by Jim Grimsley
“What does it mean?” asked Mother.
Uncle Sivisal looked at the sky. “I shouldn’t tell you here where any bird could hear us and go off wagging its tongue. But this is a son of the King Horse. As a common rule such a horse would not permit Jessex on his back.”
Wind was blowing. We returned to the house, Mama calling me to her side and walking me to the kitchen with her full skirts sweeping round me. Lise and Vaguath finished laying the table and Mama kept me by her without saying anything. She was afraid, now that I had managed the horse. Sivisal came through the door, stooping, and took the seat of honor by the fire, Mama watching his every move. He replaced the ruby ring in a pouch of his cloak. We sat down to roast tree hen, corn, shallots, ham from last season cured in the smokehouse, fresh bread and beans, followed by infith fruit in sweet cream from Sim’s dairy. My sisters watched Sivisal eat with a slight blush at his appetite; Mama’s cooking roused enthusiasm in him and some of his reserve vanished. He almost seemed merry at supper and he made compliments to Mama that made her feel like a sister again, she said. Father told more stories of current happenings in Cordyssa and other northern villages, to which Sivisal listened avidly. At that time Lord Ren of Cordyssa had just returned from a long journey south during which he had conferred with Queen Athryn at court. Sivisal knew of the journey but did not know Lord Ren had returned. Their conversation continued well beyond the end of the meal. I had heard much of this news discussed at previous suppers and wanted impatiently to learn more about the black horse in the barn. But this topic was apparently forbidden for the moment.
When supper was done, Mother sent me to the hearth room where jaka was brewing. In our house, as in many of the houses in that part of the country, the fireplace was large, open on two sides, allowing a hearth room separate from the kitchen. Our hearth room was cozy and warm, being built of mortared stone with a high beamed roof and real glass windows. Father and Sivisal were already seated on stools talking while Mama poured jaka into mugs I held. “Athryn Ardfalla has doubled the corn levy in the past few years,” Father was saying, “on top of the levy we pay on seed, livestock and buildings. Last year I built a lean-to for the potatoes back of the barn, and when the tax collector came through he added it to the lists at the same rate as a full shed even though it didn’t have but a rain-wall and a roof. As if the Queen doesn’t already have enough money. We can barely pay the taxes on what we’ve planted this year. Of course that will suit her just fine if we can’t pay the tax; she’ll send her magistrates to seize the farm.”
“Are you really in danger of losing your land?” Sivisal asked. “I have back wages I could draw —”
Father waved his hand. “Sybil and I will manage. We plant no more than we need to pay the tax and feed the family. We get by.”
“What use to try to make any money when the Queen will only take it?” Mother asked. “But thank you kindly for the offer.”
“The Queen keeps her Wizard in very grand state, with armies of his own, I hear,” Father said.
“She doesn’t have much choice,” said Sivisal. For a moment his face was full of trouble. He gauged his words carefully. “She has less power left to oppose him as the years go by and no power to match him. Neither do we.”
“Are you treated well in the Woodland?” Mama asked. “How do you get food? There aren’t any farms in Arthen.”
“We bring in food from Drii and Cordyssa,” Sivisal said.
“There’s fighting?” Mama asked, with an eye for me.
Sivisal saw the glance and stood, taking me by the hand to a place beside him on the hearth. “Yes, there’s fighting. The Blue Cloaks don’t let us pass unhindered. The Queen would starve us if she thought she truly could. I’ve seen some fighting. All of us have. We fear we’ll see more as times get worse.”
“Did you come to turn my Jessex into a soldier, too?” Mama asked.
A hush fell over the room. Sivisal watched his sister calmly. “Would you refuse to let him come with me because of that?”
Father said nothing, studying his own knuckles. Mama said, “No. I wouldn’t.” But I had never seen such sadness on her face, and it made me wonder.
Father read the silence that followed as Uncle Sivisal’s hesitation. “You can trust us, Sivisal. My wife and I have kept secrets before.”
Sivisal waited until a new silence had fallen, as if gathering his words. While he watched the fire he played one hand idly through my hair. He studied my mother almost tenderly. “My lord keeps his shrine according to the old custom, and keeps a servant in the shrine to tend the lamps. A twentynight ago the present temple servant took sick with fever out of the blue sky, and she was dead inside of a day. That evening Lord Mordwen Illythin had a true dream. YY-Mother visited him as she has not visited him in many years, telling him to leave the shrine tent vacant and to send to Kinth’s farm in Mikinoos country for the next servant to light the lamps. She named Jessex son of Kinth and Sybil as the boy, and gave the lineage of our family back to four generations. She told him other things as well, and one of them was the test with the horse. Next morning Lord Illythin told his dream to my lord. My lord knows me and my kin and summoned me, telling me I was to test my nephew Jessex with the son of the King Horse, and if Jessex could ride the horse, I was to bring him to serve the shrine of YY in Arthen.”
