Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn)

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  She turned and saw the gatewarriors grinning as they watched her. She walked halfway back to them and asked, “This is some holiday? Surely it is not a sickness in the town?”

  The axewoman chuckled. “Not a holiday, but might as well be one. Our local Reverences are holding solemn ceremony—a quarter of the day in each holy hall, fines for not attending. You came to the wrong gate if you hope to get a meal, ‘-ess. This part of town’ll be empty till midday. You might try the Fat Suckling Inn, a hundred paces from South Center Gate, but you’d better walk fast if you want to eat your porridge before their Reverences move on to the South Holy Hall.”

  “You are permitted to tell me the reason for the ceremonies?”

  “Nothing that’d interest your kind,” said Whistlepoint.

  “Nor us, neither,” said Splathandle. “Gate duty’s a pleasure when it looses you from solemn harangues. Thank your demons you’re not allowed in the holy halls, ‘-ess.”

  “You told me nothing of this before.”

  “They had another bet, these two scramblebrains,” said Splathandle, “whether you’d come back to ask. The watchbrat won again.”

  “Better hurry on to the Fat Suckling, you and your dog,” the watchgirl shouted down, “if you want to fill your bellies before that side of town locks down!”

  Frostflower glanced toward her. “Can you not shout more softly to one who has brought you wealth today?” Then, to the axewoman, she added, “How is it they lock their doors here beneath your very eyes?”

  “Vuck’s claws!” cried Whistlepoint, thumping her spear against the ground.

  But Splathandle laughed. “They lock their doors out of pure kindness, so the thieves won’t come around to be caught and gutted, and so we can spend our time making silly bets instead of watching shops.”

  Frostflower touched her fingers to her lips in a peaceable imitation of the warriors’ salute. To return a strange warrior’s jests was to strain her vow of prudence, but at least she seemed to have gauged Splathandle’s temper correctly—condescending but far from malicious.

  The wagers of the spearwoman and watchgirl, the axewoman’s lack of malevolence, suggested that the general attitude toward sorceri was much more relaxed here in Five Roads Crossing than their experiences in String-of-Beads had led them to fear. Might the fact that Deveron’s murder aroused no greater nervousness toward black robes indicate that others secretly disbelieved in Windbourne’s guilt? Might Splathandle’s “Don’t put wasps in our priests’ bellies” have been meant as a friendly precaution? Yet the warriors were still watching for a sorcerer of Windbourne’s description—she must warn him of that. She wished she could warn her swordswoman friend directly at the same time, for she could not help but mistrust Windbourne’s prudence; but her free-traveling entity could not touch Thorn’s senses.

  Here in the town’s edges, the streets were curving, with numerous sudden angles and unexpected alleys. The oldest part of Five Roads Crossing, that which had been in the center of the area enclosed by the original walls, would probably have straight streets; but for now Frostflower’s attempts to proceed toward South Center Gate were often baffled, as though she were in a maze.

  Doubting that she could reach the inn before the people of that part of town began to gather in their holy hall, the sorceress reconciled herself to the prospect of an empty stomach until midafternoon. “Poor Dowl,” she murmured, pulling him away from some budding rosebushes beside a shop that looked as if the building had once belonged to a wealthy family.

  Why did towns like Five Roads Crossing grow so large? Frostflower found nothing appealing in them. If I were of the farmers folk, she thought, I would prefer to live in a cottage in some good priest’s farm. Yet folk left smaller towns like String-of-Beads and Frog-in-the-Millstone to settle in larger ones. And not all the increase of a town’s size was due to the increase of its population; as folk grew rich enough, they built larger houses with more garden land around them. Frostflower passed several of these luxurious homes, walled about like farmers’ personal gardens to shut them off from the shops and dwellings of poorer folk. The flowerbreeder Crinkpetal lived in such a house. He might give her clearer information than Baconcrunch of the Fat Suckling Inn could provide, and a safer place to leave her body while she free-traveled back to Windbourne and Thorn tonight.

