“Except sorceri?”
Eaglesight rubbed her chin and nodded. “Youngwise never laid down any rule against your people enjoying the place, so long as there’s no ceremony going on in the old holy hall, but you’d be smart to keep to the path through it. Amazing, the things we can call disrespectful if you people do them.” She pointed to the wall surrounding the next building. “There’s the priestly alcove-hall across from us, where their Reverences sleep when they deign to spend a night in our stinking town, which one or other of ‘em does once or twice a year, to keep the form. Every Hatching-Day a squad of pious townsfolk go in and spend their holiday keeping the place clean. That next building’s where the undermasters live. Then the front end of the warriors’ barracks—looks pretty good from the front, doesn’t it? When the wind blows from the south, they light incense around the rest of this yard to keep the smell of the hinder parts from their dainty noses. Then there’s the first townmaster’s dwelling on our left; doesn’t look so fine as the priestly alcove-hall from the outside, but probably a lot more comfortable inside. And this one we’re going into is the townmasters’ hall, where the real governing of the town, such as it is, is supposed to go on. Ordinarily, one or other of our frigging undermasters should always be sitting in the front alcove or the judgment hall, but today they’re both in attendance at the ceremonies, along with the first master, and Wallkeeper Snagcut’s sitting delegate this morning, the bloody cow. So we’ll just go in by the side door without telling her you’re here.”
The side door was a descent to the cellars. Though dry and not ill smelling, these were dark, lit only by a few constant-wicks and an occasional small candle before the niche of some god or goddess. What Frostflower thought at first was an unusually wide passageway cut here and there by a partition she soon realized was in fact a maze of rooms opening into one another.
Eventually the women reached a brighter area, lit and ventilated by a ceiling screen through which sweet fragrances and sun-dappled shadows penetrated. “Are we below another garden?” Frostflower asked softly.
“A little one, for summer council meetings. Behind the judgment hall. In their own humble way, our townmasters manage to rival the priests. Want to use the close-room over there? Have a drink of water? It’ll be a boggy long afternoon for you, but I can’t do anything about that.”
“Thank you,” said the sorceress. Eaglesight freed her hands and let her go into the close-room. When she came out again, the warrior had produced dried apricots and cold water from a stone cupboard at one side of the room.
“I wouldn’t drink too much,” said Eaglesight, picking up the copper chain and tube again. “Have to immobilize you for the afternoon. It’d be skin off my back, first wallkeeper or not, if the priests or anyone else found you loose here.”
Frostflower nodded and turned, holding her hands behind her back. “Should you have shown me so much kindness already?”
“Now you ask, no. I should’ve hooked you right away, like this.” Eaglesight fastened the end of the chain to a copper hook in the wall. The height of the hook, combined with the length of the chain and tube, made it impossible for the sorceress either to stand without bending her knees or to sit on the floor. Eaglesight moved a small bench over for her to sit on, then frowned at Dowl, who waited just out of the way, wagging his tail trustingly.
“Must you immobilize him, also?” said Frostflower.
Eaglesight shrugged. “Better. I can see he’s gentle enough to roll eggs, but if their Reverences get the notion he’s trained to go for their noses at your command…” Returning to the stone cupboard, she untangled a variety of chains, ropes, and straps until she found a thin iron chain several strides long. She secured one end to the cupboard and hooked the other end rather loosely around Dowl’s neck, patting him as he tried to lick her face. “Anything else before I go? I can give you a cushion or two, but they’re pretty damn
greasy. Might have a few creatures living in ‘em, too.”
Frostflower shook her head. “I am to be alone the entire afternoon? You will not return?”
“Probably not. It’s a big town, and a good day for thieves.”
“Is it not unusual that a wallkeeper should walk patrol in a large town like Five Roads Crossing?”
Eaglesight raised one eyebrow. “Never knew sorceri were so interested in warriors’ work. No, it isn’t usual, but any woman not on other duty today has to make the rounds of the holy halls with their Reverences and the townmasters, and I’d rather look for thieves. So I named myself to street-guard for the whole blasted day.…Are you really harmless, Frostflower? Or just kind to an old swordswoman?”
Frostflower lowered her gaze. “It would be very difficult for me to harm anyone, I think, even with such weapons as are available to all folk.”
“Is it common for you people to wander around loose after you’ve been power-stripped?”
“Is it common for us to escape death after the stripping?”
