Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One

by Dale, Veronica

  Sheft soon found that he needed the ice again and had to dredge up yet more. Mariat must not see a single drop. The needle pricked in and out of the throbbing already present and caused him to stiffen, but she only murmured “Sorry,” and went on.

  At last she was finished and slathered on more of the burvena salve. Sheft glanced at a neat line of stitches on his arm. He slumped in relief, not because the pain was gone, for indeed it seemed worse, but now he could finally withdraw the ice and clear his head. He was stitched together, spared for now the threat of emerging roots, and nothing would spill out of him to cry out from the ground. “Thank you, Mariat,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of service,” she said, and smiled into his eyes.

  Her gaze held him and he could not look away. He wanted to reach out to her, touch her cheek, her hair. But he did not.

  As if she knew what he longed to do, Mariat picked up his good hand and held it.

  Only a thin layer of skin lay between her fingers and his root-filled veins, between her warmth and the numbing ice. He knew he must pull away, but couldn’t do it. He ached to put both arms around her tightly and stay like that, but he couldn’t do that either. All he could manage was to look at her without hope.

  Her smile faded, replaced with a kind of puzzled tenderness. “You said earlier you wanted to talk to me. What is it, my dear?”

  The beautiful word she called him twisted into his heart, and would lodge there forever.

  He didn’t know how to begin. Tarn might reappear at any time and there was no way he could tell her in only a few minutes about the terrible accusations that had emerged, and the deaths, and his shadowed parentage. In spite of himself, his right hand clung tightly to hers, but his left arm, stitched against roots, he kept under the table. She waited for an answer, and it occurred to him that he could at least tell her part of the truth, a part that might be enough. “Mariat, it’s much worse than what you heard after the fire. Now the villagers are saying that—that I molested a child. A little boy, at the market-fair.” He felt as ashamed of saying it as if he had in truth done it, and could hardly meet her gaze.

  She took his hand in both of hers and her eyes filled with hurt for him. “I know, Sheft. Etane heard all kinds of rumors in the village and tried to keep them from me, but I heard him tell Father. At the fair you didn’t notice me looking, but I saw you with that little boy. He wanted to learn carving, and you were gentle with him and patient. You never tried to hurt anyone.”

  “But that’s not the point, Mariat. An entire faction in the village believes it.” Nor was that all they believed, nor all that was wrong with him, but he couldn’t get into that now. “I—have to go away. Right after your brother’s wedding in Herb-Bearer.”

  “Go away! Why?”

  “There’s trouble on the council over me. If I don’t leave, it will only get worse. For everyone.”

  She was silent for a moment, still holding his hand. “But you said ‘I’, that ‘I’ must go. Where is the ‘we’ in this?”

  For her sake, there should have never been a “we.” He spoke as gently as he could. “I have to go alone.”

  She took her hands away, and left his empty. “I think I understand. We’ve spoken of this before, on the way home from the market-fair. You said you had nothing to offer me, that any man in the village could give me a better life.”

  He nodded miserably.

  “But what if I don’t want this so-called ‘better life’? What if I don’t want a life without you?

  Sheft, I love you and want to go where you go. No matter where, and gladly.”

  She had no idea about what he was, yet looked at him in utter simplicity and handed him her whole life. She tore his heart in two.

  “Mariat, you don’t under—”

  Tarn came through the door. “Padiky has lost a shoe. If I’m to get you home, Mariat, and then take her to the smith’s and be back before dark, we must go immediately.” He held up her cloak.

  “I’ll take her home and go on to Rom’s,” Sheft said. He jumped to his feet, but the room spun around him and he had to grab the edge of the table for support.

  Two “no’s” rang out. One was Mariat’s, out of concern for him, and the other was Tarn’s. “I told you to stay out of the village,” he growled, and left the house.

  Behind him, Sheft heard his mother coughing again.

  “Give her more of this now.” Mariat handed him Riah’s medicine, then the small jar of green salve. “Put this on your cut in the morning and at night. After I get back from Ferce, I’ll come to check on Riah and also take out those stitches. We’ll talk then.” She gave Sheft a swift kiss on the cheek and went out the door. The light left with her.

