When the song was done Saeverth smiled at me, made some excuse to the gitternist, and pushed his way through the crowd toward me. Reaching me at last, he put a hand on my arm, which fell straight through my solid flesh, leaving only a prickling chill. “Do you remember the hideaway?” he whispered.
The hideaway was not in the town I saw around me; it was home in Swanroad. In fact, it no longer existed even there: storms had changed the shape of the dunes the very winter after we'd claimed our stronghold there. But I knew that if Saeverth led me, we would be there anyway, so I nodded and followed him, across wharves and over dunes, to a place concealed by a rise of sand, the place where we'd hidden from the world, from our father, one summer long ago. I looked back to make sure Hwyn and Trenara had followed us, and I saw them waiting close by on a rise of sand. Reassured, I turned back to my brother seated beside me. He looked older now, maybe as old as he'd been when he died. “I've been thinking about what you said the last time we met,” said Saeverth.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't understand.”
“But the question was a fair one: do I grudge you your life? I don't think so. But I do envy you, if that's any different. I wasn't ready to die; after seven years I still haven't accepted it. Yes, I definitely envy you—but then, I always did,” Saeverth said.
“You envied me? Whatever for?”
“You were the only one of us that seemed to have a mind of your own and, occasionally, the courage to show it,” he said. “Father didn't own you the way he owned everyone else.”
I had to laugh. “You can't mean me, little brother. Don't you remember? Saeverth, when Father died I was twenty-three years old and still his bondsman, with nothing of my own but a book of poetry in the Old Tongue—”
“And your soul,” Saeverth said. “You belonged to yourself. Garholt was Father's son and I was Mother's, but you were no one's pet, no one's favorite—except mine.” My brother grinned. Then he fixed me with that piercing look of concentration that he'd always brought to a difficult lesson, a new language, an intricate passage of music to be learned. “In some ways all that happened was only right. You were the most fit to make a life for yourself alone.”
“No. You were so full of promise,” I reminded him.
“Everyone said so,” Saeverth admitted. “But I was timid, afraid of angering Father, afraid of being left alone. You thrived alone. I'll never forget how you escaped at seventeen, slipped away as we embarked for Magya and weren't missed until we were well at sea. That was bold! Then, two years later, quite by chance, we stopped at Bellen to replace one of our ships, and found you apprenticed to the shipbuilder.”
“Yes, I'll always remember,” I said, “the look on Father's face when he saw that the shipwright's boy was his own son. I thought I was safe in my indenture—I was pledged to serve the shipbuilder another five years. But Father bought me like a slave and dragged me back home to Swanroad, and that was the end of all my independence.”
“At least you had two years,” said Saeverth.
“They were good ones,” I said. “I should have brought you with me.”
“I wished you had,” Saeverth said. He looked young again, as young as he'd been when I left home.
I tried to imagine what it would have been like plotting our disappearance together, bringing a younger boy with me through the disreputable backstreets of port towns where I'd hidden myself; seeking work for two instead of one. I was as uncertain as I'd been thirteen years ago whether I could have managed for both of us. All the same, regret stirred my heart. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I nearly did ask you to come with me.”
“But you couldn't be sure I could handle it,” Saeverth said.
“I was so uncertain of myself,” I said, “that I couldn't tell anyone, afraid one word against the plan would change my mind.”
“You knew I would have been afraid,” Saeverth said. “You were always more daring.”
“You were young,” I said. “If you'd lived longer, in time you'd have rebelled too. But at any rate, it's strange to hear you say I belonged to myself—and then to bring up this story, of all things, to prove it. Don't you remember how it ended? Father bought my indenture. You said he didn't own me, but for the last four years of his life he literally did.”
“And does that kind of owning matter now?” Saeverth said. “Here you are, as far from his world as you could be. Tell me, what did you do with the family fortune?”
“I gave it to the Tarvon Order, where I spent more than six years after the shipwreck,” I said. “They founded an orphanage with it.”
“Good!” said Saeverth. “Do you know what the rest of us would have done, had one of us been the sole survivor? Garholt would have kept Father's business going, just the same as ever, and been ruled by the old man long after he died. He'd already married the sort of woman he was expected to marry; the rest was bound to follow. Me, I'd have sold everything, boats, house, and all, and tried to live on the sale until some other plan occurred to me. Most likely I'd have run out of money and had to indenture myself. Mother would have held on to everything, preserving inviolate the memory of a great man that Father never was. And you? You gave it all away. You broke free.”
“Not quite free,” I said, as all the anguish of guilt and doubt that had haunted me for seven years came flooding into my mind, and my father appeared.
“There you are!” he called, striding over the ridge of sand, “hiding out like a couple of thieves. No one in my house should have anything to say that I can't hear.”
“This is not your house,” I said, looking back at him as steadily as I could. “Your house is hundreds of miles away, and seven years in my past.”
“You gave it to strangers,” my father said. “Once we were gone, you never looked back, did you?”
