Glares met him on all sides.
Jame had noticed that the five-commander was lingering, clearly in no hurry to return to the birthing field.
“Why are you still here?” she demanded of him, more sharply than was her wont. “Go help Char.” Killy, grudgingly, went.
Evening.
“She wants to talk to you,” said Kells.
Jame nearly demanded, “About what?” but choked back the words. Being defensive didn’t help.
“How is she?” she asked instead.
Rue had kindled a fire in the lower guest room and set a kettle to steam over it. Kells poured more cohosh tea.
“This does some good,” he said, sniffing the bitter brew, making a face. “However, I’m worried. True, labor can go on for a full day or more and it’s barely been fifteen hours. But nothing is moving except the baby. The way has to open. So far, it isn’t.”
“And that’s bad,” said Jame. She had never felt more stupid in her life. “Isn’t there any other herb you can give her?”
“Lavender, sage, ginger, nutmeg, raspberry leaves . . . I’ve tried them all, without results. There is one other.” He paused, frowning, clearly loth to speak. “Black tansy, sometimes used to end a pregnancy.”
“An abortifacient.”
“Yes, although only in the early stages. A strong dose now could deliver the baby, but would be very hard on the mother, probably fatal. The alternative, though, could be that both die.”
And then, thought Jame, Killy would have his wish. Also, her dilemma would disappear.
“Have you told her?”
Kells didn’t answer.
“I see,” said Jame, giving him a sour look. She entered the room and shut the door behind her, leaving him outside.
Inside it was fiercely hot, with a raging fire on the hearth. The Kendar Girt looked up. Then, stony-faced, she withdrew to the nearest wall. Mustard lay on the bed, looking ghastly. The flesh on her face had sunken even more than before, in grotesque contrast to the swollen mound of her stomach under the blanket. Her face shone with sweat. The room stank of it and of vomit.
“I’m sorry,” said Jame.
Must glared at her. “For what?”
“That things have come to this. A long time ago, Gorbel told me what happened with Tiggeri, but you still decided to keep the child. Why?”
A mixture of embarrassment, anger, and defiance mottled the girl’s face.
“If I had gone to an herbalist at Restormir, my lord father would have heard. He’s possessive even of his base-born offspring.”
“Ah. Then you came north to Tagmeth because you didn’t want him to have your child.”
“Neither he nor Tiggeri.” She spat out the latter name. “Even when we were little, he tried to play his games with me. Gorbel protected me, but then he went away, first to Tentir, then to Kothifir.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jame again. “I haven’t done very well by you either, but you shouldn’t have tried to force my hand.”
“Should I have thrown myself at your feet instead?”
“That might have worked better, but you’re very proud, aren’t you? Pride is all that the Caineron have left you.”
“That, and my baby. At least it will be Gorbel’s nephew—yes, I believe that it’s a boy—if he chooses to acknowledge it.”
“Knowing him, he probably will, unless it endangers the child. Gorbel may be the Caineron lordan, but my impression is that his father dislikes him.”
“There is that. But . . . but there may not be a child. I’ve seen the herbalist’s expression. Grim.” For the first time, she looked scared. “I should have told you sooner. I should have asked for help. For my son’s sake.”
“And I should have given it without being asked, however my people and brother react.”
A spasm distorted the girl’s thin face. Girt stepped forward with a cloth steeped in lavender water to wipe her brow. Kells looked in, but Must gestured him away.
“I only want Girt,” she said, sounding both petulant and very young. “She has been my nurse all of my life, and my mother’s before me.”
Another contraction made her writhe under the blanket. Her hand, when Jame took it, was slick with sweat but oh, so cold.
“I see now,” she panted. “I have no future, here or anywhere. I’m dying.”
Jame wanted to contradict her, but couldn’t. Something in her knew the truth when she heard it, smelled it. There was a throat-catching stench on the other’s breath, as if of internal gangrene. Trinity, how long had she been this ill? It was a miracle that the baby was still alive, but not much longer at this rate. She swallowed.
