Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Damn! I hope your blasted wagon doesn’t leak.”

  “I have five hundred goldens’ worth of cloth in here, warrior.”

  Thorn grunted. “All right, get back out and keep going till the storm breaks.”

  He hesitated. “Thorn…we’ll have to spend the night in Gammer’s Oak.”

  “Steamy Hellbog we will!”

  “It’s the safest way. It’ll be almost dark when we get there, and folk will gossip if we try to go on.”

  “Let them build a wagon-field and put a wall around their lousy flyspeck of a town before they gossip about merchants driving on by.”

  Frostflower listened to the argument in surprise. The merchant was clearly right. The best way to avert suspicion would be to spend the night in Gammer’s Oak. Why was Thorn, who had done so much and planned so carefully to avert suspicion, protesting now?

  “I can at least get the wagon between two houses,” said Spendwell, “and the donkeys into somebody’s pen.”

  “And your own bloody carcass into a nice warm bed, while we huddle in here waiting for the damn tent to leak.”

  Squatting, because the tent was not high enough to stand upright, the merchant shifted his weight from one leg to the other. The wagon swayed slightly, as always when anyone moved. “I know you’d rather travel all night, Thorn, but the donkeys need rest; and it’d look strange not to take the first good shelter, with a storm building up.”

  “Find a place around here and stop.”

  “We’re already too close to Gammer’s Oak.”

  “Who the Hell is going to know? All right, then, drive on to Duneron’s Farm. That isn’t all that bloody far beyond Gammer’s Oak, is it?”

  To drive willingly into another farm! They would probably have to shelter in farms farther north, where towns were fewer; but to seek a farm already tonight—to stay within the walls of Maldron’s nearest neighbor…“Thorn,” whispered the sorceress, “would it not be safer to stay in the town? I will not try to visit—”

  “All right, damn you both to Hellbog! Hurry up and get us to the bloody, stinking town.”

  Spendwell returned to the driver’s seat. The remaining distance seemed longer than it should have, for the mood had changed; instead of fellowship, now there was strain and division. Thorn sat sullenly picking at the wax that covered the garnet in her dagger’s handle, while Frostflower sat not quite daring to ask her friend why this great aversion to Gammer’s Oak? Perhaps it was Thorn’s superstition again, fear that the town was unlucky for them because of what had happened in it before. Or perhaps the warrior only feared the shadow of memory would be too painful for them there. The sorceress wished it were time for her breasts to fill again and give her something else to do than think of this.

  They knew the wagon was in sight of Gammer’s Oak when a town dog barked. Dowl lifted his head and ears, but remained quiet, obedient to Frostflower’s hand on his fur. They felt the turn, the downward slope, and the mixture of loose cinders and crushed hard refuse, grittier than the ancient, dust-covered paving stones of Straight Road beneath their wheels. The town dog barked again and they heard it run past the wagon, perhaps chasing a cat. Otherwise the town was quiet. Gammer’s Oak was not large enough for much coming and going during the supper hour.

  The wagon stopped. After a moment, Spendwell came inside again. “I’m going to buy a few loaves of bread and see if I can keep my animals behind the baker’s house.”

  Thorn snatched his arm, and he gasped a little. “You turd!” whispered the warrior. “You sneaking, bloody—”

  “Listen to me, Thorn! It’s the best—”

  She pulled him closer to her and muttered a few angry sentences into his ear. Frostflower could not understand Thorn’s words and forced herself not to try, because they were clearly not intended for her; but she wondered. Part of Spendwell’s reply, at least, was easy to overhear:

  “Blast you, Thorn, get it into your head it’s the best place for us! No one will suspect the man who…”

  Thorn shook him and muttered something more.

  Then Spendwell again: “If you don’t trust me by now…” His words became inaudible to the sorceress, but after a moment Thorn replied,

  “All right, go on in before somebody sees the wagon and gets suspicious.”

  When Spendwell had gone, Frostflower crawled nearer to Thorn. She had seen, when they hid in his upper room together so long ago, that there had been some antipathy between the swordswoman and the baker; but she had never suspected how much. “Thorn,” she whispered, “we will sleep in the wagon. You need not see Burningloaf again at all.”