I could no longer meet his eye. Looking away a little, I saw Hwyn coming toward me, followed by Trenara and a dark-cloaked figure I thought I recognized. Taking courage from the sight of friends, I turned back to face my father. “I did what I needed to live.”
His eyes narrowed to the sarcastic slits I remembered so well, as he prepared his retort. But Saeverth cut between us. He looked older now, maybe as old as he would have been had he survived. Reaching out to Father, he said, “Be at peace,” and touched him on the shoulder.
As they touched, a clap of thunder sounded and everything disappeared. Earth and sky trembled and gave way. When they stilled at last, I found myself, Hwyn, Trenara, and no one else, sprawled in the snow by the riverside, the sun just sinking behind the pine trees. No town was in sight.
“Here we are again,” Hwyn said, once again brushing snow off her clothes. “I guess we couldn't expect summer to last much longer. What did your brother do, just at the end?”
“He touched my father and told him to be at peace,” I said. “I wish he would be. I wish I could be.” I told her, then, all I'd been speaking to my brother about: how I'd run away from home and seized a brief taste of freedom, only to become my father's slave in law and in fact.
“What a hard man your father was,” she said. “When we saw him in that ghost-town, haranguing you out into the waves to drown, it gave me the chills. How you grew up with any heart at all, raised by such a man, is the world's wonder.”
“I wasn't really raised by him,” I said. “For the most part, I was raised by a long series of tutors—each one cast aside in turn by my father as inadequate. But they were wise, and some were gentle. I knew the whole world was not cut of my father's cloth.”
“Why didn't you ever tell me this story?” Hwyn said. “I would have understood you better.”
“Why didn't you ever tell me of your grandfather?” I said. “I had to bury the past deep, for fear it would come back. But I should never have made Saeverth a part of what I thrust away from myself. I should have known he wouldn't condemn me. It's not in him.”
“He loves you,” Hwyn said quietly.
“I know,” I said, pausing to take Trenara's cloak an
d my own out of my pack before the cold bit too deeply into our bodies. Then I said to Hwyn, “That was Conor with you in the ghosts' town, wasn't it?”
“Yes,” she said. “He told me some alarming things about what you were doing in Berall to rescue me.”
“I knew you'd disapprove,” I said, “when I used the Eye of Night.”
“And your own name,” Hwyn cut in. “Do you have any idea what a risk you were taking? Jereth, you could have lost your life, or your name itself.”
“Do you think I cared?”
“No,” she said. “That's what worries me.”
16
THE JOURNEY INTO WINTER
We had reached the stretch of road we'd always feared. Now, toiling northward through ever-deepening snow, we scarcely had strength to speak against the wind.
When the stream we followed joined another to form a river, I tried to build a small boat for us to travel more easily, but the broken axe I had picked up in the deserted village was a poor tool for the job, and my hands were stiff and clumsy with cold. There could be no question of cutting planks; the best I could manage was a crude dugout with bits of log lashed to each side to stabilize it. It did not serve us well: toward the end of the first night's travel, a sharp spur of rock tore off the lashings. Without the logs on each side to steady it, the dugout capsized, drenching us to the bone and sending me fishing in icy water for our gear.
Sitting cold and wretched on the shore, our only clothes soaked through, we debated whether it was worth trying to lash the dugout to a new pair of logs. In the end, we decided that since we were already wet, we might as well try again with stronger taproots for lashings. We used that miserable tub until the river snaked eastward and Hwyn declared that it was time we left it, angling north again, into the wind, into the Troubles. At least thirst was not a worry, even after we left the riverside: there was always plenty of snow we could melt for our drink. We were thankful we'd brought a pot to carry fire; it was heavy, but without it we'd have gone for days without a dry place to catch a spark in a handful of twigs.
We still lived on fish: small streams and pools abounded where I could break the ice with my axe to catch the day's meal. When food was scarce Hwyn and I, by tacit agreement, gave the biggest portion to Trenara, whose pregnancy was so far advanced that we wondered how we could have ignored it so long. Still, even Hwyn no longer fretted over the lady's condition, intent only on hanging on. The wind had burned some of the pity out of us; and besides, Trenara herself seemed singularly unconcerned.
Traveling was bad, but resting was almost worse. Often, finding no cave to shelter us, we huddled in the underbrush like animals, heaped together without modesty to make the most of our bodily warmth. After years lamenting my celibacy in the Tarvon Order, I could almost have laughed to find myself sleeping in the arms of two women—one that I loved, and the other splendidly beautiful—too cold, tired, and sore to have a lusty thought toward either of them. Still, the warmth of their bodies at rest and the sight of them walking beside me were the only cheer to be had in that harsh land. My brother's flute did not sound for me again, in this land where nothing sang except the wind.
The snow drifted up high above our boot-tops, soaking our feet. At times Hwyn struggled up to her waist in the stuff. But it took a few days of torment, her small body lost in the drifts, wet to the skin, before she would surrender enough pride to let me carry her over the worst spots.
One evening, dividing another fish supper in a snowy copse, Hwyn poked at her share listlessly. “Fish! What wouldn't I give, right now, just to have a simple piece of bread.”
