by Kate Elliott
Horn spoke in an altered tone, too resonant to come from that diseased throat. “You do not belong here, Wanderer,” she said in the language of the Deer tribes. “Go back to your own place. Your father weeps for you.”
Alain’s expression altered, pain and bewilderment replacing sincere sympathy. “I have no home. I have no father. No mother. No kin. I came alone, with nothing, from the place I once lived. I will not go back.” He stared fiercely at Horn’s slack eye before turning to Adica. The light in his expression made her heart flood with joy. “Here, I have a home. I will not leave her.” He clasped one of Adica’s hands between his own. Even the grasp of his injured hand felt strong, now.
“Many are they who wait for you in that place,” repeated Horn stubbornly. “I see your crown, brighter than stars. You have wandered off the path meant for you, and you must return. This is your fate, Wanderer.”
Throughout this labored speech, Alain’s hand tightened on Adica’s until her fingers hurt, squeezed between his. Horn’s words cut deeply, slicing open the scar that had sealed over her fear of dying. Was Alain to be taken away from her? Truly, she was no longer sure she could walk with the others, knowing where their path led, if she didn’t have him beside her. She had come to depend on his companionship; it made her last days bearable.
Alain did not quail. “I will not leave her.”
Adica recognized then, in his expression, the terrible pain he had suffered before. It was not only she who had found shelter in their bond. He had as well.
Horn snorted, made a whistling, throaty sound as a palsy shook her. Her apprentice rushed forward and bathed her face with what was left of the spilled potion, and this effusion calmed the old woman. When her body ceased its trembling, she lay slack, her good eye closed and the vacant eye staring unseeingly toward the ceiling as at a particular group of brightly-painted pipers dancing around an elk, coaxing it into their snares.
No one knew what to do at first. Cider was brought, along with rather fermented, withered, tasteless greens, and barley cakes that had been fried in lard and left to congeal in the recesses of the cave. Adica ate what was given her. She knew that, driven from their village and their stores, they had little enough to offer a guest.
Abruptly, Horn woke and, in her normal slurred whisper, began speaking where she had left off before Alain had knelt beside her. “Laoina and the Akka warriors she brings will shelter here, with my people, until the time comes for the great working. Afterward they will be free to return to their home. Those among my people who live will build a new village so that we need never again dwell in a place poisoned by the Cursed Ones. Those who die will catch up to me on the path that leads to the Other Side. Girl, take them to the Bent People. I still hold the power of fire over them, and they owe me one last boon.” She fumbled with her good hand at an armband, her fingers slipping as she tried to tug it off. “Return this to the Bent People. They will do my will in this matter.” Horn took in a breath, and as she let it out, spoke faint words. “Let that be the end of it.”
A feather floated down out of the darkness and came to rest on Horn’s lips. Adica waited for her to take in another breath, for the feather to stir, but nothing happened. Her chest did not rise. Her whole body slackened. The pale wisp that was her spirit rose out of her body, taking a form like that of the big-bellied woman carved into the cavern wall, so different than the frail, elderly body she now inhabited.
A wind rose sudden and strong. The torches blew out, plunging them into darkness. The pale substance of Horn’s spirit twisted as the wind spun it around.
“Hear me! Hear me!” It spoke in a new voice, deep and booming. “She is taken! Come quickly, or all is lost. The Holy One has been captured by the Cursed Ones. We have not enough strength to rescue her. Come quickly, or all is lost!”
“Shu-Sha!” cried Two Fingers.
A thunderous knock resounded through the chamber. Adica leaped up just as the wispy spirit shattered into a thousand glittering lights, quickly extinguished. The young apprentice wailed out loud.
Quickly, the torches were relit, but Horn was dead, and her spirit had vanished into the darkness.
PART FOUR
A MIRROR ON
THE PAST
XIV
JEDU’S ANGRY LAIR
1
THE flames scoured her clean. They emptied her of emotion, of her past, of all her links to any substance except fire, because she was fire. Long ago Da had constructed and then locked a door in the citadel of her palace of memory, hiding from her the truth of what she truly was. Even as the fire of the Sun consumed her, the pure fire of her innermost heart burned more brightly even than the blast of the Sun, waves of heat and golden towers of flame. The door remained in place, but now she could peer through that keyhole and understand exactly what it was she saw writhing and burning, the thing that Da had locked away from her: her secret soul, the blue-hot spark that had given her life and that permeated her substance.
