Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn)

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  The black robes themselves, though they announced “sorceri” to anyone who happened to see them, would also help make them harder to see. “Funny,” Thorn remarked. “I never thought of it before, but when they insist you people wear black, they make it easier for you to sneak around at night.”

  “We do not sneak around,” said Windbourne. “We live openly and honestly. What I am doing tonight is extraordinary and strains my vow of Truth to the uttermost.”

  “But the priests and everyone else in the Tanglelands think you sneak around at night, so why do they make it easier for you? Why not make it the law that you wear some other color? Light gray, maybe. Or orange.”

  “Light gray would be too close to the farmers’ sacred white. Any other color would cut into the choice honest commoners enjoy. Besides, the priests could never agree on one single color for us, not nowadays. Black is standard throughout the Tanglelands only because it’s ancient tradition.”

  “Um,” said Thorn, examining the idea of black clothes for warriors to wear on raids. Despite everything, she felt almost happy. Bloodrastor-First-of-Warriors! It was good to be going into some kind of action that more or less resembled warriors’ work!

  “What about this damn cat of yours?” Thorn went on, as Coyclaws took one of her recurrent notions to rub against the warrior’s leg as if determined to make Thorn appreciate her catly grace. “We’ll let the flowerbreeder keep her for us,” she answered her own question.

  “No,” said Windbourne. “Coyclaws must choose.”

  Thorn stared at him. “What?”

  “You know we always allow our animals to decide.”

  “Demons’ turds! You don’t leave your cows and goats to wander away into the mountains if they choose. And how do you keep your damn eggs safe for you to eat if you let your cocks go wherever they please?”

  “Have you ever seen a cock among our fowl, even in such a retreat as Frostflower’s? We either buy all our pullets from the farmer-priests before they reach maturity, or do without eggs. And our very cows and goats have more freedom than farmers’ cattle. Yes, we cajole them, teach them to follow the herder; but we do not pen them in pasture, and the pens and shelters we build for them near our own houses are for their protection, not their confinement. And our cats and dogs have as much freedom as we ourselves.”

  “Maybe a Hell of a lot more,” Thorn observed. “Anyway, we can’t have her side-stepping along with us tonight and maybe tripping us up or calling attention to us. She stays here with Crinkpetal.”

  “If she chooses,” said Windbourne.

  Thorn glared at the white cat, which had started washing itself again. The warrior searched around quietly until she found a box of ink paste that the flowerbreeder used for marking the names and prices of his plants on the jars he sold them in—for his own convenience, of course; most of his common customers could not read and had to depend on his word anyway. She carried the box to the washstand and went to work. She did not explain what she was doing, and maybe Windbourne assumed she was washing her hands, since she kept her back to him and he seemed to be busy with some kind of muscle-flexing exercises sorceri used to stay calm.

  When Thorn had two-thirds a basinful of inky water that stained her elbow at a dip, she tied the sleeves of her robe down around her wrists, put on a pair of gardener’s gloves, picked Coyclaws up, and plunged her into the ink-bath.

  “What are you doing?” cried Windbourne, jumping to his feet and starting across the room. The cat was yowling, spitting, twisting its body and lashing out with extended claws and snakelike tail, but Thorn held it down with one gloved hand around the ribcage while she used the other hand to rub the liquid wrong-way into the fur.

  “Go on yowling and you’ll get a black tongue, too, cat,” said the warrior, as she pushed its face down into the dye. “Take your robe off and spread it out on the floor, Wedgepopper—we’ll need to dry this bugger out a little so she won’t leave her futtering footprints all over Crinkpetal’s cottage.”

  He had sense enough to obey and help dry the cat. By the time they started out, Coyclaws had so far forgotten the indignity that she rode on Windbourne’s shoulders. But she continued to keep her distance from Thorn. It did that much good, anyway.

  * * * *

  The folk of large towns not only slept late in the mornings, they stayed up late in the evenings. Thorn and Windbourne had to wait until about midway between full dark and midnight, long after everyone would have been asleep in a farm. Even at the hour they finally set off, they had to watch for groups going home from inns and taverns; but drunkards were loud and easy to avoid. The streetwarriors were fairly easy to dodge, too, since Thorn remembered their routes from her time as third wallkeeper. Coyclaws seemed to be on fairly good behavior, but Thorn did not trust her. Three or four times the cat streaked silently away from Windbourne. Thorn assumed it was most often to chase some rodent, but once she glimpsed another form the size of a cat or small dog in the side street where Coyclaws darted. Windbourne hesitated a little, but made no comment as Thorn wordlessly prodded him on. Caterwauling came from the side street behind them, joined after a moment by a man’s angry shouts and a few plops—most townsfolk kept a small stack of fist-sized bags filled with pebbles, cinders, or sand near their windows to throw at cats, noisy drunkards, and suspicious shadows. Then a woman started shouting at the man to the effect that he was a bigger disturbance than the cats, and he shouted the same back at her. Thorn and Windbourne cut through the first pissing-alley that would bring them out a street away from the commotion. Such vocal brawls sometimes went on until the townwarriors arrived to scold the awakened sleepers back to bed. The noise was still audible in the distance when Coyclaws caught up with her human companions again.

