Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn)

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Eleva had offered Frostflower pay commensurate with Thorn’s, but she had always refused it, and now she had only two dreamberries and a few small coins left. She had already made three purchases that afternoon: a wooden rattle with chips of marble for Starwind and, for herself, a small jar of rose-scented lotion and a thumb-sized applewood statue of Maejira the Merciful (the rules against sorceri coming near statues of gods were made by individual priests and townmasters, and no one had ever judged it necessary to make them in the priestly town itself). She now calculated that, by asking Eleva for some of that proffered payment after all, she could afford the sheath. While Thorn was looking at perfumes in the next shop the sorceress bargained with the weapons-merchant, paying him one dreamberry to hold it from all other buyers for three days. She could not help wondering if, in a way, she were putting a pledge on her own future—hoping for a kind of omen?—and if the weapons-merchant, for all his polite smiles, were expecting that she would never return.

  Late in the afternoon they met Windbourne and Swiftcurrent. The sorcerer was carrying his purchases in a long bag, but he did not offer to show his friends what he had bought. Frostflower returned with the two men to Lady Ena’s home while Thorn stayed at a neat, smallish tavern to risk her last few coppers in a game with three or four priests and priestesses who tossed the dice quietly, gracefully, and for very small wagers.

  The swordswoman returned late and happy. She had won, building her coppers into a silver and a half; she said they might have been several goldens had the priests rolled for higher stakes, and it was a good sign for their luck in the Great Hall tomorrow.

  But if good luck with dice is an omen, thought Frostflower, what of the name of the First High Priestess? Ennealdis—it was so similar to Enneald, the name of that priestess who had been so hard and unpleasant last summer.

  * * * *

  The Great Hall was surrounded, not by adjoining alcoves, but by small cottages, arbors, and garden houses, separated from the main building so that those who sat in them could not hear the discussions of the High Priestly Gathering. Since the day was cloudy and intermittently stormy, the two sorceri, Dowl, Coyclaws, and Swiftcurrent waited in a cottage rather than an arbor.

  Eleva left them there shortly after dawn when she went into the Great Hall, accompanied by Thorn and Starstroke, who carried Rondasu in a curtained litter. A pair of priests in their very early twenties and two servants sat in the cottage with the sorceri and Swiftcurrent, ostensibly to escort them when word came from the Gathering. The window lattices had been covered with parchment against bad weather, so Frostflower kept the door open a little and watched the priests and a few white-haired, silver-tunicked warriors go into the Great Hall, trying to keep count of them and wondering how nearly they would fill the long chamber.

  Swiftcurrent was summoned to the Great Hall almost as soon as its heavy, permanent doors had been closed to signal the beginning of debate. A longish ballad’s-length later, Windbourne was summoned. He left the cottage nervously, with Coyclaws riding on his shoulders. The priests returned after escorting them. One of the servants made a fire in the small fireplace and heated gingerwater for those still in the cottage, including the sorceress.

  At midday, a large number of priests emerged from the building and dispersed into the nearest houses and small taverns. Shortly after this, a young priestess came to escort Frostflower from the cottage and tell the others they were dismissed for the midday meal.

  She led the sorceress and Dowl to another cottage. Here a small fire burned in a raised central hearth, and beside it an old priestess, wearing a wreath that was no more than a simple gold band around her white hair, sat alone at a table laid with a meal for two.

  After nodding to the young priestess, who bowed slightly and left, the old one opened her palm to the sorceress. “Come, Frostflower. It’s somewhat past the usual hour, and you must be hungry. Your dog, too. Eleva’s told me what you may and may not eat, and I am following that diet with you today.”

  Frostflower sat in the chair across from her. Dowl stood beside the hearth and began to eat eagerly from a bowl of food set ready for him.

  On the gold chain about her neck, the old priestess wore a large gold disk, a finger’s-length in diameter, engraved with what appeared to be a version of the Self-Lighting Candle. It was the first such disk Frostflower had ever seen. “Lady Reverence Ennealdis?” she asked.

