by Kate Elliott
And anyway, if the Aoi woman meant to harm him with witchcraft, then there was nothing he could do about it now.
“Blessed Mother!” he whispered, staring as the fire shifted and changed.
He crept forward and stared into the whip of flames. It was like looking through an insubstantial archway of fire into another world.
A figure, tall, broad-shouldered but thin at the ribs, shed its clothing and dove into the streaming currents of a river. He was, manifestly, male. That he would willingly enter water meant he was no kin of the Quman tribe, and although the flicker of fire gave Zacharias no clear picture of the figure’s features, the man somewhat resembled his Aoi mistress. But his clothing, lying in a careless heap on the shore, betrayed his origins: It was what civilized men wore, the rich clothing of a lord. A moment later six men scurried down to the river’s bank as if on his trail. Bearded and armed, they wore tabards marked with a black lion: Wendish solders, serving the regnant. And if that was so, then who was the man who had gone into the water, and why were they following him?
The Aoi woman whispered a word, “Sawn-glawnt.” The fire whuffed out. She rose and lifted her staff, a stout ebony length of wood scored with white marks along its length, and measured the staff against the stars above.
Then she grunted, satisfied, gestured to him, and Zacharias had to unhobble the horse and mount quickly. She strode out of the stone circle, heading north, and as soon as they were clear of the stones, she broke into a steady lope which he had perforce to follow along at a jarring trot.
In this way they ran through half the night. She never let up. He wanted finally to tell her that his rump was sore, or that the horse needed a rest, but in truth woman and horse seemed equally hardy creatures. He was the weak one, so he refused to complain. The moon crested above and began to sink westward. Light spilled along the landscape, a low rise and fall of grassland broken here and there by a stream or a copse of trees, roots sunk into a swale. Grass sighed in the middle night wind, a breath of summer’s heat from the east. He could almost smell the campfires of the Pechanek tribe on that wind, the sting of fermented mare’s milk, the damp weight of felt being prepared, the rich flavor of a greasy stew made of fat and sheep guts, the spice of kilkim tea that had been traded across the deep grass where griffins and Bwrmen roamed, all the way from the empire of the Katai peoples whose impenetrable borders it was said were guarded by rank upon rank of golden dragons.
Suddenly, the woman slowed to a walk and approached a hollow of ragged trees, stopping just beyond their edge. “We need a fire,” she said, then crouched to dig a fire circle.
Zacharias groaned as he dismounted. His rump ached miserably. Just inside the ring of trees he paused to urinate. Ai, God, it still hurt to do so; perhaps it would always hurt. But he still had his tongue, and he meant to keep it. So much tree litter covered the ground that it took him little time to gather enough for a fire. He dumped it beside the pit she had dug into the earth, then turned to the horse. “Can we bide here long enough to cook these grouse?” he asked.
“Sawn-glawnt.” Her voice rang clear in the silence.
He spun in time to see in the archway of fire the same man, now fully clothed and cast out on the ground in an attitude of sleep while the six Lions stood back in the gloom, standing watch around him. Then the archway unfolded and vanished into the ordinary lick of flames.
His mistress stood, lifted her staff again, and again measured it against the stars. Her smile came brief, fierce, and sharp. “Co-yoi-tohn,” she said, pointing northwest.
“You’re looking for him,” said Zacharias suddenly.
From behind, a panther coughed and then, more distantly, wings whirred.
Zacharias yelped, drew his knife and peered eastward, but saw nothing—no winged riders among the silver-painted grass. The woman cast a glance over her shoulder. She scented the wind, then shrugged her pack down from her shoulders, pulled out a hard, round cake, and sat to eat. She offered none to him. Zacharias sharpened a stick and spitted the grouse, careful to make sure the viscera he had cleaned out and stuffed back in did not fall out of the cavity. He was too hungry to wait long. He offered the first grouse to her; she sniffed, made a face that actually made him laugh out loud.
