Crown of Renewal(205)

When they reached the trees, the path led in among them to a glade near a tumble of rocks with puddles between them.

“It will take some little time for the stream to rise again,” Falk said. “All the springs hereabout are small.”

“Are they all rising?” Dorrin asked. “Just from one—”

Falk chuckled, folding himself down onto a rock and gesturing to her to sit on another. “Daughter, you do not know your own power even after what you have done. Do you remember what that was?”

She had not thought about it, she realized, since she found herself on the hillside. Now, as if through thinning mist, she regained a memory of herself … herself on a ship … in the water … on a barren sandy beach … walking somewhere through red and black rocks rising from the sand. A weight on her head, a box she must carry, no matter how tired she was. Smooth stones beneath her feet, forming a path. Figures in white robes, walking nearby, urging her on. Clearer and clearer … the heat, the dry mountains, the dry plain beyond, three white towers piercing a heat-hazed sky … and the great empty bowl of rock near it. Designs … water. Water and water and something … a dark shape …

He went on. “What you did, returning Aare’s water … that was more than well done. So you and I have been granted this space, this time, for your rest and recovery and for you to think how to live the rest of your life.”

“I did not expect to live,” Dorrin said. “Not when I went into the sea and not when the water rose around me. And not when the dragon showed me the fire.”

“I know,” Falk said. “I did not expect to live when I saw the look on that man’s face as my brothers walked out free. And yet—” He grinned at her. “I lived a long time after that, you know. And here I am, still meddling in the world’s affairs.”

“I … should go back,” she said.

“Back to Tsaia?” he asked. She nodded. “You have no oath to the king now,” he said. “He released you.”

“But my people—”

“Do not expect your return,” he said. “You told them so, if you do not remember. A desperate chance, you told them. Your heir, young Beclan … I am not sure he is mine, in the end. With all the turmoil in Tsaia, he may go to Gird … but either of us will be glad to claim him.”

“You … know Gird?”

Another chuckle. “In a way. Yes. The way the high gods chose. We do not walk together, exactly, but we know … I am sorry, Daughter, but this is not possible to make clear to you. Gird has taught me; I think I have taught him. Camwyn and Torre have given us both lessons we needed.”

“Torre … of the Necklace?”

“Yes, of course. Did you think she was legend only, while I once walked on earth? We are all people who once lived and also aspects of the gods’ will.”

Dorrin wanted to ask which gods but thought better of it.

“Even now,” Falk said, “I cannot comprehend the high gods. I know names—names used in this place and that, each people trimming the gods to their own measure, to their own understanding. Esea Sunlord and Barrandowea Lord of the Sea and Alyanya of the Flowers: those my father taught me when I was a child. But Adyan Namer, Sertig Maker, High Judge, First Singer … these are names for powers far beyond me.”

Dorrin thought of the night she had lain on sand in the desert, staring up at stars that seemed to recede—layer after layer of patterns, endless, beyond comprehension, into the darkness.

“Exactly so,” Falk said, once more recognizing her thought. “Is there but one power above all, or do they share equally? No one can be sure. What we can know is that we—you and I and all others who have walked the earth—are not the high gods. And yet we are more than grains of sand or drops of water.” He reached out and touched her knee with one finger. “As you have shown, Daughter.”

Dorrin said nothing. She heard water dripping now, saw rings spread across the surface of the puddle she’d been watching. Then, long before the drip could have filled it, the water’s surface lifted, overflowed its rock lip, and ran down into the next puddle. Upstream, more water sounds approached—the chuckle of water over rocks, the gurgle of water along a creek bank. Had she really started this?

“Will it do harm?” she finally said. “Bringing water in a dry season if it’s supposed to be dry?”

“No,” Falk said. “Once these springs ran in wet season and dry. Like your well, they were dried by a curse, and you have lifted that curse.” He looked around. “Are you hungry, Daughter?”