  Ennealdis nodded and poured wine for each of them. “You must not be apprehensive. I imagine I would be, in your place. So perhaps we’d best have the questions first and our meal afterward.” She held up her right hand, palm out and fingers up. “Not about the deaths of Deveron, Intassa, and Shara. All that was settled well before midmorning. You won’t need to tell the Gathering what you know, nor how you came to know it. Rondasu confessed at once, when he saw the runner Swiftcurrent. I think sight of the boy actually confounded him less than it jogged his memory.”

  “Oh.” The sorceress took a sip of wine—Southvines Foaming. “What…will happen to him, Lady?”

  “Rondasu has already died. It was a quick death. The Gathering judged that your fellow sorceron had administered justice enough to satisfy Jehandru. We will let those outside the Gathering believe he died for heresy; we leave it to Lady Eleva to give out whatever she wishes in Rondasu’s own area, consistent with priestly honor.”

  Frostflower put the cup to her lips again, but her stomach seemed to contract and she set the wine down without drinking. “Then what justice have you left to deal out, Lady?”

  Ennealdis sighed. “A delicate matter. No one in the Gathering could remember a similar case, and they decided at last to follow the proposal of Pendoru and his faction and leave the final decision to my own poor wisdom. Can you swear, Frostflower, that your companion Windbourne has lost his power for sorcering?”

  Frostflower shook her head. “I cannot absolutely swear it, Lady. I believe it is so, and I think he believes it even more firmly.”

  Ennealdis rubbed her pendant. “I feel better satisfied than if you had told me positively. I’ve found there is very little certain knowledge on this side of the Harvest Gates. Well, so it’s possible that someday in a moment of danger he may suddenly find he has his sorcerous power again. I hardly think that need worry us. More serious is the possibility that it may suddenly return to him in a moment of anger in his wife’s bed. But if Eleva has no fear of that, I think it overzealous of us to fear on her behalf.”

  Frostflower started so noticeably that Dowl lifted his head from his food and whined.

  “You did not suspect?” said Ennealdis. “They did not speak of it to you because Eleva guessed she would need your answers in this matter, and she felt we were likelier to trust you if we thought you’d had no chance to prepare the answers she wished you to give. But you really did not suspect?”

  Frostflower thought back. “Yes,” she murmured, “I think I would have suspected, had they been anyone else but a priestess and a sorcerer. But—would you allow it, Lady?”

  “Would your people allow it?” said Ennealdis.

  Frostflower shurgged helplessly. “I suppose, if the priestess or priest came to the sorceron’s retreat. But I have never heard of any farmer-priests who wished it before.”

  “Oh, they would remain in Eleva’s Farm,” the priestess replied. “There seems to be little question of that. She would not give up her rule. And you might be aware that priests and priestesses do marry faithful commoners from time to time. The commoners remain commoners, though with the special privileges of permanently consecrated acolytes. Windbourne has asked to convert and become one of our ‘farmers’ folk,’ as you call them. But this is the question I must ask: Is it possible that any of you would sincerely choose to worship all our gods?”

  Frostflower looked at the old priestess for a moment and dropped her gaze. “If I were to become convinced
that your creed is the true one, Lady, I could not remain in my own. Yes, it is possible.”

  “Is this an abstract example, or a decision you might actually make?”

  The sorceress turned her cup, watching the liquid fail to swerve with the vessel, so that a speck of dust on the wine’s surface remained at the right side. “Lady, I experienced something that should not have happened according to my own creed, and I’ve seen other things that should, perhaps, have happened as they did according to yours. Yes…someday I may ask to be admitted into your holy halls as a sincere worshiper. As for Windbourne…I cannot see his mind, Lady. I have difficulty enough trying to see my own.”

