The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  But at the same moment Jenna flung herself through the air. Before he could bring either sword up, she was on top of him, sinking the knife point between his eyes. He fell backward with Jenna on top. When she twisted the knife a half turn to the right, she felt the grinding against the bone. His right hand still clenching the sword came up behind her, as much a reflex as a stroke. One of the boys at her back gasped loudly and she hoped he had not been caught on the blade.

  Then she stared down into the Bear’s face, watching as the eyes below her glazed over. There was something horribly, hauntingly familiar about the feel of the knife in the bone and the man’s dying eyes staring up at her. She could not recall where she had seen such a thing before.

  “For Catrona!” she whispered into his slackening mouth. “For Iluna. For all the women you have killed.” She could feel his body under hers tremble slightly, stiffen, then relax. He made no answer except to exhale a sour sigh through his rigid lips.

  Jenna stood slowly, her hands bloody. Even more slowly she wiped them on her vest. When she turned away, she was shaking uncontrollably, as if she had caught a sudden fever. Jareth put his arms around her, trying to hold her still, but she could not stop shivering.

  And then she heard a strange, thin cry that built up to a high, unrelenting pitch.

  “Scillia!” Jenna whispered, turning back, all her trembling ended by the demands of that cry. “You poor little babe. You are mine, now.”

  She unstrapped the child from Iluna’s back and held her tightly, but the babe would not be comforted. Her cranky crying—that strange, tearless sobbing—continued.

  “Let her cry,” Jenna said. “She has lost both mother and home in one short day. If she cannot cry for that, she will cry for nothing all the rest of her life.”

  “She be just hungry,” Sandor said sensibly.

  “Or wet,” someone else commented.

  Jenna ignored them, bouncing the swaddled infant in her left arm and leading them all across the field, past the dying and the dead.

  As she walked, she made careful note of their faces. It was the New Steading boys, mostly, who had died upon that lea in their bright clothes and with their untried swords, still sheathed. There were few familiar faces among the dead. But somehow that made her all the sadder, that these boys had died strangers to her, without a word of comfort. She had promised herself not to cry for death, but she could not help it, though she wept silently that no one should hear, tears streaming from her eyes. Seeing Jenna’s tears, the baby stopped her own crying and, fascinated, reached out her hand to touch a tear and trace its path. Jenna kissed that tiny hand.

  None of the dead men on the field was Carum. Jenna made quite sure of that before heading toward the ring of swordsmen, now relaxed and waiting. As she approached, one came out to speak with her. She recognized him at once, Gileas with the scarred eye.

  He put a hand to his forehead, a sketchy kind of salute.

  “Anna, you must come quickly. It is the king. He’s dying.”

  “And his brother?” she asked quietly, suddenly aware of the other bodies within the circle of men. “Carum Longbow. What of him?”

  “Took!” Gileas answered. “Took like a good many of ’em. They blew a victory on their bloody horns, took what they could, and were fast away, leaving whatever of their men was dead and whichever was still fighting behind. Took!”

  Took! Her mind could not quite hold it. She repeated it to herself over and over and still did not grasp it. Took!

  He guided her to Gorum who lay against Piet’s knees. There was a smudge of old blood around his mouth. He was not smiling. How Jenna longed to see that wolfish smile now.

  “Pike,” she whispered, realizing how easy forgiveness could come. She knelt by his side. The babe in her arms cooed and reached for the king.

  Still unsmiling, Gorum lifted his hand and touched the child’s outstretched fingers.

  “Jenna,” he said, his voice a shadow. “You must find him. Find Carum. Bring him to me. I must tell him. He will soon be king.”

  Jenna looked up, startled. “No one has told him?”

  Piet shook his head.

  “Told me what?” The old fire returned to his voice, then trailed off.

  “That Carum …”

  Piet put a finger to his lips.

  “That Carum … is still fighting. Bravely. Well. Not just with the bow, but the sword, too.”

