by Kate Elliott
“What is this, Feather Cloak?” she asked. Counting on her fingers by bundles, she estimated there were twelve hundred as far back as she could see, and more beyond, whom she could not see. “Surely you have left our home lightly defended.”
“Even after our exile, we can field several strong armies. In these days, there are none close by us who can attack us. What is your report? We passed no war bands on our journey here.”
“All is quiet,” said Secha. “Since the dark of the moon I have sent two bands into the north, and received word from one that their hunt goes well. Of the rest, there are five bands of whom we have no word and sign. Perhaps they are lost.”
Feather Cloak nodded. If she worried about those who might be lost, Secha saw no more sign of it than her scouts had of the missing warriors. No doubt this was why Kansi-a-lari must lead in war. Secha hadn’t the stomach for it.
In the third rank walked Zuangua, fist tight on his spear. Its feather ornaments swayed as he walked. A tall girl dressed in warrior’s garb stood beside him, clutching a feathered shield and a quiver of arrows. She wore no mask—that had to be earned—and only a long woven shirt and knee-length breech clout without cape or ornamentation. Even so, Secha had to look twice to recognize the youth with her hair pulled back and trimmed to display the offering marks where her ears had been cut to draw the sacrificial blood.
“Isn’t that your granddaughter?” she said to Feather Cloak. “She is too young to begin weapons training!”
“She has earned the right of an apprentice, to carry the shield and arrows of a veteran.”
The girl did not even look at Secha. She stood perfectly still and straight, gaze bent on something behind Secha’s back which she watched as does a hawk, sighting prey.
“Your own son has also chosen the path of the warrior’s shield carrier, I think,” added Feather Cloak. “Would you wish otherwise?”
“He is older! Of proper age!” Secha scanned the line of march but could not see his familiar, beloved face. “Is he with you?”
“He is with the garrison at Flower Garden. There is still much work to do to cleanse the city so people can live there properly.”
Secha was not sure if she was pleased, or disappointed, that he had been chosen to remain behind.
“The Flower Garden garrison plans to conduct raids into the north,” added Feather Cloak, smiling in her sharp way. “We hope to capture more of the eastern ironworkers to teach our smiths the secret of iron. There is plenty of chance for your son to fight.”
“All of the young ones will fight, now that you are Feather Cloak.”
“Humankind must have no chance to rest.”
“So it seems.” Secha knew better than to open this argument again. After all, she was the one who had lost. “Where do you mean to go?”
“We are marching to war,” said Feather Cloak in her usual blunt, careless style. “The Pale Sun Dog is come to help you weave a new path.”
She indicated the man riding in the fifth rank. His hands were bound, and he was trussed up on the horse in the most demeaning manner possible. The blood knives taught that real people walked on their own feet, and did not rely on the strength of the Horse people’s mute brothers to carry them. Naturally, everyone but the most stubbornly traditional could see the advantage of horses, so they had begun to capture and breed their own.
The Pale Sun Dog had a red flush on his face, as though someone had slapped him, although it did not fade. Skin singed by flame might sheen in such a manner, but who was foolish enough to play with fire?
“You have bound his hands,” remarked Secha.
“We found him beneath the Mountain-of-the-World’s-Beginning. We think he was trying to help the Bright One to escape, but we stopped him before he could cause any trouble.”
Secha smiled. “How long do you think you can hold the Bright One as your prisoner, in the heart of the world?”
“There is no entrance or exit except the hidden way that the blood knives guard. It opens in the ceiling above the cavern floor. Anyone coming out of the heart of the world must be lifted by rope.”
“So you mean to kill her.”
Feather Cloak said softly, “I need her alive until I am done with the Pale Sun Dog. She will be hard to kill, but she is trapped. If the blood knives cannot control her for their ritual, then we can always let her die of thirst. The gods will be pleased to be offered any manner of sacrifice in the Heart-of-the-Mountain-of-the-World’s-Beginning, even if her blood is not spilled.”