I am only half formed out of humankind. She needed no words, no voice, because the fire itself was her voice. The daimones who took me at Verna are my kin.
I am fire.
Exultant, she reached easily into the blazing fire of the Sun and transformed it into wings. On these wings she rose on the updraft of an uncurling flare to the limit of the Sun.
Yet even so, to her surprise, she had not left everything behind. Maybe she could never leave everything behind. She still had her bow and quiver of arrows; she still had the gold torque, cold at her neck, that bound her to Sanglant, and the bright beacon of lapis lazuli, the ring Alain had given her. But nothing else, only the fire that suffused the physical form she called a body.
Jedu’s baleful glare bathed the horizon in a bloody red, the home of the Angel of War. The gates were guarded by a pair of sullen but dreadful daimones, carrying spears carved of crystal. Skulls dangled from their belts, and their faces shone with blood lust. She strung her bow and nocked an arrow, lit it so it burned.
They laughed, seeing how pitifully small she was. Although she was fire, they did not fear her. They were big as castles, with thighs as broad as a house and arms as stout as tree trunks.
“Pass through, pass through!” they cried mockingly, with voices that boomed and crashed. “We’ll watch the sport while you’re hunted down and killed, Bright One.”
“I thank you,” she said, seeing no reason to stay and quibble with creatures who looked ready to squash her like a bug.
She passed through the arch as their voices followed her, deep and resonant. “Go as you please, Child of Flame, yet you will lose something of yourself on the path!”
She tumbled into Jedu’s angry lair.
2
AT dawn, Bulkezu ordered the vanguard driven forward with the lash to swarm the walls of Echstatt. Maybe the hapless men, women, and children would find mercy in the Chamber of Light, since they had certainly found none at Bulkezu’s hands. He used his prisoners wisely, if one called ruthlessness wisdom. By pressing the unarmed mob up against the walls first, he ensured that Echstatt’s defenders used up much of their precious store of arrows, javelins, and hot tar on folk who could do nothing to harm them in return.
Hanna refused to weep while Bulkezu watched her. He liked to watch her, just as he liked to make her watch each assault as his army struck deep into the heart of Wendar, having long since outflanked his pursuers. He was trying to batter her down, breach her walls, but she would not give in.
By midday the Quman breached the town’s gates and the fires started. Smoke and flame curled up from houses, halls, and huts, melting the thin mantle of snow on the rooftops. Mounted on a shaggy Quman horse, surrounded by Bulkezu’s command group as they surveyed their troops from a hillside overlooking the prosperous town, Hanna saw every bitter moment as the victory unfolded. Despair tasted like ash on her tongue as the winged riders started in on their usual slaughter, cutting the fingers off folk who didn’t give up their rings quickly enough, dragging adu
lt males out into the streets and killing any who resisted.
Smoke billowed into the sky as fires raged. A dozen riders hurried out of the church as it, too, began to burn, flames licking up through the roof. Four men held corners of the embroidered altar cloth; vestments, gold fittings, silver cups, and the deacon’s bloodstained stole jostled in a heap at the center. After a moment, the glass window above the altar blew out.
In a prosperous town like Echstatt there was plenty to loot beyond fodder, provisions, and the church’s treasure. Bulkezu’s intentions remained a mystery to her, because he seemed remarkably uninterested in loot except in so far as it pleased his troops to enrich themselves with trinkets and slaves.
Now, of course, came the worst part as the Quman herded the surviving townsfolk out of the gates and onto their ruined fields. Bulkezu gestured, and the command group moved forward. Trapped between his warriors, she had to go along with them as they rode down to examine the captives.
