Chains of Gold

by Nancy Springer

  Sorrow was in his voice, but he spoke the name without tears, and for that I was thankful. He burrowed down beside me in our bed, pulled the blanket over us again.

  “Ai, Rae,” he murmured to me, “this has been both the worst and the best day of my life.”

  We made love. It was not much like that first incredible lovemaking, this time, for the glamour of magic no longer filled us, we were tired, and our situation was awkward, all constraint of cloth and fumbling in darkness. But I think, if anything, I cherished this time the more. It was us cleaving to each other, not winterking and sacred bride but us, Arlen and Cerilla, Rae, making a bond in the midst of adversity. Making a babe. I knew that, even then.

  A peculiar thing happened as he lay atop me and within me. Something moved within that dark underground chamber of ours, a breath, a stirring, as if earth herself had breathed a small sigh around us or through us, the most gentle of exhalations. I felt it, that stirring, as if something were alive around me or in me, but it was a waft so small, so gentle, that it did not frighten me. I merely noted it with mild puzzlement.

  “Did you feel that?” I asked Arlen.

  “As if something just walked across my grave. Yes. The storm must still be blowing.” He kissed me tenderly and extricated himself from me with care, rolling over to lie beside me.

  “I thought you used the saddle to block the entry,” I said.

  “I did! But not entirely; we need air. Indeed, it is a very good thing that this cist faces northward and the wind has scoured it for us. Else it would be too stale for us to breathe, down here.”

  But the storm was not still blowing. Not some several minutes later, at any rate, when we had clothed ourselves and ascended. We no longer found our dark shelter oppressive but thought of it as a warm haven, a womb; we gladly would have stayed longer. But we could not tarry where Rahv might so easily find us.

  Glow of pale winter light greeted us as we ascended the passage, afternoon light, and we came out into the white hush that often follows a snowstorm. The Naga flowed black between white shimmering banks where great trees, oak and ash and elm, stood with heads bowed under an icy burden, very still. Nothing moved anywhere, not even a raven; the only sound was the lapping water against the stonework that formed the shore of the crannog.

  And a sort of bumping, very soft, very insistent. Our eyes found the source of it at once, and, unthinking, we took a few steps toward it—

  A strange vessel, a sort of wicker basket floating like a boat, had come to rest against the stonework, held there by the current, and in it lay—a severed human head. Lonn’s head. I recognized it at once even though the eye sockets stared up at me empty and hideous. By his brown hair lay a bloody, pathetic something else that I did not identify, for I was vomiting—hours later, I realized it was his genitals. Arlen made a retching sound, turned, and ran for the yew grove that flanked the cist, snatching up saddle and bridle on his way. He could not be gone quickly enough from this place now, nor could I. Hastily I crawled back inside the barrow to bring out our food and the blankets.

  It took us longer than we had thought to be off, because Arlen had forgotten about the saddle pad and had to come back for it. So I stood for a while with my back to the bloody thing in the water, noticing other things, whatever met my eyes, to keep my mind from knowing what I had seen. I studied the stones at the entry to the cenotaph—there were some very old carvings on them, spirals, and after a while I realized that they might have been intended for coiled snakes, as they had a sort of triangular thickening at the center end, like an asp’s head. I considered this very carefully. And I contemplated our horse. No longer the glorious animal that had left the Sacred Isle with us, it looked like any farmer’s sturdy horse, a splotched gray suitable for the pulling of a plow, standing and stamping with cold and switching its tail, heavy-headed and sulky. Arlen’s saddle looked too grand on it, but Arlen himself appeared none too grand, pale and unkempt, and I expect I looked no better.