  In winding through the tangled streets, she chanced on the holy hall for this section of town. The folk gathered inside were beginning a hymn, all of them lifting their voices at once in one of the priestly melodies. The sorceress paused. A year ago such music had seemed alien, disturbing, and unlovely to her. But she had heard much of it in Elvannon’s Farm; he and his family had sung some of the more informal hymns and hymnlike ballads of their class for her, and even allowed her to witness, from a little distance, part of the Unblanketing of Aomu and Voma—the celebration of the melting snow—and some of the Planting Rites. Now she could hear beauty in the mysterious minor keys, and patterns in the fluctuating rhythms. And, when she heard so many farmers’ folk singing at once—their voices reverberating through the great, high hall almost as through a very small valley—she seemed to feel for a moment the same impulse that led so many people to live close together in a large, crowded, and malodorous town.

  She remembered briefly that it was in a place like this, an open yard before a holy hall, that she had been scaffolded last summer. But here the scaffold had been taken down, with nothing but a square of flat stones covering the post holes to show where it would be built again at need; and the song of an assembly of worshippers was so different from the clamor of a crowd of execution watchers that it seemed incredible the folk were of the same species, even perhaps many of the same individuals. Drawn by the reverent majesty of the hymn, she crossed the open yard and sat cross-legged at one side of the hall’s gauze-curtained door. Dowl lay beside her with one soft sigh and a few thumps of his tail.

  This hymn was in the ancient language of the priests. As spoken and explained by Elvannon and his family, it seemed to bear some resemblance to the ancient language of the sorceri, according to the pronunciation rules as interpreted in the northern mountains. When a small group of Elvannon’s folk sang a hymn, Frostflower could almost make sense of some of the verses. When a throng of midland townsfolk sang, in their slightly different accent, clearly with little knowledge of the sense of the words, the echoes of the building causing their voices to blend and run together, the sorceress had no hope of catching more than a word here and there. She caught the word for “seven,” and soon afterwards a sound that resembled the ancient sorcerous word for “tree,” and from these she guessed it might be a hymn to Jehandru of the Seven Secret Names, often depicted in priestly statuary as a tree. She gave up listening for words, closed her eyes, and let her concentration drift in the slow, majestic cadences.

  After the hymn, three women, almost certainly priestesses, read a long passage from the Second Scroll of the Afterdeath—a dialogue in which Jehandru’s intermediary Maejira the Merciful and the demon Azkor took turns describing to the Death Goddess Eshesha the rewards and punishments they would mete out to the good and the guilty after death. Frostflower thought it varied slightly from the version she had studied in Elvannon’s copy of the scroll, but she could not be sure.

  On two occasions during their journey south, Windbourne had surprised her by asking what she had learned of the farmer-priestly religion. The first time, she had tried to explain their idea that all plants and many insects were generated by the constant coupling of the Earth God Aomu and the Soil Goddess Voma, but he had quickly cut her short. The second time, guessing that what he really wanted was to hear something that might help him think gently of the priestess Eleva, she had spoken of the farmers’ conception of “The Gorious Harvest,” which did not differ so greatly in its essentials from the sorcerous belief of afterdeath. But she had not added particulars of the farm
ers’ Hellbog, for which sorceri had no parallel idea, nor had he asked for any, although he had heard Thorn and other farmers’ folk refer often enough to Hellbog and its demons.

  After the reading, a man’s voice took over the ceremony. This would be the presiding priest, probably Rondasu, who Thorn said was the nearest male priest left within a few hours’ travel of Five Roads Crossing. His voice was rich and deep and might have been pleasant, but for his words:

  “Children. No, not children—fools and idlers. Half a year ago, a priest was murdered almost in your midst. A great priest, my own brother by marriage. You allowed the murderer to escape from your very town. Does the Great Giver of Justice smile on you for this?”

  Frostflower’s eyes remained shut, but her back stiffened and her muscles tensed.