An old woman limped, a trail of blood marking her stumbling path. A young man hugged a baby to his chest while at his side his pretty wife, her expression caught between terror and hopeless anger, slapped her screaming toddler into silence before clutching the now-stupefied child tightly against her as tears streamed down her cheeks. Children sobbed. A girl tried vainly to hold together her torn sleeve. A chubby man in steward’s robes fell to the ground and lay there moaning helplessly, face buried in the dirt.
Smoke from the burning houses clouded Hanna’s vision. Tears stung her eyes. The townsfolk saw her then, an Eagle riding among the hated Quman.
An elderly man dressed in a rich man’s tunic stepped forward, raising his merchant’s staff. “I pray you, Eagle,” he cried, “intercede for us—”
A Quman struck him down. Blood pooled from the old man’s temple into the depression left by the heel mark of the warrior’s boot. A half-grown boy with a cut on his cheek screamed out loud, once, and an older girl who looked to be his sister clapped a hand over his mouth. There was a terrified silence. All of the townsfolk dropped their gazes and hunched their shoulders, as if by not seeing, by making themselves small, they would not be seen.
Bulkezu laughed. The sound echoed weirdly, muffled by his helm. He gestured, and the interpreter hurried forward, eager to serve. He had stolen a new tunic off a corpse about ten days ago and had recently gotten hold of a silver chain out of the ruins of a burned church. The finery made him vain. Hanna hadn’t known his name before, but now that he had a half-dozen prisoners to use as slaves, he had begun to style himself “Lord Boso.” Sometimes, if Bulkezu was in a magnanimous mood, Boso got to pick a fresh woman from among the newly-captured prisoners rather than accept the leavings after the Quman had done with them.
Bulkezu pulled off his helm. He spoke, and Boso translated.
“His Munificence feels a strong mercy weighing upon his heart. Be glad you do not face his wrath. Because of his good humor this day, he will allow the Eagle to choose ten from your number. The rest will become prisoners. It will become their good fortune to be allowed to serve their Quman masters.”
Was this mercy? Hanna felt sick. The townsfolk stared at her, seeming not to understand his words. Already Quman warriors walked among the three hundred or so captives, testing the soundness of limbs, pinching the arms of the young women to see how pleasingly fat they were, prodding the few men who remained, those who hadn’t been killed in the first assault or the final desperate fighting. Some men made good slaves; some did not, because they would always struggle. Bulkezu and his men knew how to tell the difference.
“What will happen to those left behind, the ones I choose?” she asked.
Bulkezu kept a stony face until Boso translated her words. His reply was swift and certain. “His Bounteousness gives his word that they will be allowed to stay behind, unmolested. Let the Eagle choose.”
The reputation of the Kerayit shamans had protected her for this long. Bulkezu had not laid a hand on her, but perhaps he meant to win her regard using different methods, mercy and persuasion, if you called this mercy. She regarded him suspiciously, but he only smiled, looking ready as always to burst out laughing.
She made the mistake of looking again at the townsfolk. They were beaten, they were lost, but a few had managed to understand Boso’s words. No matter how they struggled to keep their expressions blank, she saw hope flower in their eyes, she saw hatred burn for the choice she would be allowed to have over them.
The girl with the torn sleeve hissed. “Slave! Traitor!”
She wasn’t talking to Boso.
The townsfolk all looked at Hanna; in their hearts they knew what she was, if she rode among the Quman. Fire hissed from the town, an echo of the girl’s accusation. Boso whispered to Bulkezu, and the prince snapped a command. The girl was dragged forward, thrown down to her knees before him. She began to snivel and cry. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He drew his sword.
“I choose her,” said Hanna hastily. “I am a prisoner, too. I have no choice, I didn’t ask to travel with them.” These words she spoke to the watching townsfolk, but they didn’t believe her. They hated her now anyway, whatever they believed of her, because she had the power of life and death over them, the power to choose who would remain free and who would become a slave. It was a cruel game to play with them, and with her. Hope is often cruel.
But if she didn’t choose, then they would all suffer as Bulkezu’s slaves.
