drops

" He gave Miriamele a last look compounded of annoyance and longing, then settled back against the shed door. Simon awoke in the early morning to discover Miriamele and the old man both up and chatting amiably. Simon thought that Heanwig looked even worse in daylight, his seamed features smudged with dirt, his clothes so tattered and soiled that even poverty could not excuse it. "You should come with us," Miriamele was saying. "You'll be safer than by yourself. At least join us until you're far away from the Fire Dancers." The old man shook his head doubtfully. "Those mad folk be most everywhere, these days." Simon sat up. His mouth was dry and his head hurt, as though he were the drunkard of the company. "What are you saying? You can't bring him with us." "I certainly can," said Miriamele. "You may accompany me, Simon, but you may not tell me where I can go or who I can bring along." Simon stared at her for a moment, sensing an argument that he had no hope of winning, no matter what he did. He was still weighing his next words when he was saved from the useless engagement by Heanwig. "Are you bound for Nabban?" the old man asked. "I never have seen those parts." "We're going to Falshire," Miriamele said. "Then on to Hasu Vale." Simon was just about to upbraid her for telling this complete stranger their travel plans—what had happened to the need for caution she had lectured him about?—when the old man made a gasping noise. Simon turned, angry already at the thought that the old tosspot was now going to be sick right in front of them, but was startled by the look of horror on Heanwig's mottled face. "Going to Hasu Vale!?" His voice rose. "What, be ye mad? That whole valley runs haunted." He scrambled a cubit toward the door, grasping fruitlessly for a handhold in the moldering straw beneath him, as though the two travelers had threatened to drag him to the hated place by force. "Sooner I'd crawl down into quarry with those Fire Dancers." "What do you mean, haunted?" Miriamele demanded. "We've heard that before. What does it mean?" The old man stared at her, eyes rolling to show the whites. "Haunted! Bad 'uns, bogies from out the lich-yard. Witches and suchlike!" Miriamele stared at him hard. After a year like the last one, she was not inclined to dismiss such talk as superstition. "We're going there," she said at last. "We have to. But you don't have to travel any farther than you want to." Heanwig got shakily to his feet. "Don't want to go west'ard. Heanwig'll stay here'bouts. There's folk in Stanshire as still have a morsel to spare, or a drop, even in bad times." He shook his head. "Don't go there, young mistress. You been kind." He looked pointedly at Simon to make it clear who had not been. The old sot, Simon thought grumpily. Who gave him the wine, anyway? Who didn't break his head when he could have? "Go south—you'll be happy there," Heanwig continued, almost pleading. "Stay out the Vale." "We must go," said Miriamele. "But we won't make you come." Heanwig had been sidling toward the door. Now he stopped with his hand already on the wood and ducked his head. "I thank you, young mistress. Aedon's Light be on you." He paused, at a loss for words. "Hope you come back again safe." "Thank you, too, Heanwig," Miriamele replied solemnly. Simon suppressed a groan of irritation, reminding himself that a knight did not make faces and noises like a scullion did—especially a knight who wished to stay on the good side of his lady.

And at least the old man apparently would not be traveling with them. That was an acceptable reward for a little forbearance. As they rode out of Stanshire into the countryside, the rain began to fall once more. At first it was little more than a flurry of drops, but by the time mid-morning came, it was falling in great sheets. The wind rose, carrying the rain toward them in cold, cascading slaps of water. "This is as bad as being on a ship in storm," Miriamele shouted. "At least on a ship you have oars," Simon called back. "We're going to need some soon." Miriamele laughed, pulling her hood down low over her eyes. Simon felt warmer just knowing he had amused her. He had been feeling a little ashamed of the way he had treated the old man; almost as soon as Heanwig had gone shuffling away down the lane, heading back toward the center of Stanshire, Simon had felt his bad temper evaporate. It was hard to say now what it was about the old man that had so perturbed him—he hadn't really done anything. They headed back toward the River Road along a succession of wagon-rutted lanes that now were little more than sluices of mud. The countryside began to look more wild. The farmlands around Stanshire, although mostly given over to weeds, still bore the mark of past human care in the fences and stone walls and an occasional cottage, but as the town and its outlying settlements fell away behind them, the wilderness reasserted itself. It was a peculiarly bleak place. The nearly endless winter had stripped all of the trees but the evergreens, and even the pines and firs seemed to have suffered unkind handling. Simon thought the strange, twisted shape of the trunks and branches resembled the writhing human bodies in the mural of The Day of Weighing-Out which stretched across the wall of the Hayholt's chapel. He had spent many a boring hour in church staring in fascination at the scenes of torment, marveling at the invention of the anonymous artist. But here in the real, cold, wet world, the gnarled shapes were mostly disheartening. Leafless oaks and elms and ash trees loomed against the sky, skeletal hands that clenched and unclenched as the wind bent them. With the sky bruised almost black by clouds and the rain flung slantwise across the muddied hillsides, it made a much drearier picture than even the decorations in the chapel. Simon and Miriamele rode on through the storm, mostly unspeaking. Simon was chagrined that the princess had not once mentioned, or even hinted at, their kiss of the night before. It was not a day conducive to flirtatious conversation, he knew, but she seemed to be pretending it had never even happened. Simon did not know what to do about this: several times he was on the verge of asking her, but he could not think of anything to say about it that would not sound stupid in the light of day. That kiss had been a bit like his arrival in Jao e-Tinukai'i, a moment in which he had stepped out of time.