Part 8 (1/2)

”I do not know her name,” Paia stammered. ”Her . . . her clothes were so torn that they were no more than rags. Because of her boots I thought she might be of the First Wartroop, but she shrinks from the sight of even the smallest knife.” She tore her eyes away from the captain's intense gaze, turned to the midwife. ”She needs help, Kallye. I have approached the men of the guard, but they will not listen to me. They call me a silly woman and tell me to run along. Can you help? Will you come see her?”

Kallye read Relys's unspoken thoughts. Timbrin. ”By the G.o.ds,” she said, ”let us go to her now.”

* CHAPTER 7 *

Head down, clad in a gown that was too big for her, Timbrin sat huddled by the fire in Paia's house. She was not a large woman-in the months following her transformation by Tireas, she had come to joke about her stature-but now she seemed almost pathetically tiny. Paia's daughters had made an effort to brush her hair and tend to her cuts and bruises, but she had the air of a child who had been beaten and abandoned.

Relys entered the house and stood by the door, stricken. Kallye, though, bobbed her head at Paia's daughters and went immediately to Timbrin. ”Good morning, child,” she said kindly, kneeling beside her. ”Paia sent me to see to you.”

Timbrin's brown eyes opened wide, and she scanned the midwife anxiously, but though Kallye was no stranger to the First Wartroop, she only huddled further into her gown and lowered her head.

Relys found her voice at last. ”Lieutenant.”

Timbrin's eyes turned feral, frightened, and she made a frantic motion as though to flee, but Kallye took her hands. ”It is all right, child. No harm will come to you.” She looked at Relys sternly. ”Call her by name.”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Relys set aside her sword and approached. ”Timbrin,” she said softly. ”Dear friend.”

Timbrin's mouth trembled. ”R-Relys?”

She barely whispered the name, and Relys's eyes were aching with suppressed tears as she went down on one knee. ”How is it with you, Timbrin?”

But Timbrin's face turned pained, her brow furrowed. Mouth turned down in a grimace, she shook her head in small, rapid movements.

Kallye nodded understandingly. ”Too many people?”

Timbrin nodded slowly.

' 'Are you afraid of us?''

Again the nod, but quicker.

”Do you know who you are?”

Timbrin only looked sad.

Kallye turned to Paia's girls. ”Leave us alone with her,” she said. They nodded and withdrew in a swish of skirts and ap.r.o.ns. Timbrin relaxed noticeably, but she had still the look of a beaten thing.

Relys's throat was dry. First Seena's children, and now this. And in both cases she was helpless. Slowly, she reached out a hand. Slowly, almost fearfully, Timbrin clasped it. ”What happened, my friend?”

Timbrin fought with words. ”I . . .” She looked anguished, as though speaking had become a physical pain for her.

Relys was close to tears. ”Hounds?”

With a frantic whimper, Timbrin turned to Kallye and threw herself into the midwife's arms. Eyes clenched shut, mouth again set in an agonized grimace, she whined like a starving dog. But she shook her head.

”I . . . saw Helwych ...” she managed.

Relys leaned forward. As she had feared. And she had sent Timbrin to spy on the sorcerer . . . alone. ”What about Helwych?”

”He . . . walking . . .”

Relys exchanged glances with Kallye. ”I do not understand.”

”No ... no crutch.”

Stranger and stranger. Timbrin's wounds were hardly more than superficial cuts and bruises: nothing that would explain the mental damage that had been inflicted upon her. But her comments about Helwych were only growing more cryptic. ”But he is ill.”

Timbrin's face remained buried in Kallye's shoulder. It was obvious that speaking brought her close to screaming with pain, but she was forcing herself nonetheless. ”Not ill ...”

Gradually, with frequent hesitations and backtracking, Timbrin sketched out the story. She had been watching outside Helwych's house when noises, lights, and the presence of something indefinable had made her drop her caution and open the shutters. Immediately, she had been battered senseless by powers that she could only describe in terms of light that was heard, sounds that were felt, and vague swirlings that had struck to the heart of her psyche. But before she had been so savaged, she had seen Helwych standing in the middle of the conjured potencies, erect and healthy.

Relys's eyes hardened into obsidian darkness. If Helwych's wounds were a sham, then everything that he had told Cvinthil was a lie. The story of Vaylle was a lie. The men of Gryylth and Corrin had gone off to exact revenge for . . .

...for what? Quite possibly nothing.

By the time Timbrin was done, she was a crumpled doll. Her hands clutched at Kallye's gown, and she whimpered softly, constantly, like an infant. Relys's face was damp with tears, the first she had allowed herself since the First Wartroop had been struck, and her hands were clenched into fists that she would have liked to turn instantly upon the body of the Corrinian sorcerer.

”Dear friend,” she said, reaching out to touch Timbrin's cheek. ”Dear, dear friend. Our thanks. Fear not; we will protect you; and, given time, you will heal. For the time, I ask that you stay here. Do not be afraid of Paia or her children, for Kallye vouches for their trustworthiness. Rest. You will be provided for.”

Timbrin-shaking, gasping-nodded without looking up. Kallye called Paia's daughters, and together they helped the broken lieutenant into bed.

Later, when Timbrin had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Relys stood outside the house with Kallye. The midwife finished giving instructions to one of the girls and handed her a pouch of herbs. ”Boil this in a kettle of water, and give her a cup of the infusion as often as she will take it.” The girl nodded and ran off to prepare the brew.

Kallye straightened, shaking her head. ”I have never seen anything like it,” she told Relys. ”The herbs will soothe her, but I am afraid that the body of her affliction is beyond me.” She shook her head again.

”Beyond anyone, I fear,” said Relys. ”Save perhaps the G.o.ds. But this is not the first time that we of the First Wartroop have been deeply stricken. We survived then. Timbrin will survive now. I will see to it that Paia is given what she needs to tend her. In secrecy.” She looked meaningfully at the midwife. ”But I will do something else, too.”

Her jaw clenched for a moment, and her hand fell to her sword.

When Alouzon's party reached Mallaen, they found it in ruins. But though the burned and blackened heap of stone and charred wood was beginning to soften with the encroachments of weeds, moss, and an occasional patch of wildflowers, summer seemed not to have come to the surrounding fields. Where crops had once grown, there was now only bare earth and the browned and dead remains of an aborted spring.

Desolation. The lake lapped at the sh.o.r.e, the wind sang in the ruins and among the dead gra.s.s. It was a place fit for ghosts.

Wykla shuddered. Manda looked equally uneasy, but she gave Wykla's hand a squeeze. ”Courage, princess.”

Wykla colored. ”Manda. Please.”

”You showed no such modesty when you called yourself a king's daughter in Broceliande.”

Wykla's blush deepened. ”I spoke in the urgency of the moment, and to distract the Specter.''

The maid of Corrin grinned. ”As I spoke to distract you.”

Karthin, who was scanning the area for signs of hounds or Gray faces, chuckled at her words; but Kyria was examining the party critically. ”We will fall over unless we rest,” she said. ”Magic can help, but flesh and blood needs real sleep, and we have gone too long without.”

Santhe rubbed at the stubble on his chin. ”And Cvinthil?”

The sorceress shrugged. ”If we keep pus.h.i.+ng ourselves and collapse halfway to Lachrae, what good have we done?”

The sun had slipped behind the Cordillera some time before, sending cold fingers of shadow reaching across the land, and now dusk was coming on. Santhe debated. ”The full moon is just rising. Half a night? What say you, Marrha?”