The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (23 page)

“Of course,” he nodded, unconcerned. “No one can, I told you.”

I managed a casual tone. “You said there was no point singing these on the road, where no one would understand the words. How about giving Orial a song or two as she works? These Folk will be able to follow them and it would go some way to thanking them for their help today, their care of Zenela. We could both put something back in the balance, couldn’t we? No time like the present, isn’t that what they say?”

Frue looked around the glade where men and women were sitting over undemanding tasks or openly taking their ease in the thin sunshine. “You know, whoever your father is, Livak, I’ll bet he’s a man with a lot to answer for.”

He picked up his lute nevertheless and carried it over to sit by Orial. I followed with the precious song book and propped it in my lap so Frue could see the pages. He said something to Orial that escaped me and then struck up a jaunty melody. Forest words in his rich tenor were less easy to follow, but this was one he had already translated for me on the road. A man had gone wandering in the deep woods, finding a strange woman who—for some reason I missed— turned into a grotesque hag when he pursued her. Our hero declined her invitation to stay as her lover and tried to find his way back to his people, only to find himself lost among strange trees and stranger encounters, each taking him farther from home. When he eventually came full circle, he discovered he’d been absent five full years, not just the five days he’d lived through.

Now that I heard it sung for the first time, this jalquezan clamored for my attention, underscoring every instance of the man’s lament over his plight. The underlying rhythms were increasingly familiar; Geris the gentle scholar had used aetheric charms with just such a beat. The Elietimm bastards who’d killed him and had done their best to pull my wits out through my ears had spoken foul enchantments ringing with just such a cadence. But what did the words mean? Was this Artifice or coincidence?

Frue finished with a flourish of chords and two women came over to join us.

“That’s a tale I haven’t heard since I was a little girl,” one smiled.

“I have a book full of ancient songs.” I turned the pages so she and her companion could see. “Are there any others you know?”

The women shrugged. “We do not read, me nor Serida,” the first one explained easily.

“How about this?” Frue turned back a few leaves of parchment and frowned as he fingered the frets on his lute. His face cleared and he began a tune with a tricky shift of pitch in the middle of the verse. The women nodded with laughing eyes and joined him in a lively song about the original White Raven. Orial looked up from her work and added a descant and Frue slipped into a lower harmony, blending and dropping away in elegant counterpoint. I listened intently, finding myself nodding to the beat, but while the tune remained constant, the words dissolved into chaos when they reached the refrain.

Laughing, Frue stopped playing and Orial chuckled. She said something to the women and I cursed my lack of this tongue yet again. Orial looked at me. “This is the problem with jalquezan; everyone knows a different version!” She repeated herself to the first woman, who nodded after a moment.

“Once again, then.” Frue struck up the tune and this time they all agreed on the chorus, their exuberant song turning heads all around the camp. More Folk came over and joined in the song, each adapting their accustomed words to the majority.

The first woman looked at me when they finished. “You’ve yet to light a fire in your hearth, haven’t you?” Her Tormalin was barely accented to my ears. “You should do it before the sun begins to sink.”

She stood up so I set the song book carefully on the ground beside Frue. “Will you look after this, if I leave it with you?” I asked nervously.

“Like a child of my blood,” he promised. Since he’d taken better care of his lute through the flood than Zenela, I judged he meant that.

I crossed the open glade to fall in with the woman as she emerged with a bundle of sticks from her shelter. “My name is Livak.”

“I am Almiar.” With scant flesh on her bones and skin tanned like fine kidskin, I couldn’t put an age to her beyond being of my mother’s generation. Her russet hair was generously sprinkled with white and her eyes were a warm brown, deep set in a lattice of wrinkles woven from good humor. “You are very welcome here, my dear.”

“I’m curious about the song you were singing,” I said casually. “How is it that you all knew different words, especially the jalquezan?”

Almiar was laying a precise fire in the stone-lined pit, setting tight-pressed lumps of dried moss among the sticks. “You learn such things at your mother’s side,” she shrugged. “As she did from hers and so on, back down the Tree of Years. Everything grows and changes, words are no different.”

