“welcome back, we’d almost despaired of you,” said Diastor, teasing Jenisorn, his younger son. An Edonaris by marriage, Diastor had become one of the heads of the family, and between them he and Raphe bore much of the responsibility of managing the estate and vintnery.
“The both of them were buried in their books, Father-Nyc’s gone for her harp,”
’Deisha explained, settling herself on the hearth between her two dogs. They belonged in the kennels by rights-as Mesthelde frequently reminded her-but these were ’Deisha’s favorites and rather spoiled. They were fine watchdogs, nevertheless, and Nyctasia encouraged the one which seemed to have taken her under its special protection. Accustomed to the company of an armed escort, Nyctasia felt safer with the massive wolfhound following her about the house by day and guarding her chamber by night. Mesthelde disapproved, but tacitly allowed it after ’Deisha confided to her something of Nyctasia’s nightmares.
Mesthelde judged that Nyctasia was growing easier with her new life and her new family’s ways. She no longer went about armed, after all. No doubt she would leave behind her fears at last. She ought to be discouraged, of course, from shutting herself up with those bothersome books-it was such a bad example to set the youngsters. Mesthelde smiled with satisfaction when Nyctasia came in with her harp.
Nyctasia returned her smile, taking it for a welcome. Mesthelde must be warming to her at last, she thought, and she was not far wrong.
She next greeted the matriarch, Lady Nocharis, a frail, white-haired woman seated in a warm corner of the enclosed hearth, well provided with cushions and shawls. Nyctasia kissed her cheek. “Mother ’Charis, how good to see you here.”
The matriarch did not often leave her own rooms, yet she was in many ways the guiding spirit of the family. Her experience and her wise, gentle nature made her counsel much respected. It was she who had persuaded Nyctasia to remain with them in Vale.
“With so many of us gathered together, I couldn’t stay away. Even ’Clairin home at last, and Alder, my wandering children.” Diastor’s wife Leclairin-the mother of five-and her brother Aldrichas were away much of the time, traveling to markets in all parts of the Midlands to deliver the wines and deal with merchants and patrons. They exchanged an amused glance, upon hearing their mother’s epithet for them.
“After all, a family gathering cannot be complete without the two of us, my dear Nyctasia,” Lady Nocharis continued. “Are we not the oldest and newest members of the family?”
Nesanye looked up from the half-finished toy cart he was carving. “A family gathering’s not complete without song, that’s certain. Nye, give us ‘The Queen of Barre’.”
Nyctasia sang every ballad and catch the others asked for, and a few of her own as well, when they called for more. Trained at court, she was at her ease playing or singing or composing verses-all necessary accomplishments for a person of her breeding. Her voice was high, clear and confident, and she accompanied herself deftly enough on her small lap-harp.
But to the others music was a rare luxury, especially in the winter, when traveling players and songsters could not visit the ice-bound valleylands. They could not have enough of Nyctasia’s minstrelsy.
“Sing something from the coast,” begged Tepicacia, “something we’ve never heard before.”
“You must always have novelty, ’Cacia,” Nyctasia chided her young cousin. “Very well, here’s a wayfarer’s song for you, a song of those who are far from home, of those who have no home to return to. I learned it in Chiastelm, a town full of travelers:
“Paved roads lead us to the city,
Earthen roads lead us away.
To the north are roads of diamond,
So they say.
Village roads are dirt and ditches,
Mud by night and dust by day.
Kings once rode on roads of silver,
So they say.
Roads of water are the rivers,
Flowing between roads of clay.
Pearl roads run beneath the ocean,
So they say.
Forest roads are plagued with dangers,
Beasts and bandits haunt the way.
Roads of sorrow are the stranger’s.
So they say.
Freedom is for those who journey,
Safety is for those who stay,
Border roads are most uncertain,
So they say.
Pathways in the wilderness
Have I traveled, lost and lone,
And unyielding, twisting, treacherous
City streets of cobblestone.
Roads of clover, roads of favor
Follow ever, you who may.
Homeward roads are never-ending.
So they say.”
When she finished, there was a solemn silence, except for the whispering of the children, and the snowstorm raging against the high, narrow windows. Nyctasia busied herself at retuning her harpstrings with the silver key. Finally she raised her head and said lightly, “Hark to the wind. I have a good song for such a night, and it should please you, ’Cacia-no one’s ever heard it before.”
Smiling, she sang,
“Harvest is over,
The fields are shorn.
No longer the wind
May court the corn
Where lovers shelter
Among the grain,
Where you and I
Have often lain.
Not in the season
Of wintry weather
May the wind and I
Go a-wooing together,
But he shakes the shutters
To let me know
Of his new romancing
With the dancing snow.
Though the wind be fickle,
You’ll find me true
In every season,
My love, to you.
And in the springtime
Let him carouse
With the beckoning, blossoming
Apple-boughs,
For the spring shall see us
Renew our vows.
Harvest is over.
The year complete.
No longer the wind
May woo the wheat
Where lovers sheltered
Among the grain,
Where you and I
Shall lie again.”
This merry love-song met with a murmur of approval from the company. “Why has no one heard that before?” asked ’Cacia. “Did you just make it up now?”
Nyctasia grinned. “Do you like it?”
“Surely,” said ’Cacia politely.
“Quite charming,” Raphe assured her, and the others agreed.
“I’m most gratified by your favorable opinion,” said Nyctasia, “but I didn’t write this one. It’s one of Jheine’s.”
Her announcement caused a sensation, especially among the youngsters, who lost no time in taunting Jenisorn about his secret love.
