Reave the Just and Other Tales (33 page)

As though he sensed her distress, Titus began to fill her head with images.

One of them showed her herself as she nodded in thanks and smiled for the children; it showed her rising from the protection of the wall to surprise them with her cleanliness, and to touch each of them gratefully upon the cheek, and to let them know that it was time for them to return home.

But she obeyed without noticing what she did: her attention was on other images, images which explained what the children had done. In those images, he spoke to them, and they complied. When they brought the herbs he needed to her hovel, they were acting on his instructions.

Yes,
Titus told her firmly, almost urgently, as soon as the children were gone,
there
is
a connection. You guessed that,
and you were right. You do not understand time, but you can understand that it is no barrier to sequence. If you touch the flame, will you not be burned? If Jessup at the hearth of his alehouse touches the flame, will he not be burned, even though you do not see it? If I ask you to bathe, do you not go to the river and cleanse yourself? It is not otherwise with these whelps, or with time. One thing will lead to another because it must.

Yes, Fern repeated because that was the only sound she recognized. Yes, Titus.

She meant neither
yes
nor
no,
but only that she knew no other response. Nevertheless she saw clearly what he gave her to see: he had spoken to the boys as he spoke to her, silent and silver; those sounds conveyed images to them, which they had heeded; obediently they had hunted the hills for herbs and brought them to her, telling no one what they did. Again and again the events played through her, showing her the links between them, until she fell asleep; sleeping, she dreamed of nothing else. And when she awakened, the connection had become secure.

Across time, and against all likelihood, Yoel’s children had brought these herbs because Titus had asked it of them.

At her side, Titus snored heavily, sleeping as though he had been awake all night to weave images. He did not rouse when she scratched his throat; dreams and images were gone from her head.

But the connection remained.

“Yes,” she said aloud, although he did not hear her. The sound
Titus
meant this pig. The sound
Yes
meant the connection. One thing will lead to another because it must.

She had no idea what all these herbs were for, so she left them where they lay. After a fine breakfast of bread and sausages and clear water, she spent the morning hunting wood; then she returned to her hovel to find Titus awake at last.

About time,
he snorted.
Did you think I gathered all these herbs for my health?
But the hue of his mood was reassuring, and the images he wove for her had an itch of excitement in them.

She set to work promptly under his watchful gaze. When she had built up her fire from its embers, she turned to the gifts Yoel’s children had brought. In a bowl of water she mixed marjoram
(Not too much),
vert
(
Just so),
coriander and thyme
(More than that, more),
and sloewort
(Only a pinch, you daft woman, I said only a
pinch
). This she settled in the flames to boil, and as it heated she crushed rueweed
(Better if it were dry, but it will have to serve)
and a little witch hazel into a smaller pot. Once she had ground the leaves as fine as she could, she stirred in enough water to make a paste with a smell so acute that her nose ran.

Wipe it on a rag, not your hand,
he told her imperiously.
You already need another bath.
However, he gave her no images to compel her. His attention was on the bowl steaming among the coals.

At his behest, she stirred the herbs vigorously while they boiled; then she pulled the bowl from the flames and set it in the dirt to cool.

Hints of green and blue and a strange, raw crimson flickered at the edges of her mind while she and the pig waited. Titus was excited, she felt that. And expectant, awaiting another connection. And anxious—

Anxious? Was it possible for the connection to fail? Had he not told her that one thing will lead to another?

Because it must,
he finished brusquely.
Yes. But it is possible to misunderstand or misuse the sequence. And it is possible for the sequence to be obstructed. It may be that you are too stupid, even for me.

His tone saddened her, but she did not know how to say so.

Instructed by images, she stirred the herb broth again, then scooped a measure of the thick liquid into a broken-rimmed cup—the last container she owned. New images followed. Titus showed her drinking from the cup, showed her face twisting in disgust, showed her spitting the broth into the dirt. Then, so vehemently that her head rang and her limbs flinched, he forbade her to do what she had just seen. Instead she must swallow the broth, no matter how it gagged her. After that she must dip one finger into the paste of rueweed and witch hazel, and place a touch of it upon her tongue. That would cure her need to gag.