  “Windbourne took off his black robe this morning to make his request,” said Ennealdis with something strangely like a small chuckle. “Beneath it, he was wearing a pale yellow tunic and brown trousers.”

  The clothes must have been the purchases he had bundled yesterday with so much care.

  “But can he even know enough of our doctrine,” said the priestess, “to make the choice?”

  Frostflower used her food-pick to remove the speck of dust from her wine. “I have told him something of it, Lady. Something of your teachings about afterdeath and the Glorious Harvest, something of the mystery of Aomu and Voma. Lady Eleva may well have told him more.”

  Ennealdis ate a raspberry. “Well, he must answer a number of questions before he can be initiated as an acolyte, but if he still asks for initiation when he’s learned the answers…You welcome converts into your retreats, do you not? I see no reason why we should be more possessive with our truth than you with yours. So. This afternoon we shall question him and teach him whatever we find still necessary. Tonight, gods willing, we shall initiate him as an acolyte and let her Reverence Eleva marry him. And tomorrow we shall announce the fact to the Gathering. Yes, we’ll make a very happy pair of them, at least for a hen’s-hatching or two, which is perhaps as much as any mates can expect. Some that I have seen enjoy it the entire length of their union.” She held out a dish of roasted nut kernels wrapped in honeyed rose petals. “Now, Frostflower, we’d best eat.”

  Frostflower took the dish and scooped a handful of kernels into her plate. She wondered if Windbourne were trying a first taste of meat—or at least cheese—this midday, whether he had bought a silk tunic or kept to wool and linen. But the question she asked aloud was, “Lady, we have met such gentleness here in Center-of-Everywhere?”

  “And you can’t understand that, here in the heart of all priestly custom? This is quite safe for you—” Ennealdis indicated a bowl of green sauce with fine lumps, into which she was dipping a twist of bread. “Entirely vegetable—mainly peas and parsley, I think—with a little crumbled egg. As for your question, I did not come here as a failure myself, Frostflower. I chose to claim my place in the Gathering when I released my farm to my oldest son, almost thirty years ago. But at least three-quarters of the priests who remain in Center throughout the year either came because their neighboring priests raided them from their farms and they were unable to acquire new land for themselves, or else they are the children and descendants of such. They remember more clearly the actual, proven threat to their personal power from others of their own kind than the seemingly fanciful threat from your people. We all know that in theory you threaten our power, but I’ve yet to meet a farmer—except Rondasu—who can tell of experiencing sorcerous danger at first hand, discounting servants and commoners commanded to the work of stripping. Besides, most of us have very little left to lose—our lands gone to other priestly families, many farmers of the midlands and edgelands scoffing at us as a dithering, doddering crowd of incompetents—not, perhaps, without reason—and sometimes defying our rule outright; the very commoners of Center living with us in a close familiarity unlike the awe we remember from our old homes.…It sometimes seems as if you sorceri must be the only folk remaining who fear and fully respect us. And then, we see so few blackrobes here—I believe you are the first that our Center-born children under the age of ten or twelve have ever seen, and their parents have probably neglected to warn them against you from their cradles.” She fed a piece of bread and sauce to Dowl, who had left his own bowl and padded over to her.

  “But,” the priestess continued, “don’t think all feeling against sorceri is gone from here. Pendoru and Entrun are not my friends in the Gathering, and I suspect they threw the present decision to me in hopes of using it to prevent my reelection to the First Office next Hatching-Day.” Ennealdis shrugged and smiled. “I’ve played into their design, but perhaps they have played into mine, too. Of what use is the High Office if it cannot be spent to purchase what its holder considers best in the sight of Jehandru and Maejira?”

  Frostflower nodded and ate for some moments in silence. (Ennealdis’ name had proved no omen after all. Did that mean the sorceress should stop suspecting the truth of the priestly idea of omens, or was she searching now for an omen that denied omens?) At last she said, “Lady Reverence…your medallion, is that the Self-Lighting Candle?”

