In planning for her vigil, back before she really believed she'd have one, Faris had determined that on a cold night the best place to be was the Dean's garden, in the shelter of its walls.
Once she made her way there, Faris found it hard to stand still beneath the oaks. It soon became plain she would find no peace in the garden. She turned away, with a sudden vivid memory of Eve-Marie's vigil. No wonder she had fidgeted her way almost all across Greenlaw. The vigil made its own demands, independent of the weather.
Faris reached the garden gate and halted, startled, as Menary Paganell stepped into her path. Menary carried a small lantern, its candle sheltered from the wind by panes of thick glass that gave the light a greenish cast. She lifted the lantern high and peered into Faris's face.
“Where are you going?” Menary asked. “Better yet, where are you coming from?” In the odd light, her face seemed to hold more than ordinary interest.
“I don't know,” said Faris uneasily. “I'll know it when I reach the right place.”
“It's your vigil too, isn't it? Stay with me. We'll watch together.”
Faris drew back, disconcerted by Menary's unexpected friendliness. At her expression Menary smiled widely. The
night wind lifted her hair into a mane that caught uncanny light from the lantern and stirred her academic robes around her like great wings. Though she wore no cloak, no hood, she seemed untroubled by the cold.
“This is a good place to keep vigil.” Menary lifted her lantern and glanced around at the empty garden.
“Not for me.” Faris moved forward.
As she brushed past, Menary caught her wrist. “I meant it. I want you to stay with me.”
Menary's fingers on her wrist were so cold they stung. With a sharply drawn breath, Faris pulled free. “I can't stay.”
“You will.” Menary reached out again.
Faris stepped backward and bumped into someone. Her first thought, strangled before she spoke aloud, was
the Dean!,
then she heard Tyrian's voice, reassuringly calm, in her ear.
“Is this young person troubling you, your grace?” His level tone hinted at boredom.
Faris turned. In the wan light of the lantern, Tyrian stood at the gate of the Dean's garden, somberly dressed, exuding competence. Faris let out a breath of relief, started to speak, and glanced back at Menary.
Menary, her hair a wild pale aureole, her eyes wide, stared hungrily at Tyrian. “Is that where you came from?” she whispered to Faris.
Faris glanced apologetically at Tyrian. “I must go.”
“Of course,” Tyrian agreed. “Go on.”
Faris left them. This time Menary made no attempt to stay her. She regarded Tyrian with rapt delight.
Faris let the restless feeling drive her, first to the foot of the Cordelion Tower, then to the cloister garden. She paused there, but the restlessness persisted. From the cloister she crossed the parvis to the new chapel. Then, more sure of herself, she hurried to the spiral stair.
All the way up, Faris hurried, though she had to feel her way up the steps by touch in the darkness. With each step, the restlessness built within her. It drove her toward something, a moment or a place or a moment that belonged to a place. The urgency was so great that Faris climbed the last steps as furiously as the first and burst, gasping, at last out through the low-linteled door of the pepper-pot tower.
After the stair, the roof was cold, raked with the night wind. Faris staggered, dizzy from the spiral stair, and caught herself at the wall. There was nothing before her but wind and darkness.
Faris stood quietly, hands braced on the low wall, and listened to the sound of her laboring breath. All urgency gone, Faris let her heart find its accustomed pace. She could hear every nuance of the wind in the pinnacles and towers around her. She could see nothing. Finally the cold conquered her stillness. With Nathalie's comforter huddled around her, Faris tucked her skirts close and crouched at the foot of the wall, taking what shelter she could from the wind. At last, her vigil had begun.
The hours were long. In the darkness, Faris waited. The cold became a part of her. She became as still as the stones beneath her. She felt the college and the village far below grow quiet as the peace of the night held them close. She
sat at the heart of the world. Silent and serene, she balanced in the void.
During the last hour before dawn, the wind raked the clouds away and Faris saw the stars. She craned her neck to gauge their progress against the spire overhead. Above her, St. Michael and St. Margaret guarded one another's backs. She could not see them. Only the bulk of the spire, black against the sky's blackness, was visible against the stars. She did not have to see them. They were there. All was right with Greenlaw, she could feel that was so. Arms around her knees, chin nestled in the softness of the feather comforter, Faris felt sure of every stone in Greenlaw. All was well.
Out of the north, faint and far off, came the call of a skein of geese. Faris sat up straight. The call came closer, like a high wild song, like hounds hunting. Faris saw nothing of their passage against the stars. Only her heart could see them. Her memory showed her wild geese over Galazon. Faris swallowed hard. It was not that they were leaving winter behind. It was not that they were going somewhere Faris wished to be. It was the very fact of their passage that stirred her, the fact that something drove them across vast distance.
The wild geese did not merely heed the call that moved them. They answered it with a call of their own. The wildness of that call met the wildness of her longing for Galazon.
Vigil forgotten, Faris hid her face in her folded arms until the last faint notes of the call had faded. When the sky was
empty, she looked up. Eastward, over the dark line that marked the hills of Normandy, the sun was rising. Faris looked up. The spire was still a featureless bulk against the sky. The stars had faded completely. In the rising light, the world was merely quiet. The utter silence of the night was gone. Faris shivered suddenly. She got stiffly to her feet, teeth chattering with the cold she had all but forgotten during the vigil.
When the long shadows of dawn had moved into place, when the sun was full up, free of the horizon, Faris made her way slowly down the spiral stair. She knew she did not display Eve-Marie's joyous expression. She wondered about Jane's grave response after her vigil. She had seen nothing but stars, heard nothing but the geese going over. But if Jane's vigil had been as uneventful as her own, it had done nothing to impair her skill at magic. Faris resolved to keep a calm countenance and say nothing.