“Tell, Jheine, who’s it for?”
“No one,” he protested, blushing. “It’s just a song.”
“Who is it, boy or girl?”
“Desskara? Nolinde?”
“Eivar brenn Glaos?”
“No!”
Nyctasia intervened on his behalf. “It’s an exercise in composition, on a seasonal theme,” she explained. “But it’s incomplete, Jheine. You’ve left out the summertime.”
“Well, I had another verse, but I’m not sure it will do. Can ‘faithless’ be rhymed with ‘nameless’?”
“Not on a dare,” said ’Cacia, who felt that she’d been tricked into admiring her cousin’s handiwork.
“I didn’t ask you. You couldn’t spell ‘nameless’.”
“What about ‘scatheless’?” someone suggested, setting off another round of debate.
’Deisha got up from the hearth and stretched. “The song’s well enough, little brother, but I don’t care for the way your friend the wind is carrying on tonight. I’m going out to see that the horses are well bedded.”
The dogs jumped up too, eager for any activity, and one of them looked back at Nyctasia expectantly. “Wait for me,” she laughed. “Grey thinks I should stretch my legs, and he’s right. I’ve been sitting all the day.”
“Be careful!” Mesthelde called after them. “That storm could swallow the two of you like pebbles down a well.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let the mooncalf wander off,” said ’Deisha. At the door, she took two long fur cloaks from their pegs and draped one over Nyctasia’s shoulders. “We’ll take lanterns, but they won’t be of much use. Just remember, don’t take your hand from the guide-rope for a moment. Aunt Mesthelde’s right about these storms-folk have frozen to death just a few paces from shelter because they couldn’t see what was before them. We don’t have many blizzards as bad as this in the valley, but we do have to be prepared for them.”
Nyctasia had never known such weather. The climate of the coast was a good deal more temperate. Her cloak was whipped about her legs, and the blowing snow was so dense that she could hardly see ’Deisha walking just ahead of her. When she looked back toward the house, it had already vanished in the blinding white darkness that surrounded her. Without the rope that had been stretched tight across the yard, she’d have had no idea which way the stables lay. The dogs stayed close beside them all the way.
Not until they could feel the door beneath their hands did they release their grip on the rope. ’Deisha laughed, fighting the wind to push the door fast behind them. “That’s better! We might have been at the bottom of the sea, out there!”
“Neither earth nor air,” said Nyctasia absently. “Neither shore nor star.” She stood motionless and intent, as if trying to listen to some distant sound.
“What did you say?” asked ’Deisha, pushing back her hood and brushing snow from her cloak. “Nyc, what is it? Don’t stand there dripping like a candle.”
“Nothing, only… an echo,” Nyctasia murmured. “A memory of something that perhaps never happened.”
’Deisha stared.
Abruptly, Nyctasia shook herself from her abstraction. “Holding to the rope for guidance,” she explained. “It was a Manifestation of the Principle of Recognition. In just such a way must one follow, blindly, to seek what is within.”
“Oh, I see,” said ’Deisha, who didn’t. Like most professed believers in the Indwelling Spirit, ’Deisha did not spend a great deal of time pondering the mysteries of the Vahnite faith. Leaving Nyctasia to her revelations, she went to confer with the ostler.
It was the barking of the dogs that finally drew Nyctasia’s attention back to the mortal world. They had been sniffing suspiciously at a stall filled with fodder, growling deep in their throats, and now they set up a clamor that brought ’Deisha and the stablehands running. Nyctasia reached instinctively for her sword, and found only the small pearl-handled knife that she used to sharpen her quills.
“It must be rats, mistress,” said one of the grooms, but ’Deisha waved him aside.
“They’d not raise such a noise over a few barn rats.” Addressing the heap of hay she ordered. “Come out of there, or we’ll have you out with pitchforks.”
Nothing stirred except the two hounds, pawing at the ground and snarling. At a sign from ’Deisha they leaped forward and dug furiously into the hay, fangs bared.
There was a shriek of pain from their quarry.
The boy looked no older than Jenisorn. He was thin and ragged, with one hand wrapped in a crude bandage, and his shoulder bleeding where one of the dogs had seized him. He crouched shivering in the straw and gazed about him desperately.
’Deisha had called the dogs off at once, but they now stood guard between him and the door. “Let me go, lady, please,” he appealed to ’Deisha. “I’ve not stolen anything-”
“Go? Certainly not,” ’Deisha said sternly, and Nyctasia smiled to hear her sound so much like Mesthelde. “Where are you to go, in this weather? Come along to the house now, and we’ll give you a meal. You’ll have to stay until this storm passes over, at the least.”
Her words were not an invitation, but a command, and the boy saw that he had no choice. He rose to his feet stiffly and limped to the door, hugging his thin cloak around him. Nyctasia took up a horse-blanket and wrapped him in it.
Looking into his grey face and bright, frightened eyes, she thought, Fever.
Perhaps frostbite, and said, “He must have some mulled wine, ’Deisha. He’s half frozen.”
“I could do with some myself,” ’Deisha agreed. When she pulled open the barn door, a fierce, piercing wind rushed in, making the horses stamp and whinny in protest. “We’ve not had a storm like this in Vale for years. Not since-”
“Vale?” gasped the boy, turning to one of the grooms. “I was nearly to Amron Therain! This can’t be Vale?”
“You must have circled back in the snow, lad. This is Edonaris land.”
“No-no, it can’t be,” he cried. For a moment he stared wildly out at the storm, then suddenly he pushed past ’Deisha and disappeared into the swirling snow.