Страница 17 из 91
"Leave?" Helen blinked, then appeared to understand. "No. We've no grown men shy of forty winters since I was a girl. My father was allowed to stay and make arrowheads for a while, but they took him, too."
Wy
She trailed off, second-guessing the politeness of her question. Helen simply tucked a loose strand of unwashed hair behind her ear.
"Soldiers take more than just livestock and grain. Then leave us with more mouths to feed."
Helen's meaning sank in as Wy
She hurried toward the smithy's rear door, calling out, "I will be back in a moment."
She went to the wagon outside and climbed up into its back. Helen had hidden Port and Imp farther down in the smokehouse. Wy
Back in Soladran, Leesil had sent her to purchase supplies. Tired of biscuits and jerky, especially since she did not care for meat, Wy
At first Magiere was furious over what she spent in coin. But the following night Wy
But now she dug through the supplies with a different purpose in mind, and hauled all that she could carry back into the smithy.
"Have someone fetch the largest cook pot any of you have," she told Helen.
"What're you doing?" Helen asked.
"Making supper. There are lentils, onions, and carrots. I have parsley and marjoram as well. We need to get water boiling, as it will take time to make enough for everyone."
Helen stared at the bounty Wy
"This must be your whole supply. You can't mean-"
"No, she doesn't," Magiere said, striding over. "Wy
Wy
"Oh, yes, I mean it!" she snapped back. "We need only enough to get us to Venjetz, and we can replace all of this. Look at that little girl. She is having a decent supper tonight, and we will provide it!"
Wy
"He is on my side," she said to Magiere.
Helen and the other women looked on in tense silence.
Leesil got up from his stool and came to Wy
His expression was dispassionate, but the sadness in his eyes washed away Wy
"I do not care," she told him. "You said we should do what we can in the moment."
"All right." He stepped back. "Magiere?"
"Why ask me? You three have made up your minds."
Despite Magiere's a
Wy
The village women set out to fetch the necessary items. No one smiled or muttered thanks, but rather hurried in a way that suggested this miracle might vanish if they did not move quickly enough. Leesil picked up a bucket and went to seek a well or rain barrel for water. Wy
"Why is it so hard for you to assist these people?"
"Because I helped do this to them." He turned away, and Wy
He pulled free of her grasp and turned his back to her. Wy
Chap slipped out the smithy's back door as meal preparations heightened to a flurry. Wy
He circled around their wagon and along the smithy's side until he spotted Leesil walking slowly up the main way. A quick touch upon Leesil's mind found it empty.
Chap could not read thoughts, only memories surfacing to consciousness, and Leesil's mind was devoid of such. Most sentient beings had brief flickers of the past passing just below their awareness at any time. But even those were not present in Leesil. He held them down, shutting out everything.
Which was worse-suppression or immersion-to block all that was past until it welled up to consume one, or to dive into it and drown? Leesil was becoming a danger to himself, and Chap was at a loss for how to care for one of his charges.
Grass and leaves rustling and the sound of clicking branches chattered in the wind.
Chap lifted his head with perked ears and stared across the main way to the woods beyond the village. He felt them again. His kin, the Fay, called for him, demanding his presence among them.
He wrinkled his snout.
More talk was not needed. Perhaps he was corrupted by flesh, as they claimed. How could he not be, living encased in it, limited by it as compared to what he had once been among his kin? Or perhaps he had gained a perspective they did not possess. Either way, now was not the time for more of their admonishments.
Before their presence touched his spirit, Chap clung to the world around him. From sounds the wind made in the trees to the gritty touch of earth under his feet and the smell of the smithy's forge fire, Chap filled up his senses. With these he shut out his kin.
The presence of the Fay thi
Chap look backed down the main way. Leesil was gone, perhaps turning aside through the village to wherever the common well was located. Anxious concern over Leesil's foray into his past brought Chap his own memories.
He remembered being "born" into flesh.
The majay-hi were an old breed that ran among the elven forests. Intelligent compared to other animals, and intuitive beyond most, they were marked by long silvery fur of varied shades and crystalline blue eyes. They were sensitive to life and its balance or imbalance, and thereby sensed its u
Not since the humans' Forgotten History and the war between the living of the world and the Enemy.
In the conflict's final days, a number of the Fay chose to defend the world of their making by taking flesh. They also wished to keep their presence unknown to most. Some of them entered the unborn young of animals, so they might live in flesh and blood. Among other forms chosen were the wolves of the forestlands. When the war ended, the conflict won but the world in ruins, the born-Fay remained bound in flesh. Some took solace in one another.