Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [38]
Flashing a triumphant grin at the overseer, as if they shared some joke known only to the two of them, the woman turned and trudged off toward the wretched little shack that stood far apart from the others of the settlement, her fine green gown dragging in the dirt, catching on brambles, snagging in bushes.
The overseer was to come to know that dress well. Six years later, Anja still wore its tattered remnants.
8
The Borderlands
Joram knew he was different from the others in the settlement. It was something it seemed he had always known, just as he knew his name or his mother’s name or her touch. But the reason for this difference puzzled the six-year-old.
“Why won’t you let me play with the children?” Joram would ask during the evenings when he was allowed outside their dwelling to exercise by himself under Anja’s strict supervision.
“Because you are different,” Anja would reply coldly.
Or, “Why must I learn to read?” Joram would ask. “The other children don’t have to.”
“Because you are different from the other children,” Anja would answer him.
Different. Different. Different. The word loomed large in Joram’s mind, like the words Anja made him copy laboriously on his slate. It was because of The Difference that he was kept sealed inside the shack where they lived whenever Anja went to the fields. It was because of The Difference that he and Anja kept apart from the other Field Magi, never joining in their small holidays or the brief eventide talks before the early bedtime.
“Why am I different?” Joram asked petulantly one day, watching the other children playing in the dirt street. “I don’t want to be different.”
“May the Almin forgive you your foolish tongue,” Anja snapped, casting the children outside a look of scorn. “You are as far above those as the moon is above this wretched ground we trod.”
Joram glanced up above into the evening sky where the pale moon hung in the darkness, aloof from the world and the dim, twilight stars around it.
“But the moon is cold and alone, Anja,” Joram observed.
“All the better for it, child. There is nothing that can hurt it!” Anja responded. Kneeling down beside her son, she took him in her arms and hugged him fiercely. “Be alone like the moon and there is nothing that can hurt you!”
Well, that was a reason, certainly, but it wasn’t a very good reason, Joram thought. He had a great deal of time to think, being by himself all day. So he kept his eyes and ears open, spying on his mother, searching for The Difference. Once, he thought he might have found it.
“What do you want, Catalyst?” Anja demanded ungraciously, flinging open the door at the sound of a knock one morning before work began.
Father Tolban attempted to keep a smile upon his lips, but it was a strained, tight-lipped smile. “Sun arise, Anja. May the Almin’s blessing be with you this day.”
“If it is, it will be without your help,” Anja retorted. “I ask again, Catalyst, what do you want? Be quick. I must get to the fields.”
“I came to discuss—” the catalyst began formally but, starting to wilt beneath Anja’s icy gaze, he lost his carefully planned statement and stammered in a rush. “How old is your—is Joram?”
Still asleep in the half-light of dawn, the boy lay huddled in patched blankets on a cot in the corner. “He is six,” Anja answered defiantly, as though daring Father Tolban to challenge her.
The catalyst nodded and tried to regain his composure. “Just so,” he said with an attempt at pleasantry. “That is the age he should begin his education. I meet with the children during Highhour, you know. Let me … That is …”
His voice trailed off, his smile and his words both slowly withering in the chill of Anja’s sardonic sneer.
“I’ll see to his education, not you, Catalyst! He is of noble blood, after all,” she added angrily, as Father Tolban seemed about to protest. “He will be educated as befits one of noble blood, not as one of your ham-fisted peasants!”
With that, she brushed past him, sealing shut the door to the shack. Made of tree branches, the door, like all the doors in the village,