Fellowship & Fairydust

The quiet, snow-covered courtyard looked like the most beautiful place Fia could ever remember as the gates shut behind them and the warm glow of the lights in the windows shone out, promising warmth and a meal. The barking of the dogs shook them all out of their near stupors.

Families quickly congregated together; mothers and fathers collecting their children, older brothers or sisters getting younger ones down off their horses. Then the men started as if to put the horses away, but several of Gilahdro’s servants insisted that everyone go inside… and most of them did. A few of the stubborn ones continued to the stables to help, and Ilido went, too.

Fia felt too cold and tired to dismount, and she knew that it had to be better in the barn. So she allowed her chestnut to follow the others and they passed under an arched door into a warmer place, which smelled of freshly fed hay and horses.

She wasn’t sure how many minutes she sat atop her red horse in the dark barn, lit indistinctly with a few covered lanterns. Amid the jostling crowd of cobs and horses and indiscernible shapes, she sat listening to the wind outside and the freshly disturbed silence within.

“Come down off of there, young one,” said one of the servants after many of the horses had been cleared away and she was easier to see.

With her senses dulled she leaned forward slowly and swung her leg over the chestnut’s back, letting herself slide till her feet hit the straw-covered floor. Someone steadied her, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

“You should be inside.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on.”

She didn’t protest. “Where’s Ilido?” she muttered tiredly.

“They’ve all been sent inside,”  he replied, without even knowing who in particular she was referring to.

They seemed to enter another part of the building; it smelled like the leather shop at Scelane, where the harnesses and bridles and saddles were made and cleaned and stored. There was no light, but her guide knew his way around well.

“There’s a passage straight to the house through here,” he said.

They went through several more areas and several more doors, and then stepped into a room that smelled like a coatroom. She could tell by the difference in the air temperature that they were now in the main house.

He opened a door into a hall. There was light coming from somewhere, not much, but her eyes had been seeing in the dark for a long time now, and could see just as easily by the faint, sourceless illumination.

“Just follow clear to the end and you’ll be warm in no time,” he told her.

She nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. Then the door shut behind her.

She shivered in the sudden warmth and started carefully down the hall, the cold in her bones making them feel like they were made of glass. Her muscles felt as weak as water. She drew in a deep breath in the gentle half-darkness, letting the warmth sink slowly into her marrow.

She saw Gilahdro cross the hall near the other end and step into a door he held half open, spilling warm light. After the silence of the woods and the snowfall, in the quiet of the house it was easy to hear.

“Come,” Gilahdro said, and then Fia realized he was speaking to Ilido.

She slowed to a stop and watched. Ilido stepped out of the door and they came her way down the hall. Two thirds of the way towards her Gilahdro opened another door and the two entered; she caught a glimpse of the wavering glow of a fire. The mere sight of firelight gave her strength. She took off her cloak and clumsily shook the snow off, put it over her arm, and then unthinkingly followed them into the room. She supposed she was just used to keeping together.

She stepped softly around the door and nearly ran into Gilahdro, who had his back towards her and was watching Ilido. Fia immediately glanced up at him, and then at what he was looking at: a figure propped up in the bed.

A low fire lit the room with reddish light and the man who leaned against the pile of pillows had a wan look to his lean, dark-bearded face. It was certain that he had thinned considerably during his battle with death, but she recognized the jaw, even if it was more pronounced than usual. This obviously was Ilido’s father, and, she realized, the beleaguered King Gregor that she had heard so much talk of, and figured so prominently on the thoughts of all at home and court.

He had slowly opened tired eyes at the sound of the door, and his stricken face trembled with the effort of a joyous smile as he saw his boy.

“My son!” he exclaimed in a whisper, and lifted a weak and trembling hand towards him. Ilido cried out with a low strangled sound, and leaped to kneel at his father’s bedside, catching the poor hand that had throughout his young life wielded so strong a sword. His fingers trembled with emotion as he touched his father’s brow, brushing back the straying hair, now shot with a few threads of silver.

