The Windeye felt a flash of guilt and worry leap across Iriana’s mind. ‘I’m sorry, but I must get back to my companions who are both wounded, one very badly. Can we talk in mindspeech—’
‘There you are. I was getting worried.’
Iriana jumped and spun round. Corisand was astonished to see a fireball in her hand, raised ready to strike.
‘Whoa! It’s only me.’ The intruder stepped back hastily, hands raised in surrender, also staring at the fireball with undisguised curiosity. Behind his eyes, the Windeye could almost see his brain speeding through possibilities. With a stifled curse, Iriana snuffed the fireball. ‘Taine! What a shock you gave me. You almost stopped my heart.’
‘I should say that I was in the worse danger. Where did you learn to do that? Wizards aren’t masters of Fire Magic.’
Corisand had ceased to listen to them - her thoughts were otherwise occupied. Iriana had called him Taine? But that was the name of Aelwen’s lost lover. She had heard the Horsemistress and Kelon speak of him on occasion, and she had come to know him when Aelwen was working with her, or grooming her, and the two of them were alone. Taine was on Aelwen’s mind so often, and so intensely, that Corisand had been unable to avoid picking up the thoughts, once she had become Windeye. In fact, she had become almost sick of the subject - though a lot of the memories had been a fascinating insight into the courtship and mating rituals of the Phaerie. When she looked at him closely, she certainly recognised him from Aelwyn’s thought-pictures, though he looked older and more careworn now, and his face was pale and drawn, with black-shadowed eyes. From his torn and bloodstained clothing, it was clear that he’d been hurt in some way, and from the rank scent that still hung round him, the Windeye suspected an encounter with a bear. She shuddered. He was lucky to be alive. How tragic, if he and Aelwen had finally come so close to being reunited, and he’d been killed by a wild animal.
‘Corisand?’ Iriana’s voice in mindspeech pulled her back from her own thoughts. ‘Can you speak to Taine as well, or am I the only one? I don’t think he believes me when I say you are a rational being.’
Corisand tried, but as she had half-expected, her thoughts only reached into Iriana’s mind. ‘Only you. I have tried to reach the Phaerie many times, with no success.’
‘Taine and I are going back to our tents now. We’ll talk to you from there. It seems that we have a lot to tell each other.’
‘Iriana, you don’t know the half of it,’ Corisand replied. But even before Iriana got as far as her tent, the Windeye succumbed to her exhaustion. Her legs folded beneath her, and almost before she could lie down on the soft, cushioning moss, she had fallen asleep.
29
DAYS OF JOY AND SORROW
Dael had no plans that night except to stay as close to the fire as he possibly could, which was why he was staggering up the steps from the cellar with a huge wicker basket filled with dry logs. ‘I’ve brought some more wood, Athina,’ he called, as he tottered into the main living chamber, his knees threatening to give way any moment beneath the weight of his burden.
Athina turned from the window to watch his unsteady progress. ‘Thank you, Dael,’ she said in her beautiful low voice. ‘But why must you always be carrying such heavy loads? One of these days, you’ll hurt yourself.’
‘I just want to make sure we’re going to be comfortable for the night,’ he protested. ‘We’ll need a good fire, with that storm raging outside.’
She let him dump his basket with a thud beside the hearth, looking at him shrewdly. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me, Dael. You’re not a slave any more, and you don’t have to work like one. This is your home, here with me, and no one can take that away. You’ve been here half a year now, and we’ve become a family, you and I.’
Dael shook his head. ‘You know, I still can’t believe how lucky I am. I lived my whole life as a slave, I never had a mother - she was sold not long after I was born - and I never knew what it was to have a proper home. To belong.’
Athina smiled. ‘I think we’re both lucky,’ she said. ‘Before you came, I never realised that I was so lonely. Come along: we’ll sit by the fire and mull some wine. On such a dreadful night as this, we may as well be cosy.’
They sat beside the glowing fire, sipping mulled wine, toasting bread on the end of a long, metal toasting fork and passing a crock of honey back and forth between them. When the loaf ran out, they settled back in comfortable silence, looking into the heart of the fire. What a difference Dael has made to my life, the Cailleach thought. Before his coming, I never realised how lonely my existence was.
Dael seemed to share her pleasure in this extraordinary partnership. They would spend hours in conversation about all sorts of inconsequential things. He was delighted to find someone at last who was happy to listen, and she found great pleasure in sharing the outlook of a new, young mind. He delighted in doing things such as fetching wood and water, performing small repairs around the tower, or simply making her a cup of tea. When he told her about his upbringing in a fishing settlement by the sea, she used magic to create a little rowing boat for him, and he loved going out on the lake and fishing with a line. Though she could have done these little tasks much more easily using her powers, she soon came to realise that he enjoyed helping her, and that it was important to his newly burgeoning sense of pride to feel that he was doing his part.
The Cailleach enjoyed Dael’s company more and more. At first she had looked on him as merely an amusing pet, but as the months went by, he grew increasingly close to her heart, until finally she began to understand why the natives of the mundane world set so much store by their offspring. She, who had given birth to worlds, was now discovering the joys of having a son of her own.
To her relief, he had never questioned the magic that brought them so many necessities and comforts in the tower. Since she was clearly not one of the Phaerie, he simply made the assumption that Athina - she had no idea why she had told him her true name, but somehow it had happened - must be a solitary Wizard. And though he was very much puzzled by her disinclination to treat him as a slave, he was too thankful for his own good fortune to place it at risk by questioning the (to him) eccentric behaviour that was making his life so happy.
Though she remained a mystery to him, the Cailleach soon discovered the details of Dael’s miserable short life. He had grown up in Bourne, one of the settlements on the western coast, where the human slaves supported the Wizard community by going out on the ocean to fish. His mother had been sold inland somewhere to pay off her master’s debts while he was still a babe in arms. Dael’s Wizard owner had worked his slaves hard, and Dael had hated him for selling his mother. The greatest tormentor in the young man’s life, however, had been his bullying father, who had finally led the escape of a number of slaves and forced Dael to go with him.
It was clear that the Cailleach’s new companion had never been used to kindness, for it had taken a long time for his suspicion and wariness to recede. Finally, she had managed to half-convince him that this new, happier life would not be taken away from him, but even then he had been pathetically anxious to please her; terrified that he would accidentally say or do something to make her change her mind. As time went on, however, and she neither hurt him nor sent him away, Dael’s confidence began to grow, and these two oddly matched companions became increasingly close.
‘Athina?’ Dael’s sleepy voice broke into the Cailleach’s thoughts. ‘Will you show me some pictures in the fire?’