Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Turtschaninoff, Maria, 1977- author.

  Title: Red mantle / Maria Turtschaninoff.

  Other titles: Breven från Maresi. English

  Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2020. | Series: The Red Abbey chronicles; book 3 | Summary: “Continues the story of Maresi as she leaves the Abbey at Menos and returns home to the small, oppressed province of Rovas. There, Maresi is determined to spread the knowledge she has gained and start a school—but in the end, she will learn just as much as she teaches.”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019035148 (print) | LCCN 2019035149 (ebook) | ISBN 9781419731358 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781683356462 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Letters—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T8824 Red 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.T8824 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Text copyright © 2020 Maria Turtschaninoff

  Book design by Siobhán Gallagher

  Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  These scriptures consist of the letters of Maresi Enresdaughter, sent from her homeland of Rovas to the Red Abbey during the reigns of our thirty-third and thirty-fourth Mothers. In Rovas, Maresi became known as Maresi Red Mantle, banisher of frost, tamer of beasts and guardian of the dead, she who brought forth an avalanche and released the dead into the realm of the living.

  These letters have been added to the Red Abbey archives by Sister O, archivist and servant to the Crone, and by her successor. These archives are incomplete, but all occurrences pertinent to the Abbey are documented here, lest we forget the events that unfolded in Rovas during the first two years following Maresi’s return to her native village. They shall remain significant to Rovas for all time.

  SPRING

  Venerable Sister O,

  I write this by the light of a crackling fire. Making fire was no easy task this evening. Rain has fallen continuously throughout most of our journey through the mountain pass, so all the wood is wet, as is my woolen cloak. The sounds of the trade convoy surround me: conversation and laughter; the whinnies and bells of horses and mules; the animals’ grinding jaws as they endeavor to snatch newly sprouted leaves from among the twigs. I can smell the smoke of the campfires, and spits of meat roasting slowly above them. One of the guards following the convoy had a good hunt today and shared out mountain sheep among the travelers.

  It is early evening, the sky is still light, and a pale moon hangs above the low mountain peaks. The convoy reached the crest of the mountain range today, and the lowlands of Rovas extend below us to the north.

  I have nearly arrived at my destination, and have formed an idea of how we may arrange the delivery of letters to and from the Abbey, so I am beginning my correspondence now, as we agreed. Annual trade convoys travel the long distance between Masson, the port town of Valleria in the south, and Namar, the walled city of the Akkade people on the high grassland plains north of Rovas. I believe the wisest option would be to send two bundles of letters per year, in spring and autumn. The letters may then arrive within a few moons. I have made sure to speak with several tradesmen and women along the way to let them know that whoever delivers letters from Rovas to Menos can expect handsome payment. I would think it best if the greater portion of this sum were paid when the letters reach their destination.

  You told me that you would read my words aloud to the other sisters at mealtimes in Hearth House. This is only right, for they are the ones who have equipped me with the wealth of knowledge I am now carrying out into the world. This and the Mother Abbess’s silver will help me to found a school in Rovas. But please, Sister O, will you do me the service of reading my letters alone first? You know my ways: I blather on and write far too much. You told me that I must record all of my experiences, for many things of great significance to the Abbey may happen, even if I am unaware of their significance at the time. But I might also describe events of no relevance, in which case I would prefer that you choose only what is truly important. And perhaps some things will be intended for your eyes only, Sister O. I trust you will know when this is the case.

  I am going to view these letters as a continuation of the text I wrote four years ago documenting the spring when the men came to Menos to take Jai away. Now, as then, I do not feel strong enough for the task. Now, as then, I will do my best to fulfill the task anyway, despite my shortcomings. I hope you will share my writings with the novices. It will be good preparation for others like me who intend to venture out into the world and spread the Abbey’s knowledge after their education.

  I know that everyone was concerned that I might be hurt or robbed on my journey, but everything has gone well. I have joined forces with a number of convoys in exchange for a small payment. This has provided me with protection against highway robbers and other dangers. The convoys are always escorted by several armed guards. Yet we have seen no robbers, and have heard wolves only from afar. They were too distant even to alarm my mule. Of course, I have almost certainly paid exorbitant prices for things at times, like the first convoy I joined that gave me a cart to ride in. Then I made friends with a traveling tradeswoman from Valleria named Ajanie, who told me I should have bartered them down to at least half the price. Still, I have learned a valuable lesson, and plenty of silver remains in my purse. Ajanie advised me to sleep with it under my head.

