Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [42]
“It looks as though someone lives here,” I signed, pointing to the boarded-up windows.
“Yes,” Saryon agreed eagerly. “Yes, this would be an excellent place for Joram and his family to reside, with access to the interior portions of the Font.”
“Oh, jolly,” was the opinion of the knapsack.
Rounding a corner of the retaining wall, we found further evidence of habitation. One part of the courtyard, where the great Bishop Vanya had once walked in ceremony and state, was now apparently a laundry. Several large washtubs occupied the paving stones and lengths of rope had been strung between two ornamental trees. Fluttering from the ropes were shirts and petticoats, sheets and undergarments, drying in the sun.
“They are here!” Saryon said to himself, and he had to pause a moment, to gather his strength.
Up to this point he had refused to let himself believe that at last, after all these years, he would see the man he loved as well or better than he could have ever loved a son.
Courage regained, Saryon hurried ahead, not thinking consciously of where he was going, but allowing his memory to show the way. We circled around the laundry tubs, ducked beneath the clothes.
“Joram’s flag—a nightshirt. Well, it figures,” said Simkin.
A door led into the dwelling. Looking through a window, we could see a sunlit room, with comfortable couches and chairs, and tables decorated with bowls of blooming flowers. Saryon hesitated a moment, his hand trembling, then he knocked at the door. We waited.
No answer.
He knocked again, staring intently, hopefully, through the glass windowpane.
I took the opportunity to search the area. Walking the length of the building, I looked around the corner and into a large garden. Hastening back to my master, I tugged on his sleeve and motioned him to follow me.
“You’ve found them?” he said.
I nodded and held up two fingers. I had found two of them.
I stayed behind as he entered that garden. The women would be startled, frightened, perhaps. It was best that they saw him, at first and alone.
The two were working in the garden, their long, cream-colored skirts kilted up around their waists, their heads protected from the sun by wide, broad-brimmed straw hats. Their sleeves were rolled up past the elbow, their arms were tanned brown from the sun. Both were hoeing, their arms and the tools they held rising and falling with swift, strong chopping strokes.
Wind chimes, hanging on a porch behind them, made music for them, to lighten their work. The air was filled with the rich smell of freshly turned loam.
Saryon walked forward on unsteady legs. He opened the gate that led into the garden, and that was as far as his strength and courage would bear him. He put out a hand to support himself on the garden wall. He tried, I think several times, to call a name, but his voice was mute as my own.
“Gwendolyn!” he said at last, and spoke that name with so much love and longing that no one who heard it could have been the least bit frightened.
She wasn’t fearful. Startled, perhaps, to hear a strange voice where no strange voice had spoken in twenty years. But she wasn’t afraid. She stopped her hoeing, lifted her head, and turned toward the sound.
She recognized my master in an instant. Dropping her hoe, she ran to him straight across the garden, heedless of the plants she crushed, the flowers she trampled. Her hat flew off, in her haste, and a mass of hair, long and golden, tumbled down behind. “Father Saryon!” she cried, and flung her arms about him.
He clasped her tightly, and they both held on to each other, weeping and laughing simultaneously.
Their reunion was sacred, a private special moment for only the