The Book of Atrix Wolfe

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “That’s why I buried it.”

  Talis drew breath soundlessly, so not to disturb what was piecing itself so tenuously together. “Why?” The word, too, was soundless.

  The mage rose beside the tree. Oak boughs rose above his head, the bright moon burning within them. Talis felt the blood flow out of his face, at a memory or a sudden vision. “Why are my spells so twisted?” Atrix Wolfe said. “Why have I hidden myself since you were born? Why was it you on the mountain, looking for me, you who found my book?” He nodded, his eyes on the castle across the field. “I want and I do not want an answer to that. Why it worked its way out of stone to come here. To this place. To you.”

  He looked down at Talis, still kneeling, hunched over himself now, like an animal gathering into itself, avoiding the hunter’s eye. Talis heard himself say calmly, though his skin felt taut, chilled in the moonlight, and his body had grown still as leaves, as air within the wood, “How do you know the Hunter of Hunter’s Field?”

  “I made him.”

  The words struck like a blow; for an instant Talis thought the sudden, sharp pound of his heart would send the birds crying into the air. But the wood was undisturbed around him. He rose noiselessly. The mage, all his attention suddenly riveted on the field, did not stop him when he began to run.

  A horn, pure and solitary within the wood, sounded the beginning of the hunt.

  Nine

  The fanfare signalling the beginning of supper refused to sound.

  The tray-mistress and hall-servants listened for it absently, standing beside steaming silver bowls of soup with tiny saffron biscuits shaped like fish floating in it. Behind them, undercooks took long loaves smelling of onion and basil out of the ovens, and wrapped them snugly in linens to keep them hot. Haunches of ham crackled and split on the spits, juices flowing into the dripping-pans; the spit-boys’ lean cheeks were pouched with stolen bits of skin. Saro, deep in her cauldron, heard nothing but water sloshing and echoing around her. A small copper tower of saucepans stood at her elbow, some sticky with boiled frosting, others with congealing rice flavored with lemon and mint. She was washing them one by one, oblivious to the small fingers scooping rice or frosting, whichever she uncovered, from the top of the tower.

  As she straightened to reach for a dirty pan, noises came clearer: a laugh from the servants, the tray-mistress’s tart voice, the head cook snapping at someone, a squeal from an apprentice burning a finger. She scrubbed the pan, straightened again to lay it on the floor to drain. Silence, as if everyone were listening at once, was broken by a servant, and another laugh. She took a pan, and plunged again into water floating with rice kernels and bubbles. She flicked rice out, reappearing briefly. Silence again. She finished the pan, laid it on the floor, heard a murmuring and the head cook’s tense voice.

  “The soup—the soup! The fish will melt.”

  She reached for a frosted pan; the tray-mistress said grimly, “They’re all here, they didn’t hunt, so why aren’t they eating? Unless the musicians forgot how to play.”

  Saro bent again, felt for the pan in the gummy water. More rice than soap floated past her face; the water was cooling. She finished the pan, laid it down.

  “Someone should go,” the tray-mistress said.

  Saro turned, heaving against the cauldron. Water slapped over the side toward the drains. A mincer, his breath sugary, pushed with her, wanting to see the water spill.

  “I’ll go,” the head servant said, straightening a gold-trimmed cuff fussily. “The musicians may know.”

  The head cook studied the fish biscuits in a soup bowl and groaned. The cauldron tipped; water poured into the drains. In the unaccustomed silence everyone, having nothing else to do, looked at Saro. Then their eyes moved to one another. The head cook threw a boning knife across the room. It stuck in a rafter above a spit-boy’s head; the spit-boys, their chewing suspended, looked impressed.

  “Beat them, someone,” the tray-mistress demanded. “They’re eating the hams.”

  “What does it matter?” the head cook asked fretfully. “No one else is.”

  “Be patient.”

  “Pah.” He sniffed. “What’s burning?”

  An apprentice sprinted for the fires. Saro poured hot water from the kettle into the cauldron as the head servant came back down the steps. They all looked at him; the head cook made a sound like water about to boil.

  “Well?”

