“Overmountain from Estcarp. There is little evil there in the way you know, kin-brother,” Tirtha answered as gravely and with the same tone the Falconer had used. “But my kin were once of this land, and now I return for a purpose.”
He nodded. His growing composure was far from childlike. She wondered if this was natural to him, or whether it had been born of the release of power that had sent him into hiding and so changed his mind, perhaps enlarging a talent. He seemed twice as old as he looked.
“There are such as Gerik patrolling.” He hitched himself even higher in her hold. “They will be watching, and they hate all of the Old Blood. We kept mine secret, yet somehow they knew.”
The Falconer resheathed his strange weapon and put on his helm.
“Then it would seem that we must find a shelter better than this.” He got to his feet, held out the wrist of his claw, and the falcon moved onto it.
Alon pushed out of Tirtha’s hold, though she kept one hand on his shoulder to steady him. It was difficult to believe that the child who had been so limp and helpless when she had borne him here could now show such vigor. He wavered for a moment, then stood as tall and straight as his small body would allow, though he did not shake off her hand as the Falconer went to bring up their mounts.
Alon looked at the Torgian round-eyed and hesitatingly lifted his right hand. The beast snorted, moved toward the boy one step at a time as if puzzled and wary, the man loosing the leading rein to let it go free. The shaggy head of the horse dipped, it sniffed at the boy’s palm, pawed at the ground, and then blew.
“He—he is different.” Alon’s gaze swung from horse to ponies, then back again.
“Yes. In Estcarp,” Tirtha answered, “his kind are horses of war, and they are highly prized.”
“He is alone.” It was almost as if Alon had either not heard her or else that what she said meant little to him. “The one whom he served is dead; since then his days have been empty. But he will take me!” There was a sharp change in the boy’s face. A smile, as bright as the sun Tirtha had imagined when she was pulling him out of his inner darkness lighted it. There was an eagerness in his voice as both his hands tugged at the flowing forelock of the horse. “He accepts me!” It was as if something near too wondrous to believe had changed his world.
For the first time since she had traveled with him, Tirtha saw the Falconer smile and gained a dim idea of how different he might appear among his own kind. He caught Alon around the waist and swung the boy up to settle him in the empty saddle of the dead man’s horse.
“Ride him well, little brother. As the Lady has said, his kind is not easily found.”
Alon leaned forward to draw his hand down the curve of the Torgian’s neck, and the horse tossed its head, whickering, taking one or two small steps sidewise as if he were very pleased with both himself and his rider.
With them all to horse and the falcon settled on saddle perch, they headed back into the foothills. Tirtha watched the boy anxiously. Though she claimed hardness of spirit for herself and even in childhood had cultivated a shell to protect both her inner self and the feeling that some important destiny lay before her, she could not believe that so young a child might so quickly lose the remembrance of the raid and of how he had escaped from it.
Perhaps her first suspicion was right—the use of his power had released within him also an ability to accept things as they were. So, as the Falconer suggested, Alon was able to look forward and not back—yet another protective measure which the talent brought to him without even his conscious willing.
They halted for nooning at a spring, for these foothills were well watered. The boy shared the last of their rations of crumbling journey cake, as they had not tried to hunt along the way. By questioning, they discovered that Alon’s knowledge of the land eastward was limited to stories that had come through infrequent contact with either a single small market town to the south or from such travelers as the master of the holding had trusted enough to shelter overnight.
There was a Lord Honnor who claimed rule over part of the land, but, by all Alon’s accounts, his hold was a precarious one, his title often in dispute, though he was a man of some honesty—for Karsten—and did his best for those loyal to him. The master of the garth had been one Parian, not of the Old Race but with a dislike for the perilous life of the more fertile plains where there was almost constant warfare. He had brought his family clan into this foothill region trying to escape the constant raiding he had encountered during the past dozen years or more.
It was when he had been taken sick two tens of days back that the mastership of the garth itself had fallen on his nephew Dion. Parian was old enough to have served in Pagar’s force, being one of the garrison left behind when the fateful invasion of Estcarp had been ordered. A seasoned fighting man, he had suffered a crippling wound in the chaos that had followed the turning of the mountains, and had then taken a wife and the land his lord commander had offered, only to change his mind and move into the foothills when that lord commander himself was treacherously slain and his forces badly routed.
Alon’s own relationship with Parian and his family was apparently not a close one. He had been added to the household when they had left the plains, as a very young baby, and he had been told that he was the only child of a kinsman who had been killed with the lord commander, his mother slain in a resulting raid.
“It was Yachne who fostered me,” he told them. “She—they were all somewhat afraid of her, I think.” He frowned a little. “And she was not of their blood either. But she was a healer and she knew many things—she taught the maidens weaving and the making of dyes. So Parian got fine prices for their work in the market. Also…” He shook his head. “I do not know why, but he often came to her when he was in trouble and she would sleep, or seem to. Then when she wakened again, she would tell him things. But always she sent me away when she did this, saying this must not be told or understood by men. And when I asked her questions, she grew angry, though I cannot understand why.”
“Because she dealt in witchery,” returned the Falconer.
“And perhaps because she believed, as most do”—Tirtha herself had only today revised her own beliefs in that direction—“that the talent is only a gift for women.”
“The talent?” Alon repeated. “When I was frightened, then—what did I do? They said that they would have a hunt and that this was a fair way to bring down their hare.” He shivered. “Gerik’s shield man tossed me out into the field and I ran, and then… then…” He looked questioningly to Tirtha. “I do not know what happened. There was a dark place, but it was not of the evil, that I know—rather it was like a house, strong-walled to hold me safe. Somehow I found that and hid until I was called, and that calling I could not stand against.”
Tirtha found it ever more difficult to think of him as the child he looked. Now she asked abruptly:
“How old are you, Alon?”
Again he frowned. “I do not know, for Yachne would not tell me. I know”—he glanced disparagingly down at his own small body—“that I am too small. Frith, who seemed close to me in age when we were little, grew; he was near half a head the taller. They called me ‘babe in arms’ when they wished to tease me. It seems that I do not look like the others. Even Sala who was only ten stood above me. I think I can count for myself near twelve years since we came from the plains.”
Twelve years—perhaps more! Tirtha, startled, looked to the Falconer and read a trace of the same amazement on his face. The small body she had carried was certainly that of a child who looked hardly half that toll of years. Perhaps there was more than the blood of her own race in this one. There were stories of strange matings to be read at Lormt. A long-lived elder race might well produce a child whose development was very slow and whose seeming childhood much prolonged. The Old Race was long-lived, and they retained a semblance of late youth into scores of years, in fact until they were near death. But this very prolonged childhood was new to her.