been pretty, but now her proud face was marked with lines of anger and hatred. Her body was far too thin—the dress hung on her spare frame.
The catalyst indicated, from his sour expression, that he would take his chances on missing a few nights’ sleep to be rid of this female. This helped make up the overseer’s mind.
“Very well, milady,” the overseer said grudgingly, affecting to ignore the catalyst’s look of shocked disapproval. “I can use another hand. You’ll be given a dwelling place—expense of His Lordship—a bit of ground to do with as you please, and a share in the crops. Be in the fields at dawn, leave at dark. Rest midday. Marm Huspeth’ll watch the babe—”
“The baby stays with me,” the woman informed him coldly, hitching up the straps of the bundle on her back. “I’ll carry him in this while I work, to leave my hands free.”
The overseer shook his head. “I expect a full day’s work from you—”
“You’ll get it,” the woman interrupted, drawing herself up to her full height. “Do I start now?
Looking at her wan, pale face, the overseer shifted uncomfortably. “Naw,” he said gruffly. “Get yourself and the babe settled. The cottage there at the end, near the trees, is vacant. At least go to Marm. She’ll fix you some food—”
“I don’t take handouts,” the woman said and started to leave.
“Hey, what’s yer name?” asked the overseer.
Stopping, the woman glanced back over her shoulder. “Anja.”
“And the babe?”
“Joram.”
“Has he been Tested and blessed in accordance with the laws of the Church?” asked the catalyst sternly, determined to try to salvage some of his lost dignity. But the attempt failed. Spinning around, the woman faced him directly for the first time, and the look in her glittering eyes was so strange, so mocking, and so wild that the catalyst involuntarily fell back a step before her.
“Oh, yes,” Anja whispered. “He has been through the ceremony of the Testing and he has received the Church’s blessing, you may be sure!”
With that, she began to laugh such eerie, shrill laughter that the catalyst flashed the overseer a look of smug satisfaction. If it hadn’t been for that look, the overseer might have rescinded his decision and sent the woman on her way. He, too, heard the tinge of madness in that laughter. But he’d be damned before he’d back down in front of this weak-eyed, bald little man who’d been an irritant ever since he’d arrived a month ago.
“What are you all staring at,” he shouted to the Field Magi, who had been watching the proceedings with interest, eager for anything that relieved the daily boredom and drudgery of their lives. “Rest is over. Back to work. Father Tolban, grant them Life,” he said to the catalyst, who, with the self-conscious air of one who has been proven right, sniffed and began to chant the ritual.
Flashing a triumphant grin at the overseer, as if they shared some joke known only to the two of them, the woman turned and trudged off toward the wretched little shack that stood far apart from the others of the settlement, her fine green gown dragging in the dirt, catching on brambles, snagging in bushes.
The overseer was to come to know that dress well. Six years later, Anja still wore its tattered remnants.
8
The Borderlands
Joram knew he was different from the others in the settlement. It was something it seemed he had always known, just as he knew his name or his mother’s name or her touch. But the reason for this difference puzzled the six-year-old.
“Why won’t you let me play with the children?” Joram would ask during the evenings when he was allowed outside their dwelling to exercise by himself under Anja’s strict supervision.
“Because you are different,” Anja would reply coldly.
Or, “Why must I learn to read?” Joram would ask. “The other children don’t have to.”
“Because you are different from the other children,” Anja would answer him.
Different. Different. Different. The word loomed large
in Joram’s mind, like the words Anja made him copy laboriously on his slate. It was because of The Difference that he was kept sealed inside the shack where they lived whenever Anja went to the fields. It was because of The Difference that he and Anja kept apart from the other Field Magi, never joining in their small holidays or the brief eventide talks before the early bedtime.
“Why am I different?” Joram asked petulantly one day, watching the other children playing in the dirt street. “I don’t want to be different.”
“May the Almin forgive you your foolish tongue,” Anja snapped, casting the children outside a look of scorn. “You are as far above those as the moon is above this wretched ground we trod.”
