The Sacred Hunt Duology (66 page)

Her violet irises were rimmed with white as her eyes widened. She didn't quite drop her bowl, but it was a near thing. Then her eyes narrowed; he could see her try to gauge his honesty. “Really?”

“Yes. For four years, more or less. I don't remember much of it—probably because I don't want to.” He looked down at dinner, but he wasn't very hungry, and chose instead to lift a goblet of wine and rise. The chair was smooth and silent as he pushed it back. “But my mother was a prostitute in the city streets, and my father probably one of her clients; she wouldn't say, and that might be because she didn't know. I didn't understand it well then, and only as I got older was I able to put the pieces together. I remember her face; she was old by the time she was my age.” Oh, it was cold now; the words brought the chill, and the shame. He almost stopped speaking.

But she asked the next question. “How did you end up with Lord Elseth?”

“It's—it's a custom of Breodanir. I don't know how much of it you know, or how much you understand. But by the time I was eight—or maybe nine; I was small for my age, so it was hard to tell—I was an orphan, and no one owned me but the den. Gilliam's father came to find a suitable commoner to live with his son, and I was his choice.”

“You were an orphan?”

“My mother died when I was very young.” Before she could ask, he added, “I remember very little about her. But when she left me—when I realized that she was never coming back—it was the worst of my nightmares made real. I searched for her. I ran through the warrens shouting her name. She never answered, and I was certain that it was because she didn't care what happened to me. I never found her.

“Later, someone told me that she had died.” He swallowed. “But I remember the feeling of desertion, and knowing she had been killed didn't take it away; nothing did. I remember it still. Sometimes I dream of it now—that the people I've grown to love and value have discovered some terrible flaw in me, and one by one have deserted me.”

The Winter had opened old wounds. But he was not alone in the darkness with them. Stephen could feel Gilliam, concerned, fluttering around the edges of his emotions. His brother.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why?” The surface of the wine was deep and dark as it caught his reflection. “I don't know.” He lifted the cup and felt its cold edge between his lips. The wine was a good vintage—not sharp enough to sting the throat or leave a bitter taste in its wake. “I've never told anyone else this, not even Gilliam.” He emptied the cup and then turned back to the long table, where she was now sitting motionless, staring up at him. “I'm sorry, Evayne. I thought we would speak of who you are, and instead, I burden you with the secret of who I am. Or who I was.”

She continued to stare at him as she slowly pulled the napkin from her lap and set it aside in a crumpled heap on the table. “I used to think that my parents were Nolan a'Martin and his wife, Mary a'Graham. I was born in Callenton, in a different time.

“I've only been gone for a little while.” Her eyes began to film, and Stephen did her the grace of looking away.

“I always looked different, but my father was a blacksmith, and everyone treated me well enough, except for the other children. When I was twelve, my parents told me that I wasn't really their child. I'd been left as a babe at the Mother's Hearth, and the Priestess there had been asked to find a suitable home for me. They had no idea who left me there, or why.” As she spoke, her voice changed slightly, lilting in a cadence that Stephen had not yet encountered. “Then my father died, and everyone began to think I looked strange. Too pale and thin, and they didn't like the look of my eyes much.

“I only had two friends by the end of my fifteenth year. One was—” She bit her lip, hovering on the edge of a decision, taking, Stephen thought, risks of her own. “One was Darguar. He used to be a soldier, but he never would tell much about his life. He came to Callenton to forget about war, not to pretend it was glorious.”

“He said that.”

She smiled almost shyly. “Those are his exact words, yes. He said he'd been around enough that I looked exotic, not dangerous. He gave me this.” She parted the collar of her robe and pulled out what appeared to be a delicate, perfect flower, except for the fact that it hung from a thin chain, and its petals, like the chain, shone like polished silver.

“It's lovely,” Stephen said softly. “And unique, I think. It seems very delicate.”

“But it isn't. It never breaks. It never bends. It was an adult gift.” As she spoke, she looked down, and then cupped it carefully in two palms. He thought she would cry. But she swallowed, shook herself, and continued. “Wylen was my other friend. He was a year younger than I, and probably half as strange.

“I used to see them every day. I don't know if I'll ever see them again. I miss them,” she added as she put the pendant away. “But if I see them, I don't know who I'll be, and I don't know who they'll be. I don't know if we'll be friends anymore.” Her robes shivered as she spoke, and became tighter somehow.

“I never thought it would be easy,” she added gravely.

He knew better than to ask what.

“But I thought, if I could save them, it would be enough.”

Save who? Wylen? Darguar?

“And maybe it will be. Enough I mean. But I
don't know.
I don't know if I can save them from what—from what I saw. I wait, every day, to see if I return there. I wait to see if someone I meet can help my—my friends. And nothing happens. They aren't—they—” She lost her voice; Stephen saw a glimmer of gray light wreathe her lips, and wondered if a spell prevented her from speaking her mind.

Who would place such a spell on such a child?

Then he remembered the first time he had seen her. Dreams. Wyrd. Destiny.

“But I made my choice for them. And I don't know if the woman I'll become
will even have the time to care about one little village in the middle of nowhere.” She started to cry then.

He wanted so badly to ask her what she meant.
How could you not care?
he thought.

As if hearing his question, she shied back, and then, when it remained unspoken, relaxed a little. But only a little. “You don't know,” she said, her voice low and shaky. “You don't know who I've met, and what they've said. You don't know what I've started to learn, and what I have to learn. You haven't seen the end—” Again, gray light shadowed her lips, and a choked silence descended. “It's why I want to know who I am. What I'm like.”