Then he caught himself, cringing, but she took no offense. She tore off a strip of meat, fingered it, touched it to her lips, licked it, chewed a corner, grunted with surprise, and finished it off, then extended a hand imperiously for more. He was starving, and he ate every bit of his own grouse even though it made his belly ache. She went so far as to crack the bones and suck the marrow out.
But when they were done, they did not rest. She rose, licked her fingers a final time, kicked dirt over the fire, and indicated the direction she had earlier pointed out.
“Co-yoi-tohn,” she repeated. “What you would call, west of northwest.”
“But where are we going?” he asked. “Who was the man we saw in the fire?”
She only shrugged. Light tinged the east, the first herald of dawn. “Now we begin the hunt.”
3
SURELY, wicked souls consigned to the pit could not have spent an evening’s span of hours in more torment than did Alain at his wedding feast.
The merriment he could stomach, barely, but the constant laughing toasts and crude jokes made him want to curl up and shrink away, and he was acutely conscious of Tallia beside him so still and withdrawn that he felt like a monster for wanting so badly what she clearly feared.
But surely, when all was quiet and they were alone, he could persuade her to trust him. Surely, if he could gentle the ferocious Lavas hounds and win the trust of Liath, he could coax love from Tallia.
She had on a blue linen gown fantastically embroidered with gems and the springing roes that signified her Varren ancestry. A slim silver coronet topped her brow, Henry’s only concession to her royal kinship except of course for the delicate twist of gold braid that circled her neck. She wore her wheat-colored hair braided and pinned up at the back of her head; the style made her slim neck seem both more frail and more graceful. Wanting simply to touch it, to feel the pulse beating at her throat, made him ache in a peculiarly uncomfortable spot and even when he had to go pee he dared not stand to leave the table for fear of calling attention to himself in a most embarrassing way.
He and Tallia shared a platter. He tried hard not to dip the elaborate sleeves of his tunic into the sauces that accompanied each course of the meal. Tallia did not eat more than a crust of bread and drink two sips of wine, but he was ravenous and though he feared it made him look gross and slovenly in her eyes, he could not help but eat heartily until a new toast would remind him—like a kick in the head from a panicked cow—that later this night he would at long last meet his heart’s desire on the wedding bed, where nothing more could come between them. Then he would be so stricken with nausea that he was sorry he had eaten anything.
Likewise, he gulped down wine one moment out of sheer nerves only to refuse the cup the next when with sick fear he recalled jokes he had heard at his Aunt Bel’s table about bridegrooms who had drunk themselves into such a sodden fog that they could not perform their husbandly duty.
Lavastine spoke little and then only to respond laconically to congratulations thrown his way. He needed to say nothing; this triumph had cost him plenty in the lives of his men, but he had gained a nobly-connected bride for his heir together with a seat, by virtue of her lineage, among the great princes of the realm.
Certain distractions gnawed at the edges of the feast: Liath returned, and Prince Sanglant made such a spectacle of himself that Alain was briefly diverted from his fear that Tallia would faint dead away at the high table; the tumblers caught Tallia’s attention with their tricks, and for a happy if short span of time he got her to smile at him as he admired—not her, never her, let him show no interest in her or she would retreat as totally in spirit as a turtle pulls into its shell—but rather the lively cartwheelers and rope-balancers, thin girl
s of about Tallia’s age who had a kind of hard beauty to their faces composed of equal parts skill and coarse living.
The tumblers retreated. Wine flowed. Toasts came fast and furious and then—Ai, God!—it was time.
Servingwomen cleared off their table, he hoisted Tallia up and climbed on after, and eight young lords actually carried the table with the pair of them on it to the guesthouse set aside for their bridal night; crude, certainly, and boisterous as every person there laughed and called out suggestions, but Alain didn’t mind the old tradition if only because Tallia had to hold on to him to keep from sliding off. She looked terrified, and actually shrank against him when he put an arm around her to pull her firmly to his side. She was as delicate as a sparrow.
“Here, now,” he whispered. “I’ll hold you safe.” She trustingly pressed her face against his shoulder.
The crowd roared approvingly.
Ai, Lady, Perhaps it was he who would faint. He was deliriously happy.
