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he
added, "On the other hand, what harm are they?"
"This is a very peculiar imprisonment," commented Arel as Zanja ate the meat
pie
he had brought for her supper. When he first arrived, the door to his rooms
had
stood wide open, as the glyph master took his leave after reluctantly
delivering
to her a precious painting.
Arel said, "Where is the lock for the door? The armed guard? The shackles?"
"I think the G'deon is testing my obedience."
"At least you seem resigned."
"Then I am a finer actor than I thought."
The meat pie was delicious. Its flavorful gravy covered the deficiencies of
long-stored vegetables and reconstituted meat. Living under the influence of
an
obsessive cook for just two months had taught Zanja to notice and appreciate
kitchen skill. She paid attention to her meal. Arel was uncharacteristically
restless. Perhaps he was feeling his own confinement, for Tadwell certainly
would have forbidden him to ask Zanja any questions. Or perhaps he felt the
tedium of mud season.
Zanja licked her plate and her fingers. She said, "Surely Tadwell will decide
my
fate before he returns to Basdown. But you'll be able to leave before he
doesùthere's rarely a flood in the north, and the mountain ways will probably
be
passable by the time you reach them."
"Come with me," he said.
Zanja found herself unable to reply. Return to the Asha Valley? How could
that
possibility have not occurred to her? To travel into the mountains! To
traverse
those bright, dark, dangerous places with easy confidence! To go home!
She took a breath. "But it is not my home, my brother."
"You are Ashawala'i, a person-from-the-valley-of-stones!"
"It is not my valleyùnot my peopleùnot even my stones."
Arel squatted before her. His braids swept the woven carpet. "My sister, do
you
think I cannot see your loneliness? Six years you have wandered! It is time
to
cease being a ghost. Your family, your loversùthey will not be there. But
your
tribe is your tribe, always."
She turned her face away from him. She heard him rise, giving her the
distance
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and privacy that her gesture had requested. His movement across the room was
nearly soundless. He stepped into the water closet and shut the door. He
didn't
come out until she was no longer weeping.
"I will sleep somewhere else tonight," he said.
"No, my brotherùnot for my sake. I enjoy your company."
He squatted againùat a distance. "I will tell you something: I have a lover
here, among the Shaftali, and he has asked me to come to him."
"I am shocked," she said.
"Of course you have managed without a lover all your years of wandering."
Zanja met his gaze, and they both began to laugh.
Only after he had left did it occur to her that his lover was probably
Tadwell.
The rain stopped falling two days later. News arrived that the Corber River
had
flooded. Tadwell would not attempt to return to the south until he could
cross
the Corber by bridge, and that would not be until the flood waters subsided.
As soon as the rains ended, a gentle wind began to blow almost constantly
through the rooms and hallways of the House of Likerwess, for every door and
window was left open by day, and often by night as Well. There began a
cleaning
revelry, a scrubbing and airing and washing that included every stone and
even
the skin, for people and even animals were bathed and combed. Laundry lines
were
strung in the open courtyard below Arel's one window, and there began an
amazing
beating of carpets that lasted from dawn to nightfall for several days. All
of
Arel's carpets were hauled out, and while he was taking his turn with the
carpet-beaters, Zanja wore out a scrub brush and used up an entire cake of
soap.
Then Arel left for the Asha Valley, without her. She had told him she must
consider whether it would be wrong for her to bring into the valley those
alien
influences he had noticed when they first met. "We all carry our histories
with
us," she said. "But I am a Speakerùand like you, I am to be changed without
causing change." She might go home with him in the autumn, she added. But she
regretted even that modest promise when she said it, for such a wound of
yearning opened up that she feared it might cause her intuition and judgment
to
become unreliable.
Choose insight, Medric had said: absurd advice, when insight pierces like
arrows
of light from the stars, or drops down out of an empty sky like an owl upon
its
prey. Yet a person does choose to climb the hillside towards the stars, or
make
oneself available to the owl. In this Shaftal, Zanja must live each moment
like
a casting of glyph cards, be able to ask any question and to accept any
answer.
By no other method would it be possible for her to slip through without
destroying or undoing the Shaftal in which she did belong. She must desire
only
to return thereùnothing else.
She began to be glad of her solitude, then. The days passed, and she danced
her
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katra alone. She did not try to converse with the glyph master when he
visited
every day with a new painting, nor with the Paladin novices, Orna among them,
who brought meals and carried away the waste. She did not even look out the
window anymore. She meditated on the glyph paintings, and, gradually, all
else
ceased to matter.
At last, Tadwell came into the room and closed the door. Zanja had been
meditating on a particularly difficult glyph painting, and her flesh felt
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