He frowned, lines deepening between his eyebrows. He said slowly, “In battle we can either take prisoners or we can kill everyone. That would be worse, wouldn't it?"
"My chess skills aren't much, but don't pawns get set to the side of the board after they're captured?"
"Is that another name for slaves?"
Damn, I spent a couple of evenings a week working with teenagers at the Center and this was supposed to be a time out, so I didn't bother answering.
Sometimes we walked, leading the horse, when the path wound between boulders. I preferred walking on my own feet to riding across the valleys at full gallop. When we walked, Tarvik kept hold of my hand. His hands were square, strong, and he folded his fingers around mine. Annoying, but not worth arguing about. He was cheerful and pleasant, but still, he was a sword-carrying guy.
I had been well schooled, but somehow no one ever mentioned what to do about a handholding, sword-carrying guy.
Dusk fell before we reached the city. He lifted me back onto Banner. I considered telling him to cup his hands into a step to give me a boost and let me swing up myself, then had this mental picture of me flying head first over the stupid stallion and crashing back to earth. Decided against that.
He leaped up behind me, made a clicking sound at Banner and we wound up a low hillside. We stopped on the top of the hill, where an evening breeze ruffled Banner's mane and blew my hair across my face. Tarvik reached around me, brushed my hair back from my eyes, and then I saw it, a city unlike any I had ever seen. It stretched across a line of low hills. Our journey upward had been gradual, and now I looked across a valley of low hills surrounded in all directions by blue mountains, a valley in the Olympics and good Lord, at the moment I realized how very little I knew about my home state because I had certainly never heard of a hidden valley in the mountain range. More, I had been told only hikers were allowed in these mountains. That kind of misinformation could get me killed.
Something reminded me of ice cubes being dropped inside my collar to slide down my spine, one of those fun/misery childhood tricks. I felt my skin tighten, my breath stop, my mind flash danger signals. I grew up in a world where reality often clashed with common knowledge, that's what Mudflat was all about, but whoa! This was hallucination. Oh. Maybe. Had Roman and his creepy friends slipped me something? And when was I going to wake up?
Inside an outer ring of tents were hundreds of huts, tumbledown shacks built of wood and rock, red in the late afternoon sun. They covered the lower slopes and were separated only by dusty paths and flickering cook fires. At the crest of the centermost hill large, ugly stone structures surrounded by walls gave a clumsy unity to the sprawling city. Help. I was way past lost.
"Is this some sort of private park or nature reserve or something?"
Pointing at the stone buildings, he said, “That's the castle. I think I will not ride into my city with you looking thus."
When I turned on the horse to look over my shoulder and see what he intended to do, he reached his hand into the front of his tunic and pulled out a scarf of coarse linen dyed in stripes of red and blue.
"Put this over your head,” he said, draping it about me. I tied the scarf under my chin. He pulled its edges forward to shadow my face. “Turn this way, there. Your hair shows in back. Sit still."
He caught my long hair in one hand, wound it in a coil and shoved the ends under the neckline of the back of my tee shirt.
"I wish you would stop treating me like some small child to be pulled this way and that,” I complained.
"I am treating you like a girl I wish to keep alive for a while,” he said.
"Do you always carry a scarf in your tunic?” I asked.
"Yes, it is a token of my promise."
"What's that mean?"
"The scarf belongs to Alakar, the lady I will wed."
"Oh, that kind of promise. And would your girlfriend gladly share her scarf with me?” Was this a game engagement or were we talking real life girlfriend here?
He gave only a grunt for answer, dug his heels into Banner's sides and sent us rushing down the hill. I caught at the mane and clung. By the time we reached the city, twilight shadowed the tents and huts. Occasional torches lit the paths between. We passed close to groups of people squatting at evening fires stirring their cook pots.
Tarvik rode outside the edges of the firelight. A few people glanced up, then ducked their heads and stayed motionless until we passed. Couldn't guess who they thought I was. The girlfriend-owner of the scarf? The word that crowded into my mind was “surreal."
