Well, they had been wrong, and Eleva would hold rule of this farm—hers now, Eleva’s Farm—in spite of dead husband’s superciliousness and live brother’s malice, in spite of the very gods themselves, if necessary! She had begun making her own records, setting her chief farmworkers to inventory everything anew, speaking with them about past and future. She no longer had much need of Deveron’s old records, but, because continuity should be preserved and because simply to ignore them would be to admit a kind of defeat, she still attempted now and then to untangle them, especially when she was too vexed for other, more immediate work.
And yet, despite everything, Deveron had been a good friend to her, and, she supposed—although she had never felt any other man except in dreams—a good lover, even after his second marriage. The children still cried for him sometimes, and more than once Eleva herself had wakened from a vivid memory of him and beat her pillow at the memory that he had died a terrible death, that his body had been chopped and plowed into his favorite field, that he would never again give her his seed.
CHAPTER 4
They looked like two crummy beggars climbing up into the mountains as a last resort after being chased out of all the respectable towns and even the ratholes like Sludgepocket and Last-of-the-Worst. They had been beaten out of Jagrock on suspicion of outlawry, for no other reason than the way they looked and smelled. But at least, for all the accusations, suspicions, and evil names that had been thrown at “Bluntend” and “Wedgepopper,” they had never been called a warrior and a sorcerer. The only time anyone had seen Slicer was when a sneakthief in Last-of-the-Worst tried to rifle their one long bag, so grimy and battered that only someone in a rathole like that town could think it might contain anything to make life a little easier. The other lousehosts who woke up accepted Thorn’s story of having stolen the weapon herself.
Cleaner disguises would have meant staying too long in one decent town or other. No respectable folk traveled any distance in winter without some desperate reason, and the few respectable folk who did move around through the snow were longer remembered as individual faces, while begging vagabonds were remembered as rag-covered backs not worth any concern beyond the hope they would get out of town again quickly. Besides, Windbourne seemed to want the lowest disguise possible.
Thorn had refused from that first night to go to the cloth merchant Spendwell, who was also in Five Roads Crossing for the winter. She already owed him more than she had yet been able to pay back for his help in the summer. Besides, she had ridden into town with him, so his small, rented house might well be the first place Master Youngwise would think of looking for the fugitives.
Fortunately, Windbourne had a secret friend in Crinkpetal the flowerbreeder, one of the richest merchants in Five Roads. Even though no one was in sight, Windbourne had raised a thick cloud of swirling snow around them when they opened the hidden door in Crinkpetal’s garden wall; and the family was influential enough—Crinkpetal’s wife had been a cousin of the second wife of a priest near Center-of-Everywhere—that the townwarriors never demanded to search the house, only stood outside, asked the flowerbreeder if he had heard anything suspicious, and warned him of the dangerous escaped sorcerer and warrior.
In fact, Youngwise had not seemed to make much of a search. He only needed someone to lay the blame on for the death of a local priest who had most likely been assassinated by someone in his own family. It suited the purpose as well to have the guilt-offering free and nominally being hunted down as to have him actually hanging with a bellyful of stones.
They had not been able to stay more than a hen’s-hatching in the flowerbreeder’s house. As the townsfolk began to calculate how soon it would be until they could plant without too much risk of the flowers freezing, more and more of them would be coming to Crinkpetal’s shop and browsing through his show-garden beside the house, and the fugitives would be in more danger from their host’s customers than from the townwarriors. Crinkpetal wouldn’t be any too safe, either. So he found them their beggarly clothes and smuggled them out of town at the bottom of a wagonful of flower bulbs and special loam, which got them off to a good, dirty start.
Normally, the wagonload would not have been sent out at that time of year. But the priestess Eleva, Deveron’s older wife and ruler now of the farm, had made a special visit to Crinkpetal to arrange for its early delivery. Hidden in an upper room, the fugitives had overheard part of the conversation. Eleva had somehow conceived the idea of growing plants in small, walled areas warmed by steaming water and covered with parchment. She would try it with flowers first to save precious foodseed.