I could tell by the way he was saying, “my lord,” that he did not want to say the name. In the silence that followed I could have counted every crackle of the fire. I watched only my uncle, being afraid of every other face. After a while Father said, sadly, “Praise the Eye. We have nothing to offer Jessex here. You know all the land has to go to Sim.” He looked at Mama.
Mama said, “I can’t fight an oracle, can I?”
“No one will force you to give him up,” Uncle Sivisal said.
Mama gave me a long, calm appraisal. “I’m only sad. I’d give up more than one son to the service of Kirith Kirin.”
Father went pale and embraced her. “That isn’t a good name to say out loud, even in the house.”
“I guess she’s entitled,” Sivisal said, looking at me. “Well, Jessex, will you be ready to ride away with me in the morning?”
“So soon?” Mama asked.
“I can’t stay out of Arthen long. There are too many patrols. And the shrine is dark in Arthen until Jessex comes.”
Mama drew up tall, gesturing me close. For a long time she simply studied me with sorrowful eyes, lips moving on the words to some song I could not hear. Her cool hands brushed my face with patterned gestures, as if she were memorizing my features. “What do you think, little man? Do you want to live in the Woodland? Where you’ll forget your mother altogether?”
“Oh no, I don’t think I would forget you.”
She looked at Father and Uncle Sivisal. “I’ve some things to teach him before he goes. Please excuse us both.”
Sivisal and Father looked at her curiously. She gave them each a smile and we disappeared into her room straightaway, where she closed and locked the door.
As is the custom among Jisraegen of means, mother and father kept separate bedrooms linked by a single door. Mother’s room smelled of the scented soap with which she washed her hair. We children were not allowed inside this room and even Father had to knock. I thought it splendid with its woven tapestry hanging at the head of the feather bed, its fine collection of lamps and glass vases, heirlooms of my mother’s family. In the warm light of the globe lamp she embraced me, her expression growing grave and clouded. The smell of her hair was wonderful, like perfume, and her warmth overwhelmed me. “When I was waiting for you to be born I had a conviction you would cause me more sorrow than all the rest of my children combined. It will be true, you mark my words. I’ve known this was coming; I won’t tell you how.”
“What will I do in Arthen?”
“Serve in the shrine, light the lamps of worship, and sing the evening and morning songs. You’ll work very hard. If you follow the path, you’ll be a p
riest yourself one day.”
“I don’t think I’ll like that. I want to be a soldier like Uncle Sivisal.”
“Priests go to wars too. Don’t you remember Grandmother’s stories about Lord Illythin?”
“Does he have a horse of his own?”
She laughed at my silliness. “Lord Illythin has many estates and many horses, maybe more horses than you could ride in one lifetime.” She held me tight. “Will you be sad when you don’t see me any more?”
“Yes ma’am, very sorry.” At the thought, which was new, I became disturbed and thought I might cry. She kissed me and said, “Well you won’t need to be sorry. I’ll always be here in the same places you remember, and I’ll clean the linen on the eighth day and make the cheese on the fourth. Wherever you are I will think of you and love you and feel proud that my Jessex is off in a secret place, doing a service to one on whom our hopes are resting.”
I nodded very solemnly, and she adjusted my tunic to hang properly. Then she gave me a gift. She unlocked the heavy oak chest in her room with a key from the ring on her waist, and drew out another wooden box from inside it, and opened it with another key, revealing another box, and this one I recognized, very small, wooden, with silver hinges, carved with strange writing; I had caught her holding it once and she had not liked it.
“I’m giving this to you now because there won’t be time in the morning, I’ll be busy with the breakfast when you’re getting ready. This is a very special gift. It’s dangerous even to open it and show it to you.” She let me see the box, opening it partway. Inside was a necklace on a silver chain from which a small pendant hung. The pendant was curious, a bird impaled on a claw. A jewel in the center, glinting in the lamplight. I tried to touch the necklace but Mama said to leave it alone. The box was carved with runes inside the lid as well as out. Mama closed the lid after a few moments. She had a look on her face as though she were listening to some voice. “Take it out of the box as soon as you reach Arthen. Don’t let anyone see it, ever. Your grandmother gave it to me and her father gave it to her. It belonged to a very wise woman who once served the Red King. Remember, show it to no one.”
“But Mama, you should save this for one of the girls –“
“Your grandmother told me it was meant for you. She always knew.” She looked at me tenderly, drew me close. “I don’t know what it means and neither did she. But do exactly as I’ve told you, because she said it was important and would save your life, and I believe her.”
She would not even let me look at it, but pressed it in my hand. “Keep it in the box until morning, where it will be hidden. But don’t take the box with you into the forest. It can’t return to Arthen. Take the necklace out of the box and throw the box away. Say nothing about this to anyone, not even Jarred or your uncle.” She hurried me out of her room then. I found my bed and hid the box and the necklace under the mattress where Jarred would not roll over it in his sleep.