  “I was wrong, then. He will make a fine king.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

  “You are the king,” Jenna whispered, “as long as you are alive. And you are not dead yet. You will live long. I know.”

  “You are a prophecy, girl, not a prophet. I am dead already. A king …” He coughed and fresh blood frothed at his mouth. He swallowed it down painfully. “A king knows even more than a girl. That is why I am the king.” This time he managed to smile. “You will make a fine queen, Jenna. I was right about that though wrong about the other.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Hush, dinna waste breath,” Piet cautioned.

  “It doesn’t matter, and don’t you go being a silly nursemaid now,” the king said. “I need to tell her.” He tried to sit a little straighter, slumped back into Piet’s arms. “I was wrong. We had not the might to go against Kalas. Not yet. Not ever. Remember the story of the mouse and the cat that mother … did he tell you? I don’t think I have the breath for it now.”

  “He told me.”

  His voice was barely audible. “Remember …”

  “I will remember.”

  “You really are the end,” he whispered. “At least, you are mine.” His eyes closed.

  “I killed the Bear,” Jenna whispered, sure she was talking to a dead man.

  “Of course,” the king said, eyes still closed. “It was written.” He did not move again.

  They sat for many minutes, Piet cradling the king in his arms. No one spoke, though every now and then a cough shattered the stillness. The baby slept with a bubbling stillness and Jenna carefully set the sleeping child by Gorum’s side.

  Piet looked up. “Gone,” he admitted at last.

  Gone. The word reverberated in Jenna’s head. The king was gone. Carum was gone. One dead, the other missing. Both gone. She was about to speak when Sandor shouted.

  “Hold! An army. Through the trees.”

  “Hold, indeed,” Jenna said. “Those are women. The sisters of M’dorah. Do you not see Petra in the lead?”

  “Women, bah!” a boy’s voice called out. Others echoed him.

  “Shut that silly trap of yourn,” Piet said. “Have ye never seen a girl fight? I have. Side by side, I have. And they are the best of us. Certainly better than thee, boy. And the Anna here, is the best of all. Hasn’t she just done the Bear? What has thee to squawk about now?”

  “Nowt.” The boy looked down. The ones who cheered him originally were silent.

  “Welcome them, then,” Piet said. “Raise yer bloody voices and call them in. Girls like that.”

  They set up a cry, compounded of grief and welcome, and waved their arms, a strange ululating that brought the sisters of M’dorah across the blood-soaked field to their midst.

  They buried their own men in one common grave, the men of Kalas’ army in another. The king and Iluna had separate graves. Above the king’s they set a marker with his name and a crown carved by Sandor, who had some skill. He carved a marker for Iluna’s as well, the goddess sign copied from the ring Petra was wearing.

  The sisters of M’dorah were good nurses, binding up the wounds of those for whom binding would make a difference, the men who could still ride. The others that Piet determined could stand to travel, he insisted be sent back to New Steading. He had the men build makeshift sleds from the tree limbs, cushioned by blanket strips. These the horses could pull. Three of the older women, who were not warriors anyway, volunteered to guide the horses down the road and report on what had happened.

  “The babes go, too,”
Jenna said. “If this is indeed an ending, then one of the things that ends here is our bringing children into any fray.”

  “But it has always been done,” Maltia protested.

  All around her the women nodded vigorously. “Always,” they murmured.

  “It says in the Book that: A foolish loyalty can be the greater danger. This I was reminded of by the one who anointed me. Surely you would not disagree?”

  There were many looks passed between the women and not all of them, Jenna was sure, signaled an easy agreement.

  “One can be as foolishly loyal to past customs as to people,” Petra said.

  “Yes.” Jenna’s voice was firm. “And this custom ends here. Today. We will, I am sure, sing of it in the future.” She handed little Scillia to the True Speaker. The child whimpered as she went from hand to hand. “But I shall return and take this child for my own.”

  “She belongs to us, Anna,” Maltia said. “She belongs to M’dorah.”

