The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ Nevyn said. ‘I would have thought you’d be exhausted after a day like today.’

  ‘So did I.’ She stopped herself just in time from adding a ‘my lord’. ‘But I’m used to hard work and the like. I used to have plenty of chores to do besides tending Evan, so I’d be up at dawn every day.’

  ‘Ah, of course. The work on a farm’s never done.’

  ‘Just so.’

  They shared a companionable silence, watching the fire, occasionally feeding it with twigs and small branches, while Morwen gathered her courage to ask Nevyn the question that always haunted her. He seems truly wise, she thought. Mayhap he’ll know.

  ‘Nevyn?’ she said. ‘Do you know why the gods cursed me? I mean, not so much why they cursed me as me, if you take my meaning, like, but why they curse people with the witchmark.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Nevyn said. ‘That’s naught but superstition, and a silly one at that.’

  ‘But everyone says—’

  ‘Huh! That “everyone” is very often wrong. Now, I don’t pretend to understand exactly what causes a harelip, mind, but the gods have naught to do with it. Some of the learned physicians of Bardek attribute it to certain influences of the moon upon the baby in its mother’s womb. Others think that too little food or too much ale might weaken the mother’s humours and unbalance those of the womb, allowing the watery humours to take precedence over the earthy. Such a precedence might produce a split in solid flesh, just as a river cleaves the land. There are other theories, but those are the two that sound the best to me. The cause might even be a combination of both.’

  In utter shock Morwen could only stare at him.

  ‘Either way,’ Nevyn went on, ‘you’re not in the least to blame, no matter what the old hags and gossips in your village told you.’

  Morwen tried to speak, couldn’t, and wondered if she’d ever speak again.

  ‘It will take you a while to digest what I’ve told you,’ Nevyn said with a smile. ‘But do think about it.’

  She nodded her agreement. Nevyn suddenly yawned and clasped a quick hand over his mouth to stifle it.

  ‘Here, you’re doubtless tired.’ Morwen finally found her voice. ‘And I’d best get some sleep myself.’

  ‘Indeed. And we’ll have plenty of time to talk about such matters during our journey.’

  Morwen returned to the shelter and the sleeping Evan, but for a long time that night she lay awake. You’re not to blame. Nevyn had spoken so calmly, so quietly, that she believed him beyond her simple wishing his words to be true. Her old pain had been like clutching the handle of an iron pan only to find it burning hot—in her shame at the gods’ curse she’d been unable to either let go of it or to carry it. Now she felt as if she’d plunged that charred hand into cold water at last. If only I could tell Lanni! That regret was the only blemish on her new-found wondrous freedom. If only Lanni were here to share it!

  In the morning, she woke to find most of the camp up before her. The thought woke with her: it’s no fault of mine. It accompanied her, too, like a cheerful friend, while she fed Evan and got him ready to ride with his father again. Yet during the morning’s journey, when she had plenty of time to herself for thinking, the good cheer faded away. She remembered another phrase of Nevyn’s, ‘old hags and gossips’. Little did he know just how horribly the women in question had treated her as a child, how they had refused to let their own children play with her, how they had taught those children to taunt and tease her.

  And then at home her sister and brother teased her as well. Worse yet, they fell into the habit of hitting or pinching her, just casually, every time they passed by. She had taken it meekly, sure she’d deserved every sting and bruise because neither her mother nor father had intervened. And all along, it hadn’t been her fault, nor her shame, nor her curse, not in the least. If I could only go back, she thought. Just back for one day, oh, what I’d do to them!

  She imagined how her brother would look if she rose up after one of his insults and hit him in the head with an iron cooking pan—hit him hard, so his skull would crack and the blood run down. And dear Varynna—her beauty would vanish before the sting of a hot coal from the fire. Morwen could imagine it clearly, the skin blackening, the hiss of burning, the stench of charred flesh. As they healed, the scabs would crack and peel, leaving huge scars upon those rosy cheeks.

