Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn)

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “The Deepwine would be a better rose for them, Lady Eleva. Its thorn is very small, for all that the blossom is almost the color of blood.”

  Another time, he said of a variety of longstem lilies, “In breeding for their brilliant color, I unhappily developed a very frail stem. Within a few more seasons, I should be able to correct this fault, but the present generation of plants should be placed where they’ll have shelter from the wind—away from the edge of the wind, they do well enough, but a sudden, sharp-edged wind can reduce a row of blooms to an ugly wreck.” He seemed to give a very slight emphasis to such words as “rose,” “thorn,” “wind,” and “edge,” and frequently to direct a glance at Frostflower shortly before or after pronouncing such words. Had the warrior and sorcerer already come back into Five Roads Crossing despite her warning, as she feared they might? Had they been captured? Here, sequestered with Eleva, Frostflower had no more way of learning what happened in the town around her than if she were three days’ journey distant. Only when she free-traveled could she learn anything else but what the priestess chose to tell her. Or perhaps they were hiding with Crinkpetal again, and he hoped for some secret message from her to take back to them. What message could she give him? And how convey it?

  Or might he simply be trying to warn her, through the mere fact of cloaking their names in Eleva’s presence, that the priestess was not to be trusted?

  Was all this mistrust justified, or was it as foolish as Thorn’s early mistrust of Frostflower had been? Could there be no mutual trust and frankness anywhere in the midlands without a mutual initiation of suffering to open the minds to one another?

  “Well, my old friend and favorite flower-merchant,” Eleva said at last, with a smile that looked open and honest, “I hope to make it well worth your time to have spent this morning with me, and if your cook were not your own son, I’d try to hire him away from you. But for now, no doubt you have your plans for the afternoon, as we have ours.”

  “If I had more than the two children left and could depend on one of them to carry on my business without the other’s help, Lady Eleva, I would most certainly hire him to you for a cook.” Crinkpetal rose and touched palm to lips. “All gods and goddesses prosper your plans, Reverence.”

  “And turn your frustrations to benefits.” Eleva lifted her hand in a priestly blessing—without, however, rising from her chair. But then, as if suddenly remembering an errand, she laughed and stood. “I’d almost forgotten. I must walk with you to the door. I want to retie the thongs inside the curtain and summerscreen after you’ve gone.”

  While she was absent, a yellow cat appeared from somewhere behind the dais and leaped up onto one of the empty chairs. Frostflower caught him before he could proceed to the tabletop, held him in her lap and fed him a piece of the egg-and-vegetable loaf, all of which brought Dowl whining to her side, so that she had to feed him as well.

  Eleva returned and sat again, still laughing. “The good old hypocrite,” she remarked, not unkindly. “Wishes for the gods’ blessings come no more sincerely from Crinkpetal’s mouth than they would from yours, sorceress! Ah, so Yop’s returned, has he? Well, Gris is probably around somewhere, too, and I did my sibs an injustice last night, thinking they took them to avoid my feeding them poison.”

  “Have you spoken of your gods with Crinkpetal, Lady?”

  Eleva chose a piece of candied fruit at random. “He’d hardly report his skepticism to me, Frostflower. No doubt he thinks himself very clever in concealing it. But one cannot grow up a priest and fail to learn the signs: a certain glassiness in the eyes during ceremonies, a visible lack of fervor in singing hymns, a studied reluctance to speak of the gods lest one speak of them too flippantly, and so on. At least, one cannot grow up the child of suspicious parents and sibs ever anxious to mark down such evidence for use against their enemies, without learning such signs.” She popped the fruit into her mouth and snapped her fingers stickily. “But as long as there are so few like Crinkpetal, and as long as he keeps his opinions to himself and obeys his townmasters and priests in all other matters, I see no harm in it. Better a good-hearted, hard-working hypocrite like Crinkpetal than a pious, plotting priest like my brother. What? Have I shocked you, sorceress?”

