The Gift Read Free Page A

Maerad felt suddenly shy before him, as if she were naked, and turned her face aside. She felt his eyes upon her, and then a kind of release as he looked away. Involuntarily she shook herself. She heard him shift and sit down.
    “I wish I were not so tired,” he said at last, and then asked, “You were not always a slave?”
    “My mother wasn’t a slave,” Maerad answered, speaking reluctantly, as if against her will. “Gilman bought her and kept her here, when I was very little. I think he wanted to ransom her, but none came to ransom.” She paused, and added flatly, “And then she died.” She coiled around to face him, with a flash of anger. “What business is it of yours?” she demanded. “Who are you to ask me?”
    The stranger seemed unperturbed, meeting her gaze calmly.
    “What was your mother’s name?”
    “Milana. Milana of Pellinor, Singer of the Gift, Daughter of the First Circle. My father . . .” She stopped milking, and her hands flew to her mouth in astonishment. “Oh!”
    “Oh, indeed,” said Cadvan.
    “I mean, my mother was called Milana, that’s all I remember. . . .” Maerad trailed off in confusion. “She, she died when I was seven years old. . . . I don’t know anything about . . . about the rest. Did you make me say that?”
    “Make? No, I can’t
make
you say anything. I asked, and the doors of your mind flew open. There is more in that treasury than most people realize. The School of Pellinor,” he said, as if to himself. “That was sacked, oh, years ago. It was thought all were killed.” He fell silent, and Maerad, shaken, continued milking. What was this man talking about? Was he mazing her, as wild spirits were said to do, bewildering her senses before snaring her? But he did not seem evil.
    “By what right do you come in here and say . . . and say such things? I could call the Thane’s men. . . .” She stuttered to a halt. Somehow she knew she wouldn’t call the guards.
    The stranger put his face in his hands and didn’t answer her. Maerad glanced at him angrily. She finished milking the cow and turned her loose, bringing in the next one. Cadvan was still sitting, unmoving, in the same position.
    “You can’t stay here, if you are of Pellinor,” he said at last.
    Maerad looked across at the stranger with a sudden wild hope. Did he mean that he knew some way to free her? But no one could escape from the cot. . . .
    He looked up at her. “Could you — perhaps — spare some milk?”
    Wordlessly she offered him the milk pail. After a long drink, he wiped his mouth and smiled. “A blessing on you, and on your house,” he said. Maerad nodded impatiently, brushing off the courtesy. “Will you have to come to the byre again?” he asked. “Today, I mean.”
    She examined his face suspiciously. “Yes, I am sectioned here today,” she said at last. “I’ll be milking again in the evening. Why?”
    “Good.” He stretched and yawned. “I’ll sleep now. We’ll talk later — yes, when I am less tired.”
    He cast himself down on the hay and was asleep almost instantly. Maerad looked down at him, considering whether to kick him awake and make him answer her questions, or to call the guards after all. But for reasons she couldn’t trace, she did neither. Instead, she finished the milking and left him there.
    She was beaten for the missing milk.
    That day Maerad was so absent-minded, she was lucky to escape a second beating. At her tasks in the milchyard — churning butter or setting the milk in bowls for soured drinks — she scarcely saw what she was doing. At first she didn’t know what she felt about the man in the byre. Her mind, practiced at the evasions necessary for survival, skipped over the thought of him; he was, in a way, unthinkable. But every now and then an image of his dark face rose unbidden in her mind, and with it an unsettling feeling she couldn’t name: a skin-prickling premonition, not exactly unpleasant, but not quite comfortable either.