"It's been ages since I've heard that story," said a voice behind me.
I turned and saw Namet standing in the doorway. I made a place for her to sit next to me, at the foot of Maara's bed.
"It's been ages since I've told it," I said.
The story had disturbed me. As many times as I had told it and heard it told, at that moment I couldn't make up my mind if it was a love story or a cautionary tale.
Maara looked puzzled.
"What do you suppose it means?" Namet asked her.
Maara met Namet's eyes for a moment. Then she turned to me and put her hand over her heart.
"You once told me that stories are meant to make you feel something here," she said.
I nodded.
"What did that story make you feel?" asked Namet gently.
"Sad," she said, her eyes still on my face. "Was it supposed to?"
I shook my head.
Namet turned to me. "What do you think it means?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "How can such a love exist? And even if it does, who would dare to reach for it?"
Namet smiled a knowing smile. I remembered then that she had dared. She had walked away from everything she knew, was willing to walk away from life itself, to find it.
"I can assure you that it does exist," said Namet, "but you're right that few dare reach for it. They sense the peril in it, and it frightens them. Merin was frightened by it, though it always seemed to me that, whether a person reaches for love or turns it away, either choice demands a price."
Merin paid a heavy price, I thought, but it had never occurred to me that she might have been afraid of love.
"Go to her now," said Namet. "It's time."
I got up to go, but I was still uneasy about Maara, and I stopped in the doorway and looked back at her.
Namet chuckled. "Don't worry. I intend to sit up all night and bore my poor child silly with stories of my youth. I have no intention of letting her out of my sight. I'm too old to go chasing her around the countryside."
I saw a little color come into Maara's cheeks.
"If there's any chasing to be done," I said to Namet, "call me."
"I'm fine," said Maara.
"I know." I smiled at her and held her eyes until she smiled back.
The Lady was in bed. When she saw me poke my head in the door, she gestured to me to come in. Someone had brought her a plate of food. It didn't look as if she'd touched it.
"Are you feeling better?" I asked her.
She nodded.
"You need to eat something." I picked up the plate and sat down beside her on the bed.
Merin sighed. "Are you going to insist on feeding me?"
"Yes," I said, "unless you'll feed yourself."
She sat up and took the plate from me. After she had taken a few bites, she set it aside. I shook my head at her in disapproval, and she picked up the plate again.
While she ate, I went to the window and looked out. The rain had stopped. On the meeting ground people were gathering for the feast. Their voices murmured on the warm spring breeze. Laughter and music, joyful sounds, the sounds of springtime, of innocence, reached us as if from a great distance.
"You'd better go," said Merin. "You'll miss the feasting."
"I thought I'd sit with you a while."
Merin's eyes challenged me. "Are you worried I'll do something foolish?"
"It wouldn't be the first time."
My bluntness surprised her.
"Well," she said. "I hadn't intended to."
"I don't think anyone intends to. On days of power, strange things may happen. People may do things they don't intend."
Merin regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. Then she said, "It was on the morning of the spring festival that she left me."
I didn't need to ask her who she meant. More than the pain in Merin's eyes, my own experience told me how much that must have hurt. On a day when the power of life draws lovers together, how could either of them have borne such a parting?
"I've survived many spring festivals since," she said. "I'll survive this one too. Go get yourself something to eat. I'd like to spend the afternoon alone. You may come to me this evening, if you like. I wouldn't mind some company tonight."
The feasting had begun. Trestle tables set out on the meeting ground held platters of lamb and beef, garnished with spring greens, along with loaves of fresh bread, rounds of cheese, whole onions and mushrooms roasted with the meat, all the delicacies of springtime, as if there were no fear of want in Merin's house.
I helped myself to a plateful of food and a beaker of ale and made my way through the crowd of country people, looking for someone I knew. Tamar and a few of her new friends were sitting together on the grass. I hesitated to intrude upon my sister without an invitation. I stood still for a moment, undecided.
"Tamras!" someone called out behind me.
When I turned around, I was astonished to see Taia. She was carrying a plate heaped high with food. Her hair shone like copper in the sunlight, and she seemed taller than I remembered her.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her. Taia had gone home with Laris. I wondered why she had come back to Merin's house so soon.
Taia smiled mysteriously. "It's nice to see you too," she said. "Come sit with us."
She led me to a shady place a little distance from the meeting ground. Kenit was waiting there. On his cloak, spread out in the cool shade, his baby lay sleeping. Taia sat down next to him and set the plate between them.
"What are you doing here?" I asked again. "Has Laris come back?"
Taia shook her head. "I came alone. I only just arrived an hour ago. I'm famished."
She picked up a slice of lamb and took an enormous bite out of it.
"You came back alone? Why?"
Taia's mouth was full of lamb. She gestured with her head at something that lay a little distance away in the grass. It was a shield, bearing as its device a boar's head, freshly painted.
"I've heard that Merin's house is in need of warriors," said Taia shyly.
"Wonderful!" I said. "Congratulations!"
