“Mmm.” Aris leaned back. He had not ridden so many hours in a long time, and he knew he would wake stiff. “I don’t sense any dangers.”
“Nor I. But it’s the right way to do things. I’ll take first watch.”
“All right.” He looked at the fire for awhile, listening to Seri’s footsteps on grass and stone. She went down to the spring, up the slope to the edge of the trees, and came back to the fire.
“Nothing now.” He could feel her tension as if it was his own. In a way, it was his own tension, reflected like firelight. They both knew why they had needed to get out of Fin Panir, why they had needed to travel alone, but the years in the city made it hard to return to the easy communication of their childhood, when idea and response had flowed between them without barriers.
Seri sat back down with a sigh. In the flickering light, her face looked much older, and as heavily stubborn as Gird’s had been. “Remember after Father Gird died?” she asked. Aris nodded. Because they were then training in separate granges, they had been able to talk for only a few minutes now and then—but they had had the same dream in the days after the funeral. “I always felt close to him,” Seri went on. “From the first day we came. It was like having a grandfather of my own. Not that I didn’t respect him, but—”
“It was much the same for me,” Aris said. They had talked of this before; it was as good a way as any to ease into the real problem. “If I had been able to choose a father, I’d have chosen Gird.”
“And then he died,” Seri said. “Like any other father or grandfather, except it wasn’t.”
Aris looked at her. They had each tried to talk to the Marshals about it, and had had the blank looks given to those who have said something outrageous. They had learned not to talk about it, not to mention what was, to them, the most salient point of Gird’s death. “I think,” he said softly, “that they don’t quite remember it. They know they felt better afterwards; they know they couldn’t quite remember why they had been so angry—but I think they don’t actually remember what happened.”
“Luap does,” said Seri. “Or he did, but that’s not what he’s put in his Life of Gird. He’s made it a monster.”
“How did you find out?” Aris had been wanting to see the Life for several years, but Luap gave him no chance.
“I heard from someone who heard Rahi complaining about it. She said he was trying to make it more like one of the old tales from the archives, one of the kings’ lives tales.”
Aris snorted. “That wouldn’t fit Gird, no more than a crown would have.”
“Rahi said he couldn’t make clear what really happened, so he made up the monster so that people would understand. Only they won’t, because that’s not what it was.”
“I wish he’d let me help,” said Aris. “It could be written the right way, the way it happened. It wouldn’t be easy, but that would be better than making up a false tale.”
“Rahi said Luap can’t see that—he thinks a false tale that makes sense is better than the true one no one will understand.” Seri poked a stick at the fire, until sparks flew up. “Aris—do you ever feel Father Gird is still around?”
“Really? In person? Or just—feeling that he’s there when he’s not?”
“I’m not sure.” She faced him directly. “Aris, those dreams we had after he died—those aren’t the last ones I’ve had.”
He wasn’t surprised. Those hadn’t been his last dreams of Gird, either. He nodded, and said, “Tell me about them.”
“I can’t, exactly. It’s—it’s as if he wanted me to do something, and I’m not sure what. If he were alive, he wouldn’t be happy with Luap, that’s certain . . . Luap’s ruining it all.”
That was the core of it, what they had needed to talk over far away from Fin Panir’s many curious ears. Aris felt a cold chill down his back, as if someone had run a chunk of snow down it “I know. And I don’t think he knows what he’s doing . . .”
“How can he not!” Seri had finally let go her anger, and now it blazed in his mind as brightly as the fire she poked into brilliance. “He’s a scholar; he surely knows if he writes truth or falsehood. He was Gird’s helper so long, he surely knows what Gird would have wanted. Gird wanted mageborn and peasant living in peace, one people. Luap swore oaths that he would obey Gird and follow Gird’s will, yet he’s doing everything he can to push mageborn and peasant apart.”
“Not quite everything,” Aris pointed out. “If he really knew he was doing it, he could do worse—”
“Not without the Council noticing. He’s just being sneaky.” She glared at him. “Or have you gone over to them as well?”
He stared at her, shocked and horrified. “Seri! I couldn’t!” Tears filled his eyes; if Seri thought he would turn into another like Luap, he wasn’t sure he could bear it.
“You spend so much time with them,” she said, her voice hard. “You do what Luap tells you; you hardly have time for anyone else—”
“I’m here,” he said. “I left Fin Panir in the turning of a glass, on your word—how can you think I like all that, you of all people!”
“Then don’t defend him,” said Seri, “when you don’t believe what you say. D’you think I can’t tell what you really think? But if you won’t say it, even to me, even alone in the dark wild, how is that different from him?”
Aris struggled to control his voice. “I have tried to be fair,” he said. “Tried not to . . . to make hasty judgments. I saw—I see—Luap and the other Marshals, all quick to say what someone meant, and sometimes I know that’s not what the other meant. So I look for the chance that someone like Luap, doing something I would not do, has at least a good reason, in his own mind, for doing it.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “But—you’re right—I don’t like what he’s doing, and I haven’t liked it, and I haven’t been able to do one thing about it. I’m too young, and I’m mageborn, as he is—”
“And half the distrust you meet is for him,” Seri said, now less fiercely. “They’re afraid you’re another Luap. When you were younger, and you were out and around more . . .”
“Which is another thing,” Aris said. “I want to do more healing myself; I want to go more places, and it’s the Council—yes, and Luap—who insisted I stay close and try to train other mageborn to heal. It isn’t working, and I don’t think it will, but they won’t listen to me.”
“Why not?”
“Why won’t it work? I’m not sure. The Autumn Rose says the healing magery was rare anyway; it failed first, when the mageborn were losing their powers. I’ve found only one who responded to the training—”
“Garin—”
“Yes. And he exhausts himself when he closes a cut; the one time he tried to heal a broken bone, he fainted partway through and slept for a week.”
“You did that, when you were a child—”
“Yes, when I’d worked with all those sheep. But he’s a man grown, older than I am. The Autumn Rose found a girl said to have healed her family members of headaches and the like, but what she was really doing was charming them—they didn’t feel the pain as long as she was there. That’s not a bad use of charming—I’ve taught her to use it on more serious things—but it’s not healing. You remember that Gird wanted me to work with peasant healers to learn herblore, and with the granny-witches to learn hand-magicks. I’ve learned a lot more about herbs, and most of the women with a parrion of herblore say if I were a girl they’d trade my parrion, though they don’t think much of a man learning it. The grannies have watched me heal, and I’ve watched them lay pains on a stone, and neither of us learned how the other did it. Whatever they do is not in their power to explain, or mine to learn—and the same for what I do. They don’t sense the light of health and the dark of fever or injury the way I do, but they do feel the prickling in their hands.”