A Knot in the Grain Read online

  No villager would have mistaken Sahath for a workman now, in the dark tunic and cloak he had worn when he first met Lily, riding his tall black horse; the horse alone was too fine a creature for anyone but a man of rank. For all its obvious age, for the bones of its face showed starkly through the skin, it held its crest and tail high, and set its feet down as softly as if its master were made of eggshells. Lily, looking at the man beside her on his fine horse, and looking back to the pricked ears of her sturdy, reliable mount, was almost afraid of her companion, as she had been afraid when he first spoke in her mind, and as she had not been afraid again for many weeks.

  Please, Sahath said now. Do not fear me: I am the man who hammered his fingers till they were blue and black, and cursed himself for clumsiness till the birds fled the noise, and stuck his spade into his own foot and yelped with pain. You know me too well to fear me.

  Lily laughed, and the silent chime of her laughter rang in his mind as she tipped her chin back and grinned at the sky. And I am the girl who cannot spell.

  You do very well.

  Not half so well as Jolin.

  Jolin is special.

  Yes. And their minds fell away from each other, and each disappeared into private thoughts.

  They rode south and west. Occasionally they stopped in a town for supplies; but they slept always under the stars, for Lily’s dread of strangers and Sahath’s uneasiness that any suspicion rest on her for travelling thus alone with him, and he a man past his prime and she a beauty. Their pace was set by Lily’s horse, which was willing enough, but unaccustomed to long days of travelling, though it was young and Sahath’s horse was old. But it quickly grew hard, and when they reached the great western mountains, both horses strode up the slopes without trouble.

  It grew cold near the peaks, but Sahath had bought them fur cloaks at the last town; no one lived in the mountains. Lily looked at hers uncertainly, and wished to ask how it was Sahath always had money for what he wished to buy. But she did not quite ask, and while he heard the question anyway, he chose not to answer.

  They wandered among the mountain crests, and Lily became totally confused, for sometimes they rode west and south and sometimes east and north; and then there was a day of fog, and the earth seemed to spin around her, and even her stolid practical horse had trouble finding its footing. Sahath said, There is only a little more of this until we are clear, and Lily thought he meant something more than the words simply said; but again she did not ask. They dismounted and led the horses, and Lily timidly reached for a fold of Sahath’s sleeve, for the way was wide enough that they might walk abreast. When he felt her fingers, he seized her hand in his, and briefly he raised it to his lips and kissed it, and then they walked on hand in hand.

  That night there was no sunset, but when they woke in the morning the sky was blue and cloudless, and they lay in a hollow at the edge of a sandy shore that led to a vast lake; and the mountains were behind them.

  They followed the shore around the lake, and Lily whistled to the birds she saw, and a few of them dropped out of the sky to sit on Lily’s head and shoulders and chirp at her.

  What do the birds say to you? said Sahath, a little jealously.

  Oh—small things, replied Lily, at a loss; she had never tried to translate one friend for another before. It is not easy to say. They say this is a good place, but—she groped for a way to explain—different.

  Sahath smiled. I am glad of the good, and I know of the different, for we are almost to the place we seek.

  They turned away from the lake at last, onto a narrow track; but they had not gone far when a meadow opened before them. There were cows and horses in the meadow; they raised their heads to eye the strangers as they passed. Lily noticed there was no fence to enclose the beasts, although there was an open stable at the far edge of the field; this they rode past. A little way farther and they came to an immense stone hall with great trees closed around it, except for a beaten space at its front doors. This space was set around with pillars, unlit torches bound to their tops. A man sat alone on one of the stone steps leading to the hall doors; he was staring idly into nothing, but Lily was certain that he knew of their approach—and had known since long before he had seen or heard them—and was awaiting their arrival.

  Greetings, said Sahath, as his horse’s feet touched the bare ground.

