by Carol Berg
I shook off my foolish imaginings. Though tall for a woman and stronger than I’d ever been in my five and thirty years, I was not strong enough to carry a well-grown man down to the cottage. I crouched over him, and this time, instead of dribbling the chilly water on his lips, I threw it in his face. Gasping and spluttering, he opened his startling eyes—the deep, clear hue of midsummer evening.
“Who are you?” I said.
He squinted and blinked his sun-scalded eyes, fixing them on my face as he had earlier.
“What does Darzid want with you?”
He edged backward, struggling to sit up without coming any closer. As he moved, he seemed to notice his condition of undress and the now-ineffective red shawl. Though he quickly yanked the shawl onto his lap, he did not seem embarrassed. Nor even as he shook off his stupor did he offer any apology. Rather he raised his chin and continued to stare. Still without a word.
“I just want to know what’s happened to you,” I said. “I don’t care what you’ve done or what you did to me. I understand that kind of fear.” Fear of the things men do to each other out of greed and ignorance and jealousy. Fear that cripples your life and makes you lash out, not just at strangers, but at those you love. I had once killed a man out of fear.
Keeping the shawl well in place and one eye on me, the young man bent over the stream, cupped his hand, and drank long and deeply. Well, at least he wasn’t an idiot.
When he sat up again, wiping his mouth on his scratched arm, I tried again. “You’re a long way from anywhere. Where did you come from?”
He shook his head slightly, but the cock of his head and the blank look of his eyes told me that it was not a negative answer, but only that he didn’t understand the question.
“Are you not from Leire, then? Valleor, perhaps?” I dredged up what I could of the language of the fair northern race, but either my pronunciation was too rusty or my guess was wrong. “Kerotea?” I had been no expert linguist all those years ago, but not incompetent either. Yet neither my Kerotean nor my smattering of Avatoir, the language of Iskeran, elicited anything but a negative shrug,
“Well, you say something, then. That’s all I remember.” I pointed to my lips and to him, inviting him to put out a bit of effort to join the conversation.
He tried. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and worked his lips. Soon his fists were clenched and his whole body straining, until he clasped his hands to his head as if it might burst with the effort. But he produced only guttural growls and croaks. In the end, roaring and red-faced, he snatched a rock from the stream and hurled it into the trees, then another and another until, flushed and shaking, he sank back onto his heels and wrapped his arms tightly about his head.
I wanted to leave him there. People made their own choices, and in the ordinary event, I would let them reap their own consequences as I had done. But I would abandon no one to the mercy of Evard or Darzid or Tomas, whichever of the bastards wanted him. No one. Ever.
Calling myself an incomparable fool, I invited him to follow me, using gestures to augment my words. “I’ve food in the valley. We’ll find you some clothes, and you can sleep for a while.” His only response was to grope awkwardly for the shawl, trying to hold it about himself, looking furious and utterly humiliated.
“Then you may rot in your own prideful stink.” I didn’t look back after starting down the path, having every confidence that he would follow just because I would so much rather he wouldn’t. He followed.
I didn’t particularly want a stranger inside the cottage, certainly not one who had already left bruises on my skin. So I was well content when the young man sat on the splintered pine bench outside my door, leaned his head against the wall, and closed his eyes as if he had no better destination. I kept my attention on the forest boundary, and my ears open, halfway expecting Darzid and his riders to burst into view at any moment. But no one came, and the young man himself seemed little concerned about whatever had driven him to his sorry state.
I had no man’s clothes that might fit him, but went inside, rummaged through Anne’s trunk, and came up with a sheet, yellowed and many times mended. I cut a hole in the middle and trimmed a piece of hempen rope to the right length, then took it out to him and showed him what I planned. He picked at the sheet for a moment, then threw it on the ground, his lip curled in disgust, as if I’d offered him dung for breakfast.
