She had really believed him in the air, when he said she would be safe, and he had seemed sternly competent on the surface of Acantha. But on the ship and since they had entered the Acanthan cave settlement, he had shown a vapid and affected manner she did not like or trust. She wondered suddenly where he had been for so long. She caught his eye with a determined look, pointed at the door, then at him and finally opened her hands palms up. What happened to you?
‘I went to report to my wing leader,’ Solen said, stretching himself out by the fire. ‘A dreary duty because I missed a wing ceremony this morning and had to explain myself. I was given additional duties in these next few days for my sins.’ His lip curled. ‘They were so busy enjoying my discomfort that they failed to ask why I was late.’
Glynn frowned. Aboard the Waverider, Solen had sounded genuinely worried about what would happen if he returned late to Acantha. Maybe she had misunderstood the extent of his concern.
Solen unwrapped the food and waved an expansive hand. ‘Eat.’ He scooped greenish jelly from a small pot into a wide flat roll and bit into it, motioning for her to help herself. Pulling her cushions closer Glynn copied him and then bit gingerly into the roll. Jelly with the flavour of mint toothpaste squelched out of the roll into her mouth. She repressed a grimace and forced herself to swallow.
Setting the offending roll aside, she broke a piece from one of the pies and examined the reddish filling. It smelled vaguely spicy, but she did not think there was meat in it. Solen was watching her with an unreadable expression on his face. With a pang of unease, she lifted a brow inquiringly.
‘You remind me of a child, concentrating so fiercely on your food,’ he said. ‘I wonder what your voice sounds like.’
Glynn felt herself flush at this personal scrutiny.
He smiled, and again Wind flickered eerily in his features. ‘I am beginning to see it is dangerous to be with a person who does not talk. Especially one who knows me so little.’ He sat back in his own chair and stretched his long legs out before him.
Curious, and liking him better when he abandoned his exaggerated affectations, Glynn mimed, Why?
‘Perhaps because you have no expectations of me. No preconceptions to fit me into. In truth I am a loner, though I am known for my enjoyment of company.’ He smiled ironically. ‘And this silence of yours is seductive. One is accustomed to being a certain person in conversations – playing a role, if you like, and shaping it against the other person’s role. But because you do not speak, there is nothing to measure myself against. It is like being alone with myself. It lulls me into a dangerously talkative state.’
Outside there was a distant clanging. Solen stood quickly and crossed to the leather flap. He stared out with such anger that Glynn was startled. From where she sat, she could see only the glow of several fires. These must be the communal fire-pits Solen had mentioned. The only other light showed in chinks from behind the fell flaps around the walls.
‘The Draaka calls to her converts,’ Solen muttered. ‘Jurass will have returned with her. I wonder if he knows Argon has left Eron isle.’
Glynn thought about the Draaka. Aboard the Waverider, Carick had told Aris she might be a Draaka spy and she wondered about this woman who had both spies and converts, and who managed to rouse the languid Solen to such fury. Remembering his earlier rebuff, Glynn decided not to raise the subject. At least, not directly. When he came back to sit down, she mouthed Jurass’s name and then Argon’s, and mimed a question. Why do they dislike one another?
She had to repeat herself several times before he understood.
‘You have forgotten the story of Argon and Jurass? Incredible.’ Solen rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and Glynn thought he would not go on but, after a moment, he resumed, adopting a half-mocking tone which at times seemed to be turned as much on himself as on his subject.
‘Let me see, where should I begin? I am no balladeer, so it will be a plain telling. Jurass is the son of Nema and Garad of Acantha. Good lineage, one would have supposed. Garad had achieved the role of wing lord in his day and, as such, was destined to be the next chieftain. His father chose Nema to join with him because he admired her. He thought that their children would have his son’s strength and Nema’s cleverness and subtlety. They were joined not just to year-end, but in life bond. Nema would accept no less. It is said she had many admirers though she was no beauty. She would not join with Garad unless she was to be his partner for life. In time, she bore him a son – Jurass. It was a hard birthing and damaged her so that she could have no more children sown in her. It must have disappointed them both, especially Garad since he could offer no other woman a casual bonding to bear him another child.’
