Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (12 page)

Irissa sat next to him, holding a cup of warm wine
someone had given her. “Mother, I think the wizard did something to Treian,”
she said. Her hands were shaking a little, making the liquid tremble inside the
red-glazed cup, but her voice was firm. “We called but he didn’t come.”

Karima bit her lip, her expression still tense. She
kept absently squeezing Giliead’s shoulders, as if making sure he was still
there. “They’re searching the house now. If he’s hurt, they’ll find him.”

“He’s dead,” Giliead told her, still calmly. “The god’s
showing me. I think he’s out in the woods. Treian, I mean. It thinks the wizard
killed him when he got separated from the others after dusk, and the wizard
made a curse on himself so they thought he was Treian.” Giliead frowned in
concentration, his eyes distant. “It wasn’t a good curse. Not good, I mean it
didn’t work well. He had to stay in the dark, or people would have seen he wasn’t
Treian. The god says he must have known Menander would see through it, and so
he had to act when he realized Menander and Ranior were returning.” He blinked.
“Can I go to bed now? I’m sleepy.”

Ilias stared, then looked at Karima and Irissa, both
listening in growing consternation. Appalled, Karima said under her breath, “He
was here in the house all that time. And the motherless bastard killed Treian.”
She pushed to her feet, shaking her head.

Ilias took a sharp breath. “He waved his hand and we
couldn’t--”

Sabiras put a hand over his mouth. Ilias looked up in
surprise. “You were too startled to call out, it happened too fast. That’s what
happened, isn’t it?” She looked at Irissa pointedly. “Irissa?”

Irissa looked blank for a moment, then nodded in
startled comprehension. Ilias realized others in the room were listening and
that Karima was staring at him with concentrated intensity, as if willing him
to make the right answer. He didn’t understand but he nodded emphatically. Sabiras
removed her hand, saying, “Good.”

* * *

Ranior and Menander returned, but Ilias didn’t see
them, only heard them talking out in the atrium. He got a quick bath in warm
water, and a clean shirt to put on that was far too big for him. Irissa told
Sabiras that Ilias hadn’t eaten all day, and Sabiras brought him a bowl with
lentils and bread soaked in mutton broth, and the fact that these people still
had bread this late in the day just confirmed Ilias’ opinion of Niale’s bad
management of their house.

They didn’t ask him any questions, until Sabiras
carried him to a bedroom on the opposite side of the portico. It was nearly as
big as the room Ilias’ sisters and cousins slept in, but there were sheepskin
rugs, and only one bed and a couple of clothes and blanket chests. It wasn’t as
warm as the kitchen, though the winter shutters in the outside window were
tightly closed.

Giliead was already in bed, his face buried in the
pillow, with Karima seated on a stool nearby. As Sabiras put him down on the
bed, Karima asked him, “Ilias, how did you get lost today?”

When she smiled, she was pretty, nearly as pretty as
his mother. “On the way to town.”

“You walked from Cineth?” Sabiras asked, brows lifted.

“No, we didn’t go all the way there. I got lost on the
way.” He rubbed his eyes, just wanting them to stop. He was more glad than ever
that he had lied. He was being treated like a lost child; he wasn’t sure what
would have been different if they knew he had been...left, but he wasn’t
willing to take the chance. “I’m sleepy.”

Karima and Sabiras exchanged a look he couldn’t read,
but they didn’t ask him any more questions. Sabiras tucked him under the
blankets and they both left the room.

Giliead rolled over and cuddled up next to his side,
and Ilias put an arm around him. Ilias hesitated, then asked, “Why wouldn’t
Sabiras let me tell them why I didn’t call for help?”

Giliead blinked. “Because it was a curse on you and
Irissa. It’s gone now, and it didn’t do anything to you. But people might hear
about it, and say you should have a curse mark, like Cylides.”

Ilias knew what a curse mark was. People who had been
under a wizard’s curse had to have a silver half-moon branded into their cheek.
He had never seen one before because those people weren’t supposed to be around
normal people. He wanted to ask a question, but he couldn’t put it into words.

Giliead seemed to know what he wanted to ask. “Cylides
needs a place to live, so he lives in Andrien village, down on the beach. Ranior
says having a curse mark doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong. It means a wizard
did something wrong to him.”

