Wrath-Bearing Tree (A Tournament of Shadows Book Two) Paperback

by James Enge

  “He’s good,” the big man said reluctantly.

  “She leads as often as he does,” Aloê disagreed.

  “That’s part of being good—letting your partner lead when she knows what to do.”

  “Then why don’t you say, ‘She’s good’?”

  “She is.”

  “B,” Aloê laughed, “you’re trying to get me to dance.”

  Baran blushed a little and admitted, “I do kind of like it. But the girl is supposed to ask. Woman, I mean.”

  “I’ll never figure you Westholders out. Baran, will you dance with me? I am not good, and have no idea what I’m going to do out there.”

  “I’ll clue you,” said Baran eagerly, and took her outstretched hand.

  It was something just short of a disaster. Their first time through the drum-choir, Aloê knocked a bell right out of the ringer’s hand by smacking it with her elbow. The next time she inadvertently stomped on some poor drummer’s toes.

  But her feet soon learned the rhythm that the drummers were making, and she also learned to trust Baran’s gentle guidance. He was surprisingly light on his feet for such a big man, and quick in his mind if not quick with words. On the one occasion when she saw a collision coming (and he apparently didn’t), he responded immediately to her alarmed look and her increased grip on his arms. He swung them both into a clear patch of floor and then back into the whirl.

  “You’re good!” she shouted, over the drums, over the bells, not really sure he would hear her. But he smiled down on her and nodded agreeably.

  He didn’t appeal to her eye particularly (his fistlike bumpy face was repulsive to her), but he was a remarkable man in many ways. Unfortunately, he didn’t like girls, except as dancing partners.

  After a few more numbers the drummer’s choir retired and pair of citharodes began singing a slow ballad. Aloê and Baran dropped out by mutual agreement and retreated to the edge of the room where there were steward-tables set up. Aloê took a glass of water, and Baran grabbed a mug of dark tea that smelled like tar.

  “Ick,” she said cheerily, gesturing at his beverage.

  He grunted absentmindedly, gazing off into the crowd, and downed the boiling hot mugful in a single gulp. “Ow,” he said then, still somewhat absentmindedly.

  “What are you looking at so intently, B?”

  “Not what. Who. That boy Zalion is here. That young man. I. He. Well.”

  “You should go talk to him,” Aloê urged him.

  “Talk. Huh.” He looked at her with tortured eyes.

  “Dance with him, then. B, you talk better with your feet than most people do with their mouth.”

  “Boy isn’t supposed to ask. The man, I mean.”

  “When it’s two boys, someone’s got to. I don’t know what rules are bothering you, B, but you’re not in Westhold anymore. No one is going to be shocked if you ask Zalion to dance.”

  “Uh. See you.” He handed her his mug and walked off toward his heart’s desire.

  Silently wishing them both luck, she sniffed the dregs left in his mug, shuddered, and set it aside on the steward’s table. Each to their own.

  She ran into Callion and his wife, who had passed the bickering point of the evening and were in a more convivial mood. She talked with them for a while about the news from Kaen, and Callion had some interesting things to say about how one actually killed a god. He was so handsome and so impassive that one sometimes forgot there was a mind under that marbly surface.

  Joyous shouts broke out behind them, and they all three turned to see the triumphant and calculatedly late arrival of Naevros syr Tol and his woman-of-the-hour, the Honorable Ulvana.

  Naevros was looking well, she had to admit. He was wearing a tight-fitting suit of dark red with a plenitude of dark shining buttons—tight enough to display the taut lines of his remarkably fit body, but loose enough that he could move with his natural grace.

  As for the Honorable Ulvana . . . Her dressmaker had run out of dresses, it seemed, and had settled for covering the minimal amount of her client’s pasty skin with semitransparent gold bandages. That skin. It always reminded Aloê of various types of stinking cheese with the mold just scraped off: quivering, pale, and full. Ulvana had decorated herself with gobs of makeup like dabs of jam amongst the cheese. But the chief thing you noticed about Ulvana was her voice.

