Simon was fascinated, although he could tell from Aditu’s expression how sad the story was to her. “Do you mean he killed himself?”
“Not as you think of it, Seoman. No, rather Drukhi just ... stopped living. When he was found lying dead in the Si’injan’dre Cave, Utuk’ku and Ekimeniso took their clan and went north, swearing that they would never again live with Jenjiyana’s people.”
“But first everyone went to Sesuad’ra,” he said. “They went to Leavetaking House and they made their pact. What I saw during my vigil in the Observatory.”
She nodded. “From what you have said, I believe you had a true vision of the past, yes.”
“And that is why Utuk’ku and the Norns hate mortals?” he asked.
“Yes. But they also went to war with some of the first mortals in Hernystir, back long before Hern gave it the name. In that fighting, Ekimeniso and many of the other Hikeda’ya lost their lives. So they have other grudges to nurse, as well.”
Simon sat back, wrapping his arms about his knees. “I didn’t know. Morgenes or Binabik or someone told me that the battle of the Knock was the first time that mortals had killed Sithi.”
“Sithi, yes—the Zida‘ya. But Utuk’ku’s people clashed with mortals several times before the shipmen came from over the western sea and changed everything.” She lowered her head. “So you can see,” Aditu finished, “why we of the Dawn Children are careful not to say that someone is above someone else. Those are words that mean tragedy to us.”
He nodded. “I think I understand. But things are different with us, Aditu. There are rules about who can marry who ... and a princess can’t marry a landless knight, especially one who used to be a kitchen boy.”
“You have seen these rules? Are they kept in one of your holy places?”
He made a face. “You know what I mean. You should hear Camaris if you want to find out how things work. He knows everything—who bows to who, who gets to wear which colors on what day ...” Simon laughed ruefully. “If I ever asked him about someone like me marrying the princess, I think he’d cut my head off. But nicely. And he wouldn’t enjoy doing it.”
“Ah, yes, Camaris.” Aditu seemed to be about to say something significant. “He is a ... strange man. He has seen many things, I think.”
Simon looked at her carefully but could not discern any particular meaning behind her words. “He has. And I think he means to teach them all to me before we reach Nabban. Still, that’s nothing to complain about.” He stood up. “As a matter of fact, it’s going to be dark before too long, so I should go and see him. There was something he wanted to show me about using a shield ...” Simon paused. “Thank you for talking to me, Aditu.”
She nodded. “I do not think I have said anything to help you, but I hope you will not be so sad, Seoman.”
He shrugged as he swept his cloak up from the floor.
“Hold,” she said, rising. “I will come with you.”
“To see Camaris?”
“No. I have another errand. But I will walk with you down to where our paths part.”
She followed him out through the tent flap. Untouched, the crystal globe flickered and dimmed, then went dark.
“So?” asked Duchess Gutrun. Miriamele could clearly hear the fear beneath her impatient tone.
Geloë stood. She squeezed Vorzheva’s hand for a moment, then set it down atop the blanket. “It is nothing too bad,” the witch woman said. “A little blood, that is all, and stopped now. You have had your own children, Gutrun, and grandmothered many more. You should know better than to fret her this way.”
The duchess set her chin defiantly. “I have had and raised my own children, yes, which is more than some can say.” When Geloë did not even raise an eyebrow at this sally, Gutrun continued with only a little less heat. “But I never bore any of my children on horseback, and I swear that is what her husband means for her to do!” She looked to Miriamele as though for support, but her would-be ally only shrugged. There was little point in arguing now—the deed was done. The prince had chosen to go to Nabban.
“I can ride in the wagon,” Vorzheva said. “By the Grass-Thunderer, Gutrun, the women of my clan ride on horses sometimes until their last moon!”
“Then the other women of your clan are fools,” Geloë said dryly, “even if you are not. Yes, you can ride in a wagon. That should not be too bad on open grassland.” She turned to Gutrun. “As for Josua, you know he is doing what seems best. I agree with him. It is harsh, but he cannot halt everybody for a hundred days so his wife can bear their child in peace and quiet.”