"My foolishness won me a sword," she said. "Now I've a shield to go with it."
Kenit's baby woke and began to cry. Kenit picked him up.
"He's hungry," he said.
As Kenit strode across the meeting ground on his way back to Merin's house, Taia's eyes followed him. When she saw that I was watching her, she blushed.
"I know what you're thinking," she whispered. "It isn't true."
"What in the world are you talking about?"
"I was sorry when his sweetheart died. I wouldn't wish such grief on anyone I care for."
"Of course not," I replied.
She smiled at me for understanding.
I had eaten and drunk more than was good for me. I was so sleepy that I napped for an hour in the warm afternoon sun. Taia was tired from her journey, and she too slept for a little while. Then we went for a swim in the river. When we came out of the water, Tamar and her friends were sitting a little distance away on the riverbank. Taia and I sat down in the grass to dry off. Tamar came over and sat down beside me.
"Are you coming to the bonfire tonight?" she asked me.
I shook my head. "Merin has asked me to sit with her this evening."
"But it's a holiday. You're not supposed to have to work today."
"It isn't work," I said.
A suspicious look came into Tamar's eyes. "What's going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are the rumors true then?"
"What rumors?"
"That you're going to be adopted."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Taia's head turn toward us.
Tamar studied me through narrowed eyes. "It must be true. You never could bring yourself to tell a lie."
The mock disapproval in her voice reminded me how often my inability to make up excuses had gotten us both into trouble.
"Nothing is decided," I told her.
br /> Tamar ignored me. "I should have known." Her eyes glittered with excitement at her discovery. "You call her by her given name. You go to see her in her chamber whenever the mood strikes you. You sit with her for hours. She's chosen you to be her heir." She made a gesture with her arm meant to encompass all of Merin's land. "Someday this will belong to you."
Tamar would have chattered on about what she imagined life would be like when her sister, and therefore by extension she herself, became a person of great importance, but I took hold of her hand and gave it a little shake to get her attention.
"The only thing that will belong to me will be a responsibility that I hope I'll be strong enough to bear," I said. "I'd be just as happy if it never came to me at all. But don't count ducklings when the duck hasn't yet laid her eggs. This is not the right time for the Lady to name an heir."
"Why not? Hasn't she made up her mind?"
I knew Tamar wouldn't stop until she had the whole truth out of me. "She's asked me and I've accepted, but this isn't a good time to speak of it, and I don't want you to talk about it with anyone."
"Why not?"
"Because it's dangerous."
Tamar rolled her eyes.
"I'm serious," I said, more sharply than I meant to. "There are people here who might try to prevent such a thing from happening, if they knew about it."
"Why would anyone do that?"
Although I hesitated to cast a shadow over the innocent world Tamar still lived in, I felt I had no choice.
"There are others who believe Merin's power should come to them," I said. "There may be a few who would try to take Merin's power from her while she still lives. These are troubled times."
Tamar frowned. "I can't imagine how anyone could take the Lady's power," she said, but she sounded less sure of herself.
"Tamras is telling you the truth," said Taia. "If people knew the Lady had made her choice, Tamras would be in danger. So would you."
Tamar turned to Taia. "What do you know about it? Who are you anyway?"
"Forgive my sister's rudeness," I said to Taia. "No one has yet taught her the respect due to warriors." I turned back to Tamar. "This is Taia, a warrior, and heir to a powerful house."
"Oh," said Tamar. A blush colored her cheeks.
"Tamar," I said, "please do what I ask. Don't say a word to anyone."
Tamar nodded meekly.
"And you should know that Vintel is no friend of ours," I said. "I'd keep away from her, if I were you."
Having thoroughly embarrassed herself, Tamar didn't question me.
"I hope you know I'll keep your secret," said Taia, when Tamar had rejoined her friends. "Laris guessed that you would be Merin's choice. She'll be glad to hear this news. She has always feared Vintel's power."
"I thank you for your loyalty," I replied. "Merin is stronger than people think, but she won't challenge Vintel until we're no longer in danger from the northern tribes."
Taia moved closer and whispered, "If you need a place of refuge, Laris will welcome you. Although she hasn't said so, I believe she would help you lay claim to your inheritance. I had more than one reason for returning to Merin's house. I'm here to give you whatever help I can. Will you count me as your friend?"
I took Taia's hand and squeezed it. "Of course. We are friends."
Taia lifted my hand to her lips and kissed the back of it. Then I understood that Taia was speaking of a different kind of friendship. Taia was a warrior, and her gesture was a pledge, not only of her own loyalty, but of the loyalty of the house she now represented.
I withdrew my hand from hers. "You should make your pledge to Merin, not to me. I'm not her child. I'm not even a warrior."
Taia smiled. "Can you deny that, if not for Vintel, you would be Merin's child already?"
I shook my head.
Taia looked into my eyes. "You have taken your rightful place, Tamras of the Bow, even if no one knows it."
