Certain Symmetry (2 page)

"With fondness and anticipation," Lute
replied, somewhat absently. He glanced at the sky. "The day grows
old," he murmured.

Abruptly, he bowed to the tavern-keeper,
cloak swirling.

"Friend Oreli, keep you well. I hope to
visit your fine establishment once or twice during our stay.
Immediately, however, the duty of friendship calls. I to Veverain,
to offer what aid I might."

"You must try, of course," Oreli said. "When
she turns you away, remember that the Disguise serves a hearty
supper. And that Mother Juneper will gladly house you and your
apprentice."

Lute inclined his head. "I will remember.
But, first, let us be certain that Veverain will refuse us." He
turned, cloak billowing, and strode off down the street down the
street at such a pace that Moonhawk had to run a few steps to catch
him.

* * *

VEVERAIN'S HOUSE WAS at the bottom of the
village; a long, sprawling place, enclosed by a neat fence, shaded
in summer by two well-grown dyantrees. The trees, like their kin at
the bend in the track, showed a pale green fuzzing along their
limbs; at the roots of each was a scattering of bark and dead
branches--winter's toll. When the dyantrees came to leaf, then it
would be spring, indeed.

Lute pushed open the whitewashed gate and
went up the graveled pathway, Moonhawk on his heels. The yard they
passed through seemed neglected, ragged; as if those who had care
of it had not come forth with rakes and barrows to clear away the
wrack of winter and make the land ready for spring.

There were some indications that neglect was
not the yard's usual state; Moonhawk spied mounds which surely must
be flower-beds under drifts of dead leaves, more leaves
half-concealing a bird-pool, rocks set here and there with what
might prove to be art, once the debris was cleared away.

Gravel crunching under his boots, Lute
strode on, to Moonhawk's eye unobservant. He was also silent, which
rare state spoke to her more eloquently of his worry than any
grandiose phrase.

The path curved 'round the side of the
house, and here were the neat rows of the kitchen garden put in by
the niece, a blanket over the more tender seedlings, to shield them
from the cold of the coming night.

A few steps more, and the path ended at a
single granite step up to a roofed wooden porch. A black-and-white
cat sat tidily on the porch, companioning a basket covered with a
blue checked cloth. Lute paused on the step, bent and offered his
finger to the cat in greeting.

"Tween, old friend. I hope I find you
well?"

The cat graciously touched his nose to the
offered fingertip, then rose, stretched with languid thoroughness,
and yawned.

"Tween?" Moonhawk asked quietly. Often, over
the months of their travel together, she had deplored the
magician's overfondness for words; yet, confronted now with a Lute
who walked silent, she perversely wished to have her light-tongued
comrade of the road returned.

Lute glanced at her, black eyes hooded. "It
was Rowan's joke, see you. The cat is neither all black, which
would easily allow of it being named Newmoon; nor all white, which
leads one rather inescapably to Snowfall. Indeed, as Rowan would
have it, the cat lands precisely between two appropriate and
time-honored cat names--an act of deliberate willfulness, so Rowan
swore--and thus became Tween." He looked down at the cat, who was
stropping against the care basket.

"Rowan loved a joke--the more complex the
jest, the louder he laughed."

He shook himself, then, and mounted the
porch, stooping to pick up the basket. The cat followed him to the
door, tail high. Lute put his hand on the latch, pushed...

"Locked."

"Surely you expected that," Moonhawk
murmured and Lute sighed.

"A man may hear ill news and yet still hope
that it is untrue. Optimistic creatures, men. I did not hope to
find Rowan alive, but..." He let the rest drift off, raised his
hand and brought sharp knuckles against the wood, then drifted back
a step, head tipped inquisitively to one side. The cat settled
beside him and began to groom.

At respectful intervals, Lute leaned forward
to knock twice, then three times. The door remained closed.

"Well, then." He set the care basket down,
slipped his bag from its carry-strap and shook it. Three spindly
legs appeared, holding the bag at a convenient height. Moonhawk
watched closely while he opened the clasp and put his hand inside:
Lute's magic bag held such a diverse and numerous collection of
objects that she had lately formed the theory that it was not one
bag, but three, attached in some rotating, hand-magical manner
undetectable to her Witch senses.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.
'Break the lock?"