  “Lady Reverence…you yourself believe in your gods?”

  Eleva stopped in the act of lifting a small cluster of raisins and stared at the sorceress. “Would the gods permit a priest to rule who did not believe in them? If I had not had such difficulty getting you into my own keeping, Frostflower…” She shook her head, separated one raisin from the cluster, and ate it. “No, of course not—Rondasu would never dare risk using a sorceron. He leaves that to his half-heretic younger sister. In any event, sorceress, it isn’t what we believe or disbelieve that creates the gods’ existence.”

  If Eleva was sincere…“Lady, if I might talk with you about these things—sincerely, keeping back nothing?”

  “You aren’t trying to convert a priestess?”

  Frostflower shook her head. “Perhaps to convert myself.”

  Eleva slapped the arm of her chair. “Cows’ breath! Well, not now. Certainly not now! You’ll not give up your sorcerous powers for a while yet, Frostflower. Oh, yes, I know you practiced them again last night. Have you any idea what it’s like to awaken in the middle of the dark hours and find the person beside you motionless as a newly dead corpse?” She leaned forward. “Where did you go, sorceress? Did you go to my brother’s farm already last night?”

  Frostflower shook her head. “Had I known you wished it at once, Lady…”

  “I would have wished it, yes, had I known you still had the vigor. I thought you’d need to rest. Well, they should all have been asleep, with little enough for you to learn from them…though if I’d sent you after them at once, while they were still on their way from Five Roads back to his farm—well, the past is settled!” She sighed and sat back. “And wherever you went, was it on my concerns or your own?”

  Frostflower took a moment to phrase her reply. “Our concerns are closely intertwined, lady. But I learned nothing likely to help you.”

  Eleva gazed at her for several heartbeats, then shrugged. “No doubt Rondasu and Shara would press you for a more detailed answer. Perhaps Intassa would, as well, although I cannot see her wielding whip and knife herself. But I will not press you. You’re ready to go where I direct you now?”

  The sorceress nodded. Anxious as Eleva seemed to prove her trust, Frostflower could do no less than assume her sincerity and respond in kind. “Even to set out from your Truth Grove, Lady Reverence.”

  “I’d hope so, seeing that will be to both our greater safety. Have you guessed why I summoned the flowerbreeder here?”

  “To have him bring food we can trust? To fill your time while you allowed me to sleep?”

  “In part. And why I kept him sitting with us so long to speak of a trade matter that could wait?”

  “It should probably not wait overlong, Reverence. Already the season’s past to give your people the earlier blooming flowers.”

  Eleva tempted Dowl over to her side with a bit of sliced cow’s tongue. “But I wanted one witness to see us here together, to know that I had neither cowed you nor you spellcast me before I took you into the Grove. Remember him, Frostflower. His secret sorceri-love could be older than my lifetime. If the worst happens, if you should need a refuge, seek out Crinkpetal, in Wiltdown Street, in the northeast part of town.”

  “What do you fear may endanger us, Lady?”

  Eleva rose. “Very little, if we act soon enough and if the gods’ design favors us so far as to arrange something for you to learn at once.” She fed Dowl a last bite of cow’s tongue. “Are you ready?”

  “Now, Lady? But you have no acolytes yet.”

  “I have decided not to use any. There’s a branch of the tunnel that leads from this b
uilding to the rear alcove of the old holy hall. We’ll use that. I’ll raise a chant from time to time, loud enough for anyone near the holy hall to hear a little something. They’ll know I’m inside, but they won’t know you’re with me. There will probably be rumors, but all anyone will know is that I’m conducting some private ceremony in the Grove and must not be disturbed or intruded upon.”

  Frostflower nodded and rose, first lifting the cat down from her lap before he could take the excuse to leap up to the table. “What of this food, Lady?”

  Turning her fist in her palm, Eleva studied the remains of the meal. “Best gather it up and carry it with us. Will you do that, Frostflower? I’ll fetch the candles and incense.”