Joram glanced up above into the evening sky where the pale moon hung in the darkness, aloof from the world and the dim, twilight stars around it.
“But the moon is cold and alone, Anja,” Joram observed.
“All the better for it, child. There is nothing that can hurt it!” Anja responded. Kneeling down beside her son, she took him in her arms and hugged him fiercely. “Be alone like the moon and there is nothing that can hurt you!”
Well, that was a reason, certainly, but it wasn’t a very good reason, Joram thought. He had a great deal of time to think, being by himself all day. So he kept his eyes and ears open, spying on his mother, searching for The Difference. Once, he thought he might have found it.
“What do you want, Catalyst?” Anja demanded ungraciously, flinging open the door at the sound of a knock one morning before work began.
Father Tolban attempted to keep a smile upon his lips, but it was a strained, tight-lipped smile. “Sun arise, Anja. May the Almin’s blessing be with you this day.”
“If it is, it will be without your help,” Anja retorted. “I ask again, Catalyst, what do you want? Be quick. I must get to the fields.”
“I came to discuss—” the catalyst began formally but, starting to wilt beneath Anja’s icy gaze, he lost his carefully planned statement and stammered in a rush. “How old is your—is Joram?”
Still asleep in the half-light of dawn, the boy lay huddled in patched blankets on a cot in the corner. “He is six,” Anja answered defiantly, as though daring Father Tolban to challenge her.
The catalyst nodded and tried to regain his composure. “Just so,” he said with an attempt at pleasantry. “That is the age he should begin his education. I meet with the children during Highhour, you know. Let me … That is …”
His voice trailed off, his smile and his words both slowly withering in the chill of Anja’s sardonic sneer.
“I’ll see to his education, not you, Catalyst! He is of noble blood, after all,” she added angrily, as Father Tolban seemed about to protest. “He will be educated as befits one of noble blood, not as one of your ham-fisted peasants!”
With that, she brushed past him, sealing shut the door to the shack. Made of tree branches, the door, like all the doors in the village, was originally designed in the shape of welcoming hands. But the unkempt, untrimmed branches of Anja’s door made it look more like grasping, skeletal claws. Giving the catalyst a final, suspicious glance, Anja surrounded the shack with the magical aura of protection that left her so drained of energy each morning she was forced to walk to the fields instead of float, as did the other magi.
Inside, Joram raised his head from the blankets cautiously. The catalyst had not left yet. He could hear the man shuffling about outside, then other footsteps approaching.
“You heard?” Father Tolban asked bitterly.
“Best leave her be,” advised the overseer. “And the kid, too.
“But he should be educated …”
“Bah!” The overseer snorted. “So the brat doesn’t know his catechism? As long as he’s ready for the fields when he’s eight, it doesn’t matter to me whether or not he can recite the Nine Mysteries.”
“If you could speak to her …”
“Her? I’d sooner speak to a centaur. You want the kid, you snatch him from her claws.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Father Tolban muttered hastily. “I don’t suppose it matters much after all …”
The two walked away.
So that was part of The Difference, Joram thought. I am of noble blood, whatever that means.
But there was something else. There had to be. For, as Joram grew older, he began to realize that this Difference kept him apart from everyone—including his mother. He could see it sometimes in the way she looked at him when he performed some ordinary task, such as lifting an object in his hands or walking across the floor. He saw a fear in her eyes—a fear that made him afraid, too, though he didn’t know why. And whenever he started to ask, she looked away and was suddenly very busy.
One difference between Joram and the other children was obvious—the fact that he walked. Though he had his assigned tasks and studies to perform during the long day of isolation in the shack, he often spent much of that day at the window, staring enviously at the play of the other children in the village. Every noon, under the watchful eye of Father Tolban, they floated and tumbled about in the air, playing with any object their fancy imagined and their limited skills as growing magi allowed them to create. Joram longed most desperately to be able to float, not to be forced to walk upon the ground like the lowest rank of the Field Magi or that most stupid of creatures according to his mother—a catalyst.
“How do I know I can’t?” it occurred to the six-year-old to ask himself one day. “I’ve never really tried.”
