Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn)

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Damn you, sorcerer,” Thorn muttered. “All right. Moonscar put me in command over you, and I’m commanding you now: If you see her eating anything else you happen to think she ‘shouldn’t,’ keep your bloody tongue quiet about it.”

  Frostflower touched her friend’s sleeve. “We have both been put in charge of guiding him—not of commanding, not the way you understand authority, Rosethorn. Am I to seek for deep truths and hide from minor ones?”

  “It isn’t a question of looking for the truth, Frost, it’s a question of finding enough food to fill our bellies. Demons’ claws—”

  “I will not speak, Rosethorn,” said Windbourne. “But if Frostflower wishes to live by her own creed, she might do well to observe me and eat only what I eat.”

  “Addle your brains with wine and then twist back your tongue at a little good, wholesome cheese,” Thorn grumbled, cutting off a slice of it and holding it out on her palm to Dowl. The dog nuzzled it up eagerly, and the warrior grunted in vindication as she wiped her hand on her black robe. “Maybe you people should take a few lessons from your own animals and not ask so damn many questions.”

  Frostflower tried to smile and ate another slice of fruit loaf. When she returned in the fall, she would ask Elvannon how cheese was made. In no other way could she explain her sudden refusal of a food she had enjoyed before…and if he lied, as she suspected Thorn had lied, to spare her conscience?—No, whatever he said, she must trust him. Perhaps, after all, there were other ways of making cheese. Meanwhile, for this summer, she would avoid it…and at these thoughts she wondered, If I should find the truth I seek, and it does not please me, will I be strong enough to recognize and accept it? Or will I pass it by as ugly and spend all my life searching barren and empty symbols for pleasant falsehoods? Will I prefer cheese to truth?

  Coyclaws returned near the silent finish of their meal. She hopped up onto the rock, sat down near Windbourne in a place clear of food, and began washing her face. Thorn cut another small piece of cheese and held it out to her. The cat sniffed it for a moment, ate it, and went back to washing her face. Thorn glanced at Windbourne and started putting the food they had not eaten into their bag so that they could return the valuable box.

  CHAPTER 6

  Eleva had started out for the far northeast field to see how the new wheat was growing over Deveron’s body; but, passing the forge, she paused to watch Rediron and his assistants at work. When she saw he was forging a scythe, she asked whether he did not have more pressing work at this season. Harvest was several hen’s-hatchings in the future.

  “Aye, Lady Reverence, but they’ll be cutting the first hay before this hatching’s out,” said the smith.

  “Your work is at your forge, Rediron, not walking about the fields deciding when the hay will be ready to cut.” That statement sounded in her own ears sterner than she had intended; but, although bred a priestess, she had only ruled the farm for a quarter of a year, and she still felt a degree of secret awe that a clean, smallish woman, by virtue of priestly birth, a white robe edged with gold, and a golden wreath on her head, could command a huge, grime-blackened man with a heavy hammer and a pair of assistants almost as muscular as himself. “Besides,” she went on, seeking a way to compliment without seeming soft, “I think you can produce an excellent scythe in less than a day, can you not?”

  He grunted, grinning. “Less than half a day, Lady Reverence.”

  “Well, then! Surely you have more pressing work. Our warriors—have they all the good swords and spears they need?”

  He grunted again, this time in displeasure. “Most of ‘em wouldn’t take weapons of my forging, Lady Reverence. Call me ‘clumsy plowmaker,’ some of ‘em do. Like that farting—” he touched fist to mouth in apology for the language—“like your Reverence’s raidleader, that Splitgut. Go buy their weapons from those lazy town weaponsmiths instead.”

  “I will speak with Splitgut. Perhaps Deveron set their wages too high if they can afford to squander their money. Meanwhile, several of our wagons need new wheelrims. Replace those on my small townmarket wagon first. I will very likely want to visit the flowerbreeder in Five Roads again, if not the townmaster, well before the hay is ready for cutting.”