“Father.” Ilido nearly choked. “I was so afraid… they said that…”

The man covered their clasped hands with his other one.

“I know, my lad. I know.” He smiled and it was tremulous but proud. “But there’s no more of that, for now.” He patted his son’s hand. “I’m going to get well, and then we’ll take our country back. Things will be better, we’ll be sure to make them better.”

Then Gilahdro took her by the shoulders and piloted her outside. “Where have you been? Why weren’t you with everyone else, and where did you come from now?” he demanded.

“The stables,” she said. “I was too cold to get off. Somebody brought me here.” She gestured vaguely at the hall. “I saw the fire.”

She closed her eyes, then slowly reopened them. She wasn’t at all afraid of Gilahdro anymore, she realized with sudden clarity. Even if he was a very frightening man, she couldn’t be afraid of him. He was too… dedicatedly good.

He was assessing her with a look on his face between an annoyed frown, and… pity?

She knitted her brows. But why?

“I have someone who can take charge of you,” he said with decision and seemed to tuck her under his arm as she moved with him down the hall.

“I’m so glad he’s all right,” she murmured. “Ilido was so worried. I was worried.” She stopped and peered up at him. “Is Enhousen his real name? I didn’t tell anybody. I just don’t think that it is; you wouldn’t be that risky. You would have given them a new name, and that’s why you recognized it. Enhousen… isn’t it? You had never seen him, but you’re the one who came up with the name…” She finished with a statement.

“Where on earth do you come up with these ideas?” His voice was interested and yet carefully curious, so she knew she was right.

“It may take me a while,” she said. “But it comes to me eventually.” Then she felt like getting some answers. “Did you know that King Hanor sent me to Calima’s?” she queried. “Wanted to get rid of me.” She laughed weakly and yawned. “Should have sent me home! Safer.”

“Calima mentioned it.”

She returned to her previous subject. “And you’ve been sending the pigeons to Olayin House, all along. It’s you that organizes the people coming over the mountain, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You’re very smart,” he said, his tone sounding tired. “Now you’re going to go to bed…As soon as somebody looks you over for frostbite.”

He opened a door and they stepped into a pool of warmth, so strong it seemed to melt her to the core.

“I’ve got a waif for you,” Gilahdro announced softly and Calima appeared out of an easy chair with its back towards them, where she had been watching the fire.

The warm, glorious fire, piled high with wood.

“Fia!” she exclaimed in a whisper, and enfolded the girl in an embrace. “Why child, you’re chilled to the bone! Look at you!”

Fia started to speak, but she hushed her.

“Quiet,” she said, and gestured to the sleeping form of Arethmay on the bed. “She’s had such a hard time, what with the travel and then with her husband now getting stronger, she worries about Ilido. She finally fell asleep, poor dear; hasn’t slept well since we left the House.”

“Ilido is with his father,” Gilahdro said. “When Arethmay wakes send her to them.”

“I am awake now,” Arethmay said suddenly, sitting up and pushing back the coverlet Calima had laid over her. “Fia, I’m so glad to see you.”

That was the comforting thing about Arethmay; with all her worries and troubles, you felt she had been worrying about you, as well.

She crossed to the door and kissed Fia on the cheek softly as she went by. Then Gilahdro shut the door behind the both of them.

“Now, dearie!” Calima hustled her charge into the easy chair. “Let’s have a look at those hands. Oh, very cold, very red, but not in danger. Off with your boots!”

Fia tugged them off with fumbling fingers as the jeweler poured a cup of tea.

“It’s a good thing you got here in time, Fia girl, or those people would have been in sore trouble.” Calima put the cup in her hand and she wrapped her fingers around its warmth.

Calima knelt to examine her apprentice’s feet, and then rubbed them vigorously.

“Will everyone be all right?” Fia asked, and was forced to add, “That does hurt, you know.”

“Of course I know it!” Calima replied briskly. “You think I’ve lived all my life in the mountains without getting my feet nearly frostbitten?” She increased her vigor, and replied to the other question. “Yes, I think so. There’ll be some bad colds, and perhaps some fevers, but nothing worse I think.”

