Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One

by Dale, Veronica

  Parduka leaned over him. He struggled to twist away, but many hands gripped him in an iron vise.

  “Bring the light closer,” Parduka directed. “Good. Steady now.”

  The serrated edge of the spoon filled his sight, growing larger as it approached, a lethal eclipse that would cut out all light. He strained to see something around it—a star, a flame, anything he could remember in the coming blackness.

  Cold metal pressed at the corner of his right eye. Blind white terror seized him. He squeezed his eyes shut, tight and hard. Rulve help me! Clenching his jaw, tightening his bound hands into fists, he fought to constrict his spirikai.

  Her strong fingers pried his eyelid open.

  At the touch, his terror shattered. Ice splintered out of his spirikai and he jammed it, hard, into Parduka’s hand.

  # # #

  Sudden cold bit into her palm. Parduka jerked her hand away. It was numb. She couldn’t feel her fingers. A memory flooded in: her mother’s eyes widening, her face twisting. The old woman had emitted an animal cry and fell to the ground. She lay there stiffly, drool dribbling from the corner of her mouth.

  Ele, no! Not the paralyzing stroke. Not now. Not here, in front of them all.

  The icy chill crept up her wrist, and to her horror the spoon fell out of her useless fingers. Exclamations broke out around her.

  “Again, priestess?” Sokol spat. “Another failure? Let me do it, if you can’t.” With his hand still pressed against the back of the foreigner’s neck, he bent to sweep up the spoon.

  It signified her power and he must not take it. With her left hand, Parduka snatched it away. “No, you fool! I have not failed. I will not.” Under her cloak, she frantically rubbed her right hand against her thigh, and the warmth began flowing back.

  It was not the paralyzing stroke. It was a sign. She had received a sign from Ele, who had stayed her hand. She looked at each of the faces, grotesque in the torchlight and surrounded by the dark. “At just this instant, Ele spoke to me! She spoke to me, and I trembled in her presence.” Parduka brandished the holy instrument like a sword. “In the midst of her ancient Rites, she has issued a direct command.”

  Deep within, a crone’s voice warned her: “Do not touch him again.”

  # # #

  They held him down as an argument whirled over his head. Parduka’s voice cut through it. “His eyes are diseased, as abhorrent to Ele as they are to us. On this night of all nights, they must not befoul the sacred bowl.”

  “What about our vows?” someone asked. “I don’t want to lose all my cattle.”

  “What about the restored Rites?”

  Parduka stepped forward, the edge of her sleeve sweeping over his hair. “They shall be made perfect, even more pleasing to Ele and more satisfying to Wask. The command of the goddess is this: allow Wask himself to pluck out the foreigner’s eyes. At his leisure, throughout the night, let Wask feed on his flesh. It is Ele’s justice. This sheep”—she prodded his shoulder with the spoon—“will be given completely into the beetle-man’s will, for as long as it takes him to die.”

  “What about the tradition?” Sokol shouted. “It demands that we offer him, bound and blind, to Wask.”

  “But we can’t wade across the river!” a frightened voice cried. “Look, it’s risen from the storm. Oh, Ele, what are we going to do!”

  “The Rites are failing!” someone wailed.

  “They are not,” Parduka stated firmly. “In her wisdom, in spite of storm and flood, Ele has provided the means to complete her Rites: Moro’s horse. It will carry him across while we watch, safe on dry land.”

  Murmuring in relief, the men let go of him and stepped back. Awkward with hands and feet bound, Sheft dragged himself off the K’meen Arûk and slid to his knees. He pressed his forehead against the rock, hearing his own quick breaths, then seeing them in the cold air. Stones on the ground flashed bright in torch-flame, and he saw them too, focused on the way tiny crystals within them winked in the light. As booted feet milled around him, he stared at the stones, each different, each indescribably beautiful.

  Only last night, the ice had been like a club he could wield, like a rock he could throw, but now it had been only a shard. Now the toltyr was gone, Mariat was gone, and he had no strength left. The pounding of his heart slowed, but the trembling went on as he slid into a red fog of pain and ice-reaction.

