The Inheritance And Other Stories Part 13

Two parties set out. Most of our firewood went with them, converted to torches. Before they left, we prayed together, but I doubted Sa could hear us, so deep beneath the ground and so far from sacred Jamaillia. I remained with my son, tending the fire. We took turns making short trips to nearby rooms, to drag back whatever might burn. Treasure seekers had already burned most of the close fuel, but still we found items ranging from ma.s.sive tables it took eight of us to lift to broken bits of rotted chairs and tatters of curtain.

Most of the children had remained by the fire. In addition to my son and Ch.e.l.lia's children, there were four other youngsters. We took turns telling stories or singing songs to them, trying to keep their minds free of the ghosts that cl.u.s.tered closer as our small fire burned lower. We begrudged every stick of wood we fed to it.

Despite our efforts, the children fell silent one by one and slipped into the dreams of the buried city. I shook Carlmin and pinched him, but could not find the will to be cruel enough to rouse him. In truth, the ghosts plucked at my mind as well, until the distant conversations in an unknown language seemed more intelligible than the desperate mutterings of the other women. I dozed off, then snapped awake as the needs of the dying fire recalled me to my duty.

"Perhaps it's kinder to let them dream themselves to death," one of the women said as she helped me push one end of a heavy table into the fire. She took a deeper breath and added, "Perhaps we should all just go to the black wall and lean against it."

The idea was more tempting than I liked to admit. Ch.e.l.lia returned from a wood-foraging effort. "I think we burn more in torch than we bring back as fuel," she pointed out. "I'll sit with the children for a while. See what you can find to burn."

So I took her stub of torch and went off seeking firewood. By the time I returned with my pitiful sc.r.a.ps, a splinter group of one of the search parties had returned. They had swiftly exhausted their possibilities and their torches and returned hoping that others had had better luck.

When a second party returned shortly afterward, I felt more discouragement. They brought with them a group of seventeen others whom they had discovered wandering in the labyrinth. The seventeen were the "owners" of that section of the city and said that days ago they had early discovered that the upper stories in that section were collapsed. In all the days they had explored it, always the paths had led outward and downward. Any further explorations in that direction would demand more torches than we presently had.

Our supply of wood for the bonfire was already dwindling, and we weren't finding much in the pillaged rooms that we could use for torches. Hunger and thirst were already pressing many of us. Too soon we would have to confront an even more daunting shortage. Once our fire failed, we would be plunged into total darkness. If I dared to think of it, my heart thundered and I felt faint. It was hard enough to hold myself aloof from the city's lingering "art." Immersed in blackness, I knew I would give way to it.

I was not the only one who realized this. Tacitly, we let the fire die down and maintained it at a smaller size. The flow of mud down the grand stair brought damp that chilled the air. People huddled together for warmth as much as companions.h.i.+p. I dreaded the first touch of water against my feet. I wondered which would overtake me first, total darkness or rising mud.

I don't know how much time pa.s.sed before the third party returned to us. They had found three staircases that led up. All were blocked before they reached the surface. Their corridor had become increasingly ruined the farther they had gone. Soon they had been splas.h.i.+ng through shallow puddles, and the smell of earth had grown strong. When their torches were nearly exhausted and the water growing deeper and colder about their knees, they had returned. Retyo and Tremartin had been members of that party. I was selfishly glad to have him at my side again, even though it meant that our hope was now whittled to a single search party.

Retyo wished to shake Carlmin out of his daze, but I asked him, "To what end? That he might stare into the darkness and know despair? Let him dream, Retyo. He does not seem to be having bad dreams. If I can carry him out of here into daylight once more, then I will wake him and try to call him back to me. Until then, I will leave him in peace." I sat, Retyo's arm around me, and thought silently of Petrus and my erstwhile husband, Jathan. Well, he had made one wise decision. I felt oddly grateful to him that he had not allowed me to squander both our sons' lives. I hoped he and Petrus reached the coast safely and eventually returned to Jamaillia. At least one of my children might grow to adulthood.