Ilias asked, “So why does he have to have it? It isn’t
fair.”

Giliead shrugged, nestling into the pillow. “Because
people are so afraid of curses. Anything that has to do with them.” He eyed
Ilias thoughtfully. “Ranior says people are afraid of Chosen Vessels, too.”

“I’m not,” Ilias said automatically, before realizing
it was true. He had seen a wizard now, he knew what there was to fear, and it
wasn’t Giliead or Menander. He could hear voices, through the shutters and from
the doorway, and knew there were people on guard. But there had been people on
guard when the first wizard got in. “What if another one comes?” he said aloud.

Giliead shook his head, barely awake. “The god’s under
the bed.”

Ilias bit his lip. He didn’t think Giliead was lying,
and he didn’t want to look. But he was too exhausted not to drift off, and he
slept soundly.

* * *

The next day was mostly spent sleeping. Ilias finally
woke buried in the blankets, feeling hot and a little sick, with Giliead using
his back as waves to sail a toy boat on.

The shutters were open, revealing warm afternoon sun
and the branches of an olive tree moving gently in the breeze. Blearily, he
crawled out of bed onto the sheepskin rug in front of the banked hearthfire. Giliead
had been up for some time, judging by the scatter of wooden toys. Remembering
last night, Ilias leaned down to cast a suspicious look under the bed, but
there was nothing there but a little dust.

Ilias examined his feet with a grimace. The left one
felt fine, if tender. The right was swollen, the skin stretched tight, and the
cuts on the heel and just below his toes were red and ugly. He didn’t think he
could walk on it, at least not today.

He picked up a toy galley, trying to think what to do.
The boat was scarcely bigger than his cupped hands, but precisely carved, the
eye for the ship’s soul carefully picked out over the bow. It was old, with
traces of the paint that handling had worn off.

“Ranior made that for my sister,” Giliead told him,
settling next to him. His fine hair had completely come out of his braids and
he was still wearing the same shirt he had slept in. “She gave it to me. She’s
going to be a captain and sail to the Chaeans.”

“Is she your only sister?” Ilias asked absently,
turning the boat over. He had a wooden horse, not carved as well as this, and
battered from years of play. It had come from Timeron and Castor hadn’t wanted
it anymore, so it had been Ilias’ to play with. “If she’s the only girl, then
she can’t go to sea. She has to stay here and take care of your family’s land,
so the people who live here don’t starve.”

Giliead frowned, taking the toy ship back as if Ilias
had just lost the right to hold it. “She can be a captain if she wants.”

It wasn’t worth arguing about. Only women could own
things like houses and land.

Sabiras came in then, looked at Ilias’ feet, and made
him get back on the bed. 

She cleaned Ilias’ cuts again and put on smelly
ointment and bound his right foot up to keep it clean. Then she made up for it
by bringing them bread, fresh and still warm, and fish with pickle sauce and
lentils. Ilias ate all of his and half of Giliead’s portion, since the younger
boy had been awake earlier for breakfast. Sabiras lectured him on staying in
the bed, not walking around and especially not going out in the atrium or the
farmyard to play in the dirt.

Ilias felt better after the food. “Are there still
wizards outside?” he asked her, scraping the last of the sauce off the plate. Until
the wizards were gone, he couldn’t walk home.

Sabiras hesitated, and Giliead, sprawled on the foot
of the bed and pushing another wooden boat across the fold of the blankets,
answered for her. “There’s no curses, so there’s no wizards.”

She glanced at Giliead a little uncomfortably, then
quickly smiled at Ilias to hide it. “There you go. That’s what Menander says as
well.”

Ilias got out of bed as soon as she left, but it
really did hurt to walk. So he played with Giliead on the floor, naming the
wooden toys after famous wizards and Chosen Vessels from the poets’ stories,
and reenacting their battles. Ilias hadn’t played like this in a long time;
Castor had decided he was too old for these kinds of games and was too busy
trying to bully Ilias to want to do anything interesting. Giliead was still
young enough to have fun.

