It would not do. With only one eye open, I could scarcely judge the depth of each little fall or rise of the ground. I stumbled dangerously, then dropped to all fours, my head reeling.
“Do you need help?” Hwyn said.
I shook my head, making myself even dizzier. What help could she give me? What I needed was someone of my own height to lean against. No, I reflected, what I needed was a bed to lie in and a physician with a thorough knowledge of poisons and a good stock of antidotes. “I just needed to touch the earth to be sure of it. With only one good eye, I can't see to judge my steps. How do you manage it?” I blurted out, then instantly regretted having called attention to her lack.
But Hwyn only mused, “I'm not sure what I do. I never think of it—it's been so long since I've had to think of it.”
“One gets used to it then,” I said, though I inwardly thought it might have taken Hwyn months or years to acquire her unconscious ease in the world of half-sight.
“In time,” Hwyn said, as if guessing my thought, “one grows used to anything. Should we rest here?”
“Hardly a place to rest,” I said, for we were on a jagged spur of rock among dozens of broken crags, like the rotten uneven teeth of a giant, sticking out at all angles with broad gaps between them. I ached with regret for the mulberry grove we'd left behind, like Mereforth the Mariner pining for the Island of the Innocent that, once left behind, could never be found again. “I can go on a little way, if I keep my hands close to the ground. You go ahead and talk or sing so I can follow your voice.”
“If that will help you,” she said unsteadily. “I hate to leave you crawling on the ground. If only I could support you—but oh, gods, what use would I be, with my head lower than your armpit? All right, then, I'll go ahead. But cry out if you need anything.” So she started along the way, slower than before, and she sang, looking over her shoulder every couple of measures to see if I were following. In her place, I might have chosen a marching song or a minstrel's calling-on song as most compatible with a hard hike over the rocks. I was startled by the exquisite, fluid strains of a song I'd rarely heard outside a temple:
“Arise, arise, my own, my love,
Earthly joy of my heavenly heart,
Stretch toward me if you long for me:
I am here, here for your growing,
Here for your knowing,
Here for your loving,
Here for your living,
Here for your having.
Golden joy of my blue eye,
Grow toward me if you love me,
Grow to the sky that knows me,
Grow to the sun that shows my love,
Grow to the height that is in you, waiting to show.
Grow, though you grow to be cut down;
Grow though you know the grinder's stone
Waits to make dust of your growing;
Though I will mourn at the mowing,
I give you, grain of my fields,
Joy of the sweetness of summer,
Oblivion of autumn's doom,
New life in the creatures you nourish,
New life in the next planting,
When brightness shall sing you alive again:
Grow to me, earthly love.”
It was the Bright Goddess's song to the growing grain, and I had never heard any but a priestess sing it—for aught I knew, it might have been forbidden. Where had she learned to sing like that? Her voice was like the bright water springing over the rocks to the grateful pool, or like the sunlight on that water; yet there was a tremor in it, as though she might at any moment have begun sobbing for the grain cut down and sacrificed for our food. It was splendid: I caught Trenara looking wonderingly at her as she sang, and I fancied even the wild goats paused a little to listen before gamboling up and away from us. It made the hairs rise on the back of my neck; at the same time, it made me feel I could follow her forever. But the song ended, and she seemed to forget to begin again, looking back over her shoulder as much as forward, watching me toil on behind her, a furrow of concern deepening on her brow. At last we came to a grassy stretch that was nearly level along the western face of the hill. “Hwyn,” I said, weakly at first, then again, “Hwyn,” till she turned again: “Hwyn, this is where I stop.”
She came back to kneel in the grass by my side, her face drawn. “Of course. This is a good spot; we can rest a while. Then—”
“No,” I said. “No then. I can go no farther until something draws the poison from me. You have a quest to complete, and its end lies over the mountains to the north. I can never complete that journey in this state. I cannot go on.” My head spun, and the sun's glare seemed to oppress me; I curled on the ground, burying my hot face in my hands.
