The Raven Warrior

by Alice Borchardt

  Albe helped me to a pile of cushions in the corner of the room.

  “Mighty magic have I seen you do this day, my lady and queen. Such power as you exerted leaves no sorceress unscathed. Sleep now. I will watch.”

  “Take care of those stones. We may need . . .” That was all I managed to say before darkness took me.

  Down and down I went, drifting through dark waters from whence, both Maeniel and Dugald agreed, all life arose. Arose from the shadowed volcano-lit, lightning-limned storms of the first seas.

  “It rained then,” Maeniel told me. “Forever, the water cascading from the skies to boil away from the earth’s fiery crust, become clouds, and rain down again. In time, the cycle slowed and the vast basins of the oceans filled. Rivers ran, sometimes boiling hot but pouring through canyons of black lava, basalt churning the stones in their beds into the first soil and sand on earth.

  “Then there is mystery,” Maeniel told me. “God’s spirit brooded on the face of the troubled new waters. The young moon drew them into tremendous tides that licked at the edges of the contents, wore away rock, and drew the building blocks of life from cold, dead stone and volcanic ash.”

  “God?” I asked.

  “God,” he’d replied. “Or something else. I cannot say. But whatever it was, it set its hand to the task. Lightnings that lit the night like day were brighter than the distant sun seen through the eternal boiling storm clouds of midday, and between the anvil of raw new earth and the hammer of heaven, life flew up like a fountain of sparks from a forge or the flash of light when flint strikes steel. The sparks of life flew into the mother sea and the fire that we are—became us—began ever so slowly to burn.”

  Because, as he said, we do burn. And the creatures of darkness I summoned to help me destroy the fortress taught me how hot we burn. They warm themselves at our fire and sometimes swarm around night-flying moths to our flame.

  Once I asked Maeniel how he could remember these things that most humans, including Dugald, could not, or only do so under special circumstances. He told me that we gave up thinking with our whole brain long ago and buried these memories forever in order to become the smart animals we were. But he who enjoyed a dual nature, man and wolf, could still open these ancient passages to a past so distant it stretched beyond our crude measure of time and could only be traced back by changes in the seemingly eternal stars.

  They, those stars, were the only measure of an almost infinite duration of life on earth. All animals shared in this capacity to remember life’s beginnings and understand its meaning, as it was written into the very fabric of the universe. We humans were the only exiles from the garden of the world, the garden of the universe. Only we could not remember.

  I drifted deeper into the well at the core of all being and for a few moments, I lamented my state. Sorceress, Albe had called me, and sorceress I had become. A mighty keeper of magics. And even now, in the depths of sleep, my consciousness would not leave me and I wondered if ever again I would truly rest. Or each night, would I wander open-eyed through all the endless layers of time.

  Time, the tree, the world tree that year by year adds another ring of girth. Time, the maze, all duration measured from its entry to the center. Time, the maze.

  Suddenly I was me and not me, and I entered a summer forest. I could sense a body, not my own but rather like the being I had killed in the guise of the fish eater. I had killed it to protect an ancient king, the father of my own ancestress, Treise, his child. This was the body I inhabited now, one very similar to the fish eater’s.

  I turned, looked back, and saw my own three-toed prints in the mud. Ah well. This is, after all, the point of memory: to know what is past, even if the past is not my own.

  Such a forest I walked through. Never touched by human hands, it was filled by gigantic, ancient trees. I recognized an oak laden by ferns that had colonized the branches almost to the destruction of the tree. Under it, my toes bit into the thick mud of a sump crowded with low plants crowned by stiff, fan-shaped leaves.

  Beyond the sump a stand of ash and linden so thick that I knew even with my great strength I could not force my way through them. So I turned, circled the tall, gray trunks, and found my way under a dark-barked, squat tree with shiny broad leaves that were such a deep green, they were almost black. It carried big, deep cream-colored flowers that drenched the air with fragrance.

