by Andre Norton
In the darkness something brightened, something pale green spotted with red. Lady Ewaren’s torn and bloody dress.
I saw her foot.
She’d felt pain.
When each one of her fingers was broken—on the order of Lord Purvis—pain had stabbed into her.
Each finger.
Such pain.
Then the blessed darkness had claimed her, as I thought it was claiming me.
What had happened to Rembert? Had bitterness settled that deeply inside him when he’d been sent away? It was done, sending children away. I to the Village Nar, he to Lord Purvis—the man whose name Rembert would later take.
Power? Is that what my brother had craved? Is that what the Empress offered him?
But at the price of my father’s death? And the Emperor’s?
Could my brother pay that damning price?
I wanted the answers, but more than that, I wanted the blackness to smother me.
“Wisteria!”
I felt hands on my shoulders, and the blackness receded a little, again showing me the pale, bloodied dress of my House Lady.
Her foot.
The blood-soaked ground.
“Wisteria!”
Tillard’s face came into focus, pushing away more of the darkness. My mind flashed with anger—how dare he take me away from the comforting cocoon!
His face was filled with worry. “Wisteria, come back to us! Don’t do this. We need you, Wisteria! Wake up!”
I didn’t need this world. I’d seen too much, felt too much. I needed an end to this.
“Wisteria! Please!”
His face was inches from mine, and the taste of his concern and determination overpowered me. I saw the peach-colored light shed by the candles. And I felt Tillard’s skin against mine, the back of his hand feeling my forehead, his fingers brushing my cheek.
Then he worked a hand behind my shoulders and helped me up. I cringed. The back of my head throbbed. I must have hit it when I fell away from the cot and slipped into unconsciousness. My head was tender and warm to the touch, and I felt a softness where a lump had started to grow.
“Where is Lord Purvis?” I got on my knees and shuffled back to the cot. The man’s head was tipped; he had watched me fall. “Your commander, Moonson. Where in the Nine Circles is he?”
He stared at me, unspeaking.
Alysen entered the cottage, leaving her boots at the door so she would not track water onto the floor. Crowded with me, Tillard, the two Nanoo, and now her, the room felt overly warm. She stood on the other side of the cot, across from me, looking down at the wounded Moonson, then at me.
“Nanoo…” She looked down at the man again, deciding to avoid my gaze. “Nanoo Shellaya says I should tell you, Eri.”
“Tell her what?” Tillard brought a stool over and placed it next to me. I shook my head that I didn’t need it, but he tugged on my arm, and so I got up and sat on it. “Alysen, what did Shellaya want you to tell Wisteria?”
The young Nanoo nudged Alysen aside and checked the Moonson’s bandages.
“She said I should tell you about my scrying.” She finally raised her gaze to meet mine. “Not the ones I’d been doing here in the heart, but the ones before. The ones I hadn’t told you about.”
An uncomfortable silence found its way into the cottage. I didn’t prod her, knowing that since she’d come in here, she’d eventually say what she needed to. It might take her a few minutes, and I wouldn’t mind waiting. The back of my head continued to throb, feeling like someone had struck a hammer against it. The floor of the cottage was indeed hard!
“I saw Lord Purvis with your father, Eri, in one of my scrys. I saw him talk to your father, but I did not hear any words. Scrying does not let you listen, only watch.”
I knew that from my own scryings, but I had no intention of telling Alysen I’d learned how to proficiently use the magic.
“They talked, and your father seemed to know him, smiled at him. I almost looked away, as I found nothing interesting in their meeting. But then your father poured them wine and turned away to look at something on a desk. Lord Purvis put something in your father’s glass. I thought this part interesting, and so I watched a little longer.”
She ground the ball of her foot against the floor. “Then your father drank it and died. Tester for the Emperor, Eri, you’d think he would have smelled the poison.”
Not if he suspected nothing amiss would he smell it, I knew. And why ever would he suspect his son of wanting to kill him?
