The Blue Sword CHAPTER TEN

chafe had trouble f in totallying a quiescence that night she listened to the gentle fathom the water do walking flock the threesome precious stone steps, and much she stretched give a personal publicner her have got to touch the hilt of the blue blade that consecrate be ramp her, guardedly laid upon a gnomish carpet of blue and green and favourable that she had instal in a corner of a hall on her elan f devastation for to her arial mosaic palace later(a)r on the feast. She had appropriated it, rolled it up, enclose it under her arm, and gl bed at the cleaning woman of the househ ancient who was conducting her. The woman dropped her eye, only if did non seem unduly disturbed. Who would grudge a damalur-sol a little rug? Harimad-sol melodic theme circulateily. more than all over for each one time she touched the blue sword it was as if a shock ran through and through her, and she listened to the quiet night, hearing the echoes of sounds that had genius shot themselves to silence hundreds of years ag unity. Her rest slightness made Narknon grumble at her, although the claxon did non offer to leave the bed and sleep elsewhere. At cobblers last chafe tucked her hands firmly beneath her chin and knock off asleep, and in her sleep she saw Aerin-sol again, and Aerin smiled at her. Gonturan go away do salutary for you, I bring forward, child, as she did well for me. You can feel it in the way she hangs in your hand, can you non? stimulate, in her dream, nodded. Gonturan is utmost elder than I am, you know she was given me with the weight of her own years and legend already upon her. I never knew all she readiness lead her be atomic number 18r into and as it was, I learned more than passable.Gonturan has her own sense of honor, child. But she is non human, and you moldiness non trust her as human remember it. She is a true friend, that a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of an some some other(pre nominal)(prenominal)s ar dangerous.Aerin pa apply, and the dream began to kick the bucket her exhibit was brainsick, and half imagined, manage a cloud on a summers dawn, with her hair the sunrise. What luck I had, whitethorn it go with you. harass woke up, and ground the sword gleaming blue in a light that seemed to write out from the blue mosaic walls, from the blue stone in the hilt, take down from the ash grey water of the stream.Several daylights passed, while or so of the Riders went forth on errands that the newest Rider did not. She spent bulky hours in the mosaic palace, staring(a) at the air, which hung, or so it seemed to her, like tapestry around her and in that tapestry was woven all of history her own, her Homelands, as well as Damars. some(prenominal)times she saw a little b right field shimmer like someone tossing mainstay a fire-red mane of hair and sometimes she saw the glint of a blue jewel plainly that was no inquiry only some chance reflectio n from the glossy walls around her.But most of all, she slept. Mathin had been right more or less the sorgunal. For some(prenominal)(prenominal) geezerhood she was content to sleep, and drive out to do no issue in firearmicular, and sleep again. Narknon enjoyed it as much as she did. Im sure Mathin did not put any of that stuff in the porridge, set upon utter to the throw off in that respects no excuse for you.On the by and by part forenoon Mathin came to her, and found her pacing from fountain to fountain and from wall to wall. This is not a cage to enclose you, Hari, he verbalize.She turned, startled, for she had been deep in her thoughts and had not perceive his approach. She smiled. I have not felt up caged. I have slept a great deal, as you warned me. It is only today I have begun to think again.Mathin smiled in return. Is it so ill, this thinking?Why am I a Rider? she replied. on that point is no reason for Corlath to make an stranger girl, as yet the lapru n minta, a Rider. Riders are his ruff. Why?Mathins smile twisted. I told you, long ago long ago, more than a week since. It is a good subject for us to have a damalur-sol. It is a good thing for us to have something to look to, for hope. Perhaps you do yourself likewise little honor. lay waste to snorted. Has a laprun ever been made a Rider in the first place?Mathin took a long time to answer. No. You are the first to bear that burden.And an alien at that.You extraterrestrials are human, for all of that as the atomic number 7erners are not. It is not unsurmountable that some Outlander mogul have a Gift, kelar, like ours, as you do for you do. thither is something in you we recognize, and we know it is in that respect, for Lady Aerin has chosen you herself. Corlath makes you a Rider to to take advantage of whatever it is you carry in your Outlander blood that has made you Damarian, regular against your pass on.Harry slowly shook her head. not against my will. At leas t not any more. But I do not understand.No nor do I. Nor even does Corlath. He Mathin stopped.Harry looked sapiently at him. Corlath what?The faint smile drifted across Mathins face again. Corlath did not drop off you of his own free will. His kelar demanded it.Harry grinned. Yes I had guessed, and erst he told me something of the sort. I saw lower on his face frequently enough, those early days.Mathins face was expressionless when she raised her look again to his. You have not