1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (48 page)

 "Oh, no, friend Cormo," Idalia interrupted, smiling wolfishly. "I'm quite willing to pay my part of the price. My part is to inform the elders of your village personally, and believe me, I'm more than happy to pay it."

 "In fact," Kellen added virtuously, "I'll help you, Idalia. I've never seen the Centaur village. I'd like to."

 "You'll love it," Idalia said, turning to him with a smile. "We can get a good hot meal and a proper bath there. I'll get some things I'd been saving to trade and then we can be on our way."

 THEY reached the gates of Merryvale about an hour before sunset, but for almost an hour before that they'd been walking through the groves and fields that belonged to it.

 Harvest was still a few sennights away, and the orchards and fields were filled with ripening crops and the villagers who were tending to them. Young children, both Centaur and human, stood out among the trees and in the fields armed with tall straw-brooms to scare away birds. They waved excitedly when they saw Idalia, and Idalia waved back. Some of them, released from their duties by their elders, ran on ahead to inform the village of the approach of the visitors.

 Kellen stared at the neat orderly fields in wonder as they passed. Each field was edged in low stone fences topped with split rails. It seemed like a lot of extra work to him, but Idalia told him that the stones came out of the plowed field itself—a new crop each spring—and were stacked along the boundaries to save the farmers the work of carrying them farther away. The rail fences helped to keep the sheep and cattle out of the crops as well.

 As they came closer to the village, he saw other buildings, which Idalia also identified in answer to his incessant questions—sheepfolds and cow-byres, dairies, communal barns for hay and grain, a shearing-barn. Most were, like Idalia's cottage, made of logs or rough-hewn planks, and thatched with straw. Old roofs were a silvery grey, new ones the color of pale gold. Gold patches marked the spots where roofs had been mended, and he actually saw a thatching crew at work on one of the dairies, packing in the straw bundles and cutting them with their curved thatching knives.

 "And on the other side of the town, up along the river a way, is the cider-house and the mill, and the blacksmith's! So many questions, little brother! Don't tell me you've always nourished a secret desire to become a farmer!" she finally said, caught between irritation and amusement.

 "It's not that," Kellen protested sheepishly. "It's just that… I've never seen anyplace like this."

 Though Kellen knew of the lowland farming villages that had supplied Armethalieh with food, he'd never seen anything other than the illustrations in books of wondertales, so Merryvale was as strange and alien a world to him as the Wildwood itself had been. No one possessed thatched roofs in the City, and there were very few wooden buildings. Armethalieh was a city of stone. "And humans and Centaurs live here? Together?"

 Another thing he'd been told—it was one of the central teachings of the Temple of the Light—was that humans and the creatures he'd learned to call Otherfolk (instead of Lesser Races) could not possibly live together in peace because of the utter incompatibility of their natures.

 "Yes, yes, and yes," Idalia said. "And we'll be there soon—look, there's the gate, just ahead. And dozens of people, all of whom will be delighted to answer all your questions."

 She pointed up the road, and Kellen could see the palisades of the village ahead. Idalia had told him that the Centaurs were famed for their wood-carving skills, and the walls of Merryvale were certainly proof of that, for certainly only master craftsmen would waste their skills decorating the walls of a village.

 The walls and gates of Merryvale gleamed as smooth and polished as fine cabinetry. At this distance, they looked as if they had been carved from the trunk of one great tree, weathered by time and the passage of the seasons to a soft mossy grey-green. The entire surface had been made smooth and even, the logs planed smooth and fitted together in just the way Kellen was planning to fit the logs for the addition to the cabin floor, and then a design had been carved into the resulting smooth surface. As they got closer, Kellen could see that it was a depiction of a harvest festival, with flower-garlanded Centaurs and humans carrying baskets of fruit, bushels of wheat, barrels of drink, and the carcasses of deer, pheasants, and rabbits to a communal feast.

