Auriane had the uncanny sense the dappled stallion felt her shift of mind. It seemed that within the soft depths of the beast’s eye, an ember broke into flame. Simultaneously, a wind sprang up in a day that had been utterly still—an insistent, purposeful wind from the north. It animated hair, lifted robes, and its low whistling seemed to faintly carry the wail of horns.
The wind filled the gray’s distended nostrils, seeming to give him nourishment. She felt a prickling on her skin, knowing whose wind that was—she who was older than the mountains, she who was the first keeper of souls.
Vigorously the gray scrambled to his feet; the wind blew his silken mane upward so that he seemed to wear a fierce crest. He eased about the dun in a gliding walk, then lashed out unexpectedly with a sideways kick so swift the throng saw only a blur of black and gray—and a great gash appeared on the yellow stallion’s shoulder.
The gray seemed to float as, with steely strides, he high-stepped toward the dun. Again and again the lighter stallion struck, as if dancing to some precise but fevered music only he could hear; first his small dark muzzle shot out, then his hind legs as he erupted in a blinding flurry of bites and kicks. The dun’s evasive movements were ungainly, out of step with this furious music; he neighed in rage and circled backward, becoming dizzy and disoriented. Finally the gray stallion made a bold head-on lunge at the dun—one forehoof raked down his neck; the other struck a stunning blow above his eye. The dun stallion spasmed backward, then crashed onto his side. The gray rose up over him, eyes alight, and with iron hooves rained blows on the head of the fallen dun, splintering bone, crushing his windpipe.
The wind raised veils of dust about them so they were obscured. It trilled, a shrieking voice from the northern wastes where the oldest beings were bedded down, where ice sealed over the great well of the oldest kinswoman, the Abyss.
When the dust had blown off, the gray stallion was still, head lowered as if in awe or regret, brushing his dark muzzle inquisitively over the motionless form of the heavier stallion. The dun was dead.
Then with nimble grace the gray threw up his head and trotted lightly to the fence, bleeding, but with tail high, neighing loudly for the mare he had rightfully won.
For a long moment there was stillness, the only sound the low keening of the wind.
Auriane was aware of many eyes examining her closely. Who but a woman with seeress’s powers would have known such an unlikely beast would have so much battle-spirit?
The soft cries—“Ganna, ganna!”—rose up all around, and then a strong voice among Baldemar’s Companions roared out— “The High One calls her innocent!” The soul of her family was powerful still; it had overcome the most loathsome of deeds. Her spirits still protected her from harm, she who had bested Ramis, she who at Elk Ridge opened the gate.
Geisar stood unnaturally still. Her horse’s victory was impossible. He had heard unsettling tales of her for years, but now her uncanniness was made manifest—giving ample testimony to the unsavory strands woven into her fate. A mortal woman could be threatened, but not a woman so comfortable with the snares of necromancers and night. Baldemar had been indifferent to his remonstrations and had caused him much trouble, but the battlefield alone was Baldemar’s terrain, not the unseen world. This maid was more troublesome, for she was at home in both worlds.
Auriane felt as though her blood had run out. The sense of Ramis’ presence had deserted her, and the throng’s words The god sees her innocence! reverberated in her mind, sounding first like a taunt, then an entreaty. She saw Athelinda’s shoulders shudder faintly and guessed her mother sobbed. Does she weep because my deliverance leaves her overfull with joyful relief, or because now she must take me in and she cannot bear to live with the slayer of her husband?
Geisar raised sinewy arms for silence.
“The horse has given a verdict—and you see how close a judgment it is, betokening that even the god is not certain what to do with her.” He spoke in brutal, measured thrusts that reminded her of someone skinning and gutting an animal. “I say her innocence is still dangerously in doubt—so singular a crime demands more than one test. We must employ the ordeal by water.”
“Enough, priest. Release her! You have seen her innocence!” It was Witgern who shouted. His words spurred a mumbling chorus of assent. When Geisar managed to quieten them again, Auriane stole his silence.