  “I’d damn well better not see him again. Let’s just hope that bloody merchant knows enough not to tell the bastard we’re in here. Blasted sneak—never telling me what he had in his rotten brain until I can’t do anything about it!”

  “Shhh.”

  “Unh. You’re right, I’m worse than the damn dog. Better gag me or something.” Now the warrior was forcing her voice to be soft and calm, but her fingers were clawing audibly over the wax on her garnet.

  Frostflower sighed. Although she understood they must be completely cautious, she would have liked to let her grandmother’s old friend know somehow that she was safe. “Thorn…why do you hate him so much?”

  “Gods! You don’t even suspect?” It was almost too dark to see one another clearly, but Thorn turned her head and stared at her companion.

  “What?” Had something happened between them that Frostflower did not know of? But when?

  Thorn laid down her dagger and put one hand on the sorceress’ shoulder. “Look, Frost, forget I said anything. You know I’m a foul-tempered bitch. Go nurse the baby before you forget where you put him down.”

  Frostflower crawled back to her side of the wagon. Starwind was sleeping peacefully in the nest of silk and linen she had made for him. Feeling ashamed of the curiosity that had made her probe at Thorn’s secret grievance, she sat and began to fondle Dowl’s ears. The wagon grew darker yet.

  “What the Hell’s taking him so long?” muttered Thorn. “Gods, suppose someone hears us snoring in here tonight?”

  “We can sleep in turns.”

  “You sleep. I’ve been snoozing all—shh!”

  A door opened and shut, and someone walked quickly to the wagon and climbed up to the seat. Next moment he slipped inside. It was Spendwell.

  “What took you so damn long?”

  “The baker’s sick.”

  “Burningloaf?” whispered the sorceress. “What’s wrong?”

  “Food poisoning. Something he ate this morning. Rancid duck, he thinks.”

  “You took your bloody time finding out the bastard’s breakfast went bad!”

  “I had trouble getting him to talk, Thorn! I had to be sure it wasn’t quickfever or plague.”

  “Oh, noble merchant! Rather than bring the plague out here to us, you’d have stayed inside and left us here in your bloody wagon for the damn farmers to find!”

  “Spendwell!” Frostflower put her hand on his arm, then pulled it back as she felt him turn. “How sick is the bker? He will live?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen that much—”

  “He has vomited?”

  “I don’t…yes, the place smelled like it.”

  But the odor could not have been strong, or Spendwell would not have hesitated before remembering it. Burningloaf must have vomited earlier and cleaned it up himself, then become weaker. So the poison had already gotten into his blood…and he was an old man.…

  “I must go to him,” said Frostflower.

  “No!”

  “Shh, Thorn! Spendwell can drive between the houses, and I will slip around in the shadows to the back door.”

  “Damn it, let his stinking neighbors take care of the bastard!”

  “There was nobody with him,” said Spendwell.

  “Somebody must know about it! The whole damn town must know about it!”

  “Burningloaf ha
s suffered for years from a delicate stomach,” said Frostflower, “and he is proud. His neighbors will think it is only another of his attacks. Perhaps he thought so himself until—”

  “Then how the Hellbog does our damn merchant know it isn’t just another attack of queasy stomach?”

  “I must see him, Thorn.”

  “Damn it, Frost, think! If we’re caught, what happens to the baby?”

  “They will make him a priest.” The sorceress had faced that knowledge before, and reconciled her mind to it.

  “And us? Gods and demons, it isn’t worth risking our guts for a horny old bastard with a cud of acid in his belly!”

  “He was the friend of my grandmother and mother before me.”

  “He sold you out, Frost!”

  “What?”

  “He sold us both out! How do you think the damn farmer found you?”

  For a moment Frostflower said nothing. She hardly realized how the energy had gone out of her body until she felt Thorn’s hand on her arm. The warrior’s grasp was not hard, yet fingers seemed to displace flesh as if it were watery dough.