They let the table down unsteadily by the threshold, and he helped Tallia down. She still clung to him, more afraid of the crowd than of him.
“Who witnesses?” cried out someone in the crowd.
A hundred voices answered.
The king himself came forward to speak the traditional words. “Your consent having been obtained, let this marriage be fittingly consummated so that it can be legal and binding. Let there be an exchange of morning gifts at this door after dawn to signify that consummation.” He laughed, in a fine good humor after enough wine to soak a pig, a good meal, and the company of thrilling entertainers and all his good companions. “May you have God’s blessing this night,” he added, and as a mark of his extreme favor offered Alain his hand to kiss. Alain bent to one knee, took the king’s callused hand, and kissed the knuckles. Tallia, sinking to both knees beside him, pressed her uncle’s hand to her lips with a faint sigh. The lantern light made their shadows huge along the wall, like elongated giants.
Lavastine stepped forward to open the door for them, an unexpected gesture more like that of servant than lord and father. Alain caught his hands as well and pressed them to his lips. Everything seemed so much larger and fuller this night: the noise of the crowd, the brush of wind on his face, his love for his father which suddenly seemed to swell until it encompassed the heavens, the joyous barking of the hounds, who had not been allowed to escort them for fear that they would frighten Tallia and become too unruly among such a large and boisterous crowd.
Lavastine took him under the elbow and raised him up. This close, Alain saw a single tear snaking a path down the count’s face. Lavastine paused, then took Alain’s head gently between his hands and kissed him on the forehead.
“I beg you, Daughter,” he said, turning to Tallia. “Make him happy.”
Tallia seemed ready to swoon. Alain put an arm around her to support her and, with cheers and lewd suggestions ringing out behind them, helped her in over the threshold.
Servants waited within. A good broad bed stood with its head against one wall of the simple chamber, made comfortable with a feather bed and quilt and a huge bedspread embroidered with the roes of Varre and the black hounds of Lavas. Obviously the bedspread had been in the making for some months. At the other wall stood a table and two handsome chairs. On the table sat a finely-glazed pitcher and a basin, for washing hands and face, and next to them a wooden bowl carved with turtledoves that held ripe berries, and also two gilded cups filled with a heady-scented wine. A wedding loaf, half-wrapped in a linen cloth, steamed in the close air of the little chamber, making his stomach growl. The shutters had been put up to afford privacy for this one night.
The servants unlaced his sandals, untangled him from the complicated knotwork that belted his tunic, removed her blue linen gown, and quickly enough they both stood silent, she in a thin calf-length linen shift and he in knee-length shift and bare legs.
“Go on,” he said, giving each of the servants a few silver sceattas as they slipped out. “May God bless you this night.”
At last he was alone with Tallia.
She sank down beside the bed in an attitude of prayer, lips pressed to her hands. He could not hear her words. She shivered as at a cold wind, and he saw briefly the shape of her body beneath her shift, the curve of a hip, the ridge of her collarbone, the slight fleeting swell of a breast.
Ai, Lord! He spun to the table, poured out some cold water, and splashed it in his face. He had to lean his weight on the table while he fought to recover himself. Distantly he heard the hounds barking wildly. From the great yard he heard music, the nasal squeal of pipes and the thump of drums. No doubt the celebration would go on all night.
At last he turned. She had not moved. On a whim, he poured more water into the basin and carried it and a soft cloth over to the bed. Setting it on the floor, he knelt beside her.
“I beg you, my lady,” he said as softly as if he were coaxing a mouse out from its hiding place beneath St. Lavrentius’ altar in the old church at Lavas Holding, “give me leave to wash your face and hands.”
She did not respond at first. She still seemed to be praying. But at last she turned those pale eyes on him as a prisoner pleads wordlessly for a stay of execution. Slowly, she uncurled her hands and held them out to him.
He gasped. Down the center of each palm an ugly scar, still suppurating on her left hand, scored the flesh. Her skin was like a delicate parchment, thin and almost translucent but for those horrible gashes.
