by Kate Elliott
Who. Are. You? What. Have. You. Seen? Help. Us.
He could not reach them. He was not strong enough. He sought the one he needed to find if only he could call to him across the vast gulf of distance that separated them.
Stronghand.
There!
The thread splintered into light and became vision.
He skims across a world that is only water and sky, gray above and gray below, but after a moment he realizes that sedge beds and clumps of reeds break up the monotony of the expanse of dark water although he sees no break in the cloud cover above. Tufts of greenery mark islands. Birds flock everywhere, wings flashing in constant motion. The noise of their honking and shrilling and piping and whistling drowns the stealthy stroke of paddles dipped in and out of the water. He leans over the edge of the canoe to stare down into the murky waters, and sees himself.
He is Stronghand. His teeth flash as he grins; jewels wink in the reflecting waters. Beneath the surface fish teem. He could reach right down and catch eels with his hands. Here, in this seemingly desolate place, he has found riches.
“Keep low,” says the girl. “We’re close.”
The chattering chorus of birds covers the sound of their approach, although in truth the canoe parts the waters with no more sound than a duck dabbles, and both of his youthful guides know the secret of paddling silently as they dip and turn the oars. The boat slides into a dense cloud of reeds, and the girl slips over the side into knee-deep water and wades ashore.
Ki looks different than her cousin, not short and dark but half a hand taller, with the blonde hair and pale blue eyes common among the Albans. For the hunt today, she has streaked mud through her hair.
Half hidden among the vegetation, she gestures for him to follow. He slips over the side of the dugout, careful not to jostle his standard, which lies along the keel. Elafi leans against the opposite board so the boat won’t heel or slosh.
The water parts around his legs as he wades after Ki as silently as possible, although to his ears he sounds like a fish thrashing in shallow water as it seeks the safety of the depths. Mud sucks around his feet. Bent low, he kneels on the shore beside a nest made of grasses that shelters four tiny eggs within its woven bowl. Ki picks one out, casually cracks it open, and swallows the slippery mass of half-formed bird.
The girl hands him a second egg. “Take half, leave half.”
None among his kind eat eggs; it is taboo.
As he hands the egg out to Elafi, in the canoe, Ki speaks again. “From here, you can see the holy island.”
They creep up a low embankment, moving slowly so as not to startle birds into flight. Buntings perch on the tops of swaying reeds, but they do not take wing, unwilling to abandon their nests to these slow crawling beasts.
The birds are right to fear us, he thinks. They have no means by which to fight back.
Ki parts the reeds and beckons. He pads up beside her and gazes across a last glittery stretch of open waters. Three islands rise from the marsh, two of them low, buttressed by earth embankments thrown up around their perimeters that serve both as dikes and as fortifications, and the third a fully natural island set high enough that the tidal wash and the spring and summer floods cannot swamp it. There are so many armed men on the islands that the land is covered with them like swarming locusts. Tents lie higgledy-piggledy on the lower islands although some training grounds have been left bare, where men practice their swordcraft. Even from this distance he can hear the slap and ring of blows struck and countered as they prepare for war. A longhouse and three attendant huts hold pride of place on one of the islands but they were clearly built long ago, not newly raised. A golden banner marked with the image of a white stag flies from the thatched roof of the longhouse.
The Alban queen is here.
He can smell her. Her power and the magic of her tree sorcerers has a scent as sharp as smoke.
“Look!” whispers Ki, pointing.
The low summit of the third island bristles with teeth—or so he thinks until he realizes that a stone crown rises from the hill. All of the undergrowth has been ruthlessly cut back away from the circle of stones, and men labor with ropes and levers and earth ramps to raise a fallen monolith into position.
“What goes on there?”
She shakes her head in dismay. “When our family watched over the holy place, we left it in peace. No good will come of this, I am thinking. They’ll stir up the old spirits. Men have come from over the sea.”
“Ones like me?”
