A Knot in the Grain (5 page)

The mage-master grinned and inclined his head. “Schoolboy stuff, I know,” but he held the cups out toward them nonetheless. Lily reached out her left hand and Sahath his right, so that their other two hands might remain clasped together.

Whatever the steaming stuff was, it cleared their heads and smoothed their faces, and Lily said, “Thank you,” and smiled joyfully. Sahath looked at her and said nothing, and the blond man looked at them both, and then down into his cup.

“You know this place,” the mage-master said presently, raising his eyes again to Sahath's shining face; “You are as free in it now as you were years ago, when you lived here as my pupil.” And he left them, setting his cup down on the small table and striding away down the hall, out into the sunlight. His figure was silhouetted a moment, framed by the stone doorsill; and then he was gone. The small brown birds sang farewell.

It was three days before Lily and Sahath saw him again. For those three days they wandered together through the deep woods around the master's hall, feeling the kindly shade curling around them, or lifting their faces to the sun when they walked along the shores of the lake. Lily learned to sing and to shout. She loved to stand at the edge of the lake, her hands cupped around her mouth, that her words might fly as far as they could across the listening water, but though she waited till the last far whisper had gone, she never had an answer. Sahath also taught her to skip small flat stones across the silver surface; she had never seen water wider than a river before, and the rivers of her acquaintance moved on about their business much too swiftly for any such game. She became a champion rock-skipper; anything less than eight skittering steps across the water before the small missile sank, and she would shout and stamp with annoyance, and Sahath would laugh at her. His stones always fled lightly and far across the lake.

“You're
helping
them,” she accused him.

“And what if I am?” he teased her, grinning.

“It's not
fair
.”

The grin faded, and he looked at her thoughtfully. He picked up another small flat stone and balanced it in his hand. “You want to lift it as you throw it—lift it up again each time it strikes the water.…” He threw, and the rock spun and bounded far out toward the center of the lake; they did not see where it finally disappeared.

Sahath looked at Lily. “You try.”

“I—” But whatever she thought of saying, she changed her mind, found a stone to her liking, tossed it once or twice up and down in her hand, and then flicked it out over the water. They did not notice the green-crested black bird flying low over the lake, for they were counting the stone's skips; but on the fourteenth skip the bird seized the small spinning stone in its talons, rose high above the water, and set out to cross the lake.

At last the bird's green crest disappeared, and they could not make out one black speck from the haze that seemed always to muffle the farther shore.

The nights they spent in each other's arms, sleeping in one of the long low rooms that opened off each side of the mage-master's hall, where there were beds and blankets as if he had occasion to play host to many guests. But they saw no one but themselves.

The fourth morning they awoke and smelled cooking; instead of the cold food and kindling they had found awaiting their hunger on previous days, the mage-master was there, bent over a tiny red fire glittering fiercely out of the darkness of the enormous hearth at the far end of the great hall. He was toasting three thick slices of bread on two long slender sticks. When they approached him, he gravely handed the stick with two slices on it to Lily. They had stewed fruit with their toast, and milk from one of the master's cows, with the cream floating in thick whorls on top.

“It is time to decide your future,” said the mage-master, and Lily sighed.

“Is it true that Sahath might have cured me … himself … at any time … without our having come here at all?” Her voice was still low and husky as if with disuse, but the slightly anxious tone of the query removed any rudeness it might have otherwise held.

The blond man smiled. “Yes and no. I think I may claim some credit as an—er—catalyst.”

Sahath stirred in his chair, for they were sitting around the small fire, which snapped and hissed and sent a determined thread of smoke up the vast chimney.

“Sahath always was pig-headed,” the master continued. “It was something of his strength and much of his weakness.”

Sahath said, “And what comes to your pig-headed student now?”

“What does he wish to come to him?” his old teacher responded, and both men's eyes turned to Lily.

