“I do, I love the sea!” Even in the low light of the setting moon I could see how his eyes shone. “There are marvels in the sea, beauties we can only guess at. Empty shells thrown up on the shore are only echoes, whispers of it. Fish drawn to the surface grow dull and die in the air. If my seal form would come to me, I could more than dream and guess.…” His smile waned. “But I suppose I am secretly afraid of that, as of so many other things.”
Secret. Fear.
“There are terrors, also,” he said, “hidden in the sea.”
Hidden. Under water. Black, black and drowning deep … I felt the weight, pressure, presence, by now familiar, rising up around me or within me, and I shook my head to drive it away. It was not to be sent away so easily—I could scarcely breathe or see. But I could feel Kor watching me.
“Enemy,” I gasped.
“There is no one. I have looked.” I felt his hand on my arm, warm and firm, and I did not resist that touch. After a moment the panic left me, I could see him again. Nor was the sight unpleasant. I no longer scorned his concern.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What is the secret about me, Kor, that makes your people shun me? Tell me.” I sagged wearily toward the stony ground.
“I would rather you remembered it yourself,” he said, his voice low and taut.
“I am too much of a coward to remember.”
“No more coward than I.” He raised his head, glancing around. “Look, it is dawn.”
“Kor,” I demanded, “tell me!”
“Not now. Not tonight. Vigils are times of danger and ill omen. Ask me again in three days if you have not found your own way to truth before then.” His face looked bleak, reluctant. “Go in, now, before someone sees you here with me.”
I got up and stood looking at him.
“And try to sleep,” he added.
“I cannot sleep,” I murmured. The terror lay too near the surface of my sleep. But he was right, what he had said some days before: remembering could not be much worse than what was happening to me meanwhile.
I went and lay in my chamber, eyes open, and planned a means of finding my way to some truth while sparing him the telling of it to me.
Chapter Seven
It was from the children that I found out.
Not the tiny children, the ones who clutched at Kor’s knees, too small to understand, nor yet the striplings, old enough to be clever. I chose the children just old enough to spend some time off on their own, but not old enough to lie very readily, and I sat by Talu’s pen and watched them, aware of other watching eyes from the Hold—children sometimes unaccountably disappeared, seldom but often enough to chill the blood, and they were being guarded even when it seemed they were not.
The second day I chose my moment. It was low tide, and the lot of them swarmed down to one of the pools left behind in the rocks by the sea, down below the cliff. Their elders could not see them from the lodges or the open spaces of the headland, and no coracles floated very near. I lazed down over the side of the headland in a different direction, then came around the base of it to where they were playing, picking my way as if at random down through the mossy rocks and those thick with lichens to where the limpets and barnacles clung between bunches of sea lettuce, down to where the red wrack and the dark purple carrageen grew. The rock pool lay just above the lowest level of low tide, that of the tangleweed, and it was rich with mussels. I sat amidst wet wrack and watched as the children tried to prod a crab from under a rock.
They were, as I had said, no longer afraid of me, but they were not supposed to speak to me either. I hoped they would forget.
“Look,” I remarked after a while, “a sea star.”
They left the crab to pursue the starfish, then remembered they were supposed to shun me and stopped. To keep them near, I came over and clumsily started to gather mussels and the great sea snails called winkles. Sea asters shrank closed as my shadow fell on them.
“In the summer, are there prawns in this pool?”
The youngsters would not answer me, though they stood clustered around me, watching what I was doing. I sighed.
“Why is it that you will not talk with me? What have I done?”
They glanced sidelong at each other but stood silent. I spoke as if half to myself.
“I dare say you do not even know why it is that you are not to speak to me.”
“We do so know!” It was a small girl, shouting out with a proud lift of her chin.
“Alu, be quiet!” someone warned, perhaps an older brother or sister.
“Why should I? He thinks we don’t know, and we all know how he killed Rowalt.”