  An invitation freighted with regret entered my mind and directed me to a path through the grove of silver-barked trees. I followed the directions and picked my way among stately pillared trunks whose lowest branches began hundreds of feet above my head as I followed the meandering path through the damp, cool shadows.

  At length I came to a small, sun-dappled pond thick with green waterweed. So like the sun-dappled stillness of the pond were the colors of the creature that even my eye didn’t pick it out of its green-gold surroundings until it moved, raising its crested, sun-marked head to meet my eyes. It calmly continued chewing the waterweed in its mouth, swallowed, and hooted softly, musically, a greeting.

  It had a build similar to the one I now wore: three-toed feet, strong haunches, arms and hands not fitted for fine tasks, as I knew mine were, but splayed and blunt-fingered so the creature could support itself when it bent down to feed. The fine, large eyes in the crested head met mine, and the being I was knew it need not ask.

  They were long thinkers, these beings, and first who brought order out of chaos when my kind had been squabbling scavengers with only a rudimentary consciousness of the breadth, magnificent complexity, and sheer beauty of the citadel of truth these beings had constructed since time out of mind.

  My people had grown to maturity, a happy maturity, under their tutelage and protection. But now . . . now, I had to know. And I, Guinevere, and the being whose body I inhabited, had to know . . . what?

  And I remembered in my lifetime standing in the cave watching the massive heavenly body collide with the beautiful blue-green earth and the dark clouds boil up to hide its splendor.

  I tried to draw away from the being I inhabited, but it was too late, long too late, for a river of pain-drenched loss tore through my mind; and the reason that belonged to my fierce comrade was swept away by its passage. I knew that all I loved or ever would love would be destroyed, and it and I were seized by madness, as I had been seized by madness when I invited the evil spirits into my mind.

  Nightmares—humans have nightmares. Not real, I thought, and fled. I’ll die, I thought, and I would die to escape the raging, endless, bitter sorrow.

  Suddenly I stood with Mother beneath the falls where she drank from the pool filled with stars. From high above, the glowing falls flowed, sometimes forming a curtain of light when the wind wandering through the midnight forest blew the water out over the trees. Some of it dashed itself like a glowing mist across my face and eyes.

  “Not you!” Mother said. “Not you, and long ago.”

  Then she was gone. Consciousness went out like a candle when the wick is pinched, and I truly slept.

  Cateyrin woke me wailing. Ilona, her mother, was saying, “Have done! Girl, have done! Didn’t you know this would happen once the weak-minded young fool saw the Circe?”

  “But he has taken all the mariglobes, too!” Cateyrin shouted.

  My eyes opened. I was sleeping on the cushions between Albe and Tuau. The cat’s head was resting on my outstretched arm, and Albe was curled up next to me, head on my shoulder.

  “A curse on him!” Cateyrin was weeping now. “I hope the jewels send her nightmares.”

  Next to me I heard Albe chuckle. “He has not got so many as he thinks,” she whispered in my ear.

  “No?” I questioned softly.

  “No,” she confirmed. “I knew once that thing—she is not human, you know—got into his mind that he would betray us. Hell, he was ready before she paraded her charms. After he saw them, it was a certainty. He has one box, no more. I have the rest knotted into a strip of cloth around my waist. I�
�m sorry I had to give him the contents of the top box, but I was afraid the young fool might stick his knife into me to get them all.”

  “We had been together so long,” Cateyrin sobbed.

  Tuau lifted his head from my other arm. “God, woman,” he snarled. “You are loud as a crying queen in heat. Be still. It might be worth the price of those jewels to be rid of him. Your friend damned near killed us on the stair.” Tuau’s spit and snarl temporarily silenced Cateyrin.

  The room was bright, light pouring in from the multifaceted eye in the ceiling. The leaves on the table and chairs in the center of the room had unfolded themselves and were drinking in the sun. Cateyrin and her mother were standing near it.

  “It is to be hoped,” Ilona said, “that it is to the Circe that he went. Because if he did not, we are all in grave danger.”

  “Why?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Because of your dangerous skills,” Ilona answered.

