“Why?”
“Only they know the reason behind their prejudice.” She stared unseeing through the trunks of the oak trees, out at the road they would soon be following. “But my father asked them, and they answered. Even the Weres, with all their strange powers—they who tread the border between the Light and the Dark, between humankind and beast—even they could tell us nothing of my mother’s fate.”
The songsmith lapsed into silence again, memories crowding her mind. “It sounds a hard life,” Avris ventured, finally.
The bard shrugged. “I suppose it was, but at the time, it did not seem so. My father taught me much as we companied together, even as he and my mother had done… swordplay, and scout-lore, the planning and execution of battle. How to hunt, fish, and live off the land. If it had not been for the reason of our search, those would have been happy days, sleeping beneath the naked sky, riding my good Kioga mare every day…”
Eydryth smiled wryly. “In the winters, when we were forced to shelter in Kar Garudwyn, I returned to the schoolroom. There, I learned dutifully enough, but the space within four walls was never my favorite place to be. I loved traveling. A fortunate thing, I suppose, since I’ve had to do so much of it.”
Her smile faded; then she sighed. “But the journeying with my father ended, too. One day, he came to me as I sat playing the hand-harp Lord Kerovan had given me (after he had discovered it in an ancient storeroom in Kar Garudwyn). Jervon was excited—more hopeful than I had seen him for months. He told me that he had learned of an ancient ‘Seeing Stone’ located in the north. It was said that any who had the courage to climb up the cliff to peer into this Stone would behold his or her most-desired sight. We set out that very afternoon.
“It was a long ride. We passed several villages, but as our way took us further and further north, they became fewer and fewer. The country was nigh, and, save where rivers and streams ran, grew steadily more arid—my father told me it was beginning to resemble the Waste in High Hallack, the land he and my mother had originally come from. Finally, there was but one more settlement, a small town surrounding the old, old sanctum of sorcery called Garth Howell. A place where those with the Gift of Power journey to learn how to harness and develop their innate talents.”
“Like our Place of Wisdom.”
“Yes. Except that in Arvon it is an accepted fact that men as well as women may hold the Power. Both sexes are accepted as students. We asked directions at Garth Howell, and they pointed us to the northwest. But the lay sister who kept the gate secretly warned Jervon, saying that the Stone could be dangerous.”
“But he did not heed her,” Avris guessed.
“No, he did not. We rode, and two days later, we reached the Seeing Stone… a great cliff of crumbling ocher rock. When we reached there, late in the afternoon, it seemed to loom like something alive and malevolent. And it was strange…”
“How so?”
“One moment I was gazing at an ordinary cliff, but then, when the shadows began stealing across the scree, I made out hollows, and protrusions… and I realized that the entire cliff-face had, at one time, been one giant form. Possibly a female form, for I thought I glimpsed the mounds of pendulous breasts, but the face… that was not a woman’s.”
“What did the face look like?”
“I don’t know,” Eydryth admitted, softly. “Wide, too wide to be human. Lipless, I believe. There was still the hint of teeth visible, as though she… whatever she was… as though she smiled. Not such a smile as I would like to see on a living countenance, Avris. But her most distinctive feature was her Eye. There was only one. A wide, dark pit above what might have been a nose.
“My father was off his horse almost before I could bring Vyar to a halt, and heading for the cliff. I flung myself down, and ran after him, calling to him to wait… wait. But his face was as set as a man who has received a mortal wound, his teeth clenched within the stubble of his beard. He thrust me aside, ordering me to wait… and then, he was climbing.”
Eydryth drew a long, shaky breath. “How he found finger and toe holds on the cliff, I know not. But he moved as steadily as a spider may on a stone wall. In moments, it seemed, he had reached the Eye. I saw him lean forward, his head and shoulders almost disappearing into the opening. A moment only he remained so, then—” She shook her head. “He screamed my mother’s name once…” She swallowed. “… in a voice I can still hear in the worst of my dreams. Then his grasp loosened, and he fell.”
“Down the entire cliff?” Avris gasped.
“No. His body caught on the tiniest of ledges, near the figure’s shoulder. He lay there, unmoving.”
“What did you do?”
“Climbed the cliff myself, anchored our ropes with spikes, then lowered him in a sort of harness I fashioned from his swordbelt and mine.” Eydryth looked away. “He had a lump on the back of his head, but I do not believe it was that which caused the problem. It was that cursed Eye—the backlash of that ancient Power. When Jervon awoke, he was as he is now, mind-crippled.
“He eats when food is placed before him, stands and walks when tugged by the hand, sleeps when led to his bed. He never speaks, never smiles… except faintly, sometimes, when I played and sang for him. And so he has been, for the past six years.”
“How dreadful!” Avris whispered. “Oh, Eydryth, I pray that Lormt will hold some answer for you.” She put out her hand, squeezed the older girl’s fingers. “But I cannot see that you are responsible for any of what happened. To climb that cliff and rescue him all by yourself—! You were brave, and more than brave, sister.”
The songsmith gave her a somber glance. “If I was, it availed little,” she said. “Many times I have thought that my father would have been better off if he had fallen to his death, that day. He was a proud man, a capable man. He would have hated what he has become. To see him as he is now, day after day, became such torture…”
Eydryth shook her head. “Eventually, I could stand it no more. I had to go looking for someone who might be able to make him whole again. And, truly, Avris, if I can find no means of healing him, I have promised myself that I will return home long enough to grant him a merciful death.”
The journey to Kastryn, although long and wearying, proved uneventful. After many days of walking the roads, of searching out taverns where they might sing for their supper and a bed in the stable, and, occasionally, if none such were to be found, bedding down on the edges of new-turned fields, the two young women arrived in Kastryn.
Eydryth glanced around the sleeping village as they threaded a silent way through backyards in the chill grey light of predawn. “It is larger than I thought,” she whispered. “Which house is Logar’s?”
“His father is the town smith,” Avris said. “It is that stone one, there, with the smithy beside.” She pointed.
“Stay here. Let me scout,” the songsmith ordered. “I think it has been long enough for all pursuit to have been given up, but better safe than sorry, yes?”
Avris bit her lip; she was trembling with eagerness, but she nodded. “If it is safe for me to come, whistle,” she said.
Eydryth shed her pack and slid through the shadows, over a fence, through a chicken yard, over another fence. She glanced both ways before crossing the wagon-rutted road, listening with all her being for the slithery clink of chain mail, the creak of leather as a dart gun was unholstered.
Nothing.
She scurried to the silent house, scouted the deserted smithy, then peered in the windows of the bottom floor. All the rooms were deserted. She waited, listening, until the dark grey had lightened sufficiently that her eyes began to discern the colors of the early-spring flowers planted in the window boxes.
Then, rising, she made her way to the front doorstep and whistled.