Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  Sire Rodela caught his breath and said, “That Lich is a greater fool than I thought him. A priggish woman is like a fish with feathers—can’t fly, can’t swim, no use to anyone. If it were up to me, I’d have plucked her. I’m sure that underneath she’s as slippery as any woman.” He turned in his saddle to look at me.

  He was like a dog, grinning as he growled. I met his eyes for an instant and my hackles rose. I looked down. I thought I’d better find myself a dagger; my bone-handled knife was but a little stinger.

  Then I thought of Iza, footsore and heartsore on the road home. All along, Lich had meant to make a whore of her, and be her pander. Under my breath I prayed for her to Ardor Hearthkeeper, that she might come home safe; to Wend Weaver, that she might find her place; to Crux, the Moon—that he might let her go. I prayed for myself as well, the only woman left in the troop now that Iza was gone. Yet I wondered if the gods mocked our prayers and us. I imagined them as giants, and we their toys, like straw dolls that come apart in the hands of a heedless child. Or maybe Iza was merely a fool, beneath the notice of any god, and I was a greater fool, still riding after my hotspur. A fool, a bitch in heat—hadn’t the Crux called me that? Of course all the curs like Sire Rodela would come sniffing around. And Sire Pava.

  It did not bear thinking on. I kept my eyes on the road, looking over the mare’s ears as her head nodded and she picked her way among the ruts and stones.

  By the next morning the story had changed again. Everyone liked this tale better, though it was untrue: they said Lich would take her only from behind, because she was so sour-faced she could pickle a man’s prick just by looking at it. But he’d bruised himself on her bones, and so he’d sent her home, saying he preferred his hand or a boy’s buttocks. By the afternoon there was a song about it.

  When I went to mount Thole in the morning, the saddle was loose and I ended by sprawling on the road. Sire Rodela laughed and said to Flykiller, “You should take better care of Sire Galan’s sheath.” With a frown so fierce his black brows nearly met over his nose, Flykiller said, “The girth was tight when I put on the saddle.”

  In the afternoon Sire Rodela condescended to ride along and gossip with Spiller on the subject of Sire Galan’s wife, with his voice pitched to carry back to me: how her skin was like cream, her eyes like a doe’s, her lips two rose petals, her breasts round as apples and so on; how Sire Galan had married her last year, and with what ceremony; how the bride had worn a gold mask of the Sun and a robe of cloth-of-gold, and her unbound hair hung down to her knees.

  Marriages of the Blood are consummated during the rites, before witnesses, so that the match will be beyond question. Shyness and constraint are to be expected, and the deed is quickly done. But sometimes a god blesses the bride and groom with holy abandon. Sire Rodela said there was no mistaking that Crux had seized Sire Galan, for he was tireless.

  Spiller had been in the crowd outside the temple; he wanted to know all about it.

  I turned Thole’s head to the side of the road and slid off her back. I lifted her hoof as if I checked for a stone. But I was the one with the stone, a fl int lodged behind my temple, sharp as a memory: Sire Galan leading his naked bride to the marriage couch, her skin golden in the light of a thousand candles, her body everywhere soft, everywhere round and ripe. Her nipples gilded.

  That was a year ago; they had a son already three months old.

  Of course he was married, and she was fertile. The Blood do not send their sons to war before they’ve sired an offspring or two. Sire Pava hadn’t waited for his wife to bear, but then he was known to be overhasty.

  My curiosity had failed me when I needed it most. There were so many questions I’d neglected to ask, so much willful unknowing. But why should it matter to me? It didn’t change where I stood one whit; I was ever at the bottom.

  I leaned against the mare’s shoulder, blinking. An old beech hedge lined the road, the leaves already turning copper. They would cling all winter, color against the smooth gray branches. Someone had planted the hedge before I was born, and it would outlast me too.