  The man brought his eyes down from the motes of air he had been watching and looked at Sahath and smiled. Greetings, he replied, and his mindspeech sounded in Lily’s head as well as Sahath’s. Lily clung to Sahath’s shadow and said nothing, for the man’s one-word greetings had echoed into immeasurable distances, and she was dizzy with them.

  This is my master, Sahath said awkwardly, and Lily ducked her head once and glanced at the man. He caught her reluctant eye and smiled, and Lily freed her mind enough to respond: Greetings.

  That’s better, said the man. His eyes were blue, and his hair was blond and curly; if it were not for the aura of power about him that hung shivering like a cloak from his head and shoulders, he would have been an unlikely figure for a mage-master.

  What did you expect, came his thought, amused, an ancient with a snowy beard and piercing eyes—in a flowing black shroud and pointed cap?

  Lily smiled in spite of herself. Something like that.

  The man laughed; it was the first vocal sound any of the three had yet made. He stood up. He was tall and narrow, and he wore a short blue tunic over snug brown trousers and tall boots. Sahath had dismounted, and Lily looked at the two of them standing side by side. For all the grey in Sahath’s hair, and the heavy lines in his face, she could see the other man was much the elder. Sahath was several inches shorter than his master, and he looked worn and ragged from travel, and Lily’s heart went out in a rush to him. The blond man turned to her at once: You do not have to defend him from me; and Sahath looked between them, puzzled. And Lily, looking into their faces, recognized at last the mage-mark, and knew that she would know it again if she ever saw it in another face. And she was surprised that she had not recognized it as such long since in Sahath’s face, and she wondered why; and the blond man flicked another glance at her, and with the glance came a little gust of amusement, but she could not hear any words in it.

  After a pause Sahath said, You will know why we have come.

  I know. Come; you can turn your horses out with the others; they will not stray. Then we will talk.

  The hall was empty but for a few heavy wooden chairs and a tall narrow table at the far end, set around a fireplace. Lily looked around her, tipping her head back till her neck creaked in protest, lagging behind the two men as they went purposefully toward the chairs. She stepped as softly as she might, and her soft-soled boots made no more noise than a cat’s paws; yet as she approached the center of the great hall she stopped and shivered, for the silence pressed in on her as if it were a guardian. What are you doing here? Why have you come to this place? She wrapped her arms around her body, and the silence seized her the more strongly: How dare you walk the hall of the mage-master?

  Her head hurt; she turned blindly back toward the open door and daylight, and the blue sky. Almost sobbing, she said to the silence: I came for vanity, for vanity, I should not be here, I have no right to walk in the hall of the mage-master.

  But as she stretched out her hands toward the high doors, a bird flew through them: a little brown bird that flew in swoops, his wings closing briefly against his sides after every beat; and he perched on one of her outflung hands. He opened his beak, and three notes fell out; and the guardian silence withdrew slightly, and Lily could breathe again. He jumped from Lily’s one hand to the other, and she, awed, cupped her hands around him. He cocked his head and stared at her with one onyx-chip eye and then the other. The top of his head was rust-colored, and there were short streaks of cinnamon at the corner of each black eye. He offered her the same three notes, and this time she pursed her lips and gently gave them back to him. She had bent her body over her c
upped hands, and now she straightened up and, after a pause of one breath, threw her head back, almost as if she expected it to strike against something; but whatever had been there had fled entirely. The bird hopped up her wrist to her arm, to her shoulder; and then he flew up, straight up, without swooping, till he perched on the sill of one of the high windows, and he tossed his three notes back down to her again. Then two more small brown birds flew through the doors, and passed Lily so closely that her hair stirred with the wind of their tiny wings; and they joined their fellow on the windowsill. There were five birds after them, and eight after that; till the narrow sills of the tall windows were full of them and of their quick sharp song. And Lily turned away from the day-filled doorway, back to the dark chairs at the farther end of the hall, where the men awaited her.

