Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  The eyelids trembled and lifted. The eyes no longer shocked so greatly, when their unmatched colors were softened in the candlelight and when one was prepared for them. In a strange way, they almost added to the appeal of the face. But the lines of suffering returned, even before the sorceress tried to raise herself on her pillows.

  Planting the candle in one of the bedpost holders, Inmara bent and transferred the child to Frostflower. The sorceress bundled him eagerly and gently into her arms, careful not to bump him with her fingers that had been bandaged into pegs. It was almost like watching a mother whose hands had been cut off, fondling her babe with the stumps.

  Then, stroking the tiny head with the three uninjured fingers of her right hand, Frostflower gazed up with gratitude beyond words; and Inmara wondered how her eyes could once have seemed grotesque and menacing. She understood the beauty her husband found in this sorceress—she desired Frostflower for a sister as much as he desired her for another wife. She could not imagine feeling the same jealousy toward Frostflower that she felt towards Enneald on the few nights when Maldron chose the younger wife’s bedchamber.

  If a mortal could question Jehandru’s plan, Inmara would say the gods had been cruel to give Frostflower to the sorceri to raise. Or had it been her own choice? Could this young woman, who might have been so useful, so fertile—could she have chosen of her own will to follow one of those accursed sorceri who slunk about the towns teaching their unclean superstitions? Or could she have been one of the unliving, unnatural children they sorcered together out of snow and mud? No; her pain was too clearly real. She was flesh…surely she was herself another child stolen in infancy and nursed on corruption. Had she been saved from her kidnapper, as Maldron had saved the boy from her…

  “Lady,” murmured the sorceress, “you will help me bare my breast?”

  “What?”

  “To let him suck…one last time?” Holding him curled in her left arm, Frostflower began pulling at the cloth of her garment.

  For a moment the priestess felt horror. Did stolen babes, then, suck their first poison from the nipples of barren sorceresses? “You…have milk?”

  “Not yet. I might have had, in a few more days.” A look of appeal from those large, sad eyes. “It is useless now, but still, to feel him once more…”

  “You—What kind of milk?” Inmara should have snatched him at once from the sorceress, before disgust had melted again in confusion and pity.

  Frostflower smiled and sighed. “It is not sorcerous, Lady. If it were, I could not have hoped to produce it now, even were I to have lived. When a baby sucks long enough and often enough, the breast will fill at last for it.”

  Sorceri were treacherous; but none of them, not even those who had blasted into senility and death the men or warriors who stripped their power, had afterwards been able to harm anyone. “This is no sorcerous power?”

  “We are flesh. Is my body so different from yours?”

  I should not have come, thought the priestess. She will corrupt me. Has she corrupted us already, that even now Maldron would forgive her treachery and come to her bed, for the names of the child’s parents?

  Even as she thought this, Inmara was stooping to help Frostflower pull up the garment. She watched in fascination and longing as the infant nuzzled patiently. “But you are—you were virginal.”

  The blue and brown eyes glanced up at Inmara, then back to the baby. “His warrior mother, who did not want him, used to grow impatient when I stopped to suckle him.”

  Why did she persist in the lie that would kill her? “We know Thorn could not have mothered him.”

  “You will have as much hope of giving him milk as I had. You will have more. You can sit with him in safety.”

  “I am no sorceress.”

  Frostflower moved the child to her other breast. “Tomorrow… Lady, tomorrow I stand before a crowd of folk who…hate us, think us monsters, who will rejoice that they can shout at me unafraid. Lady—what will my scaffolding be?”

  Inmara shrugged helplessly. “I think he has not yet decided.”

  “I hope it will not be the stones. I hope it will be disemboweling—if I could ask for disemboweling? Lady, I do not want to hang too long alive, with them…enjoying themselves around the gibbet. There, there! Hush, hush, my Starwind, all is well. It is nothing, lady. I have disturbed him a little with my fears, that is all.”

  The baby had started to cry. Stroking his head again, Frostflower hummed some soft melody, weird yet soothing. Gradually her hand stopped trembling, her humming grew steadier, and the babe quieted and returned to his sucking.

