1 #3
A light rap sounded on the door to the bedchamber. Morgana called, “Come in, Braithe,” making the Blackbird chuckle.
“You at least are at the height of your power,” he said. She had no need to answer, as Braithe came in with a plate of sliced early apples in her hands.
“Sir, it’s so good to have you here on the Isle,” Braithe said. “These apples are from our own orchard, the first of the year. Do try one.”
“My appetite is unpredictable these days, Braithe, but I will taste one to please you. It’s good to be here with you both, but the circumstance is not a happy one. I fear our war is not yet won.”
Idhri and his master had eaten their supper in the quarters reserved for boatmen.
It wasn’t much of a room, with just a small table, two chairs, and four cots with pillows and blankets folded and ready, but it was every bit as comfortable as their cottage outside the walls of Camulod.
The servingwoman, called Dafne, had told them the rules of their visit, but Idhri barely listened.
His master’s rules were the ones he needed to observe.
Master Hugh had told him they were bringing the Black Mage to the Isle of Apples, that they were not allowed to go into the Temple, being men, nor into the dormitory, where the acolytes lived.
That they were not allowed to go anywhere, in fact, except to their quarters.
Idhri would have liked to wander around the grounds of the Temple, go down to the lake, perhaps explore the orchard and the woods, but he would never defy Master Hugh’s orders.
After they finished their meal, they went together out to the privy set aside for them, where there would be no chance of encountering one of the acolytes.
Idhri heard the girls’ voices chattering and laughing from the dormitory, and he quenched the wave of envy that threatened to swamp him.
He had no need to envy anyone their friendships, after all.
He had Master Hugh and his wife Emma. Hugh was strict, as a master should be.
Emma, soft-spoken and indulgent, was kindness itself.
Idhri knew he was fortunate in his apprenticeship.
As they walked back to their chamber, they caught sight of the tall priestess and the young woman who was apparently her attendant.
Idhri was rather frightened of the priestess, with her silver hair and her yellow eyes that tipped up at the corners, like a cat’s.
Her voice was deep for a woman, and she carried herself with the authority of a noblewoman, though she wore a simple black robe.
The young woman walking beside her was a different matter.
She was petite and plump, with a long tangle of curling fair hair and deep dimples in her cheeks.
He could see the dimples even when she wasn’t smiling.
Her robe was plain and brown, tied at the waist with a sort of rope.
When she had greeted him, he had been afraid to answer her.
His voice embarrassed him of late, breaking from high to low and back again.
He hoped she understood. She seemed like the sort who would.
If he could have a sister of his own, he would choose one just like that woman, with her bright blue eyes, the exact color of the summer sky. He thought her name was beautiful, too. Braithe. It made him think of sweet breezes and spring flowers. It was a laughing sort of name, perfect for a sister.
It was possible he did have a sister, but if so, he had no memory of her.
Indeed, he had no memory of anything before the day Master Hugh found him wounded and bleeding, wandering in the woods that surrounded Camulod.
It had been a kindness for the master to take him on as apprentice and for Emma to treat him as if he were the son she had never borne.
Idhri tried hard to be grateful to both of them and not to admit to himself that rowing to and fro over Ilyn sometimes bored him.
He often lay in bed at night striving to remember who he was, why he had been wounded, or how he had ended up in those woods.
He tried to cast his mind back two years, past the spring afternoon when Master Hugh had found him.
He tried to remember even the morning of that day, but it was as if his searching thoughts encountered an immovable black curtain, and he could neither see through it nor pull it aside.
It completely blocked his seeking mind. Behind that curtain, he supposed, were the details of his life before this, hidden away from him.
It had to be some fault in his brain, but neither Master Hugh nor gentle Emma ever pressed him about it.
Hugh thought work was the answer to every problem.
Emma invariably prescribed tea and biscuits, which Idhri much preferred.
He hoped Braithe didn’t know his shame. He only had a name because Emma had given him the one she had hoped to bestow on a child of her own. He only had a home because Hugh and Emma were good-hearted, generous people. He had nothing of his own, neither home nor family nor history.
He was, literally, no one.