Windbourne had seemed impressed; he had smiled with eyes as well as mouth for the first time in Thorn’s acquaintance with him. Crinkpetal, however, had afterwards called it nonsense—“Just a poor young widow’s first fluster of activity to forget her husband—happens to priests and priestesses as to the rest of us—as if the little priestlings and that helpless younger wife wouldn’t keep Lady Eleva busy enough. Well, I’ve known her Reverence from a priestling, and she’s got stuff in her that may surprise them all yet, if she can grow out of these silly whims in time to take hold and keep that farm from rotting away inside and falling to the first raid like a loose grape from the cluster.” He shrugged. “But she’s always had these whims, too. Family drove her into them, I suppose. I wouldn’t have liked to grow up with her parents and sibs—gods forgive me for saying it about priests.” He slapped left hand on right in an arbitrary version of one of the favorite prayer gestures.
“Who would raid her Lady Reverence?” Windbourne had asked.
“No one, most likely, with the only other farm north of town her own brother’s, and all the southern farmers too small and timid. Meanwhile, this gives me more business and you a way to get out of town.”
Given the time, Thorn thought, they might have been able to locate a thieves’ tunnel beneath the town wall, which would have been slightly cleaner. But thieves’ tunnels were not easy to locate (if they were, the townwarriors found them and closed them off) and Windbourne had obviously welcomed the chance to ride beneath a pile of dirt and burrow out like some mangy mole when Crinkpetal, as if by accident, backed the wagon into a huge, slowly melting mound of grainy snow along the wheelpath.
And so they had begun the cold, grimy, itchy, snuffly trudge north to the mountains. Once, while Thorn was sitting on a rock surrounded by empty weedfields and patches of snow, watching Windbourne cook the vegetables he had just grown for their meal, she had asked him how, fastidious as his kind was, he had been able to take on so filthy a disguise, even seem to relish it, and go on living in it for two hatchings or so.
“A disguise is a lie,” he had answered. “For lying, I deserve the shame and discomfort. I wonder that I can still speed the growth of this food.”
“Unh. You’re sure it isn’t to protect yourself from my earthy advances?”
She sat and whistled for a few moments, idly enjoying a daydream in which Windbourne made up his mind that procreation was better than sorcerous power and asked Thorn for instruction so that he could glide easily and neatly into some little like-minded sorceress whenever he found her. A basin and a large rinsing-can of warmed water, several brushes, and two or three jars of scented soap were an essential part of the daydream, almost more appealing than what followed them…and, as long as she was musing on the near-impossible, she imagined herself and Windbourne washing each other in the fine, smooth-tiled, well-steamed ablution room of a wealthy priest. That verged on sacrilege, but she had reached the conclusion after last summer that the gods were more lenient than most folk thought. Sometimes she put the coupling, also, in the ablution chamber; sometimes she moved it upstairs to a priestly bed, stuffed with wool and covered with satin and velvet bedding.
“If you young sorceri never even think about it,” she had asked Windbourne once, “how can any of you ever decide to marry? How d
o you know what to do when you do marry?”
After a bit more badgering, she had finally made him confess that sorceri, like other people, did sometimes have shameful nightmares, though he had discussed them only to reassure himself that he was not alone in suffering them. Thorn had remarked that, in her experience, no man but a sorcerer would talk about having those dreams as “suffering nightmares.”
She must have frightened him, because he changed the subject and began talking again about Lady Eleva’s scheme of growing plants beneath parchment. “I doubt she will succeed. With thin-cut quartz or gemstones, instead of parchment, perhaps…She may scald the young plants with this use of steaming water.…Still, what a mind to glimpse in a priestess!…And she has a lovely voice.”
“Ha! So that’s what you young sorcerers dream about, is it? Humping priestesses, hey?”