  “True,” the farmer-priest went on, “Deveron was not your master, nor am I, nor is my sister, the Lady Reverence Eleva, Deveron’s widow. You live under townmasters, and some of you take pride in that, as if it made you stronger in yourselves, less dependent on the gods and their priests. But it is to priests alone, not to townmasters, that the Gods reveal their laws! Your townmasters receive the laws from the priests, and so you, towndwellers, in return for some fancied increase of freedom, receive the laws and wishes of the gods only at third remove. Can you remain complacent? Or should you not bestir yourselves to greater efforts, lest you lose what little you have?”

  Dowl began to thump his tail against the pavement. The sorceress became aware of footsteps walking toward her across the yard. She opened her eyes and saw a swordswoman approaching.

  “Dare you allow a priest’s murderer to escape, in your laziness and cowardice,” the priest went on inside, “and not fear that He of the Seven Secret Names will strike down your town walls, destroy your proud wealth, and make your boasted freedom like stones in your throats?”

  The swordswoman was close enough now to question Frostflower in a low voice. “Didn’t they warn you to avoid holy halls, sorceress?”

  Frostflower crossed her arms over her breast in a gesture of submission. “The gatewarriors warned me not to go inside, warrior. I did not think it would be unlawful to sit quietly outside.”

  Undisturbed by their soft exchange, the priest’s voice continued. “Some of you must actually have connived at the sorcerer’s escape—an act so abominable in the sight of the Great Giver of Justice, so abhorrent to all the gods and goddesses—”

  The new warrior had gray hair and lines of weariness around her eyes. At her waist hung a tubular copper sheath, half an arm’s length long, tied by a copper chain. “What interest would a sorceron have in listening to a priestly ceremony? Aren’t you committing some kind of sin by your own notions?”

  “—only by coming to the priests can the guilty townsman or townswoman be purged,” the priest was saying. “Only by confessing in secrecy and submitting to purifications.”

  “They were singing when I first sat here,” Frostflower explained. “It was so lovely that I saw no harm in listening.”

  “Well, they aren’t singing now. I suppose you find his Reverence’s scolding lovely, too? How much have you heard?”

  Frostflower shrugged and unfolded her legs. “Enough to know that it lacks the beauty of the singing.” Dowl got up and walked to the warrior, who gave him a few pats. “If you’ll tell me which part of town had the first ceremony this morning, warrior,” Frostflower went on, “so that I may go there and buy a meal—”

  “I’m afraid not, sorceress.” The warrior unchained her copper sheath. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”

  The sorceress rose, trembling a little, but did not turn. “Warrior, I promise you, I will not venture near a holy hall again—I will not even step into the yard before one, if you will—”

  “Sorceress, I’m not a young woman. You could blast me into the grave in a puff. But I’ve lived long enough in this rotten world not to care that much, and I can throw my knife better than some of my spearwomen can throw their spears. Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.” She slipped one end of the copper chain through the hollow copper tube.

  Inside, the priest was saying, “If you wish the most stringent purification, the purging likeliest to make the demons let you slip by in pity, as one already punished in full, go to the widow of the murdered priest. If you wish a milder purification, come to me.…”

  “Warrior,” whispered Frostflower, “I have already been power-stripped.” Since that term had always been the exact equivalent of rape, she judged it no lie to say this.

  The swordswoman raised her eyebrows. “Unh? Well, I’m not equipped to strip you myself anyway, sorceress, and if you don’t give us any trouble, it might not come to that. But Townmaster Youngwise will have a few questions for you. Probably the priests will, too.”

  “I have a token from Reverence Elvannon—a priest in the north.…”

  “Good. That should help you, at least with Master Youngwise. Where is the thing?”

  Frostflower took it from her pocket. As she held it out, she tried her last resource and looked full at the warrior with her mismatched eyes.