The shock nearly toppled me. I dropped the mussels and clutched at the rocks, then slowly stood up, hearing a vast silence, more than the silence of the children, and then an odd buzzing in my ears, as if of poisonous insects. If they had said “You killed a man” it would have been bad enough, for I killed nothing lightly. But that it should have been Rowalt—
Now I knew what it was that Istas had called me. Hrauth. Murderer.
The children were suddenly afraid of me again, though I had not moved from the place where I stood. They ran, scattering like young quail. In a moment I also ran, plunging up the rocks toward Seal Hold.
I knew the chamber where Kor spent portions of the days in council with those who helped him rule. I ran to it and in straightway, not caring what I interrupted. They were all there in their places on wooden seats in a circle, Kor and Olpash and Istas and some others, and I leaped to the space at their center, facing Korridun, plunging to my knees in front of him so that the level of my head would not be above his.
“Kor—”
There was a commotion of indignation all around me, and before I could speak further Olpash’s voice rose above the others. “Show some respect, madman! Address the king by his full name and title.”
“I am the more highly honored,” Kor said quietly, “that Dannoc names me as a friend.”
“A friend!” Istas shrilled, her voice rising so high it cracked. In her hatred I heard heartbreak.
“He who ought to be your worst enemy!” Olpash boomed.
“You dare speak to me of enemies?” Korridun’s words were low, but at his tone all his counselors fell to stricken silence. He rose to his feet, spear-straight and shaking with a bitter passion. “You, who have come at night to kill me with a mask on your face? Not man enough to face me plainly—you think I do not know, but I know you well enough. You, and all you others.” His glance raked the circle. There was not a sound. “My mercy gives you life this day. So do not begrudge me mercy.” He stared them all down a moment more, then took a deep breath and sat down with a sigh, letting go of wrath.
“Of all my assailants, Dan,” he said to me with whimsical calm, “you are the only one who has bested me, and the only one with honor.”
“Kor,” I blurted out, “they say I killed Rowalt.”
Silence for the space of ten breaths. “Who has said this to you?” Kor asked in a low voice at last.
“The little ones. Please do not blame them. I asked.”
“But you do not remember.”
“If you tell me, I will know it is true.”
“Tell him, my king. Tell him how he slew my brother and two others.” It was Istas, sharp, poignant, cruel.
Two others! “Is it true?” I demanded of Kor—I hope I did not beg.
Pain in his sea-dark eyes, and he could not or would not speak. He merely nodded. My head spun, and I pressed my cold hands to my temples to clear it.
“How did I kill them?” I whispered.
“Tell him, King.” It was Istas again, malevolent.
“Silence,” he told her. But he could not threaten her to enforce it, and she knew it. She had lost a brother, and she had never come against Korridun in the night.
“How,” I pleaded, plainly begging now. Kor could no longer deny me.
“One, you sliced off his hand, and
he bled to death soon afterward. One, you beheaded. Rowalt”—he had to force himself to speak on—“you disemboweled.”
It was a hideous thing to have done, an ugly thing, of all ways the last way that Dannoc, son of Tyonoc, would have chosen to slay an enemy. I hid my face in shame. “Mahela must have hold of my soul,” I breathed.
“You were out of your mind with grief,” Kor said.
“It doesn’t matter.” I raised my face, and, though they burned as if on fire, my eyes were dry. “What is the penalty?”
“It does matter! You were not in self. You cannot remember doing these things. In a sense, it was not you who did—”
“The penalty, Kor.”
Something in my tone defeated him. Or perhaps he knew, even then, in what way healing must come to me. It seemed that I chose hard ways, always.… He was silent for some time, and when he spoke his voice was very low.
“The younger two, Voss and Taditu, were fosterlings with no kin to seek revenge for them except me, their foster sire, and I waive revenge. As for Rowalt: the bloodright belongs to Istas.”
Before him I had knelt to face him as a petitioner—though in fact I found that I fronted him levelly, as a friend. To face her I stood, a prisoner, and I met her gaze steadily, though it was a hard thing to do—her black eyes glittered with hatred.
