The Dowry Blade

by Cherry Potts

  ‘They are dead?’ Doran asked again. Madoc shrugged, unready to admit his doubts. Doran grimaced, and collecting Guida by the lead rein, rode away through the trees, glancing nervously about him. Madoc turned to Devnet.

  ‘What are you still doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘You are my hand-mate,’ Devnet replied. Madoc quelled the temptation to hit her.

  ‘I need to find that sword.’

  ‘For the princeling?’ she asked scornfully.

  Madoc rubbed the bloody weal across his face thoughtfully. ‘Not necessarily,’ he answered.

  Kendra carried the dead Songspinner slowly, reflecting on which trees to sacrifice to the human need to dispose of mortal remains. Depression settled over her shoulders as she silently marked out the infirm and the dying among her flock. Kendra rarely used wood herself. She grieved, and tried not to think. She returned to her cave. There could be no funeral pyre until the rain finished, until she was sure the pursuers were gone.

  Kendra laid her burden in the outer chamber. She stepped into the further cave, bending her head low to pass under the arch of tree roots. As she straightened, she saw that she had a visitor.

  She came, as she usually did, as the Scavenger. Dressed in her tattered brown robes, her face ever hungry, she waited to tidy away the loosened ends of this human tragedy. She had come before, to wait for one she considered hers, to snatch away from Kendra the failing breath of her charges.

  She sat with her face close to that of the unconscious woman, intense concentration keeping her features immobile. Kendra moved silently to stand over her ward, placing herself between the fallen one and death. The Scavenger raised her head, and her voice whispered into Kendra’s mind.

  Mine.

  She did not waste words. Kendra shook her head and spread her gnarled hands in a protective barrier between them. A frown flickered over the usually impassive face of the Scavenger.

  Kendra had stood between death and its intended many a time. This one came in many guises, to guide the fallen, the falling, to the gate of the world. She could be the reaper of the young, the gatherer of the lost – she could be the saviour of the ancient. She was the Battle Maiden and she came often as sharp knife or burning fever. Kendra had seen her once, rolling an avalanche of smouldering rocks before her, as a child might roll a discarded wheel rim. Some said that she came as a lover to the suicide, but Kendra had not seen it, for she was death’s enemy, and Kendra could never love that one’s messenger.

  This time, she was the Scavenger, hungry for any left-over, half-used soul, such as the tattered exhausted being with the ruined body that lay now beneath the protective spread of Kendra’s fingers.

  The Scavenger of Souls raised her hands to Kendra’s, but didn’t touch. Kendra’s time would come, but her soul would never be for the Scavenger to hold. There was an opportunist look to the Scavenger, hoping to take advantage of the weakness of this one’s defences. Kendra risked moving her hands.

  The time is not yet, she told her visitor, and beckoned her away.

  The Scavenger came readily. She could afford to wait, to play games. All things fell to her hand eventually. She seated herself beside Kendra, as though they were a pair of longtime companions, a couple of gossips waiting out a deathbed. Although they had sat like this before, with Kendra’s will pitted against the impassive certainty of the Scavenger, Kendra could feel a difference this time, and a dull dread, for it was not Kendra fighting this battle. The Scavenger did not recognise this yet; Kendra provided a distraction. She saw only the nearness to death, waiting to claim her prize for her mistress. Kendra did not think that she could.

  Will you play the stones for it? the Scavenger asked, casually, as though wagering for some petty trifle.

  She had asked this often over the years. Kendra had always refused. It was a game, a trick. The Scavenger only offered this when not certain of her catch. And this time, when the Scavenger should be sure, she was not. Kendra stared into the cold of her fathomless eyes.

  Yes, I will play, Kendra smiled. But I will only play with these stones.

  Kendra untied the knot in the hem of her shirt. The four blue stones rolled onto the ground at the Scavenger’s feet. She stretched out her thin brown hand, but her fingers could not touch.

  What have you done, Kendra?

