"They aren't the same."
"They are as far as I'm concerned. You a witch?"
Kate thought, I could fire her. I should fire her. Except then I'd have to pay her unemployment, and I don't think right now I want to be that generous. She said, "In case you didn't realize this, I'll tell you that freedom of religion is guaranteed in the United States of America, and my religion is no more your business than yours is mine."
"Are…you…a witch?"
If I tell her I am, I don't think I'll have to fire her. She'll probably quit on her own. Of course, then she can go to the Tribulation and tell Madilee Marson I confessed. If I fire her, of course, I will have done it because she was a Christian or whatever she is, and not because she's turned out to be a judgmental bitch. "I'm Wiccan," she said. "Pagan."
"I QUIT!" Lisa shrieked. "Do you hear me? I quit! And if you want your horses fed, you can do it yourself!"
She slammed down the phone.
Kate was so angry she shook.
She dialed again. The phone rang eight times before someone picked up.
"Beacham's Saddle Shop." The voice was Paul's, and he sounded out of breath.
"This is Kate."
"Thought it might be. Lisa just slammed out the back door, screaming about witches and quitting and how I could burn with you if I didn't leave."
"Right."
"I got the store key from her before she ran out…and the key to your place, too. I guess I can take care of the horses for you while you're gone."
He still sounded sane. She was relieved by that. But she wasn't really surprised. She and Paul had worked together for almost five years. He just lived so far away from her place, taking care of those horses would be a real inconvenience for him. She said, "I can't begin to tell you how much I'd appreciate it. But I will pay you extra for it."
"Kate…" His voice sounded funny. Not cold the way Lisa's had, but sort of…embarrassed, perhaps…or ashamed. "You don't need to pay me anything to do it."
"That's fine. I'll pay you what I was paying Lisa, plus something for the aggravation—"
"What I mean is, I'll watch the horses for you, but I don't want to come into the store again. And I think I'm going to have to quit, too. I was thinking today about setting the answering machine to say that Beacham's was temporarily closed, but I wanted to talk to you about it first."
"Did you say 'quit'?"
"Yeah." She heard chagrin in his voice, and apology…but also a certain determination not to be talked out of his decision.
"Why?"
"Because I have a wife and a kid and a mortgage on our trailer, and car payments. I can't afford to move out of Peters, I have to live in this town…and I'm not in a position to make any noble gestures or take any unpopular stands."
"What are you talking about?"
"When that article came out, I did a little checking myself, just like Madilee Marson. I looked into Ogden Snead and Bobby Sumner and Warren Plonkett. They're all members of the same church. Well, it calls itself a church, but it's a nasty little radical organization that doesn't have much to do with religion at all, as far as I can tell. It's called the Christian Brotherhood of Purified Souls, and I think the word 'Christian' is tacked on there just to get them a tax-exempt status. These people don't believe in brotherhood or tolerance or love or anything real Christians believe in. They're a paramilitary hate organization with an ugly definition for what it takes to be purified, and some very cultlike practices—regular members have to sell all their belongings and give the money to the Brotherhood; they go through a long, arduous indoctrination period, and bad things have been known to happen to the members who, once in, try to get out."
Kate felt her pulse begin fluttering in her wrists. She closed her eyes and leaned back on the bed and told herself that it didn't matter what group the men had belonged to—that they'd been arrested and they wouldn't bother her anymore.
"How did a deputy get into this group?" she asked. "I would think the sheriff's department would be picky about the sorts of things its members could belong to."
"You would think so, but the CBPS has been careful to keep its charities public and its causes popular. The medical funds drive for that baby was only one of their activities. They also contribute to the Sheriff's Department and the Police Auxiliary, and if their members have a professional standing—like the deputy, for instance—they relax some of their entrance requirements. They would like to get some of their members on the local school board and into local offices."
"How did you find out about them?"
"I knew someone who was—briefly—a member. She almost didn't get out, and she's moved away from Peters to be safe. She didn't want to talk about them, but once I'd made the connection between Snead's 'church' and that mess she got into, I insisted."
"If they're trying to get their members elected, they aren't going to do anything to you. That would be bad press."
"Would it?" His laugh had no sound of humor in it. "Bad press like they're getting now?"
Kate had no answer to that. She stared at the phone. "Can you just go in to work and keep things running for me until I come back? Even just the mail order part of the business? That would be all I really needed. You wouldn't have to work on the saddles. Just take phone calls and discuss orders and things like that."
"Kate…" He cleared his throat. "You and I have been friends for years. I knew about your religion, and I didn't care. But if I keep working for you now, it could cost Sandy her job. It could cause Tim problems at school. The people Sandy works with gave her a hard time today." He sighed. "And you don't know what it's like, watching people marching in front of the store chanting and shouting. As for the one who threw the brick through the window, nobody saw that happen. Nobody knows who the people throwing eggs and tomatoes were, either. Nobody saw anything."
"I see."
"I don't think you do. These people think they're on a mission from God. The picketers weren't from the Brotherhood. They were just townspeople. People you and I know. They think you're a danger to their children and their town."
