“Well enough!” But his voice did not lose that heat. “Perhaps he acted as any man. Save, that from your brother one does not expect the act of any man. And—” he hesitated as if he chewed upon some words he did not want to say yet there was that forcing him to the saying, “Lady, do not expect—Oh, what matter it. I may be seeing drawn swords where all are sheathed. What say you to food?”
I wanted to know what chafed in his mind, but I would not force it from him. And hunger was greater than all now. Eagerly I reached for a spitted bird, blew upon it and my fingers as I strove to strip the browned flesh from its small bones.
So long had I slept that it was dawn about us when we finished that meal. Jervon brought up the single horse. So Elyn had taken the other! That had not occurred to me. My brother’s behavior seemed more strange as I thought on it.
I did not gainsay Jervon when he insisted that I ride. But I made up my mind that I would not spend the whole of this journey in the saddle; like true comrades, we would share alike.
However, as we went, my thoughts were well occupied with Elyn. Not just that he had left us so—any man newly out of a spell might well be so over-cast in his mind to hold only to one desire and the need for obtaining it. If Brunissende meant so much to him, he might see in her the safely he craved. No, I could not count his leaving as unfeeling, for I had never been in the grip of a spell.
It was Elyn the boy I began to remember, recalling all I had once accepted without question. Though why I had this overshadowing feeling that I was about to face another testing I could not tell. Save that no one who had Wise Learning ever puts aside such uneasiness as without cause.
Elyn had never shown any interest in the Wise Way. In fact, now that I faced memories squarely and sounded them for full meaning, he had shunned that. Though I had had laid on me the vows of silence in many things, there had been lesser bits of learning he might well have profited by. Also he had not liked it when I had shown my arts in his presence.
Oddly enough he had not resented the fact that I shared his swordplay. He had treated me then more as a brother, and I had been content. But let me speak of what I might do with Aufrica and he had shied away. Yet at that last meeting he had allowed the cup pledge. The first time, to my knowledge, that he had ever agreed to any spell binding.
We both knew our mother’s story, that she had sought out powers which might prove fatal in order to give our father a son. She had forged the dragon cup—but at the last moment she had asked for a daughter also, gladly paying with her life.
So we had not been conceived as ordinary children; magic had played a part in our lives from the beginning. Did Elyn fear because of this?
Though I had been much with him and my father, yet I had had those other hours of which my father never spoke. He, too, as I recalled those years now, had seemed to ignore that side of my life. As if it were something—like—like a deformity!
I drew a deep breath, a whole new conception of my past opening before me. Had my father and Elyn felt aversion—even shame— But how could they? There Was my mother— What had happened in that land of Estcarp across the sea which had rift my parents from their former life, tossed them into barren Wark?
Shame of the power? Did my father, my brother, look upon me as one marked—or tainted—?
“No!” I denied that aloud.
“No what, my lady?”
Startled, I looked at Jervon walking beside me. I hesitated then. There was a question I longed to ask, yet shrank from the asking. Then I nerved myself to it, for by the reply I might perhaps find some solution to the problem of Elyn.
“Jervon, do you know what I am?” I asked it baldly, my voice perhaps a little hoarse as I braced myself for his answer.
“A very gallant lady—and a mistress of powers,” he replied.
“Yes, a Wise Woman.” I would not have flattery from him. “One who deals with the unseen.”
“To some good purpose, as you have here. What troubles you, Lady?”
“I do not believe that all men think as you do, comrade. That there is good in being a mistress of powers. Or if they admit so much at times, they are not always so charitable. I was bred up to such knowledge, to me it is life. I cannot imagine being without—though it walls me from others. There are those who always look askance at me.”
“Including Elyn?”
He was quick, too quick. Or perhaps I was stupid enough to give away my thoughts. But since I had gone this far, why try to conceal my misgivings farther?
“Perhaps—I do not know.”
Had I hoped he would deny that? If so, I was disappointed, for after a moment his reply came:
“If that is the way with him, it could explain much. And having been caught in what he distrusted—yes, he could wish to see the last of all which would remind him—”
I reined in the horse. “But it is not so with you?”
Jervon put his hand to sword hilt. “This is my defense, my weapon. It is steel and I can touch it, all men can see it in my hand. But there are other weapons, as you have so ably proved. Should I fear, or look sidewise (as you say) upon them because they are not metal, or perhaps not visible? Learning in the arts of war I have, and also, once, some in the ways of peace. That came to me by study. You have yours by study also. I may not understand it, but perhaps there is that in my learning also which would be strange to you. Why should one learning be less or more than any other when they are from different sources? You have healcraft which is your peace art, and what you have done to lay this Curse is your art of war.
“No, I do not look with fear—or aversion—on what you do.”
So did he answer the darkest of my thoughts.
But if I must accept that Elyn felt differently, what lay in days ahead? I could return to that nameless dale—unless early winter sealed it off—where the Wark folk stayed. There was nothing to tie me to them save Aufrica. Yet I had known when I rode forth that her farewell to me had been lasting. There was no need for two Wise Women there, and she had done her best for me. I was now a woman grown and proven in power. The hatched fledgling cannot be refitted into the eggshell from which it has broken free.
Coomb Frome? No, I had nothing there either. I was sure I had read Brunissende right in the short time I had seen her. She might accept her Dame, but a Wise Woman close kin to her lord—there would be more sidewise looks.
But if I went not to the Dale nor to the Keep, where would I venture? Now I looked about me wonderingly, for it seemed, in that moment of realization, I was indeed cast adrift and even the land around me took on a more forbidding cast.
“Do we go on?” Once more Jervon spoke as if he could read my unhappy thoughts.
“Where else is there to go?” For the first time in our companying I looked to him for an answer, having none myself.
“I would say not the Keep!” The decision in that was sharp and clear. “Or, if you wish, only to make sure of Elyn’s return, to visit only and let that visit be brief.”
I seized upon that—it would give me breathing space, a time to think—to plan.
“To Coomb Frome then—in brief.”
Though we perforce went slowly, by mid-afternoon we were sighted by those Elyn had sent to meet us. So I came a second time to the Keep. I noted also that, though we were treated with deference by that party, yet Elyn had not ridden with them.
We reached the Keep long after moonrise and I was shown into a guest chamber where serving maids waited with a steaming copper of water to ease the aches of travel, a bed such as I had never known for softness. But I had slept far better the night before on the bare ground in the wilderness, for my thoughts pricked and pulled at me.