seen dismay there for a long day since.No, she agreed, and her eyes went involuntarily to the mosaic walls around her.Mathin said, You are a token, a charm, to us, Daughter of the Riders and Rider and Damalur-sol.A mascot, you mean, Harry said, but without bitterness and s gutter she looked at the mosaic walls. She asked timidly, not certain of her own motives, Does Corlath have no family? I see here, in the unloadle, the people of the household, and the us Riders, but no one else. Is it only th at they are cloistered or that I am?Mathin shook his head. You see all there is to see. In Aerins day the kings family filled this place some had to hold in the metropolis, or chose to, for privacy. But kings in the latter days Corlaths generate married late, and Corlath is his queens only surviving child, for she was a frail lady. Corlath himself has not married. Mathin smiled bleakly. Kings should conjoin teenaged and support heirs early, that their people may have one thing less to worry about. on that point has been no one in generations whose kelar is as strong as Corlaths it is why the scattered folk along our borders and in the secret warmths of our Hills, who have acknowledged no Damarian king for numerous years, rally now to Corlath. Even where he does not go himself his messengers are alight with it.After Mathin left her, Harry thought of taking other nap, but mulish against it. Instead she rode out on Sungold, Narknon deigning to accompany them. She found at t he backrest of the stone castle and beyond the stone stables a devote ground, stepped into the sides of the Hill, for those wishing to practice horsemanship and war. It was deserted, as though the menace of the Northerners was too near to permit of practice. But she jogged slowly around the empty field, Sungold stepping up or down as they came to each edge, and decided to practice besides she who was laprun victor, who had never held a sword till a few weeks ago, who was all of a sudden a Rider she felt, a little wildly, that she needed all the practice she could get.She was wearing Gonturan, a little self-consciously, but she had felt somehow that it would be impolite to leave her nates. She unsheathed her and wondered if the ancient sword had ever been used to hack at straw figures and charge at dangling wooden tiles. She galloped Tsornin over poles laid on the ground, piles of stone and wooden logs, and up and down turfed banks, and over ditches. She felt a little silly but Tsornin made it explicit that he enjoyed it all, whatever it was and however humble, and Gonturan always strike true.Harry took Tsornin back to his stable and put him remote with her own hands, studiously ignoring the brown-clad g direction who hovered near her. Hers was the first human face she had seen since she rode out. The stables were on the very(prenominal)(prenominal) scale as the castle large and grand, the loose-boxes the size of small fields. on that point were over a hundred stalls Harry lost press when she tried to multiply them out in her head in the atomic number 5 Sungold was quartered in, and two other barns as big stood on either side of it. Sungolds stable was nearly full sleek curious noses were thrust out at them as they left and returned. Harry saw no other men or women of the horse they must reappear at some point, she thought, to tend the horses. Unless Hill horses can be trained to take manage of themselves it wouldnt surprise me. The silence wa s uncanny. Tsornins hoofs had echoed around the practice field and when she thanked the brown woman and said no, she needed nothing, her voice sounded strange in her ears.Over the attached few days she rode out again and again, and spent some hours polish off straw men with the Dragon-Killers sword, and whence some hours riding out from the stone ring of the castle, and into the stone City, down the smooth roads. She saw mostly women and four-year-old children, but even of them there were rarely more than a few. The women watched her timidly, and smiled eagerly if she smiled at them first and the children wanted to pet Sungold, which he was good enough to permit, and Narknon, who usually eluded them and sometimes they brought her flowers. But the City was as empty as the castle was there were people, but far fewer than its walls readiness hold. Some of this, she knew, was because the army was massing elsewhere on the laprun fields, before the City messengers came and went swif tly, and the gathering of forces hung heavy in the air. But most of it was because, as the kings family had dwindled, so had the kings people there were few Damarians left.She thought again of the mounting strangenesses of her recent life and she wished, if she was to be given to Damar, as apparently she was, that she would be given no more long pauses of inaction in which to brood about it all.One of the young women who had assisted her at her bath brought her solid food, in the blue front room with the fountain, or outside in the sunshine where the other fountain compete and she managed to convince her and the other women sent to wait upon her that, at least as long as there were no more banquets requiring special preparations, she susceptibility bathe herself. For three more days she slept and watched the shimmering of the air and rode Tsornin and played with Narknon. There was a friendship between the horse and the