by Andre Norton
Leela went to a brawny, wide shouldered youth who looked to be her match in physical strength. Askla was prey to a man perhaps old enough to be her father. Rutha was claimed by a man in a better style of dress, perhaps some townsman or even retainer of the lord.
The one taking Jass was clearly a farmer of small means. When Hadee was pushed forward there was a murmur from the crowd and Twilla gathered the fact that this one was certainly considered no bargain.
Then Twilla herself was urged forward. The man in civilian clothing at Lord Harmond’s side was frowning now and the murmurs of the crowd were growing louder and more disparaging. But Lord Harmond paid them no attention. Rather he pulled forth the last of the strips from the bowl. And when he read aloud the name there was a complete hush over the assembly.
The young man who had been so late in arriving jerked as if he were a horse to which the spurs had been suddenly applied.
“That hag face! No!” His face was flushing and he made no move toward climbing to claim the choice fortune had made for him.
Lord Harmond did not rise from his seat, but the look he turned on the young officer promised wrath to come. When he spoke his voice was icy and carried a note of command which was not to be disobeyed.
“All know the law, all will abide by it—no matter what his station may be. You will do as all others here have done, Captain; accept the bride which fortune has decreed for you.”
“No!” He had turned and was pushing his way out of the crowd where voices were being raised. Lord Harmond nodded once more to the officer beside him and he was quick on his way to intercept the younger man. Meanwhile Lord Harmond turned his attention to Twilla, looking her up and down. There was a twist to his lips as if he had sipped at a sour wine.
“We keep the law,” he said. “No man, even if he be my son, can refuse the lottery. You are of my household now, and you shall conduct yourself accordingly. Take her to the tower chamber,” he added now to Tathan who had come to the top of the three steps at a crook of his finger.
Lord Harmond's son! Twilla kept a tight grip of her bundle as Tathan hurried her down and around the end of the platform toward the gate into the Keep itself. What triangle was she involved in now? The Lord was determined to keep the law—if his son was in such disgust of her what might he do? She found her heart beating faster as the warwoman hurried her along.
Wedded by force to some field man she might have had a chance for escape, but she believed now that she had little hope of such. Lord Harmond would make sure that the marriage would take place—he could not favor his son over any of the others in the lottery, for the sake of both his own hold to the law and the matter of discipline.
Unlike the rest of the buildings of the town, which had been constructed of fired clay, this was of stone which must have come from some distance—though it had none of the feeling of age about it which one was aware of in the buildings of overmountain. And there was the smell of newly cut wood as well as the odor already imprinted on a building housing a number of people.
Tathan pushed her toward a steep wall stair, narrow enough so that not more than two could share a step, and then came to the second story of the tower where two doors opened off a narrow landing. The warwoman set hand to one and then gave Twilla another push sending the girl into a chamber which was bare of all but a bed, a chest, a rude table and a pair of stools. Certainly there was no luxurious living in Lord Harmond's establishment.
For a moment Tathan stood, hands on hips looking the girl up and down. Then she gave a coarse laugh.
“Good that you be a healer, girl. His whip to your back will give you plenty to heal. Young Lord is not going to take kindly to being bond to such as you, and Lord Harmond, he won't let him slip the leash. He has said too often there be no changing of the choices. Captain Ustar didn't want no bride to begin with but they's talking again about trying to get house timbers from the woods, and them as goes after such will have to be protected. There ain't anyone in this keep town, gal, as is going to envy you even if you got a lordling out of the lottery.”
She snickered and went. Once the door had closed behind her Twilla just got to one of the stools in time to save herself from a fall. Her whole body was shaking. The mirror—she had used the mirror and she wore the brand she had asked for in her reckless folly—she was not even sure she could undo it. Certainly not for a space, for she needed to build up her inner strengths. Also, suppose she showed her natural face—the Dandus priest would be after her at once. If Lord Harmond trusted such a one he would be the first to condemn the mage-learning Hulde taught. She was caught.
She wrapped her arms about herself feeling the near bruising pressure of the mirror as she pushed it tight against her breasts. At any moment she expected Ustar to break in upon her and—Do what? She remembered the story they had told during the trip of ill-favored women who had disappeared—conveniently for their bond husbands. Though she hardly believed that they would dare kill her out of hand in the Keep—for one thing Lord Harmond would not allow his son to so evade the law he himself so rigidly enforced.
She stooped a little farther and fumbled with her pack. There were tricks with herbs—but she had not been driven to that last extremity as yet. Though she believed she had the right to defend herself if her life was threatened.
What she did choose were a selection of the last remaining bits of that mind clearing substance she had called upon when she first started this mad action.
She had no water in which to steep them, rather she chewed two of the sprigs. Her mouth was so dry that she found it difficult work.
Then she forced herself to make a clear-eyed survey of the room. There were hooks set into the wall and from one depended a weather cloak. From another a belt which glittered even in this subdued light and was plainly meant for feast-time wearing. Hurriedly she got to her feet, but even before she laid hand to it Twilla knew that the sheath was empty of knife.
