Ashling

by Isobelle Carmody

  Swallow passed his arm across his forehead, wiping away beads of sweat gathered mere. For a moment our eyes met, then he bent over his design again. I tensed involuntarily, trying to prepare myself for another endless series of needles, but he released me almost at once.

  "It is done. Of course, you won't see the full effect until the scabs form and fall away."

  Then he gave me such a queer, searching look that I felt uncomfortable. I glanced down for the first time and a wave of nausea struck me at the sight of the raw and swollen welts.

  What have I done? I thought in dismay.

  "Maire!" Swallow called, dropping the needles into a pot of water suspended above the fire. I took a deep, steadying breath. The stars had faded. It was the second night in a row I had been awake to see the dawn.

  He moved to the wagon again and rapped on its side. "Maire! Wake up. It is done."

  The previous night the gypsy healer had called us a pair of fools before stumping off to her bed.

  "It offends her sense of fitness," Swallow had said, eyes gleaming with mischief.

  Maire emerged from the wagon dressed this time, and wearing a full apron. She ignored my arm and looked critically into my face. After a moment she shook her head.

  "It is madness. Well, let me see."

  I held my arm out obediently, hoping she would apply some more of the miraculous salve she had used on my back after the whipping, but instead she only mixed me a foul potion to drink.

  Swallow laughed at my expression. "The cure is worse than the ill when Maire is displeased."

  She gave him a scathing look and bent to examine the tattoo. "It is a good job, though I would as soon not add to his conceit by saying so."

  Swallow grinned, then his eyes turned back to me and narrowed into the same discomfortingly searching gaze. He rose. "And now to complete the process, an honorary toast offered by the D'rekta. I am not he, but I will do, as the heir apparent."

  Maire gave him an astonished look as he crossed to the wagon and climbed inside. After a moment, she took a bottle from her basket and sprinkled a sweet scented powder onto the tattoo, then she bandaged it carefully, and instructed me to leave it untouched for some few days.

  "What is a D'rekta?" asked, when she was done.

  Maire gave me a haughty stare and for a minute her resemblance to Swallow was startling. "The leader of the Twentyfamilies. Each D'rekta is the eldest blood descendant of the first, who led our people from the lost lands. The present D'rekta is Swallow's father, but there is little love and much duty between them.... "

  This meant Swallow was the son of the leader of the gypsies and therefore descended from this original leader.

  I gestured to the bandaged tattoo. "Why did he do this?"

  "No doubt he thought you would be frightened off when you knew what was involved. It seems he underestimated your courage, or overestimated your common sense."

  Swallow returned carrying a small box; not a woven square this time, but a box made from wood and carved in the same wondrously intricate style as the wagon itself.

  "The making of the Twentyfamilies mark is generally toasted by the D'rekta," he said. He opened the box and removed a jeweled goblet from its velvety recess. It was the most exquisite thing I had ever seen, all streaked with iridescent green and purple and globs of shimmering gold. If this was a sample of Twentyfamilies tithe ware, I did not wonder that the Council would keep their pact. He took out a small corked vial made of the same dazzling material, unstoppered it, poured a measure of the liquid it contained into the goblet, and raised it to me. "I am for you, as you are for me."

  He drank and I heard Maire's indrawn breath when he refilled the glass and offered it to me.

  "No!" Maire said in an outraged voice. "You make mockery of the ancient promises."

  He looked at her, his face deadly serious. "There is no mockery in what I do, Maire."

  The old woman glared. "Have you gone mad? She is not Twentyfamilies. Nor is she even a gypsy for all her talk. Indeed, we know nothing of her other than that she saved Iriny. For that I thank her, but she is no part of our destiny."

  Swallow took the healer's withered hand with a tenderness mat made a nonsense of their bickering. "Trust me, Maire. She may not be a gypsy, but she is part of the ancient promises."

  Her face sagged with shock. "But how can this be ... ?"

  "What is all this?" I demanded, but they ignored me, seeming to commune or to pit their wills in some silent way.