  If we could find some man and woman in one of the towns, Inmara thought—some man and woman who would take the child, so that Frostflower could name them…but there is no time, I know none of the townsfolk well enough, we cannot confide in anyone else, and if the true parents were found—and I am considering a lie! Gods forgive me, Raes and Aeronu forgive me, Ontaraec of the Harvest Gate forgive me, all gods and goddesses forgive me, Jehandru of the Seven Secret Names forgive me, I was considering a lie to save a sorceress.

  “We will have warriors to guard you,” the priestess said. “To keep off the common folk.”

  “If I could have one…one person tomorrow who understood that we are not so different, not so…vile. Lady, it will be nothing unclean for you to try to nurse him. It will not displease your gods. You have your own wetnurses sometimes?”

  Inmara took the sorceress’ free hand, the hand not needed to support the child. She held it long, pressing it just enough for affection, careful not to press the fingertips. We do not hate you, Frostflower, she thought. If you will only give us honesty, we will give you love, a pure home, children; even Enneald and her daughter will accept you in time. She did not say this aloud; it had already been said very often, and a farmer should not beg a sorceron. But she thought it as if the sorceress could somehow hear it in her brain.

  At length the infant slept soundly again. Inmara gave Frostflower the wine she should have given her earlier. Probably the sorceress understood it contained herbs to bring sleep. Condemned persons sometimes preferred to spend their last hours awake, but Frostflower drank obediently, without protest.

  “Teach him mercy, Lady,” she said as Inmara wiped her lips.

  “It is for his parents to teach him.”

  “You will not find them. Only let no one take him who cannot tell you of the small mole on the knuckle of his middle finger.”

  Frostflower slept. The priestess left with the infant, closing the door softly. Yes, she thought, old Cradlelap always had full breasts when a child needed suckling. I will ask her tomorrow. To feel him at my own nipple, my little adopted Terndasen…

  Gods! If we do not find his parents, then perhaps Frostflower told the truth—I will not be able to keep the child without guilt for what we have done to the sorceress!

  He was awake and crying again. He must have sensed her anxiety, as he had sensed Frostflower’s a short time ago. She would have to walk a while in the dark hall, to calm him and herself, before returning to her chamber and Maldron in her bed.

  CHAPTER 6

  Meat! Good, red butcher’s meat roasting somewhere to the southeast of her.

  Foraging off the wildlands was not all that damn simple, not for a lone swordswoman who had spent her twenty-four years in raidfare and other hand-to-hand bladeplay, in her spare hours gambling or finding men to milk. That other time Thorn had been in the woods, after the bloody farce of a raid on what-was-his-name, there were two spearwomen in the party, and one of them had worked some time as a townwarrior in Five Roads Crossing, where she learned to bring down thieves. A warrior who knew how to throw a spear could get stags, does, wolves, rabbits, even squirrels—though the squirrels might end up pretty well splattered. With a sword—damn it, the deer and rabbits could smell her somehow before she got close enough; and it was her damn luck, not one boar or wolf had tried to charge her, not even a mangy bear. The first thing she wa
s going to do when she reached Nedgebottom was get a spear and learn how to throw it, one of those nice, light, screw-apart spears she could carry around with no extra trouble. The next thing, maybe, find someone who could show her how to set snares and make traps. Three bloody days farting around alone in these stinking woods had given Thorn a little more perspective on death and Hellbog, but the experience had not done one damn thing to fill her stomach.

  Frostflower could at least have grown vegetables, pointed out which weeds and berries and mushrooms were poisonous—gods! the fluttering nightmares that one batch of toadstools had given Thorn, or maybe it had been those purplish berries. Damn things had been sour, anyway. Maybe it was the empty belly and the bloody nightmares two days ago that had taught her a few new ways to think about death and afterwards. or maybe it was just the damn loneliness. Smardon’s fleshhooks, even a few horny demons would be better than nobody but the flies and bugs! Even that damn little sorceress for company…how was Frostflower doing by now? Halfway back to her bloody retreat, if she had been smart and lucky. Well, if it was just being alone that had given Thorn a different view on Hellbog, then, damn it! she could at least have thought things over on a full stomach.