  When Aloê was a girl she’d had a speckled hunting brach who had a bad habit of yowling through the night. Her yowl was particularly harsh on the ear, demanding attention, comfort, company, food. Ulvana’s voice always reminded Aloê of that desperate lonely bitch.

  “God Creator,” muttered Callion’s wife. “How can he stand that intolerable woman?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Callion.

  Aloê turned away with a muttered excuse. She did not want to be present if their mood turned to barking again, nor did she want to have to make polite conversation with Naevros and Ulvana.

  Unfortunately the currents of the crowd brought her face-to-face with Naevros before too long. He was standing at a steward’s table with some sort of chocolatey confection in his hand and a quiet smile on his face. Fortunately his abominable cheese-woman was somewhere else at the moment.

  They greeted each other by name and stood in silence for a while, listening to the music. It had turned more lively again: a band of horn-players, string-pluckers and bell-ringers was playing a sprightly tune with a simple rhythm.

  He knew exactly how she felt, of course. His smile said it all. And he would not let her feelings change his behavior one jot; he would not apologize for his mate-of-the-moment. And, really, it was none of her business; she felt that strongly—as strongly as she felt repelled by the whole business.

  They might have reached some sort of peace, standing there, listening to the music, letting their rapport speak for them. But the crowd parted like waves, and from them stepped forth the technically honorable but certainly deplorable Ulvana. She held a glass of some milky fluid in her hand and a vacantly cheery expression on her face.

  “Oooh!” She gave her raspy, whine-edged wail. “Naevy-dear, you have one of those yummy treats. Gimme.”

  She dropped her head down and ate from his hand like an animal. He let her, his quiet smile lengthening a little as he looked down on her, giving him a fierce predatory look. Her busy tongue was licking the last traces of chocolate from Naevros’ palm, a long milk-white thread of phlegm connecting tongue and hand.

  Aloê turned, her throat knotting with revulsion, and walked away into the crowd.

  “Veuath, rokhlan!” came a cheery greeting from a gap in the crowd ahead of her.

  “Rokhlan Deor,” she said, nodding.

  “Hey, you haven’t, um, you haven’t seen—”

  Aloê wondered desperately if there was something in the drinks that was robbing males of the ability to speak.

  “—haven’t seen my harven-kin around here anywhere, have you? Sorry for asking.”

  Aloê had no idea why he was apologizing but said, “I don’t think I’ve seen him since the drum-choir retired.”

  “Excellent. Excellent.”

  “Um.” Now she was doing it! “Why do you say that, if may ask? Are you trying to avoid him?”

  “No. No. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I was hoping he would slip out of the party with an old friend of his. If you know what I mean.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s why some people come to these things—to leave with the right person. Or any person at all,” she added grimly, batting away the thought of Naevros and his trull. “Things a little tense around Tower Ambrose these days?” she added.

  “You have no idea. Really, you don’t. I’m sorry to rush off, but I’m slated to play in the next set.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Aloê said.

  “Thanks,” said the dwarf. “I won’t have to stomp on so many feet that way.”

  They forged their way through the crowd to the dais where the band was playing. As they approached, the band
wound up their tune and stepped down to general if unenthusiastic applause from the crowd.

  There was a crowd of dwarves standing nearby, and they leapt up on the dais and started setting up their instruments. Two of them were putting together a great wooden wheel studded with extrusions like wineglasses tinted in the whole spectrum of colors, a glass rainbow running around the edge of the wheel.

  Deor took his place in front of the wheel and made a few adjustments. There were pedals that turned or slowed the wheel, and he wanted them set exactly right. Then he worked a pedal to bring the wheel up to speed: the glass bells shone like colored lightning, reflecting the cold lights of the dancing hall. Deor took up two strikers, each with two business ends. The one he held in his right hand terminated in a flange of silvery metal on one side, with a thumblike wooden end on the other. The one he held in his left hand had a cloth-muffled end and an end like a long-haired metallic brush.