  “No criminal should go seeing to the beetle-man,” Sokol insisted. “It would be an insult.”

  “Let’s get this over with!” Rom exclaimed. “Blindfold him, and that will fulfill the law.”

  “It is indeed Ele’s express command,” Parduka said.

  The cloaked figures untied him, pulled him to his feet, and fastened a folded cloth tightly over his eyes. Hands dragged him stumbling back to Surilla. He was barely settled on her back when they jerked him into a prone position and tied his wrists under her neck. Someone fastened a rope around his ankles, then ran it under the mare’s wide girth. When they were done, he was bound to the great horse, painfully stretched out and unable to lift his head more than a few inches off her mane. Boots scuffed as men gathered around him. Someone grabbed his hair and yanked his head up.

  Parduka’s strong voice addressed him. “With our blood upon you, go to Wask. With our curse upon you, go to the beetle-man. We give you to him so he may eat, and take away our transgressions before Ele.”

  His head was pulled so far back he could hardly swallow. Voices swelled around him, repeating the curse, naming his destiny; and their words struck like lashes.

  The hand let go of his hair, and his forehead fell against the horse’s neck. The gourd rattled, sudden and close. Someone grabbed the rope around his wrists and led Surilla forward. The big horse clopped along, and then hooves clattered over stones.

  Everyone stopped. Surilla stamped nervously.

  “Come, Wask.” Parduka intoned.

  Boom. He jumped at the sound of the drum, had not even realized it was present.

  “Come, Meerghast.”

  Boom. Even expecting it, he still twitched.

  “Come, Rûk.”

  Boom.

  The drumbeat dissolved into the night. With a jerk, Surilla moved forward. The rustle of clothing and the creak of leather boots gave way to the sound of the Meera. It grew louder, sending dread running up his spine like a cold and bony finger. The circle dropped back, and the tension on the rope at his wrists fell away. The man leading Surilla must have let go. The big mare stood still, the rushing sound of water directly beneath him. The collective gaze of the crowd bored between his shoulder blades.

  His heart thudded in his ears. The beetle-man’s crawling face rose up in the darkness behind his eyes. “The Riftwood awaits you. Death will swallow you.” Chill air from the massive cavern of the Riftwood directly ahead funneled down the back of his neck.

  A torch whooshed behind him. Surilla screamed, jerked her head up, and lurched forward with a splash. The horse’s thick neck dealt him a stunning blow to the left side of his face. Spears of light shot through his eye, his head spun, and he felt as if he were slipping sideways. He clung desperately to Surilla with his knees and forearms as the horse plowed into the river. Behind him, men shouted. Something hard hit his shoulder, a stone, then a hail of them. Surilla surged ahead. Her big muscles working, she plunged deeper into the Meera River.

  He clung to Surilla as the water crept higher. The current swept past his fingers, wet the sleeves of his jacket. If the river was deeper here than it was upstream, if the mare was hit by a tumbling log, he would drown. Surilla churned ahead and images assailed him: of her falling, of water rushing over his head, of the sound of bubbles filling his ears. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t get off her back.

  The river began to fall away. He realized he’d been holding his breath and sucked in air. Stones dislodged under the big horse’s hooves as she climbed into the shallows and heaved to the top of the embankment. She stood there a moment, shudderin
g.

  His heart hammered. He was alone across the Meera River, in deepest night.

  The mare shook herself, sending pain boring into his side, then trotted forward with a gait that threatened to rip open every stitch. He pulled his hands against her throat, hoping she would understand what he wanted. “Easy,” he gasped. “Go easy, Surilla.”

  The horse slowed. Leaves crunched under her feet and branches brushed against his legs. With the blindfold tight across his eyes, all his senses funneled into the plodding gait, the fire on his back, the wet, rough rope biting into his wrists.

  The bandage under his jacket clung wetly to him. Under the cloth, something trickled. Was it sweat—or blood? In a panic, he strained to constrict his spirikai yet again. The effort caused whatever blind, truncated reality he possessed to slide away.