The dirt path wound up the center hill and ended at a gate in a stone wall. On either side stood guards, their spears gleaming in the faint light.
One raised his spear and said, “Welcome, son of Kovat."
"Where is my father?"
"He is gone, my prince."
"Gone?” His arms stiffened around me. “Gone where?"
"He led his army south this dawn."
"Why?"
"I do not know, my prince. I will open the gate for you."
"No need,” he said and jerked the reins to turn his horse around. “Do not know, indeed,” he muttered in my ear. “They know full well but won't admit that they know all that goes on in the castle."
Further and further from reality. If I told him that I rented out my basement to a troll, would he be surprised? Had these people been playing out this act so long that they now believed it and how long was so long? Maybe they were a combination of teachers and students with months of summer vacation.
Was it like those language camps people attended? I had a friend who went to a Portuguese language camp once, English spoken for only one hour a day at suppertime, and she said success was when she realized she was dreaming in Portuguese. Lordy, did they dream in barbarian?
We rode past a clump of small trees to another gate in another wall and more guards who saluted him. After lifting me down from the horse, Tarvik handed Banner's reins to the guard, then caught my elbow and pulled me toward the gate.
"Stop pulling me everywhere,” I said.
"Be silent a moment longer,” he whispered, his breath hot on my ear.
He rapped on the gate, shuffled his feet impatiently, rapped again and then tried to push the gate open.
"Who knocks?” whispered a girl's voice.
"Tarvik."
From within we heard a bolt slide. When the gate opened, a lamp flickered in the shadows and lit a small round face, pale, freckled and framed by a tousled mass of light hair.
"Who is with you?” she whispered.
"Let us in, Nance, and I will show you."
We entered and the girl bolted the gate behind us. Then she led us across an empty courtyard and through an open doorway. She moved to the room's center, stretched her arm above her head and touched her lamp flame to the wicks of a circle of candles that hung from the ceiling on a metal chain. The candle light cast shadows in the corners of the bare room. Here too were the sparse furnishings of the tent, the low table with a few bowls, the pile of shaggy bedding tossed on the floor.
"Look!” Tarvik cried and pulled the scarf from my head. My hair tumbled loose and fell across my shoulders.
The girl gasped. “She is an outlander!"
"Look closely, Nance. Who do you see?"
He smoothed my hair with quick nervous strokes, brushing it back behind my ears and then running his hand over the top of my head and then down my back.
I stood motionless, wanting to scream at him to stop touching me. Instead, I clamped my mouth against my fury and held my breath. Until I figured this whole deal out, I needed to stick to my “suck up to him” plan.
The girl approached, her light eyes fear widened, her childlike mouth open and her tongue pressed against her upper lip. Slowly she circled me as though I was a bush and she searched for berries, while I stared at her.
She barely reached my shoulder in height, but then, none of the men were much taller than I and I am average hei
ght. Her hair was lighter than his and had more curl, blond but without the yellow brightness, and appeared to have been chopped off with blunt scissors, standing out in all directions from her head and barely covering her ears. It fell forward across her forehead to brush her thick eyebrows. Her blue eyes were a shade darker than his, a gray blue, and framed by short white lashes.
She wore this sleeveless tunic of rough linen, dyed in stripes similar to those in the scarf Tarvik carried. It hung almost to her knees but was slit open on the sides from hem to hip, no belt, no zipper, nothing to make it fit, just a pull-over-the-head straight cut. Her face, arms, even her legs, were covered with tiny freckles.
She drew in a quick breath, reached out a small hand and caught a strand of my hair between her fingers. She rubbed it as though feeling the texture.
"Yes! Yes, you're right. Where did you find her?"
"In the forest. She says she flew over a mountain. I do not believe that."
"Oh.” She pressed her small hands to the sides of her face and stared at him. “Tarvik, they promised."
