The Wanderer by Cherry; Wilder, Katya Reimann Page A

own light, from her body, from the folds of her blue-grey gown, told Gael of magic.
    “Jehane!” said Pearl of Andine, “Welcome to Cannford! I hope your grandmother is well?”
    “Very well, my lady,” replied Jehane.
    She stepped up and exchanged a formal kiss on the cheek with the chatelaine of Cannford and then presented her companion. Gael gave a salute, and she saw that Lady Pearl had hazel eyes, very keen and sharp.
    The woman who had greeted them in the hall held open a door and the lady led them into a pleasant bower, not so striking and grand as the private hearth in Hackestell Fortress, but more comfortable. They sat on a padded settle and Lady Pearl heard of their training on the High Ground and of their pilgrimage to Silverlode, where her noble father had met his death. She turned to a tall press, with a display of miniature portraits in silver
frames, upon a wooden stand. There was Thilka of Andine and Jared Strett of Cloudhill; there were their three daughters, Annhad, Perrine, and Pearl. Gael found these portraits marvelous things, so fine it was difficult to think of an artist who could do such work. The painter, she was told, was Emyas Bill, a great artist from Lien who now lived in Achamar, the capital city, if so it could be called, of the wild Chameln.
    Then the old woman brought lemon cordial to drink and fresh applecake. Presently the Lady Pearl reached for certain objects that stood beside a vase of roses on the table before them.
    “You are blessed,” she said crisply, with an unexpected change of manner. “I will give you each a reading!”
    She swung back the domed lid of a black wooden box and revealed a smooth shining ball of glass, giving off rays of colored light, its own rainbows. Then she had in her hand, from a small woven basket, flat numbered sticks that Gael knew as runesticks. She did not know how to behave during fortune-telling but Jehane and the lady showed her kindly. Both girls scattered the sticks, and this showed who would go first—while Jehane had her reading, Gael was sent out onto the garden terrace and sat looking out into the orchard.
    She saw a band of young girls, some of them children, picking fruit, romping and hiding among the trees. She saw and wondered at the southern wall of the rift, hundreds of feet high and striated with colored layers of earth, some where plants grew, some of bare rock. Presently it was her turn to go in and hear her own reading while Jehane wandered away into the interior of the great house.
    The Lady Pearl stared at her with a keen interest and reached across the table to take Gael’s hands in her own. She peered into them, made a sharp intake of breath and bit her lip. Then she gazed into the crystal ball, smiling a thin nervous smile.
    “From the Holywell outside little Coombe …” she murmured, “and you chose the kedran life of your own free will?”
    “Yes indeed!” said Gael, surprised. “I—I believe I have a calling …”
    “More than that, child,” said the lady. “Perhaps you are surprised that I have heard of your family’s little well, even across
this side of the High Plateau—but that Well is an ancient place, and the Goddess has long blessed it.”
    Gael thought of the rocky fields where her father bent his back in labor, and she withheld her own thin smile, but the lady was speaking in all seriousness, overriding her doubts. “You are people of the Cup,” she said. “Yet you, Gael Maddoc, have chosen the way of the Lance. This is a greater departure than you yet have realized.”
    Gael could only stare, remembering the parchment she had deciphered with the Druda’s help, her father’s reluctance to allow her to follow the Druda’s plan that she should go for a kedran. “There is no cup at the croft now,” she said shyly. “We are humble people. Folk do not come so often to the Well—”
    Pearl of Andine interrupted, her gaze fixed within the glass ball. “Gael Maddoc,” she said, “a great