"Can't you tell them I'm not? Can't you say something good about me?"
"I can't let my family get sucked into this, Kate. Maybe it will die down. Maybe once you get back, you can tell everyone your side of the story. You picked a bad time to leave, you know? You look like you're the one who did something wrong, and you're afraid of anyone finding out."
"I wasn't running away. I have…I'm dealing with a serious problem for a friend down here, and it just can't wait."
"Like I said, I'll take care of the horses for you. Give me your number so that I can get in touch with you if something changes."
She gave him her number. She wanted to scream. She wanted to go back in time to the point before the men beat her up, so that she could do something—anything—to change this downward spiral her life was taking. She'd thought of both Lisa and Paul as friends as well as employees, but she'd evidently been mistaken. Friends weren't people who would say they couldn't help her out because they had their families to think about, were they? Who would let people think she was a devil-worshipper, a lunatic ready to sacrifice babies or drink blood or mutilate household pets rather than say a word in her favor. Friends didn't quit in a screaming fit.
Well, maybe they did. Maybe she didn't know any more about friends than she'd known about families. She'd already found out that families were people who would tell a reporter they didn't consider her family anymore, who turned their backs on her and decided she was out of their lives, who, when she had been in desperate need of help, had told her she'd have to believe the way they wanted her to believe before they would consider her one of them again.
So maybe friends and family were two sides of the same worthless coin.
She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, and felt tears of shame and humiliation and anger beginning to slip from the corners of her eyes. She deserved better, she thought. She deserved better friends, better family. She deserved
to have loved a man who loved her enough to live. Or maybe all she deserved was to get away from them. Maybe her real reward was to be free of her cold, self-righteous family and false friends and self-absorbed lover.
Maybe that was true, but it didn't feel true. The truth she felt was that she wanted her family to love her. She wanted her friends to stand by her. And she wanted Craig back.
Chapter Thirty
Rhiana recounted the last of the tale to Tik, Errga, and Val, and said, "Now she's lying in there, not crying any longer, still as midnight and cold as stone. She won't talk to me, she won't look at me. She's thinking or she's gone and I can't tell which. But before she went all silent, she said, "Why should I help them? Who are they to me, that I should fight or die for them?"
Errga had sat through her recounting with his head lowered, his eyes half-closed, his ears swiveled sideways, so that he seemed to be listening to many things, all far away. But when she finished, he looked up at her, his yellow-gold eyes wide, reflective, and he said, "We don't know her. She is older than any of us in her way, and deeper."
Tik growled guttural agreement and said, "How could her friends treat her that way? How?"
Val was silent longest. The others turned to look at him when he sighed. He murmured:
"Do not assume her, neither heart nor soul. She is not ours—perhaps is not her own—she's ancient far beyond imagining and from strange lands and distant waters grown. Born once of pain and purified by loss and scarred by grief and tempered now by fire; she is a blade of metal purged of dross and wielded by naught but her own desire. Do not assume her; her way is not ours. Hers is a path with homes in heaven and hell, and she will do as she must do. But still…remember that gods forge their weapons well."
Rhiana sat watching him after he had finished, startled. "What does it mean?"
"It means what it means."
That was the Kinnish way—to declare some ancient bit of poetry and refuse all comment afterward. Rhiana didn't trust poetry; numbers said what they meant, and things were what they were, and poetry turned people into swords and winds and dying fires on cold cliffs and left the listener to wonder after their actual fate. "Your moldy old poem doesn't mean what it means," she said. "Kate isn't a weapon of the gods and she is only twenty-seven years old. I'm older than she is."
Val smiled slowly, that amused smile that so irritated her. "Years mean nothing. Times change lives, and suffering molds souls, and the very young can be older than the very old. She is ancient. And she isn't who she thinks she is, nor who we think she is, either. And my poem is neither moldy or old. I just made it up."
Rhiana ignored him. "I'm afraid that because of what's happened to her, she won't help us. I don't think she cares anymore what happens to her world. And if she doesn't care about her own world or her own people, what will make her care about ours?"
"If you were Kate," Val asked, "would you care about us? Or if four of Kate's people burst through a gate into the courtyard of your castle, pursued by monsters and begging for your help, would you leave your home and your work and risk your life to help them? Even if some ludicrous book told you it was what you were supposed to do?"
Rhiana thought about that. "No," she said at last. "I would have said, 'Find someone else. I have things I have to do here.'" She'd never really paused to consider how extraordinary Kate's behavior had been. Was. She'd only thought, This is what we need, and a stranger had supplied it for her.
She looked from Val to Tik to Errga, wondering which two of them would give her advice she could trust, and which of them would lie. She said, "What should we do?"
Val said, "For the moment, nothing. She must help us of her own choice or else not. We cannot urge her or lure her or trick her, much as we might wish to."
Tik nodded agreement, looking with some surprise at Val as he did so. "Quite right. We have to wait."
The warrag didn't answer. He had lowered his head again, and now, with his muzzle resting across his forelegs, flexed the short, curling fingers of his hands and watched the claws move in and out of their thick pads.
"Errga? What about you?" Rhiana asked.