  He had told her parts of the truth, which amounted to a monstrous lie, and now he’d have to begin all over again.

  Sick at heart, he gave his mother the medicine, then offered a cup of broth which she barely tasted. Mariat had left a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese, which was their dinner when Tarn returned. Soon after, Tarn climbed up to the loft, saying Riah’s coughing kept him awake and he needed a good night’s sleep.

  Lying on a blanket in front of the hearth, Sheft allowed himself to linger for a while with the dream of a life with Mariat. He let her love soak into him like a golden healing oil and her choice to be with him brush over his skin. His need for her swelled painfully and he longed to pull her body tight against his.

  But he forced himself to acknowledge that Mariat’s dream—his dream—like some precious cloak woven for someone else, had already been folded and put away.

  Oh God Rulve, he could never atone for how he would have to hurt her.

  Chapter 19. Yarahe

  The next day, Tarn drove off to the village to help with the annual hog butchering. By noon, in spite of Mariat’s medicines, Riah took a turn for the worse. Her breathing came in wheezing gasps between fits of coughing, and the rag she held to her mouth was stained a bright red.

  Tarn returned late in the afternoon, his hands raw from salting pork. After they roasted part of his share of the meat for dinner, Tarn climbed up to the loft. “She will get over this,” he said, “just as Moro did.”

  During the night Sheft doubled the strength of Mariat’s elever tea, made a tisane of salicy as she had directed, and tried to rest on the nodding chair between going back and forth to his mother. By dawn her coughing was shaking the bed frame. Tarn came down, took one look at her, and after a quick breakfast, set out to the village for the miller’s wife.

  Sheft brought in more wood and heated up a little of Mariat’s leftover broth. He tried to get his mother to eat it, but she turned away from the spoon he held to her lips. Her eyes were only half open as he eased her back onto the pillow.

  At last she drifted off. Haggard and barely able to keep his eyes open, he settled on the floor with his back against the side of the bed. It occurred to him that he forgot to put the green salve on his arm, but—he’d do that in a minute. He closed his eyes and listened to Riah’s shallow breathing, underlined by a persistent rattle in her chest.

  Sleep overcame him, and he slipped into a dream. He was driving the wagon on a deserted road, Mariat close beside him. He looked into the soft sky of early spring, into the smiling, wind-washed blue. The old T-scar above his knee itched, and he idly scratched it. Far above, a falcon wheeled in a lazy spiral, its banded tail spread open. Suddenly it folded its wings and dived toward him, uttering a series of high, urgent calls.

  He jerked awake. His mother moved restlessly on the bed, her eyes fluttering open, but it wasn’t she who had called out.

  “Riah! Riah, daughter of Mena!” With a start, he realized he was hearing the words inside his head, but that they were coming from outside the house.

  He jumped up and rushed out the door. After the dimness of the bedroom, the bright sunlight smacked against his eyes. Half-blind, he stumbled around the corner and into the kitchen garden, then stopped dead.

&nbs
p; An impossibility towered there: an enormous falcon, half again the height of a man.

  Standing in its cold shadow, he gaped up at it. It was real. Wind ruffled its feathers and the afternoon sun shone through their delicate edges. The lethal yellow beak gleamed above him as sharp as a dagger. It could bite his head off.

  Its eyes glared down on him and mind-words seemed to travel down their golden beams. “Y’rulve, emjadi. Honor to you, niyalahn-rista.”

  Stunned, he could only stand there.

  “I am Yarahe, son of Drapak the Claw, lord of the falconforms. I bear a message concerning you.” As if listening, the creature tilted its great head, more massive in proportion to its size than any bird’s. “I hear from your thoughts that Riah is dying.”

  He was facing a being that could read his mind.

  “The toltyr lies heavy upon her. Why do you allow another to bear your burden?”

  His mute astonishment disappeared in a sudden need to defend himself. “It isn’t mine! It has nothing to do with me.”

