Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  She reached the end of the curve, squatted down on hands and knees again, and started her crawl along the eastern alcoves. The farmers’ after-supper entertainments must have ended while she was on her way around the garden, because now she heard voices in almost every alcove. In the sixth, she finally heard what she wanted—not the brat squalling, but something almost as good: a lullaby.

  The singer did not sound like an old woman, but how the Hellbog could you tell from a soft, gushy lullaby? The nurse Spendwell mentioned could not have been decrepit, or she would not have been along at the capture. Or the singer might be one of the old biddy’s assistants. Strange thing, priests’ chants were different from all other music, and usually you could tell farmers’ ballads from the kind of songs other folk enjoyed, but lullabies all sounded pretty much alike. The swordswoman crouched outside the alcove listening to bunkum about bees, lambs, and golden pears until she heard a couple of silly gurgles and a few murmurs which satisfied her that the brat really was in there, that it was not just some beginning nurse or sappy farmer-girl practicing.

  Sixth room on the east side from the garden wall, fifth from the front door. Thorn was getting itchy to retreat and wait at a safer distance until everyone was snoring, but she sat tight a while longer to make sure they were not going to move the brat to some other room. Damn stupid planning if they did, but what did the swordswoman know about how farmers—or anyone else except warriors in their barracks—raised babies? She could not remember anything about her own life before she was four or five, already housebroken, and tumbling up somehow or other with half a score other baby bitches toward adult life in the townwarriors’ barracks of All Roads West. She sure as Hellstink had never bothered about how grubs got to be four or five years old.

  Putting her ear to the wall, she heard soft footsteps, the burr of rockers, another drippy lullaby. Then the rockers gradually seemed to stop. That clinched it. Surely nobody would rock a brat to sleep if she did not intend to leave it in the same room for a while. At this time of evening, probably overnight.

  The warrior crawled away from the building and lay on her belly about forty paces distant, waiting. The nurse’s window-lattice darkened soon enough. So did the room to the right of hers; the room to the left had not been lit all evening, so far as Thorn could tell. She got up. Only two alcoves on this side still showed lights. She slipped around to the other side, this time crawling past the front door on her belly, and saw the boastful priestlings still had their lamp or candle lit, alone in this row of alcoves. She wandered around the inner farm, keeping her muscles limber and checking the lay of the land. The workers were all sleeping like good little cows, their cottages completely dark. The lower floor of the warriors’ barracks was dark, too, but the upper floor was still lighted and noisy. Too many lazy bitches used being warriors as an excuse for snoring in bed half the morning.

  She approached the farmers’ hall again, slipped into the nursery cottage that was not being used as a storehouse, and took a nap. She guessed she would not oversleep, not after dozing the afternoon away in the rotten burrow; but she tied a cord around her left little toe just to make sure the throbbing would get her up before too long.

  The moon was rising above the hall, heading for a bank of clouds a little way up, when she awoke. The priestlings were still giggling in their now-darkened alcove. Thorn cursed them softly and went to take another look at the barracks. This time they were completely dark. If it was after Maldron’s curfew for the warriors, it was bloody well time for the farmers themselves to be asleep. Thorn returned to the hall and listened at the priestlings’ bedroom. It was quiet now, but she waited to hear snoring before she made her rounds of the rest of the building.

  Everything was dark, and all seemed quiet…nothing but snores and other sleep-noises. She made her way to the front door. Absurdly, before lifting the curtain, she stopped, groped for one of the pieces of sheepskin hanging beside the steps, and wiped her boots clean.

  Well, maybe it was not so absurd, after all. She would do better not to leave dirty tracks all over the farmers’ tiled floors. She assumed Maldron had tiled floors. Most farmers she had worked for did. When she got inside she could feel, by the slight unevenness beneath her soft leather soles, that she was right.