  Rediron nodded. Eleva reflected that she knew of very few flowerbreeders who still lived in farms; hence, priests’ visits to town flowerbreeders harmed no farm artisans, while the luxury of flowers for decoration was a recognized privilege of even the poorest priests.

  Why should it be exclusively so? Many townsfolk, including some of the poorest, indulged in planting purely ornamental flowers wherever they had enough earth around their dwellings or could set a crock of dirt near a window—else the flowerbreeders would not have moved from farms to towns and grown wealthy. Why must farmworkers be content with the short-lived blooms of their useful plants?

  Her thoughts were broken off by sight of Sprint, the cobbler’s younger son, scrabbling around on the smithy’s earth floor, picking up small things and putting them into a large, dirty sack. “What are you doing, young farmworker?” demanded the priestess.

  He looked up at her, touched fist to forehead, grinned, and held his sack open so that she could see its contents: little crumbs, splinters, and shavings of metal.

  “Ah. Good. But would it not be better to search for them when Rediron and his forgeworkers are at rest?”

  “We’ve got a trade, Lady Reverence. I get to keep the smaller chunks if they get the chance to step on me and make me squeal. I get more chunks than they get squeals.”

  Eleva forced herself to smile, though she would rather have frowned. “A rough sport. Well, I’ll permit it—but if you should gain a broken hand or rib from this, there will be more than squeals from all who were present. I won’t have my workers maimed in sport before they’re even old enough to choose their adult names! And what makes your chunks worth the risk, Sprint?”

  Grinning more broadly than before, he held one up to her. “Look at it, Lady Reverence—it’s just the right size, and sharp and lumpy and heavy! Lazy old Scratcher won’t have enough stones sharpened, no matter how long they take to catch the rotten sorcerer who killed his Reverence—but these’ll scratch his guts pretty good going down, won’t they?”

  “Go back to your mother’s cottage and have her teach you how to cobble!” said the priestess. “We will waste no good iron for an execution!”

  The boy stared up at her open-mouthed for a moment, then got to his feet and scampered away. Eleva glanced at the shortness of the shadows and decided to return to the Hall. She was too discomposed for a reverent visit to her husband’s field of burial.

  Swallowing sharpened pebbles would be a fitting punishment for Deveron’s murderer. Stones were the nearest means that honest people could use to approximate the stomach-grown stinging insects of the sorceri.

  There were, of course, natural plant poisons as evil in their effects as sorcery. But the common folk must not be shown that priests knew how to extract and strengthen the natural poisons, nor should physicians be given any plausible reason, such as preparing poison for an execution, to dabble in the wicked skill. So it must be stones…if the sorcerer were found. But he must be the same one who had been captured the first time. Rondasu had suggested a purge of all sorceri who might have been seen in the area between String-of-Beads and Fourth Road Ends from the spring before Deveron’s death to the spring following it; but Eleva, as Deveron’s ruling widow, refused to let more than one person suffer.

  And the warrior who had helped that sorcerer escape? No, thought Eleva, she is not my responsibility. Leave her punishment, if she is ever found, to the devising of Townmaster Youngwise.

  By the time she neared her hall, however, satisfaction at remembering how easily she had made both the huge smith Rediron and the boy Sprint yield to her will had largely replaced less pleasant thoughts. She was in command
of herself and her farm. When Evron was old enough, she would find him a young widow or a brotherless daughter for his bride. There was the daughter of Inmara, near the Rockroots; news had just come a hen’s-hatching ago of the safe birth of this child, the last one begotten by Reverence Maldron before his death. True, Maldron left two sons by other wives; but the son by the dead wife was said to be ambitious to wall in a new farm of his own, his full sister was all but promised to a nephew of Inmara’s, Maldron’s third wife had returned with her children to her brother’s farm and was not unlikely to marry again; and thus Inmara’s daughter might, perhaps, inherit. Within the next four to seven winters Eleva must make the journey to Inmara’s Farm.

