The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2) by Elizabeth Kerner Read Free Book Online

and what I was doing, be it as lowly a task as cooking food for those I loved. Life itself is change, and you never know when such pleasures will be taken from you without warning and without hope of recovery.
    The three of us sat round the fire in the kitchen that night for a quiet cup of spiced wine after supper. I was proud of my cooking for once, for if I say it myself the geese had been roasted to perfection. Varien had enjoyed it nearly as much as Jamie.
    The two youngest stableboys, Rab and Jon, had just finished washing the crockery through in the scullery while all the rest went about feeding and closing in the beasts for the night. There was a frost in the clear night air, bitter cold in the nose and threatening.
    Jamie had spent the short daylight hours showing Varien around the stead. "Varien tells me he has never seen a stead before," said Jamie, bemused. "Though if all you say is true," he added wryly, "he'd have had little enough reason to do so."
    "And still you doubt, Master Jameth," said Varien quietly. He seemed a little amused. "How shall I convince you, beyond my word and that of your own heart's daughter Lanen?"
    Jamie held Varien's glance as long as he could, but had to look away. "You'll never convince me with words," he answered, somewhat subdued. Varien's eyes were the strongest argument he had. "It'll just take time. But I'll know truth when I see it." One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile as he looked at Varien again. "You can't say you expected me to believe you right off? You have to admit, it's a little unlikely. You're a good man, Varien, on that I'd stake my life, even if your eyes are peculiar. You could be anything, I suppose—but come, tell me, have you anything left of your old people in you to prove it?"
    "Beyond the memory of my life with my Kindred, I do not yet know," Varien replied. He seemed to be taking this all very calmly. "I have been in this body so short a time, only three moons, I believe." He grinned then, all sadness forgotten as he reached over to take my hand in his. "I have not been paying overmuch attention to the passage of time, or to what this new body can yet do that I could do before. So different, so wondrous—in truth I have been far more intrigued by the differences." He let go of my hand then and held up his own two hands, palms towards him, staring at them, then passed the fingers of one hand over the other. "These Gedri hands are so soft, so delicate, they can feel the passage even j of air. Yet withal they are so deft, so capable and strong, you can thread a needle one moment and haul on a rope the next." He was lost in thought, gazing at his hands. "These were the things I truly envied you, those long years when the ferrinshadik held me and I dreamed of such a moment."
    "What does that mean—ferrin—whatever you said?" said Jamie.
    "Ferrinshadik—it is a word in our tongue for the longing that touches many of us, to speak with another race, to hear the thoughts of another people who can speak and reason," said Varien, thoughtfully. "Some are spared, but many of us feel it as a longing to speak with the Gedrishakrim—with humans, whom we call in our language the Silent People. To some poor souls it is a deep and lasting sorrow for the passing of the Trelli, who in refusing the Powers of order and chaos sowed the seeds of their own ending."
    Jamie looked at him, shaking his head. "Varien, your pardon, but what are you talking about? What powers?" he asked.
    "Jamie!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know the Tale of Beginnings? Sweet Lady, even I know that!"
    Jamie shrugged. "Never spent much time listening to bards."
    Varien smiled at me and shifted slightly in his seat, sitting up straighter and facing both Jamie and me equally as best he could. I grinned back. "So—this is the human version of the Kantri Attitude of Teaching, is it?"
    "It is indeed," he replied. "If you do not know the Tale of HeginningSi Jameth, it is time you learned. It speaks very