by Kate Elliott
As Bayan had said, no war was ever lost if there was still wine to drink.
Bulkezu examined her in the silence as they sipped their wine and nibbled on hard cakes flavored with coriander. Truly, there was a war going on right now in more ways than one, and she didn’t suppose it would be over very quickly. After all, despite their fear of the Kerayit, she was still his prisoner.
A soldier entering carrying an odd-looking two-stringed lute. He settled himself to one side and serenaded them in a grating, nasal voice that droned on and on. After a long while, he finished, and they were permitted to go to sleep. Although she was most graciously offered the use of Bulkezu’s furs, she took herself to the opposite wall of the tent, near the entrance, and wrapped herself tightly in her cloak. She was so exhausted that she fell asleep at once.
She woke to snoring. Without raising her head or otherwise giving herself away, she studied the dark interior. Prince Ekkehard and his comrades lay sleeping nearby, sprawled in ungainly postures on the floor of the pavilion. Each of the young lords had a partner in sleep, a Quman soldier at rest beside them, so that if their prisoner stirred, they would wake, too. Only Hanna wasn’t guarded.
Or maybe she was.
One person wasn’t sleeping. In the center of the pavilion, illuminated by the pool of light afforded by a single burning lamp hung from the center pole, Prince Bulkezu still sat on his goldbraided pillow. He had an easy posture, cross-legged, one elbow braced on a knee while the other fiddled with the stem of an elaborate ceramic pipe. Steam bubbled up from its belly. He took a puff from the pipe, exhaling softly. A veil of smoke hazed the air around him as he watched her. Did he know she’d woken?
The strangely-scented smoke filled her lungs and made her consciousness drift on hazy currents out through the smoke hole, lofting above the camp. There lay the prince’s pavilion, below her, glowing with a faint golden ring of protection, and the other tents, ranged in a circle around it, seemed marked by yet more magical wards. There stood the horses, restless in the cold night, and their stalwart guard. To one side, unseen before, she noticed a corral and, within that fence, the patchwork cloak of the shaman. He cooked meat over a kettle filled with coals, and abruptly glanced up, as if he sensed her. But her awareness already ranged beyond him, to the sentries in their concealed posts, the glittering trip lines laid high and low, and a pair of hawks perched on a branch, waiting for dawn.
What waited beyond Bulkezu’s little camp struck dismay into her heart. As her awareness lifted higher, caught on an aetherical breeze, she saw that Prince Bulkezu’s was only one campsite situated among many—more than she could count in the darkness. The tents of the Quman lay scattered through the forest like uncounted pebbles.
This wasn’t a raiding party at all. It was the Quman army.
Bulkezu had swung wide around Handelburg. He’d abandoned Bayan and his shattered army, left them holed up and impotent in the east, and now was driving west toward the heart of Wendar itself.
The Quman weren’t the only ones waiting in the cold night. Dread creatures stalked the Earth, patient and single-minded. Beyond the trip lines and other protective wards, the shadows of elves waited, arrayed in hunting groups, their thwarted rage like the throb of a lute string in the air. Would she never escape them? Why did they pursue her, she who had never glimpsed such creatures before? How had she angered them, or called attention to herself? Had they, like the hideous galla, learned her name?
A breath of cold air brushed her lips, like a kiss, and she came crashing back into her body, heart pounding with fear. But she hadn’t moved, nor had anyone touched her. The night wind had teased the entrance flap open. Through the gap she saw outside into the open space between the tents. It had been snowing again. The tracks of the battle lay buried under a fresh blanket of snow, white and pristine.
The owl glided into view and came to rest on the unbroken snow. It blinked once, and she knew then that it was looking right at her.
She had seen this owl before. This was the owl who had appeared at the abandoned village, just two nights ago, before disaster had broken over them. This was the owl Liath had spoken to at the palace of Werlida just as though it could understand her.
She knew now what it was. This was the centaur woman’s owl, that Hanna had seen in her dreams.
It waited, golden eyes staring. Silence settled like snow.