“And with my own hand I will take it,” she said softly, far too softly, “and at my sweet leisure.”
It did not comfort me any that a woman would have the killing of me. In my tribe, as in the Otter, women ride to war alongside the men, and I knew how women, though not as strongly thewed as men, could be relentless when men gave in.
Istas pulled out the thong that laced her sealskin boots, came to me and tied my hands behind me, pulling the knots hard and tight. This was to dishonor me, saying, in effect, that I was a coward who would run away were I given the chance. Spiteful old woman. She slit my boots with her stone knife and stripped me of them and my clothing, then and there—she, flinty old beldam, there was no modesty left in her. Then she herself elbowed me up the headland, with half the Kindred trailing along to watch, and sent me crashing down into the prison pit.
There I stayed the rest of the day and the night, and not even Kor was allowed to bring food to me.
Or perhaps he could not bear to come.
No one came near me. The waiting was to make me miserable, I knew, and to give Istas time to smack her lips and make her plans. Strangely, I was not as miserable as she would have liked. Though the night was cold and I had no covering, though my arms ached and Istas’s thongs bit into my wrists until my hands were numb, still I slept deeply and soundly, without a dream. It was quite settled that I was going to die, so of what use was dreaming?
Therefore, I was strong and steadfast when she came for me in the morning, and I had made up my mind not to speak to her lest folk should construe it as pleading, but to go out with honor.
There was a problem for Istas and her followers—I found it very nearly laughable. I could not climb the notched pole with my hands tied behind me, so they had no way of getting me out of the pit without approaching me, and they were afraid. Also, there must have been some shame in them, for they would not send for Kor. They sent for Birc, finally, and he climbed down the pole, came over to me and cut the thongs. My wrists were so swollen by then that he sliced my skin in doing it, and I noticed that he would not meet my eyes. I centered myself and climbed up the ladder on my own. Istas did not attempt to bind me again—they were all afraid to touch me. So of my own accord I followed her to the great lodge, and no one afterward could deny it.
Most of the tribe was there, pressed back against the walls, leaving a sort of clearing, an arena, under the reed-thatched roof. But I saw no children there, and I was glad of it. These were at their centers a gentle folk. I hoped Kor would not be there either, but he was, awaiting us at a place before the hearth that was marked with red ocher spilled on the ground. After a moment I understood. It was the place where Rowalt had fallen. I had been brought there for my doom.
Like a puppy, I thought. Taken back to have my nose rubbed in my misdeed. Nothing seemed very real, and the thought made me smile. Kor saw the smile, but I think he could not bring himself to answer it. He looked ashen, as if he himself were to undergo a slow execution, and I could tell nothing from his eyes when I stopped before him.
“Dan,” he said to me, but loudly enough so that the others could hear, “I tell you again, there is no need for this.”
I did not answer. Madman and murderer though I might be, I yet had my pride, and if I had done wrong I would pay with my own blood. I met his gaze and did not speak. For the sake of my honor I had decided to be a mute, so that I would not cry out. Though more willful, it ought to be no harder than forgetting my own name.…
Korridun sighed and stepped back, yielding me up to Istas. There was a breath and a murmur from the waiting crowd, then utter silence.
Istas advanced on me with a knife of jagged blackstone. How droll it was, truly—she was a stumpy little woman with a hump on her back, she stood fully a head and a half shorter than I, and I was going to let her kill me. Droll—but her face was so full of malice, it frightened me. She held the knife up a finger’s span before my face. I refused to blink. Swiftly she moved it—
And cut off the long yellow-brown braid of my hair, tugging hard at it as she did so, trying to bring water to my eyes, notching the rim of my ear with the knife. Then she took off the other. I should have felt relieved, perhaps, but it was not so. I was stricken, chilled with fear. It had not occurred to me, somehow, that she would know me so well, that she would take my hair. She took away my self, my manhood, when she did that—she might as well have cut off my cock and had it done with! Perhaps that would be next.… She threw my braids down in the dirt of the floor and stamped and spat on them. Then, to humiliate me, she flogged me.