“Geisar! Look at me.” Auriane scarcely recognized this commanding voice as her own. The throng was abruptly quiet. Geisar slowly turned to her, the affront in his face a mask for stunned confusion.
“Geisar…I accuse you of trying to murder me.”
“Then you speak blasphemy against the High One,” he said with smooth calm. “All can see—”
“You gave me my choice of sick and weakened stallions, and so have made a mockery of the hallowed horse test,” she interrupted, forcing him to give ground as if words were sword-strokes. “The gods know the truth of it!”
Hundreds of doubtful looks shifted to Geisar. Her words roused a deeply buried hostility to the old priest most feared to openly express—and her judgments carried more weight now that she was shown to be innocent.
Witgern shouted, “Geisar, answer her. Is this true?” It cost Witgern to question the old priest; he visibly shivered. In that moment Auriane saw Geisar with merciless clarity: Here was a soul calcified, a sealed, dry fountain, a man of small magic who understood little. He had no gods behind him and he was loyal to no one, not even to Sigreda who worshiped him.
“Perhaps you did not think the god competent to decide the matter,” Auriane pressed on, “so you thought you must help?” Auriane prodded. “You who trade oracles for silver and call them true, have no cause to judge me. Unholy I may be, but I pay my debts. When, priest, will you pay yours?”
“Gundobad,” Geisar said in answer. “Lead her to the lake.” Ten of Gundobad’s men started forward, though not without hesitation in their step—they sensed the temper of the crowd was dangerously unstable.
“Do not come near me.” Too ridden with misery to fear anything or anyone, Auriane’s voice was strong and clear. To her relief, they stumbled to a stop, men frozen between bear and wolf, creatures feared equally. The moment was a stunning rebuke to Geisar.
“You are smoke without fire, Geisar. I do not honor your judgment and will not abide by it.” With this Auriane turned and walked rapidly toward the open gate. Baldemar’s Companions watched her with accumulating alarm. Geisar must somehow be allowed to save face, or she would not survive a day—the priest would send his own men to track her down and slay her in secret.
“Hear me! I would speak!” The frayed voice was Athelinda’s.
Mother. That voice sheathed Auriane’s limbs in ice. She heard the sickness and desolation there. She came back, slowly, until only the open maw of the stallion pit separated them, where the wind still tugged at the glistening, bloody straw.
Athelinda said to Geisar, “I will swear my daughter out of my family and send her forth without fire or water. If Auriane is severed from kin, your vengeance is not necessary, Geisar, for what is more terrible than drifting among the wandering souls outside the home hearth?”
Hearing these brutal words from her mother almost brought Auriane to her knees. Surely she speaks so only to shield me from Geisar’s wrath? But the words were so coldly, firmly spoken….
Geisar considered this. Here was a way to be rid of the daughter of Baldemar, and at the same time avoid dirtying his hands with the blood of one so unholy. And Athelinda spoke the words—most accepted her as formidably far-seeing. Almost imperceptibly, Geisar nodded.
Athelinda, her face pale and small, lifted a hand, indicating Auriane. “On this day, Auriane, I declare you cursed. It is not my blood that runs though you, nor did I ever give you first milk. I deny you fire and water, meat and mead, roof and hearth—”
It was wrenching and peculiar to hear these words from her own mother. But Auriane thought she detected a warmth and yearning in her mother’s
tone, belying the meaning of her words.
“—as you are the slayer of my husband,” Athelinda finished with fervor. “Go from me, unhallowed one!”
No, this is her true will, Auriane thought with a final slip into despair. She speaks with cruel relish. The veil is lifted. I should never have expected I would keep her heart. Of course she cannot bear to look upon me.
Geisar had his vengeance when he saw the raw pain in Auriane’s face. Her lips were white, her eyes, beyond pleading; she looked small and alone and young. And he was pleased, for Auriane had stolen something from him that could not be recovered. Now his oracles would ever after be questioned. She fouled the water in which he swam. Let her rot slowly, outside the hearth of kin.
Auriane said no more; what could she say if her own mother declared they no longer shared a soul?