Hwyn's cool fingers glanced lightly over my hair. “I can't leave you.”
“Then we are at an impasse,” I said, raising my head to look her in the eye—aptly phrased, one eye to one eye, some relentlessly ironical part of my mind said. “Let me think.”
That was not easy: my head would not stop pounding, nor the ground stop spinning under me, and my mind seemed distracted, as though I kept passing into dreams and out again without entirely falling asleep. Through it all, Hwyn's hand was on my shoulder, and that gentleness was all I wanted of life at that moment: to surrender myself to her care, as I had in the robbers' cave, and lie peacefully with my head in her lap, her voice in my ears, till I died of whatever poison or sickness had entered that trifling arrow-cut, for in my fevered state I could scarcely imagine surviving. But if I were dying, it would be worse than useless for Hwyn to linger without hope in this barren place with no food, no water, no shelter against a storm. I must not tempt her with my weakness to stay in this poor harbor. Certainly we would have been better off in the mulberry grove, but I was loath to ask Hwyn to turn backward—or, in truth, to raise myself off the ground and walk anywhere, forward or back, without some prospect of help from a more skilled hand than hers or mine.
“Perhaps I can break the impasse,” I said at last. “There must be herdsmen in these hills, for it was not another goat that marked that white goat's ear. Where they live in all these hills I cannot say, but they must be where there is water. Go find a stream you can follow. You can move faster without me, and will have more hope of finding whatever there is to be found while I stay here. If you find help in the next day, you can come back for me.”
“What if it takes longer?”
“If you find no help by then, there will be no point turning back,” I said as firmly as I could.
“Hidden Goddess!” Hwyn swore in a choked voice. “You promised to be with me to my journey's end.”
“And you told me,” I said with growing strength, “that if you followed anything but the vision given to you, you might as well have stayed in safety. Very true: and if I tempt you to follow anything but that vision, I should never have come with you. If you stay here, where there is no hope, I will be ashamed, for I will have turned you from your true path. Go now. May the gods go with you.”
She seized both my hands and pressed them to her face. “Forgive me.”
I felt her tears, and strange to say, they gave me strength not to hold her there any longer, seeking another sign of regard. “My friend, there is nothing to forgive. I know if there is help for me, you will find it. Go quickly.”
She pressed into my hand a handkerchief full of currants she'd been saving for later; I tried to refuse, having no stomach for them, but it distressed her too much to leave me with nothing, and in the end I took them so as not to weaken her resolve to go. Then I watched them depart, the little drab figure and the tall splendid one retreating into the sunlit haze and dropping out of sight. They looked so defenseless, I found myself wishing War-fast had gone with them after all, so they would have some protector all the rest of their journey. I gazed out along a greensward dotted with white and gold flowers, as if Hwyn's tears had taken root in the sunshine, until it all blurred in my eye. For a time I knew nothing.
/> I was awakened by a moist nudge at my face that sent a spasm of pain through my head. I opened my right eye and was too alarmed even to cry out at the sight of an enormous animal's black muzzle. I froze, trying to imagine what sort of hideous beast was about to assail me, as the creature kept sniffing at me with a motion that I dimly recognized as familiar.
“Heel, Seeker,” said a tenor voice somewhere beyond the huge black dog—for that, of course, was the true nature of the monster. The dog retreated, and a young man's round, genial face appeared over me, frank blue eyes searching me as avidly as the dog had sniffed. His hair, black as the dog's fur, hung in two braids, an ancient style long disused in the lands I knew. “Are you alive, stranger?”
I struggled up on one elbow. “Did Hwyn send you?”
“Did who?”
“Hwyn—my friend—a little woman, very small, with light hair, in old gray clothes with one red sleeve. She went to look for help.”
“No, good brother, no one sent me. I hunt on this mountain often. What brought you here? And what's that great sore on your head?”