And so we waited, our hopes dwindling as swiftly as our firewood. Our men had to venture farther and farther into the darkness in search of fuel. Finally Retyo lifted his voice. "Either they are still exploring, in hope of finding a way out, or they have found a way out and are too fearful to return for us. In either way, we gain nothing more by sitting here. Let us go where they went, following their marks, while we still have light to see them. Either we will find the same escape route they did, or die together."

We took every splinter of firewood. The more foolish among us gathered treasure to carry out. No one remonstrated with them, though many laughed bitterly at their hopeful greed. Retyo picked up Carlmin without a word; it moved me that my son was treasure to him. In truth, weakened as I was by hunger, I do not know if I could have carried my son. I do know that I would not have left him there. Tremartin took Olpey slung across his shoulders. The boy was limp as a drowned thing. Drowned in art, I thought to myself. Drowned in memories of the city.

Of Ch.e.l.lia's two daughters, Piet still clung to wakefulness. She stumbled piteously along beside her mother. A young man named Sterren offered to carry Likea for Ch.e.l.lia. She was so grateful, she wept.

And so we trudged off. We had one torch to lead us, and one at the tail of our procession, so that no one would fall victim to the city's allure and be left behind. I walked in the middle of the company, and the darkness seemed to pluck and snag at my senses. There is little to say of that endless walk. We took no rest, for our fire ate our torches at an alarming rate. There was dark, and wet, the mutter of hungry and thirsty and weary folk all around me, and more darkness. I could not really see the halls we walked through, only the smudge of light that we followed. Bit by bit, I gave up my burden of wood to our light bearers. The last time I moved forward to offer a new torch, I saw that the walls were of s.h.i.+ning black stone veined with silver. They were elaborately decorated with silhouettes of people, done in some s.h.i.+ning metal. Curious, I reached out a hand to touch one. I had not even realized that Retyo was at my side. He caught my wrist before I could touch the silhouette. "Don't," he warned me. "I brushed against one once. They leap into your mind if you touch them. Don't."

We followed the marks of the missing search party. They had marked off the dead ends and drawn arrows as they progressed, and so we trudged on, hoping. Then, to our horror, we caught up with them.

They were huddled in the middle of the corridor. Torches exhausted, they had halted there, paralyzed by the complete blackness, unable to either go on or to come back to us. Some were insensible. Others whimpered with joy at the sight of us and cl.u.s.tered around our torch as if light were life itself flowing back into them.

"Did you find a way out?" they asked us, as if they had forgotten that they were the searchers. When they finally understood that they had been our last hope, the life seemed to go out of them. "The corridor goes on and on," they said. "But we have not yet found one place where it leads upward. The chambers we have been able to enter are windowless. We think this part of the city has always been underground."

Grim words. Useless to dwell on them.

And so, we moved on together. We encountered few intersections, and when we did, we made our choice almost randomly. We no longer had torches to explore every possibility. At each intersection, the men in the lead debated and then chose. And we followed, but at each one we had to wonder if we had made a fatal error. Were we walking away from the pa.s.sage that would have led to light and air? We gave up having a torch at the end of our procession, instead having folk hold hands and come behind us. Even so, too swiftly we had but three torches, and then two. A woman keened as the final torch was kindled. It did not burn well, or perhaps the dread of the dark was so strong in us that no light would have seemed sufficient. I know we crowded closer around our torchbearer. The corridor had widened and the ceiling retreated. Every now and then, the torchlight would catch a silver silhouette or a vein of silvery mineral in the polished black wall and it would blink beckoningly at me. Still we marched hopelessly on, hungry, thirsty, and ever more weary. We did not travel fast, but then, we did not know if we had any destination save death.

The lost spirits of the city plucked at me. Ever stronger grew the temptation to simply let go of my puny life and immerse myself in the beckoning remembrance of the city. s.n.a.t.c.hes of their music, conversation heard in a distant mutter, even, it seemed to me, whiffs of strange fragrances a.s.sailed me and tempted me. Well, was not that what Jathan had always warned me? That if I did not take a firmer grip on my life, my art would immerse and then devour me? But it was so hard to resist; it tugged at me like a hook in a fish's lip. It knew that it had me; it but waited for darkness to pull me in.