Evayne.
He reached out carefully and caught one of her hands in both of his. It was shaking. How could he describe the woman who had taken him on the Winter road and nearly destroyed his soul? How could he speak of the mage who had, single-handed, fought off three of the demon-kin, buying his life, and that of Gilliam and the wild girl? Could he tell her of the woman who casually stopped time in order to urge them to travel to Averalaan to fulfill some mysterious destiny?

He could find the words, he thought, as he met her eyes. But he knew that they wouldn't comfort the fear and the loneliness. So he chose different words instead, and said a prayer to Justice and Judgment in apology.

“When she's twice your age, she seems much happier than you are, but more powerful. She has more secrets, and she's not so frightened. She's also beautiful.”

She blushed, and he smiled softly.

“When she's three and four times your age—it's hard for me to guess at ages—she's quieter, but she walks like a queen, and she seems very much at peace with herself.”

“Peace?”

“Yes.” He paused. “She's also very, very powerful.”

“Do you think she—”

“I think she's probably already dealt with whatever problem it was that worries you now.”

“All of it?”

“Evayne, if anyone can, she can.” He caught her other hand and held them both tightly between his. “You can. I don't understand how or why, but you saved my life when I was fourteen. You sent a man named Kallandras.”

She started a little, and then smiled weakly. “It wasn't me.”

“No, but I believe it's the person you become.” He smiled gently. “And if the person that you become can remember me—and make provisions to save
my
life—surely that person can remember the friends that she wanted so badly to save.”

“I want to believe that,” she told him.

“Then do,” he replied gravely. “I do.” That, at least, was the truth.

She pulled her hands gently out of his. “I—I have to go.”

“But you haven't eaten.”

“Neither have you.” Her smile was shy and slight, but it was there.

“Why don't you stay?”

“I can't tell you,” she answered, but not so defensively. “But I—but I hope I can return.” She stood back, gave a half-curtsy, half-bow, and then walked rapidly from the dining hall.

• • •

That evening Stephen could walk and stand without aid. Gilliam's dogs had made of themselves a small court before the fireplace in the great room, and lazily rolled and yapped and played. It seemed that the designer of the way station had foreseen the need to take care of beasts other than those of burden; food—perhaps a little richer than what they were used to—had been provided in very generous quantities. Gilliam was as patient as he could be, considering Stephen's condition; he took the dogs out on a run so that they could all lose the nervous energy that had built up over the course of the last two days.

Zareth Kahn spent most of his time locked in his room. Stephen, having been apprised of the magical properties of this odd rest station, wondered what sort of rooms would be given to a mage. Common sense overcame his curiosity, but it was a close thing.

Which means I must be feeling better
, he thought wryly.

She came to him, this eve, at a run. Unfortunately, she also came from around a corner, and Stephen had no time to get out of her way, let alone brace himself. They fell in an awkward spill of robe and tunic; Evayne screamed and then, realizing where she was, began to shake.

“What is it? What's wrong? Have I hurt you?” He righted himself quickly and put an arm around her shoulders.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. There were tears on her lashes; her skin was pale, with a slight green tinge to it, and her breath was short and sharp. Her body, stiff and rigid, made of itself a shield.

“Evayne,” he said, speaking as if to a frightened pup, “it's all right. Wherever—whenever—you were doesn't matter now. You're here, and you will not find a safer place.” He caught her hands and noticed that one was bleeding. He spoke two words that he hoped she would not understand; they weren't Weston, or Weston-based; they were of the eastern Breodani, the language of the streets. Then he swung her up, off her feet.

She was cold and silent and shaking. He knew that she was aware of him because she couldn't meet his eyes. And it didn't matter a bit.

What have you seen?
he wondered as he carried her down the hall, waiting for a room to open up. His strength had not fully returned, but he swore to himself
that it would not fail him before he had placed her safely down.
What are you running from?
A death. At the very least, a death. He looked at her ashen face, at the youth in it. She was too young.

He grimaced. How old had he been when he'd stumbled across his first corpse? Six? Seven? He hadn't the ability to count then, so he couldn't remember with certainty. What he could remember, as distinctly now as the day afterward, was the stench and the sight of the insects that had already made the spirit-fled corpse their home. And their meal.

A door opened to his left. It was a plain door that was the color of the wall; he thought, had it not been ajar, he might have missed it. Fitting, for Evayne. Nudging it open with his toe, he entered the room beyond. It was cool, but there was a fire that burned in a small grate. The room itself was not what he expected; it was a child's room. A narrow bed was covered with a patterned, pale quilt; there was a cloth doll and a battered sewn animal of some sort beside the pillows. On the wall, faded with sunlight and smelling slightly musty with age, was an old hanging that depicted the claiming of a unicorn. Across the free towns the unicorn was the symbol of childhood—that wild and mysterious realm of innocence and savagery, freedom and limitation. He wondered how long the hanging had been in the family—for he was certain that he had stepped into the room in which Evayne had spent her childhood.

She stilled as he crossed the threshold; he heard her intake of breath.

“No,” he told her gently before she could ask. “This isn't your home.” He could feel her shrink inward; her body gave a shudder, but she would not speak.

A lamp was burning on the small, nicked table beneath the shuttered window. Stephen set Evayne down as if she were a fragile piece of blown glass and then reached for the lamp. In its light, he cleaned her hands with a cloth and a basin which he found beneath the bed. And he found that the blood on her hands was not her own.

He did not ask. He didn't want to know. Instead, he put the basin outside in the hall, where some ancient magic would collect it and see to its removal.

“Can you sleep?” he asked her as he pulled the covers back and gently laid her down. She stared up at the ceiling, looking past his face as if she couldn't see him. The tears that she cried were a silent trail of water that fell from the corners of her eyes onto the pillow. On impulse, he handed her the doll and the animal, and she gathered them, one in either arm.

He hated whoever it was that had done this to her; had made her other than a shy young woman on the verge of adulthood. “Sleep,” he told her.