“Nay, not like you,” she says boldly. “None of you dragon-men. You would not touch the holy place, I am thinking. These are circle priests who have come from the east lands across the sea. Elafi saw there was a fight between the circle priests and the tree priests, for the queen’s favor.”
“How saw he this?”
“There’s a place to come up close without being seen, right up inside the crown. Only our family knows about it, because we got the secret from the grandmothers.”
“Can you take me?”
Ki has a pup’s grin, full of sharp teeth and playful expectation. “Not till the dark of the moon. It isn’t safe otherwise.”
Out of the still waters a majestic heron takes flight, wings wide as it glides low over them with its head tucked back on its shoulders and its legs dangling low, brushing the reeds. Its shadow covers them briefly.
Ki murmurs a blessing or a spell and ducks her head. “It’s a sign of the goddess’ favor,” she whispers.
Perhaps.
The gods seem fickle to Stronghand, offering favor or withdrawing it according to unknown and unpredictable whims. The RockChildren have never been burdened by meddling gods. They are masters of their own destiny.
But still, only a fool casts dirt in clean water when he is thirsty.
“If your goddess smiles on us, then truly we will meet with success.”
“What do you mean to do?”
He looks up at the gray sky. He smells a change in the weather, the wet taste of the east wind. A misting rain approaches. He can actually see the shadow of its passage over the pools and dark waters as it nears them.
“We will wait until the dark of the moon,” he says. “Then you will show me this secret place inside the crown.”
The girl is sharper than most of his advisers. She has never lived under the heel of a lord who holds over her the threat of life and death. That is why she is not afraid to question him. That is why she does not fear taking him out into the fens. “And then?”
Stronghand bares his teeth, a startling flash that, for an instant, takes the youth aback. Maybe, for the first time, she understands the threat he poses. Ki’s hand tightens on her knife, but she does not move at all, only stares back at him, eye for eye.
“I would like to know who these circle priests are, and what they are doing to the stone crown. Once I discover that, I will know what to do next. I have dreams, too.”
Ki pinches her lips together, eyes drawn tight. “Dreams are dangerous, my lord. My mother says that dreams have killed men and brought low those who were once queens and those who wished to rule after them.”
The rain front washes over them, hissing in the waters. Through the curtain of rain it is hard to see farther than a spear cast; the islands lie obscure and veiled, but he feels the presence of the stone crown as a throb deep in his bones. A shout carries over the waters. A cheer.
A stone has been raised, and sunk in place.
“Dangerous,” he agrees, “but it is more dangerous still to ignore them.”
That humming whisper vanished, and Alain found himself back in the dirt with mud slipping through his fingers and his knees cold and wet. The deep awareness that lived in the core of the stone was overwhelmed by the noise of the waiting camp: the scrape of a grindstone milling grain to flour, the steady stroke of a hammer, clucking chickens and complaining goats, a shout of excitement as the newcomers met their allies. The sound of a woman’s weeping.
He blinked, trying to shake off the flood of sounds and images, but he could not shake his vision.
Long ago he had dreamed of the WiseMothers, seen through Stronghand’s eyes, and in those dreams they had spoken of a great weaving that bound the Earth together. They knew of the great cataclysm because it had created them. The eldest among them were impossibly old.
Sorrow and Rage whined, licking his face, as he sat back on his heels. The WiseMothers, in their slow and patient way, also sought to mitigate the furious storm that was coming. The stone crowns were the key. If he could reach Stronghand and the WiseMothers, then maybe, for once, he could act. His knowledge might aid them. Adica’s death would not have been in vain if by having witnessed he could save others.
A horse halted beside him.
“Are you praying?” asked Father Benignus.
He shook mud off his hands before wiping them on his leggings.
“We should all pray, Father,” he said, rising. “A storm is coming.”
The veil that concealed the man’s face shuddered as Benignus shifted his seat in the way an exhausted man fears sliding off into the mire. Yet he did not dismount. He lifted a gloved hand and indicated that Alain should follow him.
Bartholomew had waited at Alain’s side all this time, and he trudged alongside, keeping an arm’s length from the hounds.