  When this first convoy branched west toward Devenland I had to travel on foot for several days before I managed to buy a retired old mule from a merchant. She has long, soft ears that obscure my view when I ride her, and her broad back is almost comfortable. The merchant who sold her mentioned no name, and perhaps he never gave her one. I call her Gray Lady, in honor of our highest peak on Menos, White Lady Mountain. She has walked this route many, many times before, bearing brick tea and salt on her back to the faraway land of the Akkade people. The merchant said that she is too old to manage that path again. The mountains between Rovas and the Akkade plains are high, and the climb is strenuous for an old mule. My intended route is not as long or difficult, but I still feared that the low peaks that form the southern boundary of Rovas might be too much for her. I dismounted and walked through the most treacherous parts, when stones were slipping under foot and hoof, and it felt as though each step took us as far backward as forward.

  The road we are following is known as the Horse Trail, because it is used to herd strong Akkade horses to the south, where they command a high price. We have not encountered any horse convoys, for spring is not a wise time to lead large herds of animals along roads damaged by the rain, snow and storms of winter. The northbound convoys travel in spring, when tradesmen bring sought-after goods from the southern lands to the north, where peopl
e are longing for sweets, spices and a little luxury after the hardships of winter. Ajanie showed me the silver jewelry she buys in the markets of Masson. It is too plain for the wealthy citizens of Irindibul, so she undertakes an annual journey to Namar. It is a great distance, but in the walled city people pay well for items considered too modest for Irindibul nobility. When Ajanie reaches Namar she trades her silver jewelry for wool, which she then brings down to the southeast and Lagora, which Ajanie described as a mosaic city by the sea, and trades the raw wool for spun yarn and tapestries. Then she travels back to Valleria and sells her wares for pure gold.

  Ajanie has seen so much of the world. For a Vallerian she has traveled a great deal: as far west as the land of the longhorns, as far north as the Akkade plains, and as far east as Lagora.

  It has been fascinating to see the landscape change over the course of my journey. From Valleria’s archipelago with its rainbow of boats at every little harbor, across vast marshlands where salt is harvested, to the Vallerian lowlands full of grape and olive groves, and the vibrant capital city of Masson. I would like to have seen Devenland as well, but it is too far west. I am trying to imagine the tea plantations on the mountain slopes. I joined a Devenian convoy after leaving Valleria behind, and first smelled the delicious aroma of brick tea. It is transported north to the Akkade people, who drink nothing else.

  Of all the people I have encountered, few have heard tell of the province of Rovas. Ajanie said that she has traveled through the region many times but never knew it had a name. To her it was only ever northwest Urundien. Naturally I felt obliged to tell her all about Rovas. The fire is providing a little light yet, so I will write down what I told her, to preserve the history of Rovas in the Abbey’s archives.

  Long ago Rovas was an independent land, but our nearest neighbor to the southeast, Urundien, was ever hungry for more territory and riches. During one of their military campaigns, Rovas fell under their dominion, and an alliance was sealed through the marriage of their king to the daughter of a Rovasian chieftain. Since then the Sovereign of Urundien has always appointed a nádor, a governor to rule over “the unruly forest folk.” The nádor enforces tax collection and trade tariffs. The Rovasians are farmers and woodcutters. The farmers are in a constant battle with the forest itself, which always threatens to reabsorb the cleared farmland, and so they never manage to grow more than the most basic of provisions for their families. The woodcutters, timber-rafters and fur-trappers live tough, solitary lives deep in the forests, traveling wherever they are hired or where game abounds. The people of Rovas are free men and women: the farmers own their farmland and woodland, but the large game belongs to the Crown, and only the Sovereign of Urundien may hunt it and allot hunting rights as a token of his favor. Large hunting parties from Urundien often enter the forest in autumn.

  However, our freedom is limited by poverty, ignorance and hard toil. Furthermore, the nádor’s levy of taxes is frequent and merciless. The villages often suffer from serious illness and malnutrition. Superstitions and delusions are rife, which is precisely what I hope to rectify when I reach my native village of Sáru and found my school. It feels like a very small step, but it is a start. Ajanie told me that schools are starting to become more common in the cities of Valleria and Devenland, though naturally only for the sons of rich families.

  My long journey has given me a lot of time to think about my future school. You said several times that I must have patience, and not expect the villagers to send their daughters to my school straightaway, but I am sure that they will when they see the benefits of true knowledge.

  Tomorrow I bid farewell to Ajanie and the rest of the convoy as they diverge to the northwest. They are to cross the flat lowland area, and in seven to eight days, depending on the weather, they should reach the wooded foot of the mountain range that divides Rovas from the Akkade lands. It will surely take them a long time to climb it, but a gentler descent awaits them on the other side, for the vast plains of the Akkade people span a high plateau, with a very different climate from that of Rovas.

  I will write again once I am closer to my home village.

  Your novice,

  Dearest Jai,

  I plan to write separate letters to you and Ennike, but that does not mean you cannot read each other’s, unless I specifically ask you not to. I cannot say when I will be able to send them, so I have decided to write a series of letters instead of one continuous text. That way I will have them ready to send as soon as an opportunity arises.

