Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (14 page)

In the dream I had been lying in the same position for a long time and my legs were beginning to go to sleep. But I was afraid to move in case somebody should hear me. A lump in the pocket of my tunic was stabbing me in the breastbone. With the least motion possible I drew out the lump from my pocket, the necklace my mother had given me.

The raven flying downward onto the curved talon of some larger bird. Silver chain dangling over yellow hay. I clutched it in my fist as a shadow fell across the doorway, a cloaked figure, hood drawn forward so that no face could be seen. A voice issued from the cloak, and the voice could have been man or woman. “I will be in his mind,” the voice said, “even if I never find him. I will be in his mind wherever he is. He will never be rid of the fear of me.”

I woke at this point, huddled beneath the wool blanket with a cool breeze blowing through my window. My heart was racing from the dream, and in spite of myself I checked every corner of the room for the hooded figure, hearing the echo of the dream voice in my head. I did not have the nerve to investigate the shrine. After I had got my breath I retrieved the necklace from its hiding place, cutting open the seam of my mattress and drawing out the cloth pouch. I studied the locket in the moonlight. The silver gleamed in my palm.

This was why he had taken my mother. This necklace. In my mind I could see her hand touching the necklace in the rune-box. She had been afraid when she opened it. Maybe she had guessed what might come.

A jewel like that one would have been famous for leagues, would have made my mother a rich woman, as rich as my father’s farm could ever make her, and yet I had never heard of it, not even from Fysyyn. But according to my mother, the necklace had belonged to Fysyyn once, and Fysyyn had given it to her.

Unnamable fear seized me. I heard the sentry walk by my window and nearly called out. But for what? What could I tell anyone, except that I had a bad dream, that I had seen my father lying in the dirt.
I will be in his mind wherever he is
.

I closed my fist around the necklace. No, I thought, you will not. You do not have power over me.

4

Kirith Kirin woke me the next morning, his face hovering over me in dim light. I thought it was another dream, but when I opened my eyes he drew back, as if he wanted to escape without being seen. I sat up and he smiled. “I didn’t mean for you to wake up. I wanted to make sure you were resting.”

“Is it close to dawn?”

“Yes. I couldn’t sleep so I came to sit in the shrine.”

A far away birdcall echoed in the night. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and leaned against the fabric wall. “Mordwen will be here soon, Kirith Kirin. He told me last night he was coming early to make sure I woke up in time.”

He glanced warily at the door and listened for several heartbeats. From outside one could hear only the breathing of the guard. Kirith Kirin said, “I shouldn’t be here. Mordwen would skin me alive. I’ll go soon.”

But he was not in any hurry. With him so close I felt tension seize me again, unfamiliar tautness restricting my chest. He asked how I had slept and I told him about my dream, the dark hooded figure, my father’s body lying in the dirt. The dream troubled him, and when I was finished telling it, he seemed more dispirited than before.

Whether he would have said anything more, I can’t say.

Mordwen Illythin walked into the chamber, frowning so darkly I wanted to crawl under the bed. Kirith Kirin flushed. Mordwen faced him. The Seer was so angry he trembled. “Have you forgotten yourself completely?”

“I couldn’t sleep and I came to the shrine to think. I looked in on Jessex to make sure he was sleeping. He woke up. You don’t need to go on like this.”

“What if someone were to find you here, or see you leaving? Have you no feeling for the boy?”

Kirith Kirin blushed and closed his mouth, thinking better of whatever he had been about to say. “Be careful.” He sighed, heavily. He stood, turned toward the doorway, his face in shadow. “Good morning, Jessex.”

“Good morning, Kirith Kirin.” My throat taut and aching. He walked out the door without looking back. He spoke to the guard and walked away. Mordwen stood by the window till his footfalls died to silence.

He lifted the felva from its place inside the chest. He started to hand it to me and then hesitated, tucking the robe under his folded arms and sitting on the edge of the cot. “I ought not to help you break the rules for the ceremony, but since you’ve already spoken, and since you haven’t yet touched the felva, I want to say this much to you. Kirith Kirin is very lonely, Jessex. In spite of his friends, in spite of Kiril Karsten and Imral Ynuuvil, in spite of me and Pelathayn. You seem to have touched him deeply. I believe that’s a good thing. But you’re still a boy under our laws.”

“I woke up and he was here. I didn’t do anything.” A sudden ache of loneliness filled me.

He lay his hand on my brow. His touch was gentle. Words dissolved that he had planned to say. “You’ll have to cut the bath short, it’s close to sunrise. I won’t go with you today. From now on this is your quiet time.”

I slipped the felva across my shoulders, finding my boots in the dim light. The clearing was silent as I headed through the underbrush, following the path to the creek.

5

Days passed. The shock of bad news eased, though a dull ache remained. The curious came each morning to see the boy the Seer had summoned to Arthen: child of a local witch, descendant of stewards, standing in place reserved for the daughters and sons of the gentry. I’m told my presence there caused unrest, but no one ever said so to my face.

The word for blood hatred is “duruth” in High Speech, and this is what I swore against the Kyminax witch and all those in her house. My lessons in High Speech progressed each day, the language coming to me like something I had known once but forgotten. I suppose that’s only natural since Upcountry is a corruption of the Jisraegen original, but I was pleased to learn it effortlessly, to show Kraele I was no fool. She was a patient teacher, but always distant.

Soon enough my private sorrow gave way to other concerns. In the world beyond Arthen, events were coming to a head.