Glynn wondered if this could possibly be the same Nema who had wanted to see Solen.
‘Jurass was nearing manhood,’ Solen continued, ‘when his father journeyed to Myrmidor for the choosing of the new Holder of Keltor. All chieftains attend, of course, in the hope that one of their sept will be named successor to the current Holder and will rule all the islands. But there Garad met and fell in love with Signe, a young soulweaver candidate. They loved one another in defiance of the life bond, and that love bore forbidden fruit.’
Argon? Glynn mouthed.
Solen nodded approvingly. ‘Yes. That was part of the problem. Signe had not undergone the Darkfall process, though she had gone through part of the training and initiation into the order. It is rare that a soulweaver in this unfinished state would leave Darkfall, else what passed might happen more often, but all soulweavers attend a choosing. Signe was therefore technically a soulweaver when she was loved and fully a soulweaver when she bore her son. Soulweavers, of course, do not bear male children. Garad had his own difficulties, for the very act of loving and seeding Signe broke his sworn life bond with Nema. Yet it was not treason and Nema might have forgiven him. But he did not seek her forgiveness. He abdicated his position as chieftain in the hope that Signe would give up the sisterhood and come to him. He abandoned his life-bond partner, his son by her and his sept for Signe, yet she had gone to Darkfall by then and had unknowingly undergone the Darkfall process while she was gravid. Who knows what she would have done if she had known a son lay in her, for it could well have been that he would die. But he did not and she was fully a soulweaver then, and bound to Darkfall. I believe Garad died quite young and never even saw his son by her. Argon was permitted to stay with his mother on the misty isle until he was ten. A great concession, for no man may walk on the misty isle. It was not deemed that he was man until then.’
Ten. And then what? He was sent away! No wonder Argon was so full of bitterness about Darkfall and the soulweavers, Glynn mused. His mother Signe sounded utterly heartless, abandoning her lover and then letting her little boy be sent away.
Solen finished his tale. ‘Jurass blamed Argon for the loss of his father.’
Glynn made an indignant gesture.
‘It is irrational, of course, but Jurass is not famous for his abiding wisdom nor for his compassion,’ Solen said dryly. ‘He does not care that Argon was not even born when Garad deserted Nema, or that Argon has scarcely had an enviable existence by anyone’s reckoning. To Jurass, his half-brother is an unnatural freak whose mother bewitched his father into desertion. I think, though, that the bitterest heart of his hate is his belief that Garad chose Argon over him. Disappointment in a father can be a savage thing.’
Glynn reflected on that, chewing a hangnail unconsciously.
Solen regarded her seriously. ‘You give yourself to this old tale as if it were a story of close friends. These matters are old and beyond pity or repair. Getting safely home is what should concern you.’
Bewildered as she was at his chameleon mood swings, Glynn knew Solen was right. She must not let herself be distracted from her quest, though home for her was much further than he could imagine.
‘I do not suppose you have the good taste to remember who you are yet?’ Solen said, rubbing his eyes again.
On an impulse of anger, Glynn nodded.
Solen leaned forward eagerly. ‘What sept are you from?’
Glynn regretted her nod immediately, and mimed that she had remembered very little.
‘If your memory has begun to return it will not be much longer before it is entirely restored. No doubt your voice will return tomorrow or the day after. If you have family, perhaps they can send the price of a passage home. If they are unable to send you coin, I will see what can be done about getting you work so that you can earn enough to get home.
‘Oh. And if you do happen to remember you are a myrmidon, it would be better to keep that to yourself. If that is the case, you can always work in the mines to earn a passage off Acantha. Miners come from all over Keltor and they are a close-mouthed lot so no one would ask you any awkward questions.’
Glynn made some urgent gestures indicating she would work in the mine anyway, but Solen shook his head. ‘You misunderstand me. I do not propose such an occupation unless you turn out to be a myrmidon. Otherwise there are far easier and better-paid employments …’
Glynn stood up and gestured determinedly that she wanted to be a miner. She needed a job where no one would ask questions and she had the feeling she would need coin. Solen shook his head but she pulled up her sleeve and made a muscle.
