The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “Or where we are, for that matter,” Hwyn added. “We are traveling players, the Lady Trenara's own troupe.”

  “Ah, players!” cried a rosy-faced young woman with a blond braid over each shoulder and a baby on her back. “Just the thing for the festival.”

  “The festival!” I said. “We lost count of days on the road. Is it the Feast of the Turning God already?”

  “What, isn't it cold enough for you?” said the man who had spoken first, a broad-faced, blond man of about forty or fifty with dirt under his fingernails. “Yes, traveler, it's the feast already. We're headed into town to take these apples to the fair and see some of the dancing. You may come with us, and if you'll sing for us, you're welcome to taste the wares. I'm Alcorel the apple grower; these are my wife, Beri,” he gestured to the older of the two women beside the cart, “my sons, Ador and Alb, my daughter-in-law Vel, and my grandchildren, whose names scarcely matter as they answer to nothing at all, these days. What should we call you?”

  “I'm Jereth,” I said. “These are Hwyn and the Lady Trenara. And we will certainly travel along with you and sing for you. But tell me first, what town are we coming to?”

  “Did you not even know that?” said Alcorel. “This is Berall, the domain of Lord Var, and a finer town you won't find in all the North. You must have traveled far indeed to wander into towns without knowing their names.”

  “Traveling is our livelihood,” Hwyn said, “learning a song or story in one place and taking it where it will seem new and wonderful. But so many towns in these parts stand empty that we could scarcely find anyone to tell us what lay ahead of us.”

  “Towns with no heart are easily broken apart by the Troubles,” said Alcorel.

  “Does Berall have a heart, then?” I said.

  “Lord Va r is our heart,” the farmer said. “In the old days, before he had the crown, when we were at war with Myrcwold, he fought at the front of his father's army—not like the Myrcwold prince, hiding in the pavilion, content to let others risk their lives. When raiders came from the wastelands north of us, he rallied all the countryside to unite, and again he faced the foe before us all. He reminds us that this is a land worth loving, worth defending. And he is a friend to the people: when the mood takes him, he will go among the crowd and pick out plain folk to be invited to his table as his guests, sharing the feast with the great. Such things are not to be found everywhere, and so we will never leave Berall. Whatever the time brings, while Var reigns, we will not be shaken.”

  “Bold words,” said Hwyn, “and they call for a bold song. What shall we give them, Jereth?”

  “‘King Haylwin's Victory,’ perhaps?” I suggested.

  “Oh, yes, just the thing! Your version has more verses: you begin and I'll follow,” she said, so I filled my lungs with the crisp frost-touched air and launched into the historical ballad we'd often sung to while away long plodding stretches of road. We sang the glories of King Haylwin, who routed the Kettrans from the North Country, made his throne in Larioneth, and established justice throughout the land, if minstrels were to be believed. We counted the ranks of overwhelming foes, mounted our defense, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and finished to such applause that we knew we could not stop after one song. Hwyn began a threshing-song, scooped up three small apples from the cart, and began to juggle.

  And so when the faint cow-path we traveled gave way to the cobbled streets of Berall, our act was already under way. Alcorel and his family made no move to reclaim the apples Hwyn juggled; instead they guided us, still singing, to the Berall fairground, where they positioned us like sentries in front of their stall and sold apples to everyone who came to listen. From time to time, when we grew hoarse, they would offer us each a mouthful of tangy cider from a jug kept behind the stall.

  We found ourselves in the thick of a thriving north-country market town—once nothing to remark on, but in these times of Troubles, practically a miracle. Clean-lined timber houses with steep-sloping roofs, many with brightly painted shutters and a few with real glass windows, stood in orderly ranks to the north of the square. Craftsmen's shops on all sides were neat and cheerful, decked with garlands and red-oak leaves for the holiday. In the spirit of the day, their fresh-painted signs hung upside-down, for the Turning God is also the Upside-Down God, lord of reversal and change, the only figure painted head-downward on icons of the Four Great Ones on the Wheel.

