Songs of the Earth (34 page)

Although the time he spent with Aysha was counted as a tutorial, it could hardly have felt less like a lesson. There was no structure and little formality; what they did depended on how her mood moved her, and sometimes that meant showing him something new. Yet he didn’t mind: after hours of rigorous mental discipline in the lecture halls with the other Masters, it was a relief to get out into the air and just be. He’d always preferred outdoors to in, and besides, Aysha was good company. She respected his silences without having to be asked; she seemed to know or sense somehow when he wanted quiet, but when he didn’t she challenged and questioned him, threw up her hands at his stubbornness, then made him laugh with her acutely observed mimicry of the rest of the faculty. Her particular target was Godril. She made it her hobby to deflate his ego whenever the opportunity presented, though no one was immune. Recollecting some of her more wicked observations when facing the sandy-haired Master across a lecture hall meant biting the inside of his cheek hard to keep himself from grinning.

Brilliant colours brushed against his thoughts.

You owe me a favour, Leahn
, Aysha said in his mind.

Gair looked round the bath-house, but in the middle of the day
it was empty of anyone who might send for the infirmarians if they saw him talking to the air.

‘Why?’

Eavin was looking for you
.

‘What for? It’s supposed to be my free day.’

As soon as he said it he winced, afraid she might think he was complaining about her demands on his time.

He has novice classes today, and sent one of the students to fetch you. I didn’t think you’d be too interested in showing a gaggle of children how to spin a waterspout, so I diverted him
.

‘Master Eavin won’t be pleased.’

Her laugh made him shiver as if he’d felt her breath on his ear.

He’s a grown man, he’ll get over it. Besides, it’s your free day. Come on up
.

‘Ah, Master Aysha, I’m in the bath.’

Tempting, but we’ll save the fish shapes for another day. Don’t be too long
.

‘Yes, Master Aysha.’

I don’t think you need to call me that any more, you know. Just Aysha will do
.

‘If you’re sure? I mean, you are one of my teachers—’

She was smiling now, though he did not know how he knew that – but he could feel it, like sun on his face. For some reason, he flushed.

I’m sure. Now run with me. My feet itch
.

Then she was gone, as abruptly as she had appeared. Gair raked his fingers through his wet hair. He could have said no, he supposed, said he was tired or that he had something else to do, but somehow that never occurred to him at the time. Aysha’s presence was so vivid, so compelling, it pushed everything else right out of his mind. With a groan he heaved himself onto the edge of the tub and reached for a towel. What the hell, the water was getting cold anyway.

Aysha’s balcony was still in shade, but out past Chapterhouse’s walls the sun shone and the wind tossed the tops of the trees with a restless hand. Mare’s-tail clouds streaked the pale bright sky as if painted on with a brush.

‘Wind’s changed,’ Aysha said. ‘Backing round to the north. I think we might have seen the last of summer for this year.’

‘I was wondering when winter would get here,’ said Gair. ‘It feels strange for the weather to still be so mild so late in the year. In Leah we’d be tobogganing by now.’

‘Tobogganing? What’s that?’

‘A toboggan is a sledge – a wooden platform on runners,’ he explained, seeing her expression remain blank. He sketched one in the air with a finger. ‘You sit on it at the top of a snowy hill, push off with your feet and ride the sledge all the way down to the bottom.’

‘And then?’

‘You drag it back to the top of the hill and do it over again. It’s fun.’

‘Sounds cold and wet to me.’ She shuddered.

‘Does it ever snow here?’

‘There’s plenty over the mountains, but not lower down, saints be praised. I don’t like the cold.’ A tingling along his nerves told him she had reached for the Song. ‘Come on. North winds always give me the fidgets. Let’s go chase some rabbits.’

In seconds Aysha’s kestrel shape was darting away down the valley from Chapterhouse and over the orchards of the home farm. Gair followed as a fire-eagle. It really was a glorious day. Autumn as he recognised it had finally arrived and it painted Penglas as vividly as a chapel window. Fiery reds and yellows lit up the lowland forests, and the fields were chequered with pale gold stubble and the brown of ploughed earth. Higher, where the landscape began to fold itself into mountains, the flaming broadleaf
woods gave way to steely spruce and evergreens and the air had a tang of frost. Winter was undoubtedly on its way, but the sun on his back said it still had some miles to go.

On the north side of the island, the land was steeper and less forgiving. Neatly terraced fields girdled the slopes with stout fieldstone walls, and sandy-coloured sheep browsed the scrubby grass. Unlike the ones Gair was accustomed to, all thick fleece and slot-eyed skittishness, these were more like goats, with beards and heavy spiral horns, even on the ewes. They suited the rockier terrain, which in its turn suited the fire-eagle. Where expanses of sun-warmed rock gave way to the sudden drops of knife-cut valleys, the chillier breath of the north sculpted the air into a cathedral of glass through which an eagle-shape slid as easily as a prayer.