  The head servant looked bewildered. “Apparently the prince is missing.”

  “Missing!” the head cook shouted, and Saro stopped abruptly, hot water splashing over her hands, down her skirt. “He’s up in the keep.”

  “No—”

  “Then he blew himself away.”

  “No.” The servant paused. “Well. Maybe. The guard—”

  “What guard?”

  “The keep guard. They said they heard strange noises. They tried to enter. The door was—impossible. Then some strange mage blew past them. The noise died; they were able to enter. The prince was gone.”

  “What of supper?” the head cook demanded. “The bread is cooling, the fish are melting, the—”

  “The beans are scorching,” the apprentice said, heaving pots off the fires. Then he flung open an oven door, peered into the blackness. “The swans are burning.”

  The head cook turned away, moaning. The tray-mistress hissed with fierce curiosity at the head servant, “Go back up. See what more they say.”

  Saro, moving more slowly than usual, stared into the wash-cauldron before she began filling it. She saw nothing but a few grains of rice clinging to the bottom. Habit moved her; she was not used to doing nothing. She poured hot water in it. Still she saw no sign, in the dark rippling, of prince or mage. She added soap, more water, and began to scrub again.

  She had nearly finished the saucepans before the head servant returned. By then the head cook had flung a few more things; the mincers, peelers and pluckers had taken refuge under the tables; the undercooks had opened a bottle of brandy and were passing it back and forth.

  “The mage,” the head servant said, pale, “must have been taken, too. So the King says. The King is baleful.”

  The cooks and undercooks stared at him. The tray-mistress reached for the brandy bottle. “What,” she asked ominously, “do you mean ‘taken’? The mage took, he wasn’t taken. The mage stole away the prince.”

  “The King says not. The King says—” He paused, drawing breath; the tray-mistress upended the brandy and swigged. “The King has sent messengers to the mages in Chaumenard. He bade them ride until their horses fell, then run until they could only walk, then walk until they could only crawl, but to get themselves to Chaumenard before they drew another breath. He is calling a hunt.”

  The head cook, morosely beheading black meringue swans, interrupted incredulously. “A hunt! At this hour? What can they hunt in the dark?”

  “A woman.”

  They stared at him again, mute. The tray-mistress clutched the brandy to her bosom; the head cook’s knife hung suspended over the charred curved neck of a swan. Saro, bent deep into her cauldron, heard the word echo oddly in the hollows. Woman, the eddying water whispered. Woman, woman, a woman.

  “What woman?” The tray-mistress’s voice cracked.

  “The King said the prince came upon her in the wood. She held him spellbound until he was nearly killed by the boar he killed.” At the hearths, the spit-boys exchanged glances, their eyes hooded, reflecting fire. “Nameless, she was. So Prince Talis told the King. And beautiful. The King said that word as if it meant everything but. So the wood is where he will search for Prince Talis tonight.”

  Still the kitchen was silent, spellbound by the tale. The woman herself seemed to waver in and out of light and shadow as all their dreaming gazes conjured her. Even the head cook saw her, in memory or in desire; her shadow fell over the tray-mistress’s face. Saro, listening to their strange silence, saw only her own dark reflection at the bottom of the cauldron. The tray-m
istress said abruptly, shaking them all awake, “Not everyone will hunt. After the King rides, those left here will want their supper.”

  “Such as it is,” the head cook muttered.

  “And those returning from the hunt later will want theirs.” The head cook, his face loosening as he calculated two suppers, hot and cold, got to his feet.

  “Reheat the soup,” he commanded. “Remove the fish. Chop green onions to float in the bowls with a pinch of paprika.”

  “Choppers!” an undercook roared, and choppers scattered like mice from under the table.

  The head cook’s eye fell on the brandy bottle. “Take hot brandy and spiced wine to the hunters in the yard, and thin slices of apple and game pie—quickly!”