Hardly aware of what she was doing—she supposed she simply sought a living companion—Auriane pulled open the gate to the stallion pit. The dappled gray leaped out and nuzzled her familiarly. Holding him by the cheekpiece of his halter, she turned and led him off. The horse had been invested with her spirit—who could deny him to her? No one moved to protest.
The company was wrapped in uncomfortable quiet; none were pleased with this end.
Auriane led the gray into the tall, cool pine forest, feeling she left her old life behind piece by piece like layers of clothing strewn in her path. She was naked and bereft. When she had traveled past Marten Ridge and was starting into the deep forest, she heard crackling branches and light, furtive footfalls not far behind. She stopped, crouched, and slipped the dagger from her belt. Had Geisar sent someone to murder her in secret after all?
Then she saw it was Sunia. Shyly the girl crept close, breathless and dirt-streaked from tracking, then stood quietly still. She was a creature with huge, desolate eyes, awkwardly angled limbs; in her face was the bright, unquestioning affection of a puppy.
Auriane knew then this girl’s misery was perhaps greater than her own, for her mother had enslaved her spirit. Sunia approached with a cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Sunia, this is madness! You’re in grave danger if you give me aid. Go back.”
“I have been accursed all my life. I would not know the difference.”
Auriane took the gift and partly unwound the cloth. Within was a youth’s bow with several arrows—hardly much of a weapon, but with it she could take small game. There, too, was a loaf of coarse millet-bread. Auriane stared at these things for a time, tears forming in her eyes. Then she drew Sunia close and embraced her wordlessly, not trusting her voice.
“Go,” Auriane said at last. “Do not follow me again.”
CHAPTER XV
AURIANE WANDERED FOR A DAY, MEANDERING west into the uninhabited hill country, leading the dappled stallion, paying little attention to her direction. Shortly after dawn the next day she found herself at a divining spring. She lingered, sensing that a stray thread of her fate had snagged her, tugging her toward this place.
To be without family is to be without skin. To be cursed by a mother is to be stripped of all humanity.
She could bear no more the mind-picture of Baldemar’s dying face—his cold acceptance of his end, his eyes struck blind with agony as her spear tore into his chest.
I cannot live on this way. I’ll join the watery spirits of the spring and know peace for a while, and hope for rebirth in a better time.
Beside her was an ancient alder tree, a beneficent being said to bleed if nicked with an axe; in the alder lived a spirit that comforted the ghosts of the drowned. So many strips of white cloth had been tied onto its branches that it seemed in bloom—these tokens marked the visits of villagers who came here to beg favors of the nixe of the spring, a powerful water sprite. They are hopeful flowers, Auriane thought, each, no doubt, representing a bitter disappointment.
She crouched, studying the place where the spring throbbed like a heart, watching how its surface glistened like some animal flayed alive.
I ask no favors and expect nothing, Sprite. Just take me into the well of souls.
She removed the dappled stallion’s halter and released him. Yesterday she had treated his wounds with poultices made from cloth she tore from her own clothing and soaked in terebinth resin. As she ministered to him, she’d decided to call him Berinhard—“brave as a bear.” She realized now she should not have named him—a name would bind him to her.
And sure enough he showed no inclination to leave her; he stood still, thin sides heaving, finely molded head proudly high as he watched her, large liquid eyes bright with concern.
“Berinhard, go!” But the horse stepped closer, a tender, willing presence unable to desert her.
“Go!” she cried again with less assuredness, thinking: This poor beast truly is mine. The perverse humor of the Fates—my one friend at the last is a horse.
She turned her back on him then and waded in, ignoring a flash of movement behind the alder tree and Berinhard’s sudden nervous snorting.
Let the Sprite watch. What does it matter?
She tripped on a root, splashing noisily to her hands and knees. Embarrassed, she looked up at the alder tree.
Cruel Sprite, you mock me.
Wind rattled the leaves, and she blushed at what surely was the water nixe’s soft laughter.
I will crawl to my death so you can’t do that again.
