Silver Eve

by Sandra Waugh

  Like Laurent.

  His name burst into my thoughts, more dizzying than the height. I shook my head to clear it. For better measure, I stuck my head through the window and studied the fort again. A young girl was hurrying along a narrow edge, balancing a tray of food. I yelled, “Take care!” There was no railing—to fall from the steps would be a dead plunge to the rocks and lake so far below. But she paid no mind, whisking up a set of narrow steps with no eye to me or to the drop.

  The girl disappeared into an interior tunnel. Moments later she was at my doorway—no place to knock, for there was no door. She smiled, doe-eyed and shy, bobbing a curtsy, making the stiff little braid at the back of her head bounce. She was not as young as I first thought, maybe only a year or so behind me. But she was all lightness and fine bones; she seemed a child.

  “May I put this down, please?” she asked, holding out the tray. I nodded. Bread and goat butter and fresh-pressed juice—peach, I thought. My mouth watered at the sight. I’d not eaten for more than a day—strange that I didn’t remember until this moment. When had a Healer forgotten to eat?

  The girl entered almost on tiptoe and set the tray on the footstool, the only bit of furniture besides the bed. I hiked up the quilt, plunked down on the floor, and attacked the food.

  “Thank you,” I managed between bites. The bread was dark-crusted, studded with fruit and hickory, and dry as sawdust. But I worked through half the loaf before I slowed and considered the girl who kneeled by the door quiet as a mouse, politely waiting.

  I wiped my mouth. “This is Gren Fort?”

  She nodded.

  “How many are here?”

  “Seven families founded this dwelling.”

  “So small…” Even Merith had twenty households. Seven hardly seemed a worthy amount to defend a fort.

  But she laughed at me and her mouselike posture evaporated. “Small? Seven families over seventy generations! But, I suppose ’tis what you think, for the fort can only support a hundred people at a time. The rest are spread out”—she waved a hand—“somewhere. Anyhap, you’ll see everyone at evening meal. You are supposed to be left alone to rest for now.”

  I was done with resting. “How long was I asleep?”

  “You arrived in the wee hours. It’s past noon now.” She jumped up. “I can show you where to wash if you’re ready.”

  “Please, the—” I stopped, suddenly awkward. I’d not expected to ask news of the Rider, the question came of its own accord and foolishly so. We’d argued through our time together, I should be relieved he was not here. I swallowed and said carefully, “I came with someone else.”

  “Oh!” The girl jerked, her face going bright pink. “You did! But he sleeps still.” She made some bashful gesture with her shoulder. He’s very han—very tall.”

  “He is.”

  ’Twas how I said it: spare of emotion, while she ducked and blushed. It surprised her. She cocked her head and studied me. “You’re not wed or you’d share his room. Are you…Do you know him well?”

  “Not at all.” I swallowed. That was mostly true.

  “I thought so.” The girl shifted a little closer and whispered conspiratorially, reverently, “He is one of the Riders.”

  Her little move relieved me, made me grin, for she reminded me then of silly Cath from Merith and her flirting, rapturous infatuation with each of the young men of our village in turn. Even so, I wouldn’t acknowledge Laurent’s looks or share impressions in front of this girl any more than I might have gossiped with Cath about Raif. I changed the subject. “Tell me something of yourself.”

  “I’m Lill. I help out in the kitchens. Now you.” She insisted rather than asked—I’d failed her thus far with my studious disinterest in Laurent, and she was waiting to be impressed.

  “Evie. I’m a Healer.”

  That brought a smile. “I baked that,” she whispered, nodding at the bread and flashing a sly little glance from the corner of her eye—waiting for a compliment. Lill was dark-haired and very pale, pixielike with her pointed features and slant to her wide eyes, and the way her braid scraped her hair so tightly back behind her ears. Cath had auburn curls, was peach-plump and syrup-pretty. Lill was a different sort of pretty, more haunting, richer.

  Something twisted hollow in my stomach then, sending a strange little burn into my shoulder blade, into the circle of my birthmark. A longing, maybe, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was longing for. I was thinking of Cath and Laurent and mixing home with here. But Lill was not the Cath from home, and this was not home, and what was home anyway?

