Otherwise none of us would have lived. And you stopped the bandits." The violist grinned briefly. "Three times ought to merit some hospitality."
Anna shook her head.
Daffyd tied the mare and his packhorse to one of the two stone hitching posts, and Anna used the other.
"Young Daffyd." An angular and wiry man stepped out onto the narrow porch. "Your sister will be pleased to see you." He looked at Anna.
"Madell, this is the Lady Anna."
Madell bowed deeply, without looking Anna in the eye. "Lady. . ." He was barely taller than the sorceress. Despite the superficial respect, Anna distrusted Dalila's consort, mate, whatever he was. He reeked of trouble.
"Daffyd!" Dalila was pert, if stocky, and short, barely above Anna's shoulder, and very pregnant. And she bounced off the porch and hugged her brother.
A dark-eyed, dark-haired girl peered from the doorway.
Daffyd hugged his sister carefully, then disengaged himself. "Dalila, this is the Lady Anna.
She's a sorceress. Fortunately, for you, and especially for me, she's managed to save my life several times."
"Then we do indeed owe her. You've always needed a saving." Dalila turned to Anna. and her eyes twinkled, as she gave a head bow. "You are most welcome to what we have, lady. It isn't much, and certainly not fit for-"
"This is a palace," Anna said. "We've slept in the rocks, and before that in a tiny room with lots of people in a fort."
"But shouldn't you be paying your respects to Lord Hryding?" The small brunette held out a hand, and the girl scurried across the porch and grasped it. "This is Ruetha."
"I don't even know who Lord Hryding is," Anna admitted. She smiled at the girl. "Hello, Ruetha."
The three-year-old buried her face in her mother's trousers.
"Lady Anna is from the mist worlds," Daffyd explained, "and she hasn't been here very long."
"The mist worlds, fancy that," murmured Madell, openly disbelieving.
"I summoned her," Daffyd retorted. "Me and Jenny, anyway."
"Then she should surely see Lord Hryding," said Dalila, stroking Ruetha' s dark brown hair.
"She cannot do that now," said Madell. "I know it for a fact that Lord Hryding is on his way back from Sudwei and will not be in his hall for at least two more days."
"And how might you know that?" asked Daffyd.
"His saalmeister came to tell us that he would be bringing back Ranuan grain in his wagons for us to mill."
Anna frowned. Wasn't flour easier to transport than grain?
"You see," Madell expounded, "if we mix the hard winter grain of Synope with the soft grain of Ranuak, then the flour doesn't spoil as quickly."
"And it doesn't taste so bitter," added Dalila.
"Right now, I'd rather not deal with another lord," Anna admitted.
Dalila studied Anna for a moment, then smiled again, warmly. "I can be seeing that. Well.. .
you're welcome. You're certainly welcome. It must have been a hard trip."
Anna nodded. So did Daffyd, but not, she thought, for exactly the same reasons.
"There are bandits along the back roads, especially now, and you were carrying some fair- looking goods and horses. Did you see any?" asked Madell speculatively.
"One group," Anna said. "We managed to leave them behind."
Daffyd swallowed slightly and started to open his mouth. Anna looked at him, and he closed it.
The less Madell knew about her abilities, the better.
"There are matters you're not talking about, but those are yours." Dalila smiled.
"There's a lot we're not talking about," Anna admitted. Including the coins and the weapons in our packs. "We were in the middle of a battle with the dark ones..."
"Aye, and the words come to Synope even." Dalila turned to her brother. "The Prophet of Neserea has sent his forces to Falcor, and he is now traveling after them. Sasia was saying so at Yunl's this morning."
"That's all Defalk needs," snapped Madell. "Another ruler to bleed us all dry."
"Do you think Lord Barjim was that type?" asked Anna. "He was better than most," grudged Madell, "and look what happened to him."
"There is that," Anna agreed.
"Well. . . we're talking, and your legs are most likely to be falling off, and you'd need to rub down your mounts and wash up, and then we'd be pleased to eat." Dalila offered another warm smile.
"Thank you," Anna said. "I do appreciate it."
"You can have the one spare room. Reneil, she had it, but it's been two years now, and I'd be guessing she'll not be back. Afore long, it'll be Ruetha's, not that it's large."
"Are you sure?" asked Anna.
"After saving Daffy's miserable neck, you deserve that and more." The pert brunette gestured.
"You be doing what you need, and I be getting back to the cooking."
Madell followed them out to the shed-stable. "Best four are the stalls in the middle. Good mounts you got there"
"Lord Brill's finest," Daffyd said ironically as he began to unsaddle the mare. "It was.. ." He broke off. "I'll tell you all at dinner."
Anna swallowed. Of course. There were no telephones. No one knew that Daffyd's and Dalila's father had died. She went to work on Farinelli, more slowly.
"Fine beast there," observed Madell from the stall wall. "He was a raider horse, I was told. He likes women, but not men."
Farmnelli punctuated her words with a whuffling snort.
After she had him settled, she started on the pack mare, thinner and less well fed than the gelding.
"Most people wouldn't travel just in a pair these days," said Madell, eyeing her from the back of the mare's stall.
