Sing the Four Quarters
Page 30
“Wolves?” Annice repeated.
Pjerin shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re not changing the subject that easily. Why didn’t you just tell her who we really are? Make it easier for them. You’ve forced them to take a moment and figure it out on their own.”
“Try to pay attention,” Annice told him, as he began to undo the straps holding the two packs on Milena’s broad back. “They haven’t spoken to anyone for nearly four full quarters. They don’t know about the Duc of Ohrid’s treason and they’ve no reason to think you’re him.”
“And what about the troop of guards we know is looking for us? They’re going to be able to get a pretty good description when they show up here.”
“If. There’s a lot of country in between here and Vidor for them to get lost in and we didn’t leave tracks, remember. If they even managed to find out we left Vidor, they could easily think we doubled back, or were swallowed by the earth, or a great winged serpent came and carried us away.”
“Annice, they’re trained guards. They can’t all be totally incompetent.” He ground the protest out through clenched teeth. “If they think I’m a traitor, they’ll also think I’m heading for Ohrid to try to get through the pass to Cemandia. This place is between Vidor and Ohrid.”
“If they thought that, they’d be guarding the pass, not chasing after us. They know that as long as you’re with me, you can’t go to Cemandia because although you may be safe—depending, of course, on how Queen Jirina feels about failed traitors—I’ll be under immediate sentence of death for being able to Sing the kigh.”
His brows met over the bridge of his nose. “You must get tired of being right all the time.”
Annice smiled sweetly at him. “Haven’t yet.”
* * * *
“… was here to Sing earth for us and take a recall of what we’ve done to the place back to His Majesty. Late First Quarter it was. His name was uh, Jaks?” Gregor twisted one end of his mustache. “No, that’s not it.”
“Jazep,” Annice offered. “Now that you’ve spoken of it, I remember his recall. Four years ago, you petitioned His Majesty for the rights to this valley, promising that in five years you could be paying taxes directly to him. In return, King Theron was to grant you his protection should anyone try to move in on you. As neither Vidor nor Ohrid claimed the valley, and His Majesty was impressed by your …” She paused, searching for the word.
“Balls?” Adrie suggested, glancing up from Mari’s suckling. Gregor reddened.
Annice nodded, her hands gratefully busy with newly acquired knitting needles and wool. “Balls are good. I was thinking of initiative, but balls are definitely better. Anyway, His Majesty was impressed and agreed to the bargain. Jazep’s been by every First Quarter since.”
“You beat him this year. We thought when we first heard the dogs it might be him.” Gregor leaned back against the wall of the house and stared down the broad length of the valley; grass, trees, and goats painted gold by the setting sun. “Do you remember what Jazep said? I mean, about how we’re doing?” He wasn’t very successful at sounding like it didn’t matter.
Actually, she did. Last year, with only two left to go, Jazep had said it would take a miracle for the valley to begin producing surplus in the time remaining. “Well, he said you’ve gotten a remarkable amount accomplished.” Which he had.
Gregor nodded, satisfied, then he stood. “It’s getting dark. Time to bring in the animals. Easier for the dogs if they’re all in one place at night.”
Pjerin stood as well. “Adrie said there were wolves?”
“Didn’t you hear them coming through the hills?”
“Once or twice off in the distance, but never very close.”
“You’re in the distance, Jorin,” Gregor told him dryly. “If this part of the Circle didn’t enclose so many deer, we wouldn’t have a goat left.”
As the two men walked off, Adrie added, “If not for the dogs, the deer would strip the gardens.” She glanced down beside Annice’s stool. “You haven’t finished your goat’s milk.”
Annice made a face. It tasted like cooked lamb smelled. “I, uh, I don’t really like it very much.”
“It is a little strong at this season,” Adrie admitted. “But it’s good for the baby.”
“Maybe, but I have to drink it.”
Adrie shrugged and returned her attention to the infant fussing at her breast.
Annice sighed. There was no point in being prepared to argue when the other person refused to cooperate. She hated the assumption that she was mature enough to realize what was best for all concerned—it made it impossible to create elaborate justifications for not doing the right thing.
Picking up the heavy clay cup, she frowned down at the contents, then swallowed the milk as quickly as she could. You better appreciate this, baby, she thought as her entire body shuddered at the aftertaste. ‘Cause I wouldn’t do this for anyone else.
Later, after an evening of singing and storytelling and edited news of the world beyond the valley, Annice and Pjerin bedded down in the loft Gregor had spent part of Fourth Quarter constructing across one end of the small house. Adrie had offered the only bed, but they’d both argued that the loft was fine. The bed, while large enough for two, insisted on a level of companionship they wouldn’t be able to maintain.
Next morning, Annice woke to a familiar bounce on her bladder. She sighed and dragged her shift over her head. While she had no real objection to the baby being up before dawn, she didn’t appreciate having to be awake as well.
Crawling around Pjerin—They look so innocent when
they’re asleep.—she very carefully swung out onto the ladder, waited a moment for various bits to catch up to the movement, and climbed slowly down to the floor.
