She was surpassing beautiful. He tried to think of her body as no more than the body of an animal, a sleek cow he had seen and coveted, a graceful horse. He focused on her hands, now racing over the strings to finger some intricate descant to the piper. It was not the same song. For how many had he stood here, fascinated, watching her? Those long-fingered hands, strong and supple, that long body. He met her eyes again, dark eyes older than her years, full of sorrow.
She knew. She knew he watched, and how he watched. Rage roiled up in him: she was charming him again, even now. He glared at her; she looked back, sorrowful and unafraid. Calm. Kill me now, her look said. I did not do this. Yet, if it was not charm, why wasn’t she disgusted at his interest? A peasant, a coarse man old enough to be her father—
Not so, came her voice in his mind. You are not so old, nor I so young.
No disgust? He was disgusted, with himself. How could he think of such a woman, as a woman, after Mali’s loyalty and Raheli’s tragedy? What had he fought for, if not to remove such women from power?
Time had passed, the fire only warm ashes under a dark sky. The others had fallen asleep. Only she remained awake, watching him as he watched her. Magicks, he thought disgustedly.
“Not so, lord marshal,” she said. Aloud, in her own voice, but quietly.
“Reading minds is magicks.”
“That, yes. The other—if it be magic at all, it is older far than mine.”
“I—would like to hate you.”
“With reason.” She turned away, and folded around the melon-bellied instrument a trimmed fleece. “But you cannot, lord marshal, any more than I hate myself. I did not come here to unsettle you.”
“Wind unsettles water,” he said, surprising himself. Where had that come from?
She laughed softly; it had an edge to it. “Yes—wind. But you are not water, lord marshal—Gird. You are what you said—good peasant clay. Do you know what the rockfolk say of clay?”
“No.”
“Sertig squeezed clay to rock. And rock squeezed makes diamond, fairest of jewels that gives light in darkness.”
He grunted, surprise and superstitious fear together. He had consented to be rock; the other, half dreamed of, still wholly terrified him. And diamonds were jewels, and jewels belonged to the wealthy, to such as this lady: he would not so belong. But his mouth opened, and he spoke again.
“I have dreamed of you.” He had waked sweating and furious; he had not spoken to her since.
She looked away. “I thought you might. I’m sorry.”
“You—you are like no one—”
“I am myself. Once—a name I will not use again. Now, what he called me, an autumn rose, a last scentless blossom doomed by frost—”
“You like that word. Doom.”
“Gird, I know myself, and my future: it is the chanciest gift our people had, but in me it is, like the others, strong. I will have no children; my time is past.” She met his eyes squarely. “And you, who have children—you think you could give me some?”
He felt suddenly hot. Now she was smiling, but it had no warmth in it.
“I know your dreams, Gird; your eyes speak of them. A magelady’s body—a magelady unwed—what is she like? You see the foreign shape of my face, my hands, and you wonder about the rest.” From musing, her voice roughened to anger. “Ah, Esea! You will believe it my magicks no matter what I do! And I have tried, if you had the wit to see it, to be invisible to you, to draw no eyes, least of all yours.”
“It was your sorrow.” That, too, came without his thought. Yet it was true. She had tried no charms on him or anyone, after that first meeting, but the stress of her sorrow drew eyes to her.
“Look, Gird: I will show you, and then if you are wise, if the gods are truly with you, you will know that in this I am honest.”
He opened his mouth, but her gesture silenced him, for she had thrown off her cloak, and begun unlacing her shirt. If he said anything now, someone might wake, and the explanations would be, at best, difficult. Her fingers moved quickly, deftly, stripping off her clothes with no more apparent embarrassment than he would have had in his own cottage. It should have been too dark to see her, but she glowed slightly, a light he knew was magelight.
She had the body he had imagined. Long legs, long slender body untouched by childbearing; her hips were like a young girl’s and her breasts—he ached to touch them. Even Mali as a girl had not had such breasts, the very shape of his desire. But through the beauty he had expected he perceived the barrenness she had claimed. Like some graceful carving of stone, set up in a lord’s hall for amusement: he could engender nothing there. His hands opened, closed; instead of the imagined softness and warmth, there was hardness and cold.
She wrapped the cloak around herself again, dimming the glow until he could just make out her face. “You see?” A thread of sorrow darkened that golden voice. “It is not you, Gird; it is a choice I made, long years ago: obedience to my king. Service, not freedom. Death, not life.”
“It’s wrong.”
Her brows rose. “You are my judge?”
“No, but—” There had to be a way to say it, that meant what he meant. “Serving things rightly, that can’t be serving death. Loyalty’s good, I’ll agree there, but it’s not all—what you’re loyal to must be worthy.”
“Wise clay, lord marshal.” Her voice mocked him, but her face was uneasy. “Where did a peasant learn such wisdom?”
“It’s only sense,” Gird said stubbornly. “Peasant sense, maybe: we serve life in our work. Growing crops, tending beasts—that’s serving life.”
“I erred, as I’ve admitted. A mistake, believing the king was true, and worth my obedience. A mistake I remedied, you remember.” Her voice had chilled again; he thought she did not truly believe it was a mistake.
“So you said.” He was grumpy, annoyed with his body which had not admitted what his mind knew—no comfort there. A man his age, to be so put out—he was disgusted with himself, and with her for rousing that interest. On the way across camp, he stumbled into one thing after another, knowing perfectly well it was his own temper making his feet clumsy.
Arranha. The old priest was one of them; perhaps he could explain. Gird sought him out, not surprised to find that Arranha was awake, peaceably staring at the stars.
“And how is the lady?” asked Arranha. Gird felt himself swelling with rage, to be so easily read, and then it vanished in a wave of humor. He folded himself down gingerly, to sit beside the priest.
“She is herself,” he said.
“Too much so,” said Arranha. “A bud that never opened, eaten out within. She has the body of a girl, but no savor of womanhood.”
Gird opened his mouth to let out surprise; his ears were burning. “She is lovely,” he said, after a decent interval.
“Cold,” insisted Arranha.
“Well—yes. And yes, I looked; she showed me—”
“She wants you?”
“No. I had never seen anyone like her—not to speak to—and I suppose—it was my own curiosity.”
“Natural enough.” Arranha shrugged that off, as he did other things Gird could not anticipate. “Which curiosity, I gather from your words, has now vanished. I would pity her, myself, were she not capable of better.”
Gird chuckled. “I thought you said we all were capable of better.”
“True. But great talents draw envy, even from tired old priests sitting up all night. Gird, she might have prevented much evil, had she listened to good counsel. It was not all heedlessness of love: she has the foreseeing mind. She chose not to listen; she chose in spite of her knowledge. She could not have saved the king, I daresay—from all I ever heard of him, as foolish a young man as ever sat on a throne. Not wicked, in any active sense, but silly and shallow. But she might have saved more than she did, and I can’t forget that. Nor should you. If she ever quits making a singer’s tale out of her lost love, she’d make you a fine marshal, but you’ll have to change her course.”