The torch burned lower with every step we took. Every step we took might be one more step in the wrong direction. The pa.s.sage had widened around us into a hall; I could no longer see the gleaming black walls, but I could feel them commanding my attention. We pa.s.sed a still fountain flanked by stone benches. We watched in vain for anything that might fuel our fire. Here, these elder folk had built for eternity, from stone and metal and fired clay. I knew that these rooms now were the repository of all they had been. They had believed they would always live here, that the waters of the fountains and the swirling beams of light would always dance at their touch. I knew that as clearly as I knew my own name. Like me, they had foolishly thought to live forever through their art. Now it was the only part of them that lingered still.

And in that moment, I knew my decision. It came to me so clearly that I am not sure it was solely my own. Did some long dead artist reach out and tug at my sleeve, begging to be heard and seen one last time before we tumbled into the dark and silence that had consumed her city?

I put my hand on Retyo's arm. "I'm going to the wall now," I said simply. To his credit, he immediately knew what I meant.

"You would leave us?" he asked me piteously. "Not just me, but little Carlmin? You would drown yourself in dreams and leave me to face death alone?"

I stood on tiptoe to kiss his whiskery cheek and to press my lips briefly against my son's downy head. "I won't drown," I promised him. It suddenly seemed so simple. "I know how to swim in those waters. I have swum in them since my birth, and like a fish, I will follow them upstream to their source. And you will follow me. All of you."

"Carillion, I don't understand. Are you mad?"

"No. But I cannot explain. Only follow me, and trust, as I followed you when I walked out on the tree limb. I will feel the path surely; I won't let you fall."

Then I did the most scandalous thing I've ever done in my life. I took hold of my weary skirts, long tattered halfway up my calf, and tore them free of my stained waistband, leaving only my pantaloons. I bundled them up and pushed them into his shocked hands. Around us, others had halted in their shadowy trudging to watch my strange performance. "Feed these to the torch, a bit at a time, to keep it alive. And follow me."

"You will walk near naked before all of us?" he asked me in horror, as if it were of great concern.

I had to smile. "While my skirts burn, no one will notice the nakedness of her who stripped to give them light. And after they have burned, we will all be hidden in the darkness. Much like the art of these people."

Then I walked away from him, into the engulfing darkness that framed us. I heard him shout to our torchbearer to halt, and I heard others say that I had gone mad. But I felt as if I had finally plunged myself into the river that all my life had tantalized my thirst. I went to the city's wall willingly, opening my mind and heart to their art as I approached it, so that by the time I touched the cold stone, I was already walking among them, hearing their gossip and corner musicians and haggling.

It was a market square. As I touched the stone, it roared to life around me. Suddenly my mind perceived light where my closed eyes did not, and I smelled the cooking river fish on the smoky little braziers and saw the skewers of dripping honeyed-fruit on the tray of a street hawker. Glazed lizards smoked on a low brazier. Children chased one another past me. People paraded the streets, dressed in gleaming fabrics that rippled color at their every step. And such people, people that befitted such a grand city! Some might have been Jamaillian, but among them moved others, tall and narrow, scaled like fish or with skin as bronzed as polished metal. Their eyes gleamed too, silver and copper and gold. The ordinary folk made way for these exalted ones with joy rather than cold respect. Merchants stepped out from their stalls to offer them their best, and gawking children peeped from around their mothers' trousered legs to glimpse their royalty pa.s.sing. For such I was sure they were.

With an effort, I turned my eyes and my thoughts from this rich pageantry. I groped to recall whom and where I truly was. I dragged Carlmin and Retyo back into my awareness. Then, I deliberately looked around myself. Up and sky, I told myself. Up and sky, into the air. Blue sky. Trees.

Fingers lightly touching the wall, I moved forward.

