Lord of the Isles (9 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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S
harina brought the rack of lamb into what was now the private dining room where her mother served Asera and Meder. The chamber was the storage room most years except during the Sheep Fair, but the extra blankets and crockery were now in use. Wainer, commander of the detachment of Blood Eagles, ate with his men in the common room.
“
Someone
in the parish must have riding horses!” Asera was saying to Lora in irritated surprise. “I don't insist that my escort be mounted, but surely you don't expect Meder and myself to walk to Carcosa?”
“Please, Your Ladyship,” Lora said in a flustered voice. She curtsied, her eyes never meeting those of the nobles to whom she spoke. “It's only drovers and merchants from Carcosa who ride here. We plow with oxen and if we go somewhere it's by our own legs, yes.”
Sharina set the platter on the sideboard, shifting the knife, steel, and fork she carried in her right hand along with part of the weight of the dish. Normally Sharina tended bar while Reise carved for guests dining privately, but he'd decided to switch their duties after he'd sized up the sailors thronging the common room for something to drink. Garric helped Reise and brought fresh casks of beer and cider up from the cellar at need.
We didn't expect nobles from Ornifal to appear
—
sailing, walking
,
or flying,
Sharina thought. She was excited to have noble visitors and knew she'd brag for years to come that she, Sharina os-Reise, had served them with her own hands, but her basic attitude was the same as her father's: treat nobles well because it's your duty to do so; take their money; but
never mistake them for gods or yourself for a dog. Lora dithered in a combination of pride in the contact and terror that she'd fail to please the great folk.
“What a barbarous place,” Asera said, shaking her head. “I suppose we'll have to sail to Carcosa after all.”
The room's dozen candles filled all the inn's holders as well as a pair borrowed from Katchin against the promise that he'd be permitted to greet the nobles formally after dinner. Half the lights were tallow dips, not beeswax, and from the way Meder squinted as he picked the last morsels from his flounder he wasn't as impressed by the illumination as locals would have been.
Sharina struck the knife quickly down one side then the other on the steel, straightening the edge to carve. She traded the steel for the fork, only absently aware that Meder had turned and was staring at her. She began to slice the tender meat away from the ribs.
“Asera, look,” the young man said. “Look at her!”
Lora took away the fish plates, clattering them onto a corner of the sideboard. She must be flustered; her touch was usually deft and silent.
Sharina deliberately didn't turn from her task. The flush starting to color her cheeks was as much anger as embarrassment. If they were talking about her, then what right did they have to sound as though she was a, a horse herself?
“Girl?” Asera said. “You there—with the knife, for the Lady's sake! Turn around and face me.”
“She's my daughter, Your Ladyship,” Lora said with another curtsy. She wore a blue and green overskirt of stiffened linen, a garment Sharina had seen only in a storage chest before. It flared when Lora dipped, making her look like a peacock displaying. “Sharina os-Reise. Sharina, curtsy for the lord and lady.”
Sharina put down the carving implements and bowed instead, trying to keep disgust for her mother's behavior from her expression. She'd never learned to curtsy properly, despite Lora's attempts to teach her when she was younger. Trying
to do so now would be to make a fool of herself.
“Where do you come from, girl?” Meder asked. He'd changed into a doublet of red velvet for the evening; his tawny hair flowed across his shoulders in a contrast that Sharina would have found attractive were his face not quite so tense and white.
“She's my
daughter
, Your Lordship,” Lora repeated as though perhaps the nobles hadn't heard her the first time.
“Do you take us for fools, woman?” Meder snapped. He got to his feet, shoving the chair behind him so roughly that it fell over with a loud crash. The inn's furnishings were all of local craftsmanship, sturdy rather than beautiful. “Just look at her!”
He reached for Sharina, his thumb and forefinger extended with the obvious intention of gripping the girl's chin to adjust her profile for him to inspect. She stepped back, feeling cold all over. Her fingers brushed the handle of the carving knife; she jerked her hand away in horror at the image that flashed into her mind.
“Meder,” the procurator warned. She stood up also, lifting one of the pewter candlesticks from the table. “If she is …”
The young man froze, backed a step, and then to Sharina's utter amazement bowed to her. “I apologize, mistress,” he said. “In my excitement I behaved in an uncivilized fashion. It won't happen again.”