  Arlen had to fasten the reins back onto the bridle, since he had used them as a surcingle for the blanket, and he was making a botch of the job in his hurry, swearing under his breath, in a temper. I did not offer to help him, for that might merely have vexed him the more. By the time he had all ready at last—it took only a few minutes but seemed far longer—he was in a state somewhat beyond either panic or temper and nearer the realms of madness. He hurled me, rather than helped me, onto the horse’s rump, and he sent the creature leaping off the crannog into the water and plunging across the ford, slipping and stumbling on rocks and ice; the river had frozen for several feet out from the shoreline, and the steed broke through at each jump, cutting its legs. When we made land at last, we were off at full gallop, breakneck fashion, over ditches and bushes and whatever lay in our way, and I hung on, too proud or stubborn to protest even though the horse’s leaps nearly sent me flying. Only after the horse was in a lather did Arlen seem to notice what he was doing, and he soothed the frightened creature and slowed it to a walk.

  “There,” he murmured, “There, there, Bucca.” I had not known the horse had a name. I cautiously loosened my grip on Arlen’s waist, and we rode on in silence for a while.

  “Rae,” Arlen said presently without turning around, “I am ashamed.”

  I kept silence. Men were entitled to their furies, in my experience, but that did not mean I had to enjoy them.

  “Poor Bucca. I ought to get down and tend to his legs, but I have to keep him moving for a while or he’ll take a chill.”

  “But he’s bleeding,” I said. I could see the red smears on the snow.

  “Horses have quantities of blood in them.”

  “So do sacred kings,” I retorted, more sharply than I had meant to. Arlen stiffened and did not reply.

  The day was far spent, for we had slept through half of it, and we rode through most of the rest without speaking again. Bucca ceased to bleed and walked stolidly. We passed out of the towering woodlands that flanked the Naga, found the beginning of pastureland and settled places, stone-walled hilltop garths. For concealment, we kept to the folds between the rounded uplands, folds where streams ran to hide Bucca’s hoofprints. Shadows began to deepen, purple on the snow. Not until then did Arlen voice what was troubling us both.

  “That thing in the Naga,” he said. “It chills me.”

  I gave him a small squeeze to show I had heard. I, also, felt my flesh crawl at the memory.

  “I feel as if it is going to follow me forever.”

  That note of wild despair in his voice—I could tell he was going to take mothering. Fittingly so, he who had never had any.

  “I never want to see that river again,” he burst out.

  “Very well,” I said, meaning it. “But have you any idea where we are going?”

  “None. Anywhere, so long as it is away from the Catena.”

  We rode on at random into the Secular Lands.

  FIVE

  The land lay between long mounds of sand and loose rock, very long; from a promontory one could see them looping and wriggling across the moors for miles. Eskers, they were called, and no one could understand where they had come from. Some said they were the garth walls of giant men in times long past, and others that they were the nests of serpents, huge serpents, in the beginning days before such creatures had dwindled. And why might it not be so, if one is to believe in the immensity of the glycon that lives in the deep? Some eskers were longer and wider than others, and the narrower ones often attached themselves to the larger, like babes suckling at a mother, if serpents suckled in those forgotten times. But sometimes their nests contained boulders as well as pebbles and sand, and that puzzled me.

  They formed boundaries of a sort between the demesnes and petty kingdoms, of which there were many. Once in every day’s journey, or sometimes more often, there arose a square tower stronghold or a round keep on a mound, stony symbol of some lord’s bid for power. We did not seek refuge or hospitality at any of them, for the lords we
re mostly in league with my father or else under his thumb. I knew of some few who were his rivals, worthy to challenge him, and we could have sought them out—but then I would have been a piece in a game of power again, a whelp to be traded, and I wanted no more of that. Arlen and I, we wanted only peace and a place to lay our heads.

  For the time, though, we were very much at power’s mercy. We knew that Rahv would be in search of us, or the Gwyneda, or both, and we kept on the move across the countryside, not knowing where we were going. This far north we traveled mostly moorland and peat bog and scrubby woodlot, land good for grazing and the hunt but not as fertile as the tilled lands farther south, and therefore sparsely settled. The few villages were clustered within the tower baileys. We could hope for aid only from outlanders, sturdy folk who fended for themselves and picked up the stones for their cottage walls from the eskers and moors. We would come upon their small holdings as we skirted the lands of the petty lords.