“Or cheese,” I said, tasting the word on my tongue before I let it go into the night air. “Or ale.”
“Stop,” she said, “I can't stand it.”
“You started,” I reminded her.
“I know,” she said crossly, poking the fish again. After staring at it a while, she said, “You know, it's strange, but after talking about food, I don't feel like eating. Who wants this piece?”
The next morning she was violently ill. “Sky-Raven's Bones!” she swore, painfully trying to wipe her mouth with snow, clinging to whatever dignity was left her. “What's the matter with me?”
“Fever,” I said; a touch on the forehead was enough to confirm it. “And here we are with no shelter but the trees. If we could only find a dry cave! But at any rate, there's no staying here. I'll carry you.” This time she didn't bother to argue. She wasn't heavy—none of us had had much to eat lately, and only Trenara was mysteriously still gaining weight. But I was doubly burdened, carrying the provisions on my back and Hwyn in my arms, not daring to give much baggage to pregnant Trenara. All we needed, just then, was for her to give birth before her time.
I found no shelter. When I could walk no more I set down Hwyn and the baggage in the least uncomfortable spot I could find, where at least the bushes blocked the wind a little. I had saved a fish packed in snow from my last catch, so I boiled it with snow in the cooking-pot, divided the fish with Trenara, and gave the broth from the cooking-pot to Hwyn to drink. She could scarcely digest even this. Choked by fear for her, I could say nothing, reaching out mutely to clasp her to me.
“My love,” she murmured. “Thank you. And I'm sorry.”
“Never mind that,” I whispered back to her. “Just please, please, survive.”
When she had fallen asleep, I wrapped my cloak around her, then wrapped myself as best I could in the trailing ends, enclosing her in my arms, using my body to shield her from the cold. Trenara, on Hwyn's other side, threw one slender arm over us both, and darkness took me.
I awoke to cold and pain and the sound of Hwyn's ragged breathing, still alive. I kissed her forehead, waking her. She smiled a little. “Where are we?”
“Who knows? Still on the earth, not buried in it. Still in the godforsaken North. That's all I know. Let's move on before we freeze.” I moved away as gently as possible, stretched my cramped limbs, and sat up. Trenara, lying curled up on her side, rubbed her eyes and then rolled backward, placing a hand on her belly, reacting to a sudden movement within. Then, slowly, she righted herself.
“Can you walk, do you think?” I said to Hwyn, reaching out a hand to help her up.
“I'll try,” she said. She noticed, then, for the first time that she was wrapped in two cloaks, hers and mine. “Jereth—” she said, pulling at the extra one, but her voice caught, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“It's all right,” I said, bending to touch her face, feeling hot tears on my chapped hand. She wrapped my cloak around me once again, indignantly.
“It's not all right,” she said, burying her face in the front of my tunic, clasping thin arms around me, shaken by sobs.
We set out again under a pale crescent moon, on snow disturbed only by the tracks of animals. Hwyn walked for the first leg of the journey, but when I stopped by a riverbank to fish, she fell asleep right there in the snow before I even had supper for us. I had to wake her to offer her some of it. “Try to eat,” I told her. “You need to take something, or the next wind will blow you away.” She took it reluctantly, and ate little. What she needed was bland food, gruel or bread, things as inaccessible to us now as the choicest delicacies on the Emperor of Magya's table. After we'd eaten I packed our things, gave the fire-pot to Trenara to carry, and slung the rest on my back. Hwyn took a few faltering steps, then swayed and grabbed me for support. “I can't—” she said. So I lifted her and carried her from there forward.
“Gods,” she said, “I'm so much trouble. What did I ever do to deserve you?”
“Everything,” I said.
Through the night I plodded forward as best I could, every muscle in my back screaming a protest against the double burden I carried. I bit my lip to silence myself, knowing that any complaint would hurt Hwyn. I looked for shelter, but none could be seen in the shadowy forest, so I had to be content to follow the north star and hope that some cave or empty house lay ahead of me. Just before dawn, the
silence of the woods was broken by a man's gruff voice: “Give her to me.” He appeared from nowhere in the clearing before us, lanky and pale, almost handsome but for his cruel eyes. He repeated, “Give her to me. I have a score to settle with her—don't I, Hwyn?”
“No!” I said. In my arms I could feel Hwyn shrinking away from the sound of his voice.
“There he is. I should have known,” she murmured. I didn't wait to hear more: I turned away, hurrying back the way we came—but he was before us again. “Go away,” I said, sifting thoughts for his name, distracted by fear. “You have no claim on us.”
“But I do,” he said. “The highest claim: my life. A life for a life.”
“Jereth,” said Hwyn, barely audible, “I killed that man.” Then to him, she raised her voice as well as she could manage: “I'm sorry I killed you: I only wanted to frighten you, but I was too frightened myself to hold back.”
I had his name in my mind, then, and would have used it—but Trenara strode between him and me. He looked at her, breathing, “No,” backing off sharply, wailing aloud, “NO!” She raised her hand as though to touch him, and he was gone.
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