“How came the Pale Sun Dog to know of the Bright One’s presence there?”
Feather Cloak did not look at him as she smirked. “The same story. A weak-minded woman sought his favor by telling tales.”
“What became of her?”
“The blood knives took her. Her crime will be measured by the gods, and she will receive a sentence.”
Secha shuddered. “According to the stories, that is how the blood knives acted in ancient days.”
Feather Cloak shrugged. The matter, out of her hands, no longer interested her.
The Pale Sun Dog lifted his bound hands to brush at a fly that had landed on his chin. When his fingers brushed the reddened skin, he winced as at a sting. He saw them talking, but his gaze wandered. He looked away, into the distance, and seemed to be dreaming, distracted, lost.
“Why should he help you, now that you have bound him?”
“He still wants that woman, and he knows I have her.” She looked along the path that led over the rise to the crown. “Best we make ready.”
“Where are you going?”
“We are going to kill a sorcerer, at the habitation the Pale Ones call Novomo.”
The Ashioi had found the crown complete, except for one stone fallen where the ground had broken away in the hillside beneath. Over the last months, and with great effort, this stone had been raised. Ridges of earth marked the remains of a ramp used to lift it. Charred logs had been rolled away from post holes; plain wood could not sustain weaving because the threads of starlight set it smoldering.
The Pale Sun Dog sat cross-legged on a blanket on the ground just behind and to one side of the weaving ground. An open book was laid over his thighs, and his astrolabe dangled from his left hand, but he did not look at it. Secha knew he watched her as she sprinkled the weaving ground with a dusting of chalk. Her apprentices—she had three—crouched a body’s length from her, studying her movements. Four mask warriors stood farther back holding ceramic bowls filled with oil, their wicks as yet unlit. Lined up on the road in ranks of four, the army waited with growling cat masks—panthers, ocelots, lynx—in the lead and, ten ranks back, Feather Cloak’s bright wheel. There was no wind. Each feather in the wheel glimmered as if sunlight caught there, but that was only a quality of light inherent in the feathers themselves, an ancient magic that lingered in the holy wheel, the symbol of turning, of fortune, of change as the world shifted onward.
“What is alive will become dead,
and what is dead will become alive.”
We are come home at last.
Secha paused to breathe in the dusty air not quite settled from the tramping of so many feet. It was good air, a little coarse in her throat because it was dry and gritty, but she smelled on that air the breadth of the wide world which, so the blood knives claimed, ran in a circle until it came back to itself.
“The world has no end,
although it, too, has a birth and a death,
ever turning into the dawn of a new sun.”
Thus runs the song of She-Who-Creates.
She smiled.
“This night you weave a new gate,” said the Pale Sun Dog.
He sounded weary. He looked away from her and sighed as he examined the book. Its pages were filled with a script she could not read. In truth, none among the Ashioi could make sense of the human script, not even Feather Cloak. Not even the girl, Blessing, who could recognize a few letters but could not string them into a necklace of meaning.
Not even the servingwoman, Anna, had knowledge of script; it had become clear to Secha that the humans built no house of youth in every village in order to teach the rudiments of learning to every child. They kept this knowledge a secret, reserved for the few. As if the blood knives did not reserve enough power for themselves!
So be it. Naturally, the Pale Sun Dog refused to teach his apprentices to read the script for fear of losing his secret. Instead, he had learned to speak the language of the Ashioi, thereby hoarding his treasure to himself in the hope it would buy him what he wanted or feared to lose.
In his situation, Secha thought, I might do the same. He must suspect Kansi meant to kill him when she was done with him.
