The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(54)

"Eight days," she said, and his eyes drew back from the water spray and met hers. "Eight days," she repeated. "You said less than a fortnight."

"Yes," he replied. "We are counting the hours now." He made a swift sweeping motion with his right hand, and Harry said suddenly: "Show me your hand."

Corlath looked puzzled for a moment, but then he held his right hand out, palm up. There was one short straight pale mark across it, obviously new; and many small white scars; she didn't have to count them to know there would be eighteen of them, the still-fresh - and longest - cut a nineteenth. She studied the hand a moment, cupping it in her own, not thinking that she was poring over a king's hand; then she looked at her own right palm. One tiny straight line looked back at her.

He closed his hand and rested it on his knee. "They don't fade," Harry said. "The old ones don't disappear."

"No," said Corlath. "It is the yellow salve, before we make the cut; it is made of an herb called korim - forever."

She studied her own palm again for a moment. The scar cut through the lines a fortune-teller would call her life line and her heart line; and she wondered what Damarian fortune-tellers might see in her hand. She looked up at Corlath, who absently put a piece of bread in his mouth and began to chew; he was staring into the fountain again. He swallowed and said: "There is a story of one of my grandfather's Riders: the Northern border was restless then - but only restless, and this man had gone North to see what he might learn. But they caught him, and recognized him as from Damar; but he knew they would find him a little before they did, and he slashed his hand that they might not find the mark and hold him for ransom - or torture; for the Northerners, if they wish, can torture with a fine prying magic that no mind can resist."

Harry thought: If the Northerners know about the Riders' mark, they must be a bit slow not to wonder about a spy caught with a cut-up hand.

Corlath continued after a moment: "He had traveled dressed as a merchant, so when he knew they would find him he freed his horse and sent it home, and took off his boots, and began to climb the near-perpendicular face of one of the Hills that is the boundary between our land and theirs. When they found him he was half mad with sunstroke and his hands and feet were as tattered as autumn leaves. They decided they had not caught a prize at all, and after they had beaten him a bit, they let him go. He finished climbing the mountain with his hands and feet, because he remembered that much of what he was doing; and just over the summit, just inside the border of Damar, his horse was waiting for him, and she took him home. He recovered from the sunstroke, but he never held a sword again."

Harry swallowed a lump of bread that didn't want to go down, and there was silence for a bit. "What happened to the mare?" she said at last.

"Your Tsornin's dam is a daughter of his mare's line," Corlath said, but it was as if he were tracing some thought of his own. "The mare lived till she was almost thirty, and dropped a foal every year till the last. Many of our best riding-horses are descended from her." Corlath looked at her, coming back from wherever he had been.

"That mare's line is called Nalan - faithful. You can see it in Tsornin's pedigree."

Harry asked lightly: "And is there a name for the line of the kings of Damar?"

Corlath said, "My father's name, and his father's, and mine, is Gulkonoth: stone."

Harry looked at his right hand resting quietly on his knee. He paused and added as if inconsequentially, "There are other names for the king. One of them is Tudorsond. Scarred hand."

"Does the korim scar the foreheads of the household, and the faces of the hunt and the horse as well?" And Corlath said, "Yes."

There was a silence again, and Harry wondered how many other questions she might be able to gain answers for. She said, "Once in the mountains before the trials, Mathin said to me that he could teach me three ways of starting a fire, but that you knew a fourth. He would not tell me what the fourth was."

Corlath laughed. "I will show you one day, if you wish. Not today. Today it would give you a headache."

Harry shook her head angrily, her feeling of contentment gone. "I am tired of having things only half explained. Either I am damalur-sol, when it is convenient, or I am to be quiet and sit in a corner and behave till it is time to bring me out and show me to the troops again. Did you choose Mathin to teach me because he is close-mouthed?"

Corlath looked a little abashed, and Harry guiltily remembered how much Mathin had told her, although - she defended herself - it was not enough. Never enough. But she could not help remembering his answer when she had asked him why he had been chosen for her training.

"I chose Mathin because I thought he would teach you best; there are none better than he, and he is patient and tireless."

And kind, thought Harry, but she would not interrupt when she might learn something.

"We of the Hills - I suppose we are all, as you say, close-mouthed; but do you think you have learned so little of us?" And Corlath looked at her - wistfully.

"No," she said, ashamed of herself. There was a pause, and she said, "Could you perhaps, please, tell me why Mathin would not tell me any of the legends about the Lady Aerin? They are a part of your lives that all of you share - and it is her sword you have given me - and the legends, why, there are a few sung even at the spring Fairs in the west, where Outlanders can hear them."