back part of the house, the oldest part, all of stone and built right up against the hillside, is chilly, and we didn’t have much firewood to warm the rooms.
I greeted them. The Waylord raised his eyebrows, waiting for my message.
“There are travellers here from the far north who need stabling for their horses. He is a storyteller and she,” I paused, “she has a lion. A halflion. I told her I would ask if they may keep their horses here.” As I spoke I felt like a person in a tale of the Lords of Manva, bearing a request from a noble visitor to a noble host.
“Circus people,” Desac said. “Nomads.”
Outraged at his contemptuous tone, I said, “No!” The Waylord’s eyebrows went down at my rudeness. “She is Gry of the Barres of Roddmant of the Uplands,” I said.
“And where are these Uplands?” said Desac, speaking to me as to a child.
“In the far north,” I said.
The Waylord said, “Memer, a little further, please?”
That was how he always asked me to go on translating a line of Aritan or explaining anything. He liked me to do it in order, making sense. I tried.
“Her husband came to tell stories in the Harbor Market. So they were there. Her lion frightened an Ald’s horse. I caught the horse. Then she quieted it. Then when I was coming home I met her with her wagon and she brought me home. She was looking for stabling. The lion is in the wagon. Gudit is watering the horses.”
Only as I mentioned coming home did I realise that the market basket with a ten-pound fish and cheese and greens in it was still weighing down my arm.
There was a pause.
“You offered her use of the stables?”
“I said I’d ask you.”
“Will you ask her to come to me?”
“Yes,” I said, and got away quickly.
I left the basket in the pantry cooler—Ista and the others were all still sewing in the workroom—and ran back to the stable yard. Gry and Gudit were talking about dogs; that is, Gudit was telling her about the great followhounds of Galvamand in the old days, that ran with the horses and guarded the gates. “Nowadays all it is is cats. Cats everywhere,” he said, spitting aside. “No meat for dogs any more, see. It stands to reason. It was meat they were themselves, those dogs, in the siege years.”
“Maybe it’s just as well you have no followhounds just now,” she said. “They’d be anxious about the contents of our wagon.”
I said, “The Waylord asks if you will be pleased to come into the house. He would come himself but it’s hard for him to walk far.” I wanted so badly to welcome her rightly, nobly, generously, as the Lords of Manva welcomed strangers to their houses.
“With pleasure,” she said, “but first—”
“Leave the horses to me,” said Gudit. “I’ll put ’em both in the loose box and then be off for a bit of hay from Bossti down the way there.”
“There’s a truss of hay and a barrel of oats in the wagon,” Gry said, going to show him, but he brushed her off—“Na na na, nobody brings their own feed to the Waylord’s house. Come along here, then, old lady.”
“She’s Star,” said Gry, “and he’s Branty.” At their names both horses looked round at her, and the mare whuffed.
“And it would be well if you knew what else is in the wagon,” Gry said, and there was something in her voice, though she spoke low and mild, that made even Gudit turn and listen to her.
“A cat,” she said. “Another cat. But a big one. She’s trustworthy, but not to be taken by surprise. Don’t open the wagon door, please. Memer, shall I leave her here in the wagon or shall she come with me into the house?”
When you’re lucky, press your luck. I wanted Desac to see the “circus” lion and be scared stiff “If you wish to bring her… ”
She studied me a moment.
“Best leave her here,” she said with a smile. And thinking of Ista and Sosta screaming and screeching at the sight of a lion passing byin the corridor, I knew she was right.
She followed me through the courtyards around to the front entrance. On the threshold she stopped and murmured the invocation of the guest to the housegods.
“Are your gods the same as ours?” I asked.
“The Uplands haven’t much in the way of gods. But as a traveller I’ve learned to honor and ask blessing of any gods or spirits that will grant it.”
I liked that.
“The Alds spit on our gods,” I said.
“Sailors say it’s unwise to spit into the wind,” she said.
I had brought her the long way round, wanting her to see the reception hall and the great court and the wide hallways leading to the old university rooms and galleries and the inner courts. It was all bare, unfurnished, the statues broken, the tapestries stolen, the floors unswept. I was half proud for her to see it and half bitterly ashamed.
She walked through it with wide, keen eyes. There was a wariness in her. She was easy and open, but self, contained and on the alert, like a brave animal in a strange place.
I knocked at the carved door of the back gallery and the Waylord bade us enter. Desac had gone. The Waylord stood to greet the visitor. They bowed their heads formally as they spoke their names. “Be welcome to the house of my people,” he said, and she, “My greeting to the House of Galva and its people, and my honor to the gods and ancestors of the house.”
When they looked up and at each other, I saw his eyes full of curiosity and interest, and hers shining with excitement.
“You’ve come a long way to bring your greeting,” he said.
“To meet Sulter Galva the Waylord.” His face closed, like a book shutting.
“Ansul has no lords but the Alds,” he said. “I am a person without importance.”
Gry glanced at me as if for support, but I had none to give. She said to him, “Your pardon if I spoke amiss. But may I tell you what brought us to Ansul, my husband Orrec Caspro and me?”
Now at that name, he looked as utterly amazed as she had when I said his title to her.
“Caspro is here?” he said—“Orrec Caspro?” He took a deep breath. He gathered himself and spoke in his stiffest, most formal tone: “The fame of the poet runs before him. He honors our city with his presence. Memer told me that a maker is to speak in the market, place, but I did not know who it was.”
“He will recite for the Gand of the Alds too,” said Gry. “The Gand sent for my husband. But that’s not why we came to Ansul.”
The pause was a heavy one.
“We sought this house,” Gry said. “And to this house your daughter brought me—though I didn’t know she was its daughter, and she didn’t know I sought it.”
He looked at me.
“Truth,” I said. And because he still looked at me, distrustful, I said, “The gods have been with me all day. It is a day of Lero.”
That carried weight with him. He rubbed his upper lip with the first knuckle of his left hand the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Then suddenly he came to a decision, and the distrust was gone. “As you are brought in Lero’s hands, the blessing of the house is yours,” he said. “And all in it is yours. Will you sit down, Gry Barre?”
I saw that she watched the way he moved as he showed her to the claw-root chair, that she saw his crippled hands as he lowered himself into the armchair. I perched on the high stool by the table.
“As Caspros fame has come to you,” she said, “so the fame of the libraries of Ansul has come to us.”
“And your husband came here to see those libraries?”
“He seeks the nourishment of his art and his soul in books,” she said.
At that I wanted to give all my heart to her, to him.
“He must know,” the Waylord said without emotion, “that the books of Ansul were destroyed, with many of those who read them. No libraries are permitted in the city. The written word is forbidden. The word is the breath