  The village women deserved even nastier fates. She imagined their deaths in detail, by dismembering, drowning, scalding with boiling water. Too much detail—suddenly she saw her revenge fantasies so clearly that the pictures began to take on a life of their own. She could watch them unfold as if she were dreaming, and yet she was awake, aware of the horse under her, the hot sun on her back, Dev’s voice as he sang to Evan. She watched with inner eyes as her dream-self rampaged through the village, stabbing, clawing, flailing around her with any weapon that came to hand. Blood flowed, flesh split and bruised, and always she saw more blood, bubbling from wounds.

  ‘Oh stop!’ She’d spoken aloud in a great sob of words. ‘It’s too horrible!’

  The world around her snapped back into reality. Morwen felt herself trembling, and her face burning with shame, but when she glanced around, she realized that no one had heard her little outburst or noticed her dreamy condition. Best of all, no one could read her thoughts; no one else had seen her horrifying visions. How could I? Just how could I? What am I, a fiend who just looks like a human being?

  Up at the head of his caravan, Wffyn yelled for a halt. She’d never heard a voice as welcome as his at that moment, calling her to human company.

  ‘Let’s have a meal, lads,’ he bellowed. ‘Time to rest the stock.’

  Morwen nearly wept at the relief of knowing that she’d be free of her own thoughts for a while.

  The caravan stopped in a long grassy meadow, dotted here and there with the dead stumps of cut timber, at the edge of the forest. The muleteers unloaded their stock to let them roll, then set them out to graze along with the riding horses, which the Westfolk men had tended.

  ‘It’ll be two days before they get fresh fodder again,’ Nevyn told her. ‘We’ll rest here for some time before we push on into the forest.’

  ‘Well and good, then,’ Morwen said. ‘Evan and I can chase his ball around for a bit. Maybe he’ll sleep better this afternoon than he did last.’

  ‘I had a thought about that. The Westfolk women use a sort of sling made from a long bit of cloth to hold their children when they ride. It saves the back, they say. I’ll get a length of linen from Wffyn’s trade goods for you. He owes me somewhat for tending one of his men after an accident. Jennantar says he’ll help you rig it up.’

  ‘My thanks! That truly would be a comfort.’ All of a sudden Morwen felt tears rise in her throat. She turned sharply away.

  ‘What’s so wrong?’ Nevyn said.

  ‘Naught. This is just the first time in my life that anyone but my friend Lanni put some thought into helping me.’ Morwen snivelled back the tears and tried to smile. ‘It took me by surprise, like.’

  Using the sling did indeed ease much of the strain on Morwen’s back, because she no longer had to clutch Evan tightly to keep him from falling. He fussed about it at first, but once the caravan started down the well-shaded road through the forest, he drifted off to sleep. After Morwen’s scant rest of the night before, she turned drowsy as well. It took an effort of will, but she was determined to keep any more ghastly blood-soaked daydreams at bay. Fortunately, once they’d ridden deep into the trees, a new surprise brought her wide awake.

  Wildfolk popped into manifestation and thronged around the caravan. Sprites hovered in the air. Gnomes raced back and forth under the horses’ legs or rode on the mule packs. When they forded a shallow stream, undines rose up to splash water on the gnomes and giggle among themselves. Morwen hadn’t seen so many Wildfolk since Lanmara’s death, and for a moment, remembering how her beloved would have enjoyed the sight, she wept a few scattered tears of
old grief, until she noticed how Devaberiel and his two friends reacted to this sudden swarm. Not only did they seem to be watching the Wildfolk’s antic, but Devaberiel held out his hand to a sprite, who settled upon it just like a tame sparrow.

  I won’t have to hide it any more, she thought. They see them, too. She felt like throwing her head back and howling with delight, but the presence of the human men, who obviously saw nothing at all, kept her silent. All day the Wildfolk came and went, hovering around the Westfolk men. At night, when the caravan made its camp in a forest clearing, salamanders appeared to play among the flames in the Westfolk campfire. Evan had always been able to see the Wildfolk, and now he pointed them out to his father.

  ‘Manders, Da,’ he said.