  We thought we rode alone, but a presence traveled with us.

  We did not sense it at first, but others did. The first freezing night after we had left the cenotaph, we gratefully stopped at a small stone cottage, and the folk greeted us with broad smiles—they seldom had visitors, they welcomed us, and of course they could see that we were young fools in love, runaways, and all their sympathies were with us. My white robe was so dirtied and bedraggled by then that no one was likely to think of the Gwyneda, looking at it. The goodwife, a round ruddy woman, merely clucked over it for a moment and bustled off to find a brown linsey frock she thought might fit me. They fed us a warm supper and spoke of giving us provisions in the morning and plotted where they might put our bed. But after we had sat by their fire for a while, their smiles faded.

  “What is it?” I asked after some time had gone by and they had grown more and more silent and I thought I saw them drawing back from me. “If we have offended in some way—”

  “Missy, ye’d better be off, ye and yer lad.” It was the goodman speaking, his tone a mixture of belligerence and shame. “Ye’ll bring ill luck upon us. Ye smell of death.”

  Arlen looked up blankly, thinking of our night in the cenotaph, I am sure, though there had been no stench there. “Why, let us wash, then,” he said.

  “’Tis not that.” The man rose to his feet, looking ill at ease but determined. “There is death walking with ye; there will come pestilence upon us or some grievous ill fortune if it touches us. Out, now.”

  “But wait a moment!” Arlen stood up, incredulous. “You cannot turn us out into this cold night. We will be dead ourselves before morning!”

  “Let us stay in the barn, then,” I put in, seeing the dark cast of the man’s face.

  “And let the cattle sicken and die? I tell ye, go.” The goodman reached for the poker.

  “Our perishing will be on your account,” declared Arlen hotly. “And if you think there is death here now—that is nonsense, but I tell you this: if I die this night my vengeful spirit will return to you and never leave you. I vow it.” There was a reckless, burning look in his eyes.

  “Husband!” It was his goodwife, frightened.

  He was thinking. “Well,” he said grudgingly, “I suppose there be’s the shed. Naught in it but tools. I’ll take them out.”

  “We’ll need bedding,” said Arlen, “if we are not to freeze.”

  “I’ll put in some straw. For ye and the horse. I’ll have the horse out of the barn—”

  “There’s no taint on the horse!” Arlen shouted. “Go smell him for yourself!”

  In the end Bucca stayed in the barn, but we went out in the dark and slept in straw in a drafty shed and were glad of it. A small gift of food awaited us at our door in the morning, like a propitiation, but no one came near us. We ate and left feeling saddened and puzzled.

  “Are all seculars like that?” Arlen wanted to know.

  I had to laugh. “You have nearly as much experience of them as I! How should I know, who have spent my life locked in Stanehold?”

  “Have you learned nothing useful at all?” he teased me.

  “To be sure! I know several ways to embroider a napkin.”

  But it was beautiful, the snow on the moors, and neither of us had ever seen such a thing before, the long windswept slopes of land and the eskers snaking across them, and after a while the pale winter sun came out and touched everything with aureate light. Arlen, who had never been atop a hill in his life, kept shaking his head and exclaiming at every vista, and we could not be very sad, either of us, not with the horse surging under us and the heady feeling of freedom. We tried to keep to the hillsides blown clear and brown, but we could never hide our traces for long, not in the snow, and before the day was old we gave it up and struck out recklessly across the billowing wealds at speed. We laughed as we rode, and we forgot to look back over our shoulders as we topped each rise.

  Came afternoon and nothing to eat, our good spirits abated.

  “My stomach is pinching me,” I complained. And a day before I had been grateful merely to be alive and at liberty.

  “So is mine,” said Arlen wryly. “They used to feed us well, back on the Sacred Isle—us boys, I mean. Scant fare for the white-robes, but anything we fancied for us lads, except love.… Bodies beautiful for the goddess. Meat being fattened for the slaughter.” A note of longing had crept into his voice in spite of his bitterness—he was thinking, perhaps of dinners past. I paid no attention, for something inexplicable was happening within my senses and my comprehension.

