Soar

Chapter 27

The people of the village Kataj had spoken of were gathered in a camp arranged around a central fire pit. They stood to greet the lord of the city as he passed, and he welcomed them with kind words and assurances of safety. A boy pointed us toward a tent near the center of the cluster. Outside, an old woman sat in a camp chair, peeling potatoes.

I watched her as we approached. Her hands were sure in their task, but slow and steady. When she finished one potato, she felt all over it with careful fingers before tossing it toward a bowl on one side. Then she bent and, without looking, felt around in a bowl on the other side for the next vegetable.

"Gelya," Kataj called to her.

The woman paused, her hand in the bowl and her head angled toward us. She was blind.

"Is that you, Kataj?" A smile cracked through the wrinkles around her mouth. She dropped her knife in the bowl and sat back, absently reaching to smooth the scarf over her gray hair.

"Yes, it is," Kataj answered, also smiling. He reached her and set his hand on his shoulder – far more lightly than he had with Erizar. The woman raised a hand to pat his, her face tilted up at him.

"About time you remembered your manners and came to visit. I was about to send a message with my son to give you a sound reprimand."

"And I would have deserved it, of course."

She clicked her tongue. "Who have you brought?"

Kataj waved toward us. "Some special friends." Erizar was the first to move. I went more slowly, while Tajir held himself apart from the scene.

"Good evening, Gelya," Erizar said, kneeling beside the woman. He took her searching hand and laid it against his cheek. "You look well."

"Oh, tut." She tried to brush off his compliment, but she beamed all the same. "I look like a ragged old woman, and you know it. But you never age, Erizar."

"You wouldn't say that if you could see my head. There is more silver than gold there of late, I'm afraid."

Gelya pulled her hand away from Kataj's and brushed back her scarf to show her own thin, gray curls. "Once I believe I was younger than the both of you, but time seems to like me better. I'd say it's because I was a simple elder's wife who spent all her time in the fields while Kataj danced and dined in this castle of his, but then there's you, Erizar, and I'll wager you're still tearing across the countryside chasing raiders." She chuckled and patted Erizar's cheek before dropping her hand. "But I hear more feet than the two of you."

Erizar laughed. "Yes, I have one of my riders with me, and...." He held out his hand toward me. I had stopped a few feet away, feeling out of place. Now I crept forward and knelt beside Erizar. He moved Gelya's hand to my face. "And this miracle, who has found her way home."

Wrinkling her brown, Gelya searched my face with shaking hands. I stared into her clouded eyes, barely breathing. There was something in those eyes I recognized from the reflections of my own face I sometimes caught in the water or the side of a pot.

"I do not understand," Gelya whispered. Her voice shook and her thumb stroked my brow. "I kissed a face so like this one on many a starry night, and yet... It cannot be. Who are you?"

"My name i-is Azadryn." I swallowed hard against a dry throat and tried to hold still. "I am the daughter of Kalamec and Elania."

Gelya's hand slid down to rest on my shoulder. "Erizar?" She turned toward my grandfather as tears traced down her face.

"If you could see her, you would know in an instant."

"I see, but I do not understand." She covered her mouth with a shaking hand. "How?"