“Reading was a gift we all shared once,” the Waylord said, his voice no longer mild. “Time, maybe, that we all relearn it. In any case, until we understand the answer we got, there’s no use asking a new question.”
“What good is an answer we don’t understand?”
“Isn’t the water of the fountain clear enough for you?”
I had never seen him so angry, a cold, knife-edge anger. The young man drew back again; after a pause he bowed his head a little and said, “Waylord, I beg your pardon.”
“Retter Gelb, I beg your patience,” he responded, still very coldly. “Let the fountain run water a while before it runs blood.”
He set the book down on the table and stood up. It was a small book bound in dun-colored cloth. I didn’t know if it was the book that had given us the oracle or some other.
Ista and Sosta were coming in with lamps.
“A good evening to youall, and a peaceful night,” the Waylord said, and taking up the book again, limped away from the crowd of people, back towards the shadowycorridors.
People left the house, then, bidding me a subdued good night. But many of them stayed to stand about on the maze in the courtyard, talking. There was a sense of unrest, unease, all through the city, a stir in the warm, windy, darkening air.
Gry came out of the house with Shetar on the leash and said to me, “Let’s walk over to Council Hill and see what’s doing,” and I gladly joined her. Orrec, she said, was in the house, writing; he had mostly kept to their apartments that day. He didn’t want to be part of the discussions and debates, she said, not being a citizen of Ansul, yet knowing whatever he said would be grasped at eagerly and given undue weight. “It worries him,” she said. “And this feeling that something is about to happen, some violence, something fatal that can never be undone…”
As we walked, people constantly greeted us, and saluted Gry and her lion, the first to face down Iddor and the redhats. She smiled and returned the greetings, but in a quick, shy way that did not lead to further talk. I said, “Does it scare you–being a hero?”
“Yes,” she said. She laughed a little and shot me a glance. “You too,” she said.
I nodded. I led us off Galva Street to a byway where we would meet nobody and could talk quietly as we walked.
“At least you’re used to all these people. Oh, Memer, if youknew where I came from! One street of Ansul has more houses in it than there are in all the Uplands. I used to go months, years, never seeing a new face. I used to go all day never speaking a word. I didn’t live with human beings. I lived with dogs, and horses, and wild creatures, and the hills. And Orrec… None of us knew how to live with other people. Except his mother. Melle. She came from the lowlands, from Derris Water. She was so lovely… I think his gift is from her. She used to tell us stories… But it’s his father he’s most like.”
“How is that?” I asked.
She pondered and spoke. “Canoe was a beautiful, brave man. But he feared his gift, and so he hid his heart. Sometimes I see Orrec do that. Even now. It’s hard to take responsibility.”
“It’s hard to have it taken from you,too,” I said, thinking of the Waylord’s life all the years I had known him.
We came back to the street at Goldsmiths’ Bridge and went on up to the Council Square. There were a lot of people there, drifting and swirling about, mostly men, and many of them carrying weapons. Someone was haranguing the crowd from the terrace of the Council House, not too successfully, for people kept coming to listen and drifting away again. Over on the east side of the square was a solid line of both men and women, some afoot and some sitting down, keeping their place side by side and very much on the alert. I spoke to one of the women, a neighbor of ours, Marid; she told us they were there “to keep the kids from get~ ting into trouble.” Beyond them, down the hill, torches gave enough light that we could just make out the cordon of Ald soldiers guarding the barracks. These citizens had made themselves a barrier between the crowd and the soldiers, preventing random insults and forays against the Alds byyoung men looking for a fight or byidle stone-throwers. Anybody trying to provoke the soldiers into violence would have to break through that line of fellow citizens. It continued on across the square, in front of the stables, where I had sat and talked with Simme.
“You are a remarkable people,” Grysaid to me as we went back across the square. “I think youhave peace in yourbones.”
“I hope so,” I said. We were in the center of the square, where the great tent had been. The wreckage was gone now; there was no trace of it except the blackening of the pavement stones, a slight crunch of ash and cinders under the feet. We were walking where Desac had died, burnt alive in the fire he had set. I shuddered all over, and Shetar, at the same moment, set up a long, strange wail, stretching her head up. I remembered how she had taken against Desac, glared at him. I saw him alive, straight-backed and soldierly, arrogant, passionate, talking with the Waylord– “We’ll meet again, free men in a free city!” he had said. His shadow was all round us.
Returning, we crossed the bridge and paused at the railing from which we had seen a man thrown to his death. We looked down at the dark canal that reflected a glimmer or two of light from the houses on the bridge. Shetar growled a little, informing us that she did not want to go back down there and go swimming again. A band of boys ran past us, shouting a chant I had heard several times in the street that day, “Alds out! Alds out! Alds out!”
“Let’s go down to the Lero Stone,” I said, and we did; neither of us wanted to go inside on this strange night, with the city all awake and restless about us, and it was good to walk, too, after sitting still listening to people talk all day. We cut down by the Slant Bridge on Gelb Street to West Street and to the Stone. A good many people were there, quietly waiting and doing as I came to do: to touch the Stone and say the blessing of Lero, who holds the balance.
We started back up West Street. I said, not knowing that I was going to say it, “Did you and Orrec never have children, Gry?”
“Yes. We had a daughter,” she answered in her quiet voice. “She died of the fever in Mesun. She lived a half year.”
I could say nothing.
“She’d be seventeen now. How old are you, Memer?”
“Seventeen,” I said, finding it very hard to say.
“I thought so,” Gry said. She smiled at me. I saw her smile in the faint lamplight of the High Bridge. “Her name was Melle,” she said.
I said the name and felt the touch of the little shadow.
Gry reached out her free hand to me, and we walked hand in hand.
“This is Ennu’s day,” I said, as we came to the turning of Galva Street. “Tomorrow will be a day of Lero. The balance will turn.”
IN THE MORNING it seemed that the balance might have turned already: we heard early that there was a great crowd gathering in the Council Square, not yet offering violence but noisy and determined, demanding that the Alds leave the city this same day. The Waylord conferred briefly with Orrec, and they came into the gallery together. Orrec looked tense and strained. He spoke to Gry for a moment, and she went to shut Shetar into the Master’s room, while Gudit brought out both horses. Orrec mounted Branty. Gry mounted Star, and I ran with her, following Orrec through the crowds in Galva Street. They willingly parted for us, calling out Orrec’s name.
He rode to the line of citizens still holding firm in the square in front of the line of soldiers. There he asked both the citizens and the soldiers if he might speak with the Gand Ioratth. They let him through at once. He dismounted and ran down the steps towards the Ald barracks.