The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [145]
Laughter rose out of the grunts and swearing, out of the clamor and din, and the mix of work and pleasure was pervasive and incongruous. No separation of life’s functions in this city, the Borderman decided. No separation of any sort.
He thought briefly of Mareth, of that quiet way she had of looking at him — as if she was studying him in ways he could not understand, as if she was measuring him for something. Strangely enough, it did not bother him. There was reassurance to be found in her gaze, a comfort to be taken from having her want to know him better. That had never happened before, not even with Bremen. But Mareth was different. They had grown close in the past two weeks, in the time they had traveled south to Dechtera.
They had talked not of the present, but of the past, of when they were young and of what growing up had meant for them. They had told their separate stories and begun to discover they shared much in common. The sharing was not of events or of experiences so much as of insights. They had learned the same lessons in their lives and arrived at the same conclusions. Their view of the world was similar. They were content with who and what they were, accepting that they were different from others. They were content to live alone, to travel, to explore what was unknown, to discover what was new. They had given up their family ties long ago. They had shed their civilized skin and taken on the wanderer’s cloak.
They saw themselves as outcasts by choice and accepted that it was all right to be so.
But most important of all was their mutual willingness to allow themselves to keep what secrets they would and to reveal them as they chose. It meant more to Mareth, perhaps, than to Kinson, for she was the more closely guarded of the two and the one to whom privacy meant the most. She had harbored secrets from the beginning, and Kinson felt certain that despite her recent revelations she harbored them still. But he did not sense bad intent in this, and he believed strongly that everyone had the right to wrestle their personal demons without interference from others. Mareth was risking as much as they in coming with them. She had taken a gamble in allying herself with them when it would have been just as easy to go her own way. Perhaps Bremen would be able to help her with her magic and perhaps not — there was no guarantee. She had to know this. After all, he had barely mentioned the matter since leaving Hearthstone, and Mareth had not sought to press him.
In any event, they had drawn closer as a result of their confidences, their bonds forged selectively and with care, and now each possessed insight to help determine how best to measure the other’s words and actions. Kinson liked that.
Yet there remained a distance between them that he could not close, a separateness that no words could transcend or actions breach. It was Mareth’s choice to enforce this condition, and while it was not just Kinson whom she kept at arm’s length it sometimes felt so to him when measured against the closeness they had otherwise achieved. Mareth’s reasons, while unknown, seemed weighted by habit and fear. There was something within her that demanded she stay isolated from others, some flaw, some defect, or perhaps some secret more frightening than anything he might imagine. Now and again, he would sense her trying to break past her self-imposed prison with some small word or act. But she could not seem to manage it. Lines had been drawn in the sand, a box for her to stand inside, and she could not make herself step out.
That was why he felt some satisfaction now, he supposed, from surprising her as he had with that kiss, an act so unexpected