  With casual skill, Deor spun both strikers in his hands. The other dwarvish musicians took up their instruments: recorders and drums and some odd stringed instruments played with some kind of stick or bow. All their eyes were on Deor.

  Deor began to play, and the other dwarves joined in.

  Aloê was spellbound by the glass wheel, and Deor’s skill in playing it. He would let the brushes trail continually over the bells, issuing a long unearthly bloodless stream of sound, while he struck the bells swinging by on the other side of the wheel with a hard striker to rap out bright bitter exclamations of sound. The wooden end made a slightly different sound than the metal one, and Aloê was amazed at Deor’s deftness. Either he was hitting those bells with exactly the right strength, to issue a maximum of volume without so much force as to break the glass, or else the bells were made with something stronger than ordinary glass. But the music was more wonderful than the instrument that made it.

  Soon she realized that she knew the tune. It was a country round from Westhold. She had even danced it a few times, while staying at Three Hills, where Illion and his brother lived. Her feet itched to join in. She danced a little by herself, unable to refrain.

  A hand touched her elbow. She turned to face a man she didn’t know. His face was red as a beet, but it was split by a bright agreeable smile. He nodded toward the dance in progress.

  “Yes!” she shouted, and leapt after him into the coil of dancers.

  She didn’t actually kick or maim anyone, and her partner was as enthusiastic but not necessarily more skilled than she was. She stayed with him for a second dance, since she recognized that tune as well.

  But it wasn’t long before she realized the second dance was a mistake. Naevros and Ulvana were also on the dance floor, and this round required all the dancers to swing past each other, hand-to-hand, at one point or another.

  She pondered stepping out of the line and walking away. But she thought she could at least pass by them in a round-dance without undue pain.

  As they came nearer to her, though, and she weaved through the dancers hand-to-hand, plunging toward them, she became more and more repelled. And when she saw Naevros’ hand actually extended toward her she suddenly remembered how she had last seen it, his palm slick with Ulvana’s milky phlegm, and she knocked it furiously aside. She stepped out of the line and walked away.

  “Aloê!” She heard Naevros’ voice behind her, rising over the music, tense with anger. She turned to face him, to shout at him that . . . that . . . she didn’t know what. But she welcomed the confrontation.

  But Ulvana came out from behind Naevros, like a pale moon from behind a storm cloud. She shook a long white fleshy finger at Aloê and shrieked, “You can’t stand it! You jealous thing, you can’t bear it that Naevy and I love each other!”

  “Love,” Aloê repeated incredulously. “Love! You silly trull, can’t you see how he hates you?”

  She screamed the words at the shocked cheesy-faced woman. They rang out like bells in the suddenly silent dancing hall. The musicians had stopped playing. The dancers had stopped dancing. Everyone was turned toward them now, attending to this vile domestic comedy. Everyone was looking at her.

  She turned on her heel and walked away through the crowd. It parted like mist before her. By sheer luck she found herself headed toward an exit. She plunged through it and into the sheltering night.

  Outside, still laboring in the dark, were the men laboring at the impulse wheel that gave light to the dancing hall and heat to the kitchens.

  “Is everything all right, Vocate?” one of them asked as she passed, and (unable to speak) she laughed unsteadily in answer.

  Aloê’s fury left her with the light of the room. She thought ironically of the position she had left Naevros in, and shrugged. It would not faze him. Nothing that happened in a crowded room could faze him.

  She leapt up the slope toward the ridge that stood over Illion’s dancing hall. She saw someone coming toward her down the slope. God Avenger, would she never be alone with her thoughts? But the person coming toward her showed no inclination to speak to her—in fact, gave her a wide berth as they passed each other. Aloê recognized her as the frosty mushroom who was one of the Arbiters of the Peace for the Rangan settlements up north. The woman had a bitter unsatisfied look on her frosty face. Aloê wondered idly what had annoyed her. Some man, no doubt: they were everywhere underfoot these days, like spiders in summer or snakes in spring.

