AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cleve poked him.
“Be quiet,” Varrick said. “Come here,” he said to Chessa.
“I hope you don’t want me to climb up on that table,” she said, and rubbed her stomach.
He frowned at her, and she would have sworn he growled.
He climbed down. He withdrew the burra from its sheath and handed it to her. “Take it. Take it and tell me what you feel, what you see.”
Slowly, she reached out her hand and took the burra from him. She cried out and brought her other hand up to help her hold it. “It’s so heavy,” she said, and quickly lowered it to the table. She still held it between her hands, but let its weight rest on the tabletop.
Varrick didn’t move.
“It’s hot, isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “Nay, it’s just very heavy, so heavy tha
t I know I can’t hold it.
“It’s cold now, isn’t it?”
“Cold? It isn’t cold at all. It just feels like wood, very heavy wood that’s got something else inside it to make it so weighty.”
“What do you see?”
She looked down at the burra. “Circles and strange squares. The paint looks faded as if it will flake off very soon now. It looks old and strange. It’s very heavy, Varrick. Won’t you take it back? I don’t like it.”
He looked baffled, then angry. “Damn you, I asked you what you saw, not what the burra looked like.”
“Saw? I saw nothing, save the table and I’m worried that it won’t hold all the food we’re preparing.”
He grabbed the burra from her and shoved it back into its sheath. “It’s the babe,” he said. “Aye, it’s the babe. It’s stolen your powers.”
“What powers?” she said. “You have the powers, Varrick, not I.”
He sighed deeply and called out, “Argana, bring me a goblet of mead.”
There were still the remnants of laughter in her voice when Argana called out, “I can’t, Varrick. My hand is filled with cabbage.”
He turned slowly to see his wife of eighteen years cutting huge chunks of cabbage and laying them onto a large wooden platter. “Athol,” she called out. “Take your father a goblet of mead.”
“I’m a man, Mother, not a slave.”
“I’m a woman, Son, not a slave. That has nothing to do with anything. I’m busy, as are your brothers, if you’d bother to notice. You are doing nothing at all. Your father deserves obedience from all of us. Do as I tell you or you won’t have dinner with us.”
To Chessa’s utter delight, Athol poured a goblet of mead and gave it to his father. He didn’t do it with pleasure, but he did it.
This, Chessa thought, holding perfectly still, not about to draw more attention to herself, was surely the beginning of the end for Varrick’s reign of terror and silence.
The feast went very well. There was plentiful food, more laughter than Chessa had heard since leaving Hawkfell Island. Chessa remembered the tale and riddle Laren had spun about Egypt for them all and that weasel Ragnor had answered. She told all the people the story, put the riddle to them, and it was Athol who answered it. No one could believe he’d answered it correctly and they hadn’t been able to. Perhaps, she thought, there was a bond between Athol and Ragnor. She decided she would have Varrick send Athol to York. He could befriend Ragnor.
Late that night when everyone slept, many of the Kinloch people wrapped in woolen blankets and packed next to each other, close to the fire pit, Cleve brought his wife close and said, “Tell me, Chessa, what did you see?”
She said very quietly, “Ah,” she said, “It was wonderful, Cleve. I saw our child. He hasn’t your beautiful eyes, but rather mine, all green and yet deeper than mine, all filled with secrets and joy and mysteries and adventures. He has your golden hair, thick and pure.”
“What is his name?”
She grinned against his throat. “I didn’t have time to ask him.”