“What my companion was pointing out … Sharina, is it?” Asera said. “Is that you don't look anything like either the maid here or your father. You're tall, you have—”
She moved the candle closer to Sharina's face.
“—gray eyes. And your hair is lighter than that of anyone else I've seen in this village.”
“What you look like, in fact,” Meder said with controlled delight, “is an Ornifal noble. An Ornifal noble like the late Count Niard. I ask you again: Where do you come from?”
“I'm from here!” Sharina said. “I was born here!”
Lora put a hand on hers to calm her. In a voice with more dignity than anything else she'd shown since the noble guests
arrived, Lora said, “My children were born in Carcosa, Your Lordship, where Reise and I were in service in the palace. But we've lived in this hamlet for all our lives since they were born, lacking the few days we took to travel here.”
“Born when?” Asera said. She remained motionless, but the focus of her body made Sharina think of a cat poised to leap. “Born seventeen years, five months, and three days ago, woman?”
“Or it might have been four days,” Meder said with a minute frown. “If a daughter rather than a son, then perhaps four. The sun was on the cusp.”
“It might have been,” Lora echoed slowly. “About that time, perhaps. But Sharina is my daughter.”
Asera looked sharply at her companion. “You said the storm was unnatural. Could it have been meant to bring us here instead of to harm us?”
“Without my magic—” Meder started hotly. He blinked, fully considering the storm in the light of Sharina's presence
here
. “I thought it was hostile. I fought with all my strength and it still was on the edge of overwhelming us. If I hadn't been aboard, the ship wouldn't have survived.”
“But you were aboard,” Asera said. She replaced the candlestick on the table and fastidiously flicked a spatter of wax from the back of her hand. She and Meder acted as if they were alone with the furniture. “And without the storm blowing us south of the Passage, we'd be searching in Carcosa for traces of something that wasn't there.”
Meder and the procurator turned their appraisal again onto Sharina. Lora stepped in front of her, either out of protective instinct or in a claim of ownership. Asera's mouth tightened in something that could have become either a frown or a sneer; Lora shrank away.
“Can you tell for certain?” Asera asked her companion. Her gaze never left Sharina.
“Of course,” Meder said, irritated at a question whose answer was so obvious to him. “I have the tools I'll need in my room. We'll carry out the rite there.”
The nobles were lodged in her parents' quarters: the procurator in Reise's room, Meder in Lora's side of the upstairs suite. For now Sharina and her mother were squeezed into the girl's corner garret, while Reise had his son's room and Garric slept in the stables.
Asera nodded. “Come along then, child,” she said to Sharina in a not-unfriendly voice, rather as though she were speaking to a favorite dog. She gestured and started for the door.
“Wait!” Sharina said.
They stared at her. Lora touched her hand.
“Wait,” Sharina repeated in a calmer tone. Her voice didn't tremble. “What is it you're going to do?”
“Do?” Asera said. “We're going to determine if the Count and Countess of Haft were your real parents, child.”
“And if they were,” Meder added as his arm shepherded Sharina toward the door, “then you've a life ahead of you never
dreamed
by anyone in this miserable sheep pasture!”
G
arric had hung the oil lamp on the axletree leaning near the stable door; the cartwheels were beside it. An iron tire had come off last winter, and the smith hadn't made his rounds yet through the hamlet to weld another onto the wooden felly.
“Do you need the light anymore?” he called to Tenoctris, making a bed of loose straw at the other end of the stable.
“No, I …” Tenoctris said. In a tone of mild surprise she went on, “That's odd. You—”
Both door leaves lay back against the brick walls; the opening was wide enough to pass a team of horses still hitched. The hermit nevertheless stopped outside the building and slapped the wooden panel with his left hand: a quick rap-rap-rap
like a gigantic woodpecker drumming for a mate.
“May I come through?” he asked. His voice sounded harsh, rusty.
“Sure,” Garric said. A dozen sailors came out of the inn, making the courtyard echo with laughter. Several of them began to sing chanteys, but they weren't the same chantey. “Ah, there's plenty of room to sleep here if you don't want to go back in the dark.”