Art is immersion, and good art is total immersion. Retyo was right. It sought to drown me. But Carlmin was right, too. There was no malice in the drowning, only the engulfing that art seeks. And I was an artist, and as a pract.i.tioner of that magic, I was accustomed to keeping my head even when the current ran strongest and swiftest.

Even so, it was all I could do to cling to my two words. Up and sky. I could not tell if my companions followed me or if they had abandoned me to my madness. Surely, Retyo would not. Surely, he would come behind me, bringing my son with him. Then, a moment later, the struggle to remember their names became too great. Such names and such people had never existed in this city, and I was a citizen of the city now.

I strode through its busy market time. Around me people bought and sold exotic and fascinating merchandise. The colors, the sounds, even the smells tempted me to linger, but Up and Sky were what I clung to.

They were not a folk who cherished the outside world. Here they had built a hive, much of it underground, lit and warm, clean and immune to wind and storm and rain. They had brought inside it such creatures as appealed to them, flowering trees and caged songbirds and little glittering lizards tethered to potted bushes. Fish leaped and flashed in the fountains, but no dogs ran and barked, no birds flew overhead. Nothing was allowed that might make a mess. All was orderly and controlled, save for the flamboyant people who shouted and laughed and whistled in their precisely arranged streets.

Up and Sky, I told them. They did not hear me, of course. Their conversations buzzed uselessly around me, and even once I began to understand them, the things they spoke of did not concern me. What could I care about the politics of a queen a thousand years gone, for society weddings and clandestine affairs noisily gossiped about? Up and Sky I breathed to myself, and slowly, slowly, the memories I sought began to flow to me. For there were others in this city for whom art was Up and Sky. There was a tower, an observatory. It rose above the river mists on foggy nights, and there learned men and women could study the stars and predict what effect they might have on mortals. I focused my mind on it, and soon "remembered" where it was. Sa blessed us all, in that it was not far from their marketplace.

I was halted once, for though my eyes told me that the way ahead of me was well lit and smoothly paved, my groping hands found a cold tumble of fallen stone and earth seeping water. A man shouted by my ear and restrained my hands. Dimly I recalled my other life. How strange to open my eyes to blackness and Retyo gripping my hands in his. Around me in the darkness, I heard people weeping or muttering despairingly that they followed a dreamer to their deaths. I could see nothing at all. The darkness was absolute. I had no idea how much time had pa.s.sed, but I was suddenly aware of thirst that near choked me. Retyo's hand still clutched at mine, and I knew then of the long chain of people, hands clasped, that trustingly followed me.

I croaked at them. "Don't give up. I know the way. I do. Follow me."

Later, Retyo would tell me that the words I uttered were in no tongue he had ever known, but my emphatic shout swayed him. I closed my eyes, and once more the city surged to life around me. Another way, there had to be another way to the observatory. I turned back to the populous corridors, but now as I pa.s.sed the leaping fountains, they taunted me with their remembered water. The tantalizing memories of food smells lingered in the air, and I felt my belly clench on itself in longing. But Up and Sky were my words, and I walked on, even as I became aware that moving my body was becoming more and more taxing to me. In another place, my tongue was leather in my mouth, my belly a cramped ball of pain. But here, I moved with the city, immersed in it. I understood now the words that flowed past me, I smelled familiar foods, even knew all the words to the songs the corner minstrels were singing. I was home, and as the city as art flowed through me; I was home in a deeper way than ever Jamaillia had been home to me.

I found the other stairs that led to the observatory, the back stairs for the servants and cleaners. Up these stairs, humble folk carried couches and trays of winegla.s.ses for n.o.bles who wished to recline and gaze up at the stars. It was a humble wooden door. It swung open at my push. I heard a murmured gasp behind me, and then words of shouted praise that opened my eyes.

Daylight, thin and feeble, crept down to us. The winding stair was wooden, and rickety, but I decided we would trust it. "Up and Sky," I told my company as I set my foot to the first creaking step. It was a struggle to recall my precious words and speak them aloud. "Up and Sky." And they followed me.

