Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (13 page)

Impulsively, seeing this was the last time he might
have the chance, Ilias asked, “Did the wizard do any other curses last night?”

Menander eyed him sharply, but Giliead turned to look
at him, his expression serious. Giliead said, “There was only one other,
besides what he did here in the house. He did one when he crossed the river
from the Uplands, just a little one to keep the wagon ferry from seeing him --
that’s how Menander knew he was coming. He might have thought he was far enough
away that the gods couldn’t hear him, but they both did. Our god and the
Uplands god. Then he killed Treian.”

“Oh.” Ilias subsided, leaning back against the
pillows. “So the gods can hear it every time a wizard does a curse?”

Still watching him, Menander answered, “Some wizards
are more subtle, but this was a young one, and his curses were loud. He
probably didn’t realize how loud.” He lifted a brow. “Why did you want to know?”

Ilias shifted uncomfortably. “Something happened last
night...when I got lost. I thought I might have gotten lost because of a curse.”

Menander nodded, understanding. “There was nothing
like that.”

Ilias nodded, resigned. He hadn’t really thought so,
anyway.

* * *

After another day, Menander returned to the Uplands,
and Giliead was allowed to go outside the house again, though he chose to stay
with Ilias, who was still confined to the atrium until his feet were well. Karima
said nothing further about the message to the Finan, and Ilias found it easier
to put it out of his head, pretending to himself that this was just a visit.

That was easy to do. Even with people from Andrien
village wandering in and out, there was less confusion and turmoil in this
house. Meals might be at odd times but there was always plenty of food, and it
actually tasted good, even when visitors came at the last moment. Irissa seemed
to actually enjoy her brother’s company for the most part, and Karima and
Ranior were...different.

By the third day Sabiras had pronounced Ilias’ feet
well enough to walk outside the house, as long as he wore a pair of sandals she
found for him. He and Giliead had been helping her milk the goats, and were now
sitting out on the short wall of the pen. From there, Ilias could see into the
stable, and he noticed Ranior’s horse was gone. “Where did Ranior go?” he
asked.

Giliead frowned down at the dusty ground. “To your
house.”

Ilias sat bolt upright, staring. Giliead flicked a
guilty look at him. “How do you know?” Ilias demanded.

Giliead bit his lip. “I heard them talking this
morning, while you were still asleep.”

“He’s not back yet?”

“No.”

If Ranior had left this morning... Ilias didn’t think
it was that far. “Come on.” He pushed to his feet.

They sat out under the olive trees in the orchard,
where they could see the wagontrack down from the road. Every moment seemed to
wear on Ilias’ nerves, though Giliead fell asleep, curled up at the base of a
gnarled trunk.

Finally he saw Ranior coming down the track, walking
his horse. Something about the set of his shoulders told Ilias that Ranior was
tired, though the distance to Finan and back couldn’t have been that long. Giliead
woke, blinking and rubbing his eyes. “He’ll talk to mother first. Want to
listen?”

Ilias nodded, not trusting himself to talk. Giliead
scrambled up and led the way back through the orchard, then around to where the
bulk of the house shielded them from the view of the barn and the front yard.

There was a field on this side of the house, with a
shady stand of oaks, stretching away up to the beginning of the forested slope.
There was a sheep pen out there, and some of the herdsmen were sitting on the
stone fence talking. Giliead crept close to the wall of the house, Ilias
following. The herdsmen were out in the bright sunlight and he and Giliead were
in the shadow of the arbor; he didn’t think the men would be able to see them.

They waited, crouching in the arbor, long enough for
Ranior to take the mare to the barn and water her and wipe her down. Then,
still in a crouch, Giliead moved through the sparse grass down the side of the
house until he was under a broad window. He didn’t have to gesture or glance
back; Ilias could already hear Karima’s and Ranior’s voices. He settled next to
Giliead, his shoulder against the cool stone, to listen.

“They wouldn’t admit it, of course, but he was on the
hill, all right,” Ranior was saying. “I found his tracks, and the tracks of the
horse that brought him, and a place where a child was digging in the dirt,
playing. He must have been up there for most of the day, before he tried to
find his way back.”

“He knew, then.” Karima’s voice was quiet.

“Oh, he knew, all right. Maybe not at first. But he
knew enough to lie when Menander asked him what he was doing out there.” There
was a pause and Ilias heard Ranior draw a long breath. “People are still
leaving children there, as if the law means nothing. There were more bones than
last time, but it was a bad harvest for some, and the fishing hasn’t been good
this year. Too many new babies that the families can’t afford to feed. I did
rites for as many as I could find, but I’ll have to get Menander to go out
there and make sure there are no shades left behind.”

Karima was silent for a long moment. “When they didn’t
respond to the message I sent, I was afraid of something like this, but...” Ranior
must have nodded, because Karima continued angrily, “It’s madness. There’s a
dozen families I can name off the top of my head who would take in a little boy
his age with no more thought than they’d spare for taking in a stray lamb.”

“Do you think the Keneans are right, that she killed
Timeron? That she’s always been mad?”

“No, no. But she was never the same after he died. And
Ilias looks like him. As soon as I saw him, I thought he must be a Kenean. And
I think she’s had too many children, the fool. I know she went out of her head
after that third girl was born and never managed to quite get back in. That can
happen with too many births, so close together.”

“What about the other husband, what’s his excuse? He
hasn’t had too many births.”

“Love for her, maybe. Fear she would send him away.” Karima
let her breath out, sounding angry. “I can’t get over it.”

“She braided his hair and put beads in it, then sent
him out to die.”

