A Knot in the Grain (3 page)

He ate with them, a silent meal, for none of the three wished to acknowledge or discuss the new balance that was already growing among them. Then he went back to his spade.

He did a careful, thorough job of the new garden plot; two days it took him. When he finished it, he widened the kitchen garden. Then he built a large new paddock for Lily's horse—and his own; the two horses had made friends at once, and stood head to tail in the shade at the edge of the tiny turnout that flanked the small barn. When they were first introduced to their new field, they ran like furies around it, squealing and plunging at each other. Jolin came out of the house to see what the uproar was about. Sahath and Lily were leaning side by side on the top rail of the sturdy new fence; Jolin wondered what they might be saying to each other. The horses had enough of being mad things, and ambled quietly over to ask their riders for handouts. Jolin turned and reentered the house.

On the third day after his arrival Jolin gave Sahath a shirt and trousers, lengthened for their new owner: The shirt tail and cuffs were wide red bands sewn neatly onto the original yellow cloth; the trousers were green, and each leg bore a new darker green hem. No mage had ever worn such garb. He put them on. At the end of the week Lily gave him a black and green—the same coarse green of the trouserhems—jacket. He said,
Thank you, lady
, and she blushed and turned away. Jolin watched them, and wondered if she had done the right thing, not to send him away when she might have; wondered if he knew that Lily was in love with him. She wondered if a mage might know anything of love, anything of a woman's love for a man.

He propped up the sagging cow shed where the two goats lived, and made the chicken-coop decently foxproof. He built bird-houses and feeders for the many birds that were Lily's friends; and he watched her when he thought she did not notice, when they came to visit, perching on her hands and shoulders and rubbing their small heads against her face. He listened to their conversations, and knew no more of what passed than Jolin did of his and Lily's.

He had never been a carpenter, any more than he had been a gardener; but he knew his work was good, and he did not care where the skill came from. He knew he could look at the things he wished to do here and understand how best to do them, and that was enough. He slept the nights through peacefully and dreamlessly.

A few days after the gift of the jacket Jolin said to him, “The leather-worker of our village is a good man and clever. He owes us for his wife's illness last winter; it would please … us … if you would let him make you a pair of boots.” His old boots, accustomed to nothing more arduous than the chafing of stirrup and stirrup-leather, had never, even in their young days, been intended for the sort of work he was lately requiring of them. He looked at them ruefully, stretched out toward the fire's flickering light, the dark green cuffs winking above them, and Karla's long furry red tail curling and uncurling above the cuffs.

He went into the village the next day. He understood, from the careful but polite greetings he received, that the knowledge of Jolin's new hired man had gone before him; and he also understood that no more than his skill with spade and hammer had gone into the tale. There was no one he met who had the skill to recognize a mage-mark, nor was there any suspicion, besides the wary observation of a stranger expected to prove himself one way or another, that he was anything more or less than an itinerant laborer. The boot-maker quietly took his measurements and asked him to return in a week.

Another week, he thought, and was both glad and afraid. It was during that week that he finished the paddock for the horses. He wanted to build a larger shed to store hay, for there was hay enough in the meadowland around Jolin's house to keep all the livestock—even a second horse, he thought distantly—all the winter, if there was more room for it than the low loft over the small barn.

In a week he went back to fetch his boots; they were heavy, hard things, a farmer's boots, and for a moment they appalled him, till he saw the beauty of them. He thanked their maker gravely, and did not know the man was surprised by his tone. Farmers, hired men, took their footgear for granted; he had long since learned to be proud of his craft for its own sake. And so he was the first of the villagers to wonder if perhaps there was more to Jolin's hired man—other than the fact, well mulled over all through Rhungill, that Jolin had never before in over twenty years been moved to hire anyone for more than a day's specific job—than met the eye. But he had no guess of the truth.