“The unwilled nightmare is not a sin,” he had replied, looking down and blushing angrily.
Or maybe they had said all that in several conversations, spread out over the days that had grown into a monotonous round of itching and smells, broken by half a score of bad incidents, the last being a late-season ice storm that kept them holed up in a hastily dug burrow in the woods, Thorn sleeping from boredom and discomfort while Windbourne concentrated on warming the air around them and keeping off the sleet.
Well, it was over now, at least for a while. Having taken more than two hen’s-hatchings to make a journey that in good weather and under better traveling conditions should take only one, they were finally in sight of Windslope. Thorn might have preferred to get the sorcerer back to his own retreat first, but she had not been able to make him tell her what it was called or where it was; and she had promised Frost last summer that she would be back at Windslope in the spring.
There was no ice damage to the fruit trees and small patches of cropland below the sorcerous settlement. Many of the trees bore ripening fruit and some of the fields showed signs of having already been harvested this spring. Folk who could manipulate both time and weather never had to worry about having enough to fill their insides…and it took a lot to fill your insides when you refused any kind of meat. Thorn cast a hungry glance at the cows grazing in a small field beside one of the outlying cottages. The pasture was not much larger than the cottage, but the cows were almost knee-high in rich green grass, and they were fatter than farmers’ cattle in midsummer. They were also unslaughterable. The warrior sighed. At least on the way here she had been able to get a little stringy, dried winter-meat, when she could pay for it without too many questions as to where a ragged beggar had found the money.
No meat and no humping! Whatever she did, she could hardly spend the rest of her life in a sorcerous retreat. But for now, a good wash and clean clothes would be worth the privations.
The sorceri were starting to come out of their cottages. In the Tanglelands proper, they were forbidden to wear any outer garment except the long black robe, and maybe an extra black cloak in cold weather; but in their own retreats they bloomed out in all the colors vegetable dyes could produce, sometimes with woven or embroidered patterns. Some of them wore trousers and midlength tunics instead of long robes.
Thorn was not yet close enough to see their expressions, but she grinned, imagining they must be pretty damned surprised. They were going to be more surprised yet when they found out who their visitors were beneath the dirt and rags. Picking out Frostflower—the one in green and saffron who was holding a baby—Thorn waved one arm above her head and called out a cheerful whoop.
Frostflower did not stir. Well, she needed both arms for the brat, and it was expecting a lot to think she would know her friend so easily in this disguise. A couple of the other sorceri waved back and hailed the newcomers, and a big reddish-brown mongrel left the side of a white-haired sorceron in blue and came down the trail, wagging its tail eagerly and whining in welcome.
“Dowl, hey?” said Thorn, glad, for once, to see a dog. She reached down and slapped his head. He let out a bark and tried to sidle up to her, but she shoved him away with the side of her leg. “Hey, get off, you stupid mongrel, or they’ll have to scrub you, too.” She cupped her hands and shouted, “Heat up the wash water!”
“Friend?” A bearded sorcerer in a plain pale-yellow robe came to meet her halfway. As they neared each other, she saw he was old Moonscar, the master of Windslope—as nearly as the warrior understood how sorcerous retreats were governed. As he came closer still, she saw a few fresh milkstains on his robe. He must have been working in the dairyhouse. With only nine sorceri here, not counting the baby, even the ruling ones worked. Besides, they had some idea it was healthy to spend part of their time working.
“Don’t recognize me yet, old Reverence?” said Thorn. “Give us a wash, and maybe you will. How’s the brat?”
“Thorn?” Moonscar nodded. “Aye, friend, there is always water in the bathhouse, and coals banked beneath the trough.”
“And a good, big loaf of your hot bread afterwards, hey?”
“It will go into the oven as you go into your bath.”
Other folk would have been clamoring to know all the whats, whys, and hows of the situation; but most of the sorceri Thorn had met personally, especially the older ones, were content to wait for new arrivals to volunteer information.