  Ennealdis lifted the golden disk and looked down at the engraved circle quartered with four points like stylized flames extending inward toward a lightburst pattern in the middle. “Yes, it’s a form of the Candle, though it’s said to have other significances as well.”

  “I would not ask to learn anything found only in your secret writings, Lady,” Frostflower pressed on, “but if you could tell me a little that is not? Reverence Rondasu’s and Lady Shara’s poisonings of Reverence Deveron and Lady Intassa—if you could assure me that such things as this are not…described in the forbidden scrolls?”

  Ennealdis’ smile formed slowly and lasted while she spoke. “You have a great desire to learn what is in those writings, have you not? Eleva told me of it.”

  Frostflower glanced up. “I hadn’t realized—”

  “No, perhaps you did not tell her in words, but there are other ways of reading folks’ desires. Such as glimpsing a timid finger brushing wistfully over a scroll-case door marked with the Candle. Well, Frostflower, I myself have often thought those scrolls are set apart as secret and privileged principally to stir up the interest of those of us who are supposed to read them. But we must ask you to guard our secret of Rondasu’s and Shara’s sins as carefully as you’ve guarded the identity of those other people in the ballad with you. And you deserve some payment in return.” Ennealdis reached into a pocket of her long white sleeve, brought out a copper disk, and put it down near Frostflower’s plate.

  The sorceress picked up the disk and examined it. On one side, engraved into the copper with gold, were her own name in priestly letters and three strawberry leaves surrounding a blossom—apparently the emblem of the farm that Ennealdis had once ruled. On the other side was a Self-Lighting Candle like that on the First High Priest’s medallion, with a single strawberry blossom in the center instead of a lightburst, and the name Ennealdis beneath it, a small lightburst in front of the first letter and a tiny, stylized seven-branched tree after the last.

  “The one side is an ordinary safe-passage token,” said the priestess. “The other side shares with you my own privilege of reading the secret scrolls. Although my High Priesthood may last only a few more days, the privilege will last as long as my life. But be careful to whom you show it. No doubt there are priests who would not only refuse to honor it, but might treat you more harshly because of it. And don’t wait too long before using it, either. I am seventy-eight years old already.”

  Frostflower blinked, swallowed, and extended her hands. The priestess accepted them, pressing them for a few moments in her own.

  “What a great show of gratitude,” Ennealdis said at last, “for a privilege that many of us think more nearly a burden! Well, let’s finish our meal.” Then, just before releasing the younger woman’s hand, she added, “Have you never thought, Frostflower, that it might be the use of your sorcerous power for
harm, and not the forcing of your bodies, that destroys your innocence?”

  “I have thought…something like that, Lady, though not in such clear words. But it does not end the problem.”

  * * * *

  The young warrior Starstroke left Center-of-Everywhere the next day to find work in the southern Tanglelands. Swiftcurrent entered Eleva’s service. With two farms to administer until Invaron’s maturity, she planned to train Windbourne in the daily management of the one that had been her brother’s, and to make Swiftcurrent his principal assistant. “The priestly authority,” she said, “will still come from me, in Invaron’s name. And they say that those marriages in which wife and husband share visits rather than constant daily life can be among the happiest.”

  “Your folk will accept Windbourne?” said Frostflower.

  “They may continue to believe that sorcery killed Deveron and Intassa,” Eleva replied, “but not your sorcery or Windbourne’s. We’ll make sure of that, with some help from Master Youngwise and Eaglesight. And who will question the innocence and conversion of a sorcerer purified in the priestly town itself?”

  Windbourne smoothed his new tunic—linen, not silk. “By next spring, we should have steamgardens in one farm or the other.” He glanced at Frostflower with an apologetic smile. “We’ll also try techniques with some of our soft curds in the dairy houses. If we find some way to make firm cheese without…cow’s stomach, I promise you will know of it as soon as possible.”