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‘No one’s ever sure how Evandar does anything.’
‘That’s very true. And Evandar might not help with this, either. So I suppose there’s nothing we can do but wait and see.’
‘That’s the Guardians for you.’ Nalla slid off the stool and walked to the door. ‘Are you coming to the refectory? The men will be waiting on table tonight in the great hall, so it’ll be just us women.’
‘Good. I don’t want to sit in the hall with the prince and his warriors.’ Hwilli got up to join her. ‘All they talk about is the war.’
‘What else is there to talk about?’
‘You have a point, unfortunately. The master did say he was going to consult with the prince about the strangers. He was thinking that the prince might want send out a squadron to find the tribe they came from and see if they’d join the People.’
‘Ah, to be allies, you mean.’ Nalla frowned, considering something. ‘I wonder where Evandar found them, though. They could have been up on the Roof of the World, for all we know.’
‘Quite so. I’ll wager that the prince realizes that. I doubt if he’ll want to risk losing any of his men on a scouting expedition. The Guardians never seem to grasp the idea of distance.’
‘That, alas, is very true. Or the idea of time, either.’ Nalla abruptly shuddered with a little shake of her head.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know, maybe an omen, maybe not. There’s so much to be frightened of, these days.’
‘Well, that’s true.’
Yet Hwilli assumed that some long wisp of the cloud that covered future events had touched her. Nalla’s marked for the dweomer, Hwilli thought, while I’m only here to learn herbs and the like. Master Jantalaber had made it clear to her from the beginning, that only the People could use dweomer, never the humble village folk that they treated like children at best and slaves at worst. As she and Nalla walked down the long corridor to the special dining area set aside for the healers in the fortress, Hwilli fought her endless battle between gratitude and envy.
Once they were sitting in the refectory with food spread on the table in front of them, gratitude won a temporary victory. Hwilli reminded herself, as she generally did, that she’d been lucky to be chosen to study with a master healer, to live here in the fortress and have plenty to eat. She’d been born and raised in huts that always smelled of the manure and mud that filled in the chinks in the walls. Her parents had worked so hard that their backs were permanently bent and aching. Her father had died, feverish and half-starved, long before he’d grown old. Her own life, even though brief compared to the spans allotted to the People, would be comfortable and respected because of her knowledge. But so brief, she thought. Still so brief.
Envy rose like bile in her throat. While the other women ate, chatting and laughing, she crumbled a bit of bread between her fingers and watched them. Despite their cat-like eyes and furled ears, they were beautiful, young and beautiful, and they would still be lovely hundreds of years on, when she’d been dead and forgotten for those same hundreds of years.
‘Hwilli!’ Nalla said. ‘Try some of this roast partridge.’ She leaned over and placed a choice slice onto Hwilli’s plate. ‘It’s awfully good.’
‘My thanks.’ Hwilli managed to smile. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘About that handsome stranger?’ Nalla said. ‘And he is handsome, or he will be after a bath. His brother’s good-looking, too. Now, don’t deny it.’
‘Oh yes, I suppose they are. For men of my kind.’
‘Well.’ Nalla paused for a grin. ‘If you shut your eyes, you could ignore their ears.’
When the other women laughed, Hwilli decided that hatred tasted like sour wine. She gathered a few bitter remarks, but when she looked Nalla’s way, Nalla rolled her eyes with a shrug toward the laughter, and Hwilli kept the remarks to herself.
Caswallinos, or so he’d often told his apprentice, had also realized that distance and time meant nothing to Evandar, but much to the elder druid’s surprise and Galerinos’s relief, the river did lie where that supposed god had told them. As they came down from the hills they could see the gleam of water far ahead, winding through a grassy plain scattered with huge boulders and dotted with the occasional copse. Laughter and cheers rippled up and down the line of wagons. The horses and cows raised their heads and sniffed the air, then walked a little faster.