News from Cordyssa was worse than ever. Poor families from across the tax-impoverished Fenax were migrating to the city, living in the streets, begging for bread. Begging soon became rioting, as food grew scarce. The garrison of Queen’s soldiers in Fort Bremn had tried to enforce the peace but ended up killing several of the migrants. To make matters worse, royal couriers and a fleet of Ivyssan accountants had arrived with new tax edicts and orders for a complete audit of city and citizens in the spring.

I know for a fact a messenger came to Arthen with a letter for Kirith Kirin from the City Nivra, Ren Vael. When the messenger arrived the Prince was on a hunting trip in the southern Woodland, Maugritaxa. The letter was urgent and the messenger rode on with an escort from camp.

Kirith Kirin had gone hunting the day after Mordwen found him with me in the shrine tent. Imral Ynuuvil accompanied him along with a party of favored gentry. Nothing was ever said to me about this trip, and I was too naive to suspect that it had anything to do with me.

I performed my duties in the shrine, worked at my lessons, trained with the youngest group of archers, beginning drill in the use of the crossbow. Each morning I rode suuren through the Woodland, returning to Mordwen to describe something for him, a forest glade, a scrap of cloud, a landmark, a beautiful tree. Sometimes he could add to what I saw, as he had when I found Hyvurgren Field. Other times he simply wrote what I told him, always staring at the words after he had written them. He was trying to make some pattern of them. The Praeven, the priests of Cunuduerum, had been able to find a rhythm in the suuren. But if there was a pattern, it escaped Mordwen.

Only one other time during this interim did I deceive him by omitting something unusual. One morning a few days after Kirith Kirin had left camp, I let Nixva pick our path for us and he headed east toward the nearest arm of River where one of the old roads cut through the forest, easy to follow as if it had been freshly cleared. These roads have existed since early Jisraegen days, the encroachment of undergrowth being prevented by an old enchantment within the obelisks that will last as long as the stones do. The Praeven made the obelisks and over millennia gardened the Woodland to its present state, and in its design Arthen is still as they saw it, for that part of their work pleased YY-Mother. The fact that Nixva had brought us to the road led me to anticipate some worthwhile destination. Mordwen told me there were memorials and shrines hereabouts, some of them dating back to the millennia before the Jisraegen built cities or towns.

I found no shrine or temple but I did happen across an old stone well, and at the well a tall, broad-shouldered woman was turning the crank to draw up a bucket of water for her cart-horse, which stood lazily chewing grass in a patch of sunlight by the roadside. She called a greeting to me in Jisraegen, and I replied that I did not know the language very well yet, though I could wish her a good-day in it. This made her laugh. “Maybe you speak this language then,” she said in Upcountry. “I think I hear the northern rhythm in your words. Are you a farm-boy, lost in the forest?”

She stood as tall as Imral, with an angular face distinguished by heavy, dark brows, a well-formed, strong nose and a full, feminine mouth. She looked as if she might be my mother’s age, her black hair touched with gray, fine lines around her eyes. But her body was obviously vigorous and there was no heaviness in her movements as she cranked the water-filled bucket upward, hefting it over the low stone well and filling the rock trough. Her horse drank gratefully as the woman watched me. “Can’t you speak?”

“Yes ma’am, I can. Excuse me, I was surprised. I didn’t expect to meet anybody out here. Are you from camp?”

She hung the bucket on the rope again. “No, I’m from much farther away than that. From far beyond the mountains.”

“I never heard of anybody from that far away. Are you on your way to camp?”

“Why should I be?”

“Because no one is supposed to live in Arthen unless Kirith Kirin allows it, and he only allows folks to live in camp. That’s what I thought.”

She was picking a burr out of the mane of the cart horse, which lazily lashed its tail even though this was much too early in the year for flies. “Kirith Kirin would be glad to see me if he knew I were here, but he doesn’t know, and he won’t know, because you’re not going to tell him.”

Her tone of voice was the same my mother used when she meant to be obeyed. I was not offended, but watched her more carefully. “I’m supposed to tell Mordwen Illythin what I see when I ride in the morning.”

“Not everything you see. Mordwen knows that.”

“Do you know him too?”

“I know many of the people in your camp. I know Nixva. I know you too, Jessex son of Kinth.” She said this while she was checking her horse’s harness. “I know why you came to Woodland. I may even tell you someday.”

“Tell me now.”

“No.” She climbed into the cart and lifted the reins. The horse stopped drinking as if she had commanded him without my hearing. “But I’ll see you again.” At last she smiled, quite coyly. “Unless you tell anybody you saw me. Then I won’t. And you’ll never know why you’ve come.”

I bit my lip. No, I would not beg her; in fact I would not make a sound. After a heartbeat I bowed my head, and she received the forced courtesy graciously. She turned her handsome face away, swatted the horse on the rump with the reins and the cart heaved down the path.

The thought of following her never occurred to me. I doubt Nixva would have allowed it. While the woman had been talking and watering her horse Nixva stood calmly, never impatient, never stamping his feet as he usually did when he wanted to be running. He listened to the woman's voice and watched her. The wonder was not simply that she had said his name; he had also recognized her.

I rode home with that to think about. As usual I left Nixva with the groom and hurried to Mordwen’s tent where I found the Seer bent over the suuren book, studying the listings he had already entered, his brows furrowed together, a veritable ridge of hair. He gestured me to sit on a cushion without greeting me by as much as a word. He asked what I had seen. I told him about the road and the well. About the woman I said nothing. He entered the road by its proper name; I never paid the least attention to it and consequently cannot remember it now. He said, “This makes no sense to me. I don’t remember a well. I almost wish we had not brought back the ride, it troubles me so much.”