Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  She smiled, understanding that she had probably intended all along to strike back at Burningloaf with the weapons he himself had nailed up against her. She might not even need to tear his blankets.

  Five iron tips she counted slanting up through the trapdoor; others, perhaps, had not poked up quite so far. Burningloaf was taking no chances. The sorceress almost giggled to think of the forest of supplies hanging below, more likely to arouse suspicion than turn it away.

  Some water still remained in the bowl which had held the sprouting bean. Frostflower poured it over the trapdoor, wetting all visible nail points. Then she settled herself comfortably on the floor, leaned forward, and touched the tip of a nail with either hand.

  There was, of course, no life at all to grasp in the metal. She must first project part of her own consciousness into the nails, feeling as iron might feel if it were capable of feeling. Identification with metal might take whole seasons from her own life, unless she rested afterwards in the trance of cool breathing; but only through identification could she put into the unliving material any substance with which to meld the sense of passing time.

  She closed her eyes, groping for a vague pseudo-memory of melting and hardening, of warm coals and cool water, of hammers, tongs, and files. Forged, polished, sharpened, driven up into wood, with the splinters clutching, mildly ticklish, around the metallic body. Then the wood splinters softening and swelling with a slow ooze of moisture… Yes, now she had the identification she needed. Into the iron’s simulated consciousness, she projected her own heartbeat.

  For a time her heart slowed between her lungs, held by the sluggishness of metal; but her will was stronger. First she brought the heartbeat back to its normal speed, both in her own chest and in its echo in the nails. Then faster, faster, like a drummer beating quickdance. She could not bring it to the speed of a steady whir, as she could do with living things—old Moonscar could race his projected heartbeat to a high-pitched whine even in soft metal and sandstone, but as yet Frostflower must be content with a rhythm no faster than a treehopper’s legs on a summer evening.

  Fortunately, this was fast enough. Even in its own time, wet iron began to rust within half a day; and with unliving metal, even a person’s normal heartpace would greatly speed its own natural processes. Within moments, Frostflower felt both nails weaken, crumble, snap—almost simultaneously—with the weight below. She heard the crash—one of the hooks, at least, must have supported heavy metal utensils. She glanced with satisfaction at the spots of rust on her two fingertips, then reached for another pair of nails before her concentration could break entirely.

  She had not yet begun to project her heartbeat into the next set, when Burningloaf’s voice reached her from below. “Frostflower! What—What have you—”

  “Stand away from beneath your weights, old friend!”

  “You fool! You—you sorceress!”

  “I regret sorcering in your house, old friend. But you yourself suggested that the fit comes upon us sometimes.”

  “You’ll wake the town! You’ll—”

  “It was you who hung the weights for me to play with. Stand away.”

  “No! Wait—Frostflower—friend—I’ll take them down! Give me time to take them down.”

  She lifted her hands, folded them in her lap, and waited, chuckling as she listened to his hasty thumps below. Poor Burningloaf! So much work to undo again. When at last he tapped six times on the trapdoor, she stood and lifted it, amused that he had gone back to the former signal instead of simply calling to her.

  He put the wooden ladder in the opening and climbed up, angry, shaken, and trembling, in his nightdress. She felt some remorse, but not overmuch, to see the terror beneath his wrath.

  “Here!” he began. “What did you mean, causing this noise?”

  “I meant to make the trapdoor light enough for me to lift.”

  “I worked longer than it takes to bake two ovenfuls, hanging those things to hide the trapdoor for you!”

  “Did you? So long? Forgive my ingratitude.” She realized she was beginning to badger him with words. As Thorn had badgered her? Or as Thorn had accused her and all her kind of doing? She must speak plainly. “When you imprison sorceri, even for their own protection, you make them very anxious, old friend. I mean to leave your house.”

  “You’re mad, Frostflower! You’ll be caught—raped, power-stripped—give us all away—”

  “If I remain, my presence here will condemn you more surely than anything I might say of you if I should be taken outside.”

  “You won’t go, sorceress! I’ll find some way of keeping the door shut.”

