LITMIR.BIZ

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      "What are serfs?"

      "They are bound to the land and they belong to the Lord in the same way that it does," said Kitten.

      "You mean they are slaves!" I cried.

      "Not exactly in law but in fact yes they are."

      "God and Angels, how can this go on?"

      "Actually it is like this all over Aramaya. It's the way the country is organized."

      No wonder these people were so passive and cowed. No wonder they had not sent for the Demon Hunters. My God. How awful. All my life people had been telling me things were done better in Aramaya and I, like all Peninsula folk, had believed them. No one had ever mentioned the fact that most of the population lived in a state of semi-slavery. They say travel broadens the mind. It certainly opens the eyes.

      Kitten and I spent the rest of the day healing people as best we could. Although it was a very short term solution to the problem it was better than nothing. Much later as we were helping an old blind woman with her cataracts, I looked up and saw Prince Nikoli standing in the door way. The old woman's daughter fluttered anxiously to the door and bowed low to him.

      If he had come earlier I really think I would have scolded him for the shameless and shocking institution of serfdom, but I had had time to recover my temper and to realize it was not personally his fault.

      "Are we going?" I said, a little shortly.

      "I was just about to ask if you would mind spending the night here. I have a few more people to question and then we shall be through, but the boys are tired and I imagine you must be too. You seem to have found much to occupy yourself."

      "I had to do something about the condition of these people," I said bluntly.

      "Yes," said the Prince. He lent against the door frame. "You are angry about something?"

      "I am shocked by the state of these people. Shocked!" I cried. "And now the Countess tells me that they are virtual slaves of this necromancer. And you said... Do they have no recourse? Is there nothing to be done? At least in Moria people can take to the roads if they are unhappy. Yet here the Countess tells me stories of hunting dogs and prison for runaways... It is not what I expected to find at the centre of the world."

      "Ah,yes." said the Prince. "It seems I must again apologize for my countrymen. It is not a system I personally support and with every generation there are more of us against it. We are in hopes that this new Emperor will be one of us, but it is too early to tell. No doubt the state of the Morian peasantry is much superior."

      That remark took the wind out of my sails. Perhaps it had been intended to. There were plenty of Morian peasants who could not afford to buy their children milk. Many of them had come to Ruinac to seek their fortunes in the new lands we were opening up there and had brought tales of starvation and cruel landlords with them.

      "Is there no way that these children can get enough milk to help them grow properly?" I said, perceiving that there was no point arguing with someone who agreed with me.

      "Lord Shugorsky had several cows. I can buy a couple of them from his bailiff and give them to the village."

      "But will the milk be fairly distributed?"

      "These villages operate as units. They must. Usually you can rely on the village elders, who are also serfs, to see that everybody gets a share. Come. We shall see what can be done."

      Nobody wanted to spend the night in the manor house. The tithe barn was the next biggest and cleanest building in the area so we all spent the night there. An area was partitioned off with blankets for Kitten and I and comfortable beds of straw were made for us. It must have been all the little children I had handled that day or perhaps I was so tired that for once I did not need magic to put myself to sleep. Anyway that night I dreamt about my miscarriage.

      They say all mothers feel the child in their womb, but a mage feels it even more strongly. From the moment Shad’s seed joined with mine, I was aware of the life force of our child within me. For five months I felt intense joy as she grew inside me. And then one terrible day, I felt that spark of life begin to struggle. Though I tried to keep it going, willing my own life force into my womb, still it failed. And was suddenly gone. And it stayed gone. A day later I gave birth to a small dead fetus. In dreams I still saw its tiny hands and feet.

      Shad and I called her Alinya and buried it in a small grave in our garden.

      "We will have other children," he said. But we did not.

      Oh that terrible moment when the life flickered and I could do nothing. That terrible moment when I realized she had died inside me. Why oh why had she died?

      I lay there in the darkness and wept silently as I had so many times before. It had been two and half years since Alinya had died, but at such moments the pain was sharp and the release that tears gave was small. When the tears had gone I lay awake, my eyes open and sore from weeping, and a kind of black emptiness pressing down on me. I tried the various relaxation rituals, but the depression was too strong for them to work. The only other option was to put myself to sleep with magic, but I could see the light of dawn already coming in through the window. Suddenly I wanted to get away from the dark soak of misery I lay in. Quickly I pulled on my clothes and went out of the barn. It was still quite dark. Though birds were twittering in the trees, there was no movement among the shabby little huts. I walked along the muddy smelly track through the village till the houses ended and on towards the sea which I could hear and smell a short way away.

      I forgot the monstrous waves I had fought (was it already a day ago) in my delight in the sea as it was now. How magnificent the waves were breaking on the wide wet sands. When Shad and I had first lived together at Ruinac, sometimes we would make the long half day journey to the nearby coast to just such a beach. Though the land around Ruinac was grey and sterile after being laid waste by a demon, the sea shore had recovered. The sand dunes were covered in spiky sea grasses and little shrubs and seagulls nested in the nearby cliffs and swirled and dipped over the waves.

      A day at the sea had always refreshed us for the long days of magic and digging that we needed to bring the land round Ruinac back to fruitful life. When it was too cold to swim we would ride our horses through the waves or run along the shore chasing each other and throwing lumps of seaweed. We had been so happy...

      I found myself rubbing my ring finger. There was no ring there any longer. I had been too shocked to take my ring off when I first received Shad's ring and letter. It had taken me over a month to bring myself to do it and to send it to Shad at Ruinac, thus granting him the divorce he had asked for.

      I had done so the night before Kitten and I had embarked to cross the Western Ocean and find Dally. Anything might happen to me on this journey. It was best to have all my affairs in order before I went. At least this way, Shad would be free to get on with his life and with the family that would hopefully inherit Ruinac from him. For myself there was nothing about freedom I wanted.

      All kinds of bitter reproaches had filled my mind, but when it came time to pen the letter accompanying my ring, I simply wrote telling him how much I regretted that things had not turned out well between us and wishing him happy for the future. Anything else just seemed too petty.

      Now standing here on the sea shore and remembering how happy we had once been, I bitterly regretted sending back that ring. It was so horribly final. I should have hung on. I should have gone back and tried to talk with him. Now there was no hope.

      But no. There had never been any hope. I could not give him children and he had wanted children. All men did.

      Naturally he had turned to Edaine, the young Klementari woman who had come to teach my students runework and who had decided it was her role to rescue my husband from the disastrous consequences of marrying a non-Klementari. I could still remember Edaine shouting at me.

      "You are selfish keeping Shad with you when everyone knows that you are barren. Why can't you do the decent thing and let him go find someone who can give him a child?"

      Shad had been furious when I told him.

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