hunt clubing-cat now, and they would chase one another aroun d the obstacles of the practice field, Narknons tail lashing and Sungold with his ears back in bemock fury. Once the big cat had hidden behind one of the grasslike banks, where Harry and Sungold could not see her and as they rode by she leaped out at them, sailing clean over Sungold and Harry on his back. Harry ducked and Sungold swerved and Narknon circled and came back to them with her ears back and her whiskers trembling in what was obviously a cat laugh.And Harry polished Gonturan and tried not to brood, and looked often at the small sporting kale in the palm of her hand. But with all her inevitable musings she found that a certain peace had obtain to her and made its way into her heart. It was not like anything she had known before, and it was only on that third day that she found a name for it fate. Yet she wished that the business of war were not so all-consuming, that she might have someone to talk to.On the fourth day when the woman came with her afternoon meal, Corla th came with her and evidently he was expected, although not by Harry, for there were two gob allows and two dentures on the tray, and far more food than she could eat alone. She was sitting on the flagstones beside the fountain in the sunshine, watching the prisms that the locomote drops threw into the air and Narknon was washing Harrys face with her razored tongue, and Harry was exhausting not to mind. She was trying not to mind with such concentration that she did not realize till she looked up, still dazzled by tiny intricate seemings, that he was there and she remained sitting, blinking up at him, as the woman set down her tray and retired.May I eat with you? he said, and Harry thought that he seemed ill at ease.Of course, she said. I would er be honored. She pushed Narknons head away and started to scramble to her feet, but Corlath dropped silently down beside her, so she settled back again, grateful that her bones decided not to creak. He gave her a plate and took his o wn and and so sat staring into the fountain much as she had make, and she wondered, watching him, if he felt any of the queer peacefulness that crept into her with the comparable looking and if he would call it by the name she had discovered.Eight days, she said, and his eyes drew back from the water spray and met hers. Eight days, she repeated. You said less than a fortnight.Yes, he replied. We are counting the hours now. He made a swift sweeping motion with his right hand, and Harry said suddenly Show me your hand.Corlath looked puzzled for a moment, but then he held his right hand out, palm up. There was one short straight pale mark across it, obviously new and umpteen another(prenominal) small white scars she didnt have to count them to know there would be eighteen of them, the still-fresh and long-dated cut a nineteenth. She studied the hand a moment, cupping it in her own, not thinking that she was poring over a kings hand then she looked at her own right palm. One tin y straight nervous strain looked back at her.He closed his hand and rested it on his knee. They dont fade, Harry said. The old ones dont disappear.No, said Corlath. It is the color salve, before we make the cut it is made of an herb called korim forever.She studied her own palm again for a moment. The scar cut through the lines a fortune- spliter would call her life line and her heart line and she wondered what Damarian fortune-tellers might see in her hand. She looked up at Corlath, who absentmindedly put a piece of bread in his mouth and began to tidy sum he was staring into the fountain again. He swallowed and said There is a story of one of my grandfathers Riders the Northern border was restless then but only restless, and this man had gone North to see what he might learn. But they caught him, and recognized him as from Damar but he knew they would bring forth him a little before they did, and he slashed his hand that they might not find the mark and hold him for ransom or spin for the Northerners, if they wish, can torture with a fine prying magic that no mind can resist.Harry thought If the Northerners know about the Riders mark, they must be a bit slow not to wonder about a spy caught with a cut-up hand.Corlath continued after a moment He had traveled dressed as a merchant, so when he knew they would find him he freed his horse and sent it home, and took off his boots, and began to wax the near-perpendicular face of one of the Hills that is the boundary between our land and theirs. When they found him he was half mad with sunstroke and his hands and feet were as tattered as autumn leaves. They decided they had not caught a prize at all, and after they had beaten him a bit, they let him go. He finished climbing the mound with his hands and feet, because he remembered that much of what he was doing and adept over the summit, but inside the border of Damar, his horse was waiting for him, and she took him home. He recovered from the sunstroke, but he never held a sword again.Harry swallowed a hoodlum of bread that didnt want to go down, and there was silence for a bit. What happened to the maria? she said at last.Your Tsornins dam is a daughter of his mares line, Corlath said, but it was as if he were tracing some thought of his own. The mare lived till she was well-nigh thirty, and dropped a foal every year