of Atth, the only god, and only by the breath may it be spoken. To entrap it in writing is blasphemy, abominable.”
I flinched, hating to hear him speak those words. He sounded as if he believed them, as if they were his own words.
Gry was silent.
He said, “I hope Orrec Caspro brought no books with him.”
“No,” she said, “he came to seek them.”
“As well seek bonfires in the sea,” he said.
She came right back, “Or milk a desert stone.”
I saw the flicker in his eyes, that almost hidden glint, when she answered with the rest of Denies’ line.
“May he come here?” she asked, quite humbly.
I wanted to shout Yes! Yes! I was shocked, ashamed, when the Waylord did not at once answer inviting him warmly to come, to be welcome. He hesitated, and then all he said was, “He is the guest of the Gand Ioratth?”
“A message came to us when we were in Urdile, saying that Ioratth, the Gand of the Alds of Ansul, would make welcome Orrec Caspro, the Gand of All Makers, if he would come and display his art. We are told that the Gand Ioratth is very fond of hearing tales and poems. As are his people. So we came. But not as his guests. He offered stabling for our horses, but not for us. His god would be offended if unbelievers came under his roof. When Orrec goes to perform for the Gand it will be outdoors, under the open sky.”
The Waylord said something in Aritan; I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was about the sky having room enough for all the stars and gods. He looked at her to see if she understood the line.
She cocked her head. “I am an ignorant woman,” she said in her mild way.
He laughed. “Hardly!”
“No, truly. My husband has taught me a little, but my own knowledge is not in words at all. My gift is to listen to those who don’t talk.”
“You walk with a lion, Memer said.”
“I do. We travel a lot, and travellers are vulnerable. After our good dog died, I looked for another guardian companion. We met with a company of nomads, tellers and musicians, who’d trapped a halflion and her cub in the desert hills south of Vadalva. They kept the mother for their shows, but sold us the cub. She’s a good companion, and trustworthy.”
“What is her name?” I asked very softly.
“Shetar.”
“Where is she now?” the Waylord asked. “In our wagon, in your stableyard.”
“I hope to see her. As I too am unburdened with belief I am free to offer you the shelter of my roof Gry Barre—you and your husband, your horses and your lion.”
She thanked him for his generosity; and he said, “The poor are rich in generosity.” Ever since she had spoken her husband’s name, his face had been alight. “Memer,” he said, “which room—?”
I’d already decided that and was calculating whether the fish could feed eight if Ista made a stew with it. “The east room,” I said.
“How about the Master’s room?”
That startled me a little, for I knew his mother had lived in that beautiful, spacious apartment, upstairs from his rooms in this oldest part of the house. Long ago when Galvamand housed the university and library of Ansul, that apartment had belonged to its head, the Master. Its unbroken, small-paned windows looked over the lower roofs of the house westward to Sul. There was a bedstead in it and nothing much else, now. But I could bring a mattress from the east room, and the chair from mine.
“I’ll lay a fire there,” I said, for I knew the unused room would be dank and cold.
The Waylord looked at me with great kindness. He said to Gry Barre, “Memer is my hands and half my head. She is not the daughter of my body, but of my house and heart. Her gods and ancestors are mine.”
I knew well that I was of the blood of Galva, but it gave me a painful joy to hear him say what he said.
“In the market,” Gry said, “a horse bolted when it saw my cat. It threw its rider and ran straight at Memer. She caught the reins and stopped and held it.”
“I’ll go get the room ready,” I said, finding praise hard to bear.
Gry excused herself and came with me, wanting to help me with the room. Once we had made up the bed and got a fire going in the hearth, it was done, and she said she’d go bring her husband here from the Harbor Market. I longed to hear him, and she saw that. “He’ll be nearly done speaking, I think,” she said, “but I’d be glad of your company. I’ll leave Shetar in the wagon. She’s fine there.” As we went out she added, “One lion is enough.”
How could I not love her?
So Gry Barre and I went afoot back down to the Harbor Market. There I first heard the maker Orrec Caspro speak.
The tent was full, and the front and sides had been raised for people to stand outside it, crowded together like trees on a mountainside, all still, listening. He was telling the tale of the Fire-Tailed Bird from Denies’
When he was done, the great crowd stood in silence for a long breath’s space, and then said, “Ah!” And then they began to applaud him, the Alds by hitting their palms together loudly, and we by crying the old praise word, “Eho, eho!” I saw him then, a handsome, thin, straight, dark man, with a certain defiance in his stance up there on the dais, though he was most gracious with the crowd.
We could not get near him for a long time. “I should have brought the other lion too,” Gry said, as we tried in vain to pry through the massed backs of the soldiers and officers with their blue cloaks and their sheep hair and their swords and crossbows and bludgeons, all pressing round the speaker, who had come down among them.
When he leapt back up on the platform and scanned the crowd, Gry made her birds whistle, loud and piercing this time. At once he saw her; she nodded to our left; and a few minutes later he met us by the steps of the Customs.
Now that the soldiers had dispersed, many citizens trailed him, but they were timid, unwilling to press forward. Only one elderly man came up to him, and bowed as we bow in thanks to our gods, deeply, with open hands that hold the gift given and received. “Praise to the maker,” he whispered. He straightened up and walked swiftly away. He was in tears. He was a man who had brought books to the Waylord more than once. I didn’t know his name.
Orrec Caspro saw us and strode forward. He took both Gry’s hands for a moment. “Get me out!” he said. “Where’s Shetar?”
“At Galvamant,” she said, pronouncing the name northern-wise. “I am with Decalo’s daughter Memer of Galvamant. We’re to be guests of that house.”
His eyes widened. He greeted me courteously and asked no questions, but he looked as if he had some.
“Please excuse me,” I said on the spur of the moment, “I forgot something at the market this morning. You know the way. I’ll catch up.” And I left them. It was true that Ista would need more greens for a stew for eight.
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn’t it what all the great wars and battles are fought for—so that at day’s end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted and gathered roots and cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn’t say what their wives and children were living on in their city left ruined and desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house and honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege and under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I’d like to know what the food was and how the women managed it.
I saw Gry and her husband at the top of West Street when I started up the hill from the Gelb Bridge. When I came into the kitchen, Sosta and Bomi were all agog, having met the guests, and Ista was on the very edge of a