  A second time he had called her sorceress, after so long avoiding that word in seeming consideration for their friendship. “Would you lose an outer wall the next time?” she said.

  He glanced at her, glanced quickly away to other things—his wall, his window grate, the baby in his kneading-trough, the dog whining interestedly on the floor. “Stay the rest of tonight and tomorrow. You can start as soon as it gets dark tomorrow night.”

  “I will do better to start at once. By tomorrow, Maldron’s search may have reached as far as the Rockroots and beyond.”

  “I suppose you’ll try to go through the marshes, like that idiot swordswoman?”

  “Thorn has gone into the marshlands?” Inwardly, the sorceress moaned. Did Thorn know them well enough to escape their treachery? Aloud, she said, “No. Why should I risk my Starwind in the marshes? My way lies north. I shall try to slip through the northern reaches of Beldrise.”

  “Maldron’s own forest?”

  “Would he not be as incredulous as you to think it of me?” Frostflower smiled. “Now, old friend, you will bring me the rope and basket to lower my dog?”

  Sullenly, the baker climbed down. When he reached the ovenroom floor, he hesitated, then put his hands on the ladder and glanced furtively upward.

  The sorceress had been watching his moves. “You may leave me ladderless again, but this time I will not replace the trapdoor.” She half-pointed her finger at him—a harmless and meaningless gesture, charged only with the exaggerations and superstitions of farmers’ folk. Burningloaf jumped away from the ladder and hurried to find the large basket and bring it up to her.

  Thorn had pulled Dowl up in this basket unaided. Frostflower needed Burningloaf’s help to lower the heavy dog, who sat patiently cramped and wagging his tail for most of the way down, until, when within a few rungs’-lengths of the ovenroom floor, he jumped out, to station himself beside the ladder. Frostflower would not entrust Starwind to the basket. She carried him down secure in her arm. Once, while descending, she glanced up to see Burningloaf, who was still in the upper room, glaring down at her. For a moment she felt as he must have felt to see her gazing down and pointing her finger at him. God! He would not push the ladder with her and the child on it? She had not so thoroughly destroyed the trust and friendship of years, in this one evening? Holding Starwind closer, she returned the baker’s stare until he turned his head.

  Then she hurried down the last rungs, chucked softly to Dowl, and slipped out the back door before Burningloaf could descend.

  The night had largely cleared. Clouds still blotted many of the constellations, but the moon showed Frostflower that the time was after midnight. She circled north and east around Gammer’s Oak, thankful that it was too small and poor a village to be walled. The mud was soft and oozing, ready to melt her tracks and Dowl’s as it must earlier have melted Thorn’s.

  On the western side of Straight Road, the sorceress hesitated. Beldrise loomed dark across the embankment; would her safest plan really be to slip north through Maldron’s own woods? Yet this part of the forest was far removed from the farmer’s walls, and the very shadows and wood noises that seemed to menace her would help hide her movement.

  She hurried across the road and among the trees. A low branch brushed her face and she shrank back, holding down a gasp. Then she smiled. Would any farmers’ folk believ
e that a sorceron could be as timid of dark woods as were other people? Did they not believe sorceri to be creatures of darkness, at home in such places on nights like this? Frostflower kissed the infant, who was beginning to cry, and hummed him back into tranquility. She stroked Dowl’s head for a few moments, then began to pick her way slowly and carefully between the trees, keeping near enough the forest’s edge that she could make out the line where woods thinned on the border of the road.

  When day broke, she moved further into the woods, so as not to be glimpsed from the road. She was by now very tired. She had not slept for a day and a night, had not truly rested since just before her castigation by Thorn, had eaten nothing since leaving the baker’s house except a piece of her dinner loaf, which she had carried away in her deep pocket. She stumbled often, and sometimes, when for a moment her mind let go the thought of her danger, she began to doze on her feet.

