Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [189]
The world seemed to rise and fall like the waves.
“I don't know why that was so hard to hear,” she said at last. “That's exactly what I expected you'd say.”
“It's not just a question of seeing my father. It's this— this—madness of mine. Out in the Westlands, there's someone who can help me, Meranaldar tells me.”
“Can you trust him? You've never seen him before this day.”
“He comes from Evandar.”
“So? I don't understand why that should be—”
All at once she realized that tears were running down his face in two silent trails.
“You don't love me anymore,” he said.
“What? Why? Just because I don't want to get on a ship and lose everything?”
“We'll take our children.”
“Kwinto doesn't want to go, and neither does Tillya. I've already asked them. We should be thinking of getting them married, not running all over the ocean.”
“You're the one who doesn't want to.” He spoke very softly. “You don't want to come with me.”
“I love you. But to leave my children—” Marka paused, gulping for breath. “Why can't the healer come here, and your father too?”
For a long moment Ebañy stared at her. He had stopped crying, and he turned away to wipe his face on his sleeve, leaving dust smeared across his cheeks.
“You don't understand what you're asking,” he said at last. “It's bad enough that the good folk of Luvilae have seen this ship and its crew. But if we leave quickly enough, they'll turn the entire thing into a storyteller's fancy, and no one else will ever believe it. But to come back and forth—” All at once his voice dropped, as sonorous as a priest's. “No. It's too dangerous, to let the people here learn of the rich islands in the far south. The omens are all wrong. I see burning and spilled blood.”
Marka felt fear clot in her mouth like sheep's wool.
“Besides,” Ebañy went on in his normal voice, “it's time for the exiles to meet again. The Lords of Fire told me that. Or maybe it was the voice in the dream. It's so hard, sometimes, to sort it all out.”
A night wind swept through the camp, rustling the tents and the trees. The flaming wick dipped dangerously, then died. Ebañy snapped his fingers over the lamp. The flame burst into life.
“Ah ye gods,” Marka whispered. “It's true! You do have real magic.”
“The dweomer, yes.” Ebañy looked up, puzzled. “I told you that, didn't I? I'm sure I did.”
She could only nod for an answer. Behind her she heard someone yawn and turned to see Zandro, standing naked at the tent door and rubbing his eyes. When Ebañy held out his arms, Zandro ambled over and flopped into his lap.
“You'll come with Papa, won't you?” Ebañy said.
Zandro nodded and began to suck his thumb. It was at that moment that Marka realized she wouldn't be sailing with the ship.
And yet she argued with herself. It was her duty to go. She was Ebañy's wife, and she should follow where he led, unthinkingly, lovingly, blindly. She was being selfish, wrongheaded, untrue to her womanly nature, to say nothing of depriving her children of their father. And yet like a drumbeat her heart pounded out no no no every time she thought of sailing off north to some unknown country and leaving Kwinto and Tillya behind. Ebañy said nothing more, merely watched her with Zandro sleeping in his arms.
It seemed to her that they must have sat that way for half a night, watching each other in silence, yet it was still long before dawn when she saw lanterns bobbing through the dark camp. They turned out to belong to Meranaldar and two sailors, hurrying through the tents. Ebañy handed Zandro over to Marka and stood to speak with them. She could see them looking at her with puzzled glances. Finally Ebañy turned back to her.
“If you and the children are coming,” he started, then let his voice trail away.
“We'd best get ready?” Marka laid Zandro down on the ground cloth. “When are we leaving? On the next tide out?”
“Just that.”
In the flickering light she could