  Meanwhile, she was getting closer to the roasting meat. She could glimpse the wagon now, through the trees: a merchant’s wagon, six wheels and a bright green cloth tent over a high framework. A pretty damn prosperous merchant to risk camping in the woods instead of heading for the nearest town. Well, he was still in south Beldrise, or maybe north Weldervise by now; and since he could not have made either Frog-in-the-Millstone or Gammer’s Oak (depending on which direction he was headed) before twilight, he was better off fairly close to Maldron’s Farm than on the road after dark.

  Maldron’s Farm. Yes. Still have to be careful, Thorn. After three days of working your way around the farmer’s wall like a lost turtle with a cracked shell, stopping to hide for five or six hundred heartbeats at every suspicious noise, it would be a bloody waste to let yourself get caught now. A damn bad bargain to sell your life for a full belly before you have a fighting chance to get the Warriors’ God and maybe a few others back on your side.

  She worked her way around the camp, looking over the situation. Merchant apparently in his wagon-tent—the bastard had better come out and turn his meat pretty soon. Six—no, seven donkeys tethered out to graze. Maybe she could slip in and untether one, make it look as if the beast had broken loose and run away. And then what? Eat it, or ride it? Probably eat it; she was no stablewoman—she could make maybe one out of twenty animals obey her. But she could not eat the whole damn carcass, and if she left part of it…well, the wolves and birds would get to it and make it look like some animal’s kill.

  Hellbog! She would have to wait for night, for the merchant to go to sleep, and meanwhile smell his roasting beef. Unless she could slip close enough now—no, here he came, sauntering out of the wagon. Damn cock of a merchant, wearing his green—was it velvet? Hard to tell from this distance. And carrying a copper-covered wine flask. Maybe if she jumped in and—no, she was no bloody thief!

  Too bad she had taken a bath in the river a few hours ago. Stupid thing to do; but when she found the old Glant slugging its way through the forest, she was in it and scrubbing the stink and itch out of her hair and skin before she even stopped to think that a good, thick layer of dirt made a fairly decent disguise. Maybe she could rub more dirt into her hair and over her face? Well, before she went out of her way to get that itching back, she was going to move a little closer and see whether the merchant was worth it. But, gods! she was hungry for meat and a good pricking, preferably in that order. And that merchant might have a pretty long tool under his fancy green tunic.

  She had not yet learned to move quietly enough to slip up on wild game, but at least her rumbling stomach and her brushing over leaves and humus did not alert the merchant or his donkeys. She got to within six or seven paces, approaching him from the side, and then squatted behind some kind of bush to be sure of what she saw. Hellbog, yes—she could handle him! Already the Warriors’ God seemed to be back on her side.

  “Spendwell, you damn pricking bastard!” she said cheerfully, standing up and striding out from behind the bush.

  He looked up, his copper-covered flask still at his mouth, and half-choked. She walked over and thumped him once or twice on the back.

  “Thorn! You—you’re alive?”

  “If that last thwack didn’t feel solid, I can thump you again. Got another cushion or two for a guest?”

  “In my wagon. I’ll get them. Here.” Wiping his mouth, he tried to give her the flask.

  She glanced at a dark red drop left in the corner of his mouth. A few swallows of wine might be pleasant for a change, after what she had been through these last few days. But, damn it, she was still a hunted woman. “You know I never touch the stuff, merchant. I hope you’ve got a good supply of milk in that wagon of yours. Or water.” Some good, clean, tasteless, town water from a filterer’s shop would be like tingling snow in her mouth after the raw, creature-infested stuff she had been drinking from the forest streams.

  “I can give you honeymilk, rosewater, or mintwater.” From his tone, she wondered if he was offering the stuff or trying to sell it. From his selection, it was obvious he was a cloth merchant and not a beverage merchant.