“I’d really rather just let my feet warm up slowly, Calima.” Fia winced.

“Oh, just as well.” Calima got up from her knees and draped the socks over the chair’s arm. “They’re not in danger of frostbite, anyway. But you are very much in need of a cup of hot soup and a good rest.”

Fia was happy to agree, but would have skipped the soup and gone straight to the sleeping part.

“Drink it,” Calima dictated. “It will warm you up.”

Fia had let her cloak drop beside the chair and now she unwound the scarves from around her head. She let them fall onto her cloak, and added the one remaining mitten to the pile. Calima gathered them up and began to hang them about the room where they would dry.

“Where is your other mitten?” she asked.

“Some children needed it. I’ll get it back.” Fia gulped a mouthful of nearly scalding soup and grimaced involuntarily. “Don’t worry. I didn’t lose it.”

“And I would have thought Larna would have sent you with more scarves.” She twitched at the meager pile with deft fingers.

“She did,” the girl assured her. “She was wonderful at fixing me up with warm clothes for the trip.”

Calima glanced at the few scarves strewn over a chair and nodded to herself.

“M-hm!” she said decisively, and then said no more.

Fia finished the cup and set it on the side table.

“Calima?” she asked. “How did you come to be here, when you set out for Herlane?”

“Herlane has been a healing camp for some time, and it was decided that at least a portion of the wounded would be moved as soon as they were able.” She paused, trying to think of a way to explain around the importance of moving the king without explaining that he was a king. A tricky proposition; and Fia went ahead and helped her out.

“Because Ilido’s father is King Gregor, and anyone looking for the king might go to Herlane,” she said, and tucked her ice cold toes underneath her.

The older lady looked at her, not really surprised, not really curious, just sort of a mixture of the mildest forms of them both.

“I found it out while over the mountain,” Fia offered. “The folks that had gathered there were from their old manor and one of them accidentally mentioned it. It sort of surprised me, but I understand why it had to be a secret.”

Calima hooked the lone mitten over a poker handle to dry, and then sat down in the rocking chair opposite her charge before the hearth.

“Well,” she said sadly. “They’re a poor family with many troubles, and it’s sad to see them in such difficult positions. I hope all turns out right for them, in the end.”

It was the most disheartened speech Fia had ever heard her say.

“It doesn’t really matter to you if they’re royal or not, does it Calima?” she asked, a little amazed at the depth of the jeweler’s complete disregard for the titles and trappings that so many folk trip over so eagerly. “You’d do any of this for them no matter who they were.”

“I’d give good people all the help I could, even if they were beggars from Umbria,” Calima said, and took up the poker to tip a blackened log closer to the center of the fire.

“I work with jewels,” she said a few minutes later as she laid the poker in its resting place. “I know the only thing that gives them their value is the value people place on them. They’re beautiful things, and the perfection of their settings is a gift of creativity that few can claim craft to. But in the same way I hold a single russet leaf of an oak as designed by a true master, higher and wider than my little tricks could ever encompass. And that’s only a leaf. When I look at an oak budding in the springtime, or a rhododendron in all its flower, I know that what people tend to put store in is so small and petty that there’s no reason even considering it. There’s so much more to a man than a title, such as ‘king,’ it doesn’t hardly seem worth bothering to mention, when it comes right down to it.”

She rocked a little in her chair, her silvery hair glistening in the light from the fire where it wasn’t covered by her white nightcap.

“I’ve seen too much nonsense over rank and lands to be taken in by a high-sounding title. Take yourself, for instance. You would have naught but family to a fault-finding matchmaker, but you’ve got everything any friend could wish for: sharp eyes and hands, a quick mind, a truthful heart, and the good sense enough to know that it’s what you make of each day life gives you that really matters. I wouldn’t trade having you in my house for the mightiest princess from some ivory tower.”

She smiled over at her apprentice, in the quiet of the shadowy room, with her face lit by the flickering tongues on the hearth, looking like the personification of every wise mother in the world. “I’ve spoken to the folks you brought over. They had much to say about their young prince… and you. You did yourself well, Fia my dear. I’m proud of you.”