  Sire Galan was such a wastrel with his charm that he had lavished it even on me. He’d turned in his saddle once or twice every league to search me out with his eyes, and smiled when I saw him looking. How easily he could roil me! I cursed him for it, and yet I waited for him to bestow his look and smile, which both promised and remembered. That very morning he’d ridden back to cull me from among his men and take me into the woods, and by the time we were done, the baggage train had passed us. We’d galloped to the front again, and the cataphracts had howled and jibed. They understood his attentions well enough.

  And I must have misunderstood, thinking there was something more—for I felt as if a rope tied me to Sire Galan by the keels of our ribs, it must tug under his breastbone as it did under mine. But I’d been a fool to believe it. Surely it was folly to believe it.

  Flykiller rode back and asked, “Is she lame?” It was the first he’d spoken to me.

  “I thought perhaps she favored one leg, a little hitch is all. But it’s nothing.” And I vowed nothing would show on my face.

  He dismounted to see for himself, lifting each of the mare’s feet in turn.

  “She has a smooth gait,” I said.

  Flykiller checked the girth to see that it was tight. “She does. She has heart too,” he said, and I could swear he nearly smiled at me. He bent his knee so that I could stand on it to mount and I put my hand on his shoulder. He was kinder now; still, I wished to ride anywhere but with Sire Galan’s men.

  A rumormonger overtook us one afternoon, riding at a smart trot on a dappled gray gelding, a very fine horse for a mudman. The horse soldiers called to him for a song when they saw his banner, the sign of his trade: a hollow red tongue that belled and flapped in the breeze. But he waved and rode on until he reached the warriors in front, where there was coin to be made. He had news of the court, of Ramus, of their keeps and kin; he brought messages for some and gossip for everyone.

  That evening, after the cataphracts and armigers had supped and the Crux’s fire had burned so low it barely crackled, the rumormonger brought out his fat-bellied dulcet and a drum he played by knocking his knees together. Spiller, Noggin, and I crept close and sat behind a bush to listen. The rumormonger plucked on the strings of the dulcet, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought two men were playing, for he played two tunes at once, braiding them together so well that they became one. He set such a sprightly pace that I couldn’t see how his fingers could keep up. I’d not heard many rumormongers at the manor, and none to compare with him: a man of talents could do better than to travel the hard mountain roads from one poor village to the next.

  Soon he began to sing, and his voice floated effortlessly above the melody, alighting on it only now and then. To please his hosts he sang a song of Crux, of the time the Moon had tricked the Sun into giving him some of her radiance, and the Sun had stolen it back, all but a tiny piece the Moon had hidden in his purse, which lights him still.

  Next the rumormonger sang the ballad of Queenmother Caelum. It was a long tale, but he made it go by fast, for he sang it so well. I knew little about her, save that she was our king’s sister, and it was her war on which we were embarked to fight against her son. I knew even less of Incus, her kingdom, which we call in the Low tongue Oversea. It was from Oversea the Blood came to settle in these lands, but that was long ago, so long ago it seems as if they’ve always been here.

  The rumormonger played with a lilt at first, as he sang of Princess Caelum, slender and fair, and of how twenty years ago she’d crossed the Inward Sea to marry the warrior lord of Incus, King Voltur, bringing peace as her dowry. Within the year Queen Caelum was brought to bed and delivered up a prince, a boy with hair black as a raven’s wing and eyes blue as twilight, and the king looked on him and was pleased, and named him Corvus. All Incus rejoiced, sang the rumormonger, and he turned the ballad into a jig that made my legs want to dance.r />
  Then he struck his strings hard and made them jangle, and he added notes of discord. He sang that eight years of peace passed while the prince grew lithe and strong, but too much peace bred discontent in eager young men and greedy old ones. So King Voltur gathered his army to war on the kingdom to the south, to win a fertile valley with a lake of sapphire blue. He swore it should be his, for his mountains lay about it on three sides.

  On the day of his victory, he was slain, not in battle but by treachery, for the Firsts of five clans had conspired against him, saying each to the other that the king had grown soft, and each to himself that he would rule in his stead, seeing he left a mere child behind.