  “Well?” Lill nodded at the bread again.

  “Yes. Oh. Thank you.” I said it blandly, and Lill only looked further disappointed. So I buttered another hunk of her bread and stuffed it in my mouth. “Truly delicious.” I chewed hard, willing her to smile again. This was so unlike me—the neediness, the discomfort, the feigning to please another.

  I drank up the juice and wiped my mouth against my arm, looking at the streaks of dirt and blood dried there. The strands of hair falling over my shoulders were filthy gray.

  “You said I could wash?”

  She jumped up. “I’ll take you. It’s a bit of a trek, but it’s too impractical to hike buckets around here to fill any tubs.”

  “I don’t mind.” I unwound myself from the floor slowly, still stiff from the riding and tangled in the quilt. “Is there anything to wear? I’ve no clothes.”

  “They’re drying,” Lill answered. “Just bring that. Come.”

  So I followed her, quilt and all. We went through the little doorway into a dim tunnel, down three steps, and out onto the path. The sunlight dazzled; the drop was dizzying. Lill noticed none of it as we proceeded. She chose an upward route and ran lightly up the narrow steps on her rope-soled shoes, turning around often to stare at me. I tread far more carefully, aware of her curious gaze and the steep pitch…and the utter treachery of the bulky wrap. We wound our way up the face of the quarry, working sideways, climbing behind walls of waterfalls and up ladders and stairs until we came to a wider, flat path where we could walk side by side.

  We stopped there to let two women pass. They had cropped hair and were dressed alike in weighted shirts of linked metal and deerskin leggings similar to what I’d seen Lark wearing. One carried a bow and quiver, the other a short sword in her belt. They cast sharp glances at me, nodded at Lill, and strode by, withholding whatever conversation until we were out of earshot.

  I turned to Lill. “Who are they?”

  “Gren guards,” she said with a shrug. “Couldn’t you tell?” When I shook my head, she added impatiently, “The weapons and chain mail, silly.”

  “They’re prepared for battle—? Oh, for goodness sake, Lill, what is it?” I could no longer take her staring.

  “Why do you not know chain mail and ask of battle? Weren’t you just in one?”

  There was a pointed little thrill behind her question, expecting that I’d give a violent account for the blood and dirt that was dried all over me. I shook my head.

  “Oh.” Lill sighed. “Well, there’s talk of great battles brewing, that we are at war with a very dark evil. I was hoping you’d been in a scrap or two. After all, you were traveling with a Rider. They don’t come down from their hills unless something needs fighting.” And then there was new eagerness in her tone: “You know the Breeders and their collaborators are massing, don’t you? Breeders are our greatest threat. I heard that the Keepers are waking the Guardians and mustering all allies. The Guardians—have you heard the legends? They’ve not been awakened for ages and ages! We’ll need all our might to push back the enemy this time.”

  If the Guardians were no secret, was I supposed to admit that I was one? Lill would be disappointed to learn it. I was all questions and boring answers for her, hardly as wondrous as she imagined. “I’ve heard this as well,” I said as neutrally as possible, wishing suddenly that Laurent was with us. “But I’ve seen no battle.”

  Lill sighe
d again. “I suppose that’s why the blood rinsed out of your clothes so easily; battle blood is harder to remove. They were washed this morning, I saw—Oh!” She was onto a wholly different subject. “Your clothes! How can there be such blue?”

  “Indigo and alum,” I said. “Common enough. Haven’t you any?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have such colors.”

  “But you are surrounded by blue!” I waved at the falls.

  Lill shrugged. “Not like that. Colors are drab here.” She skipped ahead, pointed to the wall of rock, and up. There were clever terraced plantings running up the sides of the quarry: narrow levels stacked up the length of one long waterfall (espaliered fruit trees at the bottom, then vegetables and berries above in decreasing size), close enough for the chiseled troughs to catch the constant spray of water. A rope ladder ran up the other side as access to the gardens. High above us a man was working; his legs hooked into the weave of rope as he leaned far out to cut some lettuces. He stuck them in a large pouch and hiked himself farther up.