Bulkezu laughed. He sucked on his pipe before speaking in comprehensible Wendish. “Nay, dreaded one, I will not harm the woman with the frost-white hair. I fear your power too much. But now she’s mine. Get her back if you can.”
XI
THE NOISE OF
THEIR WAKING
1
ON the first fine spring day, Adica walked down from the stone loom after a weary afternoon of meditation. The gorgeous weather had not helped her keep her mind focused, not when the song of birds kept distracting her, and primrose and blooming flax painted the ground in pale yellows, blues, and violets. She kept wondering where her husband was, and what he was doing.
As usual, she had no trouble finding him. She had only to follow the sound of laughter, to walk down to the river where it seemed most of the village had’ gathered, whooping and hollering over some ridiculous male contest. Spring had come, and that of course meant men became infected with the Green Man’s mischief.
Alain stood knee-deep in the river shallows, having challenged all comers to a wrestling match. She arrived in time to see him flip poor Kel into the deep water, dunking him. Kel came up shrieking from the shock of the cold water. A half-dozen other men stood shivering and wet on the bank, egging their fellows on.
“Throw him in!”
“It’s more than he deserves! Hold him under!”
“Whoo! Ha! That water’s so cold it’ll be summer before my wife gets any pleasure out of me!”
“Well, then,” called his wife from the crowd, “the Black Deer traders come through this time of year. I’ll have to please myself with them until you’re fit for use.” She started a rowdy chorus of “My man can’t even walk up the path to his own house,” and most of the other women joined in.
Alain was laughing as he helped Kel out of the water. He had stripped down to a simple loincloth; it was the first day warm enough to do so. Even though Adica knew his body intimately by now, she still admired his lean hips and broad shoulders. Usually she combed and braided his hair for him, but it had all come loose around his shoulders. A man’s beard had grown in over the winter, thus proving to the last of the skeptics, such as they were, that he had not one drop of the Cursed Ones’ blood running in his veins.
Weiwara moved over to stand beside her. She held the elder twin, Blue-bud, in her arms. Adica ached to hold the baby, beautiful and plump as it was, but dared not ask. “You’d think you were married yesterday instead of last autumn the way you ogle him,” said Weiwara with a chuckle, shifting the baby to her other hip. “Look, here comes Beor.”
Kel, still whimpering, staggered out of the river and grabbed a skin cloak to wrap around himself just as Beor stalked up to the shore and stripped off his knee-length tunic.
“Now you’ll see what a real man can do,” growled Beor.
The contrast between the two men was striking: Alain lean and smooth, Beor with his broad chest densely matted with curly hair. Alain always seemed to have a smile on his face, the look of a person who no longer has anything to worry about, while Beor suffered from a nagging, irritable discontent. But, in truth, Beor had mellowed over the winter. He didn’t argue nearly as much as he had once done. Maybe it was just that it had been a mild winter during which the village hadn’t suffered hunger or anything worse than the usual stink of being closed up in their homes for months on end. Maybe they were all just more at peace, despite the everpresent menace of the Cursed Ones, now that Alain lived among them.
“I said I will take on all men, not all bears,” said Alain to general laughter.
Beor lifted his hands in imitation of a lumber
ing bear and, with a mock roar, charged Alain. A child yelped with excitement. Alain sidestepped him, but not fast enough. Beor got hold of a shoulder, they grappled, then Beor twisted Alain back and with brute strength lifted him up and tossed him backward into the current. The big man threw out his arms and let out a scream of triumph that echoed off the tumulus. Adica laughed helplessly along with the rest of the village.
Alain came up thrashing, drenched through.
“Peace!” he cried. “You win.”
He extended a hand. When Beor took it, to help him up, Alain yanked so hard that Beor tumbled forward into the freezing water beside him. By this time the two black dogs had begun barking, and as the two men heaved themselves spluttering and laughing up out of the water, the dogs splashed into the shallows and, in their excitement, knocked them both over again.
“My stomach hurts,” moaned Weiwara, tears leaking from her eyes as she laughed.
