A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [83]
“Do you truly think you can just turn your back and walk away from the dweomer?” she said at last.
“I intend to try.” His hands were shaking so hard that he clamped them down on his thighs. “I am sick to my heart of being badgered and prodded.”
“What’s brought all this on?”
“I should think it would be clear, plain, obvious, and evident. I’ve found a thing that I want more than dweomer power.” He paused for one of his sunny smiles, and never had the gesture seemed less appropriate. “A normal life, Jill, a normal life. Does that have one shred of meaning for the likes of you?”
“What are you talking about? What’s so splendid about traveling the roads with a troupe of mangy acrobats and this poor child you’ve married?”
“Of course it’s not splendid. That’s the point.”
“You’re a dolt, Ebañy.”
“Oh, I suppose I must look that way to you, truly. I no longer care. I’ve found the woman I love, and I’ve found a way to have a family of my own while we travel the roads, just like I’ve always loved to do, and cursed, plagued, excoriated, blighted, and scourged will I be before I give one whit of it up.”
“I’m not asking you to give up one thing, just to develop the talent you were born with.”
“Talent? Oh, ye gods!” All at once he exploded, talking much too fast, his voice hissing as he tried to keep from shouting. “I am so sick of that ugly little word. Do you think I ever asked for it? Talent. Oh, certainly, I know I have talent for magic. That’s all I’ve ever heard in my long and cursed life, from the time that my wretched father dragged me to meet Aderyn when I was but a little child. Talent. You have splendid talent for the dweomer. You must study it. It would be a waste to not study it. Your people need you to study it. No one, not one blasted soul, whether elven or human, not one person in the entire world has ever asked me if I wanted to study the blasted dweomer. All they did was push and press and mock and nag until by every god in the sky I’m sick of the very name of dweomer.”
“My heart aches for you, but—”
“Don’t you be sarcastic with me.”
“I wasn’t. I’m trying to point out that—”
“I don’t want to hear it! By the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell, Jill, can’t you see? I’ve finally found what I want in life, and I’ll have it no matter how many platitudes and how much invective you heap upon my head.”
“Whoever said you couldn’t have it?”
“The dweomer itself, How can you sit there and tell me that I could have both, you of all people on this blasted earth?”
Jill came perilously close to slapping him. Her rage at having that ancient wound reopened took her so much by surprise that for a long moment she couldn’t speak. When he shrank back, suddenly pale, suddenly weak—cringing, or so she thought of it—the rage turned as cold as a steel blade on a winter morning. She got up slowly and stood for a moment, her hands on her hips, looking down as he crouched on the cushion, one hand raised as if to ward off a blow.
“Oho, I think I do see.” She could hear her voice crack like a boot breaking ice. “You’re a coward.”
He was on his feet in a moment, red-faced and shaking with a rage to match hers.
“After all I’ve risked for you, after all I’ve done for you—”
“You haven’t done one thing for me. You’ve done it for the dweomer and the Light.”
“I don’t give a—” He caught himself on the edge of blasphemy. “So I did. Wasn’t that enough, then, everything I suffered for the Light?”
“You can’t measure out service like so many sacks of meal and say ‘enough, no more.’ But that doesn’t matter anyway. My road isn’t your road. I couldn’t have Rhodry and the dweomer both, but there’s no reason on earth you can’t raise your family and study as well. If I’d married, my life would have been my husband’s. That’s a woman’s Wyrd, not yours. You can have Marka’s life and yours as well. You’re just too cursed lazy to study, aren’t you? That’s the ugly truth of it. Lazy and a coward.”
“Mock and goad me all you want. I’ve made my decision.”
“Well and good, then. Far