The wallkeeper laughed. “Well, sorceress, if my opinion’s worth enough, by nightfall you’ll be out looking for an inn. One friendly warning: If the priests come, be careful how you answer their questions. His Reverence Rondasu would have purged the whole damn neighborhood last winter, Lady Shara is her brother’s bitter little echo, and I think Lady Intassa might be out to prove her early remarriage doesn’t mean she’s any less eager to punish her first husband’s death, for all her silence and meek manners. Master Youngwise will probably be on our side, if only to cross his Reverence while pretending not to. You may end up for a while like a bone with two dogs fighting over you, but if the right dog wins, there are worse ways to get out of trouble. And Lady Reverence Eleva may—just may—be on your side, too. I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure I’d trust her very far, but she does things just to show her power and annoy her brother, and she purrs right alone with Youngwise most of the time. That’s the main reason we didn’t have the purge when Reverence Rondasu called for it. As for our noble undermasters, they’ll probably wiggle out of coming if they can; and since Smoothermore’s a priests’ paw and Clearthinking goes along with the strongest blast of mouth-air, Master Youngwise usually prefers to cross wits alone with their Reverences. Well, I’d better go look for the real criminals. They could’ve strolled off with half the stinking shop goods in Oldcraft Street by now.”
* * * *
Solitude made up a large and cherished part of Frostflower’s life, as it did the lives of all sorceri…but not the kind of solitude that remained after Eaglesight had left. Though the first wallkeeper had seemingly done her best to soften it, Frostflower’s present confinement much more closely resembled the tales she had heard from childhood—and which she had come to believe approximated the wild rumors farmers’ folk told of her own people—than had her imprisonment last summer in Maldron’s Farm. (Yet her folk dared to enter towns, and shunned farms!)
Dowl put his head in her lap, gazed up at her, and whined, puzzled why she would not pat him. She murmured comforting words, and after a few moments he sighed, snorted, shook himself, and lay on the floor beside her to sleep.
Eaglesight’s apparent leniency could, conceivably, have been a trick to make the sorceress trust the first wallkeeper farther than she should. Frostflower thought over all that Thorn had told her of the personalities and power struggles in Five Roads Crossing. Thorn had characterized Eaglesight as a decent woman predisposed toward honesty, but who had compromised with expediency. Thorn called Youngwise a “slithering old triple-tongue”—but Thorn had special cause for complaint against him, and if he did “shave the dice to please the priests,” he apparently did it, from what Eaglesight had said about the public garden surrounding the old holy hall, for the good of his town.
The two most important farms were those of Deveron and Rondasu. Their forebears had amassed the neighboring farms, chiefly by raidfare, until Rondas
u’s Farm included all the cultivated land northeast of Five Roads Crossing in a rough quarter-circle between the Wendwater, the Mirrel, Mideast Road Straight, and the Dranwoods, which separated his farmwall from the townwall. Deveron’s Farm, on the other side of Mideast Road, was somewhat smaller but commonly considered to have richer land. Deveron had organized no raids during his tenure; Rondasu, the younger man by six or eight years, only one—some five winters ago, he had successfully driven out the last priestly family besides his own and Deveron’s that at that time remained between Five Roads Crossing and the Mirrel River.
South and southwest of the town there remained a number of small farms whose priests raided one another sporadically; but the southern farmers rarely mixed with the government of Five Roads Crossing, preferring to dominate the smaller towns to the south. Eventually, some southern priest might succeed in increasing his lands and driving out his neighbors as the forefathers of Deveron and Rondasu had done to their north, and then the power pattern might become three-way and surround the town; but no one seemed to think that possibility near enough to worry about.
Rondasu’s father, Rondrun, had sired two daughters in addition to Rondasu, and his neighbor Deveron had married the younger of these daughters, Eleva, as his first wife, while the older daughter, Shara, remained in the farm of her birth as an unmarried priestess. According to priestly custom, the marriage between neighbors had precluded any attempt of one farmer to raid the other, at least for a generation or two; and so the power had seemed to balance peacefully. At Deveron’s death, Eleva became ruling lady. Intassa, Deveron’s younger wife, had apparently remarried after Thorn and Windbourne escaped the area. If she had married Rondasu as his first wife, the two farms were linked by yet another marriage.
Both priestly families, it seemed, were unusually small. No widows of either Deveron’s or Rondasu’s father still survived, and the only members of the coming generation were Eleva’s and Intassa’s children, none of whom were seven years old yet. As far as Thorn was aware, there had been no visiting priests in the area, and Rondasu had not involved himself in the search for the murderer of his sister’s husband until the following morning. Thus, if Deveron had indeed been poisoned by one of his own class, it must have been by one of his wives—Eleva or Intassa…perhaps by both of them working together.
The sorceress had only a dim understanding, buried long ago by choice and more recently by brutality, of the emotions that led women and men to marry. She had vague memories of her own parents’ happiness before her father’s death, which had happened when she was eleven years old; and she knew that here and there other sorcerous couples lived in contentment on the edges of their retreats. But sorcerous marriage were one woman to one man, and entered only for the sake of friendship and mutual regard deep enough to overbalance the loss of sorcerous power that marriage entailed. Priestly multiple marriages might be contracted between strangers for reasons of wealth, ruling power, and policy. Might such household situations not lead to…strange emotions…jealousies strong enough to…
No! The sorceress would continue to assume that Deveron had fallen victim to some sudden disease.
Both to quiet her fears and to take her mind off her constraint, she went through several exercises. When she opened her eyes again, she was breathing more steadily; but she was disheartened to see, by the small distance the shadow of the ceiling screen had moved, how little time had passed.