Fia sat curled up in the easy chair, the warmth of the soup and the hearth chasing the last of the chill from her bones, and a tear sprang to her eye at her teacher’s commendation. She realized those simple words from the master jeweler meant more to her than an entire proclamation issued by a king in her praise.

“Thank you,” she said.

And then for a moment they sat in the hearth glow and smiled tiredly at each other while it seemed that time stood still. But things said silently are rarely forgotten.

It was after Fia had blinked for the fortieth time that Calima started out of the rocking chair and insisted that she move to the bed and get her rest.

“Goodness, it’s late, and you’ll need your sleep!” she exclaimed as she arranged the pillow and straightened and folded back the blankets. “Here, into the bed with you now!”

Fia got to her feet, but hung back from following her teacher’s instructions. “Where will you sleep?” she asked.

“Oh, in the chair, probably,” she pronounced cheerfully.

Fia looked through her chipper demeanor and could see that she was almost as tired as her apprentice was. She shrewdly guessed that with the influx of the wounded from Herlane there had been a severe shortage of beds, and of healers, and Calima had probably been letting the first pass by and contributing greatly to the second.

“Where did the others find accommodations?” she asked.

“They’ve got bedding and are in the great room. It’s very warm there and they’ll sleep fine.”

“Then I’ll sleep fine there, too,” Fia decided. Calima made to protest, but the girl put her arm around her teacher and kissed her cheek with a knowing smile. “No, Calima. Take your own advice and get a good night’s sleep. I know you’ll be needing it tomorrow, too.”

Then she hurried to the door before Calima could change her mind, winking at the jeweler’s half-uncertain expression as she let herself out, closing the door softly behind her. She remembered then that she had left a good amount of clothing scattered about the room, but figured nothing would happen to it until morning; other than getting dry, that was.

She found her way to the great room by following the soft glow from the fireplaces, and it was very warm there as Calima had said. Beautifully, wonderfully warm.

Fia stopped a servant who was bringing in wood and asked where she could get a blanket. He set her up with two and pointed out an open spot that would accommodate her. Then he hurried out again, likely to his own night’s sleep.

Everyone had been given blankets and were now asleep on the floor. After the weary march and cold ground even a warm floor seemed like paradise. Here in the great room good fires burned warmly on the hearths and were thoroughly filling the air with the strong, embracing smell of pine and cedar.

As Fia lay down she noticed that it hadn’t taken very long for everyone to be sound asleep, and there was no one stirring at all now, except for her.

But as she snuggled against the warm wool and tried to sleep, a sudden strange disquiet came over her. The howl of the wind in the pines came back to her fiercely, and the memory of the haunting fear at the bottom of her stomach. The fear that they would not be able to outrun the storm was suddenly with her again. She lay with her eyes looking up into the darkness and could feel it all again as if she were still out there in the storm.

After a time she thought she heard a sound and rose up on her elbow.

The fire still glowed from the hearth, the pitch-black logs crackling as the darkened form of Gilahdro placed new wood atop them for the night. The nearly shapeless, humped forms spread around the room were revealed blackly in the faint red glow, and her own face must have been lit with it as Gilahdro turned.

“Go to sleep,” he said softly, and his voice was reassuring. “You will have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.”

Strangely enough, at the sound in his voice she noticed a deep feeling of comfortable warmth wrapping around her heart, as if it were her father or uncle that stood only yards away and told her to sleep, and to have no fear. As she again settled down into the blankets she wondered at it, and at herself, but didn’t bother to try to understand. She had been too cold and frightened inside for far too long, any warmth she found was quite welcome, whatever the source.

Her eyes blinked sleepily, the shapes of her companions only barely discernable in the near darkness, and her heart finally believed that all was safe and well.

She turned on her side and slipped quietly into slumber, and slept deeply, soundly through the night hours; beautifully unaware of the chill darkness, the cold howling wind, and the hungry snow that roamed the mountain through the long night.

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