by Carol Berg
Returning my attention to my work, I shifted down the row and yanked on a spike-leafed thistle as if it were Darzid’s honeyed tongue. “So who is it you seek? Has some peasant failed to tithe his full measure to our king?”
“Only a horse thief, the ungrateful servant of a friend of Duke Tomas. Your brother owes the lord a favor and has sent me to chase down the rascal. He seems to have vanished hereabouts. You’ve not seen him—a tall man, so I understand, young, fair-haired, a bit unsteady of temper?” Darzid’s words were cool, unruffled, mocking, revealing nothing of his true purpose, but then, I would have expected flames to shoot from his mouth before I would have expected truth. Yet, in the pause as he awaited my response, I felt something more—a pressure, an intensity I had never noted in all the eighteen years I had known this meticulous soldier who hovered in detached deviltry about the bastions of power. I glanced up. He was leaning toward me from the saddle, all smiles vanished for that moment, his very posture trying to squeeze an answer from me. Darzid cared about this matter. It could be no simple thief he was hunting.
“I’ve seen no thieves today save you, Captain. And as soon as you leave, I’ll drink fish oil to rinse the taint from my mouth and burn dung to cover the stench.” Childish taunting, not worthy of my training in scholarly debate. But words helped diffuse the pressure of his scrutiny.
As I turned back to my work, the four soldiers returned with negative reports. Three more riders remained half hidden under the eaves of the forest. They hadn’t expected much trouble from me, I supposed. I shuddered when I noticed the three—an inexplicable reaction, for the day was warm and soldiers had no power to frighten me.
Darzid nudged his mount to the edge of the garden and paused, speaking to my back. “So, a wasted venture. Good day, Lady Seriana. Behave yourself. Have you a message for your brother?”
I plucked off three beetles that had left the soft green leaves looking like ragged lacework, squashed them between finger and thumb, and flicked them into the dry grass beyond the garden.
Darzid snorted and spoke a clipped command. The five men spurred their horses, rejoined their fellows waiting at the edge of the trees, and disappeared down the forest path toward Dunfarrie.
For an hour I worked. Dug weeds. Hauled buckets of water from the pool to dribble on the beans and turnips. Salvaged what vines and plants I could from the horses’ trampling and threw the ruined ones onto the waste heap. Refused to think of anything beyond the task of the moment.
The sun sagged westward. I stared at the ax waiting beside a pile of logs I had dragged from the forest on a wooden sledge roped to my shoulders. Then I ripped the grimy, blood-streaked rags from my hands, threw them on the ground, and strode back across the meadow, past the pool, and up the hill into the wood.
CHAPTER 2
The long body sprawled face down across the muddy stream bank. I sat on a stump just inside the circular clearing and watched him for a while. A squirrel screeched and nagged at me from an oak limb. Finches and sparrows rose in a twittering cloud beyond the stream, then settled back down on the very branches they had just deserted. High in the forest roof, the leaves shifted in a breeze that could not penetrate the stillness below. No sounds of horses or hunters intruded.
What was I thinking? Mysteries and desperate men were no concern of mine. I had reaped the bitter harvest of my fascination with mystery long ago. And this ruffian had come near strangling me. I should leave him to his own reward.
Yet I had never been accustomed to taking good advice, even my own, and so instead of retracing my path to the valley, I stepped warily across the stream and nudged the body with my boot, rolling him onto his back. His only injuries seemed to be the wicked sunburn, the network of angry scratches, and one slightly deeper gash on his chest. He was dirty. Fair-haired. A strong face, the square jaw unshaven, rather than bearded. He could be little more than twenty, and his big frame was well proportioned—exceptionally well—with nothing to be ashamed of if he ran about unclothed very often. How had he come to be in such a state? Nothing simple, I guessed. Nothing safe. Darzid was hunting him.
I scooped a handful of water from the stream and dribbled it on his cracked lips. They moved ever so slightly. “Thirsty, are you?” I gave him a little more, then pulled the red shawl from my shoulders and covered him. Some country-bred men thought you had to marry them if you saw them naked—another of the uncountable stupidities abroad in the world. I stepped out of arm’s reach, watching. Waiting. Maybe he would sit up, say “Sorry, damnable mistake,” and run away.
Every passing moment set my teeth more on edge. Pursuers who chased a man out of his clothes were unlikely to leave off. Two times I started down the path. Two times I came back, railing at myself for stupidity. Shadows stretched well across the glade. I detected no untoward sound or movement, but felt a creeping sensation up my back. The air smelled of something that was not hot pine needles or dry forest earth, something as out of place in this woodland as perfume, but far less pleasant: the odor of hot wind across old stone, bearing the unhearable residue of screams and the tainted smokes of unholy fires . . .
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 n
o 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, “Seri.” 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.