  ‘Salamanders,’ Morwen corrected him. She glanced at Dev. ‘They’ve always been his favourites. I realized that he’d started to crawl when he nearly went right into the fire after them.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you pulled him back in time,’ Dev said, smiling. ‘Here, Evan. I’ll tell you a story about salamanders. You can lie down on my blankets right here to listen.’

  Once Evan had fallen asleep with his father to watch over him, Morwen got up and moved away from the smoky fire. To a farm woman like her, a day spent riding was a day free of real work. Since she wanted to exhaust herself in the hopes of having a sleep free of violent fantasies, she decided to walk around the edge of the camp a few times.

  Out behind the tethered mules and horses she saw someone moving through the trees—one of the muleteers, she assumed, but when she came closer, she saw a Westfolk woman. She was dressed just like the men, in leather leggings with high boots and a loose shirt belted at the waist, but she wore her thick honey-blonde hair in a single long braid down her back. In one hand she carried an unstrung bow, and at her hip hung a quiver of arrows. She smiled at Morwen and beckoned her over.

  ‘Forgive me for sneaking around like a thief,’ the woman spoke in a whisper. ‘But I can’t let the men see me here.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Morwen kept her voice low in return. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m looking for the man who stole my daughter. The child riding with you—he’s a little lad, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is, truly. Devaberiel’s his father.’

  ‘Ah.’ The woman nodded slowly. ‘Well, then, he can’t be my daughter, can he now? My thanks!’

  She turned, took one step, and vanished like a puff of smoke in the wind. Morwen felt the hair rising along her suddenly cold arms and the back of her neck. She ran all the way back to the light of the fire.

  The bard was lying asleep next to Evan. Morwen considered waking him to tell him about the strange woman, but her life had taught her that no one but Lanmara had ever cared about what she may have seen or done. Besides, her stories about the Wildfolk had got her beaten for a liar too many times as a child to risk telling a peculiar story now that she’d finally found people who treated her decently. Evan looked so comfortable that she decided to try leaving him with his father. She lay down on her own blankets and fell asleep straightaway, but she woke at intervals, listening for Evan. Somewhere in the middle of the night she heard him just starting to cry. As soon she got up and fetched him, he quieted right down.

  Much to her great relief, she had no dreams of maiming and killing all night long. In the morning when she woke, she remembered the woman, but the more she thought about the experience, the more it seemed to her that she must have dreamt it. No one but Lanmara had ever cared about her dreams. She put the incident out of her mind and set about feeding Evan his breakfast.

  Gwairyc found himself painfully confused by the Westfolk. At first they had seemed utterly alien, but as the caravan made its slow way west, he began to accept them. As they talked at the evening campfire or helped him tend the horses and Nevyn’s mule, he would begin thinking of them as ordinary enough men, merely with some odd details, like their ears. Yet just when he’d decided he’d got used to them, they’d come out with some idea that made them seem stranger than before.

  For instance, there was Devaberiel’s attitude to his son. Although he left the actual work to Morwen, such as feeding Evan and cleaning him up afterward, Devaberiel doted on the boy. He told him little stories, sang him little songs, and began teaching him the Westfolk language with every evidence of enjoying the process enormously. Gwairyc had never seen a man treat his son that way before. In fact, he’d never paid much attention to children at all. In his mind they fell under the rubric of women’s work and thus no business of his, either to like or dislike them.

  ‘Dev seems cursed glad to have an heir,’ Gwairyc remarked to Jennantar one evening.

  ‘Heir?’ Jennantar said. ‘Not truly. Not as you Deverry folk think of heirs, anyway.’

  ‘Well, a man needs someone to leave his property to.’

  Jennantar laughed, but pleasantly. ‘You’ll understand more once we get out on the grass,’ he said. ‘None of us have property, exactly, not as you’d think of it.’

  Gwairyc found he had no comment to make on such a bizarre idea, so he merely smiled.

  Gwairyc got his biggest surprise, however, when they reached the trading grounds. He’d been expecting a town of sorts with a seasonal market, just as he’d seen so many times on their journey west, that is, a rural place, and certainly isolated, but a town nonetheless. Instead, they rode free of the forest one sunny day to see a green sea stretching out ahead of them—a sea of grass, rippling with wind-blown waves, and dotted at some distance with a cluster of white tents like ships.

