Lebía’s heart raced. She thought she was the only one who knew the longing that sometimes comforted, but sometimes emptied.
“Everything changed after that?”
“Not immediately. I was always with Sabíana in the palace, walking the secret cloisters and the summit cherry groves. Those were moments of happiness I had never known. Poor Sabíana. She doesn’t know what longing is. She is all fire, all desire, all forward movement.”
“Voran, do you love her?”
He stared at his porridge, his eyes never more green. He plucked at his chin-beard.
“I do, Lebía. I always have. I just didn’t know there could be a feeling more powerful than the love of a man for a woman.”
It took the better part of an hour for the mothers to convince the boys to come out of the tarn to begin the morning leg of their journey. As it was, the crowd of pilgrims usually left far later than was probably necessary, but there were nearly a hundred people on the pilgrimage of all ages, and it seemed some had come more for the change of scenery and the joy of good company than for a religious experience.
Lebía loved watching Voran race back and forth on his black charger every morning, tightening up discipline among the warriors. She was proud of him, even if she laughed at him silently for being a touch pompous in his manner. He had no idea how ridiculous he looked.
That entire day, Lebía walked alone. By the evening, she had grown lonely again, and almost regretted coming. Finally, Voran rode to her and dismounted, handing his reins over to one of the younger warriors. Voran looked eager to speak, his mood lightened by the warmth of the day.
“How much longer, do you think, until we reach it?” Lebía asked.
“Well, the weeping tree is supposed to be not far from the Nebesti border on the side of Vasyllia’s lands. Roughly one hundred miles through mostly mountainous terrain. At the rate we’re going? Two weeks, maybe more.”
“Will we come near Nebesta, the city?”
“No. The Dar’s road splits in two at the Nebesti border. We go straight, the road to Nebesta goes left, hugging the border along a narrow valley until you hit the city at the end of the valley. It’s beautiful, you know. All wood where Vasyllia is stone. A confluence of two rivers and some of the most gorgeous forests you’ve ever seen.”
“I wish I could see it.”
“You can see the border range over there.” Voran pointed at a series of jagged peaks that started at their left and reached all the way to a point directly ahead of them. They looked like the rotting teeth of an old man. Fog encircled the tips of the left-most peaks, and something darker than fog swirled there as well.
“Strange,” said Voran. “That looks like smoke.”
He stared at the column of cloud reaching toward Vasyllia from the Nebesti side. It was pinkish in the late morning sun. Then he shook his head, thoughtful, before turning back to Lebía with a smile.
“Lebía, here I am blabbing away. And you have not yet told me why you so wanted to see the weeping tree.”
Their road led straight ahead to a dip between two drum-hills, the left crowned with aspens, the right with birches.
“It’s easier for you, Voran. You are an intimate of the Dar. I sit at home. Sometimes the pain of our parents’ absence is like a physical illness. There are mornings when I can’t rise from bed.”
“You hope the Living Water will heal that wound?”
“To be honest, I don’t think it will. But yes, I hope.”
“There is something else, then?”
She found a barrier between her thoughts and her words. To speak was as hard as to move a boulder covered with moss from a riverbed.
“Voran, there is something very wrong in Vasyllia. The omen merely confirmed it for me.”
“Yes, I have begun to feel it as well, swanling.”
“It sounds terrible, what I am about to say. It has hurt so much, seeing how everyone was willing to attack our father in his absence, when he couldn’t defend his name. With such obvious enjoyment, too. People who allow that cannot be good. Now, I don’t even care much for Vasyllia anymore. I’m going on this pilgrimage because I can no longer stay in the city.”
Voran looked thoughtful.
“Lebía, I agree with you. But do you know what the Pilgrim told me? He told me Vasyllia was everything. He told me I must never let it fall. As if I could do anything about it.”
The last sentence was said more for himself than for her, she thought.
“Is that why you seek the Living Water?” she asked
“Well, the Pilgrim told me to find it. But there’s also something else. In the Dar’s chambers, when I saw that the weeping tree is at the top of a tor called Sirin’s Peak, I felt a summons as strong as the music ever was.”
“You hope to find the Sirin?”
He nodded.
The first of the pilgrims had reached the narrowing pass between the drums, being forced to walk only three or four abreast. Voran and Lebía were still on the downslope of the road, and for a moment the sun hid behind the right drum, only visible in the golden leaves of the birches crowning it. When the sun came up over the trees, it was fire-white, brighter than Lebía had ever seen. It rose with a faint music, as though singing. Then it hit her. The light was not the sun. A Sirin perched on the top of the central birch, bathed in her own light.
Yearning pierced Lebía’s heart with a keen, pleasant pain. She knew, in that knowledge that surpasses a movement of thought, being something already formed in the heart, that the Sirin on the mount offered Lebía a choice to meet face to face. No more distant visits, no more hints of music. She could have the soul-bond only read about in tales. She could be consumed in the fire of the Sirin.
She desired it as much as she had desired anything in life. It all welled up inside her—all the injustice, all the pain, all the promises never kept. Had she ever asked for anything for herself? Did she not deserve this consolation more than anyone? No one else even believed in the Sirin.
But then, she looked at Voran, and something inside her balked. He was so unhappy. And he was so incapable of being unhappy. She was used to it. He needed this more than she did.
“Voran, do you see the birches on the top of the hill there?” she said, her voice heavy. “It’s a good vantage point, is it not? Would you do me a favor? Go up there and see what waits for us on the other side.”