He touched them gently with the damp cloth, letting the water soak in to soften the scabbing and the hard runnels of pus. “These must be tended, Tallia! How did you come by these?”
He looked up to see a faint blush stir on her pallid cheeks. Her lips parted; her eyes were very wide. He shut his eyes and swayed into her, caught the scent of her, the dry powder of wheat just before harvest and a trace of incense so fleeting that it was as if it retreated before him. Their lips did not touch.
She whimpered, and he opened his eyes to discover that she had recoiled from him and now, with a hand caught in his grasp, had begun to cry.
“God’s mercy! I beg you! Forgive me!” He was a monster to force himself on her in this way. But he could not bear simply to let go of her. Without looking her again in the face, he tended her hands, patiently wetting the scars and gently swabbing the pus from them. When he finished, he dropped the now-dirty cloth into the basin.
She was still crying.
“It hurts you. I’m sorry.” He could only stammer it. He could not bear to see her in pain.
“Nay, nay,” she whispered as he imagined a woman might who, having been violated, is compelled to grant forgiveness to the one who assaulted her. “The pain is nothing. It is not for us to tend the wounds given to us by God’s mercy.”
“What do you mean?”
The blush still bled color into her cheeks. “I cannot speak of it. It would be prideful if people were to think that God had favored me, for I am no more worthy than any other vessel.”
“Do you think this a sign from God—?” He broke off as understanding flooded him. “This is the mark of flaying, is it not?”
“Do you know of the blessed Daisan’s sacrifice and redemption?” she asked eagerly, leaning toward him. “But of course you must! You were privileged to walk beside Frater Agius, he who revealed the truth to me!” She was very close to him, her breath a sweet mist on his cheek. “Do you believe in the Redemption?”
He scarcely trusted himself to breathe. Her gaze on him was impassioned, her pulse under his fingers drumming like a racing stag, and he knew in his gut that she had unknowingly revealed to him the means to soften her heart.
But it would be a lie.
“Nay,” he said softly. “Frater Agius was a good man, but misguided. I don’t believe in the sacrifice and redemption. I can’t lie to you, Tallia.” Not even if it meant the chance she would open fully to him.
She pulled her hands away from him and clasped them before her, resuming an attitu
de of prayer. “I beg you, Lord Alain,” she said into her hands, her voice falling away until the mice scrabbling in the walls made a greater sound. “I beg you, I have sworn myself to God’s service as a pure vessel, a bride to the blessed Daisan, the Redeemer, who sits enthroned in Heaven beside his mother, She who is God and Mercy and Judgment, She who gave breath to the Holy Word. I beg you, do not pollute me here on earth for mere earthly gain.”
“But I love you, Tallia!” To have her so close! Her hands pressed against an embroidered golden stag, covering its antlers and head. A pair of slender hind legs, a gold rump and little tuft of a tail peeked out from under her right wrist. “God made us to be husband and wife together, and to bring children into the world!”
The sigh shuddered her whole body. She climbed onto the bed and lay on her back, utterly still, arms limp at her side. “Then do what you must,” she murmured in the tone of a woman who has reached the station of her martyrdom.
It was too much. He buried his face in his hands.
After a long time, still hearing her ragged breathing in anticipation of the brute act she expected, he lifted his head. “I won’t touch you.” He was barely able to force the words out. “Not until you get used to the idea of— But I beg you, Tallia, try to think of me as your husband. For—we must in time—the county needs its heir, and it is our duty—Ai, God, I—I—” His voice failed. He wanted her so badly.
She heaved herself up and knelt on the bed, offering him her hands. “I knew Frater Agius could not be wrong, to speak so well of you.”
He dared not clasp her hands in his. It would only waken the feelings he struggled to control. “Agius spoke well of me?” That Agius had thought of him at all astonished him.
“He praised you. So I always held his praise for you in my heart, he whom God allowed a martyr’s death. Here.” She patted the bed beside her. “Though I am the vessel through which God has sent a holy vision, do not be afraid to lie next to me. I know your heart is pure.”