  The warrior blinked, shook her head, and made a noose in the end of the copper chain. “I’ll deny this if you repeat it, sorceress, but between you and me, I don’t believe much more in your bloody power than I believe any of the gods would save me from it. But I do believe in what Master Youngwise and the priests would do to me if I let you go and they found out about it. Now turn around.”

  Frostflower repocketed her token, turned, and put her hands behind her.

  “You wouldn’t want to wander around Five Roads today anyway,” said the swordswoman, coming closer. “When his Reverence gets through with them, the town idiots are more likely to give you chopped quills than good food. Cross your wrists.”

  Frostflower crossed her wrists and felt metal touch them. Dowl whined and tried to nuzzle their hands; the warrior seemed to nudge him away. Frostflower turned her head to try for a glimpse of what her captor was doing. She could see nothing, but the warrior noticed her effort and explained.

  “Never saw one of these before, huh? Chain goes through the tube and loops around your wrists, then I can hold the other end of the chain and push you ahead of me using the tube, without ever touching you myself—a good length of copper to protect me from you. Master Youngwise invented the thing last winter. You know, this could be lucky for you. If you can clear your motives with Master Youngwise this evening, maybe get his token and string it around your neck along with that northern farmer’s, you’ll be a demon’s-reach safer for the next few days than you might have been otherwise.”

  Perhaps the warrior was right. Inside the holy hall, the priest was saying, “Whoever has sheltered the murdering sorcerer—whoever has even seen him pass and kept silent through fear—in the sight of the Gods, that cringing sorceri-lover shares his guilt and the guilt of all his kind. Will you allow this evil, this rot, this sin, to remain in your town, infecting it like some foul disease, threatening at every moment to bring the rage of Azkor untempered by the mercy of Maejira—the devouring justice of the Seven Secret Names?”

  Frostflower tried not to shiver. If they should ask her directly whether she knew the sorcerer supposed to have killed Deveron…

  The warrior drew the small-linked chain only tight enough to keep it from slipping off and used the tube less to push than guide her through the streets. The sorceress took courage. This was far different from the roughness of her capture last summer.

  “I owe you some thanks, sorceress, for not disturbing the ceremony back there,” the warrior said when they were well away from the holy hall, Dowl padding patiently beside them.

  “Would the farmers’ folk not have come out in a mob to tear me apart?”

  The warrior chuckled appreciatively. “‘Farmers’ fo
lk.’ Yes, it isn’t a bad name for the gobbers, even if they are townspeople. What’s your name, sorceress?”

  “Frostflower.”

  “Ever been in Five Roads before?”

  “No.”

  “Unh? Thought maybe I knew you from somewhere.”

  “I traveled between All Roads South and Three Bridges last summer. I do not remember seeing you, warrior.”

  “Never out of your hole before that?”

  “Never an hour beyond the mountains.”

  The warrior must have shrugged, for the copper tube dipped briefly. “Haven’t been farther east than the Wendwater for twelve or thirteen years myself.”

  “What happened here, warrior,” Frostflower ventured to ask, “to bring forth words like that from his Reverence?” Perhaps she should have asked sooner, not only in the hope of learning what she had come here to learn, but because not to ask might be to advertise that she already knew something of the story.

  “I’d better not tell you that yet, Frostflower. By the way, I’m Eaglesight—First Wallkeeper, if you’d rather use the title.”

  At length, following a tree-lined avenue that led through a sizable town garden, they came out into a round yard similar to the one before the holy hall, but thrice as large and ringed by important-looking buildings with trees planted between and in front of them. Eaglesight directed Frostflower to one of the most plainly designed of the buildings, standing three stories high. Before they entered, the wallkeeper paused to point out the sights of her town’s center. “The ancient holy hall,” she began, indicating an oval building ringed by trees and surrounded by garden on all sides except that facing the open yard. “Now their Reverences use it mostly for a Truth Grove away from the farm, their own little token tighthold in Five Roads. With luck, you’ll never see the inside of it. The gardens used to be priestly territory, but Master Youngwise made a deal in his youth, and now they’re free to anyone who walks in them respectfully.”