  “Mother, they’re fighting women,” Cateyrin said. “The great families won’t dare—”

  “Merciful God!” Ilona snapped. “She can—she alone can—give one of the great families hegemony. If they find out what she can do, they’ll keep throwing opponents against her until she drops with exhaustion. God-born she may be, but incarnated in mortal flesh, and however strong, she, like all mortals, has her limit.”

  “Woman, why didn’t you tell me this last night?” Albe said. “If I’d known, I’d have killed him.”

  One of Cateyrin’s hands was lifted to her lips. “No!!!”

  “Cateyrin,” Ilona snapped. “Fetch curds and honey for our guests and make some bread.”

  Then she turned to me. “We must talk. But eat first. It will take some time for Meth to convince his own family to try to gain control of you. They will certainly not believe him at first, and with luck, may kill him before he has a chance to explain. However, if he goes to the Circe . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Well, that depends on how smart she is.”

  “He should know better,” Cateyrin said waspishly.

  “Child! Child!” Ilona said, putting her arm around Cateyrin and pulling her against her breast. “Face facts. Meth had a nice face and a pleasant disposition, but he was gullible to the point of folly and suicidally self-confident. One of the quickest ways to tell when a Circe has her claws in a man is when he tells you he is sure he will be able to free himself from her whenever he wants to. I’m sorry your first had to be such a fool, but it’s as well the Circe captured him so quickly and you saw his true worth.”

  Cateyrin began wiping her face with her hand. “Any man can fall to a Circe, even the best.”

  “Yes. Yes, dear, I know. Now go fetch honey and curd cheese for our guests.”

  She sighed softly after Cateyrin left. “Thank God she’s alive. But no matter how many ways I cast the omens, I did not see her death. Neither did any of the others in the collegium, and when the lot fell on her, I consulted them all. I couldn’t believe we were all wrong.”

  “My lady,” I said. “Tell me why these jewels are so important that for every few dozen you must sacrifice a human life.”

  “We can’t live without them. And the gods demand their due,” she said.

  “But what do they, these jewels, do?”

  “Cateyrin didn’t tell you?” she asked.

  “No. Nothing coherent.”

  “Come with me.” She led us toward an alcove in the round room. There was a very narrow stair in the alcove; it spiraled down. She went first, I followed, Albe and Tuau trailed behind. The stair came to a halt looking down at a sunlit lake.

  We are under the ground, I thought. How could this be?

  There was a rope ladder on a ledge near the opening. Ilona dropped it and I saw the weighted end fall to a small promontory projecting out into the lake.

  I climbed down.

  The promontory proved to be the trunk of a gigantic, fallen tree that lay half-submerged in the lake. I stood on it and gasped at an abundance I could only dream of before.

  The lake—actually it was more of a marsh—stretched out on all sides around me. It supported a vast variety of life. In the deep, clear brown center, I saw the darting movement of large fish as they hunted minnows, tadpoles, and surface-dwelling insects. Beyond that place the shallows began, and they were populated by the same broad-leaved plants I’d seen growing on the floating islands on our way into the city. They were very beautiful. The velvety-rose, black, red, and variegated arrowhead-shaped leaves shaded the still, brown water where small fish roamed, dragonflies hovered, frogs kicked, and water skaters danced.

  I followed the log moving among the big, nodding leaves until I reached true marsh, a place thick with golden cress, blue-spiked pickerelweed, white-flowered waterweed, clumps of cattails where vividly colored birds nested among hummocks of reeds. The reeds were tall and short, some with red, fuzzy heads, others that bore plumes like papyrus, and yet others stately but with long greens, sharp, sword-shaped leaves that slid into an unwary human’s hand and legs like so many knives.

  I reached the end of the log and saw the magnificent lake was surrounded by a swamp composed of dense, drowned jungle, thick with enormous trees clothed in masses of vegetation so luxuriant it was practically impossible to know where the trees ended and the mass of guests and parasites they harbored began. The massive knot of twisted roots of the half-drowned trees towered over my head and I could walk no further. I stopped and saw a small, skin-covered boat tied to one of the tree roots. I turned and realized that Ilona had followed me down the ladder and was standing beside me on the log.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  I told her and she nodded.