  The people who milled in and out of these shops seemed as well kept as the houses. Most, like Alcorel's clan, looked like prosperous farming folk, their hands roughened with work but their clothes displaying some of the little luxuries of a fortunate year, like fur-lined boots and hoods or the brightly dyed kerchiefs that fluttered like pennants about the women's windblown hair. Other comforts of prosperity were for sale around me: nut pastries at a confectioner's stall; elderberry wine and stronger spirits at a vintner's shop; ointments against windburn and discreet little vials of face-paint sold from a lively old woman's cart. All these kept up a busy trade. I was surprised to hear it was the first day of the festi-val—usually trade must wait for the second, after the most solemn rites are done—but I was in no mood to disapprove: it was so good to see a city where normal life survived the Troubles.

  We had our share of this prosperity: onlookers, reckless with ale and high spirits, filled my cup with coins so quickly that I almost needed to be a juggler myself to stow the loot in my pocket before the cup overflowed. That will serve us well, I thought, feeling the wind's icy fingers steal between the tops of my worn boots and the bottom of my threadbare cassock and cloak. Hwyn had Ethwin's sheepskin tied about her thin frame, wool inward, but even on her small body it left too much unprotected. Winter would come down swiftly in this land, and we all needed new clothes to withstand it as we continued northward.

  Heartened by the applause and the coins, we gave the people of Berall a bounty of our own: sea chanteys and shepherds' airs, holy hymns and ribald catches, sharp satires and sweet songs of love, buoyant drinking songs and laments. They devoured it all, keeping us at it till, tired and hoarse, we begged off to gather our strength and make a few purchases of our own at the stalls we'd been eying all day. My pockets were heavy not only with this day's song-money but with unspent wages from harvesting along the road, and I was resolved to lighten them.

  “I'm not saving this money to buy illusions from ghosts in the empty towns,” I said to Hwyn.

  She nodded her agreement. “Or to be stolen by the next pickpocket, right here in Berall. You're right: it's no use being prudent now. We're better off carrying clothes on our backs than money in our pockets.”

  We went straight to the clothiers' booths and spent a long time deciding what we could best get for our money. Trenara was hardest to buy for: we could not afford clothes befitting her station, but would attract suspicion if we dressed her in commoners' clothes. Hwyn settled on buying her a muff for her hands and warmer stockings to wear under her thinning finery, as well as having the lady's boots patched, along with mine and her own. I thought these things should suffice: northern-born Trenara had complained of heat, damp, fatigue, and hunger often enough along the way, but never of cold, even when Hwyn and I woke blue-fingered and miserable. It was Hwyn that needed everything she could get against the cold.

  Walking along the rows of stalls, I scanned the faces of the sellers for one that seemed to look with troubled compassion at Hwyn's bony figure and threadbare shift. A kind-eyed woman showed us a gown of thick amber wool made for a delicate child. “The girl died before she could wear it—Hidden Goddess be gentle with her,” she said. “I have to sell the gown for less now—this hooded cloak as well, too small for most of the folk that buy from me.”

  Hwyn regarded them with a solemn eye, but stroked the soft wool of the dress appreciatively. I asked the price—a merciful one indeed—and paid the money before Hwyn could have second thoughts about getting them both.

  “Will we have enough left for your things?” Hwyn said.<
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  “I'm sure I can find something,” I told her. “And besides, we can sing again tomorrow.”

  “I don't have clerical garb,” said the seamstress, looking at me questioningly—and indeed, by then it must have been half apparent that the cassock was a remnant of some abandoned life.

  “I left the Order last spring,” I told her. “I just haven't had money for new clothes till now.”

  “Then I may have something for you,” the seamstress said. “Used, but not badly. Beanpole-shaped, like you. I was going to rework the cloth into something else—not much call for such a long narrow tunic—but you might save me the work. Here, take a look.” The moss-green tunic and breeches she showed me were all she promised: only gently worn, and about my size. They were plain, sturdy, homespun garments, but they seemed a forbidden luxury: the first colored clothes I'd had since I'd joined the Order. After paying down the coins, I stood admiring them a while.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Hwyn said. “Put them on.” She'd already slipped her new dress on over her old one and slung her cloak over her shoulders.

