Aritane’s face was bloodless and pale as the flagstones beneath her feet. “Why do you do this, Jeirran? Why stir up the long-dead embers of old wrath and bitter sorrow? Raise a fire like that and it will burn your hands. What’s done is done and there is no way to change it.”
“But what if there were?” Jeirran said softly, crossing over to her and taking her hands between his. “You cannot tell me you are happy with your lot, Ari! If you were, you would hardly have come to meet me here. I saw you at Solstice, in the Parthfess, having to dance attendance on that stupid old man. Everyone else may have thought his ramblings were the mystical wisdom of Sheltya but you knew full well it was just senile nonsense. I could see it in your eyes. They promised you power and knowledge in return for losing your home and family. What have they given you? The role of nursemaid to some incontinent old fool who still gets more respect than you when he’s drooling gruel down the front of his night-shirt! How is it right that the powers of true magic are kept from desperate people by the fears and cowardice of the Elders?”
“By rights, I should denounce you myself,” Aritane spat at him, “or very least wipe this conversation from your memory, together with all this festering hate and whatever half-truths you think you’ve garnered from lowland gossip!”
“Do so,” shrugged Jeirran. “No matter, it won’t change anything. Inside half a season, someone like me, someone selling his ingots or another trapper trading with the lowlands, he’ll bring back these songs and tales. Yevrein will be wondering why these people, who must surely share our blood, why are they so feared by the lowlanders? Why are these Elietimm using all means at their disposal to protect homes and families, while we are robbed and assaulted at every season’s turn? Peider and his friends will start wondering too, start asking questions of Sheltya, demanding answers too. Whoever among you decides to find those answers—well, that’ll be the one who finally takes the whip out of the hands of the old and fearful, won’t it? To govern how the true magic is used, to see that wisdom tempers raw power that the so-called wise are too fearful to use?”
Aritane looked down at her hands, still clasped between Jeirran’s broad palms. “You said you had a favor to ask of me?” She looked up, her face emotionless but her eyes boring into his.
Now it came to the point, Jeirran hesitated. “It is said that Sheltya can speak to each other across the mountains and valleys, send word to their colleagues far distant, farther than a season’s travel.”
Aritane nodded slowly. Jeirran continued more boldly, breaking into the tense silence with sudden urgency. “Could you contact these Elietimm? Could you find out more about them? Could you see if they might help us, teach us, maybe even make common cause with us? If they were to attack the lowlanders in the east, while we came down from the mountains, we could reclaim our lands, regain our pride!”
Aritane pulled her hands free to hug herself, shivering despite the sunshine. “You do not know what you are asking,” she murmured. “I have heard of these Elietimm, of course I have. We have been forbidden to seek them.”
“I am asking you to help your people,” Jeirran said softly. “Sheltya took you away from your own that you might serve all those of the mountains. Is there anything else but such service in what I am asking? Do you want to go back to solving squabbles between silly women, arbitrating rows over grazing, dealing with death and foulness when some traveler brings pestilence to a remote valley, while all the time our people are made poorer and meaner by lowland greed?”
“You are a curious choice to be arguing for the greater good and selfless risk-taking,” said Aritane dryly. “What’s in this for you, Jeirran?”
“Power, what do you think?” He spread his hands wide. “The power to hunt Eirys’ lands without fear of losing the best pelts to some lowlander’s snares. I want to see her brothers able to sell the ores they labor to dig for a fair price. Power. I want to be rich, Ari, I want to keep Eirys in all the luxuries her little head can imagine and to stop the mouth of that mother of hers with an endless diet of honey and cakes, if that’s what it takes to silence the hag. I want to hand my sons a handsome patrimony and to see my daughters set up to claim every right over and under the land that their blood allows. I want to be a power in the mountains, Ari, one to make the lowlanders look to the hills and fear my wrath more than the cold winter wind.” He grinned at her. “I want to be a brother once again to the new leader of Sheltya. I want to have the ear of the woman who restores true magic to its rightful place of honor and influence.”
Aritane shook her head but she was smiling now, a thin, heartless smile with a spark growing behind her eyes. “I’m not surprised that silly child Eirys fell for your blandishments, Jeirran. You always did have a tongue quicker than a mountain stream and more slippery than the rocks beneath it.”
“Will you do it?” Jeirran persisted.
“I shouldn’t even waste a moment’s thought on it.” Aritane pursed her lips. “I could find myself turned out on the bare mountainside with my mind as empty as a midwinter barrel. If anyone found out—”
“Who’s to know?” demanded Jeirran. “I’m hardly likely to go gossiping to any passing Sheltya, am I? I’m as deep in this as you are, more so. You are the one with the power over me, you said so yourself. Your word alone could have me shunned across the breadth of the mountains, no reason given or asked.”
“I can use my skills to try and get a response but with scarcely more certainty than setting a signal fire in the mountains and hoping someone will see the smoke. The trick will be reaching far enough away before raising the cry to escape notice closer at hand.” Aritane was talking to herself more than to Jeirran. “If I do find these Elietimm, what then?” she challenged him abruptly.
“Then we have something to tell those who feel as we do,” Jeirran said confidently. “There are plenty of us fed up with being bilked and cheated by the lowlanders. Deny there are Sheltya chafing under the constraints of custom and the Elders? We tell them that there are men and women of our blood beyond the ocean who do not bow and scrape and ever retreat in the face of lowlander aggression.”
Aritane tilted her head to one side. “You always were shrewd enough, I’ll grant you that much.” She moved with sudden decisiveness, shaking out her unadorned skirts. Looking toward the mountains to the north, she checked the position of the sun overhead, moving this way and that to assess the shadows before crossing to one side of the roof and squinting at the misty shapes of higher ground. Nodding at some inner conclusion, she turned to Jeirran, her face animated with daring and defiance for an instant before resuming the mask of her earlier indifference.
“Sit with your back to the chimney, facing north.” He hurried to comply.
“You do not interrupt me, you do not touch me, you do not move or say anything,” Aritane ordered in a tone of absolute authority. She sat cross-legged, heedless of her dress on the dusty roof. Elbows resting on her knees, she laid her face in her upturned hands and began to breathe deeply, regularly, in through her nose and then forcing the air out of her mouth in an ever lengthening exhalation, pushed deep from within her.
Jeirran jumped, startled, when the low sound halted and clenched his fists against the urge to go to her. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. He moved a hand as if about to wipe it away but stilled himself. His lips moved in what might have been a muttered curse, had he dared to speak. His eyes were unblinking, bright sapphire as he fixed his gaze on Aritane, who was now taking shallow breaths, pauses between each. Jeirran found himself following the same ragged pattern, the color beneath his beard fading to an unhealthy pallor until he lifted his chin with an explosive intake of breath, panting uncontrollably for a few moments before a natural rhythm was restored to his lungs.