  “This lake,” she said, “supports my family. I and my daughter.” She reached out and lifted one of the broad-leafed plants from the water, and I saw the leaves sprang from a rhizome as thick around as my thigh.

  “I harvest these and I have a food seller who will buy all I can take from the water. The bread you ate last evening was made of flour ground from these dried roots.”

  “This place cannot be,” I said. “We are deep underground and that sunlit sky above.” I stood looking up to the light even as I denied it. “That sunlit sky is an illusion.”

  Ilona laughed. “Girl, you are blond as any woman I have ever seen and if you remain much longer, the illusion above will give you a terrible sunburn.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” was the reply.

  I stretched out my hand toward one of the tree roots, but my fingers went through the apparently solid root as though it were mist and brushed stone. I jerked my hand back. The big, dark, velvet-leafed plant whose root she had just shown me was near my legs. I grabbed at the thick stem; my hand closed around it and I was also able to lift the fat root out of the water.

  I dropped it. It fell back with a splash. My mind was ready for the splatter of water on my leg and foot, but it didn’t come. The water seemed to pass through my leg and foot as though it were not real, but a ghost.

  “No!” I said again. Then I remembered Ure’s last lesson. I reached for the root again. My fingers closed around it and I felt damp, soft, dirty wood.

  Ilona was nodding. “You are a sorceress,” she said. “And you have just experienced the central paradox of this place.”

  “A thing is either real or it is not,” I stated flatly.

  “Not here it isn’t,” Ilona said quietly.

  Only a few yards way, I heard a harsh cry and a magnificent blue-crested waterbird took wing from a thicket of cattails. One wing passed through my body the way a wandering ghost goes through a door. I spun around, loosened my will, and stretched out my hand toward the wing. The tops of my fingers brushed sun-warmed feathers.

  I stood there, heart hammering, almost too frightened to speak.

  “The jewels do this,” Ilona said. “They bring places like this within the reach of the women living here. You saw how barren the land around the city is.”


  I nodded.

  “Without the food provided by this place and others like it, how long do you think it would be before we starved? We cannot raise more than a tenth of what we need around the lake in the valley. And food, my dear, is only the beginning. Every man, high or low, wise or stupid, strong or weak, noble or base, would kill as many as necessary to make a woman with talents like yours part of his family. You could have your pick among the first sons of all the great families, and the one who gets you would, in the end, achieve hegemony over all the rest.

  “The gems are eaten only by women. Only women can wander among the many worlds to which the gems open the doors. Meth will tell the Circe about you and the Circe will sell the information to the seven great families.”

  “Maybe Meth won’t succumb to her,” I said.

  Ilona gave me a mirthless laugh. “Don’t depend on it. Even now I’m sure they are welding a collar around his neck and he is sipping the waters of Lethe. To a Circe, men are just beasts of burden. They like their favorite Fir Blog better, far better, than most human males. Fir Blogs have big pricks and are almost never fractious slaves, whereas human men often turn vicious and sometimes have to be butchered for their meat when, after a few years, they develop a tolerance for the Lethe water used to stupefy them.”

  “Butchered for meat,” I gasped.

  “Yes, dear. I can see my daughter was not very . . . shall we say, informative . . . about the difficulties inherent in our society. But then, she’s young yet and I have tried to shelter her from some of the more unpleasant facts about life in this city. See, she was very fond of Meth and if I’d filled her in on his probable eventual fate, it would only have upset her. But I feel I must be honest with you. You are in great danger and in desperate need of my services.”

  My shoulders were burning and I could feel the heat in my face. I reflected that Ilona had been right about sunburn.

  I heard Albe calling me. “My lady! My lady! Where are you?”

  I shouted back, “I’m here! Not far from you! I’ll return in a moment. I’m talking with Ilona!”