  “Gah! No plain charcoal-water? All right, bring out your damn honeymilk.” Added sweetness was more palatable in milk than in water.

  While waiting for Spendwell to return, Thorn settled on his cushions and cut off a hunk of beef straight from the spit. She balanced it on Stabber’s point and took a bite. It was still red and dripping; but the one rabbit she had been able to kill she had chewed up raw rather than risk a fire; and, even when only half-done, beef smacked of towns and comfort.

  Spendwell, coming back from the wagon, put a skin of honeymilk at her side and then had the sense to sit on the new cushions he had brought out for himself and keep quiet for a few minutes while she ate. There was some hope for the pricker, after all.

  With an effort, Thorn stopped eating before her appetite was satisfied. Gorging after a three-day fast could be worse than getting drunk. “So that’s your wagon,” she remarked, looking it over. She had known he was well off, by his clothes, when she met him in Three Bridges; but this was the first time she had seen his property. “Pretty fancy stuff, merchant. Aren’t you afraid of robbers, camped out here in the woods?”

  “I have a safe-passage from Maldron. Ultimate payment for anyone who attacks me.” Spendwell fumbled at the traders’ permits hanging on the chain around his neck and finally held up a medallion in the form of three golden wheat-heads surrounding an apple.

  Thorn laughed. Ultimate payment was pretty strong—hardly enough left of a poor bastard to hang up after the scaffolding was over, and Hellbog guaranteed—but death was death and Hellbog went down only so deep. “A farmer’s threat is good when and if he catches whoever murdered you. And you can be sure, if they find that token around your neck after they attack, they’ll hack you into so many pieces your parents wouldn’t know you, and melt down your cute little safe-passage token into the measure.”

  Spendwell fingered the token nervously. “No…they wouldn’t dare hurt me once they saw—”

  “Then you’d better get all your other tokens off your chest and into your purse so Maldron’s trinket shows up bright and clear. And paint the symbol all over your tent. Make sure they see it before they decide to attack. And then pray to the Merchants’ God nobody sees you who doesn’t have anything to lose.”

  “What could be worse than—”

  “I don’t know about that, but it couldn’t be so much worse than whatever Maldron already has planned for me.” Thorn swallowed a few more mouthfuls of honeymilk and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, her sleeve being too dirty to touch her lips.

  “You—You wouldn’t hurt me, Thorn?”

  “Not if you’re a good boy, Spendwell.” She grinn
ed. Maybe later on she would scare him out of any ideas he might hatch about betraying her; but she saw no use in shaking his guts loose now, especially if she hoped to get a good tumble out of him tonight. “Eat your dinner. It should be brown enough even for you by now.”

  He cut a few thin slices from the end of the roast and scooped them into his silver-plated bowl. Despite his efforts at daintiness, he slopped some juice over the edge; but otherwise he seemed to be relaxing a little. “You can depend on me, Thorn. I wouldn’t mention to a stable cat that I saw you.”

  “Merchant’s honor.” She had not intended sarcasm, but he must have heard it in her voice, because he bristled in spite of his nervousness.

  “Yes, I am an honest merchant, Thorn. You can trust me.”

  “I never said you weren’t.” Was this herself—Thorn—being conciliatory? I must be more tired than I thought, she mused. Or more desperate. Four or five days ago I would have jumped at the chance for a quarrel. “Look, I’ve probably ruined your cushions with this three days of forest dirt on my pants. I’ll pay you someday when I’ve got the money.”

  “No—no. My gift. Nobody’s likely to ask me if I saw you, anyway. Maldron’s pretty well stopped looking for you.”

  “He has?”

  “Oh, he still has a few spearwomen patrolling the marshlands here and there, but nobody really expects… How did you get out of those marshes, anyway?”

  The swordswoman laughed. Damn baker, she had taken his measure pretty well. Maybe she should go back and put Slicer through his guts a couple of times, but the old bastard had done her a good turn when he thought he was betraying her. “I never went into the stinking marshes, my boy.”