The Silver Mage by Katharine Kerr Page B

between gratitude and envy.
    Once they were sitting in the refectory with food spread on the table in front of them, gratitude won a temporary victory. Hwilli reminded herself, as she generally did, that she’d been lucky to be chosen to study with a master healer, to live here in the fortress and have plenty to eat. She’d been born and raised in huts that always smelled of the manure and mud that filled in the chinks in the walls. Her parents had worked so hard that their backs were permanently bent and aching. Her father had died, feverish and half-starved, long before he’d grown old. Her own life, even though brief compared to the spans allotted to the People, would be comfortable and respected because of her knowledge. But so brief, she thought. Still so brief.
    Envy rose like bile in her throat. While the other women ate, chatting and laughing, she crumbled a bit of bread between her fingers and watched them. Despite their catlike eyes and furled ears, they were beautiful, young and beautiful, and they would still be lovely hundreds of years on, when she’d been dead and forgotten for those same hundreds of years.
    “Hwilli!” Nalla said. “Try some of this roast partridge.” She leaned over and placed a choice slice onto Hwilli’s plate. “It’s awfully good.”
    “My thanks.” Hwilli managed to smile. “I was just thinking.”
    “About that handsome stranger?” Nalla said. “And he is handsome, or he will be after a bath. His brother’s good-looking, too. Now, don’t deny it.”
    “Oh, yes, I suppose they are. For men of my kind.”
    “Well,” Nalla paused for a grin. “If you shut your eyes, you could ignore their ears.”
    When the other women laughed, Hwilli decided that hatred tasted like sour wine. She gathered a few bitter remarks, but when she looked Nalla’s way, Nalla rolled her eyes with a shrug toward the laughter, and Hwilli kept the remarks to herself.

    C aswallinos, or so he’d often told his apprentice, had also realized that distance and time meant nothing to Evandar, but much to the elder druid’s surprise and Galerinos’ relief, the river did lie where that supposed god had told them. As they came down from the hills, they could see the gleam of water far ahead, winding through a grassy plain scattered with huge boulders and dotted with the occasional copse. Laughter and cheers rippled up and down the line of wagons. The horses and cows raised their heads and sniffed the air, then walked a little faster.
    As they hurried across the plain, Galerinos noticed several long and oddly straight lines of small stones. The savages had laid them out, he assumed, though the landscape made him think of old tales about the giants of olden times and their furious wars. Perhaps the Devetii had wandered into an armory of sorts, with rocks laid ready for some battle that had never occurred.
    Just at sunset they reached the river. The Devetian line of march spread out along its banks to allow their weary horses to drink. After them came the cattle and sheep. Only when the animals had drunk their fill, and the mud had had time to settle, did the humans wade into the river to drink and to collect the precious water in amphorae and waterskins. As priests, Galerinos and his master received their share first. After they slaked their thirst, they stood by their wagon and looked out across the stone-studded plain.
    “This is a very strange place,” Caswallinos remarked.
    “It certainly is, Your Holiness! All those rocks! Do you know why they’re here?”
    “The Wildfolk told me that a big sheet of ice crawled down from the north. When it melted, it dropped them.” Caswallinos shook his head sadly. “The Wildfolk lack wits as we know wits.”
    “So they must.”
    “But rocks or no rocks, the land looks good enough to plant a crop in. We need to get the winter wheat in the ground.”
    “Are we going to settle here for the winter?”
    “We can’t march in the snow, can we? Think! Besides,