He was Titus, the pig who had adopted her; he was her only connection in all the world. She wished to shy away from the broth, but she did not do so. Thinking, Yes, with her peculiar understanding of the word, she gulped down the contents of the cup.

It felt like thistles in her throat; it stung her stomach like thorns and immediately surged back toward her mouth. Her face twisted; she hunched to vomit. Yet Titus’ images held her. Obeying them, her finger stabbed at the paste, carried it to her tongue.

That flavor was as acrid as gall, but it accomplished what he had promised: instantly it stilled her impulse to gag. Her body felt that it had suffered another violation; however, the sensation faded swiftly. By the time her heart had beat three times, she was no longer in distress.

The pig rewarded her with a vivid display of pleasure and satisfaction, as bright as the sun on the waters of the Gentle and as comforting as dawn on her face.
Well done,
he breathed, although she did not know those words.
You are indeed willing. The fault will not be yours if I fail.
Then he added,
As you grow accustomed to it
, it will become less burdensome.

“Yes?” she murmured, asking him for the sequence, the connection. Without words or knowledge, she wished to comprehend what he did.

Now, however, he did not appear to understand her.

He required her to drink the broth again at sunset, and again at dawn and noontime. And when the sun had set once more, Yoel’s children returned, bringing four or five of their young friends as well as more herbs and firewood. They also brought bread and carrots, corn and bacon, butter and apples and sausages and beans, which they had appropriated from their parents’ kitchens. Now Fern was not a beggar: she was a thief. But she did not see the connection, and so she was not disturbed by it. Instead she was simply gladdened that she did not need to abase herself for so much good food.

For perhaps another fortnight, Titus impelled her to do nothing new or strange. Indeed, her life became simpler than it had ever been, so simple that she hardly regarded its unfamiliar ease. Apparently he was now content. Three times a day she drank the broth and touched her tongue with the paste. Often she bathed in the Gentle. And she stopped pressing her bones against the wall when the children—at least a dozen of them now at various intervals—came to her hovel. More than often, she smiled; once she was so filled by pleasure that she laughed outright. The rest of her days and nights were spent sleeping with Titus, roaming the hills with him, caressing and cozying him, or perhaps watching the games and play of the children, and then studying the images in her mind while Titus showed her the sequences which explained what the children did.

She owned a pig, and she was happy. Only her lack of self-consciousness prevented her from knowing that she was happy. If other pigs needed her, she failed to hear their cries or feel their distress. And they no longer came to her when they succeeded at wandering away from their homes. But her knowledge of time was still uncertain, and she did not notice the change.

Of course, the village noticed. With the selective blindness of adults, the farmers and farmwives, the weavers and potters declined to recognize the surreptitious activities of their children; but they had all known Fern long enough to mark the change in her. They saw her new cleanliness, her new health; they saw the gradual alteration in the way she walked. When she raised her head, the brightness in her eyes was plain. And all Sarendel could hardly fail to observe that wherever she went she was accompanied by a pig which belonged to no one else.

Strange things were rare in Sarendel-on-Gentle. They were worthy of discussion.

“A beggar!” Jessup protested in his taproom. “That pig has made her a beggar, I swear it.”

“Be fair, Jessup,” rumbled widower Horrik the tanner. He was a large man with large appetites. He still missed his wife, but because of Fern’s cleanliness he had begun to see her in new ways, ways which did not altogether distress him. “She was only a beggar for a short time. Was it as much as a fortnight? Now she lives otherwise.”

He looked around the taproom, hoping that someone would tell him how Fern lived.

No one did. Instead, Meglan’s husband, Wall, said, “In any case, Jessup, you must be sensible.” To counteract his softheartedness, Wall placed great store on sense. “The creature is only a pig—and not a prepossessing one, you must admit. How can a pig make her do anything?”

Jessup might have retorted sourly, Because she is daft and dumb. She cannot care for a pig with her own wits. However, Karay the weaver was already speaking.