"Never mind now. Where is my father?"
"Kovat has gone south. Word came that the warlords of Thunder gather in the highlands and he seeks to cut off any plans of invasion."
"He should have sent for me!"
She frowned but didn't answer.
"I think he sent me on that hunting trip so I could not go on this raid with him,” Tarvik stormed.
"You may be right. He came here before he left and prayed to the Daughter to protect you and guide your rule of the city in his absence."
"I would rather go with my father and fight! I am no child to spend my days overseeing a city. I suppose I must return to the castle and send for my men."
"What will you do with her?” Nance asked, pointing at me.
He shrugged, jutted out his lower lip, glared at me, then said, “Leave her here. If you care to keep her alive, you must make her a templekeeper."
Thanks a lot for asking for my input, fella.
Before the girl could argue, he threw open the door and strode across the courtyard and slammed the gate closed behind him. He was big on striding in his fancy boots, that boy, but what kind of hit me was that he did it like a dancer, light, on the balls of his feet, his heels barely touching down. Oh right, most actors study music and dance because there are a lot more chorus line parts out there than there are speaking leads.
She approached me cautiously, as though she expected me to attack her. That was a new experience for me, as I am definitely the desk job type, not built for mud wrestling or anything.
"Do you speak our language?” she whispered.
"Yes."
"Do you have a name?"
Back to that, were we? I decided to try it on her and see if she challenged me. “Stargazer."
She shook her head. “I do not know that name. I hope my cousin was right when he chose to bring you here. You must do what I say."
"Why?"
"I can keep you alive."
"Always good, but what's your motivation?"
She smiled suddenly and her round face dimpled. “You are not very bright, Stargazer. Even I could see my cousin Tarvik wishes you alive. And he could someday be ruler. I choose not to displease him."
At least the girl was up to answering questions and that put her way ahead of anyone else I'd met since I'd cooled my feet in that stream. Maybe through her I could find out what was going on. Although she spoke as though my life was no big deal to her, she seemed to want my company.
At the table she filled cups and bowls, then told me to join her. Avoiding the really gross smelling hunks of mutton, I found enough to eat. The circle of candles cast a wavering light, burning with an odd odor of wax, more like the smell of cooking oil. What the hell were they using to make candles? Think about it, every mall has a candle store and they all smell of perfume or spices, so these folk must have been doing some back to nature gig and was I ever unqualified to join.
The floor was soil, scraped smooth, and the walls were hewn rock. No plaster or paint, not even whitewash. Stranger yet, no window openings broke the solid wall, only the door through which we had entered and another across the room. Overhead the candle ring hung on a long chain. When my gaze followed the chain upward, I saw in the ceiling a wide hole that opened to the night sky.
"What is this place?” I asked. “A leftover movie set?"
Telling me to follow, Nance moved softly to the far door and opened it. We stepped into a dark, narrow corridor. Like her cousin, she reached back and caught my wrist, but her grasp was gentle. She must have felt her way through the corridor or moved from memory because there wasn't any light until we reached its end. Through a doorway was a larger room, lit by seven of the hanging circles of candles.
"This is the temple,” she whispered.
She let go of my wrist, caught my hand in hers and walked ahead of me, another hand-holder. Maybe this was the Society of Short Hand-holders. I fought back a giggle and realized I was so tired I was getting slaphappy. At one end of the room on a long slab of stone a candle in a twisted stand flickered and reflected its light off a small pile of gold objects. She led me to the stone and pointed at a bowl beneath the lamp. It held several gold arm bands such as Tarvik wore, and a pile of wilting flowers.
"My lord Kovat's offering,” she said. Touching her fingers to her lips, she added, “Look up."
Damn. Looked like an altar, all right, right out of a horror film, the kind where they drag in the damsel, tie her down, then stand around and listen to her shriek while waiting for the hero to rush in and save her. Hadn't seen anyone today that I would count on to save me.