“Then there should be some other way to do things. I told Isgrimnur that it was cruelty, and I meant it. I told him to tell Prince Josua as well. I don’t care what the prince thinks of me, I can’t bear to see Vorzheva suffer this way.”
Geloë’s smile was grim. “I am sure your husband listened to you carefully, Gutrun, but I doubt that Josua will ever hear it.”
“What do you mean?” the duchess demanded.
Before the forest woman could reply—although Miriamele thought she looked in no hurry to do so—there was a soft noise at the door of the tent. The flap slid back, revealing for the merest instant a spatter of stars, then Aditu’s lithe form slipped through and the cloth fell back into place.
“Do I intrude?” the Sitha asked. Oddly, Miriamele thought that she sounded as though she meant it. To a young woman raised on the false politeness of her father’s court, it was strange to hear someone asking that as though they wanted an answer. “I heard you were ill, Vorzheva.”
“I am better,” said Josua’s wife, smiling. “Come in, Aditu, you are very welcome here.”
The Sitha sat on the floor near Vorzheva’s bed, her golden eyes intent on the sick woman, her long, graceful hands folded in her lap. Miriamele could not help staring. Unlike Simon, who seemed quite accustomed to the Sithi, she had not yet grown used to having such a foreign creature among them. Aditu seemed as strange as something from an old story, but stranger still because she was sitting right here in the dim rushlight, as real as a stone or a tree. It was as though the past year had turned the entire world upside down, and all the hidden things remembered only in legends had come tumbling out.
Aditu pulled a pouch from her gray tunic and held it up. “I have brought something to help you sleep.” She spilled a small cluster of green leaves into her palm, then showed them to Geloë, who nodded. “I will brew them for you while we talk.”
The Sitha appeared not to notice Gutrun’s disgruntled stare. Using a pair of sticks, Aditu levered a hot stone from the fire, knocked off the ashes, then dropped it into a bowl of water. When a cloud of steam hung over it, she crumbled in the leaves. “I am told we will remain here one more day. That will give you a chance to rest, Vorzheva.”
“I do not know why everyone is so frightened for me. It is only a child. Women bear children every day.”
“Not the prince’s only child,” Miriamele said quietly. “Not in the middle of a war.”
Aditu was using the hot stone to further crush the leaves, pushing it about with a stick. “You and your mate will have a healthy child, I am sure,” she said. To Miriamele, it sounded incongruously like the kind of thing a mortal might have said—polite, cheerful. Maybe Simon was right after all.
When the stone was removed, Vorzheva sat up to take the bowl, which still steamed. She took a small sip. Miriamele watched the muscles in the Thrithings-woman’s pale neck move as she swallowed.
She’s so lovely, Miriamele thought.
Vorzheva’s eyes were huge and dark, though heavy-lidded with fatigue; her hair was a thick black cloud about her head. Miriamele’s fingers crept up to her own shorn locks and felt the ragged ends where the dyed hair had been cut off. She could not help feeling like an ugly little sister.
Be still, she told herself angrily. You’re as pretty as you need to be. What more do you want—do you need?
But it was hard to be in the same room with boldly beauti
ful Vorzheva and the feline, graceful Sitha and not feel a little frowsy.
But Simon likes me. She almost smiled. He does, I can tell. Her mood soured. But what does it matter? He can’t do what I have to do. And he doesn’t know anything about me, anyway.
It was strange, though, to think that the Simon who had pledged her his service—it had been a strange and painful moment, but sweet, too—was the same person as the gangling boy who had accompanied her to Naglimund. Not that he had changed so much, but what had changed ... He was older. Not just his height, not just the fuzzy beard, but in his eyes and in the way he stood. He would be a handsome man, she now saw—something she would never have said when they stopped in Geloë’s forest house. His prominent nose, his long-boned face, had gained something in the intervening months, a rightness that they hadn’t had before.