3
In the morning a storm blew over the whole world. Gloom of it seeped through the bit of window in our attic bedroom. As soon as my eyes opened I jumped from the covers and stood at the window, where the dark clouds were rolling across heaven.
Already I could hear voices in the kitchen, counterpoint to the wind that raced through the visible hills. In the dim yard stood saddled horses, reins trailing the dirt. A pack was tied to the back of the black horse I would be riding. The horse waited patiently, once turning his gray eyes toward the window from which I watched him.
“You’ll be leaving pretty soon, I bet,” Jarred said, coming up beside me at the window. “Do you think you can really ride that horse when he gets going?”
“Yes, I think so.” I quietly dressed, sliding the small box into the sleeve-pocket of my coat. From outside came the sound of distant thunder.
“I hope I get a horse like that someday,” said Jarred.
“I wish you were coming too.”
“Not to live in Arthen, not for anybody’s money.”
“Is it a bad place?”
“There’s every kind of goblin and monster in it from what I’ve heard. And probably witches and bloodsuckers on top of it.”
“I think people make up those stories,” I said, and Jarred laughed as we heard more thunder rolling over the hills, followed by Mama’s voice calling us to breakfast.
The storm worried her more than Uncle Sivisal, who claimed the ride would be easier under the cover of rain. We ate our breakfast quickly. Papa mentioned waiting to see if the sky cleared, but Mama said harshly that the sky would not be clearing and we should get ourselves into the Woodland if we knew what was good for us. She said this in such a sharp tone no one dared to contradict her.
I could feel the necklace in its box, an awkward lump against my arm.
“You’ll want to ride the straightest, shortest way,” Mama said to Sivisal, “and make no attempt to hide. If you aren’t in Arthen by nightfall God help you.”
“My sister has more on her mind than she’s saying,” Sivisal said, and I could tell she was making him nervous.
“I often do,” she answered. “Don’t take me lightly Sivisal, I know what I’m talking about. Get into Arthen, quickly, storm or no storm.”
Behind, framed in the barn door, my father was watching his wife, a touch of fear on his face, the first time I had ever seen any such emotion in him.
The time had come. Outside the cold rain began to fall and my family pressed round to say good-bye. Uncle Sivisal threw on his cloak and I slipped the hood of my boy’s sleeved coat over my head. Father pressed a gold piece into my hand. Lise, Mikif and Vaguath started crying as we moved toward the horses. Jarred had tears in his eyes too, and we embraced a long time. Mother hugged me desperately, wanting to say something, I thought.
She found a reason to fuss with the collar of my undershirt, and whispered in my ear, “Never be sorry, Jessex, no matter what happens.”
A rush of wind overtook us both. She helped me onto the stallion’s bare back. I clutched the coat around me as the wind came down on us more and more. Uncle Sivisal looked at me with a calm smile. “All right Jessex, now we ride,” he said, and, gesturing farewell to everyone in the yard, we left my home. I never saw it again.
4
The storm that followed shook the countryside, dark clouds rolling and wind blowing trees nearly level with the ground, lightning flashing and thunder resounding, rain pouring from the clouds in such floods one wondered if the fields would wash away. Sivisal and I rode straight through the tumult toward the hills.
We rode through the east fields where the furrows of new-planted corn were battered to pieces by the rain and wind, along a creek that bordered our land and farther, past the hills where Jarred had found me herding sheep the day before. Soon we had left my father’s farm behind and rode upland into forest, good for hunting according to Sim; Uncle Sivisal headed us there to avoid any stray Blue Cloaks who might be in the area. Under the trees we took our first rest.
The storm was awesome, clouds covering the Fenax as far as the eye could see. I remembered what my mother had said and touched the necklace-box once or twice. Uncle Sivisal looked at the sky, worried. “Weather like this isn’t natural. An hour before dawn the sky was clear as clear can be.”
“Mama said it would be a bad storm,” I answered.
“Well, she was right. We had better take her advice and get to Arthen quick as we can. Is this the fastest way you know?”
“This is forest that belongs to the Queen. It isn’t very thick. Beyond is the Girdle where the patrols ride.”
“How far?”
“Minutes from here. But it’s very wide.”
“The patrols will be out today too, I’ll bet gold on it. This storm stinks of magic. Come on, we’re going to hurry. That horse of yours knows how to get where we’re headed, if you can stay on his back.”
“I can stay.” I had to shout to make myself heard above the wind.
He pulled something from inside hi
s cloak and slipped it on his finger. I recognized the ring that he had worn when he led the black horse from the barn. He leaned toward my horse and spoke words to him. The horse listened with a wholly serious air and when Uncle Sivisal released his bridle, he began to canter forward. I turned back to see if Sivisal was following. He was. So I asked, “What did you tell him?”