She sank beneath the surface and water invaded her nose, insulted her lungs, shifting from ice to fire in her chest. The bottom fell away; with a great effort she tried to force herself down. She opened her mouth, trying to drown more quickly. Her foot became entangled in grasses, holding her to the slimy bottom, and a bolt of panic passed through her. Endless caverns of horror opened in her mind. Body and lungs shrieked for air. Then all faded into soft, seductive peace and blackness.
Auriane felt a patient hand cleaning mud from her face. Human, or divine?
If this is death, she thought, it is remarkably close to life. I smell a pine fire and horse droppings, and I feel the sharp ache in the stomach that comes after vomiting. Surely ghosts know nothing of such things.
She opened her eyes barely and looked into eyes that regarded her with a familiar, irritating blend of mockery and affection.
Surely there would be no Decius in the afterworld. Wretched life still has me in its grip.
Decius! she thought, jolted into greater wakefulness. He lives!
She felt a dreamy, diffuse joy as she basked in that comfortably familiar presence, still too weak to fully open her eyes. He was her family now, and all her kin.
For long moments Auriane watched him through slitted eyes while he thought she still slept, feeling as if she were awash in pleasantly warm water. For some perverse reason her skin felt acutely sensitive, and that longing to taste with the whole body—that powerful impulse to press her body to his, always before stifled by fear—almost overwhelmed her then. She quivered like a dove held in his palm. This was a new sort of adventure altogether—the possibilities of the pleasures of the body, stripped of shame. And now that she was mother-cursed, who could judge her more?
And what are these mad thoughts? I came here to die, not to violate one more sacred law.
Decius realized she was watching him; gently he turned her face to his. “What is the matter with you?” he said softly, smiling. “I thought all barbarians could swim like rats in a wine-vat. Lucky for you I can swim.”
“I thought you were the Sprite of the spring.”
“Don’t try to flatter me. It won’t work.”
“You followed me. You spied on me.”
“You seemed to need it, wandering about without any weapons and leading a half-dead horse around…then taking a notion to go for a swim on a day when sane people would huddle round a fire.”
“I was not swimming, Decius.”
“I know that. Why, Auriane? You’ve utterly no reason to die—you’ve wild young blood in your veins yet. Would you have preferred your father taken by som
e wasting illness?”
She shut her eyes for a long time while tears escaped from beneath her lids.
“I am sorry, that was roughly said,” he amended, putting a too-tentative hand on her forehead, painfully aware he had little idea how to give comfort. It felt awkward as wielding a sword with the left hand.
“Decius,” she said finally, “how did you save yourself from sacrifice?”
Briefly he related the tale.
“Ah, my books! They were not so worthless after all, were they? Apologize for what you said! Did Sigwulf find his son?”
“I’ll never know. Thank all the gods your people are ignorant of our tongue. I take them near the fort and my countrymen cry, ‘Behold the traitor! Don’t let him get away,’ and your warriors think it’s a warm greeting. It did not go well, I’ll tell you. I kept my promise, though. I read to Sigwulf from the book of slave sales—moments before the cavalry came out. And then, Jove be thanked, your people ran in every direction and got in their way while I wheeled my horse about and galloped into the thickest part of the forest. How humorous it would have been if it were happening to someone else. Another gift of Fortuna for your old friend who survives every disaster. I did not realize how notorious I’ve become.”
He reached past her to turn a spitted hare he was roasting over the fire. “Now I know I can never go back,” he went on. “I’m here for all the days of my life. My story’s gotten worse and worse in the telling. They think I’ve trained a whole regiment of barbarians in the use of Roman arms.”
“Then you are an outcast like me.”
“Why should you be cast out? Auriane, you must tell me why you did this.”
She shut her eyes and swiftly told him—it was easier than she expected, for she realized at once from his look he was not judging her as her own people would. Afterward she felt she’d been released from tight bonds; she did not mind that, at the end of her tale, her words made him angry.
“I knew you could be a fool sometimes, I never knew how much. First, let us go back to those five villages. Their destruction had nothing whatever to do with you or your unholiness, whatever that is. I told you before, the Emperor Vespasian’s son, Domitian, has slipped his tether and begun leading military expeditions on his own to—”
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