"I suppose if it were only me, I would try to win her to our cause. Perhaps I would suggest that she could live in Glenraven, that she would find friends there better than those who abandoned her here." He chuffed. "I say that is what I might do, but if I were the one who had suffered her affronts, I would not take kindly to cajolery nor to bribes, no matter how kindly offered or well meant."
"Then you agree with them?"
"Yes."
Rhiana thought, If all offer the same advice, are all three traitors in league with each other? How could that be? Or are none traitors, and has some other wizard found us and spelled me? Yet how could that be? Or thirdly, could the good of all of us, traitor and faithful alike, still for a while lie along the same road? And if that is the case, then where will our roads begin to branch, and the traitor try to lead us onto his path?
Val stood. "Lady Smeachwykke…darkness has fallen, and I find myself with a deep desire to walk on the broad smooth pathways of this lovely city and explore some of the wonders in it. Would you do me the honor of gracing the walk with your presence?"
Tik gave Val what Rhiana could only describe as a warning look. Errga made no response of any sort.
I could go back to the room with Kate, but at the moment that's like sitting up with a corpse on the night before burial. And I would rather not. If Val is the traitor and he intends to hurt me, I can at
least feel the magic start to build before he can attack. I still have my blade.
She could feel the dagger in its sheath, tucked along the small of her back with the short blade fitted into the back of her jeans and the handle riding up along her lower spine. She smiled at him and said, "In truth, I would be glad to see some of this place."
"We'll return," Val said to his two roommates.
"I may be here or not when you return," Errga said. "Last night I followed my nose to a great swamp, all full of birds and beasts and armored monsters as long as Kate's van. I was of a mind to hunt tonight. Kate brings in her share of fine food, but tonight while the moon is waning to darkness, I would like the taste of blood."
Tik laughed. "I may stay and watch the television and drink the rest of the beer. Or I may return to the great salt lake and watch the waves roll onto the sandy shore. In all my life I've never smelled a place like that lake. It calls to my blood and makes me think of the world as it must have been when it was very young."
Rhiana stopped and glanced from the warrag to the dagreth to the Kin. "But if all of us leave, who will be here with Kate?"
"Does Kate need someone to stay with her?" Errga asked. "She seems capable of guarding herself."
Val shook his head slowly. "Rhiana is thinking that Kate, without one of us here to stop her, might come to the conclusion that she owes us nothing and leave us stranded here. Isn't it?"
"I did think that."
"So did I," Val said. "And without Kate, we have no magic and no chance of going home. But we can't make her help us, so we had best let her feel that we trust her to be by herself when she might have reason to wish to be."
So Rhiana and Val stepped out into the night. Val kept his face averted from the few people they passed, and where there were many pale gold and white-blue lights raised high on poles, he kept to the shadows. They walked along the broad sidewalks, moving away from the busiest roads and the heaviest traffic. After a while, the cool air carried little of the scent of machines; instead it was rich with the sweetness of night-blooming flowers, scents Rhiana had never smelled before.
"I walked this way last night," Val said, "and when I smelled the air, I thought of you."
"Did you?" Rhiana didn't know what to say to that, or what to think of it. It was a line like the poem he'd produced from the air earlier; a line that forced her to think of him in ways she didn't trust or quite understand.
They walked further, past a str
aight lane of still, deep water that ran at right angles to their path. Rhiana felt life and movement within the water, an ancient danger best avoided. It lurked well away from their path, but she didn't linger to admire the sheen of the reflected lights in the glassy surface. She hurried her steps.
"What?" Val asked.
"Something is there. Some animal, old and fierce and dangerous. I can feel it."
"I can't."
"It doesn't want us, but it could."
They walked yet further, turning down side roads so that they strolled beside huge many-storied castles that bloomed with light, and lovely houses planted all around with flowers and trees and grasses, and Rhiana wondered what it could be like to live in such a world.
"If she left us here…" she started, but stopped. The words were too frightening to say.
"Then we would go on." Val took her hand. "You would have the easiest time. I could, perhaps, find a way to fit in here, though I'm not certain how. Tik and Errga would have things worst. They couldn't live in towns or this great city; they would have to go to the wild place that Errga found, and live there almost as animals." His voice softened. "But for you and me, perhaps it would make things easier."
She looked up at him, trying to fathom the intent beneath the meat of his words. "How so?"
"Easier, fair Rhiana. Or can it be that you don't feel the same tug I feel? Is it true that Machnan cannot truly desire Kin? I heard all my life that Kin could not truly desire Machnan, but I've found the lie in that tale, and perhaps the lie beyond the lie, too, that maybe Kin and Machnan could be eyran to each other, so that the magic of twinned souls might not be—as Kin have said it is—reserved for the First People alone."
Rhiana's steps faltered. She had felt the pull of him, had felt it as she felt the tug of the moon, the pull of the sun. But now he claimed to feel such things, and she was forced to wonder why. He'd given her no sign. Well, she had given him no sign either, being instead cold and distant and unlikable so that he would never suspect how she felt. So that he would never suspect the shamefulness of her half-suppressed longings.
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