So in turn I lent my will to his, while she rested. But I was growing more and more tired, must force myself to the struggle. In the cup my mother slowly changed from a woman of great and stately beauty to monster, until we were sure it was safely done, and my father blew the demon mirrored on the water into nothingness.
“Rest,” my mother then bade me, “for what is left we two shall do together, even as we gave you life in the beginning.”
I lay back upon the ground, saw my mother and father lean above the cup, and knew that therein they would paint me as they had seen me. But we had been so long separated, was the “me” they would build there the “me” I myself would see in any mirror? It was an odd thought, a little disturbing. I looked away from where they wrought their spell, up into the flowering branches of the tree under which I rested. In me arose such a great desire to remain where I was, to lose all the burdens I had carried, that I yearned to remain here always at rest.
There was tingling along my body, yet I did not care. My eyes closed then and I think I slept. When I awoke the sun was far warmer and lay in slanting beams which told me that a goodly portion of the day must now be behind us. I wondered that we had not gone on.
But as I raised my head and looked along my body I saw that I had indeed returned to my proper guise. My mother sat with her back to the trunk of a tree, and my father lay prone, his head in her lap. He slept, I thought, but she was awake, her hand stroking his hair gently, smoothing it back from his forehead. She did not look at him, rather into the distance, though there was a smile on her lips which softened her usual stern expression—it was even tender, as if she remembered happy things.
In me awoke again that faint desolation, that sense of emptiness which had come before when I had witnessed the expression of their feeling for one another—as if I were one who looked into a warm and comfortable room from outside, where the dark of a chill night closed about me. I almost wanted to break that contentment which I read in my mother’s face, say to her, what of me, of ME? Kyllan has found one who is so to him, and Kemoc, also. But me—I thought I had such in Dinzil. Is it true, what I learned from him, that any man who looks upon me sees only a tool to further his ambition? Must I turn my mind resolutely from such hopes and follow the narrow, sterile road of the Wise Women?
I sat up and my mother looked to me. I had indeed broken her dream, but not by my full will. Now her smile widened, reached also to me, in warmth.
“It is a thing to weaken one, such spelling. And this is a good place in which to renew body and spirit.”
Then my father stirred also and sat up, yawning. “Well enough. But it is not good to dream away the whole day. We need to make more distance for what remains of the sun and light.”
It seemed that our rest period had been good for Ayllia too, or else my mother had released her from the full mind block that she might not be so great a drag on us. She roused enough to walk after we had eaten a portion of the supplies we had taken from the tribe.
So we left that oasis of good in the old orchard. As I passed beneath the last of the flowering trees I broke off a twig, holding the blossom close to my nose so I could smell its fragrance, tucking it then into my hair that I might bear with me some of the peace and ancient joy of that place. Oddly enough, the fragrance, instead of growing less as the flowers wilted, became stronger, so that I might at last have laved my whole body in some perfume distilled from their substance.
Our camp that night was on the top of a small hill from which we could keep watch in all directions. We did not light any fire, but when the dark closed about us we could see a distant point of light which was a fire, or so Simon believed. And since it lay to the south he thought it might mark the camp of the tribe, though it was well away from the river; perhaps they had not returned there, even to gather up what they had abandoned in their flight.
Again we slept in turn. But this time I had the middle hours of the night. And when I was aroused by my mother to take that watch, I found it chill enough to keep my cloak tight about me. Ayllia lay a little beyond, and it was shortly after my mother had gone to sleep that I heard the barbarian girl stir. She was turning her head from side to side, muttering. And that mutter became whispered speech as I leaned closer to listen. What I heard was as much a warning of danger as if she had rung some manor alarm.
“West—to the evil wood—across the river south—west again—to the orchard—then west to a hillock among three such, but standing higher than the other two. West—to what they name the Green Valley—”
Three times she repeated it before she was silent. And I was left with the belief that she herself was not trying to memorize our route, but rather reported it to another. Reported it! To whom, and for what reason?
Her people had been killed or scattered and taken captive by the sea raiders, and I did not believe that any among them could evoke the mind anyway. Her actions today had been those born in fear when she had seen the other tribe. Did they by chance have some seeress like Utta who had traced us thus? It could be true, but that was not the first and best answer I imagined.
Hilarion! He would not have tried to contact me, or my parents, knowing that any such contact, be it the most tenuous, would have been an instant warning. Then he would have had to try complete take-over. But Ayllia, by our standards, was a weakling, to be easily played upon by anyone learned in sorcery. Therefore he could reach out and work upon her—and now he was using her to keep track of us.
All my fears of what he might be or could do flooded back. But at the same time there was a weakness in me also, for I remembered that touch my mother had made for me, how I had tasted the terrible loneliness which had rent him as he understood what had happened to the world he had known and dreamed of returning to while he stood in Zandur’s pillar.
I had never believed him actively evil, only one of those who, following a trail which interested them, could be ruthlessly self-centered, acting recklessly out of curiosity and confidence in themselves. So had he been once, and if he remained so, then he was a threat to what was being built here anew in Escore. If he could track us to the Green Valley . . . !
We could mind block Ayllia completely again. But if we did so she would be only an inert bundle, needing to be carried and constantly tended. And there surely lay many dangers ahead which would make such a captive our bane and perhaps even our deaths. We could abandon her, but that, too, was unthinkable. And the final decision was not mine but to be shared by the three of us.
During the rest of my hours of watch I listened, not only to the noises of the night, but to any sound from Ayllia. She slept untroubled, however.
When I roused my father to take the final watch I warned him of what I had heard, that he might be alert in turn, even though there was certainly little more that she could report.
In the morning we took council together. My mother was very thoughtful as she considered my ideas.
“I do not believe in a tribal seeress doing this,” she said. “Your Utta must have been unique among those people. Hilarion is the more reasonable answer. Upon us may now rest an error in judgment for leaving him behind.”
“But—” I protested.
“Yes, but and but and but. There are many ifs and buts to be faced in every lifetime and we can choose only what seems best at the moment when the choice is to be made. We have the Power, which makes us more than some, but we must be ever on the alert not to think that it makes us more than human. I think we dare not mind block her. It would render her too great a burden on us. Also, I would set no rearguard cover spell. Such can be as easily read as plain footprints in muddy earth by one like Hilarion. Better to let him think we suspect nothing while we plan ahead for a defense needed at our journey’s end.”