"Yes," I said, caught out by his sudden change of tone. "Would you like a piece?"
"I love cheese," he said.
Cheese. As I took the knife out of my belt to cut it, I found myself glancing up at the woodpile. The raven was no longer there.
"The raven disappeared when I came," said the Wanderer. "But his loss is my gain."
Uncanny how Wanderers always did that. I hadn't mentioned the raven. I watched him eating the cheese. He was better dressed than most of them, cleaner and more healthy looking. A strange face. The wrinkled face of an ancient boy with dark clever eyes. I could not be sure of his age. His hair was white gold like all pure blood Wanderers.
"This is fine cheese, Enna."
"Good," I said. "Would you like a piece of bread as well?"
He looked at me. His eyes glittered.
"We are going home soon Enna Dion. Back to Moria. Back to our homeland."
His words touched me. Our homeland.
I often wished I could see Moria again, especially the hills round Mangalore where I had grown up. I shook the melancholy feeling off.
"Not while the Church of the Burning Light rules in Moria, friend," I told him. "They hate mages like us there. They'd burn us both."
He smiled up at me and repeated, "We are all going home soon."
This was an odd conversation even for a Wanderer. He looked so elated and yet mysterious that he must have been chewing hazia.
"I'll just get you that bread," said I, thinking to maybe set him on his way by doing so. Then I could get some sleep.
As I came to my front door however, it occurred to me that he might know Causa and that she would be someone to help me with these dreams. I turned back to ask him.
He was already gone. The clearing was empty of everything but cool morning light and even using magic I could not sense him anywhere.
Somehow it was as if he had taken the evil phantoms in my head away with him. I went into my hut and slept dreamlessly to wake refreshed just before midday. I completely forgot his foretelling.
Two men did come that day. They came in the late after noon when the sun was turning warm and gold on the leaves. I was chopping wood for kindling. I had plenty of kindling already, because Gill Swineherd had come just the day before and chopped me some, but I was in a bad temper. I'd remembered sometime earlier that Parrus had been back from Gallia for four days now and there had still been no sign of him here. I accepted that he didn't care much about me, but did he have to make it this obvious? These things bother you when you are overtired. I've always found chopping wood to be a good outlet for anger.
I really should break with Parrus. I had no business bedding down with anyone, let alone him. He was just sowing his wild oats among the local women as the sons of great families always do and I ... What was I doing sleeping with anyone especially a man I was fairly certain I didn't love? Whore. It was just ... Sometimes the future seemed an endless straight road stretching boringly out into the distance with me trudging along it all alone. I could not imagine anybody ever wanting to marry me, with my powers and my past, so what point was there in keeping myself pure, and denying myself these small passing excitements.
"Now come on, my girl," I said to myself in that stern voice my foster father used to use. "You've had your fair share of excitement. It'll take you this lifetime at least to pay for those mistakes."
But the answer came as it always did.
"So is this all there is and will ever be?" And then plaintively, "I'm only twenty-one."
Curse it. Now I was getting myself in a state. I threw the kindling savagely in the wood basket and grabbed another log. Hard work was the best answer.
"Hullo," said a voice behind me in Morian.
Two men, strangers, were standing in the shadow of the trees. Two men. Like the Wanderer had said. How strange.
They were not Wanderers, but ordinary Morians. It was not unusual for me to see Morians on this side of the border. Sure, all non-priestly magic was forbidden in Moria since the Church of the Burning Light had called forth the Revolution of Souls and sure, when they were healthy many Morians regarded healers like me as little better than witches, fit only for burning. The practical fact, however, was that the Revolution of Souls was still so new that there were not enough priests or nuns around capable of doing all the healing that ordinary people required. Increasing numbers of Morians had been coming over the border to seek healing from Cardun's Morian healer and the Cardun parish board allowed this as long as the Morians paid something. I always healed them whether they could pay or not. I even healed the ones who made signs of protection against witches when they thought my back was turned. What else could I do? I'm not the kind of person to turn someone with a broken leg away, just because they believe I am evil. I couldn't help hoping, no doubt misguidedly, that my kindness might sow a small seed of doubt in their minds.
So I hardly gave the men's nationality a thought. It was the words that were spoken next that shocked me.
"That's very mundane work for the Demonslayer of Gallia," one said. "Why don't you just magic them apart?"
I almost dropped the axe.
The Demonslayer of Gallia? Angels! How did he know about that? After the pains I'd taken to hide it.
"Who are you? What do you want?" I snapped.
The men came forward. They looked alike enough to be brothers and were both fair haired. Fair is a common enough coloring among lower class Morians like myself. A sign of Wanderer blood some say. One of them was not much older than me. He was tall and well-built, with a placidly handsome face. The other older one, the one who had spoken, was smaller and wiry. He had a beaky nose and bright dark eyes in a good-looking weather-beaten face. His riotously curly hair was dark enough to be called brown.
Their shoes and clothes where grey with dust and in their hands they carried felt traveler's hats.
"We're looking for Dion Appellez, previously known as Dion Michaeline." said the older one. "That's you, isn't it?”
I stared at him, unsure whether to tell the truth or deny everything.
"Who's asking?"
"My name is Tomas Holyhands. This is my half-brother, Hamel." he said. "If you think about it, you will know who we are."
Holyhands. Should I know that name?
"It's the name of an Inn near the Annac monastery in middle Moria, he continued. The Inn of the Holy Hands. The bastard children of the maid who worked in that inn came to be called Holyhands for their family name, because having no fathers they had no other name."
I just stood and stared at him. I had been born in an inn, an inn near a monastery. I was the bastard child of an inn maid, one of several. And the name Holyhands. It was familiar. So the man who stood before me must be ...
I looked into the man's bright eyes and the strong magic within me knew him for who he was.
Knew him for my brother Tomas!
I sat down hard on the chopping block.
"Tomas Holyhands!"
"Aye little sister. We've come a long way to find you."
I had so much to ask them and yet I could think of nothing to say. I had not seen them for seventeen years. I had given up on ever seeing them again a long time before the Revolution of Souls had exiled me from Moria. When I was four years old, my mother had sold me to a mage to be his apprentice and that was the last I ever saw of my disreputable family and the Inn where I had been born. A long hard time ago now, I had come to the conclusion that my family had forgotten about me and I had set out to do the same to them. Now here was the past returned, clothed in flesh.
The minutia of hospitality covered my initial confusion. There was a hut to invite them into,