Silver May Tarnish (23 page)

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Authors: Andre Norton

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“By then the war raged and all hands were against a man who was of Alizon blood. I dyed my hair and kept a hooded cloak about me when I went abroad, but still some would always suspect and I must flee again. In the end I sought out the South where the hounds had never come or where they had been only briefly. I hoped here I might find a home again.” The bitterness in his voice sharpened like a whetted knife. “Will
you
now drive me forth for the sin of being my mother's son and her a victim of Alizon herself?”
I reached for the mule's reins and turned him so Elban could mount more easily. Then I faced the potter. “There
are none of us here who have not know fear or unjust grief. Shall we send them from us for that? Mount and ride to your home, Elban, Potter of Honeycoombe.”
I said no more before turning to walk before the mule, but as I turned I stole a glance at him. The mule moved to follow. Aye, after me rode Elban with the first smile I had ever seen upon his face. I had never seen a brighter one.
I
n the last days of Fall, Levas rode out. With him went a string of all the mounts we could spare. We had traded away carefully those beasts which left with Meive for the cross-roads. She had exchanged the six taken and Dogas's two for three good young mares and supplies. Now Levas sold our bandit's gleanings and returned with a fine colt of a strain being bred by a lord in the North. There was Arvon blood in the animal but also something of the Waste. The colt had both strength and speed, and the endurance and ability to survive on little water and less feed. His foals should be an asset to Honeycoombe.
Within our dale the people had worked hard. I believed with so many grazers gone we would have stored feed and pasture enough for the snow months. Winter came after Levas had returned, bringing with the first heavy snow a great relief to me. Honeycoombe was well South so that the snows came early. The dale had never been easy to find, so said Meive. But with many of the passes closed and the thin trail over the higher hills blocked we should not need to fear Hogeth nor any outlaw band. None but the utterly desperate moved in Winter. It was too easy to die without adequate shelter. But we had wrought well. Within Honeycoombe
all was snug, each cot with its store of firewood, ample food, and a watertight roof. There were now twenty-four of us. I had talked in turn to each adult, explaining to them of Elban. Elesha set the tone for her tiny clan.
“The poor man cannot help it. And as for his mother, what? A young lass is cozened by a rogue. How is this a reason to murder his mother and drive him from his home? His lord should think shame.” After that, for a few weeks she went out of her way to help him ready his cottage. Elban accepted graciously, so they became friends. Our leather-worker was neither so kind nor so accepting, but, intimidated by Meive's glare, he shut his mouth after the first hasty words and said no more.
As for Levas, that experienced blank-shield warrior only grunted at the news.
“I guessed. What of it? Alizon fought well enough. If every fighter went around killing everyone whose parentage he disapproved there'd be damn few left.”
I had to grin at that. He was right enough. I used his words to the sisters, who agreed and swept into agreement also the two who had joined them. Our leather-worker and his family might have made trouble, still remembering the loss of a wife and mother, and the crippling of their father. But seeing how the rest of us thought, while they might never accept Elban, at least they continued silent. Thus it was as a fairly united group that we settled into the season of snows.
That first Winter was one I think I shall never forget. Most evenings we gathered to eat in the keep's great hall. After food we would take turns to tell old stories, sing songs, and several times the children had learned a small play to act for us. Small Isa was oft the lead in that activity.
Elban had spoken only the truth about his skills. In the short time before Winter he had fired several loads of plates, bowls and dishes, mugs and cups for us. They were of a quality I had only previously seen on a lord's high
table. We praised them honestly so that Elban beamed, laying a part of the quality on the fineness of the clay. We had sited his kiln in a building separate from his cottage. Elban knew what he wanted for his workshop and thus we had taken apart one of the old cattle shelters, which was stone. It had been rebuilt by his home. Elban lined the small stone building with clay inside to fill every chink between the stones, so that even in the depths of Winter, as long as the kiln was hot, he was able to continue his work there without freezing. Nor, between the materials used and the care Elban took, was there danger of fire.