  Only twice had she ever been farther into a farmers’ hall than the entranceway. If she could have had enough light to see it, what a spectacle Maldron’s long room must be! Ask warriors and commoners how they pictured the Glorious Harvest, and five out seven said they thought it was like the great hall of a very rich farmer. Maldron might not be especially rich as farmers went, but by all report he had one of the most ancient halls. Some of his mosaics might even have been plastered up in the days when warriors were priestesses. Pity Thorn could not get a look at them. Even in the dark, she felt a heady temptation to swagger a little down the middle of the long chamber.

  The great hall was not completely dark. A little nightglow sneaked in through the front doorcurtain and the high windows beneath the rafters, while Thorn could glimpse dim blue constant-wicks at the dais-end of the hall and on the corridor walls behind the inner archways. It was just dark enough so that what light there was seemed bloody little, even for a warrior. The interior darkness was thicker than the night outside.

  Thorn would have felt happier with weapon in hand; but the farmers, if they came, would not come at her with swords, and her own blades were more likely to clatter against something if they were drawn, so she left them in their sheaths. At first she held her hands out in front of her, and probed the emptiness with her toe before each step…but if you were going to swagger, you might as well swagger, not grope like a blasted fool. Just five strides, she promised herself, lowering her arms and letting them swing free. Just five strides across a farmer’s hall for once in my bloody life, and then I’ll get over to an archway and find the nurse’s room.

  Four strides she took free and loose, not looking down—then her foot hit something clumpy that wiggled and yelped.

  She caught herself and crouched rather than fell, drawing Stabber with her left hand and grabbing with her right. Damn dog! Damn farmers, letting their mangy animals sprawl out on their fancy tile floors!

  She got her right arm around some thick part of the mutt’s body. Her left arm was raised and taut—a second yelp, anything that felt like a bark or growl beginning, and the mongrel was dead. But it did not bark, or even thrash around. The damn thing whined and wagged its tail—she could feel the tip of it hitting her backbone, up and down.

  How the Hellstink did you ask a lousy mutt if it was an old friend? What the Hell was the bugger’s name? Dowl. “Dowl?” she whispered. The dog whined again, threw back its head, and somehow connected its sloppy tongue with her face.

  She got her right hand around its slimy muzzle and squeezed the jaws together. Returning her knife to his sheath, she reached back to catch the dog’s tail and hold it down, stop its blasted tapping against the floor. To her surprise—and the mongrel’s own good luck—it kept quiet and let her listen. For about twenty heartbeats something seemed wrong…someone must be awake somewhere, the air was not moving right, the whole feel of the sleeping hall had been upset. But where? If somebody was up and stirring, in which bedroom…on which side of the hall? There were no sounds of anyone being awake, unless somebody had stopped snoring. Damn! The snores were not all that loud anyway, not out here in the middle of the hall. And people could stop snoring without waking up.

  Hell of a stupid way to get caught, sprawling out in the middle of a tiled floor with one hand around a slimy set of dog-jaws and the other holding down a fool tail, and your own butt squatting on the dog’s behind. Maybe if they found her, she could say she had only come to screw with a dog! Hellstink, she did not even remember whether Frost’s mutt was a he or a she.

  Well, when she could sit here thinking nonsense like this, she could guess none of the farmers had awakened. Slowly the warrior straightened her legs until she was bending over
the dog instead of squatting astraddle its rump. “Quiet!” she whispered—as if Dowl could understand her—and unclamped her hand from its muzzle, wiping the snot off her palm onto her trousers.

  Maybe the damn mutt understood. It made one more puzzled little whine, but so softly that even Thorn hardly heard it. She lifted her other hand off its tail. It wagged once. She held it down again, then released it for good. She could not stand here all night holding down a dog’s tail.

  The animal got to its feet and walked out from between her legs. She felt its tail hitting her calves as it wagged happily in the unthumping air.

  The warrior turned and relocated herself. She could still make out the front door, its curtain vaguely gray in the nightglow. The farther, dais-end of the hall was a big shadow with one constant-wick in the darkness. Thorn was only a few paces from the first archway to the alcoves.