  “Then why do you fear it so much?”

  “I don’t fear it!” But as soon as the denial jumped out of his mouth, he realized it was a lie.

  “Without fear, there can be no courage.”

  “It’s not a matter of courage! The toltyr isn’t mine. I’m not worthy of it. I caused the death of two people.”

  “Did you kill them, emjadi?”

  The uncompromising integrity in the falcon’s gaze seemed to slice into his ability to think. “Not—not directly. But they died because of what I am.”

  The unblinking eyes bored deep. “Blaming yourself is an evasion. Do not use it to hide from what you must do.”

  The statement clutched him in its claw, and like a pinned-down rabbit, he struggled to escape. “It would be pride to take the toltyr. Pride to imagine myself someone I’m not.”

  “You have been called: by the wind, by the bell, and by the cries of the land. Why do you deny the summons? It is humility, not pride, to accept it.”

  His mother had said something similar, and it stung that now another was judging him. “I am not this niyalahn-rista! I’m no better than anybody else.”

  Suddenly he realized what he’d just said. Of course he—of all people—was no better than anybody else. Why would he deny something so patently obvious, if he did not, deep in his core, think the opposite? Why else hadn’t he made more friends, not bothered to learn the names of people in the village, looked down at their beliefs as much as his mother did? The realization doused him like a bucket of icy water.

  “You are correct when you say you are no better. No one created by Rulve is better than another. But you are niyal’arist, as I am falconform. Why is this so hard for you to accept?”

  The resentment he’d felt earlier flooded back. “The villagers accuse me of a long list of crimes, my own blood haunts me, even my best friend can’t look me in the eye, and suddenly I’m supposed to forget all that? Accept some grandiose title and march off to the tune of voices and bells to a place I know nothing about?”

  “Your shortcomings are irrelevant, emjadi. You are summoned. You have been given the power to save a dying land and redeem those who live in darkness. Twice you have been told this, and twice you rejected it. Now you must cast off the cloak you have clutched to yourself and stand before Rulve as she made you.”

  He remembered Tarn’s angry words to him the night before the Rites, the accusation that he drew his strangeness about himself “like some distinctive cloak.” His chest tightened with chaotic emotions that had been rising ever since the fair, and suddenly they all became too much. “Look at me!” he cried bitterly. “I’m not good enough for Rulve’s toltyr, not clean enough. In all these years, who redeemed me?”

  The words fell into a pool of silence. Out of it crawled another memory of what Tarn had once said: “All you can think of is yourself.” Something inside him cracked.

  “You are angry and hurt,” Yarahe said, “yet ashamed. You know you are betraying what you sense inside: a call to something greater than yourself.”

  It was true. He had felt the longing, heard the voices calling, felt the response rise up in his soul. But— “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Yarahe. I don’t know what Rulve wants.” Again he heard himself, and groaned inwardly. Was even this a denial? He remembered the tale about the desert and the creek, words he thought he had buried deep with Ane: “There the cloud emptied itself in joy, and fell over the land as rain, and under it the desert bloomed.” He remembered his odd reaction to Ane’s green cloak. Dread shot through him like sleet through a winter’s night.

  Yarahe cocked his head in a quizzical gesture that seemed almost human. “It seems you demand to see every outcome before setting your foot on the road.”

  He stood drenched in his own inadequacy, knowing Yarahe would tolerate no more excuses and no more denials. He had to face what he most feared. “The toltyr is too great for me,” he choked out. “If I take it up, I will fail. And I’ve failed enough as it is.”

  The great falcon ruffled his feathers, apparently unconcerned by this cowardly admission. “Perhaps. But fear of failure is rooted in the pride you fear so much. Rulve calls. You are required to answer, not to succeed.”

  His throat was too tight to speak. He could only nod. The sudden thought of Mariat’s lovely face slashed across his heart, as sharp and bright as a blade.

  “Your leaving her is a wound you must endure. You must take up the toltyr and journey through the Riftwood, bearing your love and your doubts and your pull toward pride. You must go now, before winter sets in.”