till the last. Many of our best riding-horses are descended from her. Corlath looked at her, coming back from wherever he had been.That mares line is called Nalan faithful. You can see it in Tsornins pe prodree.Harry asked lightly And is there a name for the line of the kings of Damar?Corlath said, My fathers name, and his fathers, and mine, is Gulkonoth stone.Harry looked at his right hand resting quietly on his knee. He paused and added as if inconsequentially, There are other names for the king. One of them is Tudorsond. Scarred hand.Does the korim scar the foreheads of the household, and the faces of the hunt an d the horse as well? And Corlath said, Yes.There was a silence again, and Harry wondered how many other questions she might be able to gain answers for. She said, Once in the mountains before the trials, Mathin said to me that he could teach me three ways of starting a fire, but that you knew a fourth. He would not tell me what the fourth was.Corlath laughed. I will take the stand you one day, if you wish. Not today. Today it would give you a headache.Harry shook her head angrily, her feeling of contentment gone. I am tired of having things only half ex f fable fielded. Either I am damalur-sol, when it is convenient, or I am to be quiet and sit in a corner and behave till it is time to bring me out and show me to the troops again. Did you choose Mathin to teach me because he is close-mouthed?Corlath looked a little abashed, and Harry guiltily remembered how much Mathin had told her, although she defended herself it was not enough. Never enough. But she could not tending remember ing his answer when she had asked him why he had been chosen for her training.I chose Mathin because I thought he would teach you best there are no(prenominal) better than he, and he is patient and tireless.And kind, thought Harry, but she would not thwart when she might learn something.We of the Hills I suppose we are all, as you say, close-mouthed but do you think you have learned so little of us? And Corlath looked at her wistfully.No, she said, ashamed of herself. There was a pause, and she said, Could you perhaps, please, tell me why Mathin would not tell me any of the legends about the Lady Aerin? They are a part of your lives that all of you share and it is her sword you have given me and the legends, why, there are a few sung even at the spring Fairs in the west, where Outlanders can hear them.Corlath tapped his fingers, one-two-three, one-two-three, on the brim of the fountain. Aerin is a part of your destiny, Harimad-sol. It is considered unfortunate to meddle with destiny. Mathin would feel that he was doing you a disservice, speaking much of Aerin to you, and I I find, now, that I feel the same. Tap-tap-tap. If you had grown up here, you would have comprehend them. But you did not. And if you had, perhaps you would not now be what you are.I am sorry. He turned and looked at her. If after we have met the Northerners, and the gods have decided between us, if you and I are left alive, I will tell you all the stories I know of Aerin Dragon-Killer. He tried to smile. I even can sing a few.Thank you.Corlaths smile became more successful. There are a very great many of them you may not wish to hear them all.I do wish to hear them all, said Harry firmly.Corlath took his hand away from the stone brim and began to shred a chunk of bread into fragments on his plate. As for the first question, he said, watch. He blinked a few times, closed his eyes, and a shudder ran through him then he opened his eyes again and gave a hot yellow glare to the litt le heap of bread crumbs, which burst into flame, crackled wildly for a few minutes, and subsided into black ash.Oh, said Harry. Corlath looked up his eyes were brown. They stared at one another. Harry found herself saying hastily, in a voice that was a little too high-pitched, What is this place here ? and she jerked her eyes away, and waved to the mosaic walls. I have seen nothing else like it anywhere in the City.Corlath shook his head. Nor will you. He got slowly to his feet, and looked around, and cupped his scarred hand under the fountain, and drank from it. My father build it for my mother just after he married her. She was fond of the color blue and I think he wanted to tell her that he did not mind that she would never carry the Blue Sword, the greatest cling to of his family, the womans sword. He looked down at her inscrutably, but his eyes did not snap on her. Then he turned and left her, going through the door into the castle.Two days later the army rode away from t he City. Corlath and his Riders rode together down the highway from the castle to the gates of the City, with men and women of the household and the hunt and horse, and pack horses behind them and the people of the City lined the streets and silently watched them go, although many raised their hands to their foreheads and flicked the fingers as they rode by. Harry had not seen so many before some were refugees from northern Damarian villages, and farmers from the green lands before the Bledfi Gap. And they rode down to the plain where the army Harry had not seen, for she had not left the City since she rode into it, lay before them and behind her she perceive a sound no Damarian had heard in generations the Citys stone gates closing, heavily, mournfully.Tsornin was restless. Now, with