“Kells hasn’t told you, has he? There’s a final potion he can try that might save your child, but probably not you.”
Must gripped her hand. “What? There is?” Jame could almost see her collect herself to think, to calculate. Her grip tightened.
“If I don’t survive, what future has my child without a protector? If I take this draught, do you swear to accept him?”
“Blackmail again?”
Must gulped. “A . . . a request. Please.”
Jame struggled with herself. How could she give such a promise without any idea how to carry it out? On the other hand, how could she refuse?
Honor’s Paradox. Should one follow orders, or do what was right? The answer lay in the question.
The girl gasped, going gray. The blanket tangled around her legs began to turn red. Blood’s copper tang permeated the room.
“Yes,” said Jame, clutching her hand. “I will provide for the child. Kells!”
The herbalist reappeared in the doorway.
“She has decided to take the herb.”
“You warned her of the possible consequences?”
“Yes. As you meant me to.”
He returned her glare steadily. She was lord, the responsibility hers. Then again, it must be hard for a healer to deliver death. Here too, however, there might also be life.
“All right,” she said. “Do it.”
In his hand, she saw that he already carried a cup of black, steaming brew. For a moment, she thought that she would vomit. Must still clung to her hand.
“Thank you,” the girl whispered, took a deep breath, and let go.
Jame turned blindly toward the door. Enough, enough . . .
Girt stood in her way. “God bless you or curse you, lady. I don’t know which.”
“Neither do I. See to her.”
Outside, Jame leaned against the closed door.
She heard Kells’ murmur, Must’s tremulous voice:
“Do you promise . . . do you swear . . .”
Still trying to strike a deal, this time with death.
“Drink,” said Kells, clearly.
A pause.
“It’s so bitter,” said Must. “It’s . . . oh. Oh!”
Gasps. Thrashing. A muffled cry.
“Hold her,” Kells said to Girt. “It’s coming. Steady, steady . . .”
A deep groan. A long, desperate pause. A baby’s wail.
“He has come,” said Kells, “and she has gone.”
Jame stumbled down the stairs. Must’s people had been sitting around the courtyard’s well but rose at her precipitous appearance.
“Your lady is dead,” she told them. “You have a new lord.”
Trinity, Jame thought as she left the courtyard, the ward, the lower pasture. Why had she said that? True, the child was three-quarters Highborn, but the quarter Kendar blood defined him. If he should prove to be Shanir, though, able to bind other Kendar. . .
G’ah. Too many “ifs.”
She found herself on the hillside opposite Tagmeth, without clearly remembering having gotten there or why she had come. Then the latter came to her:
To escape the stench of death.
Because someone needed her.
Night had fallen. The last thin rind of the moon had long since set and clouds obscured the stars, throwing the slope into de
ep shadow. It was very quiet. A thin wind skittered frozen crystals over the ice crust formed when the sun had set.
“. . . blaaa . . .”
What in Perimal’s name was that? It sounded young, weak, and desperate. Jame climbed toward the sound, into the deeper shadow of the skeletal trees. Here, she could barely see at all. Roots and rocks protruding from the snow tripped her. Thorns clutched at her sleeves. Through the sharp, clean scent of snow came something else, throat-catching . . . the reek of fresh blood. She was drawn to it, however much it curdled her stomach, as if to death itself. Perhaps that was what it meant to be a potential nemesis, and in part why Kells had left her to deliver the dire news to Must. Jame hoped not, but feared that it was so.
Then she stumbled over something that once, not long ago, had been alive.
“Don’t tread on her,” said a voice. Char.
Jame blinked. Night and death must have clouded her vision. Bene lay at her feet, the snow around her blacker than the blackest shadow.
“She came to me in agony,” said Char, still shrouded in darkness, sounding dull and numb. “I was supposed to make it all better. Instead, I cut her throat. Even then, her belly moved. The calf. . . I cut again.”
Jame could see him now, sitting in a nest of roots. Something lolled in his arms, twitching. It made an effort and rose on straddle legs. He steadied it. Long legs, short neck, a head already bowed under the knobs that would become horns . . .
