The City in the Lake (5 page)

Taene had indeed not been with the rest of the young women at Sime’s sad birth. Caught up in Sime’s pain, Timou had not even wondered at her absence. She shook her head and looked inquiringly from Taene’s mother to Jonas.

“She went out with Chais,” Taene’s mother said, all but wringing her hands in distress. “This morning—early. She hasn’t come back yet.” She clicked her tongue in worried annoyance. “Girls do lose track of passing time, at Taene’s age. Look how long the shadows are. And listen! That isn’t geese, that sound, is it? Do you think that is the calling of geese?”

When she listened carefully, Timou had to agree that the wild faraway cry did not sound precisely like the cry of flying geese.

“It sounds like geese to me,” Jonas said, and shrugged when both women looked at him. “Well, it does.”

“Maybe,” Taene’s mother said, but she did not sound like she thought so. “Do you hear thunder?”

“Not yet,” said Timou. “She went out with Chais, did she?”

The older woman cast her eyes upward in fond exasperation. “Everyone knows it’s Chais my daughter is fond of—except her father, who will
not
see what’s right in front of his two eyes!
That’s
all right—he’ll come around, ah, and no harm to a father’s blindness, except what if that isn’t geese? Look, Timou, love, it’s near dusk. Would you please,
please
go and find my foolish daughter before the thunder breaks? If that is thunder?”

“Of course,” Timou reassured her. “Though they will probably be back in the village before I am finished searching. Most likely they are walking back right now.”

Taene’s mother gave a distracted nod.

“Do you know where they would have gone?”

The woman did not seem to, but Jonas thrust his hands into his pockets and gave Timou a sidelong look. “The glade in the wood behind the stone marker, I should guess. If I were guessing.”

He did not sound as though he were guessing. Timou half smiled, but converted it to a serious nod for the sake of Taene’s mother’s nerves. “I’ll look there first.”

“Oh,
thank
you, love,” said Taene’s mother, patting her arm again. “Jonas can go with you.”

“If you don’t mind, Timou,” Jonas put in, giving her a look that clearly said he had been dragged along by Taene’s mother and it wasn’t his fault, but that he would like to accompany her if she would not object.

Timou decided she did not mind. She said, “You can show me your glade, then, and tell me what girl you last took there.”

Jonas flushed a little, started to speak, and cut off whatever he had been about to say. He had a long stride, and lengthened it further now in annoyance, so that Timou had to stretch her own legs to keep up. He said over his shoulder, “I talk to Taene, that’s all. And Chais, when I’m out that way. They only went there to talk, you know. Chais would rather roll through nettles than do anything to harm Taene, and Taene wouldn’t hurt her father; and besides, it’s not a quick tumble on a blanket under a tree that either of them has in mind.”

Timou knew that. She took two running steps to catch up. “She thinks of you as a brother.”

Oddly, Jonas flushed again, more darkly. “So she should,” he said a little harshly, and lengthened his stride again.

“Please!” Timou protested.

Jonas glanced back at her in surprise and slowed abruptly. “Sorry.”

Above them, something that might be only geese streamed away south, far aloft and far away, crying a wild cry. Both Jonas and Timou glanced up. “
Is
that thunder?” Jonas asked, listening for the storm that might follow that cry, if it was not made by geese after all.

Timou could not quite tell.

It was not geese, nor ordinary thunder. They learned that before they had quite reached the stone marker, never mind the woodland glade up on the hill behind it: they learned it when the storm broke suddenly across them, roaring through an evening that had been calm only moments before. The storm hounds, white and swift and fierce as hunting hawks, broke the quiet air into wild gusts with their passing and sent streamers of cloud skating in ragged shreds behind them as they raced the wind through the sky. Rain came behind the hounds, violent as autumn storms could ever be, but with a savage cold to it that was not normal for so early in the season. Thunder crashed, much too close, and it was suddenly dark, as though they had leapt straight across evening into the deepest chasm of the night.

Timou caught Jonas’s hand and ran with him through the rain to the great stone, finding it by feel more than by sight. She tucked them both hard up against its leeward side. Raking wet hair from her forehead, she lifted her face to the storm. Her eyes were half shut against the dashing rain as she looked out into the sudden dark for the power that drove it. She saw nothing.