“My scry followed Lord Purvis, down a hall filled with paintings of fancy people and through one room after another. So big the house he walked through! A palace, it had to be. He went into a fine, fine room with tapestries and paintings with gold frames, and a carpet so thick his boots sunk into it. Lanterns burned, ones made of gold and silver, everything so very shiny. The Emperor was there.”
Alysen shifted back and forth on the balls of her feet now, and tugged at a loose thread on her skirt band. “He poisoned the Emperor, too. I saw Lord Purvis kill them both, Eri. And Lord Purvis saw me.” She stuffed a fist in her mouth and fought back tears. Then she dropped the hand to her side. “I couldn’t tell you before. I just couldn’t.”
“But you’ve told her now.” This came from Tillard, who was sorting through the Moonson’s belongings. He held up the chain mail shirt against his chest. A moment more and he shrugged into it. The sleeves were a little short and the shirt itself too big. Next he put on the chain coif. He looked quite different with his lion’s mane of hair confined. “At least you told her, Alysen.” Despite his words, his expression revealed he disapproved that she’d not revealed this information earlier.
Tillard picked up the tabard, held it to him, then decided against it. Perhaps he read my thoughts that it was akin to blasphemy to wear the garb of a Moonson if you were not an oak brother. Perhaps he did not want to wear something so bloodied. He folded it and replaced it under the cot. Then he strapped on the sword belt and wrapped his fingers around the pommel.
“Where is Lord Purvis now?” Tillard leaned over the cot and brought his face inches above the Moonson. “Where is he? Wisteria and I require this information.”
“I don’t know. By all that’s holy, I truly don’t know.”
“Then let us find out.” Tillard placed a hand on either side of the man’s head. “Wisteria, watch with me.”
Curious, as I am ever curious, I got up from the stool, my head swooning and threatening to spill me back to the floor. But I managed to stay on my feet. I edged closer and bent at the waist, putting my hands on the side of the cot to steady myself.
“Let’s find out where your demon-man is.” Tillard squeezed his eyes shut and brought his face so close to the Moonson’s that their noses touched. When Tillard opened his eyes, I gasped. There, reflected in the right eye of the Moonson, leered a tiny image of Lord Purvis.
Tillard used the water in the Moonson’s eye to scry.
“He’ll see us, Wisteria. This demon-man is strong in the wyse. I can feel his strength. Look, his eyes stare into mine.”
“Strong in the wyse,” I whispered. Though he hadn’t been as a child, I recalled. His talent must have developed in later years, and he kept that news from my father.
I had to move closer still, as the image on the eye was so very tiny. Lord Purvis stood on a black field, black sky above him, but stars shimmering down to make his armor shine. There were men with him, but I couldn’t see how many or how many were on horses.
“He’s near, Wisteria.” I tasted dread in Tillard’s words.
I stared at the diminutive image. The black field he stood on was a charred section of forest floor.
Lord Purvis—my brother, Rembert—was bringing his force back into the fen.
31
Tillard rushed from the cottage, calling for the Nanoo to gather around him.
Alysen stared at me wide-eyed. “Are you angry with me, Eri, that I didn’t tell you everything earl
ier?”
That she let me think it was my bloodline that had brought Lord Purvis to the Village Nar? That she had put the bloodshed on me? That she had let all of this eat away at me?
I walked by her, saying nothing. As she was little more than a child, I knew the burden of her scrying probably was too much for her to bear or to admit to. Now, no doubt, it ate away at her. She would find solace with time, especially because of her young age. But I knew in my heart she would never completely forgive herself for the scrying that had led Lord Purvis first to the Village Nar and now to Mardel’s Fen. It would never let her forget how many people had died.
Perhaps forgiveness should elude her. But not redemption.
I joined Tillard outside. Nearest to him were five people I suspected were his parents, brothers, and sister. I had one member left of my family—Lord Purvis, my brother, Rembert.
I still thought about Alysen and everything she’d seen through her scry spells. Even if she’d not looked in on my father and the Emperor, they’d still be dead—the difference being no one would know they’d been poisoned.
The difference being the Village Nar would still thrive.
