The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [31]
Sidro tried to smile, sniffed back tears, and finally wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Oh, ’tis naught,” she said at last. “Just a silly moment. ”
“Oh, now, here, if somewhat’s made you cry, it can’t be naught.” Branna laid a gentle hand on Sidro’s shoulder. “Tell me. Is it about Laz?”
“Him, too, but missing my old home in Taenalapan is the most of it. Which be a strange thing, since I was but a slave lass there. It were always warm and dry in the house, and there were warm food and laughter. I think me that be what I miss the most.”
“I can certainly understand that! But truly, I don’t see how the comfort would make being a slave tolerable. Didn’t you long to get away and be free?”
“And how was I to know what being free did mean?” Sidro smiled with a rueful twist of her mouth. “Laz, he did say somewhat about that to me once, that all I did know was slavery, whether slave to his mother or to Alshandra. He were right about that, too. Now, being here among the Westfolk and having Pir, too, for my man, I do begin to see what freedom is, but truly, I see it with my mind, not my heart.”
“Is that why you’re always waiting on everyone?”
Sidro started to answer, then hesitated, visibly thinking. “I suppose it be so,” she said at last. “What we always knew before, it be comforting, somehow. My thanks, Branna! I’ll be thinking on that, I truly will. Though the Wise Ones, they do deserve what service we can pay them.”
“That’s true.” I just wish Neb could see it, Branna thought. Well, mayhap someday he will.
Yet, when she returned to their tent she found Neb sitting under a silver dweomer light, studying the book of herblore that she’d compiled back in her life as Jill. He looked up at her with watery eyes.
“Is the moldy smell bothering you?” she asked.
“Not truly.” He laid the book down, stretched, and yawned. “My eyes are just tired, that’s all. I’ll brew up some eyebright water on the morrow.”
“You told me that Dallandra wanted you to study less.”
“So?” He spat out the word. “She doesn’t know everything.”
“She knows more than you do.”
Branna regretted the words the moment she’d said them. She braced herself for one of their fights, but Neb merely shrugged and looked away.
“So she does,” he said at last. “For now.”
Branna said nothing. Outside, the storm suddenly broke with a patter of rain on the tent roof.
As the alar continued making its slow way north, the rain followed. On the few dry days the alar set up only a few tents, but a day or two out of every four it needed to make a full camp and wait out the storm, no matter how impatient its Wise One was. At least, Dallandra reminded herself, they never came upon any lingering snow.
“A blessing,” Dallandra remarked to Valandario. “I lived with snow for one whole winter, up in Cengarn, and I swear to all the gods I never ever want to see the stuff again.”
“I don’t think I ever have.” Val considered for a moment. “I’m glad, too.”
Dallandra glanced around the camp. Under a gray sky, streaked with near-black, the men were bustling around, setting up the tents for the night, while the women worked with the herds, hobbling the horses in case the coming storm broke with thunder and lightning. Wildfolk, children, and dogs raced through the camp in unruly packs, always in everyone’s way.
“We’d better get inside,” Dallandra said.
“Yes, come to my tent, will you?” Val said. “I keep thinking about Haen Marn, and we need to scry.”
Now that she was Val’s apprentice, Sidro had already brought her teacher’s possessions into the tent. Most lay piled neatly in the curve of the wall, since the alar would stay in this camp for a short time only, but her blankets and scrying materials lay spread out and ready. Sidro herself was hooking tent bags onto the wall near Val’s pillow.
“Be there a want upon you to eat dinner now, Wise Ones?” she said.
“Not now, but soon,” Valandario said. “My thanks, but I’ll call you when we’re ready.”
With a curtsy, Sidro hurried out to leave them their privacy. Dallandra made a golden dweomer light and tossed it up to