I guessed Spiller and Rowney would be dicing behind the tents with some other jacks, as they often did when they had an idle moment, so I set out across the compound to look for them. Sire Pava saw me and called me over. He was sitting in front of his tent on a folding chair of leather and wood. His legs were outstretched before him and crossed at the ankles and he appeared to be admiring the toes of his boots. I went, thinking it was gossip he wanted; not that I’d oblige him, but it was unwise for a drudge to ignore a cataphract completely, and too late to pretend I hadn’t heard him.
When I didn’t come near enough to suit, he beckoned me closer. He turned his gaze from his boots to my face and smiled. “It seems I misjudged you,” he said. “Surely you must be … charming … after all, for Sire Galan to take so long to tire of you.”
I felt my blood heating and cursed my thin skin for showing a flush so readily.
He sat up and leaned toward me. I took a step backward. He said, “No need to be skittish. I just want you to know that if you find yourself without a bed, I can give you one.” He opened his mouth and laughed until I could see down his gullet.
The whole camp knew Galan had turned on me, and thought I’d be looking for a new blade to sheathe. What else would they think after Galan took a concubine? No matter that she was near a skeleton. Probably by tomorrow there’d be a song about how she was dying of desire until she got a bit of his cure-all. He’d charm his way out of this too if she lived.
I’d have liked to stuff my fist down Sire Pava’s gullet. But I did nothing and said nothing. I hurried away with his laughter coming after me.
Spiller and Rowney got the rough side of my tongue when they complained about leaving the camp so late. By the time we had the horses saddled and I’d kicked Thole into a trot-while Spiller muttered that a woman who brays like a mule should be beaten like one-the light was yellowing and the shadows were long.
I’d followed the east-of-north road before, hunting for herbs with Noggin. Past the tourney field and the scattered crofts of shepherds, the road came to the battered face of a long escarpment running roughly east to west. There Noggin and I had always turned back, but the road went on, climbing up among the rocks to reach a plateau people thereabouts called the Hardscrabble. I hoped to find dwale up there in the heights.
Thole was ready to run and I let her. At least Galan had spared some of his horses from the sacrifice, and we were free to ride though he was not. We made good speed once out of the Marchfield, past the befouled air and the crowds. I’d been mewed up in camp since Galan was wounded, at first because I didn’t want to leave his side, and then because-though he wouldn’t speak to me-he also wouldn’t let me go beyond the clan’s tents while the feud threatened. His care had prisoned me for days; his anger made that prison comfortless.
Even beyond the Marchfield I did not feel free of it. I carried the taint with me, the stink of my own thoughts. I couldn’t bear Galan’s silence. Or to be cast out and prey to the likes of Sire Pava again. Or to nurse Consort Vulpeja back to health so she could take Galan from me. Or if she died and I was at fault and I lost all for nothing. I rode in a daze until Thole stumbled and I caught her mane between my hands, and I looked around to find we were already climbing the escarpment.
Thole and I were in the lead. I saw how sweat darkened her coat and how she thrust her way up among the rocks with her neck outstretched and her head bobbing, breathing hard. She was a drudge and bore what had to be borne. As I would, having no other choice.
Switchbacks took us across the face of the escarpment, and as we climbed, more of the sea came into view, burnished gold by the setting Sun. The Marchfield was a blotch of color below us, with banners of smoke rising from the cook fires. Close at hand I saw jillybells and goat’s ears and gallwort and other herbs growing among the boulders and rock shelves of the slope, but passed them by. There was no time.
When we reached the top of the plateau, we paused to let the horses breathe. The highlands before us were bleaker than the lands around the Marchfield, and I’d thought those barren: here there were no hedges or fields or pastures, nothing to keep even a shepherd alive. Pale rocks lay everywhere, boulders the size of houses, stones round as loaves of bread, drifts of gravel and grit. The bedrock broke through the soil, like backbones, along the low ridges. Everything that grew was stunted. A mat of low creepers, sedges, and mosses grew underfoot, and here and there a shrub had managed to take root in the shelter of a boulder, the branches reaching eastward, shaped by the hard winds from the sea.