  “Wait,” I said to Arlen. “Stop the horse a moment.”

  Bucca was glad enough to stop, and I slid down. We were at a level hilltop with a copse of tangled trees and something rumpled under the snow. Not knowing what it was, but following the guidance of a force I did not understand, I walked for some small distance, then stopped and scrabbled with my feet. The earth was peaty, friable even though frozen. I kicked at it and uncovered something that shone whitely—a turnip. I found a flat piece of rock and dug harder, with it and with my hands. There were withered stalks to be seen beneath the snow, now that I knew what to look for, and they guided me to more turnips and other things, I think they were parsnips, and orange roots such as I had seen in cattle mangers the night before—I did not care. If cattle could eat such things, so could I. On the instant I bit into one and decided it was tolerably good.

  Arlen had long since tethered Bucca and come to help me. He was finding roots as well, but he took his first handfuls to the horse before returning to eat himself. I had sat down on a stone and was eating heartily. He stared at me in wonder.

  “That is someone’s foundation you are sitting on, I think,” he said. “This was their garden; see the furrows? The house was destroyed by fire or war, I suppose, and they were killed or perhaps they went away. But the root crops survived. Cerilla, you say you know nothing, but you saw this place when I would have ridden past.”

  “I saw nothing,” I said.

  “Then how did you know food was here?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Oh? Who then?” He smiled, thinking I was teasing him again, but I did not answer. I shied from saying what was true: that I had been told about this place, voicelessly, by something not myself.

  Arlen gave up on getting any sense out of me, his gaze wandering. “Wait,” he exclaimed. “Are those apples on yonder trees?”

  They were, withered but still red and edible. We gathered as many as my mantle pockets would hold and we gave Bucca some. I am sure Arlen saw those apples on his own, without any strange prompting. But I had not so seen the fruits that lay beneath the soil.

  We ate more roots and held some in our hands and took to horse again. Before we had gone far, the peculiar summons sounded through me once more. “Wait,” I murmured to Arlen, “there it is again,” and I slid to the ground and walked. When I felt compelled to stop, I searched beneath the snow and found a flat rock. Arlen had come up behind me expectantly. I turned the rock up—a squirrel’s h
oard of seeds and acorns lay beneath. We both broke into laughter. “No, thank you,” we declared in unison, and we went on our random way. I felt the odd presence no more that day.

  “Shall we try again?” Arlen asked as evening drew on, meaning that we should again ask hospitality of an outlander. I acceded. It seemed to me that the problem of the previous evening might have been their oddity, those folks, not ours. So when we saw a prosperous-looking holding in the fold of a hill we rode toward it, found the gate in the stone wall, and entered the yard. A woman met us with a smile. But even as we dismounted the smile faded and she backed away from us.

  “Go on, go on your way. Please. It’s early yet.” she begged. And as we stared at her she ran inside and swung shut the heavy wooden door. We could hear her barring it and calling to her children to stay away from the windows, for the dead were riding by.

  So ride we did. “The dead don’t hunger,” Arlen grumbled. “We should have asked for food.”

  There was another, poorer holding farther up the valley; we could see it in the distance, and we reached it in the dusk. A man with a lantern was coming in from his work in the byre. He brought the light close enough to look at us, then shouted and lifted his stick. Arlen turned Bucca and sent him out of the yard at the gallop. We both fell silent, feeling like lepers.

  At least the night was clear; there was starlight to ride by. It was also cold. We took shelter finally in a sheep shed far up a long hillside, at the distance of a meadow from the nearest homestead, and we took pains that the folk should not see us in their sheep cot. It was a little, low stone building with the south side open to the weather, a shelter meant for lambing, perhaps. There was some soiled straw in it, and also there were some sheep. They stank, but we nestled down among them for the sake of the warmth of their wool. And Bucca had only the shelter of a thin whitethorn grove and a blanket on his back.