Good policy in any circumstance,
Faris told herself, and yawned convulsively.
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W
ith the deliberate pace of extreme fatigue, Faris started to return Nathalie's feather comforter to the dormitory. On the way, she saw the college stirring to life. It would soon be time for the Structure lecture. Resignedly, Faris left the comforter in number five study and turned toward the lecture hall. If she came too close to her bed, she would not have the heart to leave it again.
In the hall Faris saw Jane, who was frowning as she listened to Dame Villette's corner-of-the-mouth conversation.
Near the front of the room, Menary sat, resplendently smug, among Gunhild and the younger students. Faris found an inconspicuous place in a far corner and braced herself to stay awake one more hour.
The Dean, the steel in her manner more noticeable than usual, delivered a lecture on the wardens of the world. Faris was feeling a little worried about having spent an entire night near the upper ward of Greenlaw. She told herself that she was imagining the Dean's cutting emphasis on the necessity of balance, but resolved to avoid catching the Dean's interest in any way for the next fortnight. The possible double meanings in the lecture had one good effect. By the time the hour was up and the speech over, Faris made her way to the door completely awake and on her guard.
As she reached the door, Jane joined her, looking grim. “You're wanted in the Dean's office.”
Faris thought of her bed and set her jaw to suppress an involuntary protest. “Now?”
Jane nodded. “Or sooner.”
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W
hen Faris presented herself at the Dean's office, the door was open and the Dean was already at her desk. She looked up as Faris entered and held out a sheet of paper.
“I have received another letter,” she said crisply. “I think you had better see it at once.”
Faris took the letter warily. It was not, as she had instantly feared, from any of Menary's family. Written in a clear, clerical hand, signed with her uncle's untidy scrawl, it read:
Greenlaw College will permit the withdrawal of Faris Nallaneen. Her presence in Galazon is urgently required.
Stricken, Faris looked up. The Dean met her eyes gravely. When Faris said nothing, the Dean folded her hands and spoke.
“What Greenlaw College will or will not permit is no matter for your uncle to dictate. If you choose to obey him and return to Galazon, be aware that the nature of your studies here cannot be lightly interrupted. If you ever choose to return to finish your work here, you must begin at the beginning. You will not be permitted simply to resume where you left off.” The Dean glanced down at the inkstand on her desk, then reached out to adjust it minutely. Without looking up again, she added, “Should you choose to stay here and complete your studies, Greenlaw College could inform your uncle that your withdrawal is not permitted.”
Faris blinked. She had heard barely a word of the Dean's well chosen statement over her deafening thoughts. Galazon needed her. Or was it Brinker who needed her? Or
did
he need her? Was this something else altogether? She folded the letter and surprised herself by asking levelly, “Is there any message for me?”
“That missive was delivered here by a courier from Galazon. He wishes to speak with you as soon as possible. He is staying at the White Fleece.”
“If he has some more explicit message for me, I wish to
hear it,” said Faris. “It might make my uncle's motives more clear.”
“That seems perfectly reasonable. Please return when you've explored your uncle's motives sufficiently. We must discuss this further.”
Faris managed to keep herself in hand until she was out of the Dean's presence. The instant she was in the corridor, she ran. Down the hall, down the steps, out the college gate, and through the streets of Greenlaw, Faris ran to the White Fleece. Her black robe billowed behind her with the speed of her passage. She ran, frowning fiercely, and the students she met on her way scattered before her.
A summons home was unlooked-for good fortune. Wasn't it? Yet she did not feel the delight she should have. Even at the beginning of Michaelmas term, she would have been glad to go home. Now she felt as though she'd been shoved out of a vivid dream, jostled rudely by her uncle's summons. The wording of his letter to the Dean was characteristically opaque. If he'd sent along a message for her, very well. But if she was to leave Greenlaw for Brinker's convenience, some explanation was required.
Inside the White Fleece, Faris remembered that she didn't know who to ask the innkeeper for. Just as she decided to ask if a foreigner had recently arrived so she could sort out the candidates by their accents, she saw Reed. He was at a long table in the dining room, his nose buried in a pewter tankard. As she crossed to join him, he glanced up, snorted, and slammed the tankard down as he shot to his feet, choking.
“Sit down.” Faris clapped him on the back, which only seemed to make the choking worse, and took the seat beside him. “Please sit down.”
At her elbow, possibly summoned by the expression on Reed's face, the innkeeper appeared. “Is this young lady bothering you, sir? We do not generally encourage the students of the college to socialize with our guests.”
Without troubling to rise, Faris looked down her nose at the innkeeper, who fell suddenly silent. Reed blushed and protested that the duchess was not bothering him, that is, he was not bothering her, that is, in short, they knew one another.
The innkeeper gave Faris a look mingling suspicion and resentment, sneered at Reed, and withdrew reluctantly.
“
Now
will you sit down?”
Reed regarded her with narrowed eyes as he resumed his place. After a moment, he took another long draught from his tankard, and ran one hand over his close-cropped hair. “You've changed, your grace.”
“No, I haven't. When did you arrive? Did my uncle send any message for me? What's he hatching this time?”
“All I know is that I'm to fetch you home. I arrived last night. I have no message for you. And God forbid I should know what schemes best please Lord Brinker.” Reed hesitated. “Look at you. You're as tall as I am.”
“Taller, I'd guess, by at least an inch. Let's stand back to back and make the innkeeper measure.” For an instant, Reed looked as if he were going to stand up. Hurriedly, Faris changed the subject. “Am I to be fetched immediately or only eventually?”