One of the young women, Terlys, was also alone while her husband was off with the scouting party, so I began to take my evening meal in her tent, helping her with her two lively youngsters, Janos, a boy of five, and Ennia, her daughter. Ennia was barely out of her cradle, but at times it seemed to me that she could crawl faster than her mother and I could walk, so busy did she keep us… untangling her from the spinning basket, snatching her from imminent immolation in the cooking fire; once I turned my back for what seemed a bare moment, only to find her playing with her mother’s copper necklet, sitting serenely between the front hooves of the herd-gelding tethered outside the tent!
Gunnora be thanked, the horse, as though he knew he must not move, stood like a rooted oak as I retrieved the baby. I carried her back into the tent, walking with knees that only will kept steady beneath me, as all the dreadful possibilities of the situation rose before my eyes. After I handed Ennia over to her mother, explaining how I had found her, I cut a thick chunk of bread, salted it, then fed to the gelding, scratching his ears and thanking him for his forbearance.
Returning to Terlys’s tent, I helped her change the baby into a clean dhoti, folding the thickness of the cloth carefully, so it would not chafe her little legs and bottom. Worn out by her exertion, Ennia was asleep before we slipped the clean tunic over her small head. Holding her carefully against my shoulder, I moved to put her in the wicker cradle. As I tucked the blankets around the sleeping child, Terlys’s voice reached me. “You need one of sour own to care for, Lady Joisan.”
I looked up, startled, to see the shadow of a smile about her lips, wondering if she had guessed. Perhaps I might have told her, then, if the tent flap had not rattled with Janos’s return from the practice field where he was learning to ride.
“How did it go today, Janos?” I asked, a little worried. Yesterday he’d returned dirty and scratched from a fall taken over the pony’s head when (acting with the waywardness most ponies possess) it had decided to buck rather than trot in a circle.
“Much better, Cera Joisan.” He grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth. “This time Pika went where I said, not where she wanted.”
His mother hugged him. “Good, good. No more falls, then.”
“Well…” He turned ruefully to show us the seat of his linen trousers. “I didn’t say that. But”—he brightened—today I got back on all by myself!”
That night when I left Terlys’s tent, picking my way carefully between the rows of tents and wagons, I saw that the moon was at her fullest and determined to ask Gunnora tor she is especially mindful of women who are bearing) if I indeed carried a child and, if so, for portents of its birthing. With this in mind, I made my preparations with special care, for I had never had need to try divination of this kind before.
Under the moon’s glow, I walked slowly to a nearby field, seeing there the distant shapes of the horses, hearing their muffled snufflings, the tearing of the grass as they grazed. Near the western side, protected from the animals by a makeshift hedge of cut thorn, was a stand of wild grain. Carefully I harvested a handful of the green heads, murmuring the proper thanks as I did so.
Returning to my tent, I poured these into an earthen bowl, adding wine until the grains bobbed in the dark liquid. Inhaling the fragrance of the grape deeply, I recited a silent invocation, asking Gunnora to bless and aid me, lastly holding the bowl so the rays of the moon shone full upon it. Then I settled down, cross-legged, closing my eyes to all about me, clearing my mind. Scrying is not a talent that all Wise Folk possess—as in all things, some are better at one thing than another. I had never tried such by myself before… but something seemed to be urging me to do so… whispering throughout my being that I must know… must know… must…
When my mind seemed clear and steady, I leaned forward, loosing the lacings of my shirt so that Gunnora’s amulet dangled free, still warm from its touch upon my breast. Without touching the amulet with my fingers, I lifted it by its thong over my head, then dropped it into the earthen bowl with the wine and the grain. When the red liquid was again still, I looked therein.
In the wavering glimmer and shadow cast by my single yellow candle, I could see the bowl and its contents clearly. I gazed at the surface of the liquid, trying to open my mind to any sight, any message forthcoming. The candle (lame reflection… my own wide eyes… there seemed to be nothing but those shifting flickers of red… then gold… red… red-gold…
I was floating above myself, looking down upon a young woman with slender shoulders, red-gold hair lying loose over them. Her/my face was hidden, of course, but my vision seemed expanded, intensified, so I could see the thing beyond the thing plain to normal sight… a wavering glow surrounded her very faintly, blue-green, brightening about her head, then shimmering into violet just below the faint outline of the shoulder blades beneath the linen shirt… violet, the color of the purest Power, that magic of the spirit… few of this world can harness it. The violet light brightened, pulsed, its throbbing quick and regular, as of a heartbeat. I seemed to see a white glow within the violet, at its heart, a quicksilver glimmer of something… something… something which seemed (o be enlarging infinitely, expanding to fill the universe, and at the same moment to be dwindling to the tiniest of specks, smaller than the human eye can discern.
One cannot look upon something which is, and yet which cannot be, for long—mercifully the mind blanks itself, shuts out a sight so terrible, so awesome, so wondrous.
I came to myself lying on the floor of the tent, the bowl of wine overturned, the sticky dregs draining into the earthen floor. Fortunately it had missed staining Jonka’s woven floor mat.
Slowly, hardly daring to think on what I had seen, I picked myself up, feeling very tired but strangely peaceful. After cleaning and drying the amulet and putting away my materials, I snuffed the candle and went to bed.
Lying in the white light of the moon, I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, feeling myself drift toward sleep. Only then, relaxed and serene, did I think about my scryingand the child it had revealed I indeed held within me. That violet glow… Little one, I thought, as though my son or daughter could mindshare already, what/who were you before? An Old One, it must be… one whose Power eclipsed any bare scratching for knowledge and wisdom I may have gleaned…
It has been speculated by some of my race that none of us comes into this world with no previous existence. Instead each of us lives many lives, with our actions in previous incarnations determining our pattern of existence in this present one. I had had direct knowledge of such a truth when Landisl revealed himself to Kerovan as one who bore ancient identity with my lord. Perhaps, in some previous time, they had been one being.
Was it through this heritage of long-ago Power that this child held such identification? Was it only Kerovan’s seed that betokened a lineage of time-forgotten might? I thought of my aunt. Dame Math, and how she had brought the very stones of vanished Ithkrypt down, crashing upon the hated invaders of Alizon. That usage of the Power had resulted in her death, hut such a death as would make any warrior proud. One aged woman had leveled a fortress built to stand centuries… no small feat of sorcery. And I… with little lessoning beyond that which I had gathered in working with Dame Math and other Wisewomen, I had strengthened my will… my Power, until I could rightfully claim some small knowledge of the ancient Craft for myself.
No, our child did not owe its entire heritage of Power to my husband… I bad a part in that making, also.