Spiller took one look about him and pointed west to the Sun, which was red and half drowned in the water. “We’d better turn around right now. I don’t know what you think to find up here, but it’s an ill-favored place and I don’t wish to take that road down in the dark, do you?”
It wasn’t that I disagreed with him, but I’d had enough of his grousing, all the way up the hill, about greased-stoat chases and high-handed women. “So, are you afraid to be out after dark?”
Rowney eyed us both but stayed out of it.
Spiller scowled. “It’s witless to go down that hill without even a moon to see by.
“There’s plenty of light yet. We’ll make torches if need be.
“Sire Galan won’t be pleased if you break your neck.
“I’m not so sure of that,” I said.
Spiller snorted. “Kill yourself if you like, but leave me out of it.” He yanked the reins and turned his horse away.
I called after him, “Sire Galan knows I’m only doing what is needful.
Spiller twisted around with his hand on the cantle of his saddle and looked at Rowney. “Are you coming or not?”
“You go,” I said to both of them, “if you’ re so frightened. Stay at the foot of the scarp and wait for me. If I don’t find what I seek by last light, I’ll turn back.”
Rowney spoke up at last. “I’ll stay with you,” he said, and Spiller glared at him and hunched up his shoulders and kicked his horse back down the hill.
I met Rowney’s eyes, feeling sheepish at my show of temper. “I’ll try to be quick, but I don’t know this country or if what I need can be found here.”
“Let’s be going, then,” he said, shrugging. He looked unconcerned, though while Spiller and I had argued, the Sun had gone under the sea, leaving a red pool in her wake.
In the twilight we trotted along the road, which was wide and deeply rutted. From time to time I’d turn Thole toward a bush or a pile of rocks that harbored green life in the crannies, and lean from the saddle to examine a plant more closely. Nothing came of it save scratches from the thorns of a spiny dog rose and some rose hips I took in payment for the scratches. I gave a few to Rowney. They were a tart but welcome refreshment. In summer this land would bloom. Now it offered scant hope.
We’d ridden perhaps another full league before Rowney said quietly, “Do you think we should light some torches?” and I saw that night had fallen. I hadn’t noticed before, because the road was wide and paler than the lands it crossed and the crescent Moon gave a soft glow to the clouds, and to me everything was as clear as daylight. But Rowney did not have my eyes. He ’ d stayed close as the darkness grew, riding knee to knee with me, without a word until now.
I reined in Thole and turned to look at him. Rowney’s face was pale and I could see a tightness about the jaw that belied his calm voice. I was stubborn to go on in the dark. But I couldn’t give up yet, and he wouldn’t ask me.
“Very well,” I said, getting down from the mare. My legs shook. I hadn’t ridden so far in many days. I gave Thole’s reins to Rowney and told him to wait. In a short while I had the makings of two torches: bundles of gorse branches wrapped in bindwort, tipped with clumps of moss and grasses. I lit one with the coal I carried in the copper fire flask on my belt, praying to Ardor under my breath. The torch was crude and made more smoke than light. It wouldn’t last long.
“We’ll ride till this burns out,” I told Rowney. “Then we’ll turn back.�
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I couldn’t see as far with the torch. The light moved with us, past boulders like great sleeping animals, and the road moved under us. We went down one long hill and up another, and on the other side of that hill the road came abruptly to the edge of a great pit and turned to go around the rim.
I dismounted and walked to the very edge, and Rowney gave a yelp, saying, “Have a care!” I looked back to tell him not to worry and a few pebbles went over the brink and splashed far below.
I leaned forward to see where they’d gone. “It’s an old quarry, I think.”
Rowney said, “The torch is almost finished. Shall we turn back now?
“No. If I’m to find what I’m looking for, I’ll find it here.” I told him to lead the horses away from the ledge and let them graze, and that I’d be back before the second torch burned out.
He offered it to me, saying he could make another, but I shook my head. “I’m better off without it,” I said. He stared and said nothing.