Painted on the stone wall above the altar were dark shadow shapes of human forms.
Reaching past me, Nance lifted the lamp until it lit the two figures drawn on the wall. Whoa.
I stepped back and studied the whole image. The woman's hair was long, dark straight, and she had dark eyebrows and long lashes, no particular ethnic group, just a generic mix like me. The man who stood beside her resembled her in coloring, except for his eyes, and his face was thinner. There was something familiar about them both. They would have blended in at a family picnic back when my family was doing picnics.
The woman's hair was twisted above her head, held by threads of gold and shiny bits of bright stone.
Nance raised the lamp higher. Above the two heads a golden circlet glittered in the flame, catching the light and shooting out reflected glitter like some oversize halo.
After Nance replaced the lamp on the rock, she led me behind the rock to another doorway and into another room. Its walls and door were covered with draperies. Here she relaxed, slowly letting out her breath.
Peering at me, she said, “Do you know them?"
"The portraits on the wall? No. They look more like me than like you, but I don't know them."
She shook her head. “I don't believe you. Did you not recognize them at all?"
"No. Does it matter?"
Stamping her foot, she snapped, “Not to me. I shall call the guards and let them drag you to the prison cell if you do not wish to trust me."
"Should I trust you?"
Her face dimpled. She grabbed my hand. “Yes, I want you here as a priest and templekeeper. For years I have been alone in this place, except for the slaves who bring me whatever I request, and they don't speak. I need someone else. You could be my friend. I would so like a friend."
"Oh come off it, Nance. When did you get here, two weeks ago? A month?"
Her little round face scrunched into a perplexed expression, freckles and all.
"I have always lived here. My needs are left at the gate. Other than my cousin, you are the only person to ever enter these rooms where I live."
"Explain. Give me the big picture because I am totally missing some clue. What is this place?"
"A place of prayer. Have you no temples in your land?” Her voice dropped to a dismayed whisper. “Have you no gods?"<
br />
"Define gods,” I said. Damn, she sounded sincere and that was scary.
A mixture of confusion and fear crossed her face. Like Tarvik, her emotions were easy to see. “The Sun is our god. The Sun shines above the heads of the Daughter and her beloved. She, too, is a god. Do you not know her face?"
"Sorry. Why, is she famous? Rock star? Film star?"
"Look! Look here!” Nance cried. She reached behind a curtain, pulled out a small hand mirror, and held it up in front of me.
I glanced at it to satisfy her. Yup, dark hair, narrow face, a bod that bordered on skinny, me and a few million other women.
"Okay, we have similar coloring and maybe I look a bit like the both of them. Is that what you mean? But so do lots of people."
"No one here! No one I have ever seen before!"
"You're putting me on and I am tired of it, Nance. Come on, I don't mind playing games but I have had a long hot exhausting day and honestly, I am ready to head back to Seattle."
Do I sound impossibly thick headed? Okay, if I woke up on Mars my reactions would be the same. I would be in denial for a ton of reasons, even when little green people tried to steal my shoelaces. And that's about where I was, not on Mars but definitely in denial because I knew gut deep by now that Nance was not an actress, not a festival participant, not anything I had ever met before.
Nance said, “That is the Daughter and her beloved. They arrived during the time of the fever and she saved my uncle's life. That is when he knew she was the Daughter of the Sun, the daughter of a god greater than the Thunder god. He built this temple for her and her beloved. He is sworn to her service, as are we all, and I was chosen by her to be her priest until her return."
"Where is she now?"
"Their ghosts left their fevered earth bodies eight years ago. Before she died she told my uncle I must be her priest and she and her beloved must leave us. Their souls hungered for their home in the heavens, yet one day they would return. I was seven years old then and I have lived here since. I had a nursemaid for companion until she—she—she died, too.” Her lip quivered and tears shone in her eyes. “I have lived alone here for three years now."
Tarbaby Trouble [Mudflat 1] Page 4