The sisters, Betha and Lirwas, had taken the weaver's cot, which was larger than usual, with more rooms. Thus they had ample room to set up their looms permanently and dye skeins of wool in their dye pots. They opened two of the rooms to the land, and once Winter came so did their sheep, huddling into the shelter provided and enjoying the warmth which came through the wall between them and the cottage.
Before the snows became too deep, Meive and I took the mules, more sure-footed in the treacherous footing, and went to the place beyond our inner valley. We dismounted and I spoke quietly.
“We come to tell you of what passes.” There was a stirring within the crevice of the cliff-face. The reply was slow.
“Why?”
“Do not neighbors talk together?” Meive said quietly. “It is only courtesy that they should do so. It is also good sense. How should one neighbor know if what they do may not trespass on another if she does not speak of what she does and plans? And what if there is danger, or feud with another dale? Should you not know?”
The tone became more welcoming at that. “Speak then. I forget some of your customs, but, may I offer a guest cup?”
“Of your courtesy,” Meive agreed.
We drank from strange guest cups then. A sort of spiced
warming wine in tall fluted containers made of a light wrought metal. They were beautiful and the wine, though unknown to us, tasted light and fruity with a clean aftertaste which cleansed the palate. We honestly praised both wine and the beauty of the containers, our remarks bringing greater warmth to the voice as it addressed us.
“Be welcome to my home, be fortunate in your plans. I listen, speak and be heard.” So we talked. Now and again the voice commented and always the words were sound. Then it fell silent for some time before it spoke again. “I am weary.” Meive rose at once from where she was sat on a small convenient flat-topped boulder.
“A good neighbor knows when it is time to leave. We have not told our people of this place, nor shall we. Lorcan believes you have safeguards which mean they see it not?”
“He is right. None may enter but you and he, since you have gifts which permit it, to each his own.” Meive turned to stare at me, then at the direction from which came the voice.
“Lorcan has some gift also, what is it?” There was no reply. She asked again. There was nothing: even the feeling that said someone was there had vanished. She looked at me. I handed her the reins of her mule.
“Let us go.” So we did, cantering across the valley of the voice into Honeycoombe's inner vale and thence to the keep. But as we went Meive speculated. If it was true I was permitted entrance to the voice's home because I, too, had a gift, what could it be? I saw her remember, then.
“Lorcan, once you wondered if that one might not be in some way related to her who was saved from Pletten. Could that be your ‘gift?' That you come of a line which once aided one of her kin?”
She said what I had thought. “Berond said the girl's kinmale told my great-grandfather that they were long-lived and that they did not quickly forget a debt owed. It may be the voice is kin also or knows them or the tale.” I grinned
and shrugged. “How does one know about someone who is no more than a voice and a shadow?”
“She gave us guest cups.”
“She did. But tell me, Meive. Did you see how the cups came or went?”
My lady stared at me then. “No. Lorcan. I do not even remember thinking it strange. I just turned and found the cup already in my hand. I put it down on my boulder between mouthfuls. When it was empty it was gone, yet that, too, aroused no wonder in me. We have been bespelled.”
“No harm was done us. It was we who came uninvited so I daresay we have no cause to complain,” was all I could think to say.
Meive was practical. “That is so, besides which, Winter closes in. There is no need to hunt stock in the voice's place. Let us stay away from it until Spring.” So we agreed and still we spoke to none of our comrades about the hidden place. The voice agreed it was truly hidden. Both Meive and I, too, had long since learned that to allow a sleeping dog to slumber undisturbed is usually far wiser.
Winter passed quietly. We had our small joys, one when Manon came to Meive saying she wished her lady to approve a wedding between Manon and the new shepherd. That permission Meive granted most happily. Thus we had two weddings: one between Levas and Vari after the first snows, and the second towards Spring. Between them lay Mid-Winter's night and fair feasting as we celebrated the rise of the year towards Spring. I found then that roast goat-kid is very tasty when glazed with honey.