“Jolin is waiting for—us,” Lily said. The “us” had almost been a “me”; both men had seen it quivering on her lips, and both noticed how her voice dropped away to nothing when she said “us” instead.

The mage-master leaned forward and poked the fire thoughtfully with his toasting stick; it snarled and threw a handful of sparks at him. “There is much I could teach you,” he said tentatively. Lily looked up at him, but his eyes were on the fire, which was grumbling to itself; then he looked at Sahath by her side. “No,” said the master. “Not just Sahath; both of you. There is much strength in you, Lily; too much perhaps for the small frame of a baby to hold, and so your voice was left behind. You've grown into it since; I can read it in your face.

“And Sahath,” he said, and raised his eyes from the sulky fire to his old pupil's face. “You have lost nothing but pride and sorrow—and perhaps a little of the obstinacy. I—there is much use for one such as you. There is much use for the two of you.” He looked at them both, and Lily saw the blue eyes again full of daylight, and when they were turned full on her, she blinked.

“I told Jolin I would not forget to come back,” she said, and her voice was barely above a whisper. “I am a healer; there is much use for me at my home.”

“I am a healer too,” said the mage-master, and his eyes held her, till she broke from him by standing up and running from the hall; her feet made no more noise than a bird's.

Sahath said, “I have become a farmer and a carpenter, and it suits me; I am become a lover, and would have a wife. I have no home but hers, but I have taken hers and want no other. Jolin waits for us, for both of us, and I would we return to her together.” Sahath stood up slowly; the master sat, the stick still in his hands, and watched him till he turned away and slowly followed Lily.

I hold no one against his will
, the master said to his retreating back;
but your lover does not know what she is refusing, and you do know. You might
—
some day
—
tell her why it is possible to make rocks fly
.

On the next morning Lily and Sahath departed from the stone hall and the mist-obscured lake. The mage-master saw them off. He and Sahath embraced, and Lily thought, watching, that Sahath looked younger and the master older than either had five days before. The master turned to her, and held out his hands, but uncertainly. She thought he expected her not to touch them, and she stepped forward and seized them strongly, and he smiled down at her, the morning sun blazing in his yellow hair. “I would like to meet your Jolin,” he said; and Lily said impulsively, “Then you must visit us.”

The master blinked; his eyes were as dark as evening, and Lily realized that she had surprised him. “Thank you,” he said.

“You will be welcome in our home,” she replied; and the daylight seeped slowly into his eyes again. “What is your name?” she asked, before her courage failed her.

“Luthe,” he said.

Sahath had mounted already; Lily turned from the mage-master and mounted her horse, which sighed when her light weight settled in the saddle; it had had a pleasant vacation, knee-deep in sweet grass at the banks of the lake. Lily and Sahath both looked down at the man they had come so far to see; he raised a hand in farewell. Silently he said to them:
I am glad to have seen you again, Sahath, and glad to have met you, Lily
.

Lily said silently back:
We shall meet again perhaps
.

The mage-master made no immediate answer, and they turned away, and their horses walked down the path that bordered the clearing before the hill; and just as they stepped into the shade of the trees, his words took shape in their minds:
I think it very likely
. Lily, riding second, turned to look back before the trees hid him from view; his face was unreadable below the burning yellow hair.

They had an easy journey back; no rain fell upon them, and no wind chilled them, and the mountain fog seemed friendly and familiar, with nothing they need fear hidden within it; and the birds still came to Lily when she whistled to them.

They were rested and well, and anxious to be home, and they travelled quickly. It was less than a fortnight after Lily had seen the mage-master standing before his hall to bid them farewell that they turned off the main road from the village of Rhungill into a deep cutting that led into the fields above Jolin's house. As Lily's head rose above the tall golden grasses, she could see the speck of color that was Jolin's red skirt and blue apron, standing quietly on the doorstep of the house, with the white birches at one side, and her herb garden spread out at her feet.

