The Gift Read Free Page B

If she had been a child used to name-day celebrations, she might have likened it to the feeling of anticipating a present, but she knew no such celebrations. At the same time, the blank, impassive mask under which she survived seemed to have disappeared, leaving her exposed and a little frightened. It was as if the stranger had opened a door, long shut in her mind, and a cold fresh wind blew in, waking her from a stupor.
Who am I?
she wondered, and the question hurt.
    She was used to her own strangeness. It had often been a protection as much as a curse. Because of her blue eyes and black hair, the fair-haired Northerners called her a witch, and she had played the part from an early age, making a virtue of what set her apart. And Maerad did possess the power of cursing: if she glared at someone, they might trip over and fall for no reason, or a beaker might fall from a shelf and break on their head, and once she had blinded a man for three days. She was also especially good with animals, another sign of witchcraft; those she tended grew fat and yielded twice the milk of the others. Most of the slaves feared and avoided her, and Gilman’s men . . . well, the Thane’s men had also learned to leave her alone.
    Gilman was deeply superstitious and, like all bullies, a devout coward. He believed that if Maerad were murdered, her ghost would drive him to a grisly death: madden him until he ran out into the wolfhunt, perhaps, or skewer him slowly with invisible knives of fire. So Maerad escaped the worst details, which caused comment and petty malice among many of her fellow slaves. Recently this resentment had flared into open violence: a month ago six women had attacked her and tried to drown her in the duck pond. They had almost succeeded, but Gilman had rushed out of the hall, red-faced with panic, and hauled her out of the water. Though Maerad was cuffed for the trouble she had caused, the slaves who tormented her were whipped and given no food for three days. Saved by Gilman! She grinned without humor at the irony. It had stopped the persecution, for the moment — but now no one spoke to her at all, apart from idiots like Lothar.
    If it hadn’t been for her music, she might have killed herself, or let the demons in her head taunt her into madness. Or she might have just turned into stone and become like the rest of them, brutalized of all feeling. Her lyre was her one possession, the only thing she still had of her mother. It was small, fitting into the crook of her arms like a baby, a bare wooden instrument with no decoration except some indecipherable carvings, but its tone was pure and true. One of her earliest memories was of her mother playing it, plucking the strings and singing to Maerad; she guessed she must have been very young, because her mother had not been sad.
    Maerad could play like a true minstrel; her ear was accurate, and she only had to hear a tune once to repeat it. Mirlad, Gilman’s Bard, discovered her talent after her mother died. She was only seven years old then, and he somehow persuaded Gilman to relieve Maerad from morning duties so he could teach her. Mirlad, gruff, taciturn, sometimes cruelly harsh, had been her teacher until she turned thirteen: then Gilman demanded her labor in the fields again. Maerad remembered her misery at that decision, and Mirlad’s odd response. “I’ve taught you everything I know about music,” he had said, shrugging indifferently. “Anything else would be a waste here. You can play in the evenings, anyway.”
    Her musicianship compounded her isolation, but it was another reason Gilman tolerated her: Mirlad had died some two years before, although perhaps only Maerad mourned his passing, and she was now the only person in the cot with the skill to play at the riots. She played for herself, privately, whenever she could, and those snatched moments were the only consolation of her degraded life.
    Milana. My mother. How long since I thought of you? You braided my