  If I could have met this woman in different circumstances, thought the sorceress…If we could have discussed matters of eternal importance, rather than this devouring concern of a few people’s lives in a small area of the Tanglelands…and yet it is such concerns, small as all of us are in ourselves—the life and death of a few priests and sorceri, the destruction of a few anthills, the bees of a single hive collecting drops of nectar and spreading grains of pollen from individual flower to individual flower—that weave the very fabric of all nature.

  And so it was important to learn the truth of what had happened here, important for an even greater reason than the safety of Thorn and Windbourne, important even though within a hundred years all of them would be dead and forgotten. Perhaps it was even more important to learn the truth of Deveron’s death than to learn the truth of which gods ruled nature. Deveron had been no less important than the first cloud signaling the lines of ferment between warm air and cold. He, and those whom his life and death had drawn together, were also part of the pattern, though whether it was a fixed pattern or a fluid one…

  Eleva had referred to the design of the gods as if she believed the priestly assumption of a future already fixed and settled. But she had also referred to the changelessness of the past, as if she considered the past fixed in a way the future was not. She apparently remained undisturbed by Crinkpetal’s presumed skepticism, and she did not fear to break custom. And even if all this were a mere pose, and Eleva herself wicked and treacherous, she had said one thing that Frostflower would nurture in her mind—an idea she herself had often thought but never expressed, not even to her brother Puffball, so that when the priestess threw it off boldly, almost casually, it had thrilled through the sorceress like an echo that seemed somehow to corroborate the original voice: Truth existed somewhere beyond mortals’ conception of truth.

  CHAPTER 10

  Thorn and Windbourne had reached Five Roads about the time sudden storm clouds covered the westering moon. Taking advantage of the darkness, they had groped their way around the townwalls, the sorcerer twisting the breeze—and sharpening it when necessary—to keep hitting the masonry at an angle, while the warrior listened for suspicious whistles. Thus, they had finally found a thief’s tunnel, blocked with stones fitting not quite closely enough to keep out a whistle when the current was directed at just the right angle. A sorceron, Thorn thought, would make a handy assistant to a patrol of townwarriors out looking for thieves’ tunnels; as things were, the honest patrols had to wait for natural telltale winds.

  By the time they got into town, dawn was on the way, orange through the storm clouds, leaving them only enough margin to reach Crinkpetal’s house and get in through the hidden door in the garden wall.

  The flowerbreeder had not been delighted to see Thorn and Windbourne again, but at least he had stayed their friend, and the warrior trusted his peevish complaints more than she would have trusted vows of undying good faith.

  All the same, when Eaglesight’s favorite barracks-brat showed up, a few ballad-lengths after the last spit of rain, to request Crinkpetal’s attendance on Lady Reverence Eleva that same morning, Thorn had not been slow to voice her suspicions. At first she tried to insist that she and Windbourne should go along disguised as servants to carry the baskets of food that were part of Eleva’s request. But the flowerbreeder had been as stubborn as the swordswoman.

  “You’re here and I won’t betray you,” he stated, “but you’ll repay the favor by not betraying me, even accidentally. You won’t be seen leaving my house by daylight, especially not with me.”

  Thorn’s morning’s wait had not been helped by the need to keep her voice low when she felt like raging. “If you can get out of your stinking body,” she remarked to the sorcerer—the “stinking” was inaccurate since the rain had washed them both and Crinkpetal’s trusted servant Speckless had brought them hot rosewater and linen towels to wipe off the rain—“why the Hell can’t you travel around? What’s the extra trick? Azkor’s tail! If I were as competent a warrior as you are a sorceron, I’d have been killed in my second raid!” She must have said something like this a few times too often, because at last he responded by lying down and going into the deathlike trance that could signify free-travel. Then, having no one else left to grumble at, she grumbled at the ants and bees, and wondered whether she would try to drag Wedgepopper along or leave him in his silly trance if the townwarriors came.

  The sorcerer did not return to his body until Crinkpetal was back in the garden and walking toward the cottage.