As we ascended, the light came stronger, and we blinked like moles in that sweet dimness. When at last I reached the stone-floored upper chamber, I smiled so that my dry lips split.

The thick gla.s.s panels of the observatory windows had given way to cracks, followed by questing vines that faded to pale writhing things as they left the daylight behind. The light through the windows was greenish and thick, but it was light. The vines became our ladder to freedom. Many of us were weeping dry tears as we made that last painful climb. Unconscious children and dazed people were pa.s.sed up and out to us. I took a limp Carlmin in my arms and held him in the light and fresh air.

There were rain flowers awaiting us, as if Sa wished us to know it was her will we survive here, enough rain flowers for each of us to wet our mouths and gather our senses. The wind seemed chill, and we laughed joyfully to s.h.i.+ver in it. We stood on top of what had been the observatory, and I looked out with love over a land I had once known. My beautiful wide river valley was swamp now, but it was still mine. The tower that had stood so high above all was only a mound now, but around us were the hunched and mossy remains of other structures, making the land firm and dry beneath our feet. There was not much dry land, less than a leffer, and yet after our months in the swamp, it seemed a grand estate. From atop it, we could look out over the slowly moving river where slanting sunlight fell on the chalky waters. My home had changed, but it was still mine.

Every one of us who left the dragon chamber emerged alive and intact. The city had swallowed us, taken us down and made us hers, and then released us, changed, in this kindlier place. Here, by virtue of the city buried beneath us, the ground is firmer. There are great, strong branched trees nearby, in which we can build a new platform. There is even food here, a plenitude by Rain Wild standards. A sort of climbing vine festoons the trunks of the trees and is heavy with pulpy fruit. I recall the same fruit sold in the vendor stalls of my city. It will sustain us. For now, we have all we need to survive this night. Tomorrow will be soon enough to think on the rest of it.

Day the 7th of Light and Air Year the 1st of the Rain Wilds It took us a full six days to hike downriver to our original settlement. Time in the light and air have restored most of us to our ordinary senses, though all of the children have a more detached air than they used to have. Nor do I think I am alone in my vivid dreams of life in the city. I welcome them now. The land here has changed vastly since the days of the city; once all was solid ground, and the river a silver s.h.i.+ning thread. The land was restless in those days, too, and sometimes the river ran milky and acid. Now the trees have taken back the meadows and croplands, but still, I recognize some features of the land. I recognize, too, which trees are good for timber, which leaves make a pleasantly stimulating tea, which reeds can yield both paper and fabric when beaten to thread and pulp, and oh, so many other things. We will survive here. It will not be lush or easy living, but if we accept what the land offers us, it may be enough.

And that is well. I found my tree city mostly deserted. After the disaster that sealed us in the city, most of the folk here gave up all for lost and fled. Of the treasure they collected and mounded on the platform, they took only a pittance. Only a few people remained. Marthi and her husband and her son are among them. Marthi wept with joy at my return.

When I expressed my anger that the others could go on without her, she told me, quite seriously, that they had promised to send back help, and she was quite sure that they would keep their word, as their treasure is still here.

As for me, I found my own treasure. Petrus had remained here, after all. Jathan, stonyhearted man that he is, went on without the boy when Petrus had a last-moment change of heart and declared that he would wait here for his mother to return. I am glad that he did not wait for me in vain.

I was shocked that Marthi and her husband had remained, until she put in my arms her reason. Her child was born, and for his sake, they will dwell here. He is a lithe and lively little thing, but he is as scaled as a snake. In Jamaillia, he would be a freak. The Rain Wilds are where he belongs.

As we all do, now.

I think I was as shocked at the changes in Marthi as she was in the change in me. Around her neck and wrists where she had worn the jewelry from the city, tiny growths have erupted. When she stared at me, I thought it was because she could see how much the city memories had changed my soul. In reality, it was the beginning of feathery scales on my eyelids and round my lips that caught her eye. I have no looking gla.s.s, so I cannot say how p.r.o.nounced they are. And I have only Retyo's word that the line of scarlet scaling down my spine is more attractive than repellent.

