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It was not a time for talkingElena was worried about Carenna tonight; she had just had a child two weeks beforeIt was too soon for her to be doing thisBut she was needed, they were all needed, and the Ember Night wars did not tarry for any man or woman, or for anything that happened in the world of day
She nodded in response to a couple she didn't knowThey followed Carenna past her into the houseThere was dust on their clothing; they had probably come from a long way east, timing their arrival here for after the sundown closing of the doors and windows in the town and in all the lonely farmhouses out in the night of the fieldsBehind all those doors and windows, Elena knew, the people of the southern highlands would be waiting in darkness and praying
Praying for rain and then sun, for the earth to be fruitful through spring and summer to the tall harvest of fallFor the seedlings of grain, of corn, to nourish when sown, take root and then rise, yellow and full of ripened promise, from the dark, moist, giving soilPraying, though they knew nothing within their wrapped dark homes of what would actually happen rolex oyster tonight, for the Night Walkers to save the fields, the season, the grain, save and succor all their lives
Elena instinctively reached up to finger the small leather ornament she wore about her neckThe ornament that held the shriveled remnant of the caul in which she had been born, as all the Walkers had been, sheathed in the transparent birthing sac as they came crying from the womb
A symbol of good fortune, birthwomen named the caul elsewhere in the PalmChildren born sheathed in that sac were said to be destined for a life blessed by the Triad
Here at the remote southern edges of the peninsula, in these wild highlands beneath the mountains, the teachings and the lore were differentHere the ancient rites went deeper, further back, were passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth down from their beginnings long agoIn the highlands of Certando a child born with a caul was not said to be guarded from death at sea, or naively named for fortune
It was marked for war
For this war, fought each year on the first of the Ember Nights that began the spring and so began the yearFought in the fields and for the dior saddle handbag fields, for the not yet risen seedlings that were hope and life and the offered promise of earth renewedFought for those in the great cities, cut off from the truths of the land, ignorant of such things, and fought for all the living here in Certando, huddled behind their walls, who knew only enough to pray and to be afraid of sounds in the night that might be the dead abroad
From behind Elena a hand touched her shoulderShe turned to see Mattio looking quizzically at herShe shook her head, pushing her hair back with one hand
"Nothing yet," she said
Mattio did not speak, but the pale moonlight showed his eyes bleak above the full black beardHe squeezed her shoulder, out of a habit of reassurance more than anything else, before turning to go back inside
Elena watched him go, heavy-striding, solid and capableThrough the open doorway she saw him sit down again at the long trestle-table, across from DonarShe gazed at the two of them for a moment, thinking about Verzar, about love and then desire
She turned away again to look out into the night toward the huge brooding outline of the castle in whose shadow she had louis vuitton gold handbag spent her whole lifeShe felt old suddenly, far older than her yearsShe had two small children sleeping with her mother and father tonight in one of those shut-up cottages where no lights burnedShe also had a husband sleeping in the burying field, a casualty, one of so many, of the terrible battle a year ago when the numbers of the Others seemed to have grown so much larger than ever before and so cruelly, malevolently triumphant
Verzar had died a few days after that defeat, as all the victims of the night battles did
Those touched by death in the Ember Night wars did not fall in the fieldsThey acknowledged that cold, final touch in their souls, like a finger on the heart, Verzar had said to her, and they came home to sleep and wake and walk through a day or a week or a month before yielding to the ending that had claimed them for its own
In the north, in the cities, they spoke of the last portal of Morian, of longed-for grace in her dark HallsOf priestly intercessions invoked with candles and tears
Those born with the caul in the southern highlands, those who fought in the Ember wars and saw the shapes of dior women the Others who came to battle there, did not speak in such a way
Not that they would ever be so foolish as to deny Morian of Portals or Eanna or Adaon; only that they knew that there were powers older and darker than the Triad, powers that went beyond this peninsula, beyond even, Donar had once told her, this very world with its two moons and its sunOnce a year the Night Walkers of Certando would have, would be forced to have, a glimpse of these truths under a sky that was not their ownThere would be more claimed for death tonight, she knew, and so fewer to fight the next year, and fewer the nextAnd where it would end she did not knowShe was not educated in such thingsShe was twenty-two, a mother and a widow and a wheelwright's daughter in the highlandsShe was also a child born with the caul of the Night Walkers into a time when all the battles were being lost, year by year
She was also known to have the best eyesight in the dark of all of them, which is why Mattio had placed her here by the door, watching the road for the one Donar had said might come
It was a dry season; the moat, as he'd expected, was prada bags cheap shal
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