Aritane looked down at her hands, still clasped between Jeirran’s broad palms. “You said you had a favor to ask of me?” She looked up, her face emotionless but her eyes boring into his.
Now it came to the point, Jeirran hesitated. “It is said that Sheltya can speak to each other across the mountains and valleys, send word to their colleagues far distant, farther than a season’s travel.”
Aritane nodded slowly. Jeirran continued more boldly, breaking into the tense silence with sudden urgency. “Could you contact these Elietimm? Could you find out more about them? Could you see if they might help us, teach us, maybe even make common cause with us? If they were to attack the lowlanders in the east, while we came down from the mountains, we could reclaim our lands, regain our pride!”
Aritane pulled her hands free to hug herself, shivering despite the sunshine. “You do not know what you are asking,” she murmured. “I have heard of these Elietimm, of course I have. We have been forbidden to seek them.”
“I am asking you to help your people,” Jeirran said softly. “Sheltya took you away from your own that you might serve all those of the mountains. Is there anything else but such service in what I am asking? Do you want to go back to solving squabbles between silly women, arbitrating rows over grazing, dealing with death and foulness when some traveler brings pestilence to a remote valley, while all the time our people are made poorer and meaner by lowland greed?”
“You are a curious choice to be arguing for the greater good and selfless risk-taking,” said Aritane dryly. “What’s in this for you, Jeirran?”
“Power, what do you think?” He spread his hands wide. “The power to hunt Eirys’ lands without fear of losing the best pelts to some lowlander’s snares. I want to see her brothers able to sell the ores they labor to dig for a fair price. Power. I want to be rich, Ari, I want to keep Eirys in all the luxuries her little head can imagine and to stop the mouth of that mother of hers with an endless diet of honey and cakes, if that’s what it takes to silence the hag. I want to hand my sons a handsome patrimony and to see my daughters set up to claim every right over and under the land that their blood allows. I want to be a power in the mountains, Ari, one to make the lowlanders look to the hills and fear my wrath more than the cold winter wind.” He grinned at her. “I want to be a brother once again to the new leader of Sheltya. I want to have the ear of the woman who restores true magic to its rightful place of honor and influence.”
Aritane shook her head but she was smiling now, a thin, heartless smile with a spark growing behind her eyes. “I’m not surprised that silly child Eirys fell for your blandishments, Jeirran. You always did have a tongue quicker than a mountain stream and more slippery than the rocks beneath it.”
“Will you do it?” Jeirran persisted.
“I shouldn’t even waste a moment’s thought on it.” Aritane pursed her lips. “I could find myself turned out on the bare mountainside with my mind as empty as a midwinter barrel. If anyone found out—”
“Who’s to know?” demanded Jeirran. “I’m hardly likely to go gossiping to any passing Sheltya, am I? I’m as deep in this as you are, more so. You are the one with the power over me, you said so yourself. Your word alone could have me shunned across the breadth of the mountains, no reason given or asked.”
“I can use my skills to try and get a response but with scarcely more certainty than setting a signal fire in the mountains and hoping someone will see the smoke. The trick will be reaching far enough away before raising the cry to escape notice closer at hand.” Aritane was talking to herself more than to Jeirran. “If I do find these Elietimm, what then?” she challenged him abruptly.
“Then we have something to tell those who feel as we do,” Jeirran said confidently. “There are plenty of us fed up with being bilked and cheated by the lowlanders. Deny there are Sheltya chafing under the constraints of custom and the Elders? We tell them that there are men and women of our blood beyond the ocean who do not bow and scrape and ever retreat in the face of lowlander aggression.”
Aritane tilted her head to one side. “You always were shrewd enough, I’ll grant you that much.” She moved with sudden decisiveness, shaking out her unadorned skirts. Looking toward the mountains to the north, she checked the position of the sun overhead, moving this way and that to assess the shadows before crossing to one side of the roof and squinting at the misty shapes of higher ground. Nodding at some inner conclusion, she turned to Jeirran, her face animated with daring and defiance for an instant before resuming the mask of her earlier indifference.
“Sit with your back to the chimney, facing north.” He hurried to comply.
“You do not interrupt me, you do not touch me, you do not move or say anything,” Aritane ordered in a tone of absolute authority. She sat cross-legged, heedless of her dress on the dusty roof. Elbows resting on her knees, she laid her face in her upturned hands and began to breathe deeply, regularly, in through her nose and then forcing the air out of her mouth in an ever lengthening exhalation, pushed deep from within her.
Jeirran jumped, startled, when the low sound halted and clenched his fists against the urge to go to her. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. He moved a hand as if about to wipe it away but stilled himself. His lips moved in what might have been a muttered curse, had he dared to speak. His eyes were unblinking, bright sapphire as he fixed his gaze on Aritane, who was now taking shallow breaths, pauses between each. Jeirran found himself following the same ragged pattern, the color beneath his beard fading to an unhealthy pallor until he lifted his chin with an explosive intake of breath, panting uncontrollably for a few moments before a natural rhythm was restored to his lungs.
High above, a hawk’s thin cry was wheeled away on the wind, serving only to emphasize the vast silence of the empty valley. A flurry of dust and nameless debris skittered across the roof as a fugitive gust swirled around Aritane’s motionless figure. Jeirran blinked and spat out some fragment, shaking his head a fraction before forcing himself to immobility once more. The breeze vanished and the sun pressed down on his head, striking up from the stones and laying black shadows across the white surface of the roof. The chimney at his back was solid and reassuring but cold and silent where once it had been the warm heart of the rekin. A trickle of perspiration rolled down the side of Jeirran’s face to vanish into his beard. Another followed, this one moving sideways to sting the corner of his eye.
A great crash reverberated around the circular wall of the compound, echoing back and forth with a sound like a hot rock shattered by the shock of cold water. Terror leaped in Jeirran’s eyes for an instant, fear naked as the mask of arrogance and confidence was torn from his face. The noise came again, the rap of wood on stone and Jeirran took a long, trembling breath. It was the gate, wasn’t it? Set swinging by a wind rising up from the valley bottom, that was it, surely?
He looked at Aritane, who was motionless as stone.
Was it the gate? Had someone else come here, Jeirran wondered suddenly. Would Sheltya be using their powers to watch over Aritane? Could some distant gray-bearded Elder have been listening in on their conversation? Was the sound the first warning they had been discovered, that Sheltya were come? One always seemed to be on hand when needed, but were they here now, to frustrate their plot?
Jeirran’s breath came faster. He was sweating copiously, even when a new breeze cooled him. Hands clenched by his sides were shaking, tremors running up his arms to jar the stiffness in his neck and shoulders. The heat and the silence pressed down unforgiving, as if they would pound the rocks to dust.