  Nevertheless, she continued. They would not expect to find her in Beldrise; hence, they would not search here. But the general search would move in all directions, and might be waiting to seize her somewhere on the other side. She had set out with the determination to outstrip Maldron’s warriors. Long before she reached the Rockroots, she knew she could not succeed in this aim. Her muscles would not carry her far enough and fast enough. Nor would Dowl’s strength outlast hers; the dog was keeping pace with her only through loyalty and because her own steps were unsteady, her own speed flagging. If she attempted pushing herself too far, she might fall on top of the infant.

  She decided to aim no further than the Rockroots. Somewhere in those outcroppings of stone and crag, jagged and riddled like a miser’s teeth, she could surely find a small cave or other shelter. She would hide in the nearest boulders to Beldrise, thus keeping the protection of being in the unexpected place. And she would rest there several days, growing small vegetables for herself just before sunset and just after sunrise, hoping that her breasts would fill by the time she had run out of goat’s milk for Starwind.

  She hoped she had made a clear, prudent plan about hiding in the Rockroots. She began to mistrust her thoughts—that simile about the miser’s rotting and calcined teeth seemed in retrospect dangerously near a dream musing.

  About mid-morning she came to the first of the Rockroots. She had to search several of the piles before she found a formation with a crevice that might be suitable. It was not a good hiding place. While searching for it, in her weariness she accidentally broke some of the bushes that grew before the opening, and had to cut down a few more wild shrubs and drag them over to help screen her refuge. And it was scarcely large enough for all three of them. Once inside, she had no room to hold Starwind to her breast nor feed him with the spoon. Fortunately, there was a small natural ledge on which she could place him and thus avoid the danger of pressing or overlaying him; without this ledge, she would have rejected the crevice as even a temporary shelter, for she had no space within to roll from side to side. She must lie on her stomach, head resting on her folded arms. Her feet pressed into the narrow angle where two boulders met, while her elbows brushed the leaves at the opening; and Dowl had to sprawl on her back and learn painfully that he could not lift his head too high. No, they could not hide here several days. They must leave as soon as possible and find a better hiding place, deeper among the Rockroots. But first, she must sleep.

  She thought of entering the trance of cool breathing, and regaining the time she had lost from the end of her life by identifying with iron in order to rust it. But Starwind depended on her. Even now, through simple weariness, her sleep would be too sound for safety…moreover, to enter the trance, the mind should be more clear.

  * * * *

  She woke to hear Starwind crying. Somehow it seemed like a wail that had been going on a long time. The weight was gone from her back, the loose bushes knocked down from in front of the opening. Clearly Dowl had taken his dog’s rest and jumped outside to hunt small animals for his food.

  “Hush, hush,” whispered the sorceress, reaching up one hand to soothe the infant. The movement of her thin, lithe fingers, fluttering and forming into designs of light and dark above his face, seemed to hold his attention for a few moments. While he was quiet, she listened carefully, and heard no suspicious sound, nothing but woodland noises from the edge of Beldrise, and the soft whining of her dog somewhere on top of the rocks. She peered cautiously out. The setting sun cast long shadows eastward through a golden atmosphere, tranquil and lonely.

  In spite of Dowl’s escape knocking away the screening bushes, in spite of the baby’s crying, the hiding place had not been discovered. The sorceress edged her way out of the crevice. Peering around once more, and still seeing nothing to fear, she turned, bent, and gathered Starwind from his ledge. He began to cry again, and for a few moments she heard nothing but his wails, her own hushing murmurs and, as a background, Dowl’s baying.

  Starwind in one arm and the goatskin of milk in the other, she backed a few steps away from the rock. Dowl was barking eagerly, as if to welcome her out of hiding. Strange, that he had not bounded down to her by now. Taking another step backward, she looked up.

  Sitting on top of the boulders with Dowl was the farmer-priest.

  Frostflower spun round. A warrior had appeared at the edge of the woods—a tall, broad-shouldered spearwoman facing the sorceress almost directly across the rocky meadow. Frostflower was not sure how far a warrior could hurl a spear, but guessed she was within range.