  “You are mistaken, Thorn. He did not like you, but dislike is not—”

  “I never went near the damn marshes, Frostflower. When I left here, I turned east and headed straight for Beldrise. But I told Burningloaf—and nobody else except Burningloaf—that I was going to the marshlands, and now every bloody commoner between here and Gladron thinks I’m at the bottom of a stinking bog.”

  “No one else? You told no one else?”

  “I didn’t even meet anyone else between your stinking baker and the merchant here! Gut you, Spendwell, get her some wine!”

  They poured wine. Frostflower hardly knew which of them put the cup into her hand. “Someone must have seen…”

  “Seen what? Nobody saw me—they’d have seen me heading for Beldrise, not the bloody marshes! Spendwell, get on your seat and start driving.”

  “No!” The sorceress caught at his hand. “No!” How could she say the rest? There was no way to say it—no way to lessen Burningloaf’s guilt—but he had not known the swordswoman long. He had disliked Thorn and she him. “Thorn, perhaps he told them only about you, not about me.”

  “Did you tell him where you were going?”

  “I…I…” She had told him she would go north through Maldron’s own forest—but it must have been coincidence, the farmer’s shrewdness! “Maldron knew I would go north! How many places—”

  “How did he know? Did you ever tell Maldron where your retreat is? Why north? Why not east?”

  And the farmer had come prepared, so well prepared—the sprunging-stick and a man to force—that would be only farmers’ precaution against any sorceron—but the wine and the goblet and all those things for his damnable ceremony to “purify” her eyes and ears…the old nurse to hold the baby…

  “He expected to find you in Beldrise, Frostflower,” said the merchant softly. “He was surprised to find you had gotten as far as the Rockroots.”

  “Get back to your damn seat and drive, merchant,” said the warrior.

  “No! Thorn, I must see him! He is sick—”

  The swordswoman smashed her fist into something—her own arm, perhaps, or a pile of Spendwell’s cloth. “Damn the dirty, motherpricking—all right, merchant, make sure nobody’s looking and let her go in, damn it!”

  Spendwell hesitated. “Should I go in with her, or…”

  “How the Hell do I know? Do what you like, damn the pair of you! You will anyway. I can sit outside and watch—what’s one more bloody risk? No, damn it, you’d better stay here and make sure I don’t get out and cut somebody’s belly open.”

  “I will hurry, Thorn.” The sorceress crawled to the back of the wagon, unfastened the toggles, and peered cautiously out. The street was dark and seemed deserted. Someone might be walking in the shadows between and beyond the lighted windows, but Frostflower thought not. The small town was so quiet that she heard Dowl’s soft whine clearly from the middle of the wagon, Thorn’s breathing, the donkeys’ occasional stamping and snorting, then at last Spendwell’s whispered assurance that all was clear at the front of the wagon. She hoped that, from the driver’s seat, he could lean around and see to right and left also.

  “Go in the front,” muttered Thorn. “Don’t waste any more time slinking around to the damn back.”

  Pushing the tent flaps aside, Frostflower jumped out. She did not land lightly—she was trembling and felt weak, and she twisted her right ankle a little, although not enough to lame her for longer than a few steps. She glanced around once more; but how would it help her, now, to see anyone who might walk by? If someone came, she must trust Thorn and Spendwell to tell the story they had prepared, of being landworkers from the south. She hurried across the few paces between the wagon and Burningloaf’s door, opened it, entered, closed it again behind her, and leaned against it for a moment, panting. She blew out one of the lamps, then remembered her friends waiting outside and left the other burning.

  “Who’s there? Merchant?” God, how feeble his voice sounded from the inner room! Pushing the curtain aside, Frostflower went in quickly.

  The old man lay in a rumple of blankets halfway between wall and oven. Apparently he had tried to move his pallet near the oven, as if the season were winter and not summer. Although his face was flushed, he was shivering.

  “Fernlet!” he cried, pushing himself up and then falling back. It was her grandmother’s child name, the common-folks’ name he had known her by when they were both children, before Fernlet joined the sorceri and became Silkenfern.

