The Song of Andiene (15 page)

Then she sighed, seeing his bewilderment, and sat down beside him, leaning close, speaking more gently. “The graywood trees are alive, but they are as indifferent to us as they are to the dark ones, as long as we step softly in their domain. But to cut a living tree is an act of war. They do not easily forgive.”

Ilbran shook his head. Outside, he could hear the baying of the hunters, but far away. They followed some other man’s trail tonight. He was too dazed with fatigue to think clearly. “I am sorry for the wrongs I have done you, but I have not lived here. I never learned your laws. I am very weary. May I claim guest-right for tonight before I leave you tomorrow?”

“It seems some laws are the same in your land and mine,” she said with a smile. She would have said more, but he was asleep even as she spoke, lying on the floor beside the hearth.

Late into the night, she sat watching him in the dimming light of the fire. At last, she laughed and said a few words to herself, so softly that he would not have understood, even if he had been awake.

She rose, went to her shelves, and lifted down a row of carved wooden jars from the highest shelf. She took out tiny sprigs of dried herbs, and other things that she had gotten, powdered them between her fingers, mixed them well, and tossed pinches of them into the fire.

Ilbran slept soundly. When the smoke flowed out into the room, he coughed in his sleep, but did not wake. She watched him till the fire died. Then she went to her own bed, to lie alone and listen to the howling of the forest.

Ilbran woke late the next morning and broke his fast on blaggorn cakes sweetened with honey. Malesa did not ask him to stay, but she spoke often of her loneliness. Before he left her, he cut his wrist and stained the threshold with his blood.

“Now you will have a safe place to return to, if the paths play tricks on you again,” she said. Then she laughed, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips.

For a moment, he wondered why he was leaving. Gentle and trusting, she had taken in a ragged stranger, had fed and sheltered him. Then Ilbran thought:
My father was wise. He could not bear to live under the shadow of the trees, even in a place full of joy such as this could be.

But the paths of the forest had no end. Ilbran walked till noon, and an hour after noon, on the same path. No other joined it; no clearing or safehold lay in his way. He did not see any place where he had blazed the trees, though he had marked them every ten paces on the day before. When at last he looked up at the sun, through the graywood branches, and knew that he could safely go no further, it was with a kind of pleasure that he retraced his steps. The clearing, the white-trunked coil of golden trees, was a welcome sight.

Malesa ran to greet him and grasped his hands. The meal she had prepared was well enough for two. “It seems you expected me to return,” he said with a smile.

She glanced sideways at him out of her strange-set eyes. “The trees are angry at you for the outrage you did to them, and so they have shut off the path. Stay with me, and wait. In time they will forget.”

As she walked back and forth, preparing their meal, she brushed against him. Though the room was large, it seemed too small for the two of them.

“How old are you, Malesa?” he asked. Her name seemed to burn on his lips and tongue.

“Fifteen,” she said. “Seven winters and eight summers.”

“A year younger than I am.” He laughed with pleasure. “We have led much the same sort of lives, too.” The candle flames on the table bent low, though there was no draught in the room. Perhaps it was the gusty breath of his laughter.

Malesa laughed also, after a moment’s silence. She poured him thornfruit wine, flavored with honey and bitter herbs. It lay in the cup as dark and thick as blood. Her face was in shadow, her dark eyes more shadowy yet. The firelight turned her pale arms and legs to the color of new honey. She loosened her hair and let it fall in black smothering waves, almost to her feet.

Ilbran raised the cup to his lips.
Here I am, here I will stay
, he vowed to himself. The sobbing of the forest creatures was distant in his ears as Malesa smiled at him, and blew out the candles. Though it was close-shuttered night in the room, he thought that the sound of her soft breath and heartbeat would have been enough to lead him to where she waited. That night she did not sleep alone.

Chapter 11

On the shores where they measure time, four winters and three summers went by while Andiene stood and listened to the teaching of Yvaressinest, in the land where they do not count the days.

