“What can I do?” Mirnían sounded as old as Dar Antomír. “I don’t believe your tales about the Sirin. I don’t claim to have heard their song, you madman. Now, I am a leper. The quest lies with you. I have no more strength. Leshaya, take me home to die in peace.”

“Yes, yes!” the hag squawked. “Go and die, pointless princeling.”

Leshaya looked at Voran, her eyes red and almost human. She looked like she was about to say something, but she only shook her head. In a moment, she and Mirnían were a blur racing back up the mountain.

“As for you, my delicious Voran, I won’t kill you yet. You’ll do slave duty for a while. And then I’ll eat you.”

The hag resumed her frenetic dance around Voran, punctuated with several blows from her pestle on his back and legs, just enough to hurt without breaking anything.

“Now, tell me. What were you looking for in the Lows of Aer?”

My beloved is like a cherry tree in the midst of the desert. I delight to sit in his shade. His fruit is a sweet taste on my lips. Take me away with you; let us hurry from this place. The bridal chamber awaits…

From “The Song of the Dar’s Beloved” (The Sayings, Book III, 2:7-9)

My beloved is like a cherry tree in the midst of the desert. I delight to sit in his shade. His fruit is a sweet taste on my lips. Take me away with you; let us hurry from this place. The bridal chamber awaits…

From “The Song of the Dar’s Beloved”

(The Sayings, Book III, 2:7-9)

Chapter 13

The Island

The sweat, mingled with the sting of sea-wind, burned Lebía’s eyes. Her fingernails were threatening to pop off with every thrust of her hand into the black soil. The hand-harrow was slowly transforming into lead. Her back reminded her, periodically, that if she did not straighten out soon, she would remain hunched over the ground forever.

It was exhilarating.

She had never felt this alive, this useful. All her life she was served, waited upon, coddled, and worried over. All her life she ached to help others, but her father’s assumed guilt branded her, and all Vasyllia shrank from her touch. Here in Ghavan, everyone needed to work, or everyone would starve. She never imagined something as innocent-sounding as preparing the soil for winter would be the hardest work of her life.

“Take a break, dear girl,” the voice was firm, despite the age of the speaker. Lebía secretly envied Otar Svetlomír his vigor. Though his nose looked like an old potato, though his eyes had more red in them than white, he labored over the soil longer than anyone else.

“I will not stop while you still work, Otar.”

“Oh, I stopped an hour ago, swanling.” His smile smoothed out the furrows in his forehead, making him look twenty years younger.

His young smile had been the first thing Lebía saw when the pilgrims arrived on Ghavan Isle. Even now, the events of their coming to this place were as fresh as if they happened yesterday. The disappearance of Voran, the coming of the white stag, the passage into the Lows of Aer, the waiting longboats on the shores of the Great Sea…

“So pensive for a little one,” he interrupted her thoughts. “I know the island encourages it, but you must not grow up too fast, Lebía.”

“It is not merely the island, Otar,” she said.

A howl shattered the air, as though it were made of glass. There was something human in the howl.

“That is no wolf,” said Svetlomír, gathering the long hem of robe in his right hand and running off like a ten-year-old boy. Lebía sprinted after him. The entire village already crowded the beach, keeping a healthy distance from an enormous black wolf with nearly human eyes. At its feet lay an emaciated body, milk-white, but spotted with livid red. Lebía gasped and ran to him. It was Mirnían.

“You’ve grown so much, swanling,” said the wolf.

Before Lebía could fully register the fact that a wolf had spoken to her, the creature had turned and leaped into the water. Mirnían groaned in pain, and Lebía’s attention was snapped away from the she-wolf. Svetlomír picked up Mirnían with no effort at all, he was so wasted away.

“Svetlomír, you are not afraid of the leprosy?” Lebía asked.

“No, little bird.” He smiled. “Are you?”

“No,” she said, surprised at herself. “Otar, will you do something for me? Let me take care of him. Put him in my home.”

Svetlomír’s eyebrows momentarily met in the middle, but his expression softened as he looked at her.

“Yes, swanling. That would be a good thing.”

Lebía dedicated herself entirely to Mirnían’s care. Her presence seemed to ease his pain, her touch to stop the progress of the disease. After only a few days, his emaciated body filled out. Through the petulant lips and the pain etched into the lines around his eyes, Lebía glimpsed something she had never seen in Mirnían—a man of courage and gentleness.

Two weeks later, he awoke for the first time. When he saw her face, he shook his head as though trying to dispel the lingering tendrils of a dream.

“It cannot be,” he whispered.

She caressed his head, and he leaned toward her as if she were a hearth-fire. After that moment, he recovered not in days, but in hours. With every one of those hours, to her surprise, Lebía lost another piece of her heart to him. Even when he slept, she sat by him, content merely to stare at him. She pitied him, but it was more complicated than that—something thrilling and joyful, a stirring attraction that went far deeper than physical allure. She sensed his emotions and his pain as though they were her own.

“How did you come here?” asked Mirnían one morning, when he was strong enough to sit up in bed and hold a bowl of soup with his own hands. “You must know that we have been combing the wilds to find you. We thought you were lost, or worse. You’ve heard about the invasion?”

“Yes, there is talk of little else among the pilgrims.”

“What happened to you?”

“When Voran disappeared, chaos erupted among the pilgrims, and none of the warriors—most of whom were barely out of the seminary—wanted to take command. Half of the families clamored to return to Vasyllia, and they would have, if not for the white stag.

“I saw it before the rest, standing still on a hill-top, its antlers sparkling in the sun. It came to me, no one else, and as the people saw it, the noise stopped. Everyone stopped. Everyone stared. It came right up to me and kissed me—that’s the only way I can describe it—then moved away into the woods. I felt like it was calling me, so I followed.

“I didn’t speak to anyone—who would listen to me, anyway? —I just followed. Soon everyone was following me, even the warriors. We seemed to have passed into another place, because when we walked out of the woods, we were on the shores of a sea. I couldn’t see the other end of it.

“Five longboats waited on the shore, and a small group of Vasylli—or so they seemed by their dress, even if it was a little outmoded—greeted us. Otar Svetlomír was at their head, carrying a loaf of bread in an embroidered white towel, with a wooden cup of salt in the middle.

“They welcomed us like family, and before we knew it we were all on the boats. We sailed to a dim dot on the horizon. Ghavan Isle, they call it.”

“Are they Vasylli?” asked Mirnían.

“Yes, for the most part. Many came here because they wanted to leave the bustle of Vasyllia for a quiet life. Many of them seemed also to have premonitions of Vasyllia’s impending doom, and so left before it was too late.”

“But how did they all find it? Were all of them led here like you and the pilgrims?”

“Yes. The call came in different ways for different people. Sometimes they found it as though by accident. Other times creatures—the white stag, a particularly large firebird, or strange chimaeras—appeared to lead them to awaiting boats. The first settlers, it is said, were led here by the Sirin directly.”

“Are you not lonely, Lebía?”

“It is a quiet life here, but busy. We live off the land. It is different from what I am accustomed to, but I like it. Though I confess I am lonely in the evenings. I miss Voran a great deal.”

Mirnían’s face darkened visibly.