It was not the only bird Gair could shape. Thanks to Aysha there were nearly a dozen different birds he now knew well, from owls to finches, but in this form he felt most comfortable. It was familiar, well worn-in, like an old pair of boots, and unless instructed otherwise, this was what he always came back to when there was flying to be done.

He watched Aysha up ahead of him. Although she had not mentioned it directly, he knew she’d been alluding to the mantle when she’d said he needn’t call her ‘Master’ any more. It remained at the back of his closet, where it had been since the day he had found it. He hadn’t even allowed himself to try it on again, though he had opened his closet doors and almost reached for it once or twice. He knew he ought to thank her for the gift; he’d tried a dozen times to work out ways he could introduce it into the conversation, but no matter how he arranged the words in his head, the speech sounded forced, even when practised in the privacy of his room. And then there was the note – saints, that had even more layers of possible meaning …

Abruptly, Aysha peeled off into the valley below. At some time past the earth there had slipped; the ground was strewn with pale
bones of fallen trees, all down the scar and piled in a heap at the bottom where the col met the river valley. She swooped down to perch on a rock above a beck. Almost immediately her kestrel transformed into a timber wolf. She sat on her haunches and watched his approach with large amber eyes.

Do you know what to listen for?
she asked as he resumed his human form beside her.

‘I think so, yes.’

Gair took a moment to catch his breath. This was a new shape; he would need to concentrate. Although he was no longer so afraid that the Song would get away from him and become something destructive, the first few moments after any shape-change were dizzying. Aysha had the knack of flowing from one form to another with barely a break in her stride. He could only dream that he would one day have that much control.

He sifted through the Song. The melody he sought was as elusive as the wolf itself. Wolf-song spoke of crisp snow, and hot breath on a bitter, starlit night. As he let it pour into him, he changed. Limbs shortened and senses sharpened. Muscles shifted into strange new configurations that felt alien at first then became intimately familiar as the shape took hold. Even his thoughts, in that part of him which was wholly wolf, were transformed. Everything he had ever read or learned about wolves, their behaviours and complex societal structures, suddenly made sense. It was all there inside him, written in his bones, as much a part of him as the thick brindled fur.

The she-wolf inspected him critically, pacing around him in a circle.

Good
, she said.
But your tail should be a little fuller and your ruff needs to be heavier and your chest deeper, unless you want to be mistaken for a youngling
.

Standing up, Gair concentrated. His shape felt better afterwards, like clothes made to his measurements rather than hand-me-downs to grow into. He shook himself, enjoying the way his pelt
moved over him. This felt good, right, somehow, similar to the way he felt as a fire-eagle, only now he had the power not to fly but to run, to leap, to chase, fleet as the breeze, and leaving as little trace of his passing.

Excellent!
Aysha’s she-wolf stood beside him, alert and grinning.
Now we hunt
.

In the spring, when the flower-boxes were in bloom and jewelled every window and roof-garden with brilliant colour, eight days in the Havens was a feast for the eye and the nose. In the aftermath of a storm, when water-sickness stalked the canal-sides and the dead-boats poled their cargo through the foetid night, it was eight days in hell.

Masen lowered the wooden cover over the inn’s well and dusted off his hands. Water-Song was not his strongest gift; whilst it was easy enough to give the Scarlet Feather a supply of clean water, it was beyond him to ensure it for a greater part of the city. The water-table was contaminated, and that meant he had to clear the well morning and evening. Before long, he would have to do so three times a day. There were too many unburned dead upriver, too many choked sewers spilling back onto the streets, for his work to be anything other than a delaying action.

‘If only it would stop bloody raining,’ he muttered. Rainwater could be collected for drinking if the wells failed, but it also prevented the river from returning to its pre-flood level and stopped the roads drying out so food could be transported into the city and travellers could get out.

‘Patience, my friend,’ said the landlord, tamping tobacco into his pipe-bowl. ‘Patience. North winds always bring rain at this time of year.’

‘Aye, well, my patience is about exhausted, Darshan. I’ve a long way still to go and I can’t afford to be cooling my heels here.’

‘Until the Goddess wills it different, you’re stuck here with us. Might as well get used to it.’ Darshan shook out his taper and puffed contentedly.

Masen grunted. ‘Don’t take me amiss, I’m happy to help as much as I can, but I need to be moving. It’s imperative I deliver my message as fast as I can.’

‘Can’t you … you know?’ Darshan twirled his fingers. The stocky Syfrian had accepted Masen’s revelation with more equanimity than most, simply observing that when a nail needed driving, any hammer would suffice.

‘No, I’m too far away. Some are better than others at speaking over great distances. Unfortunately, I’m one of the others.’

The innkeeper inspected the glowing pipe-bowl as smoke trickled between his teeth. ‘You’re not in livery, so you aren’t on the Emperor’s business. What could be so pressing that doesn’t have Theodegrance’s seal on it?’

Every day, the same question, or one like it. Darshan, perhaps uniquely amongst barkeeps, was unable to distinguish when to talk and when to polish his glassware in silence. Masen had no wish to be rude, but his temper shortened as his chances of finding a ship before Eventide grew progressively longer.