  The old woman broke away first. "So," she said in a subdued tone.

  Again Swallow offered the goblet to me. "Drink."

  I shook my head. "Not until I know what I am drinking and what it means. I won't be bound by something I don't understand."

  The gypsy's dark eyes bored into mine, but I gave him look for look, and at last he set the goblet down. "The toast I offered is an oath of fealty to the ancient Twenty-families promises, by those whose fate is bound up in them. As is yours."

  "I know nothing of these promises. And, as you have said, I am no gypsy. What could they possibly have to do with me?"

  "I will tell you," he said with a queer fierceness. "This night I have done a thing," he gestured at my arm tattoo, "that, were it known to my father, would see me hunted to death by my own kind. Anyone seeing it on you and discovering you were an impostor, will know a Twenty-families made it, for no other has the secret. That will end the truce between the Council and my people. If you are captured and tortured, you will speak of it, and me and Maire, and again our lives would be worth nothing. Nor the lives of my people, for we will be forced to settle and become part of this Land."

  I shook my head impatiently. "If giving me this was such a terrible thing, why didn't you just refuse?"

  "It was the reward you named for returning Iriny."

  "Even so, you might have refused."

  "It was a promise," he said sternly.

  I shook my head. "I don't understand. Your people are supposed not to break Council lore or have anything to do with those who do. What is Iriny to you that you would risk so much for her?"

  "She is my half-sister," he answered flatly. "Before my father bonded with my mother, and before he was D'rekta, he loved a halfbreed gypsy. She who bore Iriny. It mattered not with whom he bonded, since he had an older sister who was to inherit the D'rektaship. But when she broke her neck in a fall, my father was forced by duty to set Iriny's mother aside, and choose a Twentyfamilies woman, so that he could get a pureblood child. He chose a Twentyfamilies cousin to Iriny's mother and I am their son."

  Again there was a flash of that deep bitterness in his eyes. "Swallow is not my formal name, but a pet name I was given as a child by Iriny."

  I blinked, suddenly convinced that Swallow was the Twentyfamilies gypsy the Herder in Guanette had wanted Iriny to name. I resisted the urge to warn him, for how would I explain knowing it? Let Iriny tell him when she woke.

  "My daughter bonded with the D'rekta, but there was no love between them," Maire said.

  I stared from one of them to the other. "He is your grandson, then?"

  Maire wrinkled her nose, seeming to recover her equilibrium.

  Swallow gave a hard-edged laugh. "There is too much division among our people. When I am D'rekta I will dissolve the Great Divide. The answer to the halfbreed problem is not to sunder ourselves from them, but to make them understand why we must remain separate from Land-folk. When I am D'rekta, any gypsy who swears fealty to the ancient promises will be one of us whether they be purebloods or no. But, until that time, I must appear dutiful and seem to believe in tradition. It is only as Swallow that I am free to help Iriny and, through her, the halfbreeds."

  "Swallow is the name you take on when you are among the halfbreeds!"

  He nodded. "I help them as best I can. Unfortunately my sister does not confine her good works to halfbreeds, hence her plight in Guanette. Landfolk are not overgrateful to those who aid them. I warned her but Iriny does not care about her
safety."

  "You do?" retorted Maire. "And do not speak ill of Iriny. She is an angel."

  "She was almost a dead angel," Swallow said.

  "How did you know we had her? Iriny, I mean," I asked curiously.

  Swallow's dark eyes glimmered with amusement. "The day you rescued her in Guanette, I was the archer in the trees."

  My mouth fell open. "You! But Matthew said your hair was white. At least..."

  He grinned. "A little flour ages a man dreadfully. I heard Iriny and Caldeko had been taken and I came to help them as Swallow. I was too late for Caldeko, but I was determined to save Iriny, even if it cost my identity. If caught, I meant to kill myself before I could be questioned for, regardless of the Great Divide, she is blood kin and I love her. I was in the trees waiting for the chance to arrow that Herder when you walked out of nowhere claiming to be her sister."

