“I shall, guard,” I told her, wishing almost that she had not done the foreseeing for me, though I knew she meant it well. Which is better, to be warned of danger and live conscious of its shadow, or walk blindly, content in the sun’s light while that lasts?
Behind us, the baby began to cry.
“Quiet, small one.” I went to pick up the child, cuddled him against my shoulder.
“Do you hold him, Lady Joisan. We shall bless him now.” Zwyie reached into her bag of simples and herbs, bringing out two sprigs of dried leaves. Lighting a white candle, she chanted softly as she passed these several times through the smoke. Then she nodded to me, and I laid the child down on the table, steadying him so he would not roll.
The Wisewoman brushed each of the tiny feet with the brittle sprigs of angelica and vervain, as together we recited the ritual words: “Gunnora, Lady who protects women, and the innocents born of women, guard this child. Let not his feet earn’ him near the Shadow, rather let him walk in the Light in all ways and times.”
I held up each of the little fists so she could touch them in turn with those protecting herbs. “Let also these hands work in the service of life and the Light.”
Lastly she brushed the child’s forehead. “Let his mind remain clean and untainted, grant him the strength of will to naysay any thought born of the Dark.” She paused, then both of us repeated in turn, “So may it be always by Thy will.”
I carried the child back to his mother. Utia roused, looking better for her short rest. “Utia”—I held the child before her after the custom of her people in which Zwyie had lessoned me—“this is your goodly son. Look upon him, name him, that he may have life well set before him.”
As her eyes fastened eagerly on her child, again that ache I could not rightly put name to welled within me. “His name is Acar,” she whispered.
I settled Acar safe beside his mother just as footsteps sounded on the dock ladder. Now came Utia’s husband, Raney, and her sister, Thalma. Since what both Utia and the babe now needed most was rest and the comfort and praise of her kin, Zwyie and I took our leave, Raney’s somewhat garbled thanks loudly following us.
The small boat bobbed as we clambered down and began to wield our paddles, sending the craft in the direction of the Wisewoman’s house. We sat side by side, silent in our weariness. But I remembered, with a chill not born of the morning air, Zwyie’s dire foretelling.
“I watched you hold the babe,” Zwyie said suddenly. “There is an emptiness within you, my lady, and that is not surprising. Come with me to Gunnora’s shrine tomorrow, ask her for a child.”
“That I cannot.” I kept my eyes steady on the approaching stone pillar supporting our temporary dwelling.
“Why?”
I discovered that I could not look directly at Zwyie. “It is… because of my lord.”
“Why, Joisan?” Her question rang like a challenge. “He is a man, that is plain to any with eyes to look. Surely his… differences are not such as to prevent him from—She broke off, plainly searching for suitable words, her own eyes suddenly downcast.
I smiled wryly at her. “No, that is not it at all, sister. My lord is indeed a man, and in spite of his… differences, as you term them, to me he is very good to look upon.” I took a deep breath as I dipped paddle into the grey-green water. “No, I speak of this troubling which has descended upon him at intervals during our wandering time in Arvon.
Now it has come to plague him again—more strongly than ever before. I am afraid, of what I cannot say…”
“This ‘troubling’ raises a barrier between you?”
“None of my building. Only Kerovan fears, that I know without his telling, and that fear drives him… apart.”
Zwyie gave me a sharp, knowing look. I realized that she understood that which I could not have put into frank speech—that my lord had not turned to me as a husband for more than a month now.
The familiar catch of sadness burned at the back of my throat. Every night he either feigned sleep or contrived, with ever-thinner excuses, to be elsewhere. I wanted to ask why, but my few attempts to approach the subject had brought only a painful silence, inner knowledge that my questions hurt him in a way unknown to me.
If only… I remembered the last time we had been heart to heart together, and my hands tightened on the grip-smoothed wood of the paddle.
I had awakened suddenly in the early morning to find him tossing in his sleep, his face marked with that disturbing “otherness” I was sure betokened sendings from elsewhere… but from whom… or what?
My heart beating frantically lest he not return from wherever that Other had taken his mind and spirit, I had shaken him into wakefulness in turn. His eyes—those eyes which had made me call him “Lord Amber” when first we met—opened, to focus on me.
“Kerovan?” I made a question of his name, because it seemed to me that strangeness still shadowed his features.
“My lady?” He smiled at me, and there was something in his smile setting my blood to racing. Never had he looked at me so… always he had been shy, diffident. Before our true marriage he had regarded all women with the suspicion that his mother’s cruel rejection and betrayal had forced on him. Try as I might to be close to him, in me always lay the hurting awareness that no matter what our physical nearness, some essential part of him remained aloof.
“Are you well?” I touched his arm, felt the warmth of his weather-browned skin, the soft down hair, was reassured by its solid reality.
In answer that arm encircled me, pulled me down to his waiting kiss, to acknowledge that this time no weight of past fear and anger welled between us—there was only love for each other, blazing and alive.
The boat bumped hard against the tiny dock built out from the house pillar, jarring me out of memories. Zwyie gathered up her bag of simples, and I made haste to do likewise. Weary beyond thought, I climbed the ladder-stairs behind her. Sitting down on the kitchen bench, we helped each other off with the high, tight-fitting, fish-scale boots. The women of Anakue, except for feast-days, went clothed the same as the men, since they shared the fishing.
Stocking-footed, I climbed to the loft my lord and I shared. He was abed, sleeping deeply. One glance told me the troubling was on him again. When I had first seen him I had thought him one of the Old Ones, those beings with a semblance of humankind—but who controlled Powers and forces we of the Dales could barely sense. Now, his dark hair further darkened by sweat, features thinned by daylight worry and night sendings, his resemblance to the faces pictured in some of the old shrines and temples was even more unmistakable. That long oval face, the pointed chin… even as I hesitated, half-afraid that, if I woke him, Kerovan as I knew him would be totally gone, he opened his eyes.
I braced myself to meet that yellow gaze; however, he spared not a glance for me. Swinging out of the bed with the fluid grace of a trained swordsman, he reached for his breeches, pulled them on, then his under-jerkin. All his movements were hasty, those of a guardsman summoned to a post. Moments later he threw back the lid of the chest where we kept our possessions and pulled on his padded shirt. Then, with a dull clink, his mail followed.
“Kerovan, what’s to do?” I crossed the loft as he tested the edge of his dagger on his thumb, nodding in satisfaction when a hairline streak of red welled. He paid me no mind—as if I had not spoken.
With an echoing clatter, our swords and swordbelts dropped in turn to the wooden floor. Then my own mail shirt was shaken free. “My lord!” I put hand to his shoulder, shook him. “What do you? There is no battle—”