“I’ve nothing finer, my Lord Particular,” I said. Then I threw the wadded sheet back at him. “But you’ll not ruin Anne’s shawl either. Go naked if you will.” I yanked the red shawl from his lap and went back inside, slamming the door behind me.
Before I could decide what to do next, he kicked the door open and stepped inside. A formidable presence in the single cramped room. He was not wearing the sheet. Shoving the chairs out of his way, he rumpled the blankets on my bed, examined the dishes and stores I kept on the open shelves by the hearth, and picked through the box of spoons on the table, tossing them onto the floor in disgust when he failed to find whatever he was hunting.
He knelt beside the chest I’d pulled out from the wall and rummaged through it, strewing the meager contents on the floor: the blue dress Anne had put on when the old couple took their vegetables to market, my winter cloak, salvaged from a barge wreck on the river, three spare blankets, the finely sewn collars Anne had embroidered in youthful dreams of meeting a gentleman, but had never worn. Instead of a gentleman, she had married a sweet-spoken Vallorean lad stubborn enough to think he could grow his sustenance on this rocky meadow and avoid the humiliation of binding his body, soul, and future to the land of a Leiran noble. As if his suspicions were confirmed, the young man held up Jonah’s slouched wool cap and gestured about the room, clearly asking where was its owner.
“Dead,” I said, trying to show him with my hands. “Both of them dead long ago. They were old and they died.” I stood by the door and pointed outside, meeting his hard gaze so he could not mistake my meaning. “How dare you touch their things… my things? Get out.”
He surveyed the mess he’d made, then tossed the cap on the floor and walked out. I sagged against the cottage wall. Stupid to bring him here. No matter who was chasing him, no matter how much hate was in me, bringing him to the cottage was stupid.
I had just closed the chest again with everything refolded, when a shadow darkened the still open doorway. My guest stood just outside looking resentful, but draped in a halfway respectable tunic, his long legs sticking out from underneath the sheet’s frayed hem. I stepped to the door and looked him up and down. In truth, the garment looked ridiculous, but it would do as long as the wind was not too high.
“It’s a good thing it’s summer,” I said. He cocked his head and frowned. I fanned myself, pointed to my own light clothing and his skimpy outfit, and raised my eyebrows. That he understood, and just for a moment there blossomed on his face a smile of such unrestrained good humor and unexpected sweetness that it almost took my breath. Earth and sky… he could charm a penny from a beggar with such a smile.
Unfortunately his fair humor disappeared as quickly as it had come. He scowled and rubbed his belly with unmistakable meaning.
From a basket hanging in the corner I extricated a hunk of dry bread, the last of a loaf I’d bought from the village baker. Pulling off the cloth wrapping, I stuffed the bread in the man’s hand and waved toward the meadow. “All right. You won’t starve. Now go.”
He glared at me sourly from the doorway as I set out a leek and a turnip—the rest of my food ration for the day— and filled a pot from my water jug. Before I could hang the pot over the fire, he had thrown the hunk of bread on the floor and was striding across the meadow.
For one moment I leaned heavily on my table, vowing never again to yield to rebellious impulse. When I began peeling the fibrous outer leaves from the leek, my hands were trembling.
But my hopes that my brutish visitor had decided to seek food and fortune elsewhere were quashed when, after crouching at the edge of
the trees for something near half an hour, he headed back toward the house. He walked through my door as if it were his own. Onto the table in front of me he threw a rabbit, neck broken, already gutted and skinned, evidently by the bloody shard of rock in his hand.
Though sorely disappointed at his return, I acknowledged the offering with a nod. I threw another leek and another turnip into the pot, along with the rabbit. I was not averse to fresh meat.
While the savory steam rose from the pot, he stood at the doorway watching everything I did. Retrieving a bone needle and a sad-looking length of cotton from a rolled canvas packet, I set about repairing the rip in my skirt, an immensely practical garment that Anne had helped me make years before—fashioned like a lady’s riding togs with the modest, unremarkable appearance of an ordinary skirt, but split discreetly down the middle like wide-legged trousers. After a while he retreated a few steps, sitting cross-legged on the trampled grass where he could still see inside my door. I resisted the temptation to close the door, remembering the force he’d used earlier to kick it open.