“The village will smell a lot better now,” cried Beor’s sister, Etora, from the crowd. “Whew! Look how the river has changed color downstream.”
Adica found Alain’s wool cloak lying on the rocks. After he waded out of the water, she draped it over his shoulders. A winter spent mostly indoors and the immediate effects of the freezing water had made him pale, dimpled with goose bumps.
“Cold,” he proclaimed cheerfully as she fastened the cloak at his left shoulder with a bronze pin. He kissed her cheek.
His lips were as cold as death.
She shuddered.
“Adica.” Instantly attentive to her moods, he took her hand in his. His skin was as cold as a corpse’s. The vision hit like the slap of cold water.
Six figures, made indistinct by darkness, sit huddled in a stone chamber. A seventh rests on the floor, sleeping, injured, or dead, the figure of a lion sewn into the cloth on his heavy tunic. At the fringe of the light cast by a smoking torch lies a stone slab. On this altar a queen has been laid to rest. Her bones have been arranged with care and respect, and the garments and jewelry fitting for a woman of her status have fallen in among the bones, strands of rotting fabric, beads, a lapis lazuli ring, and armbands of gold. One of the figures lifts the torch to see better, and all at once the gold antlers placed at the skeleton’s skull spring into view.
Those are the holy antlers she wears, to mark her place as Hallowed One among her people.
“Adica.”
She swayed, clutching him. “I saw my dead body,” she whispered hoarsely. “I saw my own grave.”
He grabbed her, pulling her close. “Speak no evil words! No harm will come to you, beloved. I will not let any bad thing touch you.”
“I love you,” she murmured into his hair.
“Always you will love me,” he said fiercely as the dogs bounded up and thrust their cold noses and damp fur against her hips, trying to squeeze between them, “and always will I love you.”
She had never had the courage to tell him the full truth about the task that lay before her. It hurt too much ever to think of leaving him. That was the secret of the Fat One, whose face was twofold, wreathed half in light and shrouded half in shadow. She was the giver of all things, pain and death as well as plenty and pleasure. Was it any wonder that Adica chose pleasure when sorrow and death waited just beyond the threshold?
Meanwhile, villagers had gathered at a respectful distance, waiting for her attention.
“Hallowed One, Getsi has that cough again.”
“Hallowed One, my husband’s snare out in the south woods is being vexed by evil spirits.”
“Hallowed One, we’ve finished repairing the roof that was damaged in the snow, and it needs your blessing.”
Alain laughed. Even in repose, his face had a kind of glow to it, but’ when he smiled, his expression shone. He had the most luminous eyes of any person she had ever met. “You make the village live, so it is for me to make you live and be happy.”
It is easy to find death in the world, but a greater magic by far to bring life. He was a life bringer.
He had come to her in late summer, and in the natural order of things the days and months had passed as the moon waxed and waned and waxed again. Autumn had worked free of summer, winter had cast her white blanket over the world, and in the course of time the Green Man lifted his head from his winter’s slumber. So it went, and so it would go on, long after she was gone from the Earth. Even knowing the fate that awaited her as the wheel of the year continued to turn, when the seasons rolled from spring into summer and at last to her final autumn, she was content.
The Holy One had chosen wisely.
Right now, however, the villagers waited.
By late afternoon she finished weaving a protective spell around the snare in the south woods that was being plagued by evil spirits. Returning, she found the village gathered for the last day of feasting in celebration of the new spring. She went into her own house and, with the proper prayers and spells, put on her regalia, the antlers and bronze waistband. With staff in hand, she led the villagers in procession up the tumulus to stand outside the stone loom around the calling ground. Together, they watched the sun set a little to the right of the spring and autumn ridge that marked the equinox. Winter had left them. Now they could plant.
She sang. “I pray to you, Green Man, let the seeds take root.” She turned to welcome the full moon, rising in the east. “I pray to you, Fat One, let the village prosper. Let your fullness be a sign of plenty in the year to come.”
