Since it was not considered important that wives enjoy their husbands’ attentions, it was not remarked that Fabla detested the attentions of Linnos. She conceived in good time and bore a son which was, of course, a first of a first on the father’s side and therefore counted a throwaway if it did not survive. Fabla should have recovered in a few months and conceived promptly again.
But she did not. She did not recover from the weakness of birthing but lingered, weakening gradually, between half life and half death, unwilling either to live or to die, unwilling to hold the child or see it gone, unwilling to cry or cease from crying. The women who assisted at birthings did not know what to do. The doctor who was sent for confessed himself at a loss. At last, Linnos sought to return Fabla to her brother, but since this would have necessitated the return of Linnos’s sister, Deekmoth was unwilling. Linnos blustered and threatened. He could not take another wife for several years; he could not return Fabla; he could get no good of her while she lay half dead. Finally he sent to the oracle at Stonycroft and was gifted with the words of that old man.
‘She may hang as she is between life and death for many years,’ said the oracle, ‘until someone finds and brings the Vessel of Healing of the Founding Doctor, which would certainly bring her back to living. The oracle did not know where the Vessel might be found.
Linnos said he might go inquire about it after shearing, if he found time. Meanwhile, he found a plump companion at the tavern in Ne’rdale and left Fabla to the care of an ancient crone. And all this time Leona suffered as though it had been she who bore and was ill and could not recover. Her face grew gaunt and lined and her eyes deep-set, and there was not an hour of any day in which she did not long for Fabla. She begged that she might be let go to Fabla, but they would not let her. At last she simply went, without their permission.
So it was that she wandered the high moor one day in her sixteenth year as the sun dropped westerly and the clouds lifted into a high roof above a world washed clean by rain. The sun fell upon her from the west beneath the cloud as the moon rose in the east behind a copse of dark trees, and her human form dropped from her as though she had shed a loose garment. No one was there to see, except Leona, what shape came upon her. Leona saw, in the reflection of a quiet ppol. No one was there to hear what sound she cried, except Leona, and she heard in the echoes that came back from the distant peaks, brazen and plangent. No one knew what had happened, except for a sheep which had lain in the heather near her and which was now a riven corpse which stared blindly at the wild green under the westering sun. Talons had pierced it through, and it had died without a sound. No one knew except Leona. She saw what she had become and understood it without words to name it or words to reason it in.
She waited until the sun sank and the moon rose high to ride in a wrack of cloud. She washed herself in the cold water, returned to human form, and went on to the north.
She went to Fabla’s side and wept there until Linnos came and drove her away, saying that he would not feed two women of her kindred to lie about his sted, and moan. Leona went away dry-eyed. Fabla had not known her.
She did not return to her family. She told one of the children that she would go seek the Vessel for Fabla’s sake, but the people scarce remarked at this for a greater news held them to their gossip. Fabla’s husband, Linnos, was gone – disappeared. He had gone out in the night to see what thing caused a racket among the sheep, and he had never returned. They found his body on the moor, much later, riven as though by beasts or the great birds of the cliffs. They wondered much at that.
But at the fact Leona was gone? That all trace of her had been removed from the house she had tenanted? That her lace by the cooking fire was empty, her bed space vacant, er voice missing? Did anyone wonder at that?
CHAPTER SIX
MEDLO
Years 1163-1165
East of the Sea Desert lie the broad plains of the cattle herders, rolling grasslands which stretch from horizon to horizon, under calm skies or lowering, the blown grass a sea of green or tan, depending upon the season. In the long summer it is a dry land, and the cities of the plain are full of dust and the heat which beats from high enclave walls and the rasping cry of cicadas from the ragged grey trees. Dry and weary are such cities as Jassus, or Dierno, or Das.
In a dismal orbansa inn in the city of Das, Medlo, the scion of Rhees, woke one morning the worse for drink and dream. He had been given some unidentified substance to chew, or smell, he forgot which, in a spirit either of camaraderie or malice, he had not known which. Inches from his face on the dirty mattress was another face, and Medlo recoiled from it as from any unexpected presence which intruded upon