  “M’dorah is no more,” Jenna reminded her gently. “When I took her from Iluna’s care, my hands were still red from the blood of Iluna’s killer. She is mine, little Scillia. I will love her well.”

  “I will keep her until ye return,” Maltia said. “And then ye can tell me, without the wind of battle in thy mouth, how well it is ye love her.”

  Jenna nodded.

  The other two babies were handed to the sisters, with many whispers of farewell. Then the women embraced, not once but many times. Strapping the children onto their backs, Maltia and the other two women took up the horses’ reins and started to guide the line of roped horses and their sleds down the road to New Steading.

  “Mount up!” Piet called when they were nearly out of sight.

  “We do not know how to ride,” a woman cried out.

  “You will learn on the way,” Jenna promised cheerily, “even as I did.”

  “Horses!” a rosy-cheeked young woman said, and spat. “They be an abomination.”

  “But a necessary and quick one,” Petra said. “If the Anna can learn to ride, anyone can.” She smiled.

  After several missteps and one disastrous hard fall suffered by an older woman with a chunky face and a determined mouth, the sisters were finally mounted.

  “Which way now?” Jenna asked Piet.

  “Farther north. They rode off that way and, I suspect, to Kalas’ holdings. With prisoners—especially the young prince—they will not be staying in the old king’s palace. Too many of his supporters live there yet. Besides, Kalas always had the biggest dungeons.”

  Jenna digested that information, then asked, “And they will not return here to end what they so foully began?”

  Piet smiled sourly. “They believe it already ended. And so it seemed to me, girl. The Bear slew the king. They carried off Prince Longbow and another double dozen of our fighters. They trust the Bear to finish the rest and that he will follow.”

  “Do you truly believe that?” Jenna asked.

  “I bet my life upon it,” said Piet.

  “You just have,” Jenna answered. “And mine as well.” She turned and signaled them all to follow and they rode, three abreast, toward the north.

  THE TALE:

  There was once a nest of seven mice who lived behind the kitchen wall. They had been warned by their Mam before she disappeared that when they were old enough to go out of the nest, they had to go with great care and all together, not one at a time.

  “For if you go one after one,” she said, “the great cat who lives by the stove will eat you up. It will catch you if It can.”

  Now the little mice listened to her, but that was all she said. And so how could they be afraid of an It they had never seen? One by one, when they were old enough they crept out of the hole. And one by one they disappeared into It’s mouth. Until at last there was only the smallest mouse left, named Little Bit.

  Little Bit’s turn came on a bright spring day. But he had heard the sound of It’s teeth and claws outside the hole. And though Little Bit was small, he was cunning. He peeked out of the hole and sure enough there was the monstrous It, snoring by the stove, with one eye open.

  “This needs a plan,” he told himself. So he searched throughout the hole and all along the inside of the boards, until he came up with enough materials to complete his plan. He worked for many days, well into the evening, for plans take patience and time. But at last he was done. He looked at his handiwork: an army of twenty mice made from sticks and gray cotton, with raisins for eyes and string for tails. He tied them one to another and the last he tied to his own tail with a special knot.

  “All home free!” he cried as loud as he could, to alert the cat. “Come on, boys!” Then he ran out of the hole hauling those toy mice behind him, lumpity, bumpity, over the floor.

  Well, It was up in a single jump, certain of the fine meal ahead. And It picked off the mice from the back end first: one, two, three … but they were all stuck together. Their tails tangled in It’s claws. It howled in anger and stuffed two in It’s mouth. Phew! Phwat! Psssaw!

  Little Bit ran free, as the knot slipped loose from his tail. When he got to the kitchen door, he stopped for a moment, singing out:

  “I am just a Little Bit,

  But I made a fool of It.

  Greedy guts and greedy paws

  Makes a tangle out of claws.”

  Then he ran out into the spring meadow to look for his Mam.

  THE MYTH:

  At last Great Alta shook her hair and a gift fell out of it onto the land below. The gift was a Babe in whose right hand was a star of purest silver. Her left hand was hid behind her.