“One of the guards of Kreyn grazed me with an arrow—a shallow wound, but it festered. I couldn't walk any farther. Even lifting my head like this makes the mountain seem to tilt and spin.”
“Could you walk with me for support?”
He looked about my height; it might help. “I'll try.”
“I can take you to Folcsted; the healer-priestess will know what to do for you.”
“Thank the gods you're here—and thank you for your willingness to help a stranger,” I said. “But I had rather you find Hwyn and Trenara. They have nearly as much need of help as I, and more hope of surviving.”
“Take heart, man. You're not dead yet,” said the youth. “As for your friends, if you have something of theirs, show it to Seeker and he'll find them soon enough.”
Glad, then, for the handkerchief full of currants, I emptied the fruit into one hand, gave it to the boy, then presented the cloth to the dog's snout, half afraid it would only send him into the next stand of currant bushes. But the beast started instead in the direction Hwyn and Trenara had taken when I had last seen them. With a triumphant nod, the young man pulled me to my feet and led me down the same pathway, supporting me all the way, his quiver of arrows jostling against me uncomfortably, his longbow hanging from his other shoulder. “What's your name, traveler?” he asked as we went along.
“Jereth,” I said. “And yours?”
“Ethwin the Hunter,” he said. “You're a priest?”
“No,” I said, “I left the Tarvon Order without vows.”
“Pity,” said Ethwin. “It would have been a better story to tell—a priest forced to flee the city guards like a thief, and me there to rescue him.”
“You can tell it that way if you like,” I said, ready to agree to anything, for I needed the strong arm under my shoulder so badly it shamed me.
“What are you, then? Since you're not a priest?”
I was not sure what to say—pilgrim, minstrel, merchant's son? “Hwyn's follower,” I mused to myself, and dazed by pain, said it aloud without further explanation.
“Then what is Hwyn?” the youth said as we followed Seeker around an outcropping of gray stone. Just then my bleary eye caught a blur of violet and a flash of red—Trenara's surcoat, and Hwyn's mismatched sleeve.
“There they are!” I said. “Or do my hopes deceive me? Do you see them, the two women—a little one with light hair and a tall dark one in blue and violet?”
“Yes,” said Ethwin. “There they are, coming up to meet us.”
Trenara hastened toward me first; Hwyn, still unseeing, lagged a little behind. “Hwyn!” I called weakly. When Ethwin echoed me in stronger tones, she quickened her step toward us. We met on a grassy slope, where Ethwin gradually lowered me to earth. “I thought to see you walking away from us,” I said.
She held out a handful of rough gray peelings. “Willow bark,” she explained, “to ease the pain. I found it near a stream I meant to follow downhill, looking for dwellings. I thought there would be no harm in bringing it to you first. Here, take a strip and chew on it.”
I did as she said. The bark had a bitter, ashy flavor, but I was too pleased to see her returning to me to complain of anything.
“Now that you've found your friends, Jereth, maybe I can leave you in their care and fetch a donkey from Folcsted to carry you,” Ethwin said. “I can go faster alone. Unless, perhaps,” he turned to Trenara, “this lady will bear me company? She seems a good walker.” The lad was gawking at Trenara with the same dreamy expression she'd inspired in Lok. But Trenara only smiled demurely and clung to Hwyn's arm. “Not without Hwyn.”
“Hwyn, I see you have many followers,” Ethwin said, “and I none. I will leave you one more. Seeker,” he called to his dog, “guard them.” He pointed at us. The dog trotted to Trenara's side—as its master might have liked to—and remained with her as the young man vanished down the hillside.
“How did you find him?” Hwyn asked me as he disappeared.
I laughed weakly. “Everything happens while I'm asleep. The dog found me, and I gave him your handkerchief to pick up your scent so we could follow you.”
“Then I needn't have left you at all,” she fretted.