In other words, with every shift and repetition, changes of emphasis and paraphrasing crept in, until what might once have been aetheric enchantment was now a myriad versions of nonsense. My earlier optimism sank like a stone; there was going to be no instant revelation to send me straight to the feast at the end of the ballad, was there?

Almiar offered me steel and flint and then peered up through the smoke hole at the center of the roof at the sun. “You could probably still use a burning-glass, if you prefer.”

But the rhythm I was hearing from the songs outside still rang with the pulse of aetheric magic. I cleared my throat. “I have another way to light a fire.” I knelt beside Almiar and took a breath to steady the qualms in my stomach. Artifice had invaded my mind and pursued me with merciless intent on more than one occasion. I was in two minds about ever using it myself, but this was a small enough trick, one of the very few I knew and harmless enough, no more than the festival trick I’d first thought it. “Talmia megrala eldrin fres.”

Wouldn’t the older women have the wisdom of the Folk in their keeping? If they saw I had some learning of such craft, they would surely share it.

Almiar looked startled as little yellow flames crackled among the sticks, setting the moss flaring. “How did you do that?”

“It’s a—a charm of sorts,” I told her.

“How clever.” Admiration overcame her shock. “You are a mage then, like your man?”

“His magic is of the elements.” I shook my head. “This is a trick of a scarcer magic, what they call Artifice. Don’t you have similar charms among the Folk?”

“Oh no, I’ve never seen the like before.” Almiar’s eyebrows rose and I’d have wagered every coin ever passed through my hands that she spoke the truth. “It’s a marvel, isn’t it?”

I smiled to hide my disappointment. Almiar suddenly looked concerned. “You won’t show the children, will you? They’ll start making a nuisance with flint and steel and even with the woods so wet—”

“No, I won’t,” I assured her. “But you could use it for your hearth, tell it to your friends.” If the little fire trick spread, perhaps it would spark memory or recognition somewhere. I was casting runes at a venture now, but couldn’t think what else to do. “Try it yourself,” I urged, brashing a bare patch of earth clear before making a careful pile of kindling. “Feel the song in the words.”

“Could I really?” Temptation was warring with her natural inclination to prudence.

“Just concentrate on the words,” I encouraged her.

“Talmia megrala eldrin free.” At least Almiar’s saying it convinced me the lilt of the Folk ran through the incomprehensible words. A faint flicker lit the kindling.

“That really is remarkable!” Delight at her success shone bright in Almiar’s dark eyes. “Now, will you be cooking for your men tonight or would you like to eat at my hearth?”

“They’re not my men,” I told her firmly. If they were, they’d choose anyone else’s cooking over mine. “We’d be honored to eat with you.”

Almiar paused at the doorway. “You have the instincts of your blood, child, for all you’ve been reared as an out-dweller.” She ducked outside without further ado.

I looked around at the shelter hemming me in and sighed. This was all very well in the balmy days of spring and summer, but I’d wager a penny to a packload that it would be cursed cold and damp come the winter. I’d rather have a stout stone house and a broad hearth, preferably with the coin to keep a maid busy bending her back over the cooking and cleaning.

Wondering where the others had got themselves to, I went out into the sunshine, blinking. The Folk were busy around their homes; a woman came to leave a pile of cooking pots by our door with a friendly smile and a girl shyly offered me a bowl of cresses gathered from some nearby stream. I could have bought either within half a street from home in Vanam.

Four

While a charming song, this favorite of Forest minstrels shows indisputably that however foreign that race may seem to us, we all give due reverence to the same gods.

Trimon took his harp up,

As he sang to greet the day,

For the sap was rising in the trees,

And the spring sun lit his way.

Larasion was plucking,

Pale blossoms from the thorn,

When Trimon wooed her with sweet words,

And she stayed with him till dawn.

Larasion walked softly,

Summer flowers in her hair,

Chanced on lonely Talagrin carving wood,

And she paused to ease his care.