Alain surveyed the camp. Including the new arrivals, perhaps three score souls sheltered here, although fully a third of them did not bide here of their own free will. They were the ones whose feet were bound so tightly with rope, as a horse is hobbled, that they could only shuffle as they went along on their errands carrying water, milking goats, and grinding grain. All of these captives were women, and there were no children in camp except for some infants bundled against their mothers’ hips and three filthy toddlers sitting on their naked backsides in the mud and squalling like stuck pigs. Stinker, passing the children, swore loudly, slapped one hard, grabbed a second and shook it, and then for good measure slapped the young woman who came running to quiet their terrified shrieks.
“Bitch! These screeching brats can be sold as easily as their sisters and brothers if you sluts can’t keep their mouths shut!”
The rope on Alain’s wrists had been little more than a show of docility. He shook it free now and ran over to place himself between the cringing woman and the stinking, scarred man, who looked eager to crack her across the face a second time. Maybe he was just waiting for an excuse.
“What manner of creature are you,” Alain demanded, “who is such a coward that he must show his strength by bullying those so much weaker than he is?”
Heads turned. Dog-Ears guffawed outright and was kicked by his companion, Red. Bartholomew said a few words too softly for Alain to make out. The captive women around the camp went as still as if they’d been touched by a guivre’s eye, and although none of them looked toward him he was immediately and intensely aware that they all knew exactly what was going on.
“You ass-licking bastard!” roared Stinker, who had the fight he’d been wanting. He lunged.
Sorrow leaped at him, but Stinker had already anticipated an attack, shifting sideways, and thwacked the hound on the side of the head with his staff, laying the poor beast out. Rage bolted back, yipping but not fleeing, and she kept her distance from the staff as she circled with a dog’s measure, looking for an opening. Alain stood his ground, not even raising his arms to fend off the blow. The woman dropped to the ground behind him with a cry of fear and despair. Father Benignus turned. A gust of wind rattled the trees.
“Eloie! Eloie! Isabaoth!” He lifted a hand and crushed something in his fist.
Stinker jerked up short an arm’s length from Alain. His scream cut the air, and his face contorted into a rictus of agony as he twitched and danced, slapping himself silly and groaning and shrieking. His leggings soaked with piss, followed by the stink of his bowels as he voided them, and he gibbered and coughed up blood and finally, mercifully, collapsed in a stinking heap on the earth at Alain’s feet.
Silence settled over the camp. The wind died.
One of the toddlers hiccuped a sob before being hustled away by the woman, herself sniffling and choking down tears. The other two children trotted after her on their scrawny legs. Hobbled women scooped them up and stood trembling, eyes lowered.
Sorrow whined and, with a grunt, padded gingerly over to Alain, who stroked him carefully and found the hardening bruise where the staff had struck him along the shoulder. Rage, still growling softly, loped up to stand beside him.
Stinker had fallen onto his back. The coarse burlap rags he wore had a fist-sized hole burned through the cloth. Alain knelt by the dead man’s shoulders and reached toward the frayed burn.
“Don’t touch it!” gasped Bartholomew. “Only Father Benignus is allowed—” He faltered and glanced up to where Father Benignus sat silent, shoulders bowed as if from exhaustion. Ducking his head, he waited for a blow.
No one moved.
Alain peeled away burned tunic from weeping flesh. Stinker wore an amulet around his neck, and it was this crude binding that had erupted into flame and scorched his skin. He stank, indeed, and not just from the pulpy mess he had voided in his death throes. He had been burned from the inside out.
Alain rose and straddled the corpse, lifting his chin as he looked at Father Benignus. “Is this justice?”
Bartholomew made a strangled noise. What had passed for silence before deepened into a dreadful anticipatory pause, the moment before the executioner’s ax falls.
“What is justice?” replied Father Benignus in a voice so weary it might be called cruel.
He shook the reins and guided his horse forward, halting beside the corpse. With a stick, he fished for the amulet, hooked it, and yanked it hard enough to break the thong that held it around Stinker’s neck. Flipping up the stick, he caught the amulet in his hand and rode his horse toward a wagon covered with a tent to make a kind of house on wheels.