  She reached her hand towards Brede, as though she would rip the living heart from her, an expression on her withered features that Kendra had never thought to see there. Grief. Why would the Scavenger grieve?

  This is wrong, Kendra, you must undo it.

  It is not my doing.

  It is not what this one wants, she wants to die.

  Kendra would not believe her, were it not for that startling grief and pity on the face of the Scavenger of Souls. The Scavenger shook her head. She placed her papery hand on Kendra’s shoulder. Cold seeped in.

  You will have to work hard with this one, Kendra. I think that perhaps this will be the last time we argue over the fate of one of your scavengings.

  Kendra rubbed her shoulder. The cold ache would not leave.

  I look forward to our next meeting.

  The Scavenger turned on her heel, giving Kendra a careless wave, an old friend, a neighbour; not an enemy. The harbinger of death walked out of the cave, alone.

  Kendra sank gracelessly to the floor and rested her face in her hands. The stones pressed against her, moulding her flesh, making her uneasy. She rethreaded them for safety, and laid them beside Brede.

  She was depleted, irrationally grief-stricken. She wanted to return to her sleep, her dreams, her silence, but she had a responsibility now. She believed that her charge would survive, although the recovery must be painfully slow. She would not sleep as she wished to sleep for many turns of the moon.

  Kendra breathed deep of the damp earth, its promise of growth, trying to rid her mind of the smell of death, and the anger that battered at her heart. She sighed restlessly and went out among her flock to collect the wood for the pyre.

  Kendra made her sacrifices, gave the dead one her rites and puzzled over the Songspinner’s web, woven from the threads of her song, of her ebbing life; stronger than any Kendra had yet met: even the Scavenger could not break it.

  She did not stay to watch the flames.

  Returning to the cave, Kendra settled once more on the cold earth. She closed her eyes wearily. For the first time in her conscious existence, she didn’t know what she should do for her foundling. She drifted into herself, she wasn’t needed yet, and there was time to seek rest and nourishment from the earth and silence that sustained her.

  Brede woke in darkness. Pain roared through her and she couldn’t understand how she had shut out the raging for so long. She stilled the whimpering fear, her training overcoming her desire to scream aloud.

  Enemy territory? She forced herself beyond the pain, listening.

  Silence? Not quite – there was a soft dripping of water onto earth, a constant soughing of distant steady rain, unless it was a river? An irrational dread followed that thought. She stretched her perceptions, but couldn’t persuade herself that she knew what she could hear. She tested the air, heavy, dark, earth-laden, but she could sense that there was space about her, and that gave her hope.

  She concentrated, forcing the drugging confusion of pain away: There was light, or at least, a lack of total darkness. She was in some kind of cave, alone.

  Brede allowed some of the tense alertness to leech away, and the pain flooded back. She fought it, identified each hurt, told herself this hurt is only so much, and this, even less – forcing her body to believe her.

  She could tell that her wounds had been tended, but she was so weak. She did not try to move. She allowed her mind to range, seeking out an explanation for how she came to be here, searching her memory for a time and place of which she could be sure, and found Sorcha. Involuntarily, she moved, trying to reach out to her memory. Pain lanced her, but it was nothing compared to the fear.

  She
had been falling.

  Sorcha isn’t here.

  Someone had bound her injuries, that someone must be Sorcha.

  Sorcha would not need bandages, would not leave her in such pain; Sorcha would not leave her.

  Sorcha is not here.

  The need to find Sorcha welled up in her, trying to voice itself in a gasp of impotent fear.

  Brede felt a disturbance of air close by and her heart quailed. Something detached itself from the wall of the cave and came to her side. In the darkness she could see only that it was unthinkable. So tall, so roughly made, so almost human, so outside her understanding. It reached out a hand and Brede shrank away. It did not attempt to touch her. It picked up something from the edge of the makeshift bed where Brede lay.

  She focused her eyes with difficulty. Hanging from the creature’s immense hand, swinging slightly, there was a thread of beads. Despite the darkness, she identified them. Not beads: stones. Four of them.

