The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(40)

Corlath, Harry thought. He knows the story - of the young foreign woman who did not thrive when she was transplanted to Hill soil. And she was Darian born and bred, and went willingly. "And Corlath? Why does Corlath speak Outlander?"

Mathin said thoughtfully, "Corlath believes in knowing his ... rivals. Or enemies. He can speak the Northern tongue as well, and read and write it, and Outlander, as well as our Hill tongue. There are few enough of us who can read and write our own language. I am not one of them. I would not wish to be a king."

There were only a few days left to run till the laprun trials. Mathin, between their more active lessons, taught her more of the Hill-speech; and each word he taught her seemed to awaken five more from where they slept in the back of a mind that was now, she had decided, sharing brain space and nerve endings with her own. She accepted it; it was useful; it permitted her to live in this land that she loved, even if she loved without reason; and she began to think it would enable her in her turn to be useful to this land. And it had won her a friend. She could not take pride in it, for it was not hers; but she was grateful to it, and hoped, if it were kelar or Aerin-sol's touch, that she might be permitted to keep it till she had won her right to stay.

With the language lessons Mathin told her of the Hills they were in, and where the City lay from where their little valley sat; and he told her which wood burned best green, and how to find water when there seemed to be none; and how to get the last miles out of a foundered horse. And her lessons of war had strengthened her memory, or her ability to draw upon that other memory, for she remembered what he told her. And to her surprise, he also told her the names of all the wildflowers she saw, and which herbs could be made into teas and jams; and these things he spoke of with the mild expression on his face that she had seen only when he was bending over his cooking-fire; and even these things she learned. He also told her what leaves were best for stopping blood flowing, and three ways of starting a fire in the wilderness.

He looked at her sidelong as he spoke about fire-making. "There's a fourth way, Hari," he said. "Corlath may teach it to you someday." There was some joke here that amused him. "Myself, I cannot."

Harry looked at him, as patiently as she could. She knew that to question him when he baited her like this would do her no good. Once, a day or two after Mathin's unexpected fall, she had let a bit more of her frustration show than she meant to, and Mathin had said, "Hari, my friend, there are many things I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find their answers."

She had looked across their small fire at him, and over Narknon's head. They were both sitting cross-legged while the horses grazed comfortably not far away, so that the sound of their jaws could be heard despite the crackling fire. Mathin was rewiring a loose ring on his chain-encrusted vest.

"Very well. I understand a little, perhaps."

Mathin gave a snort of laughter; she remembered how grim and silent she'd thought him, he in particular of all the king's Riders. "You understand a great deal, Harimad-sol. I do not envy the others when they see you again. Only Corlath truly expects what I will be bringing out of these Hills."

This conversation had made it a little easier for her when he slyly told her of things, like the fourth way of lighting fires, which he refused to explain. She didn't understand the reasons, but she was a bit more willing to accept that a reason existed. It surprised her how much he told her about himself, for she knew that he did not find it easy to talk of these things to her; but she understood too that it was his way of making up, a little, for what he felt he could not tell her. It also, as he must have intended, made her feel as if the Hillfolk were familiar to her; that her own past was not so very different from theirs; and she began to imagine what it would have been like to have grown up in these Hills, to have always called them home.

One of the things Mathin would tell her little of was Aerin Dragon-Killer and the Blue Sword. He would refer to Damar's Golden Age, when Aerin was queen, but he would not tell her when it was, or even what made it golden. She did learn that Aerin had had a husband named Tor who had fought the Northerners, for the Northerners had been Damar's enemies since the beginning of time and the Hills, and every Damarian age had its tale of the conflict between them; and that King Tor was called the Just.

"It sounds very dreary, being Just, when your wife kills dragons," said Harry, and while Mathin permitted himself a smile, he was not to be drawn.

She did pry something else out of him. "Mathin," she said. "The Outlanders believe that the - the - kelar of the Hills can cause, oh, firearms not to fire, and cavalry charges to fall down instead of charging, and - things like that."

Mathin said nothing; he had marinated cut-up bits of Narknon's latest antelope in a sharp spicy sauce and was now frizzling them on two sticks over the low-burning fire. Harry sighed.

Mathin looked up from his sticks, though his fingers continued to twist them slowly. "It is wise of the Outlanders to believe the truth," he said. He dug one stick, butt-end, into the ground, and thrust his short knife into the first chunk of meat. He nibbled at it delicately, with the concentrated frown of the artist judging his own work. His face relaxed and he handed Harry the stick still in his other hand. But he spoke no more of kelar.

Mathin took no more falls, and by the middle of the sixth week Harry felt she had forgotten her first lessons because they were so far in the past. She could not remember a time when the palm of her right hand did not bear stripes of callus from the sword hilt; when the heavy vest felt awkward and unfamiliar; nor a time when she had not ridden Tsornin every day.