A Taste of Magic by Andre Norton
Lord Purvis might be camped south of the village, and to ease my curiosity I used the scry magic to look there.
Nothing.
I let the magical image shift so that it took in the edges of Elspeth’s Knot. I might find some trace of him or his men there, more Moonsons.
There were no big horses that would be required to carry armored men, only the three Moonsons—the one I’d noticed with my magic, and the two I’d seen outside the green door—though there were likely more … along with Lord Purvis’s soldiers or guards. Maybe they were in the boardinghouse I had spotted. Maybe the horses were being kept at a nearby farm I hadn’t scryed upon.
It didn’t matter where they were. There were few men to keep me from Nanoo Gafna.
The fingers of both of my hands dropped to the handles of my knives. I would free her, then I would see to my bloodoath.
I would see it fulfilled soon.
One of the Moonsons would tell me where Purvis was. I would explain that I was once a docent of Bastien and that honor demanded I face Lord Purvis. He would understand.
“My sister Gafna has not worsened,” Shellaya said. She made her clucking sound and distracted me. The image of the city vanished from the river.
“Shellaya, we are in sight of the village from right here. Anyone coming to the river or stepping to the end of the street can see us.”
“Two women sitting by the river are of no concern to anyone. If the curious come to visit us, a no-see will keep us out of trouble.”
Like a no-see kept Alysen safe when everyone died around her.
I could not see Shellaya’s face, shadowed by the hood, but I was certain her eyes were fixed on mine.
“I don’t understand you,” I confessed, breaking an uneasy silence that had settled between us. “I don’t understand why…” I wanted to say “I don’t understand why you sit here so calmly when Gafna is so near, why you want to wait while she suffers.” But I stopped myself and recalled her visage when it had been free of the hood. Shellaya was a very old woman and a Nanoo, not a choice combination for a rescue mission in the heart of a village in full sun.
“I will retrieve Nanoo Gafna. I will reason with the Moonsons and bring her out of Elspeth’s Knot without bloodshed. I know the Moonsons, and they will listen to me. They are honorable men. I need you to stay with the horses. Please.” But would they listen? And how honorable were these Moonsons if they rode with Lord Purvis? If Alysen’s words were true, the Moonsons, perhaps these very Moonsons, were at the Village Nar when everyone died.
“I tell you again, Eri, we will wait. The darkness is a better time.”
I wanted Gafna out of there now.
I shook my head. “Now,” I told Shellaya. “I’ll not wait for darkness and attempt something skulky. I’ll not let Gafna stay in that man’s hole.”
“Headstrong.” The word was a whisper breathed out from beneath the hood. Slightly louder: “Impetuous. More like a Moonson than a Nanoo, you are.”
“I was a docent of Bastien,” I said. Then I pointed to the horses and to her. “Crust and Spring Mist are in your care.” I let out a long breath, turned, and headed down the nearest spoke-street toward the lodge house.
The street was hard-packed earth, but I kicked up a layer of dust as I went. I felt large pebbles press against my soles. There was a street like this in Nar, and it had felt more comfortable beneath my feet.
“Take care, Eri.” I heard Gafna’s words as a whisper against my ear.
“The Moonsons will be reasonable. They should not hold Nanoo Gafna. And if this is all some horrid trap, I will spring it now.”
20
Moonsons certainly should not be guarding a battered woman—there was no gallantry in that. There was no honor, only shame. Bastien would not have taken such an assignment, I knew. Bastien stood as the epitome of a Moonson, and he had taught me about chivalry and bravery and what is right and good in the world.
Those lessons ended this past winter with Bastien’s death.
They had begun a little more than a decade ago in the Village Nar.
I remembered that first lesson as if it had happened only minutes past. The recollection loomed that precise and rushed at me unbidden now.
* * *
The sword felt so heavy in my grip that my wrist and arm ached and my fingers tingled with an uncomfortable numbness. I bit down hard on my bottom lip, tasting blood and somehow finding strength in that little painful gesture. It took all of my effort to keep the sword pommel at waist level, and the blade pointed up and toward my adversary, just like Bastien had showed me.
I didn’t quite come up to Bastien’s shoulders, and I was so slight that first year of my lessons, having spent so much of my time weaving and reading and doing little strenuous activity.
I was in front of Bastien now, feet spread and shoulders back. I was here because I’d spied on him, curious about the man who’d saved the Emperor’s life at the risk of his own, the man at the center of so many wondrous tales that swept nightly around the Village Nar. I’d spied on him for more than a few days, in fact. I realized he’d known from the start that I watched him. And I wondered why it had taken so many days for him to confront me.
I suspected he had waited because in those first days he had also spied on me.
“Strength is not measured by the broadness of one’s chest, the size of one’s arms, or the muscles in them,” Bastien said. “A man twice your size and age, girl, might not have the strength to pick up that old, heavy blade of mine … and hold it for as long as needed in a fight.”
“Then what is it measured by, Bastien? Strength. What makes someone strong?” I bit down on my lip again, harder. I hoped the pain would take my mind off my aching arms and would help me keep a grip on the sword. I did not want to lower the blade in his presence.
