The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,99
her in amazement. “Give them an arrogant look and stay silent. They will be in awe of you, and that is all that matters.” She turned and saw Kare picking up scraps of silver-colored hair. “What are you doing?”
The child combed her fingers along the floor, looked at the fireplace. The stones were cold. There would be no fires lit till summer was done. Kare laid the scraps of hair on the bare hearth and watched them silently. The room was filled with expectant tension. Her face grew more pale, drawn taut with her struggle.
Then she turned away, the tension gone, the room quiet again. “You do it,” she said. Andiene held her hands out toward the hearth, and a white flame sprang up on the bare stones. The hair twisted like snakes; the smell of burning filled the room.
“I see,” Lenane said. “Guarding against other kinds of magic than your own.”
Andiene nodded. “Kare, I thank you for your care of me.” The child came to her and she stroked the little one’s dark hair. Excitement grew in her. This child was unlessoned, but she had power, and the will and right to use it. She could be a key to the conquest of a kingdom.
Lenane’s mind seemed to have flickered back to simpler things already, as she looked down at herself. “It has been long since I have worn woven cloth.” Her gown was embroidered around neck and wrists with a vine that branched and bloomed unnaturally with a hundred different flowers. She spun around, and the skirt belled out.
“Is it minstrel garb?”
“Good enough for me. I play the lute, not the great harp that you must straddle like a horse. Shall we wait for a servant to lead us out?”
“No need,” Andiene said. “This keep was built to the same plan as the one where I was born. See, the stairs are here; the music is playing already.”
***
In the dungeons, the fires had not yet been put out. In the cellars of the earth, there was coolness enough for one last night of revelry. Brightly clothed minstrels played the dance tunes of the court, and the dancers paced solemnly up and down the corridors, palm to palm.
Ilbran descended the steps as though he were going to his death. Here were the cells, the passageways, the dark dungeons. All the torches in the world could not make these halls bright. Where have they put the rack, the fires, that these merrymakers will not see them?
He thought of the grizane, with the blood drying on his face, of Giter, rank with the smell of fear. He thought of the loud laughter of the guards, the cold gray eyes of the questioner.
Where have they hidden them?
Then he saw Andiene and went to her with not a backward glance to his companions. She stood alone, watching the dance, and smiling to herself. “Where is she?” he asked.
Andiene understood him instantly. “See, over there. She is playing with the children.”
He looked and saw Kare, in a robe of white, embroidered with bright flowers. He laughed for the wonder of it all. “Rare that she has seen another child! Or a doll. I should have made her a doll.”
Kare held the other child’s plaything like a great treasure. Around them was dancing and laughter, and bright clothes. Andiene was dressed in red silk, weighed down by the gold threads laid on it. Her eyes were huge and beautiful, the pupils wide and dark in the torchlight.
“What are you thinking of?”
He answered truly, though not fully, and not wisely. “That your gown would have bought, ten times over, the house where I was born and lived for all my life. And you, my lady?”
“That at last Lenane has found her lute,” she said lightly. “She plucked it from the wall, and I fear the rightful owner will never get it back.”
In the corner, Lenane bent over the fragile instrument and strummed it softly. She ran her fingers along the shining wood of its body as though she were caressing a living thing.
Then she glanced up and saw Ilbran, and hurried to meet him, her face alive with mischief. “You slighted me once; now is your chance to pay your debt!”
He glanced dubiously at the formal dance steps. “We did it differently. This is like a grasskit’s courting, one step forward and one step backward. It will never quicken your blood or breath.”