Apologies for another late post this week. I came down with a head cold again, which I seem to be mostly recovered from now. Anyway, on with the tale…
-oOo-
Quinnya, having glanced over at Caewen, had not otherwise moved. She returned her gaze to the patch of cloud-dark sky where the man and birds had vanished together. In the eastern distance, a blush of rose was just starting to appear.
“Gods of moss and stone,” muttered Caewen, exhausted. “It’s dawn. I haven’t slept. I need to sleep. This night has been–” she failed to find words, eventually settling on, “–too much.”
“Well, you’d best not get too much sleep. I expect to see you four hours hence.”
“What for?”
Quinnya looked and sounded genuinely cross as she said. “Every time I think you have a little sense, I find myself mistaken. Really, young woman, it seems as if you have porridge where your thinking ought to be. Your name had been entered on the scroll to speak at the moot, has it not? You are speaking this morning, four hours after dawn.” A wave of the hand. “Or thereabouts. Some speakers are more long-winded than others. But you are definitely speaking this morning. I reviewed the list last night.”
“Oh,” said Caewen. “That. I’d completely forgotten about that.” She tried to remember if she had entered herself into the list, but was reasonably sure she hadn’t.
With a roll of her eyes, Quinnya turned and walked away, calling back as she did, “Do not be late. It does not behoove a person to be late at the moot. Wizards have short tempers.”
“Don’t I know that for a truth,” said Caewen, but quietly. Too quietly for Quinnya to hear, or so Caewen thought.
The old magess stopped, turned and said, “What is that supposed to mean, young lady?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Then after a moment more she added, “Sorry.”
“See you in four hours.”
“Right,” said Caewen. “Four hours. That should be time enough to get back to the tent, maybe have a quick bath, dry off, get some quick sleep, wake refreshed, plan out what I want to say, and then head up to the moot, and speak. Wherever it is that folks speak.”
“Will it?” said Dapplegrim. “Hur. You have a very optimistic view of your capacity to do things.”
She punched him lightly against the shoulder and he laughed, voice low and sharp.
“Come on,” she said. “At the very least I can change and dry off.” A yawn. “And maybe sleep. A little. Just a little.” As they walked, she ventured to say, “Dapple, did you enter me on a list to speak?”
“Not that I remember.”
“I wonder who did then? I mean, yes, I want to speak of course–Winter King, blah, blah, blah–” A yawn. “But who put my name down?”
“Hur. And why.”
###
As it turned out there was barely enough time to get clean, dry and changed, let alone collapse into a short, restless sleep, before Caewen had to dredge herself back up to a semblance of being awake, get dressed again, and stumble out of the tent. She stood outside in the new light of day, blinking madly and feeling as if she had been scoured down to a few bare threads of exhaustion. The sun stood now a handspan above the horizon, and a pall of brightness suffused the air, creeping down into the space between the earth and the grey angry clouds that still churned above. It wasn’t much of a day for a celebration of the sun. Presumably, Quinnya was still angry, and her anger was drawing the stormclouds. Caewen wondered if the priests and freers of the Sun Queen knew that their day of festivities was being marred by the magess’s rage, and more to the point, would they dare do anything about it?
She imagined a hesitant, almost certainly apologetic, magician of the sun being dispatched to talk to Quinnya, and ask if she could please, perhaps, be a little less enraged? Maybe just for a few hours? Just to let the sun come out? The vision of this in her thoughts made Caewen smile.
She rubbed her eyes, and looked around for Dapplegrim, yawning through her fingers as she did. A scratch of fingers against her scalp. Another yawn. “Dapple?”
“I think he went off about half an hour ago.” It was Samarkarantha. He was sitting at his breakfast table. As he moved a hand to indicate one of the other empty seats, he winced. Pain etched itself over his face, down the tense muscles of his neck. Caewen hadn’t even realised he had got up. She’d assumed he was still recovering where he had collapsed last night.
“I don’t know if I have time. The moot–?”
“Yes, yes, the moot. They will wait. Or they will shuffle you around with some other speaker. Quinnya likes to keep a tight ship, but the rules are the rules, and the rules are that a magician who nominates to speak must be allowed to speak. That is how it is. So, breakfast?”
“I suppose. Where do you think Dapplegrim went?”
“He didn’t say.”
“H’m.” She walked over, pulled out the chair and sat. The breakfast was much as Samarkarantha seemed to have every morning. Crusted bread and butter, leaves soaked in oil and wrapped around a fragrant filling. A mug of goat milk. He poured one for her. “And so, and so. The clouds are grey. The air snaps with static. I presume you found the Magess Quinnya last night, but that perhaps not all went well?”
“That about sums it up, yes.” She tasted the milk. It was pleasantly cold. The tip of her lips felt faintly numb from it. “Does this have ice in it?”
A smile. “An advantage of being a wizard.”
She looked at him over the cup of cold milk. “I suppose another advantage is swift recovery. You look a lot better than you did.”
“This is somewhat true. I am still bruised.” As if to emphasise this, he shifted in his seat and winced again. “And life does not come from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing, to be certain. I am burning life to come back to health. I do not know how much, but definitely days… perhaps weeks or months.”
“From where?”
“From me. From my life. There is an exchange. I will not live so long a natural life, as I might have.” He shrugged. “But otherwise, I might not be alive at all, yes? The magic, it was essential, I think.”
“And Pel? You worked some arts on her too.”
“And that I have drawn from myself also. So, a few more weeks or months? Ah, but what are one’s final years but slobbering old age, yes? Better to do some good, while we can, when we can.”
After a held onto, long moment, Caewen said, “You must care for her very much.”
“I do. But not in the way you are thinking.”
“Oh,” she said. With nothing else to add to this, she smiled, weakly, and tried to clear her thoughts. Then, with a bit of a jolt, she sat upright. “Wait a moment–you just told me that they’ll wait for me to speak at the moot.”
“I did.”
“You know I’m speaking this morning.”
“I do.”
“How?” she asked, a slant of suspicion in her voice.
“Obviously, I put you on the list. You did wish to speak, did you not? You talked of it at some length when you arrived.”
“I did. Yes. But what do I owe you?”
He smiled. “I am not that manner of mage. Nothing. It is gratis and free.”
“I see,” she said, not completely convinced.