Finding Destiny (5 page)

He looks like he fits in, though. Foreigner though he may be, he fits in here,
she acknowledged, watching him playing a guessing game with two of the children. The young boy eyed the golden-brown fists held out to him and tapped the left one. Eduor turned his hands up and displayed the pebbles on his palms, one light and one dark.

From the boy’s grin, he had guessed correctly, and Eduor rewarded him by ruffling his short, nubbly twist-locks. Mixing up the two stones, the foreigner tucked his hands into the loose sleeves of his green-and-yellow
thawa
, then pulled them out as rock-clenching fists and offered them to the young girl patiently waiting her turn. She guessed the right hand and pouted when he revealed the dark pebble in that palm. The two children, cousins and just at the age where they were responsible enough for a few simple chores, followed him into the palm-shaded courtyard of Falkon’s home.

Chanson, as the
dyara
who had invited them to take care of Falkon’s lands, had allowed him and the Arbran to move into it after their first week here. Both men had proven careful and methodical with the house and its contents, as well as the fields and the animals given into their care. Now that the Arbran Knight had ridden away, Chanson was ostensibly keeping an eye on Eduor to make sure he remained honest and honorable, but she watched him simply because ... well, she didn’t quite know why. Other than that she wanted to watch him. Eduor fit into the village, true, but he was still exotic.

She watched him hand the boy a soft currying brush, which would be used on the filly that had been born just three days before, then hand a bucket of wheat corn to the girl, who moved over to the coop and scattered a few handfuls for the chickens to peck at. The trailing edges of the woven fronds sheltering Falkon’s courtyard made it hard to see more than that, but she did glimpse enough to figure out that much of the scene.

So that’s what the betting was about, to see who got the “fun” chore of grooming the new filly and who had to deal with the mindless hens.
She noted what chore Eduor himself had taken with pleasure and amusement.
He’s certainly taking very seriously the rules about cleaning the guano from the henhouse and taking it to the compost heaps. Who would’ve guessed from their reputation that a Mandarite would so happily shovel ... aww, Goddess, the rains are starting in the distance already?

Wrinkling her nose, she sighed and headed back to the temple. Not that she had far to walk; Falkon’s compound was just two houses and courtyards away from the court hall side of the temple. Her
dyarina
came hurrying up as she reached the front entrance.

“The rains are coming,
dyara
!” Jimeyon told her, his eyes wide. “I can feel them this time, I swear it! They come from the northwest, right?”

She grinned. He reminded her of herself at that age, all excited about the tingly damp feeling in her blood and her bones. “Good! Yes, they do. Now, up to the roof. You get to try spin-trancing for the first few minutes. A little more dampness on the village ground won’t hurt it and might harden the dust into dirt.”

Jimeyon nodded, accepting her advice. He would be taught as she had been taught, by lessons, observations, and careful practice under the watchful eye of a trained
dyara
. The
dyarina
knew better than to practice without supervision. There were too many stories in Sundaran lore of what happened when a
dyara
turned bad, whether from evil intent, ignorance, pride, or selfishness.

The reverend
dyara
of the village joined them as they mounted the stairs. Kedle was old, her face wrinkled and her hair solid gray; she moved with the stiffness of the joints that plagued all
dyara
in their later years and rarely left the village walls. But her mind was still sharp and her smile warmer than the sun, and everyone in Oba’s Well revered and loved her.

Once they were on top of the roof, all three of them could see the silvery gray streaks in the distance, drifting like slanted veils. They could even smell the cool, musty odor of the approaching rain. Chanson pointed over Jimeyon’s shoulder, giving him a lesson in weather-reading. “See that? How the rain-veils drift to the east with the wind?”

He squinted, thought, and nodded. “Yes. It looks ... it looks like it might miss some of the village lands. It’s going more to the east than southeast, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it’ll miss slightly more than half,”
dyara
Kedle stated. “I will call half of the clouds to the south.
Your
job, Jimeyon, will be to open yourself up to the clouds and spin the water over the village into the collectors.” She nodded at the sloped tubs lining the temple roof. “Make sure you do not miss.”