The arc of sky was pearly gray, touched with a blush of rose-pink over the mountains to the east. Annice came out of the privy, allowed an investigation by Safety and her mother, Honor, and walked a short distance from the house. Although she was still tired, she had no real anticipation of being able to sleep again—not with the baby awake and kicking.
Climbing to the top of a small knoll, she turned to the east and dug her toes into damp ground. Almost without meaning to, she started to Sing.
It began as a simple welcome to the day, a fledgling Song, pure tones chasing each other joyously up and down the scale. When the first light crested the mountains, it became the Song she’d Sung to the earth in the gardens of Elbasan. As the day lifted out of shadow, it gradually changed again, becoming more complicated. Swaying, Annice spread her arms and opened her heart, pouring hopes and fears and dreams and self into the Song. Eyes half closed, she filled the valley with her voice, feeling it respond, Singing to that response. The more she Sang, the more energy she seemed to be pulling up through the soles of her feet and the more she poured into the Song.
When the last note lapped against the valley walls, she laid both hands lightly against the curve of her body and smiled. “Feels good, doesn’t it, baby?” she murmured, replete. “It’s been a while since we really Sang.”
Stepping forward, she frowned, confused, at the ground. The grass on the knoll, cropped nearly to bare dirt by the grazing goats, had grown up thick and green and ankle high. As she watched, the whole valley seemed to ripple as her Song settled into the earth. Bees droned to the heavy heads of early wild flowers and birds answered her Song with a chorus of their own.
Annice turned, slowly, trying to take it all in.
Off to one side of the house, the tiny apple trees that Adrie had carefully dug out of her father’s orchard were in full bloom, a thousand white blossoms touched with pink lifted to the morning sun. The day before, what few blossoms there were, had been ragged and unlikely to fruit.
Standing just outside the house, Pjerin, Adrie, and Gregor stared at her in amazement. Leaking milk soaked Adrie’s shift over her breasts and both men had erections. Only Mari, balanced on her mother’s hip, seemed unaffected. She giggled and pointed a
s a bluebird dropped for a bug right at Gregor’s feet, then took flight again with an iridescent flurry of sapphire wings.
Annice smiled at them a little self-consciously. Her Singing had never evoked quite that expression of stunned reverence from an audience before; not to mention the physical response. Something told her there’d be seconds of goat’s milk this morning—a less than appetizing proposition—and more than enough eggs to go around.
* * * *
Squatting, both hands spread flat on the earth, Jazep hummed thoughtfully to himself. The kigh had lifted his bedroll, dumped him naked into the dawn, and insisted he listen to the Song resonating through the earth.
There could be no mistaking the emotional signature.
Annice.
It seemed that a minor ability to Sing earth had absorbed the other three quarters and become a talent to equal his own—with obvious variations he could never achieve.
“Which brings us to the question,” he said, straightening, “of just what Annice is doing Walking so far from a healer so near to her time.” He ripped away the vine that had grown over his pack during the night, Sang an admonishment to the kigh, and began to pull on his clothes. Not for the first time, Jazep wished he could Sing air. Or that earth would occasionally concern itself with less indigenous matters.
Fortunately, he could track her easily as her condition, combined with the season, set up sympathetic resonances within the kigh. He wondered, briefly, if she had any idea of what was likely to happen when she gave birth and decided that it probably hadn’t even occurred to her to ask as she’d been away on a Walk when Terezka had Bernardas. Terezka Sang only air and water with no earth ability at all, and it had still been interesting.
After a quick breakfast, he shouldered his pack and Sang a request, the bass notes thrumming in the air. A path opened up through the underbrush. Humming softly, he hurried down it.
Although the sun was setting when Jazep reached the valley, not even dusk could hide the effects of Annice’s Song. Shaking his head in amazement, he stared out over an area of such fecundity he had to loosen his breeches and think very hard about bathing in pools of winter run-off. He’d never been aware of so many kigh so active in such an enclosed area and he thanked every god the Circle contained that the valley hadn’t been any smaller.
“Guess Adrie and Gregor are going to make their surplus this year …”
He Sang as he walked toward the homestead, calming the kigh and doing what he could to curb their more extreme reactions. Once or twice, the mating song of spring frogs nearly drowned him out.
Darkness had settled by the time he got close enough to be heard and he Sang the notes of his name at the flickering light in the open window. Both dogs bounded around the corner of the house, barking wildly. Jazep froze on the spot, not willing to chance that they remembered him from almost a full year before.
“Safety! Honor! Be quiet!” Gregor appeared in the doorway, a silhouette against the light within. “Is that you, Jazep?”
“It is.” He walked forward and frowned as he drew close enough to see the other man’s expression. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Adrie, or the baby?”
“No, they’re fine.” A smile flashed for an instant between the drooping ends of the mustache as Gregor touched his fist to the bard’s. “Mari’s almost walking. It’s just that …” He paused, threw up his hands, and stepped back out of the doorway. “It’s just that it’s complicated. I’d best save it till you’re in and sitting down.”
Confused, Jazep followed him into the house.
* * * *
“… so then this Captain Otik rides up, oh, midafternoon and says that Annice is really His Majesty’s sister and she’s wanted in the capital for treason and Jorin a’Gerek is really Pjerin a’Stasiek, the Duc of Ohrid and he’s escaped from his execution.”