She turned to the chest and tugged up its heavy lid. Clothes showing touches of fur—probably for the cold season wearing. A tunic richly embroidered to match the elegance of the hanging belt. Plainly this was indeed a noble's wardrobe.
Carefully she searched to the bottom of the chest hoping to find some possible weapon—but there was none. The windows were covered by oiled skin so that the daylight was dimmed and there was no looking out. Nor could she free a corner of that. She turned back discouraged as the door opened without any ceremony and she moved hurriedly to face whoever had come upon her so.
It was a man she had not seen before. Certainly not Ustar, nor his father, nor that officer who had been on the platform. Yet he had the air of the well-born. Until, looking closer she could see that his clothing, good as it had been, was now dingy, soiled, stained with food droppings down his jerkin and in the creases of his shirt showing between the loosely laced jacket.
He moved oddly as he came forward, as if each foot that he advanced sought solid foundation before he put his full weight on it. His head was up, his face framed by a mass of ill-kempt dark hair, had a curious set expression and his eyes—His eyes stared straight ahead as if he could not see her at all! They were wide open, a dark blue which was near to gray and the pupils appeared overlarge as if he were in the dark.
In the dark! He was blind!
She must have made some sound, for with the quick awareness of one who had learned to depend on a second sense, his head turned sharply in her direction—like a hound who heard the sound of a distant summoning horn.
“Who is here?” His demand came quickly. Now she saw his nostrils expand as he drew several deep breaths, a hound now turning to scent as well as sound.
His whole attitude was that of one wary as if his walk through dark days was ever under threat.
Twilla found her voice. Judging by his clothing, as ill-used as that had been, he was someone of importance so she gave him the address for a noble.
“I am Twilla, Lord, one of those brought overmountain for wedding—”
Rather than a smile, the movement of his lips now was a wolfish grin.
“Bride? Then my father has done as he threatened—saddled young Ustar with a bride! He would carry out that plan of his to meddle with the forest again and is making sure this time his heir will not be rendered useless.”
She did not know how to reply to that. He sniffed deeply again.
“What manner of bride dowry did you bring with you, Twilla? I smell—” He paused a moment and then added, “Herbs—yes, but not the ones for the scenting of body and clothes. So—what do you deal in?”
“Though your Dandus priest denies it,” she was taking a chance now, “I have healing skills—with me is the healer's bag my teacher gave me at our parting.”
“A healer!” Now he gave a guttural laugh. “It would seem that fortune guides my steps this day. What can you do for blinded eyes, healer? I am an unman here, a useless mouth, my heritage given to my brother because of these!” His hands raised to his face, clawed as if to tear those staring eyes out of their sockets.
“Did it come upon you as from a blow?"—she had heard of such cases—“or were you ill?”
She came to stand before him looking up at those changeless discs of gray-blue.
“It—” He shook his head as if he were trying to order some thoughts. “It is a curse—and how it came to me I do not remember. That is truth!” He ended fiercely as if he expected her to scoff at his story—perhaps others had.
“Let me see,” she used the soft voice such as she summoned when dealing with the ill whose body's betrayal frightened them.
At first he drew back a fraction but then stood fast as she put a hand to his shoulder and urged him forward to where was the best light in this dim room.
“Sit down,” she had guided him until his knee was against the chest and he obeyed.
To all appearances his eyes were normal save for that fixed, open-lidded stare. She could see no redness, no encrustation of the lids, nothing as a guide to the few eye troubles in which she was trained.
“How long has it been so for you?” she asked.
“How long?” His voice raised a note or so higher. “Long enough, healer—and past. A blind man cannot reckon time—we see no day nor night—all is alike to us. I only know that I went forth with a scouting party into the Demon's Wood and was lost there from the others. When I came forth again I was as one drunk, babbling of what did not exist—and blind. So they brought me back to a father who has no use for one who is maimed, true son or not. Lucky for him he has Ustar—which satisfies his need for blooded kin to rule after him.
“My father, you see,” he continued, the bitterness coloring his words ice cold, “has been promised ruler-ship over these lands. He need only establish a productive community here and he is the king's voice, not to be gainsaid. A lordship with none to envy him as they might were he to aspire to such an honor over mountain where there are many jostling one another for the king's full attention. My father is a man who heeds the law—” He paused again.
Twilla had picked up her healer's, bag and was rummaging for a certain phial.
“Therefore a maimed son is now an outcast, and a second son will wed that he may fulfill the quest his brother botched.”
She was measuring drop by drop a clear liquid onto a small puff of well-cleansed fleece. As she counted the drops with one part of her mind she was arranging in another two lines of words to awaken the power.
"May light be brought —
As ever taught.”
With the sodden pat of fleece she delicately swabbed his eyes, making sure that they were closed, yet not so tightly that the moisture of her treatment did not reach the eyes themselves.
Then, with care she stepped back from him and brought out of the hiding the mirror. If this blindness was indeed some foul ensorcellment the rumors would have it she had this other test.
“Open!” she ordered, wanting quickly to be done and the mirror back in hiding.