the ranks upon ranks of the Hill army drawn up upon it, the plain looked like some other place than the plain where Harry and Tsornin had fought with blunt staves and sword points. Tsornin was too we ll bred to do more than move slightly in place but his shoulder, when she ran her hand down it, was warmer than the morning air deserved. The muscles under the golden skin were secure she felt that if she rapped her knuckles against his shoulder ridge it would ring like iron.She stood, a little awkwardly, in the group of Riders, only a little way into the plain from the end of the City highway. They were on a little rise of land, so they looked out and down over the rest of the company, and Harry felt unnecessarily conspicuous. Why couldnt you be liver chestnut or something? she whispered to Tsornin, who bow his golden head. A new helm fitted closely down over her bound-up hair, and there were new boots on her legs, with tops that rolled up and lashed into place for battle and she felt Gonturan hanging expectantly at her knee. Ten days were not enough to accustom herself to being a Rider, however hard she had driven herself and Tsornin round the lonely practice fields with their stiff wooden silhouettes of enemy swordsmen and while the Riders themselves particularly one or two Mathin, and the lively (for a Rider) young Innath closed ranks around her and accepted her as one of them, she could not believe that they did not themselves wonder, a little, about her presence among them.Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one front foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole. She looked around the other horses were showing signs of strive as well. Mathin stood next to her Wind effortr, although rock still, unlike the younger Tsornin, wore a unilluminated sheen of sweat down her flank. Corlaths Fireheart was standing on his hind legs again the king could bring him down as he chose, but Harry rather thought the horse was expressing the mood of both of them. Narknon, so fa r as Harry could see, was the only one of their company who remained undisturbed. She sat in front of Sungold, just beyond the reach of pawing forefeet, and washed her chest and comb her whiskers.They marchlanded west. They pass the low but steep ridge of mountains between the City and the desert plain that stretched far away, up to the back door of the Outlander Residency in Istan. They retraced Harry and Mathins route, going in single deathless file through the narrow paths and they came to the desert edge at the end of the second day. Beyond the ridge they turned north.All the spies those still living, for the North had caught a few that Corlath had sent out in the last several years had come back in the last few months, in a rush, all with the same word the waiting was over, the Northerners were moving. The last man of them had returned not six days before it had taken him so long because they knew about him, and he had dodged and fled and scrambled to get away from their cr eeping introduce magic. His tale was that their army was only days behind him, and that it was many thousands strong. He had delayed and delayed to take a fairer tally of the total and yet, he said, even as the army marched south, hundreds and more hundreds appeared as if out of the air to march with it. Out of the air, Harry thought, and wondered if the phrase was more than just a manner of speaking. She had been included in the council of Riders that heard the mans tale and the candlelight seemed to cast more shadows when he was through. Yet there was nothing to be done the army that would stand for Damar was already gathered the plans to face the Northerners were already laid.Of the Northerners dread captain no spy was sure no Damarian dared get that close, for the uncanny way he was said to smell foreign blood.There were hundreds of mounted men and women now following Corlaths word and as they rode with the easterly Hills at their right hand, they looked a great many. A few hun dreds more would join as the southern army made its way to the spacious plain before the Gap. But that was all.Innath, riding at her elbow, said conversationally, slight than half of the Northern army will be mounted and not many of them will be riding horses and very few of their horses will match the poorest of ours. One can double our tally at least, just for our horses for they are Damarians and will fight for Damar as fiercely as we human beings, for all that we are the only ones who talk about it.Yes, said Harry, her voice only a little muffled. Noontimes they stopped briefly, loosening girths to let the horses breathe, and eating bread and dry meat and water. At night they camped behind ridges of shale and scrub, and lit fires enough to boil the terrible dry meat to a slightly more edible consistency, and rolled up in their blankets to sleep where they sat. A few of the hunting-cats and a dozen dogs were with them but they could not devoid the time at present to use them. Narknon continued at Harrys heels and, as she had done once before, began hunting on her own, and brought back some of her brainsick victories to lay at Harrys pillow. As the days passed and Mathins stew pot became in general known as the only one reliably containing fresh meat, it grew very popular.The nights were clear and quiet, and the weather-casters among them promised no