  “How far did you get?” Thorn said.

  “I was almost able to disengage completely.”

  “Hellstink! You didn’t even get quite out of your blasted skin? Why the demons’ farts bother?”

  “It spared my having to listen to those of your comments aimed directly at me, Rosethorn. And you still wear the black robe. Your language does not fit it.”

  Before Thorn could reply that her language had been mincing sweet and pure when they were out in the open, the flowerbreeder entered the cottage. “Her Reverence did in fact, it seems, summon me for no more sinister reason than to bring her breakfast and to discuss trade matters. Your friend is well and, to all appearances, reasonably safe for the time being. Probably safer than we are.”

  “So she is with the priestess in that bloody town alcove-hall?” Thorn began.

  “And you, Crinkpetal,” Windbourne said in almost the same moment, “you are safe? Her Reverence does not suspect you?”

  The merchant grunted. “I think she suspects me of heresy and of befriending your people in general. As far as I could tell, she doesn’t seem to suspect me of harboring any sorceri at present. Nor does she seem to suspect that her sorceress is your friend.”

  “Then why is she keeping her?” Thorn demanded. “Don’t tell me any of this bloody nonsense about overhearing the ceremonies—she could have purified her of that in less time than an egg-boiling last night.”

  Crinkpetal spread his hands. “If it were not incredible, I would say that her Reverence, like myself, may incline to befriend sorceri—that she fears Frostflower might be in some danger from his Reverence Rondasu, and is guarding her to keep her safe from his authority. Lady Eleva told me—before your friend woke and joined us—that no doubt I would hear rumors today, since folk can hardly hear chanting in a town Truth Grove without starting rumors, but that no matter what tales might reach me, she and the sorceress would be acting together in all good feeling and spirit of cooperation.”

  Windbourne relaxed visibly. “Then it seems we should have followed her instructions, Rosethorn, and—”

  “Stinking Hellbog! Because you people can’t lie doesn’t mean the bloody farmers can’t. Just what the Seven Names are they going to cooperate on in a Truth Grove? She’s taking Frost into the blasted Grove with her? Alone?”

  Crinkpetal shrugged. “I’ve known her since she was a child—she was always one of my best customers, and I would have called her as sincerely pious as a priest should be, for all her whimsical talk of the gods and doctrines—but she seems to have changed since his Reverence Deveron died—grown more sure of herself, bolder, more outspoken—but also
more suspicious of everyone around her. She seems convinced her brother and sister are trying to poison her, or at the least seeking to charge her with hard heresy and take away the rule of her farm from her. As perhaps they are—I wouldn’t trust that pair myself, though I’d be more careful not to give them evidence on an inscribed parchment, so to speak. But if her fear of them has gone deep enough, yes, she may have decided it worth the risk to persuade a strange sorceress to do some kind of spellcasting against them.”

  “Spying, more likely,” said Thorn. “But Frostflower wouldn’t even spy for her without a damn good reason.”

  Windbourne had begun shaking his head. “Have you been our friend so long, Crinkpetal, and never learned that we injure no one except in the last extremity? We do not drop hornets’ nests in folks’ stomachs. Much as they may deserve it, some of them.”

  Crinkpetal carelessly made the circle gesture that more pious folk used to ward off sorcery. “I’ve seen you people grow plants and gather little rain clouds out of the air to water them. Aside from that, I neither know, nor wish to know, nor greatly believe anything of your powers, whether I hear it from you or from your enemies. But I think Frostflower herself is in little enough danger for the rest of today.”

  Unless Eleva’s gone mad, thought Thorn. Frost will be as much at the mercy of one farmer as of a score of them, in a Truth Grove. Especially if the one farmer’s crazed enough to act without acolytes—“ritual levity,” they call that sort of thing. Aloud, the warrior said, “Well, at least she won’t be in any danger tomorrow, because we’re getting her out of there tonight.”

  CHAPTER 11