He laughed as she chose them—the defiant girl, the young couple with the two small children, a man with the burly arms of a smith, a woman who reminded her of her mother and the teenage girl clinging to her side—because by the time there were only two choices left to make they were all begging and pleading to be chosen themselves, or thrusting their innocent children forward in the hope of saving them from the Quman yoke. So many.
Cold wind stung her cheeks, bringing tears. The Quman warriors shoved the desperate townsfolk back, away from Hanna.
Children wept. The boy with the cut cheek shuddered as his sister gripped him tightly, but no sound escaped him. The steward curled up and moaning into the dirt began to claw the ground as though he meant, like a mole, to dig himself in to safety. He was missing three fingers. His blood had spattered the front of his linen tunic.
“Two more,” cried Lord Boso cheerfully. The townsfolk’s fear excited him. His eyes ranged over the women who were left, measuring them, his own nasty gaze lit with greedy desire.
The Quman watched without expression, all except Bulkezu, who found the scene amusing. She hated him for his laughter. She hated him all the more because it would have been easier to hate him if he had been ugly, but even when he laughed, even when he reveled in her pain and in his captives’s despair, when his laughter revealed a pitiless and ugly heart, none of that darkness marked his handsome face.
It wasn’t true after all, what the church folk sometimes preached: as inside, so outside.
Let no one know she was weeping inside. She was the King’s Eagle. It was her duty to witness, to save what she could. She picked out two more girls, both about the same age as the girl with the torn sleeve. Old enough to survive if they were left on their own. Old enough to be raped and taken as concubines if they were left with the Quman.
Boso cursed at her, having had his eye on one of them. Bulkezu finally stopped chuckling. With shuttered eyes, he watched Hanna, not the chosen ten being herded back to burning Echstatt. A captain called out the advance. A horn blew. Weeping and wailing, the rest of Echstatt’s survivors were goaded and lashed toward the waiting army.
The captives stumbled along. One toddler, falling behind, was killed where it lay sobbing, a prod for the rest. Riding with the command group, Hanna soon outdistanced them, but their cries and grief stayed with her anyway, melding soon enough into the morass of sorrow that attended the Quman army: the mob of prisoners driven along with livestock and extra horses.
Late that afternoon the scene was repeated again when the vanguard
reached a village. Soldiers drove a crowd of prisoners forward to take the brunt of the initial assault. When the first flurry of arrows trailed off, the Quman troops attacked, burned the palisade and houses, and rounded up prisoners. Bulkezu brought her forward again, to grant mercy to ten.
“I won’t do it,” she said. “You’re only playing a game with me. You don’t care about mercy.”
Bulkezu laughed. As he spoke, Boso translated. “Then I will choose, and leave ten behind for the crows.”
This time a woman spat on her, calling her worse names than “slave” and “traitor”, and was murdered for her disrespect. But Hanna chose ten while the others huddled in hopeless silence or stared at her accusingly.
“Mercy is a waste of time,” said Bulkezu as Boso translated. “People despise the ones who show them mercy.”
“They feel I have betrayed them,” said Hanna, “and maybe I have.”
The vanguard set up camp an arrow’s flight from the ruined village, upwind from the mass of the army and, more particularly, from the stinking mass of livestock and prisoners. But Bulkezu liked to survey his riches. He liked his luxuries, his silk robes, handsome gold trinkets, sweet-smelling women he did not treat badly as long as they did not resist him. Yet these were all things he could give up and leave behind without a moment’s thought. What he enjoyed most of all, as far as Hanna could tell, was the misery he left in his wake.
With his night guard in attendance and Hanna perforce at his side, he rode back along the lines, weaving in and out through his troops, stopping at campfires, inspecting tents, until he reached the bloated crowd of prisoners mixed together with stolen livestock, cattle and goats and sheep bleating and lowing, chickens and ducks fluttering and squawking in cages, and every variety of donkey and horse, from scrawny asses to sturdy work ponies to an aged warhorse now ridden by four small children. Even cowed as the prisoners were by their fear of their masters, they still made noise enough to wake the dead. She could not count them all; in the last few days the numbers had swelled alarmingly as the Quman army swept into more densely inhabited areas. By now, she guessed there were twice as many prisoners as soldiers.