  He sat at Moro’s table, clutching the green cloak in his sweaty hands. It was his burial shroud. Moro’s voice floated back to him, full of regret. “Time you be leaving us, Sheft.”

  He forced himself to stand, to open the door, to leave Mariat behind. Out in the dark, a hollow wind moaned high overhead. It sucked up concepts that had once warmed his heart: of “wife,” abandoned; of “husband,” impossible; of “father,” never. They rushed up like sparks from a bonfire into the night, whirling up and up, and out of the reach of his bound hands.

  # # #

  Pressure. He felt pressure under his right shoulder. Surilla seemed to be veering in a wide circle down the slope. He couldn’t see, but remembered where he was. In the domain of Wask. Hardly daring to breathe, he molded himself against the horse’s back, trying to blend into her silhouette. The blackness exuded a palpable presence that rose up behind him. Fear skittered over his skin.

  But if the beetle-man were anywhere around, Surilla would surely know it. Instead, she was taking her time and picking her way. The realization overcame his sense of imminent malice. The feeling he was being watched dwindled into something he could shake off, could believe he was merely imagining, could try to ignore.

  He focused on the horse. It soon became apparent she was trying to go home.

  If left to herself, Surilla would instinctively find her way to Moro’s barn, where these ropes would be cut away and the blindfold taken off. He would be saved. He had that choice.

  But he could never take it.

  He ground his forehead into the rough mane. He could never go back to the place that had cast him out, never go back to what he had already decided to leave behind. After the fair, he’d prayed to Rulve, begging for answers he could understand, for clarity in what he should do. He thought he’d gotten no reply, but now it seemed, in the inexorable working out of fate, the new village council had spelled it out for him. They had set him in the direction he must travel. No matter what awaited him, no matter how hopeless, this journey was his destiny.

  His throat swelled with grief, and once more he wrenched out a mental prayer. “Rulve help me!” Invisible, androgynous, absent God—help me.

  Like a tide, the past rushed up. His mother smiled down at his six-year-old self, telling him a story about great carved hands. “Those who lie in them look up at the words inscribed far above: ‘My life is in your hands’.” It was more than an expression of trust. It was a plea. But in an impossible reversal he never understood, a plea that was divine as well as human.

  Ane nudged his elbow. “Look here, Sheft.” She pointed to a line in the red book of tales. ‘You can only save your life if you lose it.’” He’d buried those words with her, but she had kept them safe for him.

  A breeze brushed over him, like a shimmer over dark water. It gently tousled his hair. “S’eft,” it whispered. “Please come. Come as soon as you can.”

  His shoulders slumped. But where? To do what? He’d lost everything.

  The falconform opened its great beak and laughed at him. “It seems you demand to see every outcome before setting your foot on the road. You are niyal’arist, as I am falconform. Why is this so hard for you to accept?”

  It had taken him a long time, but he had accepted it. He’d accepted the toltyr: the symbol, the summons, and the hope. Its physical presence was gone, but Rulve had forged its strength into his bones. He’d saved the village by leaving it, had set Mariat free, and had already paid the price. Now he had another choice, a harder one. He had to assent voluntarily to what others had thrust upon him. He had to choose this journey for himself.

  With his forearms, he attempted to drag the big mare’s head away from her homeward course, but didn’t have the strength to do it. He remembered the words that would.

  “Eechareeva, Surilla,” he choked out. “Ista!”

  She obeyed him, turning left and going forward, deeper into the Riftwood. It was a cold and bitter choice, and Rulve seemed nowhere around to validate it. He was alone.

  They moved on. The riffling of the Meera faded away and the underbrush became sparse. The quality of the air changed, becoming heavy and still, full of the smell of humus and mold. Surilla’s hooves no longer clattered on stones, but thumped with a hollow sound on thick loam. At times the horse picked up her feet as if she were stepping over fallen logs. The weighty presence of tree trunks towered over him. He was blind, couldn’t feel his hands, and blood was draining from his head. All that existed was a dark circle that eclipsed both reason and faith.