  The Firsts came back to the palace in the city of Malleus, and they laid the king’s helm in Queenmother Caelum’s lap, crying false tears and saying, “Woe to us all, for our good king is gone. We worthy men will take the burden of the kingdom from you until Prince Corvus comes of age, for it is too heavy for a woman to bear.” And all Incus mourned.

  But the queenmother sniffed out their treachery. She had the Firsts of the five clans torn limb from limb, each by four black horses, and she left their sundered bodies to feed the ravens.

  Now the rumormonger sweetened his voice and played with a gentler touch, and he sang that eight years of peace passed under the rule of Queen Regent Caelum, while Prince Corvus grew tall and his shoulders broad, until he looked the very man his father had been. Then the southern kingdom sent the prince a portrait of a princess painted lifelike even to her size, as if she might step out of the frame. He stared at it long and longing, and the wide eyes of Princess Kalos stared back, and her lips were parted as if to speak. In his dreams, he heard her voice.

  The prince said, “I will have her.” Queen Regent Caelum said—being wiser—“Let me send for word of her nature, to see if she is fit to wed a perfect prince.” She sent birds southward and when they returned, the birds sang, “Not a word is spoken against her.”

  The rumormonger plucked the twittering of birds from his dulcet, and he strummed faster and faster. He sang of one little brown thrush that carried back a different tale. The bird had spied on the princess late at night when she thought herself alone in her chamber, and saw her hold up a mirror, shinier than bronze, shinier than silver. In that mirror the princess showed her true self, gleaming all over with scales of the palest green. The thrush sang, “If you wed her, you will wed a lamia, a serpent woman, who means to catch you in her coils and squeeze the life from you. Your father stole the jewel of her father’s kingdom, that sapphire lake set in an emerald valley, and she wants vengeance.”

  The prince drew his dagger and struck down the bird even as it flew, crying out that it was all a lie. But Queen Regent Caelum heeded the warning and would not consent. Prince Corvus said, “Mother, dear, in this you do not rule me. I will have her when I reach my majority.” On his seventeenth birthday he wed his princess and all Incus rejoiced.

  Bitterly Queenmother Caelum watched her son fall prey to the wiles of the lamia. She begged him to find the mirror Kalos hid in her wedding chest, to hold it over her as she slept so that he might see through her disguise. But Corvus raged, saying, “Mother, dear, the kingdom is mine, the woman is mine, and you shall not part me from one or the other. I banish you to the Keep of Northernmost, and there you shall molder for doubting me and my judgment.”

  The tune turned plaintive, and the rumormonger paused in his singing to let his fingers coax melancholy from the strings, and it was a wonder to me that he could turn the same simple melody to so many purposes. There was such a hush around his music it seemed even the trees stooped to listen.

  When he lifted his voice again, he sang of the Keep of Northernmost, where for two long winters and a third Queenmother Caelum sat lonely in her tower, staring across the white wastelands, wondering how fared her son, her city, and her kingdom. Even her birds deserted her, flying south to roost in the orchards of Malleus and sing the winter out.

  When the birds returned in spring, she asked, “What news of my kingdom? ” For two years the birds sang of festivals that lasted winter long, of men clad in armor of beaten gold and women in gowns of gossamer. They sang, “The granaries grow empty, but the feasting goes on.” And Caelum wept.

  This spring when the birds returned, she asked, “What news of my son and his wife?” The birds sang, “Day by day Corvus grows thinner while Kalos swells. Soon she will bear a child, and all Incus is rejoicing.” And Caelum wept, saying, “What serpent will she birth to sit on the throne of Incus?”

  Then the queenmother said, “I have done with weeping.” She whistled for the gray Wolves that guarded her keep, and they loped at her heels as she rode around the Inward Sea and south to Ramus, and the way was long and hard. She knelt before her brother, King Thyrse, and begged him to lend his strength to save her son and kingdom from the lamia’s stranglehold. But he bade her go home to her northern keep, saying, “It more befits a woman to weep than to war.” She rent her gown and showed under it a corselet of steel, saying, “Brother, by our sire and dame, remember the same blood runs in both our veins.”