  “Quickly!” the tray-mistress echoed, rattling trays. The musicians clustered, devising appropriate accompaniment to send off a hasty and desperate hunt. Saro, stacking the last of the copper pans, found her tower disappear as apprentices whisked away clean pans to heat the brandy and wine. Someone took the last pan out of her hand. She leaned a moment against the cauldron, wet, idle, listening for her name. Voices shouted of the hams, and the loaves of bread, and of eggs to make more meringue, of onions and bowls, trays and platters and music, but no one cried Saro. Weariness dragged at her bones; heat from the ovens and open fires laid heavy hands across her eyes. Still listening, for there was always another pot, she dreamed a little; a word echoed not through the kitchen but in her head.

  Woman. A woman. Woman.

  “Saro!”

  Her body stiffened. But her eyes refused to open. She searched blindly, her face turning to catch the sound of her name. Saro, she heard again. But she did not recognize the voice.

  She opened her eyes, her hands dropping to the rim of the cauldron to hold herself upright, for she was suddenly so tired that her body wanted to melt like water onto the stones.

  The kitchen was oddly silent, dark but for beds of embers glowing, turning fiercely in the hearths. It seemed empty, without even a mincer asleep under a table. She could hear, as from a distant room, or another world, the familiar, constant tangle of voices and noises, the nightly skirmish that produced the feast. In the shadows, something moved.

  She stared, motionless, still gripping the cauldron. There was no kitchen-word for what she saw. The great crown of horns seemed to sweep the rafters with fire; though, as in a dream, nothing burned except the dark moon within them. The man’s face was shadowy, indistinct; it was his eyes she remembered, staring at her out of the cauldron, seeing her. Huge black hounds swarmed restlessly around him, but made no sound. She felt her heart pulse in her throat; her head went back a little as he took a step toward her. But nothing else moved; all her bones were frozen except her finger bones, which gripped the iron cauldron like iron. She could not even blink; her eyes were strained wide, transfixed by the cauldron’s dream coming at her across the kitchen.

  “Saro.”

  She opened her eyes. She felt wet stone under her face, her hip, her hands. Someone held half an onion under her nose. She took a whiff and pushed herself up. She looked around, bewildered; faces ringed her: pluckers, boners, washers, the sweeper. The tray-mistress loomed over them. Her voice, small and faraway at first, broke some sound barrier and boomed abruptly.

  “Give her soup, and some bread, and milk. She’s forgotten to eat, she has not even that much sense. She’ll work herself to death one of these days. Get her on her feet again; the pots are starting to pile.”

  A plate-washer and the smoky-eyed boner helped her sit, brought her food. The sweeper swept himself away, then swept back again and dropped a meringue swan, unburned but missing a tail, into her lap. The boner said sharply to the staring crowd around her, “Leave her be, or I’ll bone you, you little gamecocks.”

  “But what happened to her?”

  “She fainted,” the plate-washer said. “It’s a wonder she didn’t fall headfirst in the cauldron.” She patted Saro’s shoulder as the crowd dispersed, snickering at the thought of Saro’s legs dangling out of her wash water. “Poor shadowy thing. She’s nothing but bones and skin, pale and damp like a mushroom. Yet she’s always working like something demented.” She was silent a little, she and the boner both were, gazing at Saro like cats as she ate, eyes like wood smoke, eyes like hazelnuts, fixed and unblinking. “Look at her,” the washer whispered. “Look at her face. Things move around in it. She never looks the same twice.”

  “Like she’s not meant to be looked at,” the boner breathed.

  “To be seen. Or not meant to be found.”

  Saro dropped bread in her lap. Soup would have followed, but the boner took it quickly, for Saro had begun to shake. She held herself, drew her knees up, pushed herself against the cauldron, her eyes flicking around the kitchen, searching for the night-hunter among the apprentices putting the morning’s sweet rolls into the oven, among the scrawny mincers gnawing bread and bones under the table, among the spit-boys, their faces almost as wild and secret as the face in her vision. Found, she heard again in her head, and knew the word meant her as surely as her name. The horned hunter had isolated her from all the noises and bodies and words in the kitchen. He had looked at her and seen her.

  Found.

  “Eat,” the washer urged, holding the bowl to Saro’s lips. “It’ll be a long night, what with the hunters out. You’ll need to stay on your feet.”