  From far away the voices called: the deeper tones of men, the screams of women, the sobs of children. They were the voices of the dying. His spirikai pulsed with their pleas, but all he could do was hurt with them, for he was one of them.

  His despair shrank into the roughness of Surilla’s mane against his forehead. His fear of the black mist congealed into unmitigated pain; and his helplessness sank into the empty ache of his heart. He was a man drowning in a well, glimpsing far stars above him, while waters of grief closed over his head. All he had left was one last prayer.

  Ah, God, my life is in your hands.

  Chapter 32. Birth-day

  The cloud-wracked sky over the deadlands was just turning grey when Mariat, riding her father’s Skaileg pony, pulled up at Tarn’s house. Her mother’s heavy green cloak covered the pants and belted tunic she normally wore for field work. Even though it was early spring, she could smell sleet in the air.

  Late last night, after she set her father’s broken arm and given him a potion against the pain, he had let slip the horrible significance of Sheft’s altered carved mouse. He did not mention exactly what was done at the Rites, which had now somehow been restored, but his mumbled allusions and the way he covered his eyes, filled her with horror and a clawing urgency.

  She made him as comfortable as she could, and if she made the potion a bit stronger than absolutely necessary, it was only because her father would try to prevent her from doing what she had to do. After propping his feet up by the hearth, she explained that she and Sheft were espoused, that she was going to find him, and that she would try to send a message if she could. Her father’s only reaction was a puzzled, slightly vacant look.

  But it was like a shaft through her heart. She told herself that Etane and his new wife would soon be settling nearby, then kissed her father’s forehead and hugged him tightly. There was a lump in her throat when she rode away, but she didn’t look back.

  The pile of false evidence against Sheft lay in the yard. The wind riffled the open pages of the red book of tales and sent pieces of the charred mattress skimming over the ground like useless regrets. She slid off the pony and retrieved from the mud as many jars of her healing salves and herbs that were not broken. She stuffed them into saddlebags already packed with provisions and bandages. About to go into the house, she glimpsed something partly hidden under the shards of a broken jar. The toltyr.

  She hesitated, then picked it up by its black, braided cord. Only two days ago—how could it have been only the day before yesterday?—she had washed the blood from it and gently looped it over his head.

  Almost since she first laid eyes on it,
she feared it had a claim on him even greater than the love he felt for her, that it would stand between them and a life together. But had that kind of life ever really existed for her and Sheft? Riah didn’t think so, nor had Father. And neither did Sheft. He tried to say good-bye, but she hadn’t accepted that.

  A gust of wind chilled her. Was her beloved still alive? And if he was—oh God Rulve—could she repair whatever they had done to him? Once again, as it had since her father’s drug-induced hints, the vision jumped before her: of Sheft’s eyes, his beautiful silver eyes, changed into gaping bloody pools.

  She bit her lip. I will not, she thought fiercely, dwell on that. I’ll concentrate on tracking him down, healing him, holding him close again. She slipped the toltyr into her pocket and, without knocking, entered the house.

  The door to Tarn’s bedroom was closed, but she didn’t care how much noise she made. He had abandoned Sheft, and she had no sympathy for him. She crunched over the broken crockery in the kitchen, climbed the ladder to the loft, and found clothes and blankets. The door to the bedroom was still shut when she left the house.

  The day struggled to dawn behind her, but even in the dim light the tracks were, as she had hoped, plain. Many people and one large horse had gone toward the river.

  At the grim rock of the K’meen Arûk, she slid off the horse’s back. This was the closest she had ever been to the boulder, and just last night her father had told her its true name. The ground had been trampled all around it. Her heart pounding, she came closer, gripped the edges of the rock, then forced herself to look into the depression on top. Only a film of dirty water from last night’s storm lay there. Tears of relief burned in her throat. Oh God, they hadn’t taken his eyes.

  At least not here. Apart from what little her father had said, she knew nothing about these terrible Rites, nothing about what Sheft might have suffered. She scanned the stony soil, found the trail heading west, and followed it to the banks of the river.