Страница 11 из 83
But it wasn’t. It was different. Tier stopped walking so that he could encompass that difference in words that didn’t sound as stupid out loud as they did to himself, stupid but true.
“I’ve known farmers,” he said slowly. “A lot of the men who fought the Fahlarn were farmers, fighting for their lands. They are as much a part of their lands as flour is a part of bread.” He shook his head at himself and gri
“So are you going to be a farmer?” asked Willon with interest.
“And marry and breed?” Tier said lightly over the longing Willon’s words produced. “Not likely.” He began walking again, though they’d passed the bakery a while back. He had no desire to go home yet. “There’s not a woman in Redern who’d marry me and let me go farming. I know the money farming brings in and that bakery brings in ten times as much—and it would break my family’s heart.”
“Farmers don’t make much,” agreed the master trader. “But if you look around you might find a woman who’d rather be a farmer’s wife than live in the village under the tyra
That night Seraph got up out of her cot in the small room they’d given her and climbed out of the window into the garden that backed the house, her blanket serving as a cloak. The solid walls made her feel closed in and trapped. Most of her nights had been spent in tents rather than buildings.
She found the bench that had served as her bed on more than one night since she’d chosen to stay here and lay down on it again to look up at the stars.
She needed to go. These people owed her nothing, not the food she ate or the blanket she wrapped herself in. She did not belong here. She hadn’t heard the argument that Tier and Alinath had while she swept the front room, but she’d heard the raised voices.
Tomorrow, she would go. In two weeks or three she would find a clan that would take her in.
Resolute, she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep. A long time later, exhaustion had more success than her will and she relaxed into slumber.
A rotten tomato hit Arvage’s shoulder while the solsenti boys bounced with nervous bravado. Didn’t they know that the old man could kill them all with a touch of the magic he knew? Didn’t they know that he and Seraph had spent the better part of the past two days banishing a khurlogh, a demon spirit, that had been preying on nighttime visitors to the town well?
Instead her teacher’s arthritic fingers touched the mess on his shoulder and transformed it into a fresh, ripe tomato.
“My thanks, young sirs,” he said. “A rare addition to my di
The scene faded as Seraph stirred restlessly in protest of the old memory. She quieted and her dream took up again at a different point in time.
Her father’s fingers petted her hair as she leaned against his knee, half-asleep in the aftermath of a full meal and the warmth of the nearby fire.
“The entire clan gone?” her father said, a small tremor in his bassy voice. “Are you certain it was the Imperial Army?”
Their visitor nodded his head wearily. “As far as we’ve been able to determine, the last village that they passed through complained to the commander of the imperial troops stationed nearby. Told them that the Travelers kidnapped a pair of young women. The troops came upon the clan and massacred them from grandfather to day-old babe. Turns out that the women were taken by bandits—the imperial troops found them on their way back to the village.”
They buried Arvage in a wilderness glen, just as he had wanted. Seraph herself had thrown in the first, symbolic, handful of earth. He’d died trying to work magic that he could no longer harness because the pain in his joints broke through his fearsome control. He’d known the risk.
In one of those things possible only in dreams, Arvage stood beside her while her father and brothers buried him.
“It is our task to take care of them or die,” he told her. “Our purpose is to keep the shadows at bay for the solsenti who are helpless against them. This is a Raven’s task before us, and I am Raven—as are you. You aren’t old enough and I am too old, but we do as we must.”
Tier hadn’t lived in the comfortable safety of the village long enough to sleep through small noises in the night. He’d heard Seraph go out, as she often did, and he’d gone back to sleep afterward. But he’d awakened again.
He waited for the noise to repeat itself, and when it did he pulled on his pants and slipped out his window to the garden where Seraph whimpered in the helpless throes of a nightmare.
The man was from the Clan of Gilarmist the Fat, ru
By the time four days had passed only Seraph and her brother Ushireh were left to bury the dead. Ushireh worked until he passed out. She’d been so afraid that he was dead, too; it had taken her a long time to convince herself that he was only unconscious. She’d dragged him away from the dead they’d gathered together in the center of the camp, then she’d burned it all—camp and bodies alike. It had been weeks before she could work enough magic to light a fire.
When she managed it at last, Ushireh’s body sat up in the pyre, and his head turned until he could fix his glowing eyes on her. Seraph shrank back and tried to close her eyes. As if in death he’d acquired the magic he’d so envied her in life, his will kept her from looking away from him.
“You left me,” he said. “You left your duty. You ca
She awoke with a gasp and a cry and was gathered into warm arms and rocked gently.
“Shh,” said Tier, “it was a dream. You’re safe.”
She buried her head in his shoulder and gave up a lifetime of self-control to sob raggedly against him. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I don’t want to be a Traveler. They all die, and I have to burn them and bury them. I’m so tired of death and duty. I want… I want…” What she wanted was tied away from her in strands of guilt and duty, but she found a fair approximation of it in the safety of Tier’s arms.
“Shh,” he said. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
His words passed over and around her, the sense lost to her grief and guilt, but the sound of his voice comforted her.
From the third of the three windows that looked out into the garden, Alinath watched her brother hold the witch he’d brought home and she clenched her fists before she turned away.
When the worst of it had passed, embarrassment made Seraph turn away and wipe her face with the corner of the blanket.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “It was a nightmare.”
“Ah,” said Tier as he let her pull away from him. “It sounded worse than that to me.”
She shrugged, not looking at him. “Memories make the worst nightmares, my father always said.”
“You don’t have to go find another clan,” he said. “You can stay here.”
She tried to stifle her involuntary laugh. It wouldn’t be polite to disparage the hospitality of his family. “No, I can’t. Thank you. But no.”
“I can’t leave now,” said Tier. “But I fear it won’t be long. Mother complains and frets until it’s hard to believe that she’s sick at all—but she’s losing weight and her color is much worse. Can you wait?”
Seraph held herself still. Could she wait to take up her duties? Oh, yes. Wait forever if she could. But was it the right thing to do?
At last she nodded. “I’ll wait.”
“Good.”
Tier sat with her a bit, while the sweat dried on her back. With the air of a man coming to a decision, he took something from around his neck and put it into her hands.