  She headed for it without wasting any more time, stepping carefully to make sure she did not come down on any more sleeping dogs’ tails. The mongrel she had already roused padded along behind her; but, as long as it was not barking and had quit whining, she was not going to risk kicking it away or whispering anything else at its stupid ears.

  Maybe all I really need to take back to Frost is her silly mutt? Na. I don’t even know if this is the right one. Damn thing might have slobbered just as much if I’d called it Frogface or Stinkfly. And why risk my guts to bring out nothing but a mangy dog?

  Slipping through the archway, the warrior counted the small blue constant-wicks burning outside each bedchamber. Sixth from the garden-end, fifth from the front entrance. Through the thin summer curtain of the nurse’s room Thorn could see the tiny vigil candle—a little incense to please a favorite god and keep out the bugs—a few shapes, a few shadows, nothing else. She could not even hear the nurse’s snores. Slowly, careful not to let any of the curtain-weights click, Thorn began to lift the cloth.

  CHAPTER 7

  Maldron was sleeping tonight in Enneald’s bed. He had not spent a night with his second wife since before the afternoon when he and Inmara consecrated their love to Aeronu Goddess of Birth, and, in the turmoil that followed the holy rite, he had received the wound in his shoulder. Night by night, as he retreated to Inmara’s chamber for easing of the pain in his body and spirit, Enneald had grown more impatient; day by day, her words became more spiteful. At last this evening Inmra, struggling with her own need, had begged Maldron to sleep with the younger woman. Enneald had been lonely for six nights; Maldron would displease Jehandru if he stayed away any longer from her. Inmara had the child in her chamber to help bring comfort.

  The child was at once comfort, fear, and guilt. Her little Terndasen, for so Inmara had begun to call him in her own mind, might on any day be claimed by his real parents. In the meantime he was an innocent reminder of the price the sorceress had paid for stealing him. Sometimes, especially after the scaffolding and hanging two days ago, Inmara wondered how Maldron was able to look at the infant, to penetrate his wife so gently in the same room with the child. She had thought the night after the hanging, even in her own great need for comfort (coupled as it was with her need to forget the frail, wounded woman awaiting death on the gibbet), that it was strange Maldron had not fled to his younger wife’s alcove to escape the infant, or at least banished little Terndasen to Cradlelap’s care. Yet Inmara knew her husband shared her own longing for the child who seemed sometimes a gift from Aeronu, sometimes a test sent by Great Jehandru to prove their own justice when the real parents were found.

  The priestess would let no woman or man claim Terndasen who could not tell her of the small red mole on the knuckle of his left middle finger. Inmara would surely have devised the test herself if Frostflower had not given it to her. But…was it still valid? The sorceress had disappeared.

  Oh, it had been pitifully clear that the first tale the guards brought was false. Enneald and her daughter had believed, or pretended to believe, their garbled visions of demons; but Maldron, Inmara, even young Daseron and old Cradlelap had agreen that though Frostflower’s crime merited the strictest mortal judgment, it should not have brought the most feared demons of Hellbog up for her, not when so many sorceri of far greater wickedness had hung undisturbed by the immortals. Also, Ena the unmarried, Maldron’s sister, who had made the demons her particular study, scoffed at the warriors’ descriptions as inaccurate and foolish. Taken separately to the Truth Grove, Cutbone had confessed to beating the sorceress as she hung and then to burying the body in the marshes; but Clist had talked of a wine merchant who gave them drugged liquor and must have taken down the sorceress.

  Probably Frostflower was dead, but possibly…possibly she had been rescued by friends. The sorceri did have friends in the towns, misguided folk half-seduced by their blasphemies—as Inmara herself might almost have been, listening to Frostflower. Maldron and Inmara had decided not to renew the search. If the sorceress were dead, searching again would be lost effort; if she were alive…they were weary, body, mind, and even conscience, of the need to punish her; and they had the child.