49. Demons
The sun had set when I went to Merin's room that evening. I found her standing by the window in the last of the dying light. The glow in the western sky lent her pale face a blush that made her look quite young. When she turned to me and smiled, her beauty made me catch my breath.
"Come and look," she said.
I went to stand beside her at the window. The sky was dark, all but a band of deep red that burned like flame on the western hills and spilled the color of blood over the silvery surface of the river. Pale stars twinkled out, mirrored by the flickering light of bonfires on the hillsides.
Merin slipped her arm around my shoulders. Her touch struck a spark that sent a warm glow through my body and a blush like fire to my face. I fidgeted a little in embarrassment.
Merin caressed my shoulder.
"It's only the power of the night," she whispered.
Her words reassured me, and my body relaxed against her. It was not her arm around me that pulled me close to her, but the bond between us that grew stronger as the darkness deepened and desire faded into tenderness.
"Thank you," Merin whispered.
"What for?"
"For giving me someone to love," she said. "I had forgotten how much joy there is in loving. More than in being loved."
For a long time we stood together in silence, until we could no longer see the outline of the hills. The shrill music of the pipes and the heartbeat rhythm of a drum drifted up from the meeting ground where, in the flickering firelight, long shadows of the dancers cavorted on the hillside.
Merin leaned more heavily against me.
"I think I need to sit down," she said.
I brought her chair over by the window and settled her into it before I took my usual place on the edge of her bed. A single lamp cast a little pool of light around us, leaving the corners of the room in darkness.
"How was your holiday?" Merin asked me.
"Fine," I replied. As an afterthought, I added, "Taia came back."
"Did she?" Merin sounded neither surprised nor very interested. I had intended to tell her about my conversation with Taia. Before I could speak, she said, "I spent the afternoon remembering."
Wisely I held my tongue and waited for her to go on.
"The young make such terrible mistakes," she said. She gazed up through the window at the sky. "When we're young, we feel things so intensely, and our elders never think to teach us how to contend with our feelings, because they have forgotten their own."
She spoke as if she and I were of an age, and that night perhaps we were, as she returned in memory to a time that was more real to her than yesterday.
"You haven't forgotten," I said.
"No." She sighed. "I knew better even then. I knew she had to go. I knew that nothing I could say would keep her here. In time we might have found a way not to lose each other altogether, but I made that impossible. I said things that couldn't be unsaid and did things that couldn't be undone. And I paid the price for it."
My mother too, I thought, had paid that price. "What did you do or say that was more than someone who loved you could forgive?"
"I couldn't let her go," she said. "I knew how her mother's grief weighed on her heart, but still I kept her here. I found one excuse after another. The weather was unsettled. It threatened rain. Traveling alone was dangerous. Then the weather turned fine, and a band of warriors stopped by on their way south and asked to stay the night. Tamnet arranged to travel with them in the morning. Before dawn I sent them on their way, telling them that she had changed her mind.
"She didn't discover what I'd done for several days. Then, on the morning of the spring festival, she accused me. I denied it at first. When she got the truth out of me at last, she was furious. She insisted on leaving right away, even if she had to go alone. I was desperate. I used every argument I could think of. Nothing moved her, so I told her that if she left me, on that day of all days, how could I believe she'd ever loved me? She never said another word to me that day. She closed her heart and walked away. I watched her go fr
om this window. I didn't understand what I had done until long afterward."
"What had you done?"
"I called her love a lie."
"You spoke in anger."
She nodded. "I did, but I should have taken those words back. I couldn't do it." Merin frowned. An echo of her anger burned in her dark eyes. "She was the air I breathed. How could I have failed to fight for my last breath of life? I would have done anything to keep her here. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't help myself."
"Why couldn't you have told her that?"
"I didn't understand it myself then. I fought to put her out of my heart, to close my heart against her. She who once made my life worth living had made it unbearable. She became my enemy. I'll never understand how love can turn so quickly into something else. It was bad enough to call her love for me a lie. It was unforgivable that I denied my love for her, even to myself."
"I can't imagine the pain of such a parting," I said. "I don't know how either of you could have borne it, but I see no blame in what you did. My mother used to tell me that the mind will play tricks on itself, in order to bear the unbearable."
Now I understood where my mother's words had come from.
Merin too understood. "What tricks did she play, I wonder?" She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. "Why is it that wisdom comes to us too late to do us any good?"
"It's not too late."
She opened her eyes and looked at me.
"You're both still living," I said. "And you're still friends."
"Friends," echoed Merin. "Friends, and nothing more."
"Have you asked for more?"
"I meant to once," she said. "Time went by, and it didn't hurt so much to think about her. I thought about her more and more, and at last I went to see her. I don't know what I had in mind. I might have asked her for reason to hope. I found her married and big with child. That was my answer."
"You never asked the question?"
She shook her head.
"You need to," I told her.
I don't think she heard me.
The bonfire had burned down. Only the moon brightened the world outside the window. Its pale light fell on Merin's face. She looked frail, and very tired.