“There’s a lot of people living in that house, a lot
of other children. I don’t think most of them knew where he was being taken.” Ilias
heard footsteps come toward the window. “And even if some of them did... She
controls the purse-strings and her sister hasn’t a goat to her name. If they
argued too hard with her, they might find themselves out in the cold.”

Ilias had heard enough. Numb, he eased away from the
window, quiet and cautious by habit. When he was far enough away, he pushed to
his feet and walked out from under the arbor. Giliead trailed along at his
side, and the herdsmen glanced up at them, but away from the window they were
just two boys walking in the afternoon sun.

In a little voice, Giliead asked, “What’s the hill?”

Ilias took a deep breath. “It’s where your family
takes you when they want to get rid of you.” It was the first time he had said
it aloud.

Ilias avoided the front of the house, where someone
might see him, heading toward the sparse forest at the base of the slope. There
was a footpath here that was a short cut up the hill to the road. There was
nothing he needed to go back for. His own clothes had gone into the mending
basket as too stained and ruined to wear again without being re-made. The brown
shirt and blue pants, trimmed with leather braid and painted designs, were
hand-me-downs Irissa had grown out of. The sandals had probably been hers too. The
only thing he had that he had brought here with him were the beads in his hair,
which Sabiras had braided back in after his bath. “You need to go back,” he
told Giliead.

Giliead kept pace with him. “What are you doing?”

“I have to go home.” He had to know for certain.

Giliead caught the tail of his shirt. “I don’t want
you to go. I want you to stay here and be my brother.”

Ilias yanked the shirt free, telling him sharply, “I’ve
got a brother.”

“The one that sent you away to die?”

Yes, that one
.
They were almost in the shadows of the trees, and Ilias gave him a shove,
pushing him back toward the house. “Go on, go back. You’re not allowed to leave
the farm without a grown-up.”

Giliead halted, watching him with tear-bright eyes. “You
aren’t either,” he tried.

“I don’t live here,” Ilias told him, and started up
the footpath.

* * *

It wasn’t that long a walk. He knew now he had come
down from the hills at an angle, confused in the dark, and had crossed the
stream and hit the road a long distance out from where he should have. Finan
was closer in towards Cineth than Andrien.

The road, which had been such a dark frightening
cavern at night, was now just the road, dusty and uneven, shaded by the tall
trees arching overhead. It got better as he walked further away from Andrien,
smoother and less rocky the way he remembered.

The sun had only moved a little further when he passed
the pathway turning off down toward the Greian land, and he knew he was very
close. When he saw the familiar bend in the road, he began to run.

There was no one in the yard, no one around the pens
or outbuildings, but his aunt’s husbands and the older girls would be out with
the herd. The house looked different, as though he had never seen it from this
angle, as though he had been gone years instead of only a few days. He slowed
to a walk as he crossed the yard, thinking he saw movement at one of the
windows. His heart was pounding, but it wasn’t from fear.

The door, heavy wood speckled with old paint, stood
shut when it should be open to keep the front rooms from growing stuffy. He
stepped up onto the stone porch and used his fist to pound on the door.

It opened abruptly and Niale stood there. His older
sister had their mother’s darker chestnut hair and olive skin, but her nose was
sharp and her eyes too narrow. She was dressed in a rich purple robe, the
sleeves tied back to bare her arms. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Her voice was hard and cold but her cheeks were
flushed and he knew she had seen him come up the path; she must have been
standing on top of the door to open it so quickly. And he still wasn’t afraid. “I
live here,” he told her.

She tried to stare him down, her favorite trick, but
her eyes slipped away from his after only a heartbeat. She stared over his left
shoulder, saying, “You ran away. Don’t expect to just come back here.”

She didn’t add anything like “we were worried to death”
or “everyone was so upset” or “we searched all night” and that made it sound
even more like the lie it was. In a way, it told Ilias all he needed to know. “I
didn’t run away. I know you know that.” Her face stiffened but before she could
reply, he added, “I didn’t tell anybody.”

For a moment she was flustered. He took a step
forward, looking up at her. “I won’t tell anybody, ever. Just let me come back.”

Her expression hardened then, and she said with grim
finality, “You ran away, you abandoned your family--”

“That’s not true!” he shouted. It was the word
abandoned
that took his temper. “You know it’s not true!”  

Her face twisted for an instant and she flicked a look
at someone standing inside the foyer, out of his sight. Stepping back with a
grimace, she said, “Ilias, just go away!” and slammed the door.

He stood there a moment, breathing hard, then turned
away, stepping down off the porch, scuffing his sandals in the dirt. His face
felt hot and his head ached, as if he had been crying for hours, but his eyes
were dry. Then he saw a man on a horse trotting down the wagon path. It was
Ranior, riding the yellow mare from the Andrien stables. Someone must have
noticed Ilias was missing and had managed to get Giliead to tell where he had
gone. Ilias knew Giliead had only told because he had wanted to. Even at his age,
instinct told Ilias that Giliead would be nearly impossible to break with only
parental pressure.

Ranior reined in nearby. He looked down at Ilias, his
face regretful, saying, “Ilias, come away from there. It’s not going to do any
good.”

Ilias had the impulse to run. Not because he was
afraid of Ranior, but because it would mean giving up. But the horse recognized
him and stretched out a velvet nose. After a moment, Ilias stepped toward him.

He started to reach up to take Ranior’s hand, then
memory of the last time he had done this stopped him. “We’re going back to
Andrien?” he asked, watching Ranior’s face. He had heard Ranior and Karima’s
opinion of people who abandoned children, but he wanted to make certain. He
didn’t know the words to put it into yet, but he knew unthinking trust was a
thing of the past.

“Yes, we’re going back to Andrien,” Ranior said it
without impatience, meeting his eyes, as if he knew exactly what had passed
through Ilias’ thoughts.