As they hurried across the plain, Galerinos noticed several long and oddly straight lines of small stones. The savages had laid them out, he assumed, though the landscape made him think of old tales about the giants of olden times and their furious wars. Perhaps the Devetii had wandered into an armoury of sorts, with rocks laid ready for some battle that had never occurred.
Just at sunset they reached the river. The Devetian line of march spread out along its banks to allow their weary horses to drink. After them came the cattle and sheep. Only when the animals had drunk their fill, and the mud had had time to settle, did the humans wade into the river to drink and to collect the precious water in amphorae and waterskins. As priests, Galerinos and his master received their share first. After they slaked their thirst, they stood by their wagon and looked out across the stone-studded plain.
‘This is a very strange place,’ Caswallinos remarked.
‘It certainly is, your holiness! All those rocks! Do you know why they’re here?’
‘The Wildfolk told me that a big sheet of ice crawled down from the north. When it melted, it dropped them.’ Caswallinos shook his head sadly. ‘The Wildfolk lack wits as we know wits.’
‘So they must.’
‘But rocks or no rocks, the land looks good enough to plant a crop in. We need to get the winter wheat in the ground.’
‘Are we going to settle here for the winter?’
‘We can’t march in the snow, can we? Think! Besides, we’re going to have to build a bridge to get the wagons across that river. It’s far too deep to ford.’
‘You’re right, and my apologies, but it wearies my heart. This will be our second winter in Evandar’s country. Do you think we’ll ever stop wandering?’
‘Eventually even our cadvridoc will grow tired of slaughtering the white savages. I’ve given him that omen to look for, one we can arrange when we find a suitable place.’
‘Arrange? You mean you lied to him?’
‘Let’s just say I created a soothing truth.’
‘But that’s still lying –’ Galerinos caught the grim look in his master’s eyes and stopped talking in mid-sentence. ‘Apologies.’
Caswallinos snorted with a twist of his mouth.
Cadvridoc Brennos had reached the same conclusion, that the Devetii would set up a temporary settlement near the river and plant their carefully hoarded seed grain. That night, in the midst of campfires he called a general council of the vergobretes, the clan heads, and every free man who wanted to attend. Once the crowd had gathered, he stood on one of the smaller boulders and raised his arms for silence. In the firelight his golden torque and arm bands winked and gleamed. His stiff limed hair gave him the look of a spirit from the Otherlands.
‘You all know,’ he began, ‘that we travel east in search of the omen granted to us by the gods. By another river we’ll find a white sow who’s given birth, and there we’ll found our city.’
The gathered men murmured their agreement.
‘But the year turns toward the dark,’ Brennos continued. ‘According to the bronze marker of days that our druid carries, soon Samovantos will be upon us. We must plant our crops somewhere and build ourselves shelter. Now, right here the gods have given us plenty of stones to work with – an omen, or so I take it. I’d say that this is the place for our winter camp.’
More murmurs, a few cheers – as usual, Brennos had carried the day. Not even Bercanos of the Boar stepped forward to argue, an omen in itself, or so Galerinos thought of it.
‘For the first days here,’ Brennos began speaking again, ‘we’ll camp in our usual order, all together in case the savages attack us. After that, we can build farmsteads and walls to protect ourselves.’
More cheers, more murmurs of assent.
‘While everyone was watering our stock,’ Brennos continued, ‘I rode a little ways south. I found a grand supply of stone, waiting for us right beside a spring. We can use that to build a dun that’ll strike fear in the hearts of the savages. What say you?’
The entire assembly cheered him. The men of the council of vergobretes stood and threw a fist into the air to show their support. As the crowd scattered back to their various wagons and tents, Caswallinos and Galerinos left the camp to walk down by the river, rippled silver with moonlight.
‘Now,’ Caswallinos said. ‘Tell me about that curse.’
In as much detail as he could remember, Galerinos described what had happened up on the hillside. Caswallinos listened, nodding now and then.