I did not know from Meive, but I had guessed at her fear she would not do well as daleslady. She was wrong. I think at first our people deferred to her because Honeycoombe had been her home and she knew her home well from cot to keep. Then, too, they respected her for her gifts and her warriors. But perhaps her gifts gave her more, a natural air of authority which guided without offense so that, over the
Winter, more and more those within our dale looked to her. I rejoiced to see it, and to see also how she met that expectation.
From the first I had respected her courage and good sense. I was uncertain when I had begun to truly love her, but I had long since known I wished her to be to me more than a liege-lady. It was heart's lady I would have her, but I was afraid to speak in case she saw it as a demand outside dales custom. I had no family to approach her, to ask her privately how she felt about me; I could not ask her that question myself, if she did not desire me how could she answer honestly and to my face?
It would not be quite dales etiquette for her to broach the subject to me, but less a breach of that than if I approached Meive myself. So I waited patiently; if she loved me, she would find a way to tell me her desires, if she did not—well, that was ill news I could wait forever to hear.
Sometimes in the southern dales Spring comes early—a a false Spring, for after a week of thaw often the weather closes in again. Through Winter we had maintained guard. Not in the children's hiding place, but in the small sentry-post, which had a generous fireplace. The sentries stood their watches still in twos, however, a child and an adult to watch together and with both mules in the tiny stable under the same roof. It was well Meive and I had continued the guard for it was in that false Spring that we were called.
“Lord, come quick. There's a man on a horse.”
Gera was tugging at my sleeve before I could rise. I had been mending a broken link on my chain hauberk when he burst in.
“Steady, lad. Calm down, take a mouthful of this.”
I gave him a mug of the heated honey-sweetened tea we had always on the hob. “Take your time. If it's only one man he can wait while you catch your breath.”
I was brushing snow from him as I spoke. In the warmth of the hall it would melt and wet him through. It was no longer snowing outside. This must be drifted snow kicked
up as he rode. I waited until he was calmer, his breathing even, and half the contents of his mug were gone. Then I sat down opposite him.
“You say there was a man?”
“I was on watch with Criten,” Gera began. I nodded, glancing up as Meive entered. She sat to listen in silence. “I saw something while he was tending the fire. It looked just like a black dot on the snow. Criten said to watch it so I did.”
I could see if he continued this recitation Meive would die of frustration. I hurried the tale a little. “Yes, as it got closer you saw it was a man. What then?”
“He looked hurt. He was riding all to one side, kind' a hunched over. Criten thought he was heading South but when he got near us he fell off the horse. Criten saddled up one'a the mules an'said I was to get on an' watch. If anything happened I was to ride for you and not waste any time.” I jerked upright.
“Something did happen?”
“No.” I bit back exasperation. Gera was a good child but painfully slow at explaining anything.
“Then what? Why are you here?” I asked
“Criten told me to come to the keep.”
Meive took over the questioning, hastily, before my slipping temper resulted in a shout which would scare Gera into silence.
“Gera. Listen to me. You both saw a man on a horse riding by the trail.” She held up a hand. “Don't interrupt me. The minor details aren't important just now. I don't care if he was on or just by the trail. Now! You saw this man. He was alone. There are no others following him?” Gera shook his head.
“Good. He seemed to be hurt in some way. He fell from his horse and Criten told you to be ready in case the man attacked him when Criten went out to see. But the man didn't. Criten told you to ride anyhow, to let us know. Is that right?” Gera nodded mutely.
“Does Criten want us to come and look at the man, is that it?”
“Yes, m' lady. Criten says he thinks the man's a bandit. Someone stabbed him an' Criten says he doesn't think the man's long to live.”
“Good lad,” Meive told him. “You've done well. I want you to stay here until you are warm again. Drink another mug of Tasflower tea. After that you can ride back to join us. Ride slowly, Rez did well, too, and it would be wrong to make him gallop all the way again.” The boy nodded and we left hastily. Once out of the hall Meive turned to me.
“I do not like this, Lorcan. A lone bandit traveling in the false Spring. He must know the dangers.”

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