  Or there was Amron’s daughter Mikka, if the old priest did not beget a son yet on his younger wife; his land in the curve of the Western Rushwater was good, though liable to floods. Failing all else, Eleva might find a raidleader worthy the name and capture a farm for Evron; after this taste of power, the priestess doubted that she would be willing to give her own Farm over into the rule of her son and tamely retire to Center-of-Everywhere to claim her place among the old and landless priests who, in practice, composed most of the High Gathering.

  There would be a husband to find for little Evra, too…if only, thought Eleva, I could find her an old priest with no sons or living older wives—a man still young enough to give her a few years of pleasure and a child or two, but old enough to die and leave her the rule of his farm while she is still in her prime! She will want rule, for I will train her in its skills. As I myself was not trained.

  In the more immediate future, Eleva decided to eat the midday meal with her children and their young nurse Blowingbud in the apple-tree arbor. Then, when Evron and Evra were in bed for their afternoon naps, she would pay her visit to Deveron’s burial-field. Later in the year, when the wheat was heading, she would take the children; she thought she would be better able to explain where their father was if she could show them the grain nearing its harvest.

  Eleva’s plans for the rest of the day did not include Intassa, whom she found waiting for her on the bench beneath the old peach trees in the walled garden.

  “You should have sent Lightheels or Dart to let me know you were here,” said Eleva.

  “I could not find the pipe. It always used to be in its niche beside the office.”

  Eleva found it more convenient to keep the small silver pipe used for summoning messenger-servants on her table in the office. “There is no reason you should not go into the office for it, Intassa. You are free enough in the rest of my hall.”

  Intassa shook her head. “I know you leave the curtain open when you’re not inside, Lady Eleva, but Rondasu would not want me to grow into a habit of entering the ruling office. And I never went into it before, you know. I’ve never been inside a ruling office anywhere, and never wish to be.”

  “Cows’ breath! That’s no boast, it’s a pity. Every farmer should know something of how to rule.”

  “Every priest, perhaps. Not every priestess.”

  “Every priest and every priestess as well! You may think you’ll always be safe from it, Intassa. You had—was it three brothers by your father’s older wives?”

  “Four,” said Intassa. “And one older sister.”

  “And then you became a second wife, and now you have a strong, young new husband, a good, healthy son, and a husband’s sister old enough to take over rule from you if anything should widow you again.”

  Intassa made the circle against evil.

  Eleva ruthlessly went on, “But suppose some accident were to take Rondasu and Shara both, before Invaron grew old enough to rule? Almost thirteen years, and Invaron your only child. Or suppose Rondasu and Shara should both be called from their farm at the same time? You ought to be able to take the governing for a few hen’s-hatchings, at least! Sweet innocent, with so few of you in the hall, either you should learn how to govern at need, or else you should persuade my brother to marry two or three more wives, each one older than you.”

  Intassa held her palms out helplessly, her pale gray eyes seeming to symbolize the utter impossibility of her ever managing the rule of a farm. “Rondasu would not teach me. And he will not marry anyone else—he says so often that between Shara and me he has all the women he needs. Her to see to the household and me to give him a bed and children.”

  Eleva sighed. “You’re right, Rondasu would not teach you. And as for marrying another…” She paused. That Rondasu had never seemed desirous of even one wife used to worry his father and mother. Once, when Eleva was old enough to know and have witnessed the birth-end of procreation but not old enough to witness the mysteries of Aomu and Voma, she had awakened at night in her bedchamber and heard her father shouting at Rondasu, threatening him with a dangling lustration and other harsh purifications. In the morning, she had not dared question her father, but her mother said she must have dreamed it, and her sister Shara had said their father was angry because Rondasu had “tried the bald god’s harrow.” (Shara would not explain what this meant; the elder by seven years, she rarely spoke to Eleva except to tease. Even now, she was not entirely sure what the allusion meant, though she thought she might guess…and shied away from the guess, wondering how Shara…) “As for Rondasu’s marrying another,” Eleva went on now, “it’s good that he so loves you as to want no other for the present, but if he wants children of his own…He knows of the difficulties of Invaron’s birth?”