  At last, with no further incident, they neared town-center and circled around to approach the yard through the public garden between the ancient holy hall and the priests’ house.

  The holy hall seemed the best place to begin, unguarded as the door had always been by anything but a silk curtain and sanctity.

  Coyclaws struck out on her own again, disappeared in some bushes, and reappeared briefly, a blot of movement slightly darker than the surrounding grass, before she jumped onto a tree that grew near the wall of the priests’ private garden and vanished from sight against the dark trunk. Her own muscles aching for strenuous action, Thorn did not blame the cat for taking the chance to climb.

  Warrior and sorcerer reached the edge of the garden. He started to step into the paved yard. She caught his arm and held him back. She had glimpsed a shadow that shouldn’t have been there.

  Giving his shoulders a short downward push to indicate he should stay where he was, she untied her rope belt and edged forward. She held the belt in both hands, ready to use as a stranglecord, and kept her black robe closed and overlapped in front with her elbows—that way, she still kept the buff undergarments from showing, but was ready to drop the stranglecord, shake off the robe, and have Slicer and Stabber in her hands in a moment.

  A swordswoman, an axewoman, and two spearwomen stood guard in front of the holy hall door. Their discipline was perfect. The only sound they made was their breathing. The swordswoman looked like Eaglesight, though it was hard for even a warrior, trained to night action, to be sure.

  If there had been only one, Thorn could have crept up from behind and choked her into unconsciousness. Even two, and she might have risked taking them on. Not four. Even if she could defeat them all, the noise would alert the priestess, the townmaster, and the whole bloody barracks as well.

  Damn! thought Thorn. She returned to the sorcerer and pulled him back into the garden. He had the sense to follow silently, without questions. When they got almost to the tree Coyclaws had climbed, back where the rustles of wind and night-prowling creatures would help cover their whispers, Thorn explained. “Townwarriors. Four.�
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  “Should I…Thorn…do you want me to help you…knock them unconscious?”

  “A sorcerer? Offering to help batter people? Lose you your powers, wouldn’t it?”

  “If…If it’s needed…to save her…”

  The night atmosphere must have gotten to him. That morning he had been ready to believe Frostflower safe and happy in the care of his idealized priestess. “Think Frost would want you to save her that way? Besides, we can’t take on four at once, not here in earshot of the whole damn town-center.”

  He couldn’t have been too eager to fight. He made another suggestion at once. “A back way into the holy hall?”

  “None. If there were, it’d be guarded, too. At least we know they must still be in the damn Truth Grove.”

  “A thieves’ tunnel through the wall?”

  “Thieves don’t rob holy halls! Might be a tunnel from the priests’ house, though.”

  “From the…priests’ dungeons?”

  “There must’ve been one once, if it isn’t blocked off now.”

  “And the priests’ house?”

  Thorn pointed to the wall that divided the public garden from the priests’ private grounds. “Can’t go in through the front door—damn townwarriors would see us. Have to go over the wall back here.”

  They both looked at the tree Coyclaws had climbed, a huge old walnut with a deep crotch. It grew closer to the wall than Thorn had first noticed. She could see two thick limbs, each as big around as a ten-year-old oak, branching over the wall. “Your bloody cat’s probably there already,” Thorn said, taking off her robe, twisting it into a bulky strand, and tying it around her waist.

  She was nettled when the sorcerer followed her up the tree without first taking off his robe and skirted undersmock. “I suppose you’d be as clumsy in trousers as I am in skirts,” she remarked when he reached the limbs overhanging the wall.

  “We don’t fight, warrior. That doesn’t mean we avoid athletics.”

  “All right, come on,” she said, unable to tell from his whisper whether he had retorted or apologized.

  The wall was about half again as high as a man’s reach. Once beyond its top, Thorn hung from the branch by her arms, let go, and landed lightly. Very simple, but the sorcerer held back.

  “Come on down. Or isn’t jumping part of your athletics?”

  “I’ll stay here in case you’re wrong about the tunnel. I can reach down and pull you back up.”

  “And if there is a tunnel, I’m not losing any more time coming back to tell you! Either you can come with me now, or you can sit up there and wonder until sunrise.”

  That brought him down beside her. He landed as easily as she had, but said at once, “And if there’s no tunnel?”

  “Then I’ll climb back up on your shoulders, you fishbrain.” Untying the robe from her waist and draping it over her left arm, Thorn peered around. She had never been in a priests’ town garden before. She had known by the size of the walls that it was smaller than the priestly garden behind a farm hall; she should also have guessed it would be cluttered with several small cottages, replacing the hallside cottages of a farm. Instead of a Grove, it had a central fountain—that was good evidence of a tunnel to the holy hall’s Truth Grove next door.

  Windbourne was shivering as he had not shivered, to give him due credit, when they were in the streets where the danger was more immediate. “Well,” he whispered, “where shall we look for this tunnel of yours? Must we…go inside the dwelling?”

