No wonder she hurt. The dreams faded under the onslaught of the physical discomfort. She bent an elbow to prop herself up on, and then thought to open her eyes first. Trees, blue sky. Stones. She pulled herself up on the elbow. Stones, trees, blue sky. Lake. Luthe.
He sat up beside her. “Ack,” he said, and stretched cautiously. He was soaking wet; it occurred to her then that she was too, although they were some distance from the water’s edge—nearer, in fact, to the trees. Then there was a familiar stomp and whiffle behind her, and she reached up without looking to encounter Talat’s silky cheek.
Luthe was getting to his feet; he looked as stiff as she felt. He watched her inscrutably as she staggered to her feet and stood beside him. The lake’s surface was smooth as glass. It was strangely silent where they stood; she heard nothing but the distant chirp of a bird and the occasional whisk of Talat’s tail.
Nothing.
“I can breathe,” she whispered.
“Ah,” said Luthe. “Yes, I hoped for that.”
Then the cacophony of her dreams rushed back. The red man she discarded, but—“My City—”
Luthe’s inscrutable look settled over his face as if it was there for life. “Later.”
“Later? The end of my land, my City, my people? Later?” My land, a far-off thought said to her mockingly. My City. My people.
“Yes, later,” he said gruffly. “It hasn’t happened yet, and your destiny lies elsewhere.”
She stood rooted to the ground, staring at him. “My destiny lies elsewhere,” she said in a high voice. “My destiny has always lain ... elsewhere.”
His face softened. “Yes, that’s true, but not quite the way you think. Come. I’ll tell you what I can—of what you need to know. We’ll have to hope it’s enough.”
“It will have to be enough,” she said fiercely, and as he looked into her eyes they were golden from the flames of her dreams; and he feared then for what he had done. “I had no choice,” he murmured to himself, but Aerin, still fierce in her fear, said, “I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”
Luthe shook his head. “Nothing that will do you any service to hear. Come, then. What has happened to you is not all bad.”
Chapter 17
HER VISION HAD CLEARED with her lungs, and just as she smiled involuntarily every time she took a deep breath, she was also fascinated by the sight of things like leaves on trees, or the way the muscles moved under Talat’s skin when he went tearing across his meadow, bucking and kicking like a colt. She went for long directionless walks through the forests of Luthe’s high valley, or strolled along the edge of the silver lake, watching tiny rainbows reflect off the water. If she was absent too long, Luthe came to fetch her; he always seemed able to find her without trouble, however far she’d wandered. Occasionally he came with her when she set out.
She had paused, staring at a tree like many other trees, but the leaves of it were waving at her; each tiny, delicate, sharp-edged green oval shivered just for her when the breeze touched it; turned that she might admire its either side, the miniature tracery of green veins, the graceful way the stem fitted to the twig, and the twig to the branch, and the branch set so splendidly into the bole. A green vine clung round the tree, and its leaves too stirred in the wind.
Luthe idly snapped a small twig from the vine and handed it to her. She took it without thinking and then saw what it was—surka—and all her pleasure was gone, and her breath caught in her throat; her fingers were too numb even to drop what they held.
“Hold it,” snapped Luthe. “Clutch it as if it were a nettle.”
Her frantic fingers squeezed together till the stem broke, and the pale green sap crept across her palm. Its touch was faintly warm and tickly, and she opened her hand in surprise, and a large furry spider walked onto her wrist and paused, waving its front pair of legs at her.
“Ugh,” she said, and her wrist shook, and the spider fell to the ground and ambled slowly away. There was no sign of the broken surka twig.
Luthe snorted with laughter, tried to turn it into a cough, inhaled at the wrong moment, and then really did cough. “Truly,” he said at least, “the poor surka can be a useful tool. You cannot blame it for the misfortunes of your childhood. If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”
“Ha,” said Aerin, still shaken and waiting for the nausea or the dizziness, or something; she hadn’t held it long, but long enough for something nasty to result. “The taste of water doesn’t kill people who aren’t royal.”
“Mmm. If the truth be known, the touch of the sap of the surka doesn’t kill people who aren’t royal either, although eating it will certainly make them very sick, and the royal plant makes a good story. It’s the kelar in your blood that brings the surka’s more curious properties out—although poor old Merth killed himself just as surely with it. As you would have killed yourself were it not for your mother’s blood in your veins—and serve you right for being so stupid about that Galooney woman. Anything powerful is also dangerous, and worth more respect than a silly child’s trick like that.”
“Galanna.”
“Whatever. All she uses her Gift for is self-aggrandizement, with a little unguided malice thrown in. Tor doesn’t realize how narrowly he escaped; a flicker more of the Gift in her and less in him and he’d have married her, willy-nilly, and wondered for the rest of his life why he was so miserable.” Luthe did not sound as though the prospect caused him any sorrow. “But you have no excuse for falling into her snares.”
“What is kelar?”
Luthe pulled a handful of leaves off the surka and began to weave them together. “It’s what your family calls the Gift. They haven’t much of it left to call anything. You’re stiff with it—be quiet. I’m not finished—for all you tried to choke me off by an overdose of surka.” He eyed her. “Probably you will always be a little sensitive to it, because of that; but I still believe you can learn to control it.”
“I was fifteen when I ate the surka and—”
“The stronger the Gift, the later it shows up, only your purblind family has forgotten all that, not having had a strong Gift to deal with in a very long time. Your mother’s was late. And your uncle’s,” He frowned at the wreath in his hands.
“My mother.”
“Most of your kelar is her legacy.”
“My mother was from the North,” Aerin said slowly. “Was she then a witch—a demon—as they say?”
“She was no demon,” Luthe said firmly. “A witch? Mmph. Your village elders, who sell poultices to take off warts, are witches.”
“Was she human?”
Luthe didn’t answer immediately. “That depends on what you mean by human.”
Aerin stared at him, all the tales of her childhood filling her eyes with shadows.
Luthe was wearing his inscrutable look again, although he bent it only on the surka wreath. “Time was, you know, there were a goodly number of folk not human who walked this earth. Time was—not so long ago. Those who were human, however, never liked the idea, and ignored those not human when they met them, and now they ...” The inscrutable look faded, and he looked up from his hands and into the trees, and Aerin remembered the creatures on the walls of her sleeping-hall.
“I’m not,” he said carefully, “the best one to ask questions about things like humanity. I’m not entirely human myself.” He glanced at her. “Time I fed you again.”
She shook her head, but her stomach roared at her; it had been almost ceaselessly hungry since she had swum in the silver lake. Luthe seemed to take a curious ironic pleasure in pouring food into her; he was an excellent cook, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with culinary pride. It was more as if a mage’s business did not often extend to the overseeing of convalescents, and the interest he took in his humble role of provider ought to be beneath his dignity, and he was a little sheepish to discover that it wasn’t.