  Lill was used to the acrobatics and paid no mind, coming back to grab my arm and move me on. “We only dye from onion and spinach—all greens and yellows and browns.” She groaned. “So dull! I remember being surrounded by color once….”

  “You didn’t grow up here?”

  She shook her head. “Refugee. Some of us are not descended from the founding families. I was rescued ten years back. There was a battle then. Not like this one coming, but…” Lill shifted suddenly before I could ask about it and changed her tone. “Healers are supposed to know all the workings of plants and minerals. Tell me which plants would make someone sweet on me.”

  She was so like Cath. I had to laugh. “There’s someone you’re fond of?”

  “I want to catch his eye.” She flitted ahead and then ran back, all hushed with rumor. “I hear Guardians don’t need to be sweet on anyone, that they have someone already….” Lill looked at me sideways, then lowered her voice, though there was no one else in sight, and said, “I hear it’s a powerful bond created—that a Keeper or ally makes the bond with a single touch! Mark to mark and then they are connected: Guardian and Complement, the Complement protecting the Guardian to the death with heart and sword! Unless of course a Breeder catches the Guardian first….What sort of bond would that make?” She leaned a little toward me, very serious. “Do you think so? That a simple touch could make so passionate a bond?”

  Everything inside of me seemed to lurch. My grin faded. Complement—Laurent had not told me that part of the bond seeking. He’d only called it necessary. I looked over the edge of the path as if I’d find my thoughts somewhere below. “I think…I think a bond made is not always for love.”

  “No fights, no news, no imagination…” I was useless as far as Lill was concerned. She snipped, “So then why have you come to Gren Fort?”

  “A journey,” I answered vaguely.

  Another disappointment. She shrugged. “Well, you will find no battles here. Nothing to heal…”

  Lill ran a little way up the path and I hurried after, to where she stopped under hanging boughs of a birch that had somehow rooted in a crack of limestone and drooped like a screen for what lay behind: a wide ledge with two pools of water and a fall. The bigger pool was glass smooth—it collected the trickles from the waterfall. The closer was more a puddle where the water splashed into a shallow well in the rock and spilled over. It was not the one I’d seen in the Insight spell.

  “You bathe here,” Lill was instructing. “Leave the quilt outside the branches; I’ll bring you something to wear.” She turned to go.

  “Wait, Lill!” I called her back. Her thin bright face appeared between the leaves. “There is something I’m looking for: a shell. Something”—I didn’t lie—“that would be of great use to Healers. ’Tis said it’s been hidden where there are waterfalls. Have you heard anything of it?”

  “What sort of shell? Like from a tortoise?”

  “A seashell.”

  Lill shook her head. “I have never heard of a sea-shell. But you can ask Eudin at supper. He is our captain. He knows much.”

  I nodded, and then she made a fierce little giggle. “I hope he does not tell you to travel to Hooded Falls. That would be very bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you go in, you cannot come out.”

  “Well then it seems unlikely that someone would be able to hide something in Hooded Falls, for they would still be there, wouldn’t they?”

  She shrugged and disappeared, then popped her head back through the curtain of leaves, thinking of something else. “About the plants. How can I make him sweet on me? Will you help?”

  “Sneak a daisy into his pocket,” I said. “They are past flowering, if they flowered at all this year, but you might find one or two if you look hard—are there fields nearby?”

  At last I’d served a purpose; Lill was delighted. “I’ll climb. I can find one!” She dashed away only to return a moment later. “I won’t forget your things, though. I’ll be back.” And she was gone.

  —

  Within the quarry, in the little bower that the birch screen provided, it was hard to remember the dying landscape above and that it had not rained for months. There was water everywhere, pristine and sun-warm. I stepped right under the shower and let it pour over me while I watched the sun shift farther down and draw the shadows up from below. I searched around for a loose chunk of limestone and scrubbed the old blood from my skin and hair.