Bastien drew his favorite sword, one presented to him by the Emperor in a royal ceremony he often talked about. The blade gleamed flawlessly in the morning sunlight—no nicks along its edges, as were numerous on the one in my hand … the one growing ever heavier. The pommel of his fine, fine sword was brass, shaped to look like the trunk of a tree, the crosspiece a twisting limb that thinned and split and drew back to form something like a basket hilt. A small bird’s nest sat in it, which you couldn’t see unless you were close. Tiny white sapphires were set in the weave as eggs. A most beautiful weapon! But from the first time I saw it, I felt conflicted. I marveled at its form and envied Bastien for having it, and yet I cursed the beautiful weapon. Why should something meant to deal death be so stunning?
“What is strength, girl? Where does it come from?” Bastien advanced, bringing the beautiful sword up. Somehow I managed to lift my weapon higher and parry his. “Strength is measured by the heart, Eri. But it is born in the mind. Muscles? They help. But without the mind and the heart, even the burliest man is a weakling.”
It was the first time he had called me anything other than “girl,” and the first time anyone had called me Eri. That was all he called me after that day. Lady Ewaren adopted the name, and Gafna used it occasionally.
“I don’t understand, sir, strength coming from my mind.”
And I truly didn’t understand. I wanted the muscles he spoke of, the ones so evident on him even beneath the sleeves of his jerkin.
He brought his fine, fancy sword up again, and again I parried it. My arms and shoulders and my back screamed in protest. Was I mad? A girl trying to become a warrior? Should I be wielding weaving needles rather than this old, pitted blade?
No! I wanted this, though for what reason I couldn’t have said that day.
This time I took a swing, clumsy, but I still managed to keep the sword in my sweaty grip. I used both hands on the pommel now. What scant muscles I had felt on fire, and the leather-wrapped pommel of the sword was a branding iron against my palms.
“You want to quit, Eri?”
I shook my head, my narrowed lips shouting my defiance. My breathing betrayed me, though,
Once more he swung against me, and once more I parried. Despite the weight of the sword and the agony that pulsed through my arms, the defensive act was slightly easier this time.
“I can do this,” I hissed through clenched teeth. I wanted to be more than a weaver of lace and yarn. But just what more I wanted, I didn’t yet know. “I’m strong, Bastien.”
When I spoke that—“I’m strong”—something changed in me. Maybe it was the wyse talent that I’d been developing that birthed the change. Or maybe Bastien’s words about the mind and the heart being a person’s true strength sank in. Whatever sparked my metamorphosis from girl to Bastien’s docent grew and grew that day.
And as it grew, the sword became lighter. I could hold it in one hand.
I felt something pulling together inside of me, like a storm collecting the pieces of itself on the horizon. A bracing chill traveled from my toes up my legs and settled in my chest. Then it moved down my arms and into my fingers. The cold was pure and wonderful, and I wrapped my mind tightly around the sensation, not wanting to lose it.
My vision narrowed, and I saw only Bastien and his fine, fancy sword, the thin blade shining mirror-bright. I saw only him, and yet I was aware of everything around me.
Absolutely everything.
I knew where the stables stood off to my right and where the horses grazed in the meadow.
I felt the shadows cast by the buildings of the Village Nar, even though none touched me.
I sensed Lady Ewaren watching us out the window of her dining hall, weaving set aside for the moment.
I realized Willum was watching, too, and his wife.
I smelled bread baking, the tops of the loaves brushed with butter. I smelled the earth that had been turned over in the garden.
I knew I should be hearing things—the horses making their satisfied wuffling sounds as they grazed, birds, the sound of a hoe breaking the earth—for I knew people gardened this morning. I should be hearing all the usual and wonderful sounds of this place.
But I heard only Bastien’s breath, and mine, and when I concentrated, I could also hear my heart. It beat slow and steady, and it became drum music my feet danced to.
My vision became more acute, as if I looked at Bastien through an alchemist’s enlarging lens. The small lines on his face were suddenly more sharply defined, the color of his eyes became more intense, and I swore I could see myself reflected in the pupils. The hue of his lips, the flush in his cheeks, the white of his knuckles showing between the tree limbs of the basket hilt—everything became more vivid.
I danced forward, forgetting that the sword was heavy and that my arm and shoulder and back burned as if on fire. I brought the old blade up, knocking aside his mirror-blade, and I caught the surprise that took over his expression. I could not match him of, course. My one slashing gesture awoke him, though, and he began to dance with me in earnest.
His swings and parries were more elegant and practiced than mine, and the blades striking each other filled my narrowed vision. It was all I could do to keep up with him.
But I did keep up.
Somehow I brought the sword up and down as I stepped in close, slashing and parrying. It became instinct. Certainly I’d watched Bastien practice, but I’d not before this day tried any swordplay myself—it was not for one of my sex and class.
Bastien spoke to me, though I didn’t hear the words. I still heard only our breath and my heart. His eyes sparkled, and I took that to mean he was pleased with me.
We continued to spar for what seemed like the thinnest amount of time, but what Bastien told me later was nearly an hour. I tried to copy his moves, succeeding only a few times.