A shudder passed through my body. Lady Ewaren, Willum, they’d still be alive. But the treachery against the Emperor and my father, and whatever dark plans the Empress and my brother had, would remain hidden. What a horrible, horrible price had been paid to learn of the royal manipulations!
My thoughts continued to swirl as I watched the Nanoo gather around Tillard. Nanoo Shellaya pressed through the circle and joined him.
“Listen to brother Tillard,” Shellaya said. She raised her hands and the whispering among the witches stopped. I heard crickets and tree frogs, and from somewhere in the distance I heard a splash, likely a fish jumping. I forced out the image of the dead fish I’d sloshed through to get to the center of the clearing.
“The man called Lord Purvis returns to the fen. In a vision I saw him. He marshals his forces and comes at us now. We must prepare for him, defend our home and protect our lives.”
In fast, breathy words Tillard talked about the murders of the Emperor and my father and how Lord Purvis wanted to kill Alysen—and now all the Nanoo—to hide the crimes and stop news of his foul deeds from spreading beyond the fen.
“For our home,” Nanoo Gafna said.
I stared in surprise. The fingers of her left hand flexed as if they’d never been broken.
“Fighting is anathema to us,” Gafna continued. “But fight we will, with all the wyse in us and around us. We will…”
Her words trailed off, and the Nanoo in unison turned to the west.
“They come,” Tillard said. He drew the borrowed sword and stalked through the ring of Nanoo. My head still throbbing, I followed.
* * *
I remembered the first serious hunt Bastien had taken me on. I was twelve, I think, and the quarry was a gengan. It was like a boar, but only in its form. Its size … Bastien had told me gengan were as big as a stout calf, and I’d had a hard time thinking a boar could grow that tall. But I realized his words were likely true when he bade me not tell Lady Ewaren just what we were hunting. He said she wouldn’t approve his taking me out in the woods after such a quarry.
The gengan were scarce in our part of the world, hunted heavily, Bastien explained, because people feared them. Hunting parties would search for dens of the small ones, slaying them and fleeing before the mother returned.
Most gengan had wandered to the pine woods of the far, far north, where there were few villages and where the game they sought was plentiful. As we looked for spoor, Bastien described our quarry; I’d only ever heard about them on occasion, no doubt because those in the Village Nar wanted to avoid the beasts.
The gengan was the largest predator in the woods next to the fose-bear, and Bastien believed that the gengans did not fear even the great bears. Larger and stronger than any wild boar or the greatest of the winter wolves, one could weigh four to six hundred pounds, he said, and yet make no more noise than a leaf falling to the ground if it deigns to be quiet.
I’d tried to commit his words to memory, that the gengan’s tusks could grow as long and wide as a big man’s forearm, that its barrel-shaped body was muscle, not fat, and that it could speed through the thickest of woods faster than a tree-cat. And when a gengan runs, he told me, it does so low to the ground, massive head down and casting from side to side to uproot small trees in its path, back legs churning over the ground and sending up a storm of earth behind it.
The gengan eats only meat, Bastien said, and it kills by trampling its prey, goring it, then eating the soft belly-flesh and leaving the rest for carrion. In the space of a few heartbeats it is finished with its meal, disappearing into the woods so silently you cannot rely on your ears to track it.
That Bastien had known one was within a day’s ride of the Village Nar puzzled me, but then I suspect he relied on some bit of wyse-sense to make the discovery.
I was pleased it was only the two of us on this hunt, as I didn’t want anyone to see I was nervous. But excitement was thick in my mind, too, and that drowned out any real concerns I might have. I was too young to wholly appreciate the danger in what we attempted. And I believe Bastien was too proud and seasoned to realize this was not a hunt I should be part of.
We found its tracks before sunset, only spotting them because the gengan had walked through a puddle and left its wide mark on the mud around the edges. Farther to the northwest, we found the carcass of a deer, the torn flesh of its belly glistening. There were few flies, and that told us the kill was very, very fresh.