‘I never dreamt you had this much of a gift,’ he said at last. ‘It’s time to let you know a few secrets, lad. The first is very simple. The power behind that curse didn’t come from the god. It came from your own soul.’
Galerinos stared at him with his mouth slack. I must not have heard right, was his first thought. Caswallinos laughed, just softly.
‘Don’t believe me, do you?’ the druid said.
‘Of course I believe you, but I’m just surprised.’
‘There are bigger surprises ahead. This will do for tonight.’ Caswallinos glanced at the sky, where the full moon hung like a beacon. ‘I’d ask you to show me that blue fire, but I don’t want you setting fire to the grass or boiling any undines out in the river, either. Huh. That reminds me.’
The elder druid frowned at the water and whispered a message to Evandar. Galerinos waited, unspeaking.
‘There, I’ve told the Wildfolk,’ Caswallinos said at last, ‘though I’ve no idea if they’ll find Evandar or not. I haven’t forgotten your two cousins, lad. I know how close the three of you are, raised together like that.’
‘They’re more like brothers, master.’ Galerinos’s voice went unsteady with fear. ‘I’ll pray he brings them back to us.’
But Evandar never returned. Late that night Galerinos woke from an omen-dream of loss and realized, deep in his heart, that he’d never see his bloodkin again.
Rhodorix woke to the sound of the bronze gongs booming over the fortress. Dawnlight streamed through the window, touching the painted walls with silver. His back ached from his night’s drunken sleep on a thin carpet over a stone floor. He sat up, yawning and stretching the pain away. The chamber door opened to admit the healer and the pale-haired woman. They ignored him and marched over to the plank bed where Gerontos was lying. The healer held a knife with a long, thin blade.
Rhodorix scrambled to his feet – what were they planning on doing to his brother? But as he watched, the healer deftly ran the blade under the cast around Gerontos’s broken leg. The honey had stuck bandages and leg both to the planks as the cast had dried overnight.
With the leg free, the pale-haired woman helped Gerontos sit up, then slid him back to lean against the wall at the head of the bed. She turned away and called out. Servants hurried in, carrying food, fresh water, and an empty shallow pot covered by a cloth, which one of them handed to Rhodorix. Puzzled, he stared at it until the healer laughed and took it from him. With a few deft hand gestures he explained its use. The woman was grinning at him. Rhodorix felt his face turn hot with a blush, but he knew that he needed the thing after all that wine. The woman obligingly stepped out of the chamber.
Once he and Gerontos had relieved their aches, the servant whisked a cloth over the chamber pot and took it away. The woman came back in, carrying a basket.
‘Ah gen Evandares,’ she said.
She set the basket down on the table, then brought out a pair of crystal pyramids, one black, one white, glittering in the morning sunlight. She handed the black to Rhodorix but kept the white. When she gestured with her free hand, Rhodorix realized that she wanted him to hold the pyramid close to his face. She smiled when he did so, then spoke into her crystal.
‘My name is Hwilli.’ Her words seemed to come out of the black crystal, yet at the same time he heard in the normal way her speaking in her unfamiliar tongue. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Rhodorix, and my brother is Gerontos.’ He aped her mannerism and spoke directly into the crystal.
‘What strange names!’ Yet her smile made the comment pleasant. ‘My master has asked me to talk to you and for you, because you and I are both children of Aethyr.’
‘Children of what? My apologies, but I don’t know that word.’
‘The word doesn’t matter.’ She smiled again. ‘Let’s just say that you and I are more alike than we’re like his people.’
That’s as true as it can be! Rhodorix thought. Aloud, he said, ‘Then my thanks. Can my brother’s leg be saved?’
‘It can, though I doubt me if it’ll heal perfectly straight. Still, he should be able to walk without pain.’
Tears of relief welled up in Rhodorix’s eyes. He brushed them away, then repeated the news to Gerontos. Gerro grinned so broadly that his smile was all the thanks that anyone needed. The healer patted him on the shoulder, then spoke to Hwilli, who in turn spoke to Rhodorix through the crystal.