  She mounted to the top of the ridge and breathed out a sigh of relief before she realized that she still wasn’t alone: she could see the other’s crooked shape against the starlit horizon. She smiled to herself. She had thought about turning aside, but she would not now. She had come out to be alone and cool her overheated mind, but this was an opportunity she would not refuse.

  “Stand fast there, Vocate!” she called out, as she saw the crooked outline start to move away. “I’ve something to say to you.”

  She dashed up the last few paces and stood, facing the other on the height.

  “Then,” the other remarked laconically.

  “I think you’ve been avoiding me, Morlock,” she said, locking gazes with him. His face was split into halves: coldly in the starlight on one side, warm on the other in the light from the bright windows of the house.

  He met her eye. “Of course.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “‘Of course’? Why, ‘of course’? Do I annoy you so?”

  “No,” he said slowly, “I should not say ‘annoy.’”

  She would have thought he was flirting with her, if his voice were not so flat, so searchingly precise.

  “What is it, then?” she demanded, challenging him. “Are you afraid?”

  “I fear your presence,” he acknowledged, after considering the question carefully.

  She was astonished, then annoyed in her own right. He was having her on, of course, in his fishlike Northern way. “I would have thought a dragonkiller wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”

  He again considered carefully before replying at last, “You are a rokhlan, as I am; you earned that honor in the North, as I did. Yet you fled the house, as I did.”

  A denial was hot on her lips—but she could not utter it. At last, she laughed and said, “I see your point, I suppose. God Sustainer, I’ve been rude to you! I’m sorry, Morlock.”

  “Hurs krakna!” muttered Morlock.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she said gently. “I’ve never known, Morlock.”

  “It means . . . in this particular case . . . it means that I have taken no offense. I have welcomed this conversation,” he added stiffly.

  “So that is what it means.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you have faced your fear boldly, my fellow-rokhlan. I suppose I should go and do the same. Good night.”

  Morlock bowed wordlessly over his arm, exactly like a courtly hero in an old painting. She turned away swiftly and ran down the slope, covering her mouth with her hands to hold in the laughter. When she entered the open window she was sober, but smiling broadl
y.

  The first person she saw was Illion, and she greeted him gladly. “Ah, Illion, I was just coming to talk to you.”

  Illion bowed wordlessly over his arm.

  She glared at him for a moment, then laughed. “Ah, you know it all, as usual, Illion. Well, Morlock has just been telling me I ought to leave. He says if I am going to run around raging like a banefire and insulting all your guests that I ought to go home, where people have the option of being rude back to me. So I’m leaving.”

  “Hm,” said Illion thoughtfully, “I must go out and break Morlock’s jaw for him.”

  “Too late! The word is spoken, and a true word, too, my friend. Oh, besides, you daren’t go outside now, you know. He’s running about, pounding on his chest, boasting of slaying dragons with his bare hands. Really, I was frightened, so I had to come back in.”

  “Yes, I saw your grimace of terror as you came down the slope. Well, we’re sorry to lose you. Your misstep is more entertaining than another’s perfectly trod pavane.”

  “Missteps always are, but how loathsome you are to mention it. Oh, Jordel, Illion’s throwing me out—says he can’t have me insulting his guests right and left. Walk me home and get me drunk, will you?”

  “Walking!” protested the fair-haired vocate, who had just wandered by. “Not really?”

  “Oh, it’s only three streets up and a couple more over. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  “Walking!”

  “Come along, you pampered youth,” said Aloê grimly.

  His heart pounding, Morlock stood on the ridge staring into the darkness, drinking in the night air. The golden veil that always seemed to descend before his vision when she was there had faded into the shadows. His hands were trembling. He could not remember what he had said, or why. He remembered, with stinging clarity, seeing her laugh as she ran off. . . .

  His hands were trembling as he raised them to wipe off his sweaty forehead. He was exultant (he had seen her, talked with her, stood with her) but in despair. (She was laughing as she ran off. God Creator, what a fool he had been. What had he said?)