“It lies west and this much north. I am thinking many days how it is possible to hold open the gate for long enough to march a large army through the gate. It must happen in stages.” He toyed with the astrolabe as he spoke. For the first time she heard real passion in his voice. The puzzle fired him. “We begin with the Houses of Night. Early in the evening they set in the west-northwest. At dusk we hook the bright hair of the Sisters. The threads hold only a short time. Then we close them and we hook the Lion’s Claw. Because it sets this much more westerly, we add a thread to pull north off the Ladle. It keeps our passage west-northwest. After this, the Houses of Night shift to set at a point in the west-southwest. So we hook the Scout’s Torch and then later the Queen’s Bow and then later the Queen. This way we open and close the gate at intervals, so we can march a hundred men—or more men—through the arch each time it is open. If we hold our threads tight, we deliver each group at an equal interval to the crown at Novomo. I predict a week in passage, perhaps less. Hold you the correct climate on the astrolabe?”
“The same one we always use.” Surely he should know that she was not such a fool! But he only looked at her, noting the pitch of her voice, then back at the book.
“See!” cried one of the apprentices, pointing overhead.
Sharp Edge, called Looks Good by the young men who courted her favor, was a lithe young woman with a gift for noticing things. She had left the priests in order to become Secha’s apprentice, and had never quite lost the habit of superiority that every blood knife wore like a second skin.
The haze had thinned, and again—this was the eighth night running—they saw the deepening cast of the true sky as twilight overtook them. A vivid orange star blazed near zenith. Humankind called it the Scout’s Torch; the Ashioi named it the Shepherd’s Satchel. Secha had never seen it at all until two nights before. All this was new to her, who had grown up without sun and moon. Its incandescent beauty transfixed her.
“No delay!” said the Pale Sun Dog impatiently.
She raised her shuttle, which was long and thin and well worn, easy to grip. She fixed her feet in the chalk and measured her angles, which were also traced out in lines of chalk laid down around the stone circle. The astrolabe and his catalog of stars allowed him to weave even if he could not see the heavens unveiled by clouds because the stars did not change their places, but the chalk lines marked around the circle helped her measure and weave correctly. Hook the wrong star, and you would end up in the wrong crown, many days or weeks of walking away from your chosen destination. It was a cunning puzzle, a genuine pleasure, and if she envied anything, she envied the Pale Sun Dog his knowledge of how to weave these looms that was far greater than hers. She was dependent on what he told her, on his directions. She wanted to do it all by herself. She was not accustomed to being any man’s servant.
Sharp Edge moved to crouch beside the Pale Sun Dog, watching as he rose with a sigh and sighted along the observing bar of the astrolabe. He adjusted the rete slightly, showed it to Sharp Edge, and she stepped over to make a similar tiny adjustment to the astrolabe held by Secha. He measured the Scout’s Torch, its altitude and azimuth, and although she had turned to watch, and although Sharp Edge watched avidly as well, he moved swiftly, rotating the rete.
“Here,” he said. “Here are your angles for the gate to Novomo’s crown. Thirty-one degrees altitude. Seventy-five degrees azimuth. There you catch the head of the golden-haired Sister.”
She sighted to the clouds. She reached with her shuttle, and caught the thread and wove it into the angles as he had taught her and as he coached her, standing behind. The gateway of light budded and blossomed. As soon as that brilliant archway shone before her, the forward ranks sprang into step at a brisk jog. They vanished through the gateway, rank after rank, until the Pale Sun Dog called a warning. Then the march ceased, and she closed the archway. She was panting, sweaty, and tired, yet the night’s work had only begun.
“The Lion’s Claw,” he said, taking his measurements.
She wove, and the army moved, each rank of four running tight up against the one before it. They ran silently, only the drum of their feet to accompany the faint music running down the threads from out of the heavens.
“The Ladle,” he said.
Much later, the Scout’s Torch plunged to the horizon.
She closed this gateway as the heavens continued on their inexorable turn. She swayed on her feet, and Sharp Edge stepped onto the weaving ground and steadied her.
“I can weave,” said the young woman.
It was true, although Secha hated to give up the tools, the power, the way the music coursed through the net within the stones and hummed in her body. But she would drop if she kept on, and the gate would crash down on those who traveled through it. She stepped out of the weaving ground, and Sharp Edge took her place, fitting her feet into the imprints left by Secha. Astrolabe and shuttle changed hands. Secha stumbled back several paces and would have fallen, but one of the other apprentices got a hand under her arms and eased her down.