sudden windstorms the edges of the Damarian Hills were known for their unpredictable weather, where mountain storms bottled up by the steep slopes might suddenly find their way to the pamper lands where they could rage and riot as they chose.Corlath was not trying to strike at once for the center of the northern mountains and the Bledfi Gap. After the Hill army crossed the narrow range behind which the City lay, they worked their way around the meander of the mountains, trotting through the sandy sour grass and broken rock at their feet. At first this made them ride or so due north, then in an increasing arc to the west and the sun moved across the sky before them. Often in the mornings when the mist was still lying around them, trailing from the mountains shoulders into their camp, a little group of riders, or even a solitary figure on horseback, would loom up at them from nowhere but Corlath always seemed to be expecting them, and they always knew what to say to the guards that they might pass and in this way the army a little swelled its ranks. Occasionally Harry heard a womans voice among the strangers, and this made her blissful and often shed rub a finger over the blue gem in the hilt of Gonturan and think of the sword no man could carry. Mathin said to her once We did not think to see so many women few have fought with us within any mans memory, although in Aerins day it was different. But I think many fathers are letting their daughters join us who had not thought to till they heard of Harimad-sol, and that Gonturan went to war again.Many of these women she met particula rly after Mathin had spoken to her, for then she began to feel a little uneasily accountable for them. Senay she saw several times and saw too that she was wearing a sewn-together stays as if she were proud of it. Harimad-sol asked the names of the women when she had a chance, and they answered gravely and they often gave her the back-of-hand-to-forehead gesture of respect, and none ever asked her her name, even when she was not carrying Gonturan and ought to look she thought like any other disheveled soldier. Most of those who came thus late to join Corlaths army did not carry a sword, and wore no sash these were men and women who had spent their lives in their own villages, on their own farms and in their own shops, and had never attended laprun trials, nor felt the lack that they had not.One eventide they rode into a hollow where nearly a hundred strangers, all mounted, and with several pack horses and hunting-beasts besides, waited for them and Corlath rode forward with a great hearty cry of welcome, a sound nearer happiness than any Harry had heard from him since they began their march north. A rider at the head of the group rode to meet him, and they seized each other by the shoulders while their horses bumped uneasily together and rolled their eyes at each other. A third man then devoid himself from the new group and joined Corlath and his friend.Murfoth and his son, Terim, said Mathin in Harrys ear. Murfoth was one of the old kings friends, though hes not much more than ten years older than our king. He might have been a Rider, had he wished, but he chose instead to stay at home and look after his lands and a good job hes made of it too. Some of our best horses now come from him, and grain to feed many more.We Riders, said Innath from her other side, as you may have noticed, tend to be fourth sons or otherwise penniless or incurable wanderers like Mathin here but Murfoth now, when he comes to ride with his king, can bring eighty men with him . Innaths voice, for all its careless pride, sounded almost wistful. Harry found herself remembering her fathers words to her it seemed decades ago You havent a penny, you know.Terim was Harrys age, and when he and his father came to sit at the kings fireside he came to her and sank down beside her, flock up his long legs as all the Hillmen did. She looked at Terim and he looked at her his look was eager and a little, to her embarrassment, reverent. I was First at my laprun trials three years ago, he said but when I took my turn against Corlath my sash was on the ground before I had a good clench on my sword. He thumped the hilt of his sword, which jangled as it bit into the ground. My father gave me Teksun here anyway, he said no one ever got a grip on a sword against Corlath. You did, though. His eyes shone in the firelight.Harry ran a pensive finger over the careful seam in her sash, which she had put in under Mathins promised tutelage. I didnt know it was he I never thought . And he allowed me to cross swords with him and when I realized how much of it was allowing, I got mad. She paused. I was surprise too. She frowned, remembering the awful headache shed had for most of that day, and then the more awful sick lurch that seemed to start behind her eyes, where the headache was, and quiver all the way through her body, when she saw the face behind the scarf she had just removed. No one had called her baga for the cut at the corner of Corlaths mouth, though. She met the boys eyes fairly ruefully and said, It wasnt as pleasant an experience as you might think.Terim gave a little snort of laughter and said, Yes, I believe you, and Harry looked across to where Corlath sat with Terims father and found him watching her. She wondered if he had heard what she had just said.