He laughed in surprise. ‘I do not doubt your strength. I saw ample evidence of it aboard the Waverider.’
Glynn forced the memory of Argon exposing her breasts out of her mind and mimed that she might as well work until her voice came back.
He stared at her speculatively, then shrugged. ‘I cannot imagine why you want to work in the minescrape, other than that you do not know what you are contemplating. As you are so insistent I will scribe a chit for you to give the mine overseer. You will be shown through the minescrape on the strength of it. I am certain a tour will teach you patience.’
He rummaged in his bag and brought out a thing that looked like a bit of shrivelled vanilla root, and a small bundle of pale flat pieces of wood. He used the root to make some marks on one of the twigs. ‘There,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘I have scribed that you are Fomhikan and known to me, you fell into the water on your way here to inspect the mines, and are suffering temporary muteness. And here,’ he tapped the bottom half of his chit, ‘I ask that you be shown the minescrape.’
Glynn was astonished to find he had written in English using ordinary lettering, although it was heavily sloped and sprouting odd florid curlicues. It struck her as incredible that not only did the inhabitants of this other world speak English, they wrote it. But was it any more amazing, really, than that she could breathe their air without choking, drink their water and eat their food without being poisoned? How could another world be so like hers, and yet so different?
Dismissing questions to which she could have no answers, she took up the piece of wood Solen had put on the table and pulled another of the twigs from the bundle. Then she carefully wrote her name down the edge, trying to emulate the slope and curl of Solen’s lettering.
‘You can scribe!’ he said sharply. ‘That tells us you come from a family wealthy enough to have you tutored and certainly wealthy enough to send coin …’
Glynn pointed insistently to what she had written, then to herself. If he could understand her, then she could communicate whether or not she could speak.
Solen pored over her lettering. ‘You scribe most queerly, but I take it this is your name?’
She nodded eagerly and tapped the page, then looked at him expectantly.
He read aloud what she had written. ‘Glynn … Glynna?’
She nodded and bent to write again, but they were interrupted by a sound on the ramp outside. Solen had closed the leather door flap, but now it flew open to admit a beautiful dark-haired young woman carrying a circular lantern on a chain.
‘Solen, I heard …’ She stopped, her smile faltering as she took in Glynn. ‘You … You have a visitor?’
Solen made an exaggerated bow and all at once he was a mincing fop again.
What was the matter with him? Glynn thought with some disgust. He looked like a sheep, flapping his eyelashes and leering. He was slouching again, too, as if all of the hard muscle Glynn had felt when he had carried her through the air had melted at the sight of this girl.
‘Sweet Zeyar, you are as lovely as ever,’ he gushed, and lingeringly kissed the hand she offered. Glynn felt herself blush for him.
As if he had only barely remembered her, Solen introduced them. ‘Glynna, this is Zeyar, the daughter of Kalty windwalker and wing leader in his day.’
Glynn forced a smile, but she might as well not have bothered because the girl did not even look at her. Her brows tilted interrogatingly at Solen, and her perfect nostrils flared with annoyance. ‘She is not Acanthan?’
‘She is Fomhikan. An acquaintance of Flay’s,’ Solen said. He indicated the stick in Glynn’s hands with a careless flap of his fingers. ‘I am just now finishing writing her a recommendation for the mine overseer. She has an interest in such tedious and rather grubby matters, if you can believe it. Fomhikans are peculiar folk, truly.’
Glynn boiled. He might be establishing an alibi for her, but he did not have to be quite so disparaging. The girl looked mollified though. Entrancing smile back in place, she took Solen’s arm. ‘There is a celebration in Etienn cavesite this night and I heard you had returned so I came to fetch you to be my partner.’
‘I am not in the mood, Zeyar,’ Solen said, stretching voluptuously. ‘I am just returned from a crossing and I need some rest.’