“I have taught you all you can learn,” the dragon said at last. “Go and conquer your kingdom, and win me my revenge.” His voice was warm with praise, the first time in all her life she had heard such words. “I would not wish you to war with me.”

Andiene laughed happily, not examining his speech for mockery. “Never fear, I shall not try to conquer this land.”

“You may if you please,” he whispered. The fog had thickened, swirling between them, hiding his grayness in the gray mist.

Andiene took a step forward, another step, and stopped. In front of her, the cliff fell sheer to the rocks, and the waves tore against them. Forest, meadow, dragon, all were gone into the mist. Andiene stood on the summit of a mountain that rose up out of the sea.

Sweet-snow bloomed around her feet, and sandray, that heals all wounds that are not mortal, grew stunted for lack of water. Below her lay no river, but merely a cleft in the rocks.

The fog was thinner again, but it had left her robe clammy and clinging to her. When she raised her arms to push her hair from her face, the fabric tore across her shoulders. When she reached back to feel it, it tore again, rotten as if it had been buried in the earth.

How long has it been?
She was filled with sudden dread. There was no harsh whispering voice to flatter and reassure her now.

How long has it been? I never saw the night. Has time robbed me of my revenge?
Far below her, the sea birds called.

She found it easier to climb down from that mountain top than it had been to go up. Then, she had been barely grown from short-legged childhood, sheltered and pampered all her life. Now she was a woman grown, long-legged and agile, as strong as if she had spent seven years climbing over the hills like the horses of the eastern mountains; she moved awkwardly only when she wondered at her new-grown strength.

The sun was low in the sky when she reached the beach. The stones were warm under her feet. On that high plateau, the sun had never shone to warm the earth.

Driftwood lay bleached and dry above the tide mark. Andiene gathered a pile of it and knelt before it, her hands clasped together. Then she drew her hands slowly apart. Her face filled with pride as the white flame leaped up, lapped at the dry wood, and seized hold of it.

Fat and slow salfish swam in the tide pools near the edge of the cliff. She speared one with a sharp broken stick, cleaned it as best she could, and broiled it on flat rocks heated in the fire.

Once more, Andiene was alone. The dragon would speak to her no more. She had learned all that he could teach her. There were many things she needed to do, but none that she must do at once. She lay on the sand above the rocks, as unthinking as any naked wild animal, and let the sun warm her.

At last she rose, and shook the sand from her pale hair, that hung to her hips as thick as beaten silver. There were three things that she must do. She chose the simplest first. She knelt on the hard stones above the line where the receding waves were breaking, and looked out to sea. Now she knew how far it was to that other shore, the land of her birth. A little space of waves that a flimsy boat could cross. All the distance in the world and none at all.

The salt waves stretched as far as eye could see. The sun warmed her back; the stones bruised her knees. What she looked for, waited for, no watcher would have been able to know.

Magic is not the same as the use of power. When magic is done, the ones who stand watch can see, smell, and hear the shaping of the charm. The magician chants, burns incense, draws patterns in the sand. He puts on a show; it is his effort to coax or force the powers of nature to do his bidding.

The user of power scarcely does anything that can be seen or felt. An onlooker has no chance to understand. So Andiene knelt on the stones and showed no sign of what she did.

The sun quenched itself in the sea, and the flames of its dying turned sky and sea to blood. Andiene watched it, full of joy for its beauty, not looking for omens or prophecy. Presently she turned away. Kingswood trees had set their roots into the rocks below the cliffs. Their leaves are large; their branches are supple. She pulled the branches down and broke them to make a bed, then lay down and slept.

The screams of fighting sea-hawks woke her at dawn. Though the smaller one tried to fly higher and higher, maneuvering desperately, the fish in his claws weighted him down, made him clumsy. At last the larger one rose above him and stooped on him. The fish fell among a shower of black feathers, landing near where Andiene lay. When the victorious hawk circled, she threw stones at it, shouted at it, so that it did not dare claim its prize.