  “The star is yours, though you were not born with it. And in your left hand is a star of gold. Whichever you choose shall shine brightest of all. The star will be both your guide and your grief. It will be your light and your loss. It will be your close companion.”

  The child tossed the silver star into the night sky. It glittered there and shone down on the roads throughout all the land.

  At this the child smiled and brought her left hand to the front. She opened it. There was no star there.

  Then Great Alta smiled. She braided up her hair, both the dark side and the light, and pinned it on her head as a crown. A golden star gleamed in the center.

  “You have chosen and it is so,” quoth Great Alta. “Blessed be.”

  BOOK FIVE

  THE DARK TOWER

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta set a pillar of darkness on the one end of the plain. On the other she set a pillar of fire. In between ran a path as thin as the edge of a knife and as sharp.

  “She who can walk the path and she who can capture both towers is the one I shall love best of all,” quoth Great Alta. “But woe to the woman whose foot is heavy on the path or whose heart is light at the tower, for she shall fail and her failure will bring doom to the land forever.”

  THE LEGEND:

  There is an odd plain not far from Newmarket that grows neither grass nor trees. All that is there are dozens of high rocks, great towers of stone, some hundreds of feet in the air. The tallest of all stand almost two hundred feet high, one on the north side and one on the south.

  The rock on the north side of the plain looks as if it had been blasted with fire. The rock on the south has the mark of the sea.

  Atop the Fire Rock are strange remains: wood ash and bone buttons and the carved handle of a knife with a circle and a half cross incised in it. Atop the Sea Rock there is nothing at all.

  The folk of Newmarket say that once two sisters lived on those two towers of stone, a black-haired one on Fire Rock, a white-haired one on Sea Rock. They had not spoken in fifty years. Their argument had been lost to memory, but their anger was still fresh.

  One day a child came riding across the plain on a great gray horse. The child was beautiful, his hair a dazzling yellow, his face Great Alta’s own.

  Both sisters looked down from their rocks and desired the child. They climbed down and each
tried to cozen him.

  “I will give you gold,” said the dark sister.

  “I will give you jewels,” said the light.

  “I will give you a crown,” said the one.

  “I will give you a collar,” said the other.

  The child shook his head sadly. “If you had offered love,” he said, “gladly would I have stayed though you gave me naught but stone to eat and naught but rock for a pillow.”

  The anger that the sisters had so honed for one another bubbled hot once again, and the desire that each had conceived for the child added to it. The dark sister took the child by the right hand, the light sister by the left. They pulled first one way and then the other until the child was pulled entirely in two. Then they scrambled up each to her own lonely rock, cradling the half child in her arms, singing lullabies to the dead babe, until they died of grief themselves.

  Their tears and the child’s blood watered the top of the tower of rocks causing a lovely flower to grow. Partling, the Newmarket folk call the flower, and Blood-o-babe. It brings ease to the pain of childbirth when boiled in a tisane.

  THE STORY:

  Kalas’ army, having no need to disguise its trail, was easy to follow.

  “North and north and north again,” Jenna pointed out.

  “To the castle,” Piet added.

  “And the dungeon,” Jenna whispered grimly. “Surely it is not as bad as you say.”

  “Worse, girl. It is called Kalas’ Hole and them that calls it so, mean no mere hole in the ground.”

  Piet made sure their approach was little noted by the few villages along the way. This was accomplished by breaking the riders into smaller groups, though the women of M’dorah refused to ride alongside any men. Marek, Sandor, and Gileas rode carefully ahead, reporting back every few hours. Though Jenna was frustrated by their slow progress, she agreed fully with Piet when he remarked, “Speed brings notice.”

  They supplied themselves in the woods without any great trouble, even with so large a group. The women of M’dorah were wily hunters and it being late into the spring, there were ferns, mushrooms, and good berries aplenty. For half the trip a small river paralleled the road and their skin bags were kept topped off with fresh water. Even when the stream turned and meandered on a more easterly route, they were never far from some small pond or stream. Fish were plentiful.