  Thorn squinted at the back wall of the main building, which looked like several unbroken curves of masonry. Then she gestured around at the cottages. “Take your choice. One of those has to be the kitchen, and there’s usually a tunnel that comes up in the kitchen so the cooks can get to the underground storerooms. Or you can check the main hall for doors on the garden side. I’m checking the fountain.”

  “The fountain?”

  “Usually all the tunnels should connect. If they don’t, chances are the one that leads to the holy hall next door will start near that fountain—I’m guessing it’s the seasondial, and they’d probably want to tie it with the Truth Grove.”

  “I don’t want to hear any of that,” he said.

  “Unh. Frost would’ve been interested. I forgot you wouldn’t pay a fishscale. Main hall might be your likeliest place to look.”

  He glanced toward the alcove-hall, then started for the nearest cottage.

  “You’re that shy of the priests’ damn dwelling, Wedgepopper,” Thorn muttered to herself, “and you think you can follow me up into their holy hall?”

  As she had guessed, the fountain did indeed form a seasondial, with its tall, pointed stem, pierced bronze disk through which the water dripped, and ancient stone basin with grooved rim. If these dials had ever been put out where everyone could see them, anyone with a good memory and sufficient time and interest could probably have figured out the rudiments after three or five years of observation.

  Had Frost had a chance to see it? There was a surprisingly similar one in her own retreat, but without the fountain.

  Three arbors flanked it like the points of a triangle. The stone benches and pedestal table in the first were unmovable. Thorn had gone on to the second arbor and begun twisting the table when she heard approaching footsteps, broken by a sneeze.

  She turned and looked up. Windbourne was hurrying toward her, wearing his blasted cat around his shoulders again like a white shawl. White? The sorcerer sneezed a second time.

  “You think you’re imitating a damn nightingale?” said Thorn.

  “The tunnel—it’s there, in the kitchen.”

  “Unh. And how did that rutty animal get the ink off?”

  Windbourne’s face was in the shadow, but he sounded as if he was grinning sheepishly. “She covered it. She got into a broken crock of sifted flour in the kitchen.”

  “Probably broke it herself. Well, dust her off before you sneeze the town down around us, and let’s get to your tunnel in the kitchen.” Thorn might well have been close to finding another and possibly more direct tunnel to the Truth Grove, but the tunnels would be too dark for even a warrior’s eyes, and the kitchen would have lamps or candles.

  Trying, overgently, to brush the flour out of his cat’s fur, Windbourne led the way back toward the kitchen.

  “We’ve got to be quiet,” Thorn muttered, “but not so damn quiet you can’t give that beast a couple of solid whacks.”

  “It was Coyclaws who showed me the tunnel, Thorn.”

  When they got inside, Thorn saw what he meant. Windbourne had left the door to the tunnel ajar, but it would have been closed when he first entered the kitchen, and although not designed for secrecy, it was not designed to be especially obvious either. It was the same as any other section of wall: lime-washed plaster with a wooden gridwork that formed hand-high, finger-deep cubicles all the way from the floor (except where stoves, cupboards, and other kitchen furniture stood) to an arm’s reach above the cooks’ heads. While the little cubicles against the solid walls held various spices and small implements, the gridwork attached to the moving door was equipped with hooks for towels and longer pieces of equipment like ladles and tongs; but that would hardly tell the sorcerer anything. Thorn herself had not been in farmers’ kitchens very often, in a sorcerous kitchen only once, only long enough to notice some of the differences. The door was cut away at its bottom to help keep the tunnel aired out and to give the priests’ cats free passage; but the opening was only about as high as the dark boxes of wood and charcoal that stood along the base of the wall, forming one shadow with the black stone floor. Enough moonlight came into the window, however, to show the smear of flour from the broken crock on the floor, and the line of white pawprints from the mess where Coyclaws had rolled in the stuff, over to the tunnel door, where it ende
d abruptly. After jumping down into the tunnel, Coyclaws must have walked the rest of the flour off her pads before springing up into the kitchen again.

  Thorn pulled the door open. “Get your wickstick lighted and I’ll find us a couple of lamps.”

  Though not allowed near an open flame in most towns, sorceri secretly carried their own compact boxes with iron, flint, and wickstick—the need for fire between towns outweighed the danger of being searched. As his fire-gear clicked on a stone-topped work surface, Windbourne asked, “Thorn…why those guards at the entrance to the holy hall?”

  “I don’t know. One or two I could understand. Guards of honor to signal a ceremony going on. Four…” Thorn located a couple of lamps. She did not tell Windbourne what bothered her still more: the holy hall had seemed too quiet—not a sound from inside it all the time they had approached it through the outer garden. If it were not for the warriors, she might have thought her friend and the priestess were not in there now. She thought she would feel a little less unsure what the Hell was going on if she had heard even one strophe coming from the holy hall.

  The lamps filled, newly wicked and kindled, Thorn led the way into the tunnel. Unlikely though they were to hear anything very soon that might guide them, she strained her ears as tautly as her eyes. Windbourne began, “What if—” and Thorn cut him off with, “Quiet, damn you!” He did not speak again during the time they spent in the underground passageways, not even when Thorn paused at a branching.