It was not so bad, merely a willow whip. I had taken worse from the Fanged Horse Folk in combat—they fight with deadly long heavy whips made of bisonhide, and they can flick out an eye with the end—but that was fighting, and this was punishment, and therefore harder to bear. It was Istas’s malice that made the difference. I hardened my will against her, standing still, making no outcry.
Nor, I noted, did the people shout out to goad Istas on as she gifted me with the shirt of red laces. They stood as still and soundless as I. They were not bloodthirsty, Korridun’s folk.
When she had flogged me enough so that the blood ran, Istas took up her knife again and stood before me, leering up at me.
“Now,” she said, “listen well, for I am going to tell you exactly what I intend to do to you.”
It would have been easier, of course, not knowing, and that was why she told me, in detail. She fairly ground out the words of the telling, as if she were grinding out millet meal, food of her hatred. The substance of her plan was that she would disembowel me, as I had done to Rowalt. But before that, she told me, there were many ways of inflicting pain. There was my cock to be attended to. And my eyes. And many members more … She sickened me, I admit it. She was cruel, hateful, keen and cruel. I wanted to look at Kor for comfort, did not dare for fear that he had no comfort to give me. I stared over the old woman’s head at a silent crowd instead and squared my shoulders, straightening myself to receive the blandishments of Istas’s esteem.
It must have enraged her, my stance. She broke off her recitation and stamped hard with her booted foot on mine that was bare. I felt the small bones break, even heard them snap, so deep was the silence in that place, and my muteness deserted me all in a moment. I gave a croak of pain, and pain brought me to my knees—I could not stand on the broken foot. Not knowing what I was doing, like a falling child I clutched at her skirt for support. She flung away my hand. Her sharp blackstone knife was at my gut. Odd, she had forgotten her lengthy plan, she was going to open me there and then—
Her face loomed within a handspan of my own, the look on it all at onc
e wild, crazed, grieved, frightened—that anguished look shook me as her hatred had not. I felt her knife shaking, sawing into me, just below my ribs. Then with a terrible cry she sliced it downward, cutting through the skin clear to my crotch, but only the skin.… She flung the knife away to one side and hid her creased old face in her hands.
From somewhere close at hand Kor came over—but not to me. He bent over Istas, placing his touch on her shoulders, which rose and fell with her sobbing breaths. For a moment she lowered her hands to face him, and I saw in her look a terrible sorrow. I no longer cared to stare at her.
“It is as you said,” she cried to Kor. “The hating has made of me a thing more fell than Mahela.”
I felt someone take hold of me. It was Birc, of all people, helping me up, slinging my left arm across his shoulders. I leaned on him, and I was not ashamed that I was trembling. Another one of the twelve came and supported me on the right.
“Are you satisfied of your bloodright against Dannoc?” Kor asked Istas, quietly, but clearly enough for the assembled Seal Kindred to hear.
“I am satisfied. I am sickened.”
I do not remember how I went back to Seal Hold. They told me later that I hobbled there, but I think that once in my chamber I fainted.
When I awoke some time later, I found myself slippery with seal grease and swaddled in lambswool bandaging from my neck to my thighs, and my foot was tightly wrapped. Birc was sitting by me, unarmed and, by the looks of him, uncomfortable.
“Hungry?” he asked me abruptly, the first time he had spoken to me. He, or any of the others except Kor, Istas, Olpash, and the little girl Alu.
His gruffness was not because he disliked me, I decided, but because he was shy. He was a boyish youth with an awkward look about him, eyes often downcast, brown hair out of control over his forehead.
In fact, I was not hungry. I felt sick and weak. But food might help, I decided, and I nodded.
Birc went out for a moment and spoke with someone. Shortly afterward there was a stir in the passageway and half a dozen women and maidens crowded into the chamber, each bearing a portion of a feast: bread, heavy pottery bowls of food, the basin, towel, and ewer for washing with.
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