  ‘Ah, there they are!’ Nevyn rose in his stirrups and pointed at the tents. ‘There’s quite a crowd waiting for our merchant.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Gwairyc said. ‘That’s the Westfolk town?’

  ‘They don’t have any towns.’ Nevyn sat back down into his saddle. ‘They don’t farm, either, you see. They wander with the seasons out here with their herds of horses and flocks of sheep. They trade wool, lambs, deerskins and the like to border farmers for some of the things they can’t make themselves, but their real wealth is the horses. Look at Wffyn, come hundreds of miles to acquire a few.’

  Gwairyc shook his head in amazement. ‘Wandering around—that’s the strangest life I’ve ever heard of,’ he said at length. ‘What about their king? Does he go with them?’

  ‘He does, but truly, he’s not much of a king by our standards.’ Nevyn thought for a moment. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve never even heard his name. I do remember being told they have one, though.’

  ‘Ye gods, what a cursed lot of savages!’ Gwairyc shook his head again. ‘No wonder I’ve never heard of them before.’

  Devaberiel and his friends rode straight for the tents, but Wffyn halted his caravan at what looked to be a regular camp site for traders. Beside a stream where willows and tangles of hazel wands offered shade and some shelter from the wind, someone had built three stone firepits, about twenty feet apart and each large enough to roast an entire sheep, assuming of course that the cook had enough fuel to do so. Gwairyc had noticed Wffyn’s men cutting up extra deadfall wood during their forest camps, and now he understood why they’d carried it with them. Naught but grass out there, he thought, and he shivered with a toss of his head.

  Some of the muleteers began unloading the mules while others rummaged through the packs and brought out tether ropes and pegs. Wffyn wandered around, shouting orders, then stood talking to Nevyn. Gwairyc was waiting for Nevyn to tell him where totake their horses and mule when he noticed Morwen, standing at the edge of the confusion and staring out to the west. She was holding Evan’s hand, and the child was leaning against her as he too looked out onto this alien grassy sea. Gwairyc paused for a word with her.

  ‘How come you’re still here?’ he asked. ‘I thought you’d be over at the Westfolk tents.’

  ‘Dev wanted to tell his people that I was coming first,’ Morwen said. ‘Nevyn told me he’d take Evan and me over in a little while.’

  ‘I see.’ Gwairyc
gestured at the view. ‘It’s more than a little strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Morwen said. ‘I heard Dev and his friends talk about the grass, when they came to our village, I mean, but I never knew how vast it is! It chills my heart, somehow.’

  ‘You can always ride back with us when we leave here.’

  ‘My thanks, but ride back to what? I’d have to leave Evan, and I’d be twice cursed before I’d go back to my wretched brother. It would have to be the Temple of the Moon, and truly, I don’t know if I could bear being shut away like that for my whole life.’

  ‘Well, mayhap you’ll get used to the life out here.’

  ‘So I can hope.’ She pushed out a brave little smile. ‘And no doubt I can.’

  Back at the encampment, Wffyn’s men were busily raising tents and hauling the canvas mule-packs into them. Nevyn owned a tent, too, a shabby affair of much-mended canvas and ill-assorted sticks. It would protect their trove of herbs and other medicinals if it rained, but it wouldn’t keep one man dry, much less two of them.

  ‘You know, my lord,’ Gwairyc said, ‘we’ve done well this summer. Mayhap you could buy some new canvas if we go to a proper town when we leave here, one where we can find someone to lash a tent together, that is.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Nevyn said. ‘Don’t bother to set the old one up here. We’ll be sheltering with my friend Aderyn in his tent among the Westfolk.’

  ‘That gladdens my heart. I’ve slept wet many a time on campaign, but I can’t say I liked it. Should I tether our stock over with theirs, too?’

  ‘Just that. You know, I’m pleased to hear you say “we” in that casual way. I’ve been wondering if one morning I’d look around and find you gone.’

  ‘What? I promised the king I’d be at your beck, didn’t I? And truly, riding around like this, it’s not much worse than being with the army.’