Every villager had brought offerings, a posy of violets, a copper armband, flint axes, beads, arrowheads, and daggers. With the moon to light their way, they circled down the tumulus and followed the path that led to the marsh at the eastern limit of the hills. Adica knew the secret trail of firm tussocks that led through the marsh to the sacred island As the oldest uncrippled man in the village, Pur the stone knapper was given the honor of carrying in the offerings in her wake.
A fish jumped. The moon made silver of the water trembling through glittering beds of reeds and around grassy hummocks. The wind brought the scent of the cook fires from the village, and the smell of roasting pig.
The sacred island was itself scarcely bigger than two men laid end to end. An old stone altar carved with cups and spirals had been set up here in the time of the ancient queens. She knelt before it and set her palms into two depressions worn into stone. Pur waited patiently. He knew how to listen, having mastered the art of letting stone speak to him, and so he didn’t fear the dark of night as some did. He recognized its familiar noises and understood the magic that lies just beneath the surface of the world. After a while she heard the ancient voice of the stone, more a drone than voiced speech, as wakeful as stone ever could be at the quarters of the year when stars and earth worked in concert. She whispered to it, telling it the hopes and wishes of the villagers as well as the various small signs she had observed over the winter: where the first violets had bloomed, how a forest stream had cut a new channel, how both Weiwara and a ewe had borne living twins, how many flocks of geese had passed overhead last autumn on their way south to their winter nesting grounds. The stone understood the secret language of earth, and it held the life of the village in its impenetrable heart.
When she was done with the prayers, she and Pur cast the offerings into the marsh, as they did every year at the festival of spring, a sacrifice for a good year.
After that, she was through with being the antlered woman, the crossing-over one who can speak both to humankind and to the gods, to made things and to wild things. Pur moved away so as not to see anything forbidden, and with the prayers and spells she knew best, she became Adica again, putting away her regalia in its leather bag.
As they made their way back, water squelched and sucked beneath her feet on the lowest hummocks, half drowned in the marsh. A water snake glided away over the quiet water. Pond weed edged the marsh. Within the sheltering darkness, she overheard the conversation of those waiting for her return.
“All winter you speak of th
e war with the Cursed Ones,” Alain was saying. “Do you think they attack with the spring?”
“Of course they will attack.” Kel always sounded as if he had fire burning under his feet. “They hate us.”
“Why? Can there not be trading and talk? Why can there only be hate?”
Alain was always full of questions about things that seemed obvious to everyone else. The wind blew a light stalk of reed against her face, then away. Pur shifted behind her, but she didn’t move. Wherever she walked, people marked where she was. Rarely did she have a chance to overhear when people spoke words unshaped by their concern about what she might hear.
Kel snorted. “Never can we trust the Cursed Ones. They sacrifice their human captives by flaying them alive, and then they cut out their hearts and eat them!”
“Have you seen it done, Kel?” asked Alain quietly.
“No! But everyone knows—”
Urtan broke in. “Humankind has always warred against the Cursed Ones, ever since they came over the seas in their white ships. Only now the fight has grown more desperate because the Cursed Ones have brought their metal weapons to the killing field.”
“Now we have a chance to defeat the Cursed Ones,” exclaimed Kel eagerly. “That’s why they tried to kidnap the Hallowed One. They’ll try again. We must be on our guard day and night—”
“Hush, now, Kel,” said Urtan quietly. “You’ll wake the sleeping. That’s why we have to wait here for the Hallowed One to return from the offering ground. In the old days, she would have walked to the marsh and returned all alone, but now we can’t risk leaving her alone. The Cursed Ones won’t give up.”
“I’ll protect her,” said Alain in that stubborn way he had, more sweet than grouchy.
“No one can protect her,” said Kel, stung by Urtan’s words into speaking unwisely. “She has a doom laid on her—”
Behind her, Pur hissed displeasure.
“What do you mean?” asked Alain.
Adica was suddenly aware of the grass stuck to her fingers. An owl hooted. There came a sudden splash, then silence.