His incessant stare, my sore fingers, and the crude stitches down the side of my one decent garment did nothing for my temper. When the meat had cooked long enough, I shoved a filled bowl into his hand and indicated he should remain outside to eat. His disdain did not extend to my ever-mediocre cooking. His bowl was empty in moments, and he gestured for more. I set the pot outside the door and went back to my own dinner. Before I could finish my first serving, soaking up the broth with the bread he had discarded, my visitor had emptied the pot.
He lay back on his elbows, watching as I cleaned up the mess, carried in wood to refill the woodbox, and mixed dough to make hearthbread for the next day. As the evening cooled he wrapped his arms tightly about his bare legs, and whenever his eyelids drooped, he would jerk his head upright.
When my work was finished, I washed my face and hands in the last of the hot water. Then, as was my habit, I wrapped a blanket about my shoulders and sat on the bench outside my door to watch the day come to its end. Pious Leirans believed that twilight was a sacred time, when Annadis the Swordsman, the god of fire and earth and sunlight, handed off his watch to his twin brother Jerrat the Navigator, the god of sea and storm, moon and stars. Many years had passed since I had had any use for pious Leirans or their warrior gods, yet I still observed the ritual, using the time to keep the days from blurring one into the other. On this evening a good-sized oak limb lay on the bench beside me.
When my visitor unfolded his long legs and looked about as if to decide what to do with himself, I waved him away from the cottage. “Don’t think you’re going to sleep anywhere close.”
He eyed my blanket, my crude cudgel, and the cottage door, which I had deliberately shut when I came out. But I didn’t flinch. As he stood up and walked slowly toward the alder copse, I muttered a good riddance. After a few steps, though, he turned and gave me a half-bow, little more than a nod of the head, but graceful and well meant… and immensely revealing. The man was no peasant poacher. No poverty-dulled laborer. No thieving servant.
As he turned his back again, I called after him. “Your name. I need to have something to call you.” I pointed to myself and said, “Sen.” Then I pointed to him and shook my head in question.
He nodded seriously and worried at it for a few moments. Then he faced away from the cottage into the lingering dusk, pointing into the deep blue sky above the ridge. Slowly he waved his finger back and forth as if searching for something, until the quiet evening was pierced by the harsh cry of an aeren—a gray falcon. The young man gestured and nodded so there was no mistake.
“Aeren?” I said. He didn’t agree or disagree, but only shrugged his shoulders tiredly and trudged across the grass to the copse. He lay down on the thick turf under the alders and was still.
A breeze rustled the dry grass. The plaintive whistle of a meadowlark echoed off the ridge. The stream burbled softly. But as the light faded across the meadow, my gaze moved from the unmoving form under the alders to the hoofprints left by Darzid’s men, and my blood stayed cold. Karon had believed that enough beauty gathered in the soul might bury the knowledge of the evils of the world. I had never accepted his premise. Evil was too strong, too pervasive, too seductive.
Why had I asked the stranger’s name? I didn’t want to know anything about him. And when the longest day of the year was done, I went inside to bed, thinking that if there was any luck to be had, I would wake in the morning to find him gone.
CHAPTER 3
I dreamed of the fire again that night. After ten years, one would think such pain might fade into the dismal landscape of my life. Yet once more I saw Evard’s banners whipped by the cold wind, bright red against the steel-blue sky. I heard again the jeering of the wild-eyed crowds that surged against the line of guards surrounding the pyre, and the stake, and the one bound there, maintaining as he could the last shreds of dignity and reason.