  Brede struggled to find her voice, to deny what her heart told her. There was only one way that those stones would have left Sorcha’s possession.

  All that disturbed the thick silence was an incoherent, ragged gasp. Brede heard the sound and could make no connection between it and what her mind held – such a shallow meaningless gasp for the ravaging of grief and terror that was ripping her apart. She could not bear the sight of those swinging stones. Behind her closed lids the movement continued. She closed her mind against it, the winding pain in her bones a welcome distraction now.

  ‘No,’ she whispered to herself, her heart shrinking within her, recoiling.

  Kendra sensed the withdrawal, the hopelessness. She closed her hand about the blue stones, angry with herself. She had just undone all the healing of the last days. The scent of despair rankled in her. She strode out of the cave. There were others in need, who would not fight her with despair. She stayed away for days, and when she returned she expected to find a corpse.

  Brede stirred uneasily in her determined sleep, pain and grief forcing themselves to the surface of her mind. She cried out, and in her turn, Kendra drifted back into consciousness, out in the forest of her own sleep. She pulled herself back into the world and walked reluctantly back to the cave, and the stirring that might mean life, or might mean death. There was a sense of crowding in the cave, of waiting, of many lives twisting in an uncertain knot, a smell of damage. Perhaps this was the time. She glanced about, filled with unease.

  I’m looking for the Gate, Brede said to a being that she could barely see.

  Death nodded.

  Kendra listened to Brede’s breath wane, smelling the despair that leeched from her pores, begging for release.

  I am the Gate, Death said, puzzling over the mortal and her shadow. I am the Gate of the world, all things pass through me. No one comes who is not welcome. No one leaves. There is no Gate.

  But Brede couldn’t hear. The thread that bound her to life pulled her back, winding itself tight about her. She didn’t struggle; the spell that bound her was too strong for her to break.

  Brede stirred once more, and her breathing changed, gasping, fighting, choking. Kendra reached protectively and found another’s hands there before her. She felt flesh she couldn’t see, she heard a soft murmur of comfort, a skein of words, from a mouth closed by death. Kendra shuddered, and stepped well clear.

  Death thought about the shadow. It kept Brede away from her and it understood the Gate. There would be another time. All things passed through her, for she was the Gate.

  The presence had gone. The silence of the cave was the deeper for that absence. Kendra waited beside her foundling. Consciousness rose; she felt the reluctance with which it came. The eyelids flickered and closed tighter in protest.

  Kendra smiled, tasting acceptance. She had given up on dying; now she would start to mend.

  Brede’s eyes opened. It was still dark, but not as dark as the last time. She was ready for the pain, ready for the gaping loss that surrounded the island of her self. She was not ready for Kendra.

  She gazed silently for a while, accommodating the fact of Kendra’s existence to her knowledge of the world. She had to stretch her mind to do it.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ she whispered.

  Kendra shrugged. She didn’t measure time the way Brede measured it. There were dawnings, but she didn’t see them all, there were turns of the moon, but she could never be sure it was the same turn each time she greeted that silver light. She judged time by the fall of leaves, the growth of bark. There was the growing season and the waiting season. She couldn’t answer Brede’s question; insufficient time had passed to register on her reckoning of such things.

  Brede did not mind the lack of answer. She wasn’t really expecting the creature to speak. She tested her injuries: they were starting to mend. She tried to judge how long it must be.

  ‘I ought to thank you,’ she said, feeling beholden, and ungrateful.

  Kendra shook her head, understanding her reservations, smelling them in the tone of her voice. Brede recognised that Kendra had answered her, that they could communicate. Curiosity overcame her grogginess.

  ‘I am Brede,’ she offered.