‘Your brother needs to rest. Give him plenty of water whenever he asks. And make sure he eats, too, will you?’
‘I will, and gladly.’
‘In a little while a servant will come to lead you to the bath house. Others will help your brother get clean here. Um, your people do bathe, don’t they?’
‘Whenever we can.’ Rhodorix ran one hand over his stubbled face. ‘We shave, too.’
‘I’ll tell the servant that. I’ll leave this piece of stone with you. If you need something, give it to the servant and ask through the black one.’
‘Very well. One last thing, though. What’s in that stuff you smeared on his leg?’
‘Wine, honey, and egg whites. It stiffens the linen as it dries.’
‘So I see, and my thanks.’
Hwilli set the white crystal down upon the table. The healer and his retinue left, talking among themselves. Much to Rhodorix’s surprise, he could pick out three words that he understood – heal, leg, and water – words Hwilli had used when she spoke to him through the pyramid.
A bath, a clean tunic, and a good bronze razor went a long way to making both Rhodorix and Gerontos feel like men again. Later that day Hwilli returned with a flock of servants and a litter. She put the crystals into their basket, then gave orders to the servants. Rhodorix followed as they carried Gerontos to another chamber, this one with a bed that sported a straw mattress and blankets, big enough for the two brothers to share. Once they’d got Gerontos settled, Hwilli dismissed the servants. She handed Rhodorix the black pyramid and took up the white.
‘You’re a fighting man?’ she said.
‘I am that.’ He hesitated, then decided that she needn’t know of his shame. ‘So is my brother. We know swordcraft.’
‘Good. Our rhix needs swordsmen. Will you fight for him?’
‘It would gladden my heart to repay you for the aid you’ve given us, but truly, who is your rhix? Is he the head of your clan? I’ve never heard of him or this dunum until Evandar said its name.’
She stared at him slack-mouthed, then laughed. ‘You must come from very far away.’
‘We do. We were fleeing the Rhwmanes.’
‘Ah, so that’s what you call them! Master Jantalaber thought your tribe might have been trying to escape them. The master is the man who set your brother’s leg, by the by. The rhix is Ranadar of the Vale of Roses, cadvridoc of the Seven Cities, Master of Garangbeltangim.’
‘My thanks. I’d not heard of him before this day.’
‘I see. Master Jantalaber mentioned that Evandar favoured you.’
‘Well, he saved my brother and me from death.’
‘A sign of favour, sure enough!’
For the first time it occurred to Rhodorix to wonder why the god had come to their aid. Perhaps he wanted them to join this clan’s warband. Doing the will of the god, in that case, looked far better than either killing himself or returning to his own clan and facing his father’s outrage at his blunder over the ambush.
‘Is your rhix fighting those white-skinned savages?’
‘He is.’
‘Then it will gladden my heart to serve him.’ He glanced at Gerontos, who was listening intently, at least to Rhodorix’s half of the conversation. ‘Evandar brought us here to help the rhix who’s the master of this dunum. His name’s Ranadar.’
‘Then as soon as I can stand, I’ll fight for him,’ Gerontos said. ‘I owe these people my life.’
‘So do I.’ Rhodorix returned to speaking into the crystal. ‘It will gladden our hearts to swear loyalty to your cadvridoc.’
‘Splendid!’ Hwilli said. ‘I’ll tell the master of arms.’
Some of the words she spoke in her own language, those he heard as an echo to the words from the crystal, made sense to him, he realized. Somehow the crystal was teaching him her speech at the same time as it transformed it into his own. I wish we’d had these in the homeland, he thought. It would have made learning that wretched Rhwman tongue easier. As the eldest son of a clan head, he’d been expected to learn Latin in order to speak to the conquerors and a little Greek as well in order to bargain with merchants.