  I felt myself flush. "It was all I could think of.... "

  "Do not mistake me. When you spirited Iriny from Guanette, you saved me having to reveal myself. That was the first debt I owed. Then you healed her and brought her here. Even the Twentyfamilies sacred mark did not seem too great a price for all of that."

  Fear fluttered through my mind, for it occurred to me that he could keep to the letter of his promise and ensure his own safety if he now killed me. My unease increased as I thought of all that he had told me. If he meant to kill me, it would not matter what he revealed. Why else would he have said so much? That had been no part of our bargain.

  I flinched as his hand snaked out, but he only pulled me to sit. "You are swaying on your feet," he said gruffly. "Sit down girl, for I mean you no harm. The toast I offered you promised fealty, not treachery."

  "Why have you told me all of this if you mean to let me go?" I demanded.

  He smiled. "You have a grim view of gypsy justice, if you think that is how we keep bargains. In part, I have told you what I have so that you would know how important it is to keep the tattoo hidden except where it may be safely shown. It will aid you. But it is a protective charm only so long as the Council and Herders believe that only purebloods bear it."

  "I worked that out already, but why the toast? And what did you mean by telling Maire I was part of your ancient promises?"

  Swallow's eyes shifted to where Gahltha stood in the wagon traces.

  "That day in Guanette, I saw a horse come to you, though you made no sign nor did you call to it that I could hear. It knelt at your side as if to pay you homage and received Iriny's body gently. And when you mounted and were struck by the knife, it rode from the village without letting you or Iriny fall. That seemed surpassing strange and an omen of some force to me. I rode direct to Sutrium for I had to be present at the Council tithe and my absence would be the cause of dangerous questions. I thought you would follow and let it be known about the greens that you had Iriny.

  "When no one came, I began to wonder if you were a gypsy after all. In retrospect, there were discrepancies— the things you had said to the Herder and your behavior... But I could not begin to imagine who would choose to mask themselves as the most despised creatures in all the Land, for so the unlucky halfbreeds style themselves."

  I kept my expression still and polite.

  "The only answer I could come up with was one who had a greater secret to hide," Swallow said.

  XXIII

  "I guessed that you and your friends were Seditioners or escapees from a Councilfarm," Swallow went on. "I do not ask you to tell me if I am right. Yet when next we meet, there will be no lies between us."

  "Next time ... ?"

  He held up a hand. "Let that rest for a moment." He lowered his hand and hesitated, as if trying to frame what he would say in words. "You asked why I include you in the ancient promises. Know that there are those among my people with the sight—an ancient power passed down from the first D'rekta, which sometimes allows those who possess it to see what will happen before it comes to pass."

  Futuretelling? His eyes caught my involuntary movement and he stopped, but I said nothing.

  "This seering is a strange power and perhaps a fearsome thing. My people do not invoke it lightly for if it were known, those possessing it would be burned. One of my people with such power told of Iriny's capture. When I returned from Guanette, the same seer told me that she would be brought safe to Sutrium by those who held her,

  but he could not tell if she would return safely to us....

  So I waited and set those I trusted to watch for you and your wagon. They saw nothing but one night a voice spoke in my dreams, such as the first D'rekta heard, telling me that if I would find Iriny, I must go at a certain moment to a certain market."

  From the edge of my sight, I saw Maire gape at him, and understood this was as much news to her as to me.

  He looked at her. "You know I am no seer and so it seemed madness to obey a dream voice. Yet, Maire, there was such power in it mat it was not in me to disobey. When I came where the voice had bidden me, I saw you, Elaria, dressed as a boy, with a Landgirl buying birds. I meant to speak with you when I rode after you, but you outrode me."

  The gypsy's face was pale and tense, his eyes looking inward, dark with wonder.

