with a lulling in it. And she spoke with the Uplands accent, like Chamry Bern.
Melle clutched my hand more strongly and nodded.
I came forward with her, tentatively. The woman smiled at us and said, "I'm Gry."
"This is Melle. I'm Gavir."
"Melle! That is a lovely name. Shetar, please greet Melle properly."
The lion got up quite promptly, and facing us, made a deep bow—that is, she stretched out her forelegs the way cats do, with her chin on her paws. Then she stood up and looked meaningfully at Gry, who took something out of her pocket and popped it in the lion's mouth. "Good lion," she said.
Very soon Melle was petting the lion's broad head and neck. Gry talked with her in an easy, reassuring way, answering her questions about Shetar. A halflion, she said it was. Half was quite enough, I thought.
Looking up at me, Gry asked, "Did you come to see Orrec?"
"Yes. The—the lady said to wait."
And just then Memer Galva came back into the hall. "He says to come up to his study," she said. "I'll show you up if you like."
Gry said, "Maybe Melle would like to stay with Shetar and us for a while."
"Oh yes please," Melle said, and looked at me to see if it was all right.
"Yes please," I echoed. My heart was beating so hard I couldn't think. I followed the pale flame of Memer's hair up a narrow staircase and into a hall.
As she opened the door I knew where I was. I know it, I remember it. I have been here many times, the dark room, the book-littered table under a tall window, the lamp. I know the face that turns to me, alert, sorrowful, unguarded, I know his voice as he speaks my name—
I could not say anything. I stood like a block of stone. He gazed at me intently. "What is it?" he asked, low-voiced.
I managed to say I was sorry, and he got me to sit down, and clearing some books off another chair, sat down facing me. "So?"
I was clutching the packet. I unwrapped it, fumbling at the tightly sealed reedcloth, and held his book out to him. "When I was a slave I was forbidden to read your work. But I was given this book by a fellow slave. When I lost everything, I lost it, but again it was given me. It came with me across the river of death and the river of life. It was the sign to me of where my treasure is. It was my guide. So I—So I followed it to its maker. And seeing you, I knew I have seen you all my life—that I was to come here."
He took the little book and looked at its battered, water-swollen binding, turning it in his hands. He opened it gently. From the page it opened to, he read, "'Three things that, seeking increase, strengthen soul: love, learning, liberty.'" He gave a sigh. "I wasn't much older than you when I wrote that," he said, a little wryly. He looked up at me. He gave me back the book, saying, "You honor me, Gavir Aytana. You give me the gift only the reader can give the writer. Is there anything I can give you?"
He too spoke like Chamry Bern.
I sat dumb. My burst of eloquence was over, my tongue was tied.
"Well, we can talk about that presently," he said. He was concerned and gentle. "Tell me something about yourself. Where were you in slavery? Not in my part of the world, I know. Slaves in the Uplands have no more book learning than their masters do."
"In the House of Arca, in the city of Etra," I said. Tears sprang into my eyes as I said it.
"But your people came from the Marshes, I think?"
"My sister and I were taken by slavers..." And so he drew my story from me, a brief telling of it, but he kept me at it, asking questions and not letting me rush ahead. I said little about how Sallo died, for I could not burden a stranger with my heart's grief. When I got to my return to the forest, and how Melle and I met there, his eyes flashed. "Melle was my mother's name," he said. "And my daughter's." His voice dropped, saying that. He looked away. "And you have this child with you—so Memer said?"
"I couldn't leave her there," I said, feeling that her presence required apology.