Dusting his fingertips lightly over the stretched skin of his tambour, Jazep frowned. “He’s right about Annice, although I doubt His Majesty intends to pass Judgment, but I was in the Bardic Hall in Vidor the day the duc died. Unless the king himself is involved, he certainly didn’t escape his execution.”
“Then the captain was lying?” Adrie hugged herself and shivered although the night was warm.
Because he Sang only earth, Jazep spent most of Third and Fourth Quarter at the Citadel and often sat gate duty, giving him more contact with the King’s Guard than most bards. Even the most determinedly neutral opinion of Otik had included a variation on “insanely ambitious.” “Did the captain say why he was after Annice and this man?”
Gregor nodded, one end of his mustache twisted so tightly around his finger that it pulled his upper lip out at a painful-looking angle. “He said that His Majesty wanted Annice brought back to Elbasan but that Judgment had already been passed on the duc.”
“And he said that because we were here on the king’s sufferance,” Adrie continued miserably, “if we didn’t cooperate, we’d lose the valley.”
Jazep suddenly knew what had happened. “You told the captain which way they went. Showed him their trail.” The lap drum whispered under his fingers.
“We’ve put our lives into this valley.” Gregor pleaded for understanding. “We thought he was a traitor …”
“It’s all right.” Jazep used enough Voice to be believed. No wonder these two are wound so tightly with guilt. They must realize that Annice saved their valley this morning. And then they had to sacrifice her to save it this afternoon. “Otik’s a Captain in the King’s Guard. You did what you had to.” He couldn’t go after them until sunrise. “I don’t know who this Jorin a’Gerek is, but Annice isn’t entirely helpless.”
Adrie looked even more wretched. “I thought bards took an oath not to Sing against other people even to save themselves.”
“That’s true.” Jazep drummed out a faint heartbeat. “But she can Sing to save her baby.” He just hoped Annice remembered that.
* * * *
Otik watched their camp from downwind, his position carefully screened by trees. He could take them now, while they slept—one arrow for him and a second to keep her silent. The crescent moon and stars combined shed enough light to hit a motionless and unsuspecting target. Slowly, he raised the crossbow.
Slowly, he lowered it again.
He’d wait until he got a good look at the traitor in the morning. He didn’t want to make any mistakes.
* * * *
Annice cracked open her eyes and stared sleepily up at Pjerin. From the length of the shadows it couldn’t have been much past dawn. “What are you doing?” she muttered.
“Checking for bruises,” Pjerin grunted, twisting around and trying unsuccessfully to get a look at his own right shoulder blade. “There was a great big unenclosed pointed rock the size of my fist jabbing into me all night.”
“Then why didn’t you mo … What is your problem?” she snapped as the kigh pushed her up into a half reclining position. “I can get up on my …” She fell silent as she realized that something had the kigh very upset. “Pjerin! Get down!”
The crossbow quarrel caught him just under the left shoulder, spun him around, and dropped him face first into the pile of bracken he’d used for bedding.
“Pjerin!” Annice heaved herself to her feet and started toward him.
“Not another step, Bard, and not a sound, or there’s one for you, too.”
Annice froze. There was an inch of bloody steel poking out through Pjerin’s back and a line of crimson dribbling down from the wound. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but the quarrel hadn’t gone through anything vital, so he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.
Light crossbow, at the edge of its accurate range, she found herself thinking as she listened to the footsteps cautiously approaching from the brush behind her. A heavy crossbow, or a closer shot would’ve gone right through him.
“Go back to where you were sleeping and sit down. And remember, even so much as a cough out of you and I’ll shoot.”
When Otik walked out of the bush, weapon ready, it confirmed her worst fears; the guard had caught up to them. How they managed it wasn’t really relevant. Then she frowned. Here was the captain, but she couldn’t hear the rest of the troop.
“Very good, Highness,” Otik piled sarcasm on the honorific. “Stay there and stay quiet and you’ll be able to throw yourself on His Majesty’s mercy at your Death Judgment. Move and you’ll pay the price for treason now.” He hoped she believed him because he didn’t think he could actually shoot her. It was one thing to realize she was with child and another thing entirely to be confronted with it.
His attention locked on the bard, Otik circled the fire pit and squatted by the duc’s wounded shoulder. It wasn’t a heart shot; he’d known that the moment he pulled the trigger, but it had hit close and it was entirely possible that the position of the body hid a spreading pool of blood.
Still watching the bard, crossbow cradled in his right arm, the captain reached out and dug his thumb, hard, into the duc’s side. Any reaction, and he’d shoot the unenclosed traitor again before he turned him over.
In a single motion, teeth clenched against the pain, Pjerin twisted, wrapped his right hand around Otik’s wrist and slammed the fist-sized rock on his left, into the other man’s head.
The wet crunch of bone shattering at Otik’s temple, drowned out the single grunt of surprise he managed. As he fell, his finger spasmed.
Annice screamed as the ground dropped from under her and the quarrel punched through the place where her head had been. Heart pounding, she scrambled to her feet and raced through the kigh to Pjerin. “You’re not dead!”