“Bartholomew, bring him. I want no more interruptions.”
“Yes, Father Benignus,” whispered Bartholomew, scratching his warty nose. He did not look at Alain; he sidestepped Stinker’s corpse and shied anxiously away from Sorrow’s growl. “Come, then, you fool,” he muttered in a low voice. “Can’t you see how dangerous it is to keep the good father waiting?”
“Who are these women?” Alain demanded, not moving.
“Fair winnings.”
“No better than slaves, fettered so. What happened to their children?”
“You ask too many questions. If you’re stupid enough, you’ll ask Father Benignus, not me. I’m just a poor man.”
“Even a poor man is made in God’s image, is he not? Is this right, what you do?”
Bartholomew had begun to shake, and by the sheen of sweat on his face and the pallor under his scruffy beard Alain suddenly realized that the man was terrified. He twisted the cloth of his tunic between his fingers, right over a slight bulge in the fabric where he, too, wore an amulet.
Alain shook his head. “I am sorry to see any man suffer so, but surely you and the others had committed grave crimes. I see the residue of them everywhere. I pray you, friend, give some thought to the fate of your soul.”
“Here’s the wagon,” muttered Bartholomew. “Wait outside.”
Father Benignus had handed the reins of his horse off to a stammering youth, who held its bridle while the hooded man swung awkwardly from the saddle to the bed of the wagon and, bending double, vanished inside the shelter.
“Stay!” Rage and Sorrow sat beside the wagon, but they looked ready to spring into action. As Alain scrambled up onto the tailgate, he heard the startled murmurs of the bandits in camp. Everyone was watching, as wolves watched an injured elk, waiting for its thrashing to subside enough that they can dart in to tear out its throat.
He ducked in after Father Benignus.
“I knew you would come.” Father Benignus had his back to Alain as he lit a candle and dropped
the amulet into a bowl filled with a clear liquid. It hissed, and the liquid boiled and subsided, leaching a strong vinegar smell. “The others fear me, as they should. You should, too.”
The tent vaulted just high enough that he could stand upright in the center of the wagon. The flame flickered uneasily as the man unwrapped the veil and took off his broad-brimmed hat. He had long, greasy hair that might once have been blond. That much Alain glimpsed in the dim light before Benignus turned to face him and sank down on a narrow bed, exhausted.
He was horribly disfigured. Lesions had eaten away half his face, exposing bone. His eyes wept pus, and sores had long since eaten his ears.
“Are you a leper?” Alain shuddered. Leprosy passed from one man to another by means of contamination. It would strike any man. It was God’s worst punishment. Yet having come so far Alain would not retreat.
Because Father Benignus had no lips it seemed that he smiled all the time, a skeleton’s grimace. His teeth were good, strong and white; he was only missing two.
“I am no leper.” Benignus said mockingly in his soft voice. “I am least among men, but no leper. I am the one so easily forgotten even by those who used and discarded me. So easily forgotten by pawns and biscops alike, for you were only a pawn, as I was, weren’t you? Although Father Agius kept you close. Did he pollute you with his heresy?”
Alain recognized his voice, even distorted as it was by his affliction. He remembered pale blue eyes.
“I know who you are. I called you Brother Willibrod once. You were a cleric in the retinue of Biscop Antonia. She set you and the others to binding and working. You made the amulets that protected Lady Sabella’s forces from the spell laid on humankind by the glance of the guivre’s eye. They hoped to win the battle against King Henry.”
“But Father Agius killed the guivre! All our work for nothing! So we were abandoned, all of us who had poisoned ourselves doing God’s work! All but Heribert, who never soiled himself with binding and working! We were left to the mercy of the sisters of St. Benigna who locked us in an attic and left us to die!” Willibrod shook all over, then gagged, and reached for a flask hung from a nail pounded into the frame onto which the tent’s fabric had been nailed. His palsied hand could not grip the leather flask.