  The blond man looked long at her as she came up to him, but it was not an unkind look. She smiled timidly at him, and he put out a hand and touched her black hair. There have been those who were invited into my hall who could not pass the door.

  Sahath’s face was pale. I did not know that I brought her—

  Into danger? finished the mage-master. Then you have forgotten much that you should have remembered.

  Sahath’s face had been pale, but at the master’s words it went white, corpse-white, haggard with memory. I have forgotten everything.

  The mage-master made a restless gesture. That is not true; it has never been true; and if you wish to indulge in self-pity, you must do it somewhere other than here.

  Sahath turned away from the other two, slowly, as if he were an old, old man; and if Lily had had any voice, she would have cried out. But when she stepped forward to go to him, the master’s hand fell on her shoulder, and she stopped where she stood, although she ached with stillness.

  Sahath, the master went on more gently, you were among the finest of any of my pupils. There was a light about you that few of the others could even see from their dulness, though those I chose to teach were the very best. Among them you shone like a star.

  Lily, the master’s hand still on her shoulder, began to see as he spoke a brightness form about Sahath’s hands, a shiningness, an almost-mist about his feet, that crept up his legs, as if the master’s words lay around him, built themselves into a wall or a ladder to reach him, for the master’s wisdom to climb, and to creep into his ear.

  Sahath flung out a hand, and brightness flickered and flaked away from it, and a mote or two drifted to Lily’s feet. She stooped, and touched the tips of two fingers to them, the mage-master’s hand dropping away from her shoulder as she knelt. She raised her hand, and the tips of her first and third fingers glimmered.

  I was the best of your pupils once, Sahath said bitterly, and the bitterness rasped at the minds that heard him. But I did not learn what I needed most to learn: my own limits. And I betrayed myself, and your teaching, my master, and I have wandered many years since then, doing little, for little there is that I am able to do. With my mage-strength gone, my learning is of no use, for all that I know is the use of mage-strength. He spread his hands, straightening the fingers violently as though he hated them; and then he made them into fists and shook them as if he held his enemy’s life within them.

  And more flakes of light fell from him and scattered, and Lily crept, on hands and knees, nearer him, and picked them up on the tips of her fingers, till all ten fingers glowed; and the knees of her riding dress shone, and when she noticed this, she laid her hands flat on the stone floor, till the palms and the finger-joints gleamed. As she huddled, bent down, her coil of hair escaped its last pins and the long braid of it fell down, and its tip skittered against the stones, and when she raised her head again, the black braid-tip was star-flecked.

  The mage-master’s eyes were on the girl as he said, You betrayed nothing, but your own sorrow robbed you by the terrible choice you had to make, standing alone on that mountain. You were too young to have had to make that choice; I would have been there had I known; but I was too far away, and I saw what would happen too late. You saw what had to be done, and you had the strength to do it—that was your curse. And when you had done it, you left your mage-strength where you stood, for the choice had been too hard a one, and you were sickened with it. And you left, and I—I could not find you, for long and long.… There was a weight of sorrow as bitter as Sahath’s in his thought, and Lily sat where she was, cupping her shining hands in her lap and looking up at him, while his eyes still watched her. She thought, but it was a very small thought: The silence was right—I should not be here.

  It was a thought not meant to be overheard, but the blond man’s brows snapped together and he shook his head once, fiercely; and she dropped her eyes to her starry palms, and yet she was comforted.

  I did not leave my mage-strength, said Sahath, still facing away from his master, and the girl sitting at his feet; but as his arms dropped to his sides, the star-flakes fell down her back and across her spreading skirts.

  I am your master still, the blond man said, and his thought was mild and gentle again. And I say to you that you turned your back on it and me and left us. Think you that you could elude me—me?—for so long had you not the wisdom I taught you—and the strength to make yourself invisible to my far-seeing? I have not known what came to you since you left that mountain with the armies dying at its feet, till you spoke of me to two women in a small bright kitchen far from here. In those long years I have known nothing of you but that you lived, for your death you could not have prevented me from seeing.

