by Morgan Smith
For one long moment, it was as if the world caught its breath, more still than death.
And then I thought of the third wolf and looked up, scanning the rocky walls around us. Behind me, Joss drew a struggling breath, wheezy with the effort and I thought idly he must truly be in some pain or he would have never made a sound.
I was already reaching for his bow and fumbling for an arrow without conscious thought when a vague smudge beside an oddly shaped tumble of rocky scree resolved itself into a massive grey hulk, gathering its force under it, the biggest wolf I had ever seen, or even heard of.
I needed three grains of the glass, but I only had two, I reckoned. Still, I drew my breath and held it, and thought hard about aim.
The wolf was already in motion as my arm pulled back, mid-air and nearly on me when the arrow released.
But that’s the thing about a pointblank shot. Even I could not fail to hit a beast that big, straight on and squarely in its chest.
There is always that moment, when a danger is past, where the world seems a better place than it did before. The miraculous continuance of one’s own life lends a kind of sweetness to the reality, a mix of relief and remembrance, melting into a giddy gladness and a celebratory mood.
Or so I’m told: my own reactions had always been less intense, and infinitely more cautious, but generally, I understood the theory.
This time I felt not even a hint of faint joy in finding myself still on this side of the grave. Nor did Joss, I guessed. He groaned and sagged to the ground, still dripping blood. I retrieved my knife where I’d dropped it in my scrabble for the bow and cut away at my shirt hem to make a clumsy bandage for him, filled with a curious sense of urgency to be gone and far away from this rocky, barren place and these three wolf corpses.
Then I felt it.
The faintest of tremors, just the once.
Imagination? No, there it was again, just the tiniest bit stronger.
Once more, and this time it was a trembling in the ground that I truly felt, as if the rocks were somehow settling deeper into their place, bracing themselves against who knows what.
But that was suddenly the least of my concerns. I could have forgotten that moment. I would have forgotten it.
The wolf I had killed, the big one…shimmered, outlines hazy, and I swear for just a moment I saw a man there, as eerily beautiful as evil ever could be, and his eyes alive and triumphantly malevolent, staring at me as if to memorize my features for some future day…
And then, nothing.
The wind rose and fell again with a tired sigh, and the animal corpses, the rocks and the trees were all once more utterly and completely ordinary, inanimate and without menace.
Joss said nothing, his eyes wide and fixed on me. He watched me bind him up without so much as a word, struggling to his feet to help me collect our bits of scattered gear and then taking the lead in our slow journey back down the hillside.
We didn’t look back at that uncanny place. Our eyes and thoughts were firmly on leaving, eager, the pair of us, to be back in our village. It wasn’t until we’d gained the deeper woods that it occurred to me that the day was nearly spent and that we were too far out to think of safe hearth-sides, warm dinners and mugs of ale just yet.
So we found a spot sheltered by a fallen tree and a bit of stony hillside, and I gathered firewood while Joss rummaged one-handedly in his scrip and produced a bit of dried meat and a few crusts. My contribution was the leather flask of raisin wine I’d absentmindedly packed for midday and then forgotten.
We ate what little we had, and I passed him the flask, all without more than a grunt or two to indicate what needed doing next.
“You’ve nerves, you have,” Joss said suddenly. “You’d not a moment to spare or room to think in - I’d have cut and run, I would.”
It was possibly the longest speech I’d ever heard him volunteer. Blood loss must be making him delirious. I pointed out that I’d not had much choice, and that the closer the wolf was, the better my chances, anyway.
He shook his head.
“And I thought you were for leaving me, if I was hurt,” he said, as if this clinched something.
“Your legs still work. And to be honest, your mother is scarier than any wolf. I didn’t fancy telling her I’d dropped you off as a bad bet.”
***
In the morning, the world seemed a safer, friendlier place. Even a little of the weak, early sun began to make its way through the trees a bit as we stifled the last embers of our fire, gathered our gear and headed at a gentle pace down towards home.
Once there, we were met by the unsurprising news that Gair’s daughter had died in the night.
Our killings were received with some relief, although I felt bound to point out that we could not be absolutely sure all danger was past. There could be more wolves. No one really wanted to think about that, not even Eardith, seemingly, although she coaxed every detail of our encounter from me.
More, in fact: I found myself telling her things I wasn’t aware of at the time.
He had been wearing a long, dark blue tunic with even darker embroidery at the cuffs, the man-wolf. Circles and stars in deep, deep blue, eerily similar to the marking of the soldiers and servants of the royal house of Camrhys.
Possibly, Eardith said, a runaway criminal who made it through the pass. I don’t know why she thought this was reassuring. A man who was a wolf? That sound and vibration? It did not seem to me that anything at all had been resolved, and I could see that beneath her calm, Eardith was puzzled, and wary, too. With no further explanation forthcoming, though, all I could do was to be vigilant.
But the days slipped by and no more signs or calamities occurred. The village rebounded, mourned their dead and buried them, and became occupied with springtime traditions.