“What if Taene is out in this?” Jonas shouted in her ear, trying to get her to step back farther into the stone’s protection.

Timou nodded, picturing that possibility with dread. She patted Jonas urgently on the shoulder, meaning
Stay still,
and stepped out from behind the stone into the full force of the storm, so that if it was seeking a target it would more likely find her and not anyone else foolish enough to be caught out in it.

Through the rain, through the storm, rode the dark Hunter on his white mare: lightning scattered from the mare’s hooves and tangled in its wild mane; it tossed its head and settled back on its haunches, sliding down the wind to the road. Thunder rolled behind it, crashing as its hooves struck the ground, and the mare flung back its head, eyes crazed, muscles bunching to spring forward.

The Hunter checked it effortlessly, dark hand catching its white mane, and the mare reared instead, and came down again with a blaze of lightning and a bellow of thunder. Then it stood still, water from the storm streaming down its powerful neck and shoulders. The rain eased, and ceased: they were standing in the eye of the storm. All around them thunder rumbled. Somewhere far ahead and far above, the storm hounds gave tongue on the trail of some quarry. But the Hunter held his mare and did not follow them.

He seemed at once as vast as the storm and yet hardly taller than an ordinary man; he carried neither bow nor spear, nor needed either. Darkness cloaked him; it seemed he towered to the cloud-torn sky and yet Timou could see his face—or half see it, for it was masked by streamers of cloud and shadow. A crown of antlers or twisted branches rose in confusing patterns above his head. His eyes were wide and round and yellow, fierce and unhuman as the eyes of an owl, but blind. Yet he knew she was there, and turned his face toward her.

Do I not know you?
demanded the Hunter.
Surrender your name to me.
His voice was dark and fierce and wild; thunder was in it and behind it, so that it seemed to echo measurelessly through the dark.

“Timou,” Timou said, her voice shaking. “Lord, my name is Timou. Daughter of . . . daughter of Kapoen.”

Behind her, Jonas eased out from the shelter of the great stone to stand at her back and put his hands on her shoulders. Timou was glad of his support; she felt her breath coming a little more easily, for all she might have wished him to stay out of the Hunter’s way.

Daughter of Kapoen,
said the Hunter.
Is that what you are? And yet I perceive you are very like your mother.

Timou was stunned.

But do you have her power?
demanded the Hunter.
I think not.

“You . . . know my mother?” Timou came a half step forward, realized what she was doing, and drew back again. “Who was she? What happened to her?”

The Hunter gazed at her with his blind eyes. Timou thought his mouth curved in a smile that held cruelty and mockery and nothing of humor, but shadows lay across his face and she was not sure what she saw.
What happened to her? Nothing happened to her. She waits for you. As I have waited for her. And now I find you.
The Hunter moved a dark hand across the white neck of his mare, and the mare tossed its head and shifted its feet, muscles bunching with the desire to leap forward. He held it. Thunder muttered.

Timou stood still, with an effort; yet she did not know whether she wanted to run from him or press forward with questions and pleas. She asked quickly, “Do you know where my mother is, Lord?”

If you seek her, I think you will find her,
said the Hunter.
Seek her.

“I will,” Timou whispered.

A terrible fierce satisfaction filled the Hunter’s dark face, his blind yellow eyes. Lightning cracked around them in a sudden wild echo of that satisfaction; thunder crashed with brutal power all through the dark, and Timou flinched and tried not to cry out.

Jonas’s hands tightened on her shoulders, and he gave her a little shake, as though to assure Timou that he was still with her. She leaned gratefully against his solid human warmth.

But the Hunter turned, shadows twisting above him and across his face. His mare settled reluctantly, tossing its head so that lightning flickered in its mane. Rain came through the dark—small hard drops, cold as slivers of ice. He said to Jonas,
And you, man? What are you, besides my quarry?

Jonas did not answer. Perhaps he could not. He bowed his head over Timou’s, and made no sound.

The Hunter laughed, a terrible wild sound with nothing human in it, and released his mare. It sprang forward, lightning tearing the air behind it, thunder crashing at the beat of its hooves, and the cold rain drove savagely in its wake.