Sahath asked the boot-maker if there was someone who sold dry planking, for he had all but used Lily and Jolin's small store of it, till now used only for patching up after storms and hard winter weather. There were several such men, and because the leather-worker was pleased at the compliment Sahath paid him, he recommended one man over the others. Sahath, unknowing, went to that man, who had much fine wood of just the sort Sahath wanted; but when he asked a price, the man looked at him a long moment and said, “No charge, as you do good work for them; you may have as much as you need as you go on for them. There are those of us know what we owe them.” The man's name was Armar.

Sahath went in his heavy boots to the house he had begun in secret to call home. He let no hint of the cost to his pride his workman's hire of sturdy boots had commanded; but still Jolin's quick eyes caught him staring at the calluses on his long-fingered hands, and guessed something of what he was thinking.

A week after he brought his boots home he began the hay shed. He also began to teach Lily and Jolin their letters. He had pen and paper in his saddlebags, and a wax tablet that had once been important in a mage's work. When he first took it out of its satchel, he had stood long with it in his hands; but it was silent, inert, a tool like a hammer was a tool and nothing more. He brought it downstairs, and whittled three styluses from bits of firewood.

“If you learn to write,” he said, humbly, to Jolin, “Lily may speak to you as well as she may speak to any wandering … mage.” It was all the explanation he gave, laying the pale smooth tablet down on the shining golden wood of the table; and Jolin realized, when he smiled uncertainly at her and then turned to look wistfully at Lily, that he did love her dearer-than-daughter, but that nothing of that love had passed between them. Jolin had grown fond of the quiet, weary man who was proving such a good landsman, fond enough of him that it no longer hurt her to see him wearing her husband's old clothes which she herself had patched for his longer frame; and so she thought, Why does he not tell her? She looked at them as they looked at each other, and knew why, for the hopelessness was as bright in their eyes as the love. Jolin looked away unhappily, for she understood too that there was no advice she could give them that they would listen to. But she could whisper charms that they permit themselves to see what was, and not blind themselves with blame for what they lacked. Her lips moved.

Each evening after that the two women sat on either side of him and did their lessons as carefully as the students of his mage-master had ever done theirs, although they had been learning words to crack the world and set fire to the seas. Sahath copied the letters of the alphabet out plainly and boldly onto a piece of stiff parchment, and Jolin pinned it to the front of the cupboard, where his two students might look at it often during the day.

Spring turned to summer, and Sahath's boots were no longer new, and he had three more shirts and another pair of trousers. The last shirt and trousers were made for him, not merely made over; and the first shirt had to be patched at the elbows. The goats produced two pair of kids, which would be sold at the fall auction in Teskip. Summer began to wane, and Sahath began to wander around the house at twilight, after work and before supper, staring at the bottles of herbs, the basket of scraps from which Jolin made her sachets, and outside in the garden, staring at the fading sun and the lengthening shadows.

Jolin thought, with a new fear at her heart, He will be leaving us soon. What of Lily? And even without thought of Lily she felt sorrow.

Lily too watched him pacing, but she said nothing at all; and what her thoughts were neither Jolin nor Sahath wished to guess.

One evening when Lily was gone to attend a sick baby, Sahath said, with the uneasy abruptness Jolin had not heard since he had asked one morning months ago if there was any work for a simple man's strength: “It is possible that I know someone who could give Lily her voice. Would you let her travel away with me, on my word that I would protect her dearer than my own life?”

Jolin shivered, and laid her sewing down in her lap. “What is this you speak of?”

Sahath was silent a moment, stroking grey tabby Annabelle. “My old master. I have not seen him since I first began … my travels; even now I dread going back.…” So much he could say after several months of farmer's labor and the companionship of two women. “He is a mage almost beyond the knowing of the rest of us, even his best pupils.” He swallowed, for he had been one of these. “But he knows many things. I—I know Lily, I think, well enough to guess that her voice is something my master should be able to give her.”

Jolin stared unblinking into the fire till the heat of it drew tears. “It is not my decision. We will put it to Lily. If she wishes to go with you, then she shall go.”

Lily did not return till the next morning, and she found her two best friends as tired and sleepless-looking as she felt herself, and she looked at them with surprise. “Sahath said something last night that you need to hear,” said Jolin; but Sahath did not raise his heavy eyes from his tea-cup.