I trudged along the road as it followed the rim and turned downward, becoming a wide ramp cut into the quarry wall. I ran my hands along this wall, which was white and smooth, made of a much denser rock than the porous chalk of the sea cliffs. The white gleamed in the dark. I could see the stone had been cut into great steps and ledges, some still perfect and others broken and fissured. Soil had collected there, away from the brunt of the winds, and rain had filled the bottom of the quarry like a cistern. Trees had taken root all around this pool and in the cracks in the walls. Somehow their seeds had winged their way to the Hardscrabble, where no forests grew or ever had grown as far as I could tell. And I went down into the murmuring of those trees and the shadows streaming from the bare branches, marveling to myself as I laid my hand in greeting upon their trunks, here the smooth hide of a beech and there the rough bark of an elm, here a quick beam and there a silver birch. None of the trees had attained great size, but I felt nevertheless that they were of a great age.
And there, in a jumble of massive blocks chiseled from the wall by ice, or perhaps cut by man and discarded for imperfections, I found dwale: two bushy plants, one nearly my height and the other smaller, with sturdy stalks and the leaves all dry and stiff in this late season. I recognized it, even in the dark, by its own particular darkness. Under the leaves I found some of the black berries, and then I was sure of it.
It was well the Dame had lessoned me in remembrance, for we’d spoken of dwale just that once, and never had another occasion. She was impatient of repetition, and rarely had to tell me twice when it came to plants, though I never could keep in mind how to weave the summer-and-winter pattern or the loveknot, no matter how often my knuckles were rapped with the shuttle.
I’d put my trust in what she’d told me and in a song and two finger bones, and I’d searched both high and low, and my steps had led me straight across the Hardscrabble to this quarry and this plant.
A gift from the Queen of the Dead, for a dead woman had led me to it. But I didn’t feel the Dame with me. I must do this alone.
One plant would be enough—more than enough. I wrapped my gather sack around my hands to protect me from the poison and pulled up the smaller plant, and gave thanks to Rift as I pulled. The dwale came from the soil reluctantly at first, and then quickly, as if a hand had let it go. I took one of the berries and dropped it in the hole left by the roots, and watered it generously with blood from a vein in the crook of my elbow, and pushed the muddy dirt over it so that it might be reborn next year, tall and deadly. All the gods welcome blood as a sacrifice, but Rift requires it.
I cut the plant into lengths with my knife and bundled everything into the sack: root, stalk, leaves, and berries. Then I washed my hands and arms in the cold, cold water of the quarry pool.
Halfway up the ramp I stopped to rest. I wondered what buildings this white stone had gone to make and whether those buildings lay in ruins or still stood somewhere. I took a deep breath and smelled damp, fallen leaves: the scent of late fall. As we’d lingered in the Marchfi eld, autumn had passed me by—for what was autumn without trees to mark its passage?
And then I heard the fluttering of many wings. The bats came out. They came from the caves in the quarry wall like a black wind gusting through the air above and below me.
Rift Dread came. If it was in answer to my prayers, it was a gift I never sought. The swarm is Dread’s manifestation, swarms of insects or birds or bats; sometimes too the avatar shows itself in clouds of dust or ash, in waterspouts and whirlwinds. Otherwise it is bodiless, unless we give ourselves up to it. Dread is Rift’s most intimate aspect, for it inhabits us.
I knew full well that bats were harmless; the manor had a bat tower for keeping down the insects, next to the dovecote-and yet I cowered on the road with my arms covering my head, in a blinding, mindless panic. Possessed by Dread. An endless time before the terror passed and I found myself queasy and faint and soaked in cold sweat.
The god had left behind a little seed of fear. I should have been afraid all along to go down into the quarry in the dark. Anyone would be. Instead I ’ d gone fearless and even glad, to be among trees again, to be among the shadows.
I’d left the Kingswood long ago. What had it made of me?
When I came back from the quarry, I found Rowney had built a fire and busied himself making torches better than the ones I’d made. He was uneasy with me when I returned. His glance was shyer and his silence warier. He rode a little behind me and not by my side. The road was wide enough that we risked cantering, and the torch smoked and cast a poor, jerking light before the horses’ hooves. At that pace the escarpment’s edge proved to be not so far, after all.
We returned in the dark to find the cataphracts had guests from another clan, someone’s sister’s husband and assorted cousins, no doubt. They’d finished dining and had progressed to the sweetmeats and nuts and drinking songs around the hearth. Armigers stood behind them, supping on the tougher cuts of mutton when they were not attending to their masters’ wants.
