Part 52 (1/2)
”Aye,” said Prospero. ”Go.”
They rose together and padded over the leaf mold and moss away from the dark-trunked tree and the Spring.
Ephemeris in hand, Dewar went to the bedchamber-his chamber; he'd exiled himself to sleep on the kitchen hearth. The white bed was empty and the house rang with silence under the susurrus of the sea.
He listened, his heart speeding with fresh annoyance, and then he went quickly through the house, room after room, and found Freia nowhere. She had left, unceremonious and ungrateful. Icy with anger, he returned to the bedchamber, found a hair on the pillow where she'd lain, and coiled it into a ring, whispering a simple spell of seeking. He slipped the ring on his finger. A frail tingle drew on it: toward Freia.
Dewar took the uncoiling way from the round house. The sand outside caught and tangled his feet as if to delay him. He was barefooted; he loped with long strides, as difficult as running in water.
She couldn't go fast or far, not so ill, not in the small time she'd had. He caught up with her among the wind-scooped, sunny-ridged dunes behind the house, which separated the marshes from the sea.
Freia, dressed in the heavy, still-damp clothes she'd worn escaping the Palace, turned as Dewar ran down a steep slope and bounded toward her. She stood tensed, half-crouching, her hands fists. He halted, her att.i.tude warning him.
”Where are you going?” Dewar demanded.
She glared at him. ”Away,” she said.
”Away! Whither away? You don't know your way home, 1A. Sorcerer and a Qentteman 429.
you said! You're sick! Are you mad as well? What are you going to do?”
”Nothing to do with you,” Freia said.
”Come back with me,” Dewar said. He took half a step toward her, lifting a hand, meaning to take her arm. She backed away.
”Don't touch me!”
”Come back. You're tired; you need more rest or you'll be ill again.”
”What do you care what happens to me?”
”You're my guest,” Dewar replied.
”Your guest! No! You just want to use me to get at Prospero,” Freia said accusingly. ”I'm a line to him and you think that by trolling me around, bait, you'll land him. Just like that hateful Emperor and Ottaviano and Golias. Well, he won't bite. I'm rotten bait. He doesn't care about me. I'm not worth his time and I'm not worth yours-so let me go.”
”I want to help you!”
”You do not! You want to use me to find Prospero, don't you, and you leave me behind every time and I won't go with you!”
They glared at one another. Dewar, fuming, considered and dismissed several gambits.
Freia sidled away from him. ”Leave me alone.”
”What do you think you're going to do?” he demanded, moving toward her.
”I'll take care of myself,” Freia said, stepping back from him.
”Oh? There's n.o.body here but us, Freia, there's no other person, nothing here but birds and water and fish.”
”I can take care of myself.” She was s.h.i.+vering; her eyes stared too brightly.
”You cannot. You're sick and you said yourself you don't know your way home.”
They were moving in a circle, he trying to catch her, she backing away. ”Stop chasing me!”
”Stop running away. This is lunacy! What is wrong with you? I'm trying to help you!”
”I said leave me alone! I don't want your help.” Freia spit 430.
'Etizatietfi the words at him. ”You want to find Prospero-then find him yourself. Leave me alone!”
Dewar halted, folding his arms. Freia stopped a few steps away from him. ”I'm tempted to take you at your word and let you drown in the marshes. You display the same single-mindedness you showed at Perendlac, and look where that got you!”
”You left me there,” Freia said. ”You left me.”
”Prospero left you too,” Dewar retorted.
The words' effect on Freia was instant, as sharp as a twig's snap. Her back went down; anger evaporated and she slumped. ”I know,” she whispered.
He couldn't resist victory. ”It was your own fault. You got yourself into it. You have only yourself to blame.”
Freia half-turned away, covering her face with her hands. She said nothing more. Dewar took a cautious step toward her, then another, and caught her wrist. She jerked her arm, trying to pull out of his grip, then swung her free hand and slapped him with all her strength across the face; and in the same instant she burst into tears.
The crack of the blow made Dewar's ears ring; it caught him off-balance and staggered him, and he lifted his own hand to return the favor, glaring down at her with every thought drowned under his rage. Freia cowered, catching her breath in a sob and meeting his gaze with pure terror as her wrist wrenched and twisted in his grip, and Dewar recoiled from her look.
Slowly he lowered his hand, softened his hold on her arm (but did not let go), and whispered, ”I'm sorry. Freia-” He felt sick with the outwash of his anger, with self-disgust, and he caught her other arm, hugging her to him. ”I'm sorry,” he whispered again. She flailed, sobbing, saying incomprehensible words. He held her still and stroked her hair down her rigid back, whispering, ”Hush, hush, hush,” to her unsteadily.
Now Freia wept convulsively, clutching him with knotted fingers. They stood in the hollow of the dunes under the sun, the dry, sharp-edged gra.s.s hissing around them in a rising breeze. Dewar tried to think. She wasn't thinking: that was A Sorcerer and a Qentkman 431.
clear to him now. She was in such a distressed state that she couldn't think, couldn't be rational, and he had to think for her and help her no matter what she said or did. She was hysterical. He had been terrorizing her, treating her as other sorcerers treated their inferiors, domineering and violent. He had been ungentlemanly. She was his sister, his father's daughter, and she had done him no harm. Striking her would be wrong. He must be patient. She was ill; she hardly knew herself, and she knew him not at all.
”Freia, hush.”
”Oh . . .” she howled, m.u.f.fled in his shoulder.
”There. There.”
”I'm s-s-sor-ry-y-y . . .”
”Shhh. I understand. I think,”
Her breathing was raggedly slowing. Dewar admitted the truth to himself: he had left her twice in peril, in Chenay and in Perendlac. He had known her danger, and he had no right to her trust or grat.i.tude. Indeed, if Prospero ever got wind of what Dewar had done, he might well take offense unless Dewar could make up for it somehow, could soothe and comfort Freia now. She gulped air, hiccuping, in his arms.
”S-something-snapped, I'm so sorry,” sobbed Freia. ”I-sorry-I never hit anyone like that ever; I'm sorry- you're trying to help-I'm sorry-”
”Forgiven. Forgotten. The fault's mine, for teasing you so. Hush.” He waited for catharsis to steal over her, for the wild tears to exhaust her, and eventually Freia was calmer.
”Dewar-”
”I'm sorry, Freia-”