I had never objected to deer meat before, but I couldn't eat it even when Jamie had managed to cut some small and cook it quickly on a skewer in the fire Rella had set going. It smelled good, but at least for the moment I couldn't get rid of the echoes of that cry in my mind. I found myself hoping that vegetables didn't scream as I bit into a carrot, one of the winter store we'd brought from Hadronsstead. My gut was in a terrible state and the very idea of meat turned my stomach. Even the carrot tasted terrible.
"What's up with you, my girl?" asked Jamie, when I refused the deer. "It's well cooked and we all need hot food."
"I'm sorry, Jamie," I said. I couldn't face explaining what was only a guess. He'd had enough trouble believing in true-speech between people. I wasn't sure I could ever tell him. Maybe it would just go away. "I'm not hungry. I can't face food just now."
He looked closely at me for a moment, then shrugged. "Suit yourself. We should cook as much as we can, though the cold will keep it fresh enough for a few days." He smiled at me. "If you're not hungry you're the very one I'm looking for. Keep an eye on the rest of this lot while I set up camp."
He left me to tend skewers of small chunks of deer cooking over the fire while he untied his bedroll and mine from our saddles. "Thank the Lady those poor bastards were in such a hurry to get you they left our horses alone," he said after a time. "I'd rather ride than walk."
"Ride where?" asked Rella, kneeling on the cold ground as she cleared a space for her bedroll near the fire. "We never did decide exactly where we're going." Her voice hardened. "I still vote for Sorun. I have my suspicions but I want to know for certain who hired those poor buggers."
"Are you suspecting anybody I know?" I asked, half a smile tugging at my lips despite myself.
"Not unless you've heard the name Berys, no."
I frowned. It seem familiar, somehow, though I couldn't be sure—and then I heard Jamie hiss, "Berys." His voice was so deep and intense I turned to stare at him. He had stopped what he was doing and knew nothing beyond Rella's words.
I had to concentrate hard to hear anything. My mind was suddenly filled with voices again, louder than before. I tried desperately to ignore them. Something Jamie said had raised a memory, something I'd heard him say once and couldn't quite remember. It was hard to think with all the noise.
"I know him," he said. "Do you?"
"Yes, and I wish I didn't," she answered. "He's been watched for years now and none of the news is good."
"It never has been," said Jamie, almost in a trance. "I've known him for the last twenty-five years and I've hated him ever since I first heard his voice."
"Ah, you're a man after my own heart, Jamie." Rella took in Jamie's stance and voice and came to a decision. "I suspect I could be dismissed from the Service for telling you this but I think you need to know. He's now the Archimage of the College of Mages in Verfaren, where the best of the young Healers go to learn their art and better their skills. It's still a good place, by all accounts, but he's rotten to the core and as far as we can tell always has been. Rumour has it the place has started to stink of demons."
"At least for the last twenty-five years," said Jamie. His voice shook me and made Rella turn to look at him even more closely. He stood there in the winter wood, his pack dangling unheeded from one hand, his other on his sword hilt, and he was hot with fury decades old. The voices in my head were a little quieter now.
"Lady guard us, what did he do to you?" asked Rella, her eyes wide with surprise.
"Tried to kill Maran and me with demons," Jamie said, the words rough in his throat, "but that's by the by." And I remembered with a shock, as if it were the day before, Jamie telling me of a demon master linked with Marik. But that was before I was born, a quarter of a century since, and Berys had not been young even then by Jamie's account. Jamie had told me that this Berys had killed an innocent to create the Farseer, a globe that allowed the owner to see whatever they desired, no matter the distance. The Farseer for which Marik's first child had been the promised price— me, yet unsuspected in my mother's womb, the unborn child of Marik of Gundar.
"I made a vow to kill him with my own hands and now I have the chance to do it," said Jamie. "He's at Verfaren, you say?"
"I know what you're thinking and it can't be done, Master. He's the head of the College of Mages! Untouchable. Nearly everyone believes he is what he claims, a kindly servant of the Lady who oversees the training of the young Healers with a very powerful benevolence. The Silent Service knows better and obviously so do you." She flashed a quick grin at me. "Ah, well. Guess we're not going to Sorun. We can make straight for Kaibar and cross the river there, that's the fastest way to Verfaren from here."
Jamie dropped his pack and knelt beside her. "Mistress," he said fervently, laying his hand lightly on her arm, "this is not your fight. I go into danger to fulfill an old vow. Lanen and Varien go where the Lady and their destiny lead them. You do not need to come."
"Is that so, Jamie Horsemaster?" said Rella, gently removing his hand and drawing out an extra blanket from the depths of her own pack. "You don't listen very well, do you? I'm on duty, remember."
I was going to ask her what kind of duty she was talking about when I heard Shikrar's voice clearly saying my name.
"Wake up, girl!" Rella's voice interrupted my thoughts. "If you burn that deer meat you'll eat it yourself."
I managed to save most of it and was laying it by on a stone to cool when Jamie said, "Where's that man of yours?"
"He's not far," I said. "I heard him just now." Silently thanking the Lady for truespeech, I bespoke him. "Varien? Where are you/are you well?"
I was not so squeamish as Lanen and ate well of the deer that Jamie had killed. I had occasionally heard the death cry of creatures I killed for food—certainly I saw their faces.
It is a hard truth of life that we live, all, on death. We of the Kantri give thanks to the Winds for the lives that sustain our own and ask forgiveness of the creatures we must kill, but we cannot live only on the fruits of the earth. Indeed, one of the Kantri tried it when I was young—Kretissh, it was. He ate only roots and the fruit of the trees, and though Ian fruit is sustaining for a time, eventually he grew weak and then ill. It was Shikrar, my old friend, who came roaring into his chambers with a great fish he had caught. Crafty soul, he knew Kretissh was partial to fish. Shikrar was not Eldest then but he had taught Kretissh along with most of the rest of us, and when he ordered Kretissh to eat, he ate. He could only take a little flesh at first, but as he grew stronger he returned to himself. As Idai once said, how do we know that the fruits do not feel pain and cry out in their own silent tongue when we eat them?
I found my thoughts turning more and more to my old friends and my heart grew heavy. So far away, my people. I had almost forgotten that I had the means to bespeak them. I drew out from my pack the rough gold circlet Shikrar had made to hold my soulgem. I did not put it on immediately but held it in my hands and gazed at it.
How shall I explain it to you? A soulgem is not an ornament dug from the ground, it is a part of us, part of our bodies, as much as wing and talon, blood and bone. I still missed my wings, though the wonder of being human delighted me, but the absence of my soulgem was a constant sorrow. It was as though a human had lost all but the least of hearing and sight, and yet could hold the loss in their hands. The Kantri can sense emotions and hear truespeech. It is the way we are made—without truespeech, how should we speak one to another, up in the high air riding upon the winds, and with at least two wings' distance between us? Lanen was the only child of the Gedri who had ever been known to have truespeech.