Galan was not among the cataphracts. He was in the tent, stretched out on a pallet with his hands behind his head. His supper-the bland boiled greens and barley porridge allowed him by Divine Xyster-was untouched.
When I came in alone, having left Spiller and Rowney to see to the horses, Galan sat up. He moved gingerly. Sire Rodela lay face to the wall, and judging by his grating snore, he was asleep.
“You’re late,” Galan said, looking at his food as if he’d just noticed it. He picked up the plate and put it down again with disgust. “Faugh, it’s cold.”
I crouched in front of him and still he looked away.
“I expected you sooner,” he said.
“We had a long ride.
“I hope it was to the purpose.” His voice was hard, but his gaze, when it finally crossed mine, was not.
I nodded. The silence between us tugged, a strand so delicate a breath could part it, and I feared even to smile, and it was my turn to look down.
But when I looked up, his face was grim again and I sighed and stood, saying I must see to Consort Vulpeja, and I took the bundle of dwale with me to her curtained room. Yet I felt the silence stretch between us, strong as a rope.
Consort Vulpeja seemed to sleep with her eyes half open. Her breathing alarmed me. It hurt to listen to the sound; there was something trapped and desperate in it, though it issued from a listless body.
I tried to rouse her. I pinched her wrists and cheeks and called loudly in her ear, and though I woke Sunup from a doze, Consort Vulpeja didn’t stir. I shook her; I tried to pry open her mouth. I sent Sunup for hot wake-me-up and waved the steaming cup under the sick woman’s nose, and I thought I saw the first hint of an expression cross her face’revulsion. After I had so exerted myself in tormenting her, I felt for the pulse at her neck and it still beat slow slow slow, her heart a funeral drum.
Sunup watched as I did all this, her mouth somewhat ajar. When I turned to her, she cringed, as if she thought I was about
to shake her too. I sent her from the room, telling her to find something to eat and to sleep as much as she could, for I’d need to wake her later in the night to take my own rest. She settled herself just beyond the curtain on a nest of old sacks and dirty linen.
I sat back and stared at Consort Vulpeja. I was tired and hungry and most of all uncertain. I’d planned to make a weak tisane of the dwale berries, and give it to her sip by sip-but how to make her swallow it?
The bones hadn’t pointed to Ardor. If only I knew for sure that I did Ardor’s bidding, that I had the god’s help to do what needed to be done. But one god had aided me already that day, and instead of gratitude, I felt dread. To be obliged to Rift was a terrible debt.
My gaze turned to the brazier. I thought of how Ardor’s priests are said to read the future in fire; I saw nothing but a single flame scampering along a charred branch. Even so, I took my small knife and reopened the cut in my arm, and I sprinkled a libation of blood on the brazier for Ardor, for Consort Vulpeja’s sake. The flame dodged and spat at me. I added another branch and shreds of candlebark to sweeten the smoke.
I wrapped my hands in old rags and emptied my gather sack onto a cloth spread on the ground. I set aside the berries first. There were only eight, fewer than I’d hoped for: somewhat shriveled, but still with a gloss on their black skins. I pulled the brittle leaves from the stalk and a whitish milk that smelled as sour as whey seeped from the stems. I left the root alone. It was thick as two fingers, branching, with a grayish bark. After dividing the plant I put the berries in a stoppered gourd and wrapped each kind of part in separate bundles, for each had its own strength. I made sure that not one berry or leaf or stem was left on the ground.
It was the candlebark that gave me the idea. She wouldn’t take food or drink, but she could not forgo breathing. No obstinacy was strong enough for that.
I crumbled three leaves of the dwale into a shallow clay bowl. I took a coal from the brazier and dropped it into the bowl and the leaves began to give off an acrid smoke. I leaned over Consort Vulpeja and gently blew the smoke into her nostrils. Each time I took a breath, I turned my head away. When the leaves had burned, I paused to listen to her chest. Her breathing was somewhat eased; it didn’t make such a clamor going in and out of her chest. Her heart still lagged.
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