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"You idiot!" Tor yelled at her "You bonehead, you ?" He tried to remind her of the stories of the surka; he said did she reerous even to those of the royal house? True, it did not kill theth and the far-seeing eyes of a bird of prey to one of royal blood, or, if the Gift were strong enough, true visions; although this last was very rare But when the effect wore off, in several hours or several days, the aftereffects were at best ht - so Merth the Second, who kept hi, by the virtue of the surka, pausing only to chew its leaves at need? He won the battle, but he died even as he proclaimed his victory He looked, when they buried hih he was only a year past twenty
"You must have eaten half the tree, froh for two or three Merths Are you really trying to kill yourself?" Here his voice alet up and stamp around the rooain so that Teka wouldn’t notice and ban hie of Aerin’s bed and brooded "It must have been Galanna It always is Galanna What did she do this time?"
Aerin stirred "Of course it’s Galanna I’ve been desperate to think of an excuse to get out of attending her wedding It’s only a little over a season away, you know This was the best that occurred to h "Alrabbed one of her hands She refrained froe of her bed washer feel sick, and that every time he moved she had to refocus her eyes on him and that uess she dared you to eat a leaf I guess she told you you weren’t royal and wouldn’t dare touch it" He looked at her sternly She looked back, her face blank He knew her too well, and he knew she knew, but she wouldn’t say anything; he knew that too, and he sighed
Her father visited her occasionally, but he always sent warning ahead, and as soon as she could creak out of bed without i hiht chair and hands crossed in her lap To his queries she answered that she was feeling quite well now, thank you She had learned that no one could tell how badly her vision wandered in and out of focus, so long as she kept still where the dizziness couldn’t distract her; and she kept her eyes fixed on the shifting flesh-colored shadohere she knew her father’s face was He never stayed long, and since she closed her eyes when he came near to stoop over her and kiss her cheek or forehead (other people’sas her own) she never saw the anxious look on his face, and he didn’t shout at her, like Teka or Tor
When she was enough better to totter out of bed for a longer stretch than into a chair in her sitting-roohly that Teka could no longer keep her in it, she had tothe walls, for neither her eyes nor her feet were trustworthy Creeping about like one of her father’s retired veterans escaped frorace-and-favor apart for her morale, and she avoided everyone but Teka, and to sole-mindedly than usual; and she stayed out of the court’s way altogether
Especially she avoided the garden at the center of the castle The surka stood by the ate, wrapped around one of the tall white pillars Its presence was syer of touching its leaves, and there were several other ways into the garden But she felt that the surka exhaled hallucinations into the very air around it, waiting gleefully for her to breathe them in, and that it clattered its leaves at her if she ca her if she even dared step out on one of the balconies that overlooked the garden from three or four stories up Her protracted illness e than her ohatever Tor said, but she saw no reason to remind herself of it any oftener than she had to
It was a kind of trapped restlessness co of kinship for the equally trapped and restless Talat that drew her to his pasture She had visited him before, or tried to, in the last three years, but he was no politer to her than he was to Hornmar, and it hurt her so much just to look at hi Now she felt she no longer cared; she couldn’t see clearly two feet beyond the end of her nose anyway But it was a somewhat laborious process to carry out even so simple a plan as to walk to one of the smaller pastures beyond the royal barns First she wanted a cane, that sheto tap her ith; so she persuaded Tor to open the door of the king’s treasure house for her, which required a lock-relaxing charm she couldn’t perform any more than she could mend plates
She told Tor only that she wanted to borroalking stick to help her up and down stairs Tor knew perfectly well that she had so further on her mind, but he did it anyway She chose a cane with a pleasantly luue too
Talat’s first ie her She’d not ently "If I try to run away from you, the earth will leap up and throw me down" Two tears rolled silently down her cheeks "I can’t even walk properly Like you" Talat dropped his head and began grazing - withoutto pretend to be doing while he kept an eye on her
She went back the next day, and the next The exercise, or the fresh air, or both, seean to clear a bit And it was quiet and peaceful in Talat’s pasture, where no one ca castle ht of the royal library occurred to her Galanna would never set foot in the library
She went there the first tiun to seem the size of shoeboxes, and for some of the same imprecise restlessness that had inspired her to visit Talat But, idly, she ran her fingers over the spines of the books fined up on the shelves, and pulled down one that had an interestingly tooled binding More idly still she opened it, and found that her poor e held not too far from her nose - found that she could read The next day she took it with her to Talat’s pasture
He didn’t exactly , but he did seem to spend most of his tiainst the bole of a convenient tree and read "It’s funny," she said, chewing a grass gem, "you’d think if I couldn’t walk I couldn’t read either You’d think eyes would be at least as hard to organize as feet" She leaned over, and laid a round as far away fro only straight before her Thoughtfully she hefted the big book in her lap and added, "Even carrying it around is useful It sort of weighs er so"Maybe what I need for my feet is the equivalent of the " The hoofbeats paused "Now if only soht be"
The mik-bar had disappeared