Read Sartor for Free Online Page B

sunlight, seemed
to loom. “Remember what Tsauderei said about winter’s melt. The
effect is going to be noticed, but the later the better.”
    Merewen ran her hands up her arms. “I feel different. Though
I can hardly say how, or why.”
    Atan turned back to her, brow creased. “You did make
it all the way east, and you didn’t get lost in the binding.”
    Merewen nodded soberly. “Savar said I would make it if
I kept in my mind Point Adan, the mountain of the rising sun. It’s
because I am part Loi.”
    Atan drew in another of those breaths. “Yes, your
mother is... Gehlei told me she was thought to have disappeared, when her
father tried to renege on the treaty, and take the throne in her name, deposing
my father. Tsauderei told me she was rumored to have run to Shendoral to take
refuge to escape the, the trouble.”
    Merewen shrugged. “Disgrace. That’s what Savar
said. My mother’s family left the capital in disgrace, but my mother came
to Shendoral.”
    “I don’t get it,” Lilah said, looking from
one to the other.
    Merewen seemed undisturbed, but Atan said carefully, “Merewen’s
grandfather married into the Dei family, and took their name, as required by
ancient treaty of any Landis marrying into the Dei family. That meant he could
never come to the throne. The other way, Deis who married Landises also had to
renounce their names.”
    “An ancient treaty?” Lilah asked. “Why?”
    “Old problems. I thought the Dei family went on to
Everon, after they were banished.”
    “They did,” Merewen said. “Except for my
mother. They didn’t know she was in Shendoral. Nobody did. She didn’t
like being in the middle of disgrace. Dis-grace. Mis-grace. Sounds like she
spilled her soup on her clothes, or tripped over her own toes!” She
laughed, a delightful sound, reminding Lilah and Atan of birdsong.
    “Did she disappear? You said you lived with Savar.”
Atan asked.
    “She’s with the Loi,” Merewen said. “She
chose that form when she mated with the Aroel. She can’t be human again.”
    “Aroel?” Lilah asked. “Is that a leader or
a ruler?”
    “No,” Atan said. “The Loi don’t have
human hierarchies, Savar said. It’s more like the one chosen to take
human form long enough to communicate with us.” She turned to Merewen. “So
you are the child of human and Loi.”
    “Is that why you’re blue?” Lilah asked.
    Merewen nodded, skipping again. “Savar said that I should
be able to shift—ah, alter form, but I don’t know how, or when. I
can’t find them, except in dreams,” she added, her voice sad.
    “Then how did you get separated from them?”
Lilah asked.
    “They came to the world to try to help, and nearly got
caught in the binding. That’s what Savar told me. I did get
caught. I was with my mother, see, and they thought I’d go back when they
shifted. But I didn’t. Then Savar found me, and so I lived in Shendoral.”
Merewen’s large blue eyes were wistful. “When the dreams are right,
they sing to me, my parents. They call me Linet. I like that.”
    “You will find them when we break that spell,” Atan
promised.
    Merewen’s sweet smile altered her whole face in the
fading light. Atan discovered the contours of Merewen and of Lilah, too, were
blurring. Darkness was closing in.
    “Shall we make ourselves a little camp in that grass
over there, and rest for the night?” she suggested.
    Lilah sighed with relief. “My feet would like that
very much. As for my stomach, it would welcome a bite.”
    The girls turned off the road toward the bank of the river,
making their way over dusty long grasses midway between green and brown. The
blades felt strange to Atan as she swept them aside. They had been caught for
so long midway between summer and autumn. Time’s measure really had
become meaningless here.
    The Luyos flowed fast, a comforting sound to Atan, for water
was too strong to be bound. They made their way down to drink the cold water,
and then back up onto