  Can you believe it? I have finally arrived in Rovas! Well, the southern outskirts of Rovas, in any case. My village is a long way from these gentle, rolling lowlands, deep in the mountainous woodlands. The convoy I have been following took a different course this morning, and I have spent the entire day journeying through the early Rovasian springtime all alone. I am seeing and experiencing everything differently now that I have no one but my mule for company. Each time I cross a gurgling spring stream it is an adventure in itself. Each time I see the roofs of houses peek over the horizon or from behind a bend in the road I feel a tingle in my stomach—whom might I meet today? A part of me always hopes that it is my own village, though I know it is still several days northeast from here, and I do not recognize these surroundings. Yet what if everything has changed in the years I have been away? The village might not be in the same place!

  I have set up camp for the night and sheltered under some bushes, and soon I will be sleeping with only my mule and the wind for company. It is overcast tonight, otherwise I would gaze up at the stars; but just the knowledge that the stars are up there is comfort enough. The stars are there, and the moon too, and they are looking down on you, dear Jai.

  I will write more once I am home.

  Your friend,

  Venerable Sister O,

  It has been raining for seven days now. It never stops. It is a fine, constant rain that leaves everything drenched: me, my mule, my luggage. I am keeping warm inside the cloak Jai gave me, but I have not been dry in a long time. The branches are dripping and the stones are slippery. I have found shelter for the night in a half-ruined cowshed with most of its roof intact, so at least I will not be rained on during the night. I have not succeeded in making a fire, as I have no dry firewood, so this letter will be shorter than the last, because the daylight is fading.

  Gray Lady and I have passed many villages that resemble Sáru: several homesteads built in a circle or crescent, dotted with outbuildings, and fields and pastures spreading out into the surrounding forest. In the south every field has its own fence, but as I near my homeland in northernmost Rovas the fields are gathered together, with shared fences.

  I have spent many nights sleeping under an open sky. In the summers when I was little, my mother, my sister Náraes and I would sometimes stay out in the forest for a long time picking berries. Mother taught us how to build a shelter of branches and twigs to protect ourselves from wind and light rain, and this is what I have been making each night—beside streams swelling with meltwater and spring rain, beside serene forest tarns, and on slopes with far-reaching views across valleys and mountains, where smoke from unseen chimneys is the only sign of human dwellings.

  It is not easy to find one’s way through this forest. Though I grew up here, and was toddling through woodland as soon as I could walk, and though I am familiar with this forest and its ways, I am also familiar with its dangers and how treacherous it can be. Rovas is a wooded land for the most part, apart from some rocky, mountainous terrain where no trees grow. Our most important trade routes, indeed travel routes in general, follow the rivers. Yet these rivers generally flow from northwest to southeast, and as I came from the southwest, I have not been able to travel via the waterways. This would have been easier and quicker, as we discussed before I left. The Horse Trail, which I followed to begin with, runs through the western part of Rovas from the southwest to the north. The villages are linked by woodland paths that are often no more than cartwheel tracks, but th
ese go directly from village to village, and so are not best suited for long-distance travelers.

  Each time I have doubted the way, when a path has forked or disappeared into the undergrowth, Gray Lady has chosen the way with perfect composure, and each time I have soon realized that she made the correct choice. She is smarter than I, this mule. I do not know what I would have done without her.

  I have traveled through the spring and witnessed the first sprouting leaves, and birdsong has followed me along my path. Yet it seems like an eternally timid spring that never manages to take the leap and burst into full greenery and warmth. The farther north I go, the cooler the regions become and the later spring arrives. It never occurred to me that spring, which brings mild breezes and good traveling weather to Menos, is a time of rain in Rovas.

  I believe that I am following the same route that I took south eight years ago when I left Rovas, but I cannot be certain. It was so long ago, and everything was so new and frightening that I did not pay very close attention to the route. I was only a child, loaded onto a cart and driven away from Rovas to the southern mountains. From there I was transferred onto a donkey’s back, led along the mountain pass and loaded onto another cart for the remainder of the journey to Valleria. I fear I may not be able to find my village. It is an unremarkable settlement, and when I ask the folk I meet in the villages they only shake their heads in answer.

  And Sister O, there is another thing I fear, and I can admit this only to you: I fear hunger.

  At the Abbey I got used to always having a full belly. Sometimes we had simple, humble fare, but in any case, I have not had to go hungry in eight years. Now I am met by the faces of people who know the true meaning of hunger, and I remember. I remember when we slaughtered our last pig. I remember going hungry for so long that I forgot what it was like to feel full. I remember eating things not intended for human consumption: rotten seeds, leaves and grass, animal carcasses, boiled leather. I remember the taste of bread made with sawdust. I remember how swollen my stomach became, and how thin Anner’s limbs were, and how diarrhea weakened her body day by day.