He picked up his lute nevertheless and carried it over to sit by Orial. I followed with the precious song book and propped it in my lap so Frue could see the pages. He said something to Orial that escaped me and then struck up a jaunty melody. Forest words in his rich tenor were less easy to follow, but this was one he had already translated for me on the road. A man had gone wandering in the deep woods, finding a strange woman who—for some reason I missed— turned into a grotesque hag when he pursued her. Our hero declined her invitation to stay as her lover and tried to find his way back to his people, only to find himself lost among strange trees and stranger encounters, each taking him farther from home. When he eventually came full circle, he discovered he’d been absent five full years, not just the five days he’d lived through.
Now that I heard it sung for the first time, this jalquezan clamored for my attention, underscoring every instance of the man’s lament over his plight. The underlying rhythms were increasingly familiar; Geris the gentle scholar had used aetheric charms with just such a beat. The Elietimm bastards who’d killed him and had done their best to pull my wits out through my ears had spoken foul enchantments ringing with just such a cadence. But what did the words mean? Was this Artifice or coincidence?
Frue finished with a flourish of chords and two women came over to join us.
“That’s a tale I haven’t heard since I was a little girl,” one smiled.
“I have a book full of ancient songs.” I turned the pages so she and her companion could see. “Are there any others you know?”
The women shrugged. “We do not read, me nor Serida,” the first one explained easily.
“How about this?” Frue turned back a few leaves of parchment and frowned as he fingered the frets on his lute. His face cleared and he began a tune with a tricky shift of pitch in the middle of the verse. The women nodded with laughing eyes and joined him in a lively song about the original White Raven. Orial looked up from her work and added a descant and Frue slipped into a lower harmony, blending and dropping away in elegant counterpoint. I listened intently, finding myself nodding to the beat, but while the tune remained constant, the words dissolved into chaos when they reached the refrain.
Laughing, Frue stopped playing and Orial chuckled. She said something to the women and I cursed my lack of this tongue yet again. Orial looked at me. “This is the problem with jalquezan; everyone knows a different version!” She repeated herself to the first woman, who nodded after a moment.
“Once again, then.” Frue struck up the tune and this time they all agreed on the chorus, their exuberant song turning heads all around the camp. More Folk came over and joined in the song, each adapting their accustomed words to the majority.
The first woman looked at me when they finished. “You’ve yet to light a fire in your hearth, haven’t you?” Her Tormalin was barely accented to my ears. “You should do it before the sun begins to sink.”
She stood up so I set the song book carefully on the ground beside Frue. “Will you look after this, if I leave it with you?” I asked nervously.
“Like a child of my blood,” he promised. Since he’d taken better care of his lute through the flood than Zenela, I judged he meant that.
I crossed the open glade to fall in with the woman as she emerged with a bundle of sticks from her shelter. “My name is Livak.”
“I am Almiar.” With scant flesh on her bones and skin tanned like fine kidskin, I couldn’t put an age to her beyond being of my mother’s generation. Her russet hair was generously sprinkled with white and her eyes were a warm brown, deep set in a lattice of wrinkles woven from good humor. “You are very welcome here, my dear.”
“I’m curious about the song you were singing,” I said casually. “How is it that you all knew different words, especially the jalquezan?”
Almiar was laying a precise fire in the stone-lined pit, setting tight-pressed lumps of dried moss among the sticks. “You learn such things at your mother’s side,” she shrugged. “As she did from hers and so on, back down the Tree of Years. Everything grows and changes, words are no different.”
In other words, with every shift and repetition, changes of emphasis and paraphrasing crept in, until what might once have been aetheric enchantment was now a myriad versions of nonsense. My earlier optimism sank like a stone; there was going to be no instant revelation to send me straight to the feast at the end of the ballad, was there?
Almiar offered me steel and flint and then peered up through the smoke hole at the center of the roof at the sun. “You could probably still use a burning-glass, if you prefer.”
But the rhythm I was hearing from the songs outside still rang with the pulse of aetheric magic. I cleared my throat. “I have another way to light a fire.” I knelt beside Almiar and took a breath to steady the qualms in my stomach. Artifice had invaded my mind and pursued me with merciless intent on more than one occasion. I was in two minds about ever using it myself, but this was a small enough trick, one of the very few I knew and harmless enough, no more than the festival trick I’d first thought it. “Talmia megrala eldrin fres.”
Wouldn’t the older women have the wisdom of the Folk in their keeping? If they saw I had some learning of such craft, they would surely share it.
Almiar looked startled as little yellow flames crackled among the sticks, setting the moss flaring. “How did you do that?”
“It’s a—a charm of sorts,” I told her.
“How clever.” Admiration overcame her shock. “You are a mage then, like your man?”
“His magic is of the elements.” I shook my head. “This is a trick of a scarcer magic, what they call Artifice. Don’t you have similar charms among the Folk?”
“Oh no, I’ve never seen the like before.” Almiar’s eyebrows rose and I’d have wagered every coin ever passed through my hands that she spoke the truth. “It’s a marvel, isn’t it?”
I smiled to hide my disappointment. Almiar suddenly looked concerned. “You won’t show the children, will you? They’ll start making a nuisance with flint and steel and even with the woods so wet—”
“No, I won’t,” I assured her. “But you could use it for your hearth, tell it to your friends.” If the little fire trick spread, perhaps it would spark memory or recognition somewhere. I was casting runes at a venture now, but couldn’t think what else to do. “Try it yourself,” I urged, brashing a bare patch of earth clear before making a careful pile of kindling. “Feel the song in the words.”
“Could I really?” Temptation was warring with her natural inclination to prudence.
“Just concentrate on the words,” I encouraged her.
“Talmia megrala eldrin free.” At least Almiar’s saying it convinced me the lilt of the Folk ran through the incomprehensible words. A faint flicker lit the kindling.
“That really is remarkable!” Delight at her success shone bright in Almiar’s dark eyes. “Now, will you be cooking for your men tonight or would you like to eat at my hearth?”
“They’re not my men,” I told her firmly. If they were, they’d choose anyone else’s cooking over mine. “We’d be honored to eat with you.”
Almiar paused at the doorway. “You have the instincts of your blood, child, for all you’ve been reared as an out-dweller.” She ducked outside without further ado.
I looked around at the shelter hemming me in and sighed. This was all very well in the balmy days of spring and summer, but I’d wager a penny to a packload that it would be cursed cold and damp come the winter. I’d rather have a stout stone house and a broad hearth, preferably with the coin to keep a maid busy bending her back over the cooking and cleaning.
Wondering where the others had got themselves to, I went out into the sunshine, blinking. The Folk were busy around their homes; a woman came to leave a pile of cooking pots by our door with a friendly smile and a girl shyly offered me a bowl of cresses gathered from some nearby stream. I could have bought either within half a street from home in Vanam.