Leaving the window, the boy looked around the shack. Formed from a dead free that had been magically shaped and hollowed out, the tree’s branches had been skillfully laced and twined to form a crude roof. High above Joram, a single branch of the natural tree extended the length of the ceiling. Working industriously, Joram dragged the crude worktable, formed of a stump, beneath the beam. Then he lifted up a chair onto the table and, climbing on it, looked up. Not high enough. Frustrated, he glanced about and spotted the potato bin in the corner. Clambering down, he dumped out the potatoes, hoisted the huge, hollowed-out gourd, and, after a great deal of effort, managed to position it on top of the chair.
Now he could reach the beam, just barely. The gourd wobbling beneath his feet, Joram touched the beam with his fingertips and, with a jump that sent the gourd tumbling off the table, caught hold of the branch and pulled himself up onto it. Looking down, he saw that the floor was a long way beneath him.
“But that doesn’t matter,” he said confidently. “I’m going to float like the others,” Drawing in a breath, Joram was just about to leap out into the air when suddenly the magical seal was broken, the door flew open, and his mother entered.
Anja’s startled gaze traveled from the table to the chair to the gourd on the floor and, Anally, to Joram, perched on the beam of the ceiling, staring at her with his dark eyes, his pale face a cold, blank mask. Instantly, Anja sprang into the air. Flying to the ceiling, she snatched up the child in her arms.
“What do you think you are doing, my little love?” Anja asked feverishly, clutching Joram to her as they drifted down to the floor.
“I want to float, like them,” Joram replied, pointing outside and squirming to escape his mother’s pinching grasp.
Setting her son down, Anja glanced over her shoulder at the peasant children and her lip curled.
“Never again disgrace me or yourself with such thoughts!” she said, attempting to sound stern. But her voice wavered, her eyes went to the crude device Joram had put together to gain his object. Shuddering, she put her hand over her mouth; then, with a look of revulsion, she hurriedly grabbed down the chair, flinging it into the corner. She turned to face Joram, her face deathly pale, words of reprimand on her lips.
But she couldn’t say them. In Joram’s eyes, she saw the question, framed and ready to ask.
And she was not prepared to answer it.
Without a word, Anja turned on her heel and left the shack.
Joram did, of course, atte
mpt the leap from the roof, daring it during harvest time when he was certain his mother would be too busy to return to lunch, as she had taken to doing now more often. Balancing on the very edge of the beam, the child jumped, willing with all the strength of his small being that he hang suspended in the cool fall air like the griffins, and then drift to the ground, lightly as a windblown leaf ….
He landed, not like a windblown leaf, but like a rock hurled down the face of a mountain. The fall hurt the boy severely. Picking himself up, he felt a sharp pain in his side when he drew a breath.
“What is the matter with my pet?” Anja asked him playfully that evening. “You are very quiet.”
“I jumped off the roof,” Joram answered, looking at her steadily. “I was trying to float like the others.”
Anja scowled, and again opened her mouth to reprimand the boy. But she saw, once again, the question in the boy’s eyes.
“And what happened?” she asked gruffly, her hands plucking at the tattered remnants of her green dress.
“I fell,” Joram answered his mother, who wasn’t looking at him. “I hurt myself, right here.” He pressed his hand against his side.
Anja shrugged. “I hope you have learned your lesson,” she remarked coldly. “You are not like the others. You are different. And everytime you try to be like the others, you will hurt yourself or they will hurt you.”
She is right. I’m not like the others. Joram knew that, now. But why? What was the reason?
That winter, the winter when he was six, Joram thought again that he might have discovered the answer.
Joram was a beautiful child. Even the hardbitten overseer could not help but pause in his daily grind to turn and stare on those occasions when the boy was allowed outside the shack. From being kept constantly indoors during the day, Joram’s skin was smooth and white and as translucent as marble. His eyes were large and expressive, surrounded by thick black eyelashes so long that they brushed his cheeks. His eyebrows were black and set low on his head, giving him a brooding, serious adult air that accorded oddly with his childish face.
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