I see the scaling that has begun to show on the children, and in truth, I do not find it abhorrent. Almost all of us who went down into the city bear some sign of it, either a look behind the eyes, or a delicate tracing of scales, or perhaps a line of pebbled flesh along the jaw. The Rain Wilds have marked us as their own, and welcome us home.

The Inheritance.

My parents both lived through the Great Depression and World War II. My father met my mother when he was stationed near Norwich with the Eighth Air Force. She married him and followed him to the United States. Both of them had known affluence in their lives, and also knew how quickly wealth and easy lives could disappear.

As I grew up, they let me know that education and experiences were to be valued high above material things. These things were the riches that one could not easily be stripped of. And when they died, first my mother and then my father, there was very little in the way of physical goods for any of us to claim. Some photo alb.u.ms, some books. A rocking chair, a wooden salad bowl, a chiming clock my uncle had made for them. That was my inheritance.

And on the surface, such an inheritance can seem trivial, even pathetic. Unless one recalls that an inheritance isn't about material wealth, but about the experiences that came with it.

It was in my grandmother's jewel box. I found it after she died. Perhaps jewel box is too fine a name to give to the plain wooden cask that held so little. There was a silver ring with the stone long prized from the setting, sold to pay family debts no doubt. I wondered why she had not sold it whole. There were two necklaces, one of garnets and another of polished jasper. In the bottom, wrapped in layer upon layer of linen, was the pendant.

It was a lovely carving of a woman's face. She looked both aristocratic and yet merry, and I recognized in her features some of my own. I wondered which of my female ancestors she was, and why someone had taken such care to make so delicate a carving from such an ugly piece of wood. It was gray and checked with age and weighed unnaturally heavy in my hand as I examined it. The chain it was fixed to was fine silver, however. I thought it might be worn alone if the pendant could be removed. I heard a footstep in the hall outside her bedroom and hastily slipped the chain about my neck. The cameo hung heavy between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, concealed by my blouse. My cousin Tetlia stood suddenly in the doorway. "What do you have there?" she demanded.

"Nothing," I told her and hastily set the box back on grandmother's chest.

She quickly came into the room and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. She opened it and dumped the necklaces into her hand. "Nice," she said, holding up the jasper one. My heart sank, for I had liked it best of the three. "I'm eldest of the granddaughters," she pointed out smugly and slipped it over her head. She weighed the garnets in her hand. "And my sister, Coreth, comes next. This for her." Her lips twisted in a smile as she tossed me the robbed ring. "For you, Cerise. Not much of an inheritance, but she did feed and clothe you for the last two years and kept you in a house that long ago should have come to my father. That is more than she ever did for my sister and me."

"I lived here with her. I looked after her. When her hands twisted so that she couldn't use them anymore, I bathed her and dressed her and fed her . . ." My hidden anger pushed the words stiffly out.

Tetlia waved my words away contemptuously. "And we all warned you that you'd get nothing for it. She burned through her own family fortune when she was a girl, Cerise. Everyone knows that if my grandfather had not married her, she'd have starved in the streets. And my father has been good enough to let her live out her life in a house that should have come to him when his father died. Now she's gone, and the house and land revert to my father. That's life." She tossed the plundered casket onto my grandmother's stripped bed and left the room.

"I loved her," I said quietly into the stillness. Rage burned bright in me for an instant. It was an old family dispute. Tetlia's father was the son of Grandfather's first wife, and the rightful heir to all, as they so constantly reminded me. It counted for nothing with them that my grandmother had raised their father as if he were her own child. It scalded me that Tetlia would claim my grandmother as kin for the sake of being ent.i.tled to her jewelry, but deny that I had any right to share the family wealth. For a second I clutched that anger to me. Then, as if I could feel my grandmother's gentle hand on my shoulder, I let the strength of my just wrath leak away from me. "Useless to argue," I told myself. In my grandmother's looking gla.s.s I saw the same defeated resignation I had so often seen in her eyes. "It's not worth fighting for," she had told me so often. "Scandal and strife serve no purpose. Let it go, Cerise. Let it go." I looked at the gaping ring in my hand, and then slipped it onto my finger. It fit as if made for me. Somehow, it seemed an appropriate inheritance.