  In the silence nothing moved but the tiny wings of birds.

  Sahath turned slowly around.

  Think you so little of the art of carpentry that you believe any man who holds a hammer in his hand for the first time may build a shed that does not fall down, however earnest his intentions—and however often he bangs his thumb and curses?

  Lily saw Sahath’s feet moving toward her from the corner of her eye, and lifted her face to look at him, and he looked down at her, dazed. Lily—he said, and stooped, but the mage-master was there before him, and took Lily’s hands, and drew her to her feet. Sahath touched the star-flakes on her shoulders, and then looked at his hands, and the floor around them where the star-flakes lay like fine sand. “I—” he said, and his voice broke.

  The mage-master held Lily’s hands still, and now he drew them up and placed them, star-palms in, against her own throat; and curled her fingers around her neck, and held them there with his own long-fingered hands. She stared up at him, and his eyes reminded her of the doors of his hall, filled with daylight; and she felt her own pulse beating in her throat against her hands. Then the master drew his hands and hers away, and she saw that the star-glitter was gone from her palms. He dropped her hands, smiling faintly, and stepped back.

  The air whistled strangely as she sucked it into her lungs and blew it out again. She opened her mouth and closed it; raised one hand to touch her neck with her fingers, yet she could find nothing wrong. She swallowed, and it made her throat tickle; and then she coughed. As she coughed, she looked down at the dark hem of her riding dress; the star-flakes were gone from it too, and the dust of them had blown away or sunk into the floor. She coughed again, and the force of it shook her whole body, and hurt her throat and lungs; but then she opened her mouth again when the spasm was past and said, “Sahath.” It was more a croak, or a bird’s chirp, than a word; but she looked up, and turned toward him, and said “Sahath” again, and it was a word this time. But as her eyes found him, she saw the tears running down his face.

  He came to her, and she raised her arms to him; and the mage-master turned his back on them and busied himself at the small high table before the empty hearth. Lily heard the chink of cups as she stood encircled by Sahath’s arms, her dark head on his dark-cloaked shoulder, and the taste of his tears on her lips. She turned at the sound, and looked over her shoulder; the master held a steaming kettle in his hands, and she could smell the heat of it, although the hearth was as black as before.
Sahath looked up at his old teacher when Lily stirred; and the mage-master turned toward them again, a cup in each hand. Sahath laughed.

  The mage-master grinned and inclined his head. “Schoolboy stuff, I know,” but he held the cups out toward them nonetheless. Lily reached out her left hand and Sahath his right, so that their other two hands might remain clasped together.

  Whatever the steaming stuff was, it cleared their heads and smoothed their faces, and Lily said, “Thank you,” and smiled joyfully. Sahath looked at her and said nothing, and the blond man looked at them both, and then down into his cup.

  “You know this place,” the mage-master said presently, raising his eyes again to Sahath’s shining face; “You are as free in it now as you were years ago, when you lived here as my pupil.” And he left them, setting his cup down on the small table and striding away down the hall, out into the sunlight. His figure was silhouetted a moment, framed by the stone doorsill; and then he was gone. The small brown birds sang farewell.

  It was three days before Lily and Sahath saw him again. For those three days they wandered together through the deep woods around the master’s hall, feeling the kindly shade curling around them, or lifting their faces to the sun when they walked along the shores of the lake. Lily learned to sing and to shout. She loved to stand at the edge of the lake, her hands cupped around her mouth, that her words might fly as far as they could across the listening water, but though she waited till the last far whisper had gone, she never had an answer. Sahath also taught her to skip small flat stones across the silver surface; she had never seen water wider than a river before, and the rivers of her acquaintance moved on about their business much too swiftly for any such game. She became a champion rock-skipper; anything less than eight skittering steps across the water before the small missile sank, and she would shout and stamp with annoyance, and Sahath would laugh at her. His stones always fled lightly and far across the lake.