"We didn't have much choice or much time to pick up traveling companions with all the Ebran soldiers pouring through the Sand Pass." She was sweating in the close confines of the stall, and had to wipe the salty dampness out of the corners of her eyes.
Somehow, despite her tiredness, the saddle was easier to handle. Even the heavy saddlebags seemed lighter. Was she getting back into some semblance of shape? When she was finished with the horses, she lifted the saddlebags, putting a pair over each shoulder and struggling along with the last set in her arms, following Daffyd back to the house.
"Strong woman, you are," said Madell.
"I do what I have to." Anna liked the man less and less, but, again, she wasn't exactly in a position to be choosy. She had the feeling that if she went to the local inn, as a single woman alone, things would be even worse. Damn! Why were there so many like Madell?
"Here." Madell gestured to the door to the small room.
"Thank you." Anna stepped inside and lowered the saddlebags to the floor beside the narrow pallet bed. The single window was shuttered.
"I'll be leaving you to wash up." The wiry man smiled: Anna nodded.
As the door closed, she laid the hat on the peg nearest the door and walked to the narrow dresser where the washing bowl and the pitcher stood. On the wall over the dresser was a mirror.
Anna wasn't sure whether she should even look, given the way she st ill felt, and the way so many of the people in Synope had looked at her.
Finally, she stepped up to the mirror.
A stranger looked back at her-a stranger with blonde hair, not dyed with streaks of white and auburn showing, but silvery blonde all the way to the roots; a stranger with firm cheeks and a chin without any signs of aging; a stranger with no wrinkles, either in the forehead or around her eyes. A stranger with a thinner face than she remembered ever having.
The stranger looked sunburned, exhausted, and filthy, but the stranger was young, probably in her mid-to-late twenties. Anna shook her head, and the stranger shook hers.
"No. . . no. . ." Yes.... You've paid for it.... But had she, really? Really?
She put her head in her hands.
44.
Anna tried to half lift, half shrug the damp shirt away from her sweaty body without being too obvious, then slipped into the end seat on the bench beside Daffyd. Ma-dell sat at the single chair, at the head of the table and to Anna's right. Dalila sat across from Anna, with Ruetha by her side and across from Daffyd.
The sorceress smiled at the dark-haired little girl, but Ruetha leaned over and hid her head behind her mother's arm.
A tantalizing aroma of spices and hot meat circled up and out from the large earthenware crock in the middle of the trestle table, but everyone sat quietly.
Anna waited. Something was going to happen.
"In the name of harmony, let this food pass our lips." Madell nodded as he finished, and Dalila offered the basket that held a warm loaf of dark bread to Anna.
"Thank you." Anna broke off the end chunk and then offered the bread to Daffyd. She still felt hot, even without wearing the overtunic.
Madell frowned ever so slightly, but smiled when Anna tumed and presented him with the basket.
"There's the cider in the pitcher, Lady Anna," said Madell, a slight emphasis on the word ''lady.''
Anna half filled her earthenware mug, then sipped the slightly fizzy amber liquid. It was cider, relatively hard cider. "Good."
Dalila smiled, then added, "And the stew in the big crock is my special."
"It is good," Daffyd added.
Madell ladled out some for Anna, Dalila, and Daffyd, before filling his own crockery platter.
"There was something you were to tell us," prompted Dalila. "I do not think it was good, but I would hear it."
"It's about Da," Daffyd began slowly. "The gray mare was his, a gift from Lord Brill."
"He's dead." Dalila nodded to herself. "He's dead." Anna glanced from Dalila to Daffyd.
They might have been talking about two different men, from their reactions.
"Yes, he's dead," choked the young player. "Is that all ye have to say? He's dead. Is that all?"
"Daffyd... I know you loved Da. . ." Dalila spread her hands, then put her arm around her daughter. "Be gentle. Ruetha would not understand."
Daffyd shook his head. "I thought you would be sad."
Dalila handed a small piece of bread to Ruetha, who began to eat.
Madell wore a cynical smile, and helped himself to another chunk of bread, then some of the stew.
Anna took a small mouthful of the steaming stew, using the carved wooden spoon by her plate. The stew was more peppery than she would have liked, and there was a trace, but only a trace, of something like cilantro, not enough to spoil it for her. She took another mouthful, then stopped.
"I am sad. I am sad for you, Daffyd. Da was good to you." Dalila took a swallow of cider.
"I never understood," Daffyd said. "You said it was better when Mother. . . and you left as soon as you could but.., you never said."
"No. Mother asked me not to before she. . . left."
"Some family stories are best left untold, are they not, lady?" said Madell in a quiet voice, leaning his sandy haired head toward Anna "Sometimes. Sometimes not." Anna edged ever so slightly along the bench toward Daffyd.
"Da was good to me," Daffyd said.
"He was, and it's best left that way. None of us be changing the past, now," Dalila said.
firmly. Then she offered a soft smile and, with her free hand, reached across the table and touched Daffyd' s wrist. "You be remembering him as he was to you. No one can take that."
The emotional undercurrents tugged at Anna, and she finally looked back at Ruetha. This time, the girl didn't hide, but looked solemnly back at the sorceress.