Nonnus smiled faintly. “I thank you for your offer,” he said, “but I find the dark more of a friend than not. Besides, tonight the stars are clear.”
He entered the stable, letting his hands relax. He'd been spreading them to prove that he wasn't carrying a weapon, Garric realized. “I thought I'd check on your injuries, both of you. Do you need more ointment, mistress?”
Tenoctris looked at the backs of her hands, then turned them toward the hermit and the light. “There's only a little tenderness now,” she said.
Nonnus stepped close and pressed two fingers gently against Tenoctris' cheek. “Pain?” he asked.
“No, though tenderness as I said,” Tenoctris said. “Without your help I'd have been in great pain, I realize.”
“You've done more to heal yourself than I did,” Nonnus said with the same faint smile as before.
“I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd been out of my head with pain, would I?” she replied.
The hermit turned to Garric. “And you, boy? Let's see the leg.”
Garric pivoted and braced his right foot waist-high on the stable wall to show both that the limb was supple and that the wounds were knitting cleanly. The hermit brought the lamp close. The puffy flesh around the fang marks was pink but not red or streaky. When Nonnus prodded the edge of what had been the hole all the way through the leg, Garric felt a localized burning instead of a barbed lance thrusting to his groin.
To cover his wince, Garric bragged, “I've been doing all
my normal work. I could carry you around the courtyard if you like.”
“And why would I like to do something so silly?” the hermit said with mild amusement. “You don't need to prove you're a fine brave man to me. Or to anybody.”
“He'll be older before he learns that,” Tenoctris said. “If he ever does.”
Nonnus chuckled, the first time Garric had heard such a sound from him. He slapped Garric's knee with a hand like the flat of a wooden shovel. “You're healing,” he said. “But I warn you that in ten years or twenty you'll feel every strain you put your body through now.”
He looked at Tenoctris and added, “He won't believe that, either.”
“Sir?” said Garric, lowering his foot flat. He was embarrassed to have the older people discussing him as though he were a funny cloud formation. “Can't we pay you something? The least you've done is saved my leg and I know it.”
“The folk of this borough didn't run me out as others might have when I settled in the woods here,” Nonnus said. “There's nothing else I need—”
The smile again, there and gone like a rainbow.
“Nothing material, at least. If I can set a few bones or cool a fever, that's small enough recompense for what the community has given me.”
He nodded toward Tenoctris and added, “Besides, she's the one responsible for you being able to walk already. Well, I never denied that wizardry was real. Healing's a better use for it than others I've seen.”
“You're from Pewle Island, aren't you?” Tenoctris said. “They hunted seals there in my day.”
Nonnus nodded. “They hunted seals in my day too,” he said without intonation. “And still do, I hope. It's an honest life.”
“The young man with the procurator is a wizard,” Tenoctris said without a transition. She glanced toward Garric to include him in the conversation, but it was obviously the hermit's
viewpoint that she sought. “He's powerful, and he's frighteningly ignorant of the forces he's working with.”
“How do you tell?” Nonnus said. He had the interest of a craftsman for another's specialty. “Has he been working magic here?”
“How do you tell when a seal's about to rise?” Tenoctris replied. “How does Garric tell which way the tree he cut will fall? Power trails after Meder like the hair of a comet filling half the night sky.”
“Then he knows you're a wizard too?” Garric said. “Have you talked to him about it?”
A sailor wandered through the courtyard with a pair of villagers. In a loud, slurred voice he said, “—and the folk on that island didn't wear anything but necklaces of bones. They made me a king, like enough, they did, and that only because I'd saved a silver mirror from the wreck.”
There was a pause as a bottle gurgled. Villagers murmured respectfully. The voices moved out the gate.
Garric stepped back from the stable doorway, drawing the others with him. The hanging lamp would deter folk looking for privacy to do things they weren't quite drunk enough or desperate enough to do under the eyes of the community.
Nonnus dropped into a squat, his haunches against the brick base of one of the posts. They and the beams they supported were ancient oak, so black with the grime of ages that only touch could tell their grain.
