The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [7]
“Hope so, boy. Hope it helps you.”
I left him standing there, turning to rack my tools in the chest he had made for them.
Aunt Elisabet was waiting at the kitchen doorway with a wrapped package. Two of them.
“The bigger one has the flake rolls. The other one has some travel food for you.”
I took off the pack and put the travel food inside, but just strapped the rolls to the top. They weren’t heavy, and while it was cloudy, the clouds were the high hazy kind that kept the temperature down but almost never led to rain. That early in the summer the farmers would have liked more moisture, but I was just as glad I wouldn’t have to trudge to Nylan through a downpour. I had a feeling I’d be traveling in enough wet weather.
“And here are some for you.”
On a plate she had produced from nowhere were two enormous rolls, one filled with chicken and the other with berries that dripped from one end.
“If you want to get home by dinner, you’ll need to start now.”
“Dinner?”
“I’m sure your father will have something special.”
I did not answer, nor ask how she would know that my father would have a special dinner, because, first, she would know, and, second, I was wolfing down the chicken-filled flake roll. In all the hurry to get ready for Nylan, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. When you chose dangergeld, you obeyed the rules of the masters, including their schedule.
After washing down the last of the first roll with a tumbler of ice-cold water, I took the second.
“You have enough time not to eat them whole, Lerris.”
I slowed down and finished the dessert roll in four distinct bites. Then I took another deep swallow from the tumbler.
“Do you have your staff? Your uncle wanted you to have the best…”
I lifted the staff. “Seems to belong to me already.”
My aunt only smiled. “You should find it helpful, especially if you listen to the masters and follow your feelings…your true feelings.”
“Well…time for me to go…”
“Take care, Lerris.”
She didn’t give me any special advice, and since I wasn’t exactly in the mood for it, that was probably for the best.
As I walked down the lane with its precisely placed and leveled gray paving-stones, I felt both my aunt and uncle were watching every step, but when I turned around to look I could see nothing, no one in the windows or at the doors. I didn’t look around the rest of Mattra, not at the inn where Koldar was laying out the timbers from the sawmill, not at the market square where I had sold my breadboards—one had actually fetched four copper pennies.
And the road—the perfect stone-paved highway—was still as hard on my booted feet as it had been on my sandaled feet when I had first walked to Mattra.
I made it home, if Wandernaught could still be called home, well before dinner. But Aunt Elisabet had been right. I could smell the roast duck even before my feet touched the stone lane that was nearly identical to the lane that led from the street to Uncle Sardit’s. Mattra and Wandernaught were not all that different. Some of the crafts were different, and Wandernaught had two inns and the Institute where my father occasionally discussed his philosophies with other holders or—very occasionally—masters from elsewhere in Recluce. But nothing very interesting ever happened in Wandernaught. At least, not that I remembered.
My parents were seated on the wide and open porch on the east side of the house, always cool in the summer afternoons. The stones of the steps were as gently rounded as I recalled, without either the crisp edges of new-cut granite nor the depressions of ancient buildings like the temple.
“Thought you’d be here about now, Lerris.” My father’s voice carried, although it had no great or booming tone.
“It’s good to see you.” My mother smiled, and this time she meant it.
“Good to be here, if only for a night.” I was surprised to find I meant what I was saying.
“Let me take the pack and the staff—Sardit’s work, it looks like—and have a seat. You still like the redberry?”
I nodded as I slipped out of the pack straps. My father laid the pack carefully next to the low