“Right. Safely home.”
I nodded as I set the knife for another pass. “I’m glad. Truly.” There was nothing else to say. Too bad that he had risked his neck to save me when I couldn’t do what they wanted me to do. To sing again. Heaven and earth ... they wanted me to sing to the beasts of fire and death and set them free.
“Have you eaten?” he said. “I’m heading over to see what I can glean from supper. I’ve not had anything since I got in this afternoon.”
I always had to review the day to decide whether I had eaten. I seemed forever hungry, though eating was never very appealing. On most days I would rise at dawn when no one but Yura, the morose cook, was awake. He would give me a packet of bread and cheese or cold turnips, and I would carry it with me, eating as I drove the cart to the southern end of the valley to begin loading more stones for the bridge. The Elhim gathered morning and evening to eat in the refectory in the large cavern, chattering, visiting, and enjoying each other’s society. They extended me a kindly welcome, but I knew better than to imagine I was good company. My presence could be nothing but a dismal reminder of their disappointment. Even Narim avoided me. So I stayed away. When the early darkness fell I would retreat to the woodshop that the stubby Vanka had turned over to me while he was building a storehouse at the southern end of the valley. There I would eat the rest of my rations and work until I dropped. A straw pallet and two blankets in the corner of the woodshop saved me the long trudge to the cavern.
“I don’t—”
“I smelled Yura’s sausage pie earlier. If you’ve never tasted it, it’s well worth the walk over there. Everyone else is already done with eating and off to other business. I’d like the company. We ought to know each other better, since we own each other’s life.”
I must have looked puzzled, for he laughed, and his gray eyes crinkled into the fine lines that proclaimed it was his habit to laugh a great deal. “It’s an Elhim custom. When you save a person’s life, that life belongs in part to you. You can delight in its pleasures and grieve at its sorrows—and you are obligated to participate in its future course. Since you have saved my life, and I, by virtue of my sturdy friend Acorn, have saved yours, we had best get on with our delighting and grieving and participating, had we not?”
“I don’t think you’ve made a good bargain. My future prospects are somewhat limited.”
“Most Senai would not think an Elhim life worth saving, so we won’t make any judgments yet as to who gets the better of our trade.” Davyn had a winning way about him.
I began to stack the finished planks against the wall, and without saying anything more, the Elhim took up a broom and began sweeping up the curls and slivers of pine and tossing them on the fire.
“Your mount is well taught,” I said. “I felt a right fool venturing into that storm with nothing but a cloak and a horse.”
“I wondered if it was your curses I heard on the wind that night. Fortunately Acorn and his kind have no need for teaching. Have you been out among the herd? They’re a marvel—even in such a marvelous place as Cor Talaith.”
While we finished tidying up the woodshop and banking the fire, Davyn told me of the small, sturdy horses that roamed the valley, and how they allowed themselves to be haltered and ridden, but maintained a streak of independence. “If they get the yen to graze the south meadows, don’t bother trying to lure them north to hunt or haul wood. Might as well try to get a Florin to eat fish.” He propped his broom back in its corner. “So do we eat now?”
“I’ll confess—when I was ten, sausage pie was my favorite,” I said.
“You won’t look back after eating Yura’s.”
We walked slowly across the end of the valley through the moon shadows cast by rocks and trees and outbuildings scattered across the meadow. A number of sheds and workshops were clustered in a broad, grassy pocket created by the sheltering cliff walls. A bend in the valley hid the place from view until you were right on it. An orange glow flared from the forge as we walked past and the clang of ironwork rang out—Bertrand the smith often worked late—but the noise soon faded away as we passed through a dense grove of tall, thin firs. A stream burbled through the trees into the meadow, sparkling in the silvery light. Davyn inhaled deeply of the bracing air—air just cold enough to make my long-sleeved wool shirt welcome, along with the gloves I’d put on by habit. “I do dearly love coming home,” he said. “I stay away too much.”
“It’s a beautiful place,” I said. “Quiet.” Indeed I could not bear the thought of returning to a city—the noise and crowds and unending fear. Earth’s bones, how I hated being such a coward. “It’s kind of your people to let me stay awhile.”
“You can stay as long as you like. No one knows of this place. Even the rare Dragon Rider who takes his mount so far into the god-forbidden mountains overlooks such a small green blot in the middle of the snow as Cor Talaith.”
“But surely—”
“You are only the second gallim—non-Elhim—ever to come here. We are very different from other races, as you know. We have to earn our way in the world, for we’re too few to be self-sufficient, but since we’re neither physically powerful nor warlike, it’s good to have a sanctuary. Our roots are here, no matter where we vines go wandering. And it’s important that we have a place ... secure ... private ... especially at certain times in our lives. ...”
His words left the subject hanging. There were questions I should ask, things no human had ever known about the Elhim—why they were so different, how was it possible for them to have children, or did they—and I had the sense that Davyn was ready to answer if I asked. But I was so tired I couldn’t think—the very state I did my best to achieve every day, and I was doing well to force my feet to move one in front of the other. I should have stayed in the woodshop.
Davyn seemed comfortable with silence, and we entered the lighted mouth of the great cavern without further conversation. He rummaged about the deserted kitchen and came up with two mugs of cold cider and two plates of savory sausage and vegetables in a rich brown crust still warm from the embers of the supper fire. We ate our meal, and then he offered to clean up the plates and mugs if I would unroll two pallets from the stack kept for those who had no specific quarters in the warren. I never saw Davyn join me, for as soon as I had rolled out the thin mat, I was asleep, dreaming of murderous dragons who caught me up in their sharp talons and deposited me torn and bleeding into the dark heart of Mazadine.
When I awoke, sweating as usual with my night terrors, Davyn’s mat was rolled up again, though the two other Elhim who had been sleeping when I arrived were still snoring quietly. I put away my mat, then sat beside the hot spring that welled up in a basin at one end of the room and went through my daily ritual of shaving. It always took me a number of tries, dropping the knife or fumbling it enough to nick the skin, but I refused to let my beard grow. I hated wearing a beard. It was a measure of my life’s condition that getting my face scraped every morning without slitting my throat had been for so long the highlight of my days. Though it was too small a change to be called progress, the activity had become a little easier—on that morning only three fumbles and no blood.
I padded quietly between the sleeping Elhim toward the refectory, stopping short at the doorway. Davyn was sitting at the far end of a long refectory table, drinking tea with Narim, the two of them talking with a woman. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the hearth, her chin propped on one hand. Her long brown hair was caught in a braid that fell over one shoulder, leaving a few unruly wisps to obscure the features of her narrow face. She wore a dark green tunic belted with flat metal links, brown breeches and vest, and tall boots that covered her slender legs up to her knees. She was arguing in low, intense tones with the two Elhim while with her right hand she absentmindedly poked a chunk of sausage skewered on a fork into the flames.