She gutted the fish, a kielen of the deep sea, with a sharp flint. In its belly was a whitish lump; when she scraped it with her fingernail, gold gleamed. She laughed then. “From the belly of a fish—the key to my kingdom,” and she scrubbed the seven-years-lost signet ring in the sand and sea till it was clean, and forced it over the knuckle of her little finger. She broiled the fish for her breakfast, wrapped in seaweed. It is not wise to be wasteful, even with the bringers of good news.

The morning was bright, with strands of clouds across the sky. As Andiene walked along the beach, she made plans, and changed them, turning them over in her mind. She had power enough to win a hundred kingdoms, so she thought in her arrogance, but she had not dealt with people; she did not know their ways. The fisherman’s family had sheltered her; they were the last she had known.

She had not thought of them in many years
. I will reward them greatly
, she promised herself.
I will make them lords of a wide land
. But she was troubled. Years had passed, and she had no way of judging time on this timeless shore.

“Where is my enemy?” she asked as she looked out across the waves. As she waited, the look on her face changed to amazement and fierce exultation.
He is in my hands! Wind and sea, wind and sea and darkness, rise up and overwhelm him!
Overhead, the clouds thickened, and on the horizon it was darker yet.

Wind and sea and darkness, answer my call!
Then she stood quietly, her eyes fixed on the horizon. The waves forced her to retreat up the beach, as they came crashing in on the rocks. When the lightning began, she lay down in a crevice in the high rocks and waited.

Ships have survived storms far greater, riding them out on the open sea. But when the lightning was at its fiercest, and lit the storm-night as though a blue-shining sun were in the sky, Andiene lifted her head and saw the outline of a ship driving in to land before the wind. The rocks lay far out from shore, sharp as courser’s teeth. They tore at the ship’s belly as it wallowed in the waves. Then darkness fell, but with none of the exultation and terror of the night before. The thick clouds had dimmed the sun to a twilight like that of the dragon’s land.

Andiene huddled between the rocks, but could not sleep. The child that she had been would have died on such a night as that. Her clothing had rotted and fallen from her. She had nothing to shield her from the bitter wind. She struggled to keep her blood warming her, to keep the fire burning within her—work that one’s body does of its own accord when the nights are calm, but is not equal to, when the air is chill and the wind is strong. She was in grave danger of being destroyed by the storm she had wrought.

Daylight came, and the storm was gone. Andiene rose from her cramped hiding place and walked along the beach. It was littered with rubble and bits of wood as far as eye could see. Ahead of her lay the body of a man, in the edge of the surf. The waves washed over him and tugged at him as they went back, but they were too gentle, now, to take him with them.

Andiene knelt beside him, turned him over. The sight of one face, that of her usurper uncle, would have given her joy, perhaps, but she knew from the coarse seaman’s clothes that this would be a stranger. She looked at the drowned man’s face for some time—an ugly sight. Impossible to tell if he was one who had been kind or cruel, gentle or arrogant. Tears came to her eyes, a sense of fury and shame.
Dragon’s teaching, and all it has taught me is to bring death, in little ways and great.

She needed all her strength to drag him up above the storm line. She laid him on the wide rocks, so he could lie decently.

She took his dagger and cut her tangled hair, sawing it off close to her head. She stripped off his outer clothes, and carried them down to the sea to wash them in the surf, and hang them to dry on the bushes. When she dressed herself in them, rolling the sleeves and legs in huge cuffs, the coarse canvas cloth felt strange and rough on her skin, and in spite of the washing, it smelt, to her imagination at least, of seaweed and decay.

The beach was littered with flotsam, but she found no more men till she had walked far down the sea strand, near where the cliffs met the water. There one lay, face downward, and as she watched, a wave broke over his head, and dragged him a few inches seaward.

This one was dressed in nobleman’s clothes, and her heart beat faster again with thoughts of revenge, as she turned his face upward. Again a stranger; her eyes stung with tears of shame for what she had done.

Remember that courtyard in Mareja
, she reminded herself.
The pavement ran dark with blood, and no one wept. This is one who served my enemy.

A higher wave came and broke over the man’s head, as she held it, and she stared in amazement as he gave a feeble cough, and turned his face aside.