"No!" Jynna cried, opening her eyes and struggling to break out of S'Doryn's grasp.
"Jynna!"
But she fought her way free and fell from the saddle, landing hard on the dirt just beside her mother's body. She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the house.
"Stay out of there!" T'Kaar shouted after her.
She didn't stop. Instead she climbed the stairs and made her way to her room. Most of the house was in shambles. But her room remained relatively undamaged and she dove onto her bed and began to sob, clutching her blanket to her face. After several minutes she heard a footstep at her door. S'Doryn. She expected him to tell her that she had to leave. Instead, he tossed an empty carry sack onto the bed next to her.
"Anything you want to keep you should put in there. I don't expect you'll want to come back again."
"Thank you."
"T'Noth and T'Kaar are going to have a look around the rest of the village. I can stay with you if you like."
"No, it's all right."
"Then, we'll come back for you soon." He glanced around briefly. "This is a nice room. We'll have to make certain that your room in Lowna is just as nice."
He left her, and Jynna began to look around her room for things she wanted to keep. In truth, there wasn't much: her blanket, her clothes, a doll her parents had given her a few years back, a small wood carving of a deer that Delon made for her. She went to her brothers' room and found a shirt of Blayne's that she'd always liked. It didn't fit her, but she wanted something of his. And she found a wooden hair comb that had been her mother's. She took that as well. While in her parents' room she spotted the basket that the old Mettai woman had given her the day before-was it really only a day?-and she nearly took that, too. But in the end she decided not to. She wanted no reminders of yesterday.
When the men returned, they had five survivors with them. All of them were children-boys and girls she knew and had played with at the sanctuary, in between lessons. Two of them were badly burned and one had lost a hand. But they were alive, just like her.
Of the two who were unhurt, one was a boy her age, named Etan, and the other was a younger girl whose name Jynna couldn't remember, and who refused to say anything to any of them.
Etan sat on one of the Fal'Borna horses, looking terribly small, and he watched as Jynna tied her carry sack to the saddle of S'Doryn's horse.
"How did you find them?" the boy asked suddenly. "The Fal'Borna, I mean."
She paused and looked up at him, shielding her eyes against the sun. "My father sent me for help. He told me to follow the lake north to Lowna."
He looked over at S'Doryn and T'Noth, who were speaking quietly. "And now we're going to live with them."
"Yes."
"Do you think they'll let us be Y'Qatt?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Do you want to be Y'Qatt?"
He didn't answer and a moment later S'Doryn called Jynna over and helped her back into the saddle.
"It's only children who survived," she said, as he climbed up behind her. "Why is that?"
"I don't know, Jynna. Maybe it has something to do with magic. One of the girls who was burned is older than you are, but not old enough to have come into her power yet. That's the only thing I can think of that makes any sense."
"But does that mean it wasn't the pestilence?"
"I'm not certain what it means."
They started riding out of the village. From what she had overheard of S'Doryn's conversation with the brothers, it seemed that they were going to stay in the low hills west of the lake until they were allowed to return to the Fal'Borna village.
"Is there anything else you can tell me about what happened yesterday, Jynna?" S'Doryn asked after they had ridden for some time. "Anything at all unusual?"
"Well, there was the old woman."
He looked down at her. "What old woman?"
"I saw her…" She was reluctant to mention her secret spot, until she realized with a pang of regret that she probably wouldn't ever be going back to it. "I met her in a dale near the village. She was working on some baskets to trade in the marketplace."
"And did she seem at all ill?"
"No, she was fine."
He frowned and faced forward again. "Still, she might have gotten sick later. She was Qirsi, right?"
"No. She was Mettai."
"Mettai?" He sighed and shook his head. "That's blood magic. If this is a strain of the pestilence that strikes at Qirsi magic, it probably wouldn't have come from her."
Again they fell silent, until Jynna said, "Her baskets were pretty. She gave me one."
"Did you bring it with you?"
She shook her head. "No. I was afraid it would remind me of yesterday. But now I wish I had."
Chapter 10
Dreaming Moon, second day of the waxing, 1147.
It's been more than half a turn since Licaldi appeared in our village, and I despair of knowing little more about her today than I did that first sunny morning. I was encouraged in those first few days, satisfied that I was learning more about the girl with each day that passed, but I realize now that all that I gleaned then were trifles: the mere fact that she could speak, her name, the fact that she was Mettai, even the knowledge that some terrible tragedy has befallen her and those she loves. Aside from her name, these details, while certainly of some value, tell me little that I couldn't tell simply by looking at her by recalling how she appeared that day she arrived-emaciated and filthy and haunted.
She seems contented to follow me around day after day, as I attend to my duties as eldest and do all that I must to keep my house-our house-clean and the garden growing. I remain concerned for her and I try to remind myself each day that she has another home, perhaps a family who are searching desperately for her as I write this. Still, I have to admit that I enjoy having her with me. I've become quite fond of her for though she doesn't speak of anything that happened to her before she came to Kirayde-and in fact seems to take great care in avoiding any mention of her past-she speaks at length of other matters, offering her observations on the workings of our marketplace, on the ease with which I use magic (she has expressed admiration for my skill as a sorceress, and I have to admit that I'm flattered), and on the various people she's encountered in my company. Through all of this, she shown herself to be quite clever and possessed of a sharp wit. She laughs freely and at times strikes me as being a fine, normal young girl.
But then a shadow falls over her eyes, or a remark slips out that seems to hint at her former life, and the light I see in her is extinguished as swiftly as a candle in a sudden wind. If I pursue these matters with questions, she withdraws, grows silent, even sullen, as if by asking I have committed some breach of trust. At these times it doesn't matter what tone of voice I use, gentle or hard: Licaldi remains reticent. And my frustration grows.
I sense that she is aware of my feelings. And here I mean far more than the obvious. Of course she knows how eager I am to know more about her- my questions, which I've repeated probably dozens of times, can leave little doubt as to that. But I think she knows as well that I've grown attached to her that in many ways she has rescued me from a life that was a good deal emptier than I ever realized. For too long I've lived without companionship, without love. I was starved for it, though I never knew it. Licaldi did, though. I'm just as certain of that as I am of the fact that she has seen horrors beyond my imagining. I'm not so foolish as to think that she chose this village for that reason, or even that she contrived in some way to end up with me. That was the will of the gods, who may well have marked us for one another long ago.
But I do believe that she uses my need against me. Perhaps if I had a husband and a family, I wouldn't be so frightened that I might drive her away with more persistent questioning. Perhaps if I hadn't grown so accustomed to her presence here in the short time we've had together, I would be more eager to find the truth and return the poor girl to her rightful home. I don't know how much of what she does is meant to bend me to her will, and how much merely has that effect inadvertently, but I have seen her haggle with peddlers on my behalf, and I have seen her turn others to her purposes and I recognize some of the devices she has used on them as being the same she has used to good effect with me.