He looked at her. "Break the lock on the
house of one of my oldest friends? Am I a barbarian, Lady Moonhawk?
If things were otherwise, it might have been necessary to resort to
lockpicks, but I assure you that my skill is such that the lock
would have suffered no ill."

She blinked. "Lockpicks? Another
hand-magic?"

"A very powerful magic," Lute said solemnly,
and withdrew his hand from the bag, briefly displaying a confusing
array of oddly contorted wires. "By means of these objects, a
magician may learn the shape and secret of a strange lock and impel
it to open."

"It sounds like thieve's magic to me, Master
Lute."

"Pah! As if a thief could be so skilled! But
no matter. We need not resort to lockpicks for this." He replaced
the muddle of wires in his bag.

"No?" said Moonhawk, eyebrows rising. "How
then will you open the door? Sing?"

"Sing? Perhaps they sing locks at Temple. I
have a superior method." He snapped his bag shut and hung it back
on the strap.

"Which is?"

"A key." He displayed it; a rough iron thing
half the length of his hand.

"A key," she repeated. "And how came you by
that?"

"Veverain gave it me. And Rowan gave me
leave to use it, if by chance I should arrive during daylight and
find the door locked." He gestured, showing her the lowering sun.
"It is, I see, still daylight. I find the door--alas!--is locked.
Bring the basket."

He stepped up to the door, key at ready.
Moonhawk bent and picked up the care basket, settling it over her
arm. A sharp snap sounded, Lute pushed the door open and stepped
into the house beyond, the cat walking at his knee.

With a deep sense of foreboding, Moonhawk
followed.

* * *

"VEVERAIN?" LUTE'S VOICE lacked its usual
ringing vitality, as if the room's dimness was heavy enough to
muffle sound. "Veverain, it's Lute!"

Moonhawk stood by the door, letting her eyes
adjust; slowly, she picked out a table, benches, the hulking mass
of a cold cookstove.

"Let us shed some light on the situation,"
Lute said. A blot of darkness in the kitchen's twilight, he moved
surely across the room. There was a clatter as he slid back the
lock bars and threw the shutters wide, admitting the day's last
glimmer of sun.

Details sprang into being. Dusty pots hung
neatly above the cold stove; spice bundles dangled from the low
eaves; pottery was stacked, orderly and cobwebbed, on whitewashed
shelves. The table was dyanwood, scrubbed white; the work surfaces
were tiled, the glaze dull with dust.

"Well." Face grim, Lute shed cloak and bag,
and dropped them on the table. Crossing the room, he pulled a lamp
from its shelf and carried it and a pottery jug to a work
table.

Moonhawk walked slowly forward. Despite the
light from the windows, the room seemed--foggy. It was also
cold--bone-chilling, heart-stopping cold. She wondered that Lute
had put aside his cloak.

She set the care basket on the table and
pulled her own cloak tighter about her. Lute had filled the lamp
and was trimming the wick with his silver knife. Moonhawk shivered,
and recalled the neat stack of wood on the porch, hard by the
door.

"I'll start the stove," she said to Lute's
back. He looked 'round abstractedly.

"Yes. Thank you."

"No," said another voice, from the back of
the room. "I will thank you both to leave."

Moonhawk spun. Lute calmly finished with the
wick and lit it with a snap of his fingers, before he, too, turned
to face his hostess.

"Veverain, have I changed so much in one
year's travel? It's Lute."

"Perhaps you have not changed," the woman in
the faded houserobe said, with a lack of emotion that raised the
fine hairs along the back of Moonhawk's neck, "but all else has.
Rowan is dead."

"Yes. I met Oreli in the High Street." Lute
went forward, hands outstretched. "I loved him, too, Veverain."

She stared at him, stonily, and neither
moved to meet him, nor lifted her hands to receive his. Lute
stopped, hands slowly dropping to his sides.

"Leave me," the woman said again, and it
seemed to Moonhawk that her voice carried an edge this time, as if
her stoniness covered an emotion too wild to be confined for
long.