“Blaah,” it said again through as yet toothless jaws.
It looked more like a moose calf than either a domestic cow or a yackcarn, and more ugly than either. Clearly, it was a heifer; undoubtedly, it . . . no, she—was going to be huge.
“The others . . .”
“Dead, I assume,” said Char. “If Killy had brought back the rest of my ten-command in time, we might have saved more of the babies, if not more of the mothers. Huh. Perhaps he did right. What future do yackcows have in our herd? This one is named Malign.”
Jame scrambled for the connection. “Short for ‘malignant’?”
“Blaah!” said the calf again and tottered toward her dead mother.
Char lurched to his feet. “She needs to nurse. I have to find one of Bene’s sisters in milk.”
“Wait,” said Jame as he started to walk off, one arm around the calf’s shoulders. “Tomorrow is Must’s pyre and, I suppose, the dressing of whatever cows have died tonight. The day after is the winter solstice. Chingetai owes us some cattle, not to mention a proper bull. D’you want to go up to the Merikit village with me to select the new herd?”
Char hesitated, gathering himself. Jame could almost see him turning from death toward life.
“Yes,” he said unsteadily. “I would like that.”
II
THE NEXT DAY DAWNED overcast and subdued, with a few hesitant snowflakes drifting down. Everything seemed muted. The Caineron yondri prepared Must’s pyre on the west side of the lower meadow opposite from the site used earlier to burn the incursion of haunts, using finer wood than they had supplied for Tagmeth’s various hearths as if this need had been foreseen. The kitchen provided spices; Marc, a flask of precious oil from the storeroom. All day the garrison left tokens among the growing structure in a show of respect that they had not granted the Caineron girl during her lifetime. Jame wondered what exactly they were honoring. As before, she felt eyes on her askance, waiting to see how she would react. The passing Caineron watched her too, with an air of suppressed challenge.
At dusk everyone gathered. Girt emerged from the undercroft with an escort of torchbearers, holding the baby whose name, Jame had learned, was Benj, in honor of the Caineron whom Fash had killed. He was an unusually taciturn infant, with a red, pouting, frog-like face that seemed to hold in some inexpressible grievance. Jame noted how the yondri huddled around him and wondered again what his arrival might portend.
More torches. Must’s bier approached, carried by her fellow Cainerons. How small and pale she appeared under a rich coverlet. Had Marc provided that, too from some stash of which Jame was unaware? Never mind. She didn’t begrudge it.
The garrison stood back. Whatever their feelings, this ritual belonged to others. It was the first time that they had allowed their unwelcome visitors to come to the fore.
Torches were thrust into the matrix of wood. Flames licked up. A Caineron stepped forward and dropped a white cloth into the growing inferno. The fabric folds fluttered open in the updraft, revealing dark spots soon consumed. So. They were indeed treating Must as their lady, each drop of blood representing the life that a bound Kendar would once have given up on the death of his liege-lord.
Jame felt a stir of irritation. The Caineron were making great claims here for Must and by extension for her baby. Whatever, it wasn’t her business, she told herself, but doubts lingered.
The pyre burned well into the moonless night. In the end nothing remained but ash, and a child.
III
COLD, HARD DAWN.
Jorin had chosen not to leave their warm bed.
Death’s-head, on the other hand, pawed at the ground. Whatever was going on, he wanted to get on with it. Jame tweaked the reins, and was pulled nearly out of the saddle when he ducked his head.
“Bastard,” she muttered.
The rathorn snorted plumes of smoke.
In a scrabble of hooves, Char rode up, a limp Malign slung over his roan’s withers, snoring gently. The calf was so big that her hooves dangled nearly at the horse’s knees. Judging by the latter’s pinned ears, he was not pleased at his burden.
“What, you couldn’t find a milch cow?”
“Oh, I found one, but she wouldn’t cooperate, so I had to milk her myself.”
He slapped a bulging leather sack lashed to his saddle. It sloshed. “We’ll have to stop fairly often for her to nurse.”
Death’s-head warily sniffed the calf’s rump.