  Kendra inclined her head, and made a sign with her hands. It was the sign for her name, which was the same as the sign for wisdom. Brede blinked, taking in the sign, divining that it was a name, but she could only guess at its sound. Kendra made the sign for strength, and inclined her hands towards Brede. Brede accepted her interpretation of her name, without understanding what it was.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Try as he might, Madoc couldn’t remember seeing the sword in that clearing with the dead horse, and he had come to believe that perhaps Brede had thrown it down after all. So his search was slow and methodical, covering ground he had walked twice already. The persistent rain, almost blinding in its determination to fill his eyes, his ears, and his mouth made the search more difficult. Away from Kendra’s confusing influence, Madoc no longer believed Sorcha was dead. He saw the smoke from Kendra’s fire, but said nothing to Devnet.

  She barely acknowledged Madoc’s existence, and took no part in his search. Unimpressed by the significance of the sword, Devnet followed Madoc at a leisurely pace, apparently oblivious to his anxiously bent back, his searching eyes. Having made her choice to stay with Madoc, Devnet was uncomfortable in his presence. She brooded on Brede’s words, wondering why she was so adamant in her accusations. She watched Madoc’s search as though she could divine the truth from the way he moved. It took two days to reach the edge of the gorge, by which time Madoc’s thoroughness had driven Devnet from scorn to rage.

  She stood at the brink of that drop and peered cautiously over the edge.

  ‘You think they survived this?’ she asked incredulously.

  Madoc shrugged.

  ‘They weren’t there. Plenty of blood. Perhaps, perhaps not.’

  ‘And that smoke?’

  Madoc sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, irritably.

  ‘I’m not taking my horse down there,’ Devnet said, developing a deep unwillingness to discover what lay at the bottom of the gorge.

  ‘I wasn’t planning it,’ Madoc agreed. ‘It’s hard enough on foot with the rain.’

  He looped his horse’s reins into a bush that clung to the edge of the precipice, and started cautiously down the slope with scarcely a glance at Devnet. She followed unwillingly, slipping in the mud, clinging to thorny bushes to slow her descent. She reached the floor of the gorge covered in mud, bloody of hand and in a raging temper.

  ‘It had better be here,’ she muttered, as she waited for Madoc to complete his slow descent. He hung from the bushes and gazed carefully about hoping for a glint of metal among the bushes and boulders. Reaching the foot at last, he rested against a rock, and inspected his cut palms. Devnet hauled him to his feet.

  ‘You came here for a purpose, look for your blasted sword, and then let’s get away from this place.’

 
Madoc glowered at her, trying to remember why it had seemed such a good idea to hand-fast with this bitch. He rubbed the blood from his hands onto his jerkin and strode away to where the remains of the horse lay.

  Devnet recoiled from the crow pecked corpse; she was fond of her horses. Madoc quartered the ground around the beast, but found nothing, not even his own footprints. Devnet wandered away, and he thought nothing more about her, until he heard her sharp exclamation.

  Madoc raised his head at Devnet’s call, and leapt up to follow her, almost colliding with her as she backed away from her find. Madoc found himself automatically providing a comforting and protecting arm, and to his surprise, Devnet accepted his support. Madoc gave her a reassuring hug, and went past to see what had caused such unexpected weakness.

  Ashy remains of a large fire. The torrential rain had prevented the fire from completely destroying the bones at its centre. Madoc’s stomach turned in response. He retreated swiftly, and resumed his embrace of Devnet, as much for his own benefit as for hers.

  ‘We don’t burn our dead,’ Devnet said softly. ‘Brede wouldn’t do that.’

  But the witch would, Madoc thought, assessing the situation. If the witch was alive, and she took time for funeral rites, she might still be somewhere in this wood. And what kind of grudge would she hold now? He shuddered, the recovery of the sword fading in importance.

  Devnet pulled out of his arms. She had to remind herself that she had wanted to kill Brede herself only a few days ago, but this was different, and she wept: not for the woman who forced her to question her certainties, but for the woman of ten years past, who had laughed with her, who had sung with her, who had shared her blankets. Devnet looked up into Madoc’s grim face, her hands flat against his chest, thinking about his single-minded pursuit of that sword. She had seen the blade, it was nothing special, but she understood the struggle for power that the blade had engendered. Devnet thought about Madoc’s eager searching after power, and her heart went cold within her.