The house was quiet except for the occasional
reassuring sounds of Sabiras or someone else talking out in the passage, or the
lowing of a cow out in the fields. Once Ilias heard Ranior’s voice outside,
speaking to someone in a serious tone as the leaves crunched under their boots.
It was odd to be in a house so quiet, to have a whole room to themselves for
their play, but Irissa seemed to be Giliead’s only sibling.

He was so wrapped up in the game, he didn’t even know
Karima was watching them until Giliead, laughing at Ilias’ rendition of Ifaea
finding the edge of the world, rolled onto his back, smiling, and said, “Hello,
mother.”

“Hello, Gil.” She smiled at him openly, not hesitantly
the way Sabiras did. “Menander needs you to talk to the god for him. Can you do
that?”

“It’s in the hay barn, where it’s dark and cool. It
doesn’t like bright light,” Giliead told her, rolling over to prop his chin on
his hands. He explained to Ilias, “Menander could talk to the god himself, like
he talks to the Uplands god, but he wants me to practice. Our god likes him,
though. He sounds like pine needles in the wind.”

Ilias nodded seriously, fascinated. It was a novelty
to talk to someone who told you interesting things, rather than badly made-up
lies.

Karima sat on the floor, her green dress pooled around
her. “Ilias, let me see your feet.” Her voice, calm and firm, was impossible to
disobey and he shifted glumly to face her, stretching his legs out. She looked
him in the face when she spoke to him, and he couldn’t remember when his mother
had last done that.

He held his breath as she took his foot, but she
handled it gently, not hurting him. “You need to listen to Sabiras and not walk
on this,” she told him, adding almost absently, “What’s your family name?”

“Finan,” Ilias said, then bit his lip. She had caught
him by surprise, before he could decide to lie.

She nodded, her eyes thoughtful. “You’re Timeron’s
son?”

“Yes, but he died and I don’t remember him.”

“I see.” She smiled a little, and he thought she
looked tired. “We’ll send a message today and see if we can’t get you home
soon.”

Ilias nodded, but he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. And
he didn’t want to be carted home like a stray goat. He wanted to prove himself,
to show he could get home on his own. That was the point of this.

* * *

Menander didn’t come until later that day, when the
sun was just beginning to set.

Irissa had come in earlier, not long after Karima, and
proved that she wasn’t much like Ilias’ notion of an older sister. She played
games, and then they sat on the floor and she read to them out of a poet’s
story that Ilias had never heard before, a long story about a voyage down the
coast, and fighting with Hisians. When she was done, Giliead said, “Read about
the Chosen Vessels, ‘Rissa.”

“You’ve heard those stories,” Irissa told him
repressively, rolling up the parchment and tucking it carefully back into its
leather case.

“Not all of them. And Ilias hasn’t heard. And you can
stop before the end.”

“Stop before the end?” Ilias asked, poking Giliead in
the ribs to make him squirm. “Why do you want her to do that?”

Giliead defended himself half-heartedly, laughing. “She
doesn’t like to read the parts where they die.”

“They die? That’s a lousy end,” Ilias said, still
tickling.

“Chosen Vessels always die,” Giliead said, smiling. “That’s
what everybody says.” Then Irissa threw a pillow at them and refused to read to
them at all.

Menander came in not long after, his face shaved and
his hair re-braided. He sat on the floor by the fire and told Giliead things to
tell the god, and things to ask it. It was all fairly dull, just questions like
“what does the sky look like” and “ask it which way the wind is blowing” and
Ilias stopped listening, until they were done and Menander was getting up to
leave. Then Irissa asked, “Why did the god help Giliead and not Livia?” Ilias
had been wondering about that himself.

Menander shook his head, looking off toward the window
and the field beyond, the shadows long as the sun set. “The gods, and
especially this god, the god that Chose him, can see and hear Giliead very
clearly now, better than we can see and hear each other in this room. It sees
through his eyes, literally, and so it knew the wizard was here, where Giliead
was, and it could get here in time to help him. As we get older, we lose that
close contact. We can still speak to them, and they to us, but it takes time
and effort.” He turned back to them, ruffling Giliead’s hair as the boy looked
up at him solemnly. “The god didn’t help Livia because it didn’t know she was
in danger until it was too late.”