 "Oh," Kellen said softly, enchanted. "That's—amazing." He wasn't just talking about the artistic quality of the carving. There it was, depicted for all to see—Centaurs and humans living together, happily and at peace. And while he'd realized that everything the Temple taught was carefully designed to serve the ends of the Council and the City, and so probably wasn't actually true, it was one thing to know that in theory, and another to see the proof right in front of you. Idalia grinned and poked him in the ribs with an elbow.

 "Thought that would shut you up."

 The gates—wide enough for two large carts to pass through them side by side—stood open, and Kellen could see no guards or soldiers anywhere.

 "Isn't anybody going to stop us?" he asked when they reached them.

 "Why?" Idalia said blankly. Then her gaze filled with understanding and compassion. "Kellen, this may be a city—well, as close to one as the Wildwood gets—but it is not like the City. Nobody's going to ask for your name and family here, demand your address, or make you show your citizen-token. They don't even have a City Guard. People come and go as they please—except you, Cormo," she added abruptly, reaching out to put a hand on the Centaur's arm. "I think it would be better if you stuck around until we saw Haneida and the Council, don't you?"

 "I… of course, Idalia. Happy to," Cormo said with ill-concealed gracelessness. The three of them walked together through the open gates.

 There they paused for a moment. They were standing in what Kellen guessed must be—from his limited reading of the pastoral romances that had been popular in Armethalieh—the market square. On three sides of the square were rows of neat one- and two-story whitewashed thatched-roof cottages, and here in the center of the square was a well, with a windlass and bucket, surrounded by a curved stone trough with a rim wide enough to sit on. All around them, people were going about their everyday tasks—or so Kellen supposed, as it was all new and unfamiliar to him. Everything he could see was built wide enough and high enough to accommodate Centaurs as well as humans, and Kellen wondered what he'd see if he looked inside some of the cottages. Stalls? Or beds?

 "Idalia!" a familiar voice squealed, off to the right. There was a thud of hooves on the packed earth of the square as they turned toward the source of the voice, and Merana pranced to a stop in front of Idalia. "Oh, you've come to visit! And you've brought Kellen!"

 The young Centauress curveted like a restive filly as she turned to gaze flirtatiously at Kellen, but now he was prepared for her and her ways, and was able to keep his composure a little better than he had at their first meeting. He just smiled, and made sure that he kept Idalia between him and the apprentice Healer.

 By now a crowd had started to gather around the visitors, humans and Centaurs greeting Idalia by name and darting curious—and none-too-friendly—looks at Cormo. Evidently Cormo was not nearly as well thought of as he had boasted. Somehow, Kellen wasn't at all surprised.

 "Idalia." An old man in a long worn blue robe, its knees stained as if he'd been kneeling in his garden all day, made his way through the crowd. His hair was silvery white and very long, done in a braid that trailed down his back. A small neat beard adorned his weathered face, and there were lines formed by laughter and smiling around his eyes. He was leaning on a long staff, its wood polished with years of use, and he gently moved Merana out of the way with a hand on her withers as if he was well used to her ebullient nature.

 "We are both delighted to see you, child—and in such company." He raised his eyebrows, looking over Idalia's shoulder at Cormo. The Centaur male looked very much as if he wished to slink away, but didn't quite dare.

 "Master Eliron—just the person I was hoping to see," Idalia said. "You are still on the Council, aren't you?"

 So this was Merana's Master? Kellen had made the assumption—obviously a mistaken one—that the old Healer must be another Centaur.

 "Nothing short of death will make them accept my resignation, so they tell me," the old healer said with a gentle smile. "But surely you cannot have need of my services in either of my capacities, not with a Wildmage of your own to call upon?" he added, nodding toward Kellen.

 "Nothing like that," Idalia assured him. "But I healed Cormo today, and I have a price to pay as my part of the healing. Tell me, is Haneida here, by any chance?"

 Eliron looked surprised by the question. "Why, yes. She came to see me this afternoon, and I persuaded her to accept my hospitality for the evening. As I hope you and your brother will as well. It's too long a walk back to that cabin of yours to make tonight."