‘When did Solen ever need to rest?’ the girl said suggestively. ‘I would think you had other entertainments in mind, except that I have seen this visitor of yours.’
Glynn’s temper flickered hotly at the implication that no one in their right mind would want to dally with her. It was lucky she could not speak or she would give the tactless cow a piece of her mind.
‘You do not fool me, Solen,’ the girl continued coquettishly. ‘I heard you were late for a wing parade and that you have been punished. I believe you are sulking and it is most unlike you. What does it matter that you are punished for a little infringement? You have never cared before, yet now you behave as if it is important. It is hardly as if you were a candidate for wing lord even if you do walk the wind like a lord.’
Solen laughed harshly. ‘Kalinda will set forever the day Solen sulks over such a smidgen. You have such a good imagination, Zeyar. Perhaps that is why you continue to amuse me where so many other sweetlings have fallen by the way.’
The woman preened, but Glynn thought she would have done better to slap Solen’s face.
‘Oh, do come before it is all over, Solen,’ Zeyar whispered, ignoring Glynn and running her hands over his chest. ‘You love to dance and you are so good at it. Besides, whatever you say, if you do not come, it will seem as if you are skulking in a corner like a spanked child. Or that you are too frightened or shamed to show your face. It will seem the rumour that you are a coward is true after all.’
Solen’s slanted eyes flared above the girl’s head and Glynn hid a smile. Zeyar was not without claws and clearly Solen was not invulnerable. But he only shrugged and said languorously, ‘It is not cowardly to want to keep one’s skin intact, my dear. That is called common-sense.’
Zeyar tugged on his arm. ‘I do not care about common-sense, Solen. Only come with me and laugh and dance, do. Rian and Sorad have been asking about you.’
Solen offered her his arm. ‘One dance then, Zeyar my lovely, and only to show Rian how a reel is supposed to be stepped. I swear it is a punishment to my eyes to see him clumping around.’ He glanced back at Glynn as if she were a dull chore he had promised to attend. ‘We will talk in the morning of the mines and such matters.’
Glynn heard a rumble of laughter from him as the flap fell closed, and she flushed, certain that the girl had made some slighting comment about her. Trembling with anger, she liste
ned to their footfalls recede. Conceited ass to boast about all the women he had become bored with before Zeyar! Sweetlings indeed. Any man who called her that would regret it! But the stupid woman had seemed flattered by it.
Glynn looked down at the stick in her fingers, resisting the urge to throw it on the fire. She told herself it was a good thing that she had seen Solen’s true colours.
She tried to think of him dispassionately. He was shallow, she decided. How else could he be so inconsistent? But she could not hate him for his character flaws.
Hours later, when it was clear Solen had remained for considerably more than one dance, Glynn set about tidying away the remnants of their meal, wondering why she felt disappointed. She had no right to expect anything of him, except that his slanted eyes and some expressions at certain angles reminded her of Wind; a tenuous likeness, but, having connected them, she could not help responding to it.
She went into one of the two adjoining chambers of the cave. She had explored them both already. There were two sleeping chambers. A bathing room linking them had been the one delightful discovery, despite its squalid state, for it contained not only a covered hole in the ground where one could relieve oneself, but a tiny, deep pool fed by hot springs.
Glynn promised herself a bath before the night was done, but first she would clean a place where she could sleep. The smaller of the rooms looked as if it was used by Solen as a dressing room. Its state suggested he was in the habit of simply flinging everything he took off into the air with his eyes closed, though of course that was ludicrous. Collecting up clothes and folding them in a pile, Glynn wondered how Solen could stomach to live in such a slovenly manner. He had struck her as fastidious about his personal appearance.
When she had cleared a space, Glynn made herself up a bed on the floor.
The hangings in this chamber were softer and featured more delicate patterning and colours than in the other chamber. There were some small shelves carved out of the wall, filled with bits and pieces – a bird’s egg of delicate green, a bit of purplish crystal that looked like amethyst, some large, lovely sand roses and a coiled piece of driftwood draped with several twists of ribbon. All covered in a layer of dust.