The Rising Scythe

by S G Dunster

  “And fish?” Robert asked. Rosalie tittered, smothering it with her napkin.

  Guzal hadn’t come down for supper. Thessaly went up to their suite and checked Guzal’s small room and her own. Both empty.

  The Dumenon with the fydol didn’t come either. It both bothered and relieved Thessaly. The room, with the quiet movements and talk of men and women robed in black, seemed suddenly oppressive, and the itch of worry and irritation took over. Thessaly ate her portion of bread and cheese quickly. “I’m in need of a rest before . . .” she turned, and saw that Thom was leaning over the table toward Beatrice.

  “He’s like a pike after minnows,” Rye said in a low voice. “Just so you ladies know, do not find yourself in a dark corner with him.”

  “I sussed that one out for myself,” Thessaly said. “Beatrice is more than equal to the task.” She glanced at Rosalie. “We should retire for a while if we’re to go out later.”

  “We shall call on your rooms,” Hodge said. “In two hours?”

  “Aye,” Thessaly agreed, though the worry was starting to burn. Where was Guzal? Had something happened up at the Tor? Maybe she should not have stayed down in Minehead today.

  “You don’t know which door’s ours,” Rosalie protested.

  Beatrice rose from her place at the table. “I need some rest,” she said loudly, glaring at Thessaly.

  Thom sat back, his face a picture of confusion. Rye’s shoulders shook.

  “I think we all got a little too much fresh air today,” Beatrice continued, projecting so her message would not be missed as Rosalie and Thessaly rose with her, moving toward the door. “Leave me with him, will you,” she hissed at Thessaly, coming abreast of her.

  “Rye said not to be alone with him,” Rosalie informed her. “Heed his advice next time.”

  Beatrice let out an explosive breath. “Come,” she said, her annoyance melting, replaced with anticipation. “Let’s sleep so we have wind enough to dance until the moon rises.”

  The words sent a strange shiver through Thessaly. A picture came into her head of a glowing silver moon, high in the sky, lighting a dozen pointed tree tops.

  And a pale circle gathering. Figures swathed in veils, and a dark shape in the middle.

  She stopped short, putting her hand on the wall of the stairwell. A sudden cold had stabbed her along with the image. She looked inward and saw that breath and blood—the loose floes—had come undone. The floes of seeing, Thessaly thought.

  A vision, then. A true vision.

  She’d seen Beatrice’s father. And now, what was she seeing? Past or future? Her Aunt Margarida told in both, for those who came to make offerings to her at her little cave in the cliffs of Sintra.

  Was Thessaly becoming a seer too, then?

  Thessaly said the curse carefully, tucking the floes neatly back into the glowing cold mass at her core.

  She was tired, she told herself. It could be she was dreaming on her feet, and that was all.

  Chapter 14

  H

  odge knocked on their door, and they slipped out of their room.

  They walked up the street and turned off into the wood. It was dark even with the lanterns Robert and Rye carried.

  “Are you certain this is the way?” Beatrice demanded, lifting her velvet skirts. They had chosen the plainest dresses they had, but still they were far too fine for crawling through brambles.

  “There!” Rosalie cried, pointing. A glow of lights, flickering far above them in the trees.

  They followed them and came out on a hill’s top. There were torches burning all around, and lively music, and the dancing was lively, wild, and hilarious.

  As they stepped into the circle of torches, a snap of something—an energy of some kind—flooded Thessaly’s body. She cried out and stumbled to the ground, shaking.

  “Are you all right?” Rosalie asked, helping her up as the others rushed to her.

  “I tripped,” Thessaly said, her voice grim. “I think I twisted the ankle a little.” She rose, her senses on full alert, and squinted at the crowd.

  That had not been an accident.

  Someone had performed a working. A big one, and it was a whole lot like the one surrounding Dunne’s Tor.

  “Oh,” Rosalie said. “A shame. You won’t be able to dance!”

  “We shall see,” Thessaly replied. “You go. I need a moment to recover.”

  She watched silently.

  The evening was bright with moonlight, and the stars were searing pricks scattered over the black bowl above.