But finding a measure of success!
Most of the time I concentrated only on bringing my sword up to meet his. Finally, when he continued to speak and I continued not to hear, he stepped back and lowered his weapon, signaling an end to this first lesson.
I replaced the old blade in the scabbard at my waist. And as I flexed my fingers, all the fire and aches came crashing at me like a violent wave.
The fingers of my right hand went numb and I shook my arm, trying to restore the feeling. I rolled my right shoulder, then reached up with my left hand to massage it.
“Sore now? It’ll be worse tomorrow, Eri,” Bastien said. “But I’ve some ointment that will help.”
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? Sore? Yes, I was certainly that. But soreness was the least of what I was feeling. Elation, astonishment, pride, and more emotions I was too excited to put names to—I was feeling all of those things. I wanted the chill to pass through me again, to feel strong and to think I could be something beyond a girl who wove lace in a small village.
The ointment helped, and in the passing of a handful of days I used all the ointment Bastien had. I didn’t stop the fighting lessons, though I had to fit them in between a myriad other tasks—working in the garden, helping clean Lady Ewaren’s manor, brushing the horses, and weaving sessions, too. But all my chores were handled quickly so I would have time to spend with Bastien.
And within a year the chores were shaved so I could spend more and more time with the former Moonson. I formally became his docent, Lady Ewaren encouraging me to learn skills such as hunting, which I’d previously thought were taught only to young men.
We continued to concentrate on the sword, but he also taught me how to use the chain, which I favored, and knives. I wasn’t noble-born, and so carrying a sword could get me in trouble. Laws throughout the kingdom specified who could carry what sorts of weapon. Knives were permissible to everyone. And there was no mention of the chain; few used it as a weapon.
So I did not carry the sword, save when I sparred with Bastien, and on a few occasions in the woods … once when there’d been tales of a fose-bear prowling.
* * *
A few years later Bastien announced that i was his best student—he told everyone in the village during a harvest-night festival.
Best student? I told him I was his only student in the Village Nar.
He laughed warmly and said he’d named docents before, in his younger years when he’d commanded a unit in the great southern city. All the young men, they could not match my fire, he said. And he said they could not match my skills.
I proudly took his word for it, as I’d not known his previous docents. Nor, for another year more, did I meet any other Moonsons.
* * *
I remembered clearly the day that nine Moonsons came to visit Bastien, right after the first spring planting.
Bastien and I had brought down four wild pigs the day before, one of them so large we had to make a second trip just for it. They were roasting over pits now, sending a tantalizing scent into the air and into every window in the Village Nar. The pigs would cook slowly, but would be ready by the evening meal—enough to feed the entire village and then some. Willum, Gerald, and Bertrum—Bertrum the Glum, they called him—took shifts turning the pigs and stoking the fires beneath them, catching the grease and setting it aside for later use.
The Moonsons arrived shortly before noon, eight of them in gleaming chain armor, one in plate, and all of them riding big, dark warhorses. They followed the proper protocols, seeking out Lady Ewaren and asking permission to stable their mounts and to join in the evening’s festivities. It was a good thing the one pig was so massive, I recalled telling Bastien, as men that burly must eat quite a lot.
They spent the afternoon with Bastien, in his barracks most of the time, but they wandered beyond the wall, and I followed them. Even away from the Village Nar they walked straight and with their shoulders squared, heads up and eyes alert. They took their helmets off when they sat on the large, flat stones beyond the cow pen and a row of apple trees.
They were all clean-shaven, their hair trimmed short. One of them had a small silver hoop i
Bastien stood in the center of them, and addressed them as if he still commanded Moonsons. But he didn’t have their straight posture, his wounds from saving the Emperor dropping his left shoulder a little and giving him a slight limp. His voice was strong and perfect, though, and it cut across the space between the gathered Moonsons and where I hid in the tall grass by the apple trees.
The Moonson with the earring spoke of a commander who had recently died of age and injuries and that a great ceremony would be held to honor him. They wanted Bastien to speak at it, but he declined.
“I am a Moonson no longer,” I remembered him saying. “In my heart, yes, but only there.” He told them he had a docent he would not leave, and going to such a ceremony would take him days and days away from the Village Nar. “I’ll not leave my charge at this stage in the training.”
“Bring him with you,” the Moonson with the earring returned. I later learned his name—Celerad t’Lurves. “Though coming from this village, he clearly is not noble-born and cannot join the order. Still, it might do him good to spend time with active Moonsons. Add to his education.”
“Her education,” Bastien said. “My docent is Wisteria of Nar, an impetuous girl whose skill with … knives and a chain is equal to mine. She’d not be welcomed at your Moonson burial ceremony.”
Celerad t’Lurves nodded his agreement and pressed Bastien for information about me. Neither he nor the Moonsons were particularly interested in me—they were more curious why Bastien would spend his time with a common girl.
Why Bastien would spend his time teaching anyone, for that matter.
He was retired from the Moonsons and living in a pleasant village. Why not spend the rest of his days gardening and hunting deer? Why not read those precious books the Emperor had given him? He finally had time for reading now.