The Pale Sun Dog spoke. “The Queen’s Bow, where the jewel shines.”
A cup was thrust into Secha’s hands. She sipped without thinking and sagged, almost dropping the cup as the fermented sting of mahiz liquor hit her throat. Drops spilled. Hands removed the cup, and she slumped sideways, blinking as the gateway opened before her, blinding her. It was so bright. She shut her eyes.
When she woke, she lay curled on the ground with a shawl draped over her shoulders and torso. Her feet were bare, and cold, and it was early in the day with a light haze covering the heavens. In another breath, it would all burn off.
Laughter startled her. With a grimace, she sat. Every muscle hurt, although she had not exerted herself physically. She should not be this tired.
Looking around, she saw only a handful of people standing where pale grass covered the hillside. Three bored warriors were squatting farther down the road, just where it curved over the hill and out of sight; they were rolling bones, counting the marks, and calling out wagers. Sharp Edge was the one laughing, telling a tale to a semicircle of four admirers. She had a hand on one hip, and the hip jutted out provocatively. That girl would cause some trouble!
The trail that led into the crown was scumbled by the passage of many feet. The crown itself, and the rolling landscape, lay empty but for the eight Ashioi she saw now.
Sharp Edge turned. “You are awake!” She grinned fiercely, pleased with herself, trotted over at once, and solicitously helped Secha to her feet as if the older woman were a crone so crippled by age that she could not walk by herself. “Let’s go down. I didn’t want to wake you. Maybe we can leave these barking dogs in the fields and talk about what we learned! I have some ideas! That Pale Dog shouldn’t be allowed to clutch all he knows to himself! This weaving could be done even without the astrolabe. We would have to have clear weather, of course, but the stones and the notches in the hill—do you see how they align with the stones?—could act as a cruder tool to remind the weaver where the stars will rise and where they will set, which is north and which is south.”
Secha rubbed her neck and turned in a slow, complete circle that took in the lightening sky, the massive stones, and the irregular slope of the surrounding hill covered with calf-high grass and a sprinklin
g of yellow-and-white flowers. To the south the bramble had been cleared away; the land ran in a gentle incline down a long, long slope, and a distant glint marked where shore met sea a morning’s walk away. To the west, a goat ambled into view right at a pronounced notch in the sheltering hillside. It spotted them and dipped its head truculently before vanishing back the way it had come.
It was so quiet that she heard a distant ring of hammer on stone, from the village.
“All gone?” Secha asked, but except for the trampled path she saw no sign of the army.
Sharp Edge nodded, still grinning. “All gone.”
2
THE duke’s banner did not fly from the tower in Autun. The party escorting Biscop Constance rode through empty streets in a town lying quiet beneath dreary skies. At the stairs leading up to the palace on the hill, they waited while a sturdy chair with arms was found. Fixing poles beneath the seat, soldiers braced the poles over their shoulders and carried Constance up the steps, walking sidewise to negotiate switchbacks and pausing at landings to catch their breath.
“Lady Sabella is gone, Your Holiness,” said the steward who came out into the courtyard to meet them. A few servants paused to stare at Baldwin. Otherwise, the place appeared almost deserted. The dust of the courtyard was darkened by the drizzle, which slackened and ceased as a wind blew up from the south.
The sergeant said, “Still out hunting the guivre?”
“No, she and Duke Conrad returned days ago from that expedition. She and Autun’s milites have marched east in the company of Duke Conrad and his army. There’s talk that Varre is to be invaded by the usurper and his army, out of Kassel.”
“I came about the matter of two young boys,” said Constance, “the sons of Geoffrey of Lavas.”
The steward eyed Constance uneasily. “Lady Sabella has left Autun,” she repeated. The leader of the escort—a phlegmatic sergeant—rubbed his forehead. The soldiers who had carried the chair panted like dogs hoping for a drink. “Best take her on after the lady, Sergeant. I was given no instructions.”