  The dancing drew her, drew a sort of laughing, thrumming feeling from her. As the music rose, men lifted women high, and then there were intricate steps that matched the fast pace of the music. All were laughing, enjoying themselves. Was that all they were doing, though?

  Thessaly closed her eyes.

  Yes, she thought. There it is.

  Like a sheet of fire, energy glowed between the torches. A curtain from the world outside, warm, throbbing. Her own flesh-and-fire floes throbbed in response.

  She turned, slowly, and examined the crowd more carefully. There had to be two hundred people at least. The hilltop was broad and smooth, ringed by an ancient stone foundation. There was a block of wall left on one side; on this the singers and players sat or stood, sweating as they flung out music for the crowd to snap up.

  Thessaly found him immediately. He stood near the center with two others who played viol. Fydol, she corrected herself. He’d called it a fydol.

  One of the players was Meraud. She played very well, too, her dark eyes intent, face drawn up in a smile. The man stood by her, dark curls brushing his shoulders, smiling too as he played. The threads of music stung the black sky like whips of gold. They turned to each other for a moment and the duet of their melody wound together perfectly, intricate and lovely as any pair of dancers could be.

  Thessaly swallowed what felt like a lump of gristle stuck in her throat.

  There were magicks here, indeed. But the two of them were not creating the silver flame that surrounded the hill.

  What was this?

  She walked around the group. Staring, stopping, listening. Closing her eyes and feeling. All thought of fun and fresh air was forgotten.

  Beatrice and Rosalie both danced with Dumenon men. Beatrice’s partner was massive, muscled, and his long dark hair flowed over his back. He picked her up and flung her high, and she laughed so hard tears trickled down her face.

  Hodge and Rye danced with girls Thessaly had not met—both coil-haired, pale-skinned, with the characteristic Dumenon features. They looked well on women, Thessaly thought. Handsome, more than pretty. But handsome lasts longer, Thessaly thought, and then did not know why she thought it.

  Robert was somewhere. She couldn’t find him.

  Thessaly closed her eyes.

  There it was. The great, silver curtain. It evoked the feeling she’d had earlier that day, almost like a smell, subtle. Earth, spices, and sweet smoke. And the feel, too, of the tickle of things growing, and the pleasure of things warmed by sun.

  She probed the periphery of two women who stood off to the side, talking.

  There was nothing connecting them to the fire around the hill, but there was something. A hint of silver, a small warmth like a candle.

  They were not wytches. But they carried magic. In a casual way, like one carries a shawl over one’s shoulders.

  Thessaly opened her eyes and shook her head slowly. All of them. All of them, in this crowd, carried a small amount of it, now that she was looking. Gold with some. Silver with others. But all had a light about them if she looked hard.

  And then there was the Fydoler. He carried more than a small candle, and it blazed into her Sight whether she was looking or no.

  What was this?

  She had to ask.

  She had to know.

  She ached, deep down. A hollowness, a loneliness.

  She stood and walked carefully through the mass of dancers to t
he center where there was a low stone platform. There, three people played—Meraud and the Fydoler, and another man who carried strange bagged pipes under his arm. The music was full and lovely and secret and mysterious—perfect for a night under the moon. The tall torches surrounding the hill blazed and flickered, casting warm tongues of light over all the scene. Thessaly felt, suddenly, like she’d gone somewhere else . . . or perhaps, she thought, some when else.

  How many generations, how many years, how many centuries, had these people, the Dumenon, met here on this hill to dance?

  It was possible, she admitted, that this working she’d felt was an old one. That was what she’d wondered about the working at the Mansion. She had to allow the possibility here, too. Worked magicks could last as long as the objects they were poured into, whether they be trees or stone or dirt.

  Thessaly watched the Fydoler closely now, examining him with the full intent of Sight as he agitated the strings with the bow, laughing as he did so, doing a little dance himself to the rhythm of his tune, dark hair flying. His face held fun, Thessaly decided. Fun, and passion, and intelligence and . . . beauty. And something golden, cold, and refreshing, like the tingle of good cider at the back of the throat. She sighed and moved away. Whatever it was he did, she could not be certain it was on purpose. He had magicks. Strong. Perhaps they just breathed from him? Perhaps, as he played, he poured so much of himself into it that what he had inside poured out with it?