  “He knows.” Intassa’s smile lent a sheen to her eyes. “He says it need not mean there will be danger with the others, especially if the father is different.”

  “And so you would risk it again? On Rondasu’s confidence and prayers?”

  Intassa nodded.

  A wave of hot fear went through Eleva’s mind. “You really love him so much, Intassa?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes, I love him, because he loves me—he is the first man to love me for myself. Forgive me, I know how you loved Deveron, and I loved him also, but it was always you he loved best, you, his first wife. I was merely for variety, an extra ornament for his ceremonials, a bed to come to when you needed to rest alone. Rondasu…Rondasu is to me what Deveron was to you. I suppose it can only be so between husband and first wife.”

  Eleva shivered. This was not how their household had seemed to her. She would have said it was herself whom Deveron had married for convenience—a priestess for his ceremonials, a progenitress for his heirs—and Intassa whom he had married for pure love, to whose bed he had gone the more gladly.

  Intassa apparently saw the shiver and misunderstood it. “Oh, forgive me! I had almost…It’s wicked to flaunt my happiness when you’ve lost—”

  “No! Your happiness is mine.” It was a formula response, nor could Eleva so much as utter it sincerely—not because she envied Intassa now, but because she could not believe that Intassa’s present happiness would prove solid. “Nevertheless…Intassa, it may not remain so smooth. They say every priest needs two wives, even three, or he grows weary, irritable.”

  “No,” said Intassa. “Not Rondasu. You cannot understand him as I do, Eleva. Being his sister, you can hardly see him as a husband.”

  “True,” Eleva said dryly. And yet she had often sensed a power in Rondasu, as if he might prove strong and supple as Aomu or Raes, with the right bedfellow. Sometimes the sense of it had been so strong as to make her uneasy when with him, grateful but at the same time a little regretful that she was his sib. This supposed fear for Intassa’s happiness—might it not, after all, be mere envy? “Well,” she went on, “enjoy him then, Intassa. And if you are willing to bear again, Raes and Aeronu bless you, Aomu and Voma make you fertile. Shall I arrange a small ceremony for you here?”

  “That…that’s very good of you, Lady Reverence, but…” Intassa lowered her gaze.

  “But? And I hardly see why you should call me ‘La
dy Reverence,’” said Eleva, annoyed at the formality. “Rondasu never does—not in earnest. He seems to think I’m playing at rule. He’d rather I gave my farm into his capable hands and spent all my time studying the scrolls.” She forced a laugh. “I suppose, if I find it difficult to see why you love him, that’s the reason.”

  Intassa picked at the cloth of her skirt as if trying to work a snagged thread back into place. “Are you sure you would not be happier…Eleva?”

  “Happier? To sit forever combing out where Voma’s work ends and Aeronu’s begins, how many talons Azkor has in his left front claw and what the middle letter of Jehandru’s Seventh Secret Name might be?”

  “Rondasu says it might be best if you spent more time reading the scrolls, Eleva. He says—”

  “Ah. Rondasu the learned and virtuous still fears for his poor little sister’s destiny at the Harvest Gate, does he? So that’s the reason you’re shy of accepting my prayers—Rondasu the beloved of the gods has told you about the sorcery of my steambeds.”

  “They…they really seem…impious somehow.”

  “Aomu and Voma are the same in my steambeds as anywhere else beneath the surface of the Tanglelands, and if my attempts to start their spring labors early are impious and blasphemous, so is every cartload of manure and compost we spread on our fields, so is the pulling of every natural weed that threatens to choke a planted sprout—so is all cultivation!”

  Intassa had risen, her face pale. “Eleva, have you—will you bring down the gods’ blight on Deveron’s Farm?”

  About to respond that such a blight would no doubt please Rondasu, justifying his opinion and laying her farm open to his taking, Eleva choked back the words and instead replied, as gently as she could, “So you have come to beg me to return with you, as your husband wishes?”