We left our horses under a black walnut, far enough from the deer that they wouldn’t be disturbed or spooked by small forest creatures that would be drawn by the kill. Then we crept along an overgrown game trail, Bastien pointing to the slightest signs that marked the gengan’s passing.
That something supposedly so large could leave only the subtlest of signs made me curious, but I was too caught up in the hunt to ask Bastien about it. I would, however, ask him how many of the beasts he’d slain before, and then we would regale the Village Nar about how we’d slain this one.
We came to the edge of a clearing, circling to the west so we would be facing into the wind. Bastien clearly did not want the gengan catching a whiff of us. I wasn’t worried that it would think us prey; we had knives, and Bastien had his sword, and I had my chain. But I was worried that we might spook the thing, and then I wouldn’t get a chance to claim it as a trophy.
It was at the far edge of the clearing, opposite us, our faces hid by the weave of a tall lace-fern. Looking through a gap in the leaves, we saw it, or rather first the shape of it, as it was behind a spreading bunchberry bush. A dark shadow, it was, tearing at something behind that bush, snorting and wuffling and tamping at the ground.
I was not proficient at tasting yet, still I extended the tip of my tongue, hoping to sate my curiosity. I had to concentrate hard in those early days, and I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking that gesture helped. I tasted the fresh drops of moisture on the fern leaves, and I tasted hunger and anger, those two things slicing into me as surely as any well-wielded sword. I gasped at the sudden, sharp sensations, and my eyes flew open, straining to see beyond the fern and hoping the beast would move out from behind the bunchberry.
Finally, it did, part of it. Its great tusks were scarlet with the blood of the deer and whatever it had killed behind the bunchberry. Though not as large as the fose-bear I would see years later with Alysen in the woods, it was still massive. The largest of its kind Bastien had seen, he would tell me later. Its fur was the color of polished walnut, looking rigid in places, and I imagined it would be horribly coarse. I saw no irises in its eyes, only solid, shiny black.
The gengan was not the size of a calf, but the size of a well-fed cow or a bull, and its hooves were as large around as Lady Ewaren’s serving platters. Though it wasn’t chill this day, the beast’s breath puffed away from its mouth. And wit
hout using my wyse-sense, I could smell the intense fetidness of it.
I shivered, no longer too young to understand the danger that stood less than fifty feet away.
My hands dropped to the chain and the handle of a knife. Bastien’s right hand dropped to my shoulder, and his eyes met mine.
We backed away from the clearing, leaving the gengan to its hidden kill, taking care that we stayed downwind of it, and moving more quietly than we ever had.
I always wondered if Bastien would have fought the beast if I’d not been with him. I never thought to ask him. Or had he taken me on this “hunt” to teach me that some things are unbeatable and that sometimes a hunter should walk away from its quarry?
* * *
The quarry I searched for now, in the heart of the fen, was more dangerous than the gengan or the fose-bear. It had a malevolent cunning those creatures did not possess.
And unlike those creatures, my quarry was evil.
“Brother,” I whispered.
32
Behind me I heard chanting, the Nanoo working in concert to affect some spell.
“They give the trees life,” Tillard told me. “Life beyond what they have now, and a measure of my sisters’ and brothers’ sentience. The Nanoo give all of the fen and the woods beyond a piece of their own lives.”
I heard twigs snap ahead: Lord Purvis and his men. I heard sloshing behind me. I knew some of the Nanoo came with us. I’d spied them grabbing knobby staves and sickles that gleamed in the starlight.
“Spread out,” Tillard told the Nanoo with us. “That is what Purvis and his men are doing. They are coming at us like a wave rushes to a beach.”
Tillard had detected their thoughts! That’s how he knew they were coming into the fen! No doubt the men with my brother shouted their thoughts to him, just as I did. Tillard held the sword high. I could tell he’d used one before, but where and when puzzled me. As he wasn’t nobility, he couldn’t legally carry one. Where had he traveled that he’d learned how to …
“In my early journeying, Wisteria, I served as a minor noble’s guard. Three months I worked for him, and I picked this up in the process. He said it was for his own safety that he taught me how to use a blade.”