Where was justice? Time blurs so much of worth, so much of learning unused, so many of the daily pleasures that shape a life, too small to make grand memories. Why would it not erase the image of Karon’s mutilated face: the ragged sockets where they had burned out his eyes, the battered mouth where they had cut out the tongue that had whispered words of love and healing? Should not mercy dim his last avowal of joy and life, given just before he withdrew from what relief and comfort I could give him? After ten years I should not hear, again and again, his agonized cry as the flames consumed his sweet body. Dead was dead.
But as much as I tried, I could not silence that cry. In the day, yes, as I worked at the business of survival, but I had never learned to command my dreams. I had vowed on the shields of my ancestors never to weep again. Yet was it any wonder that weakness threatened to betray my resolve upon waking from such a dream?
I had permitted no tears on that day or for many days after. The dream forced me to relive that, too—the two months they kept me confined in the palace with no companion save the mute serving sister, Maddy, and the doomed babe that grew within me. Even Tomas did not come to me in that time. My brother did not want my shaven head or bulging belly to stand witness against him for what he had done or what he planned to do. They could not kill Karon’s child before it was born. The spirit might seek a new host, they said. They wanted to be sure.
Only Darzid had ever shown his face at my door, but it was not for me he came. Always he sat by the brazier, clad simply and impeccably in black and red, propping one boot on the iron hood. “Tell me of sorcerers, Seri. Who was your husband? What did he tell you of his people?” Always probing, always questioning, his unrelenting curiosity picking at my pain as the horror of what had happened settled into grim history, and the horror of what was to come took appalling shape in my ever-naive head.
I had begged Darzid’s help, promised him gold and power, love and loyalty if he would but smuggle me out of my palace prison before my son was born. But he brushed away my pleading just as he flicked off ash that settled on his shining boot, and always he returned to his questions. “Tell me of the sorcerer, Seri. Something happened when he died. Something changed in the world, and I must understand it.”
Eventually I had stopped begging. Stopped talking. Stopped listening. Eventually Darzid had stopped coming, and eventually arrived the day that I willed my labor to stop, the day I struggled to hold the babe within me yet a few more moments, for I knew I would never hold him in my arms. Nature had its way, and I was left empty; the law had its way, and my son’s life was cut short by my brother’s knife. The physician, his head and throat wrapped in a black turban so that his cold face hovered above me like some cruel moon, had commanded the serving woman to take the child to Tomas. I wasn’t even allowed to see my son until Darzid, sober and impersonally curious like an alchemist observing the turmoil he had wrought in his glass, brought him back to me—the tiny boy, pale, motionless, washed clean and laid in a basket, perfect but for the angry red slit that crossed his fragile neck. Then they
took him away and burned him, too, and proclaimed the last sorcerer gone from the earth.
Why had they bothered to wash him? I had never understood that.
Once all was done as the law prescribed, they left me alone in that cold room. Ten years it had been since that last day, and still the dream made it real…
Year 4 in the reign of King Evard
All was silent. The sprawling, squat-towered palace at Montevial, home to more than a thousand nobles, courtiers, servants, and soldiers, as well as the Leiran king, might have been abandoned. No sidelong whispers outside my door. No thumping boots or rattling weapons as the guards were changed. No clatter of dishes in the hallway or jangle of harness from the bleak courtyard far below my small window. Even mute Maddy, who had been my companion for every day of my imprisonment and who had coaxed me gently through the wretched birthing, had vanished.
I rose from the sodden bed, shivering from the sweat still drying on my skin. The murder had been swiftly accomplished; Tomas had been waiting in the next room, so Darzid had told me. I found a discarded towel and cleaned myself as best I could, tying rags between my legs to catch the birthing blood. Then I pulled Maddy’s spare tunic from the plain chest beneath the window, wrapped it over my stained shift, and tied it closed.
The door was no longer locked. Karon’s babe had been the prisoner, not Karon’s wife. They planned to send me to Tomas’s keep, the home of my childhood, to live in penitence and subservience to my brother and his pouting seventeen-year-old wife. But even with nothing left for which to fight, I was not ready to submit to that particular death.