The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [48]
“I have, if you mean the place of healing, but only briefly.”
“Very well.” She looked at Hwilli once again. “If we succeed in building this place of healing, it must be for everyone, not just the People, but your folk, and the dwarven folk of the Northlands, and yes, even the Meradan, those among them who prove worthy. Healing cannot be hoarded or begrudged, Hwilli. Your place in the work is crucial, because it means that your folk will have a share in the healing just as the People will. Do you understand that?”
“I do, Mistress.” Hwilli swallowed heavily to clear her voice. “I’m frightened I won’t be worthy.”
“Work hard, and you will be worthy.” Maraladario glanced at Jantalaber. “Thank you for bringing your new apprentice.”
Jantalaber smiled and rose with a quick gesture to Hwilli to follow. The audience had ended.
That night, when Rhodorix came to her chamber, Hwilli considered telling him about her studies and in particular, the meeting with Maraladario, but he’d been drinking with the other guardsmen and seemed muddled. Besides, she suspected that talk of sorcery might frighten him, perhaps even turn him away from her. She’d had so little joy in her brief life that she lived in terror of losing what she now had: her healing knowledge, her dweomer studies, and a man of her own, a man of her own kind who still had as much honor as a fighting man of the People.
Instead of talk she let him fall asleep on her bed. For some while, though, she stayed awake, watching him by candlelight and thanking the gods for letting him love her.
“You have to learn to ride wet and cold sooner or later,” Rhodorix told his men. “Today’s a good day for it.”
The guardsmen grumbled, but when Andariel snapped out a string of orders, they obeyed. Rhodorix had judged it time to take his new troop of mounted soldiers off the terrace and into the real terrain beyond. They rode armed. Most of the guardsmen wore a bronze breastplate and carried a long slashing sword in a baldric, though Rhodorix had his own chain hauberk and pattern-welded sword. Five of the mounted men carried the new short bows and quivers of arrows. Andariel had deemed it wise to ride ready for trouble, since trouble lay all around them.
Under a thick gray sky the men walked their horses down the mountain, following a narrow dirt track through the system of terraces, where the farm folk were planting the winter wheat despite the chilly drizzle. Like the farm folk that Rhodorix had grown up with, they were thin, bent-backed, dressed in scruffy brown clothes with their feet wrapped in rags. Overhead birds wheeled, desperate to steal the seeds that the folk flung broadcast on the ground. Children with sticks chased them away.
Back in the homeland, Rhodorix had paid little or no attention to farm folk, but here everything struck him anew.
“These farmers.” Rhodorix waved his arm in their general direction. “They’re Hwilli’s folk?”
“They are,” Andariel said. “We bring this lot up here in the summers. Soon they’ll go back down the mountain with the cattle. The snow up here—it’s too hard on the stock. We send them to the Vale of Roses for the winter.”
Rhodorix had the distinct feeling that he was including the farm folk with the cattle when he referred to “the stock.” He rose in the stirrups for a last survey of the farm folk, but none of the women looked attractive enough to give to Gerontos. They rode on, heading down the mountain. Below in a narrow valley a village of wattle huts stood around a well. More fields spread out to either side. A wider road ran the length of the valley, leading to the foothills at either end.
“This isn’t the Vale of Roses, is it?” Rhodorix said.
Andariel tossed his head back and laughed aloud. “No. In the spring we’ll ride back there, and you’ll see how splendid it is.” His face suddenly darkened. “Well, with luck.”
“And if the gods are willing. Are the farmers down there Hwilli’s folk, too?”
“No, not at all. In the Southlands around Rinbaladelan, the farmers and herders all come from the People themselves.”
“Ah. I’d