Part 3 (2/2)

”Very well,” he replied, bowing with such perfect grace she felt old, ungainly, ugly. ”I am Isladar.”

”Isladar of?”

”Just Isladar.” He rose, lifting the lamp in his left hand. ”As you will be just Ashaf, if you so choose. Have I satisfied the guardian of this abode? Might I be given leave to enter?”

There were old stories about creatures that could not enter, unless invited-but then could not be forced to leave before they had exacted their terrible price, if they could be forced to leave at all. She hesitated a moment, and then, feeling foolish, stepped aside. It was clear that this man had power, much of it unseen, a thing made not by birth and blood and rank, but by something other. If he were Widan, if he wielded the full night of the Sword of Knowledge, he could strike her down with a gesture, and destroy the timber and wood and cloth of her husband's making. What point in ill manners?

”But bring the lamp,” she added. ”We don't get a lot of tallow, and we don't waste what we have.”

”Even so.”

He stayed the evening, whiling it away as if he were a chisel, and time a rock or a piece of wood. But he asked her for nothing. Instead, he asked about this place, this one-room dwelling. She demurred, saying little; she did not know this man enough to want to share the few precious memories she did have. He did not seem displeased, and turned his discourse to the question of wood, of the type of wood that could be found in the Averdan valleys, and of the finishes applied to this tiny home. She listened politely, thinking that morning was going to be hard; she was not a young woman anymore, to speak and while away the Lady's hours without suffering during the Lord's.

As if hearing her, he rose, lifting his lamp and his light and his regard, as if each were somehow a cloud. ”Ashaf kep'Valente,” he said softly, bowing. ”The stars are out; the night is not a dark one. I thank you for your company this eve.”

She began to kneel before him, as if he were the Tor, and stopped; then she said, ”And I thank you for yours. It is not... what I expected.”

”Oh? And do you, Ashaf kep'Valente, know what it is, exactly, that you did expect?” And the darkness was in his eyes, and along the glittering edge of the teeth in his sensuous half-smile.

She could not speak then. Words would have marred his menace, and she greatly desired to use them, but she felt his power again, and it made her feel young, and in youth, she had known the value of silence, of remaining hidden. The Lady's smile was dark this eve.

He stared at her a long while. Then he said, ”Might I return to visit you again?”

”Could I stop you?”

”With a word.” He lifted the lamp; its light lengthened his face and darkened the shadows around it.

But she nodded. ”As you will.” And turned, feeling old, knowing that the menace and the strangeness, the sense of hidden power and danger, did not change the fact that he had not hurt her, although he had every opportunity to do so.

When, she thought, did I become such a lonely old woman ?

The earth that lay beneath the silvered moon was silent, and the silence was all the answer that she had never wanted.

As a concubine in the court of the Tor's father-a man who returned to her in nightmares for years after she had been ”discarded”-she had been envied by the other serafs in the village; they knew that she would be taken from their toil and hards.h.i.+p, and given a wife's name, and a wife's place, at the side of a man of power; that she would live in luxury, and never again have to face the heat of the Lord's face, the chill of the wind. And she had thought so herself, as she was taken and cleaned and clothed and oiled. One night, two, and the illusion was gone, although appearances had to be maintained. She learned her manners, her diction, the nicety of movement and the tricks by which the Tor might be pleased. She learned to sing and play the samisen. To dance. She would not dance now.

In the harem, she had never slept well. There was always, beneath the surface of sleep, a certain knowledge that, at any time, the Tor-or the cerdan he thought to reward-might come upon her unawares. She bore the old scars, some visible, most hidden; time under the Lady's skies, with a gentle man whom the Tor's son-upon taking the clan's t.i.tle-had seen fit to grant her permission to marry, had slowly masked and eased the viscer-ality of those memories. There had been little love lost between the new Tor and the old.

But that husband had pa.s.sed, like the pain, and under this night sky, her sleep was as harsh a thing as it had once been during those years.

Ashaf dreamed, and her dreams had never been kind.

The sound of the chimes woke her, or she thought it was chimes; a hint of music lingered in the air. There was no light in the room; she lay on her side on the worn, wide roll that had served her for too many years. And she heard the voice.

But where Isladar's voice held the menace or danger of the not-quite-known, this voice held something familiar. And besides, it was night, and it was a woman's voice, and after all, night was the Lady's time.

”Ashaf.”

She was disoriented by the nearness of the word; thought, for a moment, that the harem enclosed her again, and a wife had jostled her to give her a few minutes of warning, granting her time to prepare, if such preparation were possible. Kesli had done it, often, before her untimely death. Kesli. She sat up quickly, stiffly, pulling the sleeping silks up to cover her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Except that there were no silks; there was a blanket of rough cotton twill. She was home. Home.

”Ashaf.”

”Who-who is it? Who's there?” She hated the sound of her voice, when it came; it wobbled so much she knew she was making a child's display of fear.

”Not a friend,” the voice replied. ”Do you mind if I bring a little light into this place?”

”Not the Lord's light,” Ashaf said, quartering herself with the sign of the Lady's moon.

”Not the Lord's light, no.” And light came, and it was the Lady's light, a soft, silver glow that did not destroy the privacy of night colors, but did allow a woman to see by.

Two women. Not a friend, Ashaf thought, repeating the stranger's phrase to herself as she stared at the pale contours of this other woman's face. She wore blue, a dark midnight blue that made her seem one with the Lady's intent; the hood framed her face, hid her arms. There were shadows about her and within her; Ashaf recognized them at once, for they bowed her as well: old pain. Old fear.

”Who are you?”

”I am Evayne a'Nolan.”

”a'Nolan? You are a Northerner, then.”

”I have no home,” the woman replied gravely, ”But if names are important, then, yes, I was

named in the North.”

”Names are important.” Ashaf rose. ”It seems this is a night for visitors.”

”It is night,” the other woman said softly, ”and in the South, night is the time of possibility.”

”Possibility.” She paused. ”You told me that you are not a friend, yet I do not feel you to be an

enemy.”

”If a man is driving a wagon, and the weather is poor, and he does not see the child that runs out

into the road, the child is still dead. That man, if you are the mother of the child, is no friend, although he intended you no ill. An accident.”

Ashaf felt the cold, then, but this Evayne did not stop speaking; she merely paused a moment.

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