“You wouldn't have found this bark without leaving,” I reminded her. “It does seem to help.” It was true: for all its bitterness, I had to admit it seemed to have eased the pain in my head. “Thank you for these. And for coming back.”
I rested with my head in her lap until Ethwin returned, better than his word, with two donkeys, one for me, the other for Hwyn and Trenara to take turns, one riding, one walking. Though it shamed me to ride while either of them went on their own weary feet, I had little choice: every jolt along the way made the world blur and swim before my eyes, and it was all I could do to stay mounted, much less walk.
Nimble as the mountain goats, Ethwin led us downhill and northward, now by stony ridges, now by nearly flat stretches of meadow, now by thickets of birch and thorn. It was well that the donkeys were surefooted beasts, for some of the drops were steep enough to trouble my weak stomach. We went a long way through a narrow, rocky pass, gray stone rising on both sides like walls of a passageway, so that I half expected to descend into a cave. But after we rounded a bend, the walls of stone fell back, the land opened out before us, and I was almost blinded by the brilliance of a lake in the valley below us, blazing under the setting sun like a mirror on fire. A narrow band of plowed fields and a few stone houses huddled between the lakeshore and the wooded slopes beyond the valley.
We descended sharply, picking our way between birches and brambles until we reached the flat cleared land. “Here we are,” Ethwin said, “Folcsted by St. Arin's Lake. You are in luck today,” he added, “for Mother Halred's in the valley, not out among the flocks. I told the good mother you were coming, and she bade me take these donkeys and bring you back to her house.”
We were passing by plowed land worked anxiously by women and some children, all bent low over the soil. An old woman straightened to call a greeting to Ethwin, and a few children stared and pointed at us, jumping up and down and calling to their elders in piping voices. Most of the others raised their heads for a bemused glance, then returned to their work.
On the opposite side of our path, on the lakeshore, a knot of men wrestled boulders into place to reinforce an embankment. Most of them, like the farming women, only glanced up fleetingly before resuming work. But one gray-haired man broke from the group and strode toward us, calling, “Ethwin! Ethwin, I'm talking to you.” Our guide ignored him, looking straight before him, hands clenching at his sides.
“Your father?” I murmured to Ethwin.
He nodded sullenly and continued on, letting his father hurry panting after him. The old man caught up with us as we neared the first building, a simple long house of lime-washed stone, its door and window-shutters moss-green. “You're not bringing those strangers i
nto our house,” he said without preamble.
“No, Father,” the youth said, “to Mother Halred's.”
“It's no difference,” said his father. “We've none of us got anything extra to go around. If you're responsible for bringing the Folc three beggars to feed—”
“The good mother bade me bring them,” Ethwin said.
“—it's out of our own mouths you're taking their keep,” his father continued.
As we passed more grainfields, the workers looked up at the sound of the older man's voice, shook their heads, then looked down again.
“What would you have me do?” Ethwin shot back.
“Your duty, like the rest of us. You've brought home nothing from the hunt today, unless you mean us to eat these three skinny vagabonds—”
“Should I have left them to die of wounds and thirst? Is that the way of the Folc?”
“Is it the way of the Folc to starve our own to feed strangers?”
“They can have my portion, if it comes to that,” Ethwin shouted, making heads lift again to stare.
His father seemed about to retort, but stopped silent in mid-stride as a woman stepped forward to meet us. There was little remarkable in her appearance—she looked fifty or sixty years old, a little above middle height, as lean and angular as any of the people I had seen, but not more so. Her gray-black hair hung down her back and shoulders in long tangles. Her tunic of undyed wool draped loosely over her thin frame, and her feet were bare, with knobbly toes caked in mud. Nonetheless, there was something about her that stopped Ethwin and his father in midretort, and would have stopped me, too. Her steel-gray eyes held us like a wall of spears.
“Ethwin, there you are at last,” she said. “So these are my guests—the wounded man and his friends?”
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