“But where does he come from?” she asked. “That’s what I wish to know. Pigs do not fall from the sky—or climb the sides of the Rift. No village is nearer than Cromber, and that is three days distant for a man in haste. At their worst pigs do not wander so far.”

Wall and the other farmers nodded sagely. None of them had ever heard of a pig lost more than three miles from home.

Like Wall’s, Karay’s question was unanswerable. Glowering blackly, Jessup muttered, “I mean what I say. You mark me. That pig is an ill thing, and no good will come of him.” He had no name for the silver compulsion which had caused him to give bread, sausages, and barley to Fern. “If she no longer feeds herself by beggary, it is because she has learned a worse trick.”

“Be fair,” Horrik said again, and Wall repeated, “Be sensible.” Nevertheless the men and women gathered in the taproom squirmed uncomfortably at Jessup’s words. All Sarendel had heard the tales of the merchanters on their annual drive down the Rift, tales of intrigues and warlocks and wonders. The villagers could adjudge with confidence any matter which was familiar along the Gentle, but who among them could say certainly what was and what was not possible in the wider world?

No more than a day or two later, the wider world offered them an opportunity to ask its opinion. Unprecedented on a white horse, with a rapier at his side and a tassel in his hat, a man entered Sarendel-on-Gentle from the direction of Cromber. In the center of the village, he dismounted. Stamping dust from his boots and wiping sweat from his brow, he waited until Limm the potter and Vail farmwife came out from their homes to greet him; until every child of the village had arrived as if drawn by magic to the surprise of a stranger; until Yoel and Jessup had left their alehouses, Horrik his tannery, Karay her weaving, and the other farmwives their kitchens and gardens to join the crowd he attracted. Then he swept off his hat, bowed with a long leg, and spoke.

His eyes were road-weary and skeptical, but he smiled and spoke cheerfully. “Good people of Sarendel-on-Gentle, I am Destrier, of the Prince’s Roadmen. Lately it has come to Prince Chorl, the lord of all Andovale, that his domain would profit if its many regions and holdings were bound together by a skein of tidings and knowledge. Therefore he has commissioned his Roadmen to travel throughout the land. It is the will of my Prince that I spread the news of Andovale down the Gentle’s Rift, and that I bear back to him the news of the Rift’s villages and doings.

“Good people, will you welcome me in Prince Chorl’s name?”

Yoel tugged at his leather apron. Because he was an affable man who had shown during the visits of the merchanters that he was not chagrined by strangers, he sometimes spoke on behalf of the village. “Surely,” he replied in a slow rumble. “We welcome any man or woman who passes among us. Why should we not? We mean no harm, and expect none.” He might have added, We do not require the bidding of princes to extend courtesy. However, his good nature worked against such plain speaking. Instead he continued, “But I fear I do not understand. What manner of news is it that you seek?”

“Why, change, of course,” Destrier replied as though he found Yoel’s affability—or his perplexity—charming. “I seek news of change. Any change at all. Change is of endless interest to my Prince.”

Yoel received this assertion with some concern. “Change?” He dropped his eyes, and a frown crossed his broad face. Around him, people shifted on their feet and looked away. Children stared at the Roadman as though he might begin to spout poetry. At last Yoel met Destrier’s gaze again and shook his head.

“We are as you see us—as we have always been. Along the Gentle we know little of change. Surely the other folk of the Rift have said the same?

“However, it is of no great moment,” he went on more quickly. “You are road-weary, no doubt thirsty and hungry as well. I must not ask you to remain standing in the sun while I inquire in what way your Prince believes we might have changed. Will you accept the hospitality of my alehouse?” He gestured toward it with an open palm. “Your horse will be cared for. We have no horses here, as you surely know, but the merchanters have taught us how to care for their beasts.”

At once Wall stepped forward to place a hand on the reins of the Roadman’s mount. “I have a stall to spare in my barn.” During the visits of the merchanters, he often profited in a small way by tending their horses.