What was it that one of her nurses had said once of another Hayholt child? “He has to grow into that face.” Well, that was definitely true of Simon. And he was doing just that.
Little surprise, though, she supposed. He had done so many things since leaving the Hayholt—why, he was almost a hero! He had faced a dragon! What had Sir Camaris or Tallistro ever done that was braver? And although Simon played down his meeting with the ice-worm—while at the same time, Miriamele had seen, he was dying to boast a tittle—he had also stood at her side when a giant had charged. She had seen his bravery then. Neither of them had run, so she was brave, too. Simon was indeed a good companion ... and now he was her protector.
Miriamele felt warm and strangely fluttery, as though something swift-winged moved inside of her. She tried to harden herself against it, against any such feelings. This was not the time. This was definitely not the time—and soon there might not be time for anything....
Aditu’s quietly musical voice pulled her back to the tent and the people who surrounded her. “If you have done all that you wished to do for Vorzheva,” the Sitha was saying to Geloë, “I would like to have your company for a little while. I wish to speak to you of something.”
Gutrun made a rumbling noise, which Miriamele guessed was meant to convey the duchess’ impression of people who would go off and tell secrets. Geloë either ignored or did not hear her wordless comment, and said: “I think what she needs now is sleep, or at least some quiet.” Now she turned at last to Gutrun. “I will look in on her later.”
“As you wish,” said the duchess.
The witch woman nodded to Vorzheva, then to Miriamele, before following Aditu out of the tent. The Thrithings-woman, who was lying back now, raised her hand in farewell. Her eyes were almost closed. She appeared to be falling asleep.
The tent was silent for some moments except for the tuneless humming of Gutrun as she sewed, which continued even as she held the cloth close to the fire to examine her stitchery. At last, Miriamele stood up.
“Vorzheva is tired. I will leave, too.” She leaned forward and took the Thrithings-woman’s hand. Her eyes opened; it took them a moment to fix on Miriamele. “Good night. I’m sure it will be a fine baby, one that will make you and Uncle Josua very proud.”
“Thank you.” Vorzheva smiled and closed her long-lashed eyes again.
“Good night, Auntie Gutrun,” Miriamele said. “I’m glad you were here when I came back from the south. I missed you.” She kissed the duchess’ warm cheek, then delicately untangled herself from Gutrun’s motherly embrace and slipped out through the door.
“I haven’t heard her call me that for years!” Miriamele heard Gutrun say in surprise. Vorzheva mumbled something sleepily. “The poor child seems so quiet and sad these days,” Gutrun went on. “But then again, why shouldn’t she... ?”
Miriamele, walking away through the wet grass, did not hear the rest of what the duchess had to say.
Aditu and Geloë walked beside the whispering Stefflod. The moon was covered in a net of clouds, but stars glinted higher up in the blackness. A soft breeze was blowing from the east, carrying the scent of grass and wet stones.
“It is strange, what you say, Aditu.” The witch woman and the Sitha made a peculiar pair, the immortal’s looselimbed stride reined in to match Geloë’s more stalwart tread. “But I do not think there is harm in it.”
“I do not say that there is, only that it bears thinking about.” The Sitha laughed hissingly. “To think that I have grown so embroiled in the doings of mortals! Mother’s brother Khendraja’aro would grind his teeth.”
“These mortal concerns are your family’s concerns, at least in part,” Geloë said matter-of-factly. “Otherwise, you would not be here.”
“I know that,” agreed Aditu. “But many of my people will walk a long way around to find some other reason for what we do than anything that smacks of mortals and their affairs.” She leaned down and plucked a few blades of grass, then held them to her nose and sniffed. “The grass here is different than that which grows in the forest, or even on Sesuad’ra. It is ... younger. I cannot feel as much life in it, but it is sweet for all that.” She let the loose blades flutter to the ground. “But I have let my words wander. Geloë, I do not see any harm in Camaris at all, except that in him which would harm himself. But it is odd that he keeps his past a secret, and odder still when there are so many things he might know that could aid his people in this struggle.”