  "The voice spoke again into my dreams that night, sending me to another market, lest all promises be broken. That is exactly the words I dreamed: lest all promises be broken. What could it mean but the ancient Twentyfamilies promises? I obeyed and so came to find you being whipped. 'Save her,' the dream voice had told me. 'She is everything to you.' "

  We stared at one another. I thought my expression must mirror his, pale and shocked. Two people, I thought, sent out by seers to find one another. There was a terrifying symmetry in it. Worse, I thought I knew whose voice had commanded Swallow to my aid; that voice of power which spoke in dreams.

  "When I obeyed the dream voice, you must believe that it was not because I feared to die." He said this as if he needed to say his thoughts aloud. And perhaps he had, for I had no doubt voices in dreams could drive the unwary to madness. Perhaps he had feared he was losing his reason. "I obeyed the voice because ... such voices of power speak for higher reasons than to save the life of one man or a girl—even if horses do bend knee to her, or become lame."

  I felt myself flush.

  He nodded gravely, as if my silence was an answer to something. "I obeyed, too, because it ill behoved me to disobey; I, who must someday carry the weight of the ancient promises of the Twentyfamilies, for they are also matters of high destiny."

  I wanted to laugh, to bring us down from such heights, but his expression was deadly serious and forbade such cowardly evasion. And a voice inside asked me who I was, of all people, to sneer at his talk of destiny and high things. Was not my own life ruled by the very incomprehensible mystic forces he was striving to name?

  "Last night as I held your arm and made the tattoo, I knew that the time of the ancient promises foretold by the first D'rekta draws near." He looked to Maire.

  The healer paled. "Can it be so?"

  "I saw a vision," he said. "I saw this girl speak the words of the ancient promises in the place where first they were made."

  "No," I whispered, backing away. Not again, I thought incredulously, fearfully. Not another mysterious fatebinding. First the Agyllians had bound me to their quests and then the beastkindred claimed me for their legends, and now the gypsies would chain me with their ancient promises.

  "Yes," Swallow said. "And more. I will stand by your side when mat day comes. I feel me weight of that meeting across my soul and across the fatepath of the Twentyfamilies like a great heavy shadow."

  Something burned in the gypsy's face that frightened me for it told that he truly believed his words, and believing a thing so passionately must bring it to pass.

  "This is madness," I said, but even to my own ears the words lacked conviction.

  "Do not fear this," Swallow said. "I will consult the seer again and perhaps when next we meet, I will know better what is to come
. And we will meet again; sooner than you think, and I will stand at your side in battle."

  He glanced around. Here and there people had begun to emerge from their wagons and stir their cooking fires, for the sun had risen, not bright and red as on the day before, but wanly, veiled in gray cloud. I saw this as from a great distance.

  "The green begins to stir though it is early, for this day we of the Twentyfamilies go from Sutrium. You should leave now, before full light. People are more inquisitive under the sun's honest glare." He took up the little jeweled cup and offered it. "Will you drink before we part?"

  My skin rose into gooseflesh. Learn what Swallow means, Maryon had charged me. Or Atthis. Well, I had done that, and perhaps this toast was part of it. I felt powerless to resist the fey forces that seemed to drive this man as much as they drove me.

  I shivered and reached out to take the cup, drinking a little sip of the bittersweet elixir in it. He took it from my cold fingers, leaning near. "Have courage, girl. Never did I dream that I would live in such a time and, even less, that I would be part of the ancient promises, yet so it must be. There is great honor in such a fate."

  There was a wild joy in his eyes that frightened me as much as anything he had said. An exalted recklessness.

  "Come," Maire said briskly. "Before you go, let me look at the whip marks to see how they are healing."

  She had stood apart from us during the matter of the drinks, as if she did not want to hear what passed between us. I was relieved at her words, for they brought me back to earth, and freed me from the searing radiance of Swallow's face.

  I rose to face the old woman, composing myself. "The scars are healed already, thanks to your salve."

  Maire snorted, so I turned and lifted my shirt to show her. There was a long curious silence, and I craned my neck to see the tiny woman. My heart bumped against my ribcage at the look on her face.