He’d understood then that something had passed between Gran and the king, and ever after, Paisi talked about him going to seek his fortune in Guelessar, in service to the king. Paisi had said that one day his father would call him over, and ask how he had grown, and if his father liked the answers he gave that day, he might find him a place in court, maybe to be a clerk or minister, or to serve with the army, to ride a horse and carry a sword as an officer of the Guard.
“As I can’t teach ye too much about horses that ye ain’t learnt of goats, but I can show ye the sword,” Paisi had said. “I don’t know it well, but I can show ye some.”
They had practiced to be the king’s soldiers, then, with sticks, and with the quarterstaff, which Paisi could indeed use very well, and which had raised no few occasions for Gran’s poultices. He had had no great skill at the staff, when all was done. Paisi kept knocking him down, and once knocked him senseless, to Gran’s and Paisi’s dismay. So he applied himself with greater zeal to the books.
This year, however, after the king’s riding by and Aewyn asking him to come visit him in Guelessar, the King’s Dragon Guard had come, the captain of the Guard detail bearing a letter, and two grooms bringing light horses, for him and for Paisi to ride to the capital.
He had never ridden a horse. He managed not to fall off on the way. His was a bay gelding named Feiny and Paisi’s was a piebald named Tammis— and he had learned from the grooms how to see to the horses’ feet and what a horse needed, the same as he knew for the goats and geese. He was delighted to get along fairly well with the horse—he had grown less and less sure he would manage as well with people in Guelemara, and by the time he saw the walls of the city he had been terrified. He had looked forward to a summons from his father, and now faced the reality with deep trepidation, the more so as he rode into a Quinalt city, where witchcraft meant death by fire or hanging, and where, now, he had to face a brother who’d been his friend in the farmyard, where he was the one who knew all the places beyond the fences. Now he knew nothing at all.
He had been so scared when he rode into the courtyard of the Guelesfort. He had been thinking for the last two days of the journey that Aewyn might think differently about him in his own yard, or might even forget that he had asked for him, or grow bored with him after a day or two. But all that fear had flowed out of him when Aewyn had run down the steps to the stable yard and held Feiny’s bridle for him, despite the hovering grooms.
It had been that way between them from that day forward. Aewyn had been so looking forward to a brother. He had gotten a sister instead. He loved baby Aemaryen, to be sure. But, as Aewyn put it, even a brother wouldn’t have been that good, lying around most of the time, and crying and wanting all his mother’s attention whenever he tried to talk to her.
Besides, Aewyn informed him, his sister would grow up to be Regent of Elwynor, and maybe queen of that kingdom, and would never even live in Guelessar at all once she was of age: it would not be her choice, when it happened, but it meant she would go away. The lords’ sons let Aewyn win at every game, and their fathers were always looking for advantage and gathering gossip. So a brother was his heart’s desire, and when he had put it to his father this year, his father had agreed.
It was the happiest winter. The very happiest of Otter’s life, little of it as he had had yet. He had expected to leave before this. He was sure he would have to leave in spring. He would ride back to Gran’s in time for him and Paisi to do the planting, then—
Then—would come a difficult question. He would want to come back to Guelessar. He would want to go riding with Aewyn, and just—be here and live here the way things were now. But he missed Gran, too, and Gran needed him, and especially needed Paisi. Even if the king wanted him to stay here, the way Paisi and Gran had always said he might do, he still had to get home when he was needed—and that meant leaving Aewyn, the thought of which had already begun to hurt.
But he did long for home, too. He could see the cottage with his eyes shut.
He could see the thatch snow-covered as it would be, now, since the recent snowfalls, and the yard and shed roof alike under a thick white blanket. It had that clarity of a true dream, the edges unnaturally fine and clear in the night, just as if he were looking at it tonight. It comforted him.
But there was no smoke from the chimney, and there ought to be: there was always a little smoke, even at night. Certainly the snow never collected atop it. And he tried to dream of the inside of the cottage, and to dream of Gran, to be sure she was safe. He imagined her asleep in her bed, under the patchwork quilt, but imagine as he would, the only thing he could see, more and more insistently, was the chimney, the very top of the chimney, as close as he had seen it when he had climbed up with Paisi to mend the thatch last fall. A thick rim of snow lay about the vent. The warmth should have melted it, as fast as the snow fell. But it had snowed the chimney almost shut.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and he could not find Gran and he could not wake up, not without a great struggle, as if the dream did not want to let him go.
He reached out with his hand. He found the bedclothes cold. Paisi was gone, nowhere to be found. He was alone in the bed, and he sat up, flinging the covers back.
A strange sight met him, Paisi sitting on the hearthstones in the other room, a huddled shape just sitting on the hearth between two good chairs. The light of dawn was in the windows, a gray and icy dawn.
“Paisi?” he said, but Paisi didn’t move.
He fought his way to the edge of the thick feather bed and rolled out and down, his feet meeting the icy floor. He dragged a coverlet off, wrapping it around him as he went.
“Paisi?”
Paisi still didn’t move. Otter sank down to his knees and shook Paisi by the arm. Paisi was cold on one side and overly warm on the other.
“The fire ain’t lit,” Paisi said, gazing into the coals. “She’s abed sick, an’ the fire ain’t lit.”
He felt chill himself and thought to wrap the coverlet around Paisi, who let it fall.
“Paisi?” He closed Paisi’s hand on the cloth. “Take it.”
Paisi’s hand closed and he held on to it, still looking into the coals, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t see ’er, Otter. The cottage is dark, an’ the fire ain’t lit.”
“I dreamed, too, about the chimney being out. I dreamed it just now.”
“She’s fevered,” Paisi said. “She’s got the fever, she ain’t fed ’erself since yesterday.”
“What can we do, Paisi?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.” The note of unreasoning fear in Paisi’s voice would have sent a chill through him if none had been there to start with. “You dreamed it, too?”
“I dreamed about the chimney.”
“The fire,” Paisi said. “The fire not bein’ lit, in this weather—”
“We can tell the king!”
“About what, Otter-lad? Can we tell him we dreamed it? Can we talk about dreams wi’ these Quinalt priests hoverin’ near? She’s sick abed, is what. That damn chimney’s choked up again, and it never were right. I wanted to tear that crooked thing down this summer an’ build it anew, an’ she wouldn’t have it, no, no, the fields wants weedin’, the shed wants the door fixed, it ain’t no great matter, run a stick up it, and it’ll do, it’s always done. If the smoke don’t kill us in our sleep… Damn it, Otter-lad!” Paisi ran his hands through his hair so it stood on end. “Maybe I’m makin’ trouble that ain’t trouble. Maybe she’ll wake up and take one of ’er potions, won’t she? She’ll poke the broom handle up an’ unstick that chimney.”