“Blaa . . .” said the baby, still half-asleep, and farted.
The rathorn retreated, shaking his head.
They had a good day for their journey, bright and sunny, unseasonably warm. Jame had chosen to ride Death’s-head because his legs were stronger than Bel’s, but the Whinno-hir mare would have served just as well, except in the shadows where the drifts were still deep. It seemed to Jame that every time she traveled by the folds in the land, her mount chose a different path. This time, once they had left the River Road, the way north led mostly beside streams under whose icy surfaces water still ran fast. It was a slower trip than usual, given how often they had to stop for the calf’s sake. By dusk, they caught sight of Kithorn’s ragged walls.
Torches bobbed in the keep’s courtyard. Drums muttered and chimes tinkled: Boom–wah-wah-wah . . . ching-ring-a-ching-ching . . .
“What are they doing?” asked Char. He had the sense to speak softly.
“The Merikit shamans are mumming for the Four, specifically for the Burnt Man. He’s the major player at the winter solstice, until it’s the Earth Wife’s turn at dawn.”
“That creature.”
Jame had forgotten that Char had seen Mother Ragga at the summer solstice in her guise as a massive tree, cradling Lyra. They never had discussed that strange apparition. Quite possibly, he hadn’t recognized the Earth Wife again in the village during the women’s mysteries there. Sometimes she forgot how peculiar Rathillien must seem to most Kencyr.
Night fell soon after, moonless, but spangled with stars bright enough to cast black shadows on faintly purple snow. The hill upon which the Merikit village perched loomed ahead, a dark presence against darker mountains. Not a light shone there. It was two years since Jame had last attended a Merikit winter solstice. Then, she had arrived very late, to find only darkness and the village women anxiously gathered, waiting for Chingetai to play his long overdue role. As at the summer solstice, it occurred to her that she didn’t know what the Gran Cyd’s women did while their menfolk mummed for the gods. Perhaps, again, she was about to find out.
; The gate stood open.
Tip-tap, tip-tap went Malign’s hooves over the boardwalk inside as she tottered at Char’s heels. All of the half-sunken lodges were dark, although low voices sounded ahead in the open space before Gran Cyd’s lodge. Char slowed.
“Am I going to have to wear a dress again?” he asked.
“Maybe not, given what a good sport you were last time.”
“Here she is!” voices murmured in excitement as a dark shape pushed her way through the crowd toward the queen’s tall figure.
“Well then, Feran,” said the latter’s resonant voice. “What is our clue?”
“Oh, it’s a good one, it is. Listen: What has one eye but cannot see?”
“All have heard? Then seek and find.”
As the women scattered into the dark, chattering, Jame made her way through their departing ranks to Gran Cyd, who greeted her with a smile in her voice, if nearly invisible on her face.
“This year you have made good time, my favorite. Welcome to you also, friend of the tribe. And who is this?”
“Blaaa?” said Malign, raising her muzzle.
A snort answered her from atop the queen’s lodge. Jame saw what she had missed before—a sturdy fence and, leaning against it from the inside, the diminutive hulk of the yackcarn bull.
“I wish that my dear mate had not gifted me with such a guest,” remarked Gran Cyd. “He cries all night long, such a lonesome sound.”
As if in response, the bull lowed and butted the fence. His horns, Jame saw, had been sawn short and bound with iron bands. Around his neck hung a bell that tolled mournfully. A questioning bugle from Death’s-head answered him from outside the walls.
“Housebond!” A slight figure rushed forward and threw herself into Jame’s arms, nearly knocking her over.
“Lodge-wyf.” Jame returned Prid’s hug. “Lyra.”
The Highborn girl hung back a moment, then walked into Jame’s embrace. Such familiarity was not common among their class, although Lyra had previously been more spontaneous. Jame noted that she only sported the smudged charcoal sketch of a mask, although she and the Merikit again wore similar clothes—the traditional loose, belted tunic and trousers of the tribe. What else might Lyra have learned in all of this time from her hosts, and they from her?
The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8) Page 29