  The first supper, shorter than usual and even more chaotic, ate up clean pots, spit them out dirty, as the head cook replaced, reheated, improvised. Saro scrubbed, rinsed, drew fresh water, scrubbed again. But nothing could wash away the dark vision in her head, the feeling that she no longer belonged to the kitchen, one of its familiars like the mincers or the cats, that no one outside would claim or recognize or even give a thought to. She belonged in the night-hunter’s eyes. He had found her.

  As he would find Prince Talis.

  He would find her again.

  She could feel her throat trying to make a sound; nothing came. She could not hide in the kitchen among the pluckers and choppers. They would fall into their dreams, leave her behind, alone, in the still dark hours when no one called her name. When not even the fire spoke. The kitchen began to calm itself behind her, musicians and servants, cooks and undercooks, eating wearily at tables, everyone else in a corner, at a hearth, under a table nibbling leftover ham, heels of bread, broken swans filled with fruit. But still she scrubbed, for there were pots, frying pans, dripping-pans, heaped crazily around her. Saro and her noises were the kitchen’s voice, familiar, constant; no one paid attention to her clattering. Even the boner, eating bits of ham off the tip of her boning knife, had forgotten her. As they would forget her at the night’s end, drift away and leave her to the shadows.

  To the hunter.

  “They’re not back yet,” a musician said fretfully, standing at one of the butcher’s tables behind her. “I haven’t heard the horns. They always sound the horns when they leave the wood, and again at the gate.”

  “If he’s with a woman, the prince,” another said wryly, “he might not be found until morning.”

  “If he’s off chasing a dream through the wood, then what happened to the mage? What happened in the keep?”

  Saro immersed half of herself and a half-dozen saucepans in steaming, soapy water. Then she straightened again, holding the sides of the cauldron, remembering silence, the smell of owls, the hint of secrets.

  Up in the keep he does magic…

  But he was gone. The keep was empty…

  She reached again for pots.

  She finished the last pot long after the plate-washers had finished. The royal hunt had not returned. The night seemed soundless, as if it, too, listened for horns. The pastry cooks finished the sweetbreads and butter pastry for the morning. Some left, others drowsed, or drank wine and talked. The spit-boys lay beside their fires, watching them, feeding them now and then, as aware as lovers of every changing mood, every shadow. The younglings had gone to sleep; the wa
shers, waiting for the second supper, had fallen asleep at the tables with their heads in their arms. Even the tray-mistress drowsed, only grunting a little when Saro laid the last gleaming dripping-pan on the stack.

  She turned and looked at the kitchen.

  No one looked back at her. She was an iron cauldron, an apron, a table, something so familiar no one bothered noticing it, not even when it was stalked by a bloody moon above a hunter’s masked face.

  She would hear the horns from the keep, slip back into the kitchen before anyone could use a pot to want it washed. She would be safe within the prince’s magical room; the hunter would never find her there.

  A flame vanished into an ember, cast a shadow across a spit-boy’s face as he raised it to see what moved in the night, what long hair, what skirt. But it was nothing, only Saro, and he forgot about her even before she faded out of the firelight.

  Ten

  Talis ran.

  At first he scarcely heard the hunting horns. They seemed echoes of a battle fought the night he was born, a call to the bloody hunt on Hunter’s Field. He ran into a past that shaped itself around him into something living. All the memories of the siege were no longer shadows, ghosts, tales. The ghosts had names; they had feverish, bloodshot eyes; they had torn cloaks and worn boots and broken pieces of armor. They raised a tattered banner: the boar of Pelucir, tusks rampant, swords crossed above its head, a crown above the swords. His father rode among the ghosts. Burne rode beside him, and so did his uncles, his young cousins. Ravens followed them, and the Shadow of the Wolf.

  He opened the gate, the survivors said, and we rode out behind him into the winter night to meet Riven of Kardeth. To rout him, or die in the field like warriors, not like starving rats hiding behind the walls.

  He was tall, your father, like you. Dark-haired, like you. A web of silver over the dark. More like your brother in temperament. He liked movement, noise, the hunt and the feast. And generous: He liked to give, he took pride in his giving—a hound, a fine hunter, a blade, a piece of land.