“Still, the men who remained with me were vigorous, and helped me with the labor, their women and their sons and daughters, too, clearing the ground and planting. With our portion of the herd we did well, for goats are earnest in love. Their numbers soon doubled, and doubled again. Later, other men and their tents joined us, and the village was built. Today there are seven fields beyond the great pasture, fields of beans and grain, and a wood farther on of berries and apples. It is easy to barter for seed from the wandering tribes, who have little use for it. As for the fruit trees, some kindly wind must have foretold our coming. Then, too, we have learned to make boats. The ocean is massed with sea wrack, which we gather, a weed that is useful to us in many ways, not least to eat.”
My mind had begun to run on the subje6t of their boats but I said, “And your woman, Hwenit’s mother?”
“She died,” he said simply. “She was in the autumn woods, gathering windfalls, when she put her hand on a little snake. Hadlin was with her; she said there was no pain. My wife seemed not to notice she had been bitten, laughing it off, and in the middle of the laugh, she shut her eyes and sank down, and when Hadlin went to her, she was dead. Hwenit was not a year old on that day; it is an odd thing, for Hwenit has grown to be clever in cure-craft, with snakebite particularly.”
His calm disturbed me. His woman died, he loved her but did not mourn, dismissing grief as superfluous. Perhaps it had been different at the hour, but I did not believe so.
He glanced at me and appeared to note my thoughts. He went on, “Hwenit was twelve the summer the krarl of Qwenex returned to the tower with a priest in their midst, journeying to the Golden Book. Always my krarl would meet with Qwenex’s people, and when he set eyes on my girl, the priest came straight to her. He asked questions. He said she had the healer’s gift and must be trained. He stayed here three seasons, the priest. He seemed no different from any of
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our people, save that he could set a bone, and the bone would heal straight and swift, or mix herbs for a sick child and the child would grow well again, and it seemed as much from the touch of his hands as from the draft. And these arts he taught Hwenit, and she became Uasti. I recall he showed her, too, the Mysteries of the Book, which the priests will not always show a woman, the things very few master-the would that closed at the word of the priest, the power to raise the body from the earth as if it were winged. These magics were not in my daughter, though she was envious of them. Some nights she crouches by her fire and summons demons, and they never come, for which I am very grateful.”
“Are you now, my father?” said a crisp voice from the doorway. “And here you sit with the very demon I did summon.”
It was Hwenit in person, who came in to tend extravagantly the copper pot on the brazier, that all this while had placidly seen to itself.
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“I will require the warriors to leave my hearth,” said Hwenit-Uasti. “There is a baby with a fever I must have here to care for.”
“My thanks for the night’s lodging,” I said, “and the demon must, in any case, be on his road again.”
“Oh, but you must not!” cried Hwenit, leaving off splashing and stirring the mixture to pounce around on me. Today she did not wear her cat but a necklet of white bones and amber beads.
“My daughter,” said Peyuan, “our guest has spent too much time already listening to the chief’s prattle. He is in haste.” He touched my arm as we rose. “I have gone over in my mind what you have said to me. I will suggest to you that we should visit Qwef, who has a seaworthy boat.”
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At this, Hwenit flung the iron spoon into the copper pot.
“Qwef!” she yapped. “Qwef! Qwef! Is this the only name I am to hear?”
“We shall presently be gone and you shall hear it no more,” said Peyuan.
“I will not have you go!” Hwenit shouted after me. “Go, and I curse you.”
“Curse on, maiden,” I said. “I will bear it as best I may.” And I ducked out quickly to avoid the wet spoon she threw after me.
It was a serene day, between the winds of early spring. Daylight showed the krarl village engaged in quiet activity. Trees and garden patches grew at the backs of many huts; a well had been dug in the shadow of a sea-blown acacia, and two women were standing in its lacy, winter-bared shade, drawing water.
Hwenit-Uasti’s cat lay sunning itself along the painted lintel, and spit at me for old time’s sake.
I said to Peyuan that his daughter had taken exception to the name of Qwef before. Had he done her some wrong?
“Yes,” said Peyuan, “a single wrong. He has not offered to court her. For that reason she conjures demons to flirt with, to make the young man mend his ways, and instead of a demon, you appear, and she will use you as readily if you let her.”
The village, the ocean’s murmur below, less complaining than in the night, the enterprising trees and tranquil people, had got me to the stage again of not actually believing myself in danger. Had I really killed a gold-mask in Eshkorek? Had I really escaped Erran’s palace by way of the great tunnel of the magician men, the same magicians, I hazarded, who left Golden Books in towers? And had I, Black Wolf, son of a black wolf, been hunted to the sea’s blue-as-the-eyes-of Hwenit edge?
But Peyuan, good and excellent man that he was, had adopted my plight like his own. He pointed out to sea, into the mauve haze that rimmed the water’s horizon.
“There is an island, some miles from shore. Only in the clearest of seasons do you see the shape of it. Indeed, none of this krarl knew of it till the young men went adventuring in their boats. The weather is even-tempered today. If Qwef will guide you over, you can be there before nightfall. There is
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also space in his boat for food and a krarl tent to shelter you. Those who hunt you will not imagine you in a place they cannot see. If and when the hunt has passed, you shall have word, and return.”
I had considered begging a boat from them; this was better than I had hoped for. I said, “Why do you bother yourself with me, Peyuan-Chief? Is it for your goddess’s sake, the white lady who vanished into sea or sky?”
He made no reply, and just then a woman came between the huts toward Hwenit’s dwelling, carrying an animate bundle in her arms. The mother’s expression was not wild; a shireen would have been tearing her hair and screaming, for the baby coughed and crowed and looked wretched. For some reason the comparison made me think of my own children in the Dagkta krarl, my little sons and daughters I had barely glanced at twice, and of the child I had wanted by Demizdor and now should never get.
Peyuan stopped the woman at the door. He took the infant gently from her, she making no protest. Then he came and put the baby in my hands.
I had no answer to this, and I wondered what he supposed himself doing. The poor thing struggled feebly; I must hold it or it would fall.
Seeing no alternative, I ducked back in at the door, t» give the child to Hwenit.
Bent, red-lit above the seething copper, seething also with her discontent, the girl straightened with a sharp word, but changed when she saw what I carried into one mute, sinuous, and protective gesture of acceptance. This, more than anything, moved me.
I placed the child in her waiting arms, and was about to go out again, when she cried aloud in a terrible tone, “What have you done?”
The baby, too, commenced bawling, loud, raucous, and vehement, from a pair of brazen bellows secreted in its tiny chest.
I whipped around, and Hwenit held it up, kicking and howling in its wrath. Her dark face had a shrunken look. She asked me, “What did you do?”
“I did nothing. Your father gave the child to me, and I gave him to you.”
“You have healed him. He was very sick. It would have
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taken me three days, and then he might have been damaged in his bones. Let me see your hands.”