Abruptly, Aloê realized that she was tense, angry and bored. But something was about to happen, or had been about to happen. In deference to that she felt she could not move. She could not be the one to spoil things, to make things impossible. But things were already impossible. When a knock came at the door she rolled off the window ledge and moved readily toward the door.
But suddenly Naevros reached out and touched her arm, restraining her for a moment. “Meet me in the entryway after supper,” he said. “We will talk.”
She nodded, a little disturbed by the explicitness of the request. She went to answer the door. A housekeeper was standing in the corridor outside; he had come to tell them that supper was ready.
The vocate Jordel was almost a parody of the typical Westholder. He was improbably tall, lightly built, and his hair was a tangled mop of fair brown curls. He moved with a wiry comic grace and he was always in motion. And: he talked.
His brother Baran was almost as tall, but very different. His light brown hair was close-cropped, and he was of a heavier build and a quieter demeanor than Jordel. He moved slowly when he moved, but “strong as Baran” was already a proverb in the village where he had grown up. Jordel, in his opinion, never had grown up.
“Stop bleeding on me,” he growled as Jordel’s bandaged hand swung out in a grand sweeping gesture. Jordel took no more notice of his brother’s modest exaggeration than a river does of the occasional raindrop.
“So I leapt through the screen of branches,” cried Jordel, his every limb starting at the word leapt. “On the other side, what should I—”
“You should—” Baran tried to interrupt.
“—should I see but Illion wrestling with a snarling bloodcat—”
“Mountain cat,” Illion observed.
“—(a mewling mounting cat, then) to the ground with the horse in question rearing and screaming over both their heads!”
“What was the question?” Thea asked.
“Thinking quickly, actually not thinking at all if you can believe it of me, I handsprung over the friendly pair (yon cat and Mount Illion there) and snatched the horse by one ear. I shouted . . . but I won’t mention it here, you get the idea, and so did he. I braced him as he staggered in a quarter circle on his hind feet, letting his feet fall—”
“Feet? And feet again?” cried Thea. “What sort of monster was this? Did it wear shoes or sandals, now?”
“—letting its front feet fall to the ground when he was facing away from Illion and his catamite. Then I whacked him on the rump and told him the way to the safe path.
”Then I heard this scream, and the next thing I knew I was halfway up an oak tree and fighting to get higher. I heard something rustling in the foliage near me and, assuming it to be Illion, said, ‘Was that the cat? What did you do to it?’
“Away down below me I hear Illion’s voice say, ‘No, it was me. Been experimenting with some of the Silent Words.’ At about this time, the leaves part like a curtain, and the cat, with whom I am sharing the tree, says—” and Jordel threw back his head and roared, in inaccurate but spirited mimicry of a mountain cat. “I snatched my left hand from the branch just after the cat’s claws had landed atop it. My hand I mean. It amounts to the same thing, hand or branch, and—Thea must you make those faces? To make matters worse, my other hand was holding air at the moment and my feet were swinging free—”
“As usual,” Baran muttered.
“—but I caught a branch with my legs before I had fallen too far. Then I heard Illion squeak, ‘There’s a few more horses in the wood, Jordel, I—I’m just sure of it. You take care of that monster and I’ll go find them!’ And then the victor of Kaen runs like a rabbit for home!”
Baran grunted. “With the horse out of danger and you hanging upside down in front of a cat in heat, everything had obviously returned to normal.”
“Normal—” Jordel began.
“The word seems inapt, I grant you,” agreed Thea. “Now Baran, admit Jordel is not normal.”
“Normal—” Jordel repeated, then paused.
“We seem to have run aground,” said Illion. “But here are Naevros and Aloê to give us a tow.”
Those Guardians had indeed entered the room, just as Jordel had last begun to speak.
“Have you noticed,” Thea said to