Each of the rectangular-mouthed bins led down to one of the four cisterns carved in the bedrock beneath the village. There were drains in the roof which also led to the cistern caves, but those would pick up whatever dust had been tracked across the roof, forcing them to purify the murky turbidity such contamination would cause. These tiled collectors were carefully patched and grouted every summer to get them ready for the rains. There were other collectors somewhat like these ones out in the fields, tall inverted cones that funneled rainwater into storage caverns for later irrigation needs. Those collectors weren’t kept as immaculately clean, but then the ones here in the village were for the villagers themselves.

“Chanson, you will monitor how much water falls on the fields and how much is being collected. You will siphon off whatever excess the
dyarina
cannot yet handle.”

“Yes, reverend,” Chanson said.

“Now, why do we only call half of the clouds?” Kedle prompted their young apprentice. “And why do we only wring out of them what they are willing to give?”

“Because the rains belong to everybody, including the other villages that would have been in their path farther along,” he replied promptly.

“Good lad. I will summon the rains, now,” Kedle warned them. Lifting her arms, draped in their dark blue
thawa
sleeves, she started humming to herself and began making beckoning, almost clawing gestures with her hands. The clouds started to roil.

Mindful of her duties, Chanson reached out with her own powers, extending her mind to the north. The churning of the clouds being divided were causing the droplets inside of them to grow larger and fall faster, heavier. She quickly caught the excess, cupping her hands and turning on her heel.

Like most of the younger women of the village, she was clad in a blouse and gathered skirts instead of the one-piece
thawa
. Her hem floated outward as she began her spin-trance, echoing in sky blue the way the silvery curtains of falling rain now twisted and spun. On the top of the temple and far out to the north, the two of them danced, her in her skirts and the rain in its veil. Diverting the excess into the nearest field collectors, Chanson slowed and tapered off her efforts as the clouds finished parting.

Now the rain that fell wasn’t excessive, though it was enough to darken the ground visibly even at this distance. She judged it enough to water the fields and orchards without threatening anything; it was time to let nature and the careful pulling of the reverend
dyara
handle the matter. Waiting for the clouds to reach the village gave her enough time to slip between two collector bins and peer over the edge of the temple wall. From up here, she could see into Falkon’s courtyard, and could tell that the chickens had been fed and the filly groomed.

The young girl now swept the courtyard stones, while the boy ... well, Chanson couldn’t see where he was, but she knew the foreigner had bartered with their mother for chores out of them in exchange for teaching them to read and write once the busy planting season was over and the more leisurely weeding season began. All of the mothers and fathers had agreed to the bargain, after the reverend
dyara
Kedle had examined his writing skills in Sundaran and pronounced them more than adequate for the task.

The elderly woman had declared her fingers too gnarled and stiff with
dyara
’s disease to teach the children, while Chanson would be busy teaching their
dyarina
how to walk through the fields and gauge the water needs of all the various plants and animals this season. Someone needed to teach the villagers the basics, and the foreigner needed to build up a source of wealth for himself, not just tend Falkon’s farm in the would-be warrior’s absence.

Despite the way the clouds darkened the late afternoon light, Eduor himself was easily discernible, his loose golden curls a match for the yellow decorating his green
thawa.
He had brought the filly’s dam out of the shadows of the stables and was brushing her now; the donkeys who had pulled the plow through the tough soil had already been retired for the day and were no doubt groomed, fed, and drowsing in their stalls.

Who would’ve thought a Mandarite nobleman could be such a conscientious farmer? He pampers even the chickens, laying straw to catch their guano and cleaning their house every few days.
Despite all the things the village could have held against him, his rank, his nationality, his unfamiliarity with Sundaran ways, he was earning the respect of her people.
And he’s earning my respect, too.