  “Not over this,” I said, gesturing at my clerical garb. “It's the festival of change, and it's time to bid farewell to Brother Jereth of the Tarvon Order.” I turned to the seamstress. “Is there anywhere I could change my clothes without scandalizing the whole square?”

  She smiled, and improvised a tent with a length of homespun over the back of her cart. I folded my long limbs beneath it for enough time to scramble into the breeches, out of the cassock, and into the tunic. Emerging in my new finery with my old cassock in my hand, I noticed a one-legged beggar eying what I carried, his own tunic more battered and threadbare than even Hwyn's old shift. I held the garment out to him: “If you want it, it's yours.”

  The beggar smiled his thanks, and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as he took away the last frayed remnant of my ties to the Tarvon Order.

  “Come on, let's see the new Jereth,” Hwyn called. I hurried over to her, stooped so she could look me in the eye, then, caught by a sudden impulse, lifted her up and whirled her around like one of the festival's Turning Dancers.

  “You are a new man,” she laughed. “I've never known you to dance before. I approve the change! But let's find some morsel to eat and drink before the evening rites begin.”

  We scarcely had time to buy a couple of handfuls of nuts when the hunting horns of the festival began sounding, calling the people to the temple court. We hurried along with the crowd, munching the bruised apples Hwyn had been juggling all afternoon and looking forward to a more substantial meal later.

  In the temple court we found the traditional fire of chaff well ablaze. The sacred clowns—men dressed as women, women dressed as men, or adults of either sex masked as babies or beasts—capered about the bonfire, taunting the people who passed them to throw something in: their riches, their wisdom, their safety, their old way of life. Most of the people passed by; some threw in wax tablets on which they'd written what they wanted to burn. A few threw coins in the fire: a grand gesture, I suppose, but I thought it foolish. If they wanted to unburden themselves, they could throw the money at a beggar and let him get a hot meal with it.

  But the clowns would not have known what to do with a beggar. “I can't taunt you,” one said as Hwyn passed. “You have nothing.”

  “That's what you think,” said Hwyn, and threw in her apple core. Trenara and I did likewise, more to be rid of them before the rites began than for any other reason. But then, many things in this festival were without reason. I had never understood this feast day or its lord, the Turning God. He is Lord of the Harvest: why then do the priests chant that he is struck with each stroke of the flail, ground with each turn of the millstone, crushed with each grape pressed to wine? As we celebrate the god's bounty, why do we await the Procession of the Reaper and fall flat to earth as he passes, mown down by the scythe?

  It is sin to slight any of the Four Great Ones, and I would tell myself this every harvest to resign myself to these rites. Whatever we may profess, most of us feel drawn to one side of the Wheel, repelled by the other. Halred was unusual in this: most priests schooled in the lore of more than one Great One worship a god and goddess adjacent on the Wheel, offering only distant courtesy to their opposites. I had entered an order devoted to the Rising God, lord of justice, law, understanding, and light; I understood little of his irrational opposite on the Wheel.

  I mulled over these things as we waited among the crowd, mocked by the sacred clowns. They were not, I thought wryly, very good at this task. They spared some of the worshipers most ripe for satire: the merchant who hung near the back of the crowd so he could go back to his selling as quickly as possible; the well-dressed man who kept his hands fixed against his bulging pockets as he passed the fire, as though he feared his coins might jump in of their own accord. Perhaps there was a place for me at this festival, after all, I thought: teaching these complacent, well-fed people to mock. I remembered how in Annelon, when I was an acolyte, one of the Turning God's clowns had mocked my abbot, aping his stiff posture and those prim little maxims that punctuated his every speech, till the abbot was as red as the wine they spilled out for blood later in the rites. Everyone should be fair game at this feast.