  She did not know. And right now, she did not feel brave enough to ask. She walked back to the crowd’s edge, and sat under a torch, looking for her friends in the whirl of bodies.

  She closed her eyes and unleashed her bound magicks, just to feel it with everyone, and to be inside it. Immediately she was swept away with feelings: happiness, glee. Hurt and ache. Sickness, wellness, hunger and satisfaction, longing and contentment. Anger and joy, love and hate.

  She was feeling all of them, Thessaly thought. All of them, at the same time. And the music flooded the moving bodies with flames, with dust, blowing sparks over all, connecting all.

  She couldn’t stop. She stood, and her feet moved of their own accord.

  Someone grabbed her hand—a tall man. No. Barely a man. A boy almost, Thessaly thought. He had short-cropped curls, a tickle of hair on his chin, and long arms and legs he hadn’t quite grown into. He grinned at her, his eyes blue fire, and tossed her.

  “You’re of the Dunne’s Tor?” he asked, his words so thick with Breton that Thessaly could scarcely understand them. “One o’ them fancy folk on the hill?”

  Thessaly didn’t want to say yes, but it was the only answer that would make sense. She didn’t have a lot of breath to explain who she was, where she lived, why she was there in Minehead. “Aye,” she shouted her answer as he swept her across him, taking her other hand.

  “’Tis good of ye to slum wi’ us. We’ve not enough wenches now, wi’ the ones gone missing.”

  “What’s gone missing?”

  A moment later, as he whirled her back, he shouted. “Wenches. Wenches gone missing this year out.”

  Thessaly shook her head, not sure she understood. “There are girls going missing?” she asked. “Here, in Minehead?”

  “Aye, off on ships to the cities. There’s not much here for a maiden to set her cap at. Less she’s the heart to raise all her boys to the tin maw.”

  “The mine,” Thessaly said. “Where all the men go. And the girls have been going off to the cities?”

  “Aye,” he chortled at her. “The mines. The cities. So I think it’s right fair the cities send some fair ones back to us.” He brought her in close, then flung her wide, drawing her around.

  They danced long into the night. The players kept on with tune after tune, some gold, some yellow, some red. But all fire, Thessaly thought. All fire and dust.

  “Oh,” Hodge groaned as they limped back down the hill. The music was still rollicking above them. “My poor feet.”

  “Are they going to dance all night?” Rosalie asked.

  “Likely,” Rye replied. Robert, yawning, stumbled, and used Rye’s back for a steadying stone. “That was the best one I’ve been to so far,” he declared. He glanced at Rosalie. “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Indeed,” Rosalie sighed. “So many handsome men. Such lovely music. And I have never danced like that before.”

  “I could use a drink,” Beatrice added.

  “Aye, we’ll see if the sword-and-stone is open,” Hodge agreed. “I could use a pint myself to dull the ache in my legs.”

  Rosalie stayed close to Thessaly as they came down to the road again,and headed west to the wood-and-plaster building that was the town’s public house. Just behind it, sticking up like a masthead, was the chimney of the tin mine, the top dull red with fire.

  “Some aren’t dancing tonight,” Beatrice observed.

  The pub was open, but mostly empty. A woman washed down the narrow bar, looking up immediately as they entered.

  Hodge counted them all, then turned to her. “Seven pints of ale,” he said.

  “I’ve the last o’the winter’s cider,” the woman said.

  Thessaly tasted it, again, at the back of her throat. Cider. Sparkling. Gold. Sweet and fresh.

  She lay her head on the bar for a moment. Hodge’s hand, warm and kind, rested on the back of her neck. “Are you all right, Thessaly?”

  “Aye,” Thessaly replied, her words muffled.

  “Aye,” Rosalie repeated, only in answer to the woman’s questioning look. “Cider for me.”

  “And me,” Beatrice put in.

  “Ale for me,” Thessaly said, raising her head.