Talagrin went hunting,

Through the autumn leaves bright gold,

When he caught Halcarion dancing,

In the moonlight, bright and cold.

Halcarion met his passion,

As he matched his step to hers,

Until Trimon’s music to the frost,

Drew her to the year-green firs.

The Great Forest,

13th of Aft-Spring

My thanks for a superb meal.” Sorgrad bowed to Almiar with consummate grace, the sweep of his velvet-clad arm defying the mud staining the amber fabric. The doublet glowed richly as the setting sun filtered through the trees.

“You are entirely welcome,” she replied, a little bemused.

“It takes no more than a good cook to satisfy hunger, but to delight the palate, that is the work of an artist.” He sounded like one of the Tormalin lordlings Ryshad must be trailing after and I stifled a grin. I’d known ’Gren and Sorgrad in the days when they owned three pairs of breeches, three shirts, two jerkins and a threadbare cloak between them.

“Yes, thank you.” I looked at the applewood bowl I was holding. “Can I help you clear away?”

“No,” Almiar took the bowl from me. “If I invite you to eat at my hearth, I do not expect you to work for the meal.”

I smiled at her; that was a civilized custom as far as I was concerned. “I want to check on Zenela. I’ll see you two back at the—”

“Roundhouse,” Almiar supplied, “sura, in the blood tongue.” She stacked the bowls inside a larger one that had held a mix of green leaves, some familiar to me, others strange but all palatable enough. An earthenware pot had proved to contain the shredded meat of an old hare, well flavored with herbs and cooked slow and solid, covered with a succulent layer of fat. My mother at her most censorious couldn’t have criticized the cook for sending that up to table. I didn’t think they ate that richly all the time, though; all these Folk looked as if they went a few meals short of a full belly as a rule.

We walked toward our own sura, other circles of Folk eating by the doorways to their homes. I wondered what the plural of the word might be. Would that signify the settlement as a whole? I knew precious little of these Folk whose blood I supposedly shared, didn’t I?

’Gren was still chewing on a piece of flatbread. “I don’t reckon to eat leaves, not as a rule.”

I grinned at him. “You’d better get used to it hereabouts.”

Sorgrad was studying the sura closest to our own. “How long do you suppose they’ve been settled here? That hare had been hung properly for one thing.”

I looked at the beaten earth between the houses and the lack of fallen wood beneath the nearest trees. “Long enough to be foraging farther afield for fuel.”

Sorgrad shrugged. “So, what now? Do you want to pursue this business with the songs some more?” I’d told them both of my earlier experiences.

“Frue’s still got the book and I think we owe him the time to get all he wants from it. We wouldn’t be getting this kind of hospitality without him.” I rubbed a hand over my hair, feeling mud still in it. “I reckon we need to find the nearest inn, don’t you? Get ourselves a game going and work out who’s going to be most usefully indiscreet in their cups?”

“And that inn would be, what, a couple of handful days’ walk back that way?” Sorgrad and I shared a rueful smile.

“Everyone’s friendly enough. Given a few more days, I’d say we could start asking a few more pointed questions.” I looked around at the little dwellings, doors open to any who might care to enter. The Folk seemed mighty trusting, I mused. Or was it just that they had nothing worth stealing? Their jewelry was valuable enough but they looked to keep that secure around hands and necks. “Everything the wizards have learned says aetheric magic came from the ancient races.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” asked ’Gren lightly.

As we passed Orial’s threshold, Frue emerged followed by a drift of steam redolent of thyme.

“How’s Zenela?” ’Gren asked a breath ahead of me.

“Orial thinks she will do well enough,” Frue said cheerfully. He fell in beside us and pulled up the deerskin that covered our doorway. “Did anyone rescue Zenela’s bag?”

We all shook our heads. “The river claimed that.” I ducked inside and poked at the little fire, laying on more sticks to give us both warmth and light. At least the Folk had been building these shelters long enough to master ventilation for their fires; I’d half expected we’d be smoked like eels on a stick.