  Other warriors were slipping out from between the trees on either side of the first—spearwomen and swordswomen. Not only from the trees—they were also coming from behind the nearest boulders. Turning again, Frostflower saw a huge, scar-faced axewoman standing beside the very rocks which formed her crevice.

  There was little moisture in the air, little play of hot and cold currents, not a cloud nor a stirring of wind strong enough to manipulate with any effect. Caught without weather resources, she was surrounded by a circle that cautiously drew tighter—obedient, no doubt, to signals from the farmer-priest who sat above, holding and stroking Dowl. Eight warriors…no, nine. They were shy of her—yes, though they despised sorceri and obeyed their farmer, they still feared tales of sorcerous evil. Frostflower dropped the goatskin and lifted her hand, pointing at one of the spearwomen.

  The warrior faltered, fell back a step, and raised her spear.

  “Stop!” ordered Maldron.

  The warrior lowered her weapon, but stood reluctant to take another step. Her companions glanced around at one another.

  “She cannot throw her spells at you with a child in her arms,” the priest went on. “Nor are you to risk injuring the babe.”

  As long as she held Starwind, and the warriors obeyed their farmer, so long was she safe. But that could not be long. And at any moment fear might overcome obedience and one of the spearwomen, or even the axewoman nearly at her shoulder, might strike her down—such things had happened, and the farmer usually punished the disobedience mildly, with one or two lashes of a light ceremonial whip.

  Frostflower’s only chance for escape was to set Starwind down and run for the opening between two warriors now, while the circle was still wide enough. Probably their spears would strike her down, but that would be better than what might follow if she waited. Yet she would have to lay the infant down quickly—too quickly—and abandon him without seeing whether he escaped accident. So she stood and waited, holding him closer to her with both arms.

  The warriors were coming no nearer, at least for a while. They stood warily, hate and anger in their faces, blotted out now and then by a recurrence of fear.

  “You have yet to be purified, sorceress,” said Maldron.

  Could this have been his purpose in tracking her down? “You have brought nine warriors after me so that you could purify me for witnessing a part of your ritual, Reverence?”

  “It was a solemn and secret rite, even though you blaspheme it in your mind, sorceress.”

  “I could trust you m
ore readily if you had brought two or three warriors, instead of ringing me in with nine.

  “You slipped away once already from two warriors.”

  Frostflower did not remind him it was Thorn, and not herself, who had defeated Wasp and Clopmule. “You have not changed the purification rites from those you fixed before?”

  “Have you spoken to any person of what you saw and heard?”

  “I have not.” Not even with Thorn had she discussed the farmers’ ritual.

  “Then your purification remains what it would have been.”

  The sorceress looked from face to face. It was still light enough for the warriors to see the colors of her eyes, and they glanced quickly away, but stood in their places. “Send away your warriors, Reverence,” said Frostflower, “and I will submit with all good will.”

  “You will submit while my warriors look on, sorceress. You have no choice.”

  One of the spearwomen muttered something. Frostflower caught the words: “…blasts us all.”

  “Silence!” Maldron, too, had heard the warrior. “The sorceress knows she has nothing to fear in the rite, unless any mischance should cause my knife to slip. Obey my commands, and she will blast none of you.”

  Frostflower shivered. She could hardly believe Maldron had come merely to finish his silly and superstitious rite of purification…yet she saw no men except himself among his party, no brawny young smiths or stablehands such as came with their copper bars and sprunging-sticks to second the warriors on a sorceress hunt. And never had she heard that a farmer-priest used his own body to take a sorceress’ power. So, her back against the rock, she hugged Starwind and waited unmoving for Maldron to descend.

  The farmer disappeared from the top of the boulders and climbed down somewhere in back. When he reappeared, on the side where his axewoman stood, Frostflower saw that he held Dowl by a light leash. The farmer walked carefully, keeping his left shoulder stiff; and she remembered the blood flowing from it yesterday. A woman in gray smock and kerchief, carrying a large basket, followed him—an old, comfortable-seeming creature who must have been waiting behind the rocks.