Timou was trembling. Jonas put his arm around her shoulder. Neither of them spoke. Timou, at least, felt herself numbed beyond the ability to speak. There seemed no words that could encompass either the dark Hunter or the questions he had left behind him.

It was raining. The rain was cold. The road had gone to icy mud, though the terrible chill was slowly passing off the night with the Hunter’s departure. They both could hear that the storm hounds had put up a quarry far away, so there was no need to be concerned for Taene or Chais or anyone from the village. So Timou walked, shivering, close against Jonas’s side, and neither of them said a word.

Taene, it proved, was safe in her father’s house, in her mother’s kitchen. She was very glad to see them.

“I heard the storm break,” she said, leaping to her feet to greet them. “And Mother said she’d sent you after me, Timou—I’m sorry to have worried you—”

Taene’s mother pressed hot tea and little iced rolls on them both, and sent Taene’s little sisters scattering to heat soup and find towels. “You’re soaked through, Timou, love—I’m so sorry. Jonas, dear, I’m so sorry. Taene was already here when I got back, and there you were, out in all that weather. Wouldn’t you know it?”

“It wasn’t more than an ordinary storm, now, was it?” asked the apothecary, passing his wife a bottle of elderberry syrup for the tea, which she added generously. “Just a storm, ah? They come up fast in the autumn.”

Jonas turned his head toward Timou. Their eyes met. He said after a moment, “Of course. Just a storm.”

Timou did not contradict him. She accepted a cup of sweetened tea from Taene’s mother and a warm towel from one of the little girls, and a place by the stove, and felt her shivering ease. She said, “I am . . . I will leave for the City tomorrow. Or the day after,” she added more reasonably. “To find my . . . father.”

The apothecary nodded soberly. “I was discussing this with Enith.” Enith was the midwife. “After Sime, and no sign of Kapoen returning, I think you must, my dear.”

“And I wasn’t there for poor Sime,” Taene said penitently, bringing Timou a steaming mug of soup. “I’m even sorrier for that than for sending you out in the rain. Poor Timou. Are you warmer now? Is Jonas going with you to the City?”

Timou turned her head sharply, and for the second time her eyes and Jonas’s met.

The apothecary looked from one of them to the other, looked finally at his wife, took in her knowing expression, raised his brows, and sighed.

Jonas looked only at Timou. “Yes,” he said.

“No,” said Timou.

“We’ll discuss it,” said Jonas.

“As long as you discuss it in the morning,” Taene’s mother said firmly, “in dry things, and after a good breakfast. You had better stay the night here, Timou—just listen to that rain!—you can have the girls’ room, and the girls can go in with Taene. All right, dear?”

Timou looked at her silently, and wanted to weep. She did not even know why, except she thought that whatever she found in the City, it would not be a kind, comfortable woman who made tea and worried over one’s getting soaked in a cold rain.

When setting forth on a journey, there are always some things one should take and other things that one should leave behind. Timou moved methodically through the next day, and the next, sorting clothing and supplies, and thoughts and wishes and hopes, into one category or the other.

“I should come with you,” Jonas said. He had brought her his own leather knapsack, saved from the days in which he had journeyed. Timou had never asked him where he had journeyed from, nor had he ever volunteered the tale. Now such a question somehow did not seem appropriate, though she would have liked to ask it.

Jonas added, “Anybody can get into difficulty on the road.”

Timou did not answer. It had occurred to her with surprising force that in fact she would like Jonas to come with her: that she wanted his solidity at her side and his dark quiet presence across her evening fire every night. She was immediately annoyed with herself: was she a child, to need company in the dark? What would her father think if he were here to see her, shaking with nerves just because she was leaving the village? He would wonder if this was really his daughter after all.

“I know you said no,” Jonas said. He was frowning. His eyes met hers with concern, and something more: shared knowledge. “But it’s a long way to the City, and the forest to cross before you get there. I know you’re your father’s daughter. But, well . . .”

Timou said, “I don’t think so,” and did not say what she was thinking, which was that nerves or no, it might indeed be hard enough to guard herself on the way, never mind what she might find at the end of her journey, and she would be foolish to put herself in the position of having to watch after Jonas, too. Even if she was silly enough to want to put herself in that position.