“Meder bor-Mederman thinks I'm somebody's maiden sister if he thinks anything about me,” Tenoctris said. Her smile reminded Garric of Nonnus' expression when he was talking as much to the past as to his companions. “He doesn't really see the forces he works with, much less notice that I attract them also. And of course by Meder's standards, I'm not really a wizard at all.”
“Mistress …” Garric said. He didn't know how to treat Tenoctris. On the one hand she was a penniless castaway with manners and tastes as simple as those of a Haft shepherd—perfectly willing to sleep in the stable when the inn was full
of paying customers. But she was also educated beyond even Reise's standards, a noble and courtier as surely as these two from Valles, and besides that a wizard. The parts were unfamiliar, and the way they fit together was as puzzling to Garric as a river running uphill.
“If you brought yourself here from so far away,” he stumbled on, “you're—you must be really powerful. All that kid did”—Meder was some years older than Garric, but he was a wispy fop—“was keep from sinking in a storm. We've fishermen here who could have done that!”
Nonnus grinned. “Spoken like a shepherd, boy,” he said. “That storm would have driven under Pewle sealers if it caught them at sea. Don't let the fact you dislike somebody blind you to what he is and what he can do.”
Garric blinked as though he'd been struck. He was used to venting his opinions to people who didn't really listen to or
think
about the statements: Cashel, Sharina, other villagers. It shocked him to have somebody poke holes in his words instead of agreeing and adding some equally empty comment. “Ah, sorry,” he said.
“I've only once seen a wizard with such power,” Tenoctris said. She twisted a lock of her short gray hair, bringing it around to the side to look at out of the corner of her eye.
“That
was power enough to sink Yole like a stone in a millpond. And I shouldn't wonder if Meder doesn't manage to do something similar. That train he spreads is almost certain to catch something from a place he really shouldn't disturb.”
“Court folk live in a different world, mistress,” Nonnus said softly. Like Tenoctris, he was thinking of other times as he spoke, though of the present as well. “They don't understand the world that simple people live in, where life is always on the edge. Better that the two sorts never touch.”
“All I wanted was my library and leisure to study the way the forces touched,” Tenoctris said. “I wasn't interested in using them. I wasn't very good at that part anyway.”
She smiled ruefully at Garric and added, “I could never have summoned the forces I rode to come here. And ‘here'
was simply where the crest chanced to bring me—I couldn't control that, I couldn't even predict it. The choice was random.”
“Or fated,” Nonnus said. He was smiling also; but while the hermit wasn't hostile to Tenoctris, it was clear that he disagreed with her basic assumptions. “Or by the Lady's will.”
The lamp guttered as it burned down to the last of its oil. Garric would have to fetch more from the kitchen if he wanted to keep it lit.
“I'll go back, then,” Nonnus said. “I just wanted to be sure that you both were healing well.”
“Are you sure you wouldn't like to sleep in the stable?” Garric asked. “Or at least I can fetch you a torch.”
“I appreciate your kindness,” the hermit repeated, shaking his head. The lamplight shrank to a yellow glow around the wick, then flared again for a moment.
“When I look at you now, Garric,” Tenoctris said, pitching her voice so that Nonnus would be sure to hear also, “I see two people. But that wasn't true yesterday.”
“I don't know what you mean,” Garric said. “There's just me.”
Both of them faced him. Tenoctris had a musing expression, but the hermit showed his usual calm detachment.
“Do you feel different?” Nonnus asked.
“I don't …” Garric said. “I … Everything's changing with the ship and the seawolves. And you, mistress.”
He nodded to the wizard. She looked incongruous with her aristocratic delicacy garbed in a worn-out shift, but the silk robe would be out of place in Barca's Hamlet—especially for a castaway sleeping in a stable.
“I don't know how I feel,” he concluded, though he was uncomfortably aware of a muscular figure standing
somewhere
, looking through his eyes and laughing cheerfully.
“True of all of us, I suppose,” Tenoctris said. She didn't sound concerned, just curious.
The lamp went out with final certainty. The hermit walked
away in the starlight, his footsteps soundless. Straw rustled as Tenoctris settled herself on the nest she'd made, leaving Garric with his thoughts.
But not quite alone.

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