"Want me to finish?" the boy asked as he stepped inside.
"I'm almost done," Laryn said. He didn't sound angry, but neither was there any warmth in his voice. No doubt he was still annoyed with D'Abjan for staying with the healer.
"I'll stay late tomorrow," the boy said. "I'll finish the arm for Madli's chair."
"I did it myself," his father said.
"Then I'll start something new, anything that you want me to work on."
Laryn stopped sweeping and looked at him, his eyes narrowed slightly, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "What's this about?"
D'Abjan couldn't help smiling, too. "Nothing. I just… I'm ready to work harder. That's all."
His father held his gaze for several moments, then nodded. "All right then." He glanced at the basket. "What's that?"
"The woman made it. That's what she had in those big baskets. Smaller ones like this. Beautiful ones. She gave one to me and one to Pritt."
"So, she's doing better."
"Much. She's left the healer's house. I passed her in the marketplace trading with several peddlers."
The smile faded from his father's face. "You're not serious." "Pritt couldn't believe it either."
"He feared she was going to die. He made it sound as though she would. And instead she's already left his cabin?"
"He's a very fine healer."
Laryn stared at the floor. "Yes, or…"
"Or what?"
His father shook his head. "I don't know. Nothing." He took the basket from D'Abjan and examined it closely. "She does good work. And your mother will like the colors."
"I know. That's why I chose that one."
Laryn put away the broom and together father and son walked around to the front of the house. As soon as they stepped outside, D'Abjan caught the scent of the evening meal his mother was cooking. It occurred to him then that he hadn't eaten since morning. His stomach grumbled loudly, drawing a grin from his father.
His mother had prepared stewed lamb and herb bread, his favorites, and that night he ate until he was sated and happy.
It wasn't until he was getting into bed that D'Abjan began to feel ill.
Once she was away from the village she reclaimed her cart and steered it as far from Greenrill as daylight would allow. As darkness fell, she made a fire by the wash. Then she removed the bandage and threw it into the flames.
Conjuring the wound had been but a small matter; fooling the Y'Qatt healer had been laughably easy. A real Qirsi healer would have known that her injury was feigned as soon as he or she used magic to heal it. But the Y'Qatt relied on his eyes and his hands, his herbs and his false faith. Whatever qualities he thought to gain by eschewing the use of magic, wisdom and insight were not among them.
The boy had been kind. It was regrettable that he had to die as well. He was as much a victim of the Y'Qatt as she-no doubt his faith had been forced upon him, drummed into his mind until he could recite it by rote. But there was no avoiding it. That was why she had given him a basket. Let the illness come to him early; let him die before the worst of it. For die they would. All of them.
It would be a long night; she looked forward to it. First she would
hear the moans of the Y'Qatt, the cries of fear and suffering. Is it the pestilence that has come? they would ask each other. Is it Murnia's pox? Then the fires would begin. Winds would keen, sweeping dense mists through the village. Homes would crumble in the face of shaping power unleashed. Dogs would howl at the incomprehensible thoughts conveyed to them by those with language of beasts. Then at last, silence would settle over the village as over a tomb.
And she would move on, toward the next Y'Qatt settlement.
Chapter 5
Besh was lying in bed when finally it came to him. Since seeing that daybook of Sy1pa's, he had been able to think of nothing else. All through dinner, as the young ones played and laughed, and Mihas asked him question after question about the old woman's hut, he could barely keep his thoughts clear enough to respond. Elica finally asked him if he was well, apparently fearing that his long day in the woman's home had left him fevered.
He felt fine, though. It was just that journal. Why did it bother him so? No, not bother. That was the wrong word. It occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of nearly all else. But why?
Sitting outside on Sirj's stump, as water dripped from the branches overhead and the sky above him began to clear, he tried to recall all he could of Sylpa. He'd known the woman when he was still a child, and had liked her very much. True, she was forever linked to Lici in his mind, but somehow he had managed to hold on to his fondness for her. Sylpa had been a formidable woman and quite beautiful, even after her hair turned white and the lines on her face deepened. Her eyes, large and dark green, had always seemed to be dancing with humor, even when the rest of her face looked solemn. And her laugh-full, unrestrained, loud enough to carry from one end of the marketplace to the other; even after she became eldest of the village and began to carry the cares of all Kirayde on her shoulders, she always kept that laugh.
She never married or had children of her own, but there were rumors, tales told in whispers and with sympathy, of a great love affair that ended in tragedy. According to these stories, Sylpa had loved a boy from Kirayde who left the village to seek his fortune, only to be killed in a flood along Maifor's Wash in Tordjanne. Heartbroken, Sylpa had vowed never to love again. No one remembered the boy's name, and even as a youth, Besh had questioned the verity of the tale. Then again, how else could he explain the fact that this strong, beautiful, kind woman lived alone at the edge of the village?
But there was nothing in the woman's history, or Besh's own, that would explain why the mere sight of her journal should affect him so. He'd never loved Sylpa himself-he'd been far too young. And though he liked her, they had never been close. So why?
Only now, lying in his bed, in the dark and quiet of Elica and Sirj's house, did he finally understand. It wasn't Sylpa who beckoned to him from those journal pages. It was Lici.
1119. That had been the date of that first entry he'd seen when glancing through the volume. Nearly one hundred years ago. Lici had come to the village well after that-probably forty years after. Of course Sylpa would have written about the girl's arrival in Kirayde. She was eldest at the time. And then she had taken the child in, and cared for her as if she were Sylpa's own. How could she have not written about her? It seemed quite likely that Lici's history was in that daybook. All of it, or at least as much as Sylpa had managed to get out of the girl. It might well contain the truth about whatever had befallen her prior to her arrival in Kirayde, leaving her alone in the world. It might explain the woman's strange manner and her stubborn silence.
He doubted that the journal would shed much light on where Lici was now, but it might tell Besh enough to help him piece together the rest of her story.
But just as the other villagers had no claim on Lici's gold, he had no right to read the daybook. True, he was an elder of the village, but that was all the more reason for him to leave the journal where it was. It fell to him, as well as to Pyav, Tashya, and the rest, to set an example for the other villagers. On the other hand, hadn't the people of Kirayde charged the elders with finding out what had become of the old woman? Mightn't the journal help him do just that?
Besh smiled in the darkness and shook his head.
"No, old man," he whispered. "If you're going to do this, don't lie to yourself about the reason."
The truth was Lici had fascinated him since the moment he saw her. At first, he had confused that fascination with love, but even later, when he realized that he wanted nothing to do with her, when he had started a family with Ema and had begun to warn his own children away from the woman, he remained enthralled by her. She had always been beautiful as well as strange. Or perhaps it was because her arrival in the village had come within a turn or two of his birth, forever linking them in the minds of others who had been alive at the time. Whatever the reason, the fascination had never really gone away. Here he was, a man in his sixteenth four, and still thoughts of the woman kept him awake in his bed. Besh couldn't help but laugh at himself.