  The king relented, and he summoned the Firsts of all his clans, saying, “Our forebears came from Incus long ago, and if you meet me by the Inward Sea before the Ingathering Moon has waned, the winter winds shall blow us to our homeland.”

  Now the rumormonger played the last verse, and he sang it as wistfully as he’d sung of Queenmother Caelum banished to the icy north, and there was such yearning in his voice that I felt the ache of exile; he made me pine for a place I’d never been. He sang of the yielding plains of Incus, of cedar-covered hills that made the dawns smell of spice, and he sang again of Malleus the fair, a city of marble spires and gilded domes. He sang to the men of the Blood, “You’ve been tempered by war so that you are keen and hard as steel, while the men of Incus have grown soft as their golden armor from too much peace. Do you not long to return?”

  When the rumormonger finished we paid him the tribute of silence. Then the cheering began, and the men stamped their feet and whistled and struck their open palms against their chests. And I marveled that I too was part of his tale, though he’d never sing of the likes of me—for wasn’t I bound to cross the Inward Sea, following the king’s army? Soon I’d see the queenmother and her Wolves with my own eyes; I’d see her kingdom and her city. I might live long enough to know the end of her story even before a ballad could be made of it.

  But the lowliest bagboy understood the meaning of the song before I did. What mattered the cause of her war? When the rumormonger sang of Incus and held up the beauty of Malleus to dazzle us, every warrior of the Blood and every mudsoldier in camp saw a kingdom ripe for sacking, gold so plentiful it covered the rooftops, women in gossamer gowns to be had for the taking.

  The rumormonger put down his fragile dulcet and quenched his thirst with all the wine that came his way. There was singing at every fire, and the men strove to drown each other out. Spiller stood up and sang the song of Iza. He had a shrill falsetto, and before long the rumormonger strolled up and pulled out his little clay pipe, his avicula, and began to pipe along as if he already knew the tune. Spiller sang:

  Old Iza she won’t lie down,

  She won’t lie down,

  On the blanket, oh.

  The rumormonger played high above and then he sang below, but always he knocked his knee drum so the song sped along.

  Her jack says I won’t keep you,

  I can’t keep you,

  It’s home you must go.

  Men were clapping and stamping. Noggin began to jig, kicking the coals at the end of the verse to make the sparks dance. He had a rapt look on his face, as if all his meager wits were bent upon his feet.

  The mule says she’s too bony,

  She’s too bony,

  I won’t bear her, no.

  Sire Galan tossed the rumormonger a coin—I saw it flash, it was a silverhead—and the rumormonger snatched it out of the air and made a deep b
ow, and kept the beat. Everyone roared the last verse, for the song had been with us on the road for days.

  Old Iza she weeps and wails,

  She wails and rails,

  As she walks home slow.

  It wasn’t much of a song, but they made the most of it. They started all over again, and I crawled under Sire Galan’s quilt and covered my head. When I woke in the morning, the rumormonger was still there, with his long feet sticking out of a short blanket, his soles toward the embers of our fire.

  Villagers came to meet us with fat ducks and round loaves of bread dusty with flour. They tested the coins between their teeth, knowing enough of soldiers to be wary. I had no coin and nothing to trade.

  The river ran shallow and close to the road. I forded it on steppingstones and waded into the tall dry weeds and brambles of a fallow field, for I spied fawn lilies, and I thought the bulbs would do well roasted for supper with a relish of tart rose hips. I foraged whenever I got the chance, and often found enough to stretch or flavor Spiller’s bland cooking, and a little besides for the Crux’s provisioner. I was glad to do it, as I was glad to tend to the mare that carried me—but it was all I meant to do. Sire Galan’s drudges had their duties; if I let them lay their tasks on me, there’d be no end to that road.

  I came upon Fleetfoot and Sire Pava’s horseboy, Ev, sitting cross-legged on the ground, hidden in the grass. I found them by the smell of roasting meat. They had a fire going, a few flames licking a skinned rabbit on a stick. Ev waved away the smoke with a clutch of straw, so not even a trickle could be seen above their heads.