As with so many of our arguments, a kiss ended, but did not settle it.
When winter came and another Seille, we celebrated the first year of our marriage. Karon gave me a delicate gold locket, engraved with a rose. Inside it I put a crumbled bit of the enchanted roses he had grown for me. I gave him a chestnut stallion. He named the horse Karylis, which in the language of Valleor means sunlight. Karylis was the name lot of the mountain where he had healed his brother and come into his calling.
On one quiet night in midwinter, I sat nestled in an oversized chair by our library fire, plodding through a story written in Vallorean, trying to bolster the smattering of language skills I had neglected so sorely in my girlhood. I was finding myself easily distracted, in the latest instance observing how the pool of lamplight lit Karon’s high cheekbones so delectably as he sat at the library table poring over the journal transcription. So I was not too startled when he sat back and burst out, “Mother of earth! Seri, come see what I’ve found.” His high color made the lamplight pale. I hadn’t seen him so excited since the finding of the journal.
I abandoned my chair and lap robe to lean over his shoulder and see what page had revealed such a dramatic secret. It was a diagram labeled with odd symbols. “I never expected we’d make any sense of this one,” I said. “Have you deciphered it?”
“I’ve not interpreted the diagram or the symbols, but I know their purpose.” He turned back a few pages and traced his finger over my writing. “The Writer has been getting more and more worried about the terrible things being done by the Open Hand. He says that on Av’Kenat, one of the rebellious cities was beset by a ‘legion” or ’army,“ or something like that, of nethele. Nethele means ‘the dead.” Evidently this ruler, Zedar, whom he has mentioned before, sent the spirits of the dead to frighten his subjects into submission, filling their minds with ’the most pernicious mortal dread.“ The Writer is horrified at the perversion of Av’Kenat, and it looks as if it inspired him to action. What do you think he’s done?”
I squeezed his shoulder and jiggled it. “Don’t make me guess.”
“He’s gone to the elders of the Closed Hand and asked for refuge in Vittoir Eirit, the J’Ettanni stronghold. And he’s written down the route they told him.”
“He wrote it down? I thought it was the most closely guarded secret.” More and more I was losing any wonder at how powerful sorcerers had given up a kingdom so easily.
“It was. But the Writer never trusted himself to remember everything he needed to keep straight, so he encoded the instructions. It’s the reason for the symbols. Seri, if I can unravel his code, I might be able to find the stronghold. Can you imagine it?”
“Surely there would be nothing left.”
“Hard to say. The stories we told in Avonar came from people sent away from Vittoir Eirit when the elders decided to abandon it. My ancestors never knew what became of the stronghold, and they were forbidden to seek out any other of the J’Ettanne, so they had no way to find out. They assumed it had been discovered and destroyed. But even if it’s ruined, think how fine it would be to discover its location. To walk in Vittoir Eirit…”
Karon had taken on his dreaming look again, and I tugged at his hair. “Give it up. You’ll not unravel a four-hundred-fifty-year-old puzzle without the key to his code.”
“True. But we’ve already learned that the Writer is not a complex man. The key will be here in his journal.”
“And birds will fly upside down and Evard will develop a heart.” I flopped back in my chair and picked up my book, but my eyes did not leave Karon’s glowing face.
The search for the key to the Writer’s code occupied the entire spring, but by the beginning of our second summer married, we were no closer to the answer. The diagram consisted of five symbols, connected by straight lines. We assumed the lines were roads or trails and the symbols landmarks of some kind. We pulled out maps of Valleor to see what roads might fit the pattern, but too many years had passed, and even in our present day, maps were notoriously inaccurate. And, too, we had no idea if the distances between the symbols on the page were at all in proportion to the actual distances involved. The five symbols were no more enlightening. One was almost certainly a foot, one looked something like a trunk or chest, another resembled a hunting horn. The other two looked like a man’s face and a rabbit. We investigated the names of towns and villages, rivers and landforms, and tried a hundred other ideas, seeking some correspondence, but to no avail.
Karon proceeded with the translation, learning more of the Writer’s travels and his life with his wife and six remaining children. The man wrote of his garden and his animals, of the difficulties of teaching his children to read and finding mentors for their emerging talents. He wrote loving and lengthy descriptions of their games and childish follies. We laughed when we read of his five-year-old daughter’s attempts to install the family pig in the house in the dead of winter. She was afraid the beast would be cold and succeeded in inducing it to follow her about like a tame dog. It took all of the family together to overcome the little girl’s enchantment and persuade the agitated pig to retreat to the cold barnyard.
As Karon read this passage, he sat beneath a tree in our garden, and I lay on the grass with my head in his lap. “When do you know… with a child?” I asked.
“If they have magical talent, you mean? When one of the parents is not J’Ettanne?” I felt him move under my cheek. I loved the way Karon’s body came to life when he spoke.
I nodded.
“Five or six years.” Karon touched my cheek, and looked down with a smile that made my heart swell. “It won’t matter you know, if and when such a marvel occurs. The child is the miracle. And the love that creates it. Nothing else.”
“Were there marriages like ours in Avonar?”
“Yes. We were so few. We could not marry just within our own kind.”
“And the children… it really didn’t matter? Not even to them?”
His eyes drifted out of focus. “There was an old J’Ettanni Healer named Celine. She became my mentor after my day in the mountains with Christophe. She was married to a candlemaker who was not J’Ettanne, and one day I asked her if her children had talent or not. She said that one of her sons had looked to be a tamer of horses since he could walk, and he had grown into the most renowned horse-tamer in Avonar.
“ ‘Eduardo, the Horsemaster?” I asked her. Eduardo’s power was renowned among us. “Aye,” she said. “But my other son showed no magical talents at all.”
“And in the fullness of my newfound J’Ettanni manhood, I asked her, quite solicitously, was it not terribly difficult to see one son so talented and one so… ordinary. Celine nodded gravely and said it was one of the trials of parents to see children unequally blessed. Her other son had worried about it a great deal when he was a youth and didn’t want to listen to those who told him that his own talents were of no less value than J’Ettanni sorcery. But while Eduardo was in the fields with the horses, Morin read and studied, talked with the elders, and made what he could of himself.
“Morin?” I said. And she smiled slyly and said, yes, Morin was the name of her unmagical son. Well, Morin was possibly the wisest man I have ever known. He was my father’s chief counselor and the most respected man in Avonar. Of all that was lost to the world in the destruction of Avonar, the loss of his mind was perhaps the most grievous. Even now, I always begin to sort out a problem by thinking how Morin would approach it. So, you see, I learned my lesson early what gifts were important. It really doesn’t matter.“
For Karon’s birthday I gave him a walking stick made of cherry wood. “It’s quite the fashion at court, in case you haven’t noticed,” I said that evening in our library. “And I had it made especially for you.” Despite his avowals of delight and appreciation, I did not imagine that he was anything but puzzled at my choice. We were not at all bound by court fashion. Karon would sprout wings before he gave up the high-necked shirts and muted colors of provincial Valleor.