  Was it the right decision? If any came now and told them of the small red mole, could Inmara be sure they knew of it because they were Terndasen’s true parents, and not because they were friends of the sorceress? No: she could not give him up. If anyone came who could describe the birthmark, Maldron had said they must give up the babe and have the claimant or claimants followed, watched…but if they led back to Frostflower, then there must be another scaffolding, a complete disembowelment this time for the sorceress, and probably stoning for her accomplices. Jehandru of the Seven Secret Names!—would it not be better—even though You are the Great Giver of Justice—to withhold my Terndasen from all claimants than to place Frostflower naked on the scaffold once more, tied to the wheel and her entrails being drawn out?

  Yet not to return him to his parents, if they were indeed his true—

  Who was walking in the long hall?

  No one. It was only a summer wind blowing softly through the curtains. But it had called her thoughts from herself for a moment, and for that she was grateful. She closed her eyes, hoping for sleep…

  The dog yelped. Frostflower’s dog scuffled with something in the long hall. At once Inmara’s eyes were open. She held her breath and listened, staring at her candle to Aeronu as if by straining her eyes she could aid her hearing.

  Had it been merely a prick of her own conscience? No. Dowl had yelped and thrashed. She was sure of it. But now all was silent once more. Perhaps some small creature, a mouse or beetle, had wakened the dog for a moment. Or perhaps Dowl had only yelped and twitched in a sad dream of his own. Turning her head on the silken pillow, Inmara gazed at the shadow that was their family cradle, Terndasen’s cradle now. The child had not awakened. The priestess sighed and closed her eyes.

  Someone was in the long hall! Someone who walked softly…softly as a spirit? Had the sorceress come back, her strangely-colored eyes glowing with disembodied afterlife, to gaze at her child? Even so gentle a woman as Frostflower, if crazed with the pain of Hellbog—

  No, a spirit would make no footfalls. It was Maldron coming to her chamber. Enneald had fallen asleep and the priest was returning to Inmara.

  But could Maldron walk so softly? Why would any of us walk so softly? Only to avoid waking the others? When have any of us feared waking another in our own household? Does the babe not cry loudly every night? Why should footsteps disturb any sleeper more than Terndasen’s wails?

  The footfalls had stopped for a moment, as if unsure of their way. Now they began again, coming closer. Ancient tales went through Inmara’s brain, the tales never told to common folk, because they came from days when the bodies of farmers were not yet known to be as sacred as their functions, when doors were not taken off their hinges but kept closed and barred at night even in summer, because a priest or priestess was still liable to be slain during a raid.

  Such things had not happened for generations, not since before most pries
tly lines could name their ancestors. There were still assassinations sometimes, farmer killing farmer by stealth, matters kept hidden from the common folk…but not in her own family? Ah, Aeronu, Raes, and Ontaraec, Great Jehandru—not in Maldron’s family! Which of them… Daseron, who was visiting with them for half a year? Jehandru, no! It cannot be young Daseron—not my own nephew, my sister’s child! And it would be by poison. When it happens it is almost always by poison—even in the dark hours, a knife is harder to keep from the knowledge of warriors and workers…

  The footsteps were coming toward Inmara’s chamber.

  Should she scream? If whoever came had an honest reason for walking softly, Inmara would wake the others to no purpose. If whoever came were an assassin, he or she would lie; this attempt in the night would be thwarted, but poison would come in the day, on any plate of meat, in any cup of wine. It was almost always poison. Or a silken pillow held over the head in the darkness…but why? Why?

  I am in nightmare, thought the priestess. This is the worst of all nightmares, when everything seems almost natural, almost real…except for that one fine strangeness, that one all-pervading edge of horror.

  She stared around the shadows, listened to the footsteps, searching for the note of falsity that would assure her she was asleep and dreaming. Two human feet, walking very softly…an animal padding behind…otherwise all seemed so natural! The footsteps had stopped at her doorway. Her eyes seemed so truly open—she could feel the air drying them between her blinks.

  Aeronu, kind goddess, let me live to watch him grow—the infant you have given me!