There was a festival to plan for, and the first of the traders coming north to look forward to. In the meantime, the village got on with planting crops and gardens, the shearing and the repairs from winter’s depredations on roofs and fences. We fell into the usual seasonal rounds and chores, as familiar and as ordinary as breathing.
I continued to wake before dawn, going out to the back of Eardith’s tiny garden and running through warm-up stretches and pointless sword drills as the sun rose, then chopping the day’s wood and hauling water from the spring. I ate, I cared for the animals, and then, if I wasn’t drafted into some communal chore the villagers needed all hands for, I ran through more pointless drills, cared for my unused weapons, saddled my horse and hunted, or merely walked the woods and meadows aimlessly.
The weather had been variable in the days after the wolves, keeping me close to home. One morning finally brought a light mist and Joss turning up with the offer of a day’s fishing. The thought of something beyond last autumn’s dried meat and wrinkled turnips for supper was irresistible.
It was one of those days. The sun chased away the damp, the fish were co-operative, the company and the exercise of rowing, along with the concentration required, were just enough to still my thoughts. I felt satisfied and calm as I walked back to the cottage, three good trout in my creel, and thinking how pleasant it might be to go on like this forever.
There were two horses tethered on the grassy verge outside Eardith’s cottage, and one of them was a horse I knew.
I ought to have turned south, I thought. I ought to have left that first morning, rainstorm or no, and gone south to Glaice. Better still, I ought to have sold my horse in Dungarrow town and bought passage on some trader ship bound for Fendrais, or Raeth, or Istara, even, and sold my skills to the highest bidder.
Too late for weeping now, I thought, and pushed open the cottage door.
Chapter Three
Eardith was sitting in her usual place on a box chair that had a hard back, her single concession to her years. It had been a gift from Owain, who considered her utterly ancient and wise, although in fact she was no more than fifteen years or so his elder and quite the halest woman in the v
illage.
On the long bench beside the hearth there was a young woman, barely out of girlhood, wearing the marks of a priestess like Eardith, but fresh and clean and unworn and with a faint consciousness, as if they were new and dearly bought.
It was her companion sitting beside her who had my attention, though.
He was smiling. I knew that smile. He had smiled just that way too many times for me to misread him. It was when Guerin of Orleigh looked his most benign that one had the most to fear.
“Oh, hullo, Caoimhe,” he said, without the least hint that he hadn’t merely been passing through and dropped in by chance.
The reaction of the girl beside him was instant, though. She stiffened, as if her spine had turned suddenly to stone, looking first at Guerin and then at me. Long and hard and narrowly at me.
“Hullo, Guerin. How are things?”
His smile deepened. “Nothing outrageous lately. But surely the news comes to you here, however slowly?”
I smiled back. Two could play this game. “You know me, though. Always the last to hear the gossip.”
“What a shocking liar you are, Caoimhe. You always know everything - you just never care enough to remember it. But let me introduce Lady Arlais, who you will not know, being so long from Dungarrow. Arlais, this is Lady Caoimhe, a longtime…friend.”
The girl looked so stiff I thought she might break if she moved, but she inclined her head in my direction in a skimpy nod. “Indeed,” she said tonelessly, “her name, at least, is not unknown.”
I imagined not. But she was already turning her attention back to Eardith.
“We will need to speak further,” she said. “When it is,” here she flicked an irritated glance my way again, “more convenient.”
I can count on my shield hand how many people I truly admire in this world. Eardith might well have been the top of my list that day: she looked over Lady Arlais with the same expression she had when she perused late season vegetable marrows in the marketplace, and said,
“My dear girl, there is no point at all in keeping a secret from the one actual witness you have. If you wish to discuss the incident I reported to the Reverend Mother and to His Grace, you need to discuss it with Caoimhe, who was there. And,” here she held up a hand, forestalling an apparent imminent outburst from Arlais, “do not speak to me of trust or any such fol-de-rol. Caoimhe is the last person to report on anything other than the actual facts, such as they are. That is all that matters.”
“With all due respect,” said Arlais, angrily, “I do not trust her. I cannot. I wonder at you, Lady Eardith.”
“I think I am old enough not to have a child question my judgment. I know Caoimhe well enough. Speak to her or not: it is your journey wasted if you choose. I told all I could in my letter, and I have nothing to add.”
“You know her well enough? Do you truly think so? Did you know that she is a known oathbreaker and a murderer?”
Arlais’ face was quite pink, with some kind of third-hand rage and shocked propriety, as if she represented some great moral authority. I suppose, by her lights, she did.
She turned to me. “I’ve no doubt you spun some tale of woe and cozened this poor lady into keeping you safe from justice!” she said nastily. “I’ve heard all the tale, however: how you ignored the Duke’s direct orders and murdered your own husband in cold blood. And how your poor sister you were so jealous of took her own life in shame of your deeds!”
Suddenly, I was quite angry. It’s one thing to have a past. It’s another to have some complete stranger throw it in your face.