  The sound of a hunting horn interrupted my thoughts, and soon enough we had to clear the way for the Hunt: men dressed as hunters and hounds who race through the crowd and seize people here and there as prey. They set headdresses of deer-antlers on their heads and gather them on the altar, where they must lie prostrate while the hunters sing the Mourning of the Prey. The meaning of this pageant and its place in the harvest festival is never explained, like so much else in this gloomy rite full of images of death: a strange way to celebrate the harvest that brings promise of life through the winter!

  I was lost in these thoughts when I heard Hwyn gasp and realized that one of the hunters had snatched Trenara. The lady accepted the antler headdress as if it were just another holiday treat of new clothing and went docilely along with the masked man. Hwyn struggled to follow her through the crowd, but I caught her arm firmly. “Hwyn, no. She'll be all right, and we'll find her afterward.”

  Hwyn nodded slowly, and I breathed more easily. However warm our reception, the last thing we needed in a strange town was to fight with priests and respectable citizens during a holy rite. Moreover, Trenara herself showed no signs of distress as she lay among the other antlered victims, listening to the wailing voices of the singers. When it ended, the hunter had to lead her down from the altar, or she might have stayed there resting. I tried to follow her movements, but the Procession of the Reaper was next, and after we got up off the ground, I found I had lost sight of her in the crowd.

  We waited without her, casting our eyes about for her as the priest told one of the many contradictory tales of the Upside-Down God: how, captured by foes and hung upside-down from a tree, he saw things nobody sees straight on. Finding he knew something his captors could never grasp, he laughed aloud, and the laugh of their captive, the laugh of a god, sent his captors trembling till they could not hold him. The things he saw are the Secrets of the Upside-Down God, which all his priests seek. They cannot know these secrets, but in the seeking, they believe, there is wisdom.

  By the time the clowns dispersed the crowd, Hwyn was agitated, pacing about desperately in the shadowy twilight. “Where can she have gone?”

  “Don't worry,” I said. “For over a year, she's followed you through cities and woods and mountains and the haunted lands of the North. I doubt she'll let you slip from her grasp.”

  Just then, Alcorel the Apple-Grower came toward us, beaming. “There you are, players! I scarcely recognized you in your new things—a great improvement, I must say. I wanted to thank you; I've never sold so many apples in one day as I did today, with your song drawing everyone in the festival to my cart. Let me take you to an inn and buy you a good supper in return.”

  “Thank you,” said Hwyn, “but w
e need to find Trenara. She was snatched by one of the hunters, and now I can't find her.”

  “Ah, she'll be back soon. The hunter must give the prey a cup of wine in the temple after the rite,” said Alcorel. “We'll move closer to the temple to see her on her way out.”

  Hwyn acquiesced, so we made our way as well as we could through the crowd, wading against the current of people leaving the temple courts for snug homes or warm inns.

  “The god's own luck is with me today,” Alcorel said, “to have met you players on the way into town.”

  “In all the towns we've played, we've never been received so warmly as here in Berall,” I said. “This town must be hungry for song.”

  “We don't get many traveling players nowadays,” Alcorel said.

  “Not even on the great feast days?” Hwyn said.

  Alcorel shrugged. “Players are transients; they put down shallow roots. It takes plain, steady farming folk to endure in the shadow of the Troubles. No offense meant,” he added quickly. “I suppose there's a poor harvest for minstrels in a land half empty; no doubt you'll be turning back southward when the festival ends.”

  Hwyn turned to him, smiling as sweetly as her twisted face allowed. “No, friend: our road lies north. We traveling players want to find the last town—the one most in need of song to lift the spirits. Only there will we stay the winter.”

  “But this is the last town,” Alcorel said. “Everything north of Berall is deserted. I thought you knew that.”

  Hwyn and I looked at each other open-mouthed. There was still a long road between us and Larioneth. We'd hoped to cover half that ground before the snows blocked the path, but we hadn't reckoned on journeying into winter through an empty land without hope of bread or shelter.

  “Have the Troubles reached so far?” Hwyn gasped.

  “Everywhere in the North but here,” Alcorel said. “Lord Var has kept them at bay.”