As she made herself presentable, she reviewed her list again, the masculine part of it. Three novices and two trainees survived her fast pruning. Most of the novices were too juvenile, most of the trainees not juvenile enough. Mist, of course, was long gone from the College. Of the five novices in that class, only she and Woom had survived the test of the Defile. Woom had his faults, but by the time she was slipping on her shoes, she had decided to brighten Woom’s evening for him. In fact, she had known from the start that her choice would be Woom.
She trotted down her steps and started across the glade, sensuously aware of the warm summer night. The western sky was streaked with gold clouds and long shadows lay on the grass. She opened her mind and detected someone a long, long way off to the south. How strange that such beautiful country had no more people in it! The Gaib Place had been isolated, but the Thaile Place seemed to have the world to itself.
Just as she was about to set foot on the Way, she heard something, and stopped. There it went again! Woodchucks? Jays? Squirrels? Reluctantly she admitted it was children laughing. She tried again to Feel someone, and found no one. She scanned the forest with farsight, and although her range was many times greater than it had been before, she again detected no sign of human life.
The ghostly laughter had gone. Perhaps new magical powers were just hard to get used to and she would return to sanity in a day or two. Calling the Woom Place to mind, she set off along the Way.
Two or three bends were enough for that journey, because the landscape hardly had to change. Conifers became more common, hardwood rarer, the temperature dropped slightly. The cottage came into farsight and then into view. It was a very good Place, in a rocky clearing with a crystal stream. Woom was not home. She could hear him, though. Even without magic she would have located him, a few minutes’ walk uphill. He was chopping wood.
What an absurd thing to do! How typically male! The greatest joy of belonging to the College was freedom from drab toil. Let the rest of the world spend the whole of its days digging and plowing and pruning and harvesting and scrubbing—and chopping! With sorcery the monotony vanished and life was freed for living, Jain had explained that to her long ago and she had not believed him. She had not seen Jain around lately.
She came through the trees behind Woom. There he was, stripped to the waist, whacking viciously with an ax at the corpse of a tree. The steady thump of his blows, the play of light on his back and shoulders . . . Memories stirred. Not her father, for he never worked without a shirt on. Who? Who had chopped wood like that while she watched? Perhaps Wide, her sister’s goodman? No, he was so lazy he sent his wife to gather sticks. Yet Thaile had certainly watched someone doing that. She suspected that the next stage was for him to throw down the ax and her to jump into his arms. What a strange notion!
Woom was an adept, he could hear sparrows blink. He turned around and watched her approach.
She waved. He had been a dweller-under-rocks when she first met him, human slime. The Defile had changed all that. He had emerged as a solemn, stolid young man. He was half a year younger than she, not quite old enough to rouse serious intentions in either of them, but old enough that they both knew the idea was possible.
He wiped his forehead with his arm, ran fingers through wet hair. “I am Woom and welcome you to the Woom Place.”
She knew no one else in the College who clung to such mundane formalities. She knew no one who smiled so seldom without ever seeming surly.
“I am Thaile of the Thaile Place and how are you planning to move the logs home?”
“I’m not.” He unhooked his shirt from a twig and flipped it over one shoulder; he swung the ax up on the other. “You can have them all.”
They began to walk.
“Seems like a very foolish waste of effort.”
He looked at her with eyes of somber amber. “I do it because I enjoy doing it. Why did you come?”
“Thought we might eat supper together.”
“You’ll cook?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She laughed. “Because I enjoy doing it. You win.”
He did not react. Winning had no importance to Woom, nor losing either. He took the College very seriously; he worked very hard. He was completely dedicated to his duty to the Keeper and the preservation of Thume. Nothing else had mattered to him since he walked the Defile.
He was very ordinary—looking, was Woom. He could not have much growing to do now, if any. He was not tall, or burly, but he was neither short nor skinny, either. He was not handsome nor plain. He was just . . . well, ordinary. His powers were ordinary, too. He would never be an archon. She shivered.
As they emerged from the trees, something flickered at the edge of the clearing—a goat? No, there was nothing there. Thaile stopped and stared, and probed with magic. “What’s wrong?” Woom asked.
“Thought I detected . . . Ah!” She had it. There was another Place in this clearing, another cottage close to Woom’s. The two were somehow offset, as if on opposite sides of a sheet of glass. That explained lots of things, like why such wonderful living sites had not been inhabited sooner and why no mundane ever blundered in unexpectedly. There must be another Place right beside hers, also. The whole College must be like that—in Thume and all over Thume, and yet not quite the same Thume. The Gates were just a pretense, obviously, nothing but admitting points for new recruits. The recorders would not need the Gates, they would just—
“Excuse me,” she murmured, and stepped sideways. She transposed herself into the other clearing. There was the goat, and the cottage. Woom’s house had gone, of course. A small boy was washing a pot in the stream. He looked up in alarm; Even as his mouth opened, Thaile stepped sideways back again.
Woom’s eyes were a little wider than usual, but he said nothing.
“I’m having a very strange day,” Thaile said airily, and led the way to his door. There were two chairs there that he had made himself. They were heavy and solid compared to College furniture, but surprisingly comfortable. She had sewn a couple of cushions for them. She sat down with a sigh of pleasure.
“I’ll clean up,” he said.
“Sit and talk first. Care for a drink? Pineapple juice?” She made a pitcher and two beakers on the table.
Woom stared at her thoughtfully, and then pulled on his shirt and sat down. She could not tell what he was thinking—
Despair!
She gasped. She had peeked at his emotions without meaning to. His impassive expression hid a horrible bottomless melancholy that she had never even suspected. She watched as he filled the beakers and passed one to her. “Woom! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Very good juice.”
He held her gaze, but now she could see how thin the shell was, how black the heart. Hopelessness.
She had made cushions for his chairs. He had accepted them, knowing that her gift did not mean . . . How could she have been so cruel, so blind?
“Oh, Woom! I never realized. I am sorry, very, very sorry!”
“You’re a sorceress now?”
“Just a mage. They gave me another word today.”
He nodded. “You’re special, very special. We all know that. You know what they call you behind your back?”
“I don’t think I want to. How long have you felt like this?”
“Like what?”
“About me.”
He shrugged. “Since I first set eyes on you. Mist knew, of course. But it can’t be, can it? The rules won’t allow it.” He took a long drink of juice, as if rules settled everything.
“You hid it very well. At first I thought you hated me.”
“I expect I did. I hated everyone. You most of all, likely. The Defile showed me there were better things to hate.” She stared at her hands, but her powers could still see his impassive face and the desperate longing behind that mask, the longing to be wanted. Had that always been his trouble? Was that why he was so single-minded about serving the Keeper? Wanting to be wanted?
“What do they call me behind my back?”
“The Little Keeper.”
That, too. Wanting to be wanted.
“I wish I had known sooner,” she said. “Perhaps I could have helped a little. It’s too late now.”
“Helped how?” he demanded. “That rule is never broken.”