“He will not be pushed,” said Geloë. “If he tells his secrets, it will be in his own time, that is clear. We have all tried.” She shoved her hands into the pocket of her heavy tunic. “Still, though, I cannot help being curious. Are you sure?”
“No,” Aditu said thoughtfully. “Not sure. But an odd thing Jiriki told me has been at the back of my thoughts for some time. We both, he and I, thought that Seoman was the first mortal to set foot in Jao é-Tinukai‘i. Certainly that is what my father and mother thought. But Jiriki told me that when Amerasu met Seoman she said that he was not the first. I have long wondered about that, but First Grandmother knew the history of the Gardenborn better than anyone—perhaps even better than silver-faced Utuk’ku, who has long brooded on the past, but never made its study an art, as Amerasu did.”
“But I still don’t know why you think the first might have been Camaris.”
“In the beginning it was only a sense I had.” Aditu turned and wandered down the bank toward the soft-singing river. “Something in the way he looked at me, even before he recovered his wits. I caught him staring at me several times when he did not think I was looking. Later, when his sense had returned, he continued to watch me—not slyly, but like someone who remembers something painful.”
“That could have been anything—a resemblance to someone.” Geloë frowned. “Or perhaps he was feeling shame over the way his friend John, the High King, hunted your people.”
“John’s persecution of the Zida’ya occurred almost entirely before Camaris came to the court, from what the archivist Strangyeard has told me,” Aditu replied. “Don’t stare!” she laughed. “I am curious about many things, and we Dawn Children have never been afraid of inquiry or scholarship, although we would not use either of those words.”
“Still, there could be many reasons Camaris stared. You are not a common sight, Aditu no-Sa’onserei—at least not for mortals.”
“True. But there is more. One night, before his memory was returned, I was walking by the Observatory, as you named it—and I saw him walking slowly toward me. I nodded, but he seemed absorbed in his shadow-world. I was singing a song—a very old song from Jhiná-T’s eneí, a favorite of Amerasu’s—and as I passed him, Geloë, I saw that his lips were moving.” She stopped and squatted by the riverside, but looked up at the forest woman with eyes that even in the darkness seemed to glimmer like amber coals. “He was mouthing the words to the same song.”
“Are you sure?”
“As certain as I am that the trees in the Grove are alive and will blossom again, and I feel that in my blood and heart. Amerasu’s song was known to him, and although he still wore his faraway look, he was singing silently alon
g with me. A playful song that First Grandmother used to sing. It is not the sort of tune that is sung in the cities of mortal men, or even in the oldest sacred grove in Hernystir.”
“But what could it mean?” Geloë stood over Aditu, looking out across the river. The wind slowly shifted direction, blowing now from behind the encampment that lay just uphill. The normally imperturbable forest woman seemed faintly agitated. “Even if Camaris somehow knew Amerasu, what could it mean?”
“I do not know. But considering that Camaris’ horn was once our enemy’s, and that our enemy was also Amerasu’s son—and once the greatest of my people—I feel a need to know. It is also true that the sword of this knight is very important to us.” She made what was, for a Sitha, an unhappy face, a faint thinning of the lips. “If only Amerasu had lived to tell us her suspicions.”
Geloë shook her head. “We have been laboring in shadows too long. Well, what can we do?”
“I have approached him. He does not wish to talk to me, although he is polite. When I try to guide him toward the subject, he pretends to misunderstand, or simply pleads some other necessity, then leaves.” Aditu rose from the grass beside the river. “Perhaps Prince Josua can compel him to talk. Or Isgrimnur, who seems the nearest thing to a friend Camaris has. You know them both, Geloë. They are suspicious of me, for which I do not blame them—many mortal generations have passed since we could consider the Sudhoda‘ya to be our allies. Perhaps at your urging, one of them may convince Camaris to tell us whether it is true that he was in Jao é-Tinukai’i, and what it might mean.”
“I will try,” promised Geloë. “I am to see the two of them later tonight. But even if they can convince Camaris, I am not sure there will be any value in what he has to say.”