They stood on the summit of the hill for almost an hour and Toria, pointing with her frozen hand first at the river, then at a snow-covered ribbon of road, then at the close gray horizon, spoke of the centuries that had passed over the earth; of the belligerent hordes that had descended on the city all at once from three sides; of the deep moat, of which now only a small furrow, invisible under the snow, remained; of the unassailable defenses, erected at the cost of many lives. The hill, upon which Egert and Toria were now standing, was a remainder of a fortification that had been worn away by time. Egert, listening attentively, suggested that the enemy hordes were all cavalry, and furthermore that they were extremely numerous.
“How do you know that?” wondered Toria. “Did you read it?”
Egert, ducking his head, confessed his complete and utter ignorance: no, he had not read it, but from the placement of the defenses, as Toria had described them, it should be clear to anyone that they were not built to defend against foot soldiers, but against a vast quantity of mounted enemies.
For some time Toria was silent, wondering. Egert stood next to her, also silent, and their long blue shadows merged on the lustrous mantle of snow.
“If you watch the horizon for a while,” Toria suddenly said quietly, “if you do not take your eyes from it for a very long time, then you begin to imagine that the sea is beneath us. The blue sea surges beneath us, and we are standing on the shore, on a cliff.…”
Egert started. “Have you seen the sea?”
Toria began to laugh merrily. “Oh, yes. I was quite young, but I remember it well. I was—” She suddenly became sad and lowered her eyes. “—I was eight years old. My father and I traveled all over the world so as not to grieve too hard over Mama.”
The wind swept over the snow, picked up a handful of scintillating white powder, and played with it, strewing it about before letting it drop and moving on to pick up another handful. Egert did not know if his distressing ability to sense others’ pain had returned or not, but the instantaneous desire to protect and comfort Toria deprived him of both his reason and his reticence: Toria’s shoulders drooped, and then for the first time his hands dared to sink down onto them.
She was a head shorter than him. Next to him she seemed like an adolescent, almost a child; through her warm shawl and thin coat he felt how her narrow shoulders flinched under his touch and then froze. Then, desiring for all he was worth to console her and yet mortally afraid of offending her, he cautiously drew Toria toward himself.
Their blue shadows paused on the snow, merged into one; both were afraid to move, lest they startle the other. The city beyond the walls remained impassive, and the frozen river gleamed coldly. Only the wind showed any sign of impatience; it hovered like a dog around their legs, foundered in the hem of Toria’s skirt, and sprinkled Egert’s boots with sprays of snow.
“You will see the sea,” said Toria in a whisper.
Egert was silent. He had known scores of different women in his brief life so far, but he suddenly felt himself inexperienced, a clueless boy, a silly puppy: thus does the apprentice of a jeweler tout his own skill while polishing glass, and thus does he sweat from fear the first time he receives in his hand a precious stone of unheard-of rarity.
“On the shore of the southern sea there is never any snow. There is warm sand there, and white surf.…” Toria spoke as if in a dream.
Glorious Heaven, he was afraid to let go of her; he was afraid that all this was an illusion; he was so afraid to lose her. And truly, he had no right to her. Can you really lose that which does not belong to you? And did not the shadow of Dinar stand between them?
Toria shivered, as if sensing his thought, but she did not move away.
Over their heads the cloud patterns changed, twisted, their sides burned by the sun like loaves in an oven. Hearing how Egert’s distraught heart beat under his jacket, Toria, with almost superstitious horror, suddenly realized that she was happy. She very rarely managed to catch herself in this feeling; her nostrils flared, breathing in the smell of the snow, the fresh wind, and Egert’s skin, and they wanted to raise her up on her toes so that they could reach Egert’s face.
She had never caught the scent of Dinar. It was unthinkable, but she had no memory of how his heart beat. Embracing him, she had experienced a companionable tenderness, but what was that childish fondness compared to this delightful stupor, when the very thought of moving was terrible, when she hardly dared to breathe?
What is this? she thought, panicking. Betrayal? Betrayal of the memory of Dinar?
Their dark blue shadow slowly crawled across the snow like the hand of an enormous clock. A snowflake, round and flat as a grindstone, settled on Egert’s shoulder right in front of Toria’s nose. The sun hid behind a cloud, and the shadow on the snow faded.
“We should go,” whispered Toria. “We need to—I promised to show you.”
They descended the slope in silence. The river here was twisting, skirting around a small spit of land that resembled a peninsula. The earth here apparently found tall pine trees entirely to its liking: they grew in great, massed circles, and their boughs, weighed down with snow, looked like old, sagging mustaches.
They walked, wending their way through tree trunks, now and again brushing the snow from a branch: then the magnificent boughs, liberated, would rush upward, violating the consistency of the winter landscape. Finally Toria stopped and glanced back at Egert as if inviting him to look.
Right in front of them towered a stone structure, like the remnant of an ancient foundation, covered with snow. Yellow, porous stone intertwined with gray, smooth stone: Egert had never before seen anything like it. Most extraordinary was the stunted, thin-trunked tree, which was clinging to the stonework by its roots as if growing right out of the stone. Even though it was the middle of winter, the tree remained green; not a single snowflake fell on the narrow leaves, and here and there between them, round petals glowed a pale red, seeming unreal, as if they had been cut from cloth. But they were reaclass="underline" Egert assured himself of this when he touched one and it left a small amount of black pollen on the tip of his finger.
“This is a tomb,” said Toria, trying to conceal the storm raging in her soul behind a businesslike tone. “It’s several thousand years old. An ancient mage rests here, perhaps the First Prophet himself. But then again, perhaps not. This tree blossoms year-round, but never bears even a single fruit. It is rumored that it too is several millennia old. It’s miraculous, isn’t it?”
The magical tree was not more miraculous than the strange connection that was now invisibly growing between Toria and Egert. He wanted to ask her about it, but he did not. They both stood, gazing at the ancient sepulcher, which in turn was a witness to their silence. The snow-covered pine trees also remained silent: austerely, but without condemnation.
Dusk was falling as they returned home. The cold had intensified and near the city gates they found it necessary to stop for a while to warm their hands over a fire. The guard, with a face that was copper from the flames and shining with sweat, threw more firewood and kindling, collected that day from peasants entering the city, onto the blaze: in winter it was the custom to collect the toll in kind.