  He longed to leave everything behind and start a new life. But he had promised to help Etane with the field-burn. It was the last gift he could give in return for a lifetime of friendship, one small way his sweat could atone for his blood. Because of the pollution inside him, he must never have a wife, never have children; but he could clear a field, and on it Etane’s wife would plant a kitchen garden, and Etane’s children would play. “I need more time,” he said in a ragged voice, “to repay a great debt.”

  “You must leave now.”

  “I have given my word, Yarahe. To stay until Herb-Bearer.”

  The falconform’s gaze never wavered, but it shifted from one foot to the other as if in hesitation. “Once given, the emjadi’s word should not be taken lightly. It shall be as you have said, niyal’arist. But hear me: two days after the dark of the moon, as it begins to wax in Seed, you must come at dawn to the Wind-gate. Rift-riders will meet you there and take you to the Seani. Beware the waning moon, and especially the night of its fall.”

  He knew the Wind-gate, a gully that came down from the Riftwood across the river from the Council House. Yarahe spread out the great wings, and Sheft stepped back.

  “Will you be there?” the creature asked.

  He bowed his head. “I seem to have a destiny, Yarahe. But no real hope.”

  “Your eyrie has failed you, niyal’arist. A community must provide support and safety for its members, so that they may find the true identity within. This has not been done. Neither for you nor for your brother. The consequences, I fear, will be grave. Yet we must trust. Will you be there?”

  He looked up, allowing his silver gaze to meet the creature’s penetrating gold. “I will.” The words were like a gust of wind moving through a long-locked room. He took a deep breath, and for a moment the burden of past denials was lifted, and he soared.

  But almost immediately the fear of what the future might bring dragged him down.

  “Y’rulve, emjadi.” The falconform stretched out its great neck and leaped into the wind. Its wings whipped up fallen leaves as it swept over the fields.

  He watched it fly over the Riftwood until it dwindled into the autumn sky. He hadn’t even thought to ask what “emjadi” meant.

  The wind had picked up, and he was shaking. He stumbled through the cold sunshine back into the house. Gusts rattled the windows in the kitchen and moane
d through chinks in the walls, but his mother’s room was still. He went directly to her bed and knelt beside it. She turned her head on the pillow, and her eyes, bright with fever, met his. There was no doubt she had heard the entire conversation. She plucked feebly at the cord around her neck. Trying not to touch her hot skin with his cold hands, he helped her take it off.

  For the first time, he looked closely at the toltyr. It reminded him of the tale his mother had once told him when he was small and ached for help, a tale about a green disk set into the wall of a great, tree-supported hall. The medallion was punctured with three star-shaped holes in a triangular pattern at the top, and two curved hands were carved at the bottom. They were Rulve’s hands, filled with power, yet open in need. At first it seemed both sides depicted the hands holding the same object—the wavy blade of a knife. But as he looked closer, he saw that what he had thought a blade was on one side a tongue of flame and on the other a faintly veined leaf.

  He didn’t know what it meant, nor did it tell him what he must do. But he looped the toltyr over his head and dropped it under his shirt. It felt heavy, cold, and alien against his chest, but he could no longer deny it belonged to him.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother whispered, “so sorry.”

  All these years she had been alone. Even sleeping beside Tarn, she had been even more alone than he. “Forgive me, Mother. Please forgive me.”

  “My son,” she breathed, “there is no need.” She lifted her hand and, in tears, he took it between both of his.

  Head bowed, he stayed kneeling by her side, until her hand grew cold and she was gone.

  # # #

  When Tarn came through the door, he was alone. “No one was willing to come and help Riah,” he said. “Blinor told me to ‘get my ass out of his house.’ In years past, no one would have spoken to me that way.”

  “Riah’s dead,” Sheft said.

  Tarn stared at him a moment, then hung up his cloak and walked into the bedroom. After a short time he came back to the kitchen. “Tomorrow I’ll take her body to the House of Ele. She will be cremated there according to our local tradition.”