  “No, not Fernlet.” She hurried across the room to kneel beside him and put her palm on his forehead.

  “Frostflower.” He reached toward her hand. On the second attempt, he got his fingers round her wrist. “I thought you were your grandmother come to spellcast me for…gods forgive me, they took your eye!”

  With her free hand, she twisted the brown patch around to the side of her head. “No, not my eye, old friend. They left me both my eyes.”

  He grasped her hand more tightly and closed his eyes as a paroxysm went through his body. Then his fingers loosened, he sighed, and his eyelids relaxed. Freeing her hand, the sorceress began to straighten his bedclothes. Frostflower’s people did not fall sick from the food they ate; but from what she knew of illnesses, she thought Burningloaf would survive.

  She judged that he would recover in his body’s own time, even without anyone here to nurse him.… But did she so judge only because she was eager to leave him for her own and Thorn’s safety…or because in her soul she did not care whether or not he lived?

  “Frostflower,” he murmured, “they lied.”

  “Why, Burningloaf?” Why had he betrayed her? Had she frightened him so much that night? Or had she so injured his pride? Even to ask him this in words would be to injure his pride again, so she only asked, “Why?”

  “The baby…they said you had stolen it, Frostflower. All the tortures of Hellbog—for whoever helped a sorceress steal a baby!”

  “But you knew the truth. We told you he was Thorn’s.”

  “Stealing a child…I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t say…I didn’t tell them your story about sorcering him. Frostflower…you’re living on the edge of Hell…already ankle-deep in the bog, all you sorceri—I couldn’t risk going down with you!”

  He had grown up with her grandmother. They had all visited him in turn—Silkenfern, Dawncloud, and Frostflower…though not often. He should have trusted them, should have known that sorceri told only truth…but he had believed the farmers instead. Was that so much his fault, living day by day beneath the farmers’ creed? “Old friend, you do not think Silkenfern and Dawncloud are in your Hellbog?”

  “And he lied, Frostflower. He said he wouldn’t hurt you, only strip your power and give you a good life, a useful life…your own children, maybe even make you a priestess…”

  Aye. Farmers’ folk had different values. Not even Th
orn could understand what it was to feel a plant grow beneath your fingers, to ride a clean cold wind, or to seize a bolt of lightning and guide it away from a dwelling or an animate creature…not Thorn, who would have considered such powers useful only if she could aim them like a sword against her enemies. How could Burningloaf ever have understood the joy that had made Frostflower and Wonderhope grateful for their decision to remain as brother and sister?

  “He lied to me…a priest, and he lied. To send you to… Frostflower, I dreamed of your grandmother in Hellbog! Gods! The nightmares, over and over!”

  “Nightmares deceive, old friend.”

  “And when he hung you—”

  “It is over, Burningloaf. We are safe. Sleep now…you will be well again.”

  He had thought to save her from Hellbog and give her what to him must seem the best of lives possible for her. Could she blame him? Had she not seemed to show him, when she rusted loose his hooks and caused his cords to fall with their silly weights, that honest folk might indeed have something to fear from sorcerous powers?

  He should not have betrayed Thorn also; but Thorn had not been his old friend, and he had believed his own salvation endangered. It was Thorn’s part to castigate or pardon him for what he had done against her, and Thorn had shown she was more intent on her own escape than on seeing the baker again.

  I should leave him some sign, thought Frostflower, so he will know, when he recovers, that I was not another dream. Some sign that will not cast suspicion on him if another finds it by mischance. She looked around the room. A snowflake pattern outlined with flour on his kneading-board?

  She thought he was already asleep, but all at once he seized her hand again. “Frostflower—do they know you’re safe?”

  “Who, Burningloaf?” The farmers must know, or at least suspect, that it was no demon who had taken her from the gibbet; but Thorn, Spendwell, and the weavers had told her the common folk seemed still to believe that she was in Hellbog, the warrior in the marshlands, and the infant in Maldron’s hall. The priests had apparently been secretive about Thorn’s rescue of the babe.

  “Snapperfoot came north this afternoon.”

  “Snapperfoot?”