I left the room and went to my own chamber to pack. It did not take long. I had one set of clothes besides my own, and Grandmother's old Trader robe of soft saffron. I hesitated before I put it in my rucksack. I had never seen her wear it. Once I had asked her about that only unused garment in her chest. She had shaken her head. "I don't know why I kept it. It has nothing to do with my life anymore. In Bingtown, Trader families wear them when they go to the Traders' Council to vote on Trader matters. Saffron was my family's color, the Lantis family. But I gave all that up years ago."

I fingered the soft wool. It was cut in an archaic style, but the wool would be warm, I told myself. Besides, I had no intention of leaving it for my cousins. Now that my grandmother was dead, her little house on the sea cliffs and the sheep pastures behind it would go to my uncle, son of my grandfather's first wife. And I, the sole daughter of her daughter, would have to make my own way in the world. My uncle had scowled at me when I had told him last night that I had no place to go and asked his leave to stay on a week.

He replied heavily, "The old woman was dying for two years, Cerise. If, in two years, you couldn't make a plan for your future, you won't do it in a week. We need this house, and it's fairly mine. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go."

So I went, but not far. Hetta, the shepherd's wife, took me in for the night. They were as angry with my uncle as I was, for he had already announced to them that he was raising their rent. In all the years that they had been my grandmother's tenants, she had never raised their rent. Hetta was older than I, but that had never kept us from being good friends. She had two small children and was big with her third. She was glad to offer me a bed by the fire and a hot supper in exchange for help with her ch.o.r.es, "for as long as you want." I tidied the house as we talked; she was relieved to sit down and put her feet up while she put the last st.i.tches into a quilt. I showed her both my ring and my pendant and chain. She exclaimed at the sight of the pendant and pushed it away from her.

"The chain will bring you some coin, and maybe the empty ring. But that pendant is an evil thing. I'd get rid of it if I were you. Throw it in the sea. It's wizardwood, the stuff a lives.h.i.+p is made from. I wouldn't wear it next to my skin for the world."

I picked up the pendant and looked at it more closely. In the candlelight, I could see faint colors on it, as if it had once been painted but had faded. The grain of the wood seemed finer, the features of the face more distinct than I recalled. "Why is it evil?" I demanded of Hetta. "Lives.h.i.+ps aren't evil. Their figureheads come to life and talk and guide the boat on its way. They're magic, but I've never heard them called evil."

Hetta shook her head stubbornly. "It's Rain Wild magic, and all know no good ever came down the Rain Wild River. A lot of folk say that that's where the Blood Plague came from. Leave magic like that to those Trader folk who are born to it. It's not for you and me. It's bound to bring you bad luck, Cerise, same as it brought your grandmother. Get rid of it."

"She came from Trader stock," I reply stoutly. "Maybe that's how it came to Grandma. Maybe she inherited from the days when we were Traders."

Hetta pursed her mouth in disapproval as I put the chain back around my neck. I heard Hetta's husband at the door and hastily slipped the pendant inside my s.h.i.+rt again. I'd always liked Hetta, but her husband made me edgy.

Tonight was no exception. He grinned to see me there and grinned broader when Hetta said she'd invited me to stay the night. "You're always welcome here, Cerise, for as long as you want to stay. There's many a wifely ch.o.r.e that Hetta hasn't been able to do for a time. You could take them on for room and board here."

I smiled stiffly as I shook my head. "Thank you all the same, but I think I need to find a future for myself. I think I'll go to Bingtown and see what work I can find there."

"Bingtown!" Hetta was horrified. "That den of vice? Stay in the country, girl, where folks have hearts. No one will treat you well in the city."