“His … mage-master … may be able to give you your voice. Will you go with him, to seek this wizard?”

Lily's hands were shaking as she set her basket on the table. She pursed her lips, but no sound emerged. She licked her lips nervously and whistled: “I will go.”

They set out two days later. It was a quiet two days; Lily did not even answer the birds when they spoke to her. They left when dawn was still grey over the trees. Jolin and Lily embraced for a long time before the older woman put the younger one away from her and said, “You go on now. Just don't forget to come back.”

Lily nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again and smiled tremulously.

“I'll tell your parents you've gone away for a bit, never fear.”

Lily nodded once more, slowly, then turned away to mount her little bay horse. Sahath was astride already, standing a little away from the two women, staring at the yellow fingers of light pushing the grey away; he looked down startled when Jolin touched his knee. She swallowed, tried to speak, but no words came, and her fingers dug into his leg. He covered her hand with his and squeezed; when she looked up at him, he smiled, and finally she smiled back, then turned away and left them. Lily watched the house door close behind her dearest friend, and sat immobile, staring at the place where Jolin had disappeared, till Sahath sent his horse forward. Lily awoke from her reverie, and sent the little bay after the tall black horse. Sahath heard the gentle hoofbeats behind him, and turned to smile encouragement; and Lily, looking into his face, realized that he had not been sure, even until this moment, if she would follow him or not. She smiled in return, a smile of reassurance. Words, loose and filmy as smoke, drifted into Sahath's mind:
I keep my promises
. But he did not know what she had read in his face, and he shook his head to clear it of the words that were not meant for him.

No villager would have mistaken Sahath for a workman now, in the dark tunic and cloak he had worn when he first met Lily, riding his tall black horse; the horse alone was too fine a creature for anyone but a man of rank. For all its obvious age, for the bones of its face showed starkly through the skin, it held its crest and tail high, and set its feet down as softly as if its master were made of eggshells. Lily, looking at the man beside her on his fine horse, and looking back to the pricked ears of her sturdy, reliable mount, was almost afraid of her companion, as she had been afraid when he first spoke in her mind, and as she had not been afraid again for many weeks.

Please
, Sahath said now.
Do not fear me: I am the man who hammered his fingers till they were blue and black, and cursed himself for clumsiness till the birds fled the noise, and stuck his spade into his own foot and yelped with pain. You know me too well to fear me
.

Lily laughed, and the silent chime of her laughter rang in his mind as she tipped her chin back and grinned at the sky.
And I am the girl who cannot spell
.

You do very well
.

Not half so well as Jolin
.

Jolin is special
.

Yes
. And their minds fell away from each other, and each disappeared into private thoughts.

They rode south and west. Occasionally they stopped in a town for supplies; but they slept always under the stars, for Lily's dread of strangers and Sahath's uneasiness that any suspicion rest on her for travelling thus alone with him, and he a man past his prime and she a beauty. Their pace was set by Lily's horse, which was willing enough, but unaccustomed to long days of travelling, though it was young and Sahath's horse was old. But it quickly grew hard, and when they reached the great western mountains, both horses strode up the slopes without trouble.

It grew cold near the peaks, but Sahath had bought them fur cloaks at the last town; no one lived in the mountains. Lily looked at hers uncertainly, and wished to ask how it was Sahath always had money for what he wished to buy. But she did not quite ask, and while he heard the question anyway, he chose not to answer.

They wandered among the mountain crests, and Lily became totally confused, for sometimes they rode west and south and sometimes east and north; and then there was a day of fog, and the earth seemed to spin around her, and even her stolid practical horse had trouble finding its footing. Sahath said,
There is only a little more of this until we are clear
, and Lily thought he meant something more than the words simply said; but again she did not ask. They dismounted and led the horses, and Lily timidly reached for a fold of Sahath's sleeve, for the way was wide enough that they might walk abreast. When he felt her fingers, he seized her hand in his, and briefly he raised it to his lips and kissed it, and then they walked on hand in hand.