“Is that the tale they tell on the holy isle? Is that how your education was, full of whispered scandals and half-truths? I suppose they don’t mention that my poor sister was only eleven years old, hadn’t even had her Goddess-night. Or that my husband raped her, and she killed herself because she thought she was spoiled in the eyes of the Goddess because of that? She was dead two full days before Feargal…”
I stopped. I looked at Eardith. “She is right about one thing, though. I did murder Feargal, for all it was judicial combat. And Einon asked me not to. It wasn’t an order, but… I am a murderer, in any way that matters.”
“I know, dear.” Eardith said, comfortably. “You told me the tale the very first night. You said you wouldn’t take charity under false pretenses.”
“Did I? I don’t remember…” But then I did, wet, cold and exhausted I’d been and still half-mad with grief.
The room grew silent. Arlais looked shocked and bewildered, the ground cut out from under her feet, seemingly. My anger washed away as suddenly as it had come. She had only spoken as she knew, after all, and what reason had I to think that justice and fairness ruled in this world?
“I’ll see to these fish of mine,” I said, heading back towards the door. It banged shut behind me.
In the sunlight, it all seemed even more pointless. Who was I defending? Meryn? A dead child could not possibly care what retribution I took. If the priests spoke true, she was with her Goddess now. If they lied, well, dead was dead, and nothing could harm her further. And lashing out at some ignorant young priestess filled with a cracked version of dire events woven on the loom of romance into a web of pleasurable censure - that would not change a thing.
Meryn was dead. Feargal was dead. I was dead, too, for all intents and purposes, if indeed, I had ever actually lived. The Goddess loves to do things in threes.
I was just starting to gut the last fish when the door opened and Arlais came out. To her credit, when she came up to me, she did not sniff or recoil from the mess on the ground.
Indeed, she looked pale and shamefaced. I tried to pretend my eyes were all for my fish. It seemed even more to me now that she was a poor target for my demons: an untried girl sent to do some task and terrified of doing it wrong.
“Lord Guerin says I am to apologize,” she said in a small voice.
“Really? And you listened to him? I never do.”
She made a small sound somewhere between a snort and a giggle.
“Is it true, what you said?”
“She wanted to be a priestess,” I said, after a moment. “She seemed meant for it, all her life. And he took that from her. At least, she believed so.”
“No one at Braide ever said…” Her voice trailed off.
“Well,” I pointed out, “it made a better tale, the way they told it. More like what the bards sing of, anyway.”
She could have just gone in then. I wouldn’t have minded. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.
But Arlais, having decided I was not, after all, one of the Dark Incarnates personified, was on a bit of a private mission here.
“They say you are the best swordhand in all Keraine. That you never lose. That you can kill without thinking. Is it true?” She was looking me over with a critical eye.
“Does it truly matter to you to know?”
She said, “You aren’t as tall as some. You don’t look stronger than anyone else your size. Are you just faster? Or know more tricks?”
I smiled. “I do know a few tricks, but that isn’t why. Or at least, it isn’t the main reason.”
“Well, then?”
I let the smile fade. “Most people define winning and losing differently than I do, that’s all.”
Arlais frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Look you,” I said. “Every person I have ever fought defined winning as my death, and their life. Every other person in a dueling ring or on a battlefield measures their success by the fact that they are alive at the end of it. They define their loss by their death. And I don’t. I define success only by my opponent’s death. That’s all.”
“I still don’t -“
“I don’t mind if I die,” I said flatly. “As long as they’re dead, I’ve won. My own life can end as well, I don’t mind.” I paused. She looked quite shocked. “You would not believe the number of options that gives me in a fight.”
Chapter Four
&nb
sp; I don’t remember if there was ever a time when I did not know my parents hated me.
There must have been. Children cling to the hope of their parents’ love long after the illusion’s been shattered, and I don’t think that as a babe, I was so different from any other. It was the constant reinforcement of Kevern’s loathing, especially, and my mother’s cross between indifference and support of his brutality towards me that must have worn through my hopes and dreams.
All I remember is their hatred, though. No one loved me, and although my grandfather tried to shield me from too early a comprehension of my lot, no one, not even he, seemed to like me much. The best I got was toleration, the worst: well, Kevern showed them how much they could get away with.
But by the time I could work out the words that adults said, I understood what shaky ground my life stood on. There had been portents, people whispered. There had been signs, even before my mother’s labour began, so they said. I was a dreading and a hissing in the dark, and if it had not been the greatest crime against the Mother ever known, Kevern would have strangled me in the cradle.
But Kevern, at least, was an identifiable and constant menace and one that could be predicted: I learned to be silent, I tried for invisibility, and I found a kind of solace in training myself not to feel anything at all. Not the hurt from insults or japes at my expense, not the pain from kicks or shoves, not the hunger pangs when meals were withheld, or blame (and punishment) for others’ misdeeds were laid at my door. I tried to be stone, a wall of granite - I believed in that like a sacred creed, because a rock feels nothing.
I heard the rumors and the whispers, though. Bad luck, they murmured, and made the warding signs openly, not caring who saw. Not a cow could sicken, nor a wine turn sour in the cask that was not ascribed to my silent presence, though most stopped short of calling me witchborn outright. Ill winds followed me, said old Badb, our healer, trying to soften the dislike that dogged my steps, little as he cared for my company himself.