Lily's horse, pleased to be home at last, responded eagerly to a request for speed, and Sahath's horse cantered readily at its heels. They drew up at the edge of the garden, where Jolin had run to meet them. Lily dismounted hastily and hugged her.

“You see, we remembered to come back,” she said.

The Stagman

She grew up in her uncle's shadow, for her uncle was made Regent when her father was placed beside her mother in the royal tomb. Her uncle was a cold, proud man, who, because he chose to wear plain clothing and to eat simple food, claimed that he was not interested in worldly things; but this was not so. He sought power as a thing to be desired of itself, to be gloated over, and to be held in a grasp of iron. His shadow was not a kind one to his niece.

She remembered her parents little, for she had been very young when they died. She did remember that they had been gentle with her, and had talked and laughed with her, and that the people around them had talked and laughed too; and she remembered the sudden silence when her uncle took their place. The silence of the following years was broken but rarely. Her maids and ladies spoke to her in whispers, and she saw no one else but her uncle, who gave her her lessons; his voice was low and harsh, and he spoke as if he begrudged her every word.

She grew up in a daze. Her lessons were always too difficult for her quite to comprehend, and she assumed that she was stupid, and did not see the glitter of pleasure in her uncle's eye as she stumbled and misunderstood. She could only guess her people's attitude toward her in the attitude of the women who served her, and none ever stayed long enough for her to overcome her shyness with them; and she had never in her life dared to ask her uncle a question. But as she grew older, it crept into her dimmed consciousness that her people had no faith in what sort of queen she might make when she came to her womanhood; she could feel their distrust in the reluctant touch of her waiting women's hands. It made her unhappy, but she was not surprised.

The country did well, or well enough, under her uncle; it did not perhaps quite prosper, as it had done in her parents' day, but it held its own. Her uncle was always fair with a terrible fairness in all his dealings, and the edge of cruelty in his fairness was so exact and subtle that no one could put a name to it. He was severe with the first man who dared question the health of the princess—too severe, with the same brilliant exactitude of his cruelty. Thus the tales of the princess's unfitness grew as swiftly as weeds in spring, while he sat silent, his hands tucked into his long white sleeves, and ruled the country, and gave the vague, pale princess the lessons she could not learn.

He might have been Regent forever, and the queen banished to a bleak country house while her spinsterhood withered to an early death. But it was not enough for him; he wanted the country well and truly in his own hands, not only in the name of the princess, his niece. She might have died mysteriously, for his scholarship included knowledge of several undetectable poisons. But that was not sufficient either, for there would be those who felt pity for the young princess, and a wistfulness that had she lived she might have outgrown the shadow of her childhood and become a good queen, for her parents had been much beloved. There might even have been a few—a very few—who wondered about the manner of her death, however undetectable the poison.

He pondered long upon it, as the princess grew toward her womanhood and the season of her name day celebration approached. He spent more time in his tower study, and when he emerged, he looked grimmer even than was his wont, and muttered of portents. The people who heard him looked over their shoulders nervously, and soon everyone in the country was saying that there were more thunderstorms than usual this year. The Regent looked more haggard as the season progressed, for he was not a very good magician—he claimed that he knew no magic, and that magic was a false branch of the tree of wisdom; but the truth was that he was too proud and secret to put himself into a master mage's hands to learn the craft of it—and the thunderstorms wearied him. But his increasingly drawn and solemn appearance worked to his advantage also, for the people took it as a sign that he grew more anxious.

The princess also was anxious, for on her name day she should be declared queen. She knew she was not fit, and she watched the sky's anger and feared that it was, as her uncle declared, a portent, and that the portent warned against her becoming queen. A relief, almost, such would be, although she was enough her parents' daughter to be ashamed of the relief, as she had long been ashamed of her lack of queenly ability. She would have gone gladly to the bleak country house—a wish flickered through her mind that perhaps away from the strict, tense life of her uncle's court she might find one or two women who would stay with her longer than a few months—and left her uncle to rule.