  It mocked me, that stone. Limestone was the choice of blacksmiths to clean impurities from metal before forging, which seemed a fallacy. Armor and weapons—however shiny—had black hearts. ’Twas how I felt: scraped clean on the outside, but all this spilled blood was staining my soul. No limestone could erase that.

  I lifted my hands and watched the water beat into my cupped palms, wondering if it might wash away violence like it did magic. Or perhaps water was stained as well—quicksilver when running, but when stilled the things it washed from us collected beneath. Maybe as a Healer I was like running water: I cleaned away a person’s ills. But then as Guardian of Death I was also the still water—where the ills settled.

  The water beat steadily, turning my palms red.

  After, I sat in a shaft of sunlight to dry, to think more practically. Lill had come back with my cleaned undershift, which she politely left outside the leaf curtain. I stayed where I was, chin propped on my knees, trying to sort out all that happened and consider what had been requested of me. Would I find the shell amulet? Where was Tarnec? Would it be as the little verse said—that the shell could bring the rain? And if I were the only one able to do these things, what else did such a calling offer?

  Shivers rippled along my back. I stayed hunched, imagining special abilities, none of them pretty. Awakened, Laurent had said. It might be for powers not yet realized, but for me it meant something more: that I was to be vigilant against the darkness consuming the world, one of those to bear the burden. It felt like the weight of the water.

  Everything was changing, my little world expanding—I’d cut my ties to home; I’d expected to disappear, to release the pain. Instead, I had a new title and new purpose. New pain.

  And, as Lill had unwittingly confirmed, I had a Complement.

  The mark still burned warm. A full day or more, and still it burned—not firebrand painful, but enough to keep me aware. And whether I’d wanted it or not, I could not help the strangeness I felt now that Laurent had touched me. That he’d chosen to make that bond, even if only out of necessity, that he’d been at my side, that I’d rested my head against his strong back, that I’d nearly kissed him….

  That I wished I had kissed him, and been kissed back.

  I bit my lip; half wanting to grin at the discovery, half wanting to reject what felt a betrayal to Raif. I decided upon rejection. Desire was hardly useful in such grim circumstances. Especially when I’d prided myself on being so impartial a Healer.

&n
bsp; I should be neutral, should focus on the rescue of the amulet. I should concentrate on intent rather than need….Hadn’t the seer told me to beware my needs?

  Besides, there were only so many challenges I could face at one time.

  —

  The walk back to my quarters took twice as long on my own, in part because I had to inch my way past a small herd of mountain goats blocking the route. Unlike me, they were indifferent to the steepness, jostling for the best lichen on the rock face. “ ’Tis lucky your milk is useful,” I scolded when they nosed me to the outer edge of the path.

  It was dusk when I finally returned. Torches were being fitted inside and out, so the carved doorways and windows glowed like honeycombs. My spare little room glowed prettily too. Lill had taken the old quilt when she left my undershift at the waterfall; a fresh one graced the narrow bed. All my things were piled on it, washed, mended, and smelling faintly of myrrh. A comb had been slipped in as well, and so I dressed, then sat in the little frame of window to work it through my hair, the way we did it back in Merith—Lark and I—before each bedtime.

  I missed Lark. I missed her sweet and serious face, remembered that moment of seeing her running madly to the cliff’s edge. I wondered about the leggings she wore, so similar to the Gren guards’, wondered if she was preparing for battle—

  “Good evening.”

  I nearly fell off the sill. The Rider stood in my doorway.

  He smiled and I stared—a Cath’s-infatuation stare—I couldn’t help it. Perhaps I’d not seen him clean, or so refreshed. Perhaps the torchlight burnished his skin, made his hair gleam to some dark perfection. But those were not the reasons; he was handsome under any circumstance. Stunningly so. I’d just forgotten, or didn’t want to remember, or…

  Neutrality flew out the window.

  “I’ve interrupted,” Laurent murmured after a moment, deferring to my silence. He turned to leave.

  “Yes—no. I’m—I’m just…” It was ridiculous, this being tongue-tied and embarrassed for it. I steadied my voice, forced my eyes away. “ ’Tis all right, Rider. Come in.”