Kedle cleared her throat. Pulling her attention back to the task at hand, Chanson moved away from the edge of the roof. The clouds had moved close enough that Jimeyon would need to begin shortly. That meant monitoring him and his efforts with her instinctive awareness of the water heading their way.

I think I should tell him that he’s earning our respect,
she decided, getting ready to coach and praise her young apprentice.
Like I do with Jimeyon, here. It won’t hurt him to know we think he’s doing alright, and as I was the one who first welcomed him, if a bit tartly, I should be the one to let him know he
is
welcome among us. Especially now that his Arbran friend is gone and he is alone. And I did treat him roughly when he first arrived.

 

 

Several weeks later, tired from channeling the latest, late autumn storm and its worrisome lightning, Chanson found herself distracted by a burst of laughter from somewhere beyond the temple walls. Leaving Jimeyon to assist
dyara
Kedle down the steps, she crossed to the edge of the roof and leaned over the waist-high parapet.

There, on the street leading into the village, walked a very muddy, very bedraggled figure. It was so muddy, Chanson had to look twice even to realize what the gender was, let alone the identity. When she did, she winced.
Poor Eduor! He has so much quiet dignity, but everyone is pointing and laughing at him now.

The voice of one of the younger men who hadn’t left with Falkon floated up to her on the wall. “
I
think he’s trying to make himself look like one of us!”

Someone else called out, “Hey, Eduor—you missed a few spots!” and a third, a grandmother, lifted her hands as she cried, “—You’re supposed to leave your
palms
pale, not the back of your hands, boy!” and that set the rest of them laughing even harder.

Even Chanson felt the urge to giggle. It was quickly stifled by the silent not-smile Eduor gave in reply, and the stiff way he continued up the street, limping toward the temple. Toward the bathing halls, in specific.
I think he’s hurt,
she realized.
Not just by their jokes, but physically hurt, too. I should get downstairs to see if he needs tending. Not to mention find out what happened to him.

Now that the latest storm was over, the wind was beginning to pick up; from the heat carried in the breeze, she knew it was the
meltimi
, the hot, dry wind that signaled the start of the winter season. Not that winter in Sundara was anything more than a convenience of language; it simply meant the cooler of the two local dry seasons, with spring and autumn bringing the few but necessary rains.

She was a good enough water-caller that neither she, nor her apprentice, nor the reverend
dyara
had gotten wet. The same could not be said for the land outside the village walls. With the planting season nearly over, the trio had diverted some of the water into the cisterns, but had let the rain pound the ground; the roots of their crops were firmly established, and it never hurt to let the soil soak up the last of the rains this late in the season. Early on, the rain wouldn’t penetrate the too-dry soil and would only run off into the wadis of the desert, but now, the ground was quite moist.

Muddy, even. Taking herself downstairs, Chanson headed into the men’s side of the bathing hall. Normally women weren’t allowed in there, nor were men allowed in the women’s side, but there were exceptions to the rule. Infants and toddlers were kept with whatever parent brought them to the baths, obviously, at least until they were old enough to be trusted with bathing themselves. The priesthood and the
dyara
, by the right of their calling and their training as village priests and healers, could also enter either side at need.

And I see that he needs me,
Chanson thought the moment she caught sight of Eduor trying to ease his shirt over his head, his every movement slow, stiff, and accompanied by little grunts of discomfort.

The garment was a gift from one of the older women in the village, who had hired him to write a letter to one of her sons in another village. The ink and paper had come from the temple, and normally it would have been handled by the reverend
dyara
, but old Marna had taken pity on the foreigner in their midst, promising him a set of tunic and trews. Such things were easier to farm in than an ankle-length
thawa
, and less odd-looking than the fitted hose and side-slit tunic he had arrived in. Not to mention more colorful than the bland pastels favored by the forest-dwelling Natallians far to the south.