Holding Dephnay in a half pack, Ellysia sat at the second table, beside Siret and Kyalynn. Siret cradled Kyalynn in her arms. Dephnay kept squirming until Ellysia put the child up to her shoulder and patted her back.
Istril sat down heavily across from Siret and beside Hryessa, and then Ryba walked past the two mothers and eased herself into her chair. “I see Gerlich isn’t here.”
“Not yet.”
“He’s washing,” added Ayrlyn.
Ryba waited until Gerlich sat down. “I understand that Narliat left,” she said evenly.
Gerlich turned to face the marshal. “I was pulling the carcass up the hill. When I looked back he was gone.”
“Just like that?”
“That boar was heavy, and I didn’t have enough rope for both of us.”
“Did Narliat say anything before he left?” Ryba nodded to Ayrlyn.
“No. He talked about how he’d never be an armsman again, but he’s said that a number of times.” Gerlich took a short swallow of tea from his mug.
Again, Nylan could sense the whiteness, the partial wrongness surrounding the hunter’s answers.
Kyseen set one of the heavy caldrons on the table, then used the ladle to fill Ryba’s bowl/trencher. Kadran followed with the baskets of bread.
“Did he say anything else?” Ryba asked.
“Nothing special.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“I don’t know. He was headed west, I think, but he could have doubled back or turned north or south.”
“He won’t go south, not far,” said Ayrlyn. “Straight south is just more mountains. Southwest leads to the local equivalent of the hottest demons’ hell. It’s a place called the Grass Hills, except there’s not much grass, they say.”
“West or north, then,” observed Ryba with a nod. “And that means the locals will know more about us. Well … they would sooner or later.” She paused, then added, “I’m glad you were able to bring back that boar.”
“My pleasure, Ryba. My pleasure.”
Nylan and Ayrlyn exchanged glances, and Ryba shook her head.
Gerlich frowned.
“We’ll have solid meals tomorrow,” Ryba added. “Might I have some bread?”
Nylan passed her the basket. The soup was more tasty than many previous efforts, and hot, for which he was grateful. The bread was bitter, but the bitterness didn’t bother him. His shoulders were tight and ached, and while the tea helped, it didn’t help enough.
Later, after a meal of small talk and speculation about how soon the snow would really melt, Nylan dragged himself up to the top level, following Ryba.
He sat on the end of the couch. “Gerlich isn’t telling everything.”
“He’s lying,” Ryba said tiredly, shifting her weight on the couch. “I didn’t need you and Ayrlyn to tell me that. He’s lied from the beginning.”
“Are you going to let him keep doing this? You killed Mran.”
“Gerlich hasn’t openly defied me, or you, or anyone. We know he’s lying, but knowing and proving it aren’t the same thing.” Ryba eased her legs into another position. “I hate this. Now my legs get swollen all the time. I’m already regarded as a tyrant by some, and I can’t throw him out or kill him until he gives some obvious reason. He won’t, though, because he can’t stand the hot weather below, and that makes it even worse. He wants to be marshal, and he’s plotting to replace me.”
“How? No one likes him, except maybe Selitra.”
“Who said anything about liking him? He’s using Narliat, I’m sure, although I can’t see it clearly, to try to find some local backing.”
“Local backing?”
Ryba laughed harshly. “Gerlich is a man. He can make the argument that the locals can’t take Westwind, but they can ensure that one of their kind-a good old boy-runs it. He’ll try to join the local gentry, or whatever passes for it
… and, if we’re not careful, he could.“
“What about your … visions?”
“They show Westwind surviving. But it could survive under Gerlich’s descendants as well.” Ryba took a deep breath and shifted position again. “I hate this.”
Nylan frowned. Like Gerlich, Ryba wasn’t telling the whole story. Then again, were any of them telling the whole story? He licked his lips.
“We need some rest.” Ryba leaned over and blew out the small candle, then stripped off her leathers and eased into her tentlike nightgown.
Nylan undressed in the dark.
LXXI
NYLAN SET THE cradle-pale wood glistening in the indirect light that filtered through the single armaglass window of the tower’s top level-where Ryba would see it.
Then he drew into the dimness behind the stones of the chimney and central pedestal and waited, sensing her climbing the steps. In time, the sound of her steps, slower slightly with each passing day and heavy with the weight of the child she carried, announced her arrival.
Nylan watched as she bent down, as her fingers touched the wood, stroked the curved edges of the side panels, as her eyes focused on the single tree rising out of the rocky landscape in the center of the headboard.
“Do you like it?” He stepped out from the corner. While the cradle was no surprise to her, he had tried to keep the details from her as he had finished the carving and smoothing-all the laborious finish work.
Ryba straightened, her face solemn. “Yes. I like it. So will she, when she is older, and so will her children.”
“Another vision?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.
“You make everything well, Nylan, from towers to cradles.” Ryba sank onto the end of the bed.
“I didn’t do so well with the bathhouse.”
“Even that will be fine. We just didn’t have enough wood this winter to keep it as warm as we needed.”
“The water lines needed to be covered more deeply.” His eyes went to the cradle again.
So did Ryba’s. “It is beautiful. What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” Nylan didn’t know, only that, again, something was missing. “I don’t know.”
III. THE SPRING OF WESTWIND
LXXII
IN THE COLD starlight, the short man struggles through the knee-deep snow, snow that is heavy and damp, that clings to everything but his leathers. The snow glistens with a whiteness that provides enough light for him to continue. His boots crunch through the icy crust covering the road that will not be used by others for at least another handful of eight-days.
The soft sound of wings mixes with the light breeze that sifts through the limbs of the pines and firs, and a dark shadow crosses the sky, then dives into a distant clearing.
The traveler shivers, but his feet keep moving, mechanically, as if he is afraid to stop.
Occasionally, he glances back over his shoulder, as though he flees from someone, but his tracks remain the only ones on the slow-melting snow. On his back he carries a pack, nearly empty.
As he lifts one foot and then the other, his mittened fingers touch the outline of the cylindrical object in the pouch that swings around his neck under jacket, tunic, and shirt. He tries not to shiver as he thinks of the object, instead continuing to concentrate on reaching the warmer lands beyond the Westhorns, the lower lands where the heights do not freeze a man into solid ice.
He puts one foot in front of the other.
LXXIII
NYLAN GLANCED FROM the bed to the half-open tower window. Outside, the sun shone across the snowfields, and rivulets formed pathways on the snow, draining off the grainy white surface and into the now-slushy roads and pathways. In a few scattered places, the brown of earth, the dark gray of rock, or the bleached tan of dead grass peered through the disappearing snow cover. Despite the carpet of fir branches, much of the road from the tower up to the stables was more quagmire than path.
The east side of the tower was half ringed with meltwater that froze at night and cleared by day, so much that from the eastern approach to the causeway, the tower resembled the moated castle that Nylan had rejected building.