Then a bell sounded, not quite like any he'd heard before, like the birth of an age of bronze in the crisp still air. All the shave-heads bowed to their partners and filed out, two by two, their palms pressed together and their heads bowed as they chanted. The sound lulled Rudi as strongly as the herbs in the tea he'd drunk, and he leaned back against the pillow and let his eyelids droop.
"You're not hungry?" Ingolf said, worried; his spoon halted halfway to his mouth.
Mary Havel was prodding her spoon at the turned-wood bowl that held her soup. Even without the bandage covering her left eye there wouldn't have been a problem in telling her from her sister Ritva's blooming health now. She looked pale, paler than winter could account for even in someone so fair, and her face was gaunt, showing the elegant bones beneath. And she moved slowly, with only a shadow of the fluid grace her sister still had.
"What I need is a steak," she said fretfully. "We've been here for weeks, and I'm not a leaf-eating rabbit. I want a roast chicken! Or a rack of BBQ lamb ribs with a honey-mustard glaze! Or pork chops with sauteed onions… or even venison stew, Lady Varda help us!"
"Stop!" her sister Ritva said. "Venison stew is starting to make my mouth water too!"
She and her sister laughed; at the others' looks, Mary went on: "Back in Mithrilwood, it's the staple diet for winter. We Dunedain have a joke; when the sun rises in the east, it's an omen that we shall have venison stew for dinner. I never thought I'd get nostalgic for it!"
Ingolf laughed. Odard did as well; then his eyes narrowed, and he rose and left.
Mary smiled with them, but the tug at her eye wound must have hurt a little and the expression died. She'd been very patient with actual pain while she was really ill, but she wasn't a good convalescent.
"This will do," she said resignedly, and mopped up the last of the soup in her bowl with a heel of the loaf.
They were in the refectory the monastery kept for guests, non-novice students and the sick who were well enough to walk. It was a pleasant room, plain but comfortable, and well heated by the sealed stoves. Some of the older monks preferred to sit on cushions or mats, but the rest used benches and chairs, and nobody expected outsiders to do otherwise.
The food's actually pretty good, Ingolf thought, finishing his own. But yah, I could use some roast pork with crackling.
There was potato soup done with barley and onions, hard white cheese grated on it, warm dark bread and butter, pickled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs and sauerkraut, and dried apples and berries. The young nun who had served it looked at Mary indignantly.
"Besides imposing a karmic burden, food which requires killing animals is unnecessary," she said loftily. Then: "And if you must, there are places in the town which serve it, when you are better. I admit that it is not wasteful, since we have abundant pasture."
"Prig," Mary muttered to herself as the girl moved away; she was about the Dunedain's own age. "Naeg nedh adel!"
Ingolf's eyes went upward and his lips moved slowly; he'd been learning some Sindarin. It was fiendishly complicated, and the only two people in this part of the world who could talk it were right beside him, but he'd kept at it doggedly. It would have helped if they had some books, but the only material they'd brought on the trip was a small-print section of the…
Histories, Ingolf thought. Think of them as the Histories, dammit. Mary takes that seriously.
"There is pain in the…" he began.
Ritva grinned. "Naeg nedh adeclass="underline" Pain in the ass," she said. Then with concern as Mary pushed the bowl away: "You tired, sis?"
"Bored with being sick," Mary said. "I know I'm a lot better off than Rudi, but it's still a drag. We should be getting going!"
There were windows in the refectory, south-facing ones. It was getting dark already, and would have been even if the winter sun didn't set early. You could just see the powder snow the wind was driving at the glass, until one of the monastery staff went around cranking the shutters closed. Even when that was done the sound of the wind came through the stout log and fieldstone walls.
"This reminds me of winter at home," Ingolf said. "And that means we're not going anywhere for a good long while. You want to get caught in another blizzard?"
"It can be done," Mary said.
"Yah, and so can juggling sharp knives on horseback," Ingolf said. "A couple of hunters on snowshoes or skis, sure. Nine people? With horses? Big horses that need grain feed, some of them? We're lucky we didn't lose more getting here."
"I might as well go back to bed," Mary said with a martyred sigh.
"Something happened, didn't it?" Mathilda asked. "While we were in the cave."
"Well, I came close to dying," Rudi said, mock cheerfully.
Even that was hard when you felt as wretched as he did right now; in the daytime he was merely weak, but after dark like this, before sleep came, there were times when he felt as if the fever were back. An aching in every part of his body, not just the stabbing, itching ache of the healing wounds; as if he were utterly tired and at the same time too uncomfortable to rest. And when the simple comfort of the room was like a prison, wrapping him in tight bands from head to toe like a corpse trussed for the funeral pyre.
And that's when it's a struggle not to snap at people, Rudi thought. Yet it's also when you don't want to be alone. The Mother's blessing on you, anamchara.
Mathilda raised his head with a hand and fed him more of the bitter-sweet herbal tea. The low gutter of the lamp on the bedside table underlit her face, bringing out the strong contours, and highlighting small green flecks in her hazel-brown eyes. The acrid scent and taste of the liquid were comforting, and the heat relaxed him a little as it made its way down to his grateful stomach.
"Your problem is you're used to being Lugh come again," she said severely, when she'd turned back from replacing the kettle on the stove. "And now you're not, for a while."
He rolled his head on the pillow and smiled a little at her. She looked a bit shocked, which meant he wasn't doing it as well as he'd hoped.
"I had a vision, anamchara," he said, and waited for a little, until the herbs took some of the ache away.
"Well, your family is prone to them!" she said, and smoothed a lock of hair back from his forehead.
"While we were in the cave," he said. "I thought I was dead for a moment, and on the trail to the Summerlands with the Dread Lord. Then I met-"
She swallowed and crossed herself when the tale was done.
"It might have been just a dream," she said.
His smile quirked a little. "I doubt it. But it made me realize something. Ignatius planted the thought in me, that night we rescued you, but now I know it's true."
"What?"
His eyes went to the shadowed rafters and planks of the ceiling. "That this journey's end is my own death," he said softly. "I am walking towards a sword indeed; and to take it up is to take up my own mortality. All our perils and struggle just bring the altar and the knife closer."
Matti took his hand. "We're all on a journey towards that," she said stoutly.
He shook his head slightly. "Let's not play with words, you and I, my heart. I'm the Sword of the Lady; my blood is my people's ransom, the price paid for their hearths and their happiness. That's my… fate, my weird. It's a hero's death, to be sure-but I'd rather it wasn't so soon. A hero's life makes a fine song, but the living of it is another thing altogether. It's one thing to risk your death in battle, or a hunt or even climbing a tree… it's another to walk a path with only one ending, every step a pace closer. Most men run from death…"
There was a long silence. Then her hand moved on his forehead again. "You could-"
Another pause. "I could what?" he said. He laughed faintly, and then stopped because it hurt. "Matti, I wish I could run off with you and start a farm somewhere, seeing your face every morning, and die at eighty-six with our grandchildren about us, and in between no worries but the weather and the day's work."