Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [46]
“Yes, Mama,” she said in a subdued voice. “It may take me a while. He is in the far pasture.” And then she looked at me and brightened. “Could I—could Reuven come with me? You say he was born in the Font. We must go through it on our way. He might like to see it again.”
Gwen was doubtful. “I don’t know how your father would react, child. To have a stranger come suddenly on him, without any warning. It would be better if you went by yourself.”
Eliza’s brightness began to dim. You could see it fade, as if a cloud had passed over the sun.
Her mother relented. “Very well. Reuven may go if he wishes. Make yourself presentable first, Eliza. I can refuse her nothing,” she added to Saryon in an undertone, half-proud, half-ashamed.
And that was why they had not taken “Teddy” away, when both Gwen and Joram knew quite well that the bear was not a real bear. I could imagine the guilt both felt, forced to raise their child in isolation. Joram’s own childhood had been one of bitter loneliness and deprivation. He must have believed it a sad legacy to pass on to a daughter, a legacy that pained him deeply.
Eliza set Teddy in a flower basket and gave him a laughing admonition not to go and get himself lost again.
“This way, Reuven,” she said to me, smiling.
I had gained great favor with her by the “discovery” of the bear, which hadn’t been my doing at all. I glanced back at the bear as I followed after Eliza. Teddy’s black button eyes rolled. He winked.
I deposited the knapsack next to the bear, though I took my electronic notepad with me. Saryon and Gwendolyn sat together on a stone bench in the shade. Eliza and I walked together through the garden. Eliza shook her skirts down, covering her legs. She pulled the broad-brimmed hat over her head, hiding the shining black hair and leaving her face in shadow. She walked swiftly, with long strides, so that I had to adjust my normally slower pace to match hers.
She said nothing the entire way across the garden. I, of course, maintained my accustomed silence. But the moment was a comfortable one. The silence was not empty. We filled it with our thoughts, making it companionable. That her thoughts were serious I could tell by the somber expression on her shadowed face.
A wall surrounded the garden. She opened a gate and led me through it, down a flight of stone steps, which crisscrossed the cliff face. The view from the mountain, overlooking the other buildings of the Font—some whole, many crumbling—was breathtaking. The gray stone against the green hillsides. The mountain peaks against the blue sky. The trees dark green clumps against the light green of the grass. As of one accord, unspoken, we both stopped on the narrow steps to gaze and admire.
She had gone down before me, to lead the way. Now she looked back up at me, tilting her head to see me from beneath the brim of her straw hat.
“You find it beautiful?” she asked.
I nodded. I could not have spoken had I wanted to.
“So do I,” she said with satisfaction. “I often stop here on my way back. We live down there,” she added, pointing to a long, low building attached to another, much larger building. “My father says it is the part of the Font where the catalysts used to live. There is a kitchen there and a well for water.
“Father made looms for Mother and me. We use the rooms up here for our work. We spin our own thread, weave our own woolen cloth. That comes from the sheep, of course. And the library is here, too. When our work is finished, we read. Sometimes together, sometimes separately.”
We were walking down the stairs as we talked. Or I should say, as she talked. But with her I did not feel as if I were in a onesided conversation. Sometimes people, embarrassed by my handicap, talk around me instead of talking to me.
Eliza continued to discuss books. “Papa reads the books on carpentry and gardening and anything he can find on sheep. Mama reads cookery books, though she likes best