  Thessaly drank down her pint slowly, savoring the weedy tang of it on her tongue, the way it furred at the back of her throat and warmed her, like one of Guzal’s fires. Like the warming pan Guzal put in her bed when the air grew cold.

  She had missed Guzal. More than she realized.

  Her thoughts ran together, images, words, including some that had been spoken to her that night, leaving her with a fierce, strange fear.

  “I heard tonight,” she said to the woman at the bar, “that there are girls going missing in town?”

  Guzal. Guzal wouldn’t go off on a ship, would she?

  The woman immediately sobered. Her shoulders slumped. “Aye,” she said. “My niece’s one of them. Sweet thing. Only thirteen. Barely flowered.”

  “Thirteen?” Thessaly asked. “Why would a girl of thirteen years want to leave for the city?” Thessaly shook her head. Guzal. Please don’t leave me, she thought. Heat was building up behind her eyes. She blinked, and mouthed her curse, masking it with another sip of ale.

  “The girls gone missing,” Rye rumbled. “That’s what’s talked of in town, other than tin and dirt. Did someone talk of it to you tonight, Thessaly?”

  “A man I danced with,” Thessaly replied.

  “The sisters at the abbey are growing concerned. One of their own left two months past. A search was made, but nobody found.”

  “Did she leave on a ship?” Thessaly asked. “Was a ship in harbor at the time?”

  “Indeed, a merchant vessel had come into the straight, and waited around a few days during that time, but when inquiries were made there, none could find her there either.” Rye shrugged. “If the girl wanted to leave, she wanted to leave. But she seemed, to me, a rather devoted sort of postulate. Not flighty like some girls I know.” He brushed Rosalie’s cheek and she giggled.

  “I’m devoted enough,” she declared boldly. Her cheeks were flushed, Thessaly noticed. She was already drunk. It was time to get her home, before she said all manner of silliness.

  “And who else has gone lately,” Hodge said, ticking off his fingers. “There’s your Emblyn, and there was Jowanett when the last boat came—“

  “They’re not going on boats,” the woman declared, throwing her towel to the bar.

  “I’d not blame them much,” Rye said, his low voice soft, comforting as wool. “See the world.
Try a new place.”

  She met his eyes and shook her head slowly. “They’re not leaving on boats,” she said. “Emblyn was fair content at her mother’s home, and she’d a Karer. She’d no mind to leave. And lately, they’ve left in twos and threes. My mind says they’re not leaving. And our Pronter says, he begins to think it’s not ships taking them away.

  “Karer?” Thessaly asked. “Pronter?”

  “A . . . sweetheart,” Hodge said, meeting the woman’s eyes, his face furrowed with confusion and concern. “And the Pronter, their leader. His name’s Dda, and he also supervises in the mines. How many gone lately, then, Bennath?”

  The woman held up seven fingers grimly, then turned from the bar. “And no ship at all, in this last month, other’n’ that great hoary fleet what came and brought the girls sittin’ before me. Your da take away any of our own wi’him?” She gave Thessaly a grim stare.

  “No,” Thessaly replied. “No, I highly doubt it. My pa doesn’t take passengers. He’d set to sail clear to the Spice Islands. So . . .” She shook her head. “So what you’re saying is they’ve just gone? Disappeared?”

  “Someone at the dance said there’s enough missing that the men in town don’t have enough to dance with,” Beatrice put in.

  “Aye, or marry,” the woman replied. “All the young ones, too. In first flower. And often enough they’re when the ships come. That’s why so many say they’ve gone off on ships. But why all of a sudden? Only since the start of last winter has it happened so many girls of Minehead stow away aboard ships and leave no trace of themselves, not even a note for their grieving parents.”

  “It does seem odd,” Beatrice said, frowning as she sipped.

  It’s more than odd, Thessaly thought, her worry burning suddenly bright.

  Guzal.

  She would go up to the Tor the next day. And she would ask some questions. Disappearing girls? In the first of womanhood? There were many, many reasons why workers of magicks might take such girls, and none of them were good.

  Her Aunt Umbra had given her an education, indeed, while she lived with the Sforzas. About spells, curses, left-hand and right-hand magicks, and to all of them she allowed Thessaly access.