 "We were hoping someone would tender us an invitation to stay," Idalia confessed cheerfully. "And you set a fine table, Master Eliron. Could someone fetch her, if it wouldn't be too much trouble"—she held out a minatory hand to Cormo, who looked as if he was going to bolt—"not you, Cormo!—then I can pay my price and spend the rest of the evening in amusing myself. Kellen is eager to see your village."

 "As we are to show it to him," Master Eliron assured her gracefully.

 "I'll go," Merana offered quickly.

 She half reared and pivoted neatly in place on her hind legs, then moved nimbly off through the crowd, which was already buzzing with expectancy at the prospect of great revelations in store. Several others at the edges of the crowd also faded off to spread the word that something terribly interesting was about to happen, and as word spread, the crowd grew, until Kellen was sure that everyone in all of Merryvale was crowded into the market square. As he looked around, he could see people crowded at the open windows of the cottages that had upper stories as well, leaning out of the windows and looking down into the square. If Cormo had wanted to keep the terms of his price a secret, there was no way he was going to be able to do it now.

 Which was probably exactly as Idalia had planned, the clever thing.

 A few minutes later Merana returned, walking slowly and carefully. Seated on her back was an old woman whom Kellen guessed must be Haneida. She sat very straight and held her walking staff across her lap. The crowd parted to let them through, and when they reached Eliron and Idalia, Merana knelt gracefully to let Haneida dismount. The old lady looked around the square, her blue eyes bright and sharp.

 Kellen thought she looked amused. He also had the distinct impression that she was not going to be much surprised when she heard Cormo's price.

 "Well. All this fuss can't be for one old lady, now can it? Or is it that young Cormo has been up to more mischief than usual?"

 "He'll be up to less in the future," Idalia said, stepping forward. "This afternoon I healed him with the Wild Magic, and Cormo accepted half the price. His price was this: that for a year and a day, he is to help you haul your cart to and from the market, Haneida."

 There was a moment of silence, and then the market square exploded with laughter. Cormo growled low in his throat, flushing dark with embarrassment. He stamped his hooves fretfully, hating to be the butt of the joke, but did nothing else. Kellen guessed there was nothing he could do aside from stand there and take it. For all that Idalia said that Merryvale didn't have guards the way Armethalieh did, he guessed the village must have some way to keep the peace, and a lot of the folks in the crowd, human and Centaur both, looked big and strong enough to make even Cormo think twice about any bullyragging he might want to get up to.

 Haneida laughed until she doubled over, clutching at her staff for support. "Oh, my!" she gasped, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. "Cormo doing honest work for once! It was worth living this long to see that!" She hobbled stiffly over to the Centaur and stared up at him. "Who knows, young man? Perhaps you will grow to like it. And you'll find it a sight easier to be given a honey-loaf warm from the oven than to skulk around my window trying to steal them from the cooling racks!"

 Cormo stared down at her, his face blank with surprise. "You'll pay me?" he said in shock.

 Haneida reached up with her staff and rapped him smartly on the shoulder. "Pay? Who said anything about paying you, my young scallywag? You've been paid, in the coin of healing. But when a friend does me a kindness, I do a friend a kindness in return. Besides, it's hungry work, making that long trip from my cottage down to the market and back, and I don't intend to see you go hungry for it. Now. I'll see you in three days, at sunrise, at my front door. Don't be late. And be clean!"

 "Yes, ma'am," Cormo said, as meekly as Kellen had ever heard him speak. Haneida turned away and regarded the crowd. "I suppose none of you have homes and dinners of your own to go to?" she said tartly. Waving away all offers of assistance, she began to make her way slowly back the way she had come.

 The crowd, sensing that the show was over, began to slowly break up and disperse. Cormo, too—at a nod from Idalia—took the opportunity to make his escape, though as he edged his way through the crowd and out through the Merryvale gates, he kept darting bemused looks over his shoulder at the retreating figure of Haneida, until her slight stooped figure was lost in the crowd.