Well, sorceri had ways other folk lacked of shortening such a wait as this. Frostflower might slow her body’s time, watch the sun-pattern slide across the floor as quickly as the shadow of a wind-blown cloud, hear the birdcalls and fountain ripples above merge into a high-pitched whir, feel Dowl’s breathing like a rapid quiver against her legs. Or she might put herself into a trance or else—more difficult because of her discomfort—a state of conscious meditation. Or she might free-travel.
It was never wise to change the body’s own time without good physical reason.
Either a trance or a state of meditation would allow her mind to ponder in its deepest, calmest reasoning, and her case should not be worsened if they found her in harmless trance.
But free-travel appealed to her most. It had its dangers. If the body were destroyed while the entity was outside, the entity was doomed to melancholy wandering and an eventual fate on which those who had not experienced it could only speculate. She might be very rash to free-travel here, leaving her body in a townmasters’ prison. Still, if they found her in that state, they would probably assume it was trance.
She would have time to go to String-of-Beads and return here by evening, but chances were it would do little good since Windbourne did not expect her until midnight and only whim or inexplicable instinct could inspire him to enter the free-traveling state himself at midafternoon today. Moreover, for the maximum prudence, she ought to remain close to her body. But the idea of spending the afternoon in the garden around the ancient holy hall, in the intangible but unsuffering freedom of the unrestrained entity, was mischievously tempting. She began the preliminary exercises.
She was still rather disquieted to see her own body as it appeared to other folk, so she glanced back only once after leaving it. Some part of her personality, she knew, remained inside with her suspended senses; and indeed, while close to her body, she could almost feel herself in two places at once. As she withdrew, however, all conscious awareness of the part that remained inside fell away.
The most dubious part of her venture was finding her way up. The entity could move a few fingers’-length above ground or floor, and it could jump down from any height and land without injury; but it could not fly, nor jump appreciably higher than the physical body in good health. And it could pass through doors and walls and see a little better in darkness than could the physical body, but it did not have any surer instinct of direction. Therefore, she followed the regular doorways. Though she tried to memorize her route, she doubted that, after so many turnings and doublings back, she would be able to retrace the path very quickly. Probably she would need to follow the townmaster’s group when it came to question her.
And if she missed seeing it approach? She decided to spend part of her afternoon in the upper floors of the townmasters’ hall.
Finding stairs that led up to a short interior passageway, and following the sound of voices, she passed through a dark brown doorcurtain and emerged at one end of what must be the townmasters’ judgment-hall.
It was large enough to hold the entire gathering-house at Windslope Retreat, roof and all—much larger than the central hall in either of the two priestly dwellings the sorceress had seen, as if by its size the townmasters hinted that their power, at least in town, was superior to that of the farmer-priests. But, as if in apology, it was also stark, with floor of dull-glazed tile, walls of brown clay, and ceiling high but smooth plastered, lacking even the exposed rafters that might have lent a little relief to the eye. There was no dais.
One warrior, her back to the doorway, slouched on a short-backed bench behind a plain, heavy oaken table. Another warrior, a spearwoman, held a thin youth by one arm. His hands were behind him, as if bound; he looked to be in his late teens or early twenties; and he seemed to be hiding apprehension with a display of insolence.
“Napping at home in bed,” the spearwoman was saying. “Can’t show his token for missing the ceremonies.”
“I was sick,” said the youth. “It came on very suddenly.”
“And left very suddenly,” replied the spearwoman. “I found the brat snoring away comfortable as a bloody wine-nose.”
“My father took the fine-money along to the ceremonies for me—”
“Not much point in that,” said the warrior behind the table. “Couldn’t bring your token back to you in time, could he?” Reaching down, she produced a coil of rope from beneath the table and tossed it to the spearwoman. “All right, Quickarm, sp
read him out and up with the tunic. No need to chain him below and worry the undermasters with him this evening.”
Frostflower fled. To escape the sound of the young man’s screams, she hurried along the passage in the other direction. It ended in a second doorway, this one covered with a blue and white curtain that swayed in the air currents and seemed to glow a little as if sunlight were shining through the thin cloth. Passing through, she found herself in a pleasant chamber where three walls were decorated with mosaic done in chips of multi-colored tile and the fourth had large, carved windowscreens on either side of another door. Beyond this door lay the townmasters’ small inner garden.
This garden had no trees, but many shrubs and bushes, some espaliered along the walls. Its chief glory and luxury were the flowers—almost too many. She did not regret that the free-traveling entity had no bodily senses except sight and hearing, for she might have found so many mingled fragrances rather cloying.
The ventilation screen to the cell below was ashwood with an upper coating of lead. Though surrounded by a border of prickly leafed teasel as if to prevent its being stepped upon, it was probably capable of sustaining a man’s weight. Peering through the interstices of the screen, Frostflower glimpsed her body sitting below, with Dowl still napping comfortably at her feet.
Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn) Page 11