Thorn glanced around and saw Windbourne staring at the muddy path. It looked as if the introduction was up to her. “Grandfather Moonscar,” she said, this time remembering that sorceri did not like such priestly titles as “Reverence,” but unable to think of what equivalents they used, “this is Windbourne, one of your people. He won’t tell me where he’s from, but I found him in Five Roads Crossing.”
Tearing off his hood, Windbourne fell on his knees and began to rub icy mud and old, grainy snow into his hair. “Aye,” he said. “A sorcerer—a sorcerer in disguise!”
Dowl padded over to him and began trying to lick his face.
“Oh, get up,” Thorn said in disgust. “That’s no bloody way to wash your hair. He’s in disguise, Grandfather, because he’d be rotting on a gibbet if he weren’t, and me rotting beside him.”
The old sorcerer nodded to her and joined the dog in comforting Windbourne and getting him on his feet. Scratching herself, Thorn walked on up to Frostflower.
But the sorceron holding the baby was not Frostflower—it was her younger brother, Puffball. The facial resemblance was close, and sorcerous clothes tended to disguise sex, but Thorn realized the difference well before she saw that both this sorceron’s eyes were blue.
She looked around again and counted only eight Windslope sorceri, Frostflower not among them. “Well, Puffball, where’s your sister? Nothing wrong?”
“She stayed the night with Elvannon. At first we worried—she had never stayed the night before. But early this morning she free-traveled to Moonscar and explained: she stayed yesterday afternoon to save their fruit groves from the ice storm. She’ll be back again this evening.”
“Elvannon. The farmer just half a day back down there? So she’s really done it, hey? Gone down and made friends with a priest! He teaching her anything?”
“She can read their scrolls and write with their letters now,” said the young man. “And sometimes they let her listen to their hymns. I heard her humming one in the wheatfield once—at least, I think it must have been a priests’ hymn.”
“And if she wasn’t your sister, you wouldn’t approve, eh?” Thorn laughed. “Well, if we’d known, we could’ve waited a few hours and climbed up together. How’s the grub?”
“Healthy. Beginning to take cooked food. Sometimes wails very loudly at night.” Puffball seemed a little apprehensive, as if he feared Thorn might have come to reclaim Starwind.
She laughed again, louder. “Seems to be sleeping all right this afternoon.” Forgetful of the dirt on her hand, she laid her thumb on the baby’s sil
ly tip of a nose and left it smudged. He opened his eyes, twisted up his face for a wail, then seemed to change his mind and started gurgling instead. “Don’t worry, I don’t want him back,” the swordswoman went on. “If he takes after his mother, in a few years you’ll probably wish you’d sold him while he was still young enough to attract a buyer.”
“Never!” Puffball hugged the brat as close as Frostflower ever had.
A couple of other sorceri had joined them by now—Thorn did not remember all their names, having spent only a few days with them last summer. Most of the Windslope population had gone partway down the path to stand ready if Moonscar wanted help with Windbourne.
Good. The warrior had had her fill of trying to comfort and bully the sorcerer out of his fits of remorse all the way up. Let his own kind take care of him now! She followed Puffball to the washhouse, a building shaped like a couple of giant domed ovens pressed together, closely resembling the dome-shaped dairy house, kitchen house, a couple of the storage houses, and two or three of the small dwellings.
Puffball quickly cleaned the infant’s face and left Thorn alone. Even though the long trough was in the back dome of the building, no one else would come into the bathhouse while she was using it—except, she hoped, to leave clean clothes near the door. She doubted that any two sorceri ever washed themselves at the same time, even if they were of the same sex. Windbourne would not be able to clean his body until Thorn had finished, and he needed it as much as she did. She decided to take her time anyway. She would have let him bathe first if he had not chosen to wallow in self-accusations down on the path; but now he was among his own kind, he might go on confessing for a quarter of the afternoon.
Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn) Page 4