Perhaps Lute heard it, too, or perhaps his
skill brought him more subtle information. In any wise, he did not
leave, but stood, hands spread wide, and voice aggrieved.

"Leave? Without even a cup of tea to warm
me? You yourself said that I should never want for at least that of
you. The thought of taking a cup of tea at your table has been all
that has made the last day's walking bearable!"

"Have you not understood?"
And the untamed grief was plain to the ear, now. "I say to you
that
Rowan is dead
!"

"Rowan is dead," Lute repeated gently. "He
is beyond the comforts of tea and the love of friends. We,
however--" He gestured 'round the room, a simple encircling, devoid
of stage flourish, and Moonhawk was absurdly relieved to find
herself included--"are not."

There was a long moment of silence.

"Tea," Veverain said, and her voice was
stone once more. "Very well."

"I'll start the stove," Moonhawk said for
the second time, and went out to fetch an armload of wood.

When she came back to the kitchen, some
minutes later, Veverain was in Lute's arms, sobbing desperately
against his chest.

* * *

MOONHAWK IT WAS who made tea in Veverain's
kitchen that evening, and served it, silently, to the two who faced
each other across the table. She carried her own mug to a
wall-bench and sat, quietly watching and listening.

"I cannot," the woman was
saying to Lute, "I
must not
forget. I--Rowan--we swore that neither would ever
forget the other, no matter what else the future might
destroy."

"Yes," Lute murmured, "but surely Rowan
would not have wanted this--that you lock yourself away from kin,
take from your neighbors' kitchens and give nothing--not even
thanks!--in return. Rowan was never so mean."

"He was not," Veverain agreed, her fingers
twisting 'round themselves. "Rowan was generous."

"As you are. Come, Veverain, you must stop
this. Open your house again to your well-wishers. Tend the garden
your niece has started for you, clear the flowerbeds and rake the
gravel. Soon enough, the vines will need you, too. It will not be
the same as if Rowan worked at your side, but--I promise!--these
familiar things will soothe you. In time, you will--"

"In time I will forget!"
Veverain interrupted violently. "No! I will
not
forget! Every day, I read his
journals. Every day, I sit in his place in our room and I recall
our days together. Everything, everything... I must not forget a
syllable, the timbre of his voice, the lines of his
face--"

"Veverain!" Lute reached for her hands, but
they fluttered away from capture.

"You do not understand!" Her voice was
shrill with agony. "Before you first came to us there was in this
village a woman called Redfern, her man--Velix--and their babe.
That summer, there was an illness in the village--many died, among
them Redfern's man and babe. She grieved and would speak to no one,
though she accomplished all her usual business. In the fall, she
shut up her house and went to her sister in another village. Two
years later, she returned to us, with a new babe and a man she had
taken in her sister's village." Veverain's fluttering hands lighted
on the cooling mug. Automatically, she raised it to her lips and
drank.

"I saw Redfern in the
street," she continued, somewhat less shrill. "We spoke of her
babe, and of how things had changed in the village in the years she
had been gone from us. I mentioned Velix, and she--she
stared
at me, as if I
spoke of a stranger. She had forgotten him, Master Lute! It chilled
me to the heart, and I vowed I would never so dishonor my
love."

"Veverain, this is not the way to honor
Rowan." Moonhawk had never heard the magician's voice so
tender.

Veverain turned her face away. "You have had
your tea," she said, hardly. "There are houses in the high village
who will be happy to guest you."

Moonhawk saw Lute's shoulders tense, as if
he had taken a blow. He sat silent for a long moment, until the
woman across from him noticed either the absence of his voice or
the presence of himself, and reluctantly turned her face again to
his.

"Lute--"

He raised a hand, interrupting her. "How,"
he said and there was an electric undercurrent in his voice that
Moonhawk did not entirely like. "How if you were shown a way to
return to life at the same time you honor your vow to
remember?"

There was hesitation, and Moonhawk saw, for
just a instant, the woman Veverain had been--vibrant, strong and
constant--through the diminished, grief-wracked creature who sat
across from Lute.

"Can you work such a magic?" she asked.