"Stay," her husband urged me. His eyes decided me as he declared, "Live here, and I'll treat you just like one of my own."

And that night, he was as good as his word. As I slept on the hearth, I heard the scuff of his big bare feet as he came into the room. His children slept in the loft, and Hetta in their small bedchamber. In the past, he had done no more than stroke my b.u.t.tock as I pa.s.sed him, or casually brush my breast with the back of his hand as he reached past me, as if it were an accident. But I had never slept the night in his cottage. I smelled his sweat as he hunkered down beside me. "Cerise?" he whispered in the darkness. I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. My heart was hammering as I felt him lift the corner of the blanket Hetta had given me. His big hand came to rest on the angle of my neck. I gritted my teeth but could do no more than that. Useless to resist. Hetta and the children might wake, and then what would I say? I tried to be as stoic as my long-enduring grandmother. Let him touch me. If I refused to wake, surely he would leave me alone.

"Cerise, honey," he whispered again, inching his fingers along my flesh.

"Faithless man!" a whisper answered him. Every muscle in my body tightened, for it seemed to come from my own throat. "Touch me, and I rake your face with scratches that Hetta won't ignore."

He jerked his hand back from me as if scalded, so startled that he sat down hard on the floor behind me. I lay still, frozen in silent terror.

"And that's how you'd pay back my hospitality, is it? Go to Bingtown, then, you little baggage. There the men will take what they want of you, and not offer you a roof nor a bed in exchange for it."

I said nothing, fearing his words were true. I heard him get to his feet and then shuffle back to his marriage bed. I lay still and sleepless the rest of the night, trying to pretend that I had said those words. The pendant lay against my skin like a cold toad; I feared to touch it to remove it.

I left the next morning, though Hetta near wept as she urged me to stay. All my possessions still made a light load. Bingtown was only two days away by foot, but even so, I'd only been there twice in my life. Both times, I had gone with my parents. My father had carried me sometimes on his shoulder, and my mother had cooked food for us at night. But they were both long gone. Now I walked the road alone, and my heart pounded fearfully at the sight of every pa.s.sing traveler. Even when I was alone, fear rode with me, dangling from the necklace about my neck.

That night I left the road, to unroll my blanket in the lee of some rocks. There were no trees for shelter, no friendly nearby stream, only a hillside of lichen-sided boulders and scrubby brush. Hetta had given me a little sack of meal cakes to last me on my way. I was too frightened of thieves to build a fire that might draw them, so as the westering sun stole the colors from the day, I huddled in my blanket and nibbled on one of my meal cakes.

"A fine beginning to my new life," I muttered when the last dry crumbs of the cake were gone.

"No worse than what other women of your line have faced," whispered a voice. It came from my s.h.i.+rtfront. In an instant, I had s.n.a.t.c.hed off chain and pendant and flung it from me. It caught on a bush and hung there, silver chain glinting in the last of the sunset. The dangling pendant came to rest facing me. Even in the fading light, I could see that it had taken on lifelike colors. It raised tiny eyebrows at me in disdain. "It's a foolish choice you're making, girl," it warned me. "Throw me away, and you throw away your inheritance. Just as your grandmother did."

Frightened as I was, the small voice was so like my grandmother's that I could not ignore it. "What are you?" I demanded.

"Oh, come," the pendant exclaimed in disdain. "I am exactly what you see and know me to be. Let us not waste time in foolishness."

"You were gray and still when I took you from Grandmother's jewelry box."

"She had not worn me for many a year. She put me aside, just as she put aside the rest of her life. But you have revived me. You are young and your anma rushes strong as your blood through your veins."

The pendant had a tiny voice, and despite my fear, I drew closer to hear her words. The eyes that met mine held kindly amus.e.m.e.nt. A smile bent the mouth. "What are you afraid of?" she demanded. "For generations I have been in your family, pa.s.sed down from mother to daughter. With me comes all the wisdom of your line. You were wise enough to steal me. Are you so foolish that you will fear your fortune now that it is in your hands?"

"You're magic," I said. "You're alive."