He did, his straight stare unchanging. She swung the mirror directly up before him and looked at its surface. Because she was expecting some such she did not gasp at what she saw.
There was his ill-shaven face, his wide mass of hair and—across his eyes a concealing band of silvery motes as if he were half masked with a thick gauze.
“Sorcery,” she said.
For the second time he laughed. “You need not read it so, healer. Has not the Dandus priest already seen the taint in me? And what have I in answer to mage curse—or what have you? I am demon-struck, I can only be thankful that my wits have returned to me and I no longer babble—or should I be thankful? Not to understand misfortune is perhaps the better. And death now the best of all!”
Twilla wet her lips. She was trying to remember any bit of Hulde’s lore which covered such ensorcellment. But the nature of the spell which had set it must first be known—and where could that be learned save from the one who has done the casting?
“You remember nothing of what happened to you in the wood?”
“Do not raise that question again!” he half snarled.
“They have thrown it at me in one form or another for what seems near a lifetime now. No, healer, I do not remember! If I did perhaps I would still be able to wage some form of battle on my own behalf. None of us know what lies within the wood—only this—that a man who is wed can venture there. One who has no wife to bed comes to a fate like mine or worse. For that also there is no answer. The Dandus priest would have it some demonic dark outside even his wide knowledge.”
Twilla raised a hand and brushed back a long lock of hair which had swung down over those unseeing eyes. To such a man the loss of sight would seem far worse than a clean death, that she could understand.
“There—there is nothing you can do for me?” There appeared a crack in that harsh shell he had built around himself.
“Not with herbs, Lord. Not with such small learning as I have. But I swear that this is not of the body but of ill wishing, and for that there can be a remedy.”
“Where do I seek such?” His head was up, that harshness was back in his voice again. “Among the demons of the Wood? They will show me no mercy—but perhaps you do have the right of it.” He stood up and turned toward the door as if he knew this chamber well enough to cross it without mishap. “Perhaps an accounting with demons would be better than to live like this—un-man that I am—”
He was out of the door with two swift strides and slammed that behind him before Twilla could answer.
6
TWILLA, HAVING PUT her herb bag to rights again, once more seated herself on one of the stools. The light was growing even more dim, and she was hungry. Weddings such as she and Hulde had attended as guests had been very different.
There had been feasting and laughter, dancing, joy in a new beginning for two lives. But there had been no degrading lottery there, no reduction of any girl to a thing which a man needed to keep himself safe from some invisible menace. Even if the bonds had been arranged by the two families the young people had always known each other and she had never heard of a girl being pushed into some uneven match willy-nilly.
She wondered what was happening now to her late companions. Most of the men at the lottery had plainly been from farms, and some of those might be situated some distance away. Perhaps they were already trudging back to those shelters with their “brides” beside them like beasts bought in the market.
They were wedded—and that by the will of Lord Harmond and the formula he spoke but—Twilla drew a deep breath. That formula had not been spoken over her. The unwilling Ustar had not been brought back to stand with her before his father. That could mean that she was not bound to him!
Though what good did that do? She was very sure that sooner or later she would see Ustar and that his father would make very sure he was married and that marriage consummated so that his second son would be safe in the proposed venture into the demon woods. Therefore there was no escape, only a breathing sp
ace.
She drew out the mirror again and peered into it—the surface was dim in this light and those window skins would keep out a scrap of moonlight. Yes, the face she had designed for herself and which would probably be her undoing still stared back at her. The red splotches had faded into deep pocks. Her eyes were still small, red-rimmed, weak looking with lashes scanty enough to hardly show at all, and the swelling of her nose—she looked not unlike one of the young sows in a farm yard. Truly a face to frighten away or disgust any man. And she feared now she was going to suffer for it.
She was debating on trying to assuage her hunger with some of her herbs when she heard the bar on the door rattle and a moment later Tathan clumped in, setting a tray down on the chest top.
“Eat up,” the warwoman leered at her, “a maid needs strength for bedding. Though that may be yet awhile. Lord Ustar and his father are not of one mind concerning you. However, Lord Harmond will win in such a dispute. You'll be brought down before the company, the bond given and then"—she now grinned widely—“you'll have to greet a very unloving master.” For a moment she hesitated.
“I have heard things of wisewomen, mind you. That they may have powers. But the Dandus priest will be sure you don't summon such. His sort do not take kindly to yours. Best not try anything that that one can catch upon—it will be the worse for you. Eat, and be glad that you were remembered when the bowls were filled tonight.”
She tramped out, and Twilla heard the bar slide back. She edged her stool up to the chest and investigated the contents of two bowls and a tankard. What she wanted and needed now was food.
However, as she dipped into a thick mixture of root vegetables and small blocks of meat (nothing which required the aid of an eating knife, she noted—she had only been provided with a spoon) her thoughts turned